Hmm, We Might Be Bad Hosts

By the end of the evening, the family was split into three camps who were all very tired of each other: the parents, the kids, and the grandkids. Somehow, the recalcitrant brother convinced my parents to take his kids back to the hotel and the recalcitrant brother stayed here. This was good fun, just the three of us hanging out, bitching about Bush* and reminiscing about baseball games of yore. We all agreed that it was something to have gotten to see Dawson play, but my brothers preferred seeing the Sox. This lead to the realization that my uncle was taking the boys to baseball games all the time and I was sneaking into Cubs games only because I knew somebody who knew somebody who was fucking someone who worked for the organization. Fine. I might not have gotten family bonding time, but I bet I had better seats**. Anyway, yesterday, we turned off the heat because, with so many bodies in the house and the oven going all day, it was a balmy one million degrees in here. Men were taking their shirts off to sit around and watch college football. But I come downstairs today and not only is the house freezing, there's the recalcitrant brother on the big green couch and does he have any sheets or blankets? No, the poor man is covered in a big yellow afghan*** and a bath towel. Yes, the Butcher thought that a bath towel (and not even one of the big ones from upstairs) was appropriate covering for a man who had to sleep on a couch in a house now hovering around 60 degrees. I've now turned on the heat for him. Still, all three of us thought that this was one of the better thanksgivings we've had. No one got upset. The cutting criticisms were reserved for the turkey preparations. The dog was laid back even in the face of my littlest nephew continually trying to climb on her. There was plenty of football to watch, which kept the men occupied, and plenty of Playstation to play, which kept the boys occupied (you haven't lived until you've seen the littlest nephew running around singing "I am evil Homer" from the Simpsons game) and Mom had a blast making cookies and eating all the coconut thingies when she thought no one was looking, and I worked on the afghan. We even formulated a plan for today: to go to the zoo. My dad is worried that it's too cold, but I figure the kids will run around and be fine and wear themselves out. Can you imagine? We sat around and discussed what we might do, like civilized adults, before hand and now we're going to execute said plan without anyone being like "Well, you live here, what is there to do with kids under 10?" I'm a little disconcerted, honestly. Is this what it's like to have a nice visit with them? I guess there's still time for bullshit, but we made it through the meal in one piece and no one snuck off at any point, so I think we all made it through the meal in one piece sober. And so I'm pretty happy. *Yes, I can hear you laughing. **I would argue that there really aren't great seats at Wrigley. The best seats we ever had, right in with the players' families, something smelly and wet dripped on me from the upper deck the whole game. Had we not been so close to Mark Grace, I would have moved. ***But what a good afghan it is!