Dysfunctional Families

My kids like to tell me that there is definitely something wrong with me or maybe it is the way I do things or the things I do.
I'm really not sure but whatever it is, I think they mean it. My oldest daughter refused to bring one of her male friends to meet me for fear of what I might say. As a matter of fact, since they liked to take road trips, she one time took a detour of one whole state just to avoid bringing him home to "meet mom." I thought that was kind of extreme.
She has a job (which is a good thing) in a state that I can't name under threat of God knows what on a newspaper that I am also not allowed to mention. This particular daughter is deathly afraid that her co-workers will find out that I am the person who designed the Kelo Christmas Curse Card which, I am very proud to say, made national even international, if you count New Jersey, headlines.
She also has extracted my promise that, if I use any photos of her on my various sites, including ctrsvp.org, that I will disguise/eliminate any identifying marks, etc.
Giving that copious amount of information, above is her picture.

This is my son who is actually the oldest. I don't know why he is always carrying that cross when he comes for coffee. His biggest worry is who will take care of him when I die. The sister who lives in the state I can't mention says there's no way in hell that she will do it. The middle sister (pic below)has 4 (count 'im) kids of her own and thinks he should take care of them. There's a major disagreement about that! When he feels like he's been forced into watching them, he does silly things like get into egg and maple syrup fights with them to get even. Plus he has a friend named Albie who no one else can see.

This is my middle daughter with the four children. Her brother likes to say it's time for her to have another and thinks she should make the next one Asian just to sort of round things out.

She, also, prefers not to be recognized which is probably pretty obvious. In addition to her 4 children, who my friend the mailman refers to as the "bin laden children", she is trying to get her college degree. She's a good daughter but she does have a bad habit of blaming things on other people-like me. I asked her to go down to another town, which I can't mention, and pick up the baby of the family who had no way home. So, with no license, car insurance or headlights, off she goes with her brother. Needless to say, the police stop her for driving w/o lights and she got into a BIG argument with them and made nasty references regarding their family members, etc. They took her car and I can't remember how she got home. Sure enough, though, she blamed it all on me.

This is the one child who doesn't seem to be bothered, too much, by the things I do or say or wear. She has even been on my show and makes a really good co-host. Maybe she figures what's the difference since we live in a fairly small but infamous city and most people already know she's my daughter.

She is the baby in our family at 20 while her siblings are, in order of appearance, 43, 38 and 33. God, how did I get to be this old but I know that it is certainly better than the alternative.

She did get her own apartment because she said I was driving her crazy but she calls or visits almost every day. She's in college too with a 3.9 GPA and works fulltime. Another hard worker and another to be proud of.

So, while it's true that our family is probably dysfunctional, we can all read and our shared motto seems to be "All for one and one for all". Maybe it's the other way around.

So what is it that I do that's so strange? Well, I've written so much that I've exhausted myself and if you've gotten this far, there's a good chance that you may be exhausted too so I'll just give you one example of what the kids think is strange but doesn't seem at all strange to me.

I tie chicken wings or pork bones to the ceiling fan, put it on high and drive the cats crazy. It makes (and them!) laugh. Did you ever wonder why a person can be as intelligent as all hell but if that same person likes to laugh and have a good time, you're suddenly less intelligent?

And, finally, don't eat Peter Pan Peanut Butter until some safer time in the future.