I leave tomorrow for close to a week to attend Pauline's second wedding. I think it's a huge mistake, because she calls me every few weeks bawling about how sad and depressed she is. Then she swears up and down, that she "loves" him.

It feels like abuse to me in my empathic heart. I haven't met the guy, so it may not be, but I'm going to go visit and get my own impression and see what I think.

What makes me sad is that she's trying desperately to impress me and I just would rather she was happy.

Genny's coming with me. I bought her a pretty dress for the wedding and I've got one coming in the mail for me, so even if things fall to shit, I'll be well-dressed!

Pauline's lining me up to blow big wads of cash on her, claiming, she'd "pay me back." Been there, done it, and *just* paid off the bills from it, so Mike and I decided to just give her a engagement card with $250 in it. That way, she can buy what she wants, without the lie about paying it back, and I won't be obligated to give up any more than that. Mike and Sarah have just told me to be strong and blame them.

Mike said I can claim he's gotten to be a real tightwad now that he's making the money and Sarah said I can tell Pauline I gave her money to help her out. What I'm going to tell her is that Mike had to help out his brother to buy a computer and that our extra money went there because that's not a lie. And it'll shut her up.

The problem is that I love both Pauline and her daughter, Angelina, but I'm also way more generous than I should be sometimes, and Pauline takes advantage of that. She plays that "oh, don't get anything for me" ploy and then I end up spending a bunch of money on Angelina AND her. I'm just not going for it this time. I figure I'll tell her that I split my money with her and she'll have to be careful. Before I arrive there, I'll buy some groceries, so I don't get hit up for that either, and I have the kind of food that I need.