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[porphyry]

My Wife refers to her brother and his wife as scrabbling rats. Nothing, seemingly, is safe from their depredations during their frequent raids visits. If there is any foodstuff that we wish to keep for more than 12 hours we have to hide it in the recesses of our closet (even keeping it reserved in a snack-bowl on the bookshelf in the bedroom is not sufficient). They are constantly dieting, and making a point of eating half the regular portion at dinner. Never-the-less, within this very hour, the She-rat (as she is known) turned a brick of havarti weighing more than a pound (which we had intended to serve as the center-piece of a lunch and a couple of snacks over the weekend) into a cheese sandwich for a pre-dinner snack. The only safety for a thing like that is the back of the bottom shelf, since they will not condescend to stoop.

Nor do they limit their marauding to food. They live in an apartment building with its own laundry room, but they do their laundry here; occupying our own quite spacious laundry room for two or three days a week. Not even once in many years have they brought a single jug of detergent (they bring prepared food about once a year for dinner). At one time the laundry room was liberally provided with hangers for suspending shirts to dry and the like. Then they vanished, kidnapped away to the rats’ apartment since they refuse to remove their dry clothes from the hangers before putting their clean clothes in the car. Then it was again refreshed with a new supply of hangers, only to have them vanish down the rat-hole again, and a third time, and more. Now there are only the fewest hangers that we must carefully horde and shepherd back and forth for our own needs. The other day the She-rat asked my wife, “Can I borrow some clothes-pins?” She was told plainly, “Well, there used to be many clothespins in here, but since you have taken them all home with you, I now keep only the minimum number that I need for my own use hidden in the closet, and therefore can’t produce anymore now. And I’m not buying any more.” But no clothespins or hangers have lately reappeared (one small bundle of such things might come back once a year).

But, as usual, there was a single egregious event that reached the tipping point of this rather ungracious tirade. My wife’s other brother is diabetic (he has one of the He-Rat’s kidneys in place of his own, so it is not as if generosity is completely unknown to them). So, since they have been playing golf a great deal now (one is an adjunct historian on summer hiatus, the other a recently laid-off banker), the diabetic brother has been carrying a lunch box with him, and keeping in it besides his lunch a snickers against the possibility of a sudden catastrophic drop in blood sugar. This morning as they were preparing to go, the diabetic brother asked the other, “Do you happen to know what happened to my snickers?” The other answered, “Well, yes, you know nothing like that is safe around me,’ openly admitting it.

Scrabbling little rats are so poorly mannered these days.

Comments

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well, of course they take advantage of goodwill, and I suppose they're not unique that way, but I always try to remember Epictetus who reminds us about duty to family:

Duties are universally measured by relations. Is anyone a father? If so, it is implied that the children should take care of him, submit to him in everything, patiently listen to his reproaches, his correction. But he is a bad father. Are you naturally entitled, then, to a good father? No, only to a father. Is a brother unjust? Well, keep your own situation towards him. Consider not what he does, but what you are to do to keep your own faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature. For another will not hurt you unless you please. You will then be hurt when you think you are hurt. In this manner, therefore, you will find, from the idea of a neighbor, a citizen, a general, the corresponding duties if you accustom yourself to contemplate the several relations.

In other words, it is our duty to love our family even when they displease us since we cannot choose our parents or siblings. Their habits trouble Malkhos more than they trouble me because he expects people to govern their actions by reason although I've tried to explain that most people are not capable of that kind of introspection, or self-criticism; rather, people tend toward self-justification (as do my brother and sister-in-law) which enables them to make any choice they want whether it's good or bad, fair or unfair, right or wrong.

However, just for your amusement, perhaps the greatest offense committed recently occurred when the She-Rat was taking our children somewhere and using our vehicle that has the carseats. While backing out of our garage, she hit the side of it and wound up doing about $1000.00 worth of damage to the car. You can probably guess what's coming--no, they did not offer to pay to have the damage fixed, or even apologize. Or even tell me about it, as a matter of fact. I noticed it the next day. And their combined income exceeds ours and they haven't two children to support (guinea pigs don't count, in my book; surely they can't be as expensive as children).

I suppose between the two of them my sister-in-law has the personality I favor less; she's boring beyond belief; a pseudo-intellectual; middlebrow in all her tastes and she loves Broadway musicals, which I abhor. The intimacy between them is expressed in some kind of strange duck-call that reverberates through the house when they are looking for each other [a sickening satire of the recognition scene between Pamina and Tamino after he is released from the labyrinth--Malkh.] which then dissolves into baby talk. It isn't cute. What's worse, our four-year-old is starting to emulate this, so we instructed the child--who is extremely articulate, and always has been--to not talk that way.

I suppose my brother's biggest character flaw is his extreme narcissism which seems to border on pathological. He was the baby of the family, though, and very spoiled by all of us, so it's no surprise. He does have charisma, though, and can be quite engaging when he wants to be. I respect him more, I suppose, though I do worry about his lack of empathy.

They just seem so--well, immature, despite the fact they are in their early thirties. Or perhaps I'm too cynical.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

You'll like this, I'm sure.

During a long hiatus at her work, the She-Rat read some sort of self-help book for executives. One thing that she picked up from it is that she started to assert her feminine power (or however she expresses the idea to herself) she started dressing like a slattern--in her work clothes I mean. Before, her clothes hid two very considerable parts of her figure, but now she wears tight sweaters and push up bras. Rather cheap, and not at all modest, a virtue which the auburn-haired one highly approves (one can be attractive without being cheap; there is no such thing as an elegant tart).

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Make a great big spaghetti bolognaise, or meatloaf or suchlike, but make it out of dog food. Then leave it in the fridge for your in-laws to 'find' the next time they visit.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I like that. A scaled-down version of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus!

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

That is, the banquet of Thyestes--from whence Shakespeare stole it.

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Better still, see if you can get hold of a human placenta.

My friend once tricked me into eating some 'special pate' that she had made out of her placenta. Not bad actually.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I've heard about women keeping their placentas and then eating them later; rather like a mother cat!

Problem is, I don't know where I'd get one since I don't want any more children.

What did it taste like?

[benicek.livejournal.com]

It tasted a bit like mushroom pate.