Full House

Tonight will be the first night in almost two weeks we haven’t had people staying with us...and I already feel a little lonely. I think Gary and I are gonna go out to a crowded restaurant for dinner so at least it will feel like we’re surrounded by friends...

You would think we’d be relieved, but you'd be wrong. Because our guests are the best guests – and not just because they have a habit of doing our dishes every day while we’re at work. First Jenny was here, who is super fun and laid back, followed by my parents. Maybe I’m biased, but I think they’re pretty stinkin’ awesome.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that my dad really only comes here to visit Gary, his favorite child, so I was extra excited to find out that my mom decided to come along at the last minute. We usually have months to plan out every moment she’ll be here, and by the end of the visit we’re all tired and sad and wondering how the time could have gone by so quickly, but not this time! All we knew was that the men would be spending the weekend fishing every lake in Colorado.

Somehow Sarah and I got our mom to agree to watch just one episode of Glee after the boys left in the morning. Have I mentioned this? I’m obsessed. Not because of the popular music choices or the fantastic acting, but because of the deep personal connection I feel to the characters. I can’t help but wonder how different my high school life would have been if this show had come on back then. Probably not different at all...but I imagine at the very least it would have made me feel just a tiny bit cooler for being in show choir – even though my choir director was closer to Sue Sylvester than Will Schuester. I’m fairly confident that I was her favorite – only because I spent so much time and energy sucking up to her – and she still didn’t like me very much. She was allergic to children and fun, and she once told me that while I was good at pop songs, my choral voice was just average. I later made a voodoo doll of her and dressed it in a turquoise and purple wind suit and a scrunchie for its bleached-beyond-repair ponytail...but that’s beside the point. The point is Glee is cool.

Up until this weekend I had been wary of recommending that my mom watch the show because there is a little bit of sketchy business going on. I know she’s seen Grey’s Anatomy more than once, and they have WAY more sex on that show than on Glee, but I thought the fact that Glee’s about high schoolers might make things seem worse. However, since my mom’s hip to the jive, she was able to overlook those few scenes and fall deeply in love with the show. So deeply, in fact, that instead of watching one episode, we ended up watching the entire first season. That’s twenty-two 43 minute episodes in two days...meaning we pretty much didn’t leave the house or even bother to change out of our pajamas for two straight days. That also means we had to watch the final nine episodes in sub-standard quality on an illegal website since the second half of the season has yet to be released on DVD. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of breaking the law in your pj’s.

My mom left on Monday, and my dad stayed for a couple more days after that. Gary has often said that my dad’s the best houseguest imaginable because he’s so laid back. He doesn’t like for us to go to any trouble for him. He put his foot down when I told him I wanted to make chicken fried steak for dinner one night while he was here...little did he know that the only kind of chicken fried steak we ever eat at my house is the frozen kind. I tried to make it from scratch once, and I’m not sure Gary’s ever fully recovered.

My dad left at around 2:30 this morning to drive home because he’s a little bit crazy. The house seems pretty lonely with an empty guest room, so I’m off to go create some life-size cardboard cutouts of my friends and family who don’t live here to place strategically around my home.