smoke gets in your eyes

one thing about having great friends is knowing you can always count on them to sympathize with you, no matter how rough it gets.

having great friends who experience similar fcuk-ups in their own relationships, well, that's priceless.

it's not that i wish bad things on my friends, it just makes you feel less alone if they have weird run-ins with their in-laws, too.

so this weekend, while i suffered through a sunday drive to hell with my in-laws, one of my best buds was undergoing similar difficulties of her own.

she invited her in-laws and her husband's siblings to dinner at their new house. expecting some level of wackiness is normal from this cast of characters. we had the pleasure of spending lots of time in their company before her wedding and it was always interesting. (notice i didn't say fun?)

this dinner definitely ranks up there with the best of 'em. not one, but two members of her new husband's family tried to burn down her bathroom.

poor gal. in her newly outfitted bathroom, her strange (very strange) brother-in-law knocked over a lit candle in the bathroom. wax went everywhere you'd expect (the shower curtain, bath rug, towels) and even those places you wouldn't expect (the toilet seat?). leading to some awkward question as to how said candle got spilled in the first place. her b-i-l is a weird guy, if he were polishing off some dance moves in front of the bathroom mirror, that could explain how the candle got knocked over. of course he could also be doing some kinky stuff in there too which would make me never want to use her bathroom again. ever. but we'll never know for sure.

when her b-i-l walked out of the bathroom, i can only imagine my friend's reaction. she'd swallow her anger, her eyes would circle around in her head a few times and then she'd go about resolving the issue, quietly steaming.

now, when her equally, if not more so, strange sister-in-law emerged from the bathroom claiming to have knocked over the same candle, well, she exploded. it ain't the bathroom's fault that her in-laws are insane. and trust me, my friend is not the type to place a lit candle on carefully balanced pick-ups sticks. knowing her, it was on very solid footing.

why then do her in-laws insist on torching the place? are they that mentally unbalanced themselves? or are they simply closeted pyromaniacs that couldn't resist the urge?

the reaction of the rest of her ill-spawned clan to her outburst doesn't bode well for the rest of the holiday season. we all know the holidays are a time of mass-family-togetherness that we manage to avoid the other 11 months of the year. so i'll be thinking of her this weekend as i partake in the filet o'dinner.

yet, no matter how unfortunate our troubles with in-laws may be, we know we share stories with sympathetic ears. we also provide comic relief to our singleton friends.

and provide powerful reminders to only marry orphans. without siblings.