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I love Christmas with my family. Large rant below. It's all trivial stuff, not earth-shatteringly important, so I suggest if you're not up to listening to me whinge about ultimately unimportant shit that you skip to the next post.
I'll do this chronologically.
First there's the lack of sleep all week. Damned if I know why the early-cycle insomnia has continued. Exhausted I would go to bed, and then keep my SO awake (when he finally got to bed) with my inability to sleep as much as my body knows it needs to. I can deal with it every month because I know to not schedule anything truly important for that week, but when it keeps on going it starts to interfere with functioning as a human being.
Not to mention being exhausted means twitching and skin sensitivity and lack of snuggles because I can't sit still and I've been keeping my SO awake so he's tired and unsnuggly.
Then there's work. Not office work wot is good and quite happy to let me do stuff in whatever manner I like as long as I get it done. Oh, and gave me a lovely big esky-bag filled with yummy goodies for Christmas. No, the other one, the markets. Firstly, I organised myself into organising the person responsible for the Christmas-New Years' roster into getting around to doing it. And argued against my working until close on Thursday (9pm) when we would need to start and 6am on Christmas Eve. So when I finally looked at the roster, I was surprised to see that I was, indeed, down to work 14 hours (still less than some), then start at 6am for an 11.5 hour day (shorter if we sold out earlier, as expected). And for some reason, I wasn't down to work one of the pre-New Years' days that we'd agreed I was working. We fixed the not-working day because someone else found that they needed to be somewhere else, but it wasn't worth arguing against the sheer non-OHS-ness of the shifts. The bosses were doing even worse shifts.
But I was duly unimpressed to be doing this when I realised I was imsomnia-ing, then being on my feet all day both days, and on the Thursday it was 38+ degrees outside. The markets do not cool down easily, and were still warm enough at 6am the next morning that I was in t-shirt instead of the three layers I had been wearing outside the markets in the early morning cool change chill.
So I get home on Christmas Eve, exhausted, having done shopping to last until the shops re-open on Wednesday as well, make a token effort at finishing the present-wrapping that I was too tired to do earlier in the week, then sit down at my computer, unable to settle to any one activity on that as well. Finally I go to bed.
If I had been able to sleep easily, and my SO had not had to start work at 6:30 am, he would have dropped me off at his work, and let me walk the just under a kilometre from there to my parents' house so that I could do the early-morning "Don't wake up Mum and Dad" that is traditional at Christmas. But I was exhausted, and so when the alarm went off at way too early, I was unhappy to be woken by it. Usually, I sleep through if it isn't for me, or go to sleep shortly after. But not this time. So after 5 hours sleep (the best this week so far, yay!) I was awake and decided that no matter how awful I felt, no matter how much lactic acid was still accumulated in my muscles and no matter how strained all my tendons and nerves felt, I was getting up, damn it, and finishing off those presents I needed to wrap.
It's not uncommon for me to find it easier to settle down to a hated task when really tired, because I can't really concentrate. I don't dwell on how much I hate whatever it is that I'm doing. Not that I hate present-wrapping. It's just tedious, and something I've usually got done shortly after having finished getting all the presents about a month before Christmas..
Anyway, I pack the presents into my shopping trolley, reasoning that it was going to be much easier to transport the lot in something with wheels. Since I don't drive, my SO had taken the car to work, public transport sucks on public holidays, and I was NOT taking that much stuff, some of which was fragile, on a 50 minute bike ride, I ordered myself a taxi
The taxi arrived faster than they usually do on an ordinary day. This was good.
So I got to my parent's house to say hello and drop off the presents for unveiling that evening. The first thing I get asked is "Bubbly?" I assented, and drank my first alcoholic drink of the day. This is something I miss about having moved out. Christmas should start with pre-lunch bubbly, lunch being the first real meal of the day. On Christmas, my family believes that anyone who wants breakfast can damn well get it themselves. What am I saying? They believe that 100% of the time. But Christmas breakfast can involve caviar, spreads, and toast as well as bubbly in bed for the parents if the kids are feeling organised, and have already got their own breakfasts. After I finished the bubbly, addressed all the presents, exchanged presents with my sister who was not going to be there for tea due to working, I got my sister to drop me off at my SO's parents' house to have lunch with them, sans my SO.
Quick rant about my sister. She was annoyed, and not in the mood to be pleased. Apparently her SO had gone off to his family's place and wanted her to be there too, and since she had to work that night, this would mean ignoring her family. According to her, threats of selling or destroying her presents from him and/or his family had been made. So because she was irritated, snide comments continued to be made about everything. This is the kind of mood in which she denies that my mother and I are lactose intolerant, because we eat cheese (small amounts of good stuff), and also denies that it is congenital because she doesn't have it (even though it is a dominant trait, like the stuffed digestive valves, allergy to perfumes, allergy to cigarettes, and other traits that my mother and I share, and not a recessive one like Mum's red hair that I do not share). This is the kind of mood that makes me want to run for cover. I don't like it. I have learnt over the last couple of years to respond politely and ignore the mood, which makes her worse, but leaves me more even-keeled than allowing myself to react to her behaviour.
Anyway, from my sister, I received a box of my favourite type of Tim-Tams (*snide comment* I'm sure it was an accident that these were the first pack she picked up in the store, and I shouldn't have that much chocolate or even any at all because it makes anything my body is throwing at me worse, and besides, my SO will eat them all anyway */snide comment*) and a bottle of Chanel No. 5 bath oil. To which I am allergic because it's perfume, but made a big fuss over how good it smells because it does smell good, it's just that it'll give me hayfever and migraines if I use it. Or if I open the box to look at the bottle *whoof*. I shall now put the damn thing in my air-tight carton of Stuff Wot Freya Likes But Is Allergic To And Should Only Use In A Well-Ventilated Area. She looked askance over her presents from me, but she can get knotted. If she can't pretend that she is OK with receiving things that I put lots of thought into (not that she ever does like anything we give her) then that's her problem and I'm tired of dealing with it.
So then I left and went up the hill a little to my SO's parents' place. I arrived perfectly on time for lunch, which was very nice. Their traditional Christmas lunch of roast pork, roast turkey breast roll, and roast vegies. It was tasty.
I was very careful to eat only as much as everyone around me, because the tummy, although empty, was protesting against everything put in it because I was so tired. So by the end of lunch I'm starving and feeling rather ill at the same time.We waited until my SO finished work and got to his parent's place to cut the pudding. Oh how rich Christmas pudding is. How stomach-turningly rich. How stomach-turning is the custard sauce that goes with it (damn the lactose content!) and oh how much does everyone but me enjoy it and have seconds, and press me to have more. With brandy-custard sauce. My SO's mother remembered my difficulties last year with traditional Christmas pudding and cut me a very small slice for which I was very grateful because that's all I could eat of it.
Then there was the after-lunch nap. Three people on the floor, one in a bed, one in a recliner chair, and then me unable to sleep and therefore reading my SO's Dad's magazines and National Geographics. The one in bed went straight to bed, and so missed us giving out presents, but my SO's family doesn't seem to have the tradition of waiting for everyone to be there for a large present-giving orgy, since they had started before I got there. This makes me twitch. They knew we were coming. Aren't presents supposed to be opened all at once so that you get the group thing going? Then there's the fact that his family all knows what they're getting. My SO's mother told me what she was getting us prior to Christmas because she needed me to nudge my SO into going out with me and getting it. But not knowing is one of the best parts! And my family, if we get something big like that, we still wrap something small and inexpensive up so that the recipient has something to unwrap with everyone else, and doesn't feel left out.
After naps had finished, we went to my parents' place, where I seized upon the remains of lunch (the last of the smoked trout, some sliced salad goodies, enough to keep me going and yet light enough that my tummy wouldn't protest). My sister had fortunately left by this time, so I was not subjected to her carping, which would have been inevitable. We watched what was on TV, which wasn't too bad until they got to the moralising bit at the end. More nice alcohol was thrust at me. I like my Dad's taste in wines. In general, it marches with mine. Shiraz, not merlot, and never cask wine except for cooking (makes my tummy protest).
Then presents. Lots of small inexpensive things that make us laugh, many books changed hands (about half of which were cookbooks, a quarter fiction of some kind, and the other quarter about investment), and I got the pasta maker I vaguely mentioned in passing to my mother about 3 or 4 months ago that I wanted. She rocks!
We even had a Christmas tree that I didn't have to bring with me! Even if it was a potplant of some kind that they'd made no effort to decorate beyond draping a piece of tinsel over the top. It was still something to put presents under that I didn't have to organise. When I was little, the Christmas tree consisted of a grevillia (sp?) that Dad would prune about a third of it off, stick it in a weighted bucket on top of a groundsheet to catch fallen needles. It would reach the ceiling, we'd decorate it, it would look like a pine tree, except because it was pricklier it would discourage people playing with it, or touching the presents accumulated beneath. He'd complain about the mess for ages, before and after. But he'd help me hang tinsel and other decorations in the house. As my sister and I hit puberty, Dad pulled the grevillia out, and decided that Christmas trees were too much effort. Because I cared, and missed it, I would sometimes organise things. Little fake ones that I decorated with whatever I could find that would look good (couldn't afford big fake ones), or potplants from outside that I would have to bring inside myself, spread the groundsheet, and water. No point in asking Dad to help move the damn things, they would be heavy enough that he would complain for days about it, as well as the inevitable mess and so forth.
There's probably more things that I want to say something about, but my body tells me it's finally ready to eat.
Enjoy yourselves as much as possible, people!
I'll do this chronologically.
First there's the lack of sleep all week. Damned if I know why the early-cycle insomnia has continued. Exhausted I would go to bed, and then keep my SO awake (when he finally got to bed) with my inability to sleep as much as my body knows it needs to. I can deal with it every month because I know to not schedule anything truly important for that week, but when it keeps on going it starts to interfere with functioning as a human being.
Not to mention being exhausted means twitching and skin sensitivity and lack of snuggles because I can't sit still and I've been keeping my SO awake so he's tired and unsnuggly.
Then there's work. Not office work wot is good and quite happy to let me do stuff in whatever manner I like as long as I get it done. Oh, and gave me a lovely big esky-bag filled with yummy goodies for Christmas. No, the other one, the markets. Firstly, I organised myself into organising the person responsible for the Christmas-New Years' roster into getting around to doing it. And argued against my working until close on Thursday (9pm) when we would need to start and 6am on Christmas Eve. So when I finally looked at the roster, I was surprised to see that I was, indeed, down to work 14 hours (still less than some), then start at 6am for an 11.5 hour day (shorter if we sold out earlier, as expected). And for some reason, I wasn't down to work one of the pre-New Years' days that we'd agreed I was working. We fixed the not-working day because someone else found that they needed to be somewhere else, but it wasn't worth arguing against the sheer non-OHS-ness of the shifts. The bosses were doing even worse shifts.
But I was duly unimpressed to be doing this when I realised I was imsomnia-ing, then being on my feet all day both days, and on the Thursday it was 38+ degrees outside. The markets do not cool down easily, and were still warm enough at 6am the next morning that I was in t-shirt instead of the three layers I had been wearing outside the markets in the early morning cool change chill.
So I get home on Christmas Eve, exhausted, having done shopping to last until the shops re-open on Wednesday as well, make a token effort at finishing the present-wrapping that I was too tired to do earlier in the week, then sit down at my computer, unable to settle to any one activity on that as well. Finally I go to bed.
If I had been able to sleep easily, and my SO had not had to start work at 6:30 am, he would have dropped me off at his work, and let me walk the just under a kilometre from there to my parents' house so that I could do the early-morning "Don't wake up Mum and Dad" that is traditional at Christmas. But I was exhausted, and so when the alarm went off at way too early, I was unhappy to be woken by it. Usually, I sleep through if it isn't for me, or go to sleep shortly after. But not this time. So after 5 hours sleep (the best this week so far, yay!) I was awake and decided that no matter how awful I felt, no matter how much lactic acid was still accumulated in my muscles and no matter how strained all my tendons and nerves felt, I was getting up, damn it, and finishing off those presents I needed to wrap.
It's not uncommon for me to find it easier to settle down to a hated task when really tired, because I can't really concentrate. I don't dwell on how much I hate whatever it is that I'm doing. Not that I hate present-wrapping. It's just tedious, and something I've usually got done shortly after having finished getting all the presents about a month before Christmas..
Anyway, I pack the presents into my shopping trolley, reasoning that it was going to be much easier to transport the lot in something with wheels. Since I don't drive, my SO had taken the car to work, public transport sucks on public holidays, and I was NOT taking that much stuff, some of which was fragile, on a 50 minute bike ride, I ordered myself a taxi
The taxi arrived faster than they usually do on an ordinary day. This was good.
So I got to my parent's house to say hello and drop off the presents for unveiling that evening. The first thing I get asked is "Bubbly?" I assented, and drank my first alcoholic drink of the day. This is something I miss about having moved out. Christmas should start with pre-lunch bubbly, lunch being the first real meal of the day. On Christmas, my family believes that anyone who wants breakfast can damn well get it themselves. What am I saying? They believe that 100% of the time. But Christmas breakfast can involve caviar, spreads, and toast as well as bubbly in bed for the parents if the kids are feeling organised, and have already got their own breakfasts. After I finished the bubbly, addressed all the presents, exchanged presents with my sister who was not going to be there for tea due to working, I got my sister to drop me off at my SO's parents' house to have lunch with them, sans my SO.
Quick rant about my sister. She was annoyed, and not in the mood to be pleased. Apparently her SO had gone off to his family's place and wanted her to be there too, and since she had to work that night, this would mean ignoring her family. According to her, threats of selling or destroying her presents from him and/or his family had been made. So because she was irritated, snide comments continued to be made about everything. This is the kind of mood in which she denies that my mother and I are lactose intolerant, because we eat cheese (small amounts of good stuff), and also denies that it is congenital because she doesn't have it (even though it is a dominant trait, like the stuffed digestive valves, allergy to perfumes, allergy to cigarettes, and other traits that my mother and I share, and not a recessive one like Mum's red hair that I do not share). This is the kind of mood that makes me want to run for cover. I don't like it. I have learnt over the last couple of years to respond politely and ignore the mood, which makes her worse, but leaves me more even-keeled than allowing myself to react to her behaviour.
Anyway, from my sister, I received a box of my favourite type of Tim-Tams (*snide comment* I'm sure it was an accident that these were the first pack she picked up in the store, and I shouldn't have that much chocolate or even any at all because it makes anything my body is throwing at me worse, and besides, my SO will eat them all anyway */snide comment*) and a bottle of Chanel No. 5 bath oil. To which I am allergic because it's perfume, but made a big fuss over how good it smells because it does smell good, it's just that it'll give me hayfever and migraines if I use it. Or if I open the box to look at the bottle *whoof*. I shall now put the damn thing in my air-tight carton of Stuff Wot Freya Likes But Is Allergic To And Should Only Use In A Well-Ventilated Area. She looked askance over her presents from me, but she can get knotted. If she can't pretend that she is OK with receiving things that I put lots of thought into (not that she ever does like anything we give her) then that's her problem and I'm tired of dealing with it.
So then I left and went up the hill a little to my SO's parents' place. I arrived perfectly on time for lunch, which was very nice. Their traditional Christmas lunch of roast pork, roast turkey breast roll, and roast vegies. It was tasty.
I was very careful to eat only as much as everyone around me, because the tummy, although empty, was protesting against everything put in it because I was so tired. So by the end of lunch I'm starving and feeling rather ill at the same time.We waited until my SO finished work and got to his parent's place to cut the pudding. Oh how rich Christmas pudding is. How stomach-turningly rich. How stomach-turning is the custard sauce that goes with it (damn the lactose content!) and oh how much does everyone but me enjoy it and have seconds, and press me to have more. With brandy-custard sauce. My SO's mother remembered my difficulties last year with traditional Christmas pudding and cut me a very small slice for which I was very grateful because that's all I could eat of it.
Then there was the after-lunch nap. Three people on the floor, one in a bed, one in a recliner chair, and then me unable to sleep and therefore reading my SO's Dad's magazines and National Geographics. The one in bed went straight to bed, and so missed us giving out presents, but my SO's family doesn't seem to have the tradition of waiting for everyone to be there for a large present-giving orgy, since they had started before I got there. This makes me twitch. They knew we were coming. Aren't presents supposed to be opened all at once so that you get the group thing going? Then there's the fact that his family all knows what they're getting. My SO's mother told me what she was getting us prior to Christmas because she needed me to nudge my SO into going out with me and getting it. But not knowing is one of the best parts! And my family, if we get something big like that, we still wrap something small and inexpensive up so that the recipient has something to unwrap with everyone else, and doesn't feel left out.
After naps had finished, we went to my parents' place, where I seized upon the remains of lunch (the last of the smoked trout, some sliced salad goodies, enough to keep me going and yet light enough that my tummy wouldn't protest). My sister had fortunately left by this time, so I was not subjected to her carping, which would have been inevitable. We watched what was on TV, which wasn't too bad until they got to the moralising bit at the end. More nice alcohol was thrust at me. I like my Dad's taste in wines. In general, it marches with mine. Shiraz, not merlot, and never cask wine except for cooking (makes my tummy protest).
Then presents. Lots of small inexpensive things that make us laugh, many books changed hands (about half of which were cookbooks, a quarter fiction of some kind, and the other quarter about investment), and I got the pasta maker I vaguely mentioned in passing to my mother about 3 or 4 months ago that I wanted. She rocks!
We even had a Christmas tree that I didn't have to bring with me! Even if it was a potplant of some kind that they'd made no effort to decorate beyond draping a piece of tinsel over the top. It was still something to put presents under that I didn't have to organise. When I was little, the Christmas tree consisted of a grevillia (sp?) that Dad would prune about a third of it off, stick it in a weighted bucket on top of a groundsheet to catch fallen needles. It would reach the ceiling, we'd decorate it, it would look like a pine tree, except because it was pricklier it would discourage people playing with it, or touching the presents accumulated beneath. He'd complain about the mess for ages, before and after. But he'd help me hang tinsel and other decorations in the house. As my sister and I hit puberty, Dad pulled the grevillia out, and decided that Christmas trees were too much effort. Because I cared, and missed it, I would sometimes organise things. Little fake ones that I decorated with whatever I could find that would look good (couldn't afford big fake ones), or potplants from outside that I would have to bring inside myself, spread the groundsheet, and water. No point in asking Dad to help move the damn things, they would be heavy enough that he would complain for days about it, as well as the inevitable mess and so forth.
There's probably more things that I want to say something about, but my body tells me it's finally ready to eat.
Enjoy yourselves as much as possible, people!
