Friends and Family

I apologize deeply for my immature tantrum yesterday. With that being said...

Do you want to know what's funnier than watching an episode of "Friends" in English class? Watching your English teacher watch one of her favorite episodes of "Friends" in English class.

Today we kicked off our 'family' unit in English with a free-write about our families and a special viewing of an episode of "Friends" (obviously), which was really amusing. I was mildly entertained with my free write, and I think it might be kind of fun to expand on it, so that's what I'm going to do right now.

My family is...
weird. But I challenge you to find me one that would be considered 'normal.'

There's my mom, who is currently way more excited about the release of "New Moon" than I am. That confuses me. I'm the hormonal teenager in the house - I should be the obsessed one. Last night, she got 20-some points in a game of Scrabble with the word 'vagina.' She patiently taught me how to drive, makes me laugh constantly, and just this morning informed me that she thinks she needs therapy so that she can be more tolerant of people who are incompetent. I guess I'm quite like her in that repsect. She's my BFF, the Lorelai to my Rory. She doesn't judge me for my nerdy music taste or my Christmas Pandora station that I listen to more frequently than I should two weeks before Thanksgiving although I constantly judge her for her bizarre appreciation for both classic rock and raunchy rap music. She has recently convinced herself that she is going to re-learn how to ice skate and that I'm going to be very jealous of her when she can do perfect figure eights to the 'Figure Eight' song from Schoolhouse Rock. But that's just typical Mom.

Then there's my dad, who is a freak. He's super-smart but he often has really funny ways of showing it. I like him anyway. He respects me and my rare 'teen' moments, although the constant tapping on my bedroom door every five minutes while I'm doing homework to ask me about my day or what I think we should do for dinner loses its charm very, very quickly. He just went back to work at a legit job, so my homework gets done a little faster now. When I was little, I had myself convinced that he would go on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' one day and win us a bunch of money because he knew all the answers anyway. He has yet to lose faith in the Cleveland Browns and will forever worship the ground on which Bernie Kosar walks. His love for the boys from the Rat Pack greatly influenced my nerdy taste in music, though in my defense, it's pretty hard not to respect Frank Sinatra when you're dancing around with your father every night to 'Fly Me to the Moon' at four years old.

And then there's my dog, a golden retriever mix of some sort who has effectively chewed off a good 75-80% of her fur do to allergies and a staph infection. She used to be covered in beautiful white and gold fur, but now most of the fur is gone and she's still adorable. She sleeps probably 21 out of the 24 hours in the day, but we have accepted this as a fact of life. We rescued her from the pound when she was a puppy and had to fight many battles including her intense separation anxiety and all of her cage issues, which included slicing her paw open on it (twice) and occasionally getting out of it and tearing up furniture/doors. But we eventually came out victorious and are quite positive that she didn't turn out half bad for having us as owners.

It's an unfortunate thing to note that there is basically no one still kickin' on my mom's side of the family, which would constitute as the 'fun' side. My aunt rocks - she's hilarious and a lot like my mom. She's married to a guy who I had to take for a beer run the other night and who just became a fan of Sarah Palin on Facebook. Their kids can be obnoxious, but I love them anyway. Preston, the 9-year-old love of a child (usually - he recently locked one of my friends in an outhouse while we were at a pumpkin patch) and Bailey, a 7-year-old recovering kleptomaniac. Also on my mom's side is my grandfather, a very Conservative, very loving gentle giant with a wicked-awful sense of humor, and his wife, my 'step-grandma' who is as obsessed with shopping as I am.

Then there's my dad's side of the family. The irritatingly loud and dramatic, most times intolerable Greeks who don't really appreciate me that much. I do like my grandparents; my Yia-Yia is a QVC addict and my Papou, an ancient little Greek man who is probably president AND vice president of my fan club. My aunts are both nuts, my Godmother is an adorable little woman with the biggest heart in the world. She and her husband have adopted two little girls who happen to be sisters. They're both absolutely sweethearts no matter how 'bad' they are compared to the standards of my crazy aunts. Then there are innumerable cousins and aunts and uncles and who I could never accurately discribe in the space allowed here, no matter how expansive.

That's all that can really be said for my biological family, and if I went on a tangent about my unbiological family, my friends, I would be here forever.

Goodnight, all.