It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times

If you'd like a synopsis of this entry, here it is: bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, sniffle, bitch bitch bitch. If you'd like specifics, read on.

There's at least half a foot of snow on the ground and counting, so instead of being back at work taking care of business, I'm snowed in and have finally worked myself around to an update. It's not as though I don't appreciate the time to myself. I've certainly needed it to get over last week. While the week in Acapulco was one of the best weeks of my life, the week in Indy had to be one of the worst. Of course there is some hyperbole there, but honestly it was pretty miserable.

My week in Acapulco was originally intended to replace having to go in for "festivities" at all. There are no holiday events at my own family's home, and all of our relatives have long since stopped trying. It would be plenty awkward trying to revive that anyway--my parents kept us purposely distant from them, and quite frankly, I don't like many of them. My in-laws are sweet people, but they are very close knit. They don't treat me badly at all, but most of them make little effort to get to know me, and there are few opportunities for that to happen anyway. I recently found out they think I'm a vegetarian, lol. It's pretty funny seeing what they've decided I'm about and trying to match that up with what I'm actually projecting when I'm around them. Being a former Jehovah's Witness, holidays are just weird for me, as I've blogged about before. None of the rituals are familiar. I'm still coming to grips with how to accept all the presents that come my way. Half of them seem to think I only enjoy hand made, organic products. Which are OK, but I feel like they really went out of their way to find something "Virgil would like." lol.

On top of that, the idiosyncrasies El Hijo has grown up with and tolerates, don't exactly sit well with me, particularly with my personality, which is more about "let's just fix this, OK??" My in-laws are very upper middle class bourgeoisie people. They like their "bourgy" experiences and their lifestyle. Most of what we would probably talk about would shock them. To me, the best way to describe it is that it's one giant upper class cocktail party. The conversation is rarely deep and you dress for the occasion. Don't think I'm trying to slam them, or anything, as they are good people and have always been good to me. But that's just what it feels like. It takes the whole tribe to make a decision: "What do you think we ought to do today?" "I don't know, what about you?" "Well, somebody needs to make a decision!" And of course no one can for another hour and a half. But it's a good money bet that one of the decisions will be to go shopping. :) I hate indecision. I like working through a choice, but when everybody passes the buck and then complains that they've wasted their morning because no one will decide, that just irks the hell out of me. But not nearly as much as having El Hijo's father talk over him.

My father in law (fil) loves to talk, maybe even more so than my mother. When they were together talking at my reception, it was quite a comedy to behold. They jockeyed for position the whole night, and then both came away declaring privately that the other was "interesting, but boy did s/he like to talk!" Pot, kettle, black. What gets me is how my fil talks over El Hijo at his son's expense; there are plenty of interesting things going on in our lives. But the introduction of those topics are just springboards to talking about something else in my fil's life and thoughts. Once on the phone with me, before El Hijo and I were married, I called his parents' house to see if he'd left for school after a vacation break, to get a sense of when he would get home. Fil kept me on the phone for 45 minutes, during which time I said--nothing. That's right, he talked the ENTIRE time.

I absolutely cannot stand that, because I believe it demonstrates that he, or anyone else who does it, believes that whatever is going on in his life is infinitely more important, and that ours can't be worth talking about. I have quite the interesting little life he could find out about. But he doesn't ask me about my classes, my service learning project, my nonprofit work, or my recent vacation. It's OK--my mother doesn't either. I'm the in-law, I don't honestly expect to be of that much importance. The bonds you've built over several decades of your children's lives are obviously more important to you than the person you've known for less than five years, and I have no problem with that.

But what was especially galling to me was when the conversation steered toward El Hijo's field, and fil just blabbed straight through, even though half of what he was positing was dead wrong, and El Hijo couldn't get a word in edgewise. At one point he wanted to read his student reflection responses out loud to us, at which point I finally spoke up and said I'd just finished 44 student portfolios with an average of 6 reflections each, and I didn't really care to hear any more. He took it well, but I could tell he was pretty upset with us. I don't know if I'm more frustrated with El Hijo for not speaking up or my fil for being so benignly selfish. He's only that way because they enable him to act that way. But why on earth would I want to continue going in for a week's worth of cocktail talk and the minutia of his father's life? No offense, El Hijo, but that feels like a wasted opportunity to me. We don't get to know them better, and they don't get to know us better. So, no, I don't like going in.

This time around, we went to Indianapolis, where my sister in law lives. Since she has the only grandbaby, I figure we'll end up spending Christmases there. Well, they will, I have no plans on going back. We were all supposed to go up there, and El Hijo said that while we'd love to see them, we really didn't feel like sleeping on the floor. No problem, fil says, if it comes to that, we'll stay in hotels. So we pack our bags and go...

...to end up sleeping on the floor--on a slim mattress, but still on the floor. Turns out that Sis in law and her hubby (whom I enjoy being around probably the most) were in the process of remodeling their entire house. While she was very gracious and generous to all of us who piled into her home, I don't believe it was her idea to invite us all. I think it was sort of foisted upon her, and if I had asked more questions, I would've probably gracefully bowed out.Our bedroom had no door on it, no curtains in the window. When their 1 1/2 year old daughter woke up at the butt crack of dawn and decided to run up and down the hallways with her toys, shouting at the top of her voice, that was pretty much the end of sleep. I don't blame the kid--she's just being a toddler. The heat, for whatever reason, was largely absent. I've grown up with the idea that if you aren't the one paying the power/gas bill, you don't bitch about the heat, so I didn't. Turns out they didn't know it was down as low as it was, so maybe I should have. Since Fil got his bed, he didn't seem too concerned that the rest of us were sleeping on the floor or the couch. And I can't spring for my own hotel at this point, having just come off a trip plus it looks incredibly rude to put your suitcase back in the car and say, "Well, we're heading to a hotel, see you in the morning!" So we stayed. By the end of our stay several days later, I had a massive allergy attack that lodged itself in my ear. I haven't had an earache since I was probably 12 years old. I haven't been sick and needed medicine for probably two years. I'm taking some sort of sudafed thing for my allergies and I have drops for my ears. I'm still recovering.

Going to my own home was really no better. In fact, we put it off to the absolute last moment possible, because staying with my mother should require a haz-mat license. We got in around 8:30 Sunday night, with plans on leaving by 8:00 Monday morning. Not too much time to do damage. She had already arranged for my cousin, who has moved back from the Middle East for about a year now, to come over as soon as we arrive. So I'm no sooner through the door than fifteen minutes later she's on the phone. I tried to explain to her nicely that I was sick, on medicine and we had to leave in the morning. Couldn't she just pop in for a minute on her way to the store? How can I say no to that? The problem is, she never just pops in. She stays forever. She's used to staying up to the wee hours in the morning because where she lived it was too damned hot to do anything until the late night. So she gets there at 10:30 and doesn't leave until nearly midnight. I'm sick as a dog, and even after I politely worded requests that she leave several times, she just refused to do so. I can't get my son in bed until her three children are gone, and I certainly can't go to bed while they're still here--they run the hallways, just being kids, they keep Dante up (how can you make him go to bed when there are other kids there?), etc. etc.

There was the inevitable lecture that I should begin to pack my bags and figure out a plan to move back to Bumfuck, Kentucky as soon as possible, and that I would very soon begin to miss it. Har. At least this cousin attempts to find out what's going on in my life, although every time she tried, Mom found a way to try to disrupt it. Since Mom doesn't know how to relate to a successful life outside of the JWs, she finds it very uncomfortable when other people talk about my life or my little successes. Thus, when I got about three sentences into my cousin's question of what I did on my trip to Acapulco, Mom charged in with "I've always wanted to go to Niagara Falls!" and derailed the conversation towards that end. When I started talking about my job in nonprofit, she starting hammering on her banjo as hard as she could. Anything to distract from the possibility that I might be having a good life that she didn't have a hand in. In short, we went to bed late and pissed.

I have never been so glad to be home in all my life. What is the point in wasting the time you get for vacation around people who don't really give a care about the direction your life is taking? Why should you listen to them, when they won't do the same for you? I don't need just oodles of validation, but I got more out of a week with my buddy just toodling around than I did with a week's worth of both sides of family, who are supposed to care more about what you're doing with your life than acquaintances are, right? Right?? Family is always what you make of it. When Dante is big enough, I'm just going to fly him down to his family in Florida for Christmas and let him fly back. At this point, I have zero interest in ever going back to Kentucky again.

-- Virgil

P.S. Bitch, bitch, bitch!