So about an hour after I posted my Daddy Issues post, I got a call from Stepmom2. I let it go to voicemail because it was threatening to ruin the good feelings I was having while drowsy and laying in bed.. (suggestive wink). I listened to the voicemail:
“Hi (former middle name that I don’t go by any more and please stop calling me this name), this is stepmom2 just reminding you about Easter dinner tonight at 5. Bye!”
What? What? REMINDING ME?
I spent about a half hour stewing and muttering to myself, and it finally took Hubs saying, “Remember how you don’t want to be that angry person that you feel like you’ve been?” to make me shut up and deal with the confrontation of a call-back. So I called her back, and GOT VOICEMAIL!! Thank you Jesus, for becoming a zombie today and also for letting it go to voicemail.
“Hey stepmom2 it’s (ACTUAL NAME). We never got a call about dinner tonight (accidental sigh that I regretted immediately) before today, so we’ve made other plans. I hope you have a good Easter, we’ll talk to you later.”
I rehearsed that. A lot. In my head.
Fast forward to me in the middle of either dying my hair or cutting off some of the more dead parts of it, and my phone rings. This time it’s Dad. Voicemail.
“Hey (former middle name), could you give me a call back? I don’t have a list of the numbers for you that work. I assume the 891-one doesn’t work any more, so let me know where I should call you. Thanks”
Ok, did you just blame me for you not inviting me to dinner? Did you? Wow. Apparently he has the numbers that “work” since he called me on one. Right? So, what happened here is that Stepmom2 got mad at you for forgetting to invite me, and you decided that you were going to displace your anger back on me with unfounded blame? Oh, yes, I forgot. That’s what you do.
I even called my old number (which has been disconnected for almost a year) to see if he had possibly not paid attention when calling it and got some random girl’s voicemail and invited her to dinner. Nay, it is indeed disconnected. Which means 1) he called the disconnected number and went “Oh I should figure this out” and abruptly forgot, 2) never invited me at all (most likely candidate!) and didn’t want stepmom2 to be mad at him 3) decided it was pointless to try one of the 2 other phone numbers or 4 email addresses he has and left it at that because he really doesn’t want to bother, or 4) figured stepmom2 would do it because he is lazy and it’s just easier for someone else to follow through with things.
All of those options make him look like a winner, don’t they?! Today, I emailed him all the phone numbers. Then next time he blames this I can say “I emailed it to you, and you sent me a forwarded email the next day so you had to have gotten it.” It’s like covering your ass with email so you won’t get fired if something goes wrong at work. The whole relationship is like being at work. Maybe he could just send me an Outlook meeting request.
***
In an attempt on Hubs part to make my day not suck total ass, we decided to go hiking. It was either hiking, or a bag of candy followed by a tub of coolwhip spooned directly from the (family sized) tub. (It’s like icecream, but not as cold!)
So we went hiking, the trail was lame and cold and brown and disturbingly close to some million dollar homes, such that we felt we were doing a Parade of Homes, Nature Style. Didn’t matter though, we had a great time. We ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches with saltines on the side for lunch which is soooo much better when you’ve been “exercising” for the last hour. I also tried raisins for the first time, and enjoyed them. Win for raisins! Lots of holding hands, lots of talking, lots of walking, lots of wondering if we had stumbled into someone’s back yard and were no longer on the trail….(this trail is part of a “community design” for the neighborhood around it, in case you were wondering why it was so filled with homes)
I forgot to put bandaids on the back of my feet for the walk though, so when we got to the three hour mark I quickly and painfully realized that there were big blisters a-brewin’ on leftie. Ah well. I’m wearing flipflops to the office today, for which I thought I would be given a lot of crap and have not. Good to know.
After the hike we went home and decided that we could justify going out to eat by walking to the restaurant. So we walked about an hour to IHOP and abruptly ate too much. Yep, self-control is what we’re ABOUT.
I think I whonked* my foot somehow. There’s been this odd pain on the top of my foot that initially felt like just work-out pain from a week or so ago to full fledged limpiness. The medical opinion of my co-worker says that it’s probably ligament related. So, I guess I’ll have to wait that out.
*whonked: a term to use when there is a pain that you’re not sure is due to muscle pulling, ligament tweaking, whanged up random bruising, or other. But it hurts.
So, all in all it was a nice Easter weekend. How was yours?
Paul’s family like to play these games, too. Let’s say his grandparents have a big anniversary coming up. Paul’s mother will tell us about it, adding that it is a “command performance.” We will say we will not be able to make it, since I’m scheduled to be in the hospital having a baby that week. She will say huffily that she hopes we don’t think SHE is going to break the bad news. She hopes we don’t expect HER to be our messenger. We will say “….?” because—isn’t she the messenger who said there was a celebration, and that it was a command performance? We will point out that okay, we will tell the grandparents ourselves, but it’s kind of awkward because it’s not like we’ve talked to them about it before, so we’d just be calling them out of the blue to say, “Hey, you know that celebration you haven’t invited us to? Well we can’t make it!” Four hours later we’ll get a call from the grandparents, inviting us. And we will decline. AAAAAQAAAAGH. Stupidness!
Oh wow, that was cathartic. I could feel the frustration along with you. I love hearing the dad issues, they are so juicy.
My father came over and sat on the couch for FOUR HOURS, and he slept for two of those. We said maybe six words to each other. Oh lord, our dads should hang out together.
I’m glad it ended up being a good Easter for you. Yay! I got a chocolate fairy bunny.
Yes, that’s right, a Fairy Bunny.