hippybngstockng | Hitting the Motherload

uniquecrash5 and I have been in Santa Fe since last Friday. We're here staying in his mom's little guest house that she usually rents out, visiting with the load of moms that's gathered- Crash's mom and grandma, my mom, and a bonus mom of an old friend of Crash who is also his mom's BFF. Santa Fe is amazingly beautiful as usual, and has lots of fun holiday stuff going on to see, and I've been managing to take some lovely pictures. I've been in a pretty good mood and coping well with seeing my mom despite the fact that I am having another one of those really truly awful PMS months where the urge to kill anything that even so much as looks at you funny or challenges the gravity around you is really quite strong. Sleeping in a separate building definitely helps.

I made it onto LJ long enough to post because my mother is out getting new tires at the moment. (I don't tell my mom, my MIL or any family about my LJ, shhhhhh...) We basically forced her to get them now instead of waiting until she gets back, since hers were quite bald resulting in her getting stuck at the bottom of my MIL's steep ice encrusted driveway, further resulting in nearly all of us spending a couple hours with sand and gravel and a lot of rakes and shovels helping her get it back up to the street. It was actually pretty funny, considering, but we're not going to let her go back home without new ones despite her whining.

But the best moment so far really had nothing to do with the holidays or this trip at all...

I called my step-mom and half-sibs to wish them a merry Christmas, and ended up having what I'd have to call THE TALK about dad that I had always wanted to have with my sibs, with my little sister. For the first time since their divorce she started bitterly complaining to me about dad, and how she doesn't miss him and how pissed she suddenly finds herself about her whole childhood and what a shitty non-fatherly attitude he had toward all of his kids and his family in general. We bonded about that feeling, and the feeling of puzzlement he brings up in all of us. She even opened up to me about how she's started worrying she is seeing signs in herself of following Dad's footsteps as I also have with the depression thing. I cautioned her to deal with it early and often, and without feeling any shame over it. I also got to tell her a lot of the things I'd been holding back all those years when I was hoping it wouldn't go badly, and how I had always wished it would all been different for them. I even told her about asking him politely to try to do a better job with them than he had with my mom and I and how disappointed I was in him for all of it. I think she always knew it wasn't easy for me to talk about him, and to him, but now she knows how and why and I feel a lot better for it. I love the fact that both she and my brother are becoming adults that I can discuss things with. I love the people they are both becoming, and I wish there was an easier way to see them more often. *waves fists at scientists who are dragging their feet on that whole matter transportation thing* Anyway, I also promised to get over myself and call them far more often than I used to, making sure she knew it was my stupid damage over how he never called me that often kept me from picking up the phone myself before. It felt really good to get to say all that, finally, like releasing pressure from a valve that's been stuck for a hundred years, even better than the similar talk I'd had with my step-mom.

Today feels like a giant let-down in comparison, since my PMS is keeping me from being able to talk to most everyone else calmly about anything more complex than the weather. I miss being at home. I miss our life, strange and imperfect as it is, and I just yearn to get back to it. Being here now just feels like waiting to go home even though there is still the promise of more fun things to do this week now that Ln and Km are here. There's even been plans to hang out kid-free and do fun things like drink, but my heart is not so in it as before. Our flight is on Friday, and I really hope the coming snow isn't going to make that change. Also, please cross your fingers and think pleasant harmless thoughts about me going through immigration coming home. We couldn't locate our marriage certificate, and only have a printed receipt for my newly renewed visitor status (third? fourth time since we've promised we would file for permanent residency) and some other bonus receipts to make us look less reprehensible about the paperwork we are dragging our feet on. All going well I should be home Friday night. I took pictures this time, so you might actually get to see them!

I hope everyone who celebrates it had a good Christmas, or a good whatever holiday you celebrate, and that all your dinners and parties or lack there of were all that you'd been hoping for throughout the year.