Home for the holidays

Two different takes on seeing family this time of year…
from SLB at Post Bourgie:

Whenever I go back there, I never quite know what to say. How do you answer for why you’re not in one of those townhomes? You, who insisted on going around the mulberry bush to get a couple of degrees instead of just stacking paper at the post office right out of high school? How do you return to a school reunion and tell your homeowning, child-rearing former classmates that you live on your fam’s couch while you’re building your curriculum vitae?

and from Antigone at PunkAssBlog:

Unpleasant aspects number two: This has been a problem for awhile now, but now that Hubby and I are married, it’s put into even sharper relief: where are we going to spend Christmas? The various families all want us at their houses*, which are functionally on the other end of the country. The worst part of all of this? I don’t want to go to ANY of the family for Christmas; because by some sort of unspoken contract that I was not a party to, we are only allowed to talk about: the weather, sports, new births, new relationships (on a very shallow level, and no talking about heartbreak), new jobs and food. Oh, and I’m no longer allowed to talk about the weather because I keep using meteorological terms and I brought up global warming once. I’m also forbidden from talking about, in no particular order: politics, books, movies, social movements, college, and the biggest one: religion.

Sure, you can go home again. But for some of us, it’s pretty damn uncomfortable.