The Coffee House

limr · Dec 23, 2014

bribrius said:
out Christmas shopping last night again. Strange because at first you are concentrating on the money aspect and being a good consumer for your dollar. But after a few hours of stores and people you stop caring and just whip out the visa because you want to get the hell out of there and go home.

This is why early online shopping is your friend!

I despise being in the stores at this time of year. I will avoid it at any cost and if I must do it, I will not go in the evening or weekends.

snerd · Dec 23, 2014

limr said:
This is why early online shopping is your friend!.

This!!! It's what I've done the last few years. This year I hit the stores just for the exercise!!

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sm4him · Dec 23, 2014

limr said:
Today's activities: cat shelter, then home to change clothes, then several errands to do in the afternoon before everyone gets out of work and things start going crazy in stores and on the roads. I did some shopping yesterday and meant to get all the errands done but my brother showed up unexpectedly (he lives in North Carolina) and I went to lunch with him and my mother.

His wife, of course, wasn't there. She's decided that we're all devils. I can't even get started on that story. It's long and boring and would involve many many curse words - unless I start getting more creative and using terms like "shrieking harpy" - and it can all be boiled down to my brother getting just one afternoon with his mother and one sister as his entire allotted Christmas family time. Some of this is his own unwillingness to stand up to her, so it's not like it has to be this way, but it doesn't change the fact that he's in a tough spot.

Man, did I somehow get an Irish coffee this morning? I normally don't get this chatty about family stuff - or anything, really - unless I'm drinking!

Oh my goodness, your brother is married to the SAME WOMAN *my* brother is married to!! "Shrieking harpy" would be about the kindest thing I could say about my brother's wife. This is his second wife; the first one is crazy and bipolar (AND is intentional. I consider being bipolar to simply be a medical condition. But she is Crazy AND Bipolar). But she is at least nice, for the most part, and made efforts to fit in to the family, and still reaches out and communicates with us.
His second wife has no medical condition as an excuse, she is just crazy and hateful. She is an absolutely miserable example of a human being.

sm4him · Dec 23, 2014

KenC said:
Just kind of wet and dreary here, actually a little warm for the season, but the dampness makes it feel cold (at least to me). It's supposed to be 60 tomorrow, so everyone is getting weird weather.

I have to figure out a Christmas Eve dinner for five people (it's an extremely long story - we never do this). I have recipes but need to get ingredients, which should be crazy today. I'm hoping to do it this afternoon. For now, I'm at work (with coffee of course) - decided to save some vacation for next year so I'm in a few days from now til January.

We don't do a "traditional" dinner for Christmas Eve; we never have. We do Potato soup and Chili, with bread and some other fixings. Delicious, filling, and easy!

sm4him · Dec 23, 2014

limr said:
bribrius said:

out Christmas shopping last night again. Strange because at first you are concentrating on the money aspect and being a good consumer for your dollar. But after a few hours of stores and people you stop caring and just whip out the visa because you want to get the hell out of there and go home.

Click to expand...

This is why early online shopping is your friend!

I despise being in the stores at this time of year. I will avoid it at any cost and if I must do it, I will not go in the evening or weekends.

I'm not a shopper anyway, at any time of the year, and I *despise* crowds, so I'd rather have a dozen root canals at once than go shopping at Christmas time.

I do most of my shopping online. But, I do also like to support some of our smaller, local stores so once it's this close to Christmas, I get up and go out as early as the stores are open, and get done before the buy-crazy hordes have even gotten out of bed.

limr · Dec 23, 2014

Sharon, I think our brothers really did marry the same woman! The last time they spent Christmas with us, we were all being nice very nice, probably even extra nice because we knew she was giving my brother a hard time and we didn't want to make things harder for him. Her response was to go into another room after dinner and cry for an hour because, as she told my brother, "they're being horrible! They even got us presents even when I specifically said not to because we aren't giving them gifts!" :icon_rolleyes:

Gary A. · Dec 23, 2014

Buenas Dias Coffee Hosers. Running late, I got hit with a cold last night. Doin' better today. Presently, at 11:00 a.m. it is 70F here. Okay, we have horrific traffic and housing is extremely expensive ... but I think it's all worthwhile. Gotta wrap the last presents, adios hosers.

Designer · Dec 23, 2014

Reading about those sisters-in-law I realize that my immediate family is in pretty good shape. (After a few bumpy years long past.)

My DIL's family is nearly completely dysfunctional however.

So God Bless Us Everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Happy Hanukah!

Namaste!

sm4him · Dec 23, 2014

limr said:
Sharon, I think our brothers really did marry the same woman! The last time they spent Christmas with us, we were all being nice very nice, probably even extra nice because we knew she was giving my brother a hard time and we didn't want to make things harder for him. Her response was to go into another room after dinner and cry for an hour because, as she told my brother, "they're being horrible! They even got us presents even when I specifically said not to because we aren't giving them gifts!"

Yep, definitely the same one!

M.A. (my brother's wife) basically just refuses to acknowledge our presence. She refused to even marry my brother until his second-oldest daughter had left home, because she "hates" her (her own words, not mine). Seems like you'd get a CLUE and not marry a woman who HATES one of your children...

Two years ago at Christmas, she got p.o.'ed at one of my nieces so she made manipulated things so that on Christmas morning, there was something for everyone EXCEPT this one niece. Not just from her, but period. It was not long after that, we ended up letting that niece move up here and live with a brother here. She and the other niece who lives here (who also left home, about 8 or 9 years ago, partly because of this woman) don't even go there for Christmas now.
THEN M.A. had the NERVE to scream at my mother, when she came to visit, because she says my mother "doesn't appreciate" all the many wonderful things she's supposedly done to help raise my brother's children. Well, if that includes singling a child out to leave out of Christmas, no I don't really appreciate that sort of "help" raising a kid.

Oh, she also took the same kid's car keys away and SOLD the car, because she was "doing drugs." She was taking the PRESCRIPTION medication her doctor had given her, AS he had prescribed it.

limr · Dec 23, 2014

The one consolation is that there are no kids involved. That would have made things so much worse and those kids would have been screwed.

There was a time a few years back that she and my brother moved into my mother's house when I was also living there. This woman took over and started bossing everyone around as if it were her house. She also started getting really passive-aggressive. For example, if I left something of mine somewhere that she didn't approve of, she'd throw it to the floor.

One day I finally snapped. I had some espresso cups I'd brought back from Portugal and they needed to be hand washed. She didn't like that I didn't wash the cup immediately after using it and kept putting the cup in the dishwasher. Whenever I came back to wash the cup, I had to keep taking it out of the dishwasher. One day, the dishwasher had already been run and my cup was chipped really bad and I went off on her. She started getting really nasty, talking about how I kept breaking "house rules."

That fight ended when she crossed a line and I threw coffee in her face. It is one of the high points of my life. And no, the coffee wasn't hot, but I made it clear to her that if she ever talked to me that way again, the cup would be hitting her instead of just the liquid.

oldhippy · Dec 23, 2014

Open up a can of woo pass on her. Did ya . Lol. Ed

minicoop1985 · Dec 23, 2014

I can has the cold. Hot cocoa and nap kinda day.

pgriz · Dec 23, 2014

Oh man. After reading Sharon's and Leonore's experiences am I ever glad I married the woman I did. She has four siblings, and we have lots of help and support from all of them. I love my mother-in-law, and my mom considers my wife to be "her" daughter. When we're travelling, we're usually staying at one or the other's houses. Before the kids were grown up, our wills had the kids looked after one of the other couples. So this animosity that I'm reading about is really alien. Reason #5,398 why marrying my wife was a good idea.

limr · Dec 23, 2014

oldhippy said:
Open up a can of woo pass on her. Did ya . Lol. Ed

You know it!

BillM · Dec 23, 2014

I just bought a big bag of really good chocolate to take to my sisters house on Christmas day. You know that old saying about you can pick your friends but you can't pick your family. If I did get to pick my family I don't think I could have done better than what I have. Well I would have made room for a Cowboys cheerleader or 3, i'm not greedy, but that's a whole nother story for another day. Merry Christmas everyone :biggrinangelA: