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Diarrhea of the brain

2003-11-23 - 10:12 p.m.

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My baby girl turned sixteen today! Probably wasn�t as spectacular of a birthday as she�d have liked, for she is the original party animal; but there is no way I could have pulled something like that together right now. The apartment is too filthy even for teenage company, and I have neither the time nor energy to clean it right now.

But she got roses from The Boy, and the Prince and I took them both out to the mongolian barbeque for supper... something she mentioned a few weeks ago that she�d like to do. We had a nice time, everyone acted decent and the food was great, and we even got dessert for a change since we didn�t do the birthday cake thing.

There also was no opening of gifts for her today. She got a DVD player from her dad in the mail a couple of days ago and naturally opened it right then. I didn�t buy much in the way of gifts for her this year due to lack of funds, and what I did get her�a portable CD player and a new CD�I gave to her last weekend so she�d have something to listen to on the way to Missouri. (I don�t think I mentioned here that we had to go out of town last week for a funeral�one of the reasons I�m so swamped with schoolwork right now!) It�s actually kind of nice to have a kid who�s old enough to be satisfied with a non-traditional birthday kind of thing. I think she had a good day, and we all enjoyed her birthday dinner.

The older I get, the less interested I find I am in holiday traditions. I�ve never cared much for Christmas... for a lot of years when I had no money, a small child and lots of family I hated it because it was just so hugely stressful. I always struggled to buy gifts for my extended family because I just couldn�t get over the embarrassment of showing up to Christmas empty-handed (even though I knew my family would have completely understood.) And then there was the fact that we had so damn many places we had to go... no, seriously, we HAD to go or we�d have mortally offended someone. At one point we had Christmas Eve at my grandma�s (my personal favorite part of the holiday), a huge Christmas brunch at Dick�s grandfather�s house (my least favorite, for it meant we had to rush through our little family�s Christmas morning in order to get there on time) and then on to Dick�s mother�s house for a huge dinner (which always just kind of pissed me off, as no one was hungry after brunch and we�d just spent all morning together AT the brunch, but she was always so depressed and miserable over the holidays that we went anyway just to avoid upsetting her further.) These three events took up most of two days, and we still hadn�t been to my dad�s yet! Visiting him always managed to get kind of shoehorned in somewhere, and I know he always had his feelings slightly hurt about it, which made ME feel bad even though it couldn�t really be helped.

Back then I never felt any joy about the holidays simply because of all the stress overload, and the fact that I always wound up doing what everyone else wanted instead of what I wanted to do. One year I decided that I�d like to make lasagna for Thanksgiving dinner�good lasagna, my grandmother�s special occasion company lasagna�but Dick and his mom threw a huge fit about not having turkey. I wasn�t going to cave, but then his mom said SHE�D cook a turkey and bring it, and then she started hitting up other people to make all the traditional side dishes, and finally I thought that there�d be no real point in having lasagna if there was just going to be a whole shitload of other food there too, so I let the ultra-traditional anus-puckerers have their fucking turkey and dressing. But by god, I sulked about it plenty.

Anyway, since I�ve moved away from all the crazy people I find myself having no expectations for the holidays, and liking it that way just fine. Seriously, it�s not about being bitter or Scrooge-like... it�s just that I don�t have any emotions invested in keeping tradition anymore. I don�t celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, and these days it doesn�t even mean getting together with extended family. And I�ve never cared for the materialistic side of it. Don�t get me wrong... if we had lots of money to burn and a bit more time to spare, I think maybe I could have fun with decorating and gift-buying. It just feels good not to have the pressure on to do the whole Martha Stewart thing or feel inadequate if I don�t.

Same goes for Thanksgiving. Last year we went out and had Thanksgiving dinner with the heathen Chinese�our favorite all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. We call it that because they�re always open on religious holidays that a lot of restaurants aren�t, and once I read a book about missionaries that talked about spreading �the Word� among the heathen Chinese and somehow it struck me as funny because non-PC humor cracks my shit right up (but only in the presence of the Prince who knows me well enough to know I�m not really a racist asshole, I just enjoy being inappropriate because I�m twelve. (You should hear me and the kiddo when I take her to the gynecologist.))

So ANYWAY... I�m thinking of having Thanksgiving dinner at the Olive Garden this year, because I haven�t eaten there in forever and I have a serious hankering for some tiramisu. I was hoping for a relaxed Christmas as well... we won�t be getting a tree, will be keeping shopping simple and inexpensive except for the Evil Childe who wants a shopping trip to Hot Topic, which is fine by me because I hate wrapping presents; but the in-laws are wanting us to fly down to the Prince�s brother�s house for Christmas and since they are willing to pay to fly us down, we won�t have the ready-made excuse of not being able to afford the trip. I love spending time with his family, but I�m not really keen on flying plus I�d really just like to spend my entire two weeks off over the holidays just relaxing. I�m in serious need of some down time, and even a short trip is going to cut into that by several days what with packing and travel time. So I don�t know what we�re going to do about that.

Jeez, I know this is about the most boring entry ever, and I feel like I had more to write about but suddenly my brain is channeling nothing but static.

Oh, yeah, there was one more thing I wanted to write about... we went to see the new Matrix on Saturday. The reviews of it were horrible so we didn�t know what to expect, but seriously, the Prince and I both thought it was pretty good. Oh, parts of it kind of stunk... in fact the first twenty minutes or so were so slow and the dialogue so stiff that I was ready to write the whole thing off; but then it picked up, and from that point on I enjoyed it quite a bit. I don�t think either of the sequels was quite as good as the original�the first one was much more interesting from the standpoint of bringing up some intriguing philosophical questions, while the sequels kind of morphed the story into a religious allegory. But still, it was fun trying to pick up all the religious references and try to figure out how they all fit together. The plot itself was pretty good, and the special effects were excellent. There were some obvious flaws in the movie�a few too many cliches, some subplots that never went anywhere, several questions from the previous movies that were never answered�but all in all, it was entertaining and they did wrap up the main storyline pretty well. I�m not sure what is up with all the terrible reviews. Maybe we�re just not cool enough to hate it.

I�m sitting here half asleep, exhausted from a hard week at school and a busy weekend, and I�m thinking I should go to bed. Except that lately it doesn�t seem to matter how tired I am, I either can�t get to sleep in the first place or I wake up at 4:30. Anxiety is the pits. And as long as I�m whining... I�ve had cramps, kind of BAD cramps actually, for two days now. So why hasn�t my period made its grand entrance yet? Is it waiting for a more inconvenient time, or what? Would have been nice to get the two heaviest days over with during the weekend where I could contain the bloody mess in my own damn bathroom. But the upside is, since I didn�t start this weekend I was able to get me some good lovin� this morning. Goooooooooooood lovin�. Did I mention it was good? Yeeeah.

Not looking forward to tomorrow.... I�ve come to hate both my drawing and page composition classes with a passion, which means that Mondays and Wednesdays now officially suck ass all day long. Hell, just carrying that big-ass drawing tablet around is getting on my very last nerve. That�s the main reason I didn�t sign up for Drawing III next quarter, I�m just sick to death of lugging all that art shit around everywhere.

Well, I don�t seem to be coming to a natural concluding point, do I? So I guess I�ll just stop typing now.

G�night.








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Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
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