Sep 23, 2007
Birthday Sunday
Today was a birthday celebration day. Daughter-in-Law Sneed had a birthday this week, as did Mr. Peterson, Daughter Sneed's squeeze. You may recall from an earlier post that I have nixed the use of boy/girlfriend to describe the love interests of adults, so I struggle for a way to identify Mr. Peterson. Perhaps I should have thought more carefully about the ban before putting it into place. The story of my life.
We commemorated the occasion by having a breakfast at a local restaurant called The Good Egg. Clever, eh? There were twelve present for the festivities, including the two Peterson daughters, plus one...uh...one, dammit, boyfriend. This isn't working out at all. A good time was had by all.
After the meal, the Sneedlets and I took our customary stroll around the plaza, where they jumped off of stuff, looked into the windows of the closed stores shouting one-word descriptions of the store, such as "shoes", or "bike store"!
Mrs. Sneed and I were talking today about the labels that are used to describe the relationships among relatives. For instance, when your daughter has a child, he is your grandchild. You sister's kid is your niece or nephew, that sort of thing.
In blended or step-families the named relationships can get real murky. One of the Peterson Daughters has an toddler. If Daughter Sneed were to marry Peterson, and I am not saying she should or should not, she would become the stepmother of the Peterson daughters and step-grandmother to the toddler mentioned earlier. Since Daughter Sneed is our daughter, would we become step great-grandparents of sort? Sneedlet One would become a step-uncle at four or five. That's weird.
By the way, the Sneed children no doubt just guffawed at the word weird when they read this post. Years ago I banned the use of the word weird and they never let me forget it. When they were teens, we went through a period where they could not form a sentence without the use of the word weird. It drove me to distraction, so I banned its use. Not that they honored the ban, mind you.
So to the Sneeds, one and all, I lift the ban on the word weird and welcome its return to the Sneed lexicon by using it in this post. Also feel free to watch reruns of Three's Company.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
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4 comments:
Did you ban Three's Company? You are the best father ever.
I think it's weird that we have the same word for your mother's sister that we do for your mother's brother's wife. There are some languages that make a distinction. Also your mother's mother and your father's mother are the same word. Confusing.
My uncle, a surprise baby, became an uncle at 16 months. When I was old enough to talk and start calling him uncle, he had no end of amusement.
The odd thing is that he still really feels like he's from my parent's generation and not mine. I think it's because as a kid he was definitely cooler than me (thus out of my league) and soon after he got out of high school he had a baby and got married and got all serious and grown-up like whereas I went to college and then grad school and still am not married and plan never to have children. Even at Thanksgiving, I still sit at the kiddie table because in my family you don't move to the grown-up table until you have your own kids (and need a break from them). Fine with me--the kiddie table is much more fun, and we get to tell our cousin that she can eat whatever she wants!
How about "significant other". SO for short?
Ha ha! Weird. I Tivo Three's Company. What kind of a person doesn't like obnoxious behavior mixed with sexual innuendo and painful physical comedy? Weird.
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