Day: December 24, 2015

We’re not nice people

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It’s Christmas Eve and everyone is here.  We’ve started drinking, we’re working on our ugly sweaters (or t-shirts, for some of us), and games (Munchkin, maybe, probably Taboo, almost certainly Bananagrams – we know how to party) and a contest are coming up.  We’re expecting a lovely Christmas Eve, at least partially because a certain someone has decided she’s not feeling well and has gone off to bed.  Poor thing.  Guess the rest of us will have to make merry without her.  We’ll manage somehow.

I’ve been banned from the basement for the time being.  I think Molly is wrapping my present.  The making of the Beef Wellington (by John and his mother) is imminent.  We’re very excited.  But if they’re busy in the kitchen, and I’m not allowed to hang out in the basement, I might have a few minutes’ quiet.  “Quiet”, I should say.  Christmas music is blasting, and there’s plenty of good-natured shouting (followed by shushing) going on.

Oops, I’ve been summoned to help Emily with something.  And I have to change the song – it’s that depressing Peanuts one.

 

Extended family

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The other night, we went to a family party on Long Island, and I got to meet some relatives of John’s that I’ve only heard of and another dozen no one has ever mentioned to me.  Some of them were totally normal, some of them were a little nuts, and I only wanted to fight one of them.  She’s a Trump supporter (“Government should be run like a business, and he’s a brilliant businessman!”), and she turned a perfectly civil conversation into a contentious argument.  I bit my tongue and backed out.  I’m not going to have a political argument with one of my mother-in-law’s cousins, certainly not at a holiday party/family reunion.  I can’t be that in-law.  I did find unlikely allies in two of John’s uncles.  I knew there was a reason I liked them.