It’s that time of the year now. All your fun vacations are over. You’ve spent time on your tropical island, did the amusement park, and toured the amazing architecture of some cathedral and it’s back to work. You’ve used up all your vacation time, except for that one week you are hoping to use at Thanksgiving or Christmas.

But then you forget about that email that your wife’s Great Aunt Trudie sent you in March. You remember the family reunion, right? You know you would love to skip it, but you promised your wife you would go if you get to go on the sweet vacations you had planned. Now you have to pay the piper.

Reunion time. I can’t wait to remember all the names of the people you’ve been avoiding for 10 years now. You can’t wait to see how those annoying kids grew up to be perfectly bitter teens that now have their headphones on, and their smartphones implanted in their faces.

Don’t worry, though, you will only have to spend a week with these people. A week that you could have been working on boring spreadsheets and answering asinine emails. But you get to eat Nan’s jello with carrots and PJ’s wife’s macaroni salad. Can’t wait to be sitting in the bathroom for an hour recovering that meal. At least I won’t have to talk to people for a minute or two. Until someone comes and ask when you will be finished because they are headed out to the campground.

Ahh, the campground. You will get to go back to nature. You know, where the rest of the planet lives. Mosquitoes, bears, flies, and other things that want to eat you. Certainly you are just as welcome in their nature; as welcome as a bee’s nest is in your house. I’m sure they won’t mind you making noise, burning a fire and putting up nice cream filling for them.

Eventually, you get the heck out of the wilderness, with only mosquito bites, and mental strain to show for it. You are finally excused and free to go home. Back to home bitter home where you can lay on the couch and never worry about these people for ten more years.

Then to find out you have to put all this stuff away before you collapse. Good thing you only have to wake up at 6 am tomorrow and go back to the really interesting spreadsheets and emails you were going to do last week. Good thing you won’t have to go back to that boring work until you make up for all the things you missed last week. Oh and two people you back up for are on vacation this so they need all kinds of work done after that. Good thing you took your last week to do this awesome family reunion. Oh and Uncle Dan just sent out the invite for next summer’s reunion!

ARRRRGGGHHHHH

Bitter Family Reunion Ben