Fire Ants and Family Angst

My right leg from the knee down is almost twice the size it normally is. I accidently stepped on a fire ant hill at Jamie's soccer practice tonight, and apparently I stood there for a while - long enough for the ants to swarm up my leg, biting as much as possible. And these were weird fire ants - each bite is almost the circumference of a quarter, then the area around the bite has swelled up lots, too. And it itches like crazy. I'm keeping my Gold Bond Medicated Cream really close by, otherwise I'll scratch my leg to pieces.

And now for the family angst. I got a phone call today from the newspaper where I used to work. Seems like my aunt, out of desperation, called there trying to track me down. I'd lost touch with most of my dad's side of the family through the series of moves and such. I no longer had their addresses or they had recently moved, meaning the address/phone number I could find on the Internet no longer applied to them. So, anyway, the paper's managing editor had my number because I write to the paper quite often to comment on their stories, and my e-mail tag line has my work phone number in it. So, they called me and gave me Aunt Patty's phone number. Seems that side of the family is several members smaller due to age and disease, and the family reunion next weekend may be several members' last. So, she was begging me, Jamie and Dad to come.

I've greatly missed some members of my dad's side of the family (the ones who DON'T act like my father), and I'm eager to go. So I passed the message on to Dad, and his comment was "F&@K THEM!" then he got all pissy when I said Jamie and I were going to go, and he hung up on me. There are few things on this earth that steam me more than being hung up on, so I called back. And when it rang 20 times, then switched over to automated beeping, I hung up and called back - for 40 minutes until he got tired of hearing his phone ring and finally picked up. I informed him that I didn't appreciate him jerking me around that way, and that if he hung up on me again he will never see or talk to me or Jamie again. I had finally reached my limits on the amounts of crap I would take from him. So, we arranged for me to call him back tonight after Jamie's soccer practice when I wasn't surrounded by co-workers and we could speak frankly.

I called him a bit ago, and he didn't hang up on me, although he made it quite clear he thinks I'm stupid to waste my money to go see them. Just because he's so eaten up by hatred and delusions of grandeur, doesn't mean I have to indulge him in it. He doesn't want to go? Fine, but he shouldn't try to manipulate me into not going.

Oh, and on a good note, I'm taking a vacation day tomorrow so we can do last minute things and have some fun before school starts for me and Jamie on Monday. Bowling may even be on the agenda.