Hey guys, I have a new camera!
I was skeptical, I will admit.
I was trying to do something with this, but I forget what.
Yes, I am slightly OC, as you may be able to tell by the glimpses of the magnets on my fridge.
It isn’t fancy or expensive, but it can take non-blurry pictures, and thus I say “huzzah!” in triumph. However, today’s blog post is not about my new camera, but rather family.
I have two very distinct sides of my family. I think that’s relatively normal. One the one side is my dad’s family. They are very wealthy, and my dad grew up going to very good schools and doing lots of sports and taking trips to places like France and England every summer (as did his two younger sisters). On the other side is my mom’s family, who are the on the top end of upper middle class, have always been comfortable but not really rich, and had three girls (my mom and her two older sisters).
The money is part of why they don’t mix well, but a lot of it is also where my aunts all went. The middle child on my dad’s side, Aunt L, is unmarried with no kids. She has a very good job and is very intelligent and cultured with a lovely house full of nice, expensive things. The youngest, Aunt P, was married (now divorced) and has two sons, the older is going through the teenage years, and the younger is high-functioning autistic (around middle school age). On my mom’s side, the oldest, Aunt S, married into a very conservative, religious family, which is what she wanted (my mom’s parents were neither). And her daughters and son are very cool people, although quite a bit older than me (late thirties to my mid twenties). The middle daughter, Aunt V, married into a Catholic family, and has spent most of her life fostering children, even when her own children were little. Her daughter and two sons are also pretty cool people. And really, as far as I understand, they’re all happy with their respective lives.
I love my family. Aunt V and Aunt P both live right near me (Aunt V is about half an hour south and Aunt P is about fifteen minutes north). Aunt V is the one I feel closer to, as she’s my mother’s older sister (she actually half-raised my mom because my grandmother and my mom had some issues near the end of my mom’s schooling and couldn’t live in the same house anymore). She’s sort of my mom-away-from-mom. Which, considering how close I am with my mom, is a comfort for me. She always makes time for me, even when she’s got an insanely busy day. Aunt P I see less often, as our schedules never seem to mesh quite right.
I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it on here or not, but I am not comfortable around kids. Older kids I can generally deal with (say, 8 or 9 and up), but younger kids I have no use for. I don’t intend to ever have children (and no, I am not going to change my mind), so I don’t see it as a problem, except in circumstances where I have to be around small children. And, unfortunately, since my cousins on my mom’s side are pretty much all about kids, and just started having them about 5 years ago… Well. Family gatherings tend to be kind of insane. There are now six children between the ages of 3 months and 5 years at any given family gathering at my Aunt V’s house. Of course, they all know I don’t do kids. I’m not offered babies or children to hold, and the kids generally look at me with a mix of curiosity and fear, since I’m the only adult who doesn’t actively interact with them (and personally, I think some of them are a little spoiled, so I don’t think it’s a bad thing for them to have). My cousins and their spouses react differently to my attitude. I believe that my oldest cousin is actually insulted on behalf of her children. My middle cousin and his wife are totally fine with it. The youngest (my oldest brother’s age) doesn’t have any kids yet, but I get the feeling his wife might be miffed with me if I don’t get totally insane over hers when they start having them. n.n;;;
I understand, though. Parents are biologically wired to think their kids are the best thing that ever happened in the entire world. That’s kind of how the kids survive in the first place (otherwise the parents would let them wander off into the street and the human race would be extinct in one generation). And it’s not that I don’t like the kids as people. The problem is that I can’t consider any human being a “person” until they can actively interact with me in a consistent and coherent manner.
…
Actually, by those criteria some adults aren’t really “people” yet (I am looking at you, people who use “netspeak”). But that point aside, until I can actually have a conversation with them and understand what they’re saying without their parents interpreting (because I don’t speak toddler, sorry, I must have missed that class in college), and they don’t start screaming randomly because they’re tired or emitting strange odors because they can’t control their nether regions, I don’t want anything to do with them. I wouldn’t want to interact with an adult who did those things either. Those people who are happy to work with adults who do those things, I admire you greatly, because there’s no way in hell I would be willing. By contrast, I’d be thrilled to work with a half-blind, incontinent, drooling dog or cat, because I love animals, but if it was a person, of any age? No thanks.
On the plus side, though, the family gathering was totally an excuse to bake lemon cheesecake bars. >.> I love baking. And they were very much appreciated. So that was awesome.
MirrorMe 