NikkiB #18

[NikB]

JDK and ST - hi, thanks for checking in! Hope everyone's having a great weekend.

Mine's been pretty good so far. Went to my sister's dance recital last night. I realized I hadn't seen her dance except at practice in awhile - she has gotten GOOD!! I was really impressed. The littler kids were cute of course, but mostly stood around and looked adorable in their costumes - not a lot of actual dancing. I'm excited that my sis is so talented with physical type things (something I never had and always wished for).

It was SO awkward being there with my dad and stepmom, though. ST you're right, stepmom is so incredibly patient. It was stepmom, her parents, her sister and family, my dad, and me. Good to see her family again but it was tense.

I think it also gave me some interesting perspective being there. I know I've mentioned my dad basically does not get the DB thing AT ALL but it was crazy seeing the WAS/LBS dynamic right there in front of me. My dad kept digging for things to talk to stepmom about, excuses to touch her. I ended up sitting in between them (not intentional! Everyone kept shuffling seats around and that's how it ended up). So half the night my dad was pretending to look at me while staring at her. I could feel her avoiding looking back at him and getting tense. A couple times I said "Dad! Watch the dancing." Or he'd reach across to touch her to get her attention and ask her a question that he already knew the answer to or that he didn't need to know about. i.e. stepmom said "Oh this is [sis] coming up." Not 10 seconds later Dad touches her leg (she flinches, he still keeps touching her), leans across me, and says "[stepmom] is this her coming up?" Um Dad she JUST said that, and you were there for practice so you know the order just as well as she does. Stepmom had a friendly but detached tone at first, more and more irritated as the night went on. I could see her getting more and more agitated - at one point when she stepped out for a minute I told my dad I could see he was upsetting her, suggested he back off and make it a nice relaxed family time. No luck. By the end when we got up to leave she was practically running from him, and she even had a hard time talking to me. I didn't take it personally just think she was so annoyed with him she couldn't even stomach being around me by then. It was really crazy seeing it all right before my eyes.

After I got home H invited me out to the movies so we went and saw Transformers. Good movie!!! I thought it might be kinda cheesy but it wasn't. We both really enjoyed it.

This morning took my mom over to get her new car - she is really excited. We went out to lunch and did some shopping for my coworker's birthday tonight.

Now... just taking a little break and catching up here, then will get ready for the party.

Oh, and we got invited to ANOTHER BBQ / party tomorrow - cool stuff!! This is with a couple who is kind of mutual friends, but the girlfriend really "took me in" a lot when H left and we got a lot closer, so I'm excited to see them.

Fun weekend so far!! Feels good to be back on the GALing a little more.