Rethink That

The debate continues on where Audrey is to spend the holidays. Sam doesn’t want her for Thanksgiving. He doesn’t want to be around anyone. He said he has become disimpassioned by the holiday season now that he doesn’t have a family to celebrate it with. He was quick to qualify that he wasn’t going to miss spending the holidays with me since I get so bitchy [I will say this is true – I always end up hosting, and the year I hosted for his family I was driven up the wall by their inability to clean up each present’s wrapping directly after its opening – OCD? Guilty as charged. And I tend to get a wee obsessed and stressed over the hosting duties. I am in serious need of a chill pill, so I am filling my prescription now so I am plenty laid back in time for this year, because really there is no need to be Martha Stewart. At the end the meal will be eaten, the leftovers in the fridge (in color-coded and neatly labeled containers, of course) and the guests stuffed. The results are always the same, so why freak out about the need for 17 separate dishes just because we have them every year?]

So I am fine with having Audrey for Thanksgiving. I am hosting the darn thing, so I might as well have my dear child there turning up her nose at everything that isn’t on Gramma’s plate, because Gramma’s food is all she wants. Turkey is apparently inedible if it is not sitting in front of my mother.

So having Audrey for Thanksgiving means I will have her for the entirety of my Thanksgiving break, which isn’t bad per se, but a lusciously lovely four-day weekend, well of course it is better with a three year-old. What else would I do? So I will take her from her disillusioned father and enjoy the time spent with her and plan lots of fabulous activities that will involve more than listening to Christmas music and filling ourselves on pumpkin pie and turkey salad sandwiches. It will be great. Just great.

So then there’s Christmas. Sam only wants her for Christmas morning. What? Say that again? You only want her for my favorite part of the Christmas experience (aside from whole honoring the birth of Christ bit)? Are my ears clean? Am I hearing you right? I don’t think so buddy. That isn’t exactly the way it works here. To be honest I don’t truly know how it works, but I don’t think that’s it. I don’t mind taking her for Christmas, but if I am going to have her for Christmas, I better get Christmas morning too. Got it?

We really need to work through this whole custody arrangement bit again. This really isn’t fun. Luckily there have been no arguments (well loud ones anyway) and the majority of our conversations take place during the workday, so Audrey never overhears it. We have done a wonderful job, I think, of sheltering her from any of this business.

Why haven’t they developed some sort of test to give couples that will tell them whether a marriage will last between them? There has got to be something. But if I had taken that test, would I have listened to it? I didn’t listen to my own mother’s advice.