My uncle showed up… high… again. Which doesn’t bother me so much, but he snarfed wine everywhere, like every couple minutes.
It is so nice to live halfway across the country from both sides of the family. NghtCrwlr and I went out for dinner. 
Robin
At my gramma’s house, my nephew Dylan was high on sugar or something (he’s 8 years old, methinks) and he wouldn’t stop running around the house. Then he was spinning around on the floor. My older brother, Tony, told Dylan to spin around more and wherever he stopped the person sitting there could beat him silly with a pillow. I thought this would calm him down but it encouraged him to be more hyper! Spin spin spin! My boyfriend was there with me; he probably thinks my family is insane. “Yeah, haha, let’s beat up little kids!” I thought it was a stupid idea, but my younger brother Ben (he’s 16) liked the idea and continually hit Dylan.
sigh Men…
We had the normal problems. One of which is always that we do everything wrong according to people who have always lived in the U.S.
Sorry if we learned it all from the famous corny Norman Rockwell magazine covers, but we really didn’t study it every year from grade 1 like our friends did.
And we aren’t pumpkin anything, traditional or not! 
I had dinner at my psycho-christian uncle’s house. Actually my uncle isn’t so bad, it’s mostly his wife and my cousins that make me nuts. These poeple won’t do anything to advance their own lives. It’s always “well, if the lord wills it…” My cousin is 34 years old, perfectly attractive and has decided that she doesn’t want to kiss anyone until she’s engaged. She also won’t make any effort towards meeting new people outside of her small church, but she constantly bitches about not being married yet. “When the lord thinks I am ready he will send the right man…”
Aarrgghh!!
Also, my grandfather is dying and has this huge brain tumor and it’s making him hallucinate and act even weirder than ever. Actually, his behavior was pretty funny, he made a pass at the above fundie cousin. My sister and I were laughing for a good long time at that one.
The worst has got to be…golden raisins in the stuffing! My immediate family was staying with some other (sane) cousins that weekend, and as soon as we got back they gave us some unfruited stuffing, so it was OK in the end.
I must admit to never being even slightly interested in washing dishes following a good meal. I’m much more into retiring into comfortable chairs for an evening of fine conversation. To this end, I’m a big fan separate, enclosed dining rooms. Just close the doors and walk away. Clear the mess another day.
Which brings me to my pet peeve concerning Thanksgiving family dinners. I very much want to enjoy everyone’s company, rather than loose several to mundane chores. Sometimes it seems that the meal is a production orchestrated by the host, in which we all have our parts to play, rather than a celebration with the host, in which we are all free to be ourselves and enjoy each other.
My brother-in-law’s girlfriend could NOT stop talking about the election. She is one of these people who has extremely strong opinions based on (as far as I can tell) not one moment of independent thought. She was just parroting what she’d heard others say. Argh.
Also, we went out to dinner on Friday evening, something that was a pretty scary prospect given that my toddler is at an age where we just don’t GO to restaurants. My husband and I were spending 10% of our energy on enjoying our meals and the family company, and 90% of our energy on keeping the little nipper happy, distracted, and semi-quiet. Finally, we could tell we had reached the end of our ability to keep him from disrupting the restaurant. We both start pitching in 99% as we wrap up the paying of the check, etc.
My BIL’s girlfriend had asked to have her leftover gourmet pizza boxed, then said she wasn’t sure she’d eat it before they went home to Wisconsin, but hated to waste it. I remarked that our son would probably enjoy whatever she didn’t eat. She said “Great!”
We’d driven separately and were planning to light out of there ASAP and meet them all at home again. So there we were, my hands were loaded up with baby crap and my husband was holding our squirming son and I was trying to manage coat, hat, etc while cleaning up the disaster area of our table. This is the moment the waitress brought the styrofoam box to the girlfriend. What does the girlfriend do? She refused to even take it out of the waitress’ hands; she pointed to me, saying “Cranky is taking it.” That’s right. I had to put down my son’s diaper bag and hat and stop picking up the crumbs around his high chair so I could pick up the damned container and go over to her place and slide the leftovers in myself. AND carry it home. All because I mentioned that we might eat the leftovers she didn’t eat.
It’s not that she was being deliberately mean, she was just being CLUELESS and lazy. Christ.