My own brand of crazy

        Have you ever left the house and thought, "Nooooooot my best outfit."?  That happened to me today.  I knew it wasn't great, but couldn't be bothered to change.  

At least I didn't wear this to work today

        Let's talk about family.  I spent time with my in-laws as well as my immediate family over Thanksgiving.  One thing I notice when hanging out with different family units is that each one has their own particular brand of crazy.  Some people are good at hiding it.  My family- clearly- is not.  (See above picture.)  

        You know what I mean, though, right?  Some families think fart jokes are funny, and some would never dream of laughing at such a thing.  Some families yell when they fight, and some smile bigger the more pissed off they get.  Some families watch football on Thanksgiving (GO PACK GO) and some don't even know which teams were playing.  I hate to say it, but [in order to appear slightly PC] none of these differences are right or wrong.   If you believe that skip the following sentence in parenthesis and continue on to the next paragraph.  (This is obviously total bullshit.  If you didn't know the Packers beat the Lions on Thursday, you're dead to me.)

I always make total sense

        Some families are more functional than others, but let's just be honest, we're all at least a little dysfunctional.  I like to say my family puts the "fun" in dysfunctional because, well, we do.  

Don't let the smiles and waves fool you

        My parents drove with my brother over the pass to have second Thanksgiving with Eric and me.  The minute they walked in to our apartment, I started busting my nugget.  I hadn't finished cleaning the shower.  My dad needed to use the [one] bathroom in our apartment.  "You're just going to have to hold it!" I hollered, scrubbing like a would be escapee from an insane asylum attempting to scrape a hole out of the bottom of the bathtub.  My dad just stood there and blinked.  Let me give you a tip: do not tell a person with Chron's Disease (or Ulcerative Colitis for that matter) to "hold it."  It is rude, and unrealistic.  Get your ass out of the bathroom ASAP should you ever find yourself in a similar situation.  Don't worry, even though I was acting tough, I followed my own advice and got my ass out of there.

        Keep in mind, my family was here for less than 24 hours. I don't think a single one of them used the shower.   It obviously didn't do any harm to wait and clean the shower in segments.  I just had to spaz out.  That's what we do in my family; we spaz out.  The good news is, once you have a serious spaz, you're set.  This works for me.  If you don't come from spazzy stock, though, you might have been taken aback had I shouted in your face in response to a relatively reasonable bathroom request.  I guarantee you that my dad didn't think twice, except perhaps a fleeting, "That's just Nikki being Nikki,"  

Not to be confused with Manny being Manny

        The point of this story is that I am a freak.  I come from a family full of freaks.  We like to fly our freak flags at every family gathering.  Yes, they are weird spazzy freaks, but they are mine, and I love them.  Enjoy your family, immediate or otherwise, and fly those freak flags high this holiday season.

Normal, right? You have no idea how many takes this took.

        

        *FYI people:  I got stuck in the elevator with the killer the other day.  He didn't recognize me because I had no make up on.  Unfortunately, my cover was blown when he saw me going into my apartment, and he called creepily down the hall, "Oh, I know who you are."  Holy crap!  I nervously laughed before he could try to poison dart me in the neck, and barely made it in alive.