Sunday, August 17, 2008

Ruined Endings

So this is the second time in a month that I've been reading a book and some other element of the book has completely ruined the story for me. For example, I was reading Black Ships by Jo Graham and saw this little who's who of characters in the back so I read through them like an idiot and find out the main character and another character get together and have two sons! This was well before this happened in the book. Then this week I am reading the Awakening by Kate Chopin and the person who did the introduction states right in there that the main character commits suicide at the end! So WTH is the point of reading the book if the introduction gives away the ending??? Why would they put that in there???
Maybe I'm just grouchy because I've had a migraine for two days and because my dad is pissed at me for no good reason AGAIN. Apparently on friday when they were outside and I was in the house, Chris told my dad he was working sat/sun and my dad said well maybe we'll all take a ride out there and have lunch with you. Mind you no one mentioned this plan to me. So Chris calls yesterday and asks if I want to go out to Allendale and we go. We don't even get to eat lunch with him because he's so busy so we go grab McDonalds and leave it there for him to eat when he gets a minute. I get home and put Boy down for his nap and 10 minutes later my dad calls and says "Where have you been? Why didn't you tell me you were going out there? I was going to go with you! I could have been dead over here and you haven't even called me all day to check on me!" This is at 2:30 BTW. My response "No one told me about us all going to have lunch and I just got home about 20 minutes ago." Well he says "Ok I'll talk to you later" and I haven't heard from him since. I know he's pissed because of the tone he used but this is NOT MY FAULT. I didn't know we were all supposed to go have lunch with Chris as no one told me and if he would have went he would have been miserable because a) the parking was far away and he would have had to walk and he can't walk b) there was nowhere to sit where chris was and c) Chris wasn't able to leave to have lunch anyway and he would have been pissed off because "we drove all that way and he couldn't eat lunch with us" so I fail to see what the big deal is.

Also my husband knows I have a tremendous amount of homework due to the LIT class and I'm taking another class along with it. In fact I have 2 three page papers and 1 ten page paper I need to start on today. Yet he insists on guilting me CONSTANTLY because I don't spend enough time with him. I really wish sometimes that I could leave and be by myself somewhere for two weeks just to clear my head. This would not be fair to my son though who I already do not spend enough time with and can only go about a day without seeing me without being extremely upset. Good grief... Does it ever get better??? Ideally our financial situation would go away and I could quit my job, work part time somewhere and be home with my son for the rest of the time. I wish my siblings would realize how completely unfair it is that I am giving up the best years of my life to live in this crappy town to take care of a man who is prone to mood swings at the slightest provocation while they live their lives as normal. I understand its a little much to expect them to pack up their entire lives and come up here but I need help beyond a visit or two a year. When they do come I am glad he has something else to occupy his time but also he is very posessive of them to the point of telling them if they are coming over to visit me they "better not stay over here for long" because he wants to hog every second of the time they're here. I can completely understand why K moved far far away from her mother but unfortunately I can not do that with my dad and feel ok about it because he is in really bad health and probably not going to be around much longer and what kind of daughter would I be if I left an old man to die alone?
And that brings me back to the book. I did not like the character Edna Pontellier but I do relate to the whole hopelessness/despair thing and the wanting to be who she wants to be and not who everyone else wants her to. Not like I'm going to swim out into the great blue yonder of Lake Michigan and just sink to the bottom but still, come on already. Can something good happen here just ONCE?

No comments: