Over the long weekend I went on a trip with my bio-kids and my mom to a family reunion where we stayed with my grandma. The dynamics of 4 generations of women, plus extreme heat with no air conditioning, caused all kind of tension. I am the person in the family who "fixes" the conflicts, smoothes hurt feelings, and just kind of keeps the peace between everyone. When I got back home, I vented at length to SO about how much stress I had been under trying to keep everyone happy. He replied in a sympathetic tone, "I know, that's what I go through every Saturday."

Vent starts here as thinly veiled rant letter to SO:

After some disengagement on my part over the last several weeks, meaning SO's total immersion with SD6 on the weekends, her whining, cloying, complaining ways even got on SO's last nerve. Then finally a couple weekends ago SO witnessed her ignoring me when I spoke to her, and although it was a relatively minor incident compared to other instances, it made him realize that I was not making this shit up that she has been disrespectful and has been acting like she out-and-out dislikes me. He thinks it's BM poisoning her against me.

I had been on the verge of ending my relationship with SO, but decided to keep trying, because I really do love the clueless sap. Instead I disengaged again from SD, whom we only have on weekends, but it's still an enormous strain. I went to my mother's, intending to spend the whole weekend, but being the emotional wreck that I've been all week, I got my feelings hurt about something and decided not to stay (I'm not usually like this, by the way).