It Wouldn't Be Easter Without a Drunk Relative or Two

We traveled down to Keith's brother Bruce's house on Sunday to have Easter dinner with them. Easter is just not a big holiday for us, since we don't have kids we don't buy chocolate bunnies (no matter how tempting they are when you walk by the candy displays in the store) and we don't dye eggs or have Easter egg hunts in the back yard. And we still haven't quite figured out what eggs have to do with the whole Christ is Risen thing, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, they don't normally invite us to Easter dinner but son James was going to be in town visiting from his new home in Alabama, which he totally hates, and Bruce was kind enough to arrange a dinner so we could all see him.

We arrive at his house and find that Keith's ex wife is there, and we just kind of figured that she was among the invited guests so that she could see her son, too. Wine glasses were out and bottles had been opened and as the day went on the ex wife got louder and progressively drunker. Yay! It's Easter! Let's Get Drunk!!

It didn't bother me too much that she was there. Keith was a little creeped out but was nice to her and we all had dinner and visited and then Katie took her home because by then she was pretty well whacked and she is one of those mean loud obnoxious drunks, which is one of the many reasons Keith is not still married to her.

Then we find out that she was not actually among the invited guests, James just told Katie (who is treated as the family chaffeur because she is the only one that can legally drive and has a car) to go pick her up and bring her along without thinking that maybe he should ask Bruce first before bringing along another guest, but James is kind of oblivious to most of the social rules that we all kind of assume everyone knows.

Anyway, we find out that Bruce has been laid off from his job because the company was sold and they decided to get rid of anyone over about the age of 50, and Bruce is 64 and how do you deal with unemployment and starting over at 64? When you still have 2 kids at home and a big house payment and nobody is hiring young people let alone someone who is old enough to retire but can't afford to.

And before you get laid off you just adopted the biggest dog in the world because it was free and you've always loved these dogs and now you have a dog that probably eats $50.00 worth of dog food in a day. Because he is HUGE.

I don't remember what the dog's name is but he is really sweet (and HUGE!) and it's kind of cool to not have to bend over to pet a dog. And did I mention that he is HUGE?