8:36 a.m. - 2012-11-27
happy thanksgiving
I had a lousy thanksgiving, a wonderful weekend being sick and spoiled by my favorite girl, and so far a lousy monday trying to get a project done and keep from losing my temper with my I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-L-E 3-year-old.
My 3-year-old and my mother are a lot alike. Nothing makes them happy. NOTHING!! My 3-year-old has been howling since the moment he got out of bed about something -- too much cereal, the ladder doesn't work on his fire truck -- it is constant and I mostly ignore it, but it drives me nuts. (Don't tell me to try to figure out what he's howling about; he has to be howling about something -- been there, done that; I used to be a parent who believed children do everything for a reason but I don't anymore. He is doing this because he hates being 3; that is the long and short of it.)
My mother, unlike my 3-year-old -- well, I have figured out that if I don't want to deal with her, I don't have to!!! And that is exactly what I am going to do. I don't have any reason I have to go to her house when she tells me to and get held captive and bitched at for three days even though she doesn't like my company and doesn't need my help. I am not financially dependent on her in any way, and I learned a long time ago that she is not someone I can turn to for any type of emotional support or even a couple of nights of a roof over my head when my husband's screwing half his employees and I'm a stay-at-home mom with a newborn and a 2-year-old, and she has three extra bedrooms.
Nope. Nor, thankfully, does she need me. She is in good health, just finished nursing school, and has a good job plus income from her divorce from my dad. She has friends, and three other children (my brothers; she loves boys) who live closer and who get along with her much better because she treats them much better. She had friends and hobbies and all the tie she wants with her grandchildren (of course, she only wants time with one, my daughter, but I understand that and deliver Only One whenever she wants her).
In other words, finally, my mom doesn't need me at all and I have decided to take full advantage of that. I'm going to inflict her on myself the absolute minimum possible. I'm not sure that she won't try to give me a guilt trip but I am simply going to explain to her that spending time with her is not pleasant for me and I am going to spend my holidays in a way that is.
She knows damn well what I'm talking about because I've been saying it for years, and trying SO hard to do everything right, which never works.
This is not a punishment; it's just that life is short, including mine, and I think I should be able to spend my holidays with people who are nice to me.
Unfortunately my brothers, my uncle and my cousins -- all of whom I really like -- all go to my mom's -- but I think my plan will be to spend very little time at her house, like they do, if I go at all. Why should I be obligated to spend three days cooking and cleaning with her (which she doesn't actually let me do, just obligates me to be there and get criticized while she does everything) -- just because I'm a girl?
In the words of my teenage, 20-something, and everlasting, self,
FUCK THAT!!
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