this house is clean

Well, maybe not in a strictly literal sense, but...let's just say:  my friends, the occupation is over.

Things have been percolating here the last three (has it only been 3?!) weeks because of our 'house guest'.  I suppose a teeny bit of back story is in order....don't worry I won't go on forever, and since I have no new knitting pictures to post--mostly because I've done no new knitting, a short story may suffice.

Our 'house guest' was actually Cee's brother's wife (notice I don't say sister-in-law)....there's been animosity there, almost completely on her side, by way of the fact that she doesn't like or want to know her husband's family, hasn't spoken to any of us in 8 years (yes, you read that right) and actually moved them two hours away from where we all live and kept her husband from communicating with any of his family for almost 6 of those 8 years.  Well, the rift between Cee's brother and family recently healed, thanks in part ironically to Cee's dad's declining health and eventual passing, and things were starting to go back to normal, but there's been tension between his wife still see, because she still didn't want to know any of us or even try to mend things...all of us decided we could live with that, as long as Cee's brother was still communicating, and it seemed it would go on indefinitely until....out of the blue she took a job here (or close to here) and all of a sudden she didn't want to commute the distance and demanded they sell up down there and move back here, but in the meantime she needed a place to stay.....

Enter yours truly....now, I must preface this by saying this was against our better judgement to begin with, we weren't too keen on having her here--wait, that is a big understatement, we both knew it was a horrible idea--mostly because like I said, she didn't want to know any of us, and but for the fact that she needed a place, she STILL wouldn't want to know any of us, and I knew for a fact that once they got settled into a place here, she again wouldn't want to know any of us....still, some part of Cee and I thought that maybe by doing this, things would be resolved, fences mended, rifts overcome...so we agreed, mostly for Cee's brother, who let's face it, was in a terrible fix..also we figured if we said no, that rift just might start to open up again.....damned if you do, damned if you don't.

So we said yes....and to make a long story short, it's been a nightmare.  I won't bore you with the excruciating minutia of every event, but suffice it to say we felt heartily ill-used and abused, but were accomodating and opened our home, and the first time I asked her not to do one thing (that one thing was do multiple loads of laundry every day....she's one of those people to whom one shirt and a pair of socks is a laundry load) she decided that we were mean horrible people who were making her life intolerable and she moved out without so much as a thank you for letting me stay or a kiss me arse.

Where this leaves Cee's family and Cee's brother I have no idea....I'm hoping that we (with the exception of her, because she's shown her true colours and I wasn't completely surprised by what happened) can all be adults and get this resolved before it turns into another indefinite period of animosity and no communication.

I'm hopeful, because I don't think Cee's brother wants that either, but I also know he's got a poisonous little bug in his ear....stay tuned, it could get ugly.