TW: Xmas / Holiday / Family etc rant

That's understandable. Hope you get through the next few days ok!

Thanks Exploring. I hope the next few days go smoothly for you as well.

Still feeling uptight about tomorrow and procrastinating hard on stuff today.

We'll get through it, and then we'll be back home and it'll be Littles' Day and it'll be nice.

We survived the day with the family. It was exhausting. There were some nice moments, some annoying stuff, and a lot of whatever in between.

By the end of it, we were too burnt out to really process much. In retrospect I believe we switched twice, but I'm not sure. Perhaps it was just a lot of influencing rather than full-on switching. There's also some gaps or blurry stuff, like I don't remember how we got from A to B in a few places. But I think there were a couple switches or changes cos i can remember feeling and thinking and acting very differently. I think. lol.

I'm not sure who got us home but I know when someone decided it was time to go, and everyone ignored us trying to say goodbye, we just packed up and then hollared a goodbye from the frontdoor.

Now I'm feeling some anger-in-retrospect at stuff from yesterday. There were some things I remember being angry at, in the moment, but then tiredness made it fade. Now it's back.

Now today, is for us. Our holiday. Having some tea, then I'm gonna do a workout, and then it's Littles Day and I can feel they're already excited about it. Like, they want to skip the workout and get going, but we can't do that.

hooray it's over!

Happy Littles Day!

Thanks BeccaBee.

They got some colouring done and played with some dolls and I think we're on our 4th MLP cartoon movie of the day... Oh and we made cookies; several of which got eaten. They didn't get to the legos today, but maybe they'll do that on the weekend. We have to work tomorrow and friday, but we won't be working very hard.

I typed up a big ranty thing about yesterday but ###$ it, doesn't matter. We got through it. Violet dealt with them for the day, but when we'd had enough of their bs, she couldn't put her foot down and walk away. Then Melissa got upset and Mike took charge, and the two of them teamed up and got us home.

Viola

You made it through! I think it's great how you worked together to manage such a stressful time (Violet dealing with family, Melissa and Mike making sure you got out when it got too much).

Dunno where else to put this but it's kinda on the same topic.

The mother has called a few times since xmas, and has gone on and on about how it was the best xmas in years and how it was wonderful that she didn't have to do almost anything cos we were there to coordinate all the cooking and stuff, and the sister brought some sidedishes and dessert and coordinated the cleaning up.

So the mother was all about how she wants to do it like that every year.

Then yesterday (I think? or two days ago?) she called and was trying to get us to volunteer to come for another visit this weekend cos now she needs us to help put away all the decorations and $#%^. She wouldn't just like say, hey come visit and help put away all this $#%^. She was playing her manipulation game of saying $#%^ has to get put away and how she needs help with that and how she could buy some food for us to cook and have lunch with her if we wanted to come up on the weekend.

(Yes she wants us to come and do a bunch of work then cook our own meal too. lol.)

I wasn't around to talk so she was playing all these manipulation games with someone else and they were good at not agreeing to anything, at all. Not refusing, but just being like 100% noncommittal about anything. I think it may have been Melissa now that I think of it. I'm probably remembering wrong but it was like, the mother could have said 'the sky is blue' and I think we'd have been 'maybe, i dunno, gotta look into it' lol.

Anyways, I'm grumpy about the mother trying to manipulate us instead of just outright asking. I'm grumpy about her thinking xmas was so fabulous she wants to do it like that allways. I know if I explain to her why these things make me grumpy, she'll become the victem and I'll be the badguy and it'll all be about her hurt feelings. So I'm just grumping about it here.

V2

Yay for Melissa (or whoever if not her) for handling it like that! Perhaps y'all should start discussing NOW how to handle things next year when the holiday conversation comes up. Like, did you have a friend you could do Christmas with, and make plans far enough in advance to tell the mother in like October or early November, "oh, just a heads up, I've been invited to spend Christmas with a friend, I wanted to give ed you enough notice so as not to inconvenience you later..." ??

K