be honest…
I cut ties with my dad and my mom and sisters would rather spend the day with the fascist. My kids are all grown up and off doing their own things.
I am on my morning hike with my dogs and wife (taking a break while my dog plays). After hike I will surprise my wife with Mario Kart and we will shit talk each other all day while playing.
So for a holiday I do not celebrate, it is going well.
Failed to pretend that I liked my presents so now the family is leaving me alone. Childish behaviour from me, but it is only once a year!
Pretending to like your presents if you don’t is the infinitely more childish option in my opinion.
As long as you’re not being a dick about it, it’s in everyones best interest to know the truth.
Woke up with a 101 fever, so it’s going great
Drive to the folks was ok. Tensions were minimal and then ramped up when newly deconstructing brother made a very tame joke about the pope. I though it was funny, he just said the pope should bless little bottles of Malort instead of holy water. The parents were not amused.
I slept in the guest room below the kitchen. Their fridge is old and the compressor has started to howl. It sounds like car horns blasting in the distance. I did not sleep well and I’m going to need a lot of emotional control today.
I don’t think even the pope can exorcise the foul demons of malort
Old fridges make some scary noises. Mine kinda sounds like someone screaming.
You got this! It’s one day of the year
we have a not so old fridge that sounds like an old farting monk…so yeah…that sucks.
I absolutely hate the holidays that people feel obligated to be with family. I had a good upbringing but found out later in life how self centered and narcissistic my family was. I have lived my own life apart from them, mostly because growing up it was either get a sport scholarship to college or the military and I chose the latter, which freed me in a lot more ways than I realized at the time.
I hope you can get some distance and find the family you deserve.
What Christmas? I’m traveling and having a blast (through my wallet too but I’ll worry about my budget next month). Christmas Eve was spent on a night train
Everything is all done. No family besides the kids so no one to entertain, feed, or clean up after. They’re enjoying their presents and I’m doomscrolling.
Well done! How’s the doom scrolling?
Still scrolling 🥹
🫂
American here. My mother divorced my dad 15 years ago and moved to the other side of the country to live by herself in a cabin in the woods. My father just passed away 2 years ago. And my sister moved to the next state over and has her own family to celebrate Christmas with.
My parents are both originally from other states, so I have no extended family within 100 miles of me. My wife is originally from a few states away and is keeping her family at arm’s length, so she also has no family here.
It’s just my wife and I today (and our dog). We don’t have any solid plans for today. Tomorrow, my sister is inviting us over to celebrate Christmas with her family, so our niblings get two Christmases! One of them has a December birthday, so that’s 3 days to receive presents this month. Lucky kid.
I always enjoyed Christmas, but as I get older, I feel more awkward about giving and receiving gifts. I always worry about buying gifts for someone if they didn’t specifically ask for what I bought. I’m nervous they’ll hate it and we’ll have to go through the awkward song and dance of, “thanks, I love it!” while arranging to return it the next day.
I’ve always felt weird about receiving gifts too. My parents spoiled the hell out of me as a kid, but I was unusual in that I actually didn’t like being spoiled. If I expressed interest in something, there was a good chance it might be sitting on my bed the next day when I came home from school. I learned not to tell my parents when I liked something because I didn’t want them automatically buying it for me.
Christmas meant a living room half-full of presents and a whole morning of unwrapping gifts. Meanwhile, I had friends who were lucky to get A present or two. It just made me feel awful and unfair the more I thought about it.
So now as an adult, I don’t care so much about following Christmas tradition. I tell people not to buy gifts for me, but if they insist, I keep an Amazon shopping list with some cheap interests on it so they know what to buy me.
I also ask people directly what they want before I buy them gifts. I don’t want to guess what they want, I’d rather just be direct. If they could send me a list to pick from, all the better. But I hate trying to guess what someone will like. It’s extremely stressful for me. Although like my parents, I tend to spoil my friends and family with expensive gifts if they’ll allow me.
Christmas traditions:
My parents were usually up real late wrapping presents on Christmas Eve, so they didn’t want to be bothered first thing in the morning. They had a rule that my sister and I were not allowed to wake them before 9 AM. We could get up and admire the Christmas tree and all the presents “Santa” left, but we do it quietly.
Santa would always move our stockings to the foot of our individual beds. They always had candy, nuts, and an orange tucked into the toe of the stocking (which was later replaced with a chocolate orange when those became a thing). They also had a bunch of small wrapped toys. My parents allowed my sister and I to open those gifts on our own. They were meant as a distraction to keep us silently entertained until 9 AM.
Once my parents were up and had made coffee for themselves, then we would sit around the Christmas tree to open presents. We had a rule that only one present could be opened at a time, which gave everyone the spotlight to enjoy a gift and have it acknowledged by the family. It also taught us patience, so we didn’t just spent 5 minutes shredding gifts.
My sister and I would hand out presents. We made sure everyone had a stack of gifts to open next to them, then we’d pick someone and go clockwise around the room, opening one gift at a time.
Afterward, my family would drive us to one of our local family friends and we’d spend the evening hanging out and eating a large Christmas dinner with their family.
I am 41 years old now, and to this day, my mother still hasn’t admitted that Santa isn’t real. She does this silly little innocent “wink, wink” act where she mails me her gifts, with a few labeled from Santa. She claims every year that Santa still hasn’t gotten my address updated, so she accidentally got my gifts from him, which she forwards to me.
She also loves to write punny hints on the tags for each present and have my sister and I guess what they are. For instance, I might get a gift that says, “He was a skater boy…” and it’ll be a skateboard. Or “Be careful or you’ll get mugged!” and it’s a new coffee mug.
My wife grew up in a very poor household, so she was used to not having much for Christmas. Her tradition is to only receive one gift from Santa, which was usually the cheapest gift. Because Santa rewarding rich kids with expensive toys and poor kids with practically nothing was upsetting for the poor kids, so her family made sure to teach them that the most expensive gifts came from family, while Santa only gave out small practical things, like socks or a new notebook, etc.
They also had a tradition where the oldest kids would help wrap presents. They were let in on the “secret” that Santa couldn’t do everything himself, so he would ask families to help out. That kept the magic of Santa alive for the older kids who had to write “Santa” on their younger siblings’ gifts. It also explained why Santa always seemed to have familiar handwriting.
Pretty alright, except I managed to contract a mild flu.
The main event with Christmas dinner went well (It’s on the 24th here in Norway), and as I’m the chef for such occasions I get to stay in the kitchen and watch youtube and the like, chilling with a few beers, while my GF does all the guest-stuff. (5 guests, 11 total people total).
Today is leftovers day, with a few hours until some of the people arrive, so now I’m chilling in the kitchen again.
I’m currently self medicating with a Laphroaigh Quarter Cask, and combined with a moderate dose of paracetamol it helps dulling the barbed wire in my throat.
My kids are satisfied and happy with their gifts, and that’s all that matters in my book.
First time I’ve been sick on Christmas, so not seeing family outside the house today. Kind of a bummer, but trying to make the best of a nice, quiet day at home.
Only I’m awake so far, I haven’t been able to sleep. Had several nightmares about my ex and stayed up a little while crying about it and missing her since it’s Christmas. I suspect the day coming will be fairly boring, spending it with family, we’re all too broke for presents, but we’re going to have a nice meal and spend time together, so there’s that.
I ruined it. My wife is crying. My son is in his room doing whatever teenagers do. I fucking hate it here. I’m suffocating. Fuck Christmas. Fuck my life.
How did you ruin it?
By saying that I don’t want to be here. I’m tired of feeling like a servant and I’m sick of feeding her vacuum cleaner of a son.
Yeah, that would do it.
How old is her son?
- Will consume half a dozen eggs in a sitting. Or anything else that isn’t locked up. It’s like he never stops. She says I’m overreacting, he thinks it’s funny. I wish I had a way out. Jesus Christ, we’re in the process of building a house. I am drowning in regret. There’s nothing for it. I just need to learn to shut up. It’s not going to change any time soon.
Ah. I’d say that’s about normal for 14. It won’t last forever, but teenagers need a lot of food, and if you’re in a guardian role, you’re on the hook. I’m not sure what other complaints you might have, but for that one I think you need to come to terms with it. It’s unfair to him. Some kids need more food than others, and it might be that your expectations are out of line with reality.
When I was that age, I was working stage crew at the high school one night. My mom brought baked pasta and Pepsi to the school. I ate it. When I got home, she asked me how everyone liked it. I told her I ate it all. She said she made enough for everyone on the crew. I told her she was wrong. She only made enough for me.
Another tidbit from that time: with everything I was eating, I was still barely getting enough. I could eat as much as I wanted at every meal, and I was still deathly skinny. I was 6’4" tall and only 185 pounds. When I was 16 and started dating my future wife, I briefly stopped eating (love struck). I dropped down to 165 in two months. I never noticed at the time, but when I look at pictures from back then, I look like a skeleton with skin stretched over it.
I have three kids and they are all above average height. My wife would make food for the week on Sunday, and by Tuesday morning it was all gone.
My advice is to make sure that he eats one serving at a time. Make it clear that he can come back for more as much as he needs to, but to the extent possible get him in the habit of eating one normal serving and then stopping for 30 minutes. That won’t reduce the amount he needs, but it will help him avoid eating more than he needs. That’s more for his benefit than yours. It will help him avoid overeating later.
You can tell him I told him so. I stuffed myself at every meal growing up. When I was done growing, it took me decades to unlearn that habit. I ended up gaining a lot of weight. So, I made that rule for my kids and they’ve all stayed down to a reasonable weight.
185 pounds is deathly skinny at 6’4"? I’m the same height and I’ve never been over 160 😭
My doctor thinks I should get down to 230. Personally, I’d prefer to get closer to 205. I’m at about 245 now. That’s down from around 300 at my peak.
According to This chart , the ideal weight range for a 6’4" male is 182-222 pounds. A 6’4" female would be 162-198.
It’s going pretty well. Got to sleep in till 8. Definitely getting a cold or something. I’ve got no where to I’m going to enjoy my day inside. Usually I’d like to get out for a hike. Instead today will be a cozy day.
My friend pushed me to do some witchcraft. Basically to draw my name in a circle on a paper, and then lines radiating out of it, like the suns many of us used to draw as kids, with wishes to manifest. So, like health, relaxation, appreciation, equanimity etc.
I didn’t want to just ‘try and be open’ and uncritically go with her explanation of frequencies and talking to the universe and all that, but I’m sure it’s good to ritually focus on something like this every now and then. Certainly felt nice.
Since it’s Christmas, I also feel it’s in order to thank you for all your contributions to this place. I appreciate it and wish you as good a day as possible.
I’m alone all day drove from Arizona to California and stopped at two gyms and exercised and stretched along the way and at a truck Stop accidentally spent $250+ on fun stuff, truck stops have so many awesome things! I need a new dash cam and it turned out to cost $100, oops.
I was with one of my boyfriends yesterday but he made it clear I was not invited to his family gathering, 😢 and I get it, whatever, but that hollow feeling of emptiness and being uninvited anywhere in the world is an achey feeling.
Otherwise I’m feeling fantastic because every time I stop at the gym I do my physical therapy which is fixing my back pain and I’ve been eating healthy so
Then when I got back to California I contacted my other boyfriend and he said we could meet tonight but then an hour later he said he was tired and let’s do it some other day. So I was basically alone all day but I mingled with the nice customer service people at the truck stop and saw some people at the gym, so that satisfied my biological need for human interaction today.
And my boyfriend who didn’t invite me to his family gathering, his heart must have felt something because he texted me to make sure I’m doing okay today. That was nice.
Merry christmas.
for Reasons, I had a get-together with relatives yesterday instead of today. upside: I don’t have to put up with any holiday BS today. downside: I ate like half a gingerbread house just before I left, and still feel kinda gross, ugh… maybe I’ll put on a martial arts movie and do calisthenics…
