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Tags: family vacation
Published : 1 year, 2 months ago (Wed, 07 May 2008 17:51:10 PDT)
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We do have high-speed Internet access in our hotel room - albeit intermittently - so here I am. I knew you guys couldn't wait to hear how my vacation's gone so far, LOL.
We spent Saturday night and most of Sunday with Dad and N. And that's about all I could take. It's not that N is mean or anything, but it was an exhausting, annoying experience on several levels. My initial impressions of N:
1. She's a bit flakey. Several times, she would ask a question like, "So how was your trip?" We'd reply that it was fine. Then, a minute later, "So, did you have a good trip?" This didn't happen a lot, but just enough for us to feel like, "Okay, is she paying attention or what?"
2. N likes to talk, or listen to someone else talk. She can't spend fifteen seconds in silence. She even admitted to having the TV on at times just so she wouldn't talk to herself. If we were in the back seat of Dad's car being driven to the restaurant, and no one was talking, she had to fill the void by saying something to us or asking a question. That really grated after a while. I'm not the type of person who has to chat non-stop every single minute, and constantly being forced to do so was draining.
3. Mix N with a drink, and the flakiness goes up by a factor of 10. Every time we went out to a meal with Dad and N, Dad would order something like beer or wine prior to the meal, while N always ordered something on the harder side - a martini, a Bloody Mary, some concoction I'm not sure about. She's a fairly petite woman, so you can imagine how drinking on an empty stomach affected her. Our first meeting with her was at a restaurant, and when she saw me she immediately got up from the table, kissed me on the lips, and proclaimed loudly, "Oh, aren't you adorable!" Bassman and I both thought, "Boy, she's sloshed." I don't think she has an alcohol problem, though. She always limited herself to one drink just before the meal, at least in our presence, and once she got some food in her, she calmed down a little. But I quickly learned to just go with the flow with her for the first ten minutes or so. (I could tell Dad was a little embarrassed by this, too, so it may have been a case of her imbibing because she was nervous.)
4. N and I have very few interests in common. Although we could chat on a superficial, social level, we have different tastes in a number of things. And she's far more of a social butterfly than I am, which makes her perfect for Dad but not so great for feeling close to on my part. I showed her our web site while we were there, and she seemed to like it, but not in a "I'm going to check this out when I have more time" type of way, if that makes sense. She also doesn't strike me as the type of person to do a lot of reading. I suspect that if I get a science fiction novel published, she'll be like Dad and just sort of put it on a shelf to say, "Oh, writes_stuff published this. Isn't that nice?"
5. Her little 2-year-old Japanese Chin likes Dad, but it doesn't like me, even though I got down on the floor with it and petted it. Bassman thinks it's because I smiled while I was really close to the dog's face, and he might have thought I was being aggressive. The dog has no clue about human behavior in that respect, I guess. In any case, it's a typically nervous, fragile toy breed that was purchased at a pet store. Not my kind of dog at all. Vogue could eat that dog for breakfast.
6. N likes to be blunt about what she's thinking. While disconcerting at first, it was the one refreshing aspect to her personality. I'm not talking about her being rude or anything, but little stuff like saying to my Dad when he stops in the street on the way home to chat with a neighbor, "Don't talk too long. I have to go to the bathroom." Mom would have just sighed and rolled her eyes and bottled up that little resentment. So that was a good thing, I think.
As for Dad's interactions with N and her family, these were my observations:
1. Dad defers to N for a lot of decision-making. He took us out to eat the entire time we were with them. He wanted to take us to different places. She would convince him to eat somewhere else. And inevitably, we would eat at someplace we didn't like. The first restaurant was fine, but going there the next day for brunch - with N's son and his family, whom she told Dad she'd invited when we stopped by their house to pick her up, and he then felt obligated to pay for - was a bit much. The third restaurant was a seafood place, on the shores of the Indian River, with a cold 15 mph breeze blowing through the open windows the entire time we were there. Dad knows I'm not a big seafood fan, and we'd eaten so much already that Bassman and I just had a couple of non-seafood sandwiches, which perplexed N. N also insisted on a lobster appetizer without asking us what we wanted, and I hate lobster (although this thing was so bland, it didn't make a difference). And Dad just sat there and let her control the whole thing. Ugh.
2. Dad doesn't share a lot with N. He hadn't told her about our web site, for example (although he'd mentioned my weekly Vogue photos - he hadn't shown any to her, though, even though she has Internet access). He hadn't told her about my writing fiction. He'd just told her that I was a really good singer. Mind you, I haven't sung in public in years, and it's not what I'm into right now. But I believe that's all he told her about me. She never asked about my writing or what I did with myself during the day, and there wasn't really an opportunity to say, "Hey, I also write. In fact, it's the most important activity in my life right now." I don't know what was up with that. Is he embarrassed by his daughter who hasn't done anything with her life because she's not published? Does he think the web site is stupid? In any case, it was annoying.
3. It was also annoying watching how Dad interacted with N's granddaughters (6 and 9 years old), goofing around with them and teasing them. I can't recall that he'd ever treated me that way at their age. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom at one point while he was doing that because I was about to cry.
4. Dad hadn't told N that he was trying to find a new home for his dog, an elderly Sheltie who hates other animals (he was abused as a young dog, and while he's okay around humans now, he's extremely territorial with any other animal, no matter how small it is). I think the only reason Dad mentioned anything at all to N was because she started talking with us about how they were going to get their two dogs to get along. The vet had told Dad it would be next to impossible to do that - not without keeping the dogs in separate rooms for months, maybe. But Dad hadn't mentioned anything to N until now. She thought it was a shame, but she didn't argue with him. After all, her dog is her "baby," according to her. Also, Dad boarded the Sheltie the entire time we were there. He said it was because of my dog allergies. While I do have those allergies, I've stayed with him plenty of times in the past without those allergies acting up, because I'm never there long enough for them to kick in, and my medicine is sufficient for it. And this time I was staying at a hotel, so it's not like I was even going to see the dog for longer than a couple of hours. I think he just thought I was going to get all teary-eyed at the Sheltie being sent away. While it does piss me off that he getting rid of the dog who stood beside him when Mom died, I would not have created a scene or tried to get him to change his mind. One of those dogs has to go, and it's obviously not going to be N's. I did NOT need to hear, though, that if he can't find a home for the dog he would just take him back to the shelter and risk him being euthanized. That was unnecessary to bring up. And I would have appreciated seeing the Sheltie one last time to say goodbye.
5. Dad's gained weight. He was always so careful about his weight in the past, but now he has a definite beer gut. He's not exercising a lot because he's got a bad knee that he's been told for a year now he'll need to get replaced (he's scared of surgery, so he's been putting that off). At the same time, though, he's eating out constantly. Look, if you can't get the exercise and you expect to remain trim, you need to cut back on the calories. It's that simple. But he's not doing that. And that bothers me, because he's effectively cutting back his life expectancy precisely when he should want to live as long as possible. Doesn't he even care how he looks to N?
6. Dad annoyed the heck out of me at the first restaurant (the one we went to twice) because he knows all the staff there, and he kept getting up to chat with them. The owner actually came to our table and had her meal with us the first night, and then the owner's parents (in town for a few weeks) came over to talk with everyone the next day. Our conversations kept getting interrupted. I murmured to Bassman at one point, "Okay, I'm ready to scream now," and he replied, "Me, too." Also, whenever we were in Dad's car and he was driving around the neighborhood, he would stop and talk to anyone he saw. I'm serious. He'd stop, roll the window down, and chat for about five minutes with them. Okay, yeah, I get it that everyone likes you. But right now, you should be concentrating on your daughter whom you haven't seen in three years. This is one thing that drove Mom nuts, and I can definitely see why.
7. The good news: Dad and N have no problem talking about Mom respectfully, and N seems to appreciate that Dad had some good times with Mom. Dad has also told me that they're keeping separate bank accounts and everything's remaining the same as far as his estate planning goes, with one annoying exception that I won't go into now. It's not a big deal at the moment, though, so everything's okay as far as that goes. Oh, yeah - he said I didn't have to worry about "disco dancing" with him at the wedding. I doubt that his knee is going to allow him to do much dancing, anyway. So that's a big sigh of relief.
Overall, the weekend wasn't exactly a disaster - I do think those two probably deserve each other, and I could tell that they enjoyed one another's company - but it still bothered me on several levels. After the June wedding, I don't think I'll be taking too many trips to Florida in the future, at least not to see them. But I can see going down to see my friend J once in a while. We had a really good time visiting with her. As this entry has turned into a tome, though, and we have to get ready to go to Epcot tomorrow, I'll stop for now. More later... :-)
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