i spent christmas alone while my family got together and fought, and honestly i feel so good about this
i bought myself presents, cooked a big meal, drank wine and watched Home Alone 3 w/ my dog. I don’t feel sorry for myself at all.
meanwhile my sister threatened to disown my dad so he threatened to disown her, while my mom enabled and my other sister downed a bottle of wine to deal.
on the other side of the country, i was busy discovering, to my delight, that the that the 3rd installment of the Home Alone franchise not only stood up to the test of time, but contains some of the best oneliners and comedic timing I have ever seen.
honestly, keep toxic people out of your life. family isn’t everything, and bad family is often worse than no family. don’t be afraid to put in some distance, especially during high stress times like the holidays. you don’t actually owe them anything.
being alone for the holidays is so much better than being with people who make you unhappy.
In 1943, a team of ingenious Italian doctors invented a deadly, contagious virus called Syndrome K to protect Jews from annihilation. On October 16 of that year, as Nazis closed in to liquidate Rome’s Jewish ghetto, many runaways hid in the 450-year-old Fatebenefratelli Hospital. There, anti-Fascist doctors including Adriano Ossicini, Vittorio Sacerdoti and Giovanni Borromeo created a gruesome, imaginary disease.
The doctors instructed “patients” to cough very loudly and told Nazis that the disease was extremely dangerous, disfiguring and molto contagioso. Soldiers were so alarmed by the list of symptoms and incessant coughing that they left without inspecting the patients. It’s estimated that a few dozen lives were saved by this brilliant scheme.
The doctors were later honored for their heroic actions, and Fatebenefratelli Hospital was declared a “House of Life” by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.