We should have brought a tent

I feel so guilty. I have not been keeping up with blogs.

Mainly because I am not sure how to tell you guys about the disaster that was Thanksgiving/my birthday.

I feel incredibly ungrateful when I think about everything that went "wrong". And boy howdy, I am glad I am not in the middle of another infertility cycle on top of all of it, because that would have just been...well.

Here are a few things that may or may not have happened:

1. Hanging out with my sis and sis-in-law (who look like Angelina Jolie and Mandy Moore, respectively) made me feel like a beluga whale. An old, ugly beluga whale encrusted with moldy barnacles.

2. I bought and wrapped my own birthday gift from my husband, who didn't even bother to get me a card.

3. I showed up at the house, and realized that nobody else had bothered to get me anything, either.

4. Except for a birthday cake, which I was obscenely grateful for. Until my mom put it on a low shelf for a second when she was getting ready to serve it and my brothers dogs licked half the frosting off of it. Nobody really wanted it after that.

5. I mentioned the "couch-to-5K" program I am doing, and got to see the shifty looks that obviously meant, "Yeah right."

6. The phone call from my aunt who asked, "And how young are you today?" and when I said, "33" she sighed and said, "How time does fly!" In a way that was supposed to be consoling, but since my age doesn't bother me, I just wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her.

7. Mom said she would take me out shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday. We stayed in town and avoided the mall. I didn't find anything I liked, and all the shopping was for other people. Dad showed up halfway through the day with a ring he bought for me as a surprise. It was the one nice thing that anyone had done, and I was almost teary.

8. Then Mom said, "Well, it's from both of us! Happy Birthday! Let's go home."

9. Then we got home, and Dad had bought identical rings for my sister and s-i-l.

10. My sister, who has a habit of wearing very thin pajamas and bending over and revealing half of her butt and all of her thong, decided to change clothes in the room that The Man and I stayed in. After dinner. Without locking the door, or utilizing the en-suite bathroom with a door that closes. The inevitable happened, and The Man walked in on her.

I should back this up by saying that The Man has commented on this before, and my sister just isn't modest on the same level that I am. In any event, I have discussed with my parents that my husband knows way too much about my sister's anatomy, and aside from saying, "Well, you know what she's like" and "we're in close quarters in that house"....yeah. I never knew how to bring it up.

I was furious. she kept protesting, "But he didn't see anything! I covered up!!" and I would just say, "What he saw is not the POINT. The POINT is that if you are changing in someone else's room, you make an effort to be respectful, and you tell them, or lock the door, or use the bathroom!"

It ended up with me leaving the house by myself at 9PM and walking down to the beach and staring sightlessly at the waves. The Man was watching movies with Dad and my brother, and I didn't want to make a scene, I just wanted to be gone.

I stayed gone for nearly an hour. As I was getting close to the house, I rounded the corner and saw my husband, who had been waiting for me.

He just kept repeating that he was sorry. Did I want to leave? Yes, I had every right to feel the way I did. He felt bad that he had screwed up my birthday.

We walked back to the house, and I stayed holed up in the room until bedtime. I eventually came out to try to have a sane conversation with my sister, which degraded into:

Her: "My blue pajamas are not see-through."

Me: "I assure you, they are."

Her: "They totally are not!"

Me: "Do you want me to give you the diameter of your nipples in centimeters? "

Her: "You're obviously just have a grudge and you're holding all this stuff against me. It's YOUR problem, not mine. How am I supposed to control what everyone sees?!"

Me: "That's an interesting perspective. Somehow, I manage to get through a family weekend without everyone seeing MY underwear. It's not rocket science."

Her:"You're just being unreasonable."

Me: "I don't feel that it's so unreasonable to ask that you not flash your crotch at my husband from across the room. Or to be respectful and lock the door when you're changing in our room."

Her: "I didn't know I was flashing! And he didn't see anything, tonight! I covered up with a towel."

It went around and around, and on, and on. I finally said, "Look, all I am asking you is to be a little more modest around my husband. That's it."

We said goodnight and went to bed. I made my point, and in the process, l think I killed my friendship with my sister.

I am so glad to be home. But that's really the only thing I am glad about right now.