I'm Back

I think I've recovered enough to talk about the hell that was my Christmas. The trip to my parents was nightmarishly long with the dog whining and teenager complaining about dog. When we finally arrived and got in the house, my younger brother was already there with his HUGE gallumphing mastiff Rosie. Rosie took my little Toto for a squeeky toy and pinned her to the ground with a gigantic paw and started chewing on her. Needless to say, I was not impressed so my little dog got back in the car to drive with BT to go and visit his family (she made dog #4 at their house without a single problem I might add). It was a strange Christmas eve because we were all at my parents at the same time (except for Jamie). My mother had driven to Oshawa earlier Friday to pick up my grandmother (her mother), this is an hour and a half there and then the same back. It was a full house with everyone happy and friendly - can you hear the dramatic music building? I wish I had.

Christmas morning was good with everyone opening their gifts and liking them. My grandmother was disappointed that her present from me was so small and my parents gift was so large in comparison. I had given her 18kt gold earrings with a small emerald in each and my parents gift was a small fridge cooler for storing wine. At least Grandma got gifts she could actually USE this year. Grandma went overboard with the presents again less this year than last but still too many. She came with 5 Santa bags full of presents - she shops all year in discount stores and ends up with lots and lots of presents. It gets to be so much stuff that you don't know what you get. Anyhow. We had breakfast and tidied up all the wrapping etc. Now the sniping begins. Not much just little comments here and there but everyone goes to a different part of the house and things calm down. Dinner goes extremely well with everyone happy, the crackers all had good things in them, we all wore our silly paper crowns and we stuffed ourselves with more turkey than seemed humanly possible.
After dinner, it was nap time all round and then a quiet early evening.

Boxing Day and a little trip down the road of family hell. Everything started out fine, sitting around the living room having tea, coffee whatever chatting about things. Then somehow the conversation turns to money and my grandmother brings up an incident that happened 37 years ago where she thinks my parents cheated her out of $2000. I should explain that my grandmother gave my parents $2000 to help with the deposit on their house and they let her live with them for 13 YEARS. Fair trade I would say. Anyways, as it started heating up I got the hell out and went to pack my bag and hope like hell BT got there soon. Then I realized that I had left my youngest brother up there trapped between the two of them and I went to rescue him but by that point they had retreated to neutral rooms still yelling and then came the slamming of the doors. *sigh* Merry Christmas. My mother and I had already planned to hit the (ew) Walmart - mostly because my youngest brother works there and gets a discount - so off we went to Walmart leaving my dad, younger brother and grandmother at the house. By the time we got back (loaded with loot btw lol) my younger brother was gone having taken my grandmother home. My dad was LIVID seems that while we were gone my grandmother had accused him of all kinds of things including hitting her. My brother would have KILLED my dad if he raised a hand to my grandma. She also told him that we are all out of the will because "we took my mothers side". *sigh* By the time I left my mother was planning on writing my grandma a cheque for $2000 and telling her that she never wanted to hear from her again. Great. Now all the rest of us will be stuck in the middle and won't be able to win no matter what we do. I was NEVER so happy to see BT pull up and to get home was wonderful.

On the bright side, I got what I wanted for Christmas. My youngest brother got me a toaster oven and my parents got me the pillows that I wanted - better than I wanted actually, they gave me double down pillows - soooooooooo soft. I got a new purse for my birthday too. Katie gave me a lovely book on Egyptology. Oooo and my younger brother brought me a bottle of REAL vanilla from Mexico, it smells wonderful.