aunt rant
May 09, 2007

We are burying my brother�s ashes on the 26th. 275 miles away, in my hometown. So yet again, mucho outlay of assets on my part. I have to burn a vacation day, pay for the dog to be kenneled (and since it�s a holiday weekend, it will be a four-night minimum), pay for a hotel, and pay for all the gas�probably about a hundred dollars worth, since we have to borrow my B-I-L�s SUV.

Sigh. So much for getting new glasses. Or a replacement for my broken windshield, for that matter.

Why drive the Guzzler? Well�some of my Arizona relatives are coming back for it. My uncle (72, wooden leg, profoundly deaf, mostly blind, and post-stroke), his daughter, and her husband. They will be flying into Chicago, and Spouse and I have been guilted into persuaded to picking them up at the airport and driving them.

This being my family�even though it�s the good side of the family�the whole plan has been kind of a fustercluck. My aunt (who is staying home in Phoenix to mind the grandchild) was having tremendous difficulty getting the plane tickets�she was trying for Midwest into Milwaukee, direct, to accommodate the mobility-challenged uncle thing. Couldn�t swing it. Spouse, being a kind person, wanted to expand her options, so he called her and told her that O�Hare was just as easy for us as Milwaukee.

My aunt, being a ditz, and Southwesterner with no conception whatever of anything Midwestern (and something of a tightwad) took this information, ran with it, and got their flight booked�

�into Midway.

@%*$!!!

Whenever I have to deal with my family, I end up feeling like I�ve been beaten with a sack of doorknobs. And it still isn�t completely resolved! You see�we don�t know yet where we�re driving them TO. It may be as far as my parents, to borrow a car to drive. It may be as far as the town where my brother Buck lives, which still would be okay, since we are staying there ourselves. It could be as far as my hometown itself, which would be a 50-mile round-trip beyond our hotel. And it could even conceivably be another 30 miles on top of that to the town where Uncle�s best friend lives.

I know it�s my fault, that I can�t just tell them �Oh, I can take you as far as _____, and you�ll have to figure it out from there�. But the truth is, these are my favorite relatives.
I once made Spouse drive from Vegas to Phoenix and back in one day, just so I could have lunch with them. I adore these people. And they are coming to mourn my little brother.

So I�ll bitch, and moan, and write about it in my diary. But in the end, I�ll do anything I can to make things easier and happier for them.

GYM REPORT:
15 minutes
.66 miles
106 calories