I hate unpacking and I’m tired. Besides, Puppy is off doing something fun–it’s ok for me to take a break.

The trip was up and down and up and down and….
My first impulse is to say that I hate his father. It probably is an overstatement though. His father is going to be a problem for me probably for the rest of his life, though I bet we will eventually come to some sort of terms. I will never again be at that man’s beck and call night and day. Of that I am 100% certain. I am never setting foot in that RV again. I will be renting a car during all future visits. I will not stay at his house. My schedule will never be at his beck and call. He is a total jerk. Specifically: he is fond of telling people what is expected of them at the very last second and then getting really angry when they are not finished when he would like them to be. He also never gives anyone enough information and gets really frustrated when they don’t read his mind. He likes to yell and give orders when it isn’t appropriate. When things are going his way, and everyone is jumping fast enough, he can be ok though. I refuse to ever be at his mercy again. But he isn’t actually evil and I probably don’t actually hate him. I just don’t deal well with his style of interaction. He is incredibly self-centered and rude and…. I wanted to shoot him many times during the trip.

The step-mother is stupid. Literally. I think she has a low IQ. By the end of the trip I reached the conclusion that I will probably never care enough about her one way or another to have an opinion. She is annoying, but I tend to just ignore the annoyance factor from people who are that stupid.

The little brothers are awesome. The youngest one, who called me the sucky girlfriend early in the trip and made me cry, turned out to be really cool–he’s just an almost 12 year old boy and he says rude/stupid things sometimes. For the last two days whenever anyone said anything that wasn’t polite to me he would give them a dirty look and say, “Don’t say mean things to Princess! She doesn’t like it.” The boys were calling me Mother 4 (Bio-mom, step-mom, then long-time friend’s mother come before me) and when I told them to do things they would get up immediately to do it. They totally ignored their father. It was funny. We spent most of the last three days talking and getting to know one another and I like them both a lot. They are going to come visit us and I can’t wait. 🙂 I think staying for the RV portion of the trip was worth it just to get to know the brothers. I rescued the littlest one when he fell out of the raft during the white water rafting trip (ok, it would have been dealt with by someone else and he probably wouldn’t have gotten seriously hurt anyway) and he called me his hero. 🙂 The older one is heading into high school and we had some pretty adult conversations about interactions between people and ways to handle different situations (his father was yelling at him constantly) and I think I probably helped him get through the trip without some tears because he was on the verge several times.

And Puppy and I had some really awesome adventures. It was lots of fun with him. It was indeed a learning experience. Staying was the right call.

Ok. Well. His dad seems to be talking to me this morning, but after hanging back and watching his family interact at breakfast… that may be a bad thing.

Wow are they violent and hostile. You know how people think I am abrasive? I am an infant in the world of hostility. Good grief. Maybe I am just totally misunderstanding their behavior and they only hate me as much as they hate everyone in the whole world.

It still hurts my feelings. But maybe I can stop crying.

Yeah, the wedding wasn’t easy. First off was the fact that I didn’t eat enough early in the day and we had to arrive at 4:15 for a 6:30 wedding. (They were doing pictures first and really we didn’t need to be there till 5, but apparently Puppy’s father is always so fucking late that they lied to him about arrival time and he showed up on time for once.) Dinner wasn’t until almost 8. It was blazingly hot and I felt horrible. The ceremony itself was really sweet. It went longer than anyone was happy about (heat, humidity, constant threat of thunder storms…) but I liked the whole thing and found a lot of beauty in seeing the meshing of the cultures. The vows were awesome, “I promise to clean up my dishes in a timely fashion and laugh at your jokes…” “I promise to let you sleep in on the weekends and tell you I love you every night before bed and at other spontaneous times…” The two people getting married seem like they could be cool, not that I will ever get to know them. The groom looked freaked out the whole time and I wasn’t sure what was up with that. Probably part of it was that he had on a tux and then the kittel? over it (which is a robe thing that he will keep and wear throughout his life for ceremonial stuff). He was sweating buckets.

I sat by myself in front of this young couple (they are both English teachers) who were making dirty comments before the ceremony. Girl: “I am so sticky and wet.” Guy: “Cool!” She blushed three shades of red; it was very charming.

I felt really on the outside; I didn’t really know anyone and that felt awkward. His father has basically stopped acknowledging my presence and that is a problem.

During the reception Puppy and I talked about taking his younger brothers and the two elderly infirm men in the family home so that the others could stay and enjoy the party. When Puppy suggested this to his dad he was told no because his strength was needed to load up the vehicle later so he couldn’t go. He said I could go home with the nasty aunt and crew instead. I didn’t do this though. Instead I threw a temper tantrum (well, I told Puppy in a very unhappy voice, “Oh that sounds fun” and got up and left the table and wandered off into the woods) and spent almost an hour by myself. Puppy eventually found me while I was on the phone with Japlady and we talked about the shit that was going on. I took her advice and told him about how his family has been treating me. He told me that I am misinterpreting, that there is no way they are actually treating me that way and he wishes that he could help me fix the part of me that is broken and sees insult in everything. I let the situation go and he and I actually had a lot of fun together at the wedding.
We spent most of our time wandering in the woods and we had sex and several blow jobs and I took my clothes off and he dumped water on me (dear god was that good) and we talked and kissed and played. Eventually we danced to the band and had cake and between the two of us we had a lot of fun. (We did the polka and West coast swing and east coast swing and cross-step waltz–he is massively improving.)
When the party was finally winding down his dad made a number of really nasty comments about, “I don’t know how I am going to load everything in with three people… This is so much harder than it has to be…” Really he was being an asshole. I almost suggested that I go home with the step-mom because she was alone in her car and didn’t have much of anything in it. But I didn’t, and there was a huge amount of empty space in the SUV anyway so he was just being a dick. On the ride home he completely ignored every single thing I said. I felt really shitty. When we got home and crawled into bed Puppy told me that I was right about how his dad was treating me and he has no idea what is motivating it. They are spending the day together today because I am going to go spend the day in DC by myself (anything to get away from this treatment) and Puppy said he is going to ask his dad about it because it isn’t ok. I don’t really want to cause strife between them, but I also don’t appreciate being treated this way.

I feel like I don’t know what to do. Puppy has been basically pleading with me since the day we got here to respond naturally and actually say the things I would normally say because he believes that is the only way his family will respect me. I have been doing so and now his father (and the step-mom stopped speaking to me as well by late last night) is treating me like a pariah. I don’t get to leave for five more days and I am going to be spending two of them in an RV with the whole fucking family. This seems like a recipe for disaster to me. *sigh* I just want to cry.