Extended Family Blues

Last week or so, Mami gave me the scoop on the Penzos, because she keeps forgetting that she's NOT one of them and NOT obliged to stay in touch with them and stays getting all the gossip from my loose-lipped Penzo aunt.

Not that I ever turn down a chance at hearing the newest news from CrazyTown, mind you. Just, you know, if I never hear from or about them I won't feel cheated.

But anyway, Mami calls to tell me my grandfather is dying from (of?) prostate cancer, and that one of my aunts also has cancer (the same kind Farrah Fawcett had... *side eye*) and moved to Florida to get the best & latest treatment to fight it off.

Let me tell you, I am NOT pleased to know that these people have the big C coursing through their genes. The very genes I'm working with. The same genes I've passed down to my babies! As if their ghetto ways weren't enough...now I have to worry about cancer.

So the old dude died. Antonio I think is what Mami said his name was, a man I never met in my entire life. That is until one of my Penzo aunts posted pictures of him. Dead in his coffin. At the funeral. On Facebook.

Really, though? Really? THIS is how I finally get to meet my grandfather? I cannot...

It is also rumored that we may make an appearance at a Penzo New Year's Eve party. I'm half excited and half-nauseated. Excited because the aunt whose house it is is the only Penzo I love to bits and pieces. Nauseated because I fear William R. Penzo may be there, and if y'all remember correctly, I kinda wrote him a letter this fall that Mami doesn't know about, and wouldn't it be some shit to have all that mess come out during the party?

Please excuse me while I hyperventilate...thinking of the worst-case scenario is the only way I know to deal with a situation like this. In fact, I'm already imagining that this chronic sinus infection I keep getting is cancer of the ear-nose-and-throat.

Because it would make perfect sense that the moment I learn my grandfather's name is the moment I also inherit all his bullshit.

*smooches...wishing Mami had made a better choice when she made me*
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If someone has a better party idea for me for NYE, PLEASE let me know in case this party thing happens... I want to have a place to escape to!