exhausted, again

...
One of DD's classmates had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. While it was less horrid than I thought it would be -- it was actually pretty nice -- it still completely wiped me out. I'm simply not used to being up & about for 4 hours straight, which is what this turned out to be, with the driving.

Still, have to clean out the guest room tonight as my in-laws are arriving tomorrow and it won't do for them to not be able to even turn around in there! All the gifts are stashed in there, some wrapped, some not -- what a hassle! I guess we will put them under the tree, after all. I will deal with DS2's curiousity when it surfaces. It should be easier to deal with when Nana and Papa are here -- more grownups to do the policing.

DH was awesome today and mopped all the tile down here, then vaccuumed upstairs and down (something that still really kills me). He's happy because no one can beat him now in the football pool, so he has major bragging rights.

Finally did the Christmas cards yesterday, and way underestimated how many I needed, so then I had to figure out who would get the photo cards, and who would get regular cards... then sorting out all the extra photos I ordered to send to people, yikes! It was quite a task.

Then, stayed up late after falling asleep on the couch for like 2 or 3 hours, because The Two Towers was on Starz! and I wanted to see the Ents take down Isengard again.

I really need to get to bed at a decent hour tonight. I'm seeing my rheumatologist in the morning, we'll see how that goes... have to take all 3 kids with me but we will be OK. I hope! At least it gives them something to do!

My mom is coming out for Jan and Feb, we bought her ticket today online together. That's a good thing.

The other family thing that came up is just beyond the pale, to me -- one of my siblings has given refuge to the Ex of one of my other siblings, and it is causing a lot of upheaval: the Ex is NOT invited to Christmas, and the "savior" sibling doesn't get how many of us in the family have been hurt and/or betrayed by the Ex, so why shouldn't the Ex come to Christmas? My mom has put her foot down and said, No -- I hope my sib does not hassle my mom, she really doesn't need this stress. Then of course yet another one of my sibs (there are 7 of us altogether) is hosting a Christmas Eve thing, and savior sib wants to bring the Ex to that -- oh, what a mess!

I am technically out of the loop on this because I live so far away there's no question of me being there for Christmas this year, but of course I hear about it from everyone, probably because I am so far away. I'm siding with my mom and the Christmas Eve-hosting sibling on this one, btw, as one of the folks that this Ex betrayed. I don't wish anything bad on this person. I just wish this person would stay away from our family. The Ex made the decision to leave, my sib wanted the Ex to stay and work things out, but the Ex refused, walked away from all of us, years ago. Now my sibling has a whole new family! Of course, the Ex does not care about that.

Some people refuse to accept the consequences of their actions, and this Ex has been that way in the past. To me, this is just more of the same, thinking "Oh, I can do whatever I want, and it won't matter because they'll forget about it and forgive me and let me come back..." Well, forgiveness is one thing and we all realize this person had a very difficult life before marrying my sib, so I'm pretty sure the forgiveness and understanding are there. However, we're not forgetting, and we're not letting this person back into our lives -- why should we set ourselves up for abuse again? As I said, I have no wish that anything but good things should happen to this person, who has had a tough life. But at a certain point, the tough life is a result of the Ex's own decisions, and there's nothing we can do about that.

My biggest concern now regarding this is that it does not stress my mom and other brothers and sisters -- we are all stretched so thin over the holidays, anyway. ***sigh***