To recap, I spent Wednesday running around (picking up the quiche, going to the neurologist) and cooking. Thursday morning we started cooking at 9:30 am and finished at 12:30, then carried everything to the hotel where the in-laws were staying and were there until about 6. Friday we went to the Ackland and saw some art, then played a board game for a little while, then went home, fed the cats, and changed for dinner at 6:30 at Panciuto. Saturday we met the in-laws at 10, went to the NC natural history museum, then had dinner at the Flying Saucer and finished up the board game, then got home around 8:30 to feed the cats.
So I've had no time to do anything like writing since Tuesday. This is Annoying.
Spending time with Ben's family is just draining. It reminds me constantly of how different my background is, how much of a disadvantage I have in comparison. His mom tells the same dozen "my kids were in the gifted program and volunteered at science museums and went to all these educational camps and ..." you know, all the things rich kids of highly-educated parents do. And I sit there and get pissed off, because I wasn't a rich kid, and my parents sure as shit aren't highly educated, and I have some serious resentment and anger about my mom telling the school not to let me into the G&T program.
So them just sitting there all "educational blah blah gifted blah summer camp etc" brings up all the things I couldn't do, because a) we couldn't afford it or b) it wasn't considered important enough.
Then there's his dad, who's a special kind of jerk. He interrupts you when you're in the middle of your sentence. He lives in this little tiny bubble of very narrow, limited experience and can't see beyond his narrow experience to realize he's wrong about a lot of things, then when you explain that he's wrong, he doesn't understand what you're saying.
Example: we went to Pepper's for lunch, and for some reason, we were discussing the Appalachians. Oh, right, we were talking about the Biltmore house and Asheville, because his mom wants to go there.
Context: Asheville isn't as hot as it is here in summer, because it's in the mountains.
him: It can't be that high elevation, the Appalachians aren't that high. It's about 2000 feet.
me: What? The Appalachians are plenty high, what the hell are you talking about?
him: Well, Mount Washington in Vermont is the most extreme place in the US.
me: !?!!? Mount Washington is in the fucking
Appalachians!him: So?
me: You just said, "the Appalachians aren't that high," but Mount Washington is an Appalachian, therefore the Appalachians ARE that fucking high, QED. It's not like I'm making giant leaps of logic here.
him: What's the highest peak in the Appalachians?
me: Like I know that off the top of my head.
Ben looks it up on his iPhone. Mount Mitchell, North Carolina, 6684 feet, highest point on the east coast. (And 400 feet higher than Mount Washington.)
me: HA. Suck that, dickweed.
There may have been less swearing involved in the actual conversation, but I don't guarantee it.
Spending time with someone who's "discussion" and "conversation" style involves attacking and looking for holes and basically treating it like a particularly brutal grad student-level course is
REALLY FUCKING TIRING.I can't think fast enough to keep up with his changes of argument or tactic; I lose my train of thought easily, and when he interrupts, it's hard for me to get back where I was. And that's me on all cylinders; since I got sick, I get brain fog more often. And I have trouble processing sounds when there's a lot of background noise (and when over half the participants in the "conversation" are shouting).
It's stressful. I hate it.