Celebrate Freedom: Choose Your Family Carefully

Holiday weekends are a great time to socialize, but the proximity of your family might drive you a little nuts. Just remember, your family is not always the one you were born into, so find people who make you feel great to be yourself (and, of course, proud to be an American!).

If you are stuck with the family from hell, it might bring you comfort to read about people who have it worse. Advice columns are full of them. By the way, the men in my life seem to LOVE advice columns even though guys are supposed to be phobic about "touchy feely" stuff. Maybe since they love to GIVE advice, they like to read it, too?

Slate Magazine's "Dear Prudence" recently featured a woman with a PBFH (Psycho Bitch From Hell) for a Mother in Law. Here's the difference between me and Prudence in this situation. Prudence suggests couples counseling. I suggest the wife start packing. As long as she's married to him, Mom ain't goin' anywhere and her place was fixed long before they got married. In the words of Dr. Who, "RUN!"

My ex (the experience from which I speak) used to read Dear Abby and you can find classic Ann Landers columns on line as well. My boyfriend admires Carolyn Hax in the Seattle Post Intelligencer and he doesn't suffer fools, trust me. He also LOVES Dan Savage's column in The Stranger, "Savage Love". Personally, I like "DateGirl", which runs in The Seattle Weekly.

But if all else fails, take my highly unscientific, untrained advice: find a a tall cold glass of something that will impair your senses, grab your own personal patch of shade, lie back and relax. As they say in the Bible: This, too, shall pass.