Holiday Madness!

It's the day before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. We have a bizarre relationship with holidays and family in the country. All the pressure and weirdness and lack of manners comes out, often causing problems with the people we claim we love the most.

Even though I publicly stated I have breast cancer on this blog a few months ago, I hadn't told anybody else beyond a close circle of friends. And DH's family can be...a little clueless.

Even though we've had dinner with the extended family more than once, they didn't notice I'm missing a body part. It's funny and a little sad at the same time.

Seriously, we had dinner at a local Mexican restaurant two weeks ago, and DH's youngest sister, aka Princess Cindy, tells me I can use her kitchen to cook Thanksgiving dinner.

No, she didn't ask. She stated.

Now, Princess Cindy and her husband have hosted many holiday events. I don't have a problem contributing, but I had no plans to cook this year. Not even for my own household. I'd already told DH I was playing the cancer card for the holidays this year.

So I told Princess Cindy I'd bring chicken tenders and a veggie tray from Kroger. (I love their deli section! So many delicious choices!) Since she was planning a game day (the family loves board games, and not the usual Hasbro ones), I said finger food would be the perfect accompaniment. We placed the order on the 15th.

And DH got text from her on that same day, asking again if I would cook.

I'm still not sure what's really going on. It wasn't like they are huge fans of the traditional turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, yadda, yadda, yadda. The in-laws' idea of Thanksgiving is ham loaf and a store-bought pie.

So guess what Princess Cindy did yesterday? She ordered a ham dinner and pie from a local restaurant.

We'll have more than enough to eat tomorrow, but if Cindy wanted ham, why did she ask me to cook? She knows I don't make typical holiday foods.

This is what I mean about pressure and weirdness. I though I'd escaped the psych games with my side of the family, but apparently, every family has them. Cest la vie!

Too Much Pressure on Ourselves

Perfectionism. It's such an insidious little parasite, especially this time of year.

I'm not sure what's worse, watching my sisters-in-law get irate over not having their version of the perfect Christmas or my colleagues fret over not having the perfect book. And to top it off, there was a letter in one of my favorite advice columns this morning from a mother tied in knots and burning out because she thinks she's not providing the perfect childhood for her preschool-aged children.

The perfect Christmas. It's an unobtainable goal. Someone's feelings always get hurt over some trivial matter. Whatever happened to taking turns and sharing and kindness? People should have learned those things in kindergarten.

The best Christmas ever for our household? When we stopped playing our mothers' games of proving who loved who more. Seriously, it was a major battle between my mother and DH's every frickin' year! It included stopwatches timing how many minutes we spent at one parent's house or the other. Instead, we stayed home for our fourth Christmas. I made chicken phyllo and apple pie with cinnamon ice cream. We played DH's new games on his Nintendo 64. We watched movies. It was quiet and peaceful and we had fun for the first time since either of us were elementary students.

This Christmas, the perfectionism has spilled into the indie realm. No, let me amend that. A certain level of perfectionism has always existed, but it seems to have intensified lately. Writers are lamenting that sales are down, but as Kris Rusch pointed out in her blog over the last couple of weeks, indie publishing is finally hitting a level of maturity, instead of its initial gold rush days. Now, we  need to work on sustainability.

However, I see a lot of indies still searching for that perfect genre, perfect plot, or perfect cover that will send them back into the stratosphere. It doesn't exist, and these folks are driving themselves just as crazy as my sisters-in-law drive themselves in their search for a perfect Christmas.

As for your kids, I take the Roseanne approach. If they make it to eighteen alive, then I'm a successful parent. Yeah, I know there's a little more to it than that. But you know what? At a time when my teenage son and I agree on so very little, we can both sit back with our pie and laugh at the sisters-in-law (his aunts) insanity.

Because there's nothing better than cozying up on the couch with our Christmas blankies, a good snack, and It's a Wonderful Life. Now, that's perfection.