I’m sitting in a hotel room in Carpinteria, CA. It’s a craptacular little town near Santa Barbara. I never plan on coming back here again because it’s just that bad. Crappy restaurants, crappy food, and everything shuts down at 9pm even in June. Ridiculous.

S.O. had a class down here and I came with him. Also down for the same class was my cousin’s wife. This was my first time meeting her… and quite frankly, I don’t like her.

She asked how old I am. I told her 33, she is 35 or 36. She asked how old my sister is and I said, oh, she’s turning 30 in September. Her reply? “OMG, you guys are JUST BABIES!!!”

Strike one bitch.

Then she started telling me about the [last name] men. This is my mother’s family she is referencing and she’s telling me that all the [last name] men are fireman. I said, “Uh, well, not all of them.”

It really pissed me off because I know my uncle has psychotically re-written family history and this is all she has heard. I told her basically that my uncle didn’t have anything to do with the family and that my grandparents spent the majority of their time vacationing and doing things with my parents, my sister and I.

She had this glazed look in her eyes like I was some silly person with silly little stories. I couldn’t believe it. They’ve been married for a few years and I’ve been in this nuts family my whole life. I don’t know who this twat thinks she is, but I don’t want anything to do with her.

Then she mentioned a few crazy and untrue stories about my family and I nearly threw her off the pier. I didn’t drink at dinner because I was afraid I might say something.

Then she starts bragging about her son playing football for the local community college. Lovely. Who brags about their kid going to community college?

I don’t like her. It ruined my night. I really don’t want S.O. working around her anymore at all.

Oddly enough, things keep seeming to improve around here bit by bit. My dad is, basically, spoiling the living hell out of us. He just says he’s in a good position to do it now so we should shut up and take it. He bought us a spa (jacuzzi) to match the kitchen he built for us.

And, he’s building us a custom barbecue trailer to go to all the competitions with and to start our own catering company.

Yeah, I’m about to own a catering company, barbecue team, and S.O. and I still have our main business which seems to have picked up and the odds that it will continue doing so are pretty good too.

All that sounds more, uh, exotic? Extravagant? Whatever the right word, than it actually is. We look like we are doing far better financially than we really are, but at least our overhead is decreasing not increasing which is a good thing, right?

And, I feel the need to say that after all the whining I’ve done around here. It feels odd to receive these wonderful things that we couldn’t have afforded to do on our own. Strange, indeed.

Not that I’m not grateful, I am. I just feel weird. Maybe it’s just too long a run of bad luck?

In other “mom related” news. Apparently, she changed her cell phone number and was planning on ambushing us at the bbq competition last weekend. She was going to show up over there to meet her “boyfriend.”

And, by boyfriend you might think I’m referring to S.O.’s boss.

Nope. I’m referring to a father of Deirdre’s ex-best friend.

And, he’s married.

How do we know? He was a volunteer for the event (not knowing who my dad and stepmom are or that they were helping to run the event) as was Deirdre’s other ex-best friend’s grandfather.

Small world. See why I bitch about this town so much? It only looks big and heavily populated. Looks are truly deceiving.

When all of it came down it was the afore mentioned grandfather who spilled the beans that an somewhat innocent interaction between the dude my mom was hooking up with and my stepmother freaked him out and had him frantically calling my mother to call off their meet up.

No, I’m not kidding, you can’t make this garbage up.

And, now some of my mother’s note passing to Deirdre’s ex-friend and the inappropriate interaction at school ALLLL make sense.

Yes, I’m creeped out. Yes, Deirdre knows because she sat there hearing all the conversations while helping to run the ticket sales area. And, yes, Deirdre is a tad creeped out but also more disgusted than ever.

I don’t know what to think. Somewhere I find it amusing that I keep my mouth shut and I don’t do anything to her and these things just keep popping up.

Meanwhile, we got back to the real world Monday morning and S.O. was called in for a “random” urine test by his boss (my mother’s other boyfriend) – S.O. found out through the lab that they had gotten the order for it a week before but (and believe me, my mom was involved) they waited until Monday after the BBQ competition because they figured that he’d be up late drinking Sunday night. The urine tests now catch alcohol and if it is in your system the next day (and it only takes a few beers to accomplish that) they can you or in the case of someone we know – they force you to go to AA for a year just to keep your job.

It’s bullshit. It’s wrong and it’s ridiculous. It was also a complete set up in S.O.’s case… but his test was clean, he hadn’t been doing anything anyway.

Today, I don’t feel so down trodden, I don’t feel so persecuted, instead I kind of feel like they can do whatever they want, we’re just going to keep rising above it.