HAPPY NEW YEAR

If you are reading this, it means you survived the holidays.  Congratulations!

December was, as you know, not so great this year, but we persevered as well as we could. By the time Christmas rolled around, it had gotten a little less grim in our neck of the woods. We spent the holiday quietly, with our various family, and it was nice.

We had dinner with Mr. Lee on Christmas eve. Steve grilled steaks since the weather was warmish, which is one of the nice things about living down here. Also, since we have Mr. Lee's older 3D television now, we asked him to bring a movie that he wanted to watch. He brought Doctor Strange, and I'll be honest, I enjoyed it a lot more in 3D! We saw the regular version in the theater, but it really added a lot to it!  Also, I love Benedict Cumberbatch, so win-win.

We spent Christmas Day with my mom and it was planned to be a very low key sort of day. Tommy's birthday was Christmas day, so I knew it was going to be very bittersweet. We didn't have anything big planned, just lunch and gifts and hanging out with the family.  Everything was fine, except for one really weird, uninvited guest.

Look, our family doesn't do drama. That's just not who we've ever been as people. Pretty much anything that ever came our way was dealt with quickly, which I can only just now appreciate, but all in all, we have always been like good diamonds: Conflict Free. ;)

Everyone was there except for my youngest nephew and his girlfriend, and so we hadn't started eating yet when someone knocked on the door. We thought it was Seth, but it turned out to be my paternal uncle's wife's brother. Did you follow that?  So, no one even remotely related to us at all.  The man is...not right.  After years of drug and alcohol abuse, resulting in a lot of trouble with his own family that caused them to disown him, he is an incredibly muddled, hostile, unhinged (not violent, but has that potential) sick old man.  I don't think I'd ever met him face to face, so when he walked into the house, I didn't know who he was. I was under the impression that he was a friend of my mom's husband, so when he walked in, I was pleasant to him and went about my own business.  It wasn't until I saw my mom's face that I realized something was wrong.  The man, who literally has no ties to our family even remotely since my father passed away, decided to stop at mom's house and tell her he was sorry about her losing her son. Nice, right?  No, not really.  I mean, yes, that part was nice, but he turned that opportunity into talking about himself and all of his problems, and that he didn't have any family and wow, look at all the food you have, and a litany of other problems and people that he didn't like and who had wronged him, blah, blah, blah.

My mother, being the saint that she is, told him he could eat with us because (as she told us when the guy was safely out of the room and we were quietly saying WTF did you invite him to eat for?!) she felt sorry for him and that is what Jesus would want her to do.

Take a moment and love my mom for that, won't you?  She's too good for this world.

Now, I might not have minded so much if I hadn't been reminded by my sister that this man had, after my dad died and we were still trying to settle his affairs, stole his farm equipment and sold it off before we had a chance to take inventory of it. It's bad enough for him to be a thief, but the fact that he stole my deceased father's stuff before he'd been dead two weeks (which incidentally would have become MY stuff since I inherited the farm portion of the property) infuriated me. We never pressed charged on him or even called him out over what he'd done (we should have, but by the time we realized the extent of what he'd done, it wouldn't have done any good and we were still shell shocked over Papa's death to do much) but we didn't want to cause a fuss.  I won't lie, though, I have resented the hell out of that for years from afar.  I can't stand a thief or a liar. I was unhappy with the fact that this man who had treated our family so poorly was now sitting at the table talking trash about my uncle and cousins, likely because they wouldn't let him come over and mooch anymore, but we were as welcoming as we could be because as mom said, that is what Jesus would want us to do.

Sometimes I think Jesus asks a bit much.  Heh.

So he ate and talked and lied and rambled and we all sat there uncomfortably. My mom's husband was PISSED. He didn't say anything, but he was very uncomfortable with the man being in their house, so he wouldn't even sit down. He kept pacing around, muttering. It was, by far, the most bizarre Christmas lunch I've ever sat through, but soon enough, the man stood up and said he had to leave. That he didn't mean to impose, or some such thing.  It was just so WEIRD. Towards the end, I started laughing because I was so uncomfortable and had to go into another room. Eventually, though, he was gone and we locked the door.

After that, the day was nice. We played a game called Spoons, which got kind of violent, but it was fun. We exchanged gifts, sat around and talked, and then we came home.

For new years, we spent the evening at the symphony listening to songs by John Williams, which was good, and I barely made it to midnight! Haha.

By the end of 2018 I buried people I loved, gained too much weight, lost the drive to do a lot of things that I usually enjoy, and missed my friends so much it hurt, but I made it out of the other side with only a few scars. I don't make resolutions, as I am not good at keeping things like that, but I do hope that this new year will be good and fun and prosperous, and full of accomplishments and adventures and most of all happy and full of strength and love for myself and all of you.

Happy New Year! I hug you!