Not On My Own Blog I Don’t

I have a new niece. She’s adorable in that way that all brand-new-borns are. All pudgy cheeks and cute baby noises and wee toes.

But.

I don’t feel much of anything for her. I love her because she’s my niece (my husband’s sister’s child, to be exact), but I am not as gooey and head-over-heels in love with her as I know other aunts are over their nieces and nephews.

My sister-in-law has two other children in addition to this new one and I feel roughly the same thing for them. They are nice, but … meh.

I know that part of my antipathy towards them has to do with my nephew. He’s the oldest and he’s challenging. He’s high energy and low listening. That is absolutely not his fault (well, the listening is somewhat his fault, but more his parent’s fault) but it still means that I am less than enthusiastic about spending time with him. (Where “less than enthusiastic” means he drives me batshit crazy)

My other niece (the new niece’s older sister) is OK, but somewhat … wet. She seems to always be drooling or sporting a runny nose and neither of those are my favorite. I barely want to kiss my own children when they are like that, let alone someone else’s.

This is all complicated by the fact that my sister-in-law asked me to watch the two older ones (we’ll call them T and E since that makes things less complex) while she is on maternity leave. How do I go about spending two days a week with two children that I don’t care all that much for? And WHY don’t I like them? Why aren’t I excited that I have a new niece? And what the hell am I going to do with four children under four?!

I can’t help but wonder if my sister had children if I would feel different towards them or if this is some deep personality flaw in me that I don’t like other people’s children. I also wonder if my lack of feeling towards T, E and H (the new baby) are due to my deep feeling that these children should not have been born to these parents.

My sister- and brother-in-law should not have had children when they did and they absolutely should not have continued to have children and certainly not in the timeframe they did. {T, the oldest, will be 4 in a couple weeks. E, the middle, will be 2 this coming Monday and H was born this past Monday. 3 children, 4 years.} My brother-in-law is a slug at best and an ass at worst. His idea of discipline is to yell at the child from a seated position. When the child does not respond to the yelling? He yells louder and uses their middle name. Still no response? Louder still and full name. None of which is effective unless you peel your butt off the couch and enforce it  first. My sister-in-law works in child care, so her idea of discipline is “T, why are you standing on my leg? That hurts. T, please get off my leg, you’re hurting me.” (all of that is said in a very saccharine voice) Now, I understand that she can’t belt a child in her care one while she is at work, but this has drastically affected her parenting abilities to her children. And the end result is that her kids are running wild.

Even more frustrating is the fact that brother-in-law is taking next week off work to be home to help sister-in-law with the baby. BUT I get to take care of the older ones because brother-in-law doesn’t feel capable of handling them. Translation: he’s hoping sister-in-law will be sleeping a lot while he’s taking care of the baby, who he’s also hoping will be sleeping a lot, thereby leaving him with an uninterrupted and guilt-free pass to futz on the computer and watch movies all day.

End result: I’m a bad aunt. And I don’t know what to do about it.

I guess being a mom means you are not able to be competent at anything else, much less be able to juggle both mothering at work at the same time.

My coworker  just told me that he doesn’t trust me to do anything important with the students I teach because I have my daughter along with me!

He wrote:

“And I so understand why you do this right now……I really do….But I don’t feel you can be totally productive with the baby in your arms while at
rehearsal trying to clean and possibly write something. But Let me tell you,,,,,I would never ever ask you to leave your beautiful girl at home. I guess this seems like I am right now. But I am not, I am just saying I don’t see you being very productful with her there…. I felt like I couldn’t ask you to do anything with the group because you may have to attend to her needs. And her needs are what is important over the guard. So I didn’t ask much of you at rehearsal because I didn’t want to be a reason of you neglecting her when she needed you. To me and I know you…….The baby comes first no matter what age she is…….And I couldn’t, with good thinking  or a good heart, ask anything from you for that reason. I just NEVER said anything because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. And I actually would, as I do now,  feel like, I just said something horribly unthinkable to you.. I know you truely believe you can. But I have seen you in front of the flag line with her in your arms and nothing was getting a complished with them…..But what could I say to a new mother,,,,,,,,,,glad you had a baby but leave her at home? NO I THINK NOT………if I am a mean person like most think I am, guess I would, but I am not a mean ugly person. So I never said anytihing… I just wished there was someone there you trusted with her to watch over her at rehearsal and if you were truely needed by her, you would be right there for her.”

Nice huh?

I have this friend I met through my local MOMS Club. She and I announced our pregnancies at the same time, were due within days of each other and grew to be very close over the past two years. Suddenly, she dropped me like a hot potato. I am completely frustrated and hurt by this sudden fall from grace (go figure). I’m borrowing this forum to post my thoughts so that I don’t say something to her face that I will regret later. So here goes.

You really hurt my feelings. We went from being really close and talking to each other almost more than we did our own husbands to not talking at all. You were one of my closest friends and then suddenly you’re gone. I’m incredibly hurt by that. I don’t know what I did to upset you, if I did anything at all.

You pissed me off with your passive-agressive bitching about me on Facebook. I know that you have three children and no local family and so you haven’t had any time off in a while, but, BUT 1) you have a husband and he is more than capable of taking the kids for a couple of hours and DOES SO on regular occasions. ALSO, I have offere countless times to help you with the ONE child who is still at home in the mornings  so you could have some time off. You have not taken me up on that offer, so you are now NOT ALLOWED to get pissed off because I get a whopping TWO hours of child-free time ONCE a week.

I’m really not sure why you have three children when you seem to hate being a mother so much. There are ways to prevent that.

I am not sure what the hell is going on with you, but I miss hanging out with you. Sometimes. Other times I am much happier now that I am not dealing with your constant negativity. And hatred of random things. It’s been kind of nice to have opinions about something and not have them disregarded or criticized because they don’t align perfectly with your own.

I know you are having a hard time with your finances, but guess what? SO IS EVERYONE ELSE! Get over it. The fact that you can still buy groceries is a blessing. Just because your husband has student loans is not reason to mooch money from everyone in your family. And constantly bitching about using your husband’s bonus to pay those loans to someone whose husband didn’t get a raise or a bonus this year? Not the best of moves.

Do you like anything? At all? Because every time I mention something I like, you tell me you hate it. So what, exactly, do you like? Seriously. Quoting you: I’ve never been a fan of sports, vampires, snobs, reality tv shows, organized (or unorganized) religion, wishy-washy-ness, high heels, ironing, cell phones, gardening, exercise, scrapbooking, cleaning, baking, self-righteousness, Starbucks…the list can go on. I’m not a big fan of much. You have also mentioned that you hate Wal-Mart and in the next breath talked about your beloved M—–n Wal-Mart. Which is it, do you hate it or love it? And also? That right there is wishy-washy-ness. I’m also pretty sure that you hate anything that I thought of or found first, just because it wasn’t your original idea. If you come up with it, it’s The Best Thing Ever! If it is my idea? It’s shit.

I know that you are feeling stressed, but if you send me another mail note bitching at me about something that isn’t my fault, I am not going to be responsible for my actions. Or my words. It took everything I had not to rip into you when you emailed me, yelling at me because I got a morning away from my children and you didn’t. And because I had the gall to remind you to give me something that was due in September. Telling me you’ll give it to another friend because you don’t have the time is bullshit. It takes NO time to hand something to me when you see me twice a day at school. Even less time if you carry it with you and put it on my car.

You are entirely too hard on your children. And it is hurting them. If they won’t eat their food, they will be hungry. And yes, they will likely complain about it. And you will have to ignore it because they have figured out that food is one of your MANY hot buttons. Also, messing up a play room? Is what children do. Taking toys away from them for a week or more, doesn’t teach them actions & consequences. It makes them forget the toy existed. Especially when the child in question is TWO. Making a kid stand in a corner for an entire afternoon is not appropriate punishment for a three or five year old. It’s bordering on torture. Especially when the infraction is running in the house. Or bouncing on the couch. Or spilling something on their clothes.

I hate your daughter’s hair cut. She looks like a pixie. And a boy. It’s not a good look. I know that it is what your daughter wanted, but I suspect that you helped guide her to that decision by complaining about her losing her hair things. She’s THREE. They do that.

I gave you a birthday present. You got me nothing for my birthday. That hurt. I feel very greedy saying that, but I thought that after nearly two years of friendship AND your long-winded discussion about what you were getting K for HER birthday, that I would receive something other than a Happy Birthday wish on Facebook. I was mistaken. And that hurt my feelings.

If your kid won’t poop on the potty it’s because she’s not ready. And because she knows it pisses you off. She can tell you she has to poop. She can tell you poop goes in the potty. She can tell you she has pooped. That’s great. It does not mean that she is ready to physically poop in the potty. She is not yet two and a half. You admit yourself that you know she’s young. She’s a potty training savant, but forcing her to sit on the potty for 45 minutes is unreasonable. She’s telling you poop goes in the potty because you have yelled at her for two months about pooping on the potty. Back off. Let her shit in her diapers for a while. That’s what’s happening anyways. Don’t scream at her and maybe she’ll decide she’s ready.

Telling me that you were “completely content” with the way the preschool pick-up/drop-off schedule was going and then LESS THAN 12 HOURS later telling me something needed to change is NOT COOL. Also? I’m pretty sure you were pissed off because I professed a desire to stay home the whole day. I know it is a crime, but I didn’t want to leave my house. You tell me that all the time, but I guess I’m not allowed to hole up in my house like you do every day.

All that vintage shit you have in your house looks like crap. It’s old and unattractive and doesn’t go with anything else. I like antiques as much as the next person, but there should be a cohesive theme instead of Yard-Sale-Barfed-In-My-Living-Room. That’s especially true for the faded plastic Santa thing that is 1) an outside decoration and 2) not meant to be up year-round.

Saying that you “don’t mean to be rude” is rude. If it is your opinion, it’s your opinion. If you think it is rude, it probably is and maybe you could find another way to speak to your friend that isn’t rude or hurtful. Just because you are upset doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to hurt people. You know you are abrasive and brash and yet you continue on like this as though admitting it gives you impunity to act that way. It doesn’t. It just makes people not want to be around you.

Even if you do decide you want to spend time together again, I’m not sure I do. I don’t think I want to open myself to the potential to be hurt again like this. And, after writing all this, I’ve realized you weren’t as good a friend as I thought. And I don’t think I need you in my life like that.

History has proven over and over again that many women don’t get along swimmingly with their mothers-in-law. It might be moreso with women who marry an only child who is the prodigal son.  I can only surmise that it stems from time and affection once being bestowed on the mother being transferred to the life partner and that must cause extreme angst on the part of the now lonely mother.

I have been boggled over and again how a woman can go from being the nurturing mother of children, to the overbearing, hideous beast known as the Mother-In-Law.   It’s even more peculiar how that woman who has hated her own mother-in-law since the day she set eyes on her nigh on 40 years ago, and forced her own husband to sever all but the most basic ties to his family, could then turn around and become such an unbearable mother-in-law herself.

But then again, if one’s personality has always been an unbearable, controlling narcissist, I suppose the family surrounding her has just become accustomed to her behavior and the new partner/wife just stumbles into the snake’s nest of the family dichotomy.

Or maybe that’s just how it happened in my case.

My mother-in-law had earned herself the nickname of *Miss Abrasive* by her friends and family, two decades before I even met her son.  Nevertheless, I have spent the past 14+ years being blamed for the ongoing conflict between she and I.  I have been accused of being “hateful”, “relishing being pissed off” at my MIL and a multitude of other adjectives that I refuse to claim.

My MIL has no good friends.  Her “best friends” live a state away and see her 3 times a year.  Even they haven’t spoken to her in 10 months.  She has a way of driving people away with her I Am Always Right demeanor.

And yet, I am forever at the defense for being “unable to get along”.  I have spent thousands of dollars on therapy trying to rewire my brain to stop being so “hateful” toward her.  Countless dollars and countless hours later, I am confident that I am not the culprit, and yet am no better off, since I still am unable to get along with her.

I am a relatively easy-going person.  I can have a disagreement that involves honest and open discussion and my relationships move forward.  All relationships need communications for growth.

I didn’t start out not liking my MIL.  The controlling, overbearing, intrusive behavior was clear before I was engaged to her son, but the second the engagement ring was firmly planted on my hand (which I later learned she had chosen!), she became unbearable.  She immediately felt entitled to control my life.  Her sense of entitlement is suffocating.  Telling her ‘no’ is not heard.  You can tell her ‘no’ a dozen times, and she’ll still insist you do as she wants.  My wedding was eventually cancelled 4 months prior to the event, the deposits returned and an ultimatum given to my future husband:  We elope to a far off island, or there is no marriage.  His mother was extremely upset  when my future husband broke the news to his parents that there would be no Dog and Pony Show at my expense, but she insisted she go with us to elope.  I laughed in his face when he told me that.  It equated to her wanting to be on our honeymoon.    If she had kept her mouth shut and her nose out of my wedding planning (which was to be in summer, and she insisted I wear the gown she wore at her December 21st winter wedding), she would have been at her son’s wedding.   She should have learned then that she shouldn’t bully.

My mother-in-law does not allow open discussion of anything that might involve criticism of her or her behavior. Even if you have what you think is an open and honest discussion with her, months (and years!) later I will learn that she had her husband reprimand their son (my husband), who had refused to bring home the reprimand to me because MIL had been upset by the discussion.  Over and over.

And yet she is entitled to insult me at every turn.   Entitled to interject her opinions and ideals, insist I raise my children with a certain religion–a religion she doesn’t even believe in.

At one point I told my husband to stop telling me that she had called upset and ranting at him, that her upsettedness had nothing to do with me and that if he wanted to continue allowing her to bully him, that was fine, but I wanted no part in it.

My husband is afraid of his mother.  There is an actual psychological analysis called Child of Narcissist, that he displays every characteristic of.

Everybody is required to keep her happy at all cost.   Any discussion of a transgression against somebody else by her, becomes a crying fit by her, and the discussion turns into how that person has now upset her!  The audacity of somebody to stand up to her!

I used to naively believe that she wasn’t smart enough to be manipulative.  I was so wrong.  I have noted over the years how she acts in the presence of her son versus how she treats me when he isn’t looking.  He has never really witnessed her true evilness towards me, and it’s always a fight to get him to believe my side or to believe that she meant anything negative with her words.

I think it’s a nod toward my grace in the fact that after 14 years, I haven’t completely severed ties to this hideous woman. Instead, I sulk for a week or two, can’t sleep for a  month, then get over it and move forward with an open heart, allowing her into my life– where she immediately sucker punches me in the gut.  Again.  And again.

But the time is coming.  She is now fucking with my children.  She’s not mean to my kids. NO.  My kids are her grandchildren. She owns them, you see.  She manipulates them with gifts.  Big, sparkly, pretty, inappropriate gifts.  She has bought my children’s love and manipulates them with things.   She now buys my children the things I was going to get them for their birthday or Christmas… but she buys it for them because it’s Tuesday.   She’ll do this for a while… but I see the writing on the wall.  I see how she’ll use these gifts as a way to control them and control their little emotions.

The time is coming.

I’m gathering my power.

I am the teacher, not the student.

I am proving to be a bigger bitch than this woman has ever seen the likes of.

Watch out *Miss Abrasive*… nobody messes with Mama’s Babies.

The month of May? Brought more drama than I am comfortable with. Some of it, involving family, I knew it was not my place to be involved, but I got sucked in anyway.

My youngest brother from Dad’s first batch of kids, Dizzee,  got a message on FaceBook six months ago. It was from a 35 year-old woman, who was looking for her father. She gave details about her mother, when she was born, and where, and asked if he had a sister. She then gave him my name, and told him how her mother had stayed at my house for a while during her pregnancy.

Yep, guess she had the right guy. She posted a picture of herself on FaceBook, and if I had had a daughter my ownself, she couldn’t have looked more like me than Hidden Treasure did.

I was so delighted that they had found one another, and I thought everyone else would be as well.

That way of thinking doesn’t consider the crazy. Duh.

In this case there were two major players with the crazy, control freak vibe going on. One was Dizzee’s wife. When Dizzee met his wife, she was already pregnant with her first son. I teased him about being lazy, heh, but he treated that boy like gold, even letting him live at home (age 27), and let his friend have a room at home as well. So you think if you find out your husband has a daughter from years before he met you, you might remember how well he treated the firstborn.

Not so much. Dizzee’s wife felt threatened from the get go. Said she had a bad feeling about this. Disparaged Hidden Treasure to her father. Had hissyfits if Dizzee called his newly discovered daughter. So began the sneakiness. I wanted to know why he couldn’t call his own daughter. It wasn’t like he was having an affair. Why can’t people just be nice?

Dizzee arranged to visit and meet up with Hidden Treasure and her family. Hidden Treasure didn’t want to initially meet Dizzee with her husband and children present. I kind of understood why that may be when I had an msn video messenger call with them all. Hidden Treasure was charming and funny, but somewhat restrained. It was her husband who tried to take over the conversation while the children scowled at the camera. Now if I’m thinking Dizzee’s wife is all kinds of the crazy, I’m thinking I’m talking to a genuine nutbar here. Only add to the mix, my exclamation of “Christ!” during the conversation, and apologizing to the kids, who were in earshot. Not my brightest moment.

Then I ask Hidden Treasure’s husband what his T-shirt says. Can you even guess? It says: “Not ashamed to say His Name” and I’m thinking I’m so scrood what with me being a Tool of Satan and all. So I didn’t blurt out “Me either!” because I had already apologized to the kids, and that implies I was ashamed I said Christ in front of them

. So to add to the crazy, we have a fundamentalist fervor thrown in. You know, the kind of fervor that says a wife must obey her husband? And that are all smug and superior, because, apparently they are going to heaven and YOU ARE NOT.

Yeah.

Does this situation look like a breeding ground for the crazies to feed on each other?  Yes, yes it does. And when Dizzee and his daughter met initially away from religious nutbar husband, the two control freaks got on the phone with each other. Did you see that coming? I may or may not suck at foreshadowing.

Imagine the anxiety! the panic! the fear! of these two conspirators when the objects of their control freakiness are no longer under their control. Oh, religious nutbar husband wasn’t just calling Dizzee’s wife and other children, he was calling everyone who had any kind of contact with Hidden Treasure. Seems like he was trying to enlist people “on his side”. Why does there have to be sides? Why can’t a father and daughter get to know one another?

Religious nutbar husband had many inflammatory phone calls with Dizzee’s wife, his other daughter, WildChild,and the firstborn son. Got them all riled up. Implied terrible things, which were outright lies. WildChild was wildly jealous because she had to share her daddy. I kind of thought that since she was a mother herself, she would realize that love does not diminish as you share it. I mean, she has twins.

Wildchild became extremely vicious when dealing with her father, and her father, Dizzee, informed her that nobody living under his roof would talk to him like that, and she was to find a new place to live, along with her twins, and the father of the twins. Dizzee supported quite a collection of people in that house apparently. None of whom were being remotely respectful to him.

Dizzee’s wife decided that if WildChild went, so would she, and Dizzee came home to a house that had been emptied of furniture and appliances, but not of garbage. Also, a joint bank account that had been emptied. Lovely.

He set to work to get the house ready for sale. His wife weaseled her way back in, and now will not leave. I’m not allowed to play with Dizzee because religious nutbar told her that I told him not to call her because she is crazy. She’s only there until the house sells, but still, controlling his life.

Religious nutbar has been forced out of his home because he became violent, and Hidden Treasure offerred him the choice of leaving or dealing with the RCMP. He left, but continued his campaign to get people “on his side”

So? Two households demolished because of control freakishness. I kept slapping my head and asking “Is this a fucking cartoon?” because where else do you find such bizarre behaviour?

And that was only one part of the crazy that was May 2009.

June? You look mighty good to me.

I came from a family of victims. My mom married my dad who was an alcoholic, physical abuser. Like most abusers he was also a coward. They were married for 13 years before she kicked him to the curb. Three years later she had met and was marrying another guy, this one was also and alcoholic and an abuser, just not physically- verbally. They too eventually divorced.

The abuse and poverty shaped me and I knew from a very young age that I didn’t want to be an eternal victim like she was. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t intended to be a post dumping on my mother. She did many things well and did her best to make us a good life but I will never be able to understand or accept how she kept making the same mistakes over and over again.

As we’ve grown older and become more open and able to discuss things I’ve told her my views and thoughts about her lot in life. She likes to frequently call me and dump it all on me… Nah, nah nah. My life sucks, things are so hard for us, yadda, yadda. I listen and offer my thoughts when she asks for them but nothing ever changes. You can’t change someone else anyway.

Quite frankly, this whining makes me insane because it is always they same crap and I can’t stand hearing it. The same mistakes continue to be made, no learning takes place ever. She only ever complains. To any outsider the answer is clear: If you want different results you need to make different choices! Easy enough right?

Then there is my hubby’s family. His mother is off her rocker and she too is an eternal victim. She was abused as a child (so was I), her father was an alcoholic (I had two of those). All she does these days is pop prescribed pills, sit in her room and spy on the neighbors so she has some drama to fill her days with.

Our relationship is pretty strained since she hauled off and wrote me a nasty email years ago about how I wasn’t the “trophy wife” her son was meant to be with…

Anyway, both our families are messed up, we know this and have come to terms with it. We’ve never expected much from them until we found out we were going to have a baby. Actually we didn’t even expect much of them once we heard we were expecting but through the months they’ve made promises and plans and have been all giddy and lovey.

Somehow we were blinded by the new found interest everyone had in “being there for us”, as if giving them a grandchild would change anything. They wanted to support us and help out, the problem is it’s all been talk.

Baby is due in 2 weeks and we’ve been informed nobody from hubby’s side of the family can make it out to help with the animals like was planned. We’ve got a zoo of animals that will have nobody to feed or water them for about a week now! Instead his family wants to come out at the end of the summer to meet the little one.

I told him to tell them to forget coming at all. Personally, I am not interested in happy family visit time, especially right after we’ve just added a baby to the mix. Besides any time with them requires much drinking on my part and a girl can’t breastfeed and drink at the same time!

My mother is a whole other ball game. She is coming out because she wants to be at the birth, which is just a recipe for disaster. You see she came along for our big move cross country and she had to drink and take pills just to survive. How do you think she is going to handle an unconventional birth?

I don’t need to hold mommy’s hand in order to have a baby, I need my damn husband to be there holding my hand!

He’ll be 4 hours away, working and caring for the pets when I go in to labor though. When he gets the call to come when labor starts he’ll be leaving 10 pets at home with nobody to care for them and we don’t know how long till we’ll be back home after baby is born. How ideal! NOPE.

My mom has to be there for the birth though, forget the fact that what we actually need is for someone to pet sit and not be all up in our business during on of the most intimate times in our lives. *sigh* Oh and did I mention that I know having her there is only going to make it harder for me, NOT easier? And I’ve told her this a number of times.

Basically I am just so sick of having to adapt, accommodate and adjust to what everyone else wants. Having family around was supposed to be about receiving help and support during this life changing time but it’s just turned in to another situation where we aren’t really being helped at all (more like burdened as usual). The most annoying part is they’ve manipulated the situation to benefit themselves all along. The only time our families ever helps is when they are helping themselves.

Now I remember why we wanted to move so far away from where we grew up…

My husband and I have known each other since college in the mid-90s. We have been married ten years.

I apologize in advance for the random thoughts I’ve put together. I’m trying to consolidate 14 years of rage into a single stream of consciousness.
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I grew up working from the age of 8. I’ve worked hard my whole life. It wasn’t an option for poor people to not work hard. In college, I often worked 2 jobs in addition to putting myself through school, paying rent and maintaining good grades. I incurred student loans that I worked extremely hard to pay off when I was 27. When I gave birth to my first child at the age of 31, I had 23 years work experience behind me. I was exhausted. When my job was liquidated when my newborn daughter was 5 weeks old, I chose not to apply for the new position (60+ hours a week) that was offered. I chose, instead, to allow somebody else to worry about the bills…for once.

My husband grew up the only child in a family of wealth. My MIL likes to pretend that the early years of her marriage were “poor”. I don’t see “poor” as having parents with millions of dollars. My MIL never worried that her mortgage wouldn’t get paid. Never worried that her child would go hungry. I’m sure it might have been tight, considering that her parents’ money was not hers, but she has held countless shares of stock in the “family company” that she made quarterly dividends from (the company is no longer owned by the family, but each family member holds tens of thousands of shares of stock). At one point when my daughter (now 5) was a baby, my MIL told the story of how in 1972, her husband (a banker) only brought home $524 every two weeks and that covered their expenses and a few extra dollars for a few necessities. I laughed in her face because at that time in 2004, my husband made almost exactly that same amount every 2 weeks and our cost of living was 5 times what theirs was in 1972.
My husband’s college was paid for by his parents. In addition to them paying for his college, and providing him with rent-free living and several vehicles he didn’t pay for or insure, they also kept him stocked in beer. For the last 2 years of college, he did work weekends for a small company that was associated with his career path and he hoped it would help advance his “career” (in the event he decided to get off his butt and pursue it!).

2 years after graduation from college, at the age of 25, still living with his parents, he was still working his part-time weekend gig for that small company. He was still spending his weeks trekking off on hunting and fishing trips, or big family trips with his parents; still spending his money blindly and not saving any. He grew up with the notion that any money he made was disposable income. The only reason he found new employment was because in 1997 that company relocated out of state.

From the time that I had been dating him for a few months, his parents started inviting me to join them on their vacations and get-aways (the 3 of them continued to vacation together until I put a stop to it when our daughter was 2 or 3). It was during these little trips (the few that I was able to go on, since I worked full time) that it was drilled into my head, by his mother, that anybody who gets greedy and tries to “get at” the money before the generation before them has died and left the money behind… will be cut out of the will or severely punished for their greed.

Grooming of the potential future daughter-in-law. Nice.

The sad part is that my husband believes he lives his life without ever considering “the money”. He believes he just lives his life and someday it’ll be an issue, but not today.

I call bullshit.

My husband has zero work ethic or career drive. ZERO. That tells me that in the back of that giant head of his is the notion that no matter how he underachieves, “the money” will be there to save him.

He spent his twenties and early thirties pissing away his youth NOT getting where he needed to be in his career. Instead of interviewing for jobs in his career path, he was concerned that any job he might get would “interfere” with the upcoming hunting, fishing and camping seasons, followed by holiday season travel plans he had with his family.

He made a lifestyle out of allowing others to foot his financial bill.

To my utter shock, this continued after we were married.

The first 5 years of our marriage, I supported him and our home by a 2/3 ratio with my well paying job. Obviously, had I realized his lack of motivation and put the pieces together earlier, we never would have gotten married. He has always maintained that he had a career plan, and that it takes years to acquire certificates, hours of experience, etc to forge ahead. I believed he was working toward that plan.

In December 2003, when our daughter was 2 months old and I was recently unemployed, my husband landed a job in his field. He turned 32 the day he left for training. His taxable income the first year: $8256. His income increased roughly $5000 per year after that. We blew through my savings by my daughter’s first birthday. Who do you suppose has supported this family and our home all this time?

His mother has supported us.

It turns me inside out.

The annual “gifting” of the small portions of inheritance money comes at Christmas with a huge display and “presentation” where we are required to get all teary-eyed and grateful with hand-over-heart and mouthed “thank you”s, and there are so many strings and innuendo, and CONTROL that it strangles me and suffocates me to the point of wanting to run away screaming.

At one point when my daughter was a toddler, I was telling my MIL that my daughter had gotten into my bathroom and had smeared my $21 bottle of face cream all over the place. My MIL immediately said “TWENTY ONE DOLLAR BOTTLE OF FACE CREAM?” That year, we got half as much money. I assume she thought if I could afford a $21 bottle of face cream, I didn’t need her money.

I learned my lesson: Never speak to my MIL.

So you ask why don’t I get a job and stop all this? I have, too. Mostly because in my field, it requires long hours, 50 or more hours a week I’d be away from home. I’ve done the research and found that in my area, quality childcare costs $1000 per month, per child. I’d have to make $2000 a month, just to pay for my children to be “warehoused” while I’m away. My husband is away from home for his job, for days on end. I cannot imagine what my kids would think if they only saw Mommy from 5-6 am and from 6:30-7:30pm. And then saw Daddy that 1 day a week he’s home. At that point, why did I have children?

I continue to let my MIL support us because she raised a son who has no drive in life. She supported him when he wanted to work weekends and not get a real job because it would interfere with his play time, even at the age of 25 or 26. She raised him to be the way he is, she can support his family when he can’t.

What is grating me is that at the age of 37, during layoffs last year, my husband didn’t have the seniority to keep his job. Instead, he’s back at a position and pay scale along side 27 year-olds. My MIL keeps saying “He didn’t deserve losing his job. This just isn’t fair.”

I disagree.

The people who got to keep their jobs are the people who spent their twenties and early thirties working hard, EARNING seniority. EARNING their position.

All those hunting and fishing trips with his father really paid off, didn’t they?

If one more person says to me “Oh, you’re so lucky that your husband can support you so you don’t have to work like the rest of us!” I’ll scream. He doesn’t deserve to get credit for something that monumental.

I feel an extreme amount of guilt for being ungrateful for the opportunity my in-laws are granting me. It’s been thrown in my face numerous times that I’m nothing but ungrateful and if I don’t keep my mouth shut, I’ll get us “cut off”.

So I leave my ungrateful rant to the anonymity and facelessness of the internet.

Please don’t judge me harshly. There is nothing you can judge me about that I haven’t already done to myself.

I apologize before hand for the way the following is worded.  Not that well written, just honest and from my gut.  When writing it I had no intention of ever doing anything with it, not to mention ever considered publishing it.   It was just something I felt I HAD to get out and I was so very lonely.  Not to mention I have a horrible memory and get my sequence of events mixed up a bit too easily, so it helped to have it all sorted out as I went along on the whole nightmare trip.

This is just the first installment  and “things” had been going on for a while that I haven’t necessarily gone into in a lot of detail.  Or maybe I did… somewhere in the next months.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent. And the guilty.

March 2, 2009

I started writing all this down yesterday to keep as a draft in my wordpress thingy and checked for it to be kept “private”.  I have never done that before and didn’t really know how it worked.  Later when I came in and pulled up my public blog and it was on the site.  Here.  Staring me in the face as if it was published.  Scared the crap out of me and I immediately hit “delete post”.  Of course it didn’t help much that Frank was home and the last thing I wanted to do was let him know about it looking like I had posted something like that.  I now realize it said “Private Post” and it was only like that on the computer that was logged into my wordpress.  Still, I was shaking like a leaf.  I shake a lot lately.

It was entitled “The Evidence”.  Now… I don’t know how I feel about everything.  I know I so desperately want to have the anti-depressants that I am supposed to be going to the dr for on Wednesday.  I feel like I’m about to have a nervous breakdown.  Nothing seems to look the same every time I think about it.

Yesterday morning I got up at about 5:30 and went down the hall to see where Frank was.  He was in the office on the computer.  Hit a key or two and clicked something and got up when he saw me.  After he left for work I went in later in the day and brought up the My Space page that child b. has saved in the bookmark bar up at the top of the screen.  I clicked “find people” and when it came up it had boxes checked that were for looking for “women” age “18 to 35″.  So I fooled around on My Space for a while to see if what the last thing that was selected on there was what it came back up to when exed out and brought back up.  It is.

After fooling with this for a bit I finally realized that I could just look at the “history” on the computer.  He had cleared it out.  Completely covered his tracks.  I’ve never looked at the history before.  I wonder how long he’s been doing…. whatever he’s been doing, and clearing the history, so I wouldn’t see?

He texted me asking what I was doing and I wrote back telling him I was cruising around on the pooter.

He then wanted to know what I was looking at and I said My Space.

He IMMEDIATELY wrote back and asked “Who you looking for? lol”

I said, “women aged 18 to 35″.

He texted me back “I’m lost” and immediately called me.  He adamantly denied knowing anything about what was on there and had no idea anything about My Space.   Denied everything.  I didn’t say anything about the history being deleted at this point.  Actually, I didn’t realize it had been, yet.  I hung up with him and fooled around with the My Space website for a while and got no where except to realize that when you exit out of the site and come back it is back where you left it as far as what was checked off.

I then thought to look at the “history” tab and he had cleared it when he got off the computer that morning.  I was very stung.  I felt like the biggest fool ever.  He’s moved his flirtatious affairs from his cell phone to these girls My Space pages.  He always has them “with” him.  The ever present, yet very hidden cell phone and now, the computer.  I wonder so much how long the inappropriate behavior has been going on with the computer.

After texting me many, many times all day and calling me at least three or four, he came home and went in where I was sitting behind the desk and sat down and said we need to talk.  At first he adamantly denied being on My Space or clearing the history.  He said the computer was set to clear history when someone has gone into a private file.  I asked WHAT private file and he said his store mail.  I pointed out that he doesn’t use Firefox for store mail and he was getting desperate at this point and mumbled something about he thought he did…  I went into his store mail and out, using explorer cause Firefox isn’t set up to do it anyway, and the history was unchanged.  I started pointing these things to him and he started getting mad about… the fact that he was getting caught doing all these bad things.  However to hear him tell it he was mad because I was treating him like a little kid “checking up on” him constantly and not trusting him.  I agreed that, no, I don’t trust him and I wish I did again.  But those days are over and I’m not sure they are ever coming back.  They can’t because he is much happier behaving this way with these girls than just having me.

Anyway, he finally admitted that he had been on My Space looking at Pete’s page.  When I asked him why he didn’t want me to see that he had been on Pete’s page he admitted that he had been on Trish’s and a few of the other girl’s pages and the talk apparently wasn’t innocent.

So now he is swearing off the computers and “is working on getting things right at work” with his little fan club. No.  This does not consist of telling the “girls at work” to remember he’s a married man and he’s uncomfortable with the conversation they have with him.  Or that they shouldn’t text him unless it’s work related.  He’s “working on it”.  That’s what I get from him.  He guards his phone with his life and “works on it”.

He told me one time that he told Trish not to text him anymore, just call if there was a problem he needed to know about.  He acted mad at me that he had done this and said, “There!  I lost a friend.”.  I just pointed out that if she was only his friend because of the texting, she wasn’t his friend.  He admitted later that she was fine and had no problems with him.

I don’t think my self esteem has ever been lower.  I’m losing weight and it’s coming off pretty fast.  My stomach is in knots everyday and I can’t seem to eat.  So I’m guessing it won’t be long until I am at a good weight.  But, I’ll still be old and ugly.  I don’t know what to do.

Our lives have been falling apart for a few months now.  It all started with me picking up his cell phone off the side table in the living room when it rang or buzzed and giving it a cursory glance as I was walking over to hand it to him.  He snatched it like it might have been about to bite me.  I then noticed that from that point on the phone never was laid on the table again.  It had been there for years.  Now it is in his pocket or if he’s just sitting in the chair in the LR and not wearing pockets, (boxers), he tucks it under the waistband or sticks in just slightly under his leg in the chair.

I have picked it up a number of times and seen texts from Jennifer or Trish or Alecia among others.  Sometimes I would have a minute to look if he had forgotten to take it to the bathroom with him or if he was in the shower and hadn’t hidden it well before he got in.  (This was before he started deleting the chats before he got home), the texts were all very sweet, lovey-dovey stuff saying “I’m going to bed now, sweet dreams, good night.”  “Or I wish you were here.  I miss you.”  Things like that and just plain old, “What are you doing?”

Jennifer tends to want him to come out and drink with her and her friends.  I don’t know if he ever has or not.  I can’t imagine when he could have had time to do that.  But then again, a friend told me the other day that Chrissy had told her that she had seen him at some apartments over by the grocery store and did we know some people over there.  My friend  just told her that it was someone who worked at the store and she felt sure thatFrank was delivering furniture to her apartment for her.

We agreed to donate a couch that has been sitting in our garage for a few years to Jennifer and then the other day Frank and I were driving through our neighborhood to go somewhere and someone had set out two cheap particleboard book shelves on the curb for the trash.  He immediately turned the car around and went back and we got out and got them for Jennifer.  The next day he took them over to her apartment for her.  I am guessing this is when Chrissy saw him?  However, he was highly agitated and border line angry when I laughingly told him that he had been spotted and I have “eyes and spies” everywhere.  Believe me, he did not laugh.  He just kept asking if Chrissy lived there.  Several times.  I told him over and over I didn’t know.  But he was not buying it.  Why, I don’t’ know.  How would I know if Chrissy lives there or not and if I did why would I keep it a secret from him?

I cannot believe this is my life.  I never in a hundred years thought I’d be “here” for my 20th wedding anniversary.  I feel trapped in a life/marriage that’s not even mine and I don’t want at all.  I would just give any amount of money to be able to pick up and leave.  All by myself.  No one else to worry about.  It has been years since I was really, really alone.  I guess the last time someone dropped me off at the mall to shop while they went somewhere else was probably at least 6 or 7 years ago.  But I had to meet them at a certain spot at a certain time and I guess it just wasn’t QUITE the same as being there BY MYSELF.  It was fun and different, tho, I really enjoyed it.

Sometimes I wonder what Frank would want to do if he could just go where ever he wanted after work and not feel like he “had to” go home.  I guess he’d still want to because he is so exhausted when he gets here.  God knows the job gets the best of him while he’s there… and I get the rest.

Fourteen months ago, my 26-year-old stepson moved into my basement. I call him The Diva.

He doesn’t pay rent.
He doesn’t contribute to the food bill.
He doesn’t lift a finger to do anything around the house.

He does use our washing machine and dryer for his laundry.
He does eat our food, watch our television, sunbathe in our backyard, use our telephone and drink our beer.
He does have an entire shelf in the bathroom filled with organic shower products.

Yes, he’s allowed to get away with this because of his Dad’s guilt. My husband moved out of their house in 1990. And even though there were years of attempts to reconnect, The Diva wanted no part of it.

Then something happened. I think it was a breakup with his boyfriend (yes, The Diva is gay), but he’s never actually said why he decided that it was the time to move two states away from where he grew up to live with people he wrote out of his life years before. The excuse he used when he approached us about moving in was the opportunity to attend graduate school at the University in our city. Out of state tuition and room & board were WAY beyond The Diva’s budget, so we offered rent-free living and the chance to establish residency. We only asked for two things. (Which, I now know, was a HUGE fucking mistake. There should have been a list of rules 10,000 lines long.)

1. Pay $12.44 per month for his line on our cell phone family plan. (Even though he uses more than 2/3 of our allowed minutes)
2. Check and refill the water softening salts so that our well water wouldn’t stain everything mineral orange. (The only reason he was asked to do this is because his furniture blocks access to the machine and he won’t move the desk. Of course, he never actually refills it unless his Dad reminds him.)

It’s not been easy. In fact, the only thing that has saved my sanity is that I accepted a consulting job in a city 300 miles away and I’m gone 4 days every week. I leave Monday morning and get back Thursday evening. The Diva has a new boyfriend and generally leaves Thursday evening and comes back Sunday night (to wash his clothes and see what we’ve stocked in the refrigerator that he can pike).

Since I don’t have to see him very often (the occasional ‘duty visit’ if his sister comes over, or if I travel less one week), I can usually manage “out of sight, out of mind”. And y’know, that’s probably the best thing all around.

Yesterday, however, I was ready to shove my stiletto up his Diva ass.

After finally getting out of bed about 1 p.m., The Diva graced us with his presence. It was Monday. This week, I wasn’t traveling until Tuesday morning since my son (The Diva’s half-brother) had graduated from High School on Sunday evening. We had a houseful of visitors before and after the ceremony. (Oh, and by the way, The Diva couldn’t be bothered to attend this family event.)

The car my husband and I share (why have two cars when one of us isn’t home most of the week?) was smashed up in a parking lot (fucking hit and run drivers) and is in the collision shop.

My husband asked The Diva if he could use The Diva’s car to drive me to the airport this morning.

The Diva, selfish prick that he is, said, “Oh, I was going to stay at my boyfriends tonight.”

My husband didn’t bother reminding The Diva that when HIS car was not running and he needed to get to work, he borrowed MY car to get there. (And drove 50 miles and didn’t offer to reimburse us for gas OR pay us part of the money he got for mileage.)

There must have been a look, though, because then The Diva changed his tune.

“Oh, all right. I’ll come home tonight.”

Of course, it was obvious that it was killing him. He was going to have to do something for someone other than himself. The tone in his voice and his eye-rolling pretty much said it all.

When I heard about the exchange, I told my husband, “No. Tell him I don’t want to use his fucking car. And the next time he needs any of us to do anything for him, I’m going to refuse. I’ll hire a fucking car service at $85 each way.”

(By the way, none of my expenses are reimbursed by the company – it’s all out of pocket.)

My husband told him that he didn’t need to come home that night. That I would take care of getting myself to the airport.

The Diva practically danced out of the house. After thanking his father. And giving him a hug.

Seriously? You’re thanking and hugging someone who just told you that you didn’t have to do something nice and helpful for the woman who lets you live in her house rent-free?

I am so pissed off about this whole thing I can hardly see straight. I’ve never met ANYONE so self-absorbed in my entire life. Someone so oblivious to the fact that he is, essentially, living FREE under my roof ONLY because I’m a nice person. I want to send him the bill for my car service and tell him that he could have saved himself a whole shitload of money if he’d just had the decency to do without his boytoy for one night.

I want to tell him that he doesn’t deserve his boyfriend (who is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met), NOR does he deserve the family that he wants nothing to do with.

I want to tell him that he can forget about using our address to get in-state tuition.

I want to tell him that if he puts anything in his mouth from my refrigerator or pantry, he better have a receipt to prove that he purchased it.

I want to tell him that it now costs fifty-cents for a load of wash and $1 for 30 minutes of drying time.

I want to tell him that he can expect to pay for each shower he takes – I’ll calculate the electricity and water used and send him a bill.

I want to tell him that he is more immature than most 7 year olds I know and more selfish than a 15 year old girl.

I want to tell him that his rent is now $400 per month because that’s what it takes to rent a room with kitchen privileges and a shared bathroom in this University town.

I want to tell him to move his mother-fucking ass out of my basement and get his car out of MY driveway.

But I won’t. Because his dad doesn’t deserve that.

by Twistedknickers

My soon-to-be twenty six year old son still lives with me. I don’t have a real problem with that, although I fear going into his room. He has accumulated so much stuff that there isn’t room for another thing.

Yet? He had over $500 discretionary income last week, and spent it in two days. I get that. He never really had any amount of money before to spend exactly how he wanted to, and to buy the things that he really wanted. Also? He enjoys the activity of shopping.

He showed me his purchases, after much coaxing, because really, showing them to people is part of the fun of shopping, isn’t it?

Maybe not so much in his case.

He shopped for his alter ego. The girl. He bought two pairs of shoes (cuter shoes than I have had), two or three purses, make-up, two watches, and a fancy deodorant that cost over $20.

I thought he would buy a new camera, or crap for his computer. When I think of it, why should he? That’s the kind of crap I give him for his birthday. I never buy him girly things. Not that I have a problem with that. It’s just that nobody else can really buy that shit for me, so why do I think I can for him?

Seriously, though. If he has another small things shopping spree, I fear his room will burst at the seams and disgorge all of its contents into the hall.

I live in fear.