Another holiday that DIDN'T suck

My parent's became Jehovah's Witnesses when I was about 13 and from that point on there were no more holidays being celebrated in our household. No Christmas, Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, nothing. Not even birthdays were celebrated. Oh sure, the religion had/has logical reasons for it all but it sucked, big time.

I remember that I was a major brat that first year. Christmas and birthdays had been my favorites because we didn't have a lot of money and they were really the only times of year we got presents. So to go from that to nothin' was extremely hard.

I went along with it though, what else could I do? Living under their roof I wasn't about to cause trouble (I was a fairly good girl) and it wasn't so hard when the people you spent all your free time with, outside of the congregation and within, were all Witnesses as well. You could live in this bubble and not feel like you were missing out on all that much.

Fast forward a few years to when I went out on my own and left the religion (and that world) behind.

With not having celebrated holidays for so long, it was a struggle to figure out what I was going to do about that for myself. I distanced myself from my family as part of my need for independence and freedom from that life, but I wasn't ready to dive right into celebrating every holiday.

So as each holiday approached, most of the time, I got invites from various friends & spent Thanksgiving & Christmas with their families...which while being nice, didn't feel quite right and had me feeling like a bit of a freak because I wasn't spending that day with my own family. (Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day weren't the same/didn't feel like quite as big of a deal and I enjoyed parties hosted by my dear friend S when he still lived in MN.)

As I grew more uncomfortable with being a "pity" guest (I know I wasn't but in a way I was) I decided one year to take myself to a hotel for Thanksgiving. I figured that I would see other people alone because they had been traveling and couldn't be with their loved ones. The following year (or was it the year after?) I was alone again and throwing myself one hell of a pity party as I ate my frozen turkey dinner (didn't have money for anything better, no hotel this time.) It was then I decided no more. I was going to ask (insist!) my parent's to at least have my brother and I over for the day and actually be with my family. This was only going to be for the biggies...Thanksgiving & Christmas. To my relief and pleasure, they agreed. (Thank goodness for the mellowing of attitudes they've had over the years. They're not hard-ass religious...zealots (for lack of a better word...can one still say that when one has access to a thesaurus?) anymore)

To this day, I'm not quite sure why I'm not just taking it upon myself to celebrate every holiday to the fullest extent and host my own parties/celebrations, send out cards and/or buy presents for everyone. I know others who have left the religion and have jumped right into celebrating but I just can't bring myself to do that too. Even before the 'rents stopped celebrating they'd been grumbling about the commercialism of it all. It was all about gimme, gimme, gimme. (I don't sit completely on the sidelines though because I do like to participate in secret Santa exchanges at work and wish others a happy holiday but that's about it ...between my indecision about what to do for what and for who and the usual lack of excess funds, I still haven't committed to a way of dealing with holidays once and for all.)

So for the past few years, I've been so happy to have somewhere to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas that feels right. With my interesting, strange, weird, exasperating, loving parents and brother. Sometimes we'll even have the regular T-day food on T-day (my parent's like to take advantage of turkey being on sale!) and even play games. I like that we have these specific days of the year where we do get together and have quality time together. God knows we don't make the time otherwise, plus the day off of work helps with the crazy hours I and my brother usually work.

Other holidays aren't as big of a deal but I still love when I can get together with people I care about and have good drinks, food and quality time.

That was definitely the case this year, as I happily had a good 4th of July. (Finally getting to the part where I talk about a holiday that didn't suck! :P ) (Actually last year was also good as I was in FL w/my aunt S and her family and I watched neighborhood fireworks going off as I lounged around in their pool!)

Anyhoo, this year it even got to start earlier than I originally thought because I managed to get the day off of work. I was able to touch base with some friends and the plan was made to spend some time with my friend I during the day and then hang out with R that evening.

Upon waking up that morning (OK, who are we kidding, it was about 1pm when I finally crawled out of bed) I had more lower back pain and decided to do a bit of googling on exercise for lower back pain (don't ask why I just didn't do that earlier) and found a couple of gentle, basic yoga stretching type exercises that I thought I would try. Then decided to pop in the tape of Just My Size yoga I had and try a bit of that. All good filler while waiting to meet up w/I.

It actually helped! I was able to enjoy the day more than I had otherwise.

Again, anyhoo, I and I went out for coffee. Happily, Starbucks (I had a gift card I wanted to use) and Caribou (they had the outdoor seating) were open so we spent a good couple of hours getting to know each other better as we enjoyed the beautiful weather (the rain that had fallen in the early afternoon seemed to stop as quickly as it had started). Then we went to her house to pick up her roommate who was going to join us both in hanging out w/R that night. While there, she let me go through some clothes that she was too small for now and I ended up with a nice couple of items that will work, including a beautiful, pink-ish leather blazer.

We stopped for food and snacks at Cub and then off to R's house we went. I had a little bit of money but I was generous and told me not to worry about it. I feel a bit bad about that. I had had a little bit of cash left but was unsure how to make it work for all the things that got planned on.

At R's place we had his (in)famous Margarita's out on the back deck and were surrounded by firecrackers and fireworks going off all around us in his neighborhood. Good drinks, good food, good conversation and good friends. What more could you ask for?

Another moment for me to savor and reflect back upon when feeling like life is crap. I have to remind myself again how fortunate I am in so many ways.

Ah. It's almost 3am now and I should really think about going to bed. I'm supposed to be having breakfast w/B in the am. Woo hoo! ;)

It's my Friday tomorrow and the real Friday this week is payday! I can hardly wait!