Difficult Xmas

[captain_slinky]

I've never had such a difficult Christmas before in all my life! The gift buying turned out relatively simple, but actually *giving* the gifts to people is becoming impossible!

My parents are disgruntled because no one will commit to any type of plans in one way or another. They live the furthest away in Burlington (about 1.5 hours) and refuse to do any traveling. They have a point there, as they are elderly and keeping them off the roads is a good idea.

My brother lives in Kent, about the same distance away as my parents, but in the exact opposite direction. He and his family are spending Christmas at their house for a multitude of reasons and won't be coming down our way till the day after Christmas.

My darling wife is 8-months pregnant, has a killer cold going on, hasn't slept for more than 27 minutes at a stretch in the past week and would really rather not do any driving at all, or at least the very minimum of driving.

And then there's me. Due to my severe slackitude the apartment is a wreck so we can't just invite everybody to drop by our place. I work on Christmas Eve from 5pm till 2am on Christmas Day. This would mean either (a) Driving someplace far away at 2 in the morning with a pregnant woman who has to pee every 13 minutes then leaving at about noon to drive someplace further away on little or no sleep, or (b)Driving someplace at around 10 or noon when I wake up on Christmas Day, staying for about an hour, then driving even further away to stop by someplace else for an hour.

And to make matters worse, I'm considering picking up an OT shift on Christmas Day. 'Cuz I'm crazy.

If I had my druthers, I'd rather have had the apartment clean so people could drop in and keep my Schmoopie company on Christmas Eve till I got home, then have a nice leisurely and relaxing day of people dropping in on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, I screwed that all up. Now it's gonna be my poor sick wife sitting all alone in our wrecked apartment on Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day while I sit in an empty call center wishing I had made better choices :(

Comments

[khristle.livejournal.com]

Schmoopie - really, it's ok. I am soooo happy with the plans to go up X-mas after you get off work and then spend Monday celebrating the holiday with everyone all at once. Really, I don't care what the date on the calander says, Christmas is when we want to have it. Like your mom, I refuse to let anyone ruin Christmas, which to me falls on Dec 26th.

When I was upset, it wasn't about Christmas being ruined or screwed up, it was about how your mom treated me. And I think my headache probably had something to do with it as well.

I love you, and as long as I get to be with you at some point next week to open gifts, I'll be one merry pregntant wife :)

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

I know... I'm upset that both you and my mom are disgruntled over this in one way or another, but more importantly I'm upset that my Dad feels bad about it. I think he feels that no one wants to be bothered to come up and visit, and that Christmas should be the day that everyone should be able to put aside everything else and, well, he just wants it all to be like it used to be. When the worst that might happen is that one of the cousins would have to show up an hour late for dinner, and that was the biggest complication involved.

I want to be able to tell him that I feel the same way. That the actual DAY of Christmas IS important to me, and it IS a symbol of that you should do ANYTHING to get together on that one day or else it's just another gathering.

I'm just really, really down right now. And the massive gas/runs I'm having aren't helping at all. SHoulda broubht Imodium with me :(