The Attack of the Family

Okay so it's been a few days. Well I have something to write. Once again, we were descended upon by sis and her family for a "lovely" meal. I put lovely in quotes because today it really wasn't. Niece was her usual moody pre-teen self, BIL was being a smart ass again, and the boys were rolling around which resulted in younger nephew crying again. Also as usual, grandmama went crazy over the food preparation and shopping. Despite my numerous efforts to get her to scale back on things once more there was way too much food. Of course granny complained that there wasn't enough, please! I just finished cleaning up the debris pile. I've gotten accustomed to using a large garbage bag for their visits.

The meal itself started off okay and then digressed into something else. The children's manners are still being worked and it doesn't help that granny and BIL aren't exactly paragons of etiquette. I suppose I should cut grandmama some slack because she is over seventy but still the woman is older and should really know better. The children should understand that a visit to grandmother's house means be on your best behavior. It's funny, when their other grandparents come for a visit or they go to visit them, the kids are little angels. When they step out of line, other grandparents quickly correct while grandmama let's them do whatever they want. I think, in this respect, she's still trying get them to like her more than other grandparents, Grandmama figures that if she lets them have unfettered amounts of junk food and act like wild beasts the kids will think she's the cool granny and like her more. Anyway at least the adult conversation was reasonably acceptable.

The actual highlight of the meal was a soda tasting. BIL had picked up a four-pack of Chanuka themed soda. There was potato latke, applesauce, jelly doughnut, and chocolate coin flavored sodas. The potato latke flavor tasted worse than L.A. tap water, which is to say pretty bad. BIL tried to convince that it tasted just like sake. One look at sis's reaction convinced me otherwise. Fortunately the other were better. So know I'm tired and I just want to zone out somewhere.

More Later