We Put The Fun Back In Dysfunctional!
The thing I hate about November is that I have to start planning for Christmas. Not that I don't love Christmas, because it is my favorite time ever. I just wonder when it got so complicated. Well, okay, that's a lie. I know when it got complicated. I just wish it wasn't.
Planning out my holidays is a lot like negotiating an arms treaty - everyone has speak carefully and make a lot of concessions, and if you step wrong things are going to blow up. I have to figure out which days/evenings/events I'm going to do with which family members, and how I'm going to get from one place to another, and who I'm going to stay with when, and where they will be then, and somebody always feels slighted and/or put upon. And since nothing short of the threat of nuclear armageddon would induce my parents to speak to each other civilly (and even that's a bit of a toss-up), I have to do all the back-and-forth. Which is...tiring, to say the least. And Christmas is such an emotional, family oriented time to begin with that it makes it a lot worse than, say, deciding who I'm spending 4th of July with.
A lot of times when I tell people my parents are divorced, they say something along the lines of "oh, I hope they still get along all right." And then I can't stop laughing. Saying my parents' divorce was messy is like saying that US-Russian relations were tense during the Cold War. Except my mom and dad are probably slightly more likely to kill each other if you locked them in a room together.
Planning out my holidays is a lot like negotiating an arms treaty - everyone has speak carefully and make a lot of concessions, and if you step wrong things are going to blow up. I have to figure out which days/evenings/events I'm going to do with which family members, and how I'm going to get from one place to another, and who I'm going to stay with when, and where they will be then, and somebody always feels slighted and/or put upon. And since nothing short of the threat of nuclear armageddon would induce my parents to speak to each other civilly (and even that's a bit of a toss-up), I have to do all the back-and-forth. Which is...tiring, to say the least. And Christmas is such an emotional, family oriented time to begin with that it makes it a lot worse than, say, deciding who I'm spending 4th of July with.
A lot of times when I tell people my parents are divorced, they say something along the lines of "oh, I hope they still get along all right." And then I can't stop laughing. Saying my parents' divorce was messy is like saying that US-Russian relations were tense during the Cold War. Except my mom and dad are probably slightly more likely to kill each other if you locked them in a room together.