Oh, now THAT was uncomfortable..

Last evening I went to my friend Pete's 5th birthday. Pete's parents are currently separated, but Mom decided (allegedly) at the last minute to have ice cream and cake for family and friends. Let me explain ice cream and cake....A cake, a strawberry cream cheese pie, 2 kinds of ice cream, a vat of pork bbq, 2 kinds of chips, salsa, dip, and cheese. Cake and ice cream indeed.

Anyhoo,

The family is a rather extended one, with one set of grands, 2 brothers, their wives, 2 of their grown children, 2 friends of the birthday kid, and 3 assorted hangers on. (Me being one of the three)

Chaos reigns.

No Daddy to be seen or no mention of Daddy.

After everyone else gets there, and the line up for the trough begins, in walks Daddy with a rather stunned look on his face. Mom says, "OH DIDN"T YOU GET MY PHONE MESSAGE!? I CALLED AND LEFT A MESSAGE ON SO and SO'S MACHINE FOR YOU." Daddy says "No, I just stopped by, I didn't know about a party." But he came in and joined in. Well, as much as possible. Her family completely ignored him. Totally and throughly blew him off. He's 6'5" and about 230, you can't NOT see the man.

The kids were involved in the whole present grab thing, the family is doing their best to ignore him, and Mom is rushing around guiltily. 2 of the hangers on are complete fucking idiots. One is 27 years old, and a total drunk, who if she didn't have a college degree, and could get good jobs without much effort, would be wiping down the bar at the Legion (not like thats a bad thing, but you know what I mean) She reminds me a lot of me when I was 27, except I didn't have a beer surgically attached to my hand. She dresses like me too. It's kind of creepy. The other hangers on is the son of Mom's drunken slut friend, who is a complete waste of skin. Actually the whole family is, but I digress. The drunken slut friend is on more anti-depressants known to man, and has a standing appointment for therapy twice a week. Not that I've seen any difference, mind you. She latched onto my friend about two years ago, and has dragged her down into her pit of despair. Or whatever you want to call it. She has two sons by one of her multiple marriages. The one should just be shot because he may breed sometime. He's 17, has wrecked two cars, a motorcycle and a bike. Has been in juvenile detention once or twice, and is already working on a drinking problem. Niiice. The other son seems to be a little higher up the food chain, but he is younger. I'm not sure of his age, but he hangs out at my friends house all the time. I have serious issues with a 14 (guessing) year old hanging out with a 5 and a 9 year old. But apparently I'm the only one (besides the Dad, and he apparently dosen't count anymore) I just get a bad feeling about that whole deal, and I have voiced my opinon, but again, WTF do I know? This kid baits and teases both of the younger children to where they are constantly saying, "Shut it Alexander" or "Shut your piehole Alexander" If I heard that phrase once last night, I heard it a million times. And frankly, if I would have said that when I was 9, I would have gotten a pretty swift backhand. It certainly isn't becoming. Dad tried to correct them several times about that, but they ignored him.

Anyway. Dad tried to give Pete his gift, and of course the two hangers on had to jump in and try and take the attention away from Dad. It was ugly. He felt bad, I could tell. He wanted to spend some quiet time with his kids, but in the midst of this whole fiasco, he couldn't. I felt sorry for him, even though he's got his own buttheaded ways, and is certainly at fault as much as Mom in this whole separation thing, he's still a good person. So he and I talked for awhile. Auction stuff, thats all, nothing heavy. Finally after 3 hours of this gawdawful, shrill evening, we both bid our farewells and slunk into the night.

This situation is veering very closely to being out of control, and there isn't a thing I can do about it. I'm going to have to be quiet, and wait for the inevitable bomb to drop, and hope and pray that the aftermath isn't going to be as ugly as I'm afraid it is.

Oh. And since part of her family is going away for Christmas, they're going to have their Christmas open house on the 17th. They invited me to come. Eeee. I've got two weeks to prepare.

After an evening like that, I'm really glad that I have stayed single as long as I have.