My side of the family is boring, except for the cousin who keeps trying to friend my sister and I on FB, and we reject all of his requests, because he molested my cousin when she was a child.

All the gossip is D related, and comes from his ex, and you know all that -- that she's kinda crazy, and money-grubbing and mean. Although I DID find out --she is a local area editor for Patch, the AOL local news site thing -- that Patch really IS going down the tubes, so it's likely she'll be losing her job this year. I mean, I've been following the Net gossip about it, but she had another area Patch editor over for dinner, and they were talking, and apparently it's pretty much a given that Patch.com is going down.

Part of me is all "Heh" because she's all I R SERIOUS JOURNALIST IMPORTANT POLITICO (@@) and she's...not, but part of me is worried about how it will affect M. She's even crazier when she's more stressed than her usual state of High DRAHHHHMA make her. Also, her writing is not that great.

She made noises about getting a family rate on my resumes -- after being condescending about being "I'm a writer; how hard can it BE to write a good resume?" Her editor friend popped up and said, "Well, no, writing a resume is a real art" and I mentioned my resumes and covers cost between $250 and $500, and THAT impressed her. She also "joked" about how I should freelance copyedit for her, and I said sure; my CE rates are $40/hour. THAT ended the convo.

Again, @@.

Oh, also, I looked GORGEOUS the entire time I was there. And M kept saying things like "Erin is ALWAYS READING when I am at her house. She reads so many books so fast!" and she was kind of snotty: "I wish *I* had time to read more..." and I was all casual, "Oh, it's not a big deal. I'm slammed most the time, but since I can read 6 or 7 books in a day, and it's part of my job, it's not really a big deal..."

BOO-YA!

And she HAD to go to a meeting, and she was all "M needs his jeans changed, his nails clipped and the playroom cleaned."

45 minutes later, it was all done with no arguments or back talk. He argued with her, and her MO is to yell or demand stuff of him, and he gets all arguey and pouty and sad, and all I have to do is raise an eyebrow or start counting down from 10 and he does what I want and is cheerful about it.

I take GREAT shallow satisfaction from this...

I R petty. That's my gossip. However, we did rub along fairly well the entire time, and I was very helpful, and I did have moments of fun, so it wasn't tat bad.

(loves pretty petty Erin SO MUCH)

I could almost feel sorry for D. It's not her fault you're so fabulous and a Step-Kid Whisperer to boot.

Believe me, I wouldn't be petty if she weren't such a really basically awful person is so many ways. I would be perfectly happy to have her just be a normal harried ex, but everything is such a hateful, screaming mess on her part whenever the slightest thing happens (not just with D and I; I saw it with her current DH and with her sister and from people she used to know in KC) and she never take personal responsibility.

Usually I am too lazy for petty...but this time, it's personal.

I am hoping TJ's plus the pet store can accomplish most of the above.

TJs on Christmas Eve? You are a braver woman than I.

We got up early to bake, since today is lunch with Dad and then dinner with Mom and Stepdad (plus Stepdad's small yet incredibly loud and chaotic extended family), so we have to get out the door by 11:30. Mom requested corn muffins for tonight, which are a snap to make, but Tim was also baking schnecken, which uses a yeasted dough, so there was rising time involved [that's what she said] and other complicated shit I don't know about. So we had a complex schedule worked out of what baking stages of which baked good would happen when.

And it all actually worked on schedule! In this house, that's a frigging Christmas miracle.

The great thing is, Erin, that by not going the ultra-glam route you were able to show her up by just being yourself and being better at life in general, thus depriving her of the satisfaction she'd get from you trying to show her up.

I think you're right, Matt. I'm glad I went the way I did.

And with that, we are off to Iowa!! To my sane in-law's! Woo!

Living well is also the most classy revenge.

I should have left about three hours ago. I'm still not ready to leave. SIGH

My family is too dull for there to be any really drama, but my nieces are making up for it with daily teenage drama.

Which makes me want to laugh and laugh at my sister, because I am not very nice and she deserves it.

The great thing is, Erin, that by not going the ultra-glam route you were able to show her up by just being yourself and being better at life in general, thus depriving her of the satisfaction she'd get from you trying to show her up.

It helps that Erin's base-level glam is pretty high.

I've decided to rotate watching different versions of A Christmas Carol every year. So we watched the musical version - Scrooge - with Albert Finney from 1970 last night. I saw this in theaters when I was a kid.

Finney's not the greatest Scrooge. He sort of plays him like he's got a toothache the whole time. But he's too good an actor to ruin the role or anything. And the music is good, and the production is excellent, and there are Victorian Street Urchins (tm) who say "Thank you, guv'nor."

This production probably has my favorite Cratchit family, though. Very winning, and a likeable Tiny Tim are key. Also it has the rousing "Thank You Very Much" song which is practically the "76 Trombones" of 1970 and had Matilda dancing around the living room.

JZ is parked directly in front of the heater trying to warm herself. We're both sucking up coffee and nibbling on toasted banana bread slathered in butter. We've got a lot of cleaning to do before EM and Emmett come over. EM will make the xmas eve dinner (Matilda and Emmett have lobbied hard for duck). She'll spend the night, and Emmett will sleep on the couch in front of the xmas tree which he loves.

It'll be a good xmas morning because Emmett is going to Flip Out With Joy when he gets his present. He's been such a trooper this year dealing with all the early commutes via BART by himself (it's really hard on a 15 y.o. to get up at 5:30am) that I asked JZ's family to combine their moneys for one mega present. We were just going to get a refurbished 1.0 iPad, but his uncles in NYC decided they'd make up the difference and he's getting the new one.

I need to get a few more stocking stuffers but that won't require a trip to the Mall.