Thanksgiving with the in-laws

Most of you who know me have heard me state that I don't like the 5/8's in-laws much more than I like my own in-laws. Family can be such a pain in the backside. Usually for Thanksgiving we head to my brother's house where his anal-retentive wife keeps a perfectly clean Mrs. Cleaver style house. Never a spec of dirt anywhere. There is a place for everything and everything is in it's place. The worst I have ever seen her house is after dinner at Thanksgiving where the table is strewn with black Friday ads from the day's newspaper and the grown ups look through the ads and pass them around, and look through them again. The women mapping their black Friday attack vectors to hit the best stores with the best deals at the most opportune times. Planning and scheming with one another, "you pick that up for me at this store, and I'll pick this up for you at that store."

This year we made the grueling 30 mile trek to Lawrence to spend Thanksgiving with the in-laws (mine, not hers). Her parents bought one of those half in the ground houses on a five acre lot a couple of years ago, and we seem to be spending much more time there now than I had ever wanted to. Before they lived in a decent sized house, but her ol' man is somewhat of a packrat. Well, somewhat is really an understatement. He is a packrat extrordinaire. Some people drink, other's smoke dope, some look at pictures of naked ladies (or men) on the Internet (or in magazines). But the FiL's true calling is packratism. This guy can save the most mundane things which he can find a reason for them to be nigh invaluable. When they had moved from their old house to their new one, we would go over on the weekends to help clean up out the old house. There were several large plastic trash cans full of empty oil bottles - just to give you an idea what this guy is like.

So we made the trip to Lawrence. The kids (of course) are fighting and bickering the whole way there. I'm never excited about going to Lawrence. The FiL is one of those guys who drinks some sort of whey protein drink for breakfast. It's green and stinks like I don't know what. He is always going on about some health thing. When the 5/8 was a kid, it was milk. They couldn't drink milk because it had some cancer causing enzyme or some such goofiness. Now it is turkey. It is ok to eat turkey once in a while, but folks shouldn't have turkey sandwiches because if they eat turkey all the time it will kill them.

One of the things that I missed by going to Lawrence - and I didn't know I would miss it, I'd never even thought about it before - was sitting at an actual table as a family and sharing the Thanksgiving meal. At the in-laws everyone sits in the living room eating off TV trays. I suppose it works for them, and that is fine if it does, who am I to judge really. But it just doesn't feel like Thanksgiving when everyone is eating from paper plates and off TV trays scattered about the house.

With my family, there is this sense of camaraderie that just doesn't seem to exist in the 5/8's family. There isn't a lot of joking around going on. Most of the conversation centers around what we should be eating to live to be 100 (as if I would want to live that long), as well as what sham good investments to make, and of course, no trip to Lawrence would be complete without a long, and sleep inducing trip through the FiL's biblical insights. He swears he is going to write a book about his thoughts on the Bible and Christianity. And that is admiral I suppose, and of course since he is family I would buy one, and perhaps even start to read it. But I'm I'll know how it ends and pretty much what it says after listening to the man for the past 20 years.