4:30 am Christmas morning. We went to The Friends house for Christmas Eve dinner. The champagne was in her hand 5 minutes after we got there. It’s been a good few days — the ones before were the usual absenteeism — but today was great. I knew this would happen at the party though.
Shortly in to the party she was having a loud and semi-coherent political argument. I stayed away and played with S in the corner.
Later on I’m wanting to get us out of there because we still have lots of presents to wrap and I know at this point I’m doing it on my own. But she’s holding court. Then she’s having some involved conversation with The Host and our daughter, D. I don’t get it and don’t want to. I go back to playing with S.
I make another attempt to get us out of there and she’s talking to someone else. She asks for a new glass of wine. Finally I hand her her jacket. She drains the rest of the wine and puts it down. 10 mins later we leave. (We got there at 6, this was about 11).
In the car I settle in for the usual, but D surprises me. She says to W, “something, something, something…. (about the discussion they were having)… so then right after that The Host says he was trying to bail me out, and that you saying that because you’re drunk.” My muscles tighten and I expect an explosion. Instead W launches into a rambling nonsensical explanation of what he really meant. It made no sense. W asked more questions. I said, “can you talk about this later. We need to settle down so S can go to sleep.” She’s mad at me for that but is quiet.
For a minute.
Then she finds a work email on her phone to tell me about. Then she’s telling me about it loudly. I ask her to keep it down. I get the pissed expression. Then she goes back to discussing the email. Then she starts tell me about her new boss. She gets louder again. I give up on getting S to sleep. D pipes in and they start discussing something new. I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard I expect to find dents the next day. Miraculously he falls asleep.
We get home and I put S in bed. D goes off to bed. W tells me that I should go to bed and she needs to go answer this work mail. Seriously. On Christmas fucking eve. I think she’s forgotten. She spends an hour doing that (I tell her ok because I’m just not going to argue) and I start wrapping the santa presents. She comes down and sees me doing that and starts helping. I think she honestly had forgotten but smoothly covers it.
I convince her to just go to bed, but she remembers she has to prepare the turkey. So she does that and goes to bed. I finish wrapping and cleaning (I have high standards about the living room on Christmas morning), clean up the turkey stuff and start writing this at 4:30 in the morning.
But just for the hell I remember that something was bad about Christmas last year but I don’t recall the details. So I go look at this entry. Bad thing about this blog is that I can actually go back and relive this shit.
