Why family is a four letter word

I’ve been rather ill the last few days, which is always a bit unfortunate. To keep me at work, I got these wonderful drugs for my cold which contain codeine. Codeine has a wonderful effect on me and I can see how people get hooked. About 20 minutes after I take the tablets, my I feel a bit disembodied and my arms & legs feel heavy & light at the same time. Then I feel like I'm floating and my body goes all warm & I feel really, really relaxed and really happy. Then everything goes a bit grey and then next thing I know, it's six hours later. I should point out that I only take them at night or before a very long meeting.

A while ago, my aunt & uncle visited from England and it coincided with my birthday. We'd planned to go out to breakfast, but the place I wanted to go to had closed down, which we only found out when we got there. Curses. My aunt, for some reason, made things worse by laughing for the next five minutes. She found it very funny for some odd reason. But I'll get on to my aunt's insidious personality traits a bit later. Anyway, there was another place nearby, so we went there. I recommend the omelette with gruyere cheese & asparagus. We then did a bit of sight seeing for my aunt & uncle's benefit before heading home & hitting my birthday cake. It’s never birthday unless cake is involved.

My aunt has several disabling personality flaws:
1. She has a terrible laugh. It's not a laugh, it's a cackle and it's one of those irritating cackles that gets deep inside of you and makes you want to slap the person.
2. She laughs at the most inappropriate things. Like when the restaurant we went to for breakfast was closed. Or when she passes wind. Or when she makes a mess at the dinner table (see point 6).
3. She wears her bathrobe for most of the day. Family or no family, I don't want to go round to the olds' house at 11am on a Saturday morning and see my aunt getting round in a bathrobe and hair curlers. It's wrong for so very many reasons.
4. She's a tight wad. If it's free she will take it. She takes home those sugar sachets you get with your coffee at a café. When the crumblies & my aunt & uncle went away to the near-by wine region for three days, she cleaned their villa out of those little bottles of shampoo, as well as those little sachets of tea, coffee & sugar they provide you with. Mum also saw her stuffing her handbag with paper towels from the ladies’ bathroom.
5. She uses the word "toilet" in pleasant company. I know it's an American thing I've picked up, but please, call it a bathroom or a restroom, especially when I'm eating dinner.
6. She's a messy eater. Take smaller mouthfuls, slow down your eating, watch what you're doing, I don't care. I just don't want to be seated at a table where someone older than a toddler is using their napkin as a bib.

I was going to make a point 7. But you can combine points 2 & 6: she passes wind at the dinner table and then laughs.

I wanted to go to the airport just to make sure she got on the plane.

All of this reminiscing has reminded me: around the time of this visit, one of the trainers at my gym was dismissed for breach of conduct. I'm yet to find out what happened, but to me, "breach of conduct" is either (a) verbally abusing a client; or (b) riding an exercise bike with the seat removed for pleasure.