Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Suspicious

I'm so used to my step-kids biological mom (the "Momster") being uncooperative, spiteful and outright nasty to deal with, that when she's pleasant - dare I say cooperative - I get nervous.

What is she up to?

What is her plan?

When will the bomb drop?

Don't get me wrong; I used to take these moments at face value and think that she was turning over a new leaf and I would hold onto the hope that going forward maybe things would be different.  Oh the roller coaster!  It was a constant up and down and twist and turn.  About six months ago, I realized that we always end up right where she wants us and then she gets mean again, while we're still reeling from the ride.

So today, when sending a friendly email about some clothing the children brought to her house and never brought back here, I pressed the "send" button and held my breath.  And I waited for the inevitable barrage of finger pointing and nasty jabs that typically fill her emails to me.

However, there was none of that.  I received a polite response.  ACK!  Now what?  I have all this defense built up and nowhere to use it!  Her unpredictability is too much for me.  It's exhausting to even send this woman an email; a process of carefully removing anything that can be misconstrued as accusatory or offensive, then proof-reading several times, then sending, and finally waiting for the ball to be smashed back to my side of the court.

When I receive a response like the one today, I don't know how to take it.  My heart would like to simply accept that it was a friendly exchange and leave it at that; my mind says "BEWARE... something's amiss".

Today I will run through the possibilities.  I'd like to say that I can make an educated guess about the cause of her lack of nastiness (I wouldn't call it "kindness"), but if the past several years have taught me anything, it's that the Momster is insanely unpredictable.  You can only count on her to be unaccountable, and that's it.

Perhaps she has her "victim of the week/month" in my step-daughter, as they are still not getting along and she's concentrating all her meanness on her little girl.  Perhaps she's on new medication.  Maybe she won some sort of raid or battle in World of Warcraft (her favorite pastime, according to the kids), and is having a "good" day.  All I can be sure of is that it's a short-lived situation.  She could turn mean again tomorrow... or the next day... or the day after that...

I'll be sure to tell you when it happens.

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