montecristo

For the last two weeks, I've been arranging to take Jackie and Shannon with me on May 13th to go to a free annual concert and fireworks display called Ka-boom over in San Francisco. So, tonight I called the ex to see if there'd been any change of plans regarding what Jackie and Shannon are doing this weekend. I knew that the two of them already had plans for this weekend, but if they had changed for some reason sometime during the week, I figured maybe I could go get them for a weekend with me. As expected, plans hadn't changed. Okay, so much for that idea. No problem.

At this point though, the ex casually mentions, as if it were a mere matter-of-course, that she and her current spouse have been invited to Oregon by relations of his on the weekend of the 13th and she wants them to meet Jackie and Shannon, so naturally, my plans, meager as they are, have been unilaterally preempted. I am forced to wonder if it's just me, and my admittedly biased parents, or is there anyone else on Planet Earth who thinks there is something wrong with this picture:

My two-week-old prior plans for doing something nifty with my daughters, on a weekend supposedly scheduled as my time with them anyway, are being preempted because she wants to take my daughters to visit her current "hubby's" (gah, and am I glad not to be any longer the object of that revolting term myself) cross-eyed grandma, his bow-legged uncles and knock-kneed aunts to whom they have no more relationship than total strangers. This after their invitation comes down two weeks after I'd already made my plans. It would never occur to her to give him and his inbred relatives a simple, "No, I'm sorry but the girls already have other plans at this time." She had no problem telling my family that, and my grandmother would have liked to see her great-granddaughters again before she died. Hell, she doesn't even seem to have any trouble telling me no, and I'm their father. Sheesh. The funny thing is that it's not even out of any consideration for him or his family; it's only because that's not what she wants to do right now.

From your red balloon,
You were a super high-tech jet fighter,
Floating over Planet Earth,
Come back down here,
I'll show you where it hurts,
Take this bitter pill,
Is it easy to swallow?

Sometimes, I get to feeling charitably disposed to that woman and she never fails to remind me what absolutely drove me crazy in dealing with her while we were married. She's so ridiculously self-absorbed. For all of the time I have known that impossible woman, I have swallowed the fact that I am absolutely last in any consideration in her book. It's just so damned corrosive. No, it's not malice, per se. That would imply some thought, or at least negative consideration being involved. There isn't. There just isn't anything in the universe worth her notice other than what she happens to want at the time, no matter how trivial. It's frustrating. You know, if I believed in curses, I'd curse her to experience what it is like to be put last for every time she has done that to someone else. Who knows, she's a good example for our daughters, and what comes around goes around. There may be some poetic justice waiting for her yet, not that it really makes a damned bit of difference to me, really.

I don't know why I bother. She's rubbed off on my daughters as well. Of course, they're teen-agers, so maybe it's just age, and they'll grow out of it, but I really don't know. A bad marriage is just the gift that doesn't stop giving. Despite this transitory disgust though, I don't even know why I bother to complain. In the first case, I made the decision to get involved with her in the first place, so I might as well deal with it. At least I don't have to be so intimately wrapped up in it anymore. In the second, well, I am used to it. In the third, it's really not worth the exasperation. It won't change anything. It's wasted energy, like being annoyed because you can't teach a pig to sing and juggle. I really just need to shut my eyes and recite, "She's not my problem anymore," a few times, until the irritation subsides.