Curious Incidents of a Flailing Mermaid

Ridiculousness - Part two

Welcome to my reality: week 2, prompt 5 - Share an interaction you had with a family member today.

So, here we are, part two. I know I promised both parts two and three today, but as per "Note: Oh my word! I've just spent the last five h...", my brain is frazzled. Therefore, I'm only offering part two… you'll have to wait for the rest of the wedding dress fiasco. I'm worried that I've bigged this up too much and you'll say "ugh is that it?" … maybe you will. Meh, its all ridiculous in my book.

Lets go back to Tuesday … humm maybe I'll offer a little preamble to start…

My father is a man I do not understand. He's a pretty well off international accountancy lecturer. He's written books, has a nice life, lives in Thailand now and, as far as I know he has no real life problems - he's a healthy 60+ year old. However, I often think that if he was the opposite of all these things, I might understand him better.
He left my mum when I was ten for his much younger Korean secretary - my parents divorced. In a way, though, he also divorced his three kids. He got remarried (we weren't told until later)and adopted her son. From then on he put all his energy into his new family and left his biological children behind. I wont go into this too much as I could go on for hundreds of pages about why the word "dad" leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I will give you an example though: whenever he came back to Britain, he'd always call when he was at the airport… on the way OUT of Britain. Never bothering to visit or ask us to visit him. Ho hum. Ironically, his new wife had an affair

Anyway, on Tuesday I set to work on getting our wedding invites out - a job that felt like it took forever. While I was doing so, I got an email from my father asking if he could call (time difference and all that). Aggh I hate it when he calls. Luckily it’s a very rare occurrence, but still. He called, on a with held number. Honestly, I do not know his number! If I was ever in an accident, the only way we have to get hold of him is via email!

We spoke for about 10 minutes - 15 if I'm being generous. Here's the gist of the conversation (I've cut out the awkward bits where I don't know what to say):

Father: I'm calling about the wedding, everyone wants to come but they haven't heard anything
Me: yup, I know, I'm doing the invites as we speak, they will be there by Friday.
F: ahh good … so they can book hotels?
M: given that it's family and I told you they were invited, they should have done that already - it is Cambridge! Also, I need so and so's address from you.
F: Ok I'll send it. Have you spoken to Dan (my brother) recently?
M: Relatively, why?
F: has he told you my news?
M: Nope, what's that?
F: ummm I got married again… for the last time.
M: Oh right
F: we were thinking about it for a wh…blah blah blah
M: Right, well… well done
*silence*
M: when are you coming to Britain for my wedding?
F: I don’t know
M: okay well we're having a rehearsal the night before - the Friday, from about 4…
F: okay…


Sooo… what did I learn from that phone call?

1. My dad has married a Thai lady who is, honestly, about my age. And he's too ashamed/other to tell his children… again. That's two weddings and a leaving party none of us have been invited to. Ridiculous.

2. I need to open the books, with very good odds, as to whether or not my dad is actually coming to my wedding. We set the date over a year ago. He doesn't know when he's coming. That means no flights and no hotel booked. Meh.