Chaos Attraction

Family Pet Peeves

2013-12-08, 9:34 p.m.

What's my pet peeves of the holiday? They're all pretty much family related.

I am not good at picking gifts for relatives AT ALL. Except for my cousin Matt, anyway, but everyone else....I might as well be an alien from another planet for all that I understand what they want. As for me, they give me enough bath products to stock a store, so....that tells you that they feel the same about me. I am OUT of ideas as to what to get or make them. To the point where I should just give them all money, really, except I don't want to do that either (got brought up that that's kinda declasse and obvious as to how much they are worth to you). I just don't want to give them gifts any more and they can skip the bath products for me as well. Not that I don't like them, but I probably won't run out until about 2020.

At this point I am about ready to declare that nobody gets a gift because fuck this shit.... and my aunt actually suggested skipping it this year. Mom was all, "I already bought you lots of things in Alaska," and then proceeded to go out and buy more, so....yeah. I can gift for my friends, but relatives, hah. No.

And frankly....spending time with the family at Christmas has always kinda been a minefield from hell. Growing up, Christmas was deemed to be the holiday spent with Dad's relatives, who passive-aggressively didn't like us. Okay, that's not true--my female cousins and their families did well enough, but between my guy cousin who doesn't really seem to like any women who aren't his mother, and my aunt and uncle who are the leading figures in passive-aggressive jerkitude behavior.... You can check my archives for those years. They cut us off after 2007 and I am not at all sorry about missing holidays with them.

As for the other side....they don't want to invite us for Christmas and given the circumstances...I do think that is kind of shitty of them. But yes, they can invite who they want and they don't want to invite us, so that's their right to not want us there, etc. So my family options were to originally be with jerks, and now we've essentially got nobody and god only knows what we will be doing and with who every holiday. It's just weird and uncomfortable to go be with other people's families. Last year's was great, but not replicable for the future, sadly. I think this year we will just be at Mom's alone, hung over from holiday travel.

I guess my pet peeve is that family is supposed to be So Vitally Important and we are all supposed to be so close and loving with each other and all that jazz....and really, that is just not how my life and holidays go. I am tired of feeling that huge social and familial and emotional obligation and then it doesn't pan out and I end up feeling shitty.


As for today: I spent the day shopping with Jamie. We hit the flea market--I wasn't too into anything but she found some fabric--then In N' Out, and then went around the downtown stores looking at windows. I found some tacky Christmas music to add to my collection and we hit the bead store, where I got the idea to make Mom and I matching Christmas in Hawaii necklaces. And probably a crocheted lei (I have a book of those from the last Hawaii trip) as well, if I find where the book is. And after that we hit a Joann's, where I replaced my missing DPN's and then got....

(a) Yarn to make a sweater.
(b) Small holiday cookie cutters to make felted doodads with.
(c) A knitting needle holder so I don't lose more damn needles.
(e) Some light bulb charms, probably to go on the necklaces
(f) "Waste canvas" that lets you do cross stitch on fabric-- I didn't know that existed!
(f) BATTERY OPERATED 20 LED RICE LIGHT SET. Oh my gosh, this exists....and can be put into a sweater.

(Yes, I spent like $50 because I lost a set of knitting needles. That's just sad.)

Yes, I am plotting making an ugly holiday sweater.... but more on that later, because time is running late and I still need to get this entry up and posted. That needs to be a longer entry anyway.


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