Maybe I'm just cranky today.

(I like the holiday season as much as the next guy, but right now I have to say "Yay it's over!" Is that bad?)

And while we're on the subject of seeking approval from and about every little flipping thing...

Here's something that irritates the living crap out of me. So you go over to someone, say, your sister's, house for Christmas Eve dinner. It doesn't have to be Christmas Eve dinner, it can be any dinner at all. It can be lunch. Or snacks. But let's just say said sister is cooking something much more complicated than what you might normally have for dinner, because you're single and don't really cook because a) you can't quite figure out how to make something small enough for one person and b) you don't like leftovers. And let's also add here that said sister is a really good cook and always comes up with these fabulous meal ideas and you end up totally satisfied in the end because you're body is just flabbergasted that it actually got a square meal. And let's say too that you kind of hang out in the kitchen with the sister while she is putting the finishing touches on the meal preparation because you're trying to ignore your mother and salvage some kind of festiveness from the tail end of this holiday season, and even though you hear your sister mumbling under her breath about the state of the crabcakes that are maybe not as firm as she would have liked them, you don't really pay much attention to her because most cooks mumble to themselves while creating fabulousness.

What irritates me is when the food is served, and the cook starts putting down everything she has made in what can only be interpreted (by me) as a veiled attempt to get people to compliment her. Is that it? Or is it just codependency? "Okay I'm just going to say one thing - the coq au vin needs salt." There's a conversation starter, and it would have been fine if she had left it at that. Because then Pat, who has had some health issues (really odd ones because he is a pretty healthy guy to begin with), explains how his doctors say that no one really needs to put salt on anything, sure you can cook with it but there is no real need for the salt shaker on the dinner table, and Tom adds that if one is truly eating properly then your body doesn't notice a lack of salt in prepared food (while he takes his traditional twenty minutes to prepare his plate and salt and pepper the fuck out of everything before even tasting it), which can, in theory, lead to a conversation about Pat's health issues, but doesn't, because then the sister then says something else about the food, like, I hope you like mushrooms (while Tom fishes around for the mushrooms and moves them to the side of his plate), I can't believe you don't like mushrooms, maybe I shouldn't have put mushrooms in it (forget about the rest of the table who really like mushrooms..), Sorry I didn't make a salad, do you think the mashed potatoes are mashed enough, I didn't even put any bread out, It really needs salt, you don't have to have seconds if you don't want to, I won't be offended, blah blah blah.

You know what? I just want to eat the damn dinner. If it tastes like shit I can be pretty creative in making it LOOK like I ate some but simply couldn't eat another bite. But it just so happens that it's really good, and you KNOW it's good, so even though to every objection that you keep lobbing at us about how it sucks, we keep telling you no no it's really good, so quit making us have to pass the salt shaker under the table to each other so that Pat doesn't give us shit for using it and you don't continue on and on about how it needs salt. (Wait. I'm not sure that was a complete sentence. Was that sentence okay? Did it flow right? Could you follow it? Should I go back and edit? Is my punctuation okay?) (Do you SEE how annoying that is?)

Fast forward to Christmas dinner itself, when a lasagna was prepared by Tom's friend Sarah ahead of time so that he could just bring it to Mom's for dinner and save everyone the trouble (very nice of her) and all that had to be done was cook the dang thing in the oven, and they did, and when it was finally time for dinner, the ONLY SUBJECT at the table was Is the (god damned) lasagna warm enough? Seriously. Over and over again. It's fine. Are you sure? It's FINE. Really? I can reheat it. IT'S FINE. I don't know. Tell me if it's warm enough.

Mother fuck. You didn't even MAKE the god damned thing and you are fishing for compliments. Seriously. There has to be more things to talk about than how the food is. I'm making an executive decision right now to never go to either one of their houses for dinner again. I just can't take it. I'm codependent but these two take it to a whole new level. Christ.

So, yeah. That's what irritates me.

Um, Happy Boxing Day...