And suddenly, family

I have two families.

There is the family that I chose, most of whom live up here.

Then there is my blood family that, with the exception of my son, lives elsewhere.

I’m used to holidays with one or the other, but my hand-built family has really seen the most of me in the past decade. I’ll be honest. I hate traveling over the holidays. And living way up in Seattle, I’m a lot of travel for not a lot of pay-off. Well, that and I rarely have had the space to host family.

I’ve never had both families together over the Christmas. But that’s going to be the case starting tomorrow. My daughter arrives from Nashville in the morning and my mom comes in from Colorado (by way of California) on Thursday. Then seven days of hilarity will ensue.

Expected on the agenda:
Comics and sushi with the daughter and local family, because that’s just awesome. Plus, living in Nashville, she’s not going to find sushi as good as Mori just down the street from me.
Plenty of meals cooked at home because my mom doesn’t like going out. This will be a blast, because while my mom and I are both excellent cooks, we have our own ways of doing things in the kitchen. Casserole a’la Short Tempers, anyone?
Plenty of games, particularly Scabble and canasta, both of which we’re pretty competitive at. The local family is going to be dragged into this at least once. They have been warned.
Lunch at Steamers, because my mom doesn’t like eating out, but she LOVES the fish and chips at Steamers. I love it also, but it’s not my favorite. Ah, the classic clash of cornmeal breaded vs. beer battered.
Parading my family in to the office so that my team members can meet my blood relations. I expect this to be handled with all the decorum of The Elephant Man, but without the uplift.
By about the midpoint of the vacation, we will all remember why we live in separate states, though this might not actually happen. Our individual edges have blunted a bit over the years, so we are far less likely to cause sparks.

What is not on the agenda?
Sadly, writing is going to suffer. And it’s a shame, because I have a lot of projects I wanted to finish up by end of year. I guess the last two days of December are going to be hectic.

I’ll post some war diaries as time permits over the next week. Maybe with pictures of the esteemed woman who survived raising me and two brothers without ending up in a madhouse!