Category: Life

I was reading Assertagirl’s blog entry this morning and I’m afraid I went a little berserk in her comments. (Sorry about that!)

It wasn’t a bad berserk, but more of a crazy/frustrated/I-needed-to-get-it-off-my-chest sort of berserk.

The subject? The holiday family shuffle.

*sigh*

You know what I’m talking about, right? The whole we will be at your house at such-and-such time, but only until 2:00 p.m. when we’ll have to inevitably leave in the middle of some fun game/conversation, feel terribly guilty about it and probably hurt some family member’s feelings over it, so we can race across town and show up late to another family function and stay until the last possible moment to make up for coming late and then getting home to collapse into bed because we’re too tired to unwind, relax and enjoy what little time we have left of the holiday to spend with just our immediate family … dilemma.

*takes a deep breath*

I despise holidays where I’m forced to watch the clock the entire day. It’s not fun for anyone. Let me repeat that, it’s not fun for me. And when the boys were little? It was torture on them because they were so tired but were forced to be polite and good and I would get questions like, “why is MK acting so strange? Is he sick?”

AARGH.

We did the family shuffle every year, for many years. I did it mainly to appease my mother-in-law. We would spend all day Thanksgiving day with my husband’s family and then at Christmas time, we would have brunch over at my parents’ house (because mom was nice enough to move our “dinner” up to brunch so we could participate) because we had to be back at my in-laws’ house in time for lunch.

Do you see the big, fat problem with this scenario? My family was getting the short end of the stick. We never (and haven’t in I don’t know how many years) spent Thanksgiving day with them and then on Christmas day, we went over to their house at 10:00 a.m. to be at their house, eat a hurried brunch, hurry through presents and talk really fast to catch up before we had to leave around 1ish to make it over to my in-law’s house where we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon.

I had finally had enough. I yelled FOUL BALL and revised the rules.

I could no longer stand the fact that we were being terribly unfair to my family. My mother never once (and would never) said a word about the arrangement. She never complained or even made an indirect snide comment about it. Ever. My mom is the sweetest person you’ll ever meet in the entire world and hates to put any stress on you.

But I could see it bothered her. And it really bothered me that it bothered her. But not just that it bothered her but that it was unfair to them and I pride myself on being a pretty fair person.

So … we (because the husband is in agreement with me on this) put our foot down.

New rules have been established: spend all day with his family on Thanksgiving, spend all day with my family on Christmas day.

Needless to say, this is not going over well for my mother-in-law. She’s getting more used to the arrangement now, but it’s been a tough road.

I’m not so hard-nosed that I haven’t tried to come up with an alternate plan. I’ve told her, and I still tell her, that we’ll be more than happy to get together with them/the whole family on any other day BUT Christmas day. Christmas day is reserved for my family. I have brothers-in-law who made plans with their families months ahead of time – they all agree on one day to have their family party and they all show up and have their party. Easy, efficient. I don’t know why we can’t do that as well.

But whatever. People have their parties and if we can show up, great. If we can’t, great. I don’t expect anyone to rearrange their schedules for us. I wouldn’t ask them too – I think that’s rude and presumptuous.

*sigh* It’s hard (and sometimes impossible) to satisfy both families, you know? (Not that anyone is complaining now – we’ve all sort of settled into a pattern – but I can see it still bothers certain *cough*MIL*cough* people).

Anyway, I think the awkwardness has been ironed out and I feel better about the holidays – more so now than I ever have. And yes mom, I KNOW I was always the one to get stressed out, not you. What can I say, I’m a stress machine. 😀

The moral of the story? Be fair, but be firm with family. Sometimes, you have to be.

What do you do? How do you divide your family time on the holidays?

“Put those socks away, honey. They’re not going to jump into the hamper themselves.”

“No, dear. You’re a people, not a kitty.”

“Oh, your hair’s like a bird’s nest.”

A big thanks to all the moms out there!

We’re home! The concert was amazing. The 8th graders sounded so professional and I was REALLY impressed with the trumpet section – outstanding!

The kids spent the entire day practicing. They took a short break for lunch, watched a professional jazz band perform and then went back to practicing. Today was the first time they played the songs they performed as well as the first time they played with most of the other band members (there were students from other middle schools there, too).

MK did a superb job. It’s just an honor to make the band. All of the kids truly sounded incredible.

Here are a few pictures. I cropped them out of the bigger picture so they are a bit fuzzy, but you get the idea. (MK is the blonde boy in the blue oxford shirt):

Waiting to play

Playing His Heart Out

Totally Drooping

I have another question for ya’ll … why is everyone upset about the Motrin commercial?

This looks like making mountains out of molehills to me. True, the commercial wasn’t cute/flip/hip even though it tried to be. True, it wasn’t very tasteful and a bit annoying with all of those flying words, but why the outrage? To me, this commercial is all about sympathizing with the moms who HAVE aches and pains from carrying their babies – you’d have to be made of steel not to feel some discomfort. And the official mom thing? Yeah, nothing says “mom” than a baby in a sling/on the hip. So what? We proudly wear that badge.

And the YouTube videos I saw in response to the Motrin ad? Didn’t say much. How is the ad disrespectful? How is the ad patronizing? Be specific because generalizations spell irrational emotion and if this is an issue that needs to truly be addressed, I would think specifics would be more helpful than making a blanket statement about how the commercial made you feel personally.

I think the commercial was saying that moms are human too and that it’s okay to admit we have physical pains caused by our children. That if you make the choice of wearing your baby and it causes you discomfort, then hey! They are suggesting you try their product. That’s how advertising works. We’re moms, not robots. At least, that was my take on it. And that’s all I took away from the commercial.

I can’t help but wonder if complaining about mom-related issues, however remotely they are referred to in any venue, is not some sort of trend? Is getting upset over something this trivial really worth the time and energy it takes to respond to it?

Can someone explain it to me? Because apparently I’m clueless.

And not JUST the intestinal kind either, but rather the kind we put into our cars.

Question: Did we find a brand new, huge reservoir of gas and I just missed hearing/reading about it? Has the demand for gas suddenly gone down? Have people’s needs to get from point A to point B diminished?

I’m asking these questions because I’m seriously confused – how can the price of gas be the same dollar amount it was three years ago?!

Gas in our area is now down to $1.69. Why has it dropped so much and why can’t it STAY this dollar amount? Our fight for gas makes national headlines and yet, it’s the lowest it’s been in three years – why?

I mean, YAY!! More money to pour into the economy, but I’m suspicious as to the reasons it dropped.

A blog entry, Twitter style.