A few weeks ago OSD got engaged to her fiancee while they were on vacation. Last week OSDs future MIL called DH and invited him and me to a welcome back dinner for OSD and her son, which is tomorrow night. This is just one of many upcoming summer skid events:

OSDs welcome back dinner
YSD Baby shower #2
YSD Baby shower #3
SS's homebrew beer tasting night
DH and skids charity golf tournament and after party
YSD Baby shower #4
OSDs engagement party
SS's summer barbeque
Grandson is born
Bris

There is no getting off this train. I thought a lot about all of this. So much. In circles. I started interviewing therapists. I joined a 5am yoga class. I don't want to feel like there is a weight on my chest or to feel all of this negativity. I don't want to see BM 9 times in the next 2 months. I don't want to keep spending time celebrating the skids and being hit with contrast memories of the horrible way they treated us years ago. I don't want to feel that flash of anger seeing YSD fixing YDDs braid, and seeing YDD give her a huge smile, knowing that YDD thinks the world of YSD, yet YSD didn't even think they were close enough to even warrant an invite to her wedding. But there isn't anything I can do to change the past. I can only change my attitude to hopefully change the future. This is just the beginning of the skids being around a whole lot more. I don't want the next 30 years to be DH splitting his time between his 2 separate families, and that is a real possibility if I disengage and withdraw from all skid activities. I came in to the skids lives at the worst possible time. They were all teenagers or almost teenagers, at peak dickishness. DH can overlook everything we went through because of his unwavering love for the skids, just like he and I are about to overlook whatever we're in for over the next few years as our DDs become teenagers. I can't blame him for wanting to be very involved and forgetting all of the bad stuff because I would probably do the same.

I thought a lot about what I do want. I do want us to be blended. I do want us to be in reality how I thought we had been, and feel like I had been feeling for the last couple of years. I do want the skids to have a good relationship with DDs and consider them sisters, just as DDs think of the skids as their big sisters and brother. Maybe once the baby comes it will help bring the family together. As I wrote that bad memories creeped into my head, "Just like when DDs were born, right?" Nope nope nope. Shoving old, negative thoughts down, new attitude time. I am going to go out today with DH and look for an engagement present and some more personal off-registry items for the upcoming baby showers. I am going to not have any more coffee today and I am going get a good nights sleep. Tomorrow I am going to get a haircut and feel great and I am going to attend that dinner with a smile on my face. I am going to radiate positivity. And if that doesn't work out, I am going to drink 2 glasses of wine just before we leave and that should do the trick.