Father's Day- Again?

Ok, I'm sitting here, mentally preparing for this year's Father's Day cookout at my crazy sister's house. If you don't know how much I look forward to spending time with my dad, read previous entry "Lost in Thought". Let me tell you about my sister: she's nuts. Like seriously, certifiably nuts. She has been taking her medication for a while, so I'm hopeful that there won't be a repeat of last year's Father's Day fiasco, but who knows? Oh, yeah, you weren't there; it went a little something like this:

I arrive with jello salad- the kind with mandarin oranges and kool whip in it. Everyone else is there, and Dad is drunk enough that he is trying to dance with my sister's 180 lb dog. Flashback to childhood humiliation, but at least sis has a privacy fence, so it's not so bad. I put the jello on the table, trying not to trip over another of her dogs; this one weighs about six ounces and looks like a mophead. I try to wish Dad happy Father's Day, and give him his gift (a hat: I always give him a hat because he wears them constantly). He proceeds to belch at me and mumble something that I take for a thank you, but may have been "fuck you", I don't know, and quite frankly, don't care. I talk to my nephew (the only sane member of my family), who was high as a kite and couldn't stop laughing at the scene before him. After tiring of his giggles, I ask Mom what time Dad started drinking, to which she replies (I'm so serious) "he's not that drunk, he's just in a really good mood". Meet my mother, the Queen of Denial.

All goes well for a while, my sister's half dozen dogs of varying sizes are running around, occasionally grabbing a hamburger off the grill and fighting each other over it. Finally, there are enough done with no dog spit on them to call dinnertime. We all sit down, and start passing stuff around, when we hear a snort from Dad's end of the table. He has fallen asleep directly in my bowl of jello. I wonder aloud if he will suffocate (notice no one WORRIES about this possibility), and bitch that I spent money on the jello, now no one wants to eat it. Finally, my mom pushes his head out of the bowl, and says, "it's not that bad, we can still eat it". (You can cringe here, I certainly did.) My sister chooses this moment to lose it. She begins screaming about how she has worked all day preparing this, and now Dad's gone and ruined it (surprise?). I hear my nephew laughing harder than ever, and look where he's pointing. The dogs have gathered around Dad, and are licking the jello off his face. At this point, I began lauging as hard as Eddie. So we're laughing so hard that he knocks his stepsister's milk over, which brings the attention of the rest of the dogs, and I am completely serious, they begin jumping on the table and eating! I was sitting there, listening to my sister screeching, my mom trying to wake up Dad, Eddie laughing so hard I thought he'd wet his pants while my brother-in-law and his daughter sat in one corner of the yard, eating chips they wrestled from the dogs. The whole time, I'm looking at the assend of some sort of Malamute mix who's eating the food off my plate, and thinking: I wonder sometimes if God is like a TV producer, and my family is some sort of demented sitcom?

This year, I'm not taking anything and I'm stopping at Taco Bell on the way- I'll hope for the best, but it's a good idea to be practical. Happy Father's Day!