christmas: season of despair, just short of spiraling into cannibalism.

the holidays are fast-approaching your gentle author (me) and, because i am no stranger to whining, i'll be detailing the supposed highlights of this visit. to give you a fair first impression: do you recall the raft of the medusa .





involves:

. avoiding talking about my personal life in any aspect. i will bring home some mechanical pencils that say my company's name, and distribute them in place of "kaylen's life" details. which always spiral into the sad task of familiarizing my mother with my ever-continuing dislike of the notion of marriage. also, as a side battle––children. reminding her i have adopted a strict "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" philosophy for my ladywomb.

. pretending to like "fun" gifts from my mother: ie fuzzy gloves in "kooky" colors, theme socks (current catalogue to date includes '"kiss me!" frogs', 'smiley-face daisys ' and a dozen others i have managed to leave behind or discard along the way), and the ever-popular christian reminders (jesus calendars which say, "always in my heart", etc.)

. smiling around my extended family who have adopted the notion that for several reasons, i don't "deserve christmas". last year i didn't deserve christmas presents from anyone. this year they strongly believe i don't deserve to be home for christmas. why? because i don't go home often enough.

. wearing longsleeve shirts, constantly, to hide my punctuation tattoos.

. as protective as i have become of making holiday dinners, my family seems even more enthusiastic about slaughtering my attempts toward a delicious meal. either they beat me to the punch, pad my traditional meal with nonsense additions like stromboli and teriyaki chicken, or they find some way to do away with it entirely. this year, my mother's highschool friend "denny" is being paid to "cater" the "meal". i find i can't even say "denny" without scare quotes. you think "caterer" implies "nice". well, it doesn't. who the fuck caters christmas dinner, first of all. what kind of caterer isn't busy on christmas (yes, i know this is a little conflicted). and what kind of talent could he possibly possess, having lived his entire life in the rusting, cultural wasteland that is western pennsylvania.

there are other things to whine about. my father fighting constantly with my brother, my mother getting upset and crying because she doesn't "touch me" enough, crying because even when i'm there i can't help cringing when she hugs me (i'm sorry, it's an asperger's thing), my parents fighting with each other in the way that involves my mother crying and my father leaving the room to obsessively load the dishwasher - or re-load the dishwasher, as i never do it right. ("the spoons will nest!")...and being surrounded by my mother's gaudy taste in christmas decorations. she has a thing for fibre optics...

anyways. happy holidays, dudes.