put your eye out, schmut your eye out

Being an aunt rocks. I can't thing of many things I'd rather do than hang out with my niece and nephew, who are my cousins actually. (Insert "dueling banjoes", envision a double-wide and a few cars and boats up on blocks and you've conjured up my family's humble beginnings...got it? Okay.) And any curse word teaching, kid-riling, sugar pushing, stay-up-all-night-letting, drum-set giving aunt or uncle will tell you it's the most perfect relationship to be had in a family. You get all the benefits of having kids without the drag of having to bear them and raise them and educate them and pay for them; not to mention the biggest perk of all (beside the adulation and worship): the ability to finally get back at your sibling for all the shitty things they did to you when you were kids. It's sublime.

Within an hour of my arrival my niece was sporting Snoop Dog braids and referring to the use of the bathroom as "having to take a pa-zizzle in the ta-zizzle". My nephew had taken off his shirt and was delighting the crowd (at my behest) with a newly invented dance move combo: rolling his abs, shaking his (what do you call it aunt Kd? My tail-feather?) and folding his eyelids backward while I sang "Get up off of that funk" at full voice. I hadn't even broken out the case of Jolt yet, the warmup alone had my sister so nervous she --quite contrary to her character-- downed three fingers of vodka. "I hope you're ready for this" she said.
"Oh I'm ready." I replied. To prove my determination I broke out a slide whistle, a few pots and pans, opened the piano, and suggested a little something I like to call 'jam session full contact music wrestling'. My niece screeched with delight at the mere description, my nephew ran to the piano, and my sister poured another drink while quietly repeating the mantra "she's only here for two days, how much damage can she do in two days? she's only here for two days..."