Sunday Brunch with my family...

My mom called me up last Monday and invited my husband and I to Sunday brunch since it had been a month or so since i'd seen her. She offered to treat and told us that my sister, her fiance and his mom would also be there and she was really hoping we could skip out on church and go. Since my mom and I have been getting along better, and since we knew that my sister would have a buffer (her future mother-in-law) there, we agreed since it looked like it would be a mellow ordeal with nothing too intense.

We picked up my mom at her house since she doesn't like to drive after she fell at work. (She was off for 2 weeks on medical leave and had to getting by using crutches. She's still healing and has a hard time going down stairs now while she heals).

We pulled in, parked, and went inside to find just my sister and her fiance... apparently his mom wouldn't be able to make it... and to top it off they were already sitting in the bar at a booth with 5 glasses of champagne on the table...

Now normally ordering drinks for everyone along with yourself would be seen as a polite gesture if you arrive early (or at least asking for a round of water....) but when you know that 2 people coming will not be drinking champagne and you order it for them anyway to make a big deal out  of the fact that they aren't drinking... and then demand within 2 seconds of sitting down that everyone toast, and clink glasses and drink up is just plain rude.

To add insult to injury, you probably shouldn't jokingly tell the one person who doesn't drink at all and never had (SCB) that you guess he could toast with the small orange juice glass that's half empty and that was used to cut the champagne with...

Oh, ya, and you probably shouldn't request to sit in the bar either...

So, needless to say SCB didn't participate in my sister's toast and she wasn't happy that while I lifted my glass and clinked it around, that I chose to set it down on the table and not consume it. After politely moving SCB's glass away from him (the smell makes him a bit sick), we tried to enjoy ourselves.

While no one got into a food fight or a table debate (mostly because we weren't included in the conversations to begin with), we made it through brunch. To call it a pleasant visit would be an exaggeration though, even by my families standards.

After we had had our fill of food from the buffet, and watched them go through 3 rounds of champagne while eating (including drinking the 2 glasses originally for SCB and I... which they also kept getting re-filled... we then had to sit through another 2 and a half rounds of watching them drink before we could leave because they wanted to make sure that if they didn't "eat" their monies worth, that they would drink their monies worth instead. (and somehow my sister was going to drive herself and her fiance (who came hungover btw) home????)

SCB fell asleep in the booth twice and the second time I just let him quietly dose off and sleep because it was obvious that he wasn't going to be included in any of the conversations and the environment was not fun for him...

Eventually we got to leave, and as I was driving my mom home she let it slip that when my sister's lease is up, she might have my sister AND her fiance move in so they can save money for a house....

(I guess that's why she put a new king sized bed in my sister's old room instead of replacing her 10 year old mattress/bed...)

If you flash back to when SCB and I got engaged and you remember how I asked my mom if I could just come and SLEEP in my old room for a few months leading up to the wedding so SCB could move out here and get a job... so we could date and spend more time together...  and how she told me no and I had to ask a family from my church if I could live with them when my own mother turned me down...

then you know that I ended Sunday brunch with a knife in my chest.

Yeah family... Yeah.