Junk Memories

I'm going to give you some background on my relationship with Annie through the years. It will help make more sense why I questioned motive of her sending the twin's graduation pictures.  

Let's see...John and Annie had 50/50 custody. The boys would come home from school on Friday to our house, be at our house the entire week and get off the bus at Annie's the following Friday. I had met Annie while we were dating. It was a day when we were dropping the boys off at their Grandmother's (Annie's Mom) in Baton Rouge. She and her Mom came out and were really nice. Her Mom hugged John (I took this as a good sign and recall at the time John had told me the marriage ended because they had "just grown apart").

I'm going to bullet point things to keep the timeline straight in my mind:

• Meet in Baton Rouge. Annie looked me up and down and seemed to be very interested in my shoes. I forgot what I had on but you know they rocked!
• Lots of phone calls from Annie to John while we were together. Especially when he was down here visiting me for the weekend. Often the subject of the call would be something non-urgent. One time it was buying new sneakers for the boys. I once asked John if she knew he was in Tampa. He replied, "yes, I always let her know when I come down her in case anything comes up with the boys." The calls would be at all times throughout the weekend. I recall thinking, "I wonder why she is calling about benign things that can hold until Monday?" She would also do this if we were on vacation. It bugged me, but this was the first time I had dated someone with kids.I remember asking John about it. I said something like, does she have to call while we are together if the subjects are not burning? I said I totally understood that the boys would (and should) call whenever they wanted to talk to him, but his ex wife while we were on vacation? He got defensive and told me his boys came first. I was nipped.
• Moving on to when we decided to get married. I had gone to Lafayette several times to go house hunting. John was renting a house from...you guessed it! Annie. We made an offer on a home that was almost finished. It was going to be in the Parade of Homes and the builder was using this one to really sell his work. It was so exciting. The upstairs was perfect for the boys. J would have his own room. The twins would share a room (they always ended up in each other's room at night anyway), there was an office area to do homework and there was a huge bonus room that we had finished as a playroom. Our wedding was in March. The house would be complete one month later. The Parade of Homes was the first 2 weekends in April. The builder had his designer stage the house for the parade. I would move from Florida after the parade. John wanted to surprise the boys. He had told them we were looking for a house, but didn't tell them we had closed on one. On the first Saturday of the parade he took them to a couple of houses. When they got to ours they were saying how much they liked it. He said, "that's great because this is your home!" It was fun--they called me and it was really exciting. I had not seen the completed house yet since I was still in Tampa and dealing with selling my house (this was during the time that bidding wars start before the sign is in the yard. Oh those were the days...) John would send me pictures of the house. I couldn't wait. The next weekend I get an email from Annie telling me how beautiful the house was.  She had gone to the parade and been in the house before me. Call me a bitch, but it bugged me. She started telling me how the designer decorated it and what she thought. I said thank you and swallowed my pissed-off-ness.
• John's birthday is in June (recall he is the epitome of everything bad about a Gemini!). On the morning of his birthday we were in bed and I had brought him his presents. He had gotten a call and he played the VM on speaker thinking it was the boys. It was Annie and her sister singing Happy Birthday. Annie says "Happy Birthday Sweet John." Thank goodness we had already fucked because hearing that dried me right up, if you know what I'm saying and I THINK that you do...
• Several months after I moved there I was in my office doing some computer work. I had taken a shower and had on a robe and my hair in a towel. I heard some talking in the kitchen. It was just me and John there. I creep into the hall and listen. I hear Annie's voice. John tells me to come out and say hello. She's sitting at the island sipping a coffee. WTF? I'm there in a robe with my hair in a turban. I smile and wave and say I need to get ready for work. Similar things happened over the next 2 months. One of the twins rented a movie at Blockbuster and took it to our place. She goes over there while we are gone (the boys had a code they punched in on the garage to get in) and goes upstairs and looks for it in the playroom.  I find out she used the code and went in. Now THAT pissed me off. I told John it was our home and there needed to be boundaries. He agreed and asked her not to do it again. She said she had a late fee at Blockbuster and it needed to be returned...
• The clincher was Christmas. The gift from the boys to John was all the videos from when they were babies/toddlers/elementary were converted to DVD. On the front of each DVD there were still shots of the theme--baptism, birthdays, etc. There were something like 15 DVDs. I can't tell you how many had Annie on the front. The boys were so excited. They loved seeing movies of when they were little with both their Mom and Dad together. Girl, I talked to my close friends. Everyone agreed this was not an innocent gift. One Saturday while John was golfing I got out the DVDs to watch. There was the sonogram of the twins, Annie videoing a new house, her talking to John and calling him "Papa" and "Babe". I had been an new wife and step mom for 6 months. As I got to probably the 6th DVD I was sitting there with tears rolling down my face. The twins in the kitchen banging pots, J running through the house asking "when are the babies getting here?" with John and Annie talking to him. I felt like a voyeur. I felt like an outsider. It sucked. When John got home from golf I told him how the DVDs upset me. I was expecting understanding. Instead I got anger, "how can you be mad that she gave me a priceless gift of videos of my boys?", he yelled. I told him he was missing the point. That she was in 80% of the videos and her voice was in all of them. He said, "fine, I'll put them away." It was tense. 
• I realized at that point I needed someone to talk to. I looked at counselors available on my insurance. I picked one that did not have a name that ended in -eaux and called her. My first question was "are you from Louisiana?" She said "no, Illinois." Sold! I made an appt. Sharon was no Lynn, but she really helped with the struggles of being a new step mom. I told her about the DVDs and asked if I was being unreasonable. I'll never forgot her response, she put down her pen and put her hands in her lap. She said, "Giving those DVDs under the guise that they are from the boys was incredibly narcissistic." Wow. I thought she would say something like, "oh she meant well."
• Many of my appointments with Sharon revolved around setting limits with both Annie and John. I had to deal with a request to watch her dog for 3 days while she and her husband went on vacation. My answer was I didn't think it was a good idea and she should board him. Annie would call John and ask for help setting up new TVs, installing fans, you name it. I would ask what Rickie thought (Annie's husband). John would reply that he wasn't very "handy."

I just looked at the clock and I need to seize the day. I could type for hours. What I listed above goes from April of 2005 to around February of 2006. The next chapter will consist of pyramid marketing schemes, the camp and birthdays. Stay tuned.

Penelope disclaimer--Annie has been great to me after the whole Pao thing. I think we were like 2 soldiers that had been through the same war. We shared the PTSD of John and that was our common ground. However, there is some pathology there!