Goals for the Road

This weekend Jenn and I went to KC for our nephew’s third year birthday party. Yeah, I had to backspace to say “our”. I’m still not used to that. This is our family. And man… is it huge.

My parents are both only children, so on the holidays, if my brother can’t make it with Kim and the kids, we’re looking at around half a dozen people, tops. This was a kid’s birthday party and there must have been at least twenty-five to thirty people there.

Now, with that being said, I had a great time. I think, in part, it was because unlike when we went to KC for Christmas, I went with my own set of objectives. You see, at Christmas (our last trip to KC), Jenn and I had been going out like 5 months, and my basic plan was “adapt, make a decent impression, and don’t look too idiotic. You never know, if all goes well you may actually see these people again.” Now we’re married. It’s a whole new ballgame. This is family.

So what was my strategy going into this trip? Good question. Here’s the list in no particular order:

• Don’t say or do anything stupid.
• Spend some quality time with my nephew. He’s great, but we haven’t had a lot of chances to hang out with him. Besides, it’s been a while since I’ve tried to keep up with a three year old, so I wanted to make sure I was up to it before Jenn and I start trying for our own family later this year.
• Get to know my brother-in-law (Jenn’s sister’s husband. Does that still qualify as brother-in-law? I don’t fucking know.) He’s a cool guy. A techy geek like me (ok not nearly as geeky as me) and a movie buff. However, up until now, it’s always seemed like any time we were talking I got the vibe that he was just talking to me to be polite. While I’m sure that’s probably just in my head, I really wanted to get to know him a bit better and have at least one conversation where I felt like he was having a good time.
• Avoid staring at cleavage. These people are family now. Besides, even if it’s wife cleavage, it’s kinda uncool to do at a 3-year-olds birthday party.
• Get road head.

Well, I’m happy to report that I had varying degrees of success with just about all of these goals. Here are the results, which are also not in order.

Jenn helped me with the last goal on the way there. Thank you all for your prayers, well wishes, and emails of support. The PT Cruiser is officially christened.

I also got to know the brother-in-law a bit better. I prepped before the trip by going to darkhorizons.com and superherohype.com before I left and got all the latest movie gossip. I had several conversations with him where not only did I feel that he was having a good time, but so was I.

Avoid staring at cleavage? *sigh* Well, there’s always next year, right? For various reasons it was completely impossible for me to avoid the cleavage stare. However, I take some solace in the fact that I caught my father-in-law staring too (albeit at different cleavage.)

Don’t do anything stupid? Another thing I didn’t do overly well. Here’s a little etiquette tip: If you’re going to start out a sentence with “I have a friend who used to be a stripper…”(believe it or not, this was relevant to the conversation at the time) check the room to make sure your brother-in-law’s religious mom isn’t standing behind you. Jenn tried to cover for me to no avail. So again… there’s always next year.

Lastly, there was spending time with my nephew. This was, without a doubt, the best part of my weekend. Not only was I able to keep up with him, I had a really great time doing it. We hung out on the back deck for a good long while flying his air-pump powered plane and I got to teach him the overhand toss of the plane (verses the dump over the railing.)

But the moment that cemented the fact that I want to have kids was this little exchange:

Nephew: “Larry the Lizard is stuck up there (pointing up.)”

Me: “Really? Way up there? In the sky?”

Nephew: “Yeah. But he’s not in heaven; He’s just on the roof.”