Back from visiting the family

[feuervogel]

My mom's family has a get-together every year around Christmas. This time it was combined with a baby shower for my sister, who's due in February.

Ben and I drove up on Friday and stayed with my aunt and uncle who were hosting the party. They were having friends over that night, so we hung out with their friends and drank fancy tequila and played pinball. This one was my favorite.

Saturday we went out to play Ingress a bit (get some unique hacks, at any rate, and captured a couple). It was a lovely nostalgic walk from the house I lived in from ages 10-16 to downtown. We walked past the creek I played in, the covered bridge, my high school, even my elementary school. My home town has a lot more fancy stuff than it used to, more ethnic restaurants and even an Islamic center, but I couldn't live there again, ever.

Mom came to her brother's house that afternoon, and I showed her pictures from Berlin, then we ate dinner and sat around talking a while, playing more pinball and Scattergories. And drinking. (Except mom, she doesn't drink.) Mom got kinda mad when I was doing well, "She's thinking outside the box!" Um, that's kind of how you win at Scattergories...

(She wouldn't accept Slavic Studies as a college major starting with S (because she'd never heard of it), but she didn't protest Proto-Indo-European as a language starting with P. It was the first one that popped into my head, I swear.)

My sister's shower was more about mom than my sister. She's wanted a grandchild since I got married almost 15 years ago, and now my sister is finally doing her duty as a grandchild dispenser. There were a loooot of presents, and mom made my aunt make cupcakes and set up more snacks downstairs where the shower was (which nobody ate because there was ample food from the potluck...) and there were games (which my sister hadn't even wanted really). My sister looked uncomfortable at the quantity of presents.

My sister liked the blanket I crocheted her, so I'm happy with that. Grandma made the baby a quilt. A bunch of people chipped in to get some sort of cloth diaper system (apparently they're "systems" now), which was about 10 packages.

There was a lot of gender normativity flying around, plus all the squeeing over baby booties (I don't get it). Stuff with adorable baby animals on, OK. She got a onesie with a penguin or something, which is pretty cute. But booties? idgi.

After everyone left, we helped clean up then watched a bunch of HGTV shows (which mostly made me want to punch the people buying the houses).

My uncle turned his grandfather's home movies into DVDs (by aiming a digital camera at the screen while running the projector), so we watched some of that (this was before the party). One of them was the European vacation he took around the time my grandpa's brother was stationed in Germany again (according to grandpa, this was around 1975 because Jack left in 76.) My uncle didn't know where all he went, and there aren't really labels or anything, so we're watching and trying to guess where they are. Switzerland because of a flag, then the Alps, then some more stuff, and then there's the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche. So I told him I needed a copy of it, and he said he'd make me one.

He also told me that his grandfather/my great-grandfather went back to Germany in the late 30s to visit family and was detained on his way out, for reasons that are unclear. One of his relatives (a cousin, possibly) smoothed things over and got him released. He was apparently an officer in the SS. (This isn't terribly surprising.)

Comments

[ruthling]

a couple of years ago, following being stuck in some function room for interminable hours on a beautiful day while my husband got to go sailing, I decided no more women-only showers of any kind. The lengthy coo-ing over everything, the dumb games, ugh. Thankfully, there have been only a few invites since then and I cheerfully sent my regrets.

I'm glad the blanket went over well.

[groovesinorbit]

I got to regret a baby shower just last month! Such a relief.

[feuervogel]

Thankfully there were only two games (a word scramble and a guess how many candies thing). Mom may have planned more, but people were getting restless, as it was getting later and the kids were bored.

It wasn't completely segregated. My sister's husband was there taking pictures, and Ben was there, sitting near me and also playing with his phone most of the time. All the moms were there (my 2 cousins' wives who have kids, mom, grandma, my aunt). I think my uncle was down there too, and my aunt's son briefly. (He got my sister a present.) But there was a contingent watching the Racist Slurs play the Cowboys upstairs on TV. (There's always people watching football at these things; if it were my house & my party, I'd hide the remotes.)

I did skip my sister's other shower, which my cousin on my dad's side threw, because it was in the beginning of December and there was no way I was going to drive to Maryland for the weekend twice in a month.

[groovesinorbit]

Did I mention how beautiful I think your crocheted blanket is? Gorgeous.

[feuervogel]

Thanks! My sister appreciated it and complimented my wrapping paper (which wasn't covered in baby bottles and pink and all that; it was the only non-holiday paper I had in my wrapping paper bin. It had butterflies and birds and flowers, all sort of abstract, in browns, yellows, oranges, and greens.)

If I hadn't asked mom what color to use, I'd have gone with something neutral anyway, like yellow or light green. None of this pink nonsense here. (Though if she does eventually like pink of her own accord, fine.) And lavender is apparently girly now, despite being blue + pink, so :P

[groovesinorbit]

That wrapping paper does sound neat. :)

Yeah, I think lavender's been girly for a while now.

[kriski]

i hear you on the gernder normativity. at the hospital there was one woman who transfered to the dekiz ward from the attached day clinic because she needed more care. at the day clinic she had crafted two doll prams for her twin boys, completely from scratch, i was amazed! apparently, the day clinic has a wood workshop and a pottery one and you basically spent the mornings crafting stuff. anyway, the doll prams were christmas presents and the boys really liked them. however, there seriously was comment amongst my fellow patients, that those weren't appropriate gifts for boys. it was a battle i chose not to pick, i really had bigger fish to fry. but still. sigh.

[ladyegreen.livejournal.com]

That's a lot on your plate this go round.

[feuervogel]

Most of it was just hanging at my aunt and uncle's house, so it wasn't too bad. Not like with Ben's parents, where we have to go to museums or the zoo or the botanical garden or whatever. The educated class is really different from the working class.