And if you’re not, happy Sunday, and happy any other holidays you celebrate around this time of year.
A good day to forget about all the bullshit this year has brought us.
Here are some more cats and dogs celebrating in their own peculiar ways.
Happy day!
I had a pretty decent Christmas. It was my mom’s side so no Trumpkins were present and I got to meet my cousin’s adorable 4 month baby. I also had some nice Norwegian aquavit.
I’m glad to be back home though. I’d been at my mom’s since yesterday afternoon and before that was with my dad’s family for a couple of hours. As an introvert, it’s tough to go that long without a moment alone even though I was around people I like.
Fortunately, I have the day off tomorrow. I might grocery shop but other than that I can just loaf and do nothing and be by myself.
Happy Holidays!
I went to my mother’s for supper on Christmas eve, which had me kind of nervous, I haven’t seen my brother or his partner since I started transition. It went quite well though, my brother was a little uncomfortable but overall is supportive. His partner wasn’t uncomfortable in the least and is also supportive. There were a few pronoun issues but they were genuine mistakes, which are understandable. All in all it went pretty well, noisy (due to five excited kids), but enjoyable.
For Christmas we’re taking care of the landlord’s dogs. They are ridiculously happy.
They are bouncing off the walls happy when we take them outside.
They can’t wait to run across the street, then to run back so I can put them on the leash.
They are so happy when we drive off.
They have never seen joy such as when we come back.
The happiest day in their lives is when we take them off the leash and let them in.
Nothing has ever been so exciting as when we feed them. (Here we do see a hierarchy: dog food is great, but seal meat boiled with macaroni is greater, and Arctic char skin is greatest)
The paroxysm of joy comes when we let them out and put them on the leash.
They can’t imagine their luck when we go bring them back inside and turn the lights off.
Oh to be a dog….
Wait. That would mean getting tied to a leash when it’s -30 outside. Fuck that!
I’m just a lurker here but I wanted to bust in again and say Happy Holidays to all the amazing people on this blog!
You’re all wonderful people and I hope you all let this time of year soften your hearts and fill you with cheer. Put love in your hearts and wish that 2017 onward won’t be as bad as we all fear.
Merry Christmas, everyone!!
Redsilkphoenix-Congrats for the birth of your grand nephew!! 😀
Chie-Hugs if you want them!
Yeah, I think that Cartman’s name for reelz is Cartcat, ’cause our kittyz talk just like that.
*****
@rogue angel
Been there, done that. Sometimes you have to make your own Merry Christmas for yourself. I hope it was a lovely day.
******
@Alan
Beautiful photo! Did you take it? Was it today?
*****
@Chie Satonaka
I’m so sorry that happened to you. Family can be the w-u-r-s-t.
Here’s a trick for dealing with them. I work freelance and have had many clients over the years. I pretend that the asshole family member I’m dealing with is a particularly obnoxious client.
I usually keep my temper with my clients no matter what. But at the same time I don’t give in to them — I just humor them and don’t show that I’m angry.
I might smile a little and say “Huh!” or some such, and remind myself that I like it when they pay me.
In my experience, it works like a charm. Damn, I deserve an Oscar!
And you deserve a medal because actually you held your own in the face of a great deal of manipulation. Kudos!
*****
And to Mammotheers in general, including lurkers, Merry Christmas or Happy Day to you.
@Deimos Masque
Aww, thanks!
Back at ya with the incomparable Jackie DeShannon:
Jackie DeShannon – Put A Little Love In Your Heart (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTxxEdBIL6Y
The video is a little blurred — sorry about that.
In late 1969, this song reached number 1 on South Africa’s hit parade.
If the peeps of SA can kick out the bloody, murderous apartheid regime, we in the USA, with our nearly 250-year history of democracy, can make short work of the Donald Trump regime!
@Chie
Hugs if you want them. Hope you can still have a semblene of a happy holiday despite all that.
@Chio:
I don’t have any useful suggestions, I’m afraid. My normal responses are either avoidance or confrontation, neither of which have produced good results for me in the past.
I know what it feels like to be there; I’ve done it with grandparents. It’s an awful situation and you have as many of my hugs as you feel you need.
@ kat
Aw thanks. Yup; went for a little apres dinner stroll on the beach. In legend (and probably actuality if the archeologists are correct) that’s where Christianity landed in Cornwall. Hence the cross and the St. Pirran’s flag.
@Axe,
I am rubbish at conversions, so I asked Google. Wow, that’s warm for December in the northern hemisphere!
However, *waves hands hastily* no need to give it back, ok? You just hang onto it.
I should probably stop mentioning how pleasantly not-stinking-hot it is before something terrible happens…
@wwth,
I understand that feeling so well – not your own experience, of course, but the experience in general. It gets especially difficult when it’s people you like/love, because it’s kind of hard to explain why you need to be … without them after a while. Hey, did you end up finding a good book for your mum?
@everyone, especially those who are having a hard time or an awkward time or a horrible time over this period – take good care of yourselves and do keep talking here if it helps.
Stupid holiday again. Some good stuff, and the usual bad stuff, most of it just plain old stupid.
We’ve stopped going the usual way with gifts a few years ago because we ain’t really got that much money. So what we do instead is buy a ton of cheap tiny little random gifts, wrap em all up, and put everything in a giant basket. Then everyone grabs a few, opens them, and keeps what’s inside if they like it or trades it with someone else. I actually like it much better this way. Of course the kid did get her own gifts though. Not sure what she’d do with any of the random ones anyway.
I walked out with a mini USB fan (which is gonna be oh-so-precious in 6 months), a bunch of lighters and a SCENTED MOTHERFUCKING CANDLE. Everyone got a small bag of chocolates and cookies as well.
I was instrumental in lying to the kid about Santa, yay ! I had to call her upstairs to watch through the windows and try to spot him flying by, while the others snuck all the gifts under the tree (couldn’t do that at night because we didn’t have all the gifts then, since the guests weren’t here yet). I wanted to just tell her the truth, meh. Guess I can live with that, it’s not gonna last anyway.
I got to see most of my sisters, except for one. I’m told she isn’t too well these days. Sadly she’s pretty difficult to get in touch with, because she’s often in other areas of the country and doesn’t exactly tell us when she is around. And she tends to “stay out of our way” when she’s not feeling so good… that ain’t helping. Hope I get a chance to see her soon.
I had to rant about drinks, again, because they still don’t give a fuck. Jebus fucking dammit, stop it with the wine. I can’t digest the stuff ! What the hell would it hurt to allow me to buy my own beer and drink that instead ? Well no, that would be “rude”. Drink water instead, while we all joyously get drunk on stuff that you can’t touch. That‘s the proper polite behavior, unlike having beer at Christmas. All because of my stepfather who’s super proud of his good wines and only wants that on the table. Well okay dude, I’m glad you’re happy about your good wine, but it still wrecks my insides when I go anywhere near it and I’d like that to be considered just fucking once.
(you know an argument is bullshit when it can be discredited with just the goddamn title of a single wikipedia page, for fuck’s sake)
Not to mention that I wasn’t allowed to cook any mulled wine either, even though almost everyone had said during the days before that they hoped I’d make some. The reason ? We didn’t have any cheap wine on hand, only “good stuff that would be wasted if cooked” – again, stepfather said that. Well why not buy some cheap wine then ? Sanctimonious asshole. You fucking know I won’t cook anything that costs more than 1€/l, so why even say that to begin with ? I coulda grabbed a 10 liter box for half the price of your pack of cigarettes and turned that awful stuff to wonderful hot spicy mulled wine that everyone enjoys and that everyone can digest, but no, sorry, that’d be stealing the spotlight from your 1995 Château-Whatever. I hate wine snobs.
Of course the nephew and I couldn’t openly smoke either. Because I guess that’s rude too ? So yeah, everyone takes their smoke break together outside, while we’re banished to the study, on the basis that we’re not smoking the same stuff and cigarettes are fine y’know, but joints are evil or something. Hey, at least it’s warmer in here. The fun part ? Almost everyone present was either a weed smoker or a former one, except for, you guessed it, my stepfather. The only one who’d be “offended” if he knew we were smoking. Even though he does know we smoke weed in general. It’s fucking ridiculous.
He even gets pissed at me the few times he actually realizes I’ve been smoking in here, “because it smells” (dude has literally no sense of smell whatsoever, because smoking gauloises for 45 years will do that to ya) “because it’s expensive” (my weekly weed budget is, at its highest, one third of his cigarettes budget… and even if you add my own tobacco, it’s still way cheaper – and also dude, guess what, I have a fucking medical need for this shit, unlike you with your own smokes) “because it’s unhealthy for everyone in the house” (it’s contained to this 1/4 of the attic that I’m allowed to occupy and you have no reason whatsoever to even set foot on this floor, dude).
Same thing went with food. My mother, two of my sisters, my nephew, and myself had imposed a ban on foie gras, because it’s fucking cruel. But hey, this is France, so one of my sisters (coincidentally, stepfather’s daughter) decided that we’d have it nonetheless, because FREEDOM ™ and also quintessentially french food is apparently mandatory or something. Other countries get to have foie gras that is produced without inhumanely force-feeding anything (yes, it’s actually illegal here to call it foie gras if the goose wasn’t force-fed through a tube) but we can’t have that instead because it ain’t our way, or something. And damn what you say about animal cruelty. This is France ! And in France, we only celebrate Christmas and only have foie gras and wine. So fuck your “happy holidays”, humanely produced food, and digestible drinks.
“Progressives”, huh. They also ban politics talk when my sister (the one who wasn’t here this time) and I are around, because we’re too “extreme” for them – “extreme” seems to mean that some really wanna disagree with us but unfortunately can’t do so in an intelligible way, and thus can’t keep up the smug superiority in front of someone who actually knows what the fuck they’re talking about. Yes, I’m specifically talking about my stepfather and one of his daughters, the one who brought the foie gras.
TL;DR : “holiday spirit” my ass. I fail to see how it means anything other than “you will enjoy this holiday the way I decided you would, and if for any reason you can’t, you’re invited to fuck off upstairs in your attic, out of the sight of us wholesome folks”.
Done ranting.
@Everyone
Have a very merry, again. Hope this season is treating you well. My heart goes out to you if you’re spending your holidays alone (or wishing you were alone).
@Chie
You can have all of my hugs and cookies. But please share some of the cookies with your mom, because this is awesome :
Holidays aren’t over yet so I hope new year’s eve treats you better. Have a merry !
@John,
I was already feeling ridiculously grateful for how simple this time of year is for me now, compared to Times Long Ago. Now, even more so. Jebus. If I was around for your xmas, I’d give you all the pot and solitude you needed 🙂
Side note re your awesome niece: my boy never really believed in Santa, not that I pushed him in either direction (not consciously anyway). But if she loves the whole idea, then indulge – it’s really cute to watch, and doesn’t do any harm, I don’t think? Now I am second-guessing myself and wondering if it’s a Bad Thing. “Buggrit, millennium hand and shrimp” – I need to go to bed.
@Mish
You’re right, it’s harmless. She had loads of fun and that’s what matters, I guess I’m just grumpy about everything else. Bit shy about fixing that the easy way though, because I’m running out again. There’s probably an alternate dimension where La Peau de Chagrin was actually meant as a metaphor for that. It’s not really about the solitude though : I know everyone needs some, but I didn’t, not yesterday. Just would’ve loved to be able to actually enjoy the family gathering in my own home without being consigned to this attic. Already spend way too much time alone in here.
In better news, this morning I got my hands on Borderlands : The Handsome Collection for about 15€ and I’m unreasonably excited at the prospect of playing that. I never got to play The Pre-Sequel, or any of the expansions for Borderlands 2, and now I can fix that !
(and I get to join PI’s bandwagon of people who got themselves Borderlands this holiday)
That is, as soon as my abysmal download speed gets better. An 85 hours estimate does not strike me as what should be expected. If I find out that my stepfather is taking up all the broadband again with his goddamn phones and TV (seriously, who needs wifi on a TV when its only src is another wifi device !?), I’m gonna force-feed him wine and cookies until he begs for secular, inclusive mercy. *evil grin*
Love all the Borderlands fans here. Spent Sunday rescuing the Queen and bringing light back to the world.
Today I may fire up my gifted copy of The Last Guardian which was actually released this month after so many years in development hell.
Stay strong, David (and everyone).
@John
I had foie gras for the first time recently. I do not eat the stuff because of the cruelty, but I was at a very fancy restaurant with a fixed menu that the chef decides and it was served to me, so I tried it. I wasn’t terribly fond of it, but that might have something to do with the dish it was part of – it was this savory and sweet dish and the flavors just didn’t meld well for me. I’m glad I’ve finally tried it though so I can know that I’m really not missing much.
I’m sorry your stepdad is a controlling, snobbish bore. All the hugs.
@John : I feel for your pain, half because my family is similar (and french too), half because one of my fear is to become your stepfather (I have a distressing tendency at rationalizing as mere preferences the will of other people).
The one thing that kill me is the foie gras thing. Not that wanting foie gras by itself is too much, but the double standard of refusing people to get their stuff like beer or special smoke or whatever, but imposing that they have their own stuff like foie gras, is pissing me off something fierce. Either everyone have the same menu or everyone should get the stuff he need !
@Chie, and any other that know persona 4 : would you advice that game to a youngster that might have gender dysphoria ? I am looking at the character of Naoto in particular and fear it might be a counter-productive example if someone who have gender interrogation play the game at the same time. I don’t quite want to see what intensity of shitstorm I would create if I openly talk about transgenderism ; the concept that someone in the family could be homosexual is already off-limit.
Excellent pictures. We all celebrate in our unique ways.
@kupo
Ouch. Smug chefs and their French cuisine. I know I shouldn’t, but I actually feel guilty about that, heh. Also, I hope your path never takes you anywhere near snails and frog legs. Those aren’t actually popular even here, and for good reasons.
Raw ham and cheese sandwiches for everyone ! Now that’s French food that I can get behind. Seriously folks, if you’ve never had raw ham, and you get a chance to try some (I have a personal weakness for spanish Serrano, but the french and italian stuff is awesome too), go for it !
@Ohlmann
Right, my family’s got nothing on yours. They have their own smallish “bigotries” but nothing remotely resembling that, thankfully. All of the hugs and support (I’m all out of cookies though, sorry).
I dunno about Persona 4 (to my shame, because I hear it’s great) and to be fair I’m not aware of any game out there that might approach transgender issues in a good way. I’m also interested though, so I’ma just second the question.
@John
I’ve tried a couple of Spanish dry-cured hams, not sure if they were Serrano or not. They were pricey because they were imported and the pigs were raised humanely, but they were tasty.
I’ve read somewhere about that price issue. Apparently it’s only pricey because it’s imported – it’s really cheap in the EU.
I guess it could be because the US has pretty stringent food regs ? I learned the hard way when I landed in California with cheese in my bag and a face that just warrants a full luggage search.
They actually had some guy in a freaking hazmat suit remove it – until they figured out that it was actually okay. I had checked ahead before taking it, so they could’ve just asked me what it was instead of giving me that hilarious first impression of America.
@John
Yeah, we have weird regulations around raw milk products. I’ve heard of farmers getting in trouble for giving away raw milk to their neighbors. I think I’ve seen it for sale, though, so maybe it’s legal in my state? I haven’t tried making any cheese that requires raw milk, so I usually just buy the pasteurized but non-homogenized stuff they sell at my closest grocery store when making cheese, rather than trying to track down raw milk. If the dumb-asses in our government would think for two seconds they’d realize the raw milk is safe once turned into cheese because the cultures used in the cheese fight off the dangerous bacteria.
testing testing 1 2
woha
I got her that Alison Weir book that you and one other person recommended. I’m sure she’ll like it. Thanks for the rec.