Crazy vs Crazy

     Happy Easter!! Today I got to see both sides of my family. I used to think my family was normal. I believed that my family was normal for yearrrrssssss. And then gradually it dawned on me that they're not. They're crazy. But they're two different kinds of crazy. My dad's side is boring crazy and my mom's side is weird crazy. I had brunch with my dad's side of the family and got to listen to them talk about work and business and investments and my granddad had to get in his allotted story, in which my grandma would try to interject something and then he'd go "Excuse me June, but who's telling the story?" And this used to never bother me but now it makes me cringe inside. It's funny how you blindly love your family when you're little but as you get older there are things about them that just make you curdle a bit, but you just keep on loving them because they're your family. And then later my grandma leaned over and said very quietly, "You're still working with the handicapped children, right?", referring to unified track and I just had to ignore the way she said it like they were invalids because I know she didn't mean it like that, she just doesn't know how politically incorrect she sounds and I know that her intentions are good. And then my aunt had to retell the story about how she and my uncle got followed around Naples by some guy and "He didn't even look Middle Eastern. He was more German or something." And I just had to bite my tongue again. And then she started telling me about how to be safe in a city when she was the one who just finished telling about how she got her purse stolen at a restaurant in Naples, despite being told to watch her purse. Sigh. I love them to death but sometimes it hurts. Oh, and then my grandma took me over to meet some of her friends and they were like "Oh what are you going to do?" And when I said be an English teacher the husband asked me what book I would recommend to them to read and my mind just went totally blank. What am I supposed to say? To All the Boys I've Loved Before? Yeah, right. The first book that popped into my head was Eat, Pray, Love but I'm not going to recommend that to this little old man. Then Brave New World popped into my head but I hated that book. So I was just standing there going "Oh that's a tough one...hmm...I don't know..." And then my mom came over and saved me thank the Lord.

     Then I had a few hours before my mom's side of the family came over for dinner. My mom's side of the family could not be more different than my dad's side. I honestly don't know how they find anything to talk about when they get together. My one aunt is a total hippie and the whole night she kept collecting scraps to feed our sheep Charlie. We had to save all the tops of the strawberries to give the sheep and she even picked through the little bits of food on the plates after dinner to give him. And she kept digging through the trash. My mom recycled the plastic strawberry box and my aunt took it out because it's a "perfect mini greenhouse" (she's starting her own micro brewing company). Then I ate an apple and threw away the plastic bag it was in and my aunt took it out and saved it because she can recycle it at her house. But I love her. She's crazy but she's great. Then during dinner my other aunt was telling us about how she'd read that if you just stick your hands above your head when you're swimming you can stay afloat without treading water. Then this exchange occurred:

Dad: I feel like that would work better for women than men. 

Aunt Liz: You calling me fat?!

[Laughter]  

Grandma: I think he was referring to the fact that women have breasts. But he didn't want to say it because Sean is here. (Except she said "breast" weird so my aunt Liz is in the background going "breasticleses")

Aunt Michele: Yeah, because Sean has never seen a breast. 

     Ahhhhhh family. I know you're not supposed to have favorite sides of the family, but let's just say that I can relate more to my matrilineal crazy than my patrilineal crazy. Holidays always make me realize how much I love my family and how glad I am I don't live with all of them.

Day 855 Song Recommendation: "Know Me Well" by Roo Panes. Thanks to SR for the song rec.

-SE Wagner