The upstairs bathroom

We have a half bathroom upstairs in this house; since the girls' rooms are up there, they used that bathroom, and EG and Rocky and I used the one downstairs.

However, everyone has moved into the downstairs bathroom now. It wasn't bad enough that I had to share with two males--now I have the girls and all their accessories and lotions and hair stuff and accoutrements of femaleness in my bathroom, and meanwhile the cats are enjoying their own personal salle de bains up there. And all I do is clean up after everyone, constantly tidying and wiping and scrubbing and picking up glasses with soaking retainers.

I have always been someone who tried to be nice, thinking that everyone had some pain or issue in their life which caused them to hurt and perhaps explained their behavior. Even with my neighbor, she who is self-centered, judgmental, and just plain obnoxious, I have tried to be fair and pleasant. However, when neighbor told me that "this type of loss is pretty normal for adolescents," something in me snapped, and I told her off so thoroughly and so directly that an employee who was sitting in my office waiting for a review asked if we could reschedule for another time.

Last night, I got an email from a family member who told me that she was hurt that Kiki had asked another family member to not text or call. This person had never been in our lives, through his own choice, and then had been here for the funeral and was so difficult, needy, self-centered, dramatic, and just plain weird and was burning up Kiki's prized cell phone use to meet his own needs; so, she asked for some space. I responded nicely, omitting the parts about Family Member making a scene at the funeral, running out not once, but twice, draping over the box with the ashes and sobbing, and never shutting up, not for two seconds, using Dude or Man every other word, and just generally sucking all the air and energy out of the room. I didn't mention how he made himself the center of attention at the calling hours, to the point where other family members were monitoring him to make sure he stayed appropriate and wondering if he was on something. I also did not mention that I sat in a restaurant with this person, who talked manically about inappropriate things in front of the kids, and popped Xanax just to get through the meal, thinking that it was sad that a bad situation was being made worse by someone focusing on their own needs and not on the kids who had lost not only their dad, but a sense of safety and innocence in one hour on a Saturday afternoon.

I simply said we were all fragile right now, and I was sorry if she could not respect that.

I realized I really didn't care if these people severed the relationship--in fact, it would make our lives so much more pleasant and serene if they did go away, or at least operate from a distance. Kind of like the upstairs bathroom situation--some space would be nice.