Not On My Own Blog I Don’t

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?

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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.

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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…

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