Thanksgiving Hell
Okay, so, we made it to California, driving a dawdling 60 mph on route 15 (we had many fans that day, I can tell you) because we thought Amy and Rob would be meeting us at 9 pmish (it turned out by the time they landed at the airport, got a rental car and drove an hour to the hotel, they were in no condition to handle my family).
My family. I spoke at great length here about their many flaws. Not surprisingly, they've gotten even worse with time. Still talk your ear off for hours about everything happening in their lives, while never once expressing the slightest interest in yours. My mom is not as guilty as Nancy, although by the time we had left we had well and truly had our fill of both.
Tery had had it within the first hour. I joined her in the bathroom where she was having an honest-to-goodness breakdown. She's met them before of course, but back then she had the sanctuary of alcohol to create a refuge of numbness. Seeing them in their purest, unadulterated form proved far too much for her. She couldn't believe their self-centeredness and complete lack of attention paid to me. I assured her repeatedly I was used to it, that it's how it's been my whole life. But her reaction made me think for the first time perhaps that didn't make it right.
However, things got exponentially worse the next day when Amy showed up with Rob and baby Jane, my 1-year-old niece. So much so that by Wednesday Amy announced to my mother that she was never visiting them again. If you read on, you'll see that this decision was entirely justified.
Don't get me started on my mother's filthy house, finding not only mouse droppings everywhere but a dead mouse flattened under the hide-a-bed couch -- hardly acceptable conditions for adults, never mind a toddler. That was the least of our worries this week.
Mom and Nancy have three large dogs, a giant schnauzer (Elise), a black lab/Newfoundland mix (Morgan) and Jasmine, a yellow lab being fostered as a service dog. These dogs are given free rein and are barely trained (with the exception of Jasmine, who we have serious doubts about her usefulness for the program when Nan and mom are done with her). They surround and jump repeatedly on any strangers in the home, drooling all over you and licking you relentlessly, the only "discipline" offered a sharp "No!" from Nancy, which you can imagine is just about as effective as Tracey telling her dogs "Shhhh!" when they bark.
Sure enough, Amy et.al.arrived and Jane started toodling around in the minefield of my mother's house. Nancy showed up with the dogs; she was able to keep the other two outside, but Elise got inside. She made a beeline for the baby, who cowered and flinched. Nancy called her back, and she turned immediately, whipping Jane's face with her long tail. She started crying of course, and my mom said, "Oh, Nancy....we have to keep the dogs away from the baby."
Nancy's response? "She'd better get used to them. We can't lock them up the whole time." Let me repeat, Jane is 1 YEAR OLD. Tery told me later it was all she could do not to strangle Nancy right then and there.
So began a week-long struggle to determine who had more of a right to be inside the house, our niece or the fucking dogs. I'm not the biggest fan of children, but Jesus Christ on a cracker...would this be an issue for anyone else?
But wait, it gets better: Nancy, husband Russ and housemate Meredith are all lifelong smokers. You can imagine what their house smells like. Rob and Amy, understandably, wanted to minimize exposing Jane's little developing lung tissue as much as possible. Nancy took great offense at this, oddly; we've made no bones about our feelings on smoking, but it might have come as some surprise if they had never actually listened to us.
We bought fixings for lunch but planned to make it at Nancy's and eat at mom's (they share a yard so there's lots of walking back and forth). Meredith showed up at that moment and seemed puzzled by this plan. Russ explained the anti-tobacco attitude, and Meredith looked at me and actually said, "Hey, life's a bitch. Deal with it." Thank you, I believe that we are -- by eating at mom's. Bitch.
We had dinner at Nan's later that night. The dogs were outside (scratching desperately at the windows the entire time) and there might have been a window opened to clear the air. We seemed to have reached a truce.
However, the following day we went down to San Diego so Amy, Rob and Tery could pick up their race packets (they had found a "turkey trot" to run in). We popped in to a small museum where we all sort of broke up into smaller groups. I ended up in a room with Nancy and mom, where to my astonishment Nancy suddenly lashed out in fury at me.
"I don't APPRECIATE having to change MY lifestyle and lock MY dogs outside because of THAT CHILD. They're GUESTS IN MY HOME. They should make an effort to ACCOMMODATE THEMSELVES."
Holy hell. Which culture did SHE grow up in? I responded, "Ummm, no. They're guests in your home. YOU should be making an effort to accommodate THEM."
She looked as though I had slapped her. It stopped her dead in her tracks, probably because that was the first time anyone had stood up to her in, well, ever.
This is what perplexes us about Nancy. She was an only child for 13 years before I came along, the center of the world. But is it possible for those first formative years to overshadow the subsequent 40, when surely she had ample time to learn the way of the world and that she really ISN'T the center of it? Evidently not.
Here's how I look at it: We have ferrets that we love dearly. However, we are well aware that not everyone (in fact, hardly anyone) likes ferrets. When you come to visit, we lock them in the bedroom and don't let them crawl all over you (unless you want them to). Is it too much to ask the same of dog owners?
Poll time. (After this trip I need more reassurance than ever that people aren't ignoring me):
Poll How do you treat guests in your house?
For that matter,
Poll
After that she and Russ sort of disappeared, for so long I was afraid we had lost our ride back to their house. They turned up again for lunch and, as is the way of our family, nothing more was said about it. However, the dogs continued to be locked outside without any more quarrels, and by the time we arrived for Thanksgiving dinner it was blatantly obvious they had spent the entire day airing out the house. Apology accepted.
But it's just incomprehensible. Like I said, I'm not a kid person, but this is our niece, and truthfully she's a sweet baby: hardly no tantrums, and a smile that lights up the room.
Sweet Jane
We aren't even asking Nancy to hold her, just don't begrudge her presence. For three fucking days, suck it up and act like she's your own flesh and blood and not some stray brat we picked up in an alley.
By the end of Thanksgiving dinner she seemed to warm up to her a little. Jane wanted to sit in her lap, and we all dove for our cameras to capture this once-in-a-lifetime photo op:
None of us could believe our eyes
Unfortunately there is no documentation of me playing with her. My mother supplied a little bear puppet that I made kiss her cheek and hug her neck. She loved that so much that she would do laps around the room, and whenever she noticed her new bear friend sitting on my lap she'd stop by for a quick hug before moving on. Adorable.
Rob, Amy, Tery, Jane and I trooped back to San Diego Thanksgiving morning for the race (Jane rides in a racing stroller). In the van on the way back, I said, "What do you want to bet that when we walk in they won't ask anything about the race, but launch into a detailed description of their morning despite having not done anything?"
I won that bet. The exciting tale of the day was yet another explanation of the positions of the sleeping dogs on Nancy's bed, because THAT never gets tiresome. This despite Amy finally snapping when mom dragged out a calendar expecting us to ooh and aah over stock photos of dogs. "Mom, goddammit, I am SO SICK OF DOGS. Can we please stop talking about dogs?!?" Answer: No, we can't. She later confessed she felt bad, but I assured her it was overdue, and since it was apparently forgotten a few hours later evidently no harm done.
This is how they roll. They are totally in their own little worlds and there ain't no getting through. Tery liked my observation about Nancy, that there's not enough of a filter on stuff coming out of her head and too much of a filter on stuff going in. She has an enormous wall between herself and the world, which we think points to a deep-seated insecurity.
In fact, I had the revelation that the only reason Nancy likes taking Jasmine (the service dog in-training) out with her is because the dog makes her the center of attention -- automatic conversation piece wherever she goes. Tery and Rob took it a step further and postulated that she was desperate to be someone special when she goes out into the world. It makes me feel kind of sorry for her.
A second revelation made was that they're a little like 8-year-old kids dragging you into their bedroom to show off all their toys. Except with kids you're a bit more willing to indulge them.
My mom started out the week making an attempt to show interest, which was appreciated. However, by the last night she had fallen back into the pattern of ignoring me she has long been living in. She asked me to set her up on eBay to try to sell some of the junk in her house. I did so, and used the example of trying to sell my iPod to answer one of her questions.
"You sold your iPod?" she asked. I started to explain the saga of the Nano, how I had sold it but it was broken, etc, etc. I got maybe two sentences into it, but I was tired and my throat hurt, and I suddenly realized if I just stopped there she'd never notice if I didn't finish the story. I won that bet too. Tery, who since her breakdown had taken to just hanging out in the background and listening without participating, laughed quietly.
As we said our goodbyes, mom pouted, "Are you sure you can't stay another day?" I thought, "So you can spend another day not hearing a word I say?" Another of our theories is my family likes the idea of us visiting, but clearly doesn't know how to behave once we're actually there.
Tery simply can't believe I was raised by this family. She had asked Rob while they were discussing Amy and I growing up together (while we were stuck in the other van with Nan and mom), "Where did these girls find love?" Answer: We had each other. Amy told Tery about a recurring dream she has that doesn't take a PhD in psychology to interpret: Mom is in a pristine kitchen wearing white (okay, THAT part is a bit puzzling), and she shoos Amy out with her broom. Amy starts climbing a ladder to the attic where her room is, but the steps of the ladder are disintegrating beneath her. Suddenly I lean down from the attic and extend my hand to her. "It's okay," I say to her. "I've got you."
Me and my sister are each other's only family. It sounds melodramatic; I mean, we weren't beaten or anything, and we didn't feel like we had an awful childhood at all. But evidently we were (and are) victims of some pretty serious emotional neglect. Our untrained diagnosis is pathologic narcissism, with perhaps a touch of ADD or even autism thrown in. If you read all that under the cut, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, because I guess I've spent a lifetime being ignored and I just always accepted that that was the way it was.
We spent Friday driving home. We missed our cats terribly after being oversaturated with dogs all week (mentally and physically), so were in a bit of a hurry. Unfortunately we got stopped in Cedar City, Utah (ironically the same city with our Travelodge). I got clocked doing 95 mph in a 75 zone (thank god I was driving and not Tery, who is still on probation). The cop was as nice about it as he could be: He reduced the recorded speed to 85 and gave me the minimum fine, $90 as opposed to $240. I apologized to him and he quipped, "It's the passenger's fault; they're supposed to be watching for cops." We drove a resolute 5 only over the limit the rest of the (considerable) distance.
(FYI, I read some of the other violations on the ticket. Use of a handheld device while driving? Mandatory court appearance and $595 fine. Word to the wise, kavieshana.)
This was on top of receiving a cease and desist email from Comcast when they tracked my IP address downloading movie torrents (gonna knock that off. First letter is just a warning, I think). And I just found out today that it's illegal, possibly even a felony, to videotape on a casino game floor, so the video I'm planning to post next will need some editing. All in all this trip was full of all kinds of lawlessness, on top of intensive psychoanalysis. I need a vacation.
My family. I spoke at great length here about their many flaws. Not surprisingly, they've gotten even worse with time. Still talk your ear off for hours about everything happening in their lives, while never once expressing the slightest interest in yours. My mom is not as guilty as Nancy, although by the time we had left we had well and truly had our fill of both.
Tery had had it within the first hour. I joined her in the bathroom where she was having an honest-to-goodness breakdown. She's met them before of course, but back then she had the sanctuary of alcohol to create a refuge of numbness. Seeing them in their purest, unadulterated form proved far too much for her. She couldn't believe their self-centeredness and complete lack of attention paid to me. I assured her repeatedly I was used to it, that it's how it's been my whole life. But her reaction made me think for the first time perhaps that didn't make it right.
However, things got exponentially worse the next day when Amy showed up with Rob and baby Jane, my 1-year-old niece. So much so that by Wednesday Amy announced to my mother that she was never visiting them again. If you read on, you'll see that this decision was entirely justified.
Don't get me started on my mother's filthy house, finding not only mouse droppings everywhere but a dead mouse flattened under the hide-a-bed couch -- hardly acceptable conditions for adults, never mind a toddler. That was the least of our worries this week.
Mom and Nancy have three large dogs, a giant schnauzer (Elise), a black lab/Newfoundland mix (Morgan) and Jasmine, a yellow lab being fostered as a service dog. These dogs are given free rein and are barely trained (with the exception of Jasmine, who we have serious doubts about her usefulness for the program when Nan and mom are done with her). They surround and jump repeatedly on any strangers in the home, drooling all over you and licking you relentlessly, the only "discipline" offered a sharp "No!" from Nancy, which you can imagine is just about as effective as Tracey telling her dogs "Shhhh!" when they bark.
Sure enough, Amy et.al.arrived and Jane started toodling around in the minefield of my mother's house. Nancy showed up with the dogs; she was able to keep the other two outside, but Elise got inside. She made a beeline for the baby, who cowered and flinched. Nancy called her back, and she turned immediately, whipping Jane's face with her long tail. She started crying of course, and my mom said, "Oh, Nancy....we have to keep the dogs away from the baby."
Nancy's response? "She'd better get used to them. We can't lock them up the whole time." Let me repeat, Jane is 1 YEAR OLD. Tery told me later it was all she could do not to strangle Nancy right then and there.
So began a week-long struggle to determine who had more of a right to be inside the house, our niece or the fucking dogs. I'm not the biggest fan of children, but Jesus Christ on a cracker...would this be an issue for anyone else?
But wait, it gets better: Nancy, husband Russ and housemate Meredith are all lifelong smokers. You can imagine what their house smells like. Rob and Amy, understandably, wanted to minimize exposing Jane's little developing lung tissue as much as possible. Nancy took great offense at this, oddly; we've made no bones about our feelings on smoking, but it might have come as some surprise if they had never actually listened to us.
We bought fixings for lunch but planned to make it at Nancy's and eat at mom's (they share a yard so there's lots of walking back and forth). Meredith showed up at that moment and seemed puzzled by this plan. Russ explained the anti-tobacco attitude, and Meredith looked at me and actually said, "Hey, life's a bitch. Deal with it." Thank you, I believe that we are -- by eating at mom's. Bitch.
We had dinner at Nan's later that night. The dogs were outside (scratching desperately at the windows the entire time) and there might have been a window opened to clear the air. We seemed to have reached a truce.
However, the following day we went down to San Diego so Amy, Rob and Tery could pick up their race packets (they had found a "turkey trot" to run in). We popped in to a small museum where we all sort of broke up into smaller groups. I ended up in a room with Nancy and mom, where to my astonishment Nancy suddenly lashed out in fury at me.
"I don't APPRECIATE having to change MY lifestyle and lock MY dogs outside because of THAT CHILD. They're GUESTS IN MY HOME. They should make an effort to ACCOMMODATE THEMSELVES."
Holy hell. Which culture did SHE grow up in? I responded, "Ummm, no. They're guests in your home. YOU should be making an effort to accommodate THEM."
She looked as though I had slapped her. It stopped her dead in her tracks, probably because that was the first time anyone had stood up to her in, well, ever.
This is what perplexes us about Nancy. She was an only child for 13 years before I came along, the center of the world. But is it possible for those first formative years to overshadow the subsequent 40, when surely she had ample time to learn the way of the world and that she really ISN'T the center of it? Evidently not.
Here's how I look at it: We have ferrets that we love dearly. However, we are well aware that not everyone (in fact, hardly anyone) likes ferrets. When you come to visit, we lock them in the bedroom and don't let them crawl all over you (unless you want them to). Is it too much to ask the same of dog owners?
Poll time. (After this trip I need more reassurance than ever that people aren't ignoring me):
Poll How do you treat guests in your house?
For that matter,
Poll
After that she and Russ sort of disappeared, for so long I was afraid we had lost our ride back to their house. They turned up again for lunch and, as is the way of our family, nothing more was said about it. However, the dogs continued to be locked outside without any more quarrels, and by the time we arrived for Thanksgiving dinner it was blatantly obvious they had spent the entire day airing out the house. Apology accepted.
But it's just incomprehensible. Like I said, I'm not a kid person, but this is our niece, and truthfully she's a sweet baby: hardly no tantrums, and a smile that lights up the room.
Sweet Jane
We aren't even asking Nancy to hold her, just don't begrudge her presence. For three fucking days, suck it up and act like she's your own flesh and blood and not some stray brat we picked up in an alley.
By the end of Thanksgiving dinner she seemed to warm up to her a little. Jane wanted to sit in her lap, and we all dove for our cameras to capture this once-in-a-lifetime photo op:
None of us could believe our eyes
Unfortunately there is no documentation of me playing with her. My mother supplied a little bear puppet that I made kiss her cheek and hug her neck. She loved that so much that she would do laps around the room, and whenever she noticed her new bear friend sitting on my lap she'd stop by for a quick hug before moving on. Adorable.
Rob, Amy, Tery, Jane and I trooped back to San Diego Thanksgiving morning for the race (Jane rides in a racing stroller). In the van on the way back, I said, "What do you want to bet that when we walk in they won't ask anything about the race, but launch into a detailed description of their morning despite having not done anything?"
I won that bet. The exciting tale of the day was yet another explanation of the positions of the sleeping dogs on Nancy's bed, because THAT never gets tiresome. This despite Amy finally snapping when mom dragged out a calendar expecting us to ooh and aah over stock photos of dogs. "Mom, goddammit, I am SO SICK OF DOGS. Can we please stop talking about dogs?!?" Answer: No, we can't. She later confessed she felt bad, but I assured her it was overdue, and since it was apparently forgotten a few hours later evidently no harm done.
This is how they roll. They are totally in their own little worlds and there ain't no getting through. Tery liked my observation about Nancy, that there's not enough of a filter on stuff coming out of her head and too much of a filter on stuff going in. She has an enormous wall between herself and the world, which we think points to a deep-seated insecurity.
In fact, I had the revelation that the only reason Nancy likes taking Jasmine (the service dog in-training) out with her is because the dog makes her the center of attention -- automatic conversation piece wherever she goes. Tery and Rob took it a step further and postulated that she was desperate to be someone special when she goes out into the world. It makes me feel kind of sorry for her.
A second revelation made was that they're a little like 8-year-old kids dragging you into their bedroom to show off all their toys. Except with kids you're a bit more willing to indulge them.
My mom started out the week making an attempt to show interest, which was appreciated. However, by the last night she had fallen back into the pattern of ignoring me she has long been living in. She asked me to set her up on eBay to try to sell some of the junk in her house. I did so, and used the example of trying to sell my iPod to answer one of her questions.
"You sold your iPod?" she asked. I started to explain the saga of the Nano, how I had sold it but it was broken, etc, etc. I got maybe two sentences into it, but I was tired and my throat hurt, and I suddenly realized if I just stopped there she'd never notice if I didn't finish the story. I won that bet too. Tery, who since her breakdown had taken to just hanging out in the background and listening without participating, laughed quietly.
As we said our goodbyes, mom pouted, "Are you sure you can't stay another day?" I thought, "So you can spend another day not hearing a word I say?" Another of our theories is my family likes the idea of us visiting, but clearly doesn't know how to behave once we're actually there.
Tery simply can't believe I was raised by this family. She had asked Rob while they were discussing Amy and I growing up together (while we were stuck in the other van with Nan and mom), "Where did these girls find love?" Answer: We had each other. Amy told Tery about a recurring dream she has that doesn't take a PhD in psychology to interpret: Mom is in a pristine kitchen wearing white (okay, THAT part is a bit puzzling), and she shoos Amy out with her broom. Amy starts climbing a ladder to the attic where her room is, but the steps of the ladder are disintegrating beneath her. Suddenly I lean down from the attic and extend my hand to her. "It's okay," I say to her. "I've got you."
Me and my sister are each other's only family. It sounds melodramatic; I mean, we weren't beaten or anything, and we didn't feel like we had an awful childhood at all. But evidently we were (and are) victims of some pretty serious emotional neglect. Our untrained diagnosis is pathologic narcissism, with perhaps a touch of ADD or even autism thrown in. If you read all that under the cut, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, because I guess I've spent a lifetime being ignored and I just always accepted that that was the way it was.
We spent Friday driving home. We missed our cats terribly after being oversaturated with dogs all week (mentally and physically), so were in a bit of a hurry. Unfortunately we got stopped in Cedar City, Utah (ironically the same city with our Travelodge). I got clocked doing 95 mph in a 75 zone (thank god I was driving and not Tery, who is still on probation). The cop was as nice about it as he could be: He reduced the recorded speed to 85 and gave me the minimum fine, $90 as opposed to $240. I apologized to him and he quipped, "It's the passenger's fault; they're supposed to be watching for cops." We drove a resolute 5 only over the limit the rest of the (considerable) distance.
(FYI, I read some of the other violations on the ticket. Use of a handheld device while driving? Mandatory court appearance and $595 fine. Word to the wise, kavieshana.)
This was on top of receiving a cease and desist email from Comcast when they tracked my IP address downloading movie torrents (gonna knock that off. First letter is just a warning, I think). And I just found out today that it's illegal, possibly even a felony, to videotape on a casino game floor, so the video I'm planning to post next will need some editing. All in all this trip was full of all kinds of lawlessness, on top of intensive psychoanalysis. I need a vacation.