Obviously they missed one of the ten commandments

It's been a long time since I talked about my brother Paul, a.k.a. The Salsa King. And there's a good reason - we pretty much have little if anything to do with each other.

My brother married a woman named Cindy when I was about six years old. They lived about 45 minutes from us and other than a rare appearance, they pretty much spent every waking moment shoved up her family's butt. When I was 13, my dad fell off the roof of our house and was in the hospital for almost two weeks...and my brother came to visit one time. I mean it was almost a joke in the family how we had this invisible brother that everyone talked about but no one ever saw.

They have two kids. They seem to be nice young men, no thanks to their mother. You see, my sister-in-law is a total nutjob. She dressed them alike until they were like in middle school. She would cut stories out of the newspaper that she didn't want them to see. She put a big sticker on their television that said "Would Jesus Approve of What You Are Watching?" Oh yeah, she's nuts. And that's just the shit that we know about in our limited contact with them.

My brother and sister-in-law got involved in a fundamentalist Christian group about ten years ago that pretty much ended my relationship with them. I don't have a problem with people having religious beliefs or faith - what I do have a problem with is being preached at constantly and made to feel like someone is forcing their views down my throat. A visit with her is like being trapped in a Mason jar with Pat Robertson for about 10 years. It's horrible.

When my dad was in the hospital last August, I called and begged them to come because the doctors didn't think he was going to make it. To their credit, they drove all night to come. And then left in six hours because they had stuff to do at home. So at that point, I pretty much washed my hands of the whole situation. Obviously, getting their carpets cleaned was way more important to them than my father's survival.

About eight years ago, my parents drive nine hours to visit them. They knew my parents were coming. And they decided to go to an amusement park around an hour away and left the key under the mat for my parents to use. My father swore up and down at that point that he would never visit again.

But time fades the hurt, and when we all got invitations for my youngest nephew's graduation from Penn State, my parents were itching to go. This was their first big trip since my dad almost died last year, and my sister volunteered to drive them up there.

The whole thing started out strangely. You see, my brother "retired" from the state police about 2 years ago and has been working as a concrete truck driver since then. My sister-in-law hasn't worked for decades because she is working on her PhD from some mail order bible college in the Everglades. And yes, I wish I was kidding about this. It's something about King David having ADD or some bullshit like that. And yes, I wish I was kidding about this too. So anyhow, neither one has a decent job and no money toward retirement, so they got some crackpot scheme to go to South Carolina for some kind of Department of Homeland Security training (for who knows what) last week. The party was scheduled to be at their house on Saturday, and they weren't going to actually get back to their house until almost noon on Saturday. Talk about some planning.

So my sister and my sister-in-law discussed several times that my parents really wanted to take the nephews out for dinner on Friday night when they arrived. And honestly, my parents were super excited not only to be back on the road traveling, but to see their grandkids and catch up with them. So after confirming this several times via Cindy, my family arrived in Pennsylvania around 4 PM and called the house to let them know that they had arrived and to let them know where to meet for dinner.

No word from the nephews. They called again. And again. And again. Called cell phones. Left messages everywhere. And finally at 7:30 PM, after having been on the road all day and starving to death, they gave up and went to a seedy diner down the street from the hotel.

The next day, apparently my sister went totally apeshit on my sister-in-law - who then handed the phone to my brother with the words, "Here's your sister, now you can listen to her tell you what a horrible person you are." I guess my sister had just had enough of the years and years of having our parents ignored and treated poorly. And of course, she had to throw the "Thou shalt honor thy mother and father" in there just to add insult to injury.

Part of me wants to believe that the nephews are good kids - but then David, the graduate, out and out lied to my sister about where he had been. And part of me thinks that my sister-in-law never even told the boys that my family was coming or mentioned dinner on Friday, because the other one had to take his music class to a band competition for the weekend and didn't even make his brother's party. I don't know, but the whole thing just smells like rotten fish.

I will say one thing, though. My sister - who is single-handedly one of the nicest people and will let people walk all over her - totally broke bad on my loser brother this weekend. And I'm proud of her. Not to mention that it's nice not to be the bitch in the family for at least a little bit of time.

Tomorrow's episode of "How Builder Mama's World Turns", how my in-laws have told my husband that he needs to give them $10,000. Oh yeah, this week can't get much better than it's going already, and it's only fucking Tuesday.