meredithelaine
you can take the girl out of jersey, but you can't take the jersey out of the girl

it gets colder day by day


2004-11-22 The current mood of meredithelaine at www.imood.com

and so it begins, all the fa la la-ing and ho ho ho-ing.

should be a time of year filled with promise, don't you think?

i wonder...

considering that my thanksgiving is going to be all askew, what with my sis, bro-in-law and 3.5 year old nephew being in st. martin on the actual t-giving day. yes, my toddler nephew is taking his...2nd or 3rd jaunt to an island. islands that i'll never get to. not for nothing, but where's the justice?

oh, back to skewed holidays, yes.

so thursday shall be the mini-dinner with me, mom and dad. um. could get interesting, since, according to mom, the old man's been at the bottle(s) with a vengence. which means that he'll most likely get drunk, tell the same story 25 times, get bitchy, and be in bed passed out by 730pm.

joy to the world?

friday will start bright and early, as mom and i are doing black friday shopping again this year. (sorry L...) but i am hoping that friday night will be full of fun and frivolity with L and B. (yesyesyes??) i haven't seen them in forever and a day, it seems. so why not ring in the holiday season with some good ol' jersey shore partyin'?

hellz yeah, is what i say.

saturday will be spent bored and recovering, i'm sure, as i make my way back to mom and dad's house. sunday will be t-giving dinner part 2, as the jet-setting island triumverate section of my family will be back in town. which means i get to trek the 2 hours home in, most likely, pitch darkness, just to return to work the next morning.

fa la...yeah.

a bit of a change from last year's thanksgiving. in some ways, the impending 4 day weekend is not exactly how i'd like it to be, but in other ways, it'll be good. i'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone but myself, but i suppose it's okay that way.

i don't get to pad t-giving, christmas OR new years with my remaining 7 vacation days that i have. because, you know, there's only 2 of us in my office. so, the potential 5 days i can carry over into 2005 will also be useless, because my co-worker will be going on maternity leave mid to late january.

which means, if i get sick...oh well. i come to work sniffing, aching and puking. i shall have to bring this up with Human Resources. if i can't take days off, i want the money. it's not my fault that the other division left us high and dry. if i'd known, i would have taken more days off this summer.

i think it's only fair that i get the kizza$h, don't you? i mean, i have to make up to those i love for the quality time i cannot spend, with lots of presents. not that i'm not going to spend beyond my means (means? what means? i'm thousands of dollars in debt! i should be making origami for my beloveds, not buying toys and clothes and working on my special "projects"). but it's the principle of it all.

part of me would like to skip over all this and fast-forward to april 2005. you know, when i'll be jobless and homeless. *snicker*

no wonder the holidays have the highest suicide rates of the entire year. (don't worry, i'm not getting any ideas...) it's just that my last...2 x-masses have been less than stellar.

2 years ago i was still reeling from the worst breakup of my life, and had ALSO gotten dumped by the 40-year old lush about 3 days before christmas. yeah, that was grand. at least i won the karaoke contest that december.

1 year ago, christmas was mixed. the nephew was old enough to actually enjoy christmas. i gave him a mini piano and mini guitar. to see my nephew actually enjoy those gifts, and to see a budding interest in music, was something that was so precious to me.

of course, then there was the whole eric thing. the meeting of the parents was...rough to say the least. not for nothing, his mom was a cold bitch. was from the moment i met her. that wasn't just a christmas thing. it bothers me when people don't hug me back, okay? but it was the 1st christmas that he and his family spent without the patriarch of the family. so there were lots of tears and awkward moments. i felt as if i shouldn't be there. i was intruding on a intense time for that family.

the holidays are always just tough in my family. because dad always gets mopey and mushy and...creepy. i can't describe it any other way. he also drinks a LOT more during this time. so it's like walking on eggshells sometimes. it makes me feel like i'm 15 again, hiding in my room.

that's a bond my mother and i share, that my older sister doesn't. she didn't live in that house during the worst of it. she can never completely understand what mom and i went through. mom pretending to be asleep on the couch, and me running to my room and shutting off the lights, the minute that we heard the automatic garage door opener.

the few times, over the last 15 years of my life, that i called my father on his drinking were not pretty. the first time was after a retreat i was on. there were tears, and he acknowledged a problem. but nothing ever came about of it.

another time was post-college. he got on me about working and employment matters. i told him that i didn't want to discuss it at dinner - when i knew he had been drinking. well THAT Was a mistake. he went off on me, yelling and screaming. the worst part was that it was in front of my grandmother. embarrassing and terrifying. that was the first and only time that i thought my father was going to hit me. he didn't, but i was scared enough to flee. even mom said that i should. i retreated to becca's house. her dad has drinking issues too, so it was always just...understood between us. it was okay. hell, my dad once insulted HER while drunk. after seeing her freshman year college picture, he said she looked "a bit puffy", implying she had gained a few pounds. i was mortified. but she told me that i didn't need to apologize...she understood.

the 3rd time was when my father was arrested for a DWI. i drove my mom to go get him. there was no way in hell i was letting my mom drive, in the middle of the night, to east mongolia, NJ, to pick him up from the police station. she was shaken, to say the least. and furious. so was i, but i had to hold it together. i let him know that i was disappointed and ashamed, and that it was an inconvenience to haul ass out there to get him. christ, all the years that he's driven drunk, and this was his first DWI.

well, calling him on it was a huge mistake. sitting in the backseat, he grumbled at me, and sternly stated that I had been an inconvenience on more than one occasion, and he never bitched about it. I wasn't the easiest child in the world to deal with, apparently. what the hell? i had tried so hard, all my life, to be the golden child. get as good grades as i could ("a B is great, meredith, but next time, let's try and get an A"), i didn't rebel...in many ways, i was a saint compared to my sister at that age. my moods were my only real problem. you know, depression and what not.

my father then told me that ME being disappointed in HIM, hurt and bothered him more than getting arrested ever would.

we didn't speak for 4 days. for the sake of peace and easing of tension in the household, i apologized. i didn't want to, didn't feel i should HAVE to. but i did. i apologized for being irrational and judgemental. in essence, apologized for being a "bad girl".

wow. this entry was supposed to be about the holidays. instead, it became about my family baggage.

again, i feel this urge to apologize. but daddy's not reading this, now is he.

posted by: less-than3

spoke the truth!

[if you like what you read, please clix me!]

8:37 p.m.
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