A Visit from Family

Pardon my hiatus– I was entertaining my sister and her family for a couple of days. It’s funny that the last post was about small, cool apartments– there’s nothing like having two toddlers and their parents visit to make you think that there is nothing cool at all about having a small apartment!

Other interesting lessons from this visit:

The value of a $500 stroller is questionable, but it’s especially useless for touring around Manhattan. The double-wide monstrosity my sister’s in-laws gave them is almost as big as one of those Smart cars, and much harder to park. If you’re going to be riding around on the subway, or want to actually enter any buildings, a cheap, lightweight folding stroller is a much better option.

And which would you think would be more expensive, a Polish coffee shop in Brooklyn Heights or a highly popular Italian restaurant in Times Square? Oddly, the bill was almost the same at both places, about $110-120 for 4 adults and 2 children, including tip. Carmine’s in Times Square seems expensive when you first look at the menu, but the family-style servings are so huge, it becomes an very good value, especially if you take home the leftovers, which were enough for another dinner for two, plus a small lunch for one.

All in all, the visit was great fun. I loved seeing how my niece and nephew reacted to their first subway ride, their first skyscrapers, seeing the Statue of Liberty from a rooftop, and visiting my office (which they did with just me, while their parents waited on the sidewalk outside with the too-large stroller). Although I was glad to get my apartment back, I was sorry to see them leave.

But then, an hour after they departed for the next phase of their vacation (3 days in Washington, DC, where the kids thought they’d be sleeping at the White House and petting the Obamas’ new dog), my mother called to see how things had gone. She then launched into a whole tirade about not understanding why they were spending money on this trip when they had so much debt. I suppose their justification was that the hotel in DC was “only $150 a night” and all the museums there were free.
My mother also dropped a bit of a bombshell: something may have been lost in translation, but apparently my sister told her she was unhappy that she couldn’t get her kids into a particular school system (she’s sort of on the line between two towns) and that they might have to move back to my parents’ home town for the schools there, and that my mother shouldn’t go too far with all the household projects she’s trying to tackle, because they might want things done differently if they end up taking over that house!

I’m really trying to give my sister the benefit of the doubt here, as she and my mother can have very conflicting versions of their arguments. But I certainly hope she’s not just waiting for my dad to die or be put into a nursing home so she can kick my mother out of the house and just take it over for herself! If that is her emergency fallback get-out-of-debt plan, it’s… it’s… I don’t know, just F***D UP!!!

You can see why there are so many family dramas relating to inheritances, etc. It just brings out the worst in everyone involved!

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