I'm just a WHAT, bitch?

Kourtnie tells me today that at our family's weekly Saturday Chinese food thing, while talking about my great-niece-in-law's upcoming controversial nuptuals, that my oldest sister referred to said great-niece-in-law as "their Jeanette." Meaning, by inferrence, that I'm flighty, irresponsible, self-centered, and don't apologize for anything. Now, this all was said before I arrived, and evidently everyone at the table took offense in my place. Which, you know, I appreciate. Sure, I've made my share of mistakes in the past decade or so, but I've certainly apologized where apologies were due. And, okay, I'm the first to admit that I exhibit a little tendency towards narcisism, but the flighty thing is really offensive. Me, flighty? Um, I'm the least flighty person I know. Seriously. Okay, maybe not the LEAST flighty. Mom and Amy probably top that list. I'm just more decisive than they are, and I stand behind my decisions. Flighty? Not at all.

This, may I say, comes from a woman who, despite having two jobs that I'm sure each pay more than I made as an architectural project coordinator in Chicago, and yet is still in bankruptcy, has had her car reposessed, and lives in a farmhouse that's falling down on a farm that doesn't produce a damn thing. She had her paycheck siezed by the feds for back taxes last year, borrowed a nice chunk of change from Mom and Dad, and had yet to pay them back. Plus, she raised Mindy. It's not like she can't take just a little blame for how she turned out. And to compare me to a girl who dumped her fiance over the phone, dropped out of high school, and ran away with a 21-year-old deadbeat before she was even legal... Yeah, I'm offended. And that's not even the whole story. My sister and brother-in-law took her in when she was in elementary school because her mother wasn't able to take care of her. They gave her everything she didn't have before, even when they couldn't afford it. And what did she do? Made them pay for a whole shitload of clothes, an expensive set of senior pictures, a cell phone and the plan to go with it, and then a few weeks later just disappeared with the clothes and the phone and the truck she'd been allowed to drive and still expected them to pay for that stuff while she ran around with this loser she's going to marry. He, notably, didn't graduate from high school and can't hold down a decent job and has gotten her to give him money to support whatever habits he's got. And now she calls my parents saying she's going to marry this guy and asking Dad to perform the ceremony, as if there couldn't possibly be any objections to this wedding. Paula, of course, is mostly just mad because Mom told her in no uncertain terms that there was a good possibility Dad wouldn't want to do the wedding and that Mindy was certainly going to expect her foot the bill for the ceremony. Frankly, Kourtnie and I are far more deserving of my father presiding over our ceremony than Mindy and what's-his-face will ever be, and it's not something I'm even willing to ask him to do.

You know, maybe I really should have gotten my sister a Suze Orman book for Christmas like I half-joked about.