Good Times and Bad Dreams on a Long Weekend in August

My brother R and sister-in-law G came down for a visit!

I was nearly ecstatic!

David and I haven't had a chance to see them in a couple of years!

It was a good weekend. We had fun watching the Riders win against Calgary. We had hotdogs and a shrimp ring and pop. G helped me cook the dogs. We talked and sat together.

My brother also came over for a few hours on Sunday. I told him the reason I felt so close to him was because we two are the only two who really seem sane in this family. R made a good point: my brother C and mother both are only their thoughts, they don't think about or analyse the source of their thoughts. And dad is hard to pinpoint... He doesn't seem to think at all on his own, or if he does, his thoughts (as J, David's mom, once pointed out) aren't his own. They are my mom's.

For my mother's & father's sanity, we had planned to keep this all on the QT. However C somehow got the impression that R was coming to visit mother and father as well. So now mother can stew about it, and has thought up several reasons why they didn't visit mom & dad... Primarily that it's somehow G's fault.

It all started out fairly quiet, although my mother, sounding high or something, called around 10 am singing a Christmas Carol on the answering machine.

Then sometime between then and when R&G arrived, C called and asked mom if she had heard anything from R.

C told us later that Mom said no, but she wanted C to have a good time with R.

So apparently C wasn't supposed to tell us that he had told mom. At least, according to mom. So then she was even more angry/hurt because she found out from David and I that C had told R & G that she knew he was there.

Mom seems to think that this gives R & G some sort of plus that they can feel good that mom and dad knew that they were in town and didn't visit with them.

She kept asking me if C told us that SHE told him to have a good time? Did C tell R & G that SHE (mom) told him to say she SAID to have a good time?

*sigh*

Mom pointed out that a couple of years ago, R had told her that it took him 2 weeks to help heal G after interacting with mom. Mother doesn't seem to focus much on the fact that she wrecked G's sanity for a couple of weeks. Instead she accuses G of manipulating R by driving him crazy for two weeks after visiting with mom & dad. She completely misses the point that G was driven crazy by her.

I find it ironic that mom says she hopes someday that R gets a spine and comes for a visit. In actuality it seems like MOM is being driven crazy by G and R and it's going to take DAD 2 weeks to heal HER. Dad is the one without the spine.

I also find it almost funny that mom is now even more perturbed that we all knew that she knew. It was fine if she didn't know, it was fine if she knew, but it wasn't fine if she knew and we knew it??

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Nightmare:

Somehow my brother C and I were sharing a bed (as though we used to when we were children). I had some kind of pet or animal like a wolf pup or harmless animal, but it was squirming a bit.

C kept fretting that it was keeping him awake and that we wouldn't get enough sleep; some kind of anxiety was causing him to keep me awake.

I finally left.

The dream shifted and I found all of us together in the same bedroom.

A woman was in bed, watching us with great interest, but not really seeming interested in assisting us. Instead she wrote down her observations in a notebook and occasionally caught my eye. I would frequently see expressions of surprise, or intense interest. A raised eyebrow when someone said a certain something; or if volume raised louder in the argument. I caught her eye a couple of times, and tried to explain something, but she was more interested in observing the behaviours of everyone in the room.

G and R were part of the discussion, but I don't think they were actually there. C and mom were yelling at each other. Dad was muttering and throwing up his arms, but for the most part staying in the corner wishing he didn't have to be there.

I once in a while would try to say something. I would occasionally get one person to calm down or be quiet, but then the other who was arguing would start the ruckus up again. At one point I even grabbed hold of my mother's collar of her shirt and begged her in a hoarse whisper to be quiet and listen. But then C started up again, or dad, so I would have to go to them. I remember breathing very shallow, gritting my teeth and being very tense about the face, neck and arms. Like old times!

At one point I woke up gasping for air. As I fell back to sleep I dreamt I sat down beside David and whispered to him/muttered to him; 'Well, might as well sit back and watch the show, too...'