Blog Fishing

http://dart-rope.livejournal.com/39181.html A son share something personal with a somewhat estranged father.

http://m2f2bangkok.blogspot.com/2006/11/healing-at-home-of-hot-flashes-and.html A transgender's struggles with surgery and estrangement from family.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=33079759&blogID=188219153 Religious teachings and family estrangement----what a sick world we live in sometimes.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=42411132&blogID=187393346 Letter to an estranged friend.

http://treecalledkatie.com/archives/2006/10/30/separation_family_and_estrangement Various issues in a family estranged.

Holidays

I love the holidays. Robert and I have enjoyed this Thanksgiving immensely. Unavoidably though, and especially on the group boards that I am on, the topic of estrangements and parents comes up.

The post that brought it up was "does anyone else find it more peaceful to be estranged from certain family members". Well, I sure as hell do. Course it gets you all mad again at those family members when a post hits so close to home. Like, why couldn't I have loving and supporting parents? I have seen for myself, and certaintly through my husband side, though while not perfect, his parents loved him and his sibling unconditionally. Of that there is no doubt. No matter what mine say, oh believe me, they do not. They love them. Period. And when their needs concide with saying " I love you", well then they pull it out of their hat then. There's just one little thing, you are about to be used for something. And if you need comfort, support, or for them to leave you alone while a cherished family member is dying or in the hospital; well you can just Fing forget about that happening. Then there are the endless phone calls all about them. Like when I asked dad to leave us alone during the house sale, and then it was all about how he wanted to talk about him and me. Can you just Fing respect my feelings until my mother-in-law is buried? What do you think? And then to show up at the funeral, with the C U Next Tuesday in tow, and walk right by me without any condolensces.

So you see where a simple post can lead me down the path of absolute anger to these shitholes. Why do they have to be my parents? Why did I not deserve better than that? God. If it weren't for certain physical characteristics and some mannerisms (thankfully my grandmothers primarily---on the Italian side) I would guess that some baby switching went on in the hospital. I don't have dad or mom's insane materialism. I don't cherish material items over living things (human or animal). Prestige and wealth does not impress me (talk about uncomfortable the Christmas dad & BA had "help" to impress Andy's in-laws LOL). The inner character of a person does impress me. However, you don't need prestige/power/money to be of good character. I would never had married, as my mother did, just so I would have help in childrearing. I would never have children, if I didn't know I would be a good parent. I would not make promises to someone to bribe for a favor. Oh, and by the way, the favor would have been done for that parent anyway because I am idiotically a nice person even to those who do not deserve it. Why feel the need to promise to do something for a with a person when you have no fing intention of doing it? If it was important to a family member, I would drop a lot of things to meet or talk to that person. That is, until it has been proven that it's a waste of my time and breathe. And in fact, not important to that person. I would not expect someone to use my business services. I would not use a family member who is starting a business to get their products at cost. I would not call a family member to give me pieces of their collection as a gift to someone else, and expect to just drop by on short notice as if they did not have a life so I could "shop" there. This same person who expects me to drop everything for them, and give in every time, and could not make time or effort to discuss their relationship (without the disclusion of the C U Next Tuesday). I would never allow another family member to talk badly about a gay family member, and not stand up for him/her because it was an "embarrassment" to me or my husband. In fact, I think love between two people is no big deal, there are bigger things in the world to worry about. Although I was taught not to be racist, one of my parents liberally uses the "N" word and "Spic" when talking about certain people. I had heard the "S" word myself, my husband let me know that the "N" word was liberally used when not in my pressence. And while I would never cut a family relationship off for that alone, that is incredibly disgusting to me. It makes me want to gag.

There is my holiday rant, well before Christmas begins. Best to get these things out of the way early. Happy Holidays.

LOL, Did someone write a book about my a##hole father?

Ten Signs You May Have Had Controlling Parents
When you were growing up, your parents...
1. Overscrutinized your eating, appearance, hobbies, or social life
2. Pressured you with perfectionistic expectations or unattainable standards
3. Forbade you from questioning or disagreeing with them
4. Discouraged you from expressing anger, fear or sadness around them
5. Violated your privacy (this is the one thing that dad didn't really do in this whole list)
6. Intimidated, manipulated or overpowered you
7. Discouraged your efforts to experiment and think for yourself
8. Gave you no say in household rules and responsibilities
9. Seemed unaware of the pain they caused you or others
10. Seemed unwilling to admit they were wrong (and the one time he admitted he might be a shithole for a father, it was still my job to comply with him to make it better)

The link is provided to the author of this book. I haven't read it, cause I think I know everything I ever want to know about controlling shithole parents. Narcistic would be yet another word I would use for them. Sociopaths.

And the storm passes

Funny to look at my August entry now that the panic has again passed. Robert and I make a good team, we are able to divide conquer and get on with it. I can still concentrate on my business, and Rob's gotten a better job that allows him to work from home, less hours, and make more money:) Go figure.

I see that my Mass relatives (dad and/or step in specific) are checking out my blog. I want to assure you this blog is not for you LOL. So feel free to go on your merry way. Really, trust me, I can and have taken care of myself since age 21 or so. This sudden renewed interest is really.....touching......not. Just another symptom of the OCD that happens when you can't have everything your way. I would rather not password protect this site, so if you could just go skipping off into the sunset, that would be great. I have moved on, feel free to do so yourself.

Any who.....more later after I get less annoyed, and perhaps the gremlins climb back under their rock.

Stress and icy Pit of Despair

I was hear at this place many times when I was in my early 20s. Recently, I have escaped the corporate American hollowly that is the American dream. Yeah, right, nightmare.

Then it was mergers, acquisitions, was I doing my job well enough to keep it? It was a horrible time, I remember a time in 1989 where I was in tears because my car had died. No, tears is not a good enough word, gut wrenching sobs inspired by true panic over the situation where my only source of transportation was dead. My income relied on that car. Obviously, this was all eventually overcome on our own resources,

Now I am growing a business, but have not been working on it as hard as I should certaintly not hard enough to start socking money away for the onset of disaster.

Not to mention that I don't have a real support system of close friends or family (except my husband). So there you are, fifty stories in the air and looking down. There is no net in sight. Okay that might be a slight exaggeration, there are savings and ways that I would rather not use to tap into other available sources of $$$$s to keep this roof over our head.

What happened? Robert's job is again in jeopardy. An internal audit has been done, and actually many are in jeopardy in Robert's company. Of course, this all happened as he was traveling to Colorado (this may have been luck, we will see tomorrow), and his father was in the hospital for hip surgery. The stress and worry over his father and this, have sent Robert home early in the middle of the project. It also allowed for others to report back to him the scope and scale of what was happening. That's the only good thing that has happened.

The problem is a few procedures that have been encouraged by the higher ups to increase sales, are now being used to potentially fire (and I think close the branch with as little severance pay as possible) many employees, especially the managers. This does not bode well to me.

Unfortunately, we have just taken on a mortgage that is .....Higher than normal. Granted it is paid into the future, and now I am trying to figure out just how to pay it more into the future. We have our tenants that aren't going anywhere soon, which is lucky. The dog training business has been doing well, though I should have been doing more marketing et during this time, instead of taking it easy and enjoying life. Ugh.

We do have our retirement savings, which we can cash in if we need to. It goes without saying, I would rather avoid that. Plus if we do that, there goes our safety net. Oh, yes, there is the loss of health insurance, that my husband at least needs. We will probably need to keep it just to cover his prescription costs anyway. So if Monday comes, and Robert comes home for awhile, instead of concentrating on growing the business, I am going to need to recalculate our future success rate with all of that.

Yeah, a bit stressed out. Not to mention my three dogs and one cat that I can't let anything happen to.

Corporate Slaves/My other Blog Service Down

Watching my husband charter through the waters of corporate America lately. Ugh. I have been reading the book The Cheating Culture, and it so nails what happens in corporate America. Although I have to disagree with the books "price gouging" definition, if your customers know what they are paying and they have picked you, then that is not gouging. As a service professional the overall price may be well worth it, and I don't think the books author took into consideration, salary of personell doing menial work (benefits, taxes, space, equipment rental, office supplies) et et. Whether that fee comes in an increased per hour fee, or a per item of menial faxing, mailing et, does not matter IMO. That is as long as it is disclosed on billing and is accurate.

Any way, the hubby is off traveling in CA right now, and recently got back from CAN. He is stuck on the flight they pick (what do they care if there are 8 transfers), hotels they pick, cars they may or may not rent (held hostage during off hours), where when and with whom you eat, and on and on. I managed to weasle out of all trips, except two that I wanted to go on. One to San Fransisco, and one to Boston. Both times, I managed to get agreement that my husband came along LOL. But I had learned a lot of hard lessons, before being able to mold things to my way. It's also very helpful if you are invaluable, and no one wants to learn never mind do the work you are doing.

I guess that is what Robert is trying to accomplish, since he volunteered for this training/presentation additional duties. I say they will just try to push him harder.....faster.....more. That's what I found in the corporate world, the more you put in, the more they expect from you. The less others put in, the more time off they get with the same pay and benefits as you. If anything, you may be expected to take a position higher than you at the same pay. I said no to that one in Butchers co. Wonder how all those crooks are doing these days. Yuck. S C Johnson so sucks as a corporation (that's who bought and dismantled Butcher's despite their promises not to). They were soooo suprised when I told them flat out, I wasn't moving to Wisconsin, and even assuming their corp was right here, there was no way I was working for them. Still makes me ill thinking of that corporation.