Auntie EEE needs a cocktail

I’m on vacation. Yea!!!!

Um.

I’m on vacation with my mother, my sister and my six year old niece.

Um. Yea???

Leg 1: Chicago to Cali

The Cubs are playing in SoCal this week. I learned this when coworkers asked where I was going on vacation and they replied to my answer with “Oh! Are you going to a Cubs game?”

Have they not MET me?

The holding cell… er… the gate at O’Hare had a number of obvious Cubs fans waiting for our flight. Including one girl wearing that vile “Horry Kow” t-shirt.

When I arrived, my niece, who is cute as a button normally, was in the middle of a tantrum and managed, in fits and starts, to get steadily worse as the day wore on.

At one point, my sister told her “If you sit still and don’t say anything for five minutes, Aunt EEE will give you a dollar.”

I acted shocked, but in truth, I was perfectly comfortable with this. I’m more than willing to empty my wallet in the name of familial accord. I have been completely amenable to buying this child’s love since before she was born and let’s face it: she’s not MY kid. I can ruin her all I want.

That said, Auntie EEE has no patience for a child’s passive-aggressive games. If I’m going to bribe her into compliance, I’m going to hold her strictly to the rules and I’ll even add riders such as “each time you hit your mother/ mess with the window blind / kick the seat in front of you, I’m adding another minute to your time.”

Yeah. Unfortunately, she inherited the ornery gene from her mother. Needless to say that child is no richer than she was when she woke up this morning.

Which was obscenely early. They got up at 4:45am. This is normal for me and my saintly mother, but not for my sister and her adorable spawn.

By the time we got to our hotel (I’ll upload a pic from our patio when I get a chance) the child was ready to go over all Vesuvius. It all accumulated into the mother of all meltdowns and ended with all of us back in our hotel by 8 pm local time (10pm Chicago time), ready to crash.

I’m going to need more alcohol.