I forgot to put salt in the cupcakes today. And the frosting is a bit sweet. Ah. Bodhi hurt himself or got upset about three times while I was making them, once with blood. Olivia keeps hurting herself too, it's like they're a tag team of accidents and wailing, or getting at each other and wailing. They have fun too, but only with wailing in between.
A guy from Eircom phonewatch came round trying to sell us an alarm. He was friendly, but gaunt, with broken or rotted front teeth and something told me to be a wee bit careful. Great way to case a house, eh, come in and see what the vulnerable points are while you're selling an alarm? So my cupcaking was a bit interrupted.
Then I brought the kids down to their granny's, her sister and niece are over, which always seems to make her a bit hyper, a bit less aware. I angered her, it seems, because I said, ew! Don't say that! when her sister told Bodhi to go look for maggots in the grass. It seems they called worms maggots as kids. I have never heard of that before, so I didn't mean to imply any value judgement on that, it just seemed a bit morbid and gross to this bug-phobe to send children maggot hunting. I didn't realise she was angry about that until after Olivia twisted her ankle, and I asked for an icepack to put on it, just for the sake of giving the weepy child some attention. She has a wine cooler thingy in the fridge. She gave me a towel to put on it, then came in to try and make Olivia put her foot through it (which it wasn't really big enough for and would surely have hurt her ankle. She took the towel off to put it on anyway, and thinking you're not meant to put ice packs straight onto bare skin, I said, 'No, no, it shouldn't go straight on bare skin' or words to that effect, at which point she muttered 'Jesus fuck!' and stormed out of the room. The she stomped around and came back in later, not speaking to me - as we left (the bloody children insisted on playing and playing, oblivious to the attitude of complete discomfort in the house!) I asked her what time she wanted us for lunch tomorrow, and she answered, 'you can come any time you like, it doesn't matter to me.'
So, clearly I offended her, as I have done many times before. I wasn't remotely aware that I was doing anything offensive, is the sad thing, so it's just my obtuse, obnoxious character that's getting to her. Here's the thing though - Axl and I have split up now, less than more, yes, but something tells me that this should mean his mother and I should be able to avoid being offended by each other. That shit today has made me feel completely horrible and miserable, just as I was feeling a bit more normal again and I don't want to go to lunch with Axl and his extended family tomorrow and sit there and be awkward, or make it awkward for them.
So, here's the question, what's more awkward? Me going and having my mother in law in a huff at me in front of all Axl's family, or me telling Axl I don't want to go/have a headache and have the kids sad I'm not coming and have everyone ask where I am and blah blah. I don't know which is worse. What do you think, should I just fake my own death?
