Ramblings of a Wayward Goddess

Wishin’ for sunnier days.

It’s a strange thing we do. We allow people with whom we share DNA treat us in ways we would never allow any one else to treat us.

I had a difficult childhood. My dad’s form of disciplin was corporal punishment. As I got older and bigger, the punishments got harsher and more violent. I’ve been thrown, pushed, punched, and kicked al inside my home before I was 16.

When I turned 16 and had a car, I ran away. I was brought home by the police who said unless I filed formal charges and went into Foster care, I had to live under my parents roof until I was 18.

When I was 17, I came home late. I had a typical teen angst filled day. I don’t excuse my behavior at all. I had a fight with my boyfriend, I was upset. Instead of coming home and then going to work, I stayed out. I came home around 9pm. I knew I was in trouble. I fully expected it. When I walked in the house I said “I’m sorry, I know I was wrong”. Before I could say anything else I was knocked across the room and my dad was on top of me pinning me to the floor. I had no idea what was going to happen next. The friend who brought me home yelled and made a move towards my dad. That distracted him long enough for me to get up. I ran. I ran as far as I could until I finally hopped in a car and had them take me to my friends house where I called the police and filed assault charges. That’s when things went downhill.

I was put into a foster home. Now, I know there are great foster homes out there, but I wasn’t so lucky. The home they placed me in had lots of troubled kids. Kids that had been sexually abused, kids that had been through far worse than I had. There was no privacy. The took the door off the bathroom and replaced it with a shower curtain. I had nothing but the clothes on my back and had to go to school in the same clothing everyday for a week until I could get more clothes. I stayed there for a month before I was able to go live with an aunt.

That wasn’t much better. I had privacy at least, but my cousin had his own set of problems. He has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but back then we didn’t know what was wrong. He was violent and the object of his rage was me. I had taken attention away from him. I was trying to “steal his family”.

Meanwhile the charges against my dad were going befroe a judge. My dad was ableto convice the judge that I was an out of control teenager and he was just doing what he had to do to keep me in line. The charges were dropped and I was ordered into therapy.

I hated therapy. I think I managed 2 sessions before I said that was enough. It was all centered on making me a better daughter. No one wanted to acknowledge that the things my dad did were wrong. I mean, a judge had vindicated him, told him he was doing everything right.

The violence at my aunt’s house was too much to bear, and I couldn’t stomach going back to a foster home so I finally went back to my parents home. I was close to 18 anyway.

Soon after I turned 18, I moved out. I worked my ass off.  I held a full time and part time job and rented a house with a friend.  I didn’t have time for much more than work, but I managed to find a boyfriend. He was troubled, but he treated me well enough. As well as I figured I deserved anyway. It wasn’t long before I was pregnant. I had just turned 19. THings quickly disinigrated between us. He no longer treated me well. In fact he threatened to kill me if I didn’t have an abortion. I ended up back in my parents home. They had no idea I was pregnant and I couldn’t tell them. I was very afraid.

When I was 7 mths pregnant, I ended up in the hospital with pre-term labor. No one knew I was there. I was supposed to be at work. I was scared and alone. I was put on strict bed rest and finally had to tell my parents I was pregnant. Very pregnant. Right under their nose and they hadn’t seen it.

My son was born, healthy, at term just before I turned 20. I decided to go to school and try to get my life in order. There I met my husband. We dated, moved in together, got married and went on to have 2 more children. We’re coming up on 11 years married in Feb. IT’s been a long road to get here, but I’m here.

All that I went through with my parents growing up and they still had this hold over me. I wanted nothing more than my dad to be proud of me and love me. I felt like if I did just a little more he would be. I never got that while he was alive. However, I let go of it. I let go of the girl that wanted her daddy’s approval. I wouldn’t say I forgave him, because I can’t forgive someone who doesn’t think they did anything wrong.  I know that he believed I was his to do with what he wanted. I was his daughter. His property. I can’t forgive that. But, I let it all go. I knew he would never change and I would never have the relationship with him that I dreamed about, so I let it go. I let go of the dream, and didn’t let what I went through define me as a person. I stopped wearing it like a badge of honor. there is no honor in being a victim.

It was after he died that I found out that he told everyone how proud he was of me and that he thought I was an amazing mother.

Now however, I’m dealing with the aftermath of his death. I knew this would be hard. I knew I would be the one left to look after my mother, but I didn’t anticipate the anger and hatred that would be thrown at me by my brother. He has it in his head that he can treat me like shit and I will act accordingly. He’s 4 years younger than me, so growing up, he learned that treating me like shit was normal. It’s what we did. He still thinks of me as that girl and thinks he can hurl insults at me and I will just be grateful that he spoke to me at all. Things have changed though, and I’m not that girl anymore. I would never allow anyone to speak to me the way he has, there is no reason to allow it from him simply because we share DNA.

Now, I’m “ruining Christmas”, the “last one I’ll be here for” because I wont go to my mom’s house the same day he will be there. I told her to let me know if he was taking Christmas eve or Christmas day and I’d take the other, but I was not going to be in the house with him.  She asked me to put aside my differences for one day. This is the woman who kicked HER brother out of my dad’s funeral. She couldn’t put her differences aside for one day, but I’m supposed to.

I wont. I can’t. DNA is not a license to abuse. It stops here.

So, I wanted to get my husband an amazing Christmas/Birthday gift (I never do combo gifts cause he grew up getting those and I find it kinda tacky to throw a Christmas present at a kid because you were too wrapped up in shit to remember his birthday was the 22nd, but that’s another thing all together, lol).
Anyway, he loves Carolina Panthers. They are playing Dallas on Dec 22 (his birthday). Panthers tickets sell out immediately, they are very hard to get. I camped out on ebay and managed to get 2 tickets.
So, I’m talking to him a couple days before the auction ends and he says that I must be losing my mind since i bid so much on Panthers tickets. I told him to stay the fuck outta my ebay account, Grr! I lost that particular auction but was able to get another one.
Well, he musta seen it before I was able to delete it from My ebay, cause tonight he called to say he was mad at me. I was like Why? I’ve been working WAY too hard here for him to be mad at me for anything. He says that he’s mad that I spent the money on those tickets and I should have spent it on me if I had to spend it. I told him I was TYING to do something nice for him and to just shut up about it. He goes on about how he doesn’t need stuff like that, the best gift I can give him is a hug, blah blah blah.

He’s gonna totally lose his shit when he finds out I’m flying his brother up from Texas for the game as a surprise to him.

So today I pulled the couch away from the wall to FINALLY finish up the patch job  back there. That was a mistake. You know the saying “Let sleeping dogs lie”? well, You should let couches stay the hell wher ethey are – especially is you have laminate/hardwood flooring. Do you have any idea how much crap ends up under there? Lots! And it brings company. And that company spills its drinks and leaves without cleaning up. It’s all rather rude.

So, of course, while I had the couch pulled out adn was waiting in the paint to dry, I cleaned and scrubbed the floor behind the couch. Then I pulled the kids’ computer desk out and did the same there. That lead to a full top to bottom cleaning of the living room. By the time I had to leave to get my daughter from school and take her to eth orthodontists, then back to school…it looked like Mr Clean threw up in my living room.

When I got home after the appointment, I was fooled for a moment when I walked into the house and the smell of clean tingled my nose. Then I rounded the corner to find it was just that mop bucket I had left there and the magical cleaning fairy had not visited and finished what I started. Bummer.

I managed to finish the living room before school was out. Of course it now looks like I’m a lazy bum who never does anything around here. Ahh the joys of having three kids.

So, I have 8 mths to get this house into shape, pack my shit and get the hell outta dodge…err….or something like that.

There are TONS of piddly little repairs that need to be done around the house that have just gotten pushed aside and neglected because we woudl “get to it”. Now it’s time to get to it. First repair was the hole in my living room cieling. My uncle came over and patched that, then I had him patch up some water damage on one wall, oh and hey while you’re here can you paint my kitchen and fix this one other thing. I finally had to pay him and be done with it or I woudl have tied him up and kept him in my closet, pulling him out to fix things around the house, lol.

The next thing we need to do is finish off our laminate floors. We made it all teh way to teh doorways. There we need custom cut thresholds. Just havent gotten to it. It’s on “The List”. Then we will need to replace some siding on the back of the house. We had planned to just re-side the whole house, but now it seems like too much expense for little profit since we are moving in 8 mths. Maybe I’m wrong? I don’t know, but I do know that something needs to be done out there.  We also have a few trim peices that need to be replaced, painted, “freshened up” if you will.

What I worked on today was de-cluttering. I’ve challenged us all to get rid of 10 things every week. Today I tackled my bathroom. I threw out 2 bags of crap that had just been accumulating over the years.  We’ve started putting “yard sale” items out in one corner of the storage building. We are gonna have a HUGE one in the spring.  Anyone need a bread maker? Jack La Lane juicer? Roaster? Microwave? How about a sofa and love seat? Wait a min, we might keep that…

A 2 for 1 post to cover the weekend…….

http://www.clipshack.com/Clip.aspx?key=0645B6AD111B85D2

I guess I forgot to update that part.

We are moving.

We currently live in Central NC, we’ll be relocating to the Atlanta-ish area.

I’d really like to  stay out of Atlanta, but we will have to be close enough to be within easy commuting distance to Norcross.

The past 7 yrs I have sacrificed my husband, my sanity, my tag team partner in this parenting gig, for work. It’s been hard. It’s been stressful. Sometimes I’ve wanted to throw in the towel and say, “Damnit! If I’m going to be a single parent, I might as well be single!”. All of that has been working towards the day when  he can move up the ladder enough to report to an office. That time has finally come. He’s been promoted to Project Manager. Right now, he’ll continue to work on the road while I finish up what needs to be done here, and the kids finish up their school year. In June, we’ll be moving, and I’ll get my husband back. I don’t know what is scarier…moving from my home of 30 plus years, or living with my husband. It’s been 7 yrs since we shared a home, and in that time I’ve grown up and changed a lot. I’m not that same 25 yr old. I’m “old and set in my ways” these days, lol.

I’ve been the mother, father, friend, chauffeur, nursemaid, everything to my kids for all these years. It will be hard to give up some of that control , even though I need to for my own sanity. He’s been a part time, at best, parent and needs to learn to deal with things instead of ignoring them or passing it off to me since he’ll just be gone in a few days anyway. We have a lot of work ahead of us and I hope we can make it.

So, Black Belt Mama invited my to join in on the “fun” of National Bog POst Month where you commit to postingevery day in teh month of November.

I’m not sure what all I’ll have to say this month. It should be an interesting experiment.

Today sucks. Thursdays are really busy days. I worked for 4 hours this morning, went straight to the animal shelter for volunteer duties, then to pick up the kids. I’m sitting here typing this while my daughter changes for dance. Then we are off to dance with soccer practice in between dance drop off and pick up. I’ll get home around 8:30 tonight. This is every Thursday. I hate Thursdays.

I’m working with my Sensei to see how far I can get in my martial arts before June when we move. This whole move is so overwhelming. I keep thinking of things I need to do.  Little things, big things, just things. Ahhh! It will be a long 8 mths.