Friday, December 25

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

I managed to be in a good mood today, and not dwell on having just a small, simple Christmas.

Truthfully, I only "sort of" miss having big Christmas gatherings. I loved the ones we had when I was a kid, when everyone played cards all night and we had a great time. Everything is different when you're an adult.

I honestly don't mind that I don't have to go have Christmas with my husband's side of the family. I truly enjoyed a few people in his family, but I never felt comfortable with his parents. I also never felt like a grown up there, as his parents never seem capable of treating either one of us as autonomous beings. My husband seems to revert into some kind of "parent-pleasing" machine, focusing on them the whole time we're around them and almost becoming a different person. I feel like I could just drop off the face of the Earth and no one would notice, not even my husband, when I'm around his family. I am fine with not doing any kind of Christmas with them.

I miss my own family at Christmas, but it can be stressful too, and like I've said, it's not the same as when you were a kid.

Maybe after having this odd life of mostly just me and my husband, or being alone so much, has permanently altered me. I DO like doing things on my own terms, doing them on my timeline, and not having to compete for attention or have to be part of a group. If I don't feel like doing something, most of my life I just don't do it. Yes, I do the things I need to do, but a lot of other things are optional. Sort of like a very pampered only child.

Even when I WAS a kid, though not an only child (youngest of nine kids), I liked my autonomy, and I got a lot of it. My Mom wasn't a "joiner", and I didn't do a lot of group things. I had to go to school and certain chores, and that's about all I "had" to do at home. At my husband's parent's place, from the moment you get up till the moment you go to bed, you feel like they are directing your every moment. They do this when they come to our house, too. I'm not wired that way.

Anyhow, it turned out to be a nice day. Even when my husband's father could be overheard on the phone, making little jabs about me being a vegetarian and obviously wrecking Christmas food for my husband ("if you leave now, you could still get turkey").

We made a supper that was pretty tasty, just for us. We made tabbouleh salad, cranberry sauce, quinoa, and topped the quinoa with a coconut milk curry that had peas and paneer in it that was really good. We had a super tasty red wine that was sweet and slightly fizzy.

Earlier in the day we went for a walk at our park down the road, and it was a fairly mild day, and really nice to be outside.

After supper, we watched "Miracle on 34th Street" and "Die Hard", and even though it was a simple day, it was plenty.