- locked -
- locked -
In which I am bitchy sister ... otherwise known as person who has a grasp on reality and gives a rat's butt about someone other than herself and her own convenience. Also has a grasp on reality. I mentioned reality, right?
My brother and SIL are coming in for Thanksgiving with the offspring. They have to stay in a hotel because there are 3 of them. Today, my mother informs me that my brother has time off he has to use so now he is suddenly going to come up here a lot with the offspring to visit the grandfather (ie., my dad). I guess he just found out he had to use his time off? He has great attention to detail when it comes to financial spreadsheets. Other things, not so much.
Ok, fine. So he is also apparently now coming for a long weekend the weekend after thanksgiving. Not even a week long break between visits. And my mother, being the ... person ... she is, thinks it would just be great! if my brother and nephew stayed here. Because it's fine with her. Because this is her bizarre happy family fantasy where it doesn't matter that she is therefore requiring me to share the bathroom with my idiot brother, who is so many stereotypes, and a 4 year old. A well behaved one, but a 4 year old. Who is not my kid. Because she chooses to ignore the fact that this is a one and a half story house, and I am in the only room on the second/half floor. Because she thinks a grown assed man who has a bad back and a 4 year old very active child are going to put all their crap and themselves in the tiny dormer "room", where there isn't even room for a proper twin sized bed.
But wait! She thinks the solution to that is to have my 4 year old nephew sleep in the living room. Which is one of the rooms in which my father can sleep. Because, oh, right! he's ill and he never sleeps through the night. Sometimes he can rest in the reclining chair in the living room or on the couch in the living room, or sometimes in their actual bed in their bedroom, or sometimes in the reclining chair on the back porch. The back porch where my mother tends to stay up until all hours. Unless my dad needs to rest there, then she either annoys him and keeps him up, or she goes in the living room! Where she is up until all hours. But no one will be inconvenienced and it will work beautifully to have a 4 year old sleep in the living room.
None of which has touched on the tendency of curious 4 year olds to explore, sometimes at night, and also the fact that my dad is occasionally so weak he needs to use a walker and even without one there's the minor detail of not creating an obstacle course of crap all over the living room floor and wherever else that he could trip over in the middle of the night when he gets up and tries to find someplace to sleep in a different room in the dark. Or we could leave the lights on all night all over the house and no one will get any sleep.
Did I mention that both my brother and SIL make 6 figure salaries? He can afford a damn hotel. My mother thinks she wants to play grandma, but what she actually wants is to create a fantasy where she can claim to have created this family fantasy whereby my father gets to spend time with his grandchild, oh, and my brother gets to spend time with his father, all orchestrated by her gracious majesty like some kind of sick 1950s family sitcom pastiche. But she gets to sign off whenever she's not interested and direct everyone else to do whatever it is she thinks they should do so she can make them happy. And they better not forget to express their gratitude for all her work and how she only thinks of everyone else and never herself. People really just don't appreciate everything she does for them. Also, they had better be happy because she is making them happy.
Like, ok, I get that she more or less has a greek tragedy relationship with me, but what the heck with not having any brain about the fact that my dad is ill and his convenience should take precedence over any possibility of my brother staying here? He's exhausted most of the time. Being up and doing anything for a whole hour in a row leaves him literally needing to collapse and sleep. How can she even think of having a four year old stay in the house? My dad and my nephew are going to need naps, and NO, it is NOT ok to impose that on me. Dad needs to come back here and be left alone and not told where he can and can't go in his own house, and the kid will not turn off unless he's somewhere without anything interesting. A hotel room is actually more conducive to this than someplace he knows there are people and toys and stuff.
OH, YEAH. I forgot. You cannot park overnight on the street around here. So if my brother is here with whatever conveyance, he will be parking in the driveway along with me, so my mother will have to deal with my brother always being in the way. It sounds dumb, but we have a wide driveway. If it's just me, either my mom's or dad's car is always free to move. If my brother is here, he completely blocks the driveway. It's a major pain in the posterior to deal with my mother with just me and having to move my car sometimes. God help us all if we have to play with moving four cars around. Not to mention that if it snows, this also means 1/3 of the driveway will not get plowed because my brother's car would be blocking that path. Remember the bad back thing? Who, exactly, is going to get stuck with having to clear the now not removed snow? Which will have clumped up around the car and might have to be moved so the car can be moved?
Yeah, there's no way it is ok for him to stay here and there's no need, either. She needs to get over herself. I am venting right now but plans will be made and action taken by me because this is bullshit.
In which I am bitchy sister ... otherwise known as person who has a grasp on reality and gives a rat's butt about someone other than herself and her own convenience. Also has a grasp on reality. I mentioned reality, right?
My brother and SIL are coming in for Thanksgiving with the offspring. They have to stay in a hotel because there are 3 of them. Today, my mother informs me that my brother has time off he has to use so now he is suddenly going to come up here a lot with the offspring to visit the grandfather (ie., my dad). I guess he just found out he had to use his time off? He has great attention to detail when it comes to financial spreadsheets. Other things, not so much.
Ok, fine. So he is also apparently now coming for a long weekend the weekend after thanksgiving. Not even a week long break between visits. And my mother, being the ... person ... she is, thinks it would just be great! if my brother and nephew stayed here. Because it's fine with her. Because this is her bizarre happy family fantasy where it doesn't matter that she is therefore requiring me to share the bathroom with my idiot brother, who is so many stereotypes, and a 4 year old. A well behaved one, but a 4 year old. Who is not my kid. Because she chooses to ignore the fact that this is a one and a half story house, and I am in the only room on the second/half floor. Because she thinks a grown assed man who has a bad back and a 4 year old very active child are going to put all their crap and themselves in the tiny dormer "room", where there isn't even room for a proper twin sized bed.
But wait! She thinks the solution to that is to have my 4 year old nephew sleep in the living room. Which is one of the rooms in which my father can sleep. Because, oh, right! he's ill and he never sleeps through the night. Sometimes he can rest in the reclining chair in the living room or on the couch in the living room, or sometimes in their actual bed in their bedroom, or sometimes in the reclining chair on the back porch. The back porch where my mother tends to stay up until all hours. Unless my dad needs to rest there, then she either annoys him and keeps him up, or she goes in the living room! Where she is up until all hours. But no one will be inconvenienced and it will work beautifully to have a 4 year old sleep in the living room.
None of which has touched on the tendency of curious 4 year olds to explore, sometimes at night, and also the fact that my dad is occasionally so weak he needs to use a walker and even without one there's the minor detail of not creating an obstacle course of crap all over the living room floor and wherever else that he could trip over in the middle of the night when he gets up and tries to find someplace to sleep in a different room in the dark. Or we could leave the lights on all night all over the house and no one will get any sleep.
Did I mention that both my brother and SIL make 6 figure salaries? He can afford a damn hotel. My mother thinks she wants to play grandma, but what she actually wants is to create a fantasy where she can claim to have created this family fantasy whereby my father gets to spend time with his grandchild, oh, and my brother gets to spend time with his father, all orchestrated by her gracious majesty like some kind of sick 1950s family sitcom pastiche. But she gets to sign off whenever she's not interested and direct everyone else to do whatever it is she thinks they should do so she can make them happy. And they better not forget to express their gratitude for all her work and how she only thinks of everyone else and never herself. People really just don't appreciate everything she does for them. Also, they had better be happy because she is making them happy.
Like, ok, I get that she more or less has a greek tragedy relationship with me, but what the heck with not having any brain about the fact that my dad is ill and his convenience should take precedence over any possibility of my brother staying here? He's exhausted most of the time. Being up and doing anything for a whole hour in a row leaves him literally needing to collapse and sleep. How can she even think of having a four year old stay in the house? My dad and my nephew are going to need naps, and NO, it is NOT ok to impose that on me. Dad needs to come back here and be left alone and not told where he can and can't go in his own house, and the kid will not turn off unless he's somewhere without anything interesting. A hotel room is actually more conducive to this than someplace he knows there are people and toys and stuff.
OH, YEAH. I forgot. You cannot park overnight on the street around here. So if my brother is here with whatever conveyance, he will be parking in the driveway along with me, so my mother will have to deal with my brother always being in the way. It sounds dumb, but we have a wide driveway. If it's just me, either my mom's or dad's car is always free to move. If my brother is here, he completely blocks the driveway. It's a major pain in the posterior to deal with my mother with just me and having to move my car sometimes. God help us all if we have to play with moving four cars around. Not to mention that if it snows, this also means 1/3 of the driveway will not get plowed because my brother's car would be blocking that path. Remember the bad back thing? Who, exactly, is going to get stuck with having to clear the now not removed snow? Which will have clumped up around the car and might have to be moved so the car can be moved?
Yeah, there's no way it is ok for him to stay here and there's no need, either. She needs to get over herself. I am venting right now but plans will be made and action taken by me because this is bullshit.
Definitely tell both your mother and your brother that he needs a hotel room. Because, all of that is just one big "oh, hell no."
ReplyDeleteI suspect I will talk to the brother, but I have to have my head on first.
ReplyDeleteGive me a call if you want to talk it out first. (Or for any other reason, of course)
ReplyDelete