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Post by Nie on Dec 17, 2003 6:57:28 GMT -5
I'm actually not all that fussed about getting all my family together to stuff anymore, mainly cos we've never really all been together to do stuff anyway. Cos my mum and dad seperated when I was 4-5 I'd always have a seperate chistmas with each parent and it never really felt like we were all together doing stuff. When I was with my mum he BF was always there and I always thought of him as an intruder, and I was distant wiht my dad for a long time so It never felt all family like with him.
I feel more like I'm with family if I get to spend quality time with close friends.
My sister was really cruel once and stuck live witchedy grubs (bug white grubs you find under rotting wood and in the ground) in the microwave and cooked them on high until their skin was a dried out shell around their shrivelled inards. You pick them up and skae them and hear their gutsrattling round inside.
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Post by Will on Dec 17, 2003 23:42:02 GMT -5
-nods- That's very true. Close friends are like family. I try to get something nice for them for Christmas. I never really get to hang out with them after school though. Not as much as I'd like to, which is sad. One of my best friends is moving back to Japan in Jan. Oi...
Where would we be without them, eh?
Crap. -gulps- That is very cruel. I'm not all that fond of bugs, but they don't deserve that kind of torture.
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Post by En on Dec 19, 2003 17:31:20 GMT -5
My da's family are very habitual, so they tend to go to the same restaurants over and over. Except, the one we went to for as long as I've been alive finally closed, so now they go to Red Lobster I wish they'd picked a non-chain-place.
Mum and all her children can usually be found in bookstores or libraries, possibly computer labs, and very often in schools, but mostly at home among books.
Really, both of my families are big homebodies. That's kind of weird When they go on vacations, da's family go very fancy and take planned tours, and mum never gets vacations so I dunno what she'd do. Me, I go home a lot but that's because I don't really have a Regular Hangout in Crapids yet, and all the possibilities I've looked at so far have been icky And I definitely don't like planned tours of anything.
I usually do a separate holiday with my friends, because like you two, I've always thought of them as like a family. Last two years, that's been TD; but it used to be the old Dead Poets or the Three Graces (my high school and college gangs, respectively).
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Ivy
Slytherin Alumni
Posts: 2,958
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Post by Ivy on Dec 19, 2003 23:17:16 GMT -5
*dances* Gramma's comin over tomorrow! We're gonna make tamales! I actually cooked the meat for it all by myself! Yeay! But boo...
I don't get to have a seperate holiday for my friends cuz I rarely get to see them. They all live so far away. ;_;
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Post by En on Dec 20, 2003 12:38:41 GMT -5
One thing I do wish is that I had a family (by blood or choice) with whom I could celebrate a holiday in person. Right now, most of my holidays involve being called in by da's family (and yippee! I want to go listen to people snap at each other, complain that each other isn't helping enough, and talk about Jesus!). They can't plan anything more than two days in advance to save their lives, but they get all hot if I already had plans with Mum So then it all turns into this big responsibility: make breadrolls, wrap presents, go over and mediate between fighting relatives, fix Grandpa's computer, help wash dishes or clean up after the gifts, and hope I get 5 minutes to talk to Liz or Liam alone before I need to drive down to Mum's to beat the snow so I can spend a night with her and Lumie.
meh.
Often, my friends are far away too, if only because they have to go to another state or something to be with their families on the hols. But, like, I'd light a couple of candles in my own room, by myself, and say a sort of prayer thing for the people I was closest to, and if some of my friends sent gifts, I'd save them all and open them then.
I try to be on TD at least part of Christmas Day so I can say yo to the people who are able to get on because they have the day free. The candle/gift ceremony thing I don't do anymore, because I've gotten out of the habit of doing gifts at one particular time of the year. But I think this year I'm going to start a new tradition and go write in some yearbooks, and send some pm's. I also think it would be cool if we gave each other links to sites we think we'd like... how does that sound?
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Ivy
Slytherin Alumni
Posts: 2,958
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Post by Ivy on Dec 20, 2003 14:02:14 GMT -5
Hey that's a pretty good idea. Of course that means I to actually look into my list of links further than my few webcomics I've taken to reading... although Lulu has said that she often thinks you'd enjoy reading one of comics we enjoy En. Hm.... *thinks* Well.... *thinks some more* I'm sure I could find something.
My Christmas is usually hectic. We have to balance time at home with the time we spend with both grandmothers. I actually love wrapping gifts and shopping for people. I like giving things to people because I like it when they're happy. It's a wonderful thing to see a person's face light up so I don't really mind all the trouble I have being the lone wrapper of gifts. I just wish I were able to bake....
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Post by En on Dec 20, 2003 15:02:44 GMT -5
I love giving gifts too, I just never know what to get people because half my family are insanely rich and have everything they could ever want But, like, if I could give them house scarves or pick their patroni for them (if they cared) as a gift, that would be lovely. *sigh*
Hm. One of these days, then, I'll have to bake for you. I'll make those little cinnamon twisty things I did a couple of years ago for a party. It's one of those silly Nialle quirks... I can't cook worth two cents, but I can bake, so if I could just live on pies and cookies I'd be fine
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Ivy
Slytherin Alumni
Posts: 2,958
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Post by Ivy on Dec 21, 2003 0:03:30 GMT -5
It's hard for me to buy gifts for people too. They never really give clear answers when you ask them what the want so I have to try and think like them. My father is the most difficult person to buy for. I've bought him DVD's and he hasn't watched any of them. I finally found the one DVD he wants most and I just can't afford it or find it. -_-
Hee hee! You're lucky you're able to bake. I'd offer you tamales but we only make them during Christmas so I don't think you'd really want them once they got to you. *sighs* We made like over 25 dozen tamales today...
Hey... you wanna hear something my grandma (dad's side) told us about our great grandfather?
When he lived in Mexico our great grandfather killed a man. (details unknown) but his father was a well respected member of that community. The town was ready to hang them but my great great grandfather made a deal with someone important and they lived. My great grandfather was sent off to join the revolutionaries and put in the front lines because they figured he'd die there. Well he survived that and sort of um... deserted them and I guess fled to the US and Texas where he made a life until one day when someone caught him making beer or something (so I've heard) and he left Texas for Chicago in the dead of night to avoid being arrested. That's what grandma told us.
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Post by En on Dec 21, 2003 0:15:44 GMT -5
Woohoo! Now that's a story ;D Do you know much about his personality, besides that?
I had a three-greats-uncle who fought for the Confederacy in the US Civil War, and he was wounded in the leg. Back then, a wound anywhere could be fatal because of lead bullets, gangrene, and other general poor healthcare issues... but it wasn't the wound that got him. He was in a building along the Mississippi during one of its feistier months and died when the building collapsed
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Post by Nie on Dec 21, 2003 2:05:27 GMT -5
I never met my Opa (grandfather on dad's side) because he was shot several years before I was even born. I don't know the whole story because I've never felt it appropriate to ask about it, but from what Ive picked up he was shot because a jealous husband thought he was having an affair with his wife. I'm not sure whether he was or not, but yeah. I never met my grandfather.
Then last year I think it was I heard about a great grandmother or great aunt or something whom I never even knew existed was on her death bed and then recovered and she's hoping to come over to Australia to meet the rest of the family.
And my cousin Jeromey that I haven't seen since I was about five is roaming the world somewhere. I haven't heard from him since I was about seven, so it would be nice to catch up with him if I could. I remember him looking after me and stopping me from getting myself into near death situations when I was little.
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Post by Ritsu on Dec 21, 2003 17:39:38 GMT -5
Okay, I'll try and reply to this coherently. Just let me fix something over here, my Cd-drive is being a *cof* erm... bad companion.
So, starting with my origins and all.. I don't think there's much to tell. My dad's side is like.. all Portuguese. My grandfather was born in my town, my grandmother is from the ((very)) North of the country, born in Guimarães. The only important thing about my dad's side is that it's known for it's wealth. Nothing that I'm proud of. I hate them for that, they're snobbish. My mother's side is a bit more complicated to explain, half of it comes from Spain. My great-great-grandfather was Spanish, came to Portugal and married my great-great-grandmother. But we still have family in Spain. They own an ice-cream company. Then the other half of my mother's side comes from a great line of codfish fishers. My greatgrandfather used to be absent for months and months fishing codfish in Norway and in the Artic and stuff like that. So I wouldn't say I'm mixed blooded or anything. I'm just 95% Portuguese with 5% of Spanish blood. Unfortunately.
Christmas Eve is spent with my dad's side and I hate it for that. Because my grandfather is the most unsupportable person ever, and I mean it. He always has a timing for anything. Time to dinner, time to open the gifts, time to go home. It's like, we tell him to come here at 7.30. He gets here a 7.20. Then at 7.30 he starts stressing because my aunt, uncle and cousins aren't here yet. And if they're not here at 7.40 he starts eating without them. Everything has to follow a certain timing so that he's home at 10. And it annoys me. Christmas Eve shouldn't be like that. I like Christmas day much much better, it's spent with my grandmother (mother's side) and parents only. Much quieter and the "family ties" are there. This year will rock, since my grandmother's brother is coming here on purpose and all. It's gonna be nice. I still don't like Christmas though.
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Post by KoNeko on Dec 22, 2003 9:37:00 GMT -5
Cool, so I don't know that much about my Dad's side of the family, we don't see them that often because he sort of tried to get away from them a long time ago, and the last time I met his older brother, I was two years old and he shouted at me for greeting him with the wrong "Uncle" term. (In chinese, there are different terms of uncle/aunt/cousin etc. depending on whether they are older/younger than the person they are related to and whether they are from your mum/dad's side of the family.) So anyway, needless to say, we're not very close to that side of the family. They're all based in Hong Kong (and I think his younger sister is in China) and in any case we don't see them much.
*Not very interesting ranty family history ahead*
When my dad was a kid, they lived in a village in China and during the War his family came to Hong Kong, where they were really poor (in those days, people would stuff their pockets with whatever money they had and either boat or swim down, because the bridges were watched by the Chinese army, and you'd get shot if you were trying to escape ). He went to a school run by missionaries or Franciscan brothers or something, and he learnt how to speak English there, and eventually went to London where he became a doctor- nobody else from his family finished high school- and when he came back him and my mum got married, and from then on, there was even less contact with his family than before, and because now he makes more money than them, they don't really like talking to us or anything. But his background does show sometimes because he gets very hoardy and frugal about things like food and books and clothes and the like, because he never had any as a kid.
Oh, and you want to know something- there is nothing more weird than walking down the streets in the town where you were born and having your father suddenly point out a building and say "see that window there? That's the room where you were conceived."
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Post by En on Dec 22, 2003 16:06:31 GMT -5
More semi-scandal: I had a great-great-uncle who was terrified of wasps. I mean, like, pees in his pants scared. One day he had a hot date with this girl called Evelyn, but when he went to the horse barn to hitch up the trap, he heard wasps buzzing and panicked. So he got his younger brother Weldon and asked him to go in and hitch up the trap. "What for?" Weldon asks, and like the doof he was, Clair said, "I've got a date with Evelyn G______." So Weldon's like, fine, and he goes in and hitches up the horse and... drives off, laughing.
Weldon is my great-grandfather. Evelyn is my great-grandmother. Enough said.
Rita, sympathy... my family are weird about time, too. Da has to have everything on his terms, and time is one way he can push people around, so everything the family does has to be done at a certain time so he doesn't have to drive in the dark "because the headlights on the cars hurt" his eyes. Yuh. Whatever. Let my stepmum drive then. But then he gets into fights about time with my granda, who has a real reason to have things at specific times -- he's diabetic.
Mum's family, which is basically me, Mum, and Lumie, and my brother Joe when he shows up, are like... hey, it's 9pm, are you hungry? Yeah. Wanna order a pizza? Ok, and I'll make brownies. Anyone want to watch a movie? Lumie, if you say "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" I'll cut out your heart with a spoon....
I'm one of those people who hates spending money because I've never had any. So I do a lot of things that annoy people... like there's this postage meter in our office, and I take the time to take stuff out of envelopes to run them through the meter, instead of using the little stickers you can run through and stick on the envelope... they're like, $0.04 apiece... but I'm like, as much mail as we send, that's $60 or $70 a year, I would rather have that money in my pocket than on an envelope. Stupid stuff like that.
Got you beat all over. My da AND my mum, bear in mind that they haven't spoken in 23 years, each took me aside when Phantom Menace came out the week that I graduated college... so they could tell me how cool it was that Ep. 1 came out when I graduated, and I was apparently conceived at Ep. 4 I can never watch the original Star Wars film again.
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Post by Ritsu on Dec 22, 2003 22:42:37 GMT -5
My grandad on my dad's side goes to work at 7 am without no reason at all, the thing opens at 9. But he insists. He gets up at 5 am. And then on Sundays he goes to the shopping mall one hour before it opens and starts ranting at the guards that won't let him in. Can't stand him, believe me.
Funny story from my dad's side: My grandmother's family comes from a city in the North called Guimarães. An historic city, by the way. It was like the capital of the "country" while the lands were being conquered by our kings and all, but that's history and I'm sure that doesn't interest you though i crave my country's history Anyway, people from the North get really strong family bons and above all, bonds with the land, with the city, with its culture and traditions. Ask a guy from Porto to move to, say, Lisbon and he'll make everything he can so that it's you that moves from Lisbon to Porto, so that he doesn't leave his precious town. Ugh. Anyway. My great-grandmother got pregnant with my grandmother here in Setúbal, but she was always making sure that the baby would be born in Guimarães, in her village, close to her roots. She started labour before they were expecting it. And did she stay in Setúbal? No. She grabbed my great-grandad and made him drive all night to Guimarães so that the baby was born there. So yeah, my great-grandmother was in labour inside a car all the way up to Guimarães which in those times (1923) should be something like a 6 hour drive. But she made it. Maria Flávia Ferreira Matos ((later Maria Flávia Ferreira Matos dos Santos)) was born in Guimarães.
I just think that's curious. I wasn't born here either, though I'm registered as "Setubalense". I keep saying to anyone who wants to hear it that "no way, I was born in Lisbon, I'm Lisboeta, I don't want to have anything to do with this town". See, if I lived in the North, I wouldn't have this kind of attitude and I'd be more patriotic.
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Post by Will on Dec 23, 2003 3:05:21 GMT -5
Dang, I have really fallen behind on all this. Let’s see if I can catch up at all.
Chris, what a story! And that’s a lot of tamales…
You haven’t seen your cousin since the age of five, Li? That is a long time and I’m sorry to hear that. I know it would be hard for me if I couldn’t come in contact with my own cousins for that long.
My father has this thing about being on time, but not as intense as your grandfather, Rita. Eh, it’s still unbearable though. He starts barking at all of us when he thinks we are going to be late for something. Then again, I have inherited some of him right-on-time needs. Only for school and important events though. I can’t be late for school… even if I want to be.
Neko, history is interesting. I don’t mind at all so don’t you stop the stories. I would tell more if I knew any.
-chuckles- Brilliant.
Six hours to the destination all for her baby’s sake. That sound really nice.
Ok, I’m sorry guys. I didn’t make this as thorough as I wanted it to be. My dad’s pushing me off the computer because it’s getting late.
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