Breaking Down California Part 1

Our visit started mostly ok, once Capt Chaos slept...we tried to have dinner with CalCustom and his family, and ended up not getting back to our hotel until 10:30. We sat through a mostly silent visit, CalCustom not being a conversationalist, watched, My Name is Earl, The Office, and whatever other show comes on right before them. It was interesting, as BB and I both feel that when family is in town, no matter for how long, you make an effort to do things focused on spending time with them. They are, after all, only there for that time. Now, in our minds, this means, you DON'T watch your favorite sitcoms and ignore your guests, family or not. It also means you make an effort to converse with them, catch up with them and their lives.

However, this is NOT what it meant during our visit there. We spent a whopping total of 2 hours, 15 minutes with them outside of the shop. While there (regardless of whether at the shop, or the house) we spoke all of about 6 paragraphs. Total...the whole time...no questions about how things are going with BB's woodworking, or how I was feeling. Not even talking about the shop, and the hopes of the new location, or how advertising was going. It was like being in a room with the girl who stole the love of your life out from under your nose in high school, and your husband (who is the real love of your life), and all the crazy bitter anger, and competitive blood comes to the surface...that cool, collected, go-ahead-and-say-something-to-show-me-what-kind-of-fool-you-really-are electricity is in the air, and it sucks!

Our time at the house was spent discussing what SIL should do when she called the pizza place back to find out where the pizza was that she had ordered an hour before. Turns out, that when it got there, it was cold, burnt, and wrong! Not to mention over an hour after she called to order it. The pizza place graciously offered to redeliver the order (it didn't get there til 9pm), OR, give them $15 in store credit...

Needless to say, it was an interesting conversation, and I was sort of glad when Earl came on, because at least that caused a conversation! We don't watch Earl at our house, so seeing Jason Lee in prison, monologuing his thoughts in a redneck sort of drawl (or at least what I think of as redneck), and watching my BIL squirm at the images of the 2 other prisoners making out did make me chuckle. It was an experience, to say the least, and nicest that I can.

The real reason this grates on my nerves is that CalCustom has never had anything good to say about me, my attitude, behavior, personality. Not even, "nice shoes" about my Chuck's...and he wears Chuck's that have been custom embroidered with his logo! To quote Inkling (thanks for that, by the way!) Oy! It just frustrates me to know that someone doesn't like me, when I haven't given them anything to not like me for! Its not as though I insulted him, his family, his business, or even his dog! I love his folks, my in-laws (most of the time anyway), and am very careful not to talk critically about he, his family, his business, his dogs, or his parents. I don't try to be fake around him, he just doesn't like me. I often wonder if it is because after BB and I got married, we stopped having money to just give him for his business. I think he equates the recent downturn of his business to my suddenly making BB "mean" about helping family...

Eh...that part of the visit is over, and that's all that matters to me...