My FAMILY drives me completely UP THE WALL

Merry frickin' Christmas to you TOO!!!

How's everybody doing today. :)

I've been very productive this past weekend, in my own somewhat-humble opinion.

I sure haven't cleaned nearly enough, though, knowing that I have someone coming to stay with me in less than two weeks!! :O

However, I did clear out some trash and organize half of the closet and then proceeded to run quickly out of room to put all my various precious junx.

Washing the front porch/balcony was also slightly less successful than I had hoped, but at least it is now done and I did the best I could. Boy, white paint gets dirty in dusty, polluted, Southern California, eh??

So FIRST of all, last night was the first night I was home at the parental palace (hee) for the Christmas holidays.

After church (which was pretty fun!), I came home, and the parents came home, and then they left to go listen to some random violinist at another church, and I ended up passing out on the couch for a good 4 or so hours.

I woke up soooooooooo hungry and baby sis was laid up in bed with a horrible nasal congestion thingy and nobody else was home. So that was like, 4pm. And then I dozed and napped some more waiting for people to come the heck home already and the first person to come home was middle sis, loaded with groceries for the office party today and Christmas dinner and stuff.

Then mom and dad came home fully laden with the goods two hours later, just as I was preparing to lose my mind!! Yum yum, special Taiwanese food that I loooooooooooove.

Till we all sat down and thus ensued the massive piss party.

Ugh, horribly unpleasant.

See, my view of things is ... if we sit down to have a family dinner, EVERYONE is sitting together, and we have COMMUNAL CONVERSATION.

BUT NO.

According to SOME people, if TWO OTHER PEOPLE are already having a conversation about what the youngest will be doing after graduation, and the advisability of taking a graduate research assistant position in the Caribbean ... uh, I'm not allowed to BUTT INTO the conversation. Because, apparently, you have to be invited first, at least at THIS family table.

Oh, and if I ask questions to try to find out details about the situation and what A CERTAIN SOMEONE'S exact plans are, I better stop, because she DOESN'T APPRECIATING BEING INTERROGATED.

Can you tell I am still steamed? I think she is a tart and a horrid little b!tch sometimes, but I will get over it. We talked when I got up to clear the table and do the dishes immediately after everyone finished eating (HELLO! Also I put everything else and all the leftovers away, so there!), and basically it was resolved, I think, and she did apologize also, but sheesh!!

I was so disappointed that the first family get together was so obnoxiously unpleasant. Then again, that's what makes them FAMILY, RIGHT??

BECAUSE YOU GET TO CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS BUT FAMILY MEMBERS ARE PEOPLE YOU WOULD NEVER VOLUNTARILY CHOOSE TO ASSOCIATE WITH GIVEN FREE REIGN, AND YET THEY ARE FOISTED UPON YOU.

'Course I don't REALLY mean that.

Hah. :D

So, actually, the MOST depressing thing was putting up the d@mn Christmas tree, which I love anyway.

Guess what? I did the entire Christmas tree BY MYSELF last year TOO while the rest of the family was sleeping. Oh boy, that was not nice, though I think it turned out marvelously!! I think I did it Christmas morning, no less. I guess I'm used to getting up early. I just remembered that last year, our last day of school was DECEMBER 23, anyway, so it's not as if that much time had passed before Christmas was upon us.

This year, after I finished clearing the table and cleaning up after dinner, both sisters went straight up to bed, since one is suffering the physical repercussions of her horrible relational habits (:P) and and the other had to work in the morning. And daddoo was tired from work also so he went to bed early. And mom wandered off somewhere, don't know where.

So I lugged the Christmas tree set (I like to do three!) by myself, got out all the decorations myself (I don't think anybody else owns any Christmas decorations, anyway, it's all compulsive-shopper-hoarder me), and decorated BY MYSELF.

THAT IS DEPRESSING. IF I EVER HAVE MY OWN FAMILY WHERE I AM THE BOSS, THIS SHALL NOT COME TO PASS AGAIN. UNACCEPTABLE!!

Still, I turned the radio on to the Christmas music, and had a pretty good time throwing all the stuff up on the tree.

It always takes me a little while to decide what I want to have on the tree, and the colors and the decorations. I went completely loco-nuts buying decorations this year at Target, the pink and candy stuff that I posted earlier, but all that was at my apartment, and all I had was my regular older stuff at my parents' place. So I went with a white/brown/light green rustic kind of Christmas tree. I remember 2 years ago it was all white and glass and tin and gold (I probably have a picture somewhere), and last year was red and very countryish, and this year ended up being countryish too, but mostly white. I LOVE IT!!

And once I had nearly finished and I turned on the lights on the tree, it was like, seriously magical. That's my favorite moment so far. I said, "Oh, woooooow, that is sooooo pretty." And my mom, who was sitting at the dining table watching her own weird opera woman sing annoying songs, agreed with me. Wanna know why she didn't help me with the tree? Because she thought the Christmas music I had on from the radio was too noisy. CHRISTMAS! MUSIC! TOO! NOISY!

That's called "you-have-a-problem."

Anyway, the tree looked nice, but a little cold, and off, and missing something, till I put in a few teeny touches of red (little red wooden hearts!) and that was PERFECT. Now I am fully satisfied, but I don't have a pic yet.

Today I put up the stockings, too.

That was after I dragged both parents out to The Original Pancake House, which, if you'll check out the link, HAPPENS TO BE CLOSED ON MONDAYS.

Didn't I feel like the fool, especially since it's 20+minutes away. Darn it!

But both parents were patient and gracious and we ended up going to a Chinese supermarket where we had dimsum stuff instead and shopped for dinner tonight. I think we're having some church friends over - just the dad and the older daughter, since (don't ask me why) the mom bopped off to China with the younger daughter for I-don't-know-how-long.

And now my kvetching about my dear sainted family is over and I will concentrate on enjoying the Christmas season. Whee!!

I'll save the complaining about one of the most horrible, agonizing, cruel and terrible experiences I have had in recent memory for later. This was probably 3 weeks ago already, or something. Boy, was it awful. Even though it ended up being okay. Eye-opening experience.

Anyway, I am now going to enjoy Christmas and go wrap presents while [nosy] [ungrateful] mom is out of the house. I bought her the most presents because she needs them the most :P.

Will have pics up of the tree later.