If you have read any holiday posts of mine, you might remember me as being a little Scrooge-y. (Okay, a LOT Scrooge-y...but I think it was all justified.) I have had a few very disappointing holiday seasons over the last several years and I will be the first to admit that these shitty holidays have made all the subsequent holidays equally shitty. Maybe they have gotten progressively less shitty. But still shitty.
This holiday season, however, hasn't really been that bad. I mean, I was dreading Thanksgiving just as much as I always do. I agonized for days about how I could get out of attending all the family festivities and then possibly avoiding Thing Two's family festivities. But in the end, I sucked it up and attended all three of the family gatherings that I was supposed to. I ate turkey, I held children, and I had a pretty damn good day. But then I had to brace myself for the clusterfuck that normal people like to refer to as...Christmas.
I can't lie, the smoothness of the Thanksgiving holiday put me a little more at ease about the impending doom...I mean...Christmas...but I still wasn't convinced that I wouldn't have a breakdown. The stress of spending all that money on gifts for people and then not even being sure that they will like them, or not being able to get them what they wanted in the first place, or not being able to get anything for people at all just gets to be too much for me. I start to panic at the beginning of November and I don't stop until right around the first of the year. Bills take a back seat to making sure I get my mom (the most difficult person to shop for...EVER) something that she won't toss in a closet or immediately donate to a homeless shelter. And then there's the melancholy that sneaks in when I think about my grandparents and what it will be like without them this year.
Shockingly, however, it hasn't been so bad. I have been in a pretty good mood, despite the 4 billion times I have been forced to hear WHAM! singing that horrible Christmas song they had. In fact, so far, things have been pretty pleasant.
Things that have not sucked about the holiday season:
1. I got a really nice Christmas bonus. This has never happened to me before and was COMPLETELY unexpected and helped me to buy something for my mom that I believe that she will actually enjoy and that will not end up at a shelter.
2. I have a really awesome boyfriend who bought me a red Wii! Yes, he stood in line for 2 hours at Wal-mart (Gasp!) to get me a gift and then...gave it to me early. I am in Wii Heaven!
3. I am not turning 30. I know, I know...I have spent a lot of time NOT turning 30 and it shouldn't make things any better this time I don't turn 30. But last year, I DID turn 30 and...I have to be honest, 31 isn't nearly as scary.
I guess I am just thankful. And, its true, maybe I should have been more thankful a lot sooner, but I am getting there. And I am not dwelling on deaths or money or how many times I have had to hear Mariah Carey screech "All I Want for Christmas is You". I am concentrating on things that DON'T suck. (Like, for instance, a brand new RED Wii!)
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