Venting in Oz

[Guest guest]

So yesterday my daughter was out running errands & decided to drop

some paperwork at nada's. The plan was to call upstairs in the

retirement building where she lives, drop, and flee. Even though it

so happened my teenage nephew was visiting at the time & he could

have just run down, nada insisted on coming down with him &

thoroughly questioned daughter about me (what daughter calls The

News Report) and also about my dad (from whom nada's been divorced 27

years). But the punchline is that nada hands her a note, written on

scrap paper, dated Friday 6/13 & written in her own hand, stating

that " [Nada] is a parish member in good standing of St.

Aquinas Church. " It was signed by the parist priest - or at least

the signature didn't look like her writing. If he did actually sign

it, I can't imagine what he thinks…!

She tried, hard, to give daughter a clock/radio/white noise machine

even though my nephew was clearly dying for it (my daughter

ultimately refused it); nada, as is usual, did not ask anything about

my elder grandson, only about the baby and me. We think she doesn't

ask about the 5 y.o. because in the events leading up to NC

we " busted " her for behaving inappropriately with him & trying to get

him to keep secrets. And of course, there were tears when daughter

left plus a phone call after she left, with more tears. Needless to

say, we're going to mail anything else we find. The weirdest thing

is, I bet nada thinks she's really shown me now, with " proof " from

the priest. (She's contacted daughter a handful of times since I went

NC in November to let us know she's changed. Going back to the

Catholic church is just one such change.)

On the fada front, I couldn't reach him on father's day but caught up

with him yesterday, having talked briefly to him 2x last week due to

his having heart surgery last Monday. I told him (okay, I was

bragging to him) about daughter getting into a semi-prestigious local

leadership program, and in explaining what it's about (learning

leadership skills, how to work in groups, presentation skills, etc.)

he launches off into a diatribe about how much he hates to work in

groups, that most people are idiots & the problem with working in

groups is that you have to continually tell people their ideas are

stupid. How as a supervisor (he was a company vice-pres/pres during

most of my childhood) his approach to working in groups was to " fire

the leader " , and how the worst thing you can do is promote a good

worker into a leadership position. Blah blah blah the problem was,

he was always too smart to work in groups. I have a lot of trouble

working in groups myself. Hmmm....

Then, completely in mid-sentence, he cut me off to go play gin rummy

with his wife.

Both my folks are so f***ing bizarre sometimes I can't get my head

around it; right now is one of those times. I can't wait to get the

Narcissistic Family book, I am hoping it will answer some questions &

hopefully provide some tools for moving past all this. Thanks for

reading, all.