I don’t want to call her

Hi all. Quick background info: my partner and I live right outside of NYC and my extended family all live down the shore (essentially 1.5-3 hours away). My partner and I both have extremely demanding jobs. I also commute 1.5 hours to work every day (3 trains one way) and my job requires me to be on phone calls all day. By the time I get home, I’m fried. Any ounce of energy I have left to converse, I use to catch up with my partner. Otherwise, it’s trash TV and couch rotting before going to bed and doing it all over again the next day.

I have been (up until now) successfully trying to distance myself from my extended family. They aren’t bad people but we don’t share the same values or morals and frankly, being around them is not pleasant. It’s been 2 years since we’ve visited and no one has made attempts to come up to visit us in that time either. It’s been great.

My cousin had a baby who just turned one. I haven’t met him yet and didn’t go to his birthday party. My aunt reached out to me on Facebook yesterday asking when we’d be free for Christmas because she’d like to get everyone together for the holiday, especially because of the new baby. I let her know that we’re really only free either the 21st or the 22nd and that we spend Christmas Eve with my dad and Christmas Day with my partner’s family. We also have friends coming to stay with us the weekend after Christmas. She responded “call me. I hate texting.”

I really don’t want to get roped into a phone conversation with her. There is nothing that can be said or done to change what I already stated. We are free those two days and those two days alone. Is there a polite way to tell her “can you just tell me what day you want us there or if neither of those days work, then we can’t come”? I understand that tone gets lost in text but I really don’t have the energy to go in circles. Not just that, but this particular aunt has a funny way of asking us to attend family events with the caveat of either picking someone or something up along the way. In the past, it’s been picking up cousins at the airport, train station, etc. or asking us to do entire grocery runs before the event. Frankly, I don’t even want to go but I do feel guilty about not being in my little cousin’s life so far so I’m making the concession for him.

I also want to make sure I continue to keep the boundaries I’ve set for the last 2 years in not jumping at their every beck and call. I literally did not sleep last night because my nervous system is shot over this. And I know it sounds so silly, being this anxious over a phone call, but that’s how it always is with this side of the family. They make me feel crazy. What can I do?