Heather Christena Schmidt

Here we go.

I woke up this morning at 5 o’clock. I had no reason to, other than that I was so angry even my dreams didn’t want to be near me.

It’s finally here: Heather’s Holiday Hostility.

This happens every year. For one, I hate the fucking holidays. They’re full of greed, gluttony, and bullshit obligations I shouldn’t feel I always have to keep. For two, my family is all the way across the country in the homeland – holidays just aren’t the same without them. A third, and glaring, part of Heather’s Holiday Hostility is simply:  California. It’s fucking 83 degrees outside and the middle of November. Sorry if it’s hard for me to get all into the season of snow and winter and egg nog when the goddamned air conditioning is on high and I’m trying to find tank tops that say Ho Ho Ho.

Those are just a few reasons though. Honestly I have a lot more than that, but as we get into the 7 day countdown to Thanksgiving, I have a much more pressing issue to discuss. I hate you all.

I Hate You All and Your Thankful Posts

I’ve pretty much beaten this dead horse enough at this point, but I want to say one more thing about these thankful posts.

I don’t hate you for doing them.

I don’t hate you for not being original.

Sure, I told you to shut the fuck up a few weeks ago in my STFU Friday post, but it was just an opinion that if you are going to be thankful you should (a) be thankful through out the entire year, not just one general time; and (b) find some important things to be thankful for besides your iPhone5.

Do you know why I hate you all and your thankful posts, though? Because you can’t allow anyone to descent from your stupid holiday Facebook game. You can’t allow anyone to have an opinion other than yours. And when I posted my STFU Friday post, which I thought I was quite nice in about my feelings on the whole Facebook thankful thing I might add, I got the following message and subsequent Facebook friend deletion from someone I have known for my entire life:

“Shut the fuck up with your STFU blog crap. Get a fucking life and fuck off. I hope I read about your funeral on my iPhone5 that I am thankful for.”

Right. Happy holidays to you too.

I Hate You All and Your “Something Better Came Up”

My biggest problem with the holiday season is it always feels like everyone is competing to do it better. To do it bigger. And I think this is much in part to the fact that so many people seem to be out looking for what is better than the next guy’s crap.

Last year on Christmas Day we went to my Aunt’s house. Her ungrateful children showed up with their ungrateful children for presents about four hours late. They came in, still in pajamas, and said “let’s get this show on the road.” Then the four of them (my cousin, his wife, and their two children) proceeded to just rip open gift after gift after gift, not paying attention to who they were from, not thanking anyone, and actually saying “great… what’s next” after a few of the gifts. Then when they were done, they said they had to go to the “better house” – my cousin’s dad’s place.

Flash forward to now, we are hosting an open house this Saturday for Thanksgiving. That same cousin and his bitch of a wife, and two uneducated and wild children, committed to come about a month ago. When I saw them a few weeks ago at my grandma’s birthday party, they again said they would definitely be there. This would be the first time, ever in history, that they showed up to one of our parties, which is particularly frustrating because we constantly go to their kid’s birthday parties and they have never – not once – come to ours.

So Tuesday night I had dinner with my mom and she broke the news to me that this entire faction of the family was not coming to our party Saturday after all. We aren’t talking about just this cousin, wife and kids, though. We are talking about 3/4 of the people who said they were coming and I’ve already prepared the food for. Why? I quote: “because something better came up.”

I Hate You All and Your Intentional Exclusions

So before I talk about how I wasn’t planning on going to anyone’s Thanksgiving dinners anyway, let me first say how much it hurts to be intentionally excluded.

For two years in a row now, my aunt has hosted Thanksgiving dinner at her palatial estate in the IE. That’s right, for those of you that aren’t familiar with California it’s the Inland Empire, and you can’t drive through her area without fearing death.

Still, the entire family descends on this place for most parties, which is quite a trek for the majority of us. We’ve gone to birthday parties for afore mentioned asshole kids there, we went to Christmas there last year, we’ve gone to BBQs and other miscellaneous parties there, and so on.

And yet for some reason, my husband and I are intentionally excluded from Thanksgiving there every year.

I’m not entirely sure why. I can’t – for the life of me – figure it out. It can’t be that they just dislike us, because they invite us to everything else there. It can’t be that there is certain company around that wouldn’t mesh, because it is the same company every goddamned time. So just what the fuck is it?

It’s starting to get pretty insulting too. My bitchy mother keeps mentioning it then retracting her statement and saying “never mind, you weren’t invited.” Well I hate you and your “never mind, you weren’t invited;” and I hate you all and your intentional exclusions too.

I Hate You All and Your Unreasonable Expectations

That’s the other thing, though. Yes, it hurts to be intentionally excluded from an event, especially a family one. It’s nice for people to offer invites, to extend a warm offering. But when in the fuck did an invitation turn into an obligation?

If I say I’m going to come, well then I have an obligation. But if you invite me and I say “I’ll have to check and get back to you,” or “sorry we have other plans” – now I’m some fucking asshole? What the fuck is wrong with you people?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong: we live in an all or nothing society now. You either do everything I say or you are out.

Beyond that are the expectations of those closest to us. First of all, my father and I have had a tradition since we moved here – we go out to eat on Thanksgiving. We miss our family in Chicago, and I hate to cook … so we’ve always done that. Year in. Year out. It never fails. Always.

But then I got married and sometime in the last few years my husband ordered some sort of a girlie, cosmopolitan-type drink, and my dad got embarrassed. Now my dad’s embarrassment was stupid; and my husband’s drink choice that day was stupid too. But who does it come down on? Me. Now my dad doesn’t want to go out to eat and my husband still wants a traditional meal; and I really really REALLY don’t want to spend the day driving from place to place putting on a fake smile and pretending I love all the people at my in-law’s, so guess what?

I hate you and the fact that now I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Tears are welling up in the back of my eyes at this very moment at the thought of all the cooking that lays out before me. I suggested hosting this party on Saturday so that I could relax on Thanksgiving; now I have an eight course meal to plan out.

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 7: I Hate You All. Next up on the docket? Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 6: Meal Planning for Ungrateful Assholes.

By the way … don’t be a turkey and BUY MY BOOK! And if you want it signed, just email me for details on how to get that done and shipped back to you for free! Click here, buy book, woohoo!