Bah, Humbug

Christmas time wears me out. Despite my best efforts to minimize stress, something always fucks things up and dashes my plans for a trouble-free December.

This year I made an even greater effort than last year to avoid the major shopping centers in my town and their horrific traffic jams. I ordered practically every gift online except for a few little stocking stuffers for the wife, which I am procuring at a small confectionery away from the pushing, shoving throngs. I was doing pretty well at this little game until this past Friday.

On Friday, my office had its annual holiday party, after which we closed early. Precious freedom! I was excited and overjoyed at the prospect of going home and wallowing about in front of my beautiful new 47-inch flat-panel TV my parents bought for me as an early Christmas present. However, my dear wife needed me to procure a few items to bring to a friend's party the next evening, and also rent a Redbox movie for that night. One little errand, I thought to myself. No biggie.

That's where the ass-fucking began. Redbox has a lovely reservation feature, with which you can reserve a DVD through their website and pick it up at the requested machine. Using this feature, I could see that the only machine containing our desired film was at a grocery store in the middle of a Christmas-shopping hellhole that gets so congested with traffic that they have to hire traffic control personnel. I intended to use a promotional coupon for 66% off, only to discover that such codes can't be used for online reservations. What the fuck good is it, then? Goddamn Redbox. Desperate for cheap Friday night entertainment, I reserved it anyway, for the full $1, at the undesirable location. It took me about 15 minutes to get through the ridiculous traffic and reach the grocery store when it should have taken 5 minutes. This is a store I seldom patronize due to its overwhelming size and illogical layout. Why in the fuck did they keep the pita chips on their own rack on the opposite end of the store from the snack isle? I went up and down every isle twice looking for Craisins, and of course every carton of eggs has at least one cracked egg because they hire retarded gorillas to stock the dairy case. After maybe 45 minutes in that god-forsaken pit of human misery, I finally found everything on the jumbled shopping list and got the fuck out of there. Halfway home, I realized I'd forgotten the goddamned movie! So I had to get my ass back there, taking a back route this time, which I should have done in the first place. This time I said fuck it, and parked in the reserved "customer with child" space, probably drawing dirty looks from goody-goodies, but at that point I didn't give a flying fuck. I finally made it home about 4:30. Oh, did I mention that the office party was held at an employee's house almost in the next town? So even though we were released at 2:15, it was 2:45 by the time I got home, and then it was right back out the door again. I lost an hour and 45 minutes of my precious afternoon off thanks to all the other assholes who can't plan ahead and do all their consumerism at the last minute.

Well, at least that was the low point of the weekend. We enjoyed our movie night on our fabulous new TV, and had a good time at our friend's party the next night. We went out Saturday to our favorite watering hole, where I kept my new kilt on that I had worn to the party. That certainly shined a light on the vast sinkhole of ignorance in this town. I kept hearing "omigod that guy's wearing a skirt" and even heard "maybe he's Muslim." Eh, whatever, I looked damn good. Sunday was glorious. We didn't leave the house or even get dressed, and sat around all day watching the entire Band of Brothers miniseries on our new TV.

Then came the call from Granny.

About 5 times now, Granny has called asking when we're coming for Christmas and whether we're coming to lunch. And 5 times the answer has been no, we're not coming on Christmas day, and no, we won't make it to lunch at the fucking Marriott. It's so frustrating because not only is she being her usual spoiled, impulsive, demanding self, but her deteriorating memory is also playing a part in the repeated phone calls. I think she truly can't remember what we've already told her. My wife finally told her last night that we don't like being pressured to come to Christmas lunch when we've already planned to hang around here most of the day. Granny got all pissy after that and hung up to go fume and pout because we weren't doing what the Grande Dame had commanded. I'm getting so goddamned sick of Granny's grandiose meal plans where poor Granddaddy has to get his tired self dressed and out in the cold when he'd probably rather have sandwiches at home. Plus she just doesn't understand that not everybody gets up at 6 in the goddamned morning like she does, and to get there at noon means means we'd have to be done with opening gifts, dressed, have our bags packed, and have the dog at the dogsitter's house by 10:30. We are absolutely not going to rush ourselves through Christmas morning just because Her Majesty wants everyone at the motherfucking Marriott at 12 sharp.

My dear father-in-law hasn't made it any less stressful. A couple of weeks ago, he was talking about taking us and my wife's brother on a trip somewhere nice, so we were calling and e-mailing back & forth trying to coordinate schedules. Eventually the grand plan fell apart, so he said just come over on Christmas day for hors d'oeuvres, when we already said we probably wouldn't be coming to town that day. But, that may be the only chance we get to see him before he has to jet off again to some other desolate outpost for his job, so my dream of a relaxing Christmas at home appears to be crumbling.

I am resolved to do things differently next year. I shall call for a rigid, unbending plan to stay put and not leave town all day Christmas day, if at all. Hopefully I'll have the funds to take us somewhere like a resort for a few days, avoid our families, and truly enjoy our time off.