After a brief hiatus last week, the bitches are back this week and our topic is - "In-Laws."

The holidays are practically here and that usually means interaction with in-laws and extended family. My situation is, admittedly, a little bizarre. Neither my husband or myself are on speaking terms with our mothers. Additionally, my husband has a brother he hasn't seen or spoken to in ten years. His brother has three sons, one of which we were very close to until his brother remarried and essentially cut us off. The younger two we have never even met (we've seen them from afar when we happened to both be at the same store one time, but that's it) and of course, his brother has never met our youngest child even though he used to be close to our older two.

As much as I would love to be part of some large family where we have relationships with our nephews... it just isn't in the cards for us. And, while you'd think our oldest nephew would be on Facebook or MySpace or something... my brother is a religious zealot who is a complete control freak so I'm sure our nephew isn't even allowed to acquire computer skills since the internet is the devil's creation or something.

My husband has an aunt (his late father's younger sister) and 3 cousins all of whom have children of their own. His aunt lives in the family's house (it was my husband's grandparent's house before they passed away many years ago) about 3 hours south of where we live. We haven't seen her since my father-in-law's funeral over ten years ago. She doesn't drive up here unless she can bring the entire clan with her and, of course, they all have their own lives and kids and activities so getting ALL of them together (ends up being 12 additional people) is nearly impossible. We invited Aunt to our 4th of July barbecue, my husband's birthday, and even our annual Halloween party. Each invitation was met with "I'll see what everyone else is doing then." No offense, not that they weren't wanted, but they weren't exactly invited and why does it have to be a giant caravan anyway? Instead, Aunt suggests we drive down there. She's not elderly by any stretch, there was a HUGE age difference between her and my father-in-law. She goes out with friends on the weekends, drinks, parties, she's even a part-time bartender... but she can't manage to drive up to see her nephew or great nieces and nephew - one of whom she has never even met.

All this means I don't have any in-laws to deal with...

Oh, except and this is where it gets bizarre... hold on to your hats.

My first marriage I was married to my step-mother's cousin. I know, it sounds terribly backwoods and what-not. That means that when we go to my father and stepmother's for Thanksgiving I am going to have to play meet and greet with all of my former in-laws, the only exception being my ex mother-in-law, ex father-in-law, and the two idiot ex sisters-in-law. So, while my poor husband managed to get rid of his mother-in-law (aka the wicked witch of the west) he now has to deal with his wife's ex in-laws. Fortunately, we only stop in there long enough to say hello, eat and then get back to our own house to work on our Thanksgiving dinner.