I always end up looking like an idiot in front of my inlaws.
And it really does hurt that they never want my help. It's even worse when I offer my help and it falls through, making me appear to be more of an idiot. Twice.
So Aunt Irene died on Saturday morning. Jewish people usually have a pretty quick turnaround on funerals, which means--not to be crass--but those of us with small children have under 24 hours find a babysitter. And it's made even more difficult when 8-10 inches of snow are predicted in that 24-hour timeframe.
My parents understandably didn't want to drive two hours round-trip in the impending snowpocalypse. I thought surely I could count on our regular sitter service, so I even called my inlaws to ask them if my SIL needed childcare and wanted to share our sitter. She already had childcare taken care of. Of course.
Well, then the sitter service couldn't find anyone willing to do it.
None of the teachers at school could do it.
A friend with children the same ages as mine offered to take all three girls, but she could only do it if Bella's birthday party got cancelled and all the kids could stay at her house. Naturally it was only raining during the appointed time for the party/funeral, so the party happened as scheduled. My friend graciously took AM to the party, but she understandably couldn't take all my children and all of hers to Bella's party, and of course I would never ask her to.
It was a first class clusterfuck, resulting in Mr. Twinkle and me showing up at the funeral with E and B in the car with us, switching off during visitation while the other one sat in the car. Meanwhile, my SIL, who doesn't even live here, apparently had no trouble getting childcare. Her boring friend Christa did it. Christa actually has a business called Suck and Swallow Specialists, LLC, which doesn't actually sound that boring. But I promise she is.
Anyway, a distant cousin of Mr. Twinks found out about the situation and ended up offering to stay at my inlaws' house and tag-team all the babysitting duties with Suck and Swallow. And I accepted, because I'm not averse to taking help when I really need it. But we still sort of ended up looking like idiots who can't get our sh*t together, while my SIL always, always, always has her fucking sh*t together, even while finding childcare out of town.
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Today Mr. Twinkle called me. He wanted to know if I could ask the school if cousin Sophie could go to E's class tomorrow (this has happened in the past and hasn't been a big deal). I called the school; the school said fine. Like an idiot I texted everyone to let them know it was all good to go, because I so crave a pat on the back from these jerks.
A few hours later I heard from the principal, who said that actually they have an extra kid in that class on Wednesdays so Sophie can't come. So I looked like an idiot yet again, and had to text my SIL and say never mind. Since I had a sitter booked for tomorrow (I'm going to that luncheon at the Woman's Club), I again offered for my SIL's kids to come over and stay with my sitter. My SIL said no thanks; they have it covered. Of course they fucking do.
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And I think the worst of it is that they don't really look at me to get to know me. They have no clue how fabulous all of you are, and how fabulous I am just by proximity to such amazing, interesting women. I know my SIL does not have interesting friends, and I'm not just talking about Suck and Swallow. She has one friend that I know up in Connecticut--she's cool and I like her. She's a big, loud, funny northeasterner, and she actually humanizes my SIL to me a lot, but she couldn't hang with you Southern fabulous girls. I feel like, as with everything this family does, my SIL is friends with people out of obligation, because they're Jewish or because she's been friends with them forever--whereas I'm friends with people because I like them and find them interesting. She happened to find a gem in that one yankee girl that I've met, but I bet you she'd never have given that girl the time of day if she hadn't been Jewish.
And when I sent that ill-advised text today announcing that Sophie could attend school tomorrow, I really did want everyone to say, "Yay, Twinkle--great job! Thanks for taking care of it!" because it is a good feeling to be useful and to do someone a favor. And that's my problem, because I can't force those people to appreciate me, and of course no one did, and they never will. And now I look like an idiot and a flake and my SIL should obviously just arrange her own childcare and bypass me altogether because I'm incapable of getting my sh*t together. Twice.
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Also, Sophie is a mean girl who tried to make E feel bad for being younger (because being almost three-years-old instead of four is totally E's fault) and I so wanted to make Sophie be in her class at school. And if she couldn't be in E's class, I really wanted to make her stay at my house with a babysitter and Baby B. Maybe I'm a vindictive b*tch, but you don't mess with my sweet baby E.
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Also, Sophie came to my house and I fed her a smorgasbord of sweets. It seriously was the most decadence that kid has ever seen, and she could not control herself in the face of all that excess. She also found one of Baby B's pacifiers and was kind of hiding it behind her back. I was like, "What do you have behind your back, Sophie? Oh, I don't really care if you have that. You don't have to hide it. Go for it!" So even though she annoyed me by trying to exclude E (whom AM totally stood up for, by the way--Twinkle sisters stick together!), I'm still sort of angling to be the only adult who ever says yes to anything fun. And let me tell you all--when it comes to the Fun Sink family, it isn't that hard.
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