Thanks for all of your opinions and thoughts on my previous blog post. I know I was being selfish and I really couldn't figure out why I was feeling that way, as I'm normally not a selfish person.

We cancelled our 4th of July cookout because my wife wasn't feeling up to having people over, which I understood. Luckily we were only going to have 3 people over so I didn't buy much food, but I needed to cook it anyway or it would go bad. SD24 came over earlier to help my wife create some posters with pictures of their uncle. She stayed all of 30 mins and started to leave. My wife asked if she was going to come back and help her finish the posters. SD24 originally said she wasn't coming back, but then my wife invited her, her boyfriend, and the grandson over for a cookout later in the afternoon, so SD24 said yes. It really pissed me off that SD24 wasn't going to help out more until there was food involved. I literally cannot stand to be around SD24 or the grandson (GS5 acts just like her. He's rude and disrespectful, and tears up our house every time he comes over.) but I figured it would make my wife feel better so I agreed.

Of course when SD24 came back over, she pulled her "I'm going to the store and will be back in 10 minutes" routine. That 10 mins turned into an hour of us watching GS5 run around like a chicken with his head cut off. Neither of us were in the mood to be chasing him around all day so we were both irritated. She still didn't bother to help finish the posters, and sat on her ass while I cleaned up after everyone ate. I was glad to see them leave.

I got the opportunity to speak with one of my long-time friends about this. She's known me since I was 16 years old and she knows me pretty well. We were talking about things, and I explained to her that I don't know why I was feeling the way I was, especially since we have the funeral to attend. She helped me figure out that for the duration of our marriage, everything has been pretty one-sided when it comes to her family. We're always helping out her family, attending her family events, and even for Christmas we buy all of her grandkids presents and we usually can't afford to buy anything for my side of the family.

She also pointed out that I've always made a big deal about her birthdays and try to always do something special or unexpected, and usually my birthday is just an after-thought. When something is actually planned for my birthday, it usually ends up being cancelled for one reason or another. Birthdays were not a big deal in my family growing up so I've never had a birthday party or done anything special. She helped me to understand that I shouldn't expect my wife or other people to make my birthday special just because I made their day special.

So we figured out that I wasn't actually upset about THIS birthday in particular, I was upset at all the years nothing was done for my birthday, and this was just the culmination of years of frustration. We can't do anything next weekend for my birthday because one of my wife's 2nd cousins is having a birthday party for her 2 year old that she wants to attend. Then the next weekend one of the grandkids is having a birthday party, so I told my wife to just forget about my birthday. From now on I'll just buy myself something each year and call it good.

Thanks again to everyone who weighed in with their opinions. We ended up not going to the birthday after the funeral because were too emotionally and physically drained after helping to set up all the food before and after the funeral.