#2: The Comparison Talk

Wow, it's been over two weeks since my last post. Sorry. I guess I didn't realize how hard it would be to keep this up as well as my other blog with work and trying to act like a normal human being. If you read my post this past Saturday you all know I am not doing too well lately. Life in general has just been getting me down. And there are so many factors I am not sure which one is the prime issue. May be all of them. But I have been getting lots of advice and suggestions which I do appreciate. My mom seems to think I need to find God again and have him in my life. Possible. One friend thinks I hate Vegas and want to move back East. Could be. And another says my lack of good sleep and sucky job situation is what is causing all my problems. Since I don't sleep very well, and my job does in deed suck this is a strong contender as well. But here is the issue...what if I don't want to find God? What if I don't know how to tell my husband I want to leave Vegas? What if I need my job because we can't afford for me to take a pay cut? As for the sleeping, I do believe I have gotten used to never being comfortable enough to sleep well.

Okay, enough of the pity party. Moving on to the rest of my horrible New York trip. This post is about the constant comparison talk I had to endure all week. You see, Andrea had been to New York several times with her son Daniel and her mother. Eventually these trips made such a lasting impression everything we saw or did was instantly compared to her previous experiences. "Well, when Daniel and I went to the park we went to the carousel first," or "When we came last year we made sure to go to the Empire State Building." I could never suggest anything because she always had a better way since she had been there before. And because my mother saw her as a "seasoned New York" expert, I was often outnumbered two to one in all decisions regarding what we should be doing. Never mind this was supposed to be my trip and I should have been able to do what I wanted.

Into every conversation, and I am not exaggerating here, a reference to Andrea's previous trips was made. It was like it was a competition and this trip would never live up to the grandeur of her previous trips. Daniel and she walked twice as much as we did and their feet never hurt. They ate at some of the poshest restaurants instead of little local places. They saw so much more of the park and the city than we did. They stayed in the most fabulous hotel. Pretty soon I stopped joining in on the conversation because if I had to listen to one more story about how Daniel and she mastered the subway system on the first try I was going to scream or punch Andrea out. Why she could not take this trip as it was in the present and had to keep living in the past was beyond me.

But the total topper was a conversation I overheard Andrea having with her mother who lives with her and Daniel. She stated she wasn't sure why she brought her camera at all because she hadn't taken one picture since she "had seen all of this the last trip." She then continued to lament about how we were doing everything she had already done in their previous trips to New York and this trip was turning out to be nothing new and was kinda boring. This upset me so much since I didn't want her to come in the first place and now she was complaining because she had already done all these touristy things before and was bored with the trip? Why the hell did she come then? She knew what this trip was going to be like. And if she didn't want to do the same things why was she always suggesting these things to do? Half the stuff we went to was because she talked my mom into going. I didn't get to go to the Natural History Museum, The Ritz, the MET or the Bronx Zoo because they wanted to go to St. Patrick's, Tiffany's, Carnegie Hall, Ellis Island.

It got to be near the end of the trip that when Andrea began a conversation with "Well, when Daniel and I were here we..." I would cut her off with comments like "I'm not Daniel" or "That's fine but not what I want to do" and the kicker which ended her comparison talk all together "Perhaps you should have waited to go with Daniel again rather than us."

She made me start acting like a bitch out loud rather than just thinking like one. Which was something I was trying desperately not to do because I wanted to be above all that.