Furtive Nips 2: Ghost Protocol

This thread is intended as a sequel to the old holiday favorite: you're home for the holidays: irritating relatives, enforced sing-alongs, and furtive nips of liquour when bringing out the trash. In this thrilling episode ilxors escape momentarily from the pressures of family, tradition, and mandatory joyousness in order to blow off some steam and indulge in a bit of normal grouching.

This will be a low-key and I hope low-stress holiday for me. Rather than a house full of family, we'll just have our daughter over for the late-afternoon and early evening of Christmas Day. She's mostly recovered from major surgery on her right hip and has not had a chance to visit us at home for what seems like forever. It's always a crap shoot how her health will be on any day, but that's true all year around. Three years ago she ended her Christmas visit with an ambulance trip to the ER after a five minute seizure, so there's always some nervousness involved, too.

How are things with you?

My wife and I just kind of order stuff the other wants during the month of December and when it gets here we say "Merry Christmas, here's that thing you wanted," so there's no grand opening of gifts on X Eve or Day. We're not planning on visiting my mom (the only one of either of our parents left alive), though we did send her a card. We'll probably be cleaning the apartment on Monday and Tuesday, in fact. So yeah, a low-key holiday to say the least.

i got coquito from a friend

Many friends in town, including one of my confreres tonight, which means a gathering at a mutual buddy's sister's. A date Sunday afternoon. Nochebuena at my cousin's, followed by a quiet Christmas Day dinner at my place for my parents (my sis, bro in law, and kids leave for Ohio to his parents' tonight).

How about you?

me being a Jew and my wife's family being totally atomized (no dad, mom aunts and uncles that don't talk to each other) means Xmas is generally just us at home with the kids and whoever else we know is in town. SF is totally empty at Xmas so it's a good opportunity to run around town doing whatever (museums, movies, restaurants, parks etc.), which looks likely for this year. We do have a (small, fake) tree, my wife has a couple family tradition things she likes to make (liptauer cheese, gingerbread cookies) and we will be watching It's a Wonderful Life and idk Elf, or Scrooged or Gremlins or something. A Very Murray Christmas. That's about it.

day after Xmas = Singin in the Rain at the Castro

Beale St opens here on Tuesday so I'm going to that

Few restaurants open here on Xmas Day, so I envy you, Shakes. My friends and I look in vain for open bars; those that open do so after 8 p.m. in many cases. No one wants to hang out at home after being indoors all day.

Off to Carmel tomorrow and I kinda plan on doing nothing but reading, watching movies, listening to music and waking around town. Fancy dinner out Xmas Eve with the family, our usual at-home thing on the day itself. We have a pattern and it works!

Few restaurants open here on Xmas Day

oh options are more limited than usual, to be sure, but the restaurants per capita ratio in SF is nuts so there's still asian restaurants and other random spots open

my brother and wife will be in town and she wants to do some NYC christmas stuff so i'm dreading that tbh . The hope is to get their 23 male model son who lives in Williamsburg to bear some of the entertaining load but that's not going to be easy .

hee hee ‘furtive nips’

Entire (still small) extended family will be together for entire extended time. But! We will all be in Tanzania, so on balance, that's pretty cool.

We will all be in Tanzania, so on balance, that's pretty cool.

Pretty cool! (I am betting that was not an autocorrect for Tarzana.)

Ha, my sister was born in Tarzana.

spending time with my folks. dad's had a stroke or something in last few years, doctors think, and his speech is all fucked up now, though his thought processes are fine. he looks down a lot, so hoping to cheer him up a bit (with Billy Joel tix).

gonna spend the night on Xmas eve with the parents, and my brother.

I got my brother a painting of Steve Urkel for xmas

we'll visit Mom on Christmas Eve, then host brunch for our siblings and their mates on Christmas day

Dad has dementia and this year declined to a point where he couldn't handle Thanksgiving, so we're not going to include him in Christmas celebrations; he won't care, but it's not very merry

on a more positive note, today is our anniversary and we are about to head out for a nice dinner

Congratulations!

Staying home with the two (very young) kids on Christmas day. It's the first proper Christmas for my eldest (4) where he knows what's going on - last year he was excited but got sick on the day. He's already quite giddy with excitement so need to chill things out a bit. Inlaws coming on Boxing Day then visiting my parents later in the week, plus hosting a few visitors over the rest of the holidays. I was a bit miffed that we couldn't stay with parents/inlaws (and be cooked for) due to logistics but actually glad I don't have to lug the kids anywhere now.
Not sure if I'll see my siblings though, unsentimental bastards

heading west tomorrow to spend it with last remaining brother left down there and his daughter for the duration. have a few houses to visit en route.

full day cooking/prep sunday leaves us free monday to go down the island and tour aunts/uncles and various other houses thatll want visiting

inlaws for stephens day, thankfully plan is a short lunch and hitting road home.

Heading to tiny, ON, the very real place my folks live, and which I definitely never tire of hearing questions and bad jokes about

tiny birds flying across the sky
throwing shadows on our eyes

manys xposts to Aimless - glad that you will be able to have xmas with your daughter at home, hope that it stays a nice low-key christmas for you all with no ER trips <3

family xmas postponed til next Saturday so it’ll be just me and mr veg chilling like villains, eating & watching movies & maybe a few outings

i’m glad on one hand but still not used to just him & i at xmas coming from 20+ years of big happy boisterous christmasses back home in oz

Last night was friends-xmas -- I tended bar for the 2nd year, so I guess that's a tradition now. (I volunteered last year because the hostess was about heading for a massive party fail.) Monday afternoon we'll go to my mom's for dinner -- she's making dressing and other sides and I will pick up a rotisserie chicken. Tuesday will just be me, my wife and daughter and our usual big breakfast. In a shocking break from tradition I'll make biscuits and gravy and scrambled eggs instead of pancakes. Very exciting stuff.

MIL came over last night and is still here. Did presents today; got drunk, played Scattergories last night. We're on Bob Dylan's Christmas album now. We've gone through Xmas albums by Vince Guaraldi, Low, Jethro Tull, Don Ross, Bach (Christmas Oratorio, Boston Bach Choir), Ella Fitzgerald, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra (MIL favourite) so far. Expect my own family to be more stressful tbh.

MUST BE SANTA

Is the jam

Yeah, that one was fun.

We've avoided the Bob Dylan Christmas album so far. It's definitely in the house somewhere.

On John Fahey's now. His bell carol is giving TSO's a run for its money.

I tend to be by myself for xmas the past couple of years, which suits me fine. Before that, when I lived somewhere else and wasn't vegan I used to have all the stray alcoholics over for Xmas dinner - which I enjoyed making, but usually ended up being a really intense day. But I agreed to go to my Dad's for xmas eve, so that'll be...awkward? Like me, he's bipolar and a alcoholic, and out interactions can quickly turn unpleasant.

But his brother also died a couple of days ago (so, of the three, one hanged himself, one just died of organ failure because of alcoholism, and then there's my Dad), so I have a funeral to go to on the 27th, which feels super weird in the middle of the holidays.

At least on Xmas day proper it'll be me and the dog, and I'll maybe head to the pub for a bit at lunch.

Ooof, good luck Dowd.

Went down to Kent to Jen's brother's yesterday, saw her parents who arrived down from Perth. On the train from Finsbury Park to Gatwick now, a pint in the Lord Edward with friends after we get to Dublin and then the bus down to Navan until the 27th - we got an Airbnb for the 26th.

Also I assume this is cultural differences, but the thread zooming in on the bit of original title with a racial slur in it is a little jarring.

It refers to nipples

Had no idea that could be used as a slur.xp

It’s a v outdated slur, practically archaic - certainly way less common than “nip it in the bud” or the verb form used here

Also I assume this is cultural differences, but the thread zooming in on the bit of original title with a racial slur in it is a little jarring.

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, December 24, 2018 12:54 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you'll love this then! https://alphabet-business-concern.bandcamp.com/album/pony

n.b. it actually is one of my favourite albums. think it's meant to be a corrupted 'chaps'. but anyway who cares it's obviously not functionally racist, much as this thread title isn't

I didn't even know Jap was a slur till recently, not that there is much of a Japanese diaspora in the UK that might make aware of it.

title inadvertently appropriated from ninjutsu thread?

we had our traditional pre-family-events meltdown yesterday ... next year I think someone else is going to have to host; doing both Thanksgiving and Christmas at our house is holiday overload

It refers to a drink, presumably.

(I'm probably being 'whooshed' here...)

Working today, off tomorrow, working the rest of the week after that. One of these years I'll have my act together enough to take holiday time off.

Tomorrow morning I'll Skype with my son (who lives in Texas and has warned me to "wake up early") to see him open his presents. Will either go to a mid-day movie or work through more episodes of The Deuce Season 1 on library-borrowed DVD and/or read more of War on Peace. At 3 PM its over to my Dad's family's house for Christmas dinner and presents, which is always really fun but also always over too soon - not as contentious as these gatherings can be for some. Then I will lay in bed and say, out loud, "all that build up and this is done already?!? Every year!"

I assume this is cultural differences

It can be hard to tell the difference between someone playing dumb for an effect and someone genuinely uninformed. Therefore... the OP links to an earlier thread for which this is the sequel, the title of the earlier thread references "furtive nips of liquour". That ought to be plain enough, unless one somehow believes that the inhabitants of Japan could be made of liquor.

God bless us one and all!

I am drinking coquito and about to visit the fam in an hour.

the university i work at closes for roughly a week at xmas every year. this is paid vacay and you don't have to use your vacation hours, which is fantastic.

my family is thousands of miles away, i haven't been home to lanarkshire for christmas in 6 years, but i prefer to go back at other times of the year, and was just there in september so this doesn't make me too sad, not compared to the generalized sense of missing home that i feel on a low-level most of the time.

met my gf in march so it's my first xmas with her family - who mainly live locally. big xmas party with her late father's side of the family tonight, which I'm not particularly looking forward to just because i haven't met hardly any of them, and i don't like large social gatherings in genera,l but will be fine, and then dinner tomorrow with her immediate family, siblings, sibling's partner, mum, all of who I've met several times and will enjoy spending christmas with. then a week of doing very little

Have a few hours to kill this afternoon before things get busy later, so getting in the filming of the Christmas special of my cable access show at one of my legacy regular spots

I don't know, Aimless, are you playing dumb for effect or did you not read my post?

In an hour I head to my aunt's house (really my first cousin once removed, but Cubans acknowledge no such distinctions) for a round of catered food, a welcome relief after many years enduring her mediocre cooking. My nieces, sister, and bro in law are in Ohio visiting his parents, so with the exception of my cousin's brood it'll be a small and quite kid-free affair.

Brad, Neanderthal, Dowd, et al., – my best wishes.

I went to visit my folks yesterday, as I'm with in-laws on the 25th. My dad's managing decently with Parkinson's. My mom is going blind very, very rapidly, and she's in denial. She still drives during (eek!) daylight hours ("but only to places I know!") She tripped four times while walking the dog. My wife, father, and I chipped in to buy her an iPad so she can read National Geographic, since there's no large-print edition. However, she can't see/find the home button to turn the device on. And she can't get the timing right so that she can log in. It's unclear how much of this is vision-related, and how much is some kind of dementia. There are lots of neurology visits planned for the near future.

My parents were planning to spend the day with my sister, but they're feuding. This means my elderly folks will be alone, and won't get to see their only grandkid. My sister's miserable because she's poor, trapped in her house with the kid, and her partner works on X-mas day. I can't really do anything for any of them.

Eleven years ago I started the other thread to vent about how (especially) annoying my parents' behavior had become. From the vantage of the present, though, it's clear that their eccentricity was the onset of the illness / neurodegenerative conditions that're now defining characters in their lives.

Done with work now. CHRISTMAS EEEEEVE, poxy fules!

working tomorrow ;_;

Anticipating my mother and sister at 10 or 10:30am. About as ready as I'll ever be. Don't feel the need for a furtive nip...so far.

AA, I hope things are reasonably chill on your end.

Between having a major piece of writing due at the end of January that I’ve barely had time to start on and some health scares in the family over the last month, it has been a more exhausting holiday season than usual. Finally had to sent the husband out to finish Christmas shopping yesterday, while I stayed home to recoup (ended up watching the truly bizarre holiday drama Beyond Tomorrow).

Hallmark Channel?

TCM (it’s from 1940)

oh wait with Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly? In New Orleans or something, noirish Xmas?

No, sorry, that’s called Christmas Holiday, directed by Robert Siodmak. I recommend.

Sister’s brother, the one who wrote a holistic algorhythm to make him judge everyone else eating a mince pie and threw away my last beer (“I thought you were finished” after I took one sip and let the dog out to wee) spent the whole Christmas meal telling us his breakdown of what he made of Stargate SG1 as an iconic tv series.

While I was letting the puppy go for a piss, I discovered a pub that’s open, I just need to figure out how to escape

Oh I just downloaded Christmas Holiday last week, I heard it’s pretty wild.

On the couch watching Johnny cash 1977 xmas special with parents, enjoying some coffee which they don’t realize has been fortified with.......... a furtive nip!

Successful first Christmas dinner in our house (ie not mooching off either family), no thanks to me

AA, I hope things are reasonably chill on your end.

cheers raymond, i’m clearly in trouble for not being ebullient enough but at least it’s over now

btw good luck to everyone who’s struggling with it atm — it’s something the people around you probably don’t understand, but please know that you are not alone x

you too AA :)

I have mostly been getting high and watching Cheers. Just me and the dog; went to the pub at lunch time but wasn’t feeling it. Not the worst Xmas.

binge watching something is an excellent way to transport you out of isolating/lonely days (mine was an ‘only connect’ marathon)

my dad is telling inappropriate stories about neighbor’s family. Somehow hard to find the sweet spot between this kind of talk and complete inanities.

obviously not a patch on the pants on what is going on on the other thread but still

now onto solving the world’s problems through engineering: “you have to find a prototype that works and reproduce it!”

Perhaps only annoying to me after decades of sensitization.

Nah

I'm having a relatively good time. People seem to have slotted into roles which don't involve critique of myself and we went for a walk where we agreed about things.

It has not always been thus.

AA I can only guess what yr situation must be like. Have you got enjoyable alternatives to the family Xmas?

there are, but the problem is the incredible anger and resentment when i don’t go to something. so i really am in a lose-lose situation.

Hang on in there. How many days does it have to last before you can escape? Having the exits clearly marked can be helpful

Nah

xp yeah, i just need to work out what the exits are. there’s another family thing next week with even more of the same people and i can’t really get out of it.

Negronis at my place for everyone.

oh done, see you in 15 mins

likewise

Just let me finish the dishes, and I'll join you.

just found a parking spot

Cubed ice is ready!

Walking it off 🚶‍♀️. You can go ahead and start without me.

actually my friend Jesús made me a mojito.

I had lots of wine. I watched Spike Jones dvds with my dad.

the entire fam went to my bro's g/f's fam's house. it was a nice time.

and now some kind of literary cocktail 🍹

Jesús walks!

Indeed. My personal savior and bartender. Um Añejo Daquiri.

he’s Cuban like you, Alfred, although I think he has a girlfriend now.

he’s probably read as much as you and James Morrison combined

lol you're setting up the final b-boy battle in You Got Served only with books

My secret Santa prez was a book on Japanese Graphic Design which is insanely specific and prescient and I'm told whoever it was, they didn't get a steer from my other half, so now I'm worried someone has cameras in my house.

*phew* What I dream I had last night.

My Trumpy in-laws had a car accident on the way here - no one injured, but a hassle with paperwork, trying to get insurance estimates and find a rental car, all on Christmas Eve. Shortened their visit from three days to one and a half.

It's a strange feeling, trying to put on a somber look of disappointment when inside I was dancing with joy.

Seasonal whine:

Thanksgiving: My wife and I showed up at my parents' house to host Thanksgiving for fourteen of *their* guests. My parents refused all help, even to clear out a shelf in the fridge. They actually forbade us from using the kitchen until after they'd prepared their mid-morning snack. Because my wife and didn't get started cooking until ten-ish, I asked a cousin to drive over and assist. He agreed, as long as he could bring his LEGITIMATE THERAPY ANIMAL, and keep it dog-pen in my parents' yard since he'd be volunteering for a whole day. My parents – who have not used the pen in over a decade - refused to allow its use, because "he's so entitled for asking," and therefore my cousin could not help. During the meal, my father made fun of me for the amusement of the table. Notably, my sibling showed up ten minutes before the meal with a brand-new boyfriend. They'd been together for four weeks. However, we didn't have to spend a lot of time with them, because disappeared into the bathroom together for twenty minutes mid-meal, and left right after food was served. My wife and I spent hours cleaning and putting the house back afterward long after my parents after my parents had gone to sleep. Later, I received a brief 'thanks' email from my dad, inc. a 'did you borrow a Tupperware please return it A.S.A.P.' P.S.

Christmas: Burnt out, my wife and I spent the holiday in our own home. My sibling showed up at my parents' house with a regifted pot roast from the local food pantry, and my parents called to tell me how wonderful and thoughtful and caring a child they have. In exchange for the pot-roast, they wrote my sibling a big check, and extended the free rental agreement they're providing on their beach house.

NYE: I called to check in and see how/what my parents were doing, and my mother answered. She told me that my father, eighty, had purchased a brand new car after totaling his old one. Mom asked if we'd be around next weekend to drive them to a party at my aunt's house. I said maybe, but they should ask my sibling, who lives closer, and has done nothing for them in a year (save for regifting them a pot roast). "Oh, you know, it's you who helps us out with things," she said. I pretty much hung up the phone.

I just ... I don't understand why people who are consistently badly-behaved are rewarded when they evince even the tiniest bit of decency, and people who are consistently generous are punished for taking. breather from their responsibilities.

Yeah, funny how that works

Ugh, that sounds awful.

Being the better person is its own reward, right?

I watched Spike Jones dvds with my dad

for 3 seconds, with that spelling, i assumed it was the 1940s comedy band guy

Being the better person is its own reward, right?