...in which I dive once more into that labrynth of competing neuroses some people call "family."
My supply of charity for some of the people that I've known all my life is dwindling precipitously, as is that charity for those who find themselves unwittingly thrust into the space between that hammer and that anvil. Each of them threatens to impinge on my comfort and my selfish self-centeredness admits only of ever shorter such infractions.
Follow? I'm not looking forward to this.
I suppose every family has a straw that stirs the proverbial drink. I'm the only one in my family, however, that is still allowing himself to be affected by our personal straw. So others look on bemusedly as I blow circuit after circuit on my way to a personal hell. Or at least the bottom of another glass.
This year's Thanksgiving promises to be a richer stew than ever. Accompanying me on my two-hour drive to the parent's house will be my girlfriend, her mother, her iconoclastic brother. At the parent's house (in addition to the parents) we will find my sister and brother-in-law (islands of sanity), my personal straw, a lately divorced ex-corporate big-wig friend of the parents, a recently divorced housewife friend of Mom, Mom's certifiably neurotic partially estranged and senile queen-bee biological mother, and one high-strung ill-behaved golden retriever.
On the plus side, I think I successfully pulled off my first-ever apple and pumpkin pies (complete with homemade crust).
Wish me luck, and I wish you the same.
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