It's almost eighty degrees outside. I sat outside for an hour or so today in the sun, and now I'm inside, with the windows open, eating chocolate-chip cookie dough and finishing some homework instead of going to class. (It's a three hour class, I can afford to miss it once.)
The only thing to put a damper on the day? Today we find out whether the Nathan's accepted to school next fall or not. He's worried sick over it, literally, and he doesn't do that. I had nightmares all last night.
We know it's down to him and one other guy. I wish with every fibre of my being that it won't be the other guy, because this other guy can't possibly need the acceptance more than Nathan does.
I'm looking on the bright side, they told him if he didn't hear from them that he should call them. You don't make someone call you up to tell them they took the other guy, right? That's just cruel. So, the odds must be in his favour. He turned his paperwork in, he's talked to these people, they've seen his stuff. I just hope they take him on faith, because if it comes down to all things being equal but grades, the boy doesn't have a chance.
If there was a patron saint of graduate school acceptance, I'd convert to Catholicism right now and wear my little rosary out. Luckily, there isn't, because I couldn't live the rest of my life as a Catholic, but so much rides on this decision, I don't know what will happen to us if it doesn't work out.
In other news, invitations were finished and mailed the other day. We made our own for a fraction of the cost of having them made, and if I do say so myself they look just as good as professional ones.
The little damper there is that his mother wants to have some of her friends from work invited. Well, this is more than a little damper, this is an outpouring of unspoken rage. Were this an enormous wedding, fine, were Nathan the bride and she was paying for the entire wedding, fine. But for her to be so presumptuous as to assume that she can invite people only she knows? We have a limited number of people, and we're trying to keep it to people that we actually give a damn about, or are at least closely related.
The particular reason this irks me so much is that it's her big family hampering the guest list in the first place. More than fifty percent of the list is already related directly to her. If that doesn't give you enough people there to associate with, I don't see why that's my problem. I would like to have a lot of my friends there, but there's not room for all of them. And now she wants to do this?
So, the boy called his father, who is on the boy's side and has told his wife as much. Nathan's older brother, we learned, had to go through this same fight when he got married. He lost the battle (and most of his wife's respect for either of them in the bargain), so Older Brother is firmly on our side. Her sister, who has two daughters and had large weddings for both of them (his mother's examples for why she should be allowed to do as she pleases), says that she did it because she hosted and paid for the entire wedding, and her daughters did not object.
His mother is the only one who thinks she is in the right and (I gather) said she would make her own invitations and send them to these people. If she does so, that is it. Either she or I will not be present at the wedding if this comes to pass, and no lines of friendly communication will remain open on my side. That is the panultimate of rude, discourteous, and gauche behaviour. To believe that simply because you gave birth to him, you have the right to cow over every event of his life?
That's the other way she's played this game- sometimes this is about honouring us, but when she wants something done it's about honouring her). The damned bridal shower I wouldn't let her give is part of it. That wasn't about "honouring me" that was about her having a party and inviting all her female friends and relations and my mother, the only person directly connected to me she mentioned wanting to invite. These games have got to stop, but I can't be the one to stop them.
This is why poor Older Brother's Wife is always the enemy (she's a whiney pain in the ass, but in general not evil). I guess everything was just fine until the wedding, when Nathan's mother started to pull this shit, and Older Brother's Wife wouldn't stand for it. This got turned into OBW using OB as a tool to get what she wanted, therefore coming between the oldest boy and his mummy, which mummy can't handle.
Nathan, unfortunately, is mummy's favourite. So we've got the same thing... only worse. I can't have a word to say about anything, or I'll end up the fucking enemy. We're only having a wedding so I don't end up the enemy. So, I told him he knows how I feel, and if the only reason it happens is because he doesn't have the guts to tell her off good and proper, I will be pissed. If he legitimately believes that these people should be allowed to come, then so be it. Thing is, he doesn't think so either. So it's up to him on his own with no influence from me, because then there's no way I could be involved.
I have said before, if she wants her own birthday party to do with as she pleases and invite who she wants, that's her right. To try to do that with Nathan and my wedding, when it's not her name at the top of the invitations, is rude. Flat out. Everyone has told her so, but she can't seem to see why. Neither can she come up with a reason they should other than that her sister has done the same in significantly different circumstances.
That was long and very angry, but since I won't say anything more about it to the boy, it had to come out somewhere. I know for a fact that if my father gets wind of it, he won't be attending. He's like me that way. It won't exactly kill me if he's not there, but this means that I would get to carry around that explanation for the rest of my life.
I told Friend Sully the other day that this is going to be the worst day of my life. I may've said it here. There is too much bullshit all wrapped up in this frilly white package they call a wedding to be worth the goddamned trouble. If we hadn't already spent the money and sent out the invitations, this shit would (for me) send it to a grinding halt.
But, those who need to know where I stand, know where I stand. I simply have to bide my time. As I told Nathan, my father wouldn't give up his mother, but he ruined a job opportunity rather than leave his hometown and move away from his mother. For twenty odd years, I have watched my mother watch my father choose his mother over his wife, and Nathan knows I will not live like that.