wonderful, wonderful weekend

Let’s talk about my exciting and eventful weekend, shall we?  Well, I’ll talk; feel free to tune me out.

First, my younger (and only) brother got married this past weekend.  The wedding was beautiful, lots of fun, and they had gorgeous weather, if a little on the cold side.   I got to be a bridesmaid for the first time ever, and I was even paired up with AMP, as he was a groomsman.  We ate a delicious never-ending Italian dinner, drank lots of yummy drinks (I may have spilled a few towards the end) and danced the night away. 

Second, my brother-in-law has moved out of our house, into a place of his own 15 minutes away.

I’m honestly not sure how much I’ve talked about this situation, but here’s a quick breakdown.  Summer of 2009 AMP and I bought a house.  It has an unfinished basement that we planned to finish and rent out.  AMP decided that he had a job opening at his work for his younger brother, and that his brother would move out here from his hometown, and he would live in the finished basement.  It seemed like a great idea, but I was quite adamant that there was no way the brother (let’s call him BIL) was going to move in till the basement was completely done, or at most a month or so away from completion.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way.  The job was an immediate opening, and in October, BIL started coming over for a few days at a time to work and learn his job.  He officially moved in to our house in December.  Work on the basement started – we hit a few snags with the City, and that lengthened the process.  Months were going by, and the living situation had started to get very frustrating.  Of course it was.  It was a difficult situation after all, AMP and I still being ‘newly’ married, and his brother is an introverted person who only had a tiny bedroom to escape to.  Also, BIL is spoiled, the youngest sibling of 4, who was doted on and not really used to pulling his own weight around the house.  He helped out some… But, anyways, let’s move on.  AMP was excited to finally get to spend some time with his brother, since with a 9-year age gap, BIL was not even a teenager when AMP moved out of the house and 3 ½ hours away.

Fast-forward to now, 10 months after BIL moved in, the basement is finally at dry-walling stage, looks like the end is within reach, and I get told that BIL has decided to start looking for his own place.  I was a little upset at first – not to have BIL move out, because I was totally ok with that, but because it seemed like it was out of nowhere, and a little strange that it was happening now, when the basement was so much closer to being completed.  I found out on Wednesday of last week that BIL was looking at places, on Saturday he had moved out. 

And now I’m incredibly excited.  It’s so nice to have the house back to ourselves, I can finally run around naked if I want to – well at least after AMP fixes the furnace so the house stops being at glacier temperature.  And, it’s actually fun to spend time with my brother-in-law again, now that at the end of the day he returns to his own place.

So, that was my exciting weekend (and this will count as my ‘happy’ post that I owed you from last week!).

Guilt Gene

I’m not the type of person who meets women who don’t work (whether moms or not) and thinks, “What do they do with their time?”  I know that time has this funny habit of slipping away, and especially moms have their work cut out for them.  I try to be respectful of people’s time, their commitments and obligations.

So, why the hell can’t people have more respect for my time?

I work two days a week – the same two days every week. That means that three days of the week, I don’t trek into the office.  But that doesn’t mean I’m sitting at home with my feet up watching TV or reading a book all day.  I have plenty of things to do – like my 70 hours a month volunteer commitment, or cleaning my house, or going to the gym, or grocery shopping, or laundry, or the million other things that I could be doing.

But, let’s look at what happens on a typical day off:
My mom calls needing something, my dad texts me saying it’s been so long since he’s seen me that he needs a picture to remind him of what I look like, my brother calls wanting to know if I can help with some of his wedding stuff, my future sister-in-law texts me panicking that I haven’t printed off her wedding invites yet, my cousin needs help with the paperwork for her father’s company, the car needs to be brought in to be fixed, there’s dry-cleaning to be dropped off, AMP needs me to pick up something from the store, AMP needs something returned to the store, my grandparents are in town and need to be brought to a doctor, my aunt complains I never visit her anymore…

And, no, there’s very little exaggeration in that… That has actually happened on multiple occasions.

The problem is, I think I’ve inherited my mother’s ‘guilt gene’ – and not in the sense that I guilt people into doing things (though my mother is able to guilt me into doing a lot of things), but in that, I feel guilty saying no.  I will rearrange my plans and postpone what I want to, or should be, doing, to do all these things for other people.

I know AMP should take first place, and I try to do the things he wants and needs first.  After all, he’s been wonderful about not asking me to work more, even though we could use the money to pay down debt.  But, I have such a weakness when it comes to my family. 

I could be on the other side of town, and if my mom calls me asking if I can go pick up some bread for her, I’ll drop everything and do it.  

And, my dad does so much for me, that I feel incredibly guilty not doing things the few times he asks for something. 

But, the wedding thing is starting to drive me crazy.  My brother and his fiancée are getting married in 5 weeks.  Neither one of them seems incredibly into planning the wedding.  My sister-in-law(to-be)’s father has a heart condition and his health is a constant worry, and the mom has her hands full with that, and doesn’t seem to have much worries about the fact that her daughter’s wedding is 5 weeks away and they still haven’t figured out the décor, the flowers, and many other important details.

Which would be fine.  My response is, if they don’t care about putting the time into their wedding, that’s their problem.  Especially when my sister-in-law calls and asks me if I can do something wedding related and when I ask where she is, she says the beach.

Have I mentioned that we’re Italian though?  Have you ever been to an Italian wedding?  They are elaborate thought-out affairs.  Mine was relatively simple, but still took 10 months to plan, and lots of time and effort.  We had a 5 course seated dinner for 120 guests. 

My mom is determined that my brother’s wedding should be at least as nice as mine was.  I kept things simple, but thanks to my mom it was beautiful and elegant.  But that leaves my mom shouldering all the wedding planning responsibility, because if she doesn’t do it, no one will. 

And with my mom’s health (she has Multiple Sclerosis and a myriad of other health issues), her responsibilities for her sick parents, and her own life, she is becoming exhausted.  So, when she calls me asking me to help out with my brother’s wedding, I say yes, not for them, but for her.

So there goes some more of my time, whether it’s printing out and addressing invitations, or going with my mom to look at favors or decorating ideas, or helping throw the shower that the bride’s side should be responsible for, I’ll do it for my mom and to quiet the ‘guilt gene’.

And then, I’ll come home and make dinner, and clean the house, and do some laundry, and cringe that I missed going to the gym again…              

              And then I wonder why I feel exhausted all the time…

Love

 

LOVE

It was your love for me that made it hard for you to let go.  You fussed and worried.  No one was ever really good enough.  But, grudgingly, you came to realize that he truly loved me.  He would never hurt me.  That your little girl was not so little.  That she was in love – the real, forever kind of love. 

And so you let go.  You helped me plan the most spectacular day – you made most of it possible.  You made all the calls I wouldn’t.  You spoke to caterers and decorators.  You spent hours and hours.  And, so I thank you.  I thank you for all the work you put into that day.  I thank you for all the time and love you put into me.  I thank you for loving me, raising me, and letting me go.

I thank you for being the most amazing mom.

I love you.

 

The Learning Curve

1)      Describe someone in your life you might not know as well as you think you know…   From Mama Kat’s Writing Workshop

The Learning Curve

AMP and I have been married 2 years and 4 months.  We started dating 5 years ago summer/fall.  I like to think that after that amount of time, I know him well.

And I do.  I can rattle off any number of random facts, likes and dislikes.  I can tell you how he’ll react or respond in most situations.  But, every day I seem to learn something new about my husband.  That’s normal I guess.  After all, what else is a lifetime for if not to learn more about each other and grow together as a couple? 

When we got married, it was the first time we lived together and spent the night together.  It was strange, and absolutely wonderful, to wake up next to him.  It was interesting to learn his quirks and idiosyncrasies.  How was I to know that shampoo bottles in the shower would make him cringe?  Or that he would rather have dishes on the counter than piled in the sink?  It was a learning process.  We learned what would make each other tick, and what we had to compromise on.  We learned to live with each other’s quirks and idiosyncrasies. And we’re still learning.

I love learning new things about him.  I think we covered all the major, life changing, deal breaking details while we were dating.  I know how he feels about marriage and how he abhors cheating.  I know that he’d rather not have children.  I know that he needs a certain amount of alone time.

I’m talking about the little details.  The details of his childhood; the opinions I never realized he held; the nuances of his feelings and thoughts. 

While watching The Soloist a few weeks ago, I learned that AMP played the cello for two years. 

While visiting with my mother-in-law, I learned that he’s been a morning person since birth basically.  She told me that they knew it was time to teach him how to tell time when he started bringing her coffee at 4 a.m.

While driving the other day, I learned more about his past – the girls I’d rather didn’t exist, but that I can’t help being curious about.  I learned more about his feelings about his relationship with his father.  I learned how these things have made a difference in his life, his emotions and his personality.

AMP is still the same person I fell in love with. 

The things I learn just add to that person – to the person I chose to spend the rest of my life with.

It helps me to understand him better. 

And it makes me love him more each day.

the little brother

J and I have always been close.  Sure, we fight.  We don’t always agree.  But we’re close.  He looks up to me as big sister and he tries to take on the role of big brother/protector, although he is 3 years younger than me.  Throughout the changes growing up brought, we’ve always gone to each other first (or second – depending on circumstances) when we needed advice, or just to vent.

Now, more often than not, J is second, or third in line.  A is always first, but sometimes it’s easier to talk to my cousin Principessa* than to J.  After all she’s married, around my age, and is a girl.  But that doesn’t change how close J and I are. 

Which is why, when he was planning his proposal to his girlfriend S last weekend, he relied on me. 

Perhaps it is a bit unconventional to have people around when you are proposing.  When A and I got engaged, we were alone.  But my brother had a plan – and in order to surprise her, he needed help.  And, he asked me – his big sister.

So, after two days of phone calls every 15 minutes, it was arranged.  A and I would pick up S on the pretense of going to play tennis at an indoor court.  We were to be meeting J there at 8:30.  When we arrived, J was standing at the top of the stairs.  The tennis courts were in the lower section behind glass, visible from the entrance.  He pulled her close, and brought her to the glass, raised the blinds, and she saw this:
And she said yes!

 And, so my little brother is getting married this year.  They are planning to be married in October. 

And sometimes I worry that J and S are too young – but I wish them all the happiness in the world.  And I hope that despite all the changes life brings, we’ll always be close and always talk and always be there for each other.

- Inspired by prompt #4 at this week’s Writing Workshop by Sleep is for the Weak.