It seems like you're going through a rough time, but that you're dealing with it in a healthy way and set to find true value in life. You will be out on your own soon enough, and you'll do great. Time goes by very fast at least in retrospect.
It seems your parents have their set of pretty deep issues, but it's at least cute that they are making the effort.
Hold on there!
That absolutely sucks.
But, coming from a family where we all suck at gifts, it is somewhat relatable. It is unbelievable how difficult and anxiety-provoking gift buying can be for some people, and caring more about someone only makes it harder. In the end one could land on something awful and last minute after worrying about it for months, and it seems like one simply doesn't care.
I of course don't know this specific situation, and it is indeed a particularly bad gift considering your allergy. But don't read it as a sign that they don't care - it could be that they care quite a lot, and that it's a case of something else entirely.
There's a slight chance I could be convinced to accept the french R into the company of real R sounds, but I agree the rolling one is where it's at. The American one is something special.
Looks like Latin to me.
Oh wow!
I always assumed it was connected to the word "by" as used in "by and by", so that it would basically mean "have a good afterwards".
Cool stuff. Bob Dylan makes more sense to me now:
And goodbye is too good a word babe
So I'll just say fare thee well
Bingo!
Christmas traditions are a fun mix of things. The modern Santa Claus is mostly a mix of Saint Nicholas and a bunch of continental European traditions, but the pointy red hat is the product of being what we refer to as a nisse - a mythical creature closely related to gnomes.
We have long traditions of leaving food out for the nisse living in the barn for Christmas. And Santa is not named after Saint Nicholas over here - we call him julenissen. The Christmas gnome, if you will.
In Scandinavia we never stopped calling the holiday by it's pagan name - jul.
We've been told for a thousand years now that it's somehow supposed to refer to the birth of Christ, but the celebration is older than Christianity and nobody knows for sure the origin of it's name. As far as me and my family is concerned, it's a pagan holiday.
Happy to celebrate with my Christian friends though, there's nothing wrong with being inclusive.
God jul!
I was agreeing with you that there are too many tankies and Putin fanboys around here, making it sometimes annoying even if you don't belong to the idiot brigade of right wing Americans.
I think joining an instance that's defederated from Hexbear and Lemmygrad could be a good starting point for an enjoyable experience here. You don't even need to hold right wing opinions, being an anti-authoritarian leftist is enough.
Not that you'll be able to see content posted to Threads from Lemmy anyway - you cannot post threads (in the Fediverse sense) from Threads (the platform), and microblog posts are generally not visible from Lemmy. So it might make sense as a matter of principle, but it's not going to change anything for you.
What the fuck.
Hope you're both doing alright. I guess one could say something about how helping others is what Christmas is all about or whatever, but seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people.
Good thing you were there to be a decent human being in a shitty situation.