I went a little "Martha Stewart"

Sunday morning was party day, event day. While they were all at church, I showered and started picking up. Anything that didn't need to be downstairs was moved to the second floor -- more specifically, my brother's bedroom, which suddenly looked trashed.

A flurry of activity began after church, when really all I wanted for them was to eat, shower and stay out of my way. I had assigned tasks for the grandmothers -- cutting the fruits and veggies and storing them in individual baggies, and then making up the plastic ware in a napkin and tying it with a ribbon. I needed no other help. And I told them that, told them that I was in event mode, that I just needed to do my thing, that I most definitely have a problem with delegation, and apologized in advance for being bossy.

My sister-in-law was hanging balloons all over the house -- I followed her and curled the ribbon. We hung banners out front, with more balloons, and then decorated Tiffany's car.

At that point, I just had strawberries to dip and the cake table to set up. The cake was at the neighbor's house and they weren't home. So after dipping strawberries, I figured I would go up and straighten my hair. I was making a bit of a mess with the melting chocolate -- pink, blue & white -- and kept wiping my hand on the dish rag. My sister-in-law's mother, who could not understand why I didn't want her to help me, grabbed the rag to wipe down the table outside. I told her she needed to rinse it for the very reason I just explained -- there were globs of melted chocolate on it.

She threw it back in the sink, shrunk back as if I had just slapped her, took a few paper towels and ran from me. From that point on -- a good hour or two before the party even started -- she never spoke to me again. I did hear her make several catty comments -- in front of me, but never to me -- about how she wanted to help, but nobody would let her. Apparently, my new name was nobody.

At one point, after the party, when I was picking up, it got to me. I was upset that she was being such a bitch to me. Couldn't she see that I was doing all of this for her daughter and granddaughter -- and just be grateful for that? And then when she went up to bed and I said goodnight to her, she didn't acknowledge the fact that I was leaving the next morning before she got up.

At that point, after not getting enough sleep all weekend, not getting caught up on sleep from getting up at 4:30 to drive last week, running around all weekend, after dealing with the drama of the first day of the trip and the grandmothers in general, Joann treating like that all day was my breaking point. Was I really glad to be leaving Richmond to come back to Ithaca? Was I really looking forward to getting back to work? God help me, I was.

I can't wait to go back in August -- there will be no grandmothers to deal with. Just a very sad sister-in-law as she sends her baby off to college.