Chez PLJ

Second in our “try-to-catch-up” series of blogposts…

Much of June was spent in getting ready for my grandmother’s 100th birthday celebrations on June 10. The first bit of June involved deep-cleaning the house, to attempt to clear out space for the massive influx of relatives who were going to bunk at our place for a week. Happily, the week before the hordes descended was the annual neighbourhood street sale, so we cleared out a fair amount of old stuff. However, around the same time was a publisher’s massive book sale… Net gain: Two large boxes of books. Sigh.

So for one week in June our house was hit with a population explosion, doubling from three to six (my two sibs Tamiko and Troy, and my niece Midori), and for a short time bulging to seven (nephew Tamo). Photon went quite berserk with delight and confusion (since pretty much every room in the house featured a sleeping person or two at night), and I actually wondered whether this would work out or if we’d all be at each others’ throats by the end of the week (visions of rat overcrowding experiments dancing through my head).

Turns out we got along just fine, even if it seemed we were stepping over each other at times. It was fun having all the sibs together, since that so rarely happens; and the visitors spent a lot of time with us, just talking rather than tooling around the city, which was delightful! Jon coped well with all these people, and he especially took a shine to his cousin Midori, using his sweetest voice and beaming whenever he called her (“♫ Mi-DO-riii…♫”).

The ultimate clown-car episode at our place occurred when we had the senior relatives (mom and her sibs) over for dinner. Eleven of us somehow managed to squeeze around our patio table that normally seats six. Not so bad, but then it started to rain—not enough to be worth hauling all the dishes inside, but enough for the people not under the umbrella to get quite wet!

By the way, it is now over a month since that book sale, and there’s still a box of books on the living-room floor….

Next post: Grandma’s birthday

At times during the week we could’ve been featured in an Apple ad. Much of the week featured permutations of this view: Here, Troy’s working on the slideshow for Grandma’s party on the MacBook; I’m on my iPod touch; while Midori is somehow managing to use both iPads at the same time.