Tag Archives: family

Just life

Holidays

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.

Holy shit.

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{f-locked so that it doesn’t port}

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.

Two things

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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.

More crap from mom

Haven’t I done this before?

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I was given therapy homework. She asked for a timeline.
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Six things

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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.

Adventures in home ownership

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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.

up

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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.

Eventful.

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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.

family

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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.

not good

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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.

Defensive

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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.

Money and family

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Every time I deal with my family they ask me for money. Either to pay for something or just for actual money. In the cases of my cousins/niece/nephew asking for college money I don’t actually mind much because I think that is a worthy cause to donate towards. However I do mind in other cases. I called my sister to ask if we could take her out to dinner for her birthday. Her response was, “Oh good, cause we have a dinner planned for me and I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay for me and the kids.” *blink* So that means that a)I wasn’t invited in the first place, and b)that I get to pay for her entire family. I get that I can afford this more than them–I do. But I’m starting to really resent being treated as a walking checkbook. 🙁 My sister told me that they are planning to go to TGIFridays for my nephew’s birthday and Red Lobster for my niece’s. I kind of wonder if they told me just so that I can pay for it.

My uncle called me this morning and told me that he wants to buy a car for my niece and he was hoping that I would contribute money so they can buy her a better one. I told him that given that we just paid for my cousin’s tuition to a vocational program, we are about to hand my nephew money towards his tuition, and we have a trip to New Zealand next month–no, we can’t give them money. He then proceeded to kind of whine about how he can’t find anything within their budget but there are x, y, and z cars that are much better for only $5,000 more. I kind of saw red.

This is a lot of the reason I stopped talking to my family years ago. They’ve done this to me since I was 16. Whatever amount of money I have to live on I stretch. At this point Noah makes far more money than I ever dreamed of living on, but we also have financial goals that are fairly tight within his salary range. We can’t reach them if we support my whole family, which I don’t want to do anyway. Hell, I feel guilty asking Noah to pay for as much for my family as I do.

And don’t even get me started on my mom.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Communication

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I’m having trouble keeping track of dates lately. It’s pretty silly. I thought that my first meeting of the Holistic Moms Network (we’re going to talk about organic gardening and worm farms and such) was last Tuesday, but uhm oops–it’s this coming Tuesday instead. I found this out after I had already driven down to south San Jose. oops.

So I called my sister to see if she wanted to spend some time with Shanna and me. She did and we met up at the mall near her house. We sat in the food court and talked for about 45 minutes. Then we walked around the mall talking for another half an hour. Then we headed to my car and talked for another hour even though I was supposed to be leaving. It was really really good. Our talking meandered through many many different subjects from fluffy idle chit-chat to intense processy kinds of stuff. We actually managed to talk about her penchant for rewriting history. I got her to acknowledge that she does it. I was really really really happy she finally acknowledged it. We talked about why she does it. She told me that she sometimes can’t psychologically cope with admitting the terrible things she has done so she “forgets”. I think that is a huge thing for her to say. I told her about the book Shame and Guilt that I found very helpful and she said she would be interested in reading it and pointed out that her birthday is in a couple of weeks. So I’m ordering it for her. We talked about the blame and shame we each feel for things that happened in our family. It was kind of interesting to talk about those things finally with someone who was there with me through the trauma. Our perspectives are so different.

We spoke ruefully about our mother. I pointed out how I believe our mother’s behavior is about playing favorites and Denise said she thinks mom is just thoughtless. I hate to come down from my position on anything, but the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Sissy pointed out a few ways in which she feels our mother has treated me badly and the sense of validation I got from that was intense and overwhelming. We talked about my brother (the one who is still alive) and how he has cut us both out of his life. She said that as far as she is concerned he is dead. I told her that he really isn’t dead, it would be easier if he was. That made her pause and think. After a while she admitted that I was right–we have less (internal) conflict about Tommy (the dead brother). We talked about whether chosen family takes the place of biological family. I told her that recently my experience of my chosen family is that they don’t take the bonds any more seriously than my biological family so I’m pretty lonely. She tried to do her blustery, “You don’t need anyone…” thing and I told her that I do need my family. She hugged me when I cried.

We talked about when I turned her in to CPS. That was an interesting conversation. I told her that, for lack of a less geeky way of explaining it, I am lawful good. I have to follow the law. I can’t live with myself if I don’t. She asked me how I would feel if my actions sent her to jail (I didn’t even quibble about whose actions would be responsible) and I told her that I would feel terrible and guilty and ashamed but I would have to do it anyway. I told her about the weeks of crying I did before and after turning her in. She seemed surprised that I cared. It was pretty intense but I think that discussing it might help. She said that she is waiting till my niece turns 18 to give me her address, but that she will do so then. I don’t really blame her.

We also spent a while discussing the sexual merits of our various partners over the years. That part was pretty funny. 🙂

Mixed bag

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Yesterday went extremely well. The only hitches in Thanksgiving were that everyone showed up late due to an accident on 880 so no one ate any of the appetizers (big freakin deal) and my sister/niece forgot the apple pie and rolls they promised (Sissy ran to Safeway and bought a pie and I had sneakily bought rolls Just In Case).

Everyone got along fantastically well. I was astonished. We had far fewer people than anticipated due to losing five people yesterday morning for a myriad of reasons. It was really nice though. I would go so far as to say I had a lot of fun. Towards the end of the evening Noah corralled all the youngsters into playing Give Me the Brain and Lord of the Fries for a while so I’m pretty sure he had a blast. 🙂 My mom and sister and I played Rummy and I lost abysmally but remained fairly cheerful. Shanna was on her absolute best behavior all day while playing by herself or being handed from relative to relative. Of course this means that my whole family is convinced that I have an abnormally mellow/good baby. 🙂

I did very little of the cooking and about half of the prep. Noah earned big fat credits that will probably turn into extra gaming time for him this weekend because he was so awesome. 🙂 The food was all thoroughly excellent and we have leftovers upon leftovers.

Even the rest of my mom’s visit was really good once the dog left. And the day we dropped the dog off I went to the high school I used to work at for a while and visited. Everyone made much of me telling me how much they miss me and how awesome I am. I felt really special and loved.

And over all of this wonderfulness is the pall that I am terrified of the comp exam. One more chance. I get one more chance before I have wasted years and years of work. I am so scared.

Yup, still hate dogs.

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My mom is here. She informed me yesterday that she intends to stay with us till Friday. Last I heard before that she was going to stay here on Wednesday night and leave on Thursday, so this is a surprise. Honestly it wouldn’t so bad if she didn’t have a six month old Chihuahua who keeps SHITTING ON MY FLOOR. Have I mentioned that I have a baby who is right on the verge of learning to crawl who plays all day on the floor? Yeah. Fucking awesome.

Thanksgiving update

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Oh thank goodness. My cousin and her kids have other plans for Thanksgiving. We are only going to have 12 people. That’s way more manageable. 🙂

Early morning babbling

Thanksgiving coming

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So this year I’m hosting Thanksgiving dinner. The main thing that is fussy about it is that I have no idea who will want to come. It could be anywhere from 14 people to 24 people. That’s a big difference. That’s an enormous difference in terms of food prep. And seating arrangements.

I’m looking forward to seeing the mingled shock and horror when they discover no really, I don’t own a tv. I’m going to put out board games and cards. 🙂 It’s kind of fun looking at what I should make to eat. My family hasn’t had any experience with my cooking since I started being involved with Noah and boy howdy have things changed. The man introduced me to “full fat” and it’s improved pretty much everything that I cook. 🙂

This means I have two weeks to get my house really clean. No problem. 🙂

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Tag Archives: family

Just life

Holidays

Holy shit.

Two things

More crap from mom

Haven’t I done this before?

Six things

Adventures in home ownership

up

Eventful.

family

not good

Defensive

Money and family

Communication

Mixed bag

Yup, still hate dogs.

Thanksgiving update

Early morning babbling

Thanksgiving coming