I Knew

That it was only a matter of time before a priest I knew personally would appear on a  list somewhere. Honestly, I’m surprised it took as long as it did.

Friday was that day.

I wish I could say that I was shocked. I’m not.

I’ve seen too often at how well depravity can mask itself.

I just feel very, very sad.

Brunch

I experienced a thing recently and it has gotten stuck in my craw. I vague-ranted on a different social media platform and J was kind enough this afternoon to listen to me purge my feelings of anger and ill-will, but it still remains a bit stuck and I don’t know how else to get it out of my head.

We took J’s parents to brunch on Saturday, a belated celebration of my mother-in-law’s birthday. She chose the cuisine ( a fancy type of buffet), date and time and I took care of making the reservation and paying the check.

In other words - I hosted the meal. 

J dropped us off at the corner across from the restaurant and drove off to find a parking space in a nearby garage.

My father-in-law, the one who is supposed to use a cane or walker and flat out refuses, decided it would be a good idea to jaywalk across the street.

Now it WAS a weekend afternoon in downtown Pittsburgh and traffic is quite light. But even in those circumstances, one does not jaywalk across the street, especially a street that contains a one-way bus lane and buses fly down that lane when the streets are empty. 

So I yelled at him to get off the street and set a better example for his grandson.

Because we were so early we had to wait in the lobby, then at the bar for a bit while they staff finished setting up the dining room. We ordered drinks to take to the table.

Once settled at the table, we got up to get food.

I was the first back to the table and began eating.

Once the other members of the party returned to the table my father-in-law announced we are going to say grace. Out loud. Joined hands, the whole performative religious ritual.

Pause for a second. Grace in public dining establishments was not a thing that my family did, because you do not perform ritualistic acts of “faith” (and the quotes are very, very deliberate ) in such a manner. 

And I absolutely hate it, because my father-in-law does it as an act of aggression, an oppressed upper-middle-white class man sticking it to all the bleeding hearts trying to take away his religions freedom.

Did I mention that I was hosting the meal? Paying for the meal. That I am Forty-five fucking years old and that I, the host, just got treated like a child. Paternalism with a massive etiquette violation on the side.

Something in my broke later that afternoon and has stayed broken, stabbing at the corners of my brain, gnawing at my insides.

And I can’t say a damn thing, because there is absolutely no way for me to stand up for myself that does not start a massive fight. Even a polite comment that I will abstain would be considered an insult.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. And fuck again.

Plans

Mission accomplished! We have committed to going away during a period in which we would normally be expected to spend time with family. We are going somewhere Boy Alien has expressed a repeated desire to visit. Discussions have been had, places and transportation have been booked. Everything is non-refundable.

I am excited. This is the trip I badly wanted to do during a period of too-much-family-togetherness last year, as dealing with his family while mourning my mother's death just felt a too hard. I was talked out of it for the sake of keeping things normal for Boy Alien. It did not go well for me.

This morning I reiterated a comment I made last night about what how I intended to handle any conversation from his parents about cancelling the trip. Which is to request the full reimbursement of transportation and lodging, in spendable cash*.

J announced that we were not saying anything to them. At all. And when we do, it will be in the most vague of terms, as in "we will not be here".

I was surprised, but I should not have been.

*J's father collects coins and bills. It is fully within his MO to agree reimburse us, then pay us in bills and/or coins with no immediate, fungible value. Thus he follows the letter of the agreement while transferring any risk of loss to us when we sell the bills/coins.

The In-Laws Continue to Push

I'm writing this at work, as I need to get out of my head.

One of the coping mechanisms I have learned over the years is to keep ANY information I don't want shared with J's family to myself and to be explicit with J when I am sharing something with him about myself or my family that should not be passed on to J's family. They are strictly on a need-to-know-when-necessary basis, as sharing either leads to gossip or endless attempts to organize our lives.

The reason for this is because J's father is incapable of not gossiping about his kids to his other kids, to his friends, to the former neighbor he last saw twenty years ago. He has no respect for privacy when it comes to his children. All issues are aired out and judged.

And it happened again this weekend, at a family wedding. J's father ran into someone he has not seen in years and promptly spilled all the personal drama about ABIL. I sat there quietly horrified, listening to him discuss the personal issues of his adult son, who is well north of 40 years old and perfectly capable of handling himself.

Later, at dinner J's father asked if we were going to spend the night at their home. J said no. Both of us are still working intense schedules and are still exhausted. The only reason we showed up for the wedding is because we were raised right and would not skip an RSVP.

J's father did not like the word "No" and went into a full-court pressuring of J for us to spend the night. J continued to say "No". J's father then pivoted into yet again asking J to come with them to southern beach city for a week, as they are not permitted to take the Boy Alien out of state without one of his parents in attendance.

Then he sulked.

And J caved, called them when we reached home and invited them out to our house the following day for a late lunch / early dinner to smooth over hurt feelings.

And the parents responded by pressuring J to come out on Monday for dinner. Even though we had seen the entire family 48 hours previous.

Then the gods smiled upon me and created a water main break that left our house with no water pressure, thus forcing us to cancel the lunch.

Mother's Day 2018 - The One with the Dysfunctional* In-laws

It has been a very long time since I had cause to write about my in-laws. Since Boy Alien came along, we all had settled down rather well. The boundaries J and I built so we could balance the raising of a child with familial demands were working out well. They were not always happy with our decisions, but at least they had the sense to not complain about them in my presence.

But there has been upheaval in J's family recently, which has resulted in J's parents, especially J's father, returning to their passive-aggressive, boundary pushing ways. I am hoping that this is merely a glitch, that once the upheaval is resolved, J's parents will settle down again. Otherwise there will be several miserable months and I will be the one causing the misery.

Part I - The Background

J's brother, Awesome BIL, is a priest, . Last fall ABIL realized he was burned out to the point that it was affecting his relationships with everyone. He saw himself becoming mean and passive-aggressive and turning into someone he recognized and did not like. He recognized that he was becoming like many of the older priests he interacts with - joyless and angry.

So he went on a forty day retreat. Forty days turned into a six month leave of absence, which appears to been extended another six months. In short, ABIL is working out his his issues. Working a secular job, attending therapy, learning how to reconcile the secular and spiritual in his life.

It is very important to emphasize that ABIL wants to remain a priest.

Over the years I have "gotten away with" saying things to ABIL that his parents and most people can not and would not say to a priest. Because ABIL is still a human and needs his agnostic, unconventional-by-his-family's-standards brother and SIL to keep him humble.

Is is of no surprise that J's parents are very unhappy with ABIL's current situation.

So what do you do when your adult-in-their-late-forties-child life seemingly spins out of control, even though said child actually has situation firmly in hand and is taking the necessary steps to get better?

If you said "Try to control one of your other adult-in-their-forties-children" you win a cookie!

Part II - The Miscommunication

Last week Boy Alien made a request to spend the Saturday night at the in-laws. This is something he does regularly. Since J's parents were coming to watch Boy Alien play in his game and go out to lunch, they took Boy Alien back with them. J and I would pick him up on Sunday.

At that time, I had not been feeling well, due to side-effects of stopping my antidepressant (it was time). Starting or stopping this particular medication comes with multiple physical side-effects that cause misery for several weeks. I was in week two of withdrawal.

The day of the game was pleasant. Lunch was fun. Boy Alien went off with the in-laws, J and I went off to act like we were 25 and childless instead of in our 40's with a kid.

We woke up Sunday, puttered around, then drove to the in-laws to pick up Boy Alien. I agreed to come along on the ride on the condition that we did not stay for dinner, as I felt utterly terrible due to the withdrawal and because I acted like I was 25 the night before.

Due to construction and an accident (hello summer!) it took us 45 minutes longer the usual to reach the in-laws home, which put us perilously close to dinnertime.

We enter the house. The baseball game is blaring on the radio at a volume that literally shook the wall next to the radio. Same game is also on the television. It is very loud and warm.

And then the bomb is dropped on J and I. The family is celebrating parent's anniversary today. We staying for dinner, right?

J's siblings took it upon themselves to plan a meal for J's parents on Friday. None of them, including ABIL bothered to tell us.

J's parents knew when they came Saturday that this was happening. They did not bother to tell us.

J pushed back. We have things to do at home. I push back. I am not feeling well. We cannot stay for dinner.

ABIL backs us up, reminding his parents that NO ONE bothered to tell us. If ANYONE had bothered to pick up the phone or open their damn fool mouth with greater than 24 hours notice, J and I would have rearranged to accommodate.

FIL, being the asshat that he becomes when he sees that he will might not get his way, completely ignores us and suggests that I go lie down in the spare room. I go to the spare room in an attempt to pull myself back together before I go nuclear. I listen to the shaking of the wall and the blaring radio and cry tears of rage.

Thus J and I have boarded the wayback machine and traveled 15 years in the past to pre-Alien days. Those halcyon days in which his parents pulled this exact stunt all the damn time. If I had the energy, I could probably find one of the entries I wrote about this exact thing.

We collect Boy Alien. We head home. We eat sandwiches for dinner in our quiet house.

Part III - The Fallout

In a reasonable family, it would have ended there. Parents and siblings would have been reminded of the importance of communication, admitted that their feelings of hurt and disappointment are their own damn fault and tried to do better going forward.

J's family is not that kind of reasonable. On Monday J receives a phone call informing him that there will be a Mother's Day dinner at eldest brother's house. No words are said, but the subtext is very, very clear. We hurt feelings, and now we must pay.

So we come full circle. Since J's parents can not do anything for ABIL, they will do (in their minds) the next best thing and attempt to control the youngest child and his family, because we are not on the right path* either and must be corrected.

*Chose your own expletive if so desired.

Cultural Clashing

Things have been a bit tense in the cup-de-sac for the past week. J and I working as peacemakers, as I do not want to live in a place where it feels like all the neighbors are feuding. But some background is necessary, as the neighbors who are the cause of this current low-level simmering are actually the unfortunate victims of the drug-dealing asshat across the street.

I have not written about the drug-dealing asshat publicly, as I did not want to give away too many details. The short version is that a week after we moved into our new home, the asshat moved in across the street. Into a house that cost far more to maintain then he could afford.

As it was winter and he did not know anyone, the first months with the asshat were quiet. Then the asshat lost his job, began sharing his home with a parade of unsavory roommates, dealing pot, entertaining prostitutes and throwing wild parties, essentially making all the residents in the cul-de-sac utterly miserable.

I can even pinpoint the precise day that he showed his true character: the (very) early morning hours of August 7, 2014. The incident involved a missing wallet, a verbal argument between the 40+ year old asshat and three teenage girls and eventually the police. Who let everyone off with a lecture.

Since that incident has been arrested for dealing drugs (summer 2015), delayed his court appearances for over TWO YEARS and finally to get the charges against him dismissed on a technicality in December.

Asshat is now renting out his home on Airbnb, to suspiciously high ratings.

Cue three weeks ago. The father of our very lovely, non-Christian neighbor, dies. Lovely neighbor (P) comes over to tell us that his father has passed away and that there will be a considerable amount of activity around his home. He asks us to let him know if they become too disruptive.

I give my sympathies and tell him to do what he needs to do.

Things are OK at first. P also applied to the borough for a short-term zoning variance to deal with the activity around his house, as his faith requires an extensive and ritualistic period of mourning and requires that the house be open to visitors 24/7 during the mourning period.

Unfortunately, the length of time is not well communicated to the neighbors and some of P’s visitors act inappropriately during the night - drinking, noise, leave trash. Asshat also takes the opportunity to host visitors at P’s expense.

So there is noise and trash and sleepless nights for some of the neighbors. One of the visitors decides to get out of the driveway by backing out over our lawn. Complaints are made to the chief of police, who has dealt with this before and asks us to be patient.

J visits P’s home on Friday evening to let him know that it is becoming too much and neighbors are upset. P asks all of us to please come for lunch on Saturday. J, Boy Alien and I go. The other neighbors say no. We go because I absolutely do not want to be feuding with all the neighbors.

The family is still in mourning. Lunch is amazing. Family is surprised that J and I enjoy the spiced food. P and his siblings explain the meaning of all the rituals. Repeated apologies are given. P is not caucasian and I can imagine how nerve-wracking it can be to inadvertently piss off a bunch of the neighbors in the current political climate.

Saturday evening J and I stop at one of the neighbors most affected by the noise and encourage him to have a conversation with P. Neighbor says he will wait until the mourning period is over and he has calmed down a little more.

Hoping for peace.

A New Year - 2018

The old one ended quietly. A dinner with friends. Boy Alien and I headed home afterwards, while J stayed behind to continue the celebration. I was asleep by midnight, after a poorly made double old fashioned.

Back over to our friends this morning for breakfast and some episodes of House Hunters. Six of us in the living room, making fun of the buyers and criticizing the houses. It was lovely.

There is some upheaval. J is still miserable in his job and still refusing to seek any sort of help to deal with the stress. I even suggested a career counselor. Maybe he will take that suggestion to heart.

J's brother has taken a leave of absence from his pastoral duties to do some soul searching. J's parents are not saying anything other than to talk to BIL. J and I have no intention of asking him anything other than an offer of a place to stay while he works his issues out.

Back to better eating habits tomorrow. The long break has helped a great deal, but I would have liked additional time for wallowing.

Objectives for January:

1. Ignore the drug-dealing asshole neighbor who managed to get his case thrown out and has returned to his old ways with impunity. He woke me up last night, but was not making enough of a racket to bother calling the police.
2. Spending freeze.
3. Get eating habits back on track.
4. Write more.
5. Attend two Friends Meetings.

The One Where Christmas Eve Goes as Expected

I've actually been writing a fair amount over the past few months, thanks to Day One. However, Christmas Eve deserves its own post, put out there on the internet for someone to stumble across one day.

I've been mostly OK through this Christmas. I took an extra week off and went to New York City for several days. I stayed in a very nice hotel, ate some good food (Oyster Stew as the Grand Central Oyster Bar, a lobster roll at Urbanspace Vanderbilt) and spent hours upon hours walking the Manhattan streets. Walked to the Strand. Walked to Central Park. Walked through amazing holiday markets in Bryant Park and Union Square. Looked at the windows in Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue (Saks won, hands down. Absolutely spectacular windows). Wished my mom a Merry Christmas, lit a candle to St. Patrick and had a cry in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Per our arrangement when Boy Alien arrived, this year's holiday rotation was for Wigilia at the in-laws on Christmas Eve. I begged J to skip it this year. I really did not want any attention called to my loss. I wanted to stay home, stare at the Christmas tree and drink wine and watch the cats sleep. But Boy Alien is eight and should have an actual Christmas. So J insisted on going. Not only Christmas Eve. Family (both sides, whomever could come) on Christmas Day. A Boxing Day dinner with his family. All of it.

Quoted from a site from which I have a social media account:

"Wigilia went exactly as I expected. There is some tension between hosting Aunt and my MIL (they are sisters), so there was an undercurrent in the room. Aunt stood up before dinner to give a speech about how wonderful and blessed 2017 had been for the entire family, only to suddenly pivot to acknowledge the passing of my mom last spring. Since there was no transition between the two topics, it came off as "We had a great year! Except for that downer in-law in the corner over there. Her mom died". 

I had a mild case of hysterics once we got back to the car. 95% laughter, 5% tears. I shared the story with my dad and twin brother yesterday. Thankfully they both also saw the humor in it."

So that happened.

To smooth over the savagery, I also went on my annual holiday shopping excursion with a good friend this week. She talked me into these beauties:



Which have kittens and bunnies and insane colors. As I am officially a woman of a certain age who must wear mostly sensible shoes, I am embracing the absurd.

Another Step Forward

I purchased a new wool long coat yesterday.

I have been looking for a new long coat for three years, when it became crystal clear that my beloved size 12 Worthington black long coat with black rabbit fur trim on the hood, was falling apart by inches. Fur went missing from the hood and there were spots near the bottom where the wool had worn almost completely away.

My beloved long coat, purchased by my mom from J.C. Penney’s sometimes in the mid 90’s, approved for wearing by my mom and her best friend Jane, who said she liked the way the back flared out when I twirled and walked. I liked that it was long, with lots of buttons to keep out the cold and that the wool was light on my shoulders.

And because having something with flair is important when you are 22 years old and broke.

Three years ago I started looking for a new coat. But I wanted the kind of coat I was losing. One that was long, with lots of buttons to keep out the cold and some flare in the back to make me feel like a princess when I walked.

Because having something with flair is still important when you are in your early forties and not as broke.

But nothing I looked at was right. Wrong color, wrong length, too flashy, too strange. I tried a vintage navy peacoat, but it turned out to be too heavy and too warm for every day wear.

I wanted something that was going to keep my happy for the next 20+ years of my life.

Last year my mother gifted me with a wool-cashmere blend camel colored long coat. She had purchased it for herself, but it was too large.  It is lovely, Not perfect, but very lovely. So I wore it.

Then yesterday I found the coat, in Nordstrom. On sale. One left. In my size. With a flare in the back when I twirled. I purchased the coat. With wool that hung light on my shoulders.

I came home and happily showed J my purchase. He grumbled about the number of coats I owned, grumbled about the price, grumbled in general. I reminded him that I had looked for a new long coat for three years. That I would finally purge the old coat from the closet (and a bag of clothes I no longer wear).

(Aside: I also stocked up on Teavana teas as well, as Starbucks is closing all the stores and the stock is being sold off. Seeing that I had purchased over six pounds of assorted flavors, J asked how much I paid for the lot, *after* telling me *not* to tell him how much I pay for things. It was rather amusing.)

I hung the coat in the closet and put the tea in the tea drawer. I changed my clothes and headed downstairs to clean the litter box.

And I burst into tears.

Because until yesterday, my mom had purchased every single long coat I had ever worn. And every single one of them was beautiful and made me feel like a princess when I wore it. And I was letting go of the last one, the one infused with the memory of the laughter of my mom, her best friend Jane and 22 year old me twirling in the middle of the coat section of a small town J.C. Penney’s.

Personal Day in Many Ways

This is going to be a ramble...

J and L went to the beach after all, leaving the house to me for the week. It only took a day for me to miss both of them, but coming home to a quiet clean house without a spouse shouting down the phone has been very, very nice to experience.

Last evening was strange. I had planned to stay out for a while, reading in the park then having some dinner, taking a zTrip home if the bus was too inconvenient. I dropped Uber because of their shitty business practices and treatment towards their female employees (although I still need to delete the credit card from the account, which I really should do because a business that treats employees like crap is bound to get hacked sooner or later...).

I walked down to the Point and sat in the shade to give J a call. As I was talking to J I noticed my hands were shaking, my chest was tight and I felt a bit faint. While it was quite hot and I had not eaten in several hours, I don’t think all my symptoms were physical.

Metafilter has a thread which discusses this comic: https://thenib.com/medicine-s-women-problem.

The comic is about one woman’s FIVE YEAR experience to get doctors to take her sudden weight loss and fatigue to the point of passing out seriously. A sleep therapist finally tested her thyroid function and discovered she had Graves Disease, a condition 7-8 times more common in women then in men.

Reading the thread was difficult, but allows me to finally say out loud what has been bouncing in my head, what I have tried to rationalize away as “they would not have been able to save her anyway” (and I still believe that statement is true). My mother died because she was not a man.

My mother died because even though she had multiple factors that put her in the high risk category for what killed her - a rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm - she was missing the most important risk factor - she was not a man.

I know the 10,000 arguments against the above statement. Doctors are human. She had an existing confounding diagnosis. She waited too long to see a doctor. Or X. Or Y. Or Z.

People have a hard time looking at two statements when seem to contradict each other yet still be true at the same time.

My mother died because she was misdiagnosed. She would have died anyway. 

Too Many T-Shirts

6 June 2017 - Tuesday at 4:09 AM is what is says at the top of the screen of this application and I originally used that as the header.

I can’t sleep. I miss my mom. My mind whirls with all the tricks it is using to cope. Mostly in buying things, because buying a thing gives me a temporary moment of relief from the sadness. Buying things is how I ended up with far too many t-shirts that I will not wear and will end up giving to charity shops. I’ve already discarded one, the rest are not too far behind.

My mind plays tricks to cope, which is why I lie in bed and obsess over a phone I do not need and don’t really want. Except that J’s phone died and it makes sense to get him the most recent model of something, hoping the new one will last 4+ years through a screen and a battery replacement. But it does not seem fair that he gets the latest and greatest, which I wanted, and that I have to spend money from my savings to pay for it.

He has not been much help - he told me to just pick something out. The only problem is that I don’t know what he wants and it does not seem that he even cares to make the effort to go to one of the stores and play with the phones there before making a final decision.

I have a long day ahead of me, work until 5:00, a bus ride home, a trip to the mall to replace the phone. It will be a long and sleepy one.

A Tale of Two Sunscreens

Observe sunscreen A, at $26.88 (which is slightly less than the $31.55 I paid several days ago):



Observe sunscreen B at $32.09:


Sunscreen A is marketed as "unisex".
Sunscreen B is marketed as "protective unit-wrinkle cream" (a quality of most good sunscreens).

Questions:
1. Which one is marketed to women?
2. Which one is marketed to men?

Saturday Thoughts on Sunday Night

Yesterday J and I celebrated our 17^th Wedding Anniversary.

After a respite lasting several years, I came down with my first serious sinus infection. Naturally this illness began during my 15 day break from work, shortly before Christmas and I stayed sick right into the new year. I cycled through the normal progression of infection, starting with headache and bad congestion and ending with two days of glands so swollen that I could not move my neck properly, only to feel better right on time to go back to work.

The point of the digression is that J caught it this week and has been really miserable. Too congested to use the CPAP and sleeping on the couch like he did pre-CPAP.

And, in spite of his misery, he got up and headed in the frigid weather to our favorite bakery, Boy Alien in tow, to buy peanut butter blossoms and flowers for me. While I stayed happily ensconced in bed reading and continuing the setup my new laptop¹.

It was a good day, favorite cookies and flowers aside. I spent most of it in my pajamas, changing at 3:30 into a dress and boots to have an early anniversary dinner at the Monterey Bay Fish Grotto.

The restaurant sits on top of Mount Washington, along Grandview Avenue. We took advantage of the valet parking, as parking in general is rather dear in that neighborhood and usually involves a hike of several blocks. A pleasant journey in the summertime, a terrible one in January when the temperature is negative and the winds are wild.

From the lobby guest take an elevator to the dining room. I admit that the elevator stumped me at first, I hit one of the unlabeled emergency buttons instead of the giant oblong metal button labeled “Dining”. Which meant we waited far longer than necessary before my brain finally made the connection and J pushed the button again.

It was worth the wait. We were a bit early and the maître d’ sent us down the stairs to the lounge, to have a cocktail before dinner.

Although we ordered drinks, we never got them. This was not the fault of the bartender, even in a high-end restaurant such as Monterey Bay customer assholery abounds. The bartender’s time was taken up by a man who was demanding a receipt for the payment he made via a gift card and he was rather determined to be unhappy as he harangued the bartender. Our pager went off 30 seconds after we finally ordered, so we decided to just re-order them at the table instead.

We were seated next to the windows and I demonstrated again that I don’t get out much as I got confused about where to sit and had to be gently instructed to take a chair that faced the window. That really happened.

·      The view was magnificent.

·      The old fashioned I ordered was strong and perfectly made.

·      I asked for a recommendation on a wine to drink with the entrée and the waitperson bought two different chardonnays for me to sample. Both were buttery and light and I could not tell the difference between the two, much to J’s amusement.

·      The oysters were insanely fresh.

·      The octopus starter was good, but not something I would order again.

·      J enjoyed his first try of the rockfish.

·      The scallops stuffed with crab were a rare treat – perfectly cooked without a hint of bitterness.

·      The Brussels sprouts were sweet.

·      And the Angel Food Grilled Cheese dessert was divine.

The biggest surprise of the evening was the sheer number of young children in the restaurant. Monterey Bay even has a kid’s menu and it was clear that they were used to serving families and making adjustments to ensure that even kids are happy. And all the kids we saw were well behaved.

I suspect better behaved overall then the miserable man we saw in the bar. He had a seating in the dining room but was long gone by the time J and I finished our meal.

And thus we marked seventeen years.

^1.            I will sorely miss my old MacBook Pro and would still be using it, but the screen finally started to die, two years after I dropped it in such a fashion that the screen separated from the aluminum case. Coupled with symptoms of motherboard failure, a dead DVD/CD drive and its agonizing slowness, a new laptop came as an expensive relief.

Couple Attempts to Head off the Inevitable

I've written about my in-laws, especially my father-in-law, a fair amount in the past. Not so much in the present, as I have not really written much of anything since the boy alien came along.

J's birthday was this week, and fell over a workday. Due to demanding work schedules we decided to push any celebration to the weekend. J wanted to go on a drive "somewhere" with no definite destination in mind. Since taking a meandering, hours-long drive with no set destination is a six year old boy's definition of hell and boy alien was scheduled to spend most of the week with his grandparents anyway, we asked J's mom if we could bring him a day earlier then original planned. My mother-in-law checked her schedule and said yes.

And in the background, during a recent call, J could hear his father asking when J was coming, as he had work that he wanted J to do.

My father-in-laws' standard operating procedure in circumstances such as described is to wait until J arrives with the boy alien and then drop a set of chores on J that need to be done before J can leave. He rarely gives advance notice that he needs help, always underestimates the amount of time these tasks will take and usually drops these need bombs on days when he knows that we (as a couple or as as a family) have time sensitive activities planned.

It is galling. It is especially galling because he does it on purpose to create havoc and drive a wedge between J and myself. He has pulled this stunt numerous times during the course of our marriage. He takes advantage of the fact that J is too nice to say no. He takes pleasure out forcing me into being the bad guy as it gives him an opportunity to complain to other members of the family about how difficult I am behaving and how ungrateful I am.

Since we had some advance indication of the inevitable, J called his mom this morning and asked if he could bring boy alien this evening. He explained that since he had no idea how long it was going to take to do the things that his father wanted done, he would rather bring boy alien down early then watch our plans blow up and put me in the position of being the bad guy again.

J asked if I was interested in going with him tonight and attempted to bribe me with wings from one of our favorite wing places. I turned him down, as I am irritated with his father and have little desire to put myself in the position where he can give me a hard time this evening.

Reunion

I don't even know where to start with this.

I had a truly awful high school experience. I have written about it in the past, but not recently.

The short version is that I was not verbally bullied (although there was an element of that) as much as I was socially ostracized. I was not invited to parties, to the movies, to go bowling, on sleepovers or to just hang out at the mall for a few hours on a weekend night. I had one close friend, but even our time outside of school was limited due to the fact that she lived 20 miles away, in another town. My class was very small and I spent the better part of six years very unhappy, including a stint in therapy for suicidal ideation.

When I graduated from high school, I made no effort to keep in touch with my classmates. As of today I am in regular contact with a total of 2 former classmates (3 if I count my brother) and the above mentioned friend is not on the short list, due to my realization that her social views had hardened instead of evolved.

After I graduated, I made no effort to keep my mailing address up to date and ignored reunion invitations. When mom and dad downsized to a smaller house last year, I destroyed my high school yearbooks, as I did not want a reminder of how unhappy I was.

I don't even hate my classmates. It is just as a group they represent a very painful part of my life that I prefer not to remember.

Thanks to technology, a former classmate found me on Facebook last week and sent a friend request, which I accepted.

The next morning she added me to the class reunion page and I learned that the next reunion is in a couple of weeks.

Since then, I have wrestled with whether I want to go or not. Part of me does, out of prurient curiosity and I admitted this to Jeff a couple of nights ago.

The other part of me is dealing with a mild anxiety attack, manifested as an inner shakiness, which started last evening at dinner and has continued unabated for most of today. It is not paralyzing, just the sensation of inter vibration coupled with the feeling that if I don't get up and move I will come out of my skin.

I don't know what to do with this anxiety. Even after 25 years I am not emotionally equipped to deal with a class reunion and I should pass on this one. But I feel cowardly.

79°F Sunny

Miscellaneous and More to Come

Mainly about our lovely, lovely neighbor, who will henceforth be known as "AN". I'll leave up to my one astute reader to determine what the "A" stands for.

AN especially enjoys throwing parties that start in the wee hours of the morning, after the bars close

I have sampling of his behavior, courtesy of one of his guests. At 7:30 on Sunday morning. But the video is not working right now.

I also have to fix a syncing issue with my journal application, as there are more details to come.

Every Day Something or Other Ouch

I try very hard not to write at work, or at least to write on my journal app during a break. But I had conversation with my mother this past weekend that has been gnawing at me in a small way that spotlighted the ongoing issue I have with feeling like she does not listen.

Mom and I were revisiting an old discussion about our schisms with the Catholic church. My issues go way back to grade school (I think) and I fell gradually away as soon as I felt I could do so without negative repercussions, starting in college.

Mom's last straw was seeing the implosion (for the lack of a better word) of a priest she truly admired and the revelation that the Catholic church covered up decades of sexual abuse of children.

It was in this context that she told me that my younger brother, when tapped to serve the early mass (as the Catholic school in which we attended was a great resources of involuntary servitude for the young men of the school, who were required on a rotational basis to serve at the morning and noon masses) refused to serve morning mass said by a specific priest unless my mother attended the service. This priest unsettled my brother out to the point that he would rather serve detention.

When I was young, there were times when I was forced to allow myself be manhandled by adults who made me feel distinctly uncomfortable under the guise of being polite. My protestations about my discomfort were set aside, I was told to "be nice" and that those individuals "meant no harm".

In short, under very similar circumstances, my brother was listened to. I was not.

Ouch.

Squeak

I dreamed of Squeak Saturday nigh. I took him to the vet. I had to park my car in a space without feeding the meter. I stood in line to check him in, realized that I had forgotten some papers, so I had to retrieve and stand in line again. He was sick, I would have to leave him overnight. The kennel section at the vet had a window facing the street. As I walked past, I could see a tech cuddling him. He was happy, snuggled against the tech's shoulder. He saw me as she it him down and looked at me. I held my hand up to the window, then walked away.
Now I am in tears. It has been a long time since he died. I miss him terribly right now, but I am strangely happy that my brain bought forth his memory so I could see him again.

27° Clear

-- So it has been a day and Squeak is remains in my thoughts. It was around this time that we bought Wigford home from the shelter, several months after Squeak died.

I still feel guilty about missing how sick Squeak was at the end of his life. He should not have to suffer the way he did. I've tried very hard not to make that mistake again. Letting go of Axel and Lucy Snowe was difficult, but there is not a moment that I doubt that I did the correct thing.

I have one photo of Squeak, an analog shot taken of him as a half-grown kitten sitting in a basket of clean laundry, being scratched behind his big ears by an old friend. I don't have his ashes (there was no money at that time for more than basic cremation). All I have is memory.

Twelve years and I still miss him so much.

Passings

I normally don't become sad when I learn about the death of a famous person. It always struck me as unseemly to invest emotional energy into mourning an individual that I don't actually know in real life.

Alan Rickman is different. I absolutely adored him as an actor and I am terribly sad to hear of his death. He one of my fantasy husbands, along with Martin Straka and Colin Firth. He was riveting onscreen. From all the stories I have read today, he was also a stand-up human being in his personal life as well. 

My first Rickman movie, was Die Hard. I did not know him as the Alan Rickman then. He was just this great British actor with amazing presence who made a run-of-the-mill action film extraordinary.

When I saw him again in Robin Hood, I did not recognize him as the same man who played Hans Gruber. I adored every single scene chewing moment he was on-screen. But I still had little idea of how good he was.

My eyes were opened in An Awfully Big Adventure. I rented the movie to watch Hugh Grant, but it was Rickman's performance, as an emotionally wrecked drunk who begins an affair with a young woman who does not love him and turns out to be his daughter, that caught my notice and Rickman's character who I connected with emotionally.

Sense and Sensibility left me officially smitten. From then until now, I knew that I would enjoy any movie in which he as a part and that has turned out to be true.

I've spent most of today reading through the conversation of his death on Metafilter, watching clips of his movies and public appearances and trying very hard not to cry.