I'm watching Lucylee and family to see how all their holiday plans turn out. I'm sure it will all be fine.
LOL, Harmony! It's always something, isn't it?
I watched Jimmy Kimmel's monologue tonight for the first time ever, and he had a little segment about Trading Relatives -- for $29.99, you get a crate to stuff your most obnoxious relative in and send him/her to some randomly selected family. LOL... I hope dbro saw that!
Dbro is really concerned about spending time w/duncle. Since hearing of how duncle got in a row with his own sister and her granddaughter, and knowing how duncle feels about dbro's situation -- still not married to long-time girlfriend, still living 14 hours' drive away from us, and now claiming he wants to keep ddad's Pontiac... dbro just hates to deal with him.
Dh and ds say they just ignore duncle -- he has never actually said anything especially critical TO dh, and although ds says he "smarts off" at him on occasion, ds has no idea how critical he was to me (re: ds) on that 4th of July several years ago. DS said, "(dbro) and (dcousin) just need to realize that he is just a cranky old man and ignore him. I don't pay any attention to anything he says."
Actually, for the most part, duncle is generally nice to me. I guess that's why it stands out so much about the episode at the 4th of July and then the time he called fussing about dmom, a few months after ddad passed away. But I have always gotten along with him fine, for the most part, and I know he has "issues" of his own to deal with too.
* and DRAT * I still have not called him. MUST DO THAT tomorrow!!!
But yeah... our holiday plans so far as dmom is concerned... we will probably still be debating where to have Christmas on the 23rd of December.
(That will be the last possible day for me to help her, since Christmas Eve is reserved for dh's family.)However, I may talk to her tomorrow and point out, if she DID NOT change plans w/daunt tonight, it would be easier to do Thanksgiving and get it over with. You don't have to decorate your house for Thanksgiving, you don't have to SHOP for GIFTS for Thanksgiving, and you don't have to prepare major breakfast for family on the morning of Thanksgiving. I don't know what dmom is thinking, thinking Thanksgiving is more difficult that Christmas -- her logic is that we do "finger foods" for Christmas.
* sigh *
* shaking my head * at the tardy policy for Harriet's dd... ridiculous.
BTW -- have any of you heard of schools using a "T rust C ard"? It's a card the students wear on a lanyard and apparently it doubles as an ID card, library card, AND discipline card. (I'm splitting it up b/c I don't want the locals IRL searching it and finding us here, LOL.) It seems to have the middle school crowd around here completely in come apart mode. It seems any teacher can revoke your card for any discipline measure they deem fit, and then the child doesn't get to buy break and has to sit at lunch detention table, and cannot get it back until the child meets with the teacher and discusses the infraction. If the card is forgotten and left at home, same penalties and parents are not allowed to deliver the card to the child. So parents are resorting to subterfuge of hiding the card in lunch boxes or textbooks to get the child out of trouble. It is ridiculous how upsetting this has been to all of them, but dh says, "Well, they'll learn to keep up with their stuff."
Between that and Common Core math, I am doubly glad we have a little time off before anyone in this family is concerned w/school for awhile.
