Persians unleashed.

Tonight T's parents had a 4th of July barbecue.

I wasn't aware until ten minutes before it was time to leave that I was invited.

T's sister was there with her horrible husband and her three naughty children and her nanny, K. I met K the night I arrived here and haven't seen her since. She's in her thirties and has been nannying for ten years. She's been with T's sister's family for almost a year now.

Honestly, I don't know how she puts up with them.

T's sister drives me bonkers. I am SO grateful that I worked for the sister I do.

When we arrived there were old Persian men playing Backgammon in the corner and Persian old men holding a window fan over the grill in the backyard and Persian women sitting around making Persian food.

The only kids around were mine and K's charges so we took the lot of them to the pathetic swing set surrounded in poison oak and talked for a while.

More people began to arrive and a few more kids came with them.

I crossed paths with T in the kitchen, trying to avoid the old ladies seated in a circle in the formal living room. She was rolling her eyes and when I laughed she said,

"I hate these things. They're so boring. I'm ready to go home."

I love her.

The bitties took Baby I for a while and I wandered around checking on my kids and nibbling on dried fruit, which is always an appetizer at that house.

There was a water table for the kids to play with which Baby I really loved but a few of the bitties and E were FREAKING out about the kids being wet on this 90 degree day and someone dumped out the water.

But not before Baby I drenched himself and won the freedom of running around in a diaper for a few hours.

T's sister's husband went into a mood and came into the play room to take over the TV. He has the most miserable looking face I have ever seen, but I didn't hear any arguing this time around.

After dinner, dessert was put out on the formal dining room table and people nibbled and the kids ran around. The kids had been made to come inside when the mosquitoes came out, but the old men were still at Backgammon and now there was a group of young Persian men sitting around the garden swing speaking Farsi and drinking beers.

T's sister bathed her kids and put them all in pjs before they headed out. I stopped into the bathroom to round my two who had followed her into the bathroom and she asked me if I had their pajamas. When I told her no, that T had packed their bag and that she didn't like bringing all that stuff she waved away my words and said,

"Just pack it. Every time you go out, just bring it and do it."

Does she know that I don't work for her?

I guess not.

When it was FINALLY time to leave we piled into the car and T told E to back straight down the driveway. He got stuck on the curb. He pulled up and tried again, all while she kept going,

"Straight! Straight, you need to go straight!"

They then engaged in a light-hearted argument about whether or not the driveway was straight. He lined the car up with the curb and alligned the steering wheel and hit the curb. He did it again and again until his mother, who had pulled out just before us, rolled down her window and called something to him. He ignored her and kept explaining in the calmest and most condescending voice ever, how he was right and T just laughed and laughed and insisted that he was still wrong. He needed to go straight and he wasn't.

E eventually gave up trying to prove his point and got onto the road. As we drove up the street E asked me if I could believe what had just happened and I got to use my favorite line ever.

"If a man says something and there's no one around to hear him, is he still wrong?"

To which T replied,

"YES!"