26 December 2025
This was the second Christmas with Mom gone.
Not my second Christmas without her. Most of my Christmases were without her. I could probably count on one hand the number that were with. Definitely no more than a hand-and-a-half.
But my first was with her, for sure. And this was her parents’ house, so Pawpaw and Mawmaw were there too.
--
Had to work. It was okay. Last time I worked a holiday I got a weirdo family that trashed the place three days in a row. There was none of that nonsense this time.
GM even got me a little present.
However, it was (as the Scots say) blowin’ a hoolie outside to go along with all the rain, and the power went out as I was near the end of cleanup. The building I was in has one of those idiot alarms with a high-pitched hey stupid, the power’s out! that had me homicidal by the time I got out of there.
And then Neighbor and L had their little gathering at Neighbor’s place. I had attended the one last year. I refused to attend the one this year. Stuart was there.
He was a Facebook friend some years ago, and we kind of hit it off. By the time I moved here May of last year, I was tentatively thinking of him as a friend. Deep Green Resistance had a conference here in town the following August, so I got to meet him in person. By that point, I was starting to think there was Possibility. I was not the only one who thought so. L, who normally takes zero interest in my life, had noticed his apparent interest in me.
Well, we met. We shook hands. We had maybe a ten-minute conversation. And then things went weird. To the effect that I basically had to chase him around just to get more than a handful of words out of him.
He did invite me to British Columbia to help him with a political campaign, but that is when shit got really weird -- leading to me unfriending him on Facebook, him blocking me, him starting a new Facebook months later and sending me a friend request, and me accepting only for him to basically ignore me. I finally gave up and blocked him rather than have to keep seeing the La La, I Can’t Hear You act.
I don’t know what it is. I have some theories. He knew what I looked like, but maybe I’m even uglier in person or something. And I was forever checking him on his endless complaints about “leftists.” (I am tired of leftists being blamed for the behavior of right-wingers.) But apart from those? I got nuthin’.
All I know is it hurt. (Particularly from someone who’s got no room to talk if he’s looks-shaming. I like his looks just fine, but we’re not talking conventionally handsome here.) And everyone we know just kind of pretends it’s not happening; as usual, the man matters more. Well, he can matter out of my sight then. I wasn’t going to spend hours in the same room with him pretending I wasn’t there and everyone else pretending it wasn’t happening. He’s spoken to me a couple times, but nothing of substance and with all the air of Just Being Polite. (He is a politician.) I had no reason to expect anything better and even if I’d gotten it, it would have been an illusion; soon as he was back home again I’d have been back on the naughty step. That I don’t know why I’m sitting on. No fucking thank you.
I want to be around people who like me, not just tolerate me.
And that is that, I suppose.
--
The stress has been messing with me a bit. I’m actually up early with this because I woke around 1:30 to pee, then L woke and had lights on (at one point I heard Parker barking outside), and then my brain just wouldn’t shut the fuck up. I hit the coffee at work anyway, but I will need it today. Meanwhile I thought this might be a better use of Yappy!Brain than tossing and turning.
But my alarm just went off… 3:30. Sigh. Off to the races. ‘Later.