No title at all.

Today started out nicely enough. I woke up and just lay in the bed feeling the smooth sheets and the springy soft pad beneath. Grendal decided to join me for a cuddle. Then Smudge came in and started shifting things around. When that happens it's time to get up.

Dh & I decided to install a stone patio in the shade under the maple tree. We bought $80 worth of field and flagstone slabs. Not enough for the job but a start. Came home and proceded to take up the sod in the area. Not too difficult since it was mostly dirt and scrawny half dead grass anyway. It went pretty quickly. Chickens thought it was great. Dog thought it was "instant hole". There he is writhing in wild anticipation. We had to call it quits at this point because it was time to get ready for our "counseling" session with dh's parents. Dh begged me to go with him so I did. I will support my husband at any cost. This time it was my reputation.

We drove up to Ashland somewhere to try and reconcile our differences. FIL's accusations were really "out there".

He didn't like how dh ate his dinner in his room....20 years ago.

He said we stole a bottle of booze from him. He said he saw a liter of bourbon with a LV tax stamp on it in one of the bedrooms and just knew it was his. (We do not keep our alcohol in the bedroom nor do we drink bourbon.) But he just admitted to poking around in another part of the house when he said he was going to the bathroom. (Actually he refused to say that we stole it. Just that "someone stole it and it ended up at your house".

He said I hacked his computer and messed up his stock portfolio.

He said I stole his pennies.

He said that dh kicked him out of the stock club that the family used to run. (He probably changed his email address and didn't tell us.) He thinks that Greg, his wife's brother, was making fun of him on it.

We were at the top of the list of suspects in the theft of $10,000 that was taken from his house. The maid did it and was arrested. He says he didn't "accuse" us of that but he did think of us.

He says we took his old computer and gleaned all of his stock information off of the harddrive and that would give us access to his stock accounts online. (He gave us the monitor only.)

This is all from a man whose own family won't have anything to do with him. Dh is just his step-son. I told him I was there to support my husband and Kathy because that's what families do...they support each other. But that he wasn't family and he practically yelled "You got that right! I'm not family!"

He mentioned Dh's cousin Christie. Apparently she didn't speak to fil at the last family party. He took great offense at that. He said "Well, I was standing right there and she spent five minutes talking to her granddad!" Well Hell's Bells! How dare she talk to her actual grandfather and not blow him off to talk to....um....her aunt's husband?

He got pissed a year or so ago because one of Dottie's kids didn't speak to him either. Kathy had to go to Dottie and tell her that her husband felt disrespected by her boys (who are grown up and out of college now) and Dottie had to get the boys to speak to him. Robby, the fil, expects everyone else to make the first move. If you don't approach him and engage him in conversation he'll pout in the corner and then bitch at Kathy on the way home about what assholes there are in her family.

And in order for this to be resolved and to have us and dd back into their lives as a family, all we have to do is....

wait for it

Apologize to him! Half the accusations he flung at us today we'd never even heard about. The stock market game hasn't been running for quite a few years. But he's pissed because he was taken off of it through his own actions. The computer gift really threw me. He never gave it to us. I didn't know anything about it. That was supposedly 9 years ago I guess.

He said we used his AOL account and ran up over a $1,000 in overtime charges.

He said his new ISP says someone else is using his account, too. According to him. The counselour suggested that they have a computer specialist come out to OUR HOUSE and search MY COMPUTER for any of his files. Dh agreed since we have nothing to hide. I refused. I don't like the fact that they think they can invade my home and paw thru my private files and that I'm supposed to allow it in order to defend myself for something I didn't do just to appease that asshole. No way in hell.

I left the room, picked dd up in the front room where she was quietly reading her book, and we left. We walked down to biglots. Dd wants to know what was going on but it's hard to know how to handle this. The meeting broke up at an impass and dh found me in no time. We came home and I made zucchini latkes for supper. They were pretty tasty.

And now my ambien has settled around my ears and I need to go to bed.

I guess I really am the Master of Chaos.