Vent: The Nerve of Some People

I know the saying…”Funerals bring out the best in people. Weddings bring out the worst in people.”  This is certainly true!

It started with my engagement party with one of my aunts basically telling my mother who needed to be invited. What gives her the right to do that?? Anyways, crisis basically averted, minor annoyance on my part and no family rifts.

Fast forward to NOW…At my engagement party, my grandparents hand me a list of people who need to be sent an invitation. Their friends and their family (which I guess also means it is my mom’s family and ultimately my family) in Israel. They also took it upon themselves to invite my grandfather’s uncle who they are close to. I wasn’t happy about that, but okay, 2 people and make my grandparents happy? Sure, why not? Plus my grandparents were convinced that Sam (the uncle) wouldn’t come because he is in his 80′s and may not be up for the travelling. Well, this uncle has decided that he and his lady friend are coming. Uncle Sam (yes…stop smiling, I have an Uncle Sam) has a daughter (we’ll refer to her as R) who is NOT invited to the wedding. My grandparents are not close to her, my mother isn’t close to her and I have never met her in my life! R has only gotten back in touch with my mom after 25 years when she heard that my father had passed away. For the past 6 months or so, she has been bragging to everyone how she can’t wait to go to the wedding. My mom subtly told her that she wasn’t invited…she didn’t get the message. So finally I sent her a very sweet, very short & to the point email that we just couldn’t invite her, her husband and son (not to mention that she has a brother and if we invite R we have to invite her brother too).

The emails she has sent back to me in a matter of a 12 hour period! I have been made to feel lower than life, bullied, guilted & manipulated. Comments like “this is not what you do, no way”, “I am hoping that this was just an error in judgement and it will be corrected and rectified and you will e-mail me to let me know that the matter has been rectified and that my husband, my son and I can and will expect and invitation to the wedding.” 

Her son was Bar Mitzvahed in 2000, and no one in my family can recall having received an invitation. She even threw in how she had lost her mother tragically a year ago. And how this is very hard on her son and she wants to be able to share a happy occasion with her father. I lost my father too. This is EXTREMELY hard on me, my brother (who still hasn’t come to grips with it) and my mother…but nothing about that. Nothing about  how she would love to see my mother, my uncle and his wife, meet me & my brother and share in the joy. No…just about how you don’t do this to family. She even told me that she sent an email to my grandparents about this as well. Like that is supposed to change my mind! They aren’t paying for this.

Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep last night because all these thoughts & feelings kept running through my head. Am I totally wrong on this? I don’t think so. I don’t know this woman. My mom hasn’t had any kind of relationship with her for god knows how long. She doesn’t want to be invited for the right reasons. She wants to see her father. That should be the secondary reason for attending the wedding. I am so beside myself about this! It has been such a long time since someone has made me feel like this.

I was going to email her back with my point of view, but my mom has decided to take care of this tonight.  There are certain people who are being invited to the wedding who have every right to EXPECT to be invited…not her! And yet she does. I am not some stupid kid who doesn’t know the meaning of family. I am just more concerned about my close family.

Thanks for listening/reading…Phew…vent over (hopefully)!

6 Random Things…

Joy tagged me for a meme….6 non important things/habits….

Here are the rules:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules.
3) Share six non-important things / habits / quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people.
5) Be sure the people you tagged KNOW you tagged them by commenting what you did.

6 Things:

1. I love to eat foods that can be separated into different categories (stir frys etc).

2. To me, holiday dinners are not complete without my grandmother’s stuffing at Thanksgiving, mom’s matza ball soup at Rosh Hashanah & Passover, potatoe latkes at Hanukkah.

3. When I was 13, the colors of my Bat Mitzvah were purple, purple & purple. For many years afterwards, I hated that color. Now it is the color I am using all over my wedding.

4. I used to practice swallowing pills with M&Ms.
5. As Roy likes to say…”I have monkey feet” I can pinch with my feet, pick things up and I am trying to work on writing with them. Gross, I know!

6. I love spraying my sheets with vanilla & lavendar linen spray. It is one of the best smells!

I don’t have anyone to tag

4/9/08-I’m Back!!

What have I been doing for the past 5 months?? Honestly, I have no idea how I managed to not blog. I mean it’s not like I haven’t been doing anything. But for the most part my life has been consumed with crafts & wedding planning.

Within the past couple of weeks there have been good & bad happening. The first bad thing is that I had honestly thought that I was going to have to settle for something I didn’t like for a wedding band. Roy did a great thing and got me a beautiful and very detailed engagement ring. However, that kind of limited me in terms of the style of wedding band I could get. Also, the price of platinum has completely skyrocketed. I wanted a beautiful ring, but was not prepared to go into more debt than I already am over it. It took Roy a bit to find a band that he liked. We ultimately ended taking advantage of another’s misfortune. Alpha Omega! A company that is notoriously overpriced (in my opinion) became quite advantageous for us! Roy found a “manly” palladium band for 70% off. Mine was a better find! Instead of taking the additional 10% off the 50% markdown…they took off an additional 28%! (We’re still waiting for them to realize this) Here is a picture of our wedding bands:

This next picture is of our cake topper. My cousin had one at her wedding and Roy just fell in love with it. Take a close look at him…doesn’t he look like what you would think a rabbi would look like?

And finally, there was the hair mishap. For anyone who knows me…I have, for a very long time colored my own hair. I have typically favored the fun colors by Garnier Nutrisse such as Chocolate Cherry and more recently Sangria. The only problem is that I can never seem to get the color even in the back and my copious amounts of gray hairs always start rearing their ugly head within a couple of weeks. I decided that I would suck it up and have my stylist do the color for the next couple of times. We decided to go a much darker brown, very close to my natural color (which I don’t think many people actually remember what that is anymore) with highlights of burgundy. This is what we ended up with:

Trust me…I looked like a close relative of Raggedy Ann! I went back yesterday to have it fixed. Thank goodness it actually worked and my hair now looks as we thought it should.

Now that I actually have a computer at home, I promise to continue blogging more!