New Year’s Eve/Day Open Thread: It’s 2016 Already Updated Edition

@Vuclodack – Stay safe.

Hugs if you want them Vucodlak.

Thanks all for the well wishes, everybody. Sorry to be such a downer. I haven’t heard any sirens, and there are no carp* swimming around my ankles, so I guess all’s well. I haven’t slept in a couple of days, so I’m extra paranoid.

*My grandmother used to tell me stories of the great flood of ’73, when she would go out to her garden and find carp nibbling on her lettuce.

HNY everyone!

This year is looking up already. Had an appendectomy on Monday and just got released from hospital in time for NYDay.

Gonna spend the day with my two favorite people in the enitre world, have a spoonful of black eyed peas and do some reading, movie watching, and crocheting. Good day for me, I hope, with absolutely no excitement outside of a TV show.

Best wishes and hugs for those that need and want them.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

This year, among other things, I will learn not to read YouTube comments. If a lighthearted video of an interracial couple talking about their cat can result in a tsunami of rage over their daring to be an interracial couple in the first place (it’s the fault of feminists!) then. . . well. No wonder David Futrelle heavily moderates his threads. Don’t blame him at all.

On a more positive note: It’s 2016! Yay! Best wishes to all.

I’ve only just got to the first morning of 2016, so no spoilers please.

All my best wishes, Vucodlak. If the river overflowing is a case of when-not-if, then I hope it happens far away from the most populated areas and causes as little disruption as possible.

@Aces

I am also hoping things get better for you.

Happy new year, peeps! I’m having… a time. My husband and I are separating and it leaves me in dire straights. (Not a love issue, his mental health has gotten worse and all of his doctors recommend this to treat his codependant personality disorder) :/ I did start up a gofundme if you guys could share it around.

https://www.gofundme.com/sephirajo

Long, whiny post about personal stuff below.

———–

I’ve been meaning to get this off my chest for a long time, but I don’t have anyone in meatspace who I can share this with. Since it’s about my wife’s family I can’t talk to any of them, and I simply don’t talk about things with my own family (which is small, and the extended family I have no contact with). Friends, you say? Nope, I’m almost 31 and all my old friends fled when I got married at 26. I’m bad at making new friends.

On to the issue: My wife’s family is getting on my nerves. Like, badly on my nerves. They are an American family of 6, including my wife, and the father was an immigrant from Cuba at a young age. They are a very conservative and deeply religious family, while my wife and I are the opposite. One important piece of information is that we’re partly dependent on them financially since they’re very well off and we’re still struggling to find steady work.

Below I’ll just list all of my problems and frustrations with them, and I’m praying to Obi-Wan my wife won’t read this comment.

Father

He is in his late 50s and makes a ton of money. He’s some form of specialist doctor. He is extremely authoritarian, a misogynist, a racist, and everything else. He seems to love and hate god at the same time. When something goes wrong for him, no matter how insignificant, he curses god and asks what he’s done to deserve this. When he gets upset with his wife, he asks god what he’s done to deserve such a useless wife. He won’t lift a finger to help around the house, ever. When he gets home from work he immediately makes himself a strong drink, then he retreats to his cave where he reads philosophy/religion or listens to pop music. Sometimes he will come out, shirtless, say hello to everyone individually, and then disappear again. Eventually he’ll come looking for food and he will be very upset if the food is not ready exactly when he wants it, or if it’s not to his liking for some reason.

He insists he’s not racist because he ”has never discriminated against anyone because of their race”. But he keeps making stupid racist jokes about his (other) daughter’s Chinese boyfriend. He will use the N-word to yell at black people on TV if he doesn’t like them. He’s especially hateful toward black people, and it ties in with his ”bootstrapism”, by which I mean he believes all Americans can get rich if they just pull themselves up by the bootstraps like he did. He says slavery was the worst thing that has ever happened to America, not because people were SLAVES, but because ”now we have this huge group of people with a chip on their shoulder, expecting to have everything handed to them for free”.

In my view he’s an adult baby, and a hateful one. I get the impression he never achieves anything more than a shallow understanding of any subject. I suppose he’s good at his job (yet another example of a person being highly skilled at one thing, and scarily incompetent at most other things). He’s the type of person who will read a book on philosophy and then he thinks he knows everything about philosophy ever. He never has any form of dialogue, but it’s all just him going through from memory exactly what he’s read lately. When he’s done, the rest of us can go back to normal conversation.

He is, of course, a Trump supporter. In the previous election cycle he supported Santorum. I have SO much more to say about this person, but I have to stop at some point. To me, he’s the definition of a toxic human being. My parents are calm, friendly, middle class, well-meaning socialists, and my only sibling is my feminist, progressive older brother. I’m not used to having a person like this in my family and I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t want to cause drama in my wife’s family but I am also bad at keeping my mouth shut. To this man’s credit, he actually can take criticism without becoming furious. He won’t listen and change, of course. But he won’t blow up.

Mother

She’s the same age as her husband and she runs everything. I mean everything. She does part time work as a nurse, but her main job is taking care of the family, which is a 24/7 thing. Just keeping her husband in an ok mood is a full time job, and as I will explain later they have sons who also refuse to grow up. I think she is generally a decent person, but she’s also conservative and hateful in all the ways conservatives generally are. She can’t shut up about ”teh gays” of course. While she won’t go on and on like her husband does, I’m sure she generally agrees with him on most topics. She will sometimes complain about Obama but that’s to be expected. She’s very loud, very stubborn, and never listens to anyone.

Older daughter

My wife. She’s perfect in every way, of course. 😉

Older son

He is, I think, 27 years old and lives with his parents. He graduated college and came back home (no shame in that, of course). He is the epitome of a man-baby. He plays videogames almost 100% of his awake time and needs everything delivered to the door of his room in the basement. When he’s hungry he’ll just call his mom and ask if she can pick up McDonalds or some other fast food. If he wants a new videogame he’ll call his mom and ask her to go to the mall. If he wants anything at all, he’ll call his mom and ask her to bring it to his room. If he doesn’t get his way he’ll throw a tantrum. When his mom visited us here in Sweden about a year ago, he literally called her and demanded she get on the next flight home because he was hungry. I’M NOT KIDDING.

He’s had MRA tendencies in the past but I’m not sure what’s up with that now. He is actually a fun, caring and smart person when he wants to be, but you never know when he’ll switch to screaming man-baby again. You can’t play any game with him because it’ll always end with him throwing the cards/board/controller/whatever, accusing others of cheating. Seriously.

Younger son

He’s 24 and a complete shut-in. He was home schooled through most of high school and after that he locked himself in his room on the 2nd floor. He didn’t step outside the house in literally 3 or 4 years, not even the back yard. When there are guests in the house he will lock himself in his room and won’t come out until he’s sure they’ve left. He’ll keep texting and calling his mom to get updates on the situation. Without speculating about his mental health I know he has severe anxiety, which of course I want to respect. At the same time, he is a man-child just like his brother. If he can’t have burgers and Mt. Dew delivered to his door within minutes, he’ll send his mom text messages about how she must hate him.

When I first visited the house he wouldn’t come out of his room for the entire 3 weeks, only sneaking out to go to the bathroom once he could confirm with his mom that he wouldn’t accidentally run into me. One night I went downstairs for water at 4am and ran into him in the kitchen when he was making a run for Mt. Dew (apparently he at least won’t wake his mom up in the middle of the night for soda). I have to add, he’s a big guy. He’s at least 6’3 or maybe 6’4, at that point quite heavy (although he’s lost a lot of weight since), and he hadn’t trimmed his hair or facial hair in years. I was so confused for a second, thinking it must be a burglar. It’s such a strange situation, knowing I’ve been in that house for several weeks without seeing this giant man who’s been in there the entire time with us. When I realized who he was, I just said ”hey nice to meet you”. He grunted and ran upstairs to his room.

The next time I visited them, he actually started coming out of his room to hang out with the rest of us. But when it was time for my third visit he had reverted back to hiding in his room the whole time. During other visits he’s been sometimes more open, sometimes hidden. Last summer was my 8th time there, and he was nowhere to be seen the entire time.

Strangely enough, a few years ago he got an older girlfriend in NYC (they met online). He cleaned himself up, shaved his face, had his hair cut, had his mom buy him new/nice clothes. Then he went into the city all by himself and met with this woman. I don’t think the date went very well because he never talked about her again after that. A while later he got a new girlfriend, a woman in Mexico.

Why am I going into all these details? I don’t know! Maybe I want to convey the feeling I have when I visit this family, that it’s like travelling to a different dimension. I just don’t fucking know what’s going on there, or how the laws of physics work in this house.

Younger sister

The sister I never had! She’s 22, graduated from an Ivy League college with a STEM degree and is now working in her field of expertise. She is also quite spoiled, which I think is unavoidable with the way her parents are, but she eventually got to the point where she desperately needed to get out of the house and do her own thing. I don’t see that ever happening with her brothers.

I’ve mentioned her in previous open threads here since I’ve been concerned about her controlling boyfriend. No news there lately.

———

So that’s that. Now I can’t remember why I wanted to share all this stuff. Oh, yeah, I just needed to get it off my chest. We usually spend a few weeks/year in close contact with this family, and after a few days I don’t know what to do with myself. I love having some time away from home, and they have an amazing pool in the back yard, but I just can’t DEAL with these people sometimes.

And again, Obi-Wan if you can hear me, please don’t let my wife see this comment.

@dhag85 — thank you for your generosity. These next few weeks are going to suck. Trying to keep everything smooth for my daughter’s sake but it’s hard.

Hugs all! Happy New Year.

Also, can I just applaud the number of fellow medievalists, nerds, and, dare I guess…SCAdians and Kentwellies here? because…it’s well and truly wonderful 🙂