It's going to be a full house.
Unfortunately, it will be a house of very ill repute, to mix my metaphors. The Jewish Home is having a birthday party for my Dad, and all five -- count 'em, five -- of the kids will be there.
For some of them, it will be a first. For others, this will bump the number of visits past the all important 2 mark. [note for the humour impaired: that's sarcasm.] Rita, at least, has been there probably at least 20 times in the 9 months that he's lived at the Jewish Home.
Given my druthers, I would have said "fuck 'em" and not bothered to tell them about the party. But, it's not my party. It's Dad's, and I have to think of what is best for him; what he would want. And more than just about anything, he wants to see his kids.
And so, in just over two weeks, all five Sinasohn brats will be together in one place -- make sure you stock up on bottled water and Dinty Moore.
Rachel is worried to death that there will be a huge scene. She doesn't have to worry about me, however. As I've said before, as far as I'm concerned, as long as Dad is alive, they're a protected species. I don't want Dad to have to deal with one of his kids getting hurt or even killed, if I can help it.
Of course, that doesn't mean they won't start something. Stanley, will be wanting to let everyone know how he's making $85K per year. Barbara will show up, even though I'm told she doesn't like Dad at all. She still wants his stuff, though. Barbara is Dad's favorite, for some odd reason. Paul isn't bringing the wife-creature, which, at least, is something good. He'll be his fat boisterous self, of course. Making a scene in the desparate hope that someone will notice him, perhaps even like him, but at least notice him.
Rita will be the biggest problem, though. Cassie still has a bit of attachment to Rita, which is kind of like a kid wanting to pet the nice grizzly bear. Even Rachel isn't sure what to do about that one.
There is the whole issue that if we take care of Dad when he's "sick", or any number of other folks who need assistance because of some "sickness", why don't we help Rita when she's sick in the head? That's one I can't answer just yet, but it has been bugging me. Should I be trying to help Rita despite her attitude toward me, or is there some point at which you can wash your hands of someone? And what is that point?
Perhaps it is related to two things: 1) that I'm not really helping her if she is spending her time hating me, instead of concentrating on getting well, and 2) that there must be a point at which you have to think of your own health and survival over the needs of another, and that when someone is as hateful and abusive as Rita is, one must protect oneself first? Those are probably questions for my therapist to go over. Or maybe an ethics counselor?
In any case, I'm sure it will prove a most interesting event. The full cast of characters include the five Sinasohns, Rachel, Gemma, Johnny, Cassie, and Diane. Jake will be there too, but I don't think he counts against the limit of ten guests, since he won't be eating much.
In a totally unrelated development, I got some bad news about the future of the web -- web pages should be following a standard which seems designed to make the source code as ugly and unreadable as possible. All tags have to be lowercase only, options must be quoted, and so on. So all my great looking web pages have to be uglied-up to conform. Blech.