Nicky’s been in one of those strange food crazes in which he likes to immerse himself.  Who can forget the months of nachos, made with a pound of grated cheese and eaten with half a jar of salsa?

Now he’s making batches of pancakes, and following those with bowls of oatmeal, drenched in brown sugar and creamo.  This is eaten AFTER dinner, as a snack.  I’m continually on a diet, so watch his food crazes with a mixture of envy and fascination.

Less fascinating is the way he takes parts off my car, puts them on one of his derelict cars to make it start or whatever, then returns the part.  It reminds me of how annoyed I still am over his ‘borrowing’ of my camera until he finally lose the cord.  Hence, I imagine myself careening down the highway one day, and realizing he forgot to re-install the brakes.

But I find the philosophy of offering little to no resistance to life’s foibles is the best way to cope.  I shrug.  What can one do?  If you rail against these things, it just causes dissention, but does nothing to stop the annoyances from occuring.

Plus, I like to get along and thereby avoid confrontations.  Nicky, on the other hand, says he enjoys nothing better than to argue, even if it’s just for the sake of argument.  You can see the challenges these opposing philosophies would bring.

 On the weekend we all went to Osoyoos and celebrated some Easter family time together with mom.  On Sunday night I made roasted chickens with scalloped potatoes, baked yams and broccoli.  I used Julia Child’s method of trussing the chickens, then coating them in butter and roasting them on a rack.

Today I arrived home, dead tired from 48 hours of partying with octogenarians. Mom loves staying up late, and getting up early, but I’m a bit too weak for that kind of stuff.  At 85 mom has no problem drinking wine, eating and talking until midnight.  She’s then up at 7:30 feeling great.

Maybe that’s the problem.  Perhaps once I reach 70 my stamina’s really gonna finally kick in and then I’ll have the strength to say no to Nicky.  He’ll be 35 years old, and hopefully will have stopped borrowing my stuff and will be living on his own.

I don’t like to get overly optimistic, though.  Luke came home from the rigs for a week, and the party was on.  I suppose a lot of people would be envious, so I don’t want to complain about all of the kids that have been coming and going in a steady stream since.  I just wish that my generation, the ‘sandwiches’, had a bit more jam.