whew, but...

[dragonlady7]

ok. my deposit arrived before all but 1 of the bills cleared. so i will not be slammed this time with huge penalties for my financial incompetence. Yay!

i have another deposit to make soon which is good, but it is pitifully small which is bad. i need a way to transform cash into something i can send by mail to my bank, as i bank entirely by mail and on the internet. hm. well, it's moot at the moment, as i have no cash either. but still.

And when you earn $5/hr, the big fat old chunk the government takes out is exceedingly painful indeed.



just made a big To Do Before Thurs. Night list. Added on estimates of how long each task will take. Yes... I have 14.5 hours of work to do tonight and tomorrow, most of which cannot be done while other things are doing. Faugh.
I wonder if I could convince Dave to do any of the tasks for me... Since they involve things that affect him, like cleaning and decorating the house.
But he doesn't care about a clean house, or a decorated one. So I really truly doubt it. The only thing he could do without me is also the only thing I actually really want to do for its own sake, and that's the cookies.

And have I begun work on this massive Kringle project? For his family? No. They have this massive Christmas-gift-decorating contest every year, with all kinds of hullabaloo, and this year they even have a theme, for God's sake. I tried last year, and my gift totally sucked and went entirely unremarked-upon by everyone present because it wasn't very interesting or, for that matter, witty. I have no talent at this sort of thing-- this building of things out of other things to house still other things and be witty and clever at the same time. i can't do it. Nor am I craft-minded or particularly creative about anything that doesn't involve lines of dialogue. So I absolutely dread this. I'm not going to have any time to work on it between now and Christmas, I can't count on Christmas Eve OR Day to put on finishing touches because oh RIGHT, I'm WORKING ALL @(#)(#%* DAY both days, and I have no idea what to do. I don't even have the gift, or the time to go get it. So it's going to suck. And I can't ask Dave for advice because it's super-top-secret who has who as a giftee and who makes what gift (you have to guess after you open it who gave it to you).

So I must say, for the first time in my entire life, that I'm absolutely dreading the holidays and no, I'm really not looking forward to them at all because I'm not going to get to do any of the traditions I grew up with, because I'm not going to see my family, and I'm going to make an absolute hash of my attempts to conform to this family's traditions. It's going to be awful and I finally understand the absoultely ridiculous concept of 'holiday stress'. Ugh, ugh, UGH.


Livejournal is for whining when all else fails utterly, and don't you forget it. It's sorta all I got now. To those still reading, thank you for listening, and thank you still more to those who have been sympathetic or supportive or have suggested solutions-- I appreciate it more than I can express. To those bored with the whining: Sorry. Eventually my life will come together again and I'll start talking about something besides being miserable.

Comments

[qowf.livejournal.com]

Not to be crazy or anything: but why don't you write your giftee something? Something cool, a story in which they star or something you remember about them that made an impression?

Play to your strengths and have fun, you know? Then decorate it, buy a cheap frame, but some of the fab photos you have around it. You're a fabulous writer; use it.

I'm just sayin'.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

My giftee is someone I don't actually know very well. The circle of people is Dave's extended family; he's the only one I know well and with whom I have shared particularly good memories. The others I really haven't either seen much of or become terribly friendly with.

There's a list of things they want, and I don't think a story would be particularly welcome. (Yes-- the sensible part of this gift exchange is that they list their 'gits' so you know what to get them. Usually they list size, color, and product number as well. Handy.)

Past entries in this gift-decorating contest have included:

A Bugs Bunny replica, 3-d, handmade of cardboard
a papier-mache hot air balloon
a gold-foil covered, refrigerator-box-sized replica of the Taj Mahal
a Mr. Potato Head in a homemade Santa suit
a two-foot-tall penguin of black and white fleece whose body was an electric blanket
a christmas tree made of a shower curtain rod and a green bathrobe
a foam-core laptop with a working eject button that fired a CD into Dave's groin one year
a giant clove of garlic enclosing a wok and other cooking supplies
...

so I sort of know what I have to buy, but have no time to shop for it, and don't know what the heck to put it into. Writing ability isn't going to get me much in this sort of a contest-- except for the sort of writing ability that helps one make clever and cute poems so the giftee can guess at the gift and the giftor. And I can't rhyme for crap.


So thank you: your idea is an excellent one, but would be better-used for someone among my friends or family. This is Dave's family and they don't really care that I'm a writer, and not even Dave is interested in reading what I write.

[qowf.livejournal.com]

Damn. They should be. You're good.

Although those gifts are impressive. Odd, but impressive. They must look all year for that stuff.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

You see how I'm a bit intimidated?

the best I could come up with last year was to enclose an answering machine in a cardboard box decorated to look like... an answering machine.

I glued buttons to it and wrote inscrutable things, but nobody actually read them, and so in the end, it was a cardboard box shaped like a box. Not terribly thrilling.

At least the answering machine inside it was put to good use.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

>look all year for that stuff

Oh no, there's no looking. They make it.

You don't find out who you're giving to, or what you're getting, until Thanksgiving. They all whip this up in under a month.

Dave's dad once carved a two-foot Oreo out of styrofoam. Accurate down to the number of ridges around the outside edge. And then used the wrong kind of paint, so it melted, so he did it again.

[qowf.livejournal.com]

Dave seems very cool but his family is insane. You know this, right?

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Mais oui.
C'est l'amour.

What can you do?

[qowf.livejournal.com]

Make a marionette out of styrofoam balls and fur fringe, I guess.

Hey, that's not a bad idea.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Containing a giftwrapped power tool in its head? Or perhaps a turtleneck as its body?

The gift has to be incorporated into the wrapping somewhere, you see.

[qowf.livejournal.com]

The powertool as the body is feasible. There are too many rules to this game. Aiee. However, it's really got me thinking.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

OK, I can't discuss actual real details of what I'm really getting for who, because other participatns in the game could see it.
So I'm going to do a friendslocked post and ask for ideas there. Since y'all are proving more creative and less defeatist than I.
:)

[qowf.livejournal.com]

go for it. Now, I'm intrigued.

[spacellama.livejournal.com]

Oh, fuggy. I just suggested (in a comment below) the writing-as-a-gift idea. :(

This is Dave's family and they don't really care that I'm a writer, and not even Dave is interested in reading what I write.

My husband isn't a big reader of my stuff, either. Even when he does, his responses are always concritty, never just sublimely supportive, or, heaven forbid, fangirly. He has no idea how much a speck of enthusiasm would make me glow.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

My boy is the kind who doesn't go in for the subtlety and romance stuff. He'll buy me great gifts and take me great places and be all one could wish for, but if I want him to do something I had better darn well ask.
So if I want a compliment I have to ask for it.
Not always, which makes it completely lovely when he gives one spontaneously, but...
Lots of things. None of this drape-myself-in-lingerie and hint stuff-- if I want sex, I had better say so. And if I dare fish for a compliment he won't give it.

And if I give him something to read he'll say, "so, it's like a dog, only it's got scales, and breathes fire?" and will henceforth refer to my dragons as 'dogs' or the like. (To him, the Balrog in Moria is forever known as "the ill-tempered dog".)

And yes. It would mean so much if he would just read something and say "well, that was entertaining". But, I know better than to hold out for that.

[(Anonymous)]

> Writing ability isn't going to get me much in this sort of a contest

I don't know what yall are on about, but Helen had a two- or three-year running series of performance gift wrapping that usually involved making people sing stuff or put shit on their heads and dance around like an organ grinder's monkey. This kind of thing is the reason we had to institute the elaborate two-phase rating procedure that is in place now.

- Z

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I will never understand why everyone assumes that a novelist is going to be good at writing poems and songs and skits. Me? No. If it's shorter than a breadbox when printed out, it's not long enough for me to figure out how to say anything.

And yeah-- I don't understand the rating system either.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

>don't really care

I didn't mean that to sound bitter. It's just that that's not particularly the part of me that they know or like. And Dave's not into fantasy, sf, or fanfiction, so isn't a fan of any of my genres, so wouldn't enjoy any of my stuff-- i know, he's tried reading some of it, and can't help but make fun of it, so he has to just put it down and walk away, or he'll hurt my feelings.
it doesn't make him a bad person, just means he's not a fan.

[qowf.livejournal.com]

My husband doesn't read what I write either. He read one thing and liked it, but he's not crazy about the reading.

Eh. They don't know what they're missing. : )

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Pearls before swine?

Mostly my boy objects to the character names. "OK, rename him 'Bob' and I'll read it."

[spacellama.livejournal.com]

I don't know the specifics of the gift-decorating thing, but what if you could use your literary talent? Like, for instance, writing a poem, drawing it out in pretty handwriting, and glueing it on top of a box? I don't know how dorky that sounds, but it seems to me that you *are* a very talented person and folks should be made aware of that. :)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Aww....

Roses are red,
violets are it,
I can't write poetry for shit.

Which is the drawback. I am not skilled at the succinct. So if someone wants their own version of War and Peace starring them, sure, give me a year. But a poem on a card?
I'm buying one from Hallmark.