Most stressful thing I’ve done recently…

Mandrina doesn’t get along too well with her dad.

I’ve met her mother three times now, and in all of them I’ve spent a large amount of time with the lady. Miss Polly is a sweetheart through and through.

I’ve met her father twice. Once the day before he was getting remarried, and the second time at his wedding. The evening I met him, he proceeded to show me his gun collection.

Mandrina insists that I shouldn’t feel threatened — he let me hold one of them. I insist I should feel threatened — us Northerners don’t tend to have closets full of assault rifles! And letting me hold ONE assault rifle when he has the entire closet — and all the bullets — doesn’t seem like anything other than a promise not to kill an unarmed man!

The second day I met him, he made a fairly suggestive comment — telling a joke about the aphrodisiac effects of Oysters ran out “after the sixth one!” I felt awkward, to say the least.

But Mandrina has years of stored up horror stories, so I was the obstacle she chose to put in front of her father when it came time to tell him we were getting married. We “didn’t have her cell phone charger” while we were in NY, so we couldn’t call him. We sent him a copy of the newspaper clipping, and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being the Father of the Bride” or some such, along with a note saying I don’t know what, but apologizing for not calling (no phone number without her cell phone’s phone book!) — and providing my cell phone number to call.

So a week or so goes by. We realize we’ve sent the package to the wrong address, so we weren’t sure if it was going to be received by him, or returned to my parent’s house where we had mailed it from. Then, while we were at the Seattle Bridal (Wedding?) Expo, I missed a phone call.

Mandrina still hasn’t listened to the message, but I have. It’s not that he wasn’t pleasant or polite… I just got the impression that the man was speaking through forced manners. Mind you, having only spoken to him twice before, and neither time at length, I’m not in a valid position to pass actual judgment. That being said… if that’s Mandrina’s father being HAPPY for us, I’d hate what it would be like if he was angry.

Then Mandrina’s new step-mom stole the phone, and she was all warm and fuzzy, wanting to know the details of the proposal.

It’s been almost two weeks since then… and I just worked up to calling her dad back.

The time zone thing doesn’t help. During the day, he’s likely to be at work, and I only have his home phone number. And then there’s only so large a window in which it’s polite to call — particularly to my future father in law! — namely, between dinner and bedtime. Then there’s the, “No, you do!” conversation I had had to have with Mandrina.

So I found myself near trembling today… but I called. We spoke, for almost ten minutes!

He pointed out that Mandrina is high maintenance, I assured him I had noticed. He was surprised when I mentioned we were considering getting married “down there” — Florida, near where Mandrina’s from. He told me an amusing anecdote from Mandrina’s past that she’s never mentioned — she had owned a BMW as a teenager. She claimed she liked BMW — his version is she liked how she LOOKED in a BMW. Hrm…

Mandrina is supposed to call her step-mom tomorrow during the day, as she wanted to know the details of the proposal… I’ll bully her into it, if need be. Mandrina knows she needs to be civil… and the step-mom is a nice lady.

I don’t get afraid easy. I get nervous, I get ansy. I get irritated at the drop of a hat. But I don’t tend towards actual “afraid.”

I was more afraid of making that call than I was of actually proposing. How odd.