I have to really thank my Diaryland friends (hugs) for all the good advice concerning the entry I made yesterday. You�ve given me more sound advice than some of my family.
I have a family of avoiders and jokers. It�s all fun and games or else it�s �let�s not live in the past or make waves�. I don�t want to resent Cinders, but this situation is making me want to do that. I don�t want to always search for an underlying reason for any kindness, but I have because prior experience tells me there is a price for any nicety bestowed upon me by her.
Just yesterday she called. I have a voice announce feature on my phone and when she calls, it says, �MAMA!� really
obnoxious-like, because I�m obnoxious. I recorded that part myself when I first bought the phone.
I didn�t feel like talking to her, because I was watching �That 70�s Show� so I let the machine get it. Jackie�s message played, and then there was Ma, breathing into the phone.
�I just called to let you know you drew Granny Great�s name for Christmas. You should get her the Satin Hands gift set..�
Gee ma, just take all the fun out of buying a gift.
Meanwhile, don�t ask me what I want (just in case one should ask) so I can end up with another useless item, that cost between $25.00 and $30.00, that I�ll never use.
That�s what happened last year. I asked for photo albums, knowing you can get some really beautiful ones at Marshall�s for $5.99 each. Instead, I got some cheap loose pocket ones with no adhesive. I�ve yet to use them because I never buy enough tape to glue each page to the pocket.
I give good gifts, some people don�t.
Salsalita, don�t get self-conscious, you give good gift too.
Am I a crab?
I don�t buy people things they can�t or won�t use. I buy neat modern and useful gifts for people. And yet I get the big stiffy every year. The stuff ends up sitting in a box until I donate it to charity. Nothing like some campfire incense and a vegetable chopper to make my holiday.
�..and for my birthday you should get me the Eye Appeal (is she still talking) doohickey in the recent Mary Kay catalogue. That would be nice, I need stuff for my eyes.� (this for the lady who should own stock in Estee Lauder and Clinique, but I digress). �Oh, and I was going to pick up Jackie this weekend. Do you still want to do that? Call me! Love you, bye!�
Oh, yeah, I forgot she mentioned this when we spoke the last time! Why is she being so nice to me? I guess there�s some little alarm going off in my head that Jackie staying a night with her Grandma Saturday is going to cost me something, even if its supposed to be free.
Mom always stays the night on Friday when she comes to visit. I know that when she comes, I will have a cupboard full of healthy food, yet she �can�t eat it� for whatever reason. We will have to go out to dinner, where she will definitely eat something she shouldn�t, like something fried or smothered. She will then take a souvenir, like A1 Sauce, or a bowl, or a knife. I don�t know why. There�s a name for the behavior, but I�m not sure what it is.
And then I will pay the bill and tip with money I borrowed from Mr. Sweatpants especially for the occasion.
She will leave and take Jackie home with her on Saturday around noon. This Saturday I have a Holiday Party to go to, and Lisa and I will probably go out and shake our booties at Woody�s, that�s our favorite redneck bar.
What to do? I just cannot buy anything I don�t have the money to just to make Mom happy. Last time I did, I spent $65.00 on dinner for 3 of us. I just can�t afford it right now. It�s Christmas and I have 18 people on my list.
I think I�m going to just have to be a grown-up and tell her that I don�t have extra money for dinner. I hope she doesn�t get mad, but if she does, well that�s the way the bell tolls.
Yes, in case you are wondering, there are some underlying issues with Cinders. She likes to blame it all on my bipolar, while I blame it on her opportunism.
Once upon a time, I was a 17-year-old runaway ward-of-the-state. I was not only running from Attila the social worker, but also my sister�s mean Cuban husband Juanito (a pervert) and I was in a dead-end high school. Roosevelt High School. See, when I lived with Uncle Nat at 15, I went to McCluer North. A good, award-winning school. When it didn�t work out with Uncle Nat, I went to Melinda and Juan�s. They lived in the city on Compton and Shenandoah. Not the greatest neighborhood. The worst part was going to Roosevelt. I went from being a straight A student to a dropout. I told my social worker that I was not going to attend school somewhere where people shoot each other in the cafeteria over the mystery meat.
So, for a lot of reasons, I dropped out of school and ran away.
I lived in my boyfriend�s car for a few days. I stayed with Maggie, and Spring, and even with my friend Greg.
After a while, I guess Cinders and Spring�s mom Isis got tired of seeing me suffer and decided that one of them was going to adopt me. They had the rest of the summer to decide.
In the end, it was Cinder�s. Cinder�s wasn�t a retired Ford Model like Isis (which took down the cool factor) but she was more motherly than Isis. So in the end, I went back to High School at McCluer North.
Cinders took me in against the advice of her mother, Granny Great, and the rest of her family.
I never really felt like I fit in with them. And I did lots of Bipolar things, you can guess, but they just thought I was a messed up kid. That I hadn�t been raised right. That they were right about me. They weren�t right about me because they didn�t know me. That I wasn�t ever going to be anyone important.
After all I had been through, I didn�t get acceptance from Cinders. I got blame, I got accusations, and I got grief. And to this day I think she�s still holding grudges against me. Because I didn�t turn out to be the daughter she wanted me to be.
I�m a survivor of a violent co-homicide, I am a survivor of violent crime, I am a survivor of incest, I am a survivor of child abuse, I am survivor of rape, I am a survivor of many types. Of course I�m going to be a little different. Cut me some slack will ya? I mean, I could�ve killed myself a long time ago but the fact that I�m still here means I�m willing to try to make a life for me and my daughter. I wasn�t supposed to live, you know. But I did. I�m trying.
I�m not downplaying her right to her feelings, but I do feel that she has over inflated her accusations a lot. I feel that she has manipulated me many times and she doesn�t even have to say it, but I know she�s saying �do this for me because of all the worrying you put me through�. The fact is, she knows nothing of what my life was like in the military or even before that.
When I was in the Navy, she�d come out once a year. On my tab. I paid for her plane ticket and rental car.
You can�t come visit once and think you know the situation. But she did.
She called DFS on me because I was tired and for a few other reasons. Of course, I was working two-twelve hour days, one day off (I always had PT at 0600 that morning), and then I worked two-twelve hour nights. I did this rotation constantly for 4 years.
I was exhausted and trying to raise a baby.
But instead of being there for me, you were pointing fingers, Cinders. You were blaming me, and not Jackie�s dad. He was the one who ran out and left me to raise her alone.
The military didn�t care that I had a baby to raise. �She didn�t come in your seabag,� was something that I heard many times, meaning, Jackie didn�t enlist with me.
I remember this one time that my back yard grass was � foot high. I only had 3 hours to spend with my daughter on this particular day. Cinders was going to watch Jackie while I went to work. I chose to let the grass go for another day and play with Jackie instead.
Cinders got all upset and said that Navy housing could give me a warning about it. I told her that spending time with my daughter was more important.
And that�s her basis for arguments now. She doesn�t understand that I will sometimes let laundry go just to spend time with Jackie. She doesn�t understand that I�d rather color or read a book to Jackie than do the dishes sometimes.
Why? Because my daughter is only young once, and housework will always be there. I want her memories to be of me reading to her and spending time with her, not me cleaning.
Our house isn�t filthy by any means, just a little disorganized. And who really cares? I must be doing a good job with Jackie in spite of my disorganized house, because she�s not a bad kid. She knows I love and cherish her, and that most things in this world come way behind her.
The issue with Cinders goes back to the first years of Jackie�s life. This was horrible.
My daughter fell out of her crib at the age of almost a year. We were living in Navy Housing in Florida and had cement floors. It was bad. I�ve never been so scared in all my life.
I called the Navy hospital and talked to the nurse. I didn�t know what to do. I was dazed.
But I never hit my daughter. I don�t believe in that. I don�t believe people should ever hit their kids, and that�s because I was hit. I know how it breaks you, humiliates you, scars you, so I don�t do it.
But especially not a kid so small. I was horrified that anyone would think I would hit her.
My mom and DFS thought that since my house was disorganized, it meant maybe that I�d somehow hit my daughter in the face. I�ve never been so humiliated in my life. I was crushed, absolutely crushed that anyone would think I would hit her. I cried so much that week.
That week I said it over and over, �I didn�t hit my baby�.
I had a witness from work that had stopped by. He was with me in my living room when we heard that awful sound and he saw me go running into her room.
He heard me cry out, �Jackie!�
He sat there with me while I called the hospital in hysterics.
He heard me repeat to the nurse that I should take her in should anything else happen (vomiting).
He stayed with me into the wee hours while I held her on my lap and refilled her ice pack that I was putting on her face.
I told DFS that the babysitter had every right to question the bruise. But I didn�t do it. She was climbing out of her crib and fell.
Cinders told me to be nice to the DFS lady. I said, �Bull-crap�. I didn�t do anything wrong and if any butt was going to be kissed, it was mine.
The last day of that long hell week, I had to go in to see a doctor with Jackie. He said, �We could tell by the shape of the bruise that you didn�t hit her. Obviously, it was a fall.�
All of that heartache because someone made an accusation. That someone was Cinders.
She seemed surprised to hear the doctor say that they knew it wasn�t me. I told them basically to kiss my butt, that I was leaving and they were lucky I didn�t sue them.
I guess ever since then, I�ve had a grievance against Cinders. She never came out and said it really, but I knew she was the one that called. I love her, but she sometimes uses people. She�s done it to me, and still continues to try. I guess I�m torn because this is the only Grandma Jackie has ever known.
She�s got problems.
I don�t have to be a perfect mom, and obviously she felt she had to. My house isn�t always going to be sparkling clean, and sometimes I�m going to let things go for a day. But my daughter is happy, because this is what works for us.
And at the end of the day, what makes me and Jackie happy is what matters anyway, right?
12:45 - Tuesday, Dec. 02, 2003
Recent entries:
What you missed - January 16, 2012
%%older_entries%%From hell - October 19, 2010
%%older_entries%%a rant from a few weeks ago - August 17, 2010
%%older_entries%%Tired - June 20, 2010
%%older_entries%%A beautiful lie - March 11, 2010
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