OT: Christmas Parties from Hell

[mauconnfan]

Ok I thought this would be a great time for yet another "OT" much to the chagrin of some!

Does anyone else have 1 or 2 holiday parties which they have to go to every year and you just dread it right up until your wife says "C'mon turn the damn TV/Mac off it's time to go. We can't be too late"????

Well that message is going to come any second so I better make this one quick. I mean it's her family (mine isn't better but they're just smart enough not have one LOL) and they play fn games all night sitting around in the living room, with no room and hardly drinking at all. I mean we're talking secret santa * and dollar bills exchanges and $1 lottery tickets in another game with 30 grown ups who don't even want to watch football or college basketball. I have a few nippers to throw in my pockets to stay sane but the fact is, when this is over finally (i already can't wait) I will come home and get on this computer to bring myself back to earth! Anyone else have these functions from hell? Ugghhhhh

Wish me luck

 

[CTBasketball]

God speed, mau. God speed.

 

[dsturdy5]

Condolences Mau. We have our family party tomorrow afternoon and it shapes up to be bad because

1. It's at 1pm and several of us will want to watch the Pats game. There is a tv but it uses friggin rabbit ears, the picture quality is that of the 1930's.

2. My cousin is making her triumphant return after walking out on the family last summer. Our family typically fawns over her and her kids like they are the saviors. This is going to be awkward.

3. My favorite cousin is still on his honeymoon and will not be there.

4. My mother hosts and when she hosts more than a few people her anxiety hits 100 thus she starts drinking by 10 am and is all over my wife and I from the start. (Caveat, my aunt actually plans, organizes, and sets up but it's at a club house in my mothers condo complex so she takes ownership).

5. My wife always volunteers to bake, she's good at it. But she also gets very overwhelmed by her plans and I can't step in to help guide, organize, etc. I just take over menial jobs where I can but this leads to a ton of stress in our house (commencing momentarily).

 

[whaler11]

It must be a party from the past if they use rabbit ears and they have static in their picture...

 

[Cheeky]

. . . and hardly drinking at all.

No thank you.

 

[dsturdy5]

It must be a party from the past if they use rabbit ears and they have static in their picture...

It's a digital antenna that can't pick up local ota signals making the image wobbly and unreliable.

 

[8893]

Mau, yours sounds like prison.

Dsturdy, yours sounds like another day in paradise. Put on a good buzz yourself and ride it out. And if you start to get depressed, think of a somewhat sober Mau (sneaking nippers) playing charades with his sober in-laws.

 

[Devland]

About 25 years ago we used to go to a xmas party at one of my wife's elderly aunt's house. She used to keep the house at about 80 degrees. Then she would keep asking everyone if they were warm enough. I used to tell my wife I was taking up smoking for one day a year so I had an excuse to go outside and cool down.

 

[UconnU]

I was expecting more stories about coworkers getting drunk and embarrassing themeselves itt.

Unfortunately I dont have any of these stories to supply. I did go to a wedding once where the brides alcoholic mother had to get her stomach pumped in the parking lot after passing out on the dance floor.

 

[jleves]

When I was a kid my parents would host a party on Christmas Eve for family and friends. We would typically have upwards of 100 people show up. Traditionally my father and I would go to City Fish to get shrimp and crab for the event and on the way home he would stop at Caldors and let me pick my big gift for the year. My mom would cook for two days and somehow manage to feed everyone and still have leftovers. My father would make this killer punch with a bottle of all the standard alcohols, frozen strawberries an sherbet. Every year some teetotaler would decide she could handle a second glass and get ripped. My parents families were not big partiers so for them I'm sure it was the party from hell. They would clear out by 8pm. Around 10, my parents would let us open our gifts because there was no way they wanted to get up at 6am the next morning. The party might start dieing out around 2 or 3am. The next morning we would get up pretty early to play with our new stuff and we would find random people on couches. Sometimes there would still be 3 or 4 people sitting at the bar.

Now I get to go to my wife's parent's church to watch them sing in a cantata for about 90 minutes on Sunday evening. After they are done singing, we go to the common room with bad baked goods to fellowship (I think that's what they call it) for an hour or so. It's always over 80 in there and I've worn my Xmas sweater because that's what I should wear - it's Christmas! Then we go back to their house for some veggies and dip and tamales (I hate tamales). At any moment a game of Mexican Train (domino game) can break out that can run until 1am. There is no alcohol offered. There are no TVs on. This year it just happens to be when Arizona and Seattle play - the only Sunday Night game for Arizona all year with home field advantage through the Superbowl on the line. Trust me - I would take the TV with rabbit ears!

Maybe this is why I have become jaded to tragedy.

 

[whaler11]

When I was a kid my parents would host a party on Christmas Eve for family and friends. We would typically have upwards of 100 people show up. Traditionally my father and I would go to City Fish to get shrimp and crab for the event and on the way home he would stop at Caldors and let me pick my big gift for the year. My mom would cook for two days and somehow manage to feed everyone and still have leftovers. My father would make this killer punch with a bottle of all the standard alcohols, frozen strawberries an sherbet. Every year some teetotaler would decide she could handle a second glass and get ripped. My parents families were not big partiers so for them I'm sure it was the party from hell. They would clear out by 8pm. Around 10, my parents would let us open our gifts because there was no way they wanted to get up at 6am the next morning. The party might start dieing out around 2 or 3am. The next morning we would get up pretty early to play with our new stuff and we would find random people on couches. Sometimes there would still be 3 or 4 people sitting at the bar.

Now I get to go to my wife's parent's church to watch them sing in a cantata for about 90 minutes on Sunday evening. After they are done singing, we go to the common room with bad baked goods to fellowship (I think that's what they call it) for an hour or so. It's always over 80 in there and I've worn my Xmas sweater because that's what I should wear - it's Christmas! Then we go back to their house for some veggies and dip and tamales (I hate tamales). At any moment a game of Mexican Train (domino game) can break out that can run until 1am. There is no alcohol offered. There are no TVs on. This year it just happens to be when Arizona and Seattle play - the only Sunday Night game for Arizona all year with home field advantage through the Superbowl on the line. Trust me - I would take the TV with rabbit ears!

Maybe this is why I have become jaded to tragedy.

Hopefully no one tries to cross a street.

 

[jleves]

Hopefully no one tries to cross a street.

Don't know if you read the last line I added as an edit.

I guess I get to live with that monkey on my back for a while. I liked the Colorado anchor better.

 

[whaler11]

Don't know if you read the last line I added as an edit.

I guess I get to live with that monkey on my back for a while. I liked the Colorado anchor better.

I read it. It just makes it worse.

 

[jleves]

I read it. It just makes it worse.

I've lost you forever, haven't I?

 

[whaler11]

I've lost you forever, haven't I?

I am about the least sensitive person here so no...

99.99% of people make bad decisions. 99.95% of us are lucky and get away with it - over and over.

Even if you are the one in ten thousand who never drove drunk or had unprotected sex or dove into a shallow pool or texted while driving or tried cocaine or handled poisonous snakes or surfed in Australia or went skydiving or picked a bar fight or played golf in a thunder storm... you still have to understand if someone gets killed in an accident it's not a reflection on the person.

 

[jibsey]

When I was a kid my parents would host a party on Christmas Eve for family and friends. We would typically have upwards of 100 people show up. Traditionally my father and I would go to City Fish to get shrimp and crab for the event and on the way home he would stop at Caldors and let me pick my big gift for the year. My mom would cook for two days and somehow manage to feed everyone and still have leftovers. My father would make this killer punch with a bottle of all the standard alcohols, frozen strawberries an sherbet. Every year some teetotaler would decide she could handle a second glass and get ripped. My parents families were not big partiers so for them I'm sure it was the party from hell. They would clear out by 8pm. Around 10, my parents would let us open our gifts because there was no way they wanted to get up at 6am the next morning. The party might start dieing out around 2 or 3am. The next morning we would get up pretty early to play with our new stuff and we would find random people on couches. Sometimes there would still be 3 or 4 people sitting at the bar.

Now I get to go to my wife's parent's church to watch them sing in a cantata for about 90 minutes on Sunday evening. After they are done singing, we go to the common room with bad baked goods to fellowship (I think that's what they call it) for an hour or so. It's always over 80 in there and I've worn my Xmas sweater because that's what I should wear - it's Christmas! Then we go back to their house for some veggies and dip and tamales (I hate tamales). At any moment a game of Mexican Train (domino game) can break out that can run until 1am. There is no alcohol offered. There are no TVs on. This year it just happens to be when Arizona and Seattle play - the only Sunday Night game for Arizona all year with home field advantage through the Superbowl on the line. Trust me - I would take the TV with rabbit ears!

Maybe this is why I have become jaded to tragedy.

If this is a contest. You win. Condolences.

 

[John]

When I was a kid my parents would host a party on Christmas Eve for family and friends. We would typically have upwards of 100 people show up. Traditionally my father and I would go to City Fish to get shrimp and crab for the event and on the way home he would stop at Caldors and let me pick my big gift for the year. My mom would cook for two days and somehow manage to feed everyone and still have leftovers. My father would make this killer punch with a bottle of all the standard alcohols, frozen strawberries an sherbet. Every year some teetotaler would decide she could handle a second glass and get ripped. My parents families were not big partiers so for them I'm sure it was the party from hell. They would clear out by 8pm. Around 10, my parents would let us open our gifts because there was no way they wanted to get up at 6am the next morning. The party might start dieing out around 2 or 3am. The next morning we would get up pretty early to play with our new stuff and we would find random people on couches. Sometimes there would still be 3 or 4 people sitting at the bar.

Now I get to go to my wife's parent's church to watch them sing in a cantata for about 90 minutes on Sunday evening. After they are done singing, we go to the common room with bad baked goods to fellowship (I think that's what they call it) for an hour or so. It's always over 80 in there and I've worn my Xmas sweater because that's what I should wear - it's Christmas! Then we go back to their house for some veggies and dip and tamales (I hate tamales). At any moment a game of Mexican Train (domino game) can break out that can run until 1am. There is no alcohol offered. There are no TVs on. This year it just happens to be when Arizona and Seattle play - the only Sunday Night game for Arizona all year with home field advantage through the Superbowl on the line. Trust me - I would take the TV with rabbit ears!

Maybe this is why I have become jaded to tragedy.

it's funny, I had no idea what a Mexican train was before I read your post, but if some dude came up to me and told me he was doing a Mexican train on Christmas eve, I'd have thought he was either doing some kind of Yuletide orgy or blowing an awful lot of coke.

 

[mauconnfan]

jleves, I wish I read about yours before I left tonight I would have felt wonderful about that last 4 hours.

Actually good news, my wife and I helped her best friend move today so she was very tired and sore. We got out about 1-2 hours early and I am now ready to watch any college basketball which is available to me. Tomorrow me and the recliner will be best friends.

 

[Dove]

Ok I thought this would be a great time for yet another "OT" much to the chagrin of some!

Does anyone else have 1 or 2 holiday parties which they have to go to every year and you just dread it right up until your wife says "C'mon turn the damn TV/Mac off it's time to go. We can't be too late"????

Well that message is going to come any second so I better make this one quick. I mean it's her family (mine isn't better but they're just smart enough not have one LOL) and they play fn games all night sitting around in the living room, with no room and hardly drinking at all. I mean we're talking secret santa * and dollar bills exchanges and $1 lottery tickets in another game with 30 grown ups who don't even want to watch football or college basketball. I have a few nippers to throw in my pockets to stay sane but the fact is, when this is over finally (i already can't wait) I will come home and get on this computer to bring myself back to earth! Anyone else have these functions from hell? Ugghhhhh

Wish me luck

Do they love to play Left-Right-Center?

 

[sledog]

The story about the woman getting her stomach pumped gets hi marks. I can also visuaize people still sitting at the bar at 6am. I guess they were helping Santa?

 

[CAHUSKY]

Be grateful that
1. You have family
2. They are nearby
3. They want to spend time with you
Someday you'll look back and realize how lucky you were to attend these parties from hell.

 

[mauconnfan]

Do they love to play Left-Right-Center?

YES they do. We played last night for sure - a big circle with 30 people passing gifts back and forth.

My son's Ms RIGHT (his girlfriend) LEFT a winner! LOL

 

[intlzncster]

Ok I thought this would be a great time for yet another "OT" much to the chagrin of some!

Does anyone else have 1 or 2 holiday parties which they have to go to every year and you just dread it right up until your wife says "C'mon turn the damn TV/Mac off it's time to go. We can't be too late"????

Well that message is going to come any second so I better make this one quick. I mean it's her family (mine isn't better but they're just smart enough not have one LOL) and they play fn games all night sitting around in the living room, with no room and hardly drinking at all. I mean we're talking secret santa * and dollar bills exchanges and $1 lottery tickets in another game with 30 grown ups who don't even want to watch football or college basketball. I have a few nippers to throw in my pockets to stay sane but the fact is, when this is over finally (i already can't wait) I will come home and get on this computer to bring myself back to earth! Anyone else have these functions from hell? Ugghhhhh

Wish me luck

Sounds like you just need to smoke a bit of weed beforehand. That should do the trick.

Put that one in your pipe and smoke it for next year's party.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

Mau, it's simple, If they stock the bar well you are set. If they don't, bring a bottle of something and remain close to it all evening.

 

[CL82]

I just was at a pretty decent one. The hostess described her relationship with her mother using interpretive dance. Needless to say it was after the tequila shots had come out.