So... some updates are overdue and through them I will be showing my hand a little bit, but I have decided that's okay.
First, any suggestions on how to keep a stretchy two-year-old Boyo from reaching the front door catch and trying to escape? Little fellow is going to give me a heart attack.
It is April in Alabama, and 85* in Huntsville today. Aaaahhhh...
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I started writing this a few days ago, and then the draft (the above-listed stuff) got saved before the power went out. We blew a fuse-circuit-thing because we had the washer running, the dryer running, lights, ceiling fans, dishwasher(?) and the lone air conditioner. Turns out this house doesn't harness that much juice well. Also turns out that we don't need more than one air conditioner for the size of this house. Which I guess is both good and bad-I don't like not being able to better control the coolth of each room, but its nice not to have certain rooms be like the Arctic Circle.
Yesterday (04/10) was my birthday. Oh joy, oh rapture, I'm 32. I was initially having a hard time with it because I am now the age my mother was when she gave birth to me, and I always felt like the kid at school with the "old mom", and I didn't want to be the "old mom" when I had kids. I guess 32 with a 2-year-old isn't too bad; provided we don't have any more kids. That decision is up in the air. Like I'd said on an earlier blog, you watch... we'll decide to have just one more, and I'll end up pregnant with twins.
Prayer requests, before I go any further:
There is a little boy named Reilly who is valiantly fighting for his life at Yale New Haven Hospital, in New Haven, CT. He is only 6 months old, but completely wired for lights & sound. He is fighting like crazy but still needs the positive power of prayer to bring him up. If you're reading this on FaceBook, go to my groups and see the one about Reilly Francis Maxim-that is him-join the group or the prayer page and spend a couple minutes a day making sure God knows we are not ready for this baby boy to go home to Him; but rather go home with his parents.
Next, a close friend of mine's daughter was just hospitalized due to feeding and not-growing type of issues. Please pray that she is not in there for long and the doctors are able to determine the cause of her problems and get her back home to her Mommy & Daddy, brothers & sister.
Moving right along... I don't think there is anybody out there who doesn't know about our Brown Recluse Spider incident, so I'll just skip that. The bug man came today.
We are constantly and consistently working on cleaning the house, when neither of us isn't so tired we can't move. A childless friend asked me last week why I was so tired, and what it takes to get our house clean. Obviously he has never tried to pick up and sweep/dust/mop, etc. with a rambunctious, precocious two-year-old "helping Mommy". *grin* Not his fault, ignorance can be bliss.
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Another day, another start on this. I have it handwritten out on a legal pad of sorts, so perhaps since all I have to do is transcribe it, I will actually get it done tonight.
First off, we took the kids to the park this evening. Then we had McDonalds for supper, which Bubs didn't really want any of?! The only way he seemed to want food was if it was somebody else's. Wanted a burger as long as it was mine, wanted a chicken nugget as long as it was Sissy's, wanted Daddy's frappe. No frappes for little fellows.
Moving right along...
I am trying, as always, to be a better, more understanding sort of person. Forgiving of others' shortcomings, accepting of differences, etc. I realized earlier that I have no problem accepting and admitting my
own shortcomings; its just the attitude that I occasionally convey that isn't pleasant. I recently wrote three or four emails, none of which I sent, but rather waited a couple weeks until I was less pissy and then rewrote as cards and notes. I'm hoping that their intended targets are pleased to read my words and the issues/problems/etc. are solved.
I don't understand how one person continues to be how she is this many years later. I supposed its just who/how she is. Ugly & hateful. Sucks, though, because this must be who she really is. And if she is honestly that miserable? I feel bad for her, because I don't know how she can live that miserably. She is right now getting a healthy dose of Karma bitch-slapping her, and this (admittedly) makes me happier than it probably should. But I digress...
Question: if the same situation happens to you more than once, at what point do you start asking if there is a part of you that either has changed or needs to?
Let go and let God...
Easy to do with the exception of a couple relationships.
(forgive my grammatically incorrect use of "they", but I'm doing so to protect the confidentiality of the individual)
So... I think we were kidding ourselves to think we could be friends again, real friends, after all these years. There was just way too much history. We tried, went back and forth. This person is very two-faced; one face for me, one face for the rest of the world. It was explained and justified by the hell they'd catch if the "right" people found out we were friends.
I believe, in the cockles of my heart, that this person still loves me in a way they are not ready to deal with; a way that they cannot process and understand, because they way I feel is something that I cannot understand sometimes, and I don't try to understand it. I just sorta roll with it. It always just was what it was and I took it as it came; love, hate, joy, pain, confusion, hurt.
It seems to have ended-and sometimes I feel relieved. Other times, not so much. I feel torn about it. I miss their text tone on my phone. Silly, right? I know the stress isn't worth it, I have felt better since not having to deal with their stress-I just miss the friend I used to have. And that's just it. I miss who they USED to be, not who they are now.
(aside: I wonder how many strippers dance to My Darkest Days song "Porn Star Dancing"?)
"Everything happens for a reason, people change so we learn to let go, sometimes things fall apart so better things can fall together."
I have a hard time letting go. Always have.
Speaking of things it is hard to let go of... my relationship with
TC Becky. I miss her text tone too. We rarely talked about anything but the kids, although we did have a couple of two-and-three-hour conversations at night when I would drop off the girls to her house. One I recall, we thought back fondly to when we were kids and about the late-night conversations we would have, timing the phone calls so that the phone didn't actually
ring when we called each other back, but just timed perfectly so that we could pick up. We used to talk for hours.
Amazing how things change over the years. Really amazing.
There is so much I want to say about brainwashing and mirroring and using the children, about projection, dishonesty and selfishness… but to what purpose? So Mimi won’t be allowed to sign into her FaceBook anymore because my blog is accessible through FB and Becky’s argument is that I post “inappropriate” things about her? This is not intended to make Mimi’s life harder than it needs to be. She already isn’t happy in her situation and feels her life is “crappy”. I know some of that needs to be taken with the grain of salt that comes with a 13-year-old girl, but I also know deep down that some of it is her situation and what she is forced to deal with. And those of you who know the truth know that Jason & I have been fighting for years to get her (and Liz too) to live with us so we can make her (their) life (lives) better. But to no avail, because every time we try, Becky plays the victim card and we don’t get a chance. She was quoted as saying “I might not know what is best for her (referring to Mimi), but she isn’t moving with you and that’s final. She can hate me for the rest of her life. I don’t care.”
Then in January of 2010, Becky started agreeing to Mimi living with us, no matter where we were living… but when time came for Jason to actually get Mimi, Becky said to Family Services, “yes, I agreed, but I changed my mind.” When Jason argued with her about it, she retorted, “what? You never changed your mind before?” Jason answered, “well of course I have, but not when it messes with the lives of my children.” Becky also admitted that both girls told her that they wanted to live with us, but that we were “brainwashing them, telling them lies, making them false promises about getting a dog and having a house with a pool.” Jason and I talked about this earlier today and Becky has had them for the last few months uninterrupted, so she has had plenty of time to “unbrainwash” them. So we’ll see now…
There is so SO much that I can’t wait for the girls to be older so I can tell them… there is some of it I will NEVER tell them, just because of the content of the material, but there is so much they have been not told the truth about over the years, or told the truth about by me & Jason only to have Becky & her parents insist that the girls shouldn’t believe us, that all we are doing is lying, and that they should instead believe Becky & her parents because THEY love the girls and would NEVER lie to them. Yeah… okay…
Two of the last times they went to court, Becky was told by multiple Family Services workers that the best thing to do is to let Mimi finish 8
th grade up in Connecticut and then let her move with Jason to start High School; and that that would be the best thing to do for her, and if she didn’t like living with Jason, then she could move back for her second year of high school without any issues. Think Becky went for it? Nope, she instead went for filling Mimi’s head with all of the great things she can do in high school, but that she HAS to do them in
Connecticut. She’s started with Lizzie too… Lizzie asked if she lived with us in
Alabama if she could play clarinet. We said of course she could, why? Liz said “because Meme said that if I stay here she’ll buy me a clarinet to play.”
Wait… and WE are the ones brainwashing them… HOW?
Anyway, Becky uses Mimi’s FaceBook to lurk on my page and maybe Jason’s, but I know me for sure. And that isn’t paranoia speaking, that’s fact. She has made comments about things I posted back in February; which means she had to scroll down a month & a half’s worth of posts and FarmVille and whatever else to find it. She had to be looking for it… because I know Mimi wouldn’t have done that. And even if Mimi HAD found it, she damn sure wouldn’t have run to Becky and said “look what Mama posted”. My girl wouldn’t do me like that.
The part Becky doesn’t know (although by now she probably does because she logged on as Mimi again and read my blog… Becky, go ahead and just bookmark it. You can’t comment on it, but you can lurk, go right ahead) is that posts of that nature are protected under the First Amendment. I can post whatever I want.
Lets take a minute and question what she is putting on her FB page, shall we? The world may never know… why? Glad you asked. Becky first defriended Jason, and then she defriended Mimi. Her own daughter. Who DOES that? Right… people who are posting things that are inappropriate and don’t want to get nailed for what they are saying and or doing that they shouldn’t be. People who don’t want to get called hypocrites because they are blasting others and what others are posting, but are doing the exact same thing on their own pages. Really, if she had nothing to hide, she wouldn’t have defriended Jason or Mimi. And why wouldn’t she want to be Mimi’s friend on FaceBook? Wouldn’t you think she’d want to monitor her actions? Wait… she’s just logging in as Mimi instead. Think Mimi knows that? Becky also defriended every mutual friend that she and I had. Again, paranoid much? But Becky is nothing if not paranoid-always has been. Does anybody believe for a hot minute that her intentions are pure? If they were why not make things public? What are you hiding? How could anyone in their right mind believe her intentions are pure? She has constantly perpetuated lies for way too long to believe anything else.
And she has told me some things-things I know that other people might not, and things I know that her husband certainly doesn’t. But if/when she lies about those things to the “right people”… I think that she lies so much and has for so long, that the line is even blurred for her. Does it happen automatically? Or does she even have to think about lying anymore? And for what purpose? That’s what you have to really ask yourself. What is it about the truth-of her life, of who she is, of what she is, of how she is that she is so afraid of? Is she afraid to admit that she’s a lousy mother, a lousy wife and wishes she didn’t have the life she does? Is she afraid to admit that she doesn’t really want any of the kids, that she never has and would give Jason custody if she wouldn’t have to deal with the ineveitable backlash from her mother? She has said before that if she were to ever move out of her parents house that he “could have them”. Which I suppose is a good thing, considering her mother has said before that if Becky moves out and it comes to Jason or Becky getting the girls, she’d rather Jason have them. Wow! What must it be like to know your own mother doesn’t have faith in you? Maybe we should just ask Mimi. Wait… anybody else see a pattern? A cycle? Something that needs breaking & intervention?
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So now our current situation: Jason & Becky have been going back and forth via email trying to hash out the girls’ summer vacation plans. I’ll spare y’all the gory details, but the synopsis is that Jason is trying to get the whole summer (as he should have) and Becky is taking her position as cruise director and has the girls’ summer planned out except for two weeks or so that she is so generously telling Jason he can have to “visit” with them. He thinks not. We are going to have to go to court, I’m sure…
I don’t understand why she can’t just be reasonable for a while and actually give Jason time with the girls that he should have. Instead she’s too busy worrying about how all of this “punishes” her and how it makes her life difficult.
