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dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2QjeSf3
Thanksgiving was great, and then I spent all day today cutting up two deer my b-i-l shot late on Thanksgiving evening, and I haven’t looked at my computer at all, so clearly my wordcount is… static, as of late. But. anyway.
I have one family complaint to make. The only drama, incredibly enough, of this whole big Get Together And To-Do.
So the oldest sister’s family got in, with cantankerous husband and multitude of children, late on Tuesday, and we all got together Wednesday evening for the first time. Middle-Little got there late, because she had to work, of course.
At the end of the evening on Wednesday, Middle-Little said, “OK, when’s the doings tomorrow? When should I arrive?”
The major chefs, Mom and Farmsister, looked at one another, and went over their math, and said, well ok, the turkey’ll be out of the oven around 2 probably, so the sides will finish.. probably by three, so we’ll have appetizers probably… like, starting at 1pm… and the Carload O’ Children will probably roll up… counting back… mm probably like 10 am? So, they concluded, really you could come between ten am and 1pm and be sure to get all the goodies.
No, Middle-Little said, don’t give me a range, because you always give me a range and then get upset when I don’t show up at a specific time that you had decided on. (Fair-ish of her to object, but in our defense, literally every time we say “come before X” or “come anytime between A and B” she will show up an hour after X or B, every time without fail; the children will have been asking for her, the adults who had planned to discuss various things with her will never get to. And then half the time she has to leave family events early because she’s booked some activity with friends that she just can’t cancel, so for example she’s never seen my vacation photos because she only had time to eat dinner and then had to run, because she couldn’t be late for whatever bullshit she was doing with her friends. Like, I get that she’s got an active social life and that’s great, but why do they rate being on time but we never do???)
“Fine,” Mom said. “Come at eleven if you want to see your family.” Because that’s the thing; even if there’s no hard deadline, the point is to be together, right? And if you want to be together, you’d come before the absolute latest moment you could arrive, right? Wouldn’t you?
It would be quite some other thing if she had said, and this is plausible, something like i have worked so many days in a row, i’m really tired, i need to spend some time by myself, so I’d rather come closer to dinner or even just oh my god please can I sleep in??– I mean, she just spent a long weekend down in MD with the kids down there, it’s not like she hasn’t seen them– but Farmkid has barely seen her this month, and I haven’t either! And she didn’t say that! She said, “Okay, eleven it is!” and off she went.
And as we’d sort of expected, 11am came and went on Thanksgiving morning, and no Middle-Little. But then it was noon, and I did send a text, because that’s awfully late to have slept in. I didn’t send a mean text, I just said, “ok it’s noon we’re starting to drink!!!”
No answer. At 12:45 I sent another text, “That cider I had Dave bring from Buffalo is gone, I forgot to save you any because I thought you’d be right along. Is everything ok? Should I wait to crack the next growler?”
No answer.
So I called her, at 1pm, and I said, angrily, “Why did you force us to tell you a specific time just so you could ignore it,” and she got all pissy and was like “It’s not like you’re waiting for me to open presents or something!” and so I snapped at her that it’s a weird and shitty power trip thing to do, to force us to nail down a time we want you here so that you can blow it out of the water by several hours! And she was like “well I have to dry my hair.” And I hung up on her, and texted “Well, the verbatim quote was come at 11 if you want to spend time with your family so I guess we have our answer but it’s shitty you couldn’t have just said that in the first place.”
She showed up as we took the turkey out of the oven. Of course nothing more was said, we don’t really operate that way.
But, like. Fuck that. I’m not on her side in her weird passive-aggressive bullshit.
I guess I’m delighted that’s literally the only drama we had. Southern BIL behaved himself beautifully, really went out of his way to be nice to me helping me cut up the deer and giving me advice and such, the kids were actually angels for the most part, everyone had a great time and all was well.
I just don’t get the weird power trip thing. Like, if you don’t have any impulse to Be On Time, or if you have zero Fear of Missing Out, then I get not being like Super Punctual or whatever, but like… then accept that they’ve given you a range, and maybe double down on it– like, you said be here before 2, but are you gonna get super mad if I don’t get here until 2? do you really mean be here before 1? Because honestly with like pattern-recognition skills that’s mostly what goes on. (And honestly what we’re usually mad about is when we say be here before 2 and she rolls in at 3. Like, I don’t think it’s rocket science to predict that a hostess will be annoyed by that.) And I get being confused by things like, Mom saying “I am to have dinner on the table at 5:30″ and you think that means she wants you there at 5:30 but really, think that through, you don’t think she’s going to want you to get in the door and get a drink and greet everybody beforehand? And you know she’s the kind of dame who’s gonna serve appetizers, so you can do the math yourself, having lived under her roof for two decades, that if dinner’s on the table at 5:30 then a guest should arrive by no later than 4:30.
Dude’s family says “come at 6″ and means “come at 6″ and so Dude’s mom will roll up at 5:58 and her sister will roll up at 6:03 and that’s just how they are. My family is not much given to pronouncements like that. I get it. We don’t make solid plans because there are at this point thirteen of us when everyone shows up, and it’s hard to be solid. So like.
Anyway! So that was annoying.
(Your picture was not posted)
Thanksgiving was great, and then I spent all day today cutting up two deer my b-i-l shot late on Thanksgiving evening, and I haven’t looked at my computer at all, so clearly my wordcount is… static, as of late. But. anyway.
I have one family complaint to make. The only drama, incredibly enough, of this whole big Get Together And To-Do.
So the oldest sister’s family got in, with cantankerous husband and multitude of children, late on Tuesday, and we all got together Wednesday evening for the first time. Middle-Little got there late, because she had to work, of course.
At the end of the evening on Wednesday, Middle-Little said, “OK, when’s the doings tomorrow? When should I arrive?”
The major chefs, Mom and Farmsister, looked at one another, and went over their math, and said, well ok, the turkey’ll be out of the oven around 2 probably, so the sides will finish.. probably by three, so we’ll have appetizers probably… like, starting at 1pm… and the Carload O’ Children will probably roll up… counting back… mm probably like 10 am? So, they concluded, really you could come between ten am and 1pm and be sure to get all the goodies.
No, Middle-Little said, don’t give me a range, because you always give me a range and then get upset when I don’t show up at a specific time that you had decided on. (Fair-ish of her to object, but in our defense, literally every time we say “come before X” or “come anytime between A and B” she will show up an hour after X or B, every time without fail; the children will have been asking for her, the adults who had planned to discuss various things with her will never get to. And then half the time she has to leave family events early because she’s booked some activity with friends that she just can’t cancel, so for example she’s never seen my vacation photos because she only had time to eat dinner and then had to run, because she couldn’t be late for whatever bullshit she was doing with her friends. Like, I get that she’s got an active social life and that’s great, but why do they rate being on time but we never do???)
“Fine,” Mom said. “Come at eleven if you want to see your family.” Because that’s the thing; even if there’s no hard deadline, the point is to be together, right? And if you want to be together, you’d come before the absolute latest moment you could arrive, right? Wouldn’t you?
It would be quite some other thing if she had said, and this is plausible, something like i have worked so many days in a row, i’m really tired, i need to spend some time by myself, so I’d rather come closer to dinner or even just oh my god please can I sleep in??– I mean, she just spent a long weekend down in MD with the kids down there, it’s not like she hasn’t seen them– but Farmkid has barely seen her this month, and I haven’t either! And she didn’t say that! She said, “Okay, eleven it is!” and off she went.
And as we’d sort of expected, 11am came and went on Thanksgiving morning, and no Middle-Little. But then it was noon, and I did send a text, because that’s awfully late to have slept in. I didn’t send a mean text, I just said, “ok it’s noon we’re starting to drink!!!”
No answer. At 12:45 I sent another text, “That cider I had Dave bring from Buffalo is gone, I forgot to save you any because I thought you’d be right along. Is everything ok? Should I wait to crack the next growler?”
No answer.
So I called her, at 1pm, and I said, angrily, “Why did you force us to tell you a specific time just so you could ignore it,” and she got all pissy and was like “It’s not like you’re waiting for me to open presents or something!” and so I snapped at her that it’s a weird and shitty power trip thing to do, to force us to nail down a time we want you here so that you can blow it out of the water by several hours! And she was like “well I have to dry my hair.” And I hung up on her, and texted “Well, the verbatim quote was come at 11 if you want to spend time with your family so I guess we have our answer but it’s shitty you couldn’t have just said that in the first place.”
She showed up as we took the turkey out of the oven. Of course nothing more was said, we don’t really operate that way.
But, like. Fuck that. I’m not on her side in her weird passive-aggressive bullshit.
I guess I’m delighted that’s literally the only drama we had. Southern BIL behaved himself beautifully, really went out of his way to be nice to me helping me cut up the deer and giving me advice and such, the kids were actually angels for the most part, everyone had a great time and all was well.
I just don’t get the weird power trip thing. Like, if you don’t have any impulse to Be On Time, or if you have zero Fear of Missing Out, then I get not being like Super Punctual or whatever, but like… then accept that they’ve given you a range, and maybe double down on it– like, you said be here before 2, but are you gonna get super mad if I don’t get here until 2? do you really mean be here before 1? Because honestly with like pattern-recognition skills that’s mostly what goes on. (And honestly what we’re usually mad about is when we say be here before 2 and she rolls in at 3. Like, I don’t think it’s rocket science to predict that a hostess will be annoyed by that.) And I get being confused by things like, Mom saying “I am to have dinner on the table at 5:30″ and you think that means she wants you there at 5:30 but really, think that through, you don’t think she’s going to want you to get in the door and get a drink and greet everybody beforehand? And you know she’s the kind of dame who’s gonna serve appetizers, so you can do the math yourself, having lived under her roof for two decades, that if dinner’s on the table at 5:30 then a guest should arrive by no later than 4:30.
Dude’s family says “come at 6″ and means “come at 6″ and so Dude’s mom will roll up at 5:58 and her sister will roll up at 6:03 and that’s just how they are. My family is not much given to pronouncements like that. I get it. We don’t make solid plans because there are at this point thirteen of us when everyone shows up, and it’s hard to be solid. So like.
Anyway! So that was annoying.
(Your picture was not posted)
