no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Come now, roxy. Surely you're smart enuff t--OW

Yuk! I hate that look (I know what you are talking about, preciousness ...otm) and any male who has it, makes me want to punch him in the face. GRRRRRRRR

Once a guy, who looked at me that way, supplemented it with the following ridiculous and offensive comment;" I want a beautiful and innocent, sweet girl who is non-judgemental when it comes to drugs but doesn't do them herself". WTF?! He was always talking about some sweet and innocent type who was non-judgemental. Made me revolt, made me want to revolt and puke. It did change how I acted around him, I am not a sweet and innocent type but I'd highlight it every chance I had. Yeah, that one is still single and seeking.

Speaking of office christmas parties... (LL how did it go or has it not happened yet?)

How do you gurls deal with all the stresses and annoyances of the ~holiday season~? (using that terminology to avoid committing to or excluding any winter festivals, but feel free to discuss whatever holiday you celebrate - or don't.) Like, I'm not asking do you love/hate it coz everyone has their take and being all "yuck, I'm a grinch" is as valid a reaction as "it is the bestest! time! ever!" but more how do you functionally avoid the annoyances and enjoy what aspects you can?

Obv this will have a different answer depending on whether your tradition is "spend it with your family" vs "spend it with partner's family" vs "have no family; do my best to avoid the whole thing"

I've spent the past several years always going down to Cornwall for Winter Solstice, which had turned into a wonderful tradition and way to avoid both Christmas and the no-family thing. This is the first holiday in ages I've spent in London, to the point where it feels odd and disjointed not to have my ~traditional traditions~ without even realising that those things had snuck into my mind as traditions!

Curious as to your takes, experiences, tips!

How do you gurls deal with all the stresses and annoyances of the ~holiday season~?

Booze mostly.

This year I had a baby, which was a pretty good excuse to avoid holiday travel and to excuse us from perfunctory family gift giving but that was really a one time solution.

So, booze.

I just do the stuff I want to do, and try not to do the stuff I don't. Our families are very chill and we split time between then so less chance of arguments.
Also we do a 'pre-Christmas Christmas' with a very select few at our house - just did it yesterday and made ALL the delicious food and chilled out without any travel/present/family stress so at least you can bank on having *one* good christmassy day out of it all.

Booze, haha, yeah, I suspect that's a big one. But I have really seriously moved into a place of "you are not allowed to use booze as a way of dealing with social pressures EVER. AGAIN" (rather than a "never drink, ever again" approach to dealing with my problem drinking) which is why I've been nursing half pints at parties for this entire season.

"All the delicious food at your house!" is a brilliant idea!

I might do a post-Christmas "all the delicious food" to try and reconnect with people I've lost touch with; I used to always do a big Burns Night thing because it's late enough that people have stopped having too many social commitments to find time for another Xmas-based one, and late January is so relentless that it's a good time for another feast.

(LL how did it go or has it not happened yet?)

It happened on Friday, and it was mostly ok, but some things did occur. Good parts first 1) I successfully avoided him most of the time (but he snuck up behind me twice) 2) I had unselfconscious fun, danced with 3 different coworkers (there is a strong dancing culture at my school to put it mildly) and none of them were him.

Now for the unfortunate part -- he lives like 3 blocks from me, so he asked me for a ride home. I was going to try to sneak out without him seeing me, but I couldn't. On the ride home, I couldn't see his face, so I don't know if he was smirking, but he was asking me 1000 questions* and was being (i don't even know which adjective i want here) about my drumming. You may think I'm being harsh, but it was stuff like telling a deeply unfunny "drummers are dumb" joke and yet being ignorant that there are many different styles of drumming. He was like "I'm not a musician, I don't know about drumming" and I was like you have ears, right? That's when I got mad and snapped at him. I am a noob drummer, but I am not an idiot. So we pulled up, he got out, and I sped away, did not look back to check to make sure he got in. THEN he sent me a fucking email on Sunday about one of the songs I mentioned. I am ignoring the shit out of that email.

At worst, I feel like I'm under surveillance, which I absolutely LOATHE. At best, this is annoying and will go away. Unfortunately, still gotta work together. Know what it is? He is acting like this is a rom com and there is absolutely NO ROM AND NO COM. And I quadruple hate romcoms.

* I like it when people show interest in something I'm doing if they don't treat it like a trick that a circus poodle is doing, ie if they take me seriously.

sorry for the babble

as for holidays, i have several coping devices:

* a trip somewhere that i really want to go
* hibernation
* a project that is completely unrelated to holidays
* politely declining all invitations that i don't actively want to accept

I'm not going to be all "read stuff into this behaviour" but it actually sounds like this guy has one hell of an "INAPPROPRIATE PROFESSIONAL ATTACHMENT" crush on you. Ugh ugh ugh. On both sides.

I love the holidays but then I love my family and we have a nice memory-containing homestead to go back to. It's not perfect, but it's a lot. Plus even the parts of the hols that I'm in NY for, everyone is having parties and feels social, so it's easy to get together w ppl which is what I really like to do.

I love the holidays. I just wish my family wasn't so fucked up. Last year the Christmas week was probably literally the worst year of my life. How did I cope with it? By drinking too much and making myself throw up so not very well! This year should be better. As fucking horrible as this is going to sound, I actually look forward to a time when I can have and make Christmas all my own as my mother has essentially ruined nearly every single Christmas and birthday of mine (it's right after Christmas) since I was 15. Last year she fell on flat on her face during Christmas dinner and then took me out for my birthday and got so drunk she puked at the table in the restaurant and we had to leave so, you know, fun times.

omg enbb that sounds really really awful. i'm sorry.

last comment about my irritating coworker -- whatever it is, i can't stand it and i wish he would just stop. if he is trying to be my friend, this is not how it's done.

Btw LL that guy sounds terrible. Yay dancing though!

xp ENBB: I look forward to a less toxic time for you, just overall.

It's hard enough to work on our shit and examine what we do and get better when the things that we're supposed to be healing from aren't still happening in the present.

Oh Laurel, that just made me tear up. I do too. Thank you.

it was brave of you to write that, e -- i have a hard time talking about things, and i can't even imagine what it would take for me to be able to share something that personal. it takes a lot of courage to go through stuff like this. it sounds like you're on the right side of things and optimistic? at least?

(if not, that's ok too, being only child with atypical parents is familiar territory)

(also not sure what typical parents are, but i think you know what i mean? i hope.)

Know what it is? He is acting like this is a rom com and there is absolutely NO ROM AND NO COM. And I quadruple hate romcoms.

a friend of mine has one of these situations at work and it sounds hellish - she discovered (after he'd, like, gone into a huff and refused to talk to her for a day when she said she couldn't go to see some film with him because she had a date) that he thought that when she mentioned going on dates with people she'd been doing it reactively, in response to him having gone on dates, in order to… make him jealous??? show him that she wasn't waiting on him???

that vertiginous sense of 'this person has invented a narrative based on me and they're acting like it's really happened and i honestly can't tell how deep this delusion goes,' which is always horrible; but especially when it's someone at work who you can't really avoid and who can make your life really difficult if they choose to.

xposts oh ENBB, how awful and exhausting it must be -- i hope this year is better! i don't think it's wrong to sometimes long for the future where you don't have to think of the christmas-and-birthday season with dread.

that vertiginous sense of 'this person has invented a narrative based on me and they're acting like it's really happened and i honestly can't tell how deep this delusion goes,' which is always horrible; but especially when it's someone at work who you can't really avoid and who can make your life really difficult if they choose to.

totally completely otm and i've never seen it articulated so clearly --esp the "can't tell how deep the delusion goes" paired with "who you can't really avoid"
can also hear with 100% clarity what your friend is going through. anyone at work who is going to go into a huff had better have a really good reason for it, and anyone who goes into a huff like that must be hell on earth to deal with on a more personal basis. that's waaaaaay worse than my situation.

she's finding it especially hard because he was one of her "work friends", so there's that impulse to go back over her memories of their interactions and try and work out where what she thought was plain friendliness might have seemed to him romantic encouragement. Even though that's a hiding to nowhere, she is not responsible for his wacko interpretations of her behaviour, she was pretty clearly not "leading him on", etc. The worst.

yes, that part is totally the same! i thought he was someone i could joke with, but no.

I'm really really cringing here, because of memories of mine own Inappropriate Professional Attachment from 2 years ago and how that did end with a huff which probably looked ridiculous to anyone else not in that office and that situation. (I got in a huff and stopped speaking him because in a deliberate act of social aggression, he offered biscuits to every. single. person. in the office (even the guy who sat next to me which made it patently obvious and ridiculous) except me - but that was not actually about the biscuits, and on another level, it wasn't even about the IPA, it was about him going over my head to speak to my boss about stuff I should have been involved with, and a host of actual, work-related stuff which was starting to really rub me the wrong way.)

So I am not defending either the crusher or the unfortunate crushee, but just saying this is often a shitty, horrible situation for everybody involved in it. That, however, does not excuse shitty, horrible behaviour on the part of the crusher. It's the "can't really avoid" situation that makes it so untenably awful.

yeah. i also clam up when i feel like i'm being watched, like i totally completely hate it, and i was just starting to enjoy the feeling of being relaxed about stuff like that. like i was already getting paranoid about him googling a pair of words and finding me here! i just hate it.

re holiday coping

I usually do pretty well with the holidays because I enjoy it and I don't have a lot of party commitments or too much in the way of crazy family drama to sour it. Usually. However last Christmas I ended up in tears by lunchtime on Christmas Day - I was staying at my inlaws and I felt like I was trapped in some kind of bad-vibes prison, it was horrible. In that instance, my remedy was to change the scenery as quickly as possible - get lunch over and done and out of the way, pack up our stuff and get out of there, return to my own house, watch a good movie and talk to my Mum back in Australia. Cleanse all the bad vibes out of me, basically.

I don't know how I could cope if that happened every year.

E, I'm so sorry that you're going through that. And anyone else who has a rough/emotional time over Christmas. idk what the thing to do is, except to find ways/moments to be kind to yourself, etc. <3

I dunno, it's always kinda awkward to talk about ~holiday stuff~ and there's such a pressure to *not be a grinch about it* to the point where it's hard to even admit that this can be a fucking difficult time of year, especially for those of us with, um, *complicated* family arrangements (because yeah, what is typical? there is no typical.) Even saying "it's hard to say things are hard" gets greeted with a "that's a cliche, just shut up and have some christmas cheer."

I'm just annoyed about Not Going To Cornwall because Cornwall is the thing-I-do-instead-of-Christmas. Because my immediate family live a couple of thousand miles away, and the family is not just "broken" but triangulated, to the point where none of the three other members speak to each other (and I'm trying to minimise contact with one of them, myself). Usually, not being anywhere near my family is a source of comfort and relief at this time of the year.

But this year, for the first time ever, I went on holiday to visit my Mum, and I stayed with her for a month solid, to the point where it stopped being visiting and actually felt like "OK, this is home" and "this is My People" and right now, not being around her, (or even being able to be around her (and even if I could go visit her, which I can't afford to, because if I could afford to go anywhere I would go to Cornwall) because Christmas is her busiest working day/season of the whole year) - well, right now it's just this giant hungry hole of "WAAAAAAHHHH I wants My People."

I don't even know where my people are any more. I guess people in London have got so used to the idea that I'm not available for anything over Xmas that I don't even get asked to things any more, so it's not a question of turning down awkward invitations. I've got the box set of Cosmos for Xmas day, so that's sorted. London is just so dark and so unfriendly and I'm already missing the lights and bonfires and pagan shit of the Cornish festive season.

So I don't have any advice or anything to add at all, really, just shout-outs and solidarity to anyone who is finding it tough, this year, or any, really.

(Probably also brought on by being at a big, sprawling family party of an old, old friend last night, which at the time was really great and wonderful, because it was fabulous catching up with lots of people I hadn't seen in years. But at the same time, it's hard to look at someone else's big, sprawling, celebrating family and not feel a hint of "don't got that" sads.)

((Now I feel like I've ~bummed out~ the thread and I hate feeling like that :( ))

not at all! honestly from the people I know and friends etc, I feel like it's actually more common that ppl feel similarly to you. Christmas Dissonance is how I think of it.

You're totally allowed to have those kinda feels at Christmas -- honestly I feel more like a freak for not feeling that way, it seems like all of my friends have that same sort of, idk, 'christmas dissonance', at varying levels.

oh and hey here's me repeating myself in two separate sentences yay for not editing :(

(got super busy at work but thank you for the kind words :) )

But at the same time, it's hard to look at someone else's big, sprawling, celebrating family and not feel a hint of "don't got that" sads.)

i get this *all the time* -- know exactly what you mean. one time i had to leave a wedding because i was having a crying fit.

BB, I have been thinking about the thread you referred to a few posts ago! I will Never Ever post on it because bad idea but it was appreciated at the time.
E, hope you can do as much of your own thing as you want this year.

So this will probably be the first 'normal' Christmas I've had in 5 years - for 3 years I lived too far away from the fam but secretly (guiltily) enjoyed just Skyping then keeping it super low-key. Last year was extremely stressful due to medical and financial and sabotaging neighbour stuff so this year I'm doing it properly and going full guns blazing with Christmas cheer, as it could be the last one we do in the same way. It's also the longest break from work either of us will have had in a year.

"Christmas Dissonance" is a really good word for it, thanks for that VG.

(we shall never speak of that thread again, shall we)

Christmas is generally fine. New Year's, otoh, with the expectations of romance and joyous nostalgia and having all your favorite people around you -- that's the one that gets to me.

E, I'm so sorry that you're going through that. And anyone else who has a rough/emotional time over Christmas.

cosigning this

I like my parents and lived with them for many years longer than normal people and even I am looking at my Christmas travel plans wondering if I can really bear to be around them for as long as is required*, so, yeah, Christmas. Good vibes to all.

(* last time I stayed with them for the weekend and felt like I was going mad and could not wait to get out of there by Saturday evening. This time will be several days for reasons of transport and fitting in visits to all the other relatives - which I still totally want to do because I don't see them v. often and my grandmother is getting on and hasn't been in the best of health lately. At least now they have wi-fi and I have a smartphone for surreptitious ILX breaks.)

Cis, as an aside which I don't want to end in badness because I can't cope with any more badness today, but it's quibbling over hairs to say the term "mansplain" is really not Feminist Theory proper because you're right, technically it's not, but it's certainly within the remit of feminist-stuff-and-womens-issues as discussed on ILX threads about feminism and the like.

And now I really really need to go and look at kittens and sea arches for a while because when you reach that point where you get so used to microaggressions that *everything* looks like a microaggression really it's time for kittens and sea arches.

Now back to Christmas and kittens, already in progress.

While we're putting c#maj-aimed asides to that thread here, I meant to say that I really enjoyed that Ursula Le Guin interview, except I forgot to do so in a timely manner and now the thread subject is a bit bleak to do so. So thanks for the link.

Yeah, cosign that Le Guin interview was very good, I enjoyed that one.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree here, BB. (Though not on kitten and sea arches! or Le Guin!)

Well, it depends what part you're disagreeing with.

Because I have read a heck of a lot of Feminist Linguistics Theory and "the tendency of men to interrupt women" and "the tendency of men to dominate conversations with women" and "the tendency of men to ignore things that women say until those things are taken up by a man" are all p thoroughly documented and interpreted and and discussed and addressed in Feminist Linguistics Theory. At length. So are you saying that "the tendency of men to explain things to women, especially things with which women are already much more familiar than said men" cannot be validly added to that corpus, or that the jokey and itself mocking name "mansplain" has no business being used to describe that corpus of behaviour or defended as "feminist theory" ?

I'm saying that I won't have this discussion with you here.

ugh, that sounds so abrupt - i don't think this thread is the place for it, and like you said it's probably not going into on that thread, so i think it's fine to leave it as an aside and move on.

*not worth going into

:(

Well, at the time, the options being "have that discussion on a thread that I have unfortunately rendered full of really triggery shit about sex with children" vs "have that discussion on a thread full of petulant manchildren who are mad that feminism took their ~discussion of masculinity~ away" or take that discussion to email so, um, now I feel really bad about asking the question in the first place.

Haha. Awww, this thread is the best.

Keep talking, it's distracting me from the fact that half my back is in spasm.

We should probably go back to a picture of a Christmas Kitten on a Sea Arch.

x-post oh no! Back problems are horrible! I do those "lie on the floor, pull your knees slowly up to your chest" exercises, or failing that, codeine.