Charity??

So I got a text the other night from Daniel asking if Shane would help him (do it for him) put carpet in their new house while we're there for Thanksgiving. Now, I'm all for helping family, but this is a vacation that we never get. And it would be so hard to take all of Shane's tools down (they take up the whole back seat of his truck).

Not to mention, I have said many times how many hours Shane works and that is the last thing he wants to do on a vacation. Well, when I nicely said that Shane really wanted to have this be a vacation and Daniel put me on quite the guilt trip. Then I asked him how big the space is --- it's the entire house: 5 rooms and 2 closets. When Shane figured out the size, it would take him literally, about 12-15 hours to do. That's a whole full day of our vacation.

When I said that, his response was that he didn't want to pay someone to come do it. This job would be about $500 dollars for Shane to do just as a regular job. And I'M NOT SAYING WE'RE NOT WILLING TO HELP FAMILY, but that is a lot of time and work to just do [on your vacation] to be nice.

Then Danny said "well can he give me some pointers on how to do it then? It can't be too hard to lay carpet, I've just never done it before". Is it just me, or is that kind of a mean thing to say - like if Shane can do it, then he definitely can.

Sorry - I just have to vent. I don't want to complain to Mom because I know she doesn't love hearing the kids complain about each other, but am I totally over reacting? We never mind helping family, but if someone was coming for a vacation, with no prior knowledge of this situation, would you ask them to spend one FULL day helping you out?

Then, to top if off - a comment was made on Facebook by Andrea about how hard Danny's been working on their new house - getting only 4 hours of sleep - blah blah blah.... I'm so bothered by this. I know it shouldn't bug me and obviously I will not say a thing to anyone outside of this blog - you all know how much I LOVE confrontation. And I know that Daniel is still going to guilt trip us down there and I'm worried its going to affect the whole trip.

I'm not saying that we don't like to help family, but usually it's something that is planned - we've done the carpet for other family members, but the trips were always for that specific purpose and we knew ahead of time what we were getting in to - totally different situation (so Anne, don't start thinking that I'm referring to you :P)

Anyway, I'm glad I remembered about this site. I'm sorry if my ranting offends any of you, but I am really protective of the little time that Shane actually gets to rest and enjoy himself. I feel so bad that this happened, but with the time and space it takes just to even bring his tools, we would need to make this a trip JUST for the carpet. GAH!! I don't like getting so worked up about it. And now I'm so worried about Thanksgiving just being awkward. Advice? Please? Sympathy even....??