Funeral was nice. Big. Large protestant church, max capacity. HOT. Becky & I got there just before start time and somehow ended up sitting right by a big fan, which was fantastic. The family is holding up really well, clearly this has been very overwhelming and busy this week, but they're tight and it shows. The last I'll say about this here for now (because I'm tired of being mad and offended), all the older sibs got to walk out of the sanctuary with their spouses or significant others. Josh walked out alone. Lizzie was partying with her new Canadian pals at that moment.

The fallout hasn't come yet, Lizzie (who has lost "Liz" status with me- a few years ago she wanted to be called Liz instead of Lizzie because she thought it sounded more mature) will be home tomorrow. She would have been here today except that she informs her mom that she has stuff planned for them to do on the way back from Quebec! Yay! Never mind that I sort of count on my mother-in-law's babysitting services on Mondays. I don't mind staying home with my kids, but when it's because Lizzie has shopping she wants to do (and have someone else pay for, no doubt), I'm bent. And here's the awesome kicker- I'm absolutely positive that Lizzie plans on freeloading in my vacation house in North Carolina in a couple weeks. Months ago we told her and Josh that it would be cool for them to crash in one of our extra rooms there, but that was long before all this bullshit rolled out the cow. I've already voiced my displeasure at the notion of her leeching on my vacation that I've been killing myself to pay for, but I'm getting the vibe that I'll have to roll with it if it goes down. At least there's a lot of awesome live theater to look forward to! By the way- I HATE LIVE THEATER. I like keeping a nice calm blue ocean around me at all times, ESPECIALLY ON VACATION. I don't appreciate the drama. So there will be problems maybe.


P.S.- funnier stuff next time, or at least some new baby pictures. Promise.

Tags: What? Family Drama

After I said I'd be updating lots more often I promptly did the exact opposite and didn't update at all. That's why you have to keep your head on a swivel folks, you never know what crazy stuff we'll do around here! WHOOOO! Nobody could predict opposite!

I could blame the wife's side of the family and their current drama for my internet failings, and to a certain extent that would actually be accurate. Not that I couldn't have posted about this sooner, but I was trying to figure out an angle that would be most fair to everyone involved. Just the facts! I really wanted to do this in the One Sentence of Drama format, but I don't think I can get in enough context for you to draw a solid conclusion. This will be like, three or possibly forty sentences. I'll be trying not to express my opinions about the current situation so much as just lay out the facts & let you have at it in comments. I have made my feelings clear to plenty of folks here in the real world.

On New Year's Eve of 2004, Becky's baby sister Liz married her first boyfriend, Josh (for whom Liz was also a first significant other), after meeting him her freshman year at Ohio State a few months before. This was met with much disapproval and resistance from both families (both huge- Liz has three sisters and a brother and Josh is one of twelve kids) who sensed a disaster in the making, but these two were in LOVE and would not be denied. Like most always, when Liz wants something, she will get it; in this case an expensive wedding at age 19.

For the record, everyone in our family really likes Josh. He is a great guy, extremely nice and considerate to a fault. Young, naive, but super nice. Hard working, smart, responsible, good-looking in that "I'm a young guy in college!" sort of way. Exactly the type of guy you want marrying your daughter, so even though we all objected the marriage thing, that was just because it seemed waaaaay too soon, not because we thought Josh was a bad guy. Actually, we thought he might be a great influence on her. Sadly, I think what appealed to Liz about him is that he bends over backwards to cater to her moody, eating-disorder fueled whims without complaint or hesitation. Most of us had the feeling that she'd break Josh at some point, that he couldn't take that forever. He's proven fairly resilient to her less appealing personality issues though, and they are still together. Technically.

This past quarter (semester? I don't know) at Ohio State, Liz, a language student, took a scholarship opportunity to study with the French speaking Canadians in Quebec. This, beyond all the usual dramatics that ensue whenever Liz does anything, sent up some huge red flags as to the status of Liz & Josh's marriage. "She's moving to Canada for three months?" "Weren't they like, just married a little while ago?" "Isn't that a little odd?" These are more like questions than actual red flags, but you get my meaning. So there was that. Liz would e-mail Becky and ask how Josh was doing. "Wait- you're married to him- don't you know?!?" This was a redder flag than the last ones, almost INFRA-RED and invisible to the human eye!

Then there was this, and our tale gets sad here. One of Josh's brothers, Mike, was killed in a car crash last weekend. Personally, I didn't know the guy, I'd met him only once sorta at Liz & Josh's wedding, but he was one of 11 siblings that I met that night and that's 11 more people than I am capable of remembering after one meeting. Anyway, it is really sad and you would not believe how many people have stopped by during the calling hours for the viewing (which is inaccurately named since it is closed-casket). Josh's family, as I mentioned, is HUGE and really involved in the church/school community and know a lot of people. It has been a massive parade of folks offering condolences and shoulders to cry on, the funeral home had to use an empty lot next door to make room for all the cars. I bet it is safe to say there have been thousands of people dropping by, many close friends and family but also many relative strangers who just felt they should offer up some support.

Days ago, understandably distraught after learning of the fatal accident that took his 24 year-old brother, Josh called Liz in Canada and asked her to come home a few days early to help him through this. She said no.

Becky and the rest of her family did their best to convince her to get here, but no dice. After Becky eventually e-mailed the ultimatum of "if you don't respond to me the next time you'll see me is in fourteen hours at your dorm room door to bring you home," Liz replied with something to the effect of, "Don't tell me how to live my life. You should know that Josh and I were having problems, and after I get back from Canada I'm probably not going to be living with him. Mike wouldn't care if I'm there or not. If you come here you won't find me- I'll be hiding."

Liz is done with her program in Quebec today, the day of Mike's funeral. She is staying in Canada until Sunday and is not returning phone calls.

Tags: What? Family Drama

We're runnin' her a little thin here, folks- low to the ground, sputtering; we'll get as much distance in as we can before we have to ditch. Just hope we're not over a mountain range or someshit- a nice water landing is what we need. Someplace nice with a pretty beach. And little grass skirts on little native ladies. Beer. Ooh- DOUGHNUTS. I'd smite all of you for a doughnut. Or pizza- thick pizza. Thick as your arm. I like a thin pizza, but I want Court Street Bakery pizza. I wonder if that place is still there? In Athens (Ohio) I mean, they would close on weekends at one in the afternoon, but then they opened back up at midnight with giant sheets of gloriously gooey pizza for a buck a slice. Lines would form outside the door and wind down the sidewalk. Totally worth the wait, it was magic like Christmas Morning except with more cheese and less fake surprise. I would check on the internet for Court Street Bakery's current status, but I sort of don't want to know. If it's gone, I'll be sad, but if it's still there I'll probably also be sad because I doubt they deliver and certainly not to Cleveland within the next five minutes. Was I just talking about crashing a plane? What the hell was that?

I finished up things a little early last night (before 1 a.m.!) so I worked on the mayhems.com site a little. I didn't really add anything, but I made places TO add things. Potential and faux progress! That is perfectly fitting. Unlike these shorts, but I keep wearing 'em, they're old friends.

The keys of my laptop keyboard look like Scrabble squares, except black. They're not concave curvy and sculpted like regular keyboard keys, they're flat. I'm looking at triple word scores like you would not believe. NUM LOCK F6. What's that worth? 5?

Finally it looks like my brother-in-law Nick might have a break in getting full (or at least primary) custody of his daughter from Hallie, that psychotic (just my opinion, not calling names) he banged a few years ago, which is a whole THING just like everything else in my wife's family. The constant drama over there would make Tennessee Williams shake his head in disbelief were he not dead and whatnot. (Did you know he choked to death on a bottlecap? I didn't. How 'bout that?) I try not to get involved 'cause I like it quiet and boring, but the drama is so dense it creates it's own gravity and you just get sucked in. Anyway, I won't backtrack too much because I could type a modern epic here. I'll give you the amazingly out-of-context compendium special edition, the Shock and Awe version. I can do it in one possibly run-on sentence.

Hallie admitted that her mother, Mary, the grandmother who has made it her mission to ruin Nick's life as well as the lives of everyone in his family (and been fairly successful to this point, you'd be amazed what regular calls to various civic agencies by someone who hates you and has lots of free time will do), has been using dolls to teach the daughter, a three year old girl, what penises and vaginas are for in an attempt to brainwash the girl into reporting to authorities that her daddy has been raping her.

There you go! One sentence! Shock-ing and Awe-ful enough? I'm standing on an aircraft carrier in front of my "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner, waving to the international media assembled. Thanks, everybody- we've got those terrorists on the run now, boy! YEEE-HAAWWWW! I've got a flight suit!

Not funny, I know. Sorry. I try not to bring down the room here at Cranky Matty, but my mind keeps coming back to this.


Today's only Tuesday?!? You've GOT to be kidding.

Tags: Good Times Family Drama I Am Professional Lunch

My mother-in-law comes over to watch the kids a few days a week so I can go get some face time in at the office. Someday I'll describe the circus-like vibe all that entails, but for now I just need some info. Amongst Kathy's quirks (of which there are many, some endearing, others not so much), she is a die-hard tea drinker, like English die-hard. She has close relatives in England, so I don't know if this is where she picked this up or if the religious tea drinking came about on its own. The tea thing is fine I guess, she has to pee a lot and we always have to wait around while she has her tea and whenever we go anywhere she drags along this huge sack of teabags, BUT WHATEVER. Here's the thing that gets me- she uses the same mug here all the time, and never washes it. Some days she'll be so kind as to go out of her way and do all our dishes when I haven't gotten to them, but she leaves the dirty, tea-ring stained mug sitting there on the counter. If I let it sit, she'll use it the next time again, without washing it. Or even rinsing it out!

What The Fuck Is That? Is this a filthy british thing? Kathy has, on occasion, attempted to do things "bri-ish" (like not pronouncing "t" in words like "british") because she thinks it's cool or something. Do tea drinkers in England not wash their mugs? Does that add something to the experience? I admit I am not a tea drinker (or coffee either), but I just don't get it.

My kitchen ain't pretty, not by a long shot, but this kitchen is America, dammit! In America we wash our gross tea ringed mugs. I took A.P. History in high school, and I distinctly remember us winning some war in olden times so we wouldn't have to look at disgusting tea stains in our table service. And then we ate all the dinosaurs, which still pisses me off because I want a huge brontosaurus burger like the kind Fred Flintstone got to eat in 1962. I'm not gonna get over that, ever.

Tags: What? Family Drama