What’s a girl to do without family drama in her life?

For normal people, maybe you don’t have to deal with this kind of stuff. For Miss Cotton Candy, this is just part of a normal day!

If you’ve been following along, you might remember that there was some friction between my sis and I regarding my engagement (she disapproves of my choice, she wouldn’t help him get me away so that he could talk with my parents, had no interest in seeing the ring, and then didn’t even mention it the first time I saw her after the engagement officially occurred). Is this ringing any bells?

So, imagine my surprise the other day when my cell phone rang early that morning while I was at work and it was my sis calling me. I warily answered the phone to find out that she was headed down to Austin for a conference and did I want to go to dinner that night. I was nervous (and skeptical, to be perfectly honest) but I agreed. Then I spent all day wondering if I should make an excuse to not go! Yep, that’s how I was thinking about handling it all!

Anyway, the evening finally rolls around and we end up meeting at Papasito’s for dinner. (I was pumped since trying to kill some time I ducked into my personal favorite of all retail stores (Target) and managed to score two nightstands that Mr. CC and I desperately needed that were what we’d been looking for the last few months, AND they were on sale!) So riding that high, I went off to meet sis for dinner.

First things first. She congratulated me on my engagement and asked a few questions regarding my plans and dates and venues and such. Not too many questions, but just enough to let me know that she was semi-interested. I should mention that about the time that she congratulated me on the impending wedding, a little alarm started going off in my head. Something like “BEWARE!” since I knew at that moment that there was probably an ulterior motive to this impromptu “visit.”

About 10 minutes into talks about the wedding, she got around to her point. Apparently she’s quit her job and she and her mom aren’t talking. I guess that I should backtrack for a moment and explain some of the afore-mentioned family drama. This is my step-sister. My dad married her mom when we were almost 5 years old, so this is in every way but the biological my sister and my second mom. Through thick and thin (most of it being strained) we survived our teenage years and have managed to remain semi-close. We’re not that close, most of it due to our growing apart after college and her disapproval at some decisions that I’ve made and her own growing outspoken-ness regarding those decisions. To me, there are just times in a person’s life when you stand by them. No matter what you truly think on the inside. And she was not only not there for me like that, but she was the one to ridicule me during those times. And she never apologizes for it, she does it all because she loves me and wants what’s “best” for me. I’m sure that you know people like this, right? I’m not the only person out there with people like this in their life…I hope not anyway!

Anyway, my parents own a company together and my sister has always worked for them. She’s never held a job for more than a month that wasn’t with them. And this is a stressful thing, because she doesn’t enjoy working for them. But she doesn’t want to go anywhere else. So once every so often, she quits, walks out, they don’t speak for a month or more, and then they offer her more money to come back and help them again. It’s a vicious cycle. So apparently, we’re on the down side of the cycle. And dinner is just her opportunity to tell me her side of the drama and get me on her side.

You see, picking sides became a popular thing in the last few years. As my step-mom grows older and in my own opinion, my sister gets worse, my aunts step in and help SM deal with sis. Thus, they firmly take SM side. And you know where that leaves me, right? You can balance out the equation, yes? Except what happens when I just don’t want to be involved at all? What happens when all that hear while she’s telling me this whole drawn-out story is that we’re doing this again? And all that I can think of is “I wonder if they’ll be speaking by the time that my wedding rolls around?”

And I suppose that my lack of concern or caring eventually showed. Mr. CC tells me that I’m not a good liar, so my poker face probably wasn’t working very well. She abruptly changed the subject back to my wedding and when I mentioned trying to book the DJ, her comment was (and I quote!) “So, you’re doing a dance and everything?”

Can you HEAR the disapproval coming through this blog???? Because it was there!

And I’m right back where I started with her…except that now we’re pretending that she’s on board with this marriage and the whole terrible scene at Thanksgiving just didn’t happen.

Gotta love family, right?