Insane Family Gathering Part II

I am back. This will be the first posting of 2007. Another "Duh!" moment brought to you by me. Okay the obvious is out of the way, I did see the outlaws twice this weekend, and Friday night here brought the bar down to about curb level. I told you that with it getting dark so early he would freak earlier. I was so right. He was "freaking" and speaking such nonsense at around five. Why they came at four, I have no idea. Well, I do. My mother in law could hang with the lad and not have to listen to my father in law babble his reality broken thoughts.

We are sitting in the living room and he is yammering about my brother in law, who was supposed to be there at six thirty (he was late). Now, my father in law is trying to create a time line as to when he finishes work, comes home and gets to our place. Of course, in his world the laws of fucking physics cease to exist. It is like bringing the ice out at nine in the morning and being shocked, and not being able to comprehend why, that by four in the afternoon the bowl of ice is a bowl of tepid water. Somehow, in his mind, my brother in law has the technology to instantly travel at the speed of light and should be here instantaneously. He was not.

Then as we are sitting in the living, my mother in law is upstairs with the lad trying to get him to watch Oprah?, my father looks across my wife, his daughter, and then sees that it is dark outside. He then asks what "the wife" will do because it is dark. I look at the darkness and agree it is dark and then say "so what?". Meanwhile, I cannot, nor can the wife, figure out what the hell he is talking about especially when he refers to her as if she is not sitting beside him. It makes my brain hurt.

Anyway, I told you that you would get part II of an evening with the extended outlaw clan, or as I call it, "Who let the inmates escape the Asylum?". You have heard all about my father in law and his inability to master the remote control, now I bring you tales of his younger, diva, moronic sister.

She arrives like a house afire. Bitching about her son and daughter in law not being there, blah, blah, blah. The wife caught wind of it and put her in her place. It is funny. They grouse and come off as tough but back down like lambs when confronted directly with their own words. Anyway, she comes in with a gift for my in laws, a very thoughtful gift (that would assume that she thinks of anybody but herself) a bunch of tins of flavored coffee. My in laws drink instant coffee and nothing flavored (I would question anybody who drinks flavored coffees in any event, bunch of freaks, coffee should taste like fucking coffee, besides it is just a caffeine delivery system). Recall, my mother in law likes her instant coffee in a styrofoam cup so that she can imagine being at some fancy place (nothing but the best styrofoam) having a coffee.

She then sees that my mother in law's sister has brought some sort of dessert. I would not eat the thing, given how it looked but that is me. Anyway, this aunt now has a shit fit. If somebody had told her, she would have made and brought a dessert, blah, blah, blah. Somehow, this is some sort of competition between crazy, insecure women. I would suggest a fight to the death, but then again I see that as a win-win outcome. Ohhhh, that is too nasty even for me. I do not wish death on either of these women. Silence, yes, death, no. Well, that storm (tempest in a teapot) blows over. We eat and it is served buffet style.

That is cool by me. I end up sitting in the kitchen with my mother in law's friend. She, too, does not like this Crazy Aunt, but she takes no shit, so has no trouble standing up to the bully. It was funny because my mother in law joined us in the kitchen and would later say to me that she has not seen me, or spent time with me, all evening. I must have left some great impression.

Dessert time comes. Water is boiled to make tea. The Crazy Aunt wants coffee. Not just any coffee but the hazelnut coffee the she brought as a gift. When asked where the coffee maker is, my mother in law tells her that they do not have a coffee maker. "No coffee maker? Who does not have a coffee maker? What about a French press?" My mother in law looks at her and does not answer. She does not know what a French press is but if it is anything like that French tickler that my father in law had forty years ago, she wants none of that.

She created such a stink, actually a two part stink, that my mother in law's friend, who lives on the second floor of the building, got her coffee maker. It is a good thing that she drinks hot water with lemon because you never get rid of the smell or taste of that crappy flavored coffee because the essential oils bind with the plastic in the coffee maker (like attracts like for those of you who do not remember your organic, or even inorganic, chemistry). See you get a story and a science lesson when you read the Well Adjusted Madman (also, with the underwear I am wearing today, it should be the Continually Readjusting Madman, but I digress). So she got her fucking flavored coffee (quite the gift, huh?) and the smell of that hazelnut shit still permeates the air in my outlaws' unit.

The best is that on Friday, when the outlaws came for dinner, what did they bring, the fucking tins of flavored coffee. There is a coconut flavored coffee, which only made me say "What the fuck?!!!" Coconut and coffee? The chocolate, vanilla and hazelnut, I can see. But coconut. Maybe Crazy Aunt is crazy like her big brother (there is 15 years between them) only nobody has had the good sense to get her brain checked out. Coconut coffee??? Is there any other explanation for that? I mean, I do not know who invented that flavor, but the crazier part is somebody was fucked up enough to buy it (presumably for somebody else, was this a regifting?). So, now I have these tins of coffee that I would not consider using, so will end up giving to the homeless. They don't have homes, so they won't mind flavored coffee. I am expecting a lot of pissed off homeless soon.

Happy and Healthy New Year to y'all! All the best in '07! Ciao!