Sistah Pat

I think I’ll just sit here with my fingers in my ears and sing “la, la, la” all day.  I’m deliberately trying to pull myself out of a big, dark hole and it seems like everyone in the family keeps trying to throw me back in there.  I just want to sit here and think about fun stuff but there’s always another crisis going on and everyone wants me in on it. 

Sometimes families go through periods when everyone has problems and they all think their problems should be everyone’s problems.  Right now, I have enough of my own, thank you very much.  DS is concerned because DIL’s mother keeps calling him in spite of the EPO that states that neither DIL nor any member of her family is supposed to contact him.  Personally, I was kind of surprised at the restrictions but, nevertheless, that’s what the court ordered.  DIL’s mother asked the judge if she could pick up some of DIL’s clothes and the judge asked DS if that would be okay.  He said that would be fine.  Then she comes over with a specific list of items she wants and it’s no more than a couple of outfits.  Two days later, she has another list and he has to go through everything and find DIL’s “Liz Claiborne jeans with the red stitching on the back pockets, white jeans with silver embroidery, gold necklace with sand dollar charm, white tank top, black blouse, etc.”  He told her mother he didn’t want to continually be filling “orders” and would prefer that she pick up everything at one time.  DIL’s mother said she didn’t have room in her car and doesn’t have room to store everything.  She also mentioned that they’re supposed to have family portraits made on Sunday and she wants Jake and Scout to be there.  DS told her he had to think about it.  Then he tells me he has no intention of letting her take the kids.  It violates the protective order and he could get in a heap of trouble.  I told him to let her know that it wasn’t going to happen and asked him why he didn’t tell her that in the first place.  He said it caught him off guard that she would even ask and he didn’t know how to respond.  He’s following the EPO to the letter and isn’t allowed to call her but she left a voice mail on his phone yesterday “reminding” him that she would be picking up the kids Sunday for pictures.  No way, Jose.  Not gonna happen.  DS and I both know it’s just a thinly veiled excuse for allowing DIL to be with the kids and that’s totally forbidden.  DS is not the one who set up the restrictions.  She set it up and the court simply reversed it so that it pertained to her instead of him.  In fact, DIL’s mother is not supposed to be calling him like this.  She’s never been what I would call “involved” with the kids.  Only sees them a couple times a year during the holidays even though she lives right here in town.  She’s been divorced for years and is a very “hands off” kind of mother.  Told me a long time ago that DIL has serious problems and she got tired of trying to deal with her.  Anyway, I told him to get all the rest of DIL’s belongings packed, take pictures of how he packed them and get a witness to observe her mother picking everything up.  Tell her he won’t do anymore shopping lists and she needs to find a way to get everything within a reasonable amount of time. 

Little Sister called and said she had to put Mom in the hospital yesterday.  She hasn’t really recovered from her “fence climbing” episode from last May and she’s getting really weak and is not able to care for the kids in her daycare.  No duh!  The woman is 84 years old.  She’s not supposed to be running a daycare.  Little Sister said my brother called and said he wasn’t able to reach Mom on the phone.  Little Sister got her son to go over there and Mom was very weak and couldn’t get out of bed.  She said she was sick to her stomach and felt terrible.  To top it all off, she had a ten year old watching TV in the living room and Mom didn’t even know she was there!  Hello!  Mom!  Stop watching kids!!!!  Little Sister made the decision to take her to the hospital and said Mom is not happy about it even though she was so weak she couldn’t even get out of bed.  They admitted her for observation.

SIL called yesterday.  She and DB invited his kids and grandkids down to New Orleans for vacation and asked me to use my credit card so they could rent two cars for the trip since they wouldn’t allow them to pay for the cars in New Orleans but needed to do it up here.  It was supposed to be $340.00 and they were going to send me a check.  Their son was scheduled for back surgery the week after the visit and I didn’t want to bother them while they were worrying about that so I didn’t say anything for a couple of weeks.  Monday, they discovered that he had a small hole in his heart and they want to correct that before doing the back surgery so it was cancelled.  After the surgery was cancelled, I sent her an email and asked her if she’d heard anything about the bill for the car rental.  I really didn’t want to bother them but, as I said before, finances are getting tight since I had to spend so much on DS’s legal battle.  She called me yesterday and said, “I don’t know how to break it to you but the bill came to almost $800.00.  I don’t know what happened and I need to call Thrifty to find out why it was so high because I don’t have $800.00 right now.”  Okay, breathe deep.  Keep calm.  It’s on a charge card so there’s no emergency but it does have to be paid eventually.  I thought I did the right thing but Little Sister told me DIL called her and said she couldn’t believe I asked about the car rental when they have so much to worry about with their son’s health right now.  She said she had way more important things to deal with right now than the car rental bill.  Damn!  That hurts.  Of course I’m concerned with their son’s medical problems.  That’s why I wasn’t burning up the phone three weeks ago!  These are good people and I love them dearly and know they’re good for the money but it still hurts that she would say that.

Okay, so that’s today’s little segment of family affairs.  Now, can I just clean my house and deal with my own problems for a little while?  I’m still working hard to keep my spirits up.  I went out shopping yesterday and got some ideas for decorating the upstairs of the cabin.  I think I’m going to go with fun.  Maybe it’s because I’m trying to cheer myself up but I’ve decided to go with a “flip flop” theme in the room.  Sounds strange, I know, but the fabric has a strange little pattern in it that reminds me of flip flops.  I found a couple of cool pictures of flip flops and I’m going to buy a few pair of them and have a trail of flip flops climbing the wall.  I’m going to use flip flops for the curtain tie backs and use them everyplace I can so everyone can rest assured that I’ve finally lost my mind completely.

I met Sistah Pam for dinner last night.  Mongolian BBQ and a couple of beers.  The mongolian BBQ place we used to go to closed and another one took over at the same location.  They had a couple of new twists including a soup and salad bar.  The soup bar had a couple of big pots of broth, beef and chicken, and you could choose goodies to add to the broth to make your own soup.  I used the beef broth, tofu, rice vermicelli, carrot strips, cilantro, pea pods, and a dab of hot sauce in mine.  I guess if you have folks put together their own goodies for the BBQ, salad, and soup, no one can complain if the food’s not good.  We had a good time and it was nice to get away from here for a little bit.

Think I might plan a trip to Frankfort tomorrow.  An hour’s drive.  Check out my retirement options.  It would be nice to know that there IS that option in my future.