Thursday Thirteen Things I’d Like To Do In 2007 (#18)

So this is the time of year when everyone is doing New Year’s Resolutions. I prefer not to do “Resolutions” because they’re generally broken and joked about by the middle of January and forgotten by President’s Day. Then, next January, they’ll be resolved again.

So, instead, I usually try to use the time to reflect and think about the things I’d like to work on in my life, changes, improvements, and so on. I don’t make myself any impossible promises though. I know my limits and I know physics. There’s no way I can lose 60 lbs in 2 months, for example; nor is it likely that I’ll be getting up at 5am any time soon to exercise 3 times a week.

Anyway, here is my list of things I would like to do in 2007, no promises, but I’m working on it. More

Tags: Thursday Thirteen, bloghopping, meme, New Years Resolutions, gardening, knitting, debt, weight, health, writing, Green Living, housekeeping, dysfunctional family

My Brain May Explode

I wonder why my brain doesn’t explode from the sheer insanity of contradictory messages I get from my parents sometimes — mainly from my mother.

Mind you, I write that with love and thankfulness for all the help they both have been the last few weeks. I know that I could not have done everything that’s been done regarding the move without their help.

However…with closer, constant proximity, comes more regular contradictory messages and I suspect wrinkle lines on my forehead from the almost permanent perplexed expressions on my face. Certainly the strain on my forehead and brain has not helped my headaches.

I will admit that in the past, I was not always financially responsible. There was a dark time where I succumbed to the American Dream of Hopeless American Credit Card Debt. It was at the end of college and it kept building for a few years until it got a bit too large for me to handle as I was extremely underpaid while I struggled to find that American Dream IT job I was promised were the jobs of the 21rst Century that would make me rich. I kept hoping that I’d get that job and everything would work out and I’d be able to pay off the growing debt and everything would right itself.

I wasn’t financially stupid, mind you. I had a good idea of what was going on. I understood how interest rates and late fees and minimum balances worked and I’d read the fine print, but I was digging through my sofa cushions when my friends left in hopes that they left change behind. You can read all of the experts’ books and you can memorize every word Suze Orman ever wrote and dutifully read and discuss The Millionaire Next Door that your parents gave you for your birthday instead of something really useful like groceries or paying your overdue electric bill which has been turned off twice that year already.

Anyway, I eventually worked up the courage, hard as it was, to ask my parents for financial help and admit that I had failed somehow out on my own to manage my money — a huge sin for the daughter of a CPA. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how or that I’m not smart enough to do it, but just that I got caught up playing that game that so many people play these days — “The Credit Game.” You think to yourself that you’ll have the money next month so you put it on your card but then next month you’re in the same boat or worse and then the boat keeps taking on water. Kind of like that scene with Captain Sparrow and the sinking boat at the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean but not as funny and there’s no dock to step off of; you end up in the middle of the ocean with Davey Jones, basically, and you remember how nice a guy he was.

So, there’s that back history. It took me years to bale myself out of that little sinking ship, but I did do it. I applied what I could from all of those books and articles my parents had been feeding me. I even applied some tricks they told me not to do…and apparently it didn’t hurt because my credit score was 816 when I went to buy my house. But it did take years. It wasn’t overnight. And it was frustrating and it felt hopeless most of the time. There were other things I wanted to do with my money like buy things, invest, buy a house. I was particularly frustrated when I was given a book on investing in the stock market to read but of course couldn’t afford to do so because of my debt.

So, I’ve got all of this knowledge, and I’ve applied some of it. I’m 35 years old. I’ve just bought a house.

What do my parents do? They each, separately, aggressively got on my case within the first two days of moving into the house about paying it off early, about making extra payments.

I haven’t even made my first mortgage payment yet. I haven’t even had a chance to see the reality of my new budget.

Basically they’re treating me like a child, telling me what to do with my money and my house.

So two nights ago while I was unpacking books with my mother, I asked her if she thought I was incompetent. She was surprised and said no. I told her that when she and my father act like they are dictating to me what I should do with the house or my money or how I should pay my bills, etc., it feels to me like they think I don’t know what I’m doing. I held up some of those books they gave me years ago and I said, “You know, I’ve been paying attention all these years. I do have a clue and when I don’t, that’s when I ask.”

She told me that they were just worried because I’d been talking about all kinds of things I wanted to buy for the house and I’d been spending money on the house. I told her that I was keeping an eye on my bank account.

Now, here’s where the contradictions come in. My father gave me some extra money before the move to buy some extra things for the house like curtain rods and garbage cans. The things I’ve bought for the house have pretty much been basic stuff like curtain rods, shades, garbage cans, a plunger, three-prong outlets…it’s not like I’m out redecorating the house. The only thing I splurged on was a breakfast bar because I don’t have a kitchen table.  So then every time I turn around, she’s telling me that I need to get this or that for the house.  I didn’t buy new bookshelves, though the three I have need to be replaced and badly — the shelves actually sag, which she’s commented on.  I know I can’t afford it right now.  So I told myself I’ll just replace them in a year maybe.  For now,  these still hold the books off the floor…mostly. ;)  And my craft supplies can stay in boxes another six months or so.  But now she’s telling me I need to replace the bookshelves and buy metal shelving to hang on the walls of the craft room/office to put my craft supplies on.  Well, gosh, I’d also like a Dining Room table, a new bedroom set, chairs for the Music Room/Study, a mattress set for the guest room…

Not to mention that every time she tells me to start working on some part of the unpacking, she then interrupts me within two minutes to do something else.

Let’s not even start on, you should lose weight, here have some ice cream.
I miss my routine.

Tags: dysfunctional family, move, little red house, credit card debt

I Should Be Happy

I’m thirty-five years old and I am intelligent enough to know I do not need the approval of someone else to make me happy or give me self-worth. However, being brainy enough to know that is somewhat different from being able to control the emotion or the need. I’ve never quite been able to disconnect the wiring on my insides that would allow me to be free from seeking the approval of my parents in all of these years. I’ve said so many times here. That’s why even now after doing triple handstands and cartwheels I still pause at the end to look in their direction to see if they’ll clap.

O.K. Technically I’m not going to do handstands or cartwheels for anyone. I don’t think I can actually do those, but you get the point.

The thing is that for years, I’ve been hearing from my parents that I should get out of debt and buy a house.

I got out of debt last year — something that my father seems to keep forgetting because he keeps asking me how paying my debt off is coming. For me, paying off my debt was a really big deal because not only was it weighing on me financially and not only did it cause panic attacks but I felt the weight of my parents’ disappointment with each passing month that it wasn’t paid off. I felt shame. For me, paying it off was redemption. I thought as though paying it off would somehow be more satisfactory that it was. But when my father asked again last month during his visit how that debt was coming, I just felt like I was in a sinking boat.

Now the house-buying thing is something else. It’s something I’ve wanted too. I had gotten excited about it once before back in 2003 right before I lost my job. I had even gone looking at houses and had tried to get a realtor who had turned out not to really want to sell me a house because I never saw her face, kid you not. She actually never showed for any of our appointments. I even found a house I liked but I couldn’t afford to buy it at the time and then I lost my job and ended up moving to Maine, so everything works out, right?

Here’s the thing. I don’t see the point in going to all of those Parades of Homes and open houses unless you’re actually ready to buy a house. My parents have been pushing me for six months or so to start getting out and looking around at houses that are out there though I don’t have anything in savings because I just got back from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the UK and I’m in the middle of a 1 year lease on my apartment. To me, it’s a waste of my time and gas, especially when gas prices are high. I kept trying to tell them that I have no patience for it because what if I see the house I want? I am not the type of person to just ignore that and hope it’s still around in the Spring when my lease is up and I have money in the bank. I’m just not.

You have to understand. My father agonizes over every decision. There’s no such thing as an impulse buy. Everything is researched to death. He went back and forth on the moving to New Mexico thing for years before they did it. In fact, they had bought property they were going to build on in Louisiana…but they had it for like five years and he couldn’t decide on the finalization of blueprints. Every time the final prints were made, he’d back off.

My father still has a laser printer he bought in the early 1990’s. It isn’t really compatible with either of the computers he has but he can’t make up his mind about a new printer so he’s making my mother suffer. He won’t let my mother upgrade anything on her laptop. She still has Win98. Two years ago, he still had Win95.

It’s not just because he’s cheap and wants the best deal though that’s part of it. It’s because he can’t make the decision.

Me? I know what I want most of the time where material things are involved. I may not always know the best ways to get them, but I know what I want. For big things, I generally give myself a little time to think things through, but I don’t like to agonize over the what-if-something-better-comes-along thoughts. There’s always that possiblity. You can’t help that. All you can do is make the best decision based on the information you have now.

In 1995, I wanted a green Jeep. My dad forced me to shop around. The whole process was torture. Months later, I bought one. Interestingly, in 2006, I still want and have my green Jeep.

Someone told me that there are some houses you walk in and you just know that’s the house. I know that this little red house is the house I want to live in and make my home. I can imagine myself there doing every day things — cooking, doing laundry, snuggling with my pets, playing piano, reading a book, starting a garden, getting ready for work, having friends over. I can picture where my belongings will go. I can’t imagine changing much of anything (except to add a second bathroom later). I think I can be happy there.

Mind you, I wasn’t ready to go house hunting last week, but my mother insisted that I go while she was here. I would never have seen the little red house but for her. Now I want it.

So, I talked to my parents, I talked to various people, I read up on buying a house in books and online. Mostly, I wanted to find out how to go about it. I wanted advice on the mechanics. I wanted to know the etiquette. I was sorely disappointed in the results of my research. No one seemed very helpful, especially my father. He was very evasive on the subject. He kept telling me that he couldn’t tell me specifically what to do or say. His suggestion though was of course to spend the next three weekends looking at two houses in the area each day so I got a better idea about what the houses in the area where like.

O.K. I get the whole idea about knowing what houses are selling for in the area and being able to comparison shop. However, in this day and age of the internet, it’s not hard to do that from the comfort of your living room. And I did. It’s quite clear to me that comparable houses are not selling for less than $215K, which in the end is what we agreed on, btw. (Sorry, did I give part of the story away?)

What I really wanted to know from my father is how he would handle the negotiation. What things he would ask for in the purchase agreement, etc. He never would tell me.

Friday night, I went into the negotiation for the little red house completely unprepped for the event. It’s not the same as bartering in Mexico for crystal turtles or handmade blankets — both of which I’m excellent at getting cheap. The fact is that those “How to Buy a House” books don’t really tell you what you need to know. My advice is to get a realtor. I think they’re probably worth it if they actually want to sell you a house. The fact that I’d been burned in New Orleans by that one realtor and the fact that these folks are selling without a realtor meant none of us wanted to deal with one, but probably I could have used one on Friday night. Though possibly the flippers and I might not be on as friendly terms now.

Anyway, I put down a deposit of $1K and signed a purchase agreement of $215K contingent on a building inspection and the seller putting in a garbage disposal as well as fixing a few odds and ends I noted. I was very excited though it was more than I originally offered.

My father quickly put a damper on it when I called my parents full of enthusiasm. His first response was that it wasn’t that much lower than the asking price. (Only $3K less.) Then he was upset that I hadn’t asked for things like a termite inspection. Well, gosh, I didn’t know I should ask for one. I wasn’t aware that there was a termite problem in Maine. It pissed me off too because I asked for his advice about what I should ask for and talk about at the negotiation and he didn’t have anything to say beforehand but he was sure all disappointed in how I handled it after.

Then of course, there was no cheer about the closing date, tentatively set for Nov. 27th. No cheer about hiring moving men — I don’t know how he thinks I’m getting my furniture over there. No cheer about breaking my lease. Then all of a sudden he had to get off the phone because the evening paper was arriving.

My mom just kind of went along with him. Oh they said, “Congradulations,” but I just didn’t get the satisfaction I was hoping for.

I haven’t slept well since Friday night and yet I slept all day Saturday. A bout of depression. I told my mother yesterday that it’s hard to be excited when no one else is. She at least sounded a little more excited yesterday.

I should be happy. I’m getting the house of my dreams. I’ve paid off all my other debt.

So, why do I feel like I’ve done it all wrong?

Tags: little red house, depression, parental approval, dysfunctional family

What Part Of “Not Far” Didn’t You Understand?

Originally when the vacation planning was being done, my parents were only supposed to be here until last Thursday so when I was trying to swap the on-call pager, I thought it’d be o.k. to be on-call starting last Thursday as long as I was clear for the weekend before so I could travel to see my aunt and drive back with my parents. And let me tell you, it hasn’t been easy, the last month or so with the pager swapping. We’re all getting a little picky or we all have particular plans around this time. No one wants to be on-call due to social events and Fall and life. So, after my parents announced their change of plans to stay through the weekend, I knew there was no way out of being on-call for the time they were here. So, I told them that whatever we did, we just had to stay close and not go far. They both said, “O.K.” I thought they understood.

So, anyway, I wasn’t feeling well yesterday morning. It was one of those on-the-verge-of-a-migraine mornings where I felt queasy and achy and headachy but I was functioning anyway like I do when I have to go to work. After all, my parents don’t visit often. I didn’t want to spend any part of their visit upstairs in bed making them feel like I was ignoring them or neglecting them. So, I put on a semi-pretty-semi-cranky face and got ready for the day’s adventure, which I was told was going to be the Desert of Maine because it is near my house (thus it follows the “not far” rule) and because the weather people were reporting an incoming storm which my mom wanted to beat home. Since I’ve never been to the Desert of Maine but I’ve wanted to check it out, I was fairly excited about the daily outing. Even Pugly was invited.

Now…I had a strange sense of foreboding as we were leaving the house that made me grab the book I am reading, though I would wish later that I’d grab my new knitting stuff so I could play with that.  If only I had paid more attention to my instincts…

When everyone was in the car and we began to pull out of the parking lot, my father suddenly announced that he had changed his mind and he didn’t want to go to the desert.  Instead, he wanted to drive around and look at “the color” more — meaning that he wanted to drive around and check out the changing leaves of New England, which, by the way, is the real reason my parents are visiting.

Have I mentioned that being in a car is one of my least favorite activities?  Have I mentioned that I get car sick?  I mean, granted, it’s better in the back seat, but I despise any lengthy time in a car.  I even hate driving myself longer than 30 minutes.  In fact, driving myself between Portland and Boston makes me car sick, I kid you not.

Anyway, I was already not feeling well, remember?  So not long into this kidnapping of me and my dog, who doesn’t like long trips either, I broke down and took a Maxalt for the migraine.  This kind of made me sleepy.  After a while, since I didn’t feel well, was drugged with cough syrup that had codeine and migraine med and was bored from looking at trees that while prettily colored, looked remarkably similar mile after mile, I decided to take a nap in the back of the rented SUV.

So, when my pager went off, I was groggy.  When I opened my cel phone to try to call work and got a “no service” message, I was a bit surprised.  I said, “How far from Portland are we?”

My dad was like “New Hampshire.”  Then he was kind of laughing and appologetic.  He was sorry because he forgot but he was like “Well, this was the farthest point we were going to go anyway.”  Like that was supposed to somehow make it better.  And “If they’d just waited 15 minutes, we’ve have been 15 miles closer.”

So, there I was in some small town in New Hampshire outside of a sporting goods store at a pay phone using my Rite Aid long distance card calling work to find out what was going on.  Then I was calling a co-worker who happened to be at his desk and begging him to do me a big favor as I explained what had happened, how I had been kidnapped by my parents who don’t listen to me.  Since he really couldn’t help resolve the issue, I actually needed him to page another person on the Integration Team — you know, one of those other people who didn’t want to be on-call this weekend because they had other plans?

Then I hopped back into the SUV and we started heading the 111 miles back at top speed.

You want to talk about car sick.

When I finally got service on my cell phone, I still hadn’t gotten a page back from the co-worker at his desk who was supposed to page me to let me know if he’d gotten ahold of anyone.  So I called him to check.  Voice mail.  Left a message.  Thirty minutes went by.  Still no page.  Called again.  Voice mail.

I am so dead.

Meanwhile, my parents are like, “Just blame us.  Tell your boss it was all our fault.  We forgot.”  And I’m thinking, I’m 35 years old.  This isn’t high school anymore.  I cannot go to my the boss of my job and say “It’s my parents’ fault.”  Ultimately it’s my fault.  I should have said “no” when my father changed the day’s plans.  I should have been paying attention while he was driving around all willy-nilly.

Finally I got a page saying that the drama-queeniest of all of the Integration Team has solved “both pages” (I only got one, remember?) and everything was o.k. now.

At least I got to tell my father he could stop speeding and could he pull over at a gas station somewhere so the dog and I could pee-pee.  For once, he let us have the break.

Then he got all pissy when he discovered that I was extra dizzy from the speeding and needed to eat something with sugar because that was going to spoil the dinner we were going to have in an hour or two — we hadn’t had lunch, mind you.  Ah, memories of family vacations are flooding back now.  Fortunately my mom backed me up this time.  God bless her.

Given a second chance, did he continue on toward home?

No.

There was more wandering.  We just can’t learn our lesson.

I do love my parents, but I don’t think they always listen or remember what I say.  I did tell my dad that this incident was a prime example of him not listening but ironically, he didn’t want to hear that.

Tags: dysfunctional family, work, sight-seeing, Fall

Discombobulated Family-ness

So O.K. Just some discombobulated thoughts having to do with my family.

• Talking to my mom Wednesday night about the surgeon and the Rheumy, she pops out with “You know your grandmother had Sjögren’s.”

  Well, no…I don’t recall that.  Now, I’ve talked before about how trying to get a family medical history out of my mother has been like pulling teeth out of a mule and how she always mentions these sorts of things after I’ve talked to a doctor about about them; though generally it’s several weeks or months later; so this is an improvement.  However, in this case, I kind of actually think she might have actually mentioned it once at some point and it didn’t register.  I think it was when my grandmother was in the nursing home toward the end and there were quite a few things wrong.

  So, it’s possible that Sjögren’s Syndrome runs in the family then on my maternal side.  That’s good to know and I’ll now be able to pass that on to the Rheumy.  Wish she’d reminded me of it when I was talking about going to the Rheumy.  Though…the fact that I’ve discussed my symptoms with her and that didn’t ring a bell suggests to me that Sjögren’s probably isn’t what I have.

• I’ve been playing phone tag with my aunt for a week.  Remember how I said I was going to visit her this summer?  Well, Summer’s almost over and I need to make those plans.  So I was trying to get in touch with her.  At first I had that whole surgery thing hanging over me but now I’m pretty free…so “we” (my dad, my aunt, and I) figured we could somehow intermingle the family trips in September where my parents were planning on visiting her in Ohio and then driving up here to Maine.  So now I’ll probably fly down to Ohio and then drive back to Maine with my folks.  Except my father is being his usual self and being unhelpful with the planning and won’t tell anyone anything so I can’t figure out when to buy the plane ticket to fly down or when to ask off from work.  My aunt and I may start plotting to kill him soon.  Ohio’s a big state with lots of lakes and hills to hide the body.  Her husband has a boat, I’m told.
• I did ask my aunt if Pugly could come along.  I realized it was presumptuous to assume he could come.  Apparently, the rest of the family has already worn out the doggy welcome at her house though.  I had to do some serious promising on Pugly’s part.  He had better behave himself and get his act together in obedience classes.
• My mother for some reason passed on the link of this blog to my aunt.  *waves to aunt*  My aunt has rightly pointed out that if my uncle and his family ever found out about the things I’ve written here, they would never forgive me.  I’m very glad to have a very accepting and understanding aunt.  I must speak to my mother about why we don’t hand out the link to the rest of the family.
• As a side note, my aunt did point out that my cousin who I have mentioned here before as having been diagnosed as anorexic has apparently regained her weight.  What this means for the original diagnosis, I don’t know.  I am glad to hear she’s recovered though.
• And here’s a random thought I mentioned to my aunt, if you grow up with a crazy person, how likely are you to become one yourself?

Tags: dysfunctional family

A Conversation With My Mother

I’ve actually been meaning to write about this for several days but at first I was too frazzled about getting lost for over an hour and then I was distracted by other things. Life happens that way.

I have a fairly good relationship with my mother now that we’ve got a country between us. What I mean is that when we lived in the same city, we hardly ever spoke or saw each other, I guess because it was always there that we could do so anytime we wanted so we put it off. When they moved to New Mexico, that kind of changed. we got in the habit of talking far more often on the telephone. Now that I’m in Maine, hardly a week goes by without a phone call or two. The time difference is a little troublesome, but somehow she still manages to find a way to call early enough to wake me up on a Saturday on occassion.

However, this Saturday, I thought I’d surprise her and call her at 8am my time. Hah! They were barely out of bed! Kind of odd for them as they’re early risers. By 5am their time, they’re usually up and have the coffee going and are anxiously awaiting the newspaper while catching CNN’s headlines. My father was raised on a farm and my mother was an army brat — they never outgrew that early morning schedule for some bizarre reason, though I tried to break them of it for 18 years or so.

Anyway, Saturday, I called my mom bright and early from the comfort of my bed, beneath my covers piled high with kitties. I wanted to talk to her about the incident on the bus.

O.K. That’s not true. I don’t really care about the incident on the bus. I know there’s some women’s rights women who might be angry or horrified by the thought that I don’t really care about the fact that I was victimized by two little boys on a bus fifteen years ago. By all means, include me as a statistic somewhere, but the truth is that I don’t actually feel anything toward those two boys who probably don’t even remember the incident, the bus, or me. They probably didn’t even remember it the next month, which is probably where the true crime is. Probably they never really knew what they did wrong.

What I am upset about is how I became a victim after the bus. How I did everything I was supposed to to. I told a grownup, my parent. I told an authority figure, my principal. My life was the life that changed. I lived in fear though not the shame that many victims reportedly fall into. I lived in a kind of punishment as my priviliges were the ones that were stripped and my movements were the ones restricted.

I discussed this all with my mother. She doesn’t really recall a lot of these changes though she does recall the incident. She did admit that these sorts of things do happen to victims of sexual assult and rape afterwards as a result and it’s a shame.

So then I wanted to know if she recalls if I started to withdraw more after this event. Did she notice a significant change? Really this is what the phone call was about for me. I really want to know what happened to me in my childhood. When did things go wrong? Maybe if I can figure out the when, I can figure out the why and maybe then I can start working on fixing it. I don’t know.

Well, she didn’t think that I did withdraw after the bus incident and for some reason, this lead me to comment that I thought that I had been fine until we moved to New Orleans. Suddenly, she said, “Yeah!” This lead her to tell me that when we lived in Florida before I was seven, I was a bright and sunny kid, completely different and I thought everyone loved me and I would walk up to complete strangers and talk to them. Once I scared her because I walked up to a complete stranger in a grocery parking lot and started talking to him and when she tried to tell me that it wasn’t a good thing to do, I wanted to know why and she told me that not everyone would love me; apparently I refused to accept this as fact.

Something changed between Florida and New Orleans. Where that bright and sunny kid went, I don’t know.

However, she pointed out that the other really big personality shift she noticed in me was when I came home from college. She said a friend of a high school friend of mine had called to ask me out or ask me to do something and I had said no and when asked why not, I told her that I didn’t know where he’d “been” or what he’d been doing the last three years. Now, I don’t exactly remember this incident, but it has the sting of truth to it. It kind of sounds like how paranoid I felt about people when I first got back to New Orleans, how I sometimes still am.

So, having had plenty of time to mull this over, particularly while I was lost on the backroads of Maine, I got to thinking about the really “hard times” in my life, the times when I think I was having life crises or depressive episodes or I maybe was going through some sort of personality shift as my mom described it.

• There was the move to New Orleans when I was Six/Seven. We moved away from everything I knew where everyone loved me into a neighborhood where no one else lived and the great unknown where I started a fundie private Christian school.
• Started a new private school (leaving new friends twice) after not adjusting to public school after nearly getting expelled from fundie private Christian school — mom agrees I shouldn’t have been suspended in the first place — plus I was held back a grade to catch up with my age group.
• Went away to college (once again leaving everyone behind) which was not the grand adventure I thought it was going to be.
• Returned to New Orleans (leaving friends behind) without a real job to live at home with parents and work at video store.
• Parents move 2 states away.
• Six years of abusive job stress to be fired and leave work friends.
• Move 1700 miles and leave behind all friends and everything I’ve ever known.

So it’s kind of possible that this is the pattern. I’m not saying it is. I’m saying it’s possible. Maybe each school change and move was just reliving the move from where I was loved by all into exile subconsciously. It’s something worth exploring, I guess.

I haven’t discussed the moving theory with my mother, I kind of developed it after I talked with her.

I do want to say that I think she’s been much more supportive this last year and a half of therapy than she was when I started therapy ten years ago. She’s been willing to help me analyze and review and explore and that’s been very helpful to me this time around. Though I wish she’d stop pointing out that I have a lot of quirks just like my bipolar grandmother. That’s just too helpful. She’s also been telling me a lot how much she loves me and how proud she is of me and trying to be supportive of my ideas rather than critical and I appreciate that too. Then again, maybe my negative hearing is dimming a little too. Either way, this is much easier knowing she’s with me.

Though I still don’t have the courage to bring up the subject that maybe there’s some mental illness on her side of the family too.

Tags: dysfunctional family, depression, rape, Women's Rights, therapy, wellness, Me

Anxiously Friendless in Portland

Those of you who don’t suffer from any kind of anxiety might not understand, but for me I live in a constant state of feeling like something dreadful is about to happen. Even though I have never ever been evicted from anywhere, just seeing a flyer stuck in my door is enough to trigger a mild panic attack as I approach from the parking lot, the flashing light on my answering machine is a harbringer of some horrible message of doom, and if it’s not shaped like a card from the Hallmark store, any envelop with my parents’ handwriting means I am in trouble, despite the fact that I am now thirty-five years old and have lived on my own since 1993.

And, no, the fact that I can see the humor in my own pain does not make it any easier. It just means that I should reconsider my left-behind career in stand-up comedy.

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Tags: anxiety, dysfunctional family

Tracing Back The Dysfunctional Roots

Well, I’ve an update on the whole 1930 Census mystery about my grandmother. I’ve gotten verification from my mother that my great-grandparents were living in Tampa at that time and they were separated in 1930, not divorced as I previously thought. They had joint custody and since they were living as boarders at those residences, that explains why my grandmother shows up as a resident at both places and their names are mispelled. (They did have oddly spelled names.)

So, I had been going on some assumptions that my great-grandparents had married in Tennessee, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the case anymore. However, I can now start to look for divorce records in Tampa sometime between 1930 and 1935. Anytime after that would be too late. My grandmother was 16 when she left my great-grandfather to go live with my great-grandmother. She was supposedly fairly young when she was “kidnapped” by him and taken to Georgia or Tennessee.

Anyway, it’s a place to look.

Tags: genealogy, 1930 census, dysfunctional family

O.K. Tell Me What’s Wrong With This Plan

My mother tells me that her crazy con-artist brother has a new plan to start a new business. He apparently called her up yesterday and asked for $300 to start this new business — he apparently is always asking for money and she gives it to him; this is why I am coming out at the good relative in the family.

Anyway, so she’s explaining the plan to me and she says the he wants to buy stuff off of eBay–

Yup. I really should have stopped her right there. Remember, I was sick. My head was all muddy. It’s only starting to clear a little now as my brain drains out of my nose.

I really should have pointed out that people don’t start a business by buying stuff off of eBay, but I’ll probably call her in a bit.

So, she says that he wants to buy stuff off of eBay and sell it at flee markets.

Right. This is the complete opposite of what people are supposed to do. You buy at flee markets and sell on eBay.

I don’t know. This just sounds fishy. She said that he and some guy did this before under some franchise but she couldn’t find any information on the web on it. I can imagine why.

Tags: dysfunctional family, scam

Why I Think The 1930 Census Is Wrong

Family hearsay is that my after my great-grandparents on my mother’s maternal side divorced, my great-grandfather kidnapped my grandmother and took her with him to live in Georgia…or Tennessee. Well, I thought it was Georgia but recently I’ve reinterpreted the rumors and now think it was Tennessee.

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Tags: genealogy, 1930 census, dysfunctional family

The Gene Puzzle

It’s kind of funny but my recent quest for faith and my goal to reconnect with my family has led me to yet another quest of sorts. Last night I began working on researching my family tree.

I bought The Family Tree Maker 2006 Deluxe version which comes with a year subscription to the US records for Ancestry.com; I paid $70 for the software and the subscription is a $180 value which is a really good deal and I highly recommend it if you’re a beginner and just getting started.

I sat down and input the few details I knew. The fact is that growing up, I never paid attention to who was related to who and whatnot. I kind of wish I had been paying attention. I managed to pull some information about my mom’s side out of the recent obituary on my grandmother. I tried to find the obituaries for my other relatives who’ve died in the last 20 years but I couldn’t find them online anywhere.

I managed to use what little information I had to fish out other information about some of the family but not a whole lot.

So I did what any smart person would do. I called my mom and she and I chatted for a good hour or so. She was able to recall some of the information about both families off the top of her head; mostly it was names of people. I’m back to my great great grandparents on one side of the family now, but I’m still trying to gather specific info on the folks I already knew about.

Anyway, it turns out that her father was into geneology and after the fire that occurred when my stepgrandmother was murdered, my mom managed to rescue some of his research. She’s going to go out to the barn next week and try to find it and copy it for me. I wish I’d gotten to know my grandfather better — after he died, I found out he wanted to be a writer too and I have one of his short stories stored away somewhere. It seems that he and I could have had fabulous conversations now that I’m grown up and share some of his interests. But back then, he was the scary sick man who smoked while on his oxygen tank.

But anyway, I’m already learning lots. I always joked about how my mother is the first in her line not to be divorced, but I never realized how true. I mean on both sides of her family, there were multiple divorces and marriages. Just sorting them all out is going to be a task in itself. Not to mention the changing of spelling of last names here and there. Heck, it turns out I have some French lineage on my mother’s side but you wouldn’t have known it because they changed their name.

I guess I kind of started this to prove and disprove some family rumors; you know me and my quests for truth. For instance, my dad’s great great something or other supposedly came over during the Potato Famine and lied about being Irish. However, my dad supposedly also has a journal from a relative that served in the Civil War. My great grandmother on my mom’s side swore we were part Cherokee — my friend N2 swears everyone claims they’re part Cherokee just like everyone was Caesar or Cleopatra in a former life. My mother also claims that her father’s line goes back to a Scottish clan and while I’m hopeful for that one, I have my suspicions…

Anyway, it’s like a big puzzle and it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out. Plus, it’s already bringing my mother and I closer. She wants to go to the UK with me once I get that far back on my dad’s line and make a vacation of researching family over there — you know, going from church to church looking at log books and tombstones. Kind of neat when you think of it.

Tags: genealogy, Family Tree Maker, dysfunctional family

Meltdowns

I had a good session with my shrink last night. This past week I have been more depressed than usual; obviously, my grandmother’s memorial service and the whole travelling fiasco have something to do with that. However, a lot of my problem is perceived self-image and an extreme unhappiness for how I look and feel due to my weight issues.

I’ve written about how I’m suffering from some form of ugly duckling syndrome or some such. I currently feel miserable all of the time. I am constantly aware of how terrible I look and how uncomfortable I feel. I am frustrated at not being able to find decent-fitting clothes. And I feel disappointed and angry with myself for gaining the weight in the first place.

Needless to say, all of this has weighed heavily on my mind and my need for approval and validation from my parents also came into play. When I lost all of that weight back in 2002, my parents didn’t see me for about a year. There was about a 40-45 lbs difference and my father said how proud he was of me and bragged to his friends. I guess I know that they are proud of me in other ways but I feel like I let them down somehow by gaining the weight back plus some. So, with only about 5 weeks between when I saw them this time, I guess I felt like the loss of 8 lbs should have been more visible. I felt like every bite I took was being watched and judged while I was there since they know I’m back on program and I was keenly aware of how dumpy I looked in the clothes I chose to wear over the weekend.

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Tags: depression, dysfunctional family, therapy

A Tribute To My Grandmother

Despite my travel woes over the weekend, I did find the memorial for my grandmother to be a positive experience despite the sadness involved.

Over the last few years, she had been so miserable and had been such a burden (often purposely) on my mother that it was hard to remember the person she was.

My grandmother was the child of a broken marriage. She had been kidnapped by her father at a young age and raised in a strict household. She blamed her mother for not “rescuing” her, though her working mother claimed that at the time she had no way to get her back.

My grandmother spoke awfully bad about my grandfather, but she had married him three times. Her soulmate though was my step-grandfather. Together, they did everything together and they certainly did everything. They ran an electronics repair shop, were accomplished sailors, and heavily involved in multiple organizations. She was an accomplished cook and seamstress who sewed multiple wedding dresses and later had a business making sails, cushions, and covers for boats. She got her GED late in life but she helped support her family as a secretary for years.

She once didn’t like the price quoted her to re-upholster her car so she stood around for a few hours watching them do it and then went home and did it herself.

She was a proud member of the NRA and once while trying to scare off a cat from the yard, shot a hole in their van’s transmission.

She and my step-grandfather thoroughly enjoyed life. They were definitely partiers. My friends in high school thought it was cool that my grandparents had a fridge just for their keg and that my step-grandfather dyed his hair green every St. Patrick’s day.

They had Bloody Mary’s every Sunday morning with their best friends’ even when they weren’t together, they’d call each other and shake the glass at the phone. My grandmother carried on this tradition with their friends until she went into the nursing home.
They once sailed to the Bahamas. The story goes that they heard that beer was insanely expensive in the Bahamas so they left with 48 cases of beer on their boat and a plan to turn around when they had only 24 cases left.

It was lovely to hear all of those wonderful memories from their friends this weekend. The laughter shared at their antics was exactly the way my grandparents would have wanted it. I’m glad to have these memories refreshed; they cloud the unhappiness of the last few years. Mostly, I’m glad that my grandparents are reunited and I imagine they’re reunited somewhere in a pub in Heaven enjoying themselves and raising some heck.

Tags: dysfunctional family

It’s The End Of Privacy As I Knew It

Seriously, despite the fact that I blog all about my life and share all sorts of thoughts and opinions, I’m really kind of a paranoidly private person. I mean, I blog under a pseudonym. I don’t publish my address or phone number or even my Yahoo!Messanger ID.

I’m like that in non-cyberland too. I am loath to hand out my phone number or even my personal email sometimes. I certainly don’t hand out my cel phone number since I moved. In fact, I think I have only given it officially to my mom and the other N.

The problem is that once that information is out there, you can’t take it back and make people forget it. You have to be inconvenienced and have to move and change all of your phone numbers again and maybe even stop using that email address.

For years, I’ve sat quietly distant from my extended family. I pretty much communicated with them through my parents. Now this whole “reconnect with the family” thing has gotten out of control.

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Tags: dysfunctional family

My Dad’s Crazy Brother vs. Me

My dad’s brother was a very successful salesman for a fairly large and well-known company. He made enough to retire in his 40’s. Since then he’s had way too much time on his hands.

I’m starting to see why he was so successful. He certainly doesn’t take “no” for an answer.

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Tags: dysfunctional family

Resolving To Close The Distance A Little

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching over the weekend. Mostly I’ve been thinking about my relationships with family and with the people I consider my friends. My grandmother’s death made me realize a few things about myself, a few things I’d like to change.

I’m not particularly close to my family beyond my parents. It seems to me that when I was younger, probably pre-college, I was closer to all of them. I don’t know if it’s a symptom of my depression that I distanced myself from them but I do seem to distance myself from everyone. I certainly don’t think there’s any one person I can bare my entire soul to or trust completely. I think I simply don’t allow myself to be in danger of being too hurt by the words and actions of others. I’ve done that in the past and it obviously hasn’t worked out well.

So, I have a fear of intimacy as far as being close to anyone. This is a lonely place to be.

My grandmother was something of a party girl when she was younger. She and my step-grandfather had a fridge built specifically for their keg. There are all sorts of photos of them at parties surrounded by their friends. They did everything together. If he had to take a certification class for something to do with their yatch, she went too. He was involved in her sewing business too. They were each other’s world.

I will admit that I think that sort of relationship is too much. I certainly think people need to have their own space and hobbies and such, but my grandmother obviously loved it and that’s fine. However, when my step-grandfather died, my grandmother didn’t know what to do. She had depended on her husband to make the decisions and take care of her and guide her through life for so long that she was lost. After all, he had been her whole world and then he was gone. She sunk into a great depression and I honestly believe she was trying to will herself to die. She went to live with my parents, she lost touch with her friends, and she never wanted to do anything with anyone except my mother. She also didn’t want to care for herself and this is where I lost patience with her. I admit it. I have a very low tolerance for someone who wants to be waited on hand and foot to the point of not being able to go to the bathroom on their own and then complains about their ailing and deteriorating body — mind you, I’d already gone through years of that with El. I could read the signs and quite frankly, I believe that a person should make every effort to take care of themselves and not be a burden on anyone else.

And that’s the kicker I guess. I was angry at my grandmother for not only allowing herself to become a burden on my mother but inflicting my mother with such burden. My grandmother wanted my mother to be her slave and I resented that. My mother deserves her retirement. She deserves to enjoy her life but she feels a lot of pressure to be the caretaker of everyone from her good-for-nothing “disabled” brother to her mother and grandmother to everyone else in the family, including me, and I think she should be free.

I admit I was also holding a grudge for some ungrateful things my grandmother said to me a few years ago too.

So, in the end, I was not as close to my grandmother as I could have been I suppose. For a lot of reasons.

I guess I’m still waiting to have that really good cry after I finally realize she’s really gone. It’s harder to accept that a person is gone when you don’t have the closure of a funeral or wake. I had a similar issue when my step-grandmother was murdered when I was in college. But I do also wonder if I haven’t had my cry because we weren’t close in the end.

Anyway, so for a variety of reasons, I am not close with the rest of the family either. I don’t care for either of my parent’s crazy brothers and do not want to have anything to do with them either. As a result, I haven’t seen my now anorexic cousin since Christmas of ‘92.

I can’t recall the last time I saw my aunt, who I do like, who has met, lived with, and married a man I’ve never met in this time. I think perhaps when my cousin, her son, committed suicide, she reached out to me but I was so close to my own suicide at the time that I couldn’t talk to her. And my cousin had an illegitimate son, who we aren’t supposed to talk about in front of my paternal grandmother (my only living grandparent), who I’ve never met. I don’t even know his age.

So, I’ve decided that sometime this year, perhaps in the summer when my cousin’s son visits his grandma (my aunt), I’ll go down to Ohio and visit. I think I’d like to get to know my aunt again and maybe start a new friendship with her. She’s really rather cool. Plus, I’d like to visit my own grandma who’s now in a seniors’ home there.

I want to learn to be more tolerant and patient with the people I love this year too. I guess this is one of my New Years’ Resolutions.

Tags: dysfunctional family, depression

A Moment of Silence

This morning at 5:30am MST, my grandmother passed away after several days of exhibiting strokelike behavior. I know that she is much happier now that she can be with my step-grandfather. There will probably not be a service.

Tags: dysfunctional family

The Guilt of Compassionate Prayer For Death

My grandmother is in her mid-eighties and has been on a steady decline in health since the death of my step-grandfather four years ago. I suspect that the decline is at least a bit in part to a conscious or unconscious lack of desire to live without him. I have some resentful thoughts that she allowed herself to fall into this condition by refusing to take care of herself, a condition I suspect she was in before my step-grandfather’s death.

The nursing home she is in sent her to the hospital on Sunday as they were concerned she may have had a stroke. My mother also feels she is behaving as if she had a stroke but the hospital says the tests do not show this. However, she is now wasting away, barely eating, unable to speak in anything more than monosyllables, unable to sit up in a chair, unable to care for herself. She’s miserable.

In fact, she did not look all that well at Christmas when I visited her. She couldn’t keep herself from slumping. She complained about her back hurting her. She barely ate. She just stared at the world with blue eyes glazed over and mouth hanging open. She was skin and bones.

And I feel guitly that I have prayed to God that he ease her suffering and not prolong her life unnecessarily. Society doesn’t seem to encourage a person to wish for anyone’s death despite their quality of life. The Terry Schaivo Media Circus last year was clearly evident of that. We are supposed to demand that our loved ones hang on to every last drop of life, no matter how bitter.

And so I’m torn between wanting her pain and misery ended and the feeling that it is a horrible thing to wish anyone dead and mean it.

All I can think about is her laying in bed, trapped in her body, with nothing to do for hours and days on end but stare at the world going by. She’s in pain, she’s unhappy, and none of that is likely to improve. I know in my heart of hearts that this is one of my personal nightmarish fears for myself and that this must be torture to her. I just can’t bare to think of her spending weeks, months and years like this.

And I feel miserable thinking that the best thing for her would be to pass on.

Tags: Faith, dysfunctional family

My Mother Is a Tease

Some of you may remember that both of my grandmothers have moved into assisted living. The one from Ohio has a two story house with a basement. The upstairs was once four rooms, I think, but a wall was torn down and two of the rooms joined to make an attic. Not to mention there is a barn and a separate three car garage. It’s a huge house and I haven’t been there in 16 years or so, but I’ve heard tales.

When my grandfather was alive, my grandmother’s compulsive shopping was kept hidden. The things she bought were snuck into the house and then into the attic so he wouldn’t know. Since his death 16 years ago, I’m told that the compulsive shopping has spilt out of the attic and down the stairs. I’ve heard that my grandmother couldn’t even sleep in her own bedroom due to the piles of clothes — by the way, she still has the dress she graduated high school in. Apparently for the last 10 years, she’s been sleeping in her recliner. I’m told that there is no place for company to sleep and visiting relatives have to stay at my aunt’s house.

So, she’s moved into an assisted living place and she doesn’t want to go home to get anything, but there’s 80 years of collecting in that house. She might be a packrat but she had an eye for value. She collected antique dishes and glassware — and she usually got several sets of each kind so there wouldn’t be a fight among “the kids”. She has lots of things that are worth lots of money. Her future could be set if it’s sorted and sold properly.

So, in September, my parents and their dog are driving from NM to Ohio to help my aunt sort through the house and my mom has been on the phone with me a number of times asking me about what I remember that they might not realize is worth something — like my uncle’s old G.I. Joe doll, the kind that was Barbie’s size and had movable joints or a very old doll that belonged to my Aunt way back when or those metal matchbox cars in that cigar box that I think were my dad’s. Little things.

Then she asked me if I wanted my grandparent’s bedroom set. It’s old, it’s wood, and it’s good quality. Probably better quality than what I have. Supposedly, they bought it when they got married. It’s a double which is smaller than my Queen, but I suppose I could get used to that, but the furniture will hold less clothes.

At first I said no but I got to thinking about it. I’d hate for it to be sold or go in my parent’s barn. So I called her yesterday and asked more questions about it and expressed an interest.

Then I had the good sense to ask if they were driving the truck.

No.

They’re driving the car, not the truck.

When I asked how they were going to get any of the furniture to Maine, she said, “Well, one day.”

If I didn’t already have a migraine, I’d bang my head against the wall.

Like they’ll drive across country a second time just to haul stuff in the truck? Yeah.

Tags: dysfunctional family

Family Updates

My father’s foot-long blood clot has apparently dissapated enough for him to return to his usual activities of long hikes and climbing and not sitting around the house in a bad mood. He seems to be back to his usual self — whether that’s entirely a good thing or not remains to be seen. Don’t get me wrong — I love my dad; he just can be the most annoying man on Earth.

My grandmother who lives in NM apparently is having a lot of falls. The assisted living people have apparently set up all these alarms and such to let them know if she so much as tries to stand up since she has a nasty habit of getting out of her wheelchair without help despite being told not to. I told my mom she should put up some sort of sign that shows how many days since the last fall and everytime 7 days goes by without a fall, she should give my gramma a treat or something. My mom is considering it.

Tags: dysfunctional family