managing various personalities with little success and IT IS STILL EARLY

The whole family crowded into the family room to watch a movie after the three possible germ carriers got home from our New York trip.  I collapsed on the couch and asked Curly to fill up my water bottle.  She did so while holding a paper towel around it, so as not to contaminate herself with my germs.  

Dear God, if Coach or Lad or I picked this thing up and brought it home, there will be hell to pay.  Let's not even go there.  

My knees, lord above - how my knees suffered from being cramped in a car for almost 24 hours.  The 6 hours when I sat in the backseat on the way home were tantamount to Chinese water torture.  At one point I HAD TO stretch my right leg with the refuse-to-heal knee.  I had to use my hands to force fold up my leg and pull my foot free from the packed stuff shoved in my foot space.  Coach swiveled around and helped me pull my foot over the pile-o-crap stuff near me to allow my heel to rest on his armrest in the passenger seat.

I couldn't sit like that forever and the other knee started screaming for some equal stretch out time, but I had nothing to offer.  No where to go.  It wouldn't stretch over to the passenger seat from its position up against the opposite door.  Add to that a water restriction for two days in order to limit stops, and my gut was begging for better treatment.  It was NOT PRETTY.

But what is an evening at home with everyone if we don't watch a movie?  The 5 youngest had been playing a rousing game of Apples to Apples when we arrived home from our road trip.  Poor Curly.  No one bought her 'definitions', so she had no winning cards, no points -as it were.  She is still too young to get that the siblings like the funny, obscure, twisted definitions and she still expects them to vote for the closest definition that she submits.  She was brave.  No tears or anything.  Still a change of entertainment was in order. 

Issue number one - the game board is very small. 
When I was a kid, we had a metal game that
was huge so people had enough personal
space to sit in front of their color.  Turns out
Mini doesn't like the way Reg breathes or sighs or
 gasps or talks to himself under his breath.  The
 set we had had little drawers that stored
 marbles around the edges of the board. But a
ticked off kid or even a clumsy kid could bump
 the board and all the marbles would go rolling
everywhere.  Game over. 
Issue number two:  I thought
 I was going to be able to school everyone
on this - my game.  Not so much. 

I ordered a Chinese checkers game when I first heard we would be at home A LOT and that has been a huge source of fun for the family.  Well, except for the first game . . .  a few nights before the New York torture, Coach and I played with the four youngest kids.  Tank sort of played, but he was not taking the game seriously.  He was just moving a few guys out of his triangle and back in again and leaving the rest alone.  

Never played?  Basically he messed up the game and some players couldn't get their guys moving because of him.  People.  I could not laugh it off.  I was irritated beyond words.  I could have won.  Instead Mini won.  Curly had a chance to block Mini's last move but she misunderstood my directions and Mini won.  I reverted to my younger-child-self and insisted that Tank never be allowed to play again.  In my defense, I did sleep 9 hours that night after the game, so I blame exhaustion.  I could not be that grossly competitive.  Right?  

Anyway, I figured a movie made sense seeing as I was really not well rested enough to try a family game.  We were thinking we would watch 'Ford vs Ferrari.'  Ed wanted to watch 'Knives Out' - a great movie, but we recently watched it while we was still away at college.  During 'normal' times.  

Lad has a way to play movies through his laptop - maybe it is Netflix, not sure.  We NEED to get rid of Direct TV, the biggest money dump of all time, but have yet to decide on a plan.  So we waited for Lad to set up the laptop, but he was in a huge huff because while we were gone Tank had inadvertently deleted Lad's entire game history on some cowboy game in the basement on some play station system that Lad bought with money I give him for food.  So, that isn't irritating at all.    

When Lad came out of the basement, he was steamed.  Tank is rarely sincere, so Lad was not accepting Tank's apology.  Lad set up the laptop and then unplugged it shouting:  "No.  I am not doing this.  He isn't sorry."  

So I'm thinking the next few months should be just swell.  

What are you and your family doing during this whether-you-like-them-or-not family time?