Whew!

So The Holidays* are finally over. It has taken me this long to recover from a long weekend at the in-laws. I love my in-laws. They are the kindest, most generous people on the planet (well, most of them are anyway) and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. But…

There are too darn many of them, frankly. In a four-bedroom house, there were 13 adults and 12 children for three days. Then, on the last night, two more adults were added. Friends of my sister-in-law’s had come for the big 50th anniversary party held in honor of my husband's parents. Now granted, they drove from Minneapolis and Chicago, and I certainly wouldn’t have expected them to turn around and drive home, but still. It would never have occurred to me to assume I could stay in a house already filled to the brink. I would have made reservations at a hotel or other arrangements. To my husband’s family, it’s the more the merrier. To me, it’s rude.

But that’s just me. I have one brother, and if you throw in his wife and in-laws, there are at the most six of us for any given holiday get-together. We all live here, so said get-togethers rarely last more than three hours. So to be thrown into the chaos of a large family for a long weekend takes a lot out of me. It would have been better if I could have had a drink, or three.

Yes, there are lovely moments. Watching the little kids open their gifts and downing several dozen cookies in one sitting, for example. But man, do I need a vacation.

*Also, why do we refer to these particular holidays as The Holidays? As a Valentine’s Day fan, I find that slightly offensive.

Ok. Thanks for listening.