We Survived

As we waited to be picked up from the airport last night I turned to Sweets and sighed "well, we survived it."

He asked "so was it worth all the anxiety?"

I asked for clarification "Do you mean, was it bad enough to warrant said anxiety?"

He nods.

"Oh yes, it was worse than I thought."

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We arrived on the 23rd, chatted with MIL and step FIL for a little while, but mainly about Fiona (younger SIL) who is still living at home, and causing WWIII type arguments with the parents.   It's been bad, and she's only been living with them since October.   I'll save that story for another time.

We drove out to Sasha's house the next day, and the trip that should have taken us 2 hours, took 3 plus with all of the traffic that we hit.    We checked into the hotel, and then made it over to Sasha's house.   Sasha is due in early April with her fourth child, and it took my about an hour to get comfortable enough to look at her.   I distracted myself by playing with her DARLING three other children (who are all wonderful and under the age of 6) and chatting with other people.     She was constantly rubbing her belly and while I had to choke back tears a couple of times, I don't think that anyone noticed.

We hung out there with the whole family until they went to bed, and then let everyone know that we'd be by about 10 am the next morning.   Sasha's hasband exclaimed "You aren't coming over to watch the kids open presents?!?"    We responded "Nope, because 6 am is 3 am for us, and we just can't do that."    I should add that we had told both MIL and Sasha that this was our plan WEEKS ago.

That night, for the first time EVER, Sweets asked me how I was feeling.   And I broke down into tears, which shocked him because I'd apparently been doing a very good job of hiding it.    So I had a good cry and we went to sleep.

We got up the next morning at 9 am (6 am our time, which is extremely early for the two of us), got up and dressed and got over there just after 10 am.

And everyone was so mad at us that non of them would even look at us.   I thought it was just me, and spent the entire day acting like nothing was wrong, forcing myself into conversations, playing with children, helping in the kitchen and acting like everything was fine.

When we got into the car that night to go home, I expressed to Sweets that everyone was acting weird, and he said "yeah, they were all mad at us, and wouldn't even look at us."    This made me angry.   I would much prefer them mad at me, and ruin my day, then make Sweets feel bad.   I mean, they are his FAMILY.  He's supposed to ENJOY being with them.     It was awful.

We both agreed that at least we'd put in our time and wouldn't have to do this for many years, though.

MIL had told us that they were going to leave the next day at 11 am (they had their own car), so we got up early again, got ready and headed over to SILs house.   AND THEY HAD ALREADY LEFT.  literally 5 minutes before we showed up.     We actually asked Sasha what the deal was, and she lied through her teeth and said nothing was wrong.

For the next two days, we managed to avoid MIL and step FIL for the most part (who went back to acting like nothing was wrong) and mainly just hung out with Fiona.   Fiona is currently involved in some personal drama which is all self inflicted, but it kept us busy (if not exhausted).


It was bad.   It is over.   I won't have to deal with that for at least another 5 years.   Hopefully by that time we'll have kids and we can use it as an excuse not to travel.  :)

On the plus side, this drew Sweets and I back together.    We kept commenting that we were so glad that we were together, and that's all that really mattered, and that the whole rest of the world could all just go to hell.    We were the calm in the storm for each other.   Isn't that what marriage is supposed to be like?