The AmtrakPants Award: What problem, in your life, is heading towards a messy trainwreck...or could be? Tell us what actually happened, or the worst-case scenario you're hoping to avoid.

You knew I'd be the one to own this topic, didn't you? And the timing is just so appropriate, speaking of trainwrecks and worst-case scenarios...

For anyone who's just found this entry via clicking somewhere and don't normally read thishere loopy-ass journal, here's the trainwreck sitch: I got engaged er, months ago and have yet to tell my parents about it. Mainly because (a) they haven't even met my fella yet, and (b) Mom's got enough control/losing my baby issues already without adding this into the mix. Adding to the trainwreck effect, he told his family just last weekend, so now I'm really feeling the pressure to tell in case anyone ever compares notes in the future. Meanwhile, Mom has managed to duck out of every opportunity I've given her to meet him with some excuse or other. Since she normally insists on meeting the fellows I date early on, this is suspicious. I think she knows where this is going and really dreads it, even though as far as she knows Dave's a great guy.

Anyway, I had tried to invite Mom and Dad to come up and visit me for this upcoming weekend. Dave has Sunday off from work and wanted to come up here and meet the parents. I hadn't decided yet whether or not to mention to Mom that he might come, given her previous tendency to duck out on these occasions and that she was already waffling on coming. I was supposed to call her last night and presumably deal with this before things dragged on even longer than they've already gone.

Ever since I moved out, nothing has gone right. We'll go a few weeks happily along, then we'll fight for a month because I'm doing something she can't tolerate or am NOT doing something she wants. It drives her crazy that after all those years "you finally got out of the house and can do whatever you want." She says that like it's the worst thing on earth. I said "Did you ever get to do that?" and she's all "No, I got married." Little Miss Proper of course never would have dreamed of doing such a thing, even if it was frigging 1971 at the time. "Don't you ever want to?" She actually admitted she did now. "See, I'm getting it out of the way, then." Despite this example, she still can't stand it that I'm not under control better.

The phone calls tonight just could not have gone ANY worse. No, that's not true. The only way it could have gotten any worse would have been if I'd screamed "I'm engaged, bitch!" into the phone, and then we would be close to nuclear holocaust. Even without screaming that, it was an absolute nightmare. She was yelling at me about the dentist (she wanted me to come home and wait around for a dentist appointment to come up) approximately three minutes into the conversation. She will. not. stop. about this. Then it got into how she thinks I should get a job that I can actually use my skills and education at. Right, like there's a lot of those available these days. I know a computer science graduate who's applying at coffeehouses right now, I'm one of the lucky ones. It also got into how my hair REALLY needs to be curled every single day, whether I want to take that much effort on it or not. Blah blah Jennifersucks cakes.

And of course it eventually got into how I never want to see them any more, I only want to see my boyfriend, how I'm spending all my money going to see him when I should be staying home (with them, presumably), how I just don't care about my family any more, but I'll hang out with his every single weekend... You get the drift. Oh yeah, and the old "no boys will last, only your parents will." She especially didn't like it when I said that I didn't want to come home all the time because a lot of the time we end up in a fight. The entire apartment complex probably heard the screaming.

Fortunately between the time she got fed up and hung up on me and the time she called back, Hill had hauled me out to get ice cream, and then to a bar. The alcohol at least kept me calm enough not to scream at her that time, but I just couldn't fix the damage.

I've decided it's an excellent idea to get a bit tanked before every phone conversation with Mom, and to perhaps keep a bottle next to the phone so that I'm prepared when it rings. Dave was distinctly not thrilled to hear me say that. "It won't solve anything, it'll just make you feel better," he said. "I'm aware of that. Nothing's ever going to be solved, I just want to keep from screaming." And yes, I did buy myself a few wine coolers today in preparation.

At this point, Dave is about ready to do some screaming of his own at her, and it was probably a damn good thing he wasn't there when I called or I'm sure he would have grabbed the phone and said something bad.

I think one of the big problems is that she just wants a lot of attention. Not just from me, from everybody. At one point she was bitching that she'd never gotten to see her grandmother enough, she didn't think that Aunt Babs had bothered to see Grandmummy enough, and that her own sister only bothers to invite her up 4 times a year, while she invites her brother-in-law all the time. (Never mind that Aunt Susie's busy, Uncle Brad's probably doing the inviting, and Kim (the BIL) lives in the same town as they do.)

She wants major attention from me, I can't give it to her. I can't explain why I can't give her as much attention as she wants, and she'd never understand if I tried. That's the bottom line. This'll never get fixed. Unless, of course, I immediately dumped Dave and moved back home and did whatever she said without any objections, because I bet then she'd finally calm down and be happy with me again.

Suffice it to say they are not coming this weekend. Which is a good thing, because one of us might kill the other if we came in contact right now.

Now Dave wants to wait until he gets his license and car (hopefully this will happen within a month, as he's getting a car from a coworker and is just waiting to get an eye doctor appointment before he starts the DMV process) and then drive down to their house and do an ambush. I'm not sure if this is the best idea or not, but trying nicely to do it in person with preparation sure isn't working. I fear, though, that at some point I may just get incredibly pissed off, stop caring about the consequences, and scream the truth into the phone just to well, be mean. Which of course, is guaranteed to make things worse and really drive her crazy.

At the rate things are going, I don't even want to tell her any more, ever. I cannot ever see us coming to a place where this news wouldn't make things even more of a nightmare than they already are.

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