Advice at Your Own Risk

My parents and brother2 arrive tomorrow afternoon. I have most of the week scheduled, primarily because my father can't sit still and if we have too much downtime, he'll start to get anxious. To make matters worse, they'll be here during the week when there isn't any football to watch, so it isn't like we could just tiptoe quietly out of the room and leave him to it. The plan so far is to do an early dinner at a fun outdoor place overlooking the lake tomorrow night, Tuesday my mom and I will go to the "Thanksgiving Feast" at the kids' school and then, weather permitting, we'll all go to the cool park in town. We may try to meet my sister for dinner somewhere. Wednesday my dad and mom will play golf with Spouse and his friend while my brother and I go to the local park with the boys. We'll have dinner here on Wed to avoid the craziness of trying to go out the Wed before Thanksgiving. Thursday we'll park here. My mom and sister and my kids will bake and cook while the older dudes watch football. It should be really nice weather and I plan to take a long walk or 2 with my mom around the neighborhood. They leave Friday morning around 10, which is kind of sad but also kind of awesome because it means we get a whole 3 days off without guests before we have to go back to work.

The second reason for keeping my dad occupied is to avoid long periods of silence when he might want to talk to me--especially about politics or religion. I can imagine 3 versions of how this week could go down

A. He decides not to go there, neither do I, and we have a peaceful weekend talking mostly about the city, family, and playing "hey, look at what the kids are doing!"
B. He makes snarky comments about Democrats, Health Care, Obama, Pelosi, etc., and I pretend like he's not talking to me.
C. He asks me direct questions about how I feel about the state of the country/economy/etc. and I answer them. He is incredulous at best and at worse freaks the holy hell out about the kind of person I am and what I must be teaching my children.

As horrible as this sounds, I plan to lie my ass off about whether or not we go to church just to avoid conflict. I also plan to prime the children by using words like "church" in a lot of sentences between now and then.

The thing is... and I don't really care how this makes me sound because it is the truth... my dad and I have a fragile relationship. He hasn't been to visit me since 2002 and hasn't seen my children in a year and a half. He recently had one of those medical scares that makes you start to "think about what matters" and "get your priorities in order." This is what prompted him to tell (not ask) my mother that they were going to visit us for T-giving this year. He's making an effort for the first time in a very, very long time and I am curious to see what that looks like or what may come of it. I'm worried that it won't go well, but I'm also worried that nothing will feel substantively different. My sisters who live near them say that there was a burst of grandchild enthusiasm shortly after surgery but that it started to wear off pretty quickly. Given that we're the out of towners we usually garner extra enthusiasm, so my hope is that we can ride that to Friday.

If it doesn't work, then bottoms up. I bought 6 bottles of wine and 1.74L of Bombay Sapphire. I will make it through the week one way or another!