What grinds my gears #7 - family quirks

Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops. Wise words from the great Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace.

Well I can certainly vouch for that. My family is INSANE. In the membrane. In the BRAIN.

OK - perhaps we are a little less insane than this fam.

Leaving my sibling aside (I'm not in the business of dishing out cheap shots), my parents are nuts. They are crazy in the coconut.

First, my mother. She is just a weird egg. She has the capacity to careen wildly from happiness to sadness to sheer madness in two seconds or less. One must carefully navigate her mood by ensuring that she doesn't drift off into the 56th tangent of a story or worse, end stories with 'let's just bomb the entire Middle East' or 'we need a good war to get rid of all the dickheads' or something else horrendously offensive.

It is quite the chore to carefully drive her back into neutral conversational territory again and again. Managing my mother in a public forum is an even more exhausting enterprise that can only be embarked upon... once a week for 30 minutes or you can save it up for a fortnightly or monthly outing, where you've got a few hours before you start to claw at the walls and shout like a hyena.

And it's quite common across her family - all 7 of her siblings suffer from frequent foot in mouth.

My aunty recently visited our house for the first time and said:

"Kid A, I like your house but I prefer to live in mine."

Difficult to take that without laughing too hard. Meanwhile, WSO was noiselessly laughing hysterically in the study at the thought of a house swap with the dear old bird.

My late uncle had a penchant for blending certain petroleum products with his liver - metho and coke being a speciality. And he was ever the salesman, first handbags, then aboriginal art and relics. I'll never forget the Christmas where he brought three didgeridoos along. Two of my cousins and I spent an hour slobbering down them. He then went on to tell us that our technique was wrong, he was of course the expert after spending three weeks in some village in Arnhem Land. While he could produce some sort of a noise, he almost had several cardiac arrests doing so!

Anyway, back to the main game. Mother bear. Here are some peculiarities that are not known to be present in any other living species apart from my mother:

• Mixing two instant coffee varieties together - Nescafe Blend 43 is too strong, whilst International Roast is too weak so voila, a 50:50 mix is the ultimate in instantio caffe.
  
• Having a back up pantry in case of World War III or an outbreak of a raging virus or plague - essentially this means you will always have two of everything. For example, if you finish off the Vegemite jar, Mum will transfer the new jar from the back up pantry and write 'Vegemite' on the shopping list to replace in the back up pantry usually within a 24 hour period.
• Saving money in a 'secret' compartment of her purse - where secret is the second most common area to put notes. In this part of her purse, you will typically find one or two greenies and half a dozen pineapples.
• Not throwing out any old calendars or cards - that get well card I made with macaroni in Grade 2 was still in the drawer the last time I looked. I thought best not tell her, she might put it up on the wall! And don't even get me started about the calendar from 1986... Pope John Paul II's second papal visit was interesting at the time yes, now we've got the Emperor Benedict. Move on!
  
• Speaking of calendars, another one is fixing the weekly culinary calendar - dinner was certainly not like a box of chocolates when I was growing up. Monday = Spaghetti or Lasagne. Tuesday = Dad cooks = something spicy like Sambal, Thai Curry, Spanish Paella. Sometimes Chicken Cacciotore etc. Wednesday = meat portion, three vegie portions. Thursday = casserole/mystery box food/splod. Friday = fish n chips like any good Catholics, sometimes pizza if Mum was not there. Saturday = roast. Sunday = pancake/omelette/the typical 3 minute CBF meal.
  

As for my father, well he has probably what is called 'second order madness' from living with my kooky mother. He is slowly eating his way through the world, one HJ's burger at a time. Big heart. Hopefully not on the verge of a big heart attack.

In his interactions with yours truly, he is like a stuffed toy with a voice box - only capable of three catch phrases - 'yeah, yeah, yeah', 'ask your mother' and 'how much do you want this time?'

But to his credit, he works harder than anyone I've seen and can take nagging like no other.

Sigh. So there you have it. That's the pez. But I do love them, you know.