Having all the members of the family home together for a fourth day in a row is bound to get everyone upset… we can’t spend that much time together and still remain civil.

So, just now, I had dragged down a very heavy cardboard box full of magazines and dragged it down the stairs on the landing so I could carry it out to the trash later. Let me stress that it was VERY heavy and I could not lift it myself, hence the dragging down the stairs. My father started shouting for me to bring it outside and I said I’d do it later since it was too heavy to carry myself and I would figure out some way with a luggage cart or something later.

NO. That would not do. So he insisted that we carry it down together. Fine - I put on some shoes and we started carrying it down the stairs. At this point, my brother decided to stick his nose where it absolutely did not belong and started yelling, “Are you guys f’ing retarded??? Can’t you carry a f’ing box down the stairs yourself?” My father replied that it was very heavy and my brother retorted back that I managed to carry it down the stairs in the first place - I replied that I’d basically kicked it down the stairs… didn’t have to lift it. The stairs to the basement - unlike the stairs going up - are carpeted and not as easy to drag something along. I said I couldn’t do it myself and he called me a fat whore and told my father, “See how useless your f’ing fat whore daughter is?”

My father just told him to stop using the “f” word.

My brother then pushed past me and my father - almost sending my father down the stairs, grabbed the box and carried it down himself (it gave me a slight “ha!” to see how he was taken aback by the weight of the box) and kept carrying on angrily about the stupidity and laziness of the family. I’m sorry, but I’m not a 6″ tall, 225-pound guy and neither is my father. Lifting a large 60-pound box of magazines isn’t the easiest thing… it’s ungainly and heavy.

I’m still trying to clean, but my mother is bringing a friend over since she needs something notarized and I happen to be a notary public. She just called me to tell me that the document to notarize also needs to be written and that she’ll need me to write it. I told her that I can’t WRITE the document AND notarize it. She can write it and I can notarize it - she balked at that and says that her English (after 30 years in the country) isn’t good enough to write the document.

What is the document? Oh. That’s the fun part. It just needs to state that her friend’s husband is authorized to pick up an accident report from the police station since she can’t get there during the hours it’s open. My god, that requires a master’s degree in English and some doctoral work. Wow.