And I'm the dysfunctional one?

So, had a fun weekend with some members of my mother's family. I clarify that because some people have two sides of a family they are close with. My grampa lives in Holiday Island, which is just next door to Eureka SPrings arkansas, Very cool town if you ever get a chance to visit it. Hippy shops, rabbits that make change, art galaries and scenery that is just magnificent.

But we were there for thanksgiving dinner. My grampa, he's 78, he doesn't get around as well as he used to, (he used to me a farmer and cattleman who worked 16 hour days moving cattle, fixing farm equipment and tromping around on three different farms checking gas wells and fences) but he makes a GREAT THANKSGIVING DINNER. And he care takes for several of their neighbors whose home are only vacation houses and aren't there this time of year. The point is he's and interesting guy, and he invited me and the kids down and was even nice enough to get us a basic hotel room to stay in so we wouldn't be super crowded or feel like we had to rush home again.

We weren't the only ones there. My aunt and uncle were there, and two of their kids. The youngest, Arron is a high school senior and a good kid, although he's a bit on the heavy side and I worry about him. And Autemn who will graduate with her BS of teaching this spring. She got married right out of high school.

this guy she's married too, has less maturity than her brother, the kid still in high school. He's loud, he ignors his kids unless someone tells him to help with them. He insists (in someone else's home no less) on having football games turned on and turned up loud, and then gets loud at them. (we aren't a football watching family, I know some are). He was going to start college when she did as a pre-med student, dropped out the first semester and is working for UPS. He STARTED chewing tobacco after that. (I asked her how she managed to reproduce with him after that. She said she certainly wouldn't have married him).

The thing is, I know that relationships are often different from the inside than they appear from the outside. But I also know that there isn't a cure for stupid. In that family, I am seen as a sad case, a dysfunctional single mother raising three little boys all by myself. I am to be pittied and coddled. My little family will never be as good as the two parent with cute little kids model.

I realize that there are people in the world who think two parents, even if one is an over grown man-child with a maturity level my eleven year old can beat is better than a single parent home. But I am SO ENCREDIBLY GLAD that I don't have to deal with that on a daily basis. I have three children I take care of, why would I want another one? Sex? Another income?

Maybe that's what's wrong with me. I don't get men. Maybe shouting at football games and turning the TV up loud at someone else's home is okay in guy land. Maybe its normal for your inlaws and your wife's cousin to do more caretaking for your kids than you do.

Maybe I am destined to just be single until I come to accept that any man willing to be married also expects to be able to act like a child and not contribute anything other than a paycheck.