So, Thanksgiving weekend...

Actual Thanksgiving went the same as it always does: I sit alone in the living room of my aunt's house amusing myself. I had finally finished my NaNo novel the night before, so I was enjoying the guilt-free Internet time and guilt-free knitting time (I'm designing legwarmers). Kinda dull yet relaxing. Everyone else was, as usual, kind of AWOL most of the time. The food was good. Same thing we do every year.

Alas, this was followed by the same thing Mom and I do every year, i.e. she bitches for days and days about how my aunt doesn't give her enough attention. She can slight everything, from "They won't let me make anything other than gravy" to "I don't like how anyone else makes stuffing" (and y'all wonder where I get the whining from?) to "All they can ever talk about is work. Don't they have ANY hobbies?" (no) to "I sat by your aunt because she was alone and then she got up and took my seat in the living room and I had nowhere to sit!" Giant paging of the whaaaaambulance, I am sorry to say.

Every year she insists on getting blood from a stone here. Every year she is genuinely Shocked! And Surprised! that my aunt isn't warm and fuzzy and doesn't have much to talk about. And every rest of the weekend she complains about it.

I keep asking her, "Are you SURE you are happier having gone to this?" and "Wouldn't you have felt better if we went to SF alone so you wouldn't have anything to complain about for 3 days?" and "No, seriously, you sound MISERABLE and you are complaining about this A LOT," but la la la, denial just went on and on. (She called her friend Pat during the weekend and Pat said the same things I did.) No wonder I hate perpetual optimists sometimes. They never learn when reality keeps kicking them in the face. Y'all may bitch me out and tell me to write in a gratitude journal (guess who spent the weekend nagging me about doing one. Excuse me, I'm not Oprah and I don't have to write that down every day), but at least I don't keep expecting people who have been the same way all their lives to have a drastic personality change without disease or a lobotomy causing it.

Things finally exploded Friday night at dinner. We went to a not-terribly-full restaurant with a very good server and the food was coming fast, so I barely finished my salad and had barely eaten one piece of (soon-to-be-infamous) bread and Mom was still halfway through her salad when the dinners showed up.

Pay attention to that tedious little detail.

Halfway through dinner, she starts bitching me out in public for not offering her a piece of bread. Never mind that she was still eating something else. Never mind that the food came immediately. Never mind the part where she has a working mouth and could very easily have asked for a piece of bread if she wanted it. That was not the point. The point was that I very specifically READ HER DAMN MIND and know that she wanted to be OFFERED the bread regardless of all logic and reason. After two hours of drama, I finally got the point across that I WAS NOT DELIBERATELY TRYING TO HURT HER FEELINGS and she stopped it.

And then she was all happy that we resolved this on our own without my shrink. Meanwhile, I'm thinking that the next time she feels lonely or pissed off, this will come up again. The next week, she whined at me about how come everyone tells her to adjust to other people and why don't they adjust to HER? (Uh, that's life, Mom. They tell you that 'cause you can't change others.)

Now, most of the weekend was fun. We went to craft fairs in Nevada City and Grass Valley (I'm not sure if I'll get up there or not in a couple of weekends, so it was good to get to peek in on my favorite stuff, pick up beads and roving and antique astrology books, etc.) and the Harvest Festival in San Jose, where we got a ton of food. The shopping was excellent. And Sunday I went home early (well, I should say MOM went home early) so I could have a driving lesson, so that was good. Plus quality guilt-free DVD time. Alas, none of that makes for terribly interesting blogging, especially since I did not take photographs and am so behind on my Photoshopping anyway (still haven't done vacation pics yet).

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