Holidays suck.

I grew up in a family with manic depressive women. No judgements, they were all clinically diagnosable. With the stress and expectations of holidays, it was always almost a game to guess who was going to meltdown and get suicidal first. Is it any wonder I always volunteered to work the holiday shift?

When I first met my wife and her family, I was amazed. even with the discussion of religion and politics (the kids were democrat, pro-abortion, atheist/Buddhist/jew, and Mom was a devout catholic republican) there was never a meltdown. It's probably hard to understand for someone from a "normal" family, but to me a holiday with out anyone running to their bedroom in tears threatening to kill themselves was quite a novelty!

Unfortunately, a novelty that was short lived.

This year we had a scene remenescient of my family in my wifes family. It was al started by my son, or maybe my wife or maybe me. Without going into a lot of detail, let just say my son open his mouth about crap that should not have been a topic of discussion, my wife over reacted, and my mother in law tried to tell my wife how to run her family. Things went down hill from there.

Right now, on the 26th of December (actually it's after midnight, so I guess it's the 27th) I'm sitting here half drunk, (don't worry, by the time I finish on the computer I'm sure I'll be the rest of way!) wishing I had to work this holiday.

Maybe it's just me. I'm not Christian, maybe the Karma is telling me I shouldn't piggy back my celebration on other peoples. Solstice was over days before Christmas. Maybe I should just ignore Christmas and focus on holidays with more personal meaning. Maybe I should just blow off the holidays all together. What ever it is. most of my life seems to have been spent dreading Christmas and other major holidays and tiptoeing around during the holidays like a soldier in a minefield.

Whatever it is, it sucks, and I'll actually be glad to go backl to work at a dead end job. Reminbd me next year to avoid taking vacation around teh holidays, and be sure to volunteer if they need anyone to go in for a few hours over the break.