You should all be thankful that you’re not me.
Well, fuck. Thanksgiving is upon us yet again, and I’m doing the countdown to misery that is my mother’s family.
These people are horrible. I mean, I love them because they’re my family, but at the same time, they drive me completely bonkers with their behavior. Watching my two aunts constantly battle for my grandma’s attention is the worst part of it. Both of them are constantly trying to out-sick each other and sound the most pathetic, which I am assuming is an attempt to be my grandma’s sickly favorite.
Every event with my family is stressful. Mostly because there is so much back-handed snipey complimenting going on that you don’t know where it’s coming from half the time. For example, Aunt Denial will say something like, “Andria, your hair looks adorable! You can’t even tell half of it fell out.” Fuck you.
Then there’s the food. Jesus. My mom used to do Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve for a long time, but she gave Thanksgiving to my grandma because she got tired of the stress of having to prepare her house for my white-glove inspecting aunts (”Oh, Becky, your house looks great! I wish I could go without dusting and just not care about it.”). Plus, they brought all their own food anyway, so she figured if they’re going to be assholes, my grandma can do the cooking and cleaning. There are FOUR different stuffings, because no one will eat the one the other made. Aunt Mormon has to have her bland, dry-as-a-bone stuffing that could choke you. Aunt Denial has to make her own special stuffing because her kids will only eat it. My sister will only eat Stove Top Stuffing. And my mom always makes this stuffing my grandma on my dad’s side used to make with eggs, and sage. She loves it, and it took her many years of trying before she got it the same way my grandma made it. No one in my family will eat it. Because it’s not “theirs”. They’re such jerks, I swear. No one can suck it up for one fucking day and get over themselves and eat something that’s not “theirs”.
I was at dinner with my parents Friday night, and I said we should do an over/under on how long until one of the aunts is not talking to someone, and which one it will be. I say it will be Aunt Mormon before dinner. She always gets pissed about something, and it’s usually my uncle, Chris Peterson. The last time she saw him, she came to see my grandma. He said something to her and she punched him in the stomach and drove all the way back home to Cucamonga, which is about an hour away.
Good times.
____________________________________
Now enjoy this. RAM finally got a hundred on his spelling test, which is a huge deal because he has really struggled with reading recently.
Too bad his teacher doesn’t have a fucking clue, though.
Comment by Violet
November 21, 2007 @
I want to attend your family Thanksgiving and take notes on the behavior, awarding point values for, say, really impressive passive aggression. Then, at the end, we can have an Official Ceremony, like the Olympics, and I will award medals. I will award Silver and Bronze, then tell them that no one was really good enough to deserve a Gold, but that they could maybe try for the Christmas competition. You could then wear the Gold, if you wanted, just to spite them. And say things like, “You wouldn’t know anything about this, but it’s so hard to think of a proper response when people acknowledge your greatness.”
And… “Know spell these correctly in your writing” is the new “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
To me.
XO