cute enough to shoot you down

Well, today was... interesting. I think that's a good adjective in light of everything. Like I said earlier, it was decided that it was time I met S' family today. I wasn't the only person who was made to go meet the parents (well, parent. It's only Mrs Holmes that's around these days). I guess my_croft or just_a_brolly or whatever he's calling himself these days is seeing someone as well, and he brought her along to lunch. She was sweet. That's another good adjective, I think. And the first person I've met since dating S that didn't make the same joke or ask the same question I hear every time we meet someone new. So that was refreshing.

I'm screwing up my narrative. Let me start over.

Birthday. Meeting S' mum. Right. Well, his brother came to pick us up, because their mum lives out in Chipping Norton, and that would have been one hell of a cab fare and I guess trains out to that direction are a pain. The ride there was misery. I think I'd have rather paid for a cab. S doesn't get on with that brother, as we all know, and we all wound up in the same car together for about an hour. I spent most of the ride practising bad habits I picked up off of S somewhere along the way and just messed around with my phone. I felt kind of bad, but wasn't sure what else to do in a completely silent car.

His mum's pretty much how I expected her to be. Charming, nice, intimidating as all hell. Sorry, S, but your mum can be a bit scary. Also, I did not know that they're French. Or 'a bit French,' as S put it (I guess their dad was English, but that's just a stab in the dark on my part, actually. Either that, or they've all put a lot of work into it).

Things went about as well as could be imagined. Everyone started off civil enough, but you can't put those three on the same website without war being declared. All around the same table was almost the front lines all over again. I'm not going to repeat what was said, partially because I'm trying to maintain the illusion that their swapping between languages confused me (come on, guys. I travel a lot more than the average person. Did you really think that would work?), but mostly because I was trying to block it out by talking to Kitty. That's the other person who was brought along today. She's very obviously new, because she didn't seem to have ever witnessed a Holmes Family Feud before. I really hope it didn't scare her off, though.

After things calmed down, I guess Kitty tried to break the tension by asking where they all got their names from. That went over... well, really badly, actually, and just started everything up again. Things didn't last very long after that. I'm almost dreading Christmas. Also morbidly curious.


Bill came over for a bit after we got home and I got S settled again. It's always a bit of a task after he and his brother are in the same room for any amount of time, but he was still wound tight as a drum when Bill got here, and he's still been really quiet all evening. I finally got some toast into him at least, which is the first thing he's touched since yesterday. I was really glad to see that his mum handles him so well for that matter. I have to admit, I was a bit worried that going out there for lunch would be a disaster since breakfast was just not on this morning. But she just let him be.

No dog tracks to report today. Or spilt paint. Or mysteriously vanishing or appearing pets. Bill's gone home now and S is back to his video game, being annoyed at some sort of endman or something. I don't know. One of these days I'm going to wake up and he's going to be make of pixels or something. I swear. I'm still annoyed at whoever put him onto that thing, but I have to be honest, it's been a bit of a godsend today. He needs the distraction, and that seems to do the trick.