Is it too early to whine about the holidays?

Parent Cafe
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This is the whole way to go! I was winding myself up about all the gifts I “had to” buy and then in a moment of clarity thought “no, I really don’t” and stopped for everyone except my parents, kids, and inlaws. And nobody cared. The happy gifters weren’t ever looking for reciprocation, the no gifters were relieved of stuff, the clueless shoppers never noticed.

My favorite part of the holidays is having a house absolutely full of people, eating leftovers, helping cook but not really helping, dogs barking, spare and “found” people added in. Hopefully some future day we will even have toddlers underfoot. We bought a wooden tree last year - 6’ - to end the struggle and expense of a live tree. Not quite the same, but learning to adapt and move on is important.

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This is how my D feels, and she embraces it. We have Thanksgiving and Christmas at D’s house with D, SIL, and now a GD. The dog has to be kept from sneaking food off the counter, her normally large enough kitchen seems small as we all move in & out of it, our S joins the fun, and friends come for dinner and/or for dessert.

SIL’s family typically does not join us. His mom has not come to their house since they got a dog almost five years ago. His dad and brother used to come for Thanksgiving if his mom was working (she works retail) - but now that his brother is a doctor, he works on holidays. They all get together for holidays at his mom’s house on a day that works for all of them.

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I am pretty sure links to social media are not okay, so I took a screenshot of this Fb account I follow – if that is also not okay w the mods, just delete it with my apologies but I thought this was worth a read

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For everyone stressing pet boarding, we boarded our dog for a week on a “required” family trip. Had not done that before and the poor dog was traumatized. My husband who did the pick up said he would never do that again

Half a dozen friends of mine, including a couple of uber obsessive dog moms, use TrustedHousesitters.com

You pay to join the site as do the sitters, and the sitter gets to stay in your home for free and you get a free sitter. I have seen these friends do this repeatedly over the past 5 years, all happily.

Me? If I could travel around Europe caring for people’s critters, that would be fun!

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I know everyone has different standards re: pet care. Some people and pets happily go to a puppy day care. Others use in home people. Others - like my husband - are not travelers and DEF not traveling and leaving our dog at home (unless it was with our son). So we don’t do a lot of traveling but if we do its at an AIRBNB that accepts pets!

You get what you get, and honestly I lean with my husband. I could not leave our dog at a facility. I could maybe leave him home with a sitter we and he knew really well.

And when people come to visit we try to be a dog friendly home within reason!

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Alright, can i whine today?

My mom died in April. I have two siblings – a sister who is seven years older than me, has two kids and is finally divorced from a man who I’ve hated since I was a preteen and should probably be in jail. My brother is eight years older than me, married to a woman who has been incredibly rude to me often and done some shady stuff, and they have no kids. My sibs live within 20 mins of each other and lived within 15 minutes of my mom’s house, spending a lot of time there and in mom’s last year one of us always spent the night with her. I live 3+ hours away so I had less of the day-to-day duties but also benefitted less from the help my parents could offer their nearby kids over the years. I’m fine with all of that. I had my reasons for wanting to leave my hometown and don’t regret it for a second.

My brother’s wife keeps asking “what the plans are” for Thanksgiving. I keep reminding her that my sister is flying to see her dd on the East Coast that week. I told her that my dh is working T’giving Day so we are staying put (that schedule isn’t out yet so I’m not positive of that, but he has signed up to work the holiday). She hasn’t offered to host us (mom’s house now isn’t an option, and I’m pretty sure that theirs is a hoarder situation; no one has been inside for more than 10 years), and I haven’t offered to host them, because if you’ve read my other posts, I need space from all these people. I started therapy to figure out how to deal with them as my mother’s health declined and we were forced to spend time together and make decisions. Unless my SIL screws it up (I won’t go into details), we close on the house next week, the third-to-last step in settling the estate.

Just now, she sends a text to me, dh, my sister and a number that I don’t recognize saying that my brother has time off for the first time ever that whole weekend off and does anyone have ideas for what they should do/where should they go? Mind you, she didn’t include my brother on this text chain – her MO is to parse information among groups of people and to withhold info from my brother.

Am I a horrible person for not inviting them here, the first Thanksgiving after our mom died, even though I 1000% don’t want to do it? You should know that I do love my brother even if he drinks too much and is low-key racist and sexist and continues to drag his feet on all things related to resolving our parents’ estate. If I could invite just him I would. But to entertain my SIL after some of the things she’s said to me, especially in the past year – I am not feeling it. AT ALL. She has family near them so I don’t know why spending it with them isn’t an option. Neither of my siblings has driven the 3+ hours to see me in 20 years.

I see my therapist Tuesday and will hash this out, but in the meantime what do the great minds of cc say? It’s OK if you think I’m a horrible person. You can say that.

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Boundaries are healthy and important! You do what you need to do for yourself! And don’t feel badly about it! :people_hugging:

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My complicated thanksgiving plans I think have been hashed out, they have been ever changing.

I was going to son and family, driving to see my mom, then going to daughter’s for thanksgiving day.

My sibling is maybe going to Florida for the holiday, they invited mom. Mom was going to be the martyr and be home by herself (she was mistaken that sibling was going for Christmas and thanksgiving but it’s only thanksgiving)

Last weekend we drove 400 miles each way to see mom and sibling. Did not see our son who lives 2 hours away.

Maybe we can see daughter for thanksgiving, see son the weekend directly after. Son and wife were very nice but her mom is going to be there, we can come but since the other grandma sees granddaughter all the time, maybe we want to stay so we can have one in one time.

Went back to the original plan of seeing son and family the weekend before, daughter on thanksgiving.

I thought we would spend a couple of days at a resort spa, a fun mini vacation.

Daughter then says that she had multiple doctors appointments on Friday. We can come on Tuesday night, she will work from home on Wednesday and we can leave Friday. Kinda an order, she will have tired of us by Friday. Her husband is working the entire time.

I ask is there is any way the appointments could be moved, we are driving 800 miles. Each way. It would be nice to have a day to do things (other than sitting around her townhouse while she monitors and “works” from home). No can do, we have Tuesday through Friday morning.

Now we are tentatively going to this nice resort for a night.

I’m exhausted and a bit out of sorts and I still have almost a month before we go

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Son and fam are going to come to our house after Christmas. That was a happy surprise!

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You are a wonderful person to even be considering whether or not you are because some person is trying to get an invite by dancing around the question.

Stay home, stay well. There’s no law that says we have to soend our whole lives doing the heavy lifting.

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No, you’re not a terrible person! You need to keep healthy boundaries. Your SIL sounds toxic and you don’t need that now!

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It would be easier if my people-pleasing dh wasn’t giving me side-eye about the whole thing. He didn’t know about the past two weeks of side texts to my sister and I until I told him yesterday. Part of telling him yesterday is that I don’t need him making me feel bad. But notice that SIL included dh this morning – she knows that he’s a soft touch. But at least he wasn’t surprised by the text as I had told him that she keeps asking, either because she’s losing her memory or because she hopes that she’ll get a different answer.

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Be thankful for having healthy boundaries and enjoy Thanksgiving the way you want to enjoy it - food, going to the movies, curling up with a book, eating pie - but no guilt. You are not responsible for others plans or happiness :wink:

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Absolutely not! My sympathy and empathy. If you can tolerate an oldmom anecdote: when my daughter got married last November, she didn’t invite her only living uncle, my brother who is definitely mentally ill–my armchair diagnosis is borderline personality disorder. In addition to doing hateful things to me over the years, he committed a terrible insult to my very small maternal family. He did come to my oldest niece’s rehearsal dinner and everyone was walking around on brass tacks. I decided not to invite him to the wedding-following-day breakfast–I think he and his partner would have come, but why???It’s not like he would have written a big check (Medicare/Medicaid for him and definitely big hypochondria; they live hand-to-mouth but order food, take taxis, keep a car in Manhattan, etc.). It would just have made everyone including the bride (but not them!!!) very uncomfortable. You do whatever you want to do to have an amazing holiday! xoxoxoxo

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delete

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You’re likely to have some complicated feelings about your mom during the first TG she’s not there. Don’t invite the sibs. Be kind to yourself. Watch football with friends while DH is at work!

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Answer her that your plans are to stay home, alone, and maybe have a dinner out with your husband on a day that isn’t Thanksgiving. If they push, say that you are not up to hosting people right now.

Or have them to dinner on a day when your sister is home too. Not thanksgiving.

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No judgement here. The next time your SIL asks what are the Thanksgiving plans, just tell her what YOUR plans are. Tell her that your DH is signed up to work that day, so you weren’t planning on hosting a group at your place. Then turn the tables around and ask her something like, “What are YOU guys thinking of doing?”

…because let’s be honest here…the real reason she keeps bringing it up is because she probably wants YOU to host that day but she doesn’t want to flat out ask that directly.

And whatever you end up doing, don’t feel guilty about it. This holiday season will be Thanksgiving & Xmas #2 since my MIL died and DH & his sister have yet to do Thanksgiving or Xmas together. In fact, the last time we all had either of those holidays together was 6 yr ago. And the time before that was like 6 yr prior.

I used to turn myself into knots over the holidays in order to make everybody happy, but instead I ended up getting myself really stressed out about it every year.

So instead, make some plans with friends on another day NEAR Thanksgiving, for example.

This Thanksgiving, we’re having 2 sets of friends over. So it’ll be the 4 of us (me, DH, D24, D26), a husband & wife who we’ve been friends with a really long time, and a local friend who is very recently divorced and won’t have his kid with him on Thanksgiving day (he & DH have known each other for over 30 yr). The divorced friend is a ‘salt of the earth’ kind of guy, would give you the shirt off his back. Meanwhile, my SIL (DH’s sister) can’t be bothered to answer phone calls or text messages, so whatever…we’ll invest our time in people who actually want to hang out with us.

…because good friends are family, too.

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I have heard great things about people who house sit from there.

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Keep her away is my vote.

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