/cartman
Well, I’m officially about done with Josh’s mom. Not that anyone could see that coming, of course.
She and her husband bought a new house a while back. She called us middle of last week inviting us to a pool party at the old house (since the new one doesn’t have a pool yet) on Sunday afternoon. Josh didn’t really say one way or the other, but I told him that if he wanted to go, that I’d go with him. Thursday gets here and I figure… why wait until Sunday, why don’t we just go and get it over with on Friday afternoon so that Brian will be with us. We called, and ended up going over to their new house.
We get there and everything’s situation normal – she grabs Liam, who squirms and fusses and pushes her away – he doesn’t know who the hell she is, after all. Mentions at least three or four times how much he looks like Ethan. She sits down and holds him for a while while we’re eating, then I end up taking him – I can’t stand watching him struggle. While we were eating, we mentioned going to Josh’s Aunt’s house. Didn’t really get into depth with it, beyond mentioning that we’d had a good time. She asked about Ethan (his brother’s biological kid, the one that was given up for adoption while he was too high to care one way or another), we said that we had seen pictures and that he looked great.
I totally knew this was pushing buttons, as did Josh. We looked at each other more than once – thank you, ability to share thoughts by sight – and giggled internally. She ended up showing us the house and playing with Brian for about an hour, throwing around some crap balls. We sat in the living room and talked to her husband and his daughter until Liam got fussy, then I decided it was time to go. (insert note here – Liam can’t effing stand to be in the car after dark, thanks to our trip home from his Aunt’s house when he fully lost it, wore himself out, and finally slept) Sometime during the Brian playtime, she did mention to Liam that the next time she sees him, he’ll be walking. That’s nice. Anyhow.
We get outside, Brian gets in the car, I get Liam in the car. He figures out that it’s dark outside and increases the volume. Josh, his mom, and her husband are standing there talking. I leave the door open and partially listen, until she gets to the complaining about Ethan part. She’s never going to forgive them, they stole him (ignoring the fact that she didn’t have ANY interest in keeping him herself), she didn’t want to be a parent she wanted to be a grandparent, she’s the reason they got him, etc, etc, etc. Same old shit. Only this time, we were able to tell her exactly how awesome of a life he’s had. His (technically adoptive, but from the sounds of it they are the only real parents the kid has ever had) parents sound awesome – they spent a few years living in Sweden, he speaks some Swedish, has manners, is smart, and from all accounts will have every opportunity in the world to be a functioning member of society. The kid looks happy and healthy, and is lucky as hell to have ended up like he did…. yet all that’s important is that she can’t talk to him, that he doesn’t know that he’s got family (hello, he HAS a family, that isn’t bi-polary fucked up), and that she was completely wronged by everyone involved. The best part was when Josh and I (at the same time) interrupted her with the “you have absolutely no legal rights where he’s concerned, at all”, and she got all upset. “But I could have!”
She looked at Josh and asked him if he could get her the pictures we took/have of him. He said that he didn’t have them, that I had them all. She replied “But I asked you”. He started explaining that he didn’t keep pictures, that he had backups on his computer only because I’d asked him to (Yes, Virginia, I keep tertiary backups of all images), and she walked away. Turned around, didn’t say another word, and walked into the house. I’m standing there laughing – I hope she heard me. Her husband was left standing there alone, Josh walked to get into the car, so I figured I’d stand there and chat for a minute. He said that he didn’t understand why she didn’t like Josh’s aunt (her technical ex-sister-in-law) so much, that she was nice and polite when he’d met her. I agreed, saying that it’s just as well since she (Josh’s mom) didn’t like me, either. He chuckled, and said yeah, that he thought it was a control issue.
(I’m the only one hearing the bells in the distance, right?)
I agreed, saying that she never talks to me. She hasn’t spoken directly to me since Josh told her I was pregnant with Liam. He was surprised, since she told him that she’d talked to me and apologized – he knew about what happened at the time, and told her that she needed to make things right with us (but of course she chose not to, she let it drag on – just like I predicted). Nope, no verbal apology. We did get that shit assed letter before Liam was born and she talked to Josh once, both to clear the way for her to see him. If you remember (or if you troll back in the entries and find where I talked about it), she took Josh aside while we were at his Uncle’s in Oklahoma and talked to him, alone. I’m sitting across the room with my six month old baby, yet she can’t talk to me. To hell with apologizing, you know, since I was only pregnant with her only (legitimate) grandchild when all this started. Ha.
Oh – Josh’s brother? Apparently back in jail. He’s called collect four or five times during the last couple of days from a <can’t remember the county, it’s north of Austin> jail. Josh told him a long time ago that he wasn’t accepting another collect call from him, the month that we accepted four and ended up paying $60 for them. I want to know what he’s done this time, but not enough to pay fifteen bucks (or call the bitch) to find out.
