I love my family, but when you get too many of us in a room, it's never good. Yesterday we got together for a dinner in celebration of my great aunt's birthday (Auntie Barbara - she's fabulous, I'll talk about her in another post) and for Hanukkay. Why not kill two birds with one stone (oh yes, and did I mention my family loves cliches)? At any rate, many lovely people came, and I had a horrible time.

First of all, I still got placed at the kid's table, which as a matter of principle I have no problem with, but it gets a little tedious when the conversation revolves around driving four-wheelers in mud, on trails, and sometimes with only three wheels (don't ask). Meanwhile, I am by far the ugliest cousin, so that adds a little bitterness to each bite of food.

In exchange for being the ugliest, god saw to it that I was the only one granted with even the least bit of interest in academics. Some consolation! At family gatherings the only thing this means is that academics is off the list of possible conversation topics. "No, no, please tell me that story of how you flipped the four-wheeler over the tree again." My mother, of course, loves to bring up Harvard at every chance she gets, just in case the conversation wasn't already awkward enough.

The redeeming factor, of course, is all the old women. Have I mentioned that I love old women? Well I do; they're my favorite demographic. If only Harvard had a joint degree in geriatric studies and women, gender, and sexuality studies - my academic path would be laid out before me. Alas! My grandmother, her sister, her son's mother-in-law...the fun never ends. In any case, they're all fabulous. If you ever thought being Jewish was about god, you're wrong - it's about grandmothers, hands down - and food, but the two are related.

The highlight of the evening was a discussion that centered around a flax seed drink that my cousin Marty's Costa Rican wife, Virginia, makes. Evidently you boil flax seeds in water with sugar and vanilla until the whole thing congeals into a gelatinous mush. Then you drink it! Among the amazing properties of boiled flax mush are that it looks rancid the moment it's finished, but (according to Virginia), it keeps for weeks. The conclusion of the conversation: flax seeds are excellent sprinkled on cereal.