One of my better crooked pictures, as opposed to my bad ones. My camera needs to be replaced but, yes, this one is all my fault.

Ahhh, another holiday with family. Each one is such a treasure. Each one should be cherished and savored like a good wine (except that I don’t drink) or an excellent cup of joe (are you kidding? I would be so hyped up I would have no excuse not to do the housework) or a drag on a---wait a sec, let’s change tack here. How about this; each one should be cherished like, say, a trip to the dentist . . . or a long walk on a short pier or, hey, this one’s good, a trip in the tumbril! Yep . . . that’s getting closer . .

My identical twin sister Holly and my brother Basil (name changed to protect the innocent, and yes he is innocent, there is no dope in those brownies!)

Before you get the wrong idea, it’s not my family’s fault. Truly it isn’t. It isn’t! In fact, each one of them hosts excellent parties with lots of good food and fun things to do especially if it is just sitting around chatting with plenty of sugar close at hand. We are a witty crowd even if some of us have to shout to get our chance to talk. It can get a little crazy, in fact, I have one sister who refuses to participate. I suppose she finds it demeaning and I suppose if I were to watch myself working so hard to throw my little joke into the pot with the others, I would probably have to agree. We are like the family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (thanks for the analogy—you know who you are). Meanwhile many of the brothers-in-law feel, I suspect, a bit out of their depth. Our one sister-in-law (married to our one brother) holds her head above water pretty darn well. You go girl!

Peter in the pool with cousins while the witty ones munch away on sugar in the adjacent shady area--it's hard to be witty when you're sweaty and squinting.

But I digress.

What is it that makes going just about anywhere such a trial, something so difficult that it can feel like a death sentence? I hate to say it, I really, really do, but it’s (glancing around checking for witnesses) the Big Guy. You know, the one I gave birth to whom I dearly love but who doesn’t go along with the script of life very well. And I ask, how can one be truly witty when the other players aren’t keeping to the script? It can be a real challenge, I must say.

Michael, the Big Guy, waiting for the copious amounts of sunscreen--half a bottle at least which means we can only afford for him to go swimming twice a year--to sink in--

One of the problems, one of the things that make us say, repeatedly, “We just can’t take him anywhere!” is that this guy needs his own stuff. Some people can’t travel without their own pillow (guilty!) or their own phone, or their own bag full of foods that fit their own special dietary needs.

My son needs his own toilet.

Not one for his own personal use at each place we gather (though it generally comes to that) but HIS toilet, the one he has for his own personal use here at our house.

It’s a special toilet, an expensive toilet and ultimately most important, a non-floodable toilet. We have owned it for about 2 1/2 years and in that time it has not flooded once. Not once! This is a gift that just keeps giving and is worth more than a hundred times we have spent on it, because, after all, the big guy is big and he didn’t get that way by accident. Oh no, he got that way by eating---a lot---and by eating foods that don’t hold up well in the intestinal tract. Stuff that comes out pretty darn slimy and disgusting, smelling like something you would give money to avoid, just like those people in Soylent Green who eat real food and live in the penthouse. Yah, just like that.

The article, er, the thing, I mean, the item in question, that is to say, THE TOILET referenced

Last time we drove up to the home of one of my sisters’, she had to round up the paper towels and cleanser and air freshener so that we could de-slime the van after the Big Guy spewed all over it (and to this day I am so glad he looked down or the back of my head would have taken the brunt of it). This time, well, this time I was out in the backyard being witty and eating sugar with the others when my husband opened the screen door and crooked his finger at me. I had already had to deal with an ugly water-splashing dispute in the pool and was still resting from my attempts to get the Big Guy to calm down enough to refrain from creaming his little cousin (she, being 7 and tiny, is no match for the Big Guy), and I was feeling a little cranky. Then I looked at my husband’s face and I knew, I just knew that we were dealing with a serious toilet flooding situation, something I could easily tell from the shade of gray my husband’s face had turned, just as it always does in just this situation.

Quickly I went inside to screen my family from the details. My husband carefully explained, through dry, white lips, that it was “pretty bad”, that he had cleaned up the water that had covered every inch of my sister’s bathroom floor (it can’t get wet or it will bubble and warp), and had taken the five or six bath towels needed to soak up the water out to the garage. Now he needed me to do the disinfecting. So, I went to my sister so she could dig out all the cleaning supplies (déjà vu!) while my husband went into the guest bedroom and collapsed. I must say I hope he washed his hands first, because my mother had to sleep in that bed last night and she is pretty germ phobic, incredibly so, sure that contact with said germs will lead to instant catatonia and bleeding of the brain. (Love you, Mom!)

Before I could get in there, the Big Guy came out (I guess he wasn’t quite finished, I don’t want to think about with exactly what) and I noticed that he had splotches of dampness all over his shorts.

Me: “Michael, why are your shorts all wet?” I was hoping he would say it was pool water, or . . . nope that would pretty much have been the only acceptable answer at that juncture.

The Big Guy: “Well, I flooded the toilet and they got wet. You know, during the process.”

I tried, I really tried, to make this picture smaller so the fuzziness wouldn't be noticeable. This is the fault of my camera--it's faulty, and so is my eyesight or I would have seen it was fuzzy and taken a better one.


I could feel my sister, the one who owns the beautiful, festive and hospitable house (pictured above) we were in at the moment, control her aversion. She did instruct the Big Guy, however, not to sit on the leather sofas, or the other sofas, or the beds or the rug or the kitchen chairs—though there were a few plastic chairs upon which he could repose.

Me: “Michael, why don’t you change into your swimsuit?”

My sister, the one with the beautiful, festive, hospitable house: “Yes, that’s a great idea!”

The Big Guy: “I can’t do that! It’s wet!” Then he sat down, in his wet shorts, on one of the plastic chairs while I went, with some trepidation, into the lion’s den to survey the damage.

I must say, I was pleasantly surprised; everything looked okay and the smell wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Then, once I had disinfected the floor to allow me safe access, I lifted the lid of the commode. There was, umm, stuff in there. No water, that had been sucked down (or run away, something that seemed pretty tempting at the moment) but still, stuff, used stuff, and lots of it.

I have to confess, I chickened out. I told my kind and tolerant brother in law that I feared a fresh flooding if I were to flush “the stuff” and he very kindly and tolerantly took care of it. I didn’t ask him for the details.

Soon after, my husband came outside to view the somewhat illegal fireworks we were shooting off and, I think, had recovered enough to even enjoy it.

My husband Roy whose still-gray face is behind the sparkler and Michael the Big Guy trying to sparkle without getting sparked.


The little guy got over his terror of the sparklers (he claimed they were too dangerous—hey! Who’s the parent here?!) and had a great time.

Peter, the little guy, also trying to sparkle without getting sparked--he got sparked on the foot last 4th of July and apparently that's something you just never forget.


My daughter was given a glow in the dark necklace that matched her cousin’s so she was happy.

Mary, my daughter, the middle child and the medium guy, if you will, glowing with her cousin Rebecca on account of the glowing necklaces around their, what else? necks. And no, she has not approved this picture or the ones of her to follow.

Basil's son Caleb sharing his light so Mary can sparkle and cringe like her brothers--Rebecca is brave and lighting her own sparkler with another one of her own sparklers. I guess.

Mary's cousin Caleb, Basil's son, going up in a puff of smoke and a sparkle of sparkler. Just kiddin'.


The Big Guy got to help light one of the big scary fireworks which made his day. And he found my missing sunglasses in a bag of cookies this morning, the same very expensive sunglasses that I took for my own when a strange woman left them on the grounds of the castle where we were staying last summer, which are so expensive that, when I lost the little thingy that holds the little thingy on, I replaced it with a green paper clip and I don’t even care—in fact, a great story for another day. The Big Guy is SO out of the doghouse.

The very expensive sunglasses that were left behind by some clueless woman which I rescued (french for "took") and repaired with a green paper clip when they broke. So, I how expensive could they be? . . .