So normal, it's weird.

I have a horrible habit of inciting all sorts of familial rumbles on holidays.

Take last year's Easter celebration.

Or the Easter before that, when, with one little benign (but smartass) comment, I managed to anger my father-in-law to the point where he felt that storming out of the house and driving away was the only solution.

Gosh, I love the holidays.

So, it is simply remarkable that this past holiday weekend was not only crisis-free but also, dare I say it, pleasant.

My father drove my grandparents up from Los Angeles since their health and age prevents them from making the drive themselves. And, Ben and I managed to share the weekend in such a way that we felt both of our families were being well-represented.

At one point, when my mother, Ben and I were playing frisbee in her warm and sunny Sonoma County backyard, I wondered when the pod people had stepped in.

There were dogs a plenty, pretty flowers and even a singing bird.

Sidenote: In true Grabowski spirit, my family's parrot (a mitred conure) sings three songs: Cool Water, Skinnamarink-y dinky-dink, and the theme from the Pirates of the Carribean.

Now, here comes the part filled with Catholic guilt:

Of course, I still feel guilty for not attending Easter mass. This was the first time that Ben or I have missed a hard-core holiday church service.

We tried to justify our absence by saying it was a protest over the way the Catholic Church is handling the recent scandals.

But really, we were just feeling lazy.

Still, for someone who went through 14 years of Catholic school, I fear that my payback for missing church is a-comin'.

Let's just hope that God's wrath was wrought when, after an hour and a half of play, our game of Oregon Trail crashed.

We had just reached the homestretch and my character had already survived a snake bite, two gun-shots, and a nasty infection!

Yes, let's hope that was our punishment.

Comments

[meryl]

I missed services for the most important and holiest holiday when I was in my early 20s. Guilt got the better of me.

[nicole]

Concurrently, my lad and I are both freaked out by the thought that our parents have begun to go to Church.
AND--do you meant Oregon Trail, the old computer game? If so, that was my first introduction to the computer way back in elementary school. Crazy!

[Mena]

This is Oregon Trail, fifth edition.

[Rosie]

Oh I remember Catholic school. Three years ago, in fact. I found mass horribly boring and many times almost fell asleep. Whatever the priest was saying never reached my ear. I was always drifting off somewhere else, as I always am.

I think most kids fall asleep in Church. I know a bunch of my classmates did, or were on the brink of doing so.

I don't go to Church anymore, but I wonder if I will in the future.

Oh, and I remember playing the old Oregon Trail. I had such a difficult time shooting those animals.

When the whole family gets together, it is never peaceful. My dad yells at my grandmother for not sitting down at dinner and when we go out for dinner, they argue over who should pay the check (they both offer). The biggest fight though is before the family arrives. While we are frantically cleaning the house, my mother will tell my sister and I how she never gets any help around the house. Excuse me, "never any fucking help." My sister and I do our best to please her and in the end we all sit down on the couch, marvel at what we accomplished, and my mother apologizes. We make the promise to try to help her more, but of course, always break that promise.

I dread getting together with the family. I'd much rather just stay at home with my parents, my sister, the three cats, and my dog.

[kismet]

this new oregon trail thing you are playing disappoints me (just on the basis of what you linked to though, I have no experience with it). The little characters are all detailed looking and stuff. Oregon trail is meant to be played on a 4-colored monitor with crappy, beeping music, and all that other cheesiness.

It reminds me of the new, anorexic My Little Ponies. They will never be as spiffy as the originals.

[megami]

Kismet's right...only I believe when I played Oregon Trail in public school there were only 2 colours...green and black. We played it on a Commodore Pet. Remember those?

[Ryan]

Don't feel guilty about church, Mena -- just tell yourself that you would have gotten there late, and since it was Easter, all the twice-a-year Catholics came out and took the seating, so you would have been left standing. Standing, no less, in a part of the church where you couldn't hear the priest anyway, and so your mind would wander and you'd feel even more guilty for thinking those kinds of thoughts in church.

Works for me.

[vis10n]

Hey Mena... I'm quite the church-goer, myself, and have a mother who's not been to church for years and years. Every once in a while, we get talking about vices (she's got a few, but she's otherwise a saint of epic proportions) and she always says something along the lines of "Surely GOD won't keep me out of Heaven for X..." to which I respond -- if only in my mind: "That's not the way it works; the question you should be asking yourself is why would I let X keep me out of Heaven?"

Anyway, if church attendance is important to you (and I happen to think it is important), then making excuses for not going is just plain silly.

*climbs down from high horse*

Sounds like you had a great Easter. Mine was nice and quiet (church services in the morning, a nice long nap, followed by an Easter potluck at a friend's place).

[Karin]

What I've noticed is the new Oregon Trail makes it much easier to shoot the animals too (besides the additional colors and music). We played on Apples, it's still fun. Did anyone else notice that the longer you play the new version the scarcer the game gets? Like you really are hunting it out? Maybe it is just me being delusional but... =)

[Annie]

I'm glad that you had a pleasant and crisis-free Easter holiday, the Oregon Trail incident & feelings of guilt notwithstanding.

Thanks for sparking memories of days spent trying to pass The Oregon Trail. I never did pass that game but had a lot of fun trying to!

[meryl]

I bought Oregon Trail back in the early '90s because I loved playing with it at the elementary school where I was a student teacher. Never loaded the damned thing on my computer and it got old before I got around to it. Sad. I'll probably buy another for the kids and still never get around to playing it again.

Oh the joys of being an adult. No more time for computer games :(

[meryl]

Oh great. My willpower gave in and I bought it. It must be the matzo I've been eating for almost a week. Now, will she or won't she buy Carmen San Diego, a fave way back from the 1st edition?

[Shaun]

Ha. For some reason I had this image of you folks being so functional.

[Jessica]

Oregon Trail!!! I played it for the first time in '92 or sometime around there... black and grey and white on a Macintosh computer (one of those one piece gizmos they made with the built in tiny monitor)... GREAT GAME! I finally found it again a couple of years ago, the second edition and its still tons of fun and lots of difficulty type stuff to set in too... the 4th edition blows, however, uses two or three CD-ROMS and is slow as sh!t...Grrrr... I was so mad about that.

Oh well.. thanks for the memory...

[Jessica]

Oregon Trail!!! I played it for the first time in '92 or sometime around there... black and grey and white on a Macintosh computer (one of those one piece gizmos they made with the built in tiny monitor)... GREAT GAME! I finally found it again a couple of years ago, the second edition and its still tons of fun and lots of difficulty type stuff to set in too... the 4th edition blows, however, uses two or three CD-ROMS and is slow as sh!t...Grrrr... I was so mad about that.

Oh well.. thanks for the memory...

[Joe]

Ahh, Catholic guilt compounded with mother guilt made me order a mushroom and cheese P'zone on Good Friday. And when it arrived with sausage in it, I tried to make a deal with God that I ordered the mushroom shouldnt that be enough? But I found myself opening the damn thing and picking out every last piece of sausage, ending up with a cheese and onion P'zone.

And, I watched mass on tv... honest... the church was just too far to walk to and the only clothes I had that were clean were shorts, and come on Easter Mass... that's the one where you have to have something really new and formal like.