First of all: "Family Vacation" this year wound up with 21 people rather than the expected 25. Roll call!

1. Dad
2. Sherri
3. Angel [my sister]
4. Brandi [Angel's daughter]
5. Nick [Brandi's husband]
6. Jaycee [Brandi and Nick's daughter]
7. Gianni [Brandi and Nick's son]
8. Enzo [Brandi and Nick's baby]
9. Ricky [Angel's son]
10. Reyna [Ricky's girlfriend]
11. Raiden [Ricky' son]
12. Ruby [Ricky's toddler]
13. Britni [Angel's daughter]
14. Stephanie [Britni's best friend]
15. Gina [my sister]
16. Beth [Gina's wife]
17. David [Gina's son]
18. Jackie [David's wife, who is pregnant with their second child]
19. Georgia [David and Jackie's toddler]
20. Matthew
21. Shobhit [Matthew's husband]

The total back in 2020 had been 22 for most of the time for everyone else; 23 for the one day I went out there, without Shobhit while he worked.

So, why 21 this year, rather than the 23 last time, or the 25 originally expected this year? Well, in the end, this year Alex and Caitlin didn't make it, and thus neither did their two kids; that's down four, to the 21 that actually came. (And actually, now that I think about it, Caitlin in the kids were there more time than Alex was in 2020, because he also had to work; he came later.) None of them came at all this time because, apparently, Alex had to work—even though he had two years to plan for it, had actually saved the money needed, and even actually already paid his share. So I don't know what the deal was there.

Those four were counted in 2020, though, which takes that count of 23 down to 19, so what made up the two-person difference to get this year's count up to 21? Two full newbies: I actually got Shobhit to come along this time, for the entire trip (it was only the trip to Wallace he did not go along with, hence my needing to ride with Dad and Sherri initially); also, Jackie was pregnant with her and David's first back in 2020, and Georgia has since been born.

There were actually two other people who were new and not there in 2020, but they were effectively replacements since both Ricky and Britni have gotten divorced since then: Britni brought his new girlfriend Reyna instead of Rachael; Britni, who all this time I had assumed would just be coming alone, was the only one not to bring either family or a romantic partner, and she brought her best friend Stephanie, instead of her then-husband David who had come in 2020.

This does mean that Alex is the only one of Angel or Gina's kids not in this year's group photo; all five of them were in the group shot in 2020. They took the group shots in 2020 on one of the days I was not there, though, so I was not in those. (Nor, of course, was Christopher, who never comes to these things—in fact, Sherri tried to brainstorm ways we could make the next one happen in Idaho so Christopher can come, but we could not find any vacation rentals in Wallace large enough. It literally occurred to me just now that there could be one in Coeur d'Alene, which is close-ish—45 miles west of Wallace—but there remains the idea of asking the entire rest of the family to travel as far as Idaho, which is unlikely ever to be a successful idea.) Not only that, but two of the people present this year were not in this year's group photo: we asked Stephanie, Britini's friend, to take the photo, saying we would also set up my timer and get a shot with her in it, but the latter never happened; and Raiden, Ricky's nine-year-old, had to get a stern talking-to by Ricky regarding his behavior with his cousin, six-year-old Gianni, and Raiden had a bit of an emotional meltdown as a result and hid around the corner while the picture was being taken. So, even though there were 21 people on this trip, there are 19 people in the two photos taken that had even that many people in them.

And, incidentally, there was a bit more drama regarding the taking of this picture than just Raiden's meltdown. I keep wondering who corralled everyone for the photos in 2020, and whether there had been any drama getting those to happen. I suppose there probably was; the photos themselves don't tell any of these stories, and no matter what, corralling more than twenty adults, many of them young children, for a photo is like herding cats. I have a suspicion that it was Gina and/or Beth in 2020, but I could be wrong; to my surprise, no one was really talking about having this done this time until I mentioned it, so I kind of wound up spearheading the effort by default. Beth was not feeling well by the day of the photo anyway (Wednesday); and don't you worry, we'll get to that.

At first we were going to do the photo at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday. When that time came, almost everyone was still out roaming around and only a handful of people were at the house. So much for that—even though it was a sunnier day, with less wildfire smoke in the air, and I still think that day would have been better, but I'll live. Then, it was going to be at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday; Britni kept quipping, "I'll be here at 6:45!" No, I kept saying; 6:30! Then I quipped back: "Six o'clock!" And not long after that, it was officially changed to an hour earlier on Wednesday, to 5:30, and I had to tell Britni I wasn't joking, it really was at 5:30 now. She shot back, "I'll be here at 6:45!"

She was clearly goading me, but I was slightly annoyed because I honestly had no idea how much I could actually rely on her to be there on time, especially since she never once actually said anything about it in seriousness. But, once 5:30 Wednesday actually rolled around, Britni was actually also around, and she was quite easily corralled into gathering. As it happens, the person who held us all up—at first—was Reyna, Ricky's new girlfriend.

Ricky told us all that Reyna was doing Ruby's hair. I don't know how long it was between everyone else mostly having gathered, and Reyna finally showing up with Ruby, but it must have been at least a good five or ten minutes—not the best move for someone new to the family. I guess I'll note here that Sherri's patience seems to wear thin quickly these days regardless of the context, so she got annoyed with waiting pretty quick here too. She even said, "This isn't the best way to make a first impression," or something to that effect, and then something along the lines of, "I'm about done waiting."

The unfortunate thing is, whether Sherri likes it or not, she is now the matriarch of this family, and people take their cues from her. Had she just been patient for a few more minutes, everyone else likely would have been too. To be fair, though, she was not the only one at least slightly irritated by this. And Reyna had seemed to make a pretty good impression up until this point. No one else talked about this, but it was not lost on me when Reyna finally arrived with Ruby, and she just walked up as though that had been the time to gather—I didn't hear her even apologize for holding everyone up.

The bigger problem now, actually, was Shobhit—who, now that Reyna was back with Ruby, was the only person everyone was now waiting for. He had gone to the bathroom, even though he easily could have waited. He actually took his cue from Sherri too, who at one point during her complaining had stepped out of the line of people, almost as though giving up, although she didn't actually.

Now, to be clear, I am not blaming Sherri for this. Shobhit took that as a cue, and ran with it, when he never should have taken it as a cue to begin with, and he sure as shit should never have run with it. But something clicked in his ffucking petty brain of his, and he decided he somehow had every right in the world to go inside the house and hold everyone up even after everyone else was finally ready. Now, Reyna had not yet returned when Shobhit went inside, ostensibly to use the bathroom, but that doesn't matter. He knew she would be there at any moment. And, just when the entire group was irritated enough, he went out of his way to make it just that much worse. Not just for me, but for everyone.

There are so, so many things wrong with this behavior, I barely know where to begin—except to say that my mind immediately went to: why am I staying with a man who pulls this kind of shit? Can you imagine me doing something like that to his extended family? I don't think Shobhit understands, or even cares, about basic respect sometimes. Reyna had returned and everyone else was more than ready to just get the photos taken so we could all disperse, and I really was afraid we'd wind up with the photo excluding him as a result, which would have been deeply disappointing to me. I shouted out to him: "Shobhit!" and that was when he appeared back at the sliding glass door beyond the deck Stephanie was standing on. And even here, when the rest of us were clearly ready, Shobhit didn't even bother to hurry down, taking his dear sweet time, smug as can be, as though to say "This is what you get!" Seriously, what an asshole. This shit is crazy making.

And then, the photos were finally taken. Stephanie took a few shots of us situating ourselves just before Shobhit finally retook his place next to me, and then she took several shots of us all finally together (except or Raiden). I kept one of the candid shots and two of the shots of us all together. It's often hard to decide which is best when someone takes, like, ten or fifteen shots for me to choose from, as Stephanie did, but I managed.

Once we dispersed, though, I was deeply angry with Shobhit. I think by and large the rest of the group sort of let it all go once they got the relief of not having to stand around anymore waiting for the photos to be taken (I mean, as if that were some huge hardship, but whatever), and as is almost always the case immediate after Shobhit does something infuriating, he acted like it didn't even make any sense that I was so mad.

Shobhit did manage to go a fair distance toward redeeming himself not long after that, and this is where we get to the point where I talk about the inevitable: COVID.

Shobhit didn't get covid, and neither did I—at least not so far; it won't be five days since the most recent exposure until tomorrow. But, I did do a test yesterday morning, just for self-reassurance before going to a movie (I saw the re-release of Avatar, which I even re-reviewed), and it came up negative. As I already noted in an earlier post, I also tested twice earlier on in this entire week of travel: on Friday the 23rd before leaving to meet up with Dad and Sherri; and again on Monday the 26th before Dad and Sherri and I headed out of Moses Lake for Leavenworth. Dad and Sherri both did tests on both of those days too, and I even texted Shobhit to please test on Monday before leaving Seattle for Leavenworth, which he also did. All of these tests were negative.

I suppose the safest thing possible here would have been for every single person who went to Leavenworth to test every single day, which of course did not happen, nor would it ever have been a realistic expectation. There was a notable difference here between the 2022 trip and the 2020 trip, though, in that multiple people had boxes of tests handy in case they were needed: when Beth fell quickly very sick on Wednesday, she and Gina had their own tests handy, and Beth took a test. She tested negative, so they assumed she was coming down with something else. They left very early Thursday morning before everyone else, so there was no further exposure that day, and then she posted to the Family Vacation Facebook Event page on Friday that she had covid after all: Hey, everyone, I’ve got some bad news, I just tested positive for COVID, she wrote. I took two tests, so it’s confirmed. If I had it before Leavenworth and anyone who went gets it, I’m truly sorry.

I was the first person to post a comment, starting with: Well, after what happened at Easter, I'm certainly not going to judge!

I mean, at least they brought tests with them. I have no idea if they tested before leaving, although I somewhat doubt it. Besides, her first test was a false negative anyway. Which, technically, any of mine could have been as well—but, it's going on several days since the end of the trip anyway, and, so far so good; I'm really hoping the omicron booster shots Shobhit and I got a couple of weeks ago made the difference. I don't think anyone else there had yet gotten the Omicron booster, not even Dad and Sherri, although most of us had already also had covid once before, and I don't think Beth had. And so far, there has yet to be a report of a single other covid case from our group—not even Gina! Although she did write back when I asked, that she's "bracing for it."

There's a lot more differences with covid in 2022 than in 2020, anyway. For most of us, even though the variants going around now are much more contagious, on average the cases are much more mild. We didn't have boxes of tests sitting around in 2020, and by September we were still even months away from vaccination roll-outs. Case rates were comparatively down by then, and Thurston County, which most of them had come from, had far lower rates then than King County (they still do, although these days it's always good to note that with home tests a whole lot of them now go unreported). Whatever the parameters, the metrics are different now than they were in 2020, when catching covid was a lot scarier.

I didn't even realize how truly mild Dad and Sherri's cases in April had been until they told me recently, that it was hardly more than having a cold for a few days. They are, thankfully, all about vaccination though, and they've had their primary series of two shots in spring 2021; had their boosters last fall; and even got their second boosters not long ago—the only one they still haven't gotten is the new Omicron booster, but in all likelihood all the vaccinations they already had were what made all the difference, preventing them from getting even as sick as Shobhit and I got. And I spent most of my time in bed for the better part of three days, continuing to feel exhausted for the first week, and taking about a week after that to feel fully back to normal again.

There are always exceptions, though, and Beth seems to be one of them. Now, I don't have a clue what her full vaccination history is, but as I recall, she at the very least had her primary series of two shots last year. Many people who aren't even anti-vax have just "not gotten around" to any of the boosters, though (that was the case with Tracy when she got really sick in February), and I have no idea whether or not that was the case with Beth. I just know that, when I asked on Friday if she was still really sick, she replied, yup, no taste, head feels like it’s going to explode from all the snot/mucus, zero energy, it sucks. Thanks. She posted a photo to her Facebook page yesterday morning of herself under a blanket in a reclining chair with her dogs, still recovering.

So what does all this have to do with Shobhit's behavior when we took the pictures? Well, first of all, in retrospect this means Beth has covid in all of those pictures. There's no way of knowing whether she caught it in Olympia or in Leavenworth, so for all we know she has covid in all the pictures. And she had been hit hard and fast, only still posing for the photos outside because that first test had come up negative, but negative or not, given how sick she got, I wonder if that meant her viral load was high, and therefore a higher risk of infecting others. All I know is, she disappeared after the photos were done (and she was a trooper in the photos; you'd never know she was sick), probably having gone straight to bed. When we all got up Thursday morning, Gina had left a note, along with the boolet with checkout instructions, telling us they had to leave because Beth was "super sick!"

Covid or not, everyone knew Beth was not feeling well when we gathered to take those photos. And the point now is: that made it doubly rude to keep her waiting so long. First with Reyna, then with Shobhit. I hadn't even been thinking about that when I was so mad at him for making everyone wait. This only made it worse.

Shobhit told me on our way home on Thursday that he had apologized to Gina, which I had not known at all. I was impressed that he had actually realized his wrongdoing independently, owned up to it, and even apologized—something he does not often do. And when I texted Gina later that day to tell her the vegetarian lasagna she had made special for us vegetarians tasted even better as leftovers, Gina texted back that she was glad to hear it. But then she sent a second text: It meant a lot to me that Shobhit owned his behavior and apologized. If you nudged him, thank you.

Well, I didn't exactly nudge him, unless you want to count my fury on Wednesday night as a "nudge." I don't even have any idea when it was that Shobhit offered his apology, except that it would have had to have been Wednesday night, so not that long after. I was relieved to hear this, and even more satisfied that Shobhit told me himself before I even got that text from Gina. Okay, so he isn't completely horrible.

And now that Gina and Beth are out of the way, I need to talk about Angel for a bit. The above photo was taken just as Shobhit and I were leaving Thursday morning. Angel had come to give us a hug, and I said, "I want to get a picture, since we bonded!" We were in the garage when I said that, and Angel said we should go outside for a better backdrop. Brandi happened to be walking by so we had her take the photo instead of me taking a group selfie as originally attempted, now with the garage portion of the huge house behind us—including the bears sign on the wall: we didn't see any bears this time, but Brandi apparently did see one in 2020. They are around.

So how did Angel and I "bond," you ask? Well, Shobhit and I wound up staying up until 2 in the morning Tuesday night / Wednesday morning, talking to her. At first we were in the kitchen, the only ones left in the house not yet having gone to bed, and then she needed to vape so she asked us to join her out in the garage, and we talked a long time out there. Angel really bore her soul to us, talking a lot about her relationships with all of her grown children, but especially the long history of struggling to get custody of Alex, the youngest, when he was still preteen. She couched a lot of it in her history of being an addict, and how that makes many in the family permanently distrustful of her (frustrating for sure, I don't doubt it, but I also empathize with those who struggle to trust her), and how she feels like she endures constant, passive-aggressively cutting and offhand comments about her drug use or criminal behavior from multiple people in the family. She's the oldest of us four kids, but she is far from the most respected; even I would say that assessment is accurate. (She didn't use those words, mind you; but that was the gist of her storytelling.)

For my part, while I won't say necessarily that I took everything she said with a grain of salt—I don't believe she lied to us, but I also don't think everything she believes to be true is actually the truth—I will say there are multiple sides to every story, and here I was only hearing hers. Still, people appreciate being heard; I got the sense that Angel does not often feel heard, but she felt heard by us on Tuesday night. More than once she apologized for unloading so much on us, and more than once I had to tell her there was nothing to apologize for. She's had so much chaos in her life all of her life that she's been left pretty insecure, I think. At least she goes to therapy, apparently, which is the best thing she can do for herself. Plus, she told us, she still drinks and still smokes pot, but has been off any other kind of drug for at least eight years. I think she said the last time she did anything else was 2014, and I'm pretty sure she said it was meth. Jesus. I know that shit is practically impossible to get off of, so I'm honestly more impressed than anything. And, she said, her relationships with all of her kids are in much better places right now. It sounds like it's been some years since she's had the kind of chaos that characterized most of her life until . . . 2014, I suppose.

But there was even more Angel talked about than her history of struggles with her children. Ther was a stretch of our conversation when we went way back, and she told me some things about when Dad and Sherri got together that I did not know. Again, memory is notoriously unreliable, and now we're talking about events that occurred forty years ago, but a lot of this stuff I had no reason not to trust was true. She told me about her dad's violent behavior when he found out Sherri was with my dad, such as tearing their house apart "with a machete." (I suppose it could have been a literal machete, but I doubt it; I chose not to take that literally.) And she told me other details I never knew and was kind of bowled over to learn, but which I have no place sharing here, although that also means I will likely forget most of it soon enough myself. Which I suppose is just as well, given it's ancient history. Still, a lot of it felt very insightful to me, particularly as it pertained to our shared family histories. Angel even shared the memory of when Sherri sat her and Gina down to tell them she and Larry were getting a divorce. Angel had a hard time pinpointing exactly when this was, but my best guess would be 1981, possibly 1980. Dad and my mom got divorced in 1982 I believe, when Christopher and I were 5 and 9, assuming it was before our birthdays. If it was 1981 and Sherri and Larry split up, then Angel and Gina would have been 11 and 9 at that time, again before their birthdays. I could be off one or so years here, but those are around the ages they would have been.

As it happens, and this only occurred to me just now: when it comes to Dad and Sherri, both of their exes have now passed on. Larry committed suicide in 1998, and it was really horrible. Mom died of a strike in 2020, just two years ago. Mom remarried in 1997, but the way Angel tells it, Larry never really got over Sherri. According to Angel, she had to convince him in the nineties not to try and get Sherri back. If he ever had that in mind, that guy clearly was an irrational person: Sherri had been married to Dad more than a decade by then. As of now, they've been married 38 years.

Incidentally, in their previous marriages, both Dad and Sherri had their first children at the age of 17. But, Sherri is three years older than Dad (born the same year as Mom, actually), which is how Angel is three years older than Christopher. Gina is a year older than Christopher because Sherri had her second child at 19, but Dad was 20 by the time he had me. (So the order is: Angel in 1969; Gina in 1971; Christopher in 1972; Matthew in 1976.) Mom and Dad married so young that even though they were married nearly ten years, Dad was still in his twenties—28, to be exact—when he married Sherri in 1984. Dad and Sherri's marriage, which certainly had its own share of problems (including a yearlong separation from 2002 to 2003), was sort of a chance for them to do it differently and better, as more mature people, I think.

I think about this sort of thing fairly frequently when it comes to Shobhit. What is a true "deal breaker," or what is the breaking point? I get very angry with him at semi-regular intervals, but inevitably it's never something I think would justify completely lighting both of our lives on fire for. Because that's how it'll go down, I'm certain. Every marriage has its ups and downs, and some have to weather some serious shit. Do I want to lose my lifestyle and financial security over it? If Shobhit were beating me up or something to that extreme, it would be different. But my physical and psychological safety are intact. The real question is just what kind of generalized bullshit I'm willing to put up with.

And it's not like I'm just the innocent one here. At one point, on another day, Angel actually asked me, "Do you guys argue a lot?" Well, kind of, yeah. And another time I had to repeat myself three times because Shobhit is fucking deaf, and as I do often at home, I practically shouted it the third time and puctuated it with, "Jesus!" Angel overheard that and said, "Rowr!" And I was like . . . oh. Maybe I should reign it in a little.

As for Dad and Sherri, I kind of wish I could get some of these stories directly from them, but some of the stuff Angel talked about was stuff I can't imagine them wanting to discuss. They don't talk about stuff from that far in the past so much anymore. I can't even remember how it came up in conversation with Angel; I think it was extrapolated from when her dad and his suicide came up. Suffice it to say, it came up organically and was not forced into the conversation by anyone.

Either way, it was useful, as was the discussion about her long struggles to gain permanent custody of Alex (she said at one point she was in a meeting with people from CPS and she offered to do a urinalysis on the spot to prove she was clean), just in terms of the specific relationship between Angel and me. Over the years we have had periods when we were close and periods when we were not, and it's been a while since I felt close to her. It was really nice to have a heart to heart like this, for the first time in what felt like eons—this alone made it feel worth going along on this Family Vacation. It's what these sorts of events are for, to keep relationships like this alive.

Just a side note; we were with Christopher last Saturday for his 50th birthday. Gina is 51 now, and in a matter of days Angel will be 53. Gina talked a bit on this trip about what it's like watching your parents grow old. This was arguably unnecessary, but I couldn't stop myself from reminding her: "Remember, your parents had children super young, so you aren't far behind."

Just because I'm still "only" 46 doesn't mean I'm not either.

[posted 9:58 am]