A Miserable Vacation

The last few years, we have been traveling to visit my wife’s relatives over Christmas. Both her mom and her step-dad and her dad and her step-mom live in the same town, so it is a convenient time to drive it. We can take Ye Olde mini-van and usually have enough space to carry back the bounty of grandparent lavishing on the grandkids. Most times, it has been fun. However, not this Christmas. My wife’s parents have finally reached that age where they seem to be no longer really interested in playing with their grandkids, and are more interested in watching NFL or bowl games nonstop or going into a back room and reading a book than visiting with their grandkids they only get to see 2 times a year. My wife and I ended up in this odd situation of having to suggest or encourage her parents to do things with them. I say it is odd, because we have never had to do this in the past.

To make matters worse, my daughter got sick with a cough, infected the rest of my family, and, due to the sleeping accommodations (sleeping on couches and the floor), the fact my wife’s step-dad gets up and wanders around all night, the fact that this set of grandparents decided over Christmas to purchase a 6-week-old puppy who howled all night long; we were having trouble getting the rest at night necessary to recover. This set of parents with whom we were staying surprised us by informing us that we had to leave earlier than we had planned, that they would be going to Florida from here on out for every Christmas to come, and then had the audacity to complain that we had not spent enough time with them (as opposed to the other grandparents) over the holiday.

After a long and grueling ride home, in which my daughter, literally coughed the entire ride (including when she was sleeping), the doctor informed us that she had pneumonia. My wife tells me that this will be the last Christmas we are traveling to visit her parents. This is disappointing. I am very big on trying to maintain familial relationships, because my parents were very poor at it and I wanted to do better by my kids than they did. However, I can see the point of not traveling, when the reception was as cold as it turned out to be this year.

It is with this in mind that I viewed today and tomorrow’s For Better or For Worse strip. I remember, at one point, the Pattersons complained mightily that Mike, Dee and the kids had agreed to spend time with Mira and Wilf over the holidays and how they were painted as pure evil because of it. Since that time, at every single occasion, Mike, Dee, and the kids; Mira and Wilf are at the Patterson house. I wonder when Mike and Dee will declare their independence and start doing holidays in their own place and no longer trot off to Elly and John’s place for everything. Well, probably never, since Mike and Dee are scheduled to take over their place. Once that happens though, will the Patterson holidays be at Mike and Dee’s, since they will have the Patterson homestead, or at Elly and John’s?