most of the time i think that i am glad to be away from my own family's high drama and scandals and stuff. like weird baby names and teen pregnancy and the trailer as target practice for the drive-by crew. most of the time i am glad to be far away so that i don't have to restrain myself when i hear that kind of stuff about people i love. i think, wow, my in-laws are so normal.

they really aren't. they are just as utterly dysfunctional as all of us; there are just elements that i did not grow up with, and so it took some time to learn them. there are various and sundry things about each member of my husband's family that i genuinely like (okay, there are a couple of exceptions); by the same token, there are things about each of them that positively infuriate me on a semi-regular basis. this all generally boils down to The One Big Thing: the planning gene.

this is a part of my husband's dna that i believe he never had. it should be considered a birth defect because it annoys the hell out of normal planning people like me. i am not a crazy anal planner a la jack byrnes; i just like to know what the hell is going on most of the time. do i have to set my alarm tonight, and if so, for what time? does anybody need the car besides me? that sort of thing.

people in his family do things like deciding to take the kids all to the beach saturday. which is fine, only they decide saturday morning, and they call us one hour before they want to go, when we are all still sleeping, and when one of the kids already has a prior commitment. they do not invite, they do not ask - they call and tell us what our kids are doing in an hour. they instruct their twelve year-old daughters to call us and inform us of the plans, and she never gets it right, because she is twelve. my favorite thing ever is when my nine year-old daughter and my twelve year-old niece get together and try to make plans. the only thing better than that is having my brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

they did it to us again today.

d. used to get annoyed that i was annoyed with them for stuff like this, in the beginning. nothing bothered him at all, except me being bothered. over the years i have pleaded, cajoled, debated, shrieked, etc. in an effort to get him to at least acknowledge that my point is a valid one. that took about five years. now that we have four kids he concedes that my point is valid. but old habits die hard, and i scream at him about it anyway, then i apologize and try not to cry. so he is still annoyed that i am annoyed, because it bothers him too and i am essentially preaching to the choir.

someday i really must post about the two spectacular fights d. and i have had with his brother... someday when i can not be infuriated by writing about it? so probably never?