"How much shit are you required to take from your parents?

I mean, when do you draw the line? When can you just walk away and say, "I'm so done with this!"? -michelle

"You still didn't tell her, did you?"

I had no intention of telling Dave what went on with my mother when he called back. Apparently I am one sucky-ass actress because he figured out something was wrong. ("When you start to swear about every other word and throw them in with no context...") He was quite shocked to hear the "pull rank" comment, and asked repeatedly if she knew what was going on here. Yup, she knew, and she said it anyway.

"And I thought my parents were going to be the problem ones."

He doesn't want to start out marriage with a big old family war. Sadly, I think it's pretty much inevitable. Mom resents the hell out of him for taking her baby, and why would that change? Anyway, he started making a big deal about getting onto school insurance instead of my parents' (I'm not on my parents', I'm not sure where he got that) and otherwise not getting money from them, getting my stuff out of my parents' house and into a storage unit, going down to visit them instead of waiting around for (a) them to visit me (given Mom's attitude, even I must admit this isn't going to happen), or (b) us NOT to be fighting, him talking to her on the phone when I call her, and some other things that well, kind of bug me.

He wants me to make up with her, even if it means I have to go visit her more often. Frankly, I don't know if I even want to make that much of an effort any more to please her. I am so very unhappy talking to her any more, I don't think I can take being trapped with her for an entire weekend. I would have been relieved had she really gone through with cutting me off, knowing I wouldn't have to go through this crap any more.

I think he's going to insist on telling her soon. He's even debating calling her up, deliberately picking a fight with her, and then telling her himself if I won't. Nice, and why don't I just give her a boot to the head while you're at it? I feel sick at the thought. I can't take it all getting worse, and that WILL make it worse. Of course, everyone tells me "how much worse can it get?" It can always find a way, lemme tell ya.

And to finally add to the fun, Mom called back to tell me that my grandma has gone to the hospital. She's been popping Grandpa's blood thinners (God only knows why) and started passing out. Mom was semi-snotty about it, saying that she thought I might want to know. Since I'm such a selfish bitch who doesn't care about anyone else but herself, you know.

I did not want to get up this morning.

They have a counseling program here for employees, which is free as far as I know. I'm thinking about calling them up, but then again, I think I need more counseling than they can give me in 1 or 2 sessions.

On a cheerier note, I got a reminder from Geocities saying that my old journal was still online and needed to be updated soon or they'd delete it. I was in total shock. I thought that thing had been deleted years ago, given what site it was located on and that I hadn't updated it since September 1999. I'd gone looking for it, but it turned out I'd forgotten the URL and was looking for the wrong one. But to my happy surprise, it's still there. Overladen with every GIF I could find on the web in 1998, filled with purple prose about my ex and his other girlfriend (for those wondering about the poly relationship I had, that's where it all is). I'm glad it's still around for historical purposes, even if it looks quite silly. I really need to save all the entries to disk so I have a record of what went on back then.

I haven't decided whether or not to link to it here. It has my full name, my ex's name, and various other identifying details about me at the time on it. This journal is semi-anonymous, as in I don't put my (distinctive) last name here just to avoid the Googlemonster. However, anyone who ever found it and knew anything about me would know it was me, so um, yeah. (I'm not good at maintaining anonymity.) I did link it off of 3WA in the current journal pimp threads, since my last name is already outed there anyway, if you want to look. I may post it to the notify list instead in a day or two if I don't mention it here.

I forgot to mention this one earlier, since I've been um, distracted. It happened on Tuesday right before I dropped Dave off. We were once again discussing the Mom dilemma, and he made a crack about us eloping and not telling her about it "because Mrs. F" (his long last name) "was too hard to spell." At the time, I thought it was fricking hilarious.

Later, however, I thought "Er.... didn't I tell him that I was not going to be Mrs. F? Twice?"

Why do I have the feeling he's ignoring that whole thing?

Honestly, I really don't want to change my name. It's an enormous pain in the ass to change your name, I'm the last of my family, I've published under this name already, nobody's going to be able to identify yet another Jennifer if I change it, I LIKE my last name and think it's pretty, I really don't like the "property" connotations of changing it when nearly all guys would refuse to do the same thing, and "Mrs." is so not my style. I don't feel like a "Mrs."- the mental image I get is someone who's around fifty, cranky-ass, and lost that lovin' feeling years ago. Not to mention that his last name is as long as mine and even worse to spell and "Jennifer F" really sounds funny. After drumming my name into people for all these years, to stick myself with the same problem, different verse, oy. It all mainly sounds like a big pain in the ass for me to do just to move up higher in the alphabet. And let's face it, the idea I had before meeting him of doing the Rodham Clinton thing if the situation arose really has to go out the window when both of you have long last names that nobody can spell. They don't sound good together either. I have very good reasons for not wanting to do it.

But after that remark... I keep thinking of this thread on Indiebride. If you look at all the posts from Mimi (and yes, that's me responding in this thread too), well... I am starting to have the horrid realization that I'm going to end up in the situation she's in. Specifically, this line: "So his argument for me taking his name is that a) he wants us to have the same last name b) he always assumed his wife would." It's creeping upon me that Dave is probably thinking those things too. I can certainly see him wanting us to have the same last name, anyway. And he definitely seems to keep on assuming I'm going to take it.

Argh!

You know, I'd add it on to mine if it wouldn't make such a mess for everyone. If one of us had a shorter one, I'd probably do it anyway. (I can already hear Scott bitching about trying to spell it. I don't think he can even spell Dave's name.) The both of you having the same name thing can be cute. But I don't want to be the only one stuck with the problem and being harassed all the time about my decision. I never dated anyone before who was all "Take my name" about things- heck, one of the ex's liked my name better than his- nor have I dated anyone who very much wanted children. I am thrown for a loop here and I don't know how to deal. I never thought I'd have to deal with issues like that.

Lord, I have nothing to do at work. I've finished everything there is that I'm allowed to do. I can't really do anything old-position-related because the new folks are supposed to do training on those materials, and we're not allowed to put the rest in until the computer system's up and running. I finished the testing I was supposed to be doing already, and have been d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g ass on filing just so I can look busy (I was told to "go slow"), but it's going to be done SOON. And then that's it, I have no more work to do at all until Monday when the computer system gets an upgrade. I'm glad the boss isn't here to notice, but she'll be back tomorrow. And I've begged for extra work, but I've DONE it all. The in boxes are empty. What the hell am I supposed to do? I'm not "supposed" to surf the web, but I have nothing else to do. I can't even water the plants or file or straighten or reorganize anything, because it's DONE. I am stumped. I feel so lame. What a waste of 16 hours. I need the pay, but yikes, what else can I do?

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