Mother's Day is hard. My children remember. My stepchildren of nearly 26 years ignore me. I am trying not to care. It was always a one-way relationship.

SD has a habit of choosing "special days" to create scenes. She was angry with her father over imagined slights a few years ago and proceeded to ignore his birthday but to be sure he got a scathing letter in the mail on on that day lighting into him for not being more involved in her life or her children's. (That letter was so outrageous, so unfair and so childish that after we forgave her for this I actually shredded it to protect her so that no one would ever know she had done it should something happen to us).

Christmas two years ago she lit into me for the first time (at least openly) since she was 19. (She is now 38, almost 39). We had spent a couple thousand dollars for a family chalet for the holiday in the mountains, I had spent months choosing and wrapping gifts, hours cooking....this was, and had been for years our ONLY Christmas. We always had it first week in December and primarily because of her. None of the other kids were a problem, but with her we always had to work around her grandmother, her mother, her husband's mother, her husband's aunt, her husband's grandmother, her church activities, her kids' sports activities. Literally out of five grown kids, this has ALWAYS Been the one that had to be "special"). She insulted my family guest as soon as she got out of the car, per usual she did nothing to help in the kitchen with me, my mom, the family guest or her stepsisters, per usual she had to be asked three times to please move her board game off the dining table so we could set the table for dinner, per usual I had to clean up the beer cans she and her husband left all over the back deck so the grandkids didn't see this (to be fair there was another family member that left his as well). All of this is "per usual". I can grit my teeth and deal with that. But THEN, she had the audacity to "call me out" over a quiet conversation me and my son were having about politics that had NOTHING to do with her. Note: no one else in the room even heard it and she was further away than many...she was LOOKING for something that weekend. And she proceeded to make that "all about her", to go crying to daddy and her husband about the mean old stepmom making political remarks and that hurt her feelings because "all of her family" voted the other way. This sounds so petty. It was. But after all I put up with out of her, I finally had enough.

I NEVER tried to discipline her growing up. She was 13 when I married her dad and I figured the best way to deal with a 13 year old spoiled young woman who was jealous of daddy's new wife was NOT to go there. I didn't. She hated me anyway. At 19 she went on a witch hunt which I survived by keeping my mouth shut, smiling and continuing to give...she soon married and got a life of her own so I knew if I could just do that, it should simmer down. It did. And for the next nearly twenty years I stood on my head to "win her over". It was my belief that as an adult with some perspective she would realize who I was, and that I was not in her father's life to cause any harm, quite the opposite. It looked like it was working. I gave, and she actually wound up giving a bit back herself. Very little, but I did get cards on Mother's Day. And although she lit into her mom and dad both with fully extended claws every now and then, I seemed to escape. Until that Christmas.

And so...that Christmas, feeling upset and betrayed, I might have gotten past again...except my husband only had to hear "Daddy you have to do something about her!" to join the fray. Literally, LITERALLY my husband and I NEVER quarrel. EVER. It had been YEARS since I can even remember the remotest tiff over ANYTHING. But as soon as daughter-in-her-late 30's whines, he reverts to the daddy of a 13 year old spoiled brat and forgets who plans all these family events, who spends the hours in preparation, who bends over backwards to do things, make things, help daughter out, dream up special things she will like...he forgets.

So with a knife in my back, I quit.

What is it about Father's Day? Well still not speaking FAther's Day after that Christmas. So instead of a card, a visit, a gift or anything for daddy (she had already ignored me on Mother's Day)...she used Father's Day as a Stab-Daddy-in-the-Back-for-being-married-to-the-bitch day. She called him...to cry and rant over me. Again.

More later. Even remembering this crap makes me sick.