If You're not Willing to Change - You should shut up and not complain

It seems to me that as a person gets older they should begin to realize that they are but a speck on the surface of earth, and earth is but a speck in the vastness of the universe. Therefore, all their personal, crappy little problems are so meaningless in the greater scheme of things that they may as well not worry about things they can't change. How does a person go through life day after day, year after year and not eventually learn what they need to do to make themselves happy? Or at least learn to be happy with what they've got? Do some people just feel more comfortable in a state of unhappiness? Are they so used to being unhappy that they don't know how to be happy?

I feel like my mother is one of these people. And her unhappiness is affecting all of us, it always has. It's why I left at such a young age to begin with and why I desperately wish I could leave now. But I have to admit I've made some brash choices in the past in my scurrying, anxious, dash to escape this place and now I have to suck it up in order to get my shit together so I can eventually live a peaceful, fulfilling life. But I have to say, it's hard, day to day to not simply explode on her, to say "Just Shut UP! Stop complaining, you have such a great life! So many people would be so happy to have what you have, you could do anything!". And I pretty much did just that this morning. I feel bad, sort of. I didn't swear, I didn't actually tell her to shut up, though she did say that to me. But I did say I couldn't take her being so angry all the time, and then taking that anger out on me. It's exhausting. Listening to her and my sister complain lately is taking up hours and hours of my day. Time I need to be job searching and finishing up my room so I can move on in this life. I need a car but I need a job to get a car and I need a car to get a job........so my mom is going to have to honor her promise to let me use the car until I save up for my own. She promised that if I broke up with Mike (therefore losing the only car we both had, bc he gets it bc he bought it) that she would help by replacing what he did for me until I could get it myself. Her family certainly did that for her plenty of times. She wouldn't...essentially she wouldn't even BE if it weren't for her mother and then subsequently the family business not entirely supporting her lifestyle. I stayed with him as long as I did because we shared too many things. I would be lost without his help for a while. And she promised to help me, something she hasn't done effectively since I was very young. She was always good with little kids. But anyone over twelve, she's lost, she has no clue what to say or do. Maybe it's just that she is such a child herself. I feel like I've been her parent for so long. To this day I have to sit there and listen to her for hours, literally, hours going on and on about my father and his lack of paying on time. They've been divorced for so long I don't even know exactly - over ten years for sure, probably closer to fifteen. Get over it already!! All your kids are grown, he has another family, he's old and doesn't really have any money anymore, does he really still owe her anything? Who agrees with her? Go on, tell me if you do, I hear her side all the time, I know the argument but I just think she should be living on her own by now, she would be able to just fine if she weren't so bad with money.
Get this, probably two years ago she buys this bedroom set. A bed, two dressers, a side table, a bunch of mirrors to go above the tables, there was a tall dresser too. It was beautiful, really, it was made from this rich, dark wood - but the problem was that it was HUGE! I mean really huge. And it must have cost a fortune, probably between five and seven thousand for the set. Like, did she measure anything before buying it? Apparently not because it totally didn't fit in her room at all. I can't believe they even got it upstairs. Anyway, she had to give the tall dresser to my brother for his room, the other two ended up covering over one of her windows once the mirror was attached and you could just barely walk around the bed, it took up the whole room! It was awful. But we all, for a full two years, had to go along with admiring how nice it was. (because if anyone criticizes her she has a fit - might even threaten suicide actually) But finally she realizes it's hideous. She doesn't realize, of course, that that means we've all been lying to her for all this time. That would require some self-reflection and thinking through an uncomfortable situation, and that just wouldn't do. So two years after spending that kind of money she decides it's awful and she can't live like that. So she takes everything out - and most of it is still sitting in our garage, getting ruined so we can't even sell it. And now she has bought a new bed (and a new daybed for the spare room while she was at it, "It was on sale Nellie" so she saved money, duh!) a bunch of new dressers, side tables, a little desk, new curtains, and God knows what else that I may or may not have seen. She even goes so far as to hide things because sometimes even she knows it's too far. And then she wants me to sit there and listen to her complain about money. But I'm not allowed to say anything about the spending, and I can't offer suggestions on how to be frugal and save - because she doesn't really want to know these things. She just wants to bitch. And I just can't take it anymore.
This week has been particularly bad. Between her and my sister who does the same thing only it's about sort of different subjects. She bitches about her lack of ability to get her own classroom her first year out of school and her boyfriend who she won't leave but who she really hates.

I'm just so sick of all these Negative Nancy's. I just want to be around people who are trying to better themselves. I'm tired of the whining. So I've gotten my whining out for the day. I have too much to do to sit around complaining. Sorry to have subjected the cyberworld to my negativity. It has to go somewhere.

Here are some pics of our Mother's Day celebration. I think my Mom had a really good day. Her, whatever he is, I guess her boyfriend, came up for the weekend. I made a nice brunch. All us kids, except Lily, of course, were present. And I got her a necklace she had mentioned she wanted for Mother's Day.

It must have been February when she pointed it out in a catalog that we have delivered to our house. I remember having made a mental note at that moment that it would be the perfect gift for the occasion. I was determined that was what we had to get her. But once May came around the original catalog was long gone. Of course I should have kept it hidden away in a safe place; or better yet, ordered it right away and kept the necklace itself hidden until the special day. But I'm not organized enough to carry out either one of those practical plans. No, I waited until the very last minute and was very lucky to have found the exact necklace online. I had to pay a little extra in order to insure that it would be here in time. But it was totally worth it because I think she was really happy that I remembered it.

This is a close-up of our table on Sunday. I stole some of the lilacs from our neighbor's yard at five-thirty that morning. I really hope they didn't see me. I had meant to do it the night before but I fell asleep waiting for my mom and Larry to go to bed. Then I snagged some more for a big bouquet that I put in the living room adjacent to the dining room. They were so beautiful and fragrant, the scent filled both rooms.
And lastly, this a picture of my Mom herself on the big day. I think she was happy. Of course for her it would all have been better if Lily had been there. She is the only person in the world who can be treated like shit by that girl time and again and she still sees her as an angel. I don't think I'll ever be able to accept that fact. But I'll keep trying.

All I can really do is do what I know is right and try to be okay with myself. And I feel really good about all the effort I put into celebrating an important day for her. I can only be me, right? I can't be my sister or my brothers or Mikey or my father. They are them and they are responsible for their own actions.

I hope everyone else had a good day.

My Weekend in Westport with the Misogynistic Tyrant

It's supposed to be APRIL showers that bring May flowers. There's supposed to be snow still melting in March...... I'm back from the weekend in Westport. However, I've been rendered speechless the past couple of days, unable to relate the horrors of my trip until now. It was so bad, I don't even know how to begin to explain just how bad it was. So bad, so, so bad.

This past weekend was just the third time I met Larry Lieberman. Yet, one looking on as a fly on the wall, would have thought him my horribly overbearing, slightly mad, father. Or worse, a step-father who now feels it is his duty to discipline the much too old children of his crazy lover. From the moment we arrived, until the moment we left, this man had only one of two expressions; he was either creepily smirking, or frowning with frustration.

I can't believe how much work my brother, Scooter, has done for them down there, basically for free. It's really crazy, actually. This man started a business the same year he separated from his wife and was fired from his job. Now he's trying to get not one, but three businesses off the ground; and not a single one is closer than a hundred miles to any of the others. Does this make sense to anyone so far? Probably not, but wait, it gets worse. His previous job was, supposedly, as floor manager or something along such lines, at Macy's in New York. Whoop-dee-fricken-doo, you'd think he had been Vice President of the United States the way he puts on airs. I'm really, quite frankly, not surprised he was fired. He's a technological moron of ridiculous proportions. He doesn't even know how to set up his own e-mail. He just recently bought a digital camera one of the weekends my brother was down there acting as his indentured servant, and Larry hands him the newly purchased camera and tells him to go put it together. What, I ask, does he think there is to assemble? Basically he wants everyone to just do everything for him. But how does that work when the task comes down to simply being able to understand something? How can I know or understand something for someone else? I can't just carry the knowledge around in my head until he needs it then simply ESP it to him or something. But that's what he wants, really. That's what he wanted from me when it came to setting up their eBay site. He wants what he wants, and he wants it NOW. I can't believe he worked there for as long as he did. His personal skills are virtually nonexistent. He doesn't listen to a word anyone else says. He doesn't communicate his expectations, he communicates only when his absurdly unreasonable expectations haven't been satisfactorily met. Let me try to prove my point.

We arrived at Larry's rented home at approximately eleven-thirty on Thursday night. We had driven almost four hours from Exeter, after Scooter had been landscaping for his actual real job all day. I had been at home getting everything settled for our absence; buying groceries, cleaning bathrooms, doling out allowances, packing my own things, taking the dog to the vet, et cetera. Basically, it had been a long day and we were ready for it to end. Upon our arrival at the house, we realized that Helen (my Mom) and Larry were out. Fortunately, Antoinette, the woman who acts as a maid but who is really a home care giver with her BA (that is for later in the story) was home and awake, and she let us in to get settled. We had only been there for about ten minutes when Helen and Larry showed up with some groceries. I had spoken to my Mom earlier and she had said they were totally out of food because there had been a storm earlier that week that caused the power to go out; so she had given most of the food from that trip to Antoinette so it wouldn't spoil. So I was glad she had gone to the store that night rather than waiting to the next day like she had originally planned because we were starving. Already, though, Larry was disgruntled because he felt that it wasn't necessary to buy more groceries that night, or at all; so we started off badly because he felt put out I guess. Even though it was my mother who actually paid for the groceries, for us, specifically, to have stuff to eat while we were there. But you could tell he didn't really want us to touch anything. My Mom kept telling us we could eat whatever we wanted because she paid for it, and then he would say things like, "Who ate all my shortbread cookies?". When there were plenty left and they weren't just his at all, he's just so greedy he can't deal with anyone else using up anything. Actually, is it accurate to label him greedy, or should it be cheap? Or both? So, right off the bat he's pissed that my Mom spent money on food for us.

Then, as we're finally getting ready for bed, around midnight, my brother, who had been there before and knew more than I, called out to everyone in general, "Let's not rush out of here in the morning, it's been a long week for me". And how does Larry reply? "You're going to be getting up with me first thing in the morning to get started." Scooter didn't even say anything back. He knew there was no point because it would just be an argument, I guess. Plus, he knew he was driving me to the clinic, so Larry would just have to deal with that. And that is where things really began to turn sour.

I had assumed that there would be WiFi access at Larry's house. It's in Westport, CT, and I figured everyone has Internet nowadays unless you live in the boonies and they don't have access. It just didn't even occur to me that he may not. So I had the address for this place in my computer. All I had to do was get to a place with WiFi; which anyone, who hasn't been living under a rock, would know can be done at any Dunkin' Donuts, McDonalds, or roadside pullover in major cities. But Larry, apparently, is a rock dweller because the man was clueless. He kept asking where the clinic was and I kept telling him that I needed to get on my computer in order to tell him. But he just wouldn't hear that. He kept asking me names of places and asking me if that was familiar. He was listing street names as if I would remember if I heard it. Despite the fact that I had repeatedly told him that I rely entirely on my laptop and I would not recognize the street name because I didn't read it, ever. I wasn't planning on caring until the moment I typed it into the GPS. But the man had clay in his ears. He pulled out a CT phone book and proceeded to bully me into dialing random doctor's offices in Norwalk (where the clinic was located) to ask if they were the clinic. Now, anyone on methadone knows that health care professionals who do not deal with methadone regularly, do not respond well to being asked about it. So he's standing over me, waiting as I ask these random medical receptionists if they know where the Norwalk methadone clinic is. And they're answering me like I'm crazy and really offending them. And this whole thing is making me more and more frustrated by the second. I've told him that I can find it just fine, and that calling all these places is just a waste of time because I can find it on the GPS in, like, five seconds. If he would just let us get going, we'd be back in less than an hour, or we could meet them at the store or wherever. But the man is relentless. Finally, I'm sweating profusely, my face is getting red, I feel sick to my stomach, I want to throw the phone at him; but I walk into the bedroom with him lingering at my heels and I motion to my mother that this has to stop. I'm facing her trying to make a distressed face and the cut-off/stop this motion with my hand swiping across my neck, like "kill me". She does get my point, thank God, and tells him to stop making me call random doctor's offices and let us just get going. He was, as you can imagine, not pleased with me for that. He's the type of guy who does not like to be wrong, especially when the person correcting him happens to be a women (more on that later). I could feel him fuming from the other room, I should have known at that moment that there was no repairing the rift that had been created by me enforcing my will over him, however minutely.

Then, after all that, he decided that HE wanted to drive me to the clinic because then Scooter could get started right away on the chores he had lined up for him. Get this, he planned for my brother to landscape the yard of the home is currently trying to sell with his not quite yet ex-wife. And Scooter has already done other work at his house, he took down his kids' childhood tree house, he cleaned asbestos out of the basement for a day before my Mom found out and put an end to it, and that doesn't even begin to cover the work he did setting up this guy's store. So, anyhow, more on all that later. Right now, I'm trying to write about this guy wanting to take me to the methadone clinic in the middle of this shitty part of Norwalk so my brother can do more work for him. I should mention, also, that it is eight in the morning, and his store doesn't actually open until ten. All his actual employees show up around ten fifteen and take their sweet ass time getting set up; but we, for some unknown reason, have to be there as close to the crack of dawn as possible. He seemed not to accept the fact that we were there for our mom, to see where she lives down there, to check out this business she's dumping money into, and most important, to get to know what this guy she likes is all about. And so far, he's making a really poor impression.

But we finally convince him that it would be best for Scooter to drive me and that we could find it, no problem, once we got to a place with WiFi and those are everywhere. It was like trying to convince someone that worms talk or something. He was dumbfounded by this talk of these newfangled devices called WiFi, Internet, Cell phones, Digital, GPS, it was like he'd rather we took a horse drawn carriage everywhere, for crying out loud. We didn't so much convince him as insist that that was the ONLY way it would work. And as I have said, he was not accustomed to a young women being so assertive and sure of what she wanted. I was being polite, but he was really getting on my nerves. At that point, however, I was still trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. I kept telling myself that he'd been through a lot recently and he's was under a lot of stress. But the more I saw him in action, the more I thought he was just an ass. A pompous, misogynistic, self-centered, classist, sexist, greedy, delusional ASS!

I really have to end this installment of the Tale of the Dreaded Westport Weekend. My Mom is finally home and despite how angry I am at her, my brother convinced me, after a little while of being stand-offish with her when she returned, to keep it to myself because she would eventually figure out what an ass he(Larry) is on her own. He and my counselor both said that. I can't make her see this man for what he is. She already knows he treats her terribly, and she's acting the same way she has with so many other pathetic men she's had in her life. It's this shit that made me leave so young to begin with. I often feel as if I stepped out of this house just yesterday, that I may as well still be seventeen because so much is the same. I wanted to believe she had matured, like the rest of us have to some extent. We're all trying, some more successfully than others, to grow up. I guess she's trying too, because outwardly she seems to have changed for the better, at least somewhat. But she just still makes these hideous choices. I'm hoping she will see, in time, that she doesn't need this guy trying to control her. I can't wait to write about the way he treats women. I just promised I would start (and finish) to bake all the Easter stuff. She wants anise cookies, all these Easter breads, sugar cookies, sticky buns, I didn't even look at all the recipes yet. I'm going to be cooking for days. But I owe her, especially since this thing this weekend didn't work out. I'll fill in the details once I have more time. And I'd rather bake than do other things. At least I like baking. And I'm really perfecting some of these recipes, so I can make them for my own family some day.

Anyhow, it's snowing here today. It's going to be a good day. Despite the angry tone of this post, I'm feeling fine today. I didn't write about this weekend until it was processed somewhat for me, so the anger is more what I felt over the past few days. But now I'm just documenting it, and then moving on.

Just Another Day

Well, well.....after a whole, entire, gut-wrenching day of searching for this dang dog....and Mikey locked him in the frickin garage. I could seriously smack him silly for it. I must have asked him five million times if he remembered letting the dog upstairs or outside, because Chili is definitely his dog. There are some of the others who have bonded more with me, but Chili isn't one of them. I mean, he'll sit with me, and come when I call, but he's Mikey's little guy through and through. Mikey gets way more upset than I do when he runs off, but he still doesn't pay enough attention to him when he takes him outside or upstairs. It drives me crazy. I'm constantly telling him that he can't just let them out in the yard and come back inside to make coffee or whatever, you have to stand there with them so they don't leave the yard or go running off after someone's dog. Granted, I should have checked every nook and cranny in the house as well, I can't believe I didn't, I feel SO stupid. But Mike was so convinced that someone must have let him out whether they knew they did or not. He waited until it was almost dark and we'd been searching the town all day before he mentions that he went in there that morning to check on his glass and Chili was with him! Why didn't he check there first, knowing he'd gone in there. I'm so annoyed with him, as usual.

It's embarrassing to have to tell neighbors that you lost your dog, they think you're so irresponsible and thoughtless. And we called the dog officer and the local SPCA, and then you have to call them all back and thank them and tell them you found the dog. It just sucks. It took over the whole day because both Mike and I worry so much about our animals. We really are good pet owners, they get treated better than some people's children, for sure. But sometimes circumstances arise which are out of our control. But people are still very judgemental.
The stressfulness of the day was only exacerbated when we realized, shortly after we noticed Chili missing, that Seneca (our other and oldest dog) had done something to his right front paw. It looked as if he just broke his nail on something and busted his paw, but he was limping around and would screech if someone attempted to touch his paw. So we had to take him to the vet and couldn't look for Chili right away, at least not as thoroughly as we would have liked. So that probably contributed to making Mikey forget about going in the garage and messed up our search making it so much longer. It was just a bad, crappy day with a lot of stress over the dogs.

If Mike could just pull himself together and act like a man about shit, life would be a whole lot easier. But he's such a baby about everything. It's humiliating to deal with him when he acts like that. I called the vet beforehand to obtain directions, just to try to make things easier so we weren't searching for it with all the dogs in the car. Because we didn't just take Seneca who was hurt, we also had to take three of our other dogs because my brothers freak out if they bark while we're out. So we took three with us, put two in their kennel because it only fits two, and left one out because she's good; and Chili, of course, we thought was missing at the time so he stayed in the garage. So, we're all stressed about the dog missing, and Seneca is hurt, and the dogs are all stuffed in our little Honda Civic and we're on our way to the vet, just across town. It's not the regular vet my Mom goes to, either, because she refused to change vets when she moved and her vet is, like, over an hour away. So that was out for sure. No way was I going to haul us all that far away. So I found a different vet, in town, which is why I had never been there before. So Mike decides he's going to look up how to get there on our phone GPS thingy, which sucks and never gets us to the right place. And the stupid thing is telling us that the vet is right in front of us on the Exeter side of the highway, and I'm telling Mike that there's no way because I called for directions and the woman, who was IN the building told me that it was on the other side of the highway, in BRENTWOOD. Hence, the name Brentwood Country Veterinarian Hospital. But he's like, "NO, NO, NO it HAS to be here! The red dot is saying it's RIGHT here!" And I'm like, "Those fuckin' things are wrong all the time. It's just a satellite or something and it's just getting you sort of close. It sucks man, listen to me, the woman said it was OVER the highway. She made it very clear. It's a big green farmhouse, with a big red BARN, do you see a barn anywhere near us? Hum, DO YOU SEE A BARN?!?" And he just won't give up, and he's driving onto little side roundabout streets into office parks and shit all, "IT MUST BE HERE! It's telling me it's here!" And I'm finally saying to him, "Then you call her, you ask her what she meant if you're so convinced it's on this side of the highway." And after yelling at me that there was nowhere for him to pull over to use the phone and why didn't I just call her; and he's driving like a total asshole, pulling u-ies (is that how one would spell such a thing? You know what I mean), he finally calls the office himself. And of course, unsurprising to myself, she explained that they were, indeed, located on the OTHER side of the highway. That he needed to drive a bit further than he had gone the first time." And when I said, "Well, there now. Why can't you ever just listen to me, man. If you ever listened to me, we'd be there, and we wouldn't be this upset, there was no need for this. I think you owe me an apology." Do you think he gave me an apology? Oh, No. He actually had the nerve to continue to blame it on me; because I should have been more definite and sure about where we were going and I would have known that it was further than a mile down the road on the opposite side of the overpass. Because he did drive over the bridge just less than a mile initially, just to try to prove I was wrong. But the way the road is, with all the trees and houses, you can't see ahead very far, and they were basically just around the corner. How annoying is that? He does shit like that all the time.

With the way he acted on the way there, and the way he acts in general, in public, I didn't want him to come inside the vet office with me. So I made it seem like I just thought he should wait with the dogs outside because it was pretty hot yesterday. So I brought Seneca in and got him all signed in. No sooner was I inside the office with the doctor than I hear him out in the reception area harassing the receptionist. Asking her questions about the cost of this and that, and what about advantage, and what about the tracking device you can put in the dog's ear, he just goes on and on. He tells everyone everywhere we go that we're opening a head shop. Now that's fine, if you happen to be speaking to your target audience. But when the person you are conversing with is, say, a very elderly woman who clearly does not smoke weed, and probably doesn't even know what a head shop is, just spare the poor woman the confusion. You should see some of the looks I get when he's talking to people. He'll tell them really personal information they didn't ask for, or the worst is when he asks someone for help in a store when I already know what I want and where it is, I'm just still deciding. Like I'll be looking at the meat, thinking about what I should get, and he'll go to the butcher counter and make someone come out and stand there and tell him about each cut and ask a MILLION questions, it drives me CRAZY. And I can't even go anywhere without him because I don't have my drivers licence. Dear God, I hope I get it back soon, it's all a matter of money at this point. As soon as I pay up, I'm good to go.

Man, I have to stop bitching today. I have so, so much to do today. My brother wants to leave to get to Westport tonight at six. So I have to get the house all cleaned up so that it's not a disaster by the time I get back on Sunday with my Mom. I mean, it will probably be a disaster anyway, but at least I'll know I did what I could. But besides cleaning up the whole house, I have to get myself ready too. I really should go to the storage unit where all our crap still is from when we just moved, I need to get some clothes. I only have a small bit of my clothes out because we're staying in the basement, which really sucks. It's not really refinished; it's not dirt or anything, but it's not a real living space either. We're supposed to be refinishing it slowly, but it's going much slower than anticipated because it's expensive and time consuming. So we've made a bedroom size area as livable as possible, and it's alright. It's livable is what it is. But dreary and dusty and I don't want my clothes down there until it's all painted and stuff. But if I'm going to be working in my Mom's store I guess I need some nicer clothes. I've been told this Westport place is kind of fancy, it's, like, all mansions and rich people. We'll see. Last time my brother was down there, that girl that was in that show Sabrina, The Teenage Witch came in to buy mirrors or something and Scooter waited on her. That's kind of weird. I wonder if I'll see anyone famous?

Life Happens

Finally the rain has stopped falling, and the sun is out. It's soggy as oatmeal out there still, but I'm glad it's beginning to dry up. I usually enjoy the rain, the dark days, the slower pace it seems to bring; but for some reason, this latest rain spell made me feel somewhat depressed or something. I couldn't get the fire to burn well in the fireplace because all our wood got wet and a draft was coming down the chimney, along with some rain drip, and everything felt wet and raw.

I did manage to get part of the front lawn raked before the rain, but I have a lot left to finish and I can't wait to get started. I would like to have the whole thing done before my Mom gets back from her latest trip. She spends a lot more time away from here than she spends here. I'm not really sure why she keeps this house except that I think she wants a place of her own in case things don't work out where she is. Maybe she also feels like she can't sell this house because then where would we all live. It's not really her problem to provide living quarters for a bunch of adults, but it's pretty nice to have the option to live here, rather than rent some over-priced, crappy apartment. Between all of us, we should be able to pay most of the bills if everyone were to contribute. But I'm not so sure I want to involve myself in that kind of hassle, arguing with them over who owes what every month. Then I'd be forced to pay it myself if they didn't hand over their share. I'm not sure it's worth it, but I don't have to decide today, so no point in stressing over it. I have enough to worry about without adding things that don't matter today.

My brother, the older of the two, spent part of his weekend in New York again with his new girlfriend. Only this time she was sick, and she passed it to him, and he's been lying all over the house moaning and groaning and being snappy with everyone, and now we are all beginning to feel unwell. So I'm going to make homemade chicken soup tonight, with a lot of fresh garlic, and some popovers or something, and hopefully that will help bolster our immune systems. I should also get some of that airborne stuff that you're supposed to take as soon as you think you may be sick. I hate, hate, hate getting sick. I feel so useless and icky. I AM useless, and nothing gets done and it makes me feel sticky and smelly. Yuk! I really hope I don't get it. Of course, we all could simply be a group of hypochondriacs and we just think we're sick because Scooter says he's sick. Maybe he's just crashing from using too many drugs and claiming "sick" to get away with it. Who knows? We're having chicken soup either way.

I'm trying to set up a host dosing at a clinic in Westport, CT so I can help my Mom this weekend at the furniture/fabric store she runs with her boyfriend. She needs help setting up an eBay account and learning how to use the computer. So I figured I would go down there to help her out with some stuff for the weekend to try to make up for some of the help she's given us lately. I do a lot around the house but she generally pays my brothers to go down there, so I know they need the help. Of course I don't expect her to pay me because I owe her a lot more than I could make in a weekend no matter what. But the clinic in Norwalk, I guess, is having an issue with my non take-home status. Because I refuse to stop smoking weed, I don't get take-homes. I have to drive to the clinic everyday to get my dose. That is my choice. I smoke weed and I accept the consequences of doing so in our society, in the current climate which does not entirely accept the smoking of marijuana. Don't I have the right to believe that some laws are not logical? Or have, perhaps, been designed to benefit a certain sector of the business world and are held in place by financial pressure from big business and the governments that work hand in hand to promote such underhanded tactics. Don't I have the right to argue against laws which seem to cause more harm than good to our society? I think I not only have a right, but I have a responsibility to rage against the machine.......

.....And basically, this is where I was in my thought process when life happened today and I was forced to carry on with the things nobody wants to do but everyone (almost) has to do. Brothers, roommates, mothers, everyone needs me to do something for them. As usual. So first I needed a shower, then to the bank, grocery store, home, and I've already made mini mango tarts, cupcakes, and homemade chicken soup. I'm awesome. Especially for someone raising a family who never had kids or got married. I received an instant family.

Can you Smell the Rage from there??

Is there even a way to fix things that have been broken for too long? For example: A chair breaks, if you fix it immediately, it may be okay, if it wasn't all that broken to begin with. But if you were to put it aside in the garage or something and wait five years, the chair would be so much more work to fix. Because now it's not just that a leg has been snapped, now the actual wood is corroding and you have to get a whole new peice. With a lot of repairs, it could be almost like new again, but never quite right. Aren't people like that too? If you don't fix the problems when they first start, it's that much more difficult to fix them at all. My family is a corroded chair thrown in the garage. Is it even worth fixing? Personally, I take chairs like that to the dump. Is there a dump for people????? I guess that would be like a jail or a state mental institution. And everyone in my family would probably fit the bill for either one of those places, sadly enough. My Mom and I would go to the loony bin, both my brothers would go to jail, and my sister would only be suited to a prison hospital, since she is a criminal and a psychotic.

I really wish I could put hidden cameras all throughout the house so professionals could see what I have to deal with. People think that if there is not overt physical abuse then there isn't anything that bad to deal with. But I've read articles about how psychological abuse can even cause post traumatic stress disorder. And that's if you take away the fact that whenever my brothers get angry, everyone in their path is in physical danger too. This morning alone, my youngest brother didn't like that my mom and I had our voices raised so he threw the laundry basket down the stairs at us. Then he came storming down, spit flying, voice hoarse with screams, flailing fists like a mini man hurricane of anger. He threw a punch a couple of centimeters from my face and then when I sat down in a chair he tried to wing the top of the cat tower at my head, but in his irate haste he misjudged and it hit my Mom in the head on the couch at the other side of the room. Then he started to scream about Mikey in response to me telling him that I hope the time that my Mom is gone works really well for him since I won't be buying him or anyone else any cigarettes, because I don't smoke. And I won't be driving him back and forth across town five times a day to get weed, and neither will Mikey. I wouldn't be doing his dishes, washing his clothes, making his meals, that I basically would no longer be his surrogate Mother. That's when he starts in on how neither of us do anything for anyone and he doesn't care, blah, blah, blah......and Mikey (who, what a surprise, didn't make it very far for very long, is back) thinks it would be a good idea to pop his head out of our dungeon space living quarters and ask if Sam has something to say to his face. And then later he acts as if he were actually defending me instead of himself. Because I didn't need nor ask for his help. I do just fine myself in arguments. See, I've learned that you almost always win if you stay logical and make sense and don't act like an idiot. Then you just have more weight behind you to back up the fact that you must be right, because you're not the one acting like a freak. It works for police and politicians ALL the time, so why not me? So when Mikey puts himself on my side w/out my asking and then proceeds to act like an ass, that pisses me off and makes things worse. So then him and and my little brother start fighting, Sam lunges at him and it gets physical. Then, my Mother always has to jump in the fray. So I'm yelling at them all to let go of each other, they're hurting my Mom, and they're rolling around on the kitchen floor, and my Mom's screaming, and I'm yelling at her now to just get away from them or she's going to get hurt. But in a fight no one wants to be the first person to let go because the other person might use that as an excuse to throw a sucker punch. But eventually they realized that they were hurting Helen (my Mom) and they separated. And then they act like nothing even happened and right away Mikey's all, "Hey Sam, I'll smoke you up". And I'm like "No, you won't, this is what the whole argument has been about". I get stuck in the middle because my siblings use all of their allotted money for the time Helen is away, and then they have nothing, no cigarettes, no weed, no money for food or gas, nothing. So then they start acting like horrible monsters, everyone has to walk on eggshells around them or another scene ensues where they are throwing things at you and screaming and calling you names. So I end up buying them that shit with my personal money or they money that Helen left me for taking the dog to the vet and buying groceries for everyone. She originally left me all their money too, to dole out as they needed it so it didn't get spent all at once, but that was a nightmare as you can probably imagine. Then EVERYTHING was my fault and I wasn't buying the right things and Lily didn't have enough of this or that. So I told my Mom I wasn't doing that anymore. So they have their own money allotted to them. But, like I said, they spend it all in about three days or less, and we're talking, like, a couple hundred dollars, not twenty bucks. So then she'll leave two hundred extra dollars in a "household" account that only I can access but then that makes me the middle man and puts me in a really horrible situation. I don't have a license but they're always bossing me around telling me they need this or that and they think I have all this secret money hidden away that I use to buy myself lavish things. And I'm so mean that I won't just give them what they want. They don't understand that that money is for emergencies or milk when we run out in four days, they don't understand the concept of planning and thinking ahead. So I end up doling out all that money in about two more days because now it's going to Lily, Sam, and Scooter because none of them have any of their own money left and so without fail, every week Mikey and I end up going through almost all of the money we live off on our own, which isn't very much honestly. I split Mike's unemployment with him every week which pays for my methadone, gas to get there, food for us and then, like, incidentals such as toothpaste, weed (which we hardly smoke very much of at all these days), shampoo and crap like that. I hate to admit it, but my dependence on that little bit of money is a huge reason why I am not more firm about Mike leaving. Because I have a bit of tax money I'm waiting for, but that will only go so far. I have to pay all my fines to get my license back and then Mike will take the car when he leaves, so it would leave me with very little money and no car. I maybe could buy a crapper with what's left after fines, or I could try to find a job within walking distance, but that's not proving very fruitful as of yet. So I feel really stuck and super pressured by parties on all sides. What's new? This has been my life for as long as I can remember. I know what I need to do in order to get where I want to be. I just never seem to be able to find an environment to reside in that stays stable enough, long enough for me to accomplish anything. Does that make sense? I feel like people are always making me feel as if everything really is within my control and I'm just always not making the right choices. But I feel like I try SO, SO hard to do the right thing, and work hard, and plan ahead and then something crazy, totally out of my hands happens. And I'm sort of left floundering and I have to sort of start all over again to figure out how this new situation works. And it just takes so long that way to get anywhere new, it seems so daunting that sometimes I just want to give up even trying. Not, like, kill myself. I can't stress enough how much I despise people who kill themselves. And I hate even more the people who simply act like they're going to kill themselves and then don't. Cry for help motherfuckers. Sorry to anyone who may be in that category and thinks I'm being insensitive; but I've had to live side by side with too many people who have pulled that crap. It's so hurtful to the people in your life, it's selfish and cowardly. I know there are certain instances when people have imbalances that are so severe that they really don't know what else to do, and I guess I feel a little sorry for those folks, but I feel more sorry for the people they left behind.

I think I must have been around eight years old the first time I remember being told that my Mom had tried to kill herself. She must have already had a history of being overly dramatic and self-absorbed, but I was a little kid and just saw her as my Mom still. I remember my aunt came to pick me and Scooter, my brother and the second oldest in the family, up from school. At the time we were going to The Atrium School, in Watertown, Massachusetts. It was this really liberal, artsy, private school where, looking back, all the teachers and administrators must have had their heads up their asses. I didn't get taught that you have to add numbers from the left to the right until I was almost ten years old. I just thought you were supposed to be able to look at them and know what they added up to. I just didn't understand how everyone could do it so quickly once the numbers we added got into the hundreds and thousands. Finally, one of them realized what I was trying to do and explained the correct, and much easier, way to do it. I remember being amazed. I had, at that point, acted out several Greek plays, made a Maypole and danced around it, disintegrated the shells of eggs with vinegar, made numerous cloth dolls, and gone on several treasure hunts. I could read anything, upside down and backwards. But I had no idea how to add. I guess they had certain priorities. But anyhow, back to the tale. We were picked up by my aunt, and I was surprised not to see my Mom. I always knew when my Mom was supposed to pick us up because usually on the days she didn't pick us up we had to carpool with my friend Jacob and his mom. And when we had to ride with him the car was always crowded and it smelled like baby poop and vomit, except when his little sister farted, which was often, and then we had the added benefit of two different poo smells. Yummy. I felt like I was going to puke the whole time. Every ride with them was a feat, a challenge of whether or not I could keep my stomach from ejecting it's contents. I dreaded those days. So I was highly concerned when I saw Meg rather than my Mother in the designated pick-up line. I was always an overly thoughtful, anxious person. Ever since I was born, my mother always said. My siblings were always fighting with each other and I would be sitting away from them saying, "It's not me Mom, right? You're not mad at me right?". And she would be trying to yell at them and turn to me finally and yell, "NO, NELLIE! I'm not yelling at you, am I? Just mind your own business". Or some such thing. Even to this day, she wants me to this or that, and I do it, and I try to please everyone, and she calls me a goody-two shoes. I just can't make her see me for who I am, which is sincerely a thoughtful person. I'm not doing what I do to get anything but respect and thoughtfulness in return. I don't want money, I don't want clothes or her car. I just want peace and consideration.

So Meg was there waiting for us, we climbed into her beat up old Volvo and asked where our mom was. She told us at that point only that Helen was in the hospital because she had been sick. Clearly we were worried as any children would be upon hearing such news. We rode in silence until we had made our way from Watertown over to Cambridge where my grandmother lived. But for some reason we didn't head to Grammy's house, and I really don't know what was going on as I've never asked for clarification from anyone who was old enough at the time to remember details, instead we stopped at O'Leary's which was a bar that my grandfather frequented. We were told to wait in the car while Meg ran in. She must have gone there to speak with either my grandfather, grandmother, or my Uncle Marty who may have been gathered there. So my mom's in the hospital after attempted suicide and we stop at the bar? Does anyone else think that's weird? Anyhow, from there I remember being brought back to our own house, over in East Cambridge. We lived close enough to the Charles River that we could see the Fourth of July fireworks from the roof of our townhouse, we could smell the chocolate from the factories that were next to the science museum. And I suppose we must have waited there with my aunt until my mom was released from the hospital.
I don't remember anyone trying to explain anything to us. I remember the hectic, anxious feelings in the air. I recall people rushing around and different family members coming and going. I don't know where my father was in all of this. I do know that was what we have always been told set it off that time. Helen and my father had separated, and she must have had some altercation with him. For a minute I almost confused this first time with another time. In the other incident, it was a weekend day and Helen decided to surprise my dad with fuckin donuts on a Sunday morning. And she finds him with some woman who worked for him. I guess, the story goes, she was sitting in the dining room with my father's shirt on and my mom walks in with home made donuts. I'm sure she made a scene. Probably donuts flew through the air. Sugar and cinnamon dripping down the front of the white collared shirt. But why, honestly, did she think he wanted his own place? So he could NOT fuck other women? At that point, after multiple infidelities, a woman has to make a choice. She either dumps the cheating bastard because she knows she can't live like that and he can't be faithful. Or she reconciles herself to what is the harsh reality and she finds some hot dude to fuck herself while continuing to live the life to which she has come accustomed. I would have respected her more had she made either one of those choices. But she picked an alternate course of action. Play the martyr and try to change an unchangeable situation; until everyone is so fucked up and angry that there is no foreseeable peace for anyone in the near future. Our life has been warped into this cluster-fuck of resentment, jealousy, anger, and depression.

And still, at almost sixty years old, my mother is not much different from that woman who was slumped in her bed in her East Cambridge townhouse with a wine bottle in her hand and make-up dripping down her face, blubbering to her three small children while they huddled in the doorway, unsure if there was anything they could do. We're still not sure what we can do when she decides she can't take anymore of the life she created. Not more than two nights ago she broke down because she spent too much money on Sam for his birthday, my brother Scooter went nuts with her credit card in NYC on a date with some girl he just met, my sister didn't act grateful when my mother told her that the Prius she drives everyday would be fixed by the next day; so that was it, nobody loves her, everybody hates her, guess she'll go make empty suicidal threats until we all want to pull our hair out. And the scene could have been any one from our childhood, only all of us are a little taller now. My Mom is freaking out on our siblings and I'm telling her to just calm down, she's overreacting and everyone is just tired. I tell her to leave the dishes and I'll do them very early so she won't even see them. And she turns and screams at me that she doesn't WANT me to do the dishes! Why don't I mind my own business, she knows how to run a home! So, same as twenty-five years ago, my siblings are spoiled to no end, act like assholes, my mom takes it out on me because they don't care when she's angry or upset and she needs someone to show a reaction so she fights with me instead when I'm just trying to be helpful and calm things down.

So, clearly, there is a lot more going on here than I could ever explain in crappy rant. But I'm sick and tired of having to deal with and clean up after this mess of monsters that Helen has created by never, ever setting ANY limits. She just throws money at anything that inconveniences her. If my sister is calling everyone big, fat fuckin cunts and calling the police on herself, my mom gives her money to go to a hotel for the night. Does anyone else agree that that is simply rewarding shitty behavior? I do. My sister thinks she's supposed to act like that, the worse she acts, the more she gets. Same with everyone. Except me, if I act out, even a little bit, or even if I'm not being unreasonable, if I'm just even questioning something my mother or someone is doing, I get attacked. She's thrown me out more times than I can remember before I even turned eighteen because I would try to tell her how to raise her kids. I'd tell her Lily was fucking twenty-five year olds and smoking cigarettes when she was fourteen, and my brother was doing acid at the dinner table, and she'd tell me to get the fuck out, I wasn't the parent and I was starting problems. She still resents me for pointing out the negative and wanting solutions. NO NELLIE! We look the other way, pretend it doesn't matter and let it eat away at our insides until we are so raw and bleeding that we need blood transfusions because the stress has caused ulcers that bleed through our ass, like you MOM.

Wow, I'm angry today. When I get treated the same as I did when I was sixteen, I get so angry, I want to burst. I don't even know what to do because I know that nothing I can say or do will matter. I just have to bide my time, try to get out alive, try to care more about myself, stop thinking that if I'm just nice enough, calm enough, if I do enough, if I clean enough than my mother will see that I'm good and and my siblings are not. That will never happen, she will never limit them, she will never reprimand them, she will never put her foot down, she will let them suck every single drop of energy from her and she wants me to do the same and I can't! I don't want for her to not love them, you can love someone who you think is wrong, you can tell them you don't love their actions while you still love them. She thinks that setting limits is the same as limiting her love for them. I think that if she loved us all more, she would have set limits when we we younger, she wouldn't have let us do whatever we wanted. Didn't she worry about us, worry is love, is caring. Letting your pre-adolescent children smoke cigarettes is not love, it nuts.

I have to go eat something before I faint. I can't not eat anything all day long like my mother and sister. Being a size zero is not worth my health and sanity, sorry. I won't starve myself because they think I'm fat! I'm so fucking tired of other people telling me I'm fat. Or talking about how fat they are in front of me when the are a size zero! Or telling me not to eat a brownie on my brother's birthday, it'll make it so I don't lose weight. Maybe I'm not all that concerned about my weight. I know I could stand to lose some, and I am, slowly. That's good enough for me. And lots of people still seem to find me attractive, so perhaps, Helen, it's possible to enjoy life and eat good foods and still people will love you even if you have a little roll on your tummy. I like having tits and an ass. I think they want to starve me so I look like a plank or a little boy, just like them. FUCK THEM! That's how I feel today, just fuck them all!

Birthdays and An Electric Outage

The weather here in NH has been nutty for the past twenty-four hours or so. It's been raining for a few days, but last night the wind became so strong it blew the screen off the second story window to my Mother's bedroom. A tree was felled in the yard across the road, and we lost electricity around eleven.

Luckily we had a fire going which created enough light to see by. We were able to gather candles and flashlights, enough for each of us to get to our rooms. And luckily the night was more or less at an end by the time the lights went out. Hours had gone by since we cleaned up from dinner. And because we live very near by the Exeter Hospital, our electricity was restored by about two a.m.; but the rest of the town was dark still when I began my drive to the clinic at six-thirty this morning. It was a traffic disaster because none of the traffic lights were working, people were charging intersections all at once, yielding to no one. And even worse, the gas stations were out of commission. And I was on empty. I thought that I could make it a few exits down to the next area with a gas station, but as I approached I realized that they too had no lights, and their pumps were also down. I was a bit worried at this point. It wasn't until I made it the entire forty miles to Manchester that I was able to find an open gas station; I putted in on fumes, just barely. It could have been a bad scene since I was alone and I still don't have my license back. If I had run out of gas on the side of the highway and a State Police Officer had driven up upon me, I would have had problems for sure. But luck was on my side, as usual.

I should have my license back soon though. My Mom has been helping me out so much, I feel absurdly indebted to her right now. I try to do as much around the house as far as cooking, cleaning, and various other chores and errands to make up for a small chunk of what she has given to me. Of course, as children, we can never really fully repay our parents for all that they have given us. In essence, we owe them a life, which is priceless. But just because I'll never catch up doesn't mean I can give up trying. It's important for me to show my gratitude as often and genuinely as possible. I think my Mom appreciates how much I am truly grateful for what she does for me. Because my siblings are often short in the gratitude department, I think it means all that much more for me to show thankfulness since she doesn't get it often enough.

But I still feel guilty and pathetic for having to accept her generosity to begin with. I know that for me to move ahead, I need to clear my blemished past. I need a license to do anything. I can't get a job without a license, and I can't pay my fines without a job. So I'm stuck in this vicious cycle. So I know that without accepting her help, I may never be able to help myself enough to ever repay her. So the fact that she paid off my NH fines is AMAZING! And she has promised to help me take care of the other states as she is able.

Even though in some ways I have reverted, like by moving back in with my Mom, and not having a job, accepting money to live from Mikey and my family, I still feel as if overall I am moving ahead. Not having the closest relationship with my family, harboring resentments, was blocking me from being happy and healthy. Working as hard and as long hours as I was just to scrounge by was causing such high levels of stress that it was making me physically ill. I was not happy being so isolated from my family, hours away with no license. If anything went wrong we were basically on our own. We were at least a half an hour from any of the few friends we had out there. If our car broke down, if we needed to borrow ten dollars for gas, if we needed someone to go to the doctors with us, it was always an ordeal. Now we have a support system in my family. They can be annoying, they can be lazy and emotionally volatile. But they will make sure that someone drives me to the clinic every day, no matter what. There is always someone there to talk to or ask a favor of, and it's a really satisfying feeling.
I'm beginning to feel as if I'm regaining a physical and emotional balance that I have not had for quite some time. My body is readjusting itself to not have to deal with as much stress and anxiety ALL THE TIME. I can finally relax, I don't feel like I'm fighting just to keep my head above water anymore. I don't have to take care of everything all by myself, I know my Mom will make sure we have food and electricity, whether we pay her or not, those things will be there. That's an amazing luxury that I have not had for over ten years. When my Mom doesn't see me struggling right in front of her, day in and day out, it's easy to think that we're doing fine. Especially since I won't tell her we're not unless something horrible has happened. So all this time, my brothers and sister have been benefitting from my Mom's generosity and I've been trying to go it alone. I should have accepted her help when I was younger and maybe I wouldn't be here now, in this humbling situation, at thirty-one years old. But here I am, Nellie the Late Bloomer (has anyone ever read the children's book, 'Leo the Late Bloomer? It's awesome.), but at least I feel as if I might actually be blooming, finally.

Anyway, here I go on and on, yap yapping about myself, as usual. I am, generally, my favorite topic. Aren't all Bloggers a little self-centered? We have to be to think we're interesting enough to publicly present our thoughts. Who are we to think anyone cares?

It's Mikey's Birthday today. He's thirty-two. He's been wanting to go to the casino in CT for his B-day for a while now. But, in typical Mikey and Nellie fashion, we didn't do our planning ahead of time and now we have to go a week after the original date of his actual birthday. It's also my brother Sam's birthday on March first, so we thought, since Sam and Mikey get along so well, that we would invite Sam along. He got wicked excited about it and then we realized that you have to be twenty-one to go to the CT casinos, and he's just turning twenty. So we found a place in upstate NY, called Turning Stone, and you only have to eighteen for that one. But it's, like, five hours away from us. And I didn't think, because I AM an idiot, about getting my methadone. Because we want to get a hotel room and stay for the weekend, so I'll need to set up host dosing somewhere. But since I just transferred clinics I'm not sure how cool they are about setting up guest dosing at another clinic. I imagine they'll be cool enough about it but since they have so many patients I don't think they'll be up for rushing the paperwork through on my account, and due to my own poor planning. So we're setting it up for next week. Hopefully it will be fun. I'm not really big into gambling, but I'll keep myself busy while they do guy stuff. That's kind of why I want to make it a group trip, so Mikey really enjoys himself and can play the games he wants to play.

But for tonight we're just making the dinner of his choice and this raspberry cream layer cake. Then he's getting some money to go toward the casino trip. And I think my brother's getting a laptop, thanks to me. My Mom was all talking about getting him a drum. And I was like, "Mom, Sam doesn't even know how to drum. And I've really never even heard him talk about wanting to learn". And she replied something along the lines of "Well, maybe he'll get into it, if I get him one. It will give him something to do". So I suggested a new laptop might be better because he spends all his time on the computer making videos and stuff. And he's been bitching, like, every day about how old, slow, and crappy his computer is. So, now, I believe that is what he's getting. I love him, but he's a spoiled little brat for sure. But at least I won't have to let him use mine anymore. Thankfully, because I spent, like, fifteen minutes this morning wiping the goop spots off the screen. I don't know how they manage to destroy things as quickly as they do, and with so little contact. It's a skill really.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a good day ahead of them. Everyone likes Friday's, right? It's the end of the week for a lot of people. It's almost March, almost Spring. Happy Friday.

Coffee, Bud, and Cleaning

Most people would enter our house and see that it was really clean and well put together. On the surface it is, more often than not, vacuumed, dusted, and organized. But if you were to open any number or drawers or closets, you would be confronted with a mess that would assault all your senses.

I love my Mom, dearly; but she is extremely disorganized beneath the surface. It matters more to her that everything look at ease and pulled together upon first glance. I would rather clean things from the inside out, creating a more thorough feeling of clean. That generally means that things will look messy while the project is being completed. But then there is longer lasting harmony and cleanliness because it's easier to keep a space tidy if it is not overcrowded and chaotic.

That being said, her refrigerator has always been a point of disagreement between us. I like my fridge to be very clean and easy to navigate. That means no dried milk flaking upon the shelving. No puddles of maple syrup. No molding food, no rotten meat. And I like to be able to see everything I have, or else it doesn't get used soon enough and goes bad, hence we wasted a bunch of money. But my Mom must figure that strangers don't generally go poking around in your fridge, so it's not one of her top priorities. Vacuuming is her thing. Since I can remember we constantly are getting on my Mom's case for vacuuming a million times a day. There will be, like, three crumbs on the floor and she has to vacuum right under your feet. She's always picking up cups of juice and coffee while you're still drinking it and dumping it in the sink and washing the cup. But she WILL NOT clean the refrigerator, ever. It's truly disgusting. So ever since I was a kid I've cleaned the fridge when she's not around. Of course, it never takes long for it to return to a state of nastiness. But maybe with me doing the bulk of the cooking and shopping these days it will stay nice and clean.

So that's what I'm doing right now. I'm taking a little break, but I'm almost done. I just have to wash out the produce drawers and put them and their contents away. Then I have the little condiment shelves that are located on the inside of the door. They usually get pretty gross. And I'm trying to wash my Mom's linens for her before she gets home because my sister slept in her bed while she was away. And then I have to admit I've begun to understand the obsession with vacuuming. With this many dogs and people, a lot of dust and dander kicks up. So I have to vacuum and clean the floors and get the trash ready for pick-up tomorrow. Man, I really believe that for every family to be really happy and comfortable, there needs to be one parent who stays home to care for the family. It doesn't necessarily have to be the woman either. Sometimes men are better at taking care of the kids and the house while the wife loves her job. Whatever works, really. It could even be a sibling or other relative or family friend. It's way too stressful to try to fit in cooking, cleaning, bill paying, yard maintenance, and everything else that comes with a home while working a full-time job. I think that a big reason the family unit has deteriorated to such a degree in this country is because there is no caretaker at home making it a happy place to be. It's no better than being at school when both parents are too tired to care about anything so there is no conversation, no family dinner, no connection or relaxation.

So anyway, those are my quick thoughts during an afternoon smoke break. A little coffee, a little bud, and slopping goop from the fridge doesn't seem so bad after all.