Present Perfect

Had my parents and my sister over for the past week. They dropped in right after Christmas. Spent a lot of evenings in good restaurants eating good food. Having been away from the family unit for some time made the transition back into disfunctionality all the more shocking :) These days I am perceived as the most normal of the lot. Not that hard to achieve though...

At one of the places my mother asked the waiter for a kiss four times. I admired the waiter's persistence in managing to avoid the inevitable conclusion. At least he managed to hold out until the next day when she went back.

Somehow the family unit managed to get into arguments and drawn-out emotional aftermaths which I ended up trying to mend in the usual ways. Step 1 - get them in each other's vicinity again. Step 2 - choose a safe activity for them to participate in (ie, going to the movies). Step 3 - pretend everything is fine and go along with the meaningless banter exchanged. Step 4 - watch them get physical with each other again. Step 5 - grit teeth as emotional gameplaying directs itself to me again, acknowledging temporary resolution of respective differences.

I can't complain - I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who ends up in situations like this. And hey, they're still my family. They should just come with a surgeon general's warning.

Had my parents and my sister over for the past week. They dropped in right after Christmas. Spent a lot of evenings in good restaurants eating good food. Having been...