I actually had a two good deed Monday and that's certainly noteworthy. The first was the wallet but the second has had a direct impact on my life and P's.
First, allow me to paint a rough outline of the situation. My mom and step-dad were in town from Thursday through to Saturday afternoon. We had a wonderful time with them, on Friday I took the day off and we went down to Monterey to go to the aquarium and then had an excellent dinner that night with some of the hugest and best tasting artichokes I've ever seen.
Anyway, Saturday morning rolled around and P's mom, sister and neice called to say that they were coming down to see us. We were just on our way out the door to go and see one of the local beaches where it was rumored that Nande could go off leash without repercusions. I want to get her used to running around off her leash as much as I can so she gets used to it and stays close regardless of leash or not.
The beach was all it was billed to be, a huge open expanse of sand stretching far south and far north into Aptos just outside of Santa Cruz. Nande was able to run around off leash some and even made a pal in a Terrier named Quinn. They ran each other into the ground until neither was running so much as loping around.
After we'd had our fill of sun, surf and sand, we headed back to the car. P's cell had five messages on it, I think four were from her family. We called them to check in and spoke with P's neice. She said they were eating lunch and she was walking back to the car for something. Since we were hungry, we decided to go and get some lunch and expected that we would hook up with them a little bit later on as they normally liked to do some shopping while in town.
But as we sat down to lunch with my parents at Real Colima (authentico Mexican? you bet!) P's phone rang and it was her mom or sister, I think her mom. And she was irate. Pissed off because we'd had the gall to go to lunch. Pissed off because she felt like we were giving my parents more attention (um yeah, an hour and a half drive is pretty safely trumped by an 8 hour flight, sorry) but we weren't intentionally snubbing anyone. They were eating lunch, we were hungry so we thought we'd eat lunch, nothing more, nothing less.
But P's mum was having nothing to do with our hunger being the main reason we got lunch. She thought we were intentionally passing them over to spend time with my parents. And then she wouldn't let it go. I don't know for sure but I'm pretty sure she thought about very little else for the two days up until yesterday. She'd had numerous phone calls with P and with P's sister (who'd been on the expedition south to visit us) that finally culminated in her already being on one call on her cell with her sister discussing the travesty and her mom called in on the house line.
I answered it and started talking to her, if you can call listening to a mother bad mouth her eight and a half month pregnant daughter like she was a petulant ten year old. Seriously, if I hadn't been in a calm and relaxed mood, I would have come back with as much piss, vinegar and flung poo as she was spewing. It was actually almost shocking to hear her rant about what an awful daughter she had.
So I let her rant herself out until she had to take a breath before trying to cut in. And then I asked her what she wanted me to do about P's attitude. She said I didn't need to do anything. What about P? She should change and be a better person. And that's fine, its a step in the right direction from just impotent fury to actually directing that energy at the problem with a possible solution. Its like putting ten rabid cats in a room and then shaking the room up until the cats are chewing on the walls and each other, open a door and they'll find the way out quickly.
I then asked her to consider the bigger picture in all of this. She cut in (a habit of hers) and said that yes, she knew my mother and step-dad were in town and that she'd been looking forward to seeing them as well as us. I stopped her and asked to take another step back and realize that her daughter, my wife, is eight and a half months pregnant and does she really think that heaping stress upon her is a healthy and good thing to be doing. She replied that P brought it upon herself and started to spin up her rant again. I cut her off and said regardless of how we arrived at the situation, the more important thing to consider is that P doesn't need and can't have the extra stress of her mother's wild rantings.
The bigger picture supercedes all of this petty stupidity and that she would need to bear that in mind from here on out.
That caught her by surprise and she backed up a bit and then got off the line with me after telling me to have P call her when she got off the phone. I don't think anyone's shaken her out of her internally fueled irrational anger and rage in a very long time because it really did throw and I hope that she began to realize that there are far more important issues going on here than a missed visit and slightly bruised feelings.
We're about to have a friggin' baby and I'm not going to stand by and allow anyone to come in and add any stress on to my wife now. Or me. Or Nande. If it can't wait until after the baby's here and we don't have a pending birth over our heads then its probably alot more important than just the issues in one head.
Later last night, P was asleep on the couch when her mom called back again. I answered and let her know that P was resting but that I'd given her the message. Just as I was about to hang up, P stirred and said she'd speak with her mom. They talked and she began to get P wound up again but I sat there and basically told P that I was going to take the phone away if her mom didn't ease up immediately. In the end, her mom acknowledged that it was time to let it go and concentrate on the important stuff, like bringing a healthy grandchild into the world.
And I spent the rest of the night smugly patting myself on the back for breaking a chain of destructive thoughts and shielding my family as best I can from the frenzied assaults of the outside world.
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