gonzai | Christmas, Not So Great

Christmas Eve, Mike didn't snark too much, except for complaining about our artificial tree. I told him if he was willing to go out, buy a tree, ship it to my house, put it up, decorate it, take it down after Christmas, take it to recycling and do that *every year*, then sure, we’d have a ‘real’ tree. There were no more comments about the tree.

Christmas…the younger nephew was obsessed with building Lego sets and barely acknowledged anyone. The older one was obsessed with their latest game system (4th system, for those counting) and wouldn’t do anything else. I wound up reading the guidebook to my Kindle because everyone but the little guy was busy playing video games. My brother only acknowledged me to make openly snarky remarks (“people who have *real* jobs don’t work Christmas week”, collecting anything is a sign of mental illness, etc) and finally at dinner, he launched several insults in quick succession at me, I snapped back, and he told me to leave. Then Mom was upset, because I was her ride home so if I left she felt she had to leave and she didn’t want to go, so his in-laws had to talk him into letting *our mother* stay. I doubt I’ll be invited back anytime soon and honestly, I don’t want to go. I’ve had enough crap from Mr 1%.