Wait - I’m supposed to be THANKFUL for these people?
I originally started this Friday morning.
The joy of working in the glamorous world of finance is that we’re only closed on bank holidays, which means I’m stuck at work today.
Boo - hoo.
Yesterday was just as boring and stressful as I’d expected any gathering of my mother’s family to be, complete with unresolved (and ridiculous) family feuds, spoiled kids who wouldn’t stop screaming, mormon robots, and my favorite martyrs - Aunt Mormon and Aunt Denial.
There weren’t any big blow-ups this year, which makes for boring blog entries, but there was still plenty of back-handed compliments and accusing glances thrown across the room.
My family are pretty much a bunch of assholes. I love them - don’t get me wrong - but they’re real jerks sometimes.
My mom’s contribution to Thanksgiving dinner is the turkey. And thank god, because my grandma actually tried to BOIL the turkey one year. But my aunts and my grandma make almost everything else. Because of the asshole thing I mentioned earlier, there has to be at least four kinds of stuffing. Aunt Mormon has to have this (horrible) dry stuffing that has nuts and apples in it, my spoiled sister (there’s a whole book I could write about why she’s an ass) has to have Stove Top, my cousin’s son is allergic to nuts so one has to be made without nuts (he is an obvious exception to the asshole thing), and my mom likes this sage and sausage dressing my [real] dad’s mom used to make when she was alive. It’s ridiculous.
Anything that’s not made by them is frowned upon by my family. My mom made this sweet potato/pecan pie from a recipe that she found at the grocery store (and I swear to god, I could smell so much butter that I was ready to eat it before it even went in the oven). My mother is not a baker, so for her to do this is kind of a big deal. No one would even try it. My mom and I are the only ones who ate it (and it was GOOD). They all walked by it, picked at it a little with a disgusted look on their faces, and went to the other pie Aunt Denial made instead. They wouldn’t even give it a chance, because none of them made it. I hate this about my family. Mostly because even though she won’t admit it, it hurt my mom’s feelings. And that pisses me off.
There were other things that pissed me off:
My cousin B married this perfect robot, and she spoils her two daughters, so they’re hell to deal with, especially if you’re like me, and they only see me twice a year and really have no idea who I am. I’m surprised B married her, because they are opposites. She cares about money and possessions and looking perfect. He cares about his skateboard. I suspect it had more to do with her being from a good mormon family, and Aunt Mormon playing matchmaker. B is fun to talk to. His wife never has anything particularly nice to say, and it always seems like she’s doing whomever she’s talking to a favor by gracing them with her presence.
Aunt Mormon and my cousin T still have not made up from the fight they got into LAST THANKSGIVING. So my cousin T is like Lord Voldemort. He-Whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Spoken. Because they’re both childish idiots, our whole family has to dance around the fact that he’s not at family events, and is not even going to be part of our Christmas gift exchange.
My uncle, Chris Peterson, gets huffy and pissy every year about his stupid cats.The kids are afraid of them, and freak out whenever they see them. He and my grandma have a cat who has the most inappropriate and ill-fitting name: Sweet Pea. He is neither sweet, nor pea-sized. He hisses, he bites, he scratches - he’s just mean. But my grandma and my uncle don’t (or won’t) see it, and think that when we’re all gone, he’s completely different. I told her maybe the next cat she gets she can name him “ouch motherfucker”, because based on Sweet Pea and his name, he’d be the best cat ever. She didn’t think that was funny.
The Robot asked my cousin B where he put their screaming daughter Audrey down for a nap, and he said, “In [Chris Peterson’s] room.” She jumped up, started yelling about the cats eating her daughter, and ran into the bedroom. She ran out with Audrey in her arms and insisted on holding her for the rest of the day.
My aunts have a way of saying something nice and something really awful at the same time. My mom had a shirt on with some jungle-print thing going on (I didn’t like it, and made fun of her for it the whole ride over). Aunt Denial said, “I love that shirt, Becky! I could never pull of those really loud prints.”
I straightened my hair (which is normall curly and fairly frizzy). I don’t do it very often because a) it never looks very good for long (which is pretty normal for my hair - I can never make it look very good), and b) I hate how much time it takes. Straightening it breaks my half-hour “out of bed and out the door” morning routine. Aunt Mormon came up and said, “Your hair looks cute, kid. I can’t handle when my hair just lays there limp, but it looks really good on you.” Um. Thanks. Bitch.
This is their way of being nice. About everything.
I really should spend holidays with my [real] dad’s family, because they are the real white trash. The ones who are missing teeth, marry their dead husband’s brother, and have all their kids out of wedlock.
Holy crap was Grey’s Anatomy good this week.
I have other things to write about, but frankly, this entry has gone on long enough.
