My Crazcation so far...

Mister C, Master J & I are up visiting the in-laws for a week. A whole week. There will most likely be fireworks. Speaking of that, Happy Independence Day, there will most likely be fireworks for that as well.

So far, so good on the not blowing up scale. There's been some grumblings and snappy answers, but no major blow ups yet. But there's usually a three day limit on good behavior up here.

After three days of semi-sane behavior, something will happen that will cause the perfect storm of insanity to blow in from the north. There will be a lot of screaming and judging of how we're living our lives and it will culminate in us being excused from the premises. Most times, Mister C will make "one more attempt at being reasonable" and go back in to Hell while I wait outside. This will result in him eventually coming back out and telling me that "it's fine, we're staying." He will have made an apology of some sort. Because he's a good son. There will be no apologies from the wicked witch's much nastier northern sister. That has never happened. Instead, her behavior will be explained away through some "stressful situation" that she is currently undergoing.

A stressful event that is indicated by her current non-reading material.

She likes to lay books around the place to indicate what's going on. She doesn't actually read them though. That might result in some learning and modification of her own behavior or some other such craziness. No, the books are for letting everyone else know how bad her life is. And if you don't know any better, you might accidentally pick up a book from a coffee table and spark a monologue of her trials and tribulations.

There's been all sorts of fun books that I've stumbled across.

I first noticed the books early in, before Mister C & I got married. We were visiting and I noticed several books about divorce. Her daughter was going through one at the time and she had found out I'd been through it as well. So there were the books about how to deal with people who've been through divorces. I thought that was a fairly decent idea. I'm a big reader myself. If I don't know a lot about something, I'm more than willing to pick up a book or two on the subject. So no warning bells there.

On another visit there were books about gambling addiction. Conveniently right around the time a family member was confronting their addiction. Again, no red flags on that. I did notice the book was fairly new but figured she just hadn't gotten through it yet.

There were the five or six books on bulimia when that issue was confronted by another family member.

There was the book about what to do when you think your kid is using drugs.

Then there was the time we got tossed out of their house because we had moved to Arizona (the first time). The books laying around at that time all had to do with "How to deal with your kids moving far away" and "how to stay connected to your grandkids when they live far from you". They may as well have all been titled "How could you do this to me you ungrateful son and slutty daughter in law?!?!?!?" because that was the gist of the scream fest we endured.

More recently, there were books about remarriage and step kids. This was when my sister-in-law got remarried and acquired two step kids.

There were several years where the books all had to do with how to deal with the social stigma that occurs when a teacher hits a child in a small community and gets fired for it. Or, maybe it was about how to deal with losing your job. Whatever.

And this trip? Well, there's a brand new bible laying on one coffee table and a religious daily devotional on the other. Now what in the hell do you think that means?