Thanksgiving Enlightenment

Learned a few things from observing family this weekend and how they relate to me.

1. Anything worn that is not jeans and tennis shoes is me dressing fancy. It took years for my sister and I to break them in when it comes to heels. We wear heels with jeans and pants, even on the weekend. I didn't have a reason to own tennis shoes for the longest time. Heels made me look taller and kept the hem of the jeans from getting raggedy and worn. Now, due to ghetto booty, pants are pretty much not an option, so I wear skirts a lot. A whole lot. Plus tights in the winter due to my allergy to cold. So Thursday I put on my jeans and they were too tight (apparently my period water weight wasn't so period related). Knowing dinner would consist of lots of eating, I did the sensible thing - change into a skirt and tights that are more comfortable in the waist. It was a cute, stylish outfit, but not overly dressy. I walked in the door and immediately kept getting comments about how dressed up I was. Now, meet my dad's mother and you'll see a woman who is always dressed very nicely. Even her lounging clothes are fine quality. She doesn't get grief. Because I actually have worn clothing that wasn't "fancy" in my life and they know this, I get grief for dressing up. It's not overt "You're just trying to be better" (well, they did say this in regards to the shoes), but they make comments about me having dressed up when it's not that dressy. (Funny part is, the heels I was wearing? Every female in the family, including the ones that hate heels, LOVED them.)

2. Anything I say has to be tempered to keep my intelligence in check, because using a big word means I'm flaunting my brains. I used the word "bulbous" once and got fussed at. No lie. I tried explaining that most of the words that are more than two syllables that I know? I got from romance novels. Then I remembered that people in my family don't read anything but the King James Bible (well, the people on mom's side of the family - even she was an anomoly). I've tried explaining that they shouldn't get on my case about big words when they can understand the King James Bible (because that version knows how to talk around something without saying it). My grandmother did a "What are you interested in" conversation starter recently that ended poorly. It's hard to explain to her that her intellectual interest in how things grow (which includes 800 pound pumpkins) is an intellectual interest, and my intellectual interests go different directions, but they're all intellectual. Somehow my grandmother thinks that me not being able to say "I like to read books on ghosts and true crime and geography and astronomy" means I think I'm better than her, when the case is that she wants to know that I like to read things, but never understands what I like to read. She has her interests, I have mine, but when she asks she doesn't get why I would like something if she doesn't like it. *sigh*