You’re my family tree:

I spent my holiday weekend in Dallas, Texas, with the shirted side of my family. Most of the time not spent in shopping malls or eating meat was spent drinking margaritas by the pool, or in the pool, or sometimes, to mix it up a little, by or in the hot tub. This might sound kind of hot, until you remember that it involved three generations of one family in bathing suits.

I learned some interesting things, like if you get my family drunk they all admit to having seen ghosts, and the fact that Meth Lab Amanda was indeed involved with an actual meth lab, and that evidently the whole Olsen twin thing is genetic, since both my 19 year old brother and my 16 year old girl cousin admitted to a fascination as well. I also learned that it really troubles my mother when I talk about eloping. Other things I do that trouble my mother, for those of you playing along at home: leaving the house with wet hair, leaving the house with dry hair, wearing this lipstick, not wearing lipstick, talking to my brother about his new fraternity, not talking to my brother about his new fraternity, breathing.

However, on the drive down I had some quality one-on-one time with my brother, which was nice and unexpected. I always reach new depths of uncool around my brother, and somehow turn into someone’s dorky uncle and say things like, “So, I hear you pledged DUI,” and he just sits there and stares straight ahead, but this time I overlooked his eau d’ Keystone Light and he overlooked my total lack of finesse, and we had a great conversation about college and movies, and even a spirited Van Halen singalong, despite his hangover. Also, my brother has some excellent ideas as to how he would run against and defeat Schwarzenegger. I don’t want to give it all away, but it mostly involves buying all the billboards in California and covering them with posters from the movie Junior. This boy is going places.