Archive for the ‘family’ Category

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Staycation hangover.

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

I don’t know if it’s post-vacation (staycation!) hangover, or the beginning or middle or end of a flu bug, but man alive – last night was not a good sleep night. At all. In any sense.

On one hand, you had Buddy – all securely ensconced in our big bed, complete with feather duvet, microfleece sheets and a mountain of pillows. In this mountain of plushy joy, he spent the majority of the night tossing and turning and shivering. Poor lamb. He gets sick the least often of the lot of us, but when he does, it’s generally a lulu.

I, on the other hand, spent the night on the couch, with one pillow, one blanket and one annoyed kitty. There, I spent the bulk of the night tossing and turning and sweating. I have no real idea why. I suspect my temperature regulation skills are not at their peak right now, either. Here’s hoping I make it through the week without also getting sick. Really, it can only be one of us at a time. Isn’t that the rule?

Upshot and short summation: I’m ridiculously fucking tired. I’m also sad that my next day off of work isn’t until mid-February.

I’m also having some really unpleasant family drama. Given the incredibly confusing nature of my family tree*, you’d think this would be very normal for me. It’s not.

In four sentences: Mother moves back to town. Eldest daughter’s husband (of 20 years or so) feels threatened by their closeness. Drama of epic proportions ensues, including tug of war, emotional blackmail and massive controlling behaviour. For no appreciable reason I can fathom, this drama also keeps having my name brought into it – geebus, asshole, I haven’t spoken directly to you more than once in the last fifteen years – how much more distant do you want me to be?

And now, with my mother pouring her hurt feelings out in one ear, and my sister pretending everything is fine in the other – I’m trapped. Maybe I should increase my phone avoiding capacity. Become a true master, like Buddy.

Yeah. Good times.

*A fact for which my only defense rests in: well, at least it isn’t a straight stick.

Posted in Being a girl, Getting older, buddy, family | No Comments »

Why I hate sharing events with my ex

Friday, December 18th, 2009

Not because they were casually dressed, front and centre and holding a camera, whereas I haven’t showered today (thanks to my hot water tank for exploding last night), arrived just in time, looking harassed and stressed (because I am - work is insane right now), and parked myself in a chair in the corner.

Not because I didn’t have my Buddy there (thanks again to my hot water tank for exploding last night, requiring one member of our household to stay home and wait for nice fixit people), or any other stars-in-alignment rationale.

No, the reason I hate sharing events is because Rosebud always goes to ex and girlfriend first.

The thing is - I know *why* she does it. She doesn’t live with them, and only has one overnight with them a week. Therefore, they are the speshul parents - the ones whose attention she gets more rarely, and therefore, covets more.

They’re also the parents who don’t have to poke the child awake every morning, wrestle her into clothing, and shuffle her occasionally unwilling body off to school. They don’t have to fight with her about what’s appropriate and what isn’t. Or about what she can have and what she can’t. They can afford to indulge her every whim, because we’re there to do all the discipline.

So yeah - I know why I get to be second fiddle at shared events. I understand it, and can even appreciate that, on one level, this means that I’m such a constant in her life she doesn’t even think about it. I know that this means she feels secure and safe with my love.

But in no way does that make it suck less.

All that said - Juniper and I were able to watch the concert together, and appreciate the awesomeness of our youngest family member together. When she finally did run over to us, yelling “Group kiss, group kiss!”, my joy over being with my girls was pretty much complete.

My kids are pretty much awesome all over.

Posted in Being a girl, Juniper, Rant, Rosebud, buddy, divorce, family | 2 Comments »

My husband at 35

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

On Sunday, my Buddy turned 35.

Pfft. Took him long enough*.

For his birthday, he got fed kielke and trappings on Friday, pizza and beer on Saturday, and my mother’s famed chop suey (with three kinds of meat!) and blueberry pie for Sunday.

See how I didn’t cook a meal for him? It’s ‘cause he gets my food every *other* day of the year. This time of year, he gets everybody else to cook for him.

He was also gifted with a Halo 3 special edition Xbox 360 Elite, which has replaced food, air and me on his hierarchy of needs. Temporarily, of course.

IT IS TEMPORARY, RIGHT HONEY?

To compensate, I’ve taken up crocheting again. Not by any pattern of any kind. I just started making a string to see if I remembered how to do it, and the next thing I knew, I’d created six or seven rows of the same pattern, three up, three across. I have no idea what I’m making, but apparently I like it that way, just fine.

I also gave him as much of the weekend as possible for his own entertainment. Which meant that I had to do more running and bending and lifting than I’ve done in quite some time, but you know what? 1) I’m extremely grateful that my spine came around in time for me to be able to do it and 2) It was entirely worth it.

That man. He draws me pictures and puts them in my lunch box. He pats my head when I’m sad and my back when I’m proud (the rest of the patting has been censored, for your comfort). He is a tremendous father and caregiver to both our girls. He is funny, sweet, kind and clever.

I’m incredibly grateful to have him in my world. I still love looking at him. I miss him when we’re apart. I’ve had to change everything I understand about the world because of the love he’s given me, and I regret not an inch of it.

Which is probably why I (mostly) put up with his ageist remarks against me.

That’s all I’m saying.
* Yes, he’s approximately seven and a half months younger than me, and yes - he does like to hold it over me. Like you, I am also amazed that he survives such antics.

Posted in Getting older, Happiness, buddy, family | 3 Comments »

My daughter, my therapist.

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Over the past couple of days, Rosebud has been applying some heavy duty emotional grind to her mother (and really, all of her beloved and loving family). It feels like being inside a keg of suspicious looking black powder in a room full of nervous, lighter-bearing pyromaniacs. You just never know what’s going to set off the explosion. After a while, you become conditioned to flinch at everything.

So that’s been our last couple of days with the spirited, one-of-a-kind child that is Rosebud. However, I think she’s doing her infamous mind-melding trick again. Like any child this well-versed in tyranny, she senses when she’s pushed her loyal subjects too far.

She then throws them a bone.

Last night, halfway up the stairs to bed (typically a raging minefield, with the black powder and aforementioned nervous pyros), she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Rosebud: You be me, and I’ll be da mama.

To reinforce this, she put her hand on my back to gently encourage me up the stairs.

Rosebud: Okay honey, it’s time for bed.

If you could resist this opportunity, you’re a better woman, mother and human than I will ever be.

Me: But I don’t WAAAAAAANNNNAAAAAA GO TO BED!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

To my surprise, this was precisely the response Rosebud was after. Apparently, she sensed that I might feel better if I could play the role of recalcitrant child.

To be able to whine loudly and have it elicit giggles and encouragement? Oh hells yeah, it was on.

All the way up the stairs, through the toothbrushing process, the final potty break and the pyjama donning, I carried on with my tantrum. At full volume. Until my throat hurt.

Damn, that felt fan-fucking-tabulous. Must do it again some time.

Posted in Happiness, Rosebud, family | 4 Comments »

Because it’s true.

Friday, November 27th, 2009

You know, it becomes more obvious on a daily basis how much my kitchen is my happy place. I love to bustle around it in, even (and perhaps especially) on a Friday night. I go there to put everything else in the world aside.

And it’s a mark of how often I’m in there, and how enthusiastic I am about the whole process of making food that nobody even comes in to check, regardless of how much hammering and thunking goes on. They’ll snoop about the food, but they never blink at the noise.

This is good, because I lost the head of my meat mallet whilst beating naked chicken thighs to a pulp. When I say lost, I mean propelled. And when I say propelled, I mean tossed upward.

Guess the reflexes haven’t quit on me just yet.

Posted in Being a girl, Happiness, Health, cooking, family | 2 Comments »

Blended family life is NOT painful.

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Have you ever gone into Google and typed the phrase “blended family”? If not, you really should. G’on, I’ll wait.

Now that you’ve done this, can you detect the thing that might have engendered my post title? Do you have any theories as to why it feels a lot like typing in “Dear Gawd, help us”? I mean, I think I actually heard Google say, “Bummer, dude” before it executed my search.

Why, for the love of all that is good and sensible in the world, does the phrase “blended family” result in websites offering workshops and classes and newsletters and faith-based guidance and statistics about how it takes seven years for a family to successfully blend?

Am I really the only person on the Internet talking about blended family life as a reality and not as a problem? I mean, hells - I love my girls - both of them. I love my husband, I love my cats and I even love my orange stepcat*. I don’t find our family life to be troubled or challenging. It’s not hard to love the daughter given to me by marriage. It’s not difficult to refer to them as sisters.

But when you look around to discuss it with others, you see that our society seems to hold this awful inherent assumption that somehow, somebody in the new dynamic is going to fail to bond. Or there’s a wicked stepmother who is merely going through the motions of family with a pimply faced and angry teenaged hosebeast, so she can get to the gooey centre of her desire - the eligible father.

Or a stepfather who would be as likely to walk around the stepchild pinned under the fallen bookcase as he would to lift said bookcase from the aforementioned stepchild’s diminutive frame.

I mean, obviously not all blendings are easy or even ultimately successful. But a 50 per cent divorce rate in a population means that there have to be at LEAST a good mittful of families who are blended and blended well. The odds are in favour of this, even with my questionable math skills.

And yet - the message is clear. “Blended? Limit your expectations for your future happiness as a family.”
Someone out there actually says this - LIMIT your expectations for success.

Way to set the bar, Internet. Thanks for making happiness feel like a freak of nature.

*No I don’t honestly call him my stepcat, even if he frequently behaves like he’s aspiring to red-headed stepchild status.

Posted in Being a girl, In the mother/stepmother 'hood, buddy, divorce, family, metablog | 7 Comments »

I need to hit the candy aisle before this burns a hole.

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Today is an historic day for me. For the first time in my adult life, I’m the proud owner of an allowance.

“An allowance, Wylie?”, you say. “Did your husband pat you on the head when he doled it out, too?”

You know? I’ll let you be snide about it - just this once. Because no, Mr. or Ms. Smartypants, with whom I am not having an imaginary conversation, so shaddup - he does not pat me on the head, because the allowance isn’t like that.

See, I have an ever-growing list of things I want/need, with a sideorder of all the nice shiny things I pass by whenever I happen to be in a place that houses and/or sells shiny things. Shiny things are good. Shiny things are fun. Everyone should have bits of shiny in their lives.

Here’s the thing. I don’t buy the shiny things I see, or if I do, I spend far too much time gnashing my teeth and donning my inner hair shirt. And then, I get mad at myself for feeling guilty, so I don’t buy the next shiny thing I see and covet.

Do you see how this might be a wee bit depressing? Do you see how I might go months and months without buying a new black sweater, to replace the one that got mysteriously shredded, like an object placed between Garfield and a tray of lasagna? Can I really justify taking food out of my own children’s mouths* to purchase a black sweater?

A couple of weeks ago, I announced to Buddy that I wanted an allowance. I wanted money that I could sit on, spend, secrete in a mattress, fritter away, impulse purchase or in any and all other ways not prohibited by law or my own moral compass - manage on my own.

As a good, sweet and sensible husband, he readily agreed to this plot.

So now I have an allowance. And no surprise, I immediately want to take my two dollars and head down to 7-11 and spend it all on the candy aisle, just like I dreamed of doing when I was a kid. Swedish fish for all!!!!

Who’s with me?

*Okay, honestly. We’re not that poor. It’s simply that this is the psychological barrier I confront when I’m spending communal money. It *feels* wrong to spend that money on things just for me. Carving out some funds for me to do with as I please makes all the difference in the world.

Posted in Being a girl, Happiness, buddy, family | 5 Comments »

How was my morning?

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Picture it: Somewhere, out there, in the year 2030. Rosebud and Juniper are at their weekly joint therapy session. Each clutches a box of Kleenex.

Therapist: Let’s go back to what we were talking about last week. I think we were talking about *her*, right?

Both women nod vigorously.

Therapist: Yes, I remember. We were talking about the fall of 2009.

Again, they nod.

Therapist: Well, don’t clam up now, ladies. I think we were getting close to a breakthrough!

Juniper: It’s just so hard to talk about.

Rosebud: It was really . . . crushing.

Juniper: There was this one day in early October. We were supposed to have picture day at school. We had these matching dresses that our grandmother got us, and we were really excited to wear them. I remember I even got up early and started getting ready early. And then . . .

Therapist: Then what?

Rosebud: Then *she* got up and grabbed a hairbrush. And. . .

Juniper: . . . and against our will . . .

Rosebud: she put ponytails in our h-h-hair . . .

The entire room dissolves into tears and trauma, and the therapist runs back and forth between the women, consoling and comforting.

SCENE END

I do so like to keep track of which of the horrid and mean things I do to my children will likely be raised in future therapy. Evidently, ensuring their hair is thoroughly brushed and partially ponytailed for school pictures is going to be high on that list.

Or at least, that’s the message I got this a.m.

And how was your morning?

Tags:
Posted in Being a girl, In the mother/stepmother 'hood, Juniper, Rosebud, family | 4 Comments »

Reason #637 that I was clearly destined for this man.

Monday, October 5th, 2009

His family is almost entirely made up of foodies. No surprise, really.  I’ve known about CH’s foodie nature from extremely early on and Pal is no creampuff in the kitchen, either.

On Friday, we went over to his uncle’s home - where we were fed with local chicken, local potatoes, local corn and extremely local bread and apple pie (both bread and pie made by said Uncle) produced from local apples.

No kiddin. I’ve never had a bad food experience with his family. Dinners are generally occasions where wine, food, conversations and children roam freely. The food, even if it’s delectable, never quite drops the conversation into catatonia. The wine paints CH’s cheeks a rosy red and puts a warm fuzz in my stomach, but never seems to generate slurred vitriol about who made the better battery (Duracell, of course) or which way is the appropriate way to pour coffee (*in*, not *on*, for the record).

And this kind of dinner? This is exactly the kind of dinner I love. If my entire social life could be composed of dinners with friends and foodies, I don’t think I’d ever want to depart this mortal coil.

But since that’s unlikely, I’ll have to resign myself to the simple knowledge that I have these dinner parties in my life, and be grateful for that.

Posted in Happiness, buddy, cooking, family | 2 Comments »

Why didn’t you tell me?!?

Friday, September 25th, 2009

D’ya know, before Rosebud started school, Buddy and I were terribly excited. We fell asleep each night, with visions of sugar plummy tantrum elimination dancing in our heads.

See, for some odd reason, we had it in our heads that school would engage our Rosebud to such a degree that she’d arrive home, already nigh-onto-comatose from all the stimulation. All we’d have to do is cajole her into wakefulness long enough for her to eat dinner and have a little mellow family time before we removed the toothpicks propping her eyeballs open and let her sleep.

So tired and so satisfied from her time at school, we imagined, Rosebud would immediately cease any and all tantrums and whims and histrionics.

Two weeks in, we’re actually reminiscing fondly about the defcon 5 moments she used to have as a pre-schooler.

She’s invented a new level, you see. School appears to have taken our darling Rosebud, energetic little master of determination that she already was, and put her into overdrive.

I’m telling you, it’s like she’s got the four-year old equivalent of ‘roid rage.

She arrives home from school, usually having already unleashed the sound and fury at least once over having to leave school for the day. She then proceeds to have drama after drama after drama, on subjects as varied as “What’s for dinner” to “Wrong episode of show” to “what do you mean it’s bedtime”.

Throughout all of it, she seems to have lost the ability to be still for more than three seconds at a time. She talks constantly, moves constantly and already (in her own words) “fell in love” with a boy in her class.

Buddy picks the girls up from school (whilst I’m power-walking home for the exercise) and he reports that she’s most often holding court in front of at least half a dozen children when he arrives.

She is turbo, she is dynamo, she is energy incarnate.

And we’re exhausted. We’re waiting for her to suddenly realize that she’s beyond exhausted and somehow, some way, return to some level of life approaching normal.

I mean, honestly, this girl still makes us laugh hysterically. The things that emerge from her mouth are beyond pithy.

But still. I want to know when she’ll be coming down a notch. I also want to know, Intarweb . . . WHY DIDN’T YOU WARN ME THIS WAS COMING?

Posted in Being a girl, Rant, Rosebud, buddy, family | No Comments »

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