this will not be here for long. i will delete it, or this sentence.

what is said here is impermenant, and i will not claim it in conversation ever again. probably.

my aunt and uncle and three little cousins came for good friday supper tonight. and i don't know. oh, also my grandma and sister and brother in law. i don't mind my siblings; i like them quite a lot, actually. but my extended family-- they take more doing, you know?

almost without exception, the relationships i hold day to day are governed by a creed of efficiency; we are friends if and only if it is efficient. we are enemies only as long as it's affordable or preferably cheap to do so. mostly, we just make one another laugh. they are built on thinking and witticism and cleverness and laughing and efficiency and getting things done, and not much more, and not much less. somehow, my extended family is not like this.

they showed up as i was leaving to make a run to the store-- i had stuff to do, you understand. and then i came home, and i had to get oriented, drop off the groceries, make managements. they were not conducive to this. to be fair, that's not what they expected of me, of course. they traveled two hours to get here, and they damn well expected me to have set time aside to talk to them.

but i came up to my room to take care of what i needed to do feeling oppressed and unprepared and impatient. i felt like you do when you're having a waterfight and somebody fixes the hose on your face, and you can't see or breathe or anything, and you just want them to quit it. like that, only not.

i recognize that my position on this is perfectly unfair. but i also recognize that the things we think don't always follow the rules we make for our thoughts, and it's a personal rule of mine not to ignore those things-- often, you know things you don't know yet. you know? i do.

thanks for listening,
Claire