Family dinners

So, I have to go to my grandparents' house for dinner. It shall be interesting. Certain Relatives ducked out, of course (funny how that keeps happening! /sarcasm). I'm not too enthusiastic about this dinner (which is a sort of pre-Thanksgiving dinner to work with people's schedules), but I'll bite my tongue.

I don't think I've ever liked holiday meals with my extended family. Dinners with my immediate family and their SOs are fine, but I've always hated the big family holiday dinners. Here are just a few reasons why...

1. I always got shunted to the 'children's table', even as a teenager. And eating at the 'children's table' with your cousins isn't fun when you don't like two of your cousins isn't much fun. I'm on better terms with them now, but I still am not crazy about taking supper with them.

2. If I bring a book, I'm deemed as 'being rude'. Even though I'm bored to death and my grandfather is more interested in watching hockey than being with his family.

3. This is sort of a companion to #1. For some reason, when we have turkey for Thanksgiving or Christmas, my grandfather carves it all wrong. By the time it gets to the 'children's table' - or wherever I'm sitting, actually - the turkey is cold and has lost a lot of it's flavour. I don't think I really loved turkey until we started having holiday dinners at home, actually.

So you can see why I'm not totally pumped for tonight. Granted, we're having roast beef instead of turkey, but I've never liked having dinner with my grandparents regardless. Even now, there's a 'pecking order', and I'm at the bottom of it - and that sucks. A lot.

I've been contemplating ways to slightly freak out my grandfather, from whispering to myself like Brick from The Middle to talking like Lauren Cooper from The Catherine Tate Show. Of course, whenever I do something slightly eccentric (like when I bowed and said 'merry Christmas' in Japanese), my grandfather just kind of smiles at me as if I'm a little kid. Never mind that I'm old enough to vote! (Speaking of which, I have a semi-prepared argument in case somebody pulls the 'you're to young to talk about politics' scheme.)

Meh. I'll find a way.

I really should eat something, and clean up the house a bit.

Yay, I'm going out tomorrow...

I hope my sarcasm in the title was easy to detect. My humor is often very British and hard to under stand (think Ricky Gervais-like).

I have to decide what I want to wear tomorrow. I'm not wearing my black shoes, because they're a bit of a pain to walk and stand in (even when I'm sitting I take them off), so it's either running shoes or my hiking boots. I'd like to wear my black shoes, though, because they look so cute. They're Clarks (a British company) shoes, kind of work-casual, and they look great with knee socks scrunched up at the ankle. I just wish they didn't make my feet hurt. Then again, if I wear them more often, my feet would probably get used to them... argh, now I wanna wear them! Maybe I will. Grah.

Anyway, I might wear one of my long cotton skirts. One is red with a kind of paisley print on it in blue and black, and the other is blue and sandy brown. The blue and brown one would go with my brown Old Navy v-neck shirt, only it's kinda stretched out from me being dumb and wrapping my arms in it while wearing it. I have a cream-coloured shirt that goes with the red skirt, or I can wear my Led Zeppelin t-shirt with it ;) Another option is a pair of jeans and my pale yellow v-neck shirt.

Damn, I really wanna wear those shoes now.

I have two short stories brewing in my head, but I don't know how to start them. Hate it when that happens.

I have also avoided math for two - almost three - weeks. eep.

I actually watched MTV today

Yup. I watched MTV, which I don't do very often unless there's something interesting on, like Engaged & Underaged. But Mom put on 16 and Pregnant, which is an interesting show - today was the second time I've watched it. Near the end of it Mom and Dad had to leave to go to Mom's doctor's appointment, so I grabbed my knitting and watched three episodes of True Life, which was quite interesting. The first one was about college basketball players, the second was about kids starting high school (I don't get why they haze the grade nines. It's stupid.), and the third was about three people starting college. Neat.

Even neater than that, we went out to an Italian-American-style restaurant for dinner. We were originally going to go to Swiss Chalet, but it was packed. Then Mom suggested fish and chips, but given that it was Friday, I said it would probably be packed, too (a lot of Catholics still eat fish on Fridays, which is why fish and chip places are often busy on Fridays). But anyway. The restaurant is one we've gone to for years, but we hadn't been there in a while. What's cool is that a lot of Dad's past and present co-workers go there, so Dad's always saying hi to somebody. Dad got wings, and me and Mom both got cheese tortellini. Mom said hers' was reheated, but mine tasted pretty good. What was funny was when Mom started talking to me about something, and I just stared at one of the TVs because there was an ad for Dissidia, the new Final Fantasy game for PSP. Sephiroth, yum ;P They also had some neat music on the stereo. The Beatles. Simon & Garfunkel. Jerry Lee Lewis. Heck yes :)

After that we stopped to get groceries... and I just remembered that I left a peppermint from the restaurant in my shorts. And they're in the wash. LOL.

Easter Weekend, Part 2 (or, 'I Really Don't Want to Be Here')

Time for part 2 of the weekend :)

Saturday

We didn't do much Saturday, but we did have turkey and ham for dinner, which was fabulous. Mom made scalloped potatoes, too, which kicked ass. I didn't have any of the Arctic Gardens peas and zucchini, though, as I hate peas, but I had salad. And we had lemon meringue pie for dessert :)

Sunday

I listened to the radio for a bit, then came upstairs. We didn't bother with Easter baskets, so partway through Sunday Morning Mom gave me a chocolate bunny and some Peeps. After she gave chocolate bunnies and Peeps to Katie and Dan (who came down later), she gave mini Whopper eggs to me and Katie. They were originally for Aunt Patti's boyfriend's kids, but they weren't coming to the hospital today.

I had lemon meringue pie for breakfast, and since dinner had been changed to lunch, I didn't eat before we left. Katie and Dan went to pick up Nathan and Steph at... 11:00? 11:30? I can't remember, but it was somewhere around that time.

We arrived just as Grandpa was wheeling Grandma into the room. This room that Grandpa booked was basically an apartment, with a kitchen/dining/living area, a bathroom and a bedroom. It was a nice room, but I really, really didn't want to be there. I wish I had brought a book with me, but that would've been rude.

And Grandpa was being... weird? Sullen? I don't know. He said nothing to me as he handed me my Easter card. He handed them out like it was his duty and didn't give a crap about it. And when he handed me a bag of chocolate eggs, he said something like, "Here, before I forget." It was odd.

Oh, and I found out that these friends from Arizona actually live here in the province. Huh.

And Becca (Patti's kid, my cousin) was dressed like a hooker. She was somewhat nice to me, though. She offered me a Baci chocolate that Patti's friend had brought. The little piece of paper that came with the chocolate cracked me up - had something witty printed on it, but I can't remember the exact words.

And I never really got to visit Grandma, because there were so many people. I don't know what the hell Grandpa was thinking, having that many people around Grandma at once.

Oh well. At least I got to see Justin, and I got to eat some killer ice cream cake.

Later today...

Things got better after I ate more Chinese food and went on my computer. Katie came upstairs to change, and then she and Dan went to Angela's Christmas party. I refuse to call Angela my 'grandmother', as she is, from what I've heard, a nasty woman, so she shall be called Angela. Well, and a few other names, but I'll call her Angela in this blog.

Dad made grilled cheese and tomato soup for us for dinner, which was really nice of him. Mom didn't have any, though. Dad had processed Swiss cheese slices in his grilled cheese, and I had cheddar cheese - not processed, though. We have no processed cheddar slices left, just the brick o' cheddar cheese - either Black Diamond or Cracker Barrel, I can't remember. But, oddly enough, the grilled cheese and tomato soup cheered me up.

Visiting my sister

I went to London, Ontario to see my sister Katie yesterday. My dad was meeting folks, so while we were waiting for him and my sister's boyfriend to come, the three of us - me, Katie and Mom - played Scrabble. Katie won, I came in second place, and Mom came in third. For me, the best part of the game was when I had a blank tile and got 'hijabs'. And, if I remember correctly, it was a triple-word score. Sweet :)

Also, she gave me three packs of gum. She bought this huge mixed pack of gum, and found out that she only liked one kind, so she game my mom three packs of peppermint gum and she gave me three packs of berry-flavoured gum. I was only going to take one pack when she offered us the gum, but she said, "You want two packs? Three?", and just gave them to me.

We went out to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. The food there is so good. I didn't eat any sushi (I wasn't too keen on it the first time I tried it), but I did have a bowl of BBQ pork udon, and some tempura, and some squid. Yum :) I also had a few edamame, which were quite good, and some deep-fried squid rings. Then everyone except Dad had ice cream. The servings of ice cream were small - which is actually good because desserts are often so huge. Mom, Katie and I had mango-flavoured ice cream and Katie's boyfriend had vanilla. The mango ice cream was so good!

I took two books with me for the trip there - a book about Bob Dylan, and Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce. I was going to bring my discman, but I decided against it - I hate my discman. I really don't like the buttons on it, because you have to dig your finger into them, but that might have been because I had the discman on my bed while reading or something when I was using it. Anyway, I might have to get an MP3 player, so that I have some music to take with me on those long car rides.