Written 9/18 – Posted from Panera

So here I am at my parents’ house in Vermont. I’ve been here all of 24 hours and I’m already going nuts. I realize that part of that is my general dislike of the house and state – I’m predisposed to be annoyed by everything here.

But I also can’t pretend that my parents don’t annoy the shit out of me all on their own, especially my father. I specifically told him to make sure that he got the carseat from Lisa with enough time to read the instructions, install the seat properly, and even to go get it checked at the police station to make sure it was in there the right way. So of course he did exactly none of that. He called me on Sunday and described how he had installed the seat – In the middle position (fine), with the lap/shoulder belt from either side seat pulled across and buckled into the opposite buckle (WTH?), and then with the top LATCH tether pulled down and somehow attached to the front seat bracket. Clearly instructions were not even considered, let alone read or followed. He explained that the seat tilted when it only had one lap/shoulder belt across, which is why he used the other. My obvious question – why didn’t you use the lap belt for the middle seat? The truly whacked out answer was that his car is old and he didn’t think it had one. Fucking hell. It’s a ‘99 Jeep Cherokee, Dad. I assure you that it has a middle lap belt. Please just install it with that. Now why did you attach the tether at all? That’s only for when the seat is forward-facing. Because he couldn’t get it to recline the right way without it. I even told him to put a rolled up towel under it to keep it reclined far enough – fuck, the instructions even say to do that – further evidence that he never bothered reading them.

So I told him all of this over the phone on Sunday saying please just install it the right way. If we get into an accident with the seat like that, there is no telling what will happen since you’re messing around with its design. It’s meant to be installed and function in a particular way – please, please, please just install it that way. We get out to the car at Bradley airport and it’s still installed in his fucked up, ass backward way and I have to lay Pippa on the seat to try and fix this monstrosity. In the process, he tries to pull the lap belt through the belt path on the seat, pulls it out of my hand and it conks Pippa in the head. Seriously?! The first injury my daughter has suffered except for me nicking her thumb when I cut her fingernails once and it’s because you couldn’t fucking listen and follow directions?

And it just goes on. I have a fold up travel chair for Pippa that I hadn’t really tested out before we left. It would be great in situations like the airport where I need to put her someplace while I eat or to feed her on the go. But on a regular basis, it’s uncomfortable for me in a regular dining chair and annoying because she’s distracted by her feet and leans forward to play with her socks and bib instead of eating. I describe this problem, focusing almost solely on the fact that she keeps leaning forward with her hands and bib in her mouth and I can’t sit her up AND pull her hands away AND get the spoon in her mouth. And by the way, it’s uncomfortable for me to have to lean down like that. Suddenly the ONLY problem is that I have to lean over and we can raise the chair, we can make it higher, we can make it more comfortable. I must have said five times that my comfort wasn’t the main problem and that the problem was that she wasn’t sitting up and eating. I don’t know how else I could have phrased it for it to get into his head. We went to WalMart so I could pick up more food for her and I got a booster seat/high chair and once I had it on the dining room chair he STILL wanted to make the height of the chair the issue.

Fuck, are you kidding me?

On top of all of that, he’s feeling all butt hurt that I don’t trust the dog around Pippa yet. I love Fonzie. She’s an absolute sweetheart, marshmallow dog. But she’s never been around children and never met a baby before. So no one can know how she’ll react. And the fact is that she hasn’t been receptive to the idea. She avoids Pippa and when Pippa is near her, she gets distinctly tense and nervous. She’s given Pip’s hand a couple licks, but when Pippa pet her side, she whipped her head around to see. I love Fonzie, but a nervous, tense dog is not one I want to leave my kid around. So I’m very reluctant to put Pippa on the floor, (on top of which my dad for some reason waxed the floor so it’s straight up dangerous to walk around in socks – I’ve almost fallen twice) where I might not be able to get between her and the dog should Fonzie get stressed to the point of snapping at her. It means I’m carrying her constantly and it makes it very hard to get her food ready. But he’s being a total asshole about my rather justified concerns about the dog. First he did his condescending bullshit “Fine, you’re right,” and then when I call him out on it, he goes off that I’m wrong and that if the dog does anything he’ll be on the dog before the dog can get anywhere near the baby anyway. Well, fuck that. Maybe that’s good enough for you, but I don’t really want to find out the hard way that Fonzie doesn’t like kids.

I swear to God I’m starting to wonder if his mind isn’t starting to break a little bit.

I knew this was a mistake. I knew it before I even got the ticket (which he still hasn’t reimbursed me for since I only agreed to come out if they paid for it). I just let my excitement at the prospect of visiting in Connecticut cloud my judgment about Vermont. Clearly I am an idiot. I think it’s what’s been making me so cranky all month, when normally September marks the start of my favorite time of year. It’s totally fucked it up. I am still excited about going to Connecticut. I just have to get through this shit first. Ugh. At least in December we can avoid Vermont more. I felt sort of obliged to stay here longer since they were paying (theoretically). I won’t have that obligation at Christmas. Of course, I’ll have the fact that it’s Christmas, but I established a long time ago that I thought it was bullshit that my dad couldn’t be bothered being home on Christmas (we were still living in Connecticut and he was here in Vermont working), so I don’t feel particularly bad about that.

I’m sure if you wanted to get down to the psychoanalysis of it, I still resent my father and this entire state for completely uprooting my life and selling my home out from under me in favor of a place with no history at all. For cheating on my mother and yet somehow making her believe that it was all her fault. I hate that they feel like the world should slow down to accommodate them just because they choose not to keep up. And while I know that it’s what’s on the inside that counts, whenever I have to go anywhere with them I just cringe because they’re so utterly unpresentable. When we went to Walmart I genuinely feared that someone would take a picture of my mom for “People of Walmart” – oversized sweatshirt, black pants with bleach stains all over them, no bra, and hair that I can’t even describe.

I am honestly amazed that I am even capable of functioning in society. Clearly some aspects of my great-grandmother either filtered through the gene pool or rubbed off spending so much time around her and playing in her cedar closet full of furs and good shoes and bags. My parents are a fucking freak show.

In all seriousness, TWICE today I’ve thought about just throwing my hands up and saying it was a mistake before calling Lisa and telling her I was coming down early.

I can’t even fucking get online because I can’t remember half my passwords because they’re stored on here and I can’t get online at the house on this computer because my parents are still on dial-up. My computer isn’t even equipped for that.

I’ll post this tomorrow. I’m planning to go to a coffee shop in town that my mom says has free wifi. The library does too, so hopefully I can actually rejoin the real world. I don’t know if I can make it until Sunday morning. My rental car is reserved for Saturday since the place isn’t open on Sunday. How insulted do you think my parents would be if I left a day early?

I’m posting this from Panera in Rutland. Pippa is at the house with my dad, hopefully not being dropped, bitten, or starved. Tomorrow when I try to find wifi in town, I’ll bring her and a bottle/jar of food with me so I don’t have to leave her. I cannot wait for Sunday morning. At least on Saturday my dad will be down in Connecticut again and I won’t have to deal with his crap. I really can’t stand him. I’m just not sure I like him very much as a person. He’s not very nice, really, not to anyone he thinks stupid, which is pretty much everyone. Don’t get me wrong, I have little patience for idiots and dealing with them, but I also wait until someone has proven that they’re incompetent before I get short with them. He goes into a lot of interactions assuming that the other person is a moron. Or maybe that’s just his manner. Either way, it sets up a dynamic that’s VERY unpleasant.

Anyway, I miss Pippa. Also I’m kind of worried about her. So off I got back to Ludlow. Just a few more days and I can go down to Waterbury. It occurs to me that being an only child in this family sucks. At least a sibling would deflect a lot of the bullshit. No wonder I like Zach so much.

Incidentally, Panera’s pumpkin spice latte isn’t as good as Starbucks’. This just happened to be the first place I came across that I knew I could get free wifi. Also really good food. I might buy a baguette to take back to the house for a mid-afternoon snack. I’ll read and note when I have more time.

~Liz