I wish this were fiction, but I couldn’t make it up if I tried.<o:p></o:p>
I had my little conversation with Donnal
yesterday
which left me a little bit miffed but not surprised
Best thing to do in such cases is just move on.<o:p></o:p>
There’s not a lot you can do about how
other people act.
The only thing you can deal with is how you react to their actions.
So taking into account the wisdom of my decades,
I try to live my hard-won newly adopted philosophy -
If you can’t change it, accept it and just move on.
Forgetting to be annoyed is sometimes the healthiest option.
It saves a lot of emotional energy.<o:p></o:p>
And I just might have achieved
the desired forgetful (though not quite forgiving) acceptance
if Donnal had not rung me back a couple hours later.
Apparently she was still working on her pre-trip to do list
and item #23, I would come to realize,
had something to do with her next trip,
the one after this mega trip.<o:p></o:p>
“Hey, um, hi,” she started off.
Interesting, I thought.
I had no idea why she was calling,
but she was not exactly comfortable about it
whatever it was.
“I was just looking at the family calendar…”<o:p></o:p>
“Uh huh.”
Oh, Donnal.
That uh-huh isn’t one of my usual audible placeholders.
Nope. You’ve got my full attention.
You’re stammering, you’re looking at the calendar,
and I am curious as Hades where you’re going with this.<o:p></o:p>
Donnal has this lovely habit of going to
the calendar
months in advance and blocking off weeks,
week-ends (well, she never covers those anyway),
entire months plus, for travel.
She doesn’t mention these trips to either Caroline or me,
just blocks out her time and lets us plan our schedules around her trips.
Did I mention MONTHS IN ADVANCE
so that her plans get priority
(through the sacred tradition of First Dibs, I suppose) ?<o:p></o:p>
___________________________________<o:p></o:p>
Caroline was not comfortable when she
realized the only time
she could go on her current trip with a teacher friend
would overlap Donnal’s big trip by ten days.
She said it wasn’t fair to me.
I said she was right, but she should go anyway.
The problem as I saw it,
was not Caroline taking a ten day once a year trip.
The problem is Donnal taking yet another trip,
this one her second 6 week trip in eight months
and especially during prime summer time.<o:p></o:p>
Caroline finally
decided to go,
but promised she’d make it up to me.
Not to worry, I told her.
I don’t have funds for travel anyway.<o:p></o:p>
My fingers were fairly flying as I
opened the family calendar on my tablet.
“I see that you’re scheduled off for the last half of July,” Donnal continued.<o:p></o:p>
I looked and,
yes, yes indeed.
There in the sky blue highlighting reserved for my time notations,
was the phrase, “Ann – Vacation days.”
The date spanned the last two weeks of July,
beginning the day after Donnal returns from her great adventure
and ending the day before I go back to work.<o:p></o:p>
“I didn’t
see that on the calendar last week,”
she said oddly carefully.
That’s true, because it wasn’t there last week.
In fact, I have no idea when it popped up on the little shared electronic grid
or, for that matter, how.
I didn’t put it there.
Donnal certainly didn’t put it there.
The only other person who has access is…<o:p></o:p>
Oh, I suddenly got it.<o:p></o:p>
Looks like
Caroline made good on her promise to make things up to me.
Two weeks off of Dad duty.
Two weeks of simply me time.
Well, thank you Caroline.
I think I’ll take that gift,
and guilt-free too.<o:p></o:p>
“Will you, are you, taking a trip or something?”<o:p></o:p>
Insert
here the sound of alarums going off.
There’s a reason Donnal is asking.
Why?
Instinct kicks in.
I don’t yet know why,
“Well, yes, I am,” I lie.<o:p></o:p>
“The whole two weeks?”<o:p></o:p>
Now I’m
getting into it.
I still don’t know what exactly she wants,
but, damn it,
I am not surrendering those blue highlights on the calendar
without a (very duplicitous, very polite) fight.
“Oh, yes. I’m driving up to Virginia.”<o:p></o:p>
“Hmm.”
Her little grunt of frustration sits a minute in the invisible miles between us.
“I was hoping you didn’t have anything planned.
You remember my friend Lisa.”
I do vaguely.
Twenty years or so ago,
the three of us worked together at a school.
“Her husband isn’t well,” (uh-huh) “and I need to go visit her,
you know, kind of an emergency thing,
so I bought a non-refundable ticket,
but then I looked at the calendar
and you’ve taken those two weeks…”<o:p></o:p>
I feel the
need to point out a little fact at this point,
“Because it was the only time left open on the calendar.”<o:p></o:p>
You
know exactly why.
Because you, my selfish, everso entitled sister
have taken up the entire rest of MY summer break.
And, by the way, what a convenient emergency -
Not important enough to cancel her mega trip.
It can be postponed for seven weeks,
but important enough that I should cancel my less important trip.
I suppose if Donnal doesn’t make it there for Mr. Lisa’s illness,
she might could get there in time for his funeral.<o:p></o:p>
Yes, I
know mine isn’t a real trip, but she doesn’t know that.
She’s perfectly content to let me cancel so she doesn’t have to.
And, by the way, is Mr. Lisa really ill or is there some other reason for this trip.
What's to say she's not lying to me?
I'm an excessively easily guilted person and I'm lying like it's my mother tongue.
What's to stop her, a much much better manipulator than I,
from finding a trip she just doesn't want to miss,
and lying to me so she can take it.
Oh, and another by the way -
Mentioning a non-refundable air ticket,
that’s some fairly evil leverage for a woman
with a net worth in the freaking millions
to wield against her sister who clears a whole $300 a week.<o:p></o:p>
There was
a moment of silence.
Then I said, with an air of faux resignation,
“I guess I could cancel my trip.
Ivy and I can do the Renaissance festival next year I suppose.”<o:p></o:p>
It was a
gamble, seriously.
I was playing on her (fingers-crossed they still existed) vestiges of guilt.
It almost didn’t work.<o:p></o:p>
“No, no,” Donnal
protested.
“I could just let Caroline deal with Dad while we’re both out of town.”<o:p></o:p>
“That doesn’t
work for me.”
Cue the Mighty Mouse hero sister music,
Here I come to save the day!
“It’s way too much to ask of her,
especially during her crunch planning time,
right before school starts up.
I’ll just stay.”
And be the better sister you aren’t being.<o:p></o:p>
By the by,
if Donnal actually did dump Dad on Caroline alone
after taking her 6 week trip,
there would be actual murder.
Caroline has decided that,
after a lifetime of acquiescing to Donnal’s demands,
there’s only so much excrement she’s going to take from Donnal.<o:p></o:p>
As it
stands right now,
Donnal says she was able to get the non-refundable ticket
refunded somehow.
Very interesting.
We’ll have to see where this goes.<o:p></o:p>
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