Survival

Yes, I survived a week in Maryland! Yeah! I spent yesterday rocking quietly in a corner, in my happy place, trying to make sense of the family I married into. Today, I have put all the information to rest and am ready to carry on!

Here are a few gems from the week that I must get off my chest before I can have Christmas closure this year:

1. I am lazy because I don't work full time and "contribute" to the family.
2. My children are too messy (this may actually be true).
3. While my sister-in-law's choice to terminate a pregnancy in Oct. because the baby had Down Syndrome is her choice, her body, and the best decision for her family - my choice to homeschool is wrong, wrong, wrong.
4. I am not allowed to believe that terminating a pregnancy is morally wrong - in fact, nothing is morally wrong in a family where infidelity and cruelty are "just the way men are".
5. My father-in-law was kicked out of his wife's son's basement because he has a strange, Michael Jackson-ish attachment to his oldest step-grandson. He asked if he and wife could move in with my mother-in-law, and was shocked when she said no.
6. Christmas day can actually be spent without anyone talking to anyone else.
7. Flying from DC to Boston is too much work for my mil, so we have to drive 12 hours in a van with three busy kids to see her at least twice a year, lest I be accused of keeping her from her grandchildren. But flying to LA to see Husband's brother is not.
8. I should not drive to see my family in Indiana because that is too hard on the kids.
9. I will never, ever work as hard as my mil or any Asian person, for that matter.
10. After a furtive glance at the google history on his computer, I have discovered The Husband is interested in stuff that is even beyond my scope of imagination.....yikes.

I could go on, but won't. After each Maryland visit, I am grateful for my own family. They are loud, nosy and slightly offbeat - I realized that no one to whom I am related has a normal job - we are wine experts in Napa, apple orchard owners, writers, pastors, missionaries, artists, chefs, landscape designers and nuns. But we love and protect each other. We are fun! In fact, my mother always says that we put the "fun" in dysfunctional....but that's another story.

I have been given a directive to return to Maryland in August and I am already coming up with reasons to avoid the trip. I think Anna has camp that week, or maybe the weather is supposed to be bad...I am a smart girl, and surely can come up with something!

Anyway, have a fun New Year's Eve! See you next year! (ha, ha)