A Bootleg Family Thanksgiving

Hope everyone had a good holiday. Here's a quick recap of mine, through the eyes of some family members who rarely get mentioned in these parts.

My Mother: She came down to San Diego last Thursday and announced that she'd be staying two nights. I love my mother. She did the best job she could raising two boys. But, since my parents broke up in 2001, my mom has gone bat-sh*t insane.

Even worse, she's morphed into one of those creepy old women who go through other people's drawers, closets and medicine cabinets. She's only 56, which leads me to believe she'll have graduated to armed robbery at 80.

When she wasn't invading our privacy, my mom was helping herself to my beer, drinking half, then putting the rest back in the refrigerator for me to drink "later". From there she opted out of spending time with her grandson, so she could repeatedly hit "refresh" on our laptop's internet browser in hopes of some septuagenarian answering her personal ad.

Most egregiously, she poured a pound of cinnamon in with our not-exactly-inexpensive coffee grounds each morning and the damn coffee pot and filter still stinks of that spice. Oh, and she pees with the door open. Those two things just…just…

My Brother: I don't talk about my brother that much. We're fraternal twins, but we're not that close. Y'all remember Tomax and Xamot from G.I. Joe fame? When one of them got hurt, the other felt it, too. Well, that wouldn't work for us, because if I got hurt, chances are my brother would be too asleep to feel it and too unemployed to afford medical insurance, if he did.

He called on Thanksgiving morning to wish my family well and I can only assume he was just about ready to hit the sack, as he hasn't been awake at 9:00 AM since he was a senior in high school. He did make sure to put in a take-out order that included "a few slices" of my wife's famous sweet potato pie and some of my mother's homemade bread that she was bringing down. "Just have mom bring it back with her", he suggested.

My Grandfather: I drove up to Long Beach last Saturday morning to see my grandfather. He lives in one of those senior citizens-only apartment complexes and, since my grandmother passed away a few years ago, has become quite the geriatric pimp.

He always meets me on the street and, as we walk to his third floor apartment, assorted widows watching from their windows wave and call out wondering when he's going to visit, asking if he enjoyed the cookies/pie/cake they baked for him and/or informing him of various broken appliances that need "fixing".

Now, he and my grandmother were married for over 50 years, so, hilariously, he'll feign annoyance at all this attention the moment we're inside and his door is closed behind us. But, when it's time for me to leave, he'll dunk his head in a bowl of Old Spice before he walks me to my car – ensuring we stroll through the courtyard, instead of taking the fire exit stairs to the street, which are quicker (for me), but where he can't be seen.

He's also at the age where two out of every three words from his mouth are "stool"…and not the kind you sit on. Well, you're sitting, but not…ah, never mind.