Graduations

OK, this one is not about Evil JB, but about her decendents other than hubbie.

Hubbie graduated with a second degree from community college a couple weeks ago. He invited his sister to come.  He'd have invited others, but did not have enough tickets, but he did send them announcements.

He also invited my parents and his best friend.  He found out who his real family is.  My parents and his best friend.  That is who showed up. 

Not a word from his sister, nieces, nephews, or family.  I am not surprised at that.

What did surprise me is that yesterday, an invite came in the mail to great-nephew's high school graduation.  Great nephew being SIL's grandson.  Great nephew is not in our lives.  Hubbie sees him once a year when he crashes his nieces house on Christmas Eve.  Until now, their family has never made an effort to reach out to us.

Now this is an accomplishment as he is the first person since DH to graduate high school.  Hubbie parents and sister did not graduate.  Hubbie graduated in the 1970s.  None of SIL's 3 kids graduated high school.  Nephew is graduating because niece happened to get a college educated man to get her pregnant then later to marry her.  (Niece got pregnant with him when she was 16.)  This nephew's influence was definitely from his father's family and not from his mother's, DH's family.



I do wonder why we got an invite?  Is it a gift grab? Do they expect us to take out a day and go? (isn't happening, my own nephew is coming HERE to visit me that weekend)?  Just being polite?  I think the first maybe.

When I got the invite, I was a little confused.  Nephew is so out of our life that the return address on the invite did not even ring a bell -- since it's niece's son, he has a different last name from the family.  I actually thought that it was one of those invites that you get that's to an "inspirational seminar".  You know what I mean, I'm sure.  When it was for a high school, I first looked at the front to see if it was addressed to US or if I opened the neighbor's mail.  Then I saw the city, and said OH, HIM. 

It gets better all the time!

Wow!  Can't believe it's been so long since I have posted.  It's so good to be free!  Got through wedding anniversary and Christmas with barely a though of her.  I read through my posts on both blogs and some of the incidents listed on them, I had actually almost forgotten.  Isn't that great?

Another "whew" week

I just remembered this one: the Fair.

Several years ago, we ran into some of DH's aunts at the state fair.

The year before evil JB died, I ran into DH's niece at the fair. Had not seen her in years due to cut off. I did not tell DH that I saw her, but I told her that I saw somebody he knew who knew him and knew me.

I feared that after evil JB heard that we had been seen at the state fair, that she would start making the pilgrimage to go.

But she died before the next one, so I did not have to worry about it.

Dreams

This was not really about evil JB, but about her granddaughter.

Last night I dreamed that I was at this niece's "house" and her little dog came at me and bit me.

(in real life she does not have a house. I don't know if she has a dog)

Asked her "husband" if the dog had its rabies shots. (in real life she does not have a husband)

This man got beligerant with me and told me that rabies shots are unnecessary.

I got ready to call 911 and they would not tell me the address. Then I woke up.

Glad I didn't have to start getting those shots before I woke up!

Freedom Increases

It has been a while since I posted.  Which means that my freedom has increased.  Holidays seem to be the big time.


Last one listed was July 4.  My birthday came later.  50th birthday.  No worries.


Then Labor Day weekend which is a major event for the hobby I am in.  This event is officially Saturday and Sunday.  But it gets started about a week before.  Many people go earlier.  Because I went out of town to this event without hubbie, I always worried that if Evil JB got wind, she'd have hubbie over.  So I arranged it like this:  I took Friday off and went Friday and Saturday. I made a point of leaving there by 3:00 on Saturday which put me back home in time for a late dinner with hubbie.  That would not necessarily keep him from going to the in-laws, but it did the trick.


After evil JB passed, hubbie decided to get involved in this hobbie as well.  So he goes to the event with me now.  The thought of HER doing something to interfere of course, never came into play.  But then Saturday, he wanted to stay another day, but said "but you have your routine and feel that you HAVE to leave by 3:00".  I said "we can stay as long as you like.  I always left then so that I could get home to you.  Since we are together, that is no longer an issue."  And as a matter of fact, if hubbie had been going with me before Evil JB and Evil EJ left, I would have probably not been anxious to leave at all, but wanted to stay longer to be out of their clutches.


So that passed.


Now the big holiday season is approaching.


Wedding Anniversary, then Thanksgiving, the Christmas and New Years.
This year is 25th anniversary. Have not decided yet what to do.  At 20th anniversary, did not decide even up until leaving for trip.  My plan "get as far away as possible".  With the unsaid words being "away from EJ and JB" followed by "so that they can't spoil it."


This time, distance from them is not part of the equation. 


Then come Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.  Since Not so Evil SIL, GR has no interest in hubbie, it's not an issue for that either.


Other people are trying to plan around their in-laws.  I can relax and say ahhhh.  There are still events I'd like to avoid.  The boring cocktail parties, etc.  But those events are ones that I would choose to attend over being around the Evils EJ and JB.


Hubbie does still have dreams of family with his sister.  But she barely acknowledges him.  She gives him last minute notice of things.  Last year I almost missed church on account of that.  This year I won't.  I will be participating in the service in some manner.

Independence Day, Part 2

I remember turning off the answering machine before holiday weekends because evil JB used the extra day as one that my hubbie, her son could do for her.

I always felt on edge on holidays.

This time, I did not feel that way. Just a relaxing three day weekend.

Field Day

In the past two weeks, I've had two of those Ahhhhhhhhh moments.

I am so totally detached that I didn't even get around to posting the first one. The second one was a delayed ahhhh.

First: I am a ham radio operator. We have an annual even that is the weekend of the 4th Saturday of the month. Part of hubbie's family has a reunion the weekend of the 4th Sunday of the month. 6 years out of seven, this is the same weekend.

So many years, I got dragged off and had to miss the second day. And after cutoff, I still had to worry about Evil JB using it to get him there (even though it was technically Evil EJ's side of the family, there were some relatives of hers there too. Family tree wasn't like one that didn't fork, there were some parallel branches.Evil JB 's Aunt was married to Evil EJ's uncle, so their kids were first cousins to both, for example.


So this year, hubbie and I are participating in this event. I did remember in the back of my mind about this family reunion, but I had mostly forgotten it. Hubbie got called by his sister on cell phone when we were on our way between two sites. He told her on the phone that he didn't know what he would be doing. He asked her how she was and then said "what's wrong." Sister is trying to take his Mom's place, but it isn't working. Instead of going to try to fix her problems, he gives her advice on some things to try to fix her problems. He said to me "she called to tell me that there's a reunion tomorrow." I said "kind of late notice isn't it?" No answer, but it was the last word spoken about the reunion.

Evil JB used any excuse to get hubbie down there to fullfill her santa/shopping list and her sonny-do list. He generally spent most of his time with her and very little time at the reunion. And it's one of those reunions where the people who were there that HE had connections with were his sister and her family. Both parents came from very large families, he didn't even know how many cousins he has. And there were so many that they sort of knew who each other was. No connection.