Picking My Brain

So I went to Wildwood last night for my grandmother’s surprise 80th birthday dinner. The whole family was there: my parents, brother, Ben and me; my mom’s brother, his wife, their daughter and her fiancee, their son; plus my granmother’s sister and brother-in-law from Virginia are up for the week. I knew the focus was going to be on Teal since her wedding is coming up in October. But I was still blown away at how little my family cares about me.

My great-Aunt and Uncle (the ones from Virginia, Anne and Cecil) hadn’t seen either one of our engagement rings. They ended up sitting across the table from Teal and Derrick so Anne asked Teal to see her ring. I hadn’t seen Teal since they got engaged, so after Anne was done I asked Teal if I could also see it. It was pretty, rather trendy right now. Lots of sparkle, of course.

Well, that of course led into the story of picking out the ring and how Derrick proposed. Then all of the other women at the table shared their engagement stories and picking-out-the-ring stories. Of course, no one even remembered that I am also engaged, so nobody even looked at me to include me in the conversation. I was completely invisible to everybody there. Derrick asked me about school briefly and at least acknowledged my existence. Anne did the obligatory ” go around the table and ask what’s new” with everybody, and found time to give me a lecture on how I should go visit my mom more. And that’s the extent of my inclusion in the evening.

I’ve decided that I am competely different from my family. Everybody else there was involved with impressing each other and showing how “high society” they were. There were a few other tables around us that were large families. They were all laughing loudly and having a good time together. Our table was calm, quiet and proper. We drank lots of expensive alcohol and talked about how important we are to the world. We told the world how important money is to us and how much better we are than everybody else; especially those without money. The only people I really talked to all night were Jeremy and Ben. Dylan is a little bit different from his family, so we did have a few conversations, but as he gets older I realized that he’s becoming more and more like them. I just don’t understand how I came from that family and spent all of my life with them and still don’t matter or fit in with them. I don’t really want to, but the approval and acceptance of my family is still nice. I don’t think I can ever have that. I will never be as good as them and will never be included with them.

On a lighter note, I finally got a weekend off from work (the first one in three months)! So Jenn, her friend Jess and I all took off Friday night to see a band that Jenn likes. The band was pretty good, I got drunk and then that night got sick. Here’s a few pictures: click on the thumbnail to see the larger image

Me all dressed up.

Jenn.

Last Man Standing (the band).

You have no idea how excited Jenn was to get this kiss.

Jenn is friends with the members of the band, so she had a blast. They seemed glad to see her. We had a lot of fun that night.

So that’s all for now. I post some pictures of my granmother’s birthday after Tuesday. We’re having a barbeque at my mom’s that day and there are still some surprises in store for my grandmother. Hopefully it’ll be a better time for me than last night was!