MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND

Over Memorial Day weekend, while most of my friends in NYC were out partying, getting wasted and lying on the beach, I was back home in AZ visting my family and staying with my parents. I have to say as awful as that sounds, it was actually a refreshing visit for once!

Usually a trip back home is always dreaded, with a sense of foreboding of a disastrous weekend in the making! I mean I take vacation time off from work and I dont even get to go on vacation!My ideal vacation would be just to relax by the pool all day and read books. I have to go back home! Thats not a vacation, thats torture!

When I get there usually its for a special occassion, and ALL of my family is visiting! Since my parents have a full house I am normally forced to sleep on the floor, fight over the bathroom, clean up, chauffer everyone around, cook my uncles breakfast and keep my luggage in the laundry room, where my grandmother (who also lives there) god bless her soul, washes every piece of clothing I brought everyday cus she assumes theyre dirty since theyre there. Not to mention my crazy mother,who I dubbed "the master delegator", likes to make little lists of things I can do for her while she's at work, like: clean the bathroom, or go groccery shopping for her, ect. And then when she's home she cant stand to see me reading a book, or watching TV so she constantly is looking for stuff for me to do. What kinda vacation is that! I mean it would be one thing if I lived there but IM ON VACATION TOO!!

But since I decided 6 years ago to move 3000 miles away from my family I made a promise to them that I would return to visit twice a year, once for xmas and once during the summer.

In preparation to this trip home I had decided to lay down some ground rules for my family:

rule #1: I am not sleeping on the floor. If you dont have room for me then I will go stay with a friend. Im 25 years old for gods sake Im not a child anymore (I waited 25 years to be able to say that)! I can rent a hotel!!

rule#2: I dont cook unless I feel like cooking. It is not my responsibility to make sure a bunch of adults have eaten 3 times a day! There are reasons I dont have kids and rule # 2 is one of them. They all have arms and legs and know how to use a friggin toaster oven! If I cook I do it out of love, not because my mother says shes gonna kick my ass if I dont.

rule# 3: I will only make one and I repeat one trip to the groccery store a day. Do not send me out for milk and Rice, and then 20 minutes later send me back out to get sazon, and then a half an hour later realize we need ice and send me back out! Get it together people! Make a list.

and finally....

rule #4: There will be no talk about why am I not married, and when am I going to have kids. I get enuff of that on a daily basis from work I dont need to here it on my "vacation"

And I actually had a really good trip!!! It was kinda fun with my brother and me being back in my mom and dads house, and we even got to spend some good quality time together.

Now I realize how much I miss Arizona......