For whatever reason the movie, The Family Stone, keeps coming to mind… I remember watching romance comedies and envisioning my wedding, moments like that. But, lately I’ve sort of started to shape in my mind what I want my family life to be like, what I want to see in my children later in life, the relationships, the way we will change but still keep the bonds we’ve forged over all our years together.

Ugh, I hate sappy statements like that, but I didn’t quite know how else to put it. The point is, I’ve been thinking about this because I have a kid who is graduating. He and his girlfriend have serious plans. My kids are growing up and they are going to be creating their own lives. I want home to always be a cool place to visit not an obligatory stop on a holiday expressway.

This morning, much like many other Saturdays, I came downstairs to find Julien and Scarlet whispering over coffee because the couch and chairs in the family room were strewn with girl bodies. Rowan sprawled on the couch snoring, Deirdre snuggled under a quilt and Deirdre’s best friend had the other chair curled under her couch. They sort of started coming to life one by one, casually checking text messages and joining in bits and pieces of conversations. From time to time I’d wander into the kitchen to refill my coffee cup and end up leaned over the island in the kitchen laughing at their stories.

I spent most of the morning diddling around online and different kids would wander in in and lean at the end of my desk to talk to me. From the couch Scarlet and Julien could be heard giggling and teasing one another with the occasional, “don’t stick your finger in there!!!!” squealed by Scarlet as Julien attempted to stick his finger in her ear.

I love having them here. I love hearing them and I live to hear them laugh. And I’ve almost forgotten about how shitty last week was. It was soul healing… and today there is a pause in the battles at hand and it’s a restorative break that I desperately needed.

Julien’s English teacher started harassing him and making inappropriate comments regarding his absences. He has no missing work and only one missing quiz in her class and she is failing him. These teachers have decided, regardless of verification from the school nurse and numerous doctors notes on file that nothing is wrong with him and there is no reason for him to be missing school. So instead they’ve become disagreeable and have nasty attitudes.

His statistics teacher even attempted to refuse notes to Julien while printing out notes for another student absent with a shoulder injury. He was informed by his assistant that what he does for one student he must do for all, his assistant happens to be Scarlet – who is incredibly eloquent and articulate while be very assertive when she is dealing with teachers either on hers or Julien’s behalf.

After the issue with the English teacher (this is really strike 3, she’s been an asshole on two other occasions just since winter break) I called her and she pretended not to “hear” me after I asked who I was speaking with and she identified herself – and then hung up on me. I wrote an email out that she received about 15 minutes later and never responded to. Instead she began threatening the class she was in (Scarlet’s English class) with a quiz that they were “guaranteed to fail” because she hadn’t taught them the information and felt she could do this as punishment because she was flipped out over my email.

Needless to say, my blood pressure shot up, I got sick, S.O. was on an excavation for an oil company, so my dad went down to the school and talked to the principal. He demanded a meeting with all the teachers, the counselor, and the principal which the principal agreed and told my dad that he would call him either Thursday or Friday.

Instead the principal called Julien into his office THE NEXT DAY to basically intimidate him. He told him that he had talked to all of his teachers and they all just loved him but said it was his absences causing all the trouble. Then he told him he was reducing him down to 3 classes. And, somehow was implying that he did Julien a HUGE favor because the school only gets paid for the student if they are there for at least FIVE classes. Instead of seeing that this kid had been through ENOUGH – my dad had already detailed his past and current health issues the day before – he attempted to pressure and guilt my kid because he had him alone. This meant removing Julien’s physics class and leaving him with statistics, English, and Economics. Julien came home in tears and became very sick. Let me make this really clear, my son doesn’t cry. I’ve seen him in excruciating pain and the kid doesn’t break like that. He is so beaten down, exhausted, and still in pain that he just can’t take it anymore.

So my dad went down there and reamed the principal a new asshole telling him he has no right to call Julien in without calling me or my dad first. The principal tried to pull some shit about Ethan being 18 and my dad said, no, I don’t think so, he’s student here and you already knew that myself and his parents were involved.

Fortunately, my dad is in some club with a district office employee who told him how to work the system and when my dad started talking about filing some 504 paperwork and calling state and county offices at first the principal attempted to explain away 504 (a mandatory FEDERAL law that no school is exempt from) as only applying to kids with serious mental or physical handicaps. However, my dad assured him he knew all about the 504 and that it did apply here the jerkoff started back pedaling and admitted to not even talking to the stats teacher who has been a total asshole. By the time my dad was done with him he said that whatever schedule Ethan wanted he could have and that he would make sure the teachers would work with him. And yet, we still aren’t done…

It’s all just a bunch of ass covering bullshit.

That was yesterday. After all of that bullshit Julien then went in to see his pain specialist and they charged us a $70 co-pay because my mother and her boyfriend (S.O.’s boss) have started fucking around with the insurance plan. We’ve only been having a $20 co-pay up until now. There is no telling how much the asthma medication I have to be on is going to cost us now considering that birth control just jumped up to $122 with their little plan change.

To make things worse, on the way home my mother and brother pulled up behind Julien. He realized it was them and maneuvered through traffic to get away from them and she ran a red light to catch up with him. She pulled up next to him at a stoplight and started HONKING HER HORN at him.

After all the shit he’s been through that stupid bitch started causing a scene IN PUBLIC – IN TRAFFIC while my son was in a car ALONE DRIVING.

Julien turned up his music and pretended to be bopping his head along to it as if he couldn’t hear anything. That’s what a gentleman does… unlike her little mutant who cuts people off in traffic and flips them off.

I thought things were getting better… I really was so optimistic… and now… I don’t know anymore… I just can’t keep going on like this.

Updated 01/30/10
Yesterday Julien arrived to second period English to have the teacher (the witch) tell him that he had been dropped from her class. She gave him a call slip to the counselor’s office. On his way he called me and I called my dad (since Julien had my car) and he rushed to the school. In the interim Julien spoke with the principal who actually started lecturing him on his attendance and threatening to put him in home studies. Julien told him, “This is an issue with two teachers, my stats teacher and my English teacher. I’m carrying B’s in my other classes. It makes no sense that I would be failing English over attendance when all of my work is made up!”

The principal said, “Well, see you’re doing what you should be doing, you’re a good student.” (WTF? – mom commentary) to which Julien replied, “Well, then why are we having an issue?”

The principal didn’t have a good response to that and this whole exchange took place in front of the school nurse who happens to have Julien’s back. About that time my dad walked in and as he was waiting for the secretary to get the principal the principal tried to call my dad to cover his ass. Instead he nearly shit himself when he found out my dad was standing on the other side of his door. My dad made it a point to check in with the nurse first and sent Julien home because he was too amped up and was sick over all this. The nurse also noted that it was her recommendation he be sent home. Then my dad had it out with the principal and basically had him on the run essentially. Monday Julien is back in all of his classes, attendance is no longer an issue, and the principal is supposedly going to tell the teachers that they have to allow him any and all work requests and are not to penalize him in any way for absences.

We’ll see. Just in case, I’ve already looked up the state education code that requires them to do this anyway and I’ve printed it out and given it to both Julien and Scarlet. And, my dad plans to force communication between us, the principal, and the teachers.

Rowan is now studying matter in science. Matter takes on one of three forms solid, liquid, or gas.

Solid, liquid – no problem. Rowan grasped the concept quickly although the concept of liquid being able to change shape per the container you pour it into did not seem to connect at all. Then we moved on to gas and I told her to take a deep breath and then explained to her that that the air, the oxygen, she breathed was a gas.

Her eyes were wide open, her jaw dropped and she exclaimed, “LIKE GASOLINE?!?!?!!” in a panicked tone.

It took me forever to back my way out of that one and the look on her face said it all, “this bitch just told me to suck in a lung full of GAS!!!”

Tomorrow is my birthday. I get to pick what I want for dinner and S.O. will make it and have the kids clean the kitchen. Rowan is attempting to convince me that we should take the day off of lessons since it’s my birthday… she has a knack for choosing “presents” that benefit both the recipient as well as herself.

This weekend the real festivities begin. S.O. and I will head down to our favorite local restaurant and start with oysters on the half shell and Bloody Marys and then spend the next few hours munching and drinking our favorite beer. My dad and stepmom will join us and the four of us will have more than a few laughs. I spent my birthday last year the very same way and decided I wanted to do it every year.

I’ve been thinking about being in my 30′s, sure there is a definite shift from my twenties at the moment getting older seems to foster a “go with the flow” sort of mellowing that I’ve always needed. I don’t have any profound insights though. Maybe that’s the thing about getting older (not that I think I’m old but I’m aging we all are) you just realize how little you really knew and how much less you actually know now. I keep thinking about that old saying, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” and I think maybe that’s the secret as you age.

The things that have occurred to me are the difference in stages of life. How much time has passed. My parents have now been divorced almost twice as long as they were married and a chunk of my life is encapsulated in their thirteen years of co-existence. My grandmother has been dead for twenty six years and I spent the first twenty years of that haunted by memories, terrified of losing someone I love, and missing her terribly, eight short years affected twenty. My grandfather has been gone thirteen years and my father-in-law for almost twelve.

Yet, out of those three I’ve ended up with more of a spiritual connection with my father-in-law which I find surprising and comforting at the same time. He walks around my house and S.O. and I catch glimpses of his tall frame rounding a corner. Once we saw it at the same time. It’s not a haunting by any stretch, it’s just a relative visiting. Sometimes it bothers me that my grandparents aren’t around. I can’t claim to feel them, see them, or experience them in any way beyond my grandfather occasionally contacting me in a dream. The thing is, over the last couple of years I’ve just sort of opened up to this and allowed whatever was going to happen to just happen, whereas before I would have struggled with fear, accepting death, and my own insecurities.

I’ve always resisted change and uncomfortable situations. My grandmother died and my body resisted physically and I became very ill. Later even going with the process of labor and delivery somehow my body would find a way to struggle against the tide even when I was consciously committed to working with it.

My entire twenties were just another exercise in that struggle against flow. Fighting to make a place for myself in the universe. Now I look back and realize that your place isn’t necessarily made as much as it is found. Admittedly, I’m still searching, exploring, and gingerly peeking into new windows. I don’t think I’ve really found my place, my specialty, my “sweet spot”.

Our lives are built on experiences and exchanges with other people. It shapes and molds us and only the most aware can affect how it molds and changes them. Awareness is something I struggle with constantly, being in the moment, focusing on that plane instead of stretching out and worrying about next week, month or year.

One morning I woke up and looked at the pills I was about to take and I realized that I felt more positive and together emotionally than I have in a long, long time. Everything just felt right, so I cut my anti-depressant in half, that was 7 days ago. I haven’t regretted it once. Before I might have been neurotically marking days on the calendar for the next step down, anticipating the moment of freedom and forcing the process along with dogged determination. But after that moment of clarity seven days ago the only thing I’m determined to do is wait for the next morning when it just feels right.

Somewhere along the long road of “I can eat anything” to “Wow, I’m going to punish and restrict myself severely to make up for all that weight I gained” I realized that it’s no longer based on how I look but how I feel. Most days I feel like shit. Bloated, uncomfortable, bulky, gross. The days I feel the best are when I’m on top of my diet, drinking loads of water, and going for mental, emotional, and physical clarity rather than the pair of jeans I really want to encase my ass in.

I haven’t dropped any pounds, but mentally I’m feeling a shift and I know losing the weight is going to follow because I feel the change coming in my bones. Funny how through most of my twenties the only time I had feelings in my bones were when I wanted to jump someone else’s or broke one of my own.

I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing, but I no longer feel like I’m sitting around waiting for something to happen either. Right or wrong, forward, backward, or sideways I’m just moving.

The eve of my birthday and these are the thoughts running through my mind. I’m happy to still be here, still in the game, breathing and all that. I’m not just focusing on the negatives, I’m just sort of amazed at time and the passing of it and the moments neatly tucked into their own pigeon-holes along this long stretching line of time.

Things have been whirling through my head lately. Memories that I thought were long forgotten or at least safely put away under lock and key. Things that I’d rather not consider how they affected me and continue to affect me.

I found a book a couple of months ago when Rowan, S.O. and I were at Borders bookstore meeting with her teacher to review her progress, grades, etc. The book is Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the daughters of narcissistic mothers. by Karyl McBride, PH.D

A week before I turned 14 my mother got angry with me and returned all of my birthday presents with the exception of one outfit. The outfit was what she had picked out for me to wear for my birthday party. It looked expensive and was pretty trendy. She told me she would have canceled the party except it was a joint birthday party for myself and a friend who had the same birthday. My mom didn’t want to look bad.

A few months later we were at the mall shopping. She got angry with me and left me to walk home. Fortunately, it was only maybe a 5 or 10 minute walk from the mall to our house, but I certainly can’t imagine ever doing that to one of my kids.

Toward the end of summer just before I started my freshman year of high school my mom took me shopping. At a local dress shop that I had waited for years to shop at, I picked out a cute dress, very early 90′s, a deep blue almost purple jumper with matching belt and print shirt to go under, it had big buttons that went down the front and I was beyond thrilled.

Just after school started my mother was supposed to marry the man who would later father my brother (the guy she still lives with) the day before the wedding her ex-live-in boyfriend (S.O’s current boss and my mother’s other boyfriend) showed up and convinced her to marry him instead. We ended up in a car headed to Vegas with my mother frantically going through her address book and stopping at payphones to cancel caterers, chair rentals, the officiant, etc. I ended up in a hotel room just off the Vegas strip somehow fielding calls from the guy she basically left at the alter. He was pissed, screaming at me on the phone while my mother hid out in another hotel room with the other boyfriend.

They didn’t get married… we came home and a few days later my mother snapped and kicked me out of the house. I went to live with my dad. A week or so later my soon-to-be-ex best friend (we had been best friends since kindergarten) showed up at school wearing the dress I had picked out from the dress shop. The kicker there was that my mother had to have taken it back to the shop and exchanged it for a few sizes larger… so it wasn’t a spur of the moment yank it out of the closet and hand it to her type of thing.

That would have been September of 1990… the following April I found out I was pregnant with Julien. In June 1991 my brother was born. That ex best friend tracked me down at the drive-in movies to tell me that my mother had given birth. I had only found out maybe a week or so before that she was pregnant. The next thing I knew I was at the birthing center watching my ex best friend flitting around my mother like she was her mother (we were only 15 at the time) and holding my brother as if he were hers. I didn’t stay long.

The following October I was 7 months along with Julien. My mother found out I was pregnant and forced me into a car as I was coming out of school. She drove me around for at least a couple of hours screaming at me. I was trash, everyone would know I was trash, my grandparents would hate me, I was lucky my grandmother was dead because she would disown me. She pointed at my stomach and screamed something about my child being a bastard… I screamed, cried and begged her to take me home. When she finally did I had to be taken into the doctor because I was having contractions. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and put on bed rest for the remainder of my pregnancy. Around all of this my parents were still fighting for custody of my sister and my doctor wrote a letter to the court detailing the physical affects of my mother’s emotional abuse… she (the doctor) insisted on doing it, I recall my doctor being visibly angry and how surreal it all felt.

I later heard how my mother, my ex-best friend, and another friend gathered together for an evening of going through the rest of my things still at her house and, as she told me later they “mourned” me. As if I had died or something. My ex-best friend and her mother would drive by my house, follow me places, and harass me in stores. My mother would defend them or simply say that she wasn’t there when it happened and had no way of knowing what was really going on.

When Julien was 2 his father left us. I worked at a local pharmacy. My mother was at home with my brother at the time so it made sense to have her watch Julien. I later found out that she was taking Julien out to see his father all the while hiding it from me.

Nearly 3 years later S.O. and I got together. My mother used it as an excuse to contact my father, crying, upset and angry over her 20 year old daughter dating a man who was 32… two years later S.O. and I got married. My father recently told me that from time to time my mother would call him with crazy stories about S.O. and I. My father would drop by my house unexpectedly the kids were always thrilled to see him and I loved that he “dropped” by. Of course, later I found out that he did it to see if there was any truth to my mother’s stories. There never was.

What I have found over the last year is that my mother was telling people all sorts of stories about me that weren’t true. Deirdre and Julien spent a great deal of time with her and as they got older S.O. and I started to notice that they came home from my mother’s with attitudes that weren’t normal for them. When Julien was in junior high she would call me telling me stories about my own son. That he acted up at school, that he was getting a bad grade in this or that class. Julien would get in trouble on my mother’s word, I’ve since apologized profusely. It just didn’t occur to me that she would lie about her own grandson. His report card would come in with awesome results and always had compliments on his conduct and behavior.

After Rowan was born for whatever reason, my mother was never all that interested in her. It was more the idea of having a baby around and all the clothes and things that she was excited about. A month after Rowan was born my mother’s house caught fire and I spent the next six months with Rowan in a carrier going from tile store to paint store to meetings with contractors and architects to rebuild her house.

When Rowan was two we moved into a new house. Four months later we started our own business, my mother was angry because I was no longer available to shop for things with her for her house. She started telling people that S.O. abused me, kept me “chained” to a desk, and that Deirdre and Julien were raising Rowan.

Our tenth anniversary was the following year. I asked my mother to watch the kids for the night so S.O. and I could do something for our anniversary. Ten years, I know it’s not much but it felt like a big deal to me. She told me that she wasn’t going to and I needed to learn that when you have kids you don’t get to have as much fun that was just life.

Two and half years later, roughly, Julien was diagnosed with cancer and the rest is well documented through dozens of posts here.

All that for what?

To remind myself that this isn’t the first time she has done something shitty. And, more likely than not it won’t be the last. Now she makes nasty comments about my marriage and implies I’m horrible person because “mothers and daughters” don’t act this way.

I have trust issues. I admit it. If my own mother is capable of these things… then anyone is capable of that and probably worse. Which means I probably really need that book, it’s time for some sort of healing to begin. Right or wrong at least it’s a move in some direction.

Winter formal went off without a hitch. Deirdre was stunning and so was her bf. I might have to come up with a nickname for him eventually, but for now bf works since he’s not a major part of our social circle… his family keeps him fairly tied up almost constantly. Kind of sad actually, Deirdre didn’t see him at all over winter break. Still he’s adorable and obviously adores my girl, so I’ll let it slide for now.

I’ve had more emails from my mother and I finally set up a filter so her emails get sent to S.O. and don’t end up in my inbox anymore. I’m getting a better grip on it, not that it’s been easy. I can feel the anger, judgment and resentment in her emails no matter how she tries to hide it. There are always lines that stand out:

I cannot dig any deeper especially when one person alone is not responcible….

You have established relationship that seem to “work” for you..maybe that was meant to be..I can’t judge that.

I left in her typos and misspellings. It would be easy to write this off as someone in a vicodin stupor having at the keyboard for a bit, but I know her, and she uses inebriation like that to let fly with what she really thinks so she can then use the meds as an excuse later. It’s typical. The swinging from one extreme to the other are just too much for me. One minute it’s how she knows she has done some things wrong, even though she never apologizes for it the next minute it’s how it is a misunderstanding and is the fault of someone else.

Occasionally it’s a guilt trip about how “mothers and daughters” shouldn’t be like this. But then again, maybe she should realize that most mothers wouldn’t attempt to coerce their son-in-law to have their daughter committed either.

I won’t say I hate her. But I can’t say I love her either. Part of me still loves what I thought I knew, the other part of me is sickened over the realization that 95% of what I thought I knew was a giant act. It’s almost unthinkable. I’m grieving the death of a mother who never existed and worse yet, is still alive. Yet, I don’t miss her, I don’t miss the drama, the nasty comments, or the thoughtless judgments and numerous times she hurt me with them.

I suspect she’s jealous of my marriage, my family and the fact that I embody all the values she and my father raised me with – even though she never really valued them or stood by them herself. I can’t imagine ever feeling that way about my child. On the contrary, I want everything to be better for my children, easier, and for their lives to exceed their wildest dreams. I want them to outdo me a million times over. What would the point be otherwise?

Bite me, I thought it was clever! (The title)

I woke up to a pink sky this morning. Pink… honest. Big huge puffy clouds reflecting the sun’s rising rays. I don’t recall ever seeing a sky look like that. It was like something out of a little girl’s drawing. The type of little girl who hasn’t had a boy break her heart, who still believes that there is a pretty land where unicorns exist, she dreams about wearing a big beautiful white dress with a long white veil and roses on her wedding day… and she draws pictures of big, fluffy pink clouds against a blue sky.

Anyway, life goes on, the pendulum swings the other direction and you get up in the morning pour a cup of coffee and keep moving. I wish I could tell you how S.O. and I had this long heart to heart talk, that we hashed it all out for the better. Instead, we tip-toed around each other politely. We chit-chatted about inconsequential stuff, and today he came home and invited me out to the back patio to have a beer and enjoy the strange warmth and sunshine that floated into the backyard in January.

A storm is moving in. I hope to God that that is strictly the weather and that nothing metaphorically lies in that prediction. When a storm approaches we get a little warm up. Nothing dramatic, high 50′s… practically tropical for January. Then the rain will move in, wash my world down, the icy winds will blow through and winter will be restored to it’s stark and chilly glory.

We didn’t talk about serious things, but that’s not entirely true. We danced around them, gingerly, we came to some fragile agreements and we sipped a few beers. I had a shot of tequila, he cracked a few jokes. He kissed me and hugged me. Then the sun went down, it got cold and I needed a shower to warm up my bones. He offered to come up and keep me company and we talked about the carpet we hate, the crown molding we want to put in the family room, and how we had each reorganized our end of the closet. Then we “christened” the closet, spontaneously and completely without resentment or anger over the past few days.

It doesn’t make it all okay, it doesn’t make it go away. But, that’s the little secret about marriage that no one ever tells you or admits to. Sometimes you are just too tired to keep trying and you just fall into each other for a freaking respite from the bullshit and you hope you get up the next day trying to do better than you’ve done before. Could be worse. It could always be worse.

From my mother around 7:30pm Monday night:

had surgery last week, great nurse friend took me and has watched over me. i am doing well and will recover fine, it’s challenging, but what isn’t. as usual hate the meds, lost past week.

do miss u, hate things are so screwed up and so untrue, but if no one cares to see where things got messed up it just stays the same and i thought we were so much more, ihate it but love u all.

So untrue?

No one cares to see how it got messed up?

Well, isn’t this just the fucking frog’s underpants.

It’s a far cry from her “apology” last summer, isn’t it?

Notice how she doesn’t say WHAT surgery. She wants me to panic and contact her. It was a fucking tummy tuck. Hello! ELECTIVE cosmetic surgery with Dr. Hottie. Again… not even the first time.

If I let her back in right now… she’d be right back to pulling her old manipulative shit all over again. There has been no responsibility taken, there are always “good” reasons and excuses, etc. Right up there with her recent blog post… not sure if I’ve already pasted this or not, I don’t want to link to her blog because I don’t want her to find this blog, so I’m pasting her bullshit here:

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Honesty, don’t ever underestimate it’s value.

Wow. Ask forgiveness? From whom? When? And, I sincerely doubt she told her “live-in partner” (my brother’s father) about her freaking 18+ year affair with the other guy (S.O.’s boss) or that she works for him now. She is one to talk about honesty. She wouldn’t know honesty if it fell out of the sky landed on her face and started to wiggle.