the Christmas that wasn�t
December 28, 2009

What can I say? This Christmas thing just doesn�t seem to work for me. If I try to deny it and fight it, I get put through hell by family & friends, but if I try and get into it, I get the royal fucking over anyway. No-win.

Let�s see�how many ways did Christmas disappoint this year? Well, there was the cancellation of our traditional Christmas Eve with P&E this year due to their unemployment and general malaise,
there was the cancellation of my family�s Christmas due to my hometown getting 19 inches of snow the day we were supposed to have it,
with the added bonus of having my mom sobbing about it to me on the telephone
, there are all the marriages hitting the rocks right and left in Spouse�s family,
and the schedules that only allowed for a scant 20 minutes or so to see the kids and exchange gifts,
there's my friggin' period that showed up a week & a half early just to throw a wrench into things,
and there�s my stubborn prick of a husband who stayed glued to me for the entire month in order to prevent me from going shopping without him, and steadfastly refused to give me a single idea for what to get him (Well, if he wanted nothing, that�s exactly what the fuck he got), and there is the Christmas morning phone call from my dad�not to wish me merry Christmas or anything�he just called me for the same reason he ever does: technical support. This time it was for the Blu-Ray player and the GPS he got for Christmas�

But. On the up side, I did get to go see W&T on the evening of Christmas and give them the big, fancy Hamilton Beach roaster-oven I got them.

They didn�t get me anything.

What can I say. It was a long, cold, icy, snowy, claustrophobic, miserable four-day weekend, and I�m glad it�s over. It was almost a relief to go back to work this morning�and considering how bad work is these days, that�s really saying something.

Spouse mailed off my nephew�s drawing gift this morning, and I suppose we�ll run down to Mom & Dad�s sometime in the next couple of weekends and give her Spouse�s drawing gift and the �just between her and me� gift. I�ll start taking down the tree and the cards and the few little items I put up for decoration this year, and we�ll work our way through all the cookies I baked and never got to give away, and then?

We can put the whole sordid business behind us for another twelve months.