Twinkle: The End of My Long, Long Fuse

There are times on here when I’m so glad I have recorded petty grievances, because if I hadn’t, new developments would make them seem even pettier, more convoluted, and harder to explain, It’s better to record everything so when new insight comes to light, analysis is easier.

In general, in life, I have a very, very, very long fuse. I don’t generally get mad at people. I usually look the other way about small disagreements, and assume the best from people. I don’t really pay attention to perceived slights from others, and I’m mostly happy with my friendships. I have a long fuse, but on the very few occasions when that fuse is spent, after years of either abuse or neglect, I am fine walking away. Once someone crosses a line, I can abandon ship without worrying about it, or even giving it a thought, because at that point the act is so egregious, and the person has bared their ass to such an embarrassing and irredeemable degree, that I no longer care.

I’m at that point with my SIL, L******. I never really thought I’d get here because I don’t care that much to begin with, but recent developments have shown me who she is. She’s not as harmless as I previously thought.

I was dishing with my nail tech today. She also does the nails of the mother of the bar mitzvah boy, S***** who I mentioned in the last post. My nail tech was doing a little digging about the whole out-of-town gift bag situation. She knew I worked hard on the bags, and she was investigating to see if this was S******’s way of micromanaging me. (I never really thought that, but I appreciate her investigative spirit.)

In the course of the conversation she had with S******, my nail tech said that S****** denied trying to micromanage me, and seemed truly grateful for the gift bags I made. (She did seem grateful.) But S****** revealed that my SIL, L******, had mentioned to her that the $200 Venmo that she sent to my husband—instead of to me—had been on purpose. As in, she intentionally Venmoed his account and not mine because he had “paid for everything in the gift baskets.”

Well I guess he did pay for everything in the baskets, seeing as how I don’t have a job. So why ask me about it at all? Why not go directly to him? 

This, dear reader, was what led me to the end of my fuse.

First, let’s go over the text exchange:

L****** (a propos of nothing): Hi, Twinkle. I wanted to reach out and see if I can contribute/help with hospitality bags for J*****’s bar mitzvah. I can send some items to you or split costs. Whatever works best.

Me: That is super sweet! I have already gotten everything and didn’t keep track of costs. You can Venmo me whatever you want and I’ll let S****** know you wanted to be part of it. (Three heart emojis)

L******: Okay. Sorry I’m late to the game. Have any inkling of cost? Anyone else help out?! How many bags were there?

Me: There are 28 bags and I’ve got a Diet Coke, water, a Chips Cookie, a mini Sissy Cake, a box of assorted candy in J*****’s color palette, and a salty snack.

L******: Fun ! Does $200 sound okay?

Me (not needing help—being GRACIOUS): Perfect! Thank you!

L******: Done!

Me (twelve minutes later, not seeing the Venmo come through, send her my Venmo info)

L******: Oh crap. I already Venmoed [husband]. That ok?

 Me: (crying emojis, laughing emojis) It’s ok.

—-

Ok, so I thought it was sort of funny and I assumed the best intentions—as I always do. It was slightly annoying, but it’s all going to the same place so I didn’t make a big deal. It would have been nice to have $200 of fun money in my Venmo account, but at the end of the day it’s either going to my nail tech or housekeeper, and if it doesn’t come from my Venmo account, it’s coming from the bank account that I share with my husband, so it’s not like I can’t get to that $200 just because she Venmoed it to him and not me.

However, hearing that she intentionally sent it to him and not me—and the fact that she discussed this with our mutual friend  S******, who discussed it with my nail tech, is hugely insulting and enraging, and it has resulted in me being at the end of my fuse with her. Suddenly, I see that she’s not all sweet and harmless. She’s not an understanding ally who also faces persecution to a lesser degree from my overbearing MIL (the way I have mentally framed things these last few years). She’s just as much of a sinister bitch as my MIL has always been, and now I can’t unsee it. I can’t go back. The fuse is gone and there’s nothing left.

Here are my problems:

1). She said my husband “paid for everything.” We both took pride in the gift bags and brainstormed them together. He went and got the Sissy Cakes because it was fun for him to visit the UK coach’s mom’s business. He coordinated that one small part of it—and I appreciated it— but *I* did the bulk of the work, including physically putting each Sissy Cake into each bag, along with the rest of the contents that I organized and procured. I wanted to do this, because, again, I care about the bar mitzvah boy and I also have fun with creative projects. I suspect she knew all this, as implied by the fact that she reached out to me at all about it. For her to reduce this work to a monetary amount—that she cut me out of—when I spent a lot of time and energy on it was an insult. To text me about what help I might need and intentionally then go around me with the money part of it feels gross.

2). I do actually have a business account where I keep my money from selling my fabric pattern designs and other items. I make significantly more than zero dollars from this each month. I theoretically could have used some of these funds to pay for items that went into the baskets. It’s possible I did, and if I did, a replenishment of $200 would have meant a lot more there than it did in the real bank account. If L****** had ever bothered to get to know me, asked me a question about myself, or paid attention to what I’m interested in, she might know this about me. Instead, she just made assumptions about who paid for the items. Our accounts are not her business, and it wasn’t right of her to assume. I’d never discuss any of this with her, but if she tried to know me better in these twenty years I have been married to her brother, she might know about this little side hustle of mine. If she actually cared, she would know that I could have contributed monetarily, too.

3). Possibly the worst and most hurtful aspect of this is that she didn’t assume good intentions from me.  She texted ME, and she said she would Venmo ME, and then she Venmoed my husband because…did she assume I would steal the $200, or hide it, or go off and have too much fun with it, never telling my husband about it? When it happened initially, I was slightly annoyed, but laughed it off because I assumed the best of intentions from her. It never occurred to me that she would try to keep it from me and then discuss her reasoning with a mutual friend. 

It really feels like this family doesn’t assume the best of intentions from me. And they don’t try to get to know me. They simply do not care about me. I actually wear a necklace with a cross that that says the letters IC XC NI KA—it’s an ancient Christogram that means “Jesus Christ conquers death.” I wear it right in front of their faces because I know they won’t ask me what it means, because they’re not interested in anything about me. And they never have. They. Do. Not. Care. Today SIL went from being a boring and beige sort-of ally, to someone I no longer trust. She clearly doesn’t trust me with the $200 I never asked for in the first place, and only accepted to be nice. She doesn’t consider me an equal member of the family. So the fuse is gone, and I’m not even sad. She exposed herself, and now I know who she is: one more person in this family who treats me as less than. I’m honestly glad, because once someone burns through my fuse and pushes me past the point of caring anymore, they no longer have the power to hurt me.

Twinkle: Same Auld Lang Syne

 Our friends have a bar mitzvah for their son coming up. They are very close friends, and I volunteered to do the gift bags for out of towners. I have to do 30 bags and I’m also sending a child to college next week, and the bags are a major undertaking. Also, I have fun with this sort of thing, so I’m having fun with the bags. I’ve known about this for a year so I’ve planned for it.

I’ve worked really hard on these bags and have put a lot of thought into them. Everyone gets basic stuff like a salty snack, a Rice Krispy treat, a granola bar, Diet Coke, water, etc., but I also tried to do something special. I ordered Chips Cookies and a mini Sissy Cake for each, and each Sissy Cake box will bear a sticker with the logo for the event. I have little plastic containers, each with twelve compartments, with a variety of candy in the color palette of the event, and I ordered stickers with the logo to put on each container. I’ve worked really hard on them, and I wanted them to be great. They are great. 

SIL texted me last week to see if I needed any help with them. I didn’t. But because I am sensitive to the way I have been treated in this family, I said, “I’d love your help, but I’ve already done everything for the bags.” She offered to Venmo me for part of the bags. I accepted because I was trying to be thoughtful and include her. I never want to make anyone feel the way Fun Sink makes me feel. She Venmoed my husband, not me (thanks, bitch), and I immediately let the our friend know that SIL was part of the bags, so that she would know to thank her. Because I’m gracious.

I never wanted her money or needed her help, but I wanted her to feel like she was part of things, and like she had a job too.

Tonight MIL mentioned that SIL already had a job. She’s doing baskets for the bathrooms (which, incidentally, is my job at every school fundraiser and I CRUSH it every time and everybody always talks about it because I always put airplane bottles of Fireball in them). There will be no Fireball in these. Trust.

So, my question is, if SIL already had a job, why did she need to help me with mine? Does this family think I’m incompetent? Poor? Unable to complete basic tasks that I have committed to? Why did I take her $200 (of which I’ll never personally see a penny)? Why did I take the time to let the hostess know she was part of the bags? Why did she need to be part of the bags? Why does no one trust me to do the thing I’m supposed to do? Can I just have my task, without it being her task too, when she already has a task?

So now it will be, “Didn’t L****** (and Twinkle) do an AMAZING job on the bags? Oh, and L******’s bathroom baskets were just perfect.” She had a job. I had a job. Why did she have to take mine? I don’t want to be someone who cares about who gets the credit—this is something Fun Sink cares about deeply, and it’s unattractive and downright gross. I really was doing the bags because I care about the bar mitzvah boy, not for the glory. But this feels like stolen valor.

It happens every time. Something comes up, and against my better judgment I react the way I would in my own family, where everything is safe, and people trust each other to do the tasks they say they’ll do. I take the bait every time, and act in a way that feels normal, in a way that doesn’t make people feel excluded the way I have been excluded. And then it bites me. Every. Single. Time.

Twinkle: Recent Vignettes

A few vignettes.

Y’all have heard this one but I’m recording it for posterity because it is just so weird:

We were in Chicago for a family wedding, and on one of the nights we went to someone’s house for dinner—friends my in-laws, and their kids who grew up with my husband, and grandkids were all there.

They cooked out hamburgers, etc. After dinner I was sitting at the kitchen island talking to everyone, and there was a bowl of chips in the middle of the island that everyone was still snacking on. The hostess was about to clear away the chips but noticed people were still eating them and left them. A few minutes later Fun Sink helpfully came to take the chips away—there was no booze at this party so she probably relished talking away what little joy people were having. The hostess said, “Oh, leave those out—I think people are still eating them.” Fun Sink said, “Oh, are they?” and made a big show of putting the bowl right in front of me.

Why is she such a bitch? I really don’t care and I think it’s funny. We laughed about it on the way home. But, like, wtf? Everyone was eating the chips. They were in the middle. I was not tucking into a huge bowl of chips by myself after the meal. The bowl was empty at the end of the night, but you best believe I didn’t touch another one after that incident. Why does she hate me? 

—

That same trip we invited my MIL to come shopping with us. Eldest needed to shop for rush and so we thought it would be fun to hit the Chicago stores, and we naturally figured Fun Sink would want to be part of it. She was really weird and cagey about it and made up a weird excuse about why she couldn’t go. She has been super weird about rush, too. She said something to Eldest about, “What do you need for that rush thing?” My kids call her out in ways I never could. Eldest said, “What do you mean, ‘that rush thing’? Aunt L****** was in a sorority. You know what rush is.”

—

Fun Sink’s mom died a week shy of 101, which is really sad and I would never wish it on anyone, but she’s still finding ways to be mean, even at her most vulnerable.

We were over at the grandma’s house, dividing up family keepsakes. I’m the only one taking heirlooms, by the way. No one else wanted a sterling silver button hook from the 1800s and the platter and bowl from my husband’s grandmother’s third great grandmother. We also inherited all the large framed Olan Mills portraits of my husband from 1980. I guess Fun Sink didnt’t want these, so I have become their custodian, and the decor in my house doesn’t have the wood paneling and shag carpeting that they require.

While we were there, my husband’s cousin, N, and his girlfriend, A****, were there. The girlfriend is really nice and I like her. He needs to put a ring on it because she’s basically the only friend I have in this family. The girlfriend was talking about another estate sale, that of the grandma’s best friend, in which the family sold precious things like a little framed baby picture of their mother from 1920 (way less obtrusive than the huge Olan Mills 8x10s). I actually bought this baby picture. I wasn’t going to let it go to strangers. Another thing the family sold was some embroidery that my husband’s grandmother had done, and some stained glass panels that my husband’s uncle, now deceased, had made. The person who made the stained glass was N’s father, and N had gone to the sale hoping to buy the panels but they were thousands of dollars.

I had been talking the entire day about how terrible I thought it was that the family was selling these things. I had been going on and on about the baby picture and the embroidery. My girls really loved this old lady, and they were each going to buy a teacup at the sale to remember her, but it turned out the sale was cash only so we couldn’t get the teacups. I had to scrounge for change in my car to rescue the baby picture. I made the point that, if it had been me, I would have invited the close family friends over to take a small souvenir from the sale. Fun Sink should have her mother’s embroidery. I DEFINITELY would have given N the glass his father made. I went on and on and on about it the whole day, and I was especially horrified over the baby picture. 

Fun Sink was there for all of it and knew my opinions on the matter, which is why I was surprised to hear her say, “A**** says the family really should have invited us all over to take a meaningful piece from the sale. A**** thinks that would have been the right thing to do. A**** says it was terrible that they were selling heirlooms that were meaningful to our famly.” Hey bitch, don’t you mean TWINKLE said? I mean, A**** agreed, but I had been saying it for hours!

A**** is already more accepted in this family than I ever will be. And no, she’s not even Jewish. 

—

At dinner recently, Fun Sink looked me in the eye and asked me if I knew anyone with sourdough starter. 

Um…baking bread is my thing. I make all kinds of bread all the time. I consider it an art and a science. I literally love it so much I’ve hoped that I still get to do it in heaven. I have made sourdough bread for her on multiple occasions.

So I said, “I have some. I’d love to share it with you.” And I meant it, like I always do.

Suddenly she wasn’t so interested in sourdough anymore. She made an excuse about why she didn’t want it.