I have an upcoming ‘event’ that I’m not looking forward to. I haven’t written about this person in a while, and there’s a reason for that. Soon after the holidays last year, I had to put my foot down with the bearded eye-roller that I was not going to participate in activities that included this person anymore, for my own well being. I wrote about it a little in the post I linked to above.

In the meantime, I’ve encouraged BER to continue his relationship with her, if that made him happy. It seemed to go pretty well, until the holidays started rolling around.

He asked if I was going to invite her for Thanksgiving and I said that I wasn’t, because I thought we had a deal. My family doesn’t enjoy being around her either- so in addition to me being uncomfortable (putting it mildly), my entire family would be uncomfortable too.

On Thanksgiving day, I could see that BER was very uncomfortable with the fact that I didn’t want to invite her over. He wasn’t trying to show it, but I'm very good at reading him. So, me- being me, I felt guilty and started beating myself up over it. I told him to go ahead and call her and invite her over. The relief on his face was confirmation that I was right about how he was feeling.

He made up a story about how he thought I invited her and I thought he invited her- but when I went over the guest list that day, we figured out that nobody invited her. Good one!

Thankfully, she already had plans when he called her. But he told her that we’ll have her over for Christmas then. Christmas is even MORE important to me for happy family than Thanksgiving, so I felt that I was between a rock and a hard place.

BER’s mom came up with a great idea to take this woman out to dinner on Christmas day, just us (and MIL said she’d join us too, as a buffer... isn’t she great?). The family is coming over on Christmas Eve, so the family won’t have to deal with her, and that part makes me happy.

Still, I’ve been really dreading this. I had a nightmare last night that is probably the most Freudian dream I have EVER had (and I’ve had plenty!). For the purposes of the dream, I’m going to call her “SP” (for sociopath- har!).

I was in the back of a van, with SP and my MIL. BER was driving the van. I was paralyzed and strapped down. SP started undressing me and my MIL was looking at me with a look that seemed to say, "why are you letting her do this?", but didn't stop her.

I think I was able to talk, but didn't for some reason.

This part of the dream has nothing to do with SP, but I thought it was funny- so I’ll continue.

At some point, I was dropped off in front of a building that housed a game show in my wheelchair (I was still paralyzed in my dream). My mom and my aunt (dad’s sister) took me into the building and wheeled me onto the game show stage. My job, apparently was to sit in my wheelchair and look at the audience. Nothing else.

The object of the game show was about winning the job you've always dreamed of. My mom ended up winning, and won a job to decorate the set for the Paul Williams show.

Yeah- that’s right- this Paul Williams.

She was very excited about it, because apparently she’s always wanted to be a set decorator. Now she’s never expressed this to me in real life, but I’ll bet she’d be good at it.

The dream ended as my aunt and mom wheeled me off down a dark hall.

OK- who wants to have me committed? Yeah- I thought so….