Notes from a visit

[Backdated entries added after this one so far: Harry Potter]

Likely there will be a plethora of posts in the next 24-48 hrs as we all recover from this state visit from Carl’s dad.

I’d forgotten what it’s like to have a specifically untrusted person in our home, and 4 days – with no work or other regular breaks, although he did go out with people other than us twice – was a long time. The bolded “un” is Carl’s dad’s fault, but the territoriality is all us. It is tiring for me to run interference against the system in the name of hospitality, although both Lyr and JJ did some interfering as well. But Magdalynn gave several looks of death and nearly had an argument or three (see below for one). The system kids were whiny and consumed some leftover Hallowe’en chocolate, smuggling it into our bedroom so as not to share with someone they didn’t like. Etc. etc.

We are sometimes very odd, I must say, at least inside our collective head.

Carl’s dad (CD) is a bit of a bully. I don’t think he means to be, really, but he’s the classic kid with a chip on his shoulder grown up. Bullying is the default setting. Sample conversations, which pretty much summarize most conversations, were like this:

CD: Well I guess this house isn’t bad for what it is.
Me: … [there just is no response to that]

Carl: I like Tage Frid’s [woodworking] books. Some of those joints are just art.
CD: Oh well, Tage Frid’s all right but you know who I think really has the right of it…

Me: (ground beef in hand) How does a spaghetti with a ragu sauce sound?
CD: You know what makes a really good sauce? Italian sausage…

CD: I noticed you had a book of runes downstairs [He really did poke through our books, which are quite the eclectic mixture including a fair amount of multiple, gay & lesbian, psychological, and left-wing texts]. Do you read runes?
Me: No.
Lyria: But I do have a tarot [faery oracle] deck.
CD: Oh really? You know B. (CD’s live-in gf and former Other Woman) has a tarot deck and is really gifted with it, now I’m sure you like to mess around with yours, but she takes it very seriously…

Noah: (grunting on baby monitor after an almost 2 hr nap)
Me: Oh, time to get Noah.
CD: I don’t think he’s really awake.
Me: He’s definitely awake; those are his awake sounds.
CD: How do you know he really wants to be awake?
Magdalynn, rising on the defensive edge: That is how he lets us know.
CD: What would happen if you left him?
Magdalynn: He would get louder, and then start to cry.
CD: Don’t you think you should let him do that?
Magdalynn: Why?
CD: To see where his limits are.
Magdalynn: He is three months old. It is not very difficult to find his limits –

Here she took a breath, which let us all remove the about to be bitchy cult queen from the area. (Besides, Noah was indeed grunting.) We retrieved Noah, she went in the bathroom with him to hiss and spit more-or-less metaphorically, and then we retreated to our Rachmaninoff and rocking-chair laden nursery haven. However this was not the end of the parenting advice!

He just has to have a one-up on everything. Everything. And because he’s an extrovert you hear quite a lot about it in four days of relentless chat. That being said, he surprised me with a few of his observations and remarks this trip, when he was just talking and not one-upping me or someone else, and they were insightful and pleasant. He also read some, which I didn’t expect – in previous visits he hasn’t been able to entertain himself at all. So it wasn’t all awful.

And although he insisted on his gay-hating, Harper-conservative political commentary, when I continually pushed mildly back or teased him a bit about promoting stereotypes of Albertan rednecks, he actually took it in relative good humour (or at least matched my determined good humour). In fact I was going to give him a pass and not even bitch about him here for posterity until this morning.

So here is the morning.

I was up quite a lot last night dealing with nursing stuff because I developed a clogged milk duct yesterday (apparently stress, and rushing feedings, can do that, both of which were going on a bit this week until I learned to shut the nursery door and turn Rachmaninoff up so as not to hear CD ask if I was finished nursing yet over and over). So this morning it did grate on my nerves a little that CD was coughing outside the nursery door – you know, the ‘yoo hoo’ cough – because there was no one around yet to make him coffee. To be fair he did not know Carl ended up working 11 pm – 4 am on a problem at work, but it still bugged me.

(The coffee pot is on the counter, and when guests are here I leave the coffee and filters beside it. You know, in case someone is up at 7:30 am on Sunday and wants coffee and I’m not up yet. I also invited him to help himself to anything in the fridge or cupboards but I knew he was unlikely to do that.)

Anyways then it grated on my nerves a little more that after I juggled baby and sore boob to make the coffee, Carl, who was sinking deeper and deeper into the passive-aggressive behaviour that it takes for him to survive his family, made himself breakfast without offering any to his father (or me).

But I still offered to make french toast after Noah was settled because, you know, hospitality is that you make a nice breakfast for people right? And CD said no, he’d rather have what Carl was having because he could have it now (toasted ciabatta bun). So, since Noah was fussy, I said to Carl directly “can you help your dad with his toast.” (note the lack of question mark!) and he did. So then I was joshing Carl about getting himself breakfast & not us. It’s hard to get across in text but it really was with an undercurrent of good, if dark, humour, because Carl knew he’d been a little ridiculous and I knew I was being a little ridiculous to be harping on it and we were both by now beaten down to being about 15 yrs old and united against the common enemy.

But CD said, seriously and helpfully “I’m sure Carl would be willing to eat some more toast.”

Because he thought I, a woman, was grumbling that I did not get to make my husband’s toast!

I’m sorry, but on the feminist scale that gives me the latitude to bitch on the Internet. :)

And now we have our life and home back, although we now have what I think is a pretty-much-unclogged but still-worrisome milk duct and a milk blister which was hurting like fuck-all nursing but seems to be improving a bit, and because there actually is a serious risk of mastitis, now we not only get to, but must, spend the next couple of days taking it easy and applying heat to the boob before frequent nursing and basically nest in our nest.

Yay nest.

I probably will backdate entries but list them here. Gradually. I do have a date with some bedrest. :)