12.29.2003

All Snestled in Bed

Or at least back in my own cozy little home. So happy to be here that I will ramble on for a good bit.

Yesterday was our first day back. We arrived home well past midnight, were completely wiped, all slept in, and as a result weren't able to rally ourselves to leave the house in search of food until well after noon. We decided to chance Suraj's spectacular lunch buffet on the chance that Leelo might have forgotten how much he likes naan bread (we haven't taken him there since August) and it went well. He's so used to being denied that he only made a couple of half-hearted requests before tucking into the pancakes we brought for him.

Then Seymour took off for the mountain on his bike, and the kids and I went to the park to meet up with Ep, JP, Clyde, and all their kids. Should have brought flak jackets for the two women who were forced to listen to hurricane-force tales of Seattle woe.

So here is what I think the problem was: personality and lifestyle conflicts. Please again understand that I truly adore all of my in-laws. It is not their fault that I am a hermit and require long stretches of solo time in my cave, or at least the opportunity to let my kids run amuck in an environment that does not require every shred of my attention span. Add on top of this several days with four or fewer hours of sleep, a week's worth of being on-call socially (no one's fault, just the way holidays are), being teased for not being a Republican, a super-high-energy boy who couldn't be left alone for two seconds, standard holiday stress, Iz incessantly battling with her cousin Leigh (I wanted the princess cup! No, it's my turn!), and zero down time, and you have one grouchy squid who takes pleasure in nothing and feels martyred by everything.

Also, I kept fucking up in front of my mother-in-law, who is an amazing, wonderful, generous woman and the antithesis of mother-in-law stereotypes (she is more deferential and considerate than anyone I know). She is probably wondering how her poor sweet son got saddled with such a lazy, unkempt shrew. And my screw-ups weren't just little things like shutting the dishwasher wrong (so all the crystal clatters and shakes) or sniping at my partner in public. No:
--I miscommunicated to her about babysitting for the Nutcracker, forcing her to find an additional babysitter at the last minute for my infant niece Kylie (who is darling but mobile and really only wants her mommy, and is not a compatible baby-sitting companion for dervish Leelo, at least not in that house).
--She came up as my sister-in-law and I were discussing the Sienna situation and how I am having trouble getting our lawyer to call me back with his promised Family Law lawyer recommendation, and asked us what we were discussing so urgently--turns out that somehow she was never informed about our plans. Nice thing to drop on the lady on Xmas Eve, don't you think?
--I was so proud of myself for getting Iz and Leigh to sit down and do art projects in the kitchen! It didn't occur to me that they were using markers next to pristine and difficult-to-clean white walls--I was so pleased to have them busy yet not zoning out in front of the TV that my powers of observation shut down.
--No matter how much I watched the kids (and I watched three of them--Iz, Leelo, and Leigh--a lot--we all did), somehow my mother-in-law always left right before and returned right after my shifts, making it look like Seymour did all kid-watching for the entire trip.
--I was generally not very helpful due to the aforementioned exhaustion (my fault, poor time management) and extra Leelo-watching needs.
--Plus, as mentioned in a previous post, I'm just not any good at figuring out how to step in and help. It is flummoxing. My mom gets it. My sister-in-law, again, totally gets it. To me it is like a foreign language.
--And finally, since I am again a complete asshole, I used her computer to complain about her house (the house of the woman who paid for our plane tickets and has spent the last few weeks doing everything she could to make our Xmas wonderful). And I think that I may have forgotten to clear the history.

I am a jerk. A complete jerk.

However this does not mean that I deserved to be subjected to Fox News all week long.

This is getting long. I will finish tomorrow. Here's Iz feeding the reindeer that came to visit us at her grandparents' house:

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