My sister is contacting me. I was looking around at checklists of behaviors found in abusive relationships. The bolded ones are the ones that have been pretty consistent from my mother and/or sister.
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Today I opened up facebook to see my sister post:
Mommy is coming today!!! Gawd I miss my Mom!! Can’t wait to see what her acerbic witt comes up with this time. She blows into town and starts giving all the kids crap if they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do. Which means I don’t have to be the only bad guy (that they actually listen to) for the next week. …They love Grammie – she’s as whacked as we are… =P
I…
I’m tempted to throw together a bag and get out of town. I have no fucking idea where I would go but it would be awfully convenient to say when she calls (cause she will) “Oh… I’m out of town. Sorry.”
I try to avoid knowing what day of the month it is around specific parts of the year. It’s just better to not notice. I had to write a check today. Today is Tommy’s birthday. He would be 33. In June it will be 12 years since he died. I didn’t have a good relationship with him by any stretch of the imagination but it is still really hard to think of him. I wonder if I will ever stop feeling responsibility? I wonder if we would have been able to have a relationship as adults. Would I have developed compassion and patience for him? Most of his issues were quite literally not his fault. He had a severe brain injury. I’ll never know.
My sister sent my brother a horribly rude, inappropriate, awful letter. I can’t believe her. Well no, that’s not true. I totally believe that she did it. She has no sense of responsibility and she has no fucking boundaries.
But you know what? My brother sent it to me. And he talked to me about it. And he wanted comfort and community with me around how crazy she is. I really hope she will leave him alone again, but I’ll take the outreach. It’s amazing how talking to him affects me. I start to shake. I’m so terrified of doing something or saying something wrong and having him shut me out again. That’s actually a pretty terrible manifestation of the overall abusive nature of our relationship. If I feel that way while talking to him it’s not healthy at all. And the way I crave his approval is also seriously unhealthy.
God I can’t win.
So I’ve been taking some time off. Maybe you noticed, maybe you were grateful that I shut my mouth for once. 😛 But yeah, stuff. I’m going to try a different technique for handling some stuff and see if it works for me. I miss writing here.
I’m nine weeks now. This pregnancy seems pretty willing to stick and that is wonderful. I’m much much much less sick than I was with Shanna (thank all deities everywhere) so I’m even feeling ok. I’m not feeling ‘normal’ and I’m not feeling energetic or anything crazy like that. But I’m not overwhelmingly sick and completely incapacitated so I consider that a win. 🙂 Humble expectations are important. I manage to do an okay job of interacting with Shanna during the day. We do a lot of cuddling on the couch and I am also incredibly grateful that she is so willing and able to entertain herself for long stretches. I know it is unusual. As a result of her playing alone a lot of the day she has been pretty needy in the evenings and the bulk of that is falling to Noah. Let me take a moment to say that my husband has stepped up in a variety of ways and man do I love him. He is doing ALL of the cooking and most of the cleaning and a much larger share of kid-wrangling than usual. As a result this is probably our last kid. That’s… as mixed as that kind of thing might be.
We went to Arizona to see Sarah. That was really awesome. It was occasionally challenging to deal with Shanna, but mostly she was her awesomely obedient and friendly self so it wasn’t too bad. It was really nice to get to sit down and talk to my Sarah again. It’s hard having her so far away. I miss her. Unfortunately we cut the trip a bit short. Has anyone noticed this storm we’re having? Yeah, I had to drive home from Arizona through that and I am really glad I left before things had gotten too established. The drive home was pretty hairy at times and it would have been much worse another day or so later from what I can tell. Also: the Grand Canyon is breathtaking. So far in all of my travels I have set Alaska up as my own personal definition of Most Awe Inspiring Place but the Grand Canyon kicked Alaska’s ass. I would like to go again while not pregnant and seriously hike it.
Oh, side thing: people who bring a two year old on a 2.5 hour train ride without ANY form of amusement or toy are flippin stupid.
I’ve been hibernating a lot more than usual lately. On one hand it’s lonely. On the other hand it feels like what my body needs and I’m drained from the basics of day-to-day life without any extra stress. See, this is why I miss my Sarah so much. I could whine at her about being sad and lonely and not wanting to leave the house and she would come visit. Ok, I’m not really sad. But I am lonely. It’s interesting how sometimes those two things are tied together and sometimes they aren’t. I’m starting to move into that placid slow-moving-brain thing I had when I was pregnant with Shanna. I feel like I’m seeing most of life from under water. Things are just slower and less sharp and that’s kind of nice. I feel … honestly kinda stoned. Ha. But it’s in a very nice way. I’m just drifting through life and that feels ok and good and right. If I could have this mental feel without feeling so physically debilitated I think I would want to be pregnant forever. If I couldn’t talk Noah into being quiverfull I would surrogate over and over. 🙂 But, I don’t get to pick and choose so no permanent pregnancy for me. 🙂
I saw my brother on the drive home from Arizona. That was shocking. I knew I was going to be driving within 2 miles of his house so I called him and asked if he wanted to meet his niece. After double checking that I wasn’t going to force him to deal with our mother he said he wanted to meet her. When I told him that I am not currently speaking with our mother he seemed to feel much better. We had about two and a half hours of sitting around talking. It was a really good conversation. He admitted things out loud that I’ve always suspected. I was shocked and impressed that he has gotten to a point where he can admit those things. He’s grown up a lot. He seemed similarly impressed with my attitude about his behavior of the past few years. I told him that I understand why he has felt he needed to make the choices he made but they still make me sad. I think I managed to convey how much I would like a relationship with him without being pushy or demanding or needy. I’m proud of myself for how I handled my end of things there. I’m really grateful that he gave me a chance. I’m not sure we are going to start having a close relationship any time soon, but maybe it will be a beginning.
I called my sister to find out when he is coming over tomorrow. We spent a bit talking. She told me how she is baking cookies today because, “After all I [my sister] am now the elder female in the family and somebody has to do it.” This is when I blink and look at the seven varieties of cookies on the counter, all of which have several dozen each. I also looked at the bowl of rising cinnamon roll dough. I more or less said, “Sure. Uhm. Yeah.”
My sister’s view of herself lately cracks me up. She thinks she is going to replace Aunt Vonnie as the one who hosts everything and does everything for everyone. Near as I can tell the only one who goes to her are her children’s drug addict friends. Good job there, sis. Oh, and I can’t remember her hosting a Thanksgiving or Christmas ever. Not one time. I’m 13 years younger and I’ve done it a number of times.
The boxes from Noah’s parents have finished arriving. I’m somewhat shocked by the generosity. I mean, my family buys a lot of stuff but it’s mostly crap. There was a really really nice doll unwrapped on the top so that when we opened the box Shanna’s face lit up like a candle. It’s rather impressive.
And then there are all her Christmas presents.
Wow. We have a very full Christmas tree and I haven’t wrapped anything yet. heh I think Shanna is going to make out like a bandit. Maybe it’s a good thing I can’t afford to get her the awesome kitchen on kids.woot.com right now because she’s already going to be pretty spoiled. Wow.
Wow. 🙂
(And the doll has a handmade jacket that matches the awesome outfit Noah’s mom made last Christmas!! How awesome is that! And a blanket out of the same super cute material! It’s very thrilling. Shanna hasn’t set the doll down yet.)
I might have to poke Noah extra to get him to call and say thank you.
Getting ready for a party this weekend is more stressful than I thought it would be. My house is in a weird state of flux because of the garage project. There is a ton of stuff in the house that is normally out in the garage and finding spots for everything is a nuisance. It doesn’t help that I have weird/stupid compulsions about having my house look neat and orderly when people I don’t know come over. If I could manage to not care this would all be much easier. 🙂 [Just so people don’t think I am not inviting you to a party–it’s a going away party for a friend and the invitees are her friends, not mine. So I’m hosting, but it’s not my party. Kind of weird.]
Shanna’s development is no longer as dramatically quick. Her progress is still rapid, but it’s slightly less startling if that makes sense. Now it is on a more predictable trajectory. She is more and more kid-like by the day. Her speaking is amazing to me. She picks up signs as quick as I teach them to her which means I should focus on more signs that are relevant to her. I gave her crackers for the first time this week and she’s in love. I wasn’t withholding them for any particular reason, I’m just not a cracker person so I don’t have them around. I can’t stand stuff that is crispy like that in my mouth. I guess she won’t have my texture fuss. This will make her life easier. 🙂 I really should post pictures of her.
Using our not perfectly accurate scale it looks like Shanna has gained almost three pounds in the past two and a half months. That makes sense. She is eating like it is going out of style. I’m starting to feel slightly frustrated with her wanting food all day long because it is hard for me to work on projects when I have to stop and help her with food. She can feed herself but if I let her go at it alone the mess is prodigious.
We took her to her first Gaskell Ball this weekend. She had a great time playing with the other little girls at the event. One of the things that is hard for me about living in Fremont is I am far away from my friends and all events. I would really love to be able to host baby dance parties during events like that and have all the folks I know drop their kids off. I think that is even more fun than going to Gaskells but it’s not going to work out. No one wants to drive down here for that sort of thing.
I find it pretty funny that at this point I have far more stuff for organizing than I have stuff to organize. 🙂 I have a lot of empty space in my house. This pleases me immensely.
I’m starting to feel a mixture of excitement and trepidation about painting the garage. I have really cool ideas, but I’m not particularly artistic. I will have a hard time if I put in a lot of effort and it looks really bad. I’m not sure what is the best way to try and get something vaguely pretty given my level of (zero) art skill. I’m great at doing basic house painting. Well, by great I mean that I am neat–I don’t like doing it much. 🙂 But I really like the results so I do it.
I asked my bio-family if it would be ok for me to host Christmas this year because I like to share the load and not put everything on my aunt. But my cousins won’t come off the mountain and I don’t want to alienate them so it won’t be happening. So my 70-something year old aunt will be doing all the work for everyone again. I think my family sucks.
I haven’t heard from my mom in months. Not since she grudgingly sent me some money towards paying back what she borrowed from me. I’m feeling unfortunately justified in my not so awesome opinions of her. Thanks for using me then ditching me again mom. I appreciate the reminder of how much you care about me.
I’m still having to struggle with my upset at feeling used by people in general. I know that no one means anything bad. It doesn’t matter if people mean to be treating me like shit or not if they are it hurts. But I’m the only one responsible for my feelings. I can point at a bunch of different things making this harder right now but it doesn’t matter what excuses I have. I need to deal with this because I’m making myself miserable and the only one who notices is me. It would be nice to be happier. I’m trying.
Oh, and I cut my hair. A wonderful friend got a great picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9522728@N08/4043845455/in/set-72157622662085684/ That was after a long day of me running my fingers through it and putting it up then taking it down then messing with it then shaking my head to resettle it. Isn’t it a great haircut?! I’m pretty excited. I think it may be one of the best haircuts I’ve ever received.
I appear to have zero interest in Halloween this year. We aren’t doing anything. I think we will probably get some candy and hand it out but I don’t plan to dress up. I have no plans for dressing up the kidlet either. I just don’t care. Meh.
Thanksgiving isn’t feeling particularly interesting either. Just… meh.
But I’m excited about Christmas. I’m thrilled about being able to get Shanna cool toys. I’m kind of weird about buying toys ‘just because’ throughout the year. So this feels like my excuse to get her stuff, which I want to do anyway. I’m kind of weird.
I have invited my bio-family to come over for Christmas dinner but I’m not sure they will do it. I have one whole ‘wing’ of the family who doesn’t like me much and I think they would just skip a family Christmas event rather than come here. If they are going to say no then I am not going to host at all because I would feel bad about keeping them from seeing everyone else. It sucks being a pariah.
So yeah. I kind of wish I had a chosen family thing going these days but that isn’t working out. So maybe Noah and Shanna and I will just stay home by ourselves. That way I don’t have to worry about people hating me or flaking at the last minute.
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Facebook has been one long series of surprises today. This is actually really awesome. I have plans next Thursday evening with a girl I was good friends with in junior high. I spent a while messaging back and forth with another chick I knew from junior high; this is the one who introduced me to goth and vampires and all that shit. She’s now a lesbian living in London. I think that is pretty awesome. 🙂 A guy I started being friends with in junior high and it continued through high school is hitting on me. A guy that I admired a lot in high school for his brains is in grad school at UC Berkeley after graduating from Harvard and man did he get hot. He grew into his face. 🙂
And… my brother accepted my friend request. This is a HUGE deal. My brother hasn’t spoken to me in years. I get to see pictures of his kids. He has been unwilling to allow pictures to circulate in the family. I almost cried when he said yes. His kids are so big. The oldest is in fourth grade, the middle is in first, and the baby is four years old. I’ve never met the youngest and I haven’t seen the middle child since he was a few months old.
Holy crap. Ok, I’m glad I joined Facebook.
Noah’s parents sent us a box of stuff for Shanna. She loves the duck. The book is a bit over her head so it will go on the shelf for later reading. The clothes are all very adorable. There is something funny about the clothes though. They sent a mix of sizes. As in: 6/9 month, 12 month, and size 5. She wears 18 month and is rapidly heading towards 24 month. I find this kind of funny. 🙂 The too small stuff will go into the baby clothes box and Little TBD might wear it. Luckily we have a box of WAY too big stuff (started with that excellent juggling shirt from Andrew) so we can store stuff for later. 🙂 At least his parents send clothes I like unlike my mother. 🙂
I think I need to give up on having friends. My life is pretty lonely and I need to figure out how to come to terms with it because fighting against it is making me really miserable. Very few people are willing to make any effort to see me and even those people are too busy to do it often. I’m tired of being the one to put in 100% of the effort in relationships. I’m tired of trying to make new friends and having it go pretty badly. Like driving 30 minutes to south San Jose for a play date only to find that the mom I am meeting brought a friend and they sit there talking to each other…in Russian. I feel like going through a list of the things I try to do is a comedy of errors but it’s gone on long enough that I’m not laughing anymore. Scene people have dropped me completely. Shanna goes to sleep at 8/8:30 so dancing just isn’t an option. This is my life. People don’t want to visit me. I need to stop fighting it and just accept it so that maybe I can stop crying.
My mom is in town. The 4th was ok. She had a whole big box full of stuff for Shanna. Some of it I appreciate: the hand-me-down hand knitted/crochet dresses that have been through multiple generations of our family are wonderful. Outside of that… not so much. I can see that we are once again going to have the trampy clothes war. She used to try and put me in awful clothes that I wouldn’t wear. She likes daisy dukes and super short skirts on young girls. She thinks they are cute. I think they are grossly inappropriate. I kind of want to make nasty comments about how she also thought it was fine to send her daughters off with a child molester but that might be pushing the point a bit hard. So yeah. I’m getting rid of the slutty clothes with the tags still on them. I’m not thrilled about the nauseatingly pink clothes either. Pink isn’t evil, I like pink. There is a difference between pink and frilly pepto bismol ickiness. I also don’t think Shanna needs to have jeans that are lace trimmed and covered in little pink hearts. Oh, and she doesn’t need cheap scratchy pepto bismol pink towels either. And she doesn’t need plastic attempts at soft covered books. And the ugly little plastic figurines? Not necessary either.
I’ve told my mother repeatedly that I don’t want her buying a bunch of crap but she won’t listen. She says, “Well it was cheap.” Yeah. It looks like it. Thanks. Save your money. In fact, save the money and pay me back the money you borrowed.
I was given therapy homework. She asked for a timeline.
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First: I am a good wife. I told Noah to go game because he hasn’t been able to much and he’s really stressed out and overburdened at work.
Second: I still haven’t heard about the comp exam. I took the test 25 days ago. I have been patient. Now I’m starting to freak out.
Third: I bought a nasal irrigation thingy. Hopefully this will allow me to resume my normal course of breathing.
Fourth: New diapers arrived! I am nerdy enough to find this very exciting.
Fifth: Family support today over the fact that both my sister and mother are over-the-top crazy. I appreciate the validation there.
Sixth: In other family news, looks like my sister is dealing again. But of course it would be my fault if she went to jail.
So the roofers are pulling our roof off today. They are feeling nervous about the possibility of weather this weekend so they are hoping the solar guy can get his butt out here tonight/tomorrow morning so they can put the roof on tomorrow afternoon. I feel guilty because I didn’t give the solar guy as much lead time as I should have. However, my sister says that the solar guy freaks out about everything and he would have been this unhinged no matter how much lead time I gave him. Ok then. She dated him/lived with him for a few years so she is probably right.
The fun part is that when they pulled off the current roofing material and looked at the wood underneath it they found that it is rotten. As in it would cause problems over the next couple of years rotten. I’m not sure how the home inspector missed that. 🙁 [side note: the home inspector has never sent us a bill. hm.] So they are going to be replacing the wood. Of course this ups the cost. *sigh* Not by enough to cause a problem, but I’m going to be feeling very poor for the next several months as we build our savings account back up.
And Noah’s dad called yesterday. We had a very polite conversation. I think he called when Noah was at work on purpose. If Noah is home I hand off the phone as soon as I hear who it is. 🙂 He apologized for not being able to come to the birthday party. I don’t think he really needs to apologize. We picked a crap-tastic weekend for them. Noah is going to be getting a new niece/nephew right around that date. Noah’s little sister has a music recital. And Noah’s other little brother is graduating from college. So yeah, kind of a busy time. I wish that things worked out such that it was easier for me to get to know Noah’s dad. He seems like someone I would like.
And my house is a complete and total mess right now. Oy. It’s a process.
The good news is that starting on Friday I won’t have to feel bad about running the hot tub cause we won’t be using power from PG&E to do it. w00t.
It’s to the point where I get really excited about waking up in the middle of the night if Shanna stays asleep. This is the most consistent ‘alone time’ I get.
I haven’t written about the Oklahoma trip. It was… interesting. I think I had forgotten or been unaware of just how closed minded the family is. I almost turned to my mom’s friend and said, “Have I mentioned that I’m queer. I’ve probably fucked more girls than both of your sons combined.” I wanted to do this because they had multiple books on their coffee table about the homosexual agenda and how homosexuals are ruining this great country. Great. I was asked if I was going back to work when Shanna goes to school and the response when I said I would be homeschooling was, “Well, that’s a choice.” Yup. It is. And fuck you very much as well Mr. Sunshine.
Oh, and when Shanna fell out of the bathtub and hit her head I talked to her about why I was asking her to sit down. My mom listened in and then said, “I told you too but you see how that turned out.” ?? In general as a mom you told me to do stuff and I didn’t listen? “I told you not to do things as a teenager but you didn’t listen to me and you got raped. See what happens when you don’t listen to me?” ?!?!?!?! WHAT?! Oh my fucking god. She said she didn’t understand why her comment was different than me telling a ten month old, “See honey, that is why I asked you to sit down. I’m sorry you hurt your head.” Though she did apologize the next morning–I guess that is progress.
I hate doing that quantity of driving sans cruise control. It’s crummy.
I realized recently that most of the people I’ve been spending time with are female and close to my age. This is such a bizarre change compared to the rest of my life. But you know what? I can’t complain. I really appreciate the friendships that have deepened in the past year and some. It’s really good to learn more about the people who think I’m worth going out of their way for.
When I got up I thought today would be boring. I thought I would go to Whole Foods with my neighbor and maybe hit the nursery (for plant matter–not baby). Well, it was a starting plan.
I went to the nursery this morning and spent quite a while figuring out what sorts of veggies to put into the pots in my back yard. I selected two varieties of tomatoes (one is best for paste the other is best for being more solid like and mixes in well for sauce), squash, sweet basil, oregano, sweet peas, and a neato sounding pepper. I was planning to try and put them into pots basically immediately but when I got home I was derailed by a phone call from my mother.
It turns out that a family friend died this morning. She was 79 and in extremely poor health so I can’t really call it a shock. My mother and I had been planning to go out to Oklahoma to see them this summer at a big birthday party. It turns out that we will instead be flying out on Tuesday for a funeral. It took a while to find reasonable airfares for both of us.
Then I went to Whole Foods with my neighbor. We both had a lot of fun wandering around looking at the sheer variety of pretentious food. Of course we both spent too much money. Oy. That place is dangerous. While we were there we ran into one of my former students. It was quite lovely as she danced with joy and told her three friends extensively about how I was the best teacher ever. She was not one of my most dedicated students so we spent a lot of time together in 8th period social club getting to know one another. 🙂 It was great to see that she is trying to go to college. On the ride home my neighbor told me, essentially, that I make her feel kind of stupid because I know so many things and can answer in depth questions on such a wide variety of topics. I think that it was made even worse when she figured out that I am seven years younger than her. I don’t think she is stupid, I think she is simply asking questions about things that I have researched and she hasn’t. Oy. But I helped her realize a few things about her marriage and that’s to the good.
I came home and spent a while talking to Noah about how frustrated he is at work right now. I wish there was more I could do to help him. Then I made the rest of the arrangements for the trip to Oklahoma. Then I sat down for a few minutes to catch up on the internet and I received a phone call from Debbie! This is always exciting. She lives in Taiwan right now so I don’t get to talk to her much. I’m glad that she has been awesome about keeping in touch with me. 🙂
Noah decided that it would be a good plan for him to go to the gym for a while after dinner because it will be a break from thinking. As he was getting ready to run out the door he casually mentioned that his parents are trying really hard to come out here for Shanna’s birthday.
It’s been a day.
As it turns out Noah’s younger brother is due to have a baby. Within a week of Shanna’s birthday. I suppose there is no better way to ensure that they will never want to come out here for Shanna’s birthday.
Shanna is sick. She has a fever and she is lethargic and tired. This isn’t great but it pales next to being told that someone I love tremendously was raped. I don’t know how to adequately help him. Yes, him. I feel terrible because I didn’t try harder to help him when/before it happened.
Sometimes I feel like I could joyfully take on all the suffering in the world just to protect my loved ones. I’m very strong; I know I could handle it. I don’t really know how he will truly heal.
I told my sister and my nephew yesterday that I’m feeling upset about them only contacting me when they want money. My sister got huffy and told me that she doesn’t want anything from anyone. Then as we were getting ready to pay for lunch she informed me she was laid off. Ahhh timing. I only paid for my food.
On the vaccine stuff: I find the different points of view interesting. I found ‘s post yesterday nearly funny. If I posted something of that length and validity on the anti-vax side I would have a flood of snotty comments. I would be be told that all of the things I was presenting were “anecdotal” and therefore completely unworthy of mention. *shrug* At this moment in time my feelings are basically that I don’t trust the information I am presented with. Once upon a time there was “evidence” that people should be given mercury when they were sick, or drugs to prevent miscarriage that caused terrible terrible deformities and problems in infants. This was the wisdom of the day. I could list off a dozen different things that have been part of “trends” in the past 150 years around the topic of bearing children that have been dangerous and problematic. They were all pushed heavily by doctors. Yet I am now told, “It doesn’t matter what has happened in the past. This time what we are telling you to do is right. Honest!” Well, I feel rather uncomfortable using my kid as a guinea pig for something with little history. Most vaccines have been around for ~60 years or less. That’s not a lot of time to look at the long-term effects. Especially because the people who were vaccinated 60 years ago were not given the same vaccines or nearly as many as children today are. Shanna will be vaccinated because eventually the risk of the diseases will overcome the risk of the shots because I want to take her to Asia and Africa. If I were a bit less infected with a travel bug I don’t know that I would be willing to.
If my life were different I would probably give her the vaccines on schedule. (Although frankly I like countries like Finland’s vaccination schedule more than the US’s.) Well, maybe not all of them. I’m more than a little worried about what is going to happen to people when we get rid of the more mild diseases that educate the body in fighting off illness. Do I have hard scientific evidence? Sorta. Not really. Why are things like cancer becoming so common? It’s a combination of reasons that no one has figured out yet. It didn’t happen much when people died of other illnesses.
I don’t think it is a good idea to fuck with mother nature. People are supposed to die. That’s kind of the end-goal of every human’s life. I don’t really think that trying to put off death forever is a great thing. I’m sure people will snarkily (and stupidly in my opinion) say, “You would feel differently if it was your kid.” Not really. If my child died I would grieve. I would miss her for the rest of my life. But I would deal with it. I have experience dealing with death and my experience of it colored my feelings enough that I feel pretty comfortable saying, “No really–it’s better to not stave off death as long as possible.” They should have let my brother die the first time instead of resuscitating him.
And I can’t help but think that our culture’s obsession with avoiding feeling bad at all for any length of time is contributing to a lot of our other social problems.