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Thursday, November 28th, 2013 08:09 pm
thanksgiving - we have a lot of food left
In case anyone is curious, Thanksgiving could have gone worse, but short of stoke or heart-attack among the guests, I can't see how.
However, there is a lot of turkey left, so there's that.
Note: this is Thanksgiving and this is not my happiest entry. Please avoid if it's gonna wreck your mood. Just skip for post-Thanksgiving marveling, as it were.
My sister--I may have mentioned her straightforward, point-blank qualities?--has something not unlike the equivalent of a rubber band snapping after being stretched too far. The problem is, she's not a rubber band, no one can see the stretching, and the snapping tends to be DEFCON6 and escalate to FUCKBEARS and it's all downhill from there. Hilariously, I was eating and half-watching the Packers and texting Madelyn about something at the snap-moment, so I can tell you exactly how long it takes to have not one, two, but three screaming fights (while some of us gathered in the front room to intensely appreciate my nephew playing Left4Dead like it was our new religion) and clear the house of non-residents.
Twenty-two minutes, snap point to finish.
Much worse, no one saw it coming. And I will say this: there was no way Point A should have gotten to Point Snap like that, or that fast (or for that reason; what was that?), and I come from a loud (polite) family who fight (politely, they do it in other rooms) at most family gatherings where quite literally anything can be a major insult and worth (going outside to be polite while) fighting before returning and everyone pretending nothing happened. No one was drinking, which was a real shame; everyone knows what to do then. A third party takes the party of the hostile for a walk and trips them to regain their fucking sobriety and act like a person again. Party of the wronged is given schnapps and everyone goes on to play craps. This is Texas; growing up, everyone was armed for emergency deer hunting purposes (apparently could happen going to the grocery store?) and considering the state of the collective liver, no one's aim deteriorated appreciably. It works; zero (known) homicides and counting at all family gatherings.
While it's considerably less likely to end in a hunting accident, the same basic strategies apply now (though I can't say the potential for firearms is zero; this is Texas). Which is why BIL and the kids hid in the front room pretending nothing was going on and I wandered in random circles around the house waiting for the moment of intervention or perhaps more truthfully, sneaking out the front door to the gate to the backyard and cleverly hiding there with a cigarette and a real lack of alcohol. I had cider; I could see it through the back door. Framed by sister A and aunt A, then sister A and sister B, then a triangular war of sister-mother-sister, so no cider for me. It was fun.
Once the guests had gone home (politely, with plates of leftovers), my sister couldn't find her shoes, which led to post-Snap fallout (as bad as Snap, but entered randomized mode, so the insults, while painful and hideous, were also deeply confusing and sometimes didn't really apply to the person in question at all), so I helped find her shoes because my God shut up already, I'm still not taking this personally but I want my cider.
(I'm going to note here for fairness: my aunt didn't help. For various reasons, the temptation to slap her silly is always there, and once escalation was in progress, boy, did she help. My best comparison here is like watching two packs of hyenas fighting over a half-dead elk; surely a documentary should be green-lighted for this soon.)
(I'm going to note here also the other strategies in force; for fuck's sake, never talk to, even sympathetically, any party. My instructions to Child were as follows: stay out of her line of sight, and no matter what you do, don't respond to anything she says. He held up his headphones; I nodded in relief. Stand up for yourself is one thing, but no one living is as good as my sister at leaving scars that don't heal well. I followed her around the house helping her find her shoes and distract her from BIL loading all the kids up in the car so they'd be ready to leave when she was; she hadn't yet said she wanted to leave, and it's never a good idea to draw attention to anticipating her correctly. It's weird.)
There's always a kind of smugness around forthright people who say it like it is, and I guess generally the admiration makes sense--who doesn't want to be able to say anything they want and not care? Being neither victim nor trapped bystander inside, but observer (with my cigarette), performance righteous rage is awesome and dramatic and it's meant to victimize everyone in range, even if they aren't the target. This isn't admirable, and I don't get people who think so, or pooh-pooh at being relatively polite and not turning any discussion into a warzone. There are a very short list of things worth a dramatic rendition of disagreement like this, and even fewer that require mandatory participation of everyone around you as unwilling witnesses.
I guess I can see the attraction, come to think; adrenaline kick, showing off, very dramatic, making people wary of you, because you can say anything you want and now they know it; during and afterward, you don't care they remember it, all of it, or you spoiled their quiet holiday dinner and sent them home early unhappy and uncomfortable.
I wonder what that's like. Twenty-two minutes from the moment it started to a deathly silent house and a lot of leftovers. I care a lot for what everyone went through today, and all I did was watch.
However, there is a lot of turkey left, so there's that.
Note: this is Thanksgiving and this is not my happiest entry. Please avoid if it's gonna wreck your mood. Just skip for post-Thanksgiving marveling, as it were.
My sister--I may have mentioned her straightforward, point-blank qualities?--has something not unlike the equivalent of a rubber band snapping after being stretched too far. The problem is, she's not a rubber band, no one can see the stretching, and the snapping tends to be DEFCON6 and escalate to FUCKBEARS and it's all downhill from there. Hilariously, I was eating and half-watching the Packers and texting Madelyn about something at the snap-moment, so I can tell you exactly how long it takes to have not one, two, but three screaming fights (while some of us gathered in the front room to intensely appreciate my nephew playing Left4Dead like it was our new religion) and clear the house of non-residents.
Twenty-two minutes, snap point to finish.
Much worse, no one saw it coming. And I will say this: there was no way Point A should have gotten to Point Snap like that, or that fast (or for that reason; what was that?), and I come from a loud (polite) family who fight (politely, they do it in other rooms) at most family gatherings where quite literally anything can be a major insult and worth (going outside to be polite while) fighting before returning and everyone pretending nothing happened. No one was drinking, which was a real shame; everyone knows what to do then. A third party takes the party of the hostile for a walk and trips them to regain their fucking sobriety and act like a person again. Party of the wronged is given schnapps and everyone goes on to play craps. This is Texas; growing up, everyone was armed for emergency deer hunting purposes (apparently could happen going to the grocery store?) and considering the state of the collective liver, no one's aim deteriorated appreciably. It works; zero (known) homicides and counting at all family gatherings.
While it's considerably less likely to end in a hunting accident, the same basic strategies apply now (though I can't say the potential for firearms is zero; this is Texas). Which is why BIL and the kids hid in the front room pretending nothing was going on and I wandered in random circles around the house waiting for the moment of intervention or perhaps more truthfully, sneaking out the front door to the gate to the backyard and cleverly hiding there with a cigarette and a real lack of alcohol. I had cider; I could see it through the back door. Framed by sister A and aunt A, then sister A and sister B, then a triangular war of sister-mother-sister, so no cider for me. It was fun.
Once the guests had gone home (politely, with plates of leftovers), my sister couldn't find her shoes, which led to post-Snap fallout (as bad as Snap, but entered randomized mode, so the insults, while painful and hideous, were also deeply confusing and sometimes didn't really apply to the person in question at all), so I helped find her shoes because my God shut up already, I'm still not taking this personally but I want my cider.
(I'm going to note here for fairness: my aunt didn't help. For various reasons, the temptation to slap her silly is always there, and once escalation was in progress, boy, did she help. My best comparison here is like watching two packs of hyenas fighting over a half-dead elk; surely a documentary should be green-lighted for this soon.)
(I'm going to note here also the other strategies in force; for fuck's sake, never talk to, even sympathetically, any party. My instructions to Child were as follows: stay out of her line of sight, and no matter what you do, don't respond to anything she says. He held up his headphones; I nodded in relief. Stand up for yourself is one thing, but no one living is as good as my sister at leaving scars that don't heal well. I followed her around the house helping her find her shoes and distract her from BIL loading all the kids up in the car so they'd be ready to leave when she was; she hadn't yet said she wanted to leave, and it's never a good idea to draw attention to anticipating her correctly. It's weird.)
There's always a kind of smugness around forthright people who say it like it is, and I guess generally the admiration makes sense--who doesn't want to be able to say anything they want and not care? Being neither victim nor trapped bystander inside, but observer (with my cigarette), performance righteous rage is awesome and dramatic and it's meant to victimize everyone in range, even if they aren't the target. This isn't admirable, and I don't get people who think so, or pooh-pooh at being relatively polite and not turning any discussion into a warzone. There are a very short list of things worth a dramatic rendition of disagreement like this, and even fewer that require mandatory participation of everyone around you as unwilling witnesses.
I guess I can see the attraction, come to think; adrenaline kick, showing off, very dramatic, making people wary of you, because you can say anything you want and now they know it; during and afterward, you don't care they remember it, all of it, or you spoiled their quiet holiday dinner and sent them home early unhappy and uncomfortable.
I wonder what that's like. Twenty-two minutes from the moment it started to a deathly silent house and a lot of leftovers. I care a lot for what everyone went through today, and all I did was watch.
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From:You write about it in a surprisingly entertaining manner (not surprising given that it's you; just, surprising that it manages to be entertaining) but I suspect that's mighty slim comfort at this juncture.
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From:Your sister sounds like my sister (to whom I do not speak, now, though we used to be close once upon a time). I spent several years avoiding being anywhere near her, including not attending any gathering she did, after the last and most dramatic time she exploded all over me; my family (usually inclined to making excuses for her and sweeping things under the carpet) actively cooperated in keeping her away from me. It did make holidays an interesting logistical exercise, especially since I love her kids and wanted to see them.
Nowadays we've graduated to playing nice at Christmas, but I am very wary in her presence and always ready to run for the hills.
It's a giant red flag when someone is proud of the fact that they win arguments by always being willing to go farther than anyone else. Emotional chicken is a recipe for trainwrecks, and personally I'm pretty attached to my social inhibitions. And my compassion.
there was no way Point A should have gotten to Point Snap like that, or that fast (or for that reason; what was that?)
Yeah. Sorry you had to deal with that at what should have been a fun food-coma-inducing holiday.
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From: (Anonymous) Date: 2013-11-29 03:23 am (UTC)My family is exactly like that too, apart from the Texas bit... and age is not improving any of us, sad to say.
So I am hiding in my room for the day (cowardly, but safe! And I'll have you know that cowardice is doing wonders for my diet since this is severely limiting my access to the kitchen/dessert/sides/seconds).
It's just me, my unsweetened green tea (lots of it) and internet connection! :D
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From:Well shit. I'm sorry your sister managed to ruin everybody's Thanksgiving. I'm not remotely surprised you're upset and sad. I have people who can explode like that in my own family as well, unfortunately, and everybody walks on eggshells to avoid the explosion. There's nothing admirable about being so "forthright" that you can clear a house of guests in 22 minutes.
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From:I'm always wary of people who self-describe as forthright and blunt with no patience for passive-aggression. I've found that it often means "I'm willing to be hurtful when I don't need to be, and I'll still be passive-aggressive but I won't notice or admit it." I do still count some such people as friends, I'm not saying I don't, but -- with some wariness.
At least you have a lot of leftovers? :-/ Ugh.
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From:Bingo. (The most passive-aggressive drama llamas I know claim to be forthright and blunt with no tolerance for passive-aggression and drama. And it's never, ever, ever *their* fault when shit and fan meet.)
They're similar to Nice Guys in many ways.
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From:I did not attend family thanksgiving this year, for complicated reasons that reduce to: everyone but me has decided that the way to deal with my father is to quietly take his abuse. People who are willing to say anything to win -- like your sister and my father -- aren't easy, are they? Sigh.
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From:Sorry about your Thanksgiving. My mom sounds very similar to your sister in some ways; it sucks. There are no kids in the family right now, but I worry sometimes how we'll handle situations like the one you were in when the time comes. It sounds like you did what you could under the circumstances, but yeesh, what lousy circumstances.
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From:Dealing with that crap is why my parents had Thanksgiving with my in-laws this year. Other people are just too much of a powderkeg for them to even bother trying to host anymore.
I'm sorry she pulled that.
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From:I'm assuming your sister is not the type who can take other people saying it like it is when it comes to her. People who pretend that their faible for rudeness and constant confrontation is "honesty" usually aren't.
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From:Maybe it is the lack of expectation but last month we had a lovely dinner with my sister, opened some presents for my mother and sister with close birthdays and left without any emotional trauma.
Is it lowered expectations?
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From:Being able to leave is a helpful thing. For a while, one of my ex-roommates had a sort of unstable family situation, presence at family holiday things was expected, and we-all depended on someone from her family taking us the hour drive from here to there, on a day when the public transit wasn't.
Which is how it could have been worse. She could have been feeling trapped there and then someone who was not BIL would have had to take her (and BIL, and kids) home.
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