Yes, Siryn, we are planning on having children.
Now, where did I leave off?
Oh, yeah...wedding plans and all that stuff.
On March 4 was the engagement party, with a formal meet and great for the parents the night before.
The evening of March 3rd went well. We went out to a nice restaurant, everyone had fun and her father actually talked! He never talks! He barely even talks to his own kids!
So, I'd rate that as a success.
The next day, however, was what I would call a Partial Birth Abortion.
First, the restaurant had us all spread out, sitting at three different tables. A couple of days prior they had told us that we would all be seated at one long table, but, oh no, we can't serve you like that. So, it ended up with my parents, her parents and her parents friends and older family members sitting at one table, the cousins, S and I and a couple of my friends at another table, then those who arrived late (S's sister, brother and friends) sitting at yet a third table.
Okay, big deal.
The food wasn't that great - I wasn't impressed.
Then, S proceeds to get drunk. I asked her to please lay off the booze that she was getting drunk.
S: "No, I'm not."
Me: "Yes, you are. I can see it in your eyes."
S: "I don't give a damn."
So, that pissed me off. At that point I started loading up my parents' van with the gifts to take back to the house later, and I went with them back to the hotel so my Mom could take some heart medications and I could cool down a bit. We then went over to S's Mom's house to meet up with everyone.
S is completely drunk at this point, being belligerent and maudlin, screaming "Shut up!" at people, giving her sister the finger, and fawning over every gift, the way it's wrapped, the gift itself, etc.
It was painful to watch, and I'm sitting there trying to keep my phony smile on despite me getting more and more angry.
As soon as the gifts were done, I took my parents back to the hotel, with my Mom in tears and steam coming out of my ears.
When I got back to the house, everyone had left except for a few people. I just retreated into the basement and watched TV, not wanting to deal with anyone. S and her alcoholic friend came downstairs, and I could hear the two of them complaining about S's sister. They finally went upstairs, and an hour later I hear yelling.
S's Mom finally comes downstairs and tells me I need to deal with the situation. I go upstairs to find S in tears, screaming at her Mom "I fucking hate you!" and her Mom refusing to talk to her because she's drunk. I tried to calm S down, but Mom is behind me just going "Take her to bed. Just take her to bed.", which just makes S freak out some more. I finally ask Mom to give us 5 minutes, and I got her calmed down, then finally got her into the basement and put her to bed.
I was seriously tempted to sleep on the couch.
The next day S and I had to go wish my parents goodbye, and we were supposed to have breakfast with them. We went over to the hotel and I told them to just hit the road.
When S and I got back to the house, she wanted to just leave, to go to my place. I told her to talk to her Mom.
S: "I'll talk to her later."
Me: "No, you'll talk to her now."
S: "No, I'll talk to her on the phone later."
Me: "You said some really hateful things to her last night, and you need to talk to her right now."
S: "Fine."
Their entire conversation lasted about 5 minutes and consisted of her Mom telling her "You need to control yourself better."
Oooo, aaaaaah.
We hit the road about 30 minutes later, with me being silent. Once we got to the house, I holed up with the computer and she watched TV. I started doing some stuff in the kitchen as well, preparing dinner, and the two of us just didn't look at each other and barely talked.
Around 5:00 (I've been pissed for 24 hours now), I finally sat down on the couch with her, turned off the TV and said "So, are we going to talk about yesterday or continue with the silence?"
She looked at me for a minute, then she said "I don't know what to say."
I sat and stared at her for 5 minutes, then I said: "Say something."
S: "I will. I just don't know where to start."
Me: "I'll wait."
Time passes while I stare at her.
Me: "Say something."
S: "I'm not ready yet."
Time passes while I stare at her.
Me: "Say something. Say anything. I need you to say something."
S: "I don't know where to start. It's all just a jumble."
Me: "Say the first thing that pops into your head."
S: "I'm just so angry at my Mom and my sister..."
This was after 40 minutes of me staring at her and being silent all day, ignoring her. So, she starts to complain about her relationship with her Mom and sister.
Me: "Do you even realize I'm angry?"
S: "Yes, and it's tearing me apart."
Me: "Do you know why I'm angry?"
S: "All I can say is I'm so sorry."
At this point I'm pretty sure she doesn't know why I'm angry.
Me: "I asked you to stop drinking. You pretty much told me to go to hell. You then got drunker and drunker, resulting in that blow up last night. I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but you get belligerent when you're drunk." (A quick nod from her.) "Last night you didn't just embarrass youself, you embarrassed my parents, you embarrassed your parents and you embarrassed me. When I took my Mom back to the hotel, she was in tears. Her mother was an alcoholic, and she's afraid for you. I'm afraid for you. Didn't you notice that every single gift from your family except one had something to do with drinking? A carafe, wine glasses, cocktail glasses, a wine and cheese set, more wine glasses, a decantur, a bartenders mix book... [Ed: The one other gift was a set of place settings] Doesn't that strike you as sad? Your family, the people who are supposed to know you best of all, they give this to you. They think of you drinking. That's sad."
At this point she's on the virge of tears. No arguments, just acceptance.
We talked a little bit more, then she went outside for a quick walk to clear her head.
When she came in, it was to log on the computer to look up a therapist. Her second appointment is this Friday. She's trying to work through her issues with her Mom and sister (Sister is a controlling bitch, for lack of a better word, and Mom lets her get away with it because it's easier than dealing with it). She's also cut out a lot of the drinking. She went 2 weeks without drinking, then the other night for her Mom's birthday she had a few wines and a spritzer over the weekend. We talked about that a little bit too.
S: "Would you mind if I had a spritzer?"
Me: "I don't care if you drink or not. I worry that you don't always stop. I've noticed you haven't been drinking."
S: "I haven't been craving it."
Me: "Like I said. I don't care if you drink or not. Just don't drink yourself stupid."
In other news, my Ex has totalled her new car already. She cut off a guy crossing traffic, which resulted in the car being totalled. She's fine.
That's 2 cars totalled in 4 months.
Damn.
S and I area also playing a game with cooking now. Each week one of us will prepare something from our imaginations. I went first.
I made a wine, orange and mint sauce. I marinated some chicken in yoghurt, sour cream and spring onions, then saute'ed some leeks, mushrooms, peppers, spinach and zuccini. I put the chicken on the grill, then cut it up and mised the veggies and chicken with some cavatelli. I then poured a very tiny bit of the wine mixture in with the mix. The sauce smelled horrible and tasted worse. Luckily, the tiny bit I added was enough that there was a tiny hint of the orange.
This week was her turn. She made talapia with a butter and lemon sauce. She over cooked the talapia and the sauce was worse than mine!
So, for round one, I won.
I'm already thinking about next week.
I'm going to make gnocchi ravioli filled with kielbasa and spring onions, then make a brechamel sauce with proscutto in it. Should be tasty, I think.
In other news, I bought an
iPod, the 60 GB one. Bought one for me and one for S. Expensive, but worth it. Got a radio turner for it too to listen while in the car.
Now I'm working with iTunes - what a piece of shit it is. I have a very large MP3 collection - 21000 songs, actually. I've ripped my entire CD collection. It was only 17000 songs last night at first, but I have a newer version I've cleaned up with the full catalog in it that I wanted to load in it last night.
I tried deleting the tracks in the library and it took
forever! After 30 minutes, I finally killed it from running. I tried deleting some one at a time after that, and it seemed fast, but, like I said - it was one at a time. So, I selected 20 at a time. It took about 30 seconds to delete!
Holy crap!
I uninstalled iTunes, then reinstalled it. The damn thing keeps its database under My Documents. Duh. So, I just deleted the stupid database and restarted iTunes.
Presto - all clear.
Then, to load it. It seems fast if you're only loading a few at a time, but when you're loading 21000 at once, it takes forever! It was only adding a track about about 3 per second. That's 7000 seconds, or almost 2 hours. I wrote a program that goes through every single one of my files and rewrites the id3 tags in them all, TWICE, and it ran in about 10 minutes. Why the hell does it take 2 hours to process the same list of files to just read the information?
It's not a very efficient program.
We haven't tried hooking up both iPods to it yet to see if we can have seperate playlists automatically synch. That's going to be tonights test.
Which reminds me, in my demented head.
I told my landlord at the beginning of the month that I wasn't renewing the lease. He told me at the beginning of last week (March 12 I think) that he was going to start posting about the place midweek, so, for me to get the place cleaned up.
The house is a hell hole. Plainly put.
Well, it *was* a hell hole. The second floor hasn't been clean since I moved in in '99. I spent Monday - Thursday cleaning the downstairs. I talked to him again on Thursday night to tell him the status of the house.
LL: "Well, I may have somebody who wants to come see it on Monday."
Me: "Okay, should be presentable by then."
Friday night I nearly kill myself cleaning upstairs. S said she would help, but she passed out on the couch. Pissed me off a bit since the kitchen and bedroom were still a mess.
The next morning she got up early and cleaned the kitchen.
I love that girl. :)
I was sitting on the couch for a while when my phone rang. Landlord again, telling me he had someone who wanted to see the house the next day. I humg up and told S he's an asshole.
The upstairs was only about 1/4 of the way done. I went up around 10 in the morning and worked until 6 in the everning. Lots and lots of garbage outside.
You can actually see the floor.
She finished the bedroom and vaccuumed the living room and the bedrooms.
The place was finally presentable. I called my landlord and left him a message telling him the place was done.
It's now Thursday and I have yet to get a response.
We went to Jersey and stayed with her Mom overnight. The following day was the
Pearl River St. Patrick's Day Parade so we went to watch it. Lots of bag pipers.
Afterward, we went to the
Hibernian House, which is basically a club for people of Irish descent. I got a corned beef sandwich, talked to a drunk leader of a bagpipe group, then finally went home because my back was in agony from standing all day and hauling stuff all over the place for the prior two days.
This weekend I'm going to be hauling more stuff around for the Ex. She's coming by Saturday to get some of her stuff out of the house. S doesn't want to be around while she's there, so, she's going to stay with her Mom on Friday night, then I'll join her after I'm done with the Ex. It'll give me some time to pack up some stuff, in any case.
Well, that's about it. It's almost 4:00 PM, time to go home.
Sorry for the time lapse. Bad Freddie.
