Christmas PTSD

Thank god the new year is here. This means that Christmas Day is officially over, and is not able to come back again for at least another eleven and a half months.

There are those who say that Christmas Day is all about families, belonging, and welcoming people into your home and creating a sense of togetherness. I don't think the people who say this have ever experienced a Christmas where performing these acts would be at all uncomfortable for them, or create one little bit of excess tension. They would certainly not have experienced the Nightmare of the Imploding Christmas Day.

I say that it is a lovely thing to invite people over to share your Christmas Day. But BEWARE! The success or dismal failure (and extreme discomfort of your main family and friends) can be directly related to who you choose to invite.

I can't be particularly specific on the particular horrors of my Christmas Day for fear of incriminating myself, so I will write a helpful list concerning who you should and shouldn't invite if you want to have a happy, harmonious day. I am all for people inviting anybody that they genuinely want to be there. This list pertains more specifically to the fringe-element that can get sucked into the whirling vortex of pain and death that is the Family Christmas Day.

Top People To Add To Your List:

1. Friends of the family who have nowhere else to go on the day, who you genuinely want to be there, and who are going to have a good time.

2. Distant relatives who wouldn't normally be invited, but who are also lovely people who you care about, and who are going to enjoy the company.

3. Random neighbours who fit the above criteria, and who are a good fit for the party. (See, I'm not that picky!)


Slightly Less Fantastic People To Add To Your List:

1. Distant relatives who you don't really know, who have never really made the effort to get to know you, are a token invite due to their proximity but are likely to show up anyway for the free food and booze. These could go either way - they are likely to know people at your party better than they know you, particularly if it is a big family get-together, and you might get to know them well and find they are a good time.

Or it might end in dog bites, barbeque burns and calls to the police. You just never know.

2. Distant cousins with slightly shady pasts who are getting back on track with their lives. They are family. One of the things that Christmas is supposed to be about is family. They could enjoy catching up with people, making new acquaintances and having a chance to socialise.

Or they could steal all of the booze, take the gift certificates from the present piles when nobody is looking and scrape a whole row of cars on their way out. They may even kick the dog.

Hopefully they won't trip on the dog. They might sue.

3. Serial whiners. Miserable relatives who spend all day whining will bounce off these people, sending other revelers around them into spirals of doom and gloom, killing the Spirit of Christmas, making fairies die by the score, and allowing the grinch to be one happy little critter. Sit them with the right people and it might work. You never know.

4. Anybody you feel obliged to invite out of guilt.

The No Go Zone:

1. The boyfriend of a distant cousin who has just spent time in jail and spent the last Christmas gathering at your place telling disgusting stories about close family members of yours, while they are in the next room, and while sitting next to your 86-year-old grandmother. He used up his first chance, and inviting him again would be like positive reinforcement. Particularly if he starts inviting friends or family of his own.

Work out some way of not inviting them the next year. Spend the months you now have up your sleeve thinking of a good way to let them know they are not on the list, otherwise you might end up finding yourself fantasizing about changing the date or location of your party. You may even find yourself looking up the real estate section of the newpaper, considering a Christmas Eve house move.

2. Anybody who thinks it is funny to make another Christmas Day guest cry. On Christmas Day. In the year that their husband/son/dog died.

Seriously. Don't. Invite. Them. Back.

3. Relatives who think it is okay to tell you that you somehow kept them out of your dying father's inheritance, while he was dying, and then still expect to be invited to every function that you put on. This also applies to weddings, baptisms, birthday parties, random coffee meetings, and any other event put on by you.

Several of the above may or may not have happened on my Christmas Day. If the guest list next year looks the same as this year, I am going to spend Christmas Day on a beach in the middle of nowhere where nobody can reach me, with a bottle of champagne, a very full i-Pod and a swarm of annoying but friendly and harmonious mosquitoes trying to dive-bomb me through the thick canvas of my tent.

Hopefully this year I'll learn about some little-known random maladie that I can diagnose myself with after getting the Christmas list of invitees. It would have to be highly contagious, so horrible that nobody else would want to get it, yet resolve spontaneously with no apparent ill-effects by New Years Day. Ideas? ;)

Happy New Year!

P.s.

Okay . . . . I have just seen the new Channel 10 advertisement for the Australian "So You Think You Can Dance". The ad looks thoroughly lame.

I watched part of the US version. Their promos were exciting. There were flips and stuff. Tricky.

The Australian version looks like it comes from 2003. Seriously, the promo song is "Move Your Feet" by Junior Senior. Surely they could have found something a LITTLE more current???!!! There is little or no dancing. Not. Impressed.

I'm hanging out for Australia's Biggest Loser, but that is it. (The US version that just finished ROCKED. I love that show.) Meh.

Happy New TV Year.

My last word for 2007

I can't believe that 2007 is over. I really don't feel like I am ready for it to be finished. I'm not sure why.

I hope you all had a lovely 2007, and that if it wasn't lovely, I hope that 2008 is a great improvement.

Tomorrow is 2008. It is also Tuesday. I am one day older, and one day closer to going back to uni. I'll have to start studying my bum off again. I'll get to catch up with friends and learn all kinds of interesting things. Then I'll have to memorise them and they won't be so fun any more. I guess that's the way it is.

I am 90% certain that I have decided on my specialty. I am also 75% certain that I will change my mind again at some point during the year. This is okay.

I'm going to go to bed now. Tomorrow I have to get used to writing a new number when I jot down the date. I need some rest to prepare for the challenge.

More Christmas stuff!

I used to hate Christmas time. I used to see it as fake, commercial and a generator of trash. As a religious holiday in a mostly secular country, it seemed like a huge farce.

Now I am finding myself getting excited about the prospect of Christmas!

I still don't care for the religious side, even though I respect the beliefs of those who choose to celebrate it that way. Part of me is a little sad that they can't teach the story of the nativity in preschools any more. Even if you don't believe in it, it is part of the mythology of our culture. You may have to be quite scarred by past religious experience to find it offensive. After all, what is there to hate about a newborn baby in some straw surrounded by his parents, farm animals, shepherds, three kings and a little drummer boy?

And yes, I know that there is also a pagan background to many parts of the celebration. I like the symbolism of starting a new year in the middle of winter, but as we celebrate in the midst of a sweltering summer this hardly makes much sense to me. Personally I would celebrate moving towards winter in our climate!

Yule is exciting for me because I feel like I need a nice celebratory season. There are sparkly lights and shiny decorations up everywhere and this actually cheers me up this year. I love buying presents for people. This year they are already wrapped and ready to transport.

I think that Christmas is special for me this year because I need a reprieve and a break. It means that I have survived my first year of medical school. I can't wait to go back next year (sick, I know ;) ) but it is nice to be here and taking a breather.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

It's over!!!!!

Medical school is over for the year. The assessment is finished, the PBL groups have wrapped up, we have jumped through all of the hoops and I'm there.

How do I feel? I am spent. Drained. Exhausted.

To be honest, I am very glad that I finished the year. In the second semester, I felt completely lost at times. That goodness that I had a great group of friends who, although they might not have realised it, helped to get me through the year. THANKS, everybody!

I never had any intention of dropping out, but it is a testament to having lived a little and having a slightly balanced perspective on life that I didn't crumble completely. I'm a consistent student who tries to work hard. If I found it difficult, god knows how others managed.

I have to have a solid whinge about our course at this point. Even though the point of graduate medicine is that you have experienced people who can learn independently in your course, it doesn't mean that you can just throw them to the sharks and expect them to teach it all to themselves, and then examine them on material that hasn't been covered in your lectures, PBLs, notes or anything that your floundering students are likely to remember.

Running a course like this will help you end up with a lot more work, due to the number of students sitting supplementary exams, and a high drop-out rate, not to mention a dreadful student morale. But perhaps you just don't care, and choose to focus on the numbers and the amount of times you can make the paper for innovations.

Bah, humbug. I'm just bitter and twisted.

I'm taking up more exercise and meditation in the break, learning to take healthy perspective on life, plan things better and spend more time catching up with friends and less time doing unnecessary things. I would be lying if I said that I hadn't lost a close friendship or two in the past year. To be honest, this wasn't entirely from the course but due to external life events, however being busy and distracted with study did not help.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and sleep for another month. In a few more weeks, it all starts again.

Where do the therapy dogs go for help?

I have heard wonderful things about pet therapy. I have read about it, seen some small pieces on the tv, and have heard anecdotes, but until recently I had never seen a therapy pet.

From all accounts, the little dog involved seemed to bring out the communication skills and emotions of the patients involved. They enjoyed having him there, and he brightened their day.

But how was the experience for him?

I had mental images of the dogs in pet therapy running up and down the hallways with their tails wagging, being happy to be the subject of affection from people, being keen for games, getting happy at all of the interesting smells and displaying other normal dog behaviour. I met this beautiful dog, and he displayed none of the above traits.

Having spent the majority of my life around large dogs, I can safely say that he seemed to display no body language whatsoever, he didn't respond to my body language or touch, and from my impressions he just sat there staring straight ahead, almost catatonic. For me, it was like having a conversation with a person who has locked themselves away in a safe corner of their mind and is completely oblivious to the outside world. He just wasn't present.

My thoughts were that this little pup was either extremely emotionally damaged, or on some kind of doggy sedative. I know that they screen these dogs carefully, but his emotional affect and reactivity was VERY abnormal. I am concerned for him, and left the experience somewhat disturbed.

The joys of Christmas shopping on-line

Christmas is just around the corner. For once, I have finished my Christmas shopping. This year I did it almost completely on-line.

One of the biggest advantages of this for me, is that you can start to build up a list of things that you want, then order them when you feel ready. There is no in-store pressure and you don't have to worry about driving another 30 minutes back to the store the next time you have a day off in order to actually buy the product. You can shop at any time of the day, and avoid the crowds.

Now I just have to wait for it to arrive so I can sit in front of the tv and wrap everything.

I'm not a complete recluse, and don't mind going to the shops around Christmas time. It is nicer to be able to take your time, stop and have a coffee and people-watch (one of my favourite spectator sports), without having to freak out and worry about whether you have remembered to buy presents for the people on your list.

Indeed, we went shopping for Christmas-tree lights this afternoon, and I had the luxury of being able to wander around in-store and look at all of the decorations without feeling any pressure to buy anything or shop for anybody else, while my better half went looking for the exact lights he wanted. It was actually more fun than normal shopping.

Now I am going to hang the wreath on the door, find the table decorations and the Christmas decorating will all be done! I hope your Christmas preparation is similarly relaxed!

I'm not going to cook much to bring to Christmas lunch this year. I went mad last year, but this year I'm going to make one main dish and one cake. Scrap the cake. I'm bringing chocolate soy ice-cream! Nobody else will touch it and it will be mine, all mine!!

This year has been stressful enough. It is time for a break.