Family

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Father’s Day Logic Problem, Dinners This Week

Well, we have slipped seamlessly from Mayhem-May to Jumble-June. Everything is good! We are so fortunate! And yet I feel like I am constantly buzzing like a high-tension wire. Do not touch me or you will experience a shock. Either that or I will latch on to you like we are two halves of a Velcro fastener and make you listen to a litany of dumb things I am anxious about. I am not sure what to do first, and I am so overwhelmed that I am having trouble even putting together a to-do list. 

This feels near universal among my cohort, too. Everyone is dashing around in haphazard zigzags, trying to do all the things. WHAT is going on? Is every year like this and I just block the memory? Or is there something special about 2023?

One of the most pressing things on my mind (but not THE most, because everything seems very urgent right now) is Father’s Day. 

My husband requested that we go out for brunch, so I duly made a reservation. But now MY father is also in town for Father’s Day, which is wonderful; I cannot remember the last time I spent Father’s Day with him. But… I don’t know how to navigate this. Several weeks ago, I made dinner reservations for a place I think my father would like, but I haven’t asked if that’s how he wants to spend Father’s Day. 

And now it’s very possible that my father-in-law will be here for Father’s Day, too. He and my mother-in-law might be arriving on Monday, but they might be arriving on Sunday, and no one is clear on which, and I feel like I maybe could get the answer by calling my mother-in-law directly instead of relying on my husband but I don’t want to because it should not be my job to manage my husband’s parents’ plans. That’s a whole other issue that we are just going to stuff into a tiny drawer and firmly close. The more pressing issue is that now my father-in-law could be here for Father’s Day and if he is, I REALLY don’t know what to do. Maybe… spend the morning celebrating my husband, then we split up to celebrate our separate fathers? What do people DO, when they live in the same area as their family?

I feel like this shouldn’t be a big deal, and yet I simultaneously feel like I’m in the duck/birdseed/fox situation, staring at a boat and a river, and trying to figure out how to get all three across without anyone being eaten, and also I don’t know how to operate a boat. 

Okay! Briskly moving on to something I have full control over, which is food!

Dinners for the Week of June 12-June 18 (it is MID-JUNE already, people)

  • Slow Cooker BBQ Pork with Baked Potatoes: I am in the mood for something saucy that I can put on a baked potato. We haven’t had BBQ pork in a while, and it fits the bill perfectly. I literally chop up an onion, throw it into the slow cooker with a pork tenderloin, and then douse the whole thing with my favorite BBQ sauce, some shakes of sriracha, and maybe some minced garlic. It is so easy. I know some people feel that chopping an onion negates the “so easy” claim, but it’s not like the chopping has to be uniform! It’s a very rough chop, takes two minutes. After a few hours in the slow cooker, I shred the pork and then put it on top of a baked potato. 
  • Hot Honey Crispy Salmon Bowls: Instagram keeps showing me reels about hot honey salmon and I have finally cracked under the pressure. I wonder if this will be the secret code that unlocks my husband’s heretofore dormant love of salmon?
  • Basil Chickpea Curry: This sounds yummy and perfect for some of the rainy days predicted this week.

What are you doing for dinners this week? Is your June a chaotic jumble?

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Weigh In Wednesday: Family Who Live Nearby

Ever since my parents left this past weekend, I’ve been feeling a little low. It was so good to have them here. We spent many hours together each day, drinking wine or taking walks or watching Jeopardy or playing games or reading near each other. My parents spent so much time with my daughter, doing sewing projects and baking projects and house repair projects and taking her to activities and listening to her practice her instruments. They took us out to dinner and watched Carla so my husband and I could take a mini vacation. They fixed things and helped tremendously with Thanksgiving dinner. And now they are gone and the next time we plan to get together is in March. I miss them. I hate saying goodbye. 

But there is a distinct possibility that our goodbyes will be fewer and farther between. I am so reluctant to post about this because I am afraid I will jinx it… but things are moving forward, and it looks like my parents may be moving to our state. Like, thirty minutes away from us. I am suppressing an excited squeal just at the thought of it!!! It is so exciting!!!! All the exclamation points!!!!!

I am looking forward to this for many reasons – not the least of which is that I will breathe a little easier once they are no longer spending 100% of their time in the remote northwestern forest surrounded by literal wolves and lions and bears, a ninety-minute drive from the nearest emergency room. But I am also just so excited that we will live near other! Within a reasonable driving distance! We could just decide, out of the blue, to get together for dinner!!!

Ever since I left home for grad school, I have been separated from my family by no fewer than 1,500 miles. Currently, we live 1,900 miles away from my parents. Previously, it was 2,200 miles. (My brother, for comparison, lives 2,400 miles away from our parents and 4,000 miles away from me.) Planes fly to cities near my parents’ house, but there are no direct flights to these cities and then you have to drive 90 minutes to get to their house. Visiting one another requires long hours of travel and lots of expense. When my husband’s family lived in Europe, it took less time to get to their house than it took to get to my house in the United States, from our college, which is also in the United States. This is a lot of boring numbers to say WE LIVE FAR AWAY.

You are starting to understand my excitement, yes?

I am also excited, of course, for Carla. She will have grandparents nearby! They will be able to attend her sporting events and music performances! When she has an urge to make a pumpkin pie with a real pumpkin, she could just… join my mother in her kitchen and make one like they did this Thanksgiving! Maybe my parents will babysit occasionally, or even have Carla over to spend the night! I don’t know; we haven’t worked out the expectations yet. But it’s all really wonderful. I feel sort of breathless with the possibilities.

I grew up seeing my grandparents very infrequently. My parents moved away from their (separate) home states once they got married, to a very rural town in the northwest. Their siblings, too, scattered to farflung states across the country. If I was lucky, I saw my grandparents once a year. Maybe an aunt and a cousin or two every couple of years. (Although admittedly, my memory sucks. I can remember specific occasions with family, but not the dates or frequency with any sort of reliability. Maybe we saw them every year; I don’t know.) 

All this means that I have NO IDEA how to exist in the same place with my family. And I don’t want to overwhelm my parents with “CAN WEs” and “WHY DON’T YOUs” and “I CAN’T WAIT TOs” when they are probably going to want to settle in and make their own friends and establish their own routines. But obviously I want to be part of their routines!!!! 

* Deep, calming breath. * Okay. Clearly, I need to chill out. I am just so over the moon about them being close to me. 

Here’s where you weigh in: If you live (or have lived) near family, I want to know how and when and how often you interact with your family members.

First of all: Which family lives nearby, and how near are they? Is it your family of origin, or your partner’s? 

How often do you see each other? And what do you do? Are there regular get-togethers, or one-off interactions? Do you have Sunday dinners each week? Do your parents take the kids every Friday? Do you go out for coffee with your sisters every first Wednesday? 

What do you do for holidays? Do you all get together, or do you split things up? 

Do you have a “come over any time, let yourself in the front door” type of relationship? (I… do not think I could do that. And I don’t think my parents could, either. But I think my in-laws would be that kind of people.) Do you get antsy if you go an entire day/week/month without seeing your family members? 

I am most curious if anyone has been in my specific situation: where you went from No Family to Family Nearby. What kinds of adjustments did you undergo?

If you could re-design your family interactions, knowing now what you didn’t know at the outset, what would you change?

Possibly because I grew up in a small family – just me and my brother, and we are six years apart in age – and spent so little time with our extended family, I find bigger/more tight-knit/more physically-near families to be so fascinating. Like my friend whose brothers all get together weekly on Zoom for a family chat. Or my friend who goes to her in-laws’ house every single Friday for dinner. Or the friend whose sister married her husband’s best friend. Or the sisters in Bad Sisterswho are so up in each others’ lives they plan a murder together. What do I know – maybe that is a totally normal level of familial intimacy. 

I want to know all about your experiences – and hey, even if you don’t live near family and never have, I want you to weigh in on what your ideal Family Interaction Situation would be.

Guess what? It is the final day of NaBloPoMo! I made it! Thirty posts in thirty days. Congrats to everyone who participated and thank you to San for hosting! Thanks so much for sticking with me, this month and beyond. To find a list of other NaBloPoMo bloggers, visit San’s blog here.

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My Ideal Weekend Afternoon

I have already gotten a few lovely questions on my Ask Me Anything form and am delighted that several of you have asked me MANY questions at once. So many great post ideas! Thank you!

(If there’s anything you want to know, please feel free to ask me anything by filling out this form! It can be anonymous if you prefer.)

NGS of The Time for Change asked, “What is your ideal way to spend a weekend afternoon?”

This is a perfect question for a Sunday! Especially a Sunday on which I woke up at 5:30 because that’s when Carla decided to wake up. Note to self: if we have to continue doing Daylight Saving Time, change the clocks BEFORE BED.

My ideal weekend afternoon would be spent lounging on the couch, reading a good book, with no pressing obligations hanging over my head. Ideally, I would be slightly tired from the exertion of some kind of family-centric physical activity that we undertook in the morning – a bike ride or a hike or skiing, perhaps. Also, it would be very pleasant if I had started dinner in the crockpot early that morning and I could sit and smell it cooking while I read, knowing that all the work was done and dinner was planned. 

During football season, I would swap out the reading for an afternoon watching my (problematic yet still beloved) team win, drinking a nice light lager, with my husband beside me for purposes of high-fiving and answering my questions about football rules, and my daughter lying on the floor of the living room, drawing or working on a LEGO creation. 

Now I want to know what your ideal weekend afternoon looks like. 

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.