when she says margarita she means daquiri; when she says quixotic she means mercurial
The thing is, it's not that she's wrong.
The house is great--better than great, Elizabeth has an eye for aesthetics and Donna threw herself into redecorating when nobody else had the time (or thought to stop her--whichever). It's the right size for their slightly-smaller-than-she-remembers family, which in turn doesn't raise the same eyebrows in California as it did in Texas. Lying about some things probably helps, she rationalizes, not incorrectly. They're weird, but they're not that weird.
(Yeah, they are.)
It's a great house. It's a great house full of a great family, but the weight of secrecy is an issue with everyone else even if it isn't an issue at home, and she's not wrong. Not about how hard it is to go from Atlantis to San fucking Diego, and if it's hard for her, she figures that it's probably a thousand times worse for, say, John and Elizabeth is probably the equivalent of a sucker bet. Markham would take it, lose it, and show up on her doorstep with something completely insane, because that's just kind of how the kid rolls. He's not even a kid, really, but Elizabeth had her favourite scientists and Donna had a pet marine. (It's not really comparable, but it sounds funny in her head.)
The thing is, it's not that she's right, either.
Things are different, but sometimes it's just wait, Mitchell's wife? and then somebody has to say Mitchell's widow and they talk about alternate realities until Donna's head hurts and John recounts some stupid story about Nathan from when Elizabeth was pregnant with Cate and they end up talking about Dr Kirkpatrick. Sometimes she's laughing at the punchline of a story she didn't fully understand because clearance doesn't mean she was really a part of the expedition. Sometimes Nami reminds her that behind faux-vacuous sixteen year old whatever there's a girl who's only been alive, experiencing, for a few years and could probably rewire the entire house to dance at her tune if she got bored.
(Donna says sure, honey, did you ask your mama? the first time Nami talks about going on a date because she really, really does not want her to get bored again. The camera thing was enough.)
She's stopped picking fights just to see what they do, though. John takes her bitching with a grain of salt and Jonathan hasn't given her that you abandoned us look in a while.
It's kind of like life.