Workin' It!

Family togetherness.

Spending about 36 hours of extremely close contact with some of my loved ones in Los Angeles this weekend gave me more than a few opportunities to practice patience, understanding, detachment and unconditional love. I am proud to say the Serenity Prayer also got a work out.

You take the bad with the good.

Fortunately, the good times and excellent home cooked meals outweighed the not so good times and for that I am grateful. I am also very grateful to have made it home before the blizzard hit here, as one more night with all of those people combined...was about to seriously mess up all my hard work in my quest for a peaceful life. Although, I held on to the fact that regardless of how long we were together, there would likely be some great material for my blog.

My very irritable, spoiled-36-year-old-birthday-girl was clearly outside of her comfort zone despite all the love and attention she was receiving. Even though she was the guest of honor and her much adored brother Fly Boy is in Afghanistan, she still lives in his very accomplished shadow in the blatantly obvious eyes of their grandparents. It's been that way for their whole lives and it ain't pretty. It's clearly affected her self-esteem and sense of unconditional love. That coupled with her drug/alcohol and mental health issues can make for some tense moments.

In the "too much information files" I patiently listened; as I was nearly held captive, to my former mother-in-law's woeful stories of her dysfunctional sex life prior to my former father-in-law's prostate cancer. And, I heard about and witnessed the propensity this now nearly 80 year old man has to be a little preoccupied with kissing and hugging on other women (including my 17 year old daughter), making inappropriate sexual comments and his unrelenting jealousy and possessiveness with his devoted but clearly irritated wife, despite their marriage of nearly 38 years.

While I realize she may need someone non-judgemental and loving to listen to her...BUT as my blogger friend Cat would say...Wait. What?

Isn't it in situations like that where we're to set some boundaries?

I'm thinking the girls and I absolutely need to work on learning to set those boundaries. After having just had a little talk with Ab, I know I'll be making that a priority.