For the Kids' Sake

Divorce rates are high in this country, but I don't think that's the problem so much as that many of those people should never have gotten married in the first place, and the divorce is a blessing rather than dragging it out and making the other's life that much worse for that much longer. But that's not what this post is about. Rather, it's about the perils of NOT getting divorced when one should, specifically when one is experiencing abuse, and my most hated, despised excuse for it:

"I'm staying for the kids' sake."

No you aren't, you coward. You're staying because you're too chicken to leave, and you're pinning the blame - for it is blame - on the kids. As in, if the kids weren't in the picture, you would stay. Don't give me that. Take responsibility for your own actions and choices, probably for the first time in a long time, if not in your entire life. YOU are staying in an unhappy situation. YOU are "taking it" because you think the kids want the illusion of an intact family home more than they want at least one mentally healthy parent that they can look up to and genuinely respect. YOU are condemning them to a life of walking on eggshells due to the tension and unhappiness in the house, if not outright experiencing the demons in their parents.

I read a Dear Abby today that sparked my furor. I give you the opening paragraph:

"I was married for 22 years. My husband was verbally, mentally and emotionally abusive to me. I took it for my kids' sake."

You dolt. You imbecile. You empty-headed ninny. Get over your martyr complex. In what universe do you think that abuse was limited only to you? If he was "verbally, mentally, and emotionally abusive" to you, do you think he turned around and bestowed nothing but smiles, support, and encouragement to your children? Congratulations, ma. Instead of walking out and showing them that you have a backbone, are entitled to respect, and will not tolerate being called those names and told those debilitating lies, you showed your children that it was okay for a man to treat his wife like that. You set your son up to either be a coward like you, or an abuser like him. You set your daughter up to expect men who "love" her to say those ugly things to her, to act like they are entitled to dominion, and to assume that it was her place as the woman to accept those words.

For what it's worth, the letter goes on to outline that the daughter recently gave birth to a child (a boy; can you see the cycle continuing?), and the child's father had ducked out on her, and the girl's father was refusing to be part of the child's life unless she named her baby after him. Stupid Mom was trying to figure out how to get him to want to be part of their grandchild's life. Why on earth would you want that? So he can have a male figure in his life? And what a prize the kid would have gotten. Even if, in some hypothetical extistence, Gramps didn't target the baby for abuse, he would grow up seeing that as his male role model. Clearly, even after the divorce, Grandma has learned nothing, and grown not at all. I weep for that child.

While a shrink might tell me that, by my disdain, I am no better than the abuser, I can't help being angry at her self-induced helplessness. I remember that, in college, I once took a self-defense course (no, we didn't get to beat up men in protective suits), and toward the end of the semester, we were supposed to show what we'd learned by pretending to attack one of our classmates. I was assigned to a watery-eyed, willowy blonde with a full face of makeup and hair that had been too much done up for a self-defense course. All that was missing was her sorority sweater. I went for her throat. She froze. Apparently an ex-boyfriend had choked her in the past. While I sympathize with the terror she experienced during the attack by the ex-boyfriend, she should have been lashing out and beating me into the ground (I'm solid; I can take it). I was hoping she would. Instead, she just stood there, looking like she was about to cry, and our instructor stopped me and explained the situation and that I should start over by going for anything other than her throat. I did of course - went for the arm, I think; but inside I was furious with her. Whither the anger, dearie? Do you think that some other guy in the throes of rage to the point that he tries to strangle you is going to stop and say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you'd been traumatized by strangulation before," and take a different approach? Of course not. So learn how to defend against it. Never let another person victimize you in that way. Isn't that what the course was for?

I have no time or patience (okay, I have precious little patience to begin with) for people who sit around and pretend they're helpless. Even if you have nobody else, you can start with yourself.

Semantics

In college, I took a class on Advertising. As an end-of-semester project, our class was divided into teams of six, and we were instructed to design a marketing campaign to sell grapefruit juice to college students; whichever team was voted to have the best campaign according to the students and the professor got an automatic A on the project. Some teams went crass, some teams appealed to the target audience's intelligence (mistake!). Our team gave up on white grapefruit juice entirely and focused exclusively on pink grapefruit juice, using celebrities as spokespeople and tying in a donation to the Susan G. Komen fund for every bottle sold. Whatever it says about college students or advertising or simply the fight put up from the other teams, our agency won.

Do you get the sense prune advertising was likewise developed by a bunch of college students? For a while now, I've noticed that Sunsweet and the like have shied away from selling "prunes" in favor of "dried plums." Semantics, certainly, but admit it: you associate prunes with nursing homes, scuffly slippers, and worn out bathrobes. "Dried plums" almost has a hipster-y quality to it, riding the tailcoats of dried cranberries as they rose to popularity and are now tossed in everything from cookies to salads to fancy autumn pastas. Well done, Federated Plum Growers of America, on maintaining truth in advertising while simultaneously making prunes an acceptable purchase to people not yet eligible for AARP.

Husband and I were browsing the fruit section at Costco some months back when we saw a label that made us stop in our tracks and consider for a moment. Here was a flat of plums - nicely colored, perfectly in season - that were being sold as "Fresh Prunes." Make of that what you will, America.

Dead Man

I stayed up late enough to catch the headlines just before Obama's address was aired, so I knew that it had happened and been confirmed. But I also knew I needed to get to sleep so that I could function when The Kid woke me up at 2 a.m. Husband stayed up to watch the entire speech, and had a distinctly joyful and excited tone to his voice when he came upstairs afterwards. If we were in our pre-kid days and lived somewhere urban, I suspect he would have been among the multitudes celebrating in the streets.

I can't admit to feeling the same sense of joy. Don't misunderstand - I'm not sad or disappointed. I'm absolutely glad that bin Laden is dead: one less psychopath in the world for my son to contend with. I'm just not elated. It feels somehow hollow to me. I say this with an admitted ignorance if there is in fact proof to the contrary, but bin Laden seemed, in the end, to be little more than a figurehead, a mascot, a rallying point. There were so many eyes on him, even when we couldn't see him, that it seems to me he couldn't run quite the operation he used to. In his absence, other psychopaths have taken on his mantle and are, at this moment, plotting new attacks, most of which will fail before they even get off the ground, but some of which inevitably won't.

Bin Laden's death didn't end anything, except the manhunt. The wars are still going on and will be forever, just in different places, because we're fighting a concept, a spectre. Terrorism isn't something that can be stamped out. It is and always has been. With apologies to Jeff Maguire, all it takes is someone willing to trade their life for the chance to harm whom- or whatever they view as their enemy.

So let's all take a nice, deep, cathartic breath and exhale a sigh of relief that Osama bin Laden is no longer among the living. And then let's crack our collective knuckles, rub our tired eyes, and brace ourselves for whatever may come. This is no time to lower our guard.

Charlie Sheen: Real American Asshole

To say Charlie Sheen is acting a little funny these days is like saying he has a little sinus trouble. The man has officially gone nuts, N-V-T-S, nuts. His ego has expanded past the boundaries of the known universe. In fact, there is no ego with him anymore; it's all id, all the time. The man blew a multi-million-dollar-per-episode gig in what was, I've heard, the highest rated sitcom on air, because he couldn't manage to stop sticking things up his nose and, when told to get his proverbial shit together, called his bosses meanieheads, took his toys, and went home. This from a man whose best performance was his 30-second appearance in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. This after he, in, what three years?, blew out two marriages with women who seemed balanced (at least in comparison to him) and gave him four children, and is now living with two barely legal overly tanned bottle blonde porn starlets "goddesses." That doesn't smell like a downward spiral at all there, Carlo.

As wacktastic as his behavior has been, however, it barely even registered on my radar except as another instance of spoiled celebs behaving badly (which sounds like a reality TV title, except that we've already seen that show). What pissed me off enough to bother writing a post was when he held the show hostage. I was unfortunate enough to catch 5 minutes of Two and a Half Men when a rerun came on after something else I was watching and I couldn't find something to switch to quickly enough. It was standard sitcom nonsense, canned laughter and all; but as I said, it was very highly rated, and employed dozens, if not hundreds, of people. By refusing to act like an adult (you know, coming to work, not snorting illicit substances, not bragging about your icky sexual proclivities), he put production on hold to the point that Warner Bros. had to 86 the rest of the season. All those grips and stagehands and assistants and wardrobers were suddenly without work until Sheen decided to put on his big boy pants. And then, because he couldn't just quietly pull himself together, he declared a war of words with the producers -- nothing is this guy's fault, after all -- which ended today in Sheen's getting the boot. What do you think is going to happen now, Charlie? This isn't a soap opera. They can't just swap actors in and out for characters and pretend no one's going to notice. It's dead in the water. You pretty much single-handedly wrecked the livelihoods of the off-screen support people. They'll find jobs again, sure, but whereas they used to have an all-but-guaranteed paycheck for as long as the writers could keep cranking out formulaic jokes (the kind the average American likes best), they have to get that resume all polished up and go out begging at the studio door again like everyone else in the Greater Los Angeles area. It's one thing if a show is cancelled in general, but this show was essentially torpedoed because you had to get into a pissing contest with Chuck Lorre.

Actually, now that I think about it, this will work well for the show's first episode or two back next season. Warner Bros. hasn't pulled the plug on the show altogether, and I'd bet any amount of money that it will be back in the fall, which would be WB's way of saying "nanny-nanny-boo-boo" to Sheen. All the old viewers and a few new ones will tune in to see what they did with Charlie's character, who the new guy is (rumor mill says John Stamos is a possibility, who I think is better than his reputation, though he's apparently on Glee - another show I don't watch, which is probably why it's still on -- and thus would be more difficult [and expensive] to woo away), and how they're going to reconcile the disaster from back in the spring. And then I would take my winnings from the previous bet and place them on the probability that, by mid-season, all those same looky-loos will have faded away once they realize that the show jumped the shark about five years back when the kid's voice dropped. I will then take my winnings from both of those bets and gamble that Sheen's future screen time will consist of a failed appearance on Dancing With the Stars, a losing season of Celebrity Apprentice, and conclude with a half-assed stint on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

That is, if anyone remembers in September that any of this happened.

The Bitch is Back

Hi kids! Sorry I've been on hiatus so long, but Thing 1 has finally gotten old enough that he can play by himself for a little bit, allowing me time enough to ooze out some of the ferocious indignation that has been building pressure in the back of my mind. Assuming work continues to be slow and the kid continues to give me small spans of time to myself, I'm very happy to let Rosie back out of her cage. Stay tuned!

August Birthday Bust 2010

On July 25, we got a call from Dad, inviting us out for the day on August 1 to see UncleR and AuntG's new house in Bunker Hill, and then to come back to Dad's house for dinner. We were expected out around 10 in the morning. As much as I relish the thought of spending a whole day in the company of my family, let alone a nice long drive in the confines of a car with them, I mercifully had other plans that morning and so, gee, I couldn't make it. However, in the interest of family harmony and not giving him another opportunity to sigh dramatically that he never sees us and therefore doesn't feel like he knows us, I compromised and said we could come out that evening for dinner instead. In fact, since AuntZ and CousinZ were going to be up from South Carolina that weekend, why didn't we just turn it into the August Birthday thing? I'd even bring cake. Dad was thrilled with the idea, and I was thrilled that I could abbreviate my time with them that much further. Everyone wins.

So August 1 rolled around. We arrived about 5pm, as promised. On the way out, we made guesses as to what time we would be getting out of there, since it was a Sunday and we therefore both had to work the next day and didn't really want to leave at 11 like we often end up doing at such gatherings. In a fit of optimistic psychosis, I thought we might be able to leave around 8. Husband pointed out that 9 was more likely, even if we made noise around 8 about having to leave. Okay, 9 was acceptable.

The attendance was greater than anticipated. While UncleR/AuntG/CousinM didn't attend, we still had Dad, Grandad, AuntZ, and CousinZ, of course; but we also had Harry (AuntZ's boyfriend), Jackie, Jackie's father, Jackie's sister, Jackie's daughter, and Jackie's niece.

There were no great outbursts, but I'll apprise you of the highlights:

• AuntZ's boyfriend Harry is a hippie who doesn't have the first clue about propriety and that certain things should not be said in certain company. He and AuntZ got drunk and were smooching like teenagers... they're both almost 60. And no, it wasn't the cute kind where you're all, "Aw, sweet, look how happy they are." It was more the, "Oh god, seriously?" kind. We're pretty sure they also smoke pot together - they are both artists, after all. The guy was making a fair number of off-color jokes, and managed to use the word "cunnilingus" by the end of the night.  
• Jackie's family is, by and large, delightful, polite, engaging, patient, and friendly. However, Jackie's father is a crotchety old vet (saw action in Bastogne during WWII) and has a salty yet colorful vocabulary so he was mostly fun to listen to, and kept Grandad entertained so I didn't have to. However, he said a thing or two to Dad that I cannot imagine a potential father-in-law saying to his potential son-in-law, but I also know he wouldn't have said those things if he knew a lady was within earshot. I will not repeat it here because Mama raised me right, but still... I could really have gone the rest of my life without hearing a nonogenarian use that term. Or, pretty much anyone of any age.
• Jackie's father also commented more than once that I was awfully big for 8 months along, and Grandad joined in the chorus. You know, I just love it when people comment on my size. Especially when they're essentially strangers. Especially when I'm not 8 but 7 months along. If I gave any value to either of their opinions, that's the kind of thing that might hurt a girl's self-image. Luckily, I know that they're both senile old bags, that they have no expertise to speak of on this subject, and that the doctors in charge when their wives were pregnant basically had the women starving themselves and feeling guilty for ingesting actual food. My doctor and I do not have such misconceptions.
• The absence of UncleR/AuntG/CousinM was probably a blessing and may have contributed to the calmer atmosphere. You see, AuntZ likes, when the three sibs (she, Dad, and UncleR) get together, to incite something and then try to get one brother to side with her against the other. While I was on pins and needles to see how Jackie might react to seeing her beloved in a ranting tirade against his brother or sister, I can't complain about what passes for harmony in this family. That said, UncleR/AuntG did send along cards and gifts for the birthday people. Jackie said how nice that was. Dad replied, "Yeah it was nice. It would be nicer if they had bothered to come tonight..." Couldn't resist, could he?
• Dad also, after a fair amount of wine, declared that Jackie is "the love of [his] whole life!" Oy. Glad he's happy and all, but I guess he was only faking it with Mom and Fran (Wife 2.0) then, hm. Just sayin'.

In such an environment, I know it confuses you that I was climbing the walls by 8 p.m. Husband was drinking (I'm a built-in desi these days, and I even passed up the half glass I allow myself because my tolerance is so much lower than it used to be and I knew it wouldn't take a lot for me to snap) so, while he was aware of how late it was getting, he also was going with the flow better than I was. In the end, after invisible cake and presents due to so little light, we didn't get out of there till 10, meaning we didn't get home until 11. I peeled off my face and got in bed, and must have passed out inside of 3 minutes. Next time, I think we'll have to make noise about leaving starting an hour after we arrive.

Open Letter: Summer 2010

Dear Crotchety Document Author:

How nice for you that you were an English major and that you can't countenance sending something grammatically incorrect as a deliverable. But client direction does not bow to your professors' whims. When your professor starts paying us untold millions to write documents for him, then he can dictate that "veteran" not be capitalized in all instances, even when referring to former military personnel. As it stands, our client is paying us to do just that. They pay the bills, they make the rules. I know it stung your technically-one-level-more-senior-than-I ego that, when you demanded written proof (as it's obvious I spend my time making these things up just to make you jump through hoops), I was able to provide a 19 month old email proving my case.

Furthermore, so sorry, but I did not delete any of your tables' background shading, and it sounds instead like Word simply had a stroke. I can only deduce that you do not work often in Microsoft Office suite products, and therefore are unaware that sometimes those programs do some wacky shit with no rhyme or reason. I'm fairly well convinced that deep in the coding lies Satan himself. Until you come up with a better and more stable word processing program, however, it is often better to suffer the proverbial slings and arrows and merely patch back together what went the way of socks in the dryer than to point fingers and accuse overburdened QC personnel of deliberately sabotaging your document. Sucks, but such is life.

Have a shiny day!

~Rosie

P.S. I'm so glad you didn't mean to "infer" that the technical snafu was malicious on my part. But what I'm sure your grammatically infallible self meant was "imply."

Fool Me Twice

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Well, consider me shamed.

We had Dad and J (the girlfriend) over for dinner on June 19. I’m sure you remember the last time I had family over for dinner. This one had a slightly less Benny Hill flavor to it, but was still sufficient to convince me that I should never host my family again. Three years later is still too soon.

A little background: Dad and J dated in college, and reconnected on Facebook earlier this year. He’s, predictably, head-over-heels for her again, and every little thing she does is magic. She lives in Morgantown, WV, so in order for her to meet (most of) the family, he had to cart her all over Northern Virginia. He had already brought her home to meet UncleR, AuntG, and CousinM (from whom I got most of my information about her in the first place). We were asked for a couple of hours to get to know her, so we extended the invitation to dinner, either out or in. He chose dinner at our place. I’m least myself when I small-talk, and instead I preferred to cook for them and show them my hospitality. I don’t know about you, but I learn most about a person by what they do and how they treat others; I almost never trust the words that they say.

Like last time, I planned out a very nice menu: chicken saltimbocca roulade, risotto primavera, sautéed squash, and mango icebox pie, paired with a light Sauvignon Blanc to complement the spring-and-summer flavors. Husband and I went to the grocery store early to get the ingredients, and he dashed over to the liquor store to make sure we had makings for the drinks of choice: martinis for Dad, gin-and-tonic for J. They were due over at 5:30, and we spent literally all day from the time we got home until that time cleaning the house and preparing food as far in advance as we could so that only a little time would be spent cooking while they were here.

At 5:30, the pie was chilled, the chicken was rolled, the risotto items were prepped and measured, the martini glasses were in the freezer, the china and silver were out on the kitchen table, and the coffee table was set with snack mix in finger bowls as a pre-dinner snack. At 5:45, Husband and I were still sitting on the couch, alone. They finally arrived a little after 6:00, having gotten caught up at Grandad’s. All right, no harm done. Let’s get the drinks out and be gracious and welcoming to Dad’s girlfriend. I managed about half an hour of small talk – where’d you go to school, what do you do, how’d you meet, how far along are you – and then I had to duck into the kitchen to get started on the risotto and such. (Have you ever made risotto? It involves 30 solid minutes of stirring while the rice gradually absorbs the broth. See? I learned something that night.)

Husband entertained them with vacation pictures and work talk while I cooked like a fiend (Husband's a far better host than I am anyway). I suspect Dad doesn’t realize that my hearing is outstanding and that the kitchen is only the next room over, because at some point, I heard Dad explaining why I lived with him when Mom and Sister moved away. He told the story that I had stayed to finish high school at the same school, which was partially true. He added, “Yep, she didn’t stay for me, she stayed for the school.” Consciously, I know he thought he was being funny, but the spark was lit: “You really want to play amateur therapy hour?” He just looked at me confused, and I ducked back into the kitchen before that conversation thread could take hold. Seriously, aren’t we supposed to be putting on our Sunday Best so that we don’t scare away the new girlfriend, and you’re going to play passive-aggressive, poor-little-me games? I know better, and I’m embarrassed that I took the bait, but it was done, and to her credit, J didn’t bat an eyelash.

Dinner went smoothly for the most part except when Dad tried to goad me a little more, and when he started in again about how we absolutely had to get a convection microwave when we replaced our ghetto-fabulous double-oven range (builder stock from the 80s). He also tried to tell Husband to quit his job, get another certification, and get another job for more money (Husband makes fine money, and even if he didn’t, it’s none of Dad’s business). I’m sure there were some more points of interest, but I’ve managed to block them. J seemed to be a nice lady who had her head on straight, seemed to keep Dad more or less in line, and seemed to handle Dad’s rants with grace, so I wish them the best. When they left, everyone seemed to have had a more or less nice time.
 
A week later, I received an email from Dad, thanking us for having them over. However, he thought that dinner had probably not been a good idea, since I had been in the kitchen so long, and since the whole purpose of them coming was for J and us to "get to know one another." This from the man who thinks that Husband and I should stay over at his house during the Christmas Eve misery because he "doesn't feel like [he] really knows me." I'm so glad I spent all that money and all that effort into making something nice for them just to have my hands slapped again. Next time you want to ensure that you get all the face-time you want, how about you show up on time and we go out to eat instead.

No One Wants Our Money

Husband and I experienced Retail Fail yesterday.

We've been in need of a new stove for a number of years now, and because Husband got his first bonus at work recently, we decided to apply some of it to replacing our pathetic appliance. He found one he liked at Home Depot and this weekend we were going to go out and take a look at the floor model, some skinny blinds for our kitchen windows, and the hardwood flooring sample that Husband liked. Bonus: we'd probably run into some Father's Day sales or discounts. While we were out, we figured we would swing by the Verizon Wireless store to see about a new phone for him (his current one won't hold a charge anymore) and maybe adjusting our plan to better fit our usage. And hey, whaddya know, Babies R Us is having a 20% sale on in-store bedding sets so we'd try to pick that up, and there's also a 20% off coupon in the Sunday ads, so we'd see about getting the glider I like as well if it's in stock. We were even prepared to spend the big bucks this extravaganza was going to cost.

We went first to a nearby Verizon Wireless store, but the parking lot was empty - which made sense, as the sign on the door said they were closed on Sunday. Seemed silly to us, but as long as it works for the franchiser... Besides, there's another we knew of on the way back from BRU.

Next we went to BRU in search of the bedding set and glider. We got back to the gliders section... and no one was there, except one expectant father chilling in a floor model while his wife was going baby crazy somewhere in the store. Okay, well let's go get the bedding set and maybe a staffer will be on hand when we get back. We got over to the bedding set area and I thought I was having a hard time figuring out where the pattern we liked was (it's reasonably bright in its royal blues and lime greens)... until I realized that the big open space on one of the shelves is where they used to stock that pattern. They were all sold out. Miffed, and knowing that the glider was not likely to be in stock in the back anyway (and not willing to pay the $75 to have it shipped), we walked out empty-handed. (FYI: the same glider is available through Amazon for FREE SUPER SAVER SHIPPING!! I love you, Amazon.)

We stopped by the other Verizon Wireless store on the way home. There on the door were the posted hours and, lo and behold, they were open from 12 - 7 on Sundays. As it was 3:00 when we arrived, we figured we were in luck. We marched up to the door, ready to do some business and -- the door won't open. No really, it won't open. Lights are on in the store. Husband and I both checked our watches and our cell phones to make sure everything was in agreement in terms of time. We looked around for an alternate entrance. We were well within the posted hours. But the door was locked, and no one seemed in a rush to get to the front of the store to open it. No one seemed to be in the store at all. Confused, we again left, twice defeated.

Home Depot couldn't fail us. In we went, first to the window coverings section to look at the blinds... but I forgot to measure how tall the windows were. Okay, my fault for being unprepared (bad Girl Scout!), but it was an "as long as we're here" errand, so no big deal. Off we went to the flooring area, but despite parading up and down three aisles, they didn't seem to be carrying the hardwoods Husband liked. Again, not too big a deal. Let's go over to Appliance Land and see about getting a new stove. Husband had wisely brought our measurements along so we were all set. But oh dear. Our house was built in the early 90s, and perhaps you've noticed that kitchen dimensions have changed in the past few years. We found exactly one gas stove that fit our width requirements - which are strictly limited by the flanking counters. However, it was too deep. Our current stove was 25.25" deep - we could probably go up to 26. That one stove with the right width was 27.75" deep, meaning almost a 3" jut out from the edge of the counters. Unacceptable.

Curses. Foiled at every turn. It seems that no one wants our money, even when we're ready to spend!

(In)Sensitive

My interactions with my father's family have been well documented here in the blog. I've heard them compared to a gross bug that makes you scream, "EW!", but instead of squashing it, you keep looking back to see what it's doing now. Here we have a new tale of paternal blundering, presented for your amusement.

A little background and catch-up before I launch into the story. Rosie will be Mama Rosie in October. Hooray! Perhaps that helps to explain my reticence in 2010. My parents have been divorced for somewhere in the range of 13 years. In that interim, my father remarried, and subsequently divorced his second wife after four years.

So here it is three years later. We invited Dad over in late March to let him know about the forthcoming grandbaby. In the course of conversation he mentioned that he had reconnected with an old college girlfriend on Facebook. I say, good for him, I'm glad to hear it.

Zoom forward another month, and I got an email from him this past Saturday. Because tone is important to the story, I feel quoting is appropriate:

Subject: Reservations Please.

Dear Rosie,

I would like an appointment to introduce you and Husband to someone special in my life during the weekend of 6/19 either Saturday or Sunday would be fine. You don’t need to plan anything special unless you wish but do allow a couple of hours.

Let me know.

Love,
Dad

After checking the calendar, I wrote back to say that we were clear that weekend, and that we'd be happy to meet her on Saturday the 19th. To remind him that I'm his daughter and not a client, I also asked "Why so formal?"

I received a response only hours later:

Hi Rosie,

The formality was supposed to be funny knowing how hard it is to get on your very busy calendar. I have to keep in mind how very sensitive you are and how sometimes my so-called sense of humor gets turned into something I did not intend.

In any case you assume that is want to introduce you to a “her”. Hmmmm….. I did not say that, but strangely you guessed correctly. Have you been corresponding with CousinM again? She met her last Sunday.

I started to fire off a response, but I knew I was furious and that there was nothing to be gained by a reply in such a state, so I deleted the draft reply and haven't responded yet.

"I have to keep in mind how very sensitive you are and how sometimes my so-called sense of humor gets turned into something I did not intend." I will admit I am a sensitive person and am easily stung, but this is classic blaming the victim. At what point was I supposed to infer that the opening email was a joke? A normal person would write, "Hi, what are you all doing on the 19th? I would like to see you two, but if that date's not convenient, let me know when you're free and we'll get together." That's all I was asking for. Not an apology or explanation, just a relaxed and familial tone. But that formality is how he writes all of his emails, like he's writing to a business correspondent. He's been using the Internet in various forms as long as I have - over 15 years now - so there is no excuse not to know that tone doesn't communicate readily through plain text. But it's clearly MY fault for misunderstanding and for convoluting his message. If I just wouldn't be so sensitive, everything would have been fine, but since I have this debilitating handicap, I must be treated with kid gloves. My fault.

"In any case you assume that [I]want to introduce you to a “her”." Well, yes. You told me you had reconnected with an old girlfriend over a month ago, so when you say you want me to meet a "special someone," please keep in mind that you are not subtle, and I am not stupid. I somehow doubt you would refer to a buddy as a "special someone." In these modern times, sure, it could have been a guy, except for that you already told me about "her." You couldn't have been so drunk that night that you don't remember telling me. Wait. I retract that statement.

"Have you been corresponding with CousinM again? She met her last Sunday." WTF. I withheld news about my pregnancy from anyone on his side of the family until I had told Dad because I thought it was only right that he hear first. I had wanted to tell CousinM, with whom I have a far better relationship, but I held back out of an apparently misplaced sense of propriety. The funny thing is, I was the last person to meet Wife 2.0 as well. I don't know why this is. Does he think I'm going to throw a tantrum at the thought of him marrying again, kicking and flailing and screaming, "She's not my mommy!" That's never going to happen. Aside from the fact that I'm not 6 years old, I'm happy to hear he's got a girlfriend. I'm happy he's happy. Mom's been with her boyfriend/fiance for 12 years. I supported the divorce, even back then. I do not and did not want them to get back together once it was done. So why the trepidation? And even though I know it's wrong to apply our principles to others' behavior, it frosts my last cookie that he's treating me like an afterthought again, like I'm the least important person to be introduced or told about this (since he obviously doesn't remember telling me in March).

Point of interest: He met/got engaged to/married Wife 2.0 when Sister was pregnant. Now he's getting serious about New GF, and I'm pregnant. Coincidence?

So I'm wondering. Is age 30 too late to put oneself up for adoption?