Friday, May 13, 2005

Family Drama, and Margaret Cho

Well, yesterday sucked. I got to see Margaret Cho, which was wonderful as always, but before that – major suckage.

I worked from 2 AM to 10:30 AM, which is forever a dream. When I got home I had trouble sleeping, thanks to all the stress this week. At 12:30 PM J@} called, to give me an update on things. Apparently, N@+ basically lives there now, and he already has A7 calling him "Daddy." I have been relegated to "Old Dad" by A7, who sounds confused on what to call me in light of the new status quo. J@} said that A7 cried when she told him, oops, she made a mistake, and that N@+ is actually his daddy. A7 asked if that meant I didn’t get to see him anymore. B^(

Luckily, it doesn’t, but since it seems that N@+ and she are (back to?) dating already, and certainly plan to when they move in together, it’s going to be a much more awkward and sudden a transition than I’d originally anticipated. N@+’s understandably anxious to start making up for five missed years of fatherhood, but that pretty much means that *my* five years of devotion, love, and support feel mostly out the window – I’ll just be informed of decisions from now on, and I can visit him the same as I would any other couple’s kid… although J@} is going out of her way to ask that N@+ at least sleep somewhere else on A7’s birthday next week, so I can come down and see A7 without having to deal with his “new” dad. Sweet of her, I know.

J@} said she’s dropping out of school, since all of this is too much to deal with and classes, too, and I guess she’ll be supporting N@+ ‘til he gets his degree, and then he’s supposed to support her until she gets her degree. It’ll be nice to have A7 (and J@}) so close physically, but with N@+ there, it’ll be a little icky and uncomfortable at first. I’ll have to suck it up if I want to see A7, but after J@}’s initial slew of sincere apologies, I’m really feeling shoved aside. I hope it’s just because of newness and stress – I’d hate to think I’m really going to be tossed aside this cavalierly after being A7’s dad for five years. I’ve made A7 my top priority as far as financial support, holidays, job choices, vacation time, weekends, etc, and now I’m feeling like I’m getting an, “Ooops. Never mind. N@+’s the dad now. Catch ya later!” from the new ‘nuclear family.’


So, anyway, after/while dealing with all this, I tried to get a little sleep so I could enjoy the Margaret Cho performance last night. J{R0 came over after work, and snuggled with me, which did help me finally stop tossing and turning. However, it meant that I was in full-on zonk mode by the time the alarm went off at 5:15 PM. I tried to struggle out of bed, but I was cranky, tired, and already running late when E- called at 6:50 PM. She asked if I was going to see Margaret Cho, and I told her yes.

She immediately started into me about the fact that originally, months ago, I’d planned to go with her, and whichever of our friends we wanted to invite along. Of course, since then, she decided she hates me, and for a while she wasn’t even talking to me. So, when I got tickets, I just got them for J{R0, L!I~ and me, since that’s all I could afford. I felt bad not inviting other friends who I know would have loved to go, but I’ve had so much pressure lately that I just didn’t feel up for coordinating a group of 20, and trying to scare up the cash to get a dozen seats together (“I’ll pay you back you later” seldom seems to materialize). I figured I’d just personally bring along a couple of my Indy friends, and E- could bring along her friends separately, and maybe if she and I were talking by then, afterward we could all go out for subversive pie.

This, of course, wasn’t good enough for E-. Even though she hadn’t bothered to ask me my Cho plans until an hour before the performance, according to E-, when I ordered the tickets I should have called her and asked if she still wanted to go, even though at the time she wasn’t even talking to me. And, when the performance approached, I should have called her and invited her to join us, even though it was too late to get seats together, and she’d have wound up by herself (or with other late-goers) anyway.

E- and I had kind of developed a sort of truce since the bottom fell out of my entire identity as A7’s father, but it seems that good will lasted a grand total of two days, because by last night E- was laying into me again, and expecting me to beg and grovel for her forgiveness about something that frankly, compared to all the other shit in my life right now, I really didn’t care. So, after establishing herself as the most self-centered bitch in the universe, she finally hung up on me, and J{R0, L!I~ and I finally made it to the show, which was awesome enough to make up for all the other crap I’d had to put up with last night.

Splendid Margaret Cho actually made me laugh and smile again, which was both necessary and wonderful.

I’m a love-sick human being.
Someone really did a
number on my heart.

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