This is an update to the last post.

When I got home yesterday and had my key in the door, I knew my emotions could not take it if the house were in the exact mess it was when we left for work in the morning. I hoped so badly that the stepkidlet took the note of demands posted by her dad on her bedroom door (like Martin Luther, except with things like “cleanliness is next to godliness” and “you are not representing your religion in a very good light if you don’t respect the public areas of the house and come home at a decent hour,” paraphrasing). I hoped that this would spark Daughter’s own religious “reformation.” If the house was still a mess and she was just going to resist anything said by non-church members, I would be at a complete loss. I NEEDED things to be okay in the house again. (Damn synthetic hormones.)

So I peered around the door pensively at the living room. SPOTLESS except for her purse on the table. YES! I entered and went around the hall to her bedroom. Her carpet was mostly visible again, about half the clothes were no longer piled around, and there was a pile of comforters and sheets in one corner that she expects to launder or do something with, and a large pile of clothes on her bed. She was sitting on the floor, sorting through small items, throwing lots of them away. I was so relieved! We chit-chatted awhile, and she explained her piles and said she’s on spring break now so it should be taken care of pretty soon, and I said, “This is pretty good, if you just do like 3 loads a day, you’d be done in less than a week.” Hoping that puts a plan into her head that doesn’t seem overwhelming. She agreed.
When her dad came in, I prepped him, saying, “HALF her stuff is gone in her room! She did good!” He was so happy he went in there and joked with her a bit, then suggested we all go out for dinner to “give her a break” from all the laundry and cleaning she’d apparently been doing. I popped my head in to her room and suggested it, asking if she had plans that night. She said she had her “small group” for church (a young women’s workshop that’s a spinoff from the main church — the reputable large church, not the little side group that’s been meeting every night into the wee hours; this large church is the church that the smaller side group accuses of “sugar-coating Jesus”) at 7:30p and is free for dinner. Soon, when Daughter decided she had reached a good breaking point in The Great Room Cleanup of 2011, we went to a local family-owned Greek restaurant.

Conversations went well; Daughter disclosed that she was out until 3:30am the night before because after the smaller religious group had broke for the evening, she hung out with one of the guys in the group that she’s now dating, and fell asleep at his house watching TV. She said she’d intended to leave at 1am. Mr. W told her that I’m having a hard time falling back to sleep, possibly due to the hormone injections, when she comes back late. I explained that I haven’t slept well in the past month that she’s been coming home this late (she explained it was because she and this boy find it hard to leave each other after the religious group’s events, so they hang out and talk until 2am or later, although they had previously decided they should stop doing that on weeknights and have a cut-off of midnight; they’d just been unable to stick to this decision). I said I used to just hear her and roll over and go back to sleep, but I’ve not been able to lately. I asked her if she could please, as a favor to me, come home earlier on weeknights because I’m up till close to 5am with insomnia when I hear her come in. She said of course, and said sheepishly that the boy and her just have such a hard time leaving each other. I suggested that since this boy had really wanted to meet and “hang out with” Mr. W and I, and really wants make a good impression, that she explain my little insomnia problem to him, and that way he’d personally feel obligated to get her to come home earlier so as not to make himself look bad. She said he’s totally like that, and that would work. (Apparently she’d told him she wanted to leave earlier the night she fell asleep there, but he convinced her to go in for a movie and she fell asleep there in the midst of it.) She also said that her church Small Group (the women’s group) is planning a weeklong trip in the summer to help “swamp kids” or something in a village in Haiti. I’m not sure if this is strictly missionary work or actual hard labor. It would cost $1800 and she wanted to know what we thought of the trip, if we thought we’d be okay with her leaving, and if we could help her find donors and sponsors for her trip. I personally think it’s a great idea for a privileged OC California girl to see what life is like in a non-cushy environment, and this is the best time to do it, when she’s got no husband or children or jobs to worry about. Also, apparently the boy she’s been dating is being scouted quite madly by local private universities for a basketball scholarship, and each school keeps trying to top the last school’s offer, and the most recent school offered to bring him onboard AND his friend (another basketball talent) onboard, and then asked if he’s seeing anyone. He said he was, and the scout asked about Daughter. Then the scout said that their school has a great music program and offered Daughter an interview, buttering up to the boy. Of course I’m excited at the prospect that a university may pick Daughter up as a transfer student and give her at least a partial scholarship under a program pointed toward her dream career. Hubby brought up some of his concerns about random things, too, including the costs of private universities and her choice of careers, and presented them in a very casual conversational manner. Daughter was open to everything, involved in the conversations, responsive. Daughter also had an ulterior motive — she wants us to meet the boy. He does sound like a good kid, and we weren’t doing anything this weekend, and she bribed us with a promise of a sushi dinner (which I’m sure we’ll be paying for) saying he LOVES sushi, so we agreed.

After we got home, I poked my head in Daughter’s room and said, “Hey, when you talk to him about sushi this weekend, make sure you talk to him about my insomnia so that *I* don’t have to talk to him about it.” She caught the humor in my tone on the threat, and laughed, and promised she would.

Last night, she was home well before 10:30pm.