So, Charlie's youngest brother got married yesterday...Yay! But because of this event there were Hanoseks swarming the greater Wasatch front area for the past week. They were everywhere, like in a horror movie, except not really that scary and generally more eloquent than your run of the mill horror movie monster. We kicked off the week with Charlie's sister and her family coming to stay with us. I love Charlie's little sister and her kids are so well behaved it's kind of unnerving, so that was exciting. But then, the festivities began in earnest with more relatives arriving every day and with each family that showed up we had to have another celebration. By Wednesday every meal was proceeded by an intense round of negotiations about what, where and when we would eat that stretched out to about four hours and involved at least 67 phone calls, some to the Vatican.
In my philisophical musings I like to ponder the difficulties of merging with a new family. I know most people have to tread lightly when it comes to their in-laws, but I have found it particularly difficult to delve into the culture and secret world of my husband's family. There are nine siblings spread out over the continental U.S. They only see each other once every two or three years but when they get together they suddenly meld into a giant unit that moves and thinks with an unsettling single-mindedness. Like a beehive. Or military clones in a sci-fi movie. Or victims that have survived some intense catastrophe together. The rest of us that have married into the family all sit on the outskirts of their activities with a bemused look on our faces listening to them speaking in their own specific dilect of english. It is kind of like when you are in a foreign country and you don't want anyone to know that you don't speak the language or understand what it is you just ordered for lunch but you can't admit to locals that you need help, so you end up with a cow tongue and pickled gnats, but you pretend that is exactly what you wanted.
During these little family get togethers I tend to vacillate between my I-feel-left-out-and-therefore-cranky mood and my isn't-Charlie-so-cute-when-he-is-playing-with-his-big-brothers mood. It's a little bit draining and I usually need a day or two to recover. But this time since the festivities have gone on now for eight days with no signs of slowing down I am considering asking my doctor for a Xanax prescription. Or a month in a spa retreat.
3 comments:
You are so funny! I laughed so hard when I read your post. I would take the meds and the spa deal together and we can go together!
I can just here Beyonce singing "I'm a survivor" in the background. I love you Amy, we need to get together.
As you may know, Xanax (alprazolam) is a benzodiazepine - a valium derivative; which would only serve to slow you down further. Sure, you would be calm, but the only thing I can imagine being worse than trying to keep up with a house full of Hanoseks is being dragged behind them.
No, my friend, I think the wiser choice for you would be meth. It's cheaper, doesn't require a prescription, and is available at any public school or Kearns neighborhood corner. You would be able to keep up with the in-laws (in fact, you'd probably be making most of the restaurant phonecalls yourself), have enough spare energy to clean the house, do your treadmill, catch up on all of the canning and preserving you feel guilty for not having done all these years, and still have enough time during the night to start your own neighborhood watch program. All this for minimal cash and a few pesky sores you are sure to keep picking at on your face.
Am I a problem solver or what?
-Kirk
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