Every year, I tend to get the holiday dread.
This is something that is sort of counter to what everyone else is thinking.
While gas furnaces are making houses cozy and people are trimming the tree, I’m wishing I was somewhere else. It’s nothing new really. Like most children, I loved Christmas and everything about it. But when my parents divorced, that was sort of the end of my Christmas happy. This was mainly due to the fact that my mom now viewed me as the hired help. Plus, she would have the gas furnace just blasting as I was up in the freezing attic getting down decorations. It was the worst. I would be sweating while moving furniture, lifting boxes of decorations all because the HVAC heating was on the insane setting. Since then, I have pretty much dreaded Christmas. You’d think it would be different now that I’m an adult with my own family. But no, we still have to make the trek to my Mom’s and deal with the HVAC thermostat setting from hell. This still hasn’t changed. It was so bad this past Christmas that I had to keep knocking down the thermostat setting on the gas furnace. But Mom would come right behind me and pump it back up. It’s her house so, I just gave up. However, this really struck a chord with me this year. On the way south to our home, I just told my wife that if my Mom wants to do Christmas, she’d do it at our house. That was just the last Christmas that I’m not going to enjoy because of too much HVAC heating and bad memories.