I Suck At Hanging Out With My In-Laws

Being parents of a four (almost five) month old baby girl, Karen and I did something that we hardly ever do: we were spontaneous. Truth be told, I think that is one of the things I have missed since our baby daughter (Briana) was born.

Don't get me wrong. I love everything about my daughter. Heck, I am very thankful to even have a daughter considering Karen and I lost our first child (Braden). Since having a child, however, the days of spontaneously doing things have dwindled. It's not that being spontaneous cannot be done. It can. It just takes more planning because now someone depends so much on you. And in the case of our daughter and her recent bout of separation anxiety, she definitely depends a lot on us.

I think it's the freedom to do as you please that I miss. When you're by yourself and have no dependents, you can drop whatever you are doing at a moment's notice with no problem. When you get a spouse, it gets a little tougher. Obviously with a child, it gets a lot more tougher.

I'll probably feel the same way when I'm old and can no longer drive a car. It's that feeling of not having the independence to freely do or go as you please. Considering how I live a good distance from public transportation, I'm not sure how I would get things done now if I did not have a car.

Anyway, with nothing planned for the day, it was a nice feeling to do something spontaneous. Granted, the spontaneous plans involved hanging out with my in-laws. Too bad I suck at hanging out with my in-laws.

In the morning, my favorite sister-in-law (Janine) asked if we were interested in coming over. Apparently, Karen's parents were also coming over as they had not seen Janine and her family in some time. I think the elusive Janine has not been seen by her parents for almost a month because they still had a birthday present for PJ. (For anyone curious, PJ's birthday was in July.) Up until Janine and PJ watched Briana for my friend's (Andrea) birthday, I don't think Karen and I saw them for a couple of weeks either.

As a means to tempt Karen and I... and our baby daughter (Briana) to come over, Janine baked banana bread. Well, if there's food... I'm there. And in case anyone is curious, the banana bread was delicious. Janine makes a lot of good food even though I do kid her about the bananas.

The whole banana thing stemmed from an incident when Karen and I were visiting. At the time, there was a banana tree holder on her kitchen counter. And naturally, there were bananas hanging in the holder. The only problem was that the bananas were not the normal yellow color. They were not even a green color. Nope, they were a solid shriveled black mush.

We even peeled (and I use the word "peeled" loosely because the skin sort of fell off) the black mushy banana to see what it looked like inside. Truth be told, it looked like the banana had a vertebral column. Needless to say, we joked about the banana and were curious as to why she even had a bunch of black mushy bananas. Her defensive argument was that they were good for banana bread.

Needless to say, I was a little curious as to whether the banana bread used to lure us over to her place was made with black mushy bananas. For anyone curious, I did not find out the answer.

If I had known that the banana bread was made with black mushy bananas, things would not have been any different. I would have still eaten the banana bread. Heck, I'll eat anything. I think a lot of people dismiss food without even tasting it because they have these preconceived notions in their head about the taste. It's unfortunate, but it happens. Trust me. I come from an ethnicity where there are a lot of strange visually unappealing foods that taste good, but your average American would probably never try them. That's why there is the term "American Chinese food" because it's Chinese food that the average American person would find appealing.

Anyway, it was good hanging out with my in-laws. I think my mother-in-law was all smiles today because she got to go out for a walk with all of her grandchildren.