More of the same

Today I feel…catawampus, emotionally and physically. My husband is out of town for his father’s funeral and I miss him terribly. We are both sick with the flu and I’m worried about his physical and mental well-being. He isn’t alone but we are really connected and being without me is hard on him (and me), especially during such a traumatic time. My health and our finances kept me from attending the funeral, along with the fact that our cat is diabetic and needs two insulin injections daily. My sister and BIL have made it clear that they would not take care of our kitty while we were away so here I sit lonely and feeling like my heart has been crushed.

An assortment of memories of my Father-in-law keeps playing in my head. It’s almost suffocating; nevertheless I wish I could take on my husbands’ pain. If he feels as heartbroken as I did (still do) when my mom passed away his grief must be killing him.

Meanwhile, my sister is in the beginning stages of the flu, with a sore throat and chills. Her fever is 99.9 and she is making such a big hairy deal out of it. She has no job, she rarely does housework, she gets take-out often, then she gets the flu and her life is over. She has been complaining non-stop all day, walking around the house as if her suffering was more than anyone could bear. Ugh! Just a minute ago, I received a phone call from my husband and his flight was canceled due to weather. He sat for hours in the airport waiting for the next flight out and then once he got off the plane his ears wouldn’t pop. The pressure in his head is causing him great pain, he has a fever of 101 and his father’s funeral is in a couple of days, yet what did he talk about in our conversation…me and how I was doing!

Give me some room to breathe

My husband and I are grieving (FIL passed away) and it doesn’t help that we both have a horrible case of the flu that involves stuffy/runny noses, constant nausea and diarrhea so you can assume correctly that we are not our usual happy selves. And I hate to whine…no actually I HAVE to whine. I’m tired of living in a house where an eleven year old brat rules the roost. I spend every waking moment trying to avoid, stay away from or not be near my niece. She is determined to make everyone bend to her will and be her personal slave/entertainment. I love her so much but her parents have turned her into a monster. I can’t stand one more minute with her. I live for 7:30am when she goes to school but when 3:30pm rolls around I feel dread wash over me because I know any minute she will walk through the front door. Disciplining her is out of the question because when I try she just laughs. Her own mother has no control over her and she just simply does what she wants when she wants. A while back I VERY nicely and with a loving heart talked to my sister about my niece’s behavior and this is what she said to me, “I know she’s a tad bit spoiled and undisciplined but anyone who doesn’t like my daughter is someone I don’t like”. In other words, shut my mouth.

Here is an example of life with Lowella (name changed, of course). School mornings, my sister has to practically dress and feed Lowella to get her out the door and on the bus for school. My sister lays out clothes for my niece the night before and after she feeds her breakfast Lowella sits on the couch as my sister literally puts the clothes on Lowella’s body. Even breakfast is prolonged because Lowella will eat a bite of cereal and then won’t eat another bite until my sister tells her repeatedly to hurry and finish her breakfast. After Lowella is fed and dressed my sister fixes my nieces hair. During the morning routine my niece is surly, whiney and demanding. One morning Lowella was upset because her new pants needed a belt. As my sister rushes to her room and back Lowella is spouting orders on what type of belt she wants. My sister aka Stacy, hands my niece the belt and immediately Lowella pitches a fit. Stacy frustrated and wanting her daughter out of the house so she can have a few hours of peace tells Lowella that if she doesn’t like the belt go to her room and find one she does. This is Lowella’s response, “You got the belt YOU go get me another one”. My sister’s lame attempt at discipline was to tell her that they will BOTH go to Lowella’s room and find a belt.

If you tell Lowella that you dislike a certain behavior she will intensify her efforts to make you feel uncomfortable. For instance, Lowella needs or wants constant attention, I mean literally constant attention. Her bedroom is decked out with everything an eleven year old could want or desire. Big TV, DVD, CD player, stereo system, VCR, telephone, TiVo, Directv, and so much more yet she never spends any time in her room. Every waking moment, if not in school, she is in the living room in your face. She talks about how beautiful she is, how smart she is, how talented she is, her favorite teen celebrities and kids from school. Not only what she talks about is incredibly boring but how she talks drives you crazy. She inserts “um” and “you know” or “like” in between every word and even pauses for what feels like minutes before finishing certain sentences. She is not stupid, nor does she have any learning disabilities she just simply wants to keep your attention for as long as she can.

There is so much more I could write about but hopefully you get my drift. You might question why I don’t just tell her to go away or leave and stay in my room, but I’ve tried and it doesn’t work. First, if you tell Lowella very nicely that you aren’t interested or that you need time alone, or that you are in the middle of something she will stand or kneel by your chair and stick her face so close to yours until you stop what you are doing. Or she will bug you every two minutes with, “Are you done yet, are you done yet, are you done yet”, that you stop what you are doing just to shut her up. She has an endless amount of tactics to bother a person until she gets her way. The guest room that my husband and I sleep in has no Directv, so I only get two channels on the TV that come in clear. Plus, for some reason the wireless internet range doesn’t extend into the guest room. Not much to do in my room except read. And even when I do go into the guest room either my niece or my sister will bang on the door and ask when I’m coming out to keep them company. My sister uses me as a buffer for when she can’t stand being with her daughter, which is almost all the time. Lowella will follow Stacy or me around the house so close that she bumps into us at times. She even tries to come into the bathroom with me. She has no close friends and uses us as playmates. Most friends tolerate her for brief periods but she rarely gets invited to sleep-overs or parties. Nobody likes to be around her.

I feel badly that I can’t stand to be around my niece but it’s the way it is. I pray that my sister gets a backbone and starts to enforce the rules and helps Lowella become a loving, caring, disciplined child but I’m not holding my breath.

Passing

I'm overwhelmed with sadness. Hubby's father passed away last night. My husband has been hit hard with the loss and is quite devastated.

Thank you in advance for any kind thoughts or prayers.

Maryrose

Third installment

I’m starting to feel quite evil. Here is the third installment of “My sister and her computer”.

Sis: “So Yahoo is like ebay, right”?

Me: “Uh…no, Yahoo is a search engine and ebay is an online auction site”.

I’m not knowledgeable about computer’s, the Internet and all that is in between but come on she can’t tell the difference.

Grease cutter

I'm thinking about making meatloaf in the near future but I'm sick of all the grease. Anyone have a recipe for a leaner meatloaf? A recipe that they have actually tried and enjoyed?

Also, if anyone needs a gmail invite I have plenty.

Sister part two

I wasn’t going to slam my sister twice but I can’t help myself. This is a recent conversation with my sister…

Sister: “I need to look up something on Google.com”

Me: “What’s stopping you?”

Sis: “I don’t know Google.com’s website address”

Me: choking on my coffee, unable to hold back laughter

Sis: “What’s so funny?”

Oh girl, if you don’t know I’m not going to tell.

Naughty

I can’t stop laughing…

My sister is talking to a friend on the phone in the living room next to where I’m sitting so it’s not like I’m eavesdropping on her conversation. She is telling her friend that she’s decided that she and another friend want to get into the PI (private investigation) business but not doing field work just looking things up on the computer.

Yeah I can see how that’s going to work considering she still asks me how to turn on her own computer.

My sides hurt from laughing. ;-)

Snake pit

I haven’t been able to sleep in 48 hours because my sister informed me that she wants my husband and me to move out and because an old friend of mine passed away. Then, my sister takes me aside before she goes to bed and tells me she has decided that we can stay but only if we have no where to go and if this will cause us to live in our car. Then she tells me that she hates her husband and takes two sleeping pills and goes to bed. I’m left standing in the hallway stunned, not by her declaration of hate towards her husband but stunned because I finally understand what makes my sister tick. It boils down to two things. First, when she is mad at her husband she treats me like a friend and confidant. When life is smooth and her husband treats her well (translation: blows sunshine up her butt and acts like her slave) she turns on me with a vengeance. Why she can’t just be content and why she needs to always be angry with someone is beyond me. She has never been accountable for anything in her life so maybe this is her way of not taking the blame for her transgressions. Second, she needs me around to have someone to complain to and clean her house.

Once again, I get the crap scared out of me only for my sister to turn the tables around. This is the second time she’s done this and I’m not taking it too well. The goodness inside of me is wearing away and I have thoughts of revenge lurking in my heart. I’ve never felt such anger towards a sibling or anyone for that matter and it scares me. I have enough secrets about both my sister and BIL that I could really, really put them in a scary predicament. So the temptation hounds me daily. I’ve got to get out of here soon. My husband and I need a safe and peaceful place to lay our heads at night not this viper pit of a home.

No tears shed just numb

I’ve been waiting, bated breath, for the inevitable boot from my sister and BIL and just when I forget to steel myself for the blow it happened out of the blue. My living arrangements were supposed to save my husband and I from homelessness and when we moved in nine months ago we were told that we had a place to stay forever. There are so many feelings washing over me at this moment and the hell my family has put me and my husband through would break most people but when your choices are living in a small car or living with two drugged-out, greedy liars I chose not to live in the car again. Then today out of no where my sister sits in a chair next to me and tells me she wants my husband and me out…now. I know why and it boils down to the fact that I know too much about certain aspects of their lives and if I wanted to I could put a nail in her coffin, so to speak. Plus, my sister is very spiteful and she found out I was helping a family member hide drugs from her so this is her way to stick it to me. After her announcement that she wants us out she put on this huge drama about how hard it is to be her and that kicking us out wasn’t because of anything I had done but because she needed to be alone with her husband and child. I couldn’t move or react, I was in shock. Then she said that I had no idea how hard her life was and that she needed to hear from me that I was okay with the situation and that I still think of her as a good person. VOMIT! BARF! This is what I was feeling. There is no love in my heart for my sister any more. She has lived a life filled with love, loads of money and people doing everything for her. She does nothing! She doesn’t work, she is a horrible mother and wife and even more horrible sister and she wants me to feel bad for her because she wants to kick us out into the streets. She has gotten everything she’s ever wanted and she has turned my father against me with outrageous lies…I am filled with such deep, pure, white rage. There are so many incidents of bad behavior and greed on her part that I could write a book.

Here is the topper. A few hours ago I found out an old friend of mine passed away this morning. I’m grieving the loss and my sister turns to me and very coldly says, “I’m really sorry about your friend but don’t forget to concentrate on finding somewhere else to go, it would be for the best if you move out within a week”.

We cannot share the same blood. How is it possible that this monster disguised as my sister shares the same genetics? I’m dealing with not only one crippling disease but two, I just lost another friend in the same year, my husband and I are in debt/financial ruin and we have no where to go but she kicks us out while acting that her life is so horrendous because she is tired of having to see me do her housework while she sits on her ass watching TV. I’m slowly slipping away…I feel so numb and my heart aches with so much agony. I keep telling myself there is a reason for all this pain but it’s all bull. There is no reason just one persons evilness.

Agonizing over decisions

Awhile back I was reading Hedy’s blog and something she wrote just knocked my socks off. Life is 10% action and 90% reaction. My life has been one of reacting and mostly negatively. The moment I read those words I made a promise to myself to change and be accountable for my actions and how I handled my life. My efforts in this matter have been nothing short of valiant but old habits are hard to break and if I don’t make a concerted effort I slip back into old patterns. I did something today that I don’t quite understand and I’m conflicted about my behavior, was it just anger, spite or heart felt.

In a nutshell…I’ve been corresponding with an old friend I’ve known since I was a teenager, via emails, about 2 to 3 times a month. This friend at one time was a very close confidant. Then we both went in different directions due to jobs and then our circles changed when I got married. Later, my husband and I moved from the east coast to west and she was heavy into a relationship and we really lost touch. Somehow we kept reconnecting and recently (past two years) we’ve kept in touch through emails. Today, I received an email from her and I wrote back a very honest but disturbing (to me) reply. During our friendship, I’ve always felt like the one that put more effort into the friendship. It’s more complicated but the email I sent her today was a real eye-opener.

I guess I’m just fed up with people taking advantage of me. Not once in my life have I ever had the nerve to say what I really felt about any given situation. Why did my mind snap today and let the truth come flowing out, and why to a friend that I want to remain my friend. After she reads the email I’m not sure what her reaction will be.

UPDATE:
My friend emailed me back a wonderful letter explaining her behavior with a very nice apology. I realize now that standing up for myself can end badly also but I'm happy that in this instance it ended so positively. :-)

Can a person implode?

I'm tired of sounding like a broken record and maybe any or all of the people that read my blog are also tired of reading the same posts but I'm so FRUSTRATED! Just when you think three people couldn't sink any lower in their greed and selfishness they drop to a new low. I’m banging my head against the wall. I want to shout to their faces what I think about their actions but if I do I will be kicked out and my husband and I will be back to living in our car. If it wasn’t for my cat I think I would be in the car already. I wouldn’t treat a stranger or enemy the way they treat me and my husband. That’s another thing. My husband is about ready to blow and if he does there will be a huge verbal confrontation, the kind where bridges are burnt. The hell with it, I’m tired of talking about it. I just don’t know what to do with the anger I feel and the feeling that I want to scream and scream and scream is putting a lump in my throat and an ache in my heart.

Crap, an argument is just about to start again. BIL is stoned off his @ss and my sister just took him into another room to “discuss” his “problem”. Of course, after the fight is over she’ll go take her sleeping pills to make her sleep while I have to hear from BIL about how mean my sister is. She is but she has reason to be with him.

Same old grub

Anybody got ideas for very inexpensive meals? I’m sick of hamburger helper (don’t laugh), spaghetti, tuna casserole and baked chicken with brown rice. Keep in mind my inability to cook and dislike for cooking in general. I would greatly appreciate any recipes!