Susan

Merry winter festivities everyone! I hope that if you were doing a family holiday it went well, and if you were avoiding any family or christmas stuff that your evasion was successful! Mine was... Mixed bag?

• Lex and I went to my mum's on Christmas Eve! I remembered my mum's presents but forgot the present that I bought for my oldest sister in 2016 and found while I was tidying. Whoops.


• As a christmas eve gift, the RWA set itself on fire, dug to rock bottom, and then cracked out the pickaxe so it could keep going. I've been following it in real time because I literally can't stop myself, and this summary doesn't have sources but is accurate to all of the sources and reports that I'VE seen. I can't look away, this is bananas. This has been going on for FIVE DAYS at this point, and it just keeps getting worse!


• My christmas haul was SO GOOD!
  
  • I got nail varnish that changes colour depending on the temperature, which I've been after for multiple years, and a bunch of temporary tattoos to see if I like them as a concept before captainraz and I pay probably extortionate postage for Geometric Beasts.
  
  
  • My book haul was SO GOOD! Lex got me Yotsuba&! volume 14 (and a Jund MtG Brawl deck, because my dreams of a Devour commander deck have never died, and a Pokéball with a Rowlett in it!), and Mum got me Because Internet, Not For Use In Navigation, Women With ADD, The Luminous Dead, and A BOX SET OF THE RERELEASED ALANNA BOOKS OMG! Yotsuba is as heart-warming as ever, and Not For Use in Navigation manages to be occasionally gutting and incredibly warm and hopeful with it. The rest I've not read yet!
  
  
  • I've not watched the BOX SET OF CARDCAPTORS THAT MY MUM GOT ME LIKE AN ABSOLUTE LEGEND, but hi I have a box set of the original run of Cardcaptors and the movies, and I'm terrified to find out whether the subtitles are going to be horribly unreadable or not.


• Saw Second Oldest Sister On Mum's Side and her family, and we were all remarkably polite! She didn't try to make me put jilliferium in contact with her, I didn't start a fight, youngest niece on that side got to show off her glittery slime-making prowess and oldest niece on that side got to show off how amazing she is at choosing presents. ... Real talk, that girl is GOOD AT PRESENTS, I am so jealous of her skills. Middle niece on that side is off doing a law degree, and apparently as part of that she's doing consulting days in a prison? Which is excellent.


• I HAVE MET MY NEICE'S HUSBAND NOW. Two factual inaccuraces on my part: he's 36 and they got married on an island just off the coast of Georgia, not mid-forties and married in Florida. But that said... He does come across as exactly the sort of guy who would marry a twenty-one year old he'd know for less than six months!
  
  • Like. Maybe I don't understand how setting up a business works, but what he was describing sounded like money-laundering to me and visa fraud to Lex? And Hayley would mention things like "Oh, we were reading the bible together last night..." and that's... Not very her? Or at least she was saying stuff about it that was very obviously not HER WORDS and it was weird to see. The nice things I will say about him is that Hayley has apparently been doing the same "Hey, this funny story about my family is actually FUCKED UP" realisations that I was doing, and she feels supported in that because of him? And him and Lex got to bond over what I described as "Wow, our wives are way more fucked up than advertised" and Lex described as "Our wives are amazing despite their families."
  
  
  • Yeah, as the only person in the room who hadn't been drinking, I was NOT prepared for the unexpected therapy session Hayley dropped on us after Christmas dinner.
  
  
  • On the plus side, Hayley was not prepared for how much I was like "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T FUCKING VOTE?!" at her. I want full points for quickness though! She was talking about how she'd visited Germany a lot, but "People died so I didn't have to learn German!" and my immediate response was "People died so you could vote as well!"
  
  
  • Best part of this conversation:
    Hayley: I can't believe my mum got married at sixteen to someone who was FIFTEEN YEARS OLDER THAN HER.
    Me: *GESTURES AT HAYLEY'S FIFTEEN-YEARS-OLDER-THAN-HER HUSBAND LIKE I'M WILL SMITH*
  
  
  • Second best part of this conversation:
    Me: Your nan told me! And then let me tell your Auntie Jill.
    Hayley: What did she say?
    Me: Same thing as me: "But she's like TWELVE."
  
  
  • Other low-lights included her and her husband talking about how harmful and awful it is that her nephew (my great-nephew) has been LABELLED with autism and ADHD while I'm there like "Motherfucker if someone had caught my ADHD when I was five my life would have been IMMEASURABLY EASIER." Also how being pregnant for two (2) days really taught her how to look at the world as a parent would and gave her a really different perspective on life, while I'm there like "Bitch PLEASE."


• Current gossip: my Tory-voting brother (did I tell y'all that I blocked him on FB?) has broken up with his girlfriend! It was inevitable because she was way cooler than he deserved, but she was so cool and now I don't have an excuse to see her! And my oldest niece still doesn't have custody of her two oldest children, but is still with the father of her youngest, despite (from what I understand) her custody of that one hinging on her telling social services that she WASN'T with him anymore. YEAH. THIS TRIP WAS KIND OF A LOT.


• I want full points for not going "Brown-haired niece. You continue to exist," at any point.


• I liked seeing my mum! (Except for the point where she was being really catty about everything, so I just turned round to Oldest Sister like "I don't know where you two went while you were out, but you can take her back.") I fixed Steam on her computer and put some more books on her kindle for her, good work us. And I liked seeing the cat, despite her STILL a vicious little shit who hunts humans for sport. And I liked raiding the manga collection that me and Jill left at mum's, by which I mean Jill banned me from running away with any of the manga she bought, but said nothing about me reading it while I was there. So I've binged the first six volumes of Red River, which has given me a craving for nineties shoujo manga despite it being super full of attempted rape. But it's cool, because it feels like I can draw a straight line between it and some shoujo manga that are currently running, like The Water Dragon's Bride or Yona of the Dawn. Also it gives me decent grounds for anyone who starts trying to tell me that isekai is a New! Radical! Never-Before-Seen! thing, because a) portal fantasies have existed FOREVER, and b) everything I hear about Super Dark And Edgy Isekai sounds boring as fuck and less dark than the shoujo manga that was doing this shit twenty-odd years ago. Yes I am bored of harem anime and yes I can disect them on a critical level, do not test me.


• APPARENTLY we did well by presents for Jill! Her housemates did a whip round to collect money for a Switch for her with Pokémon Shield! (Usually Jill and I manage to co-ordinate not getting the same Pokémon game, but eh, fuck it.) Please admire the fact that we talked about how nice it would be if she had a Switch and could play the Horrible Goose game, and my poker face was flawless. But the one I keep getting excited messages from her about is that I bought her this Archer & Olive dot-grid notebook that captainraz recommended, because I knew that Jill liked to use watercolours in her bullet journal and I wanted to buy her something that could keep up with that. Turns out that 160gsm dot grid paper is pretty good? Maybe? Apparently?


• I mostly finished the rabbit that I was making for the kid Jill looks after (I gave Jill the pieces, she assembled it), and apparently he instantly recognised what character it was supposed to be AND liked it! PHEW.


• We hung out with Lex's dad on Boxing Day and it was genuinely nice? Usually I have to field most of the small talk, which stresses me out because I AM NOT MIDDLE-CLASS ENOUGH FOR THIS, but Lex took on a bunch and it was so kind because he doesn't have the class shenaniganry that I do but DOES hate talking to people with the fire of a thousand suns. ... And bless their hearts, talking to his dad and his dad's girlfriend always makes me feel like I'm not doing enough, because they're very nice but so BUSY. Like, their holiday this year was walking a two-week long trail across Portugal? And the fact that I don't actually want to go walking across Portugal doesn't make me feel less bad for not having the time, money, or inclination to do something as adventerous and class-marking as that.


• But yeah, overall this christmas was A Lot but generally positive? I feel a little bad that I'm now a person that my mum has to schedule around for Christmas, because she doesn't want me and Tory-voting brother in the same room, but I'm glad I got to see her.