What Happened in 2010

So it’s been awhile… quite awhile, really. And a lot has happened since I was last on here regularly. It’s been such a rollercoaster, my life, and the ride seems to be coasting toward the station… at least this part of it. Will I go around again? Or will I be able to get off this crazy thing for a little bit?  Only time will tell.

What I’m about to write is hard for me. It paints me in what could be seen as a negative light. It makes me feel weak and vulnerable to put it all down, but I think it will be cleansing in a way. Those who know me in real life love me, and I feel it’s unconditional love.  My biggest fear concerning those who know me is…. Well, it seems stupid when I put it in writing, but it’s that they might see me as flawed, imperfect, weak. Pride is a hard thing to put aside, but in the interest of making peace with my past, I must squelch my pride and humble myself to tell this tale.

Mind you, I wouldn’t change a bit of this… really; I wouldn’t change any of the twists, turns, speed bumps or potholes on the road of my life. The road of my life has brought me to where I am, and where I am is where I am supposed to be… and it is good. Being human, I’m finding, means we are all weak in some ways, all imperfect, no matter how hard we try to be otherwise. For some of us, life just happens to put us in situations that prey upon our weakest points. The choices we make in those situations define us, and in my case the choices I have made have brought me to a new happier place in my life… but at the expense of my pride and in some ways, my self-image.

Heavy, right? Well, sit back and listen to my confessional... my “tell-all.” If I were a celebrity I’d be all over the cover of the tabloids.

I’ve been married since June of 1996. I married JeepMan at the tender age of 23, after a 2 ¾ year courtship… I used to joke that we would have never gotten married had I not told him when and where it was going to happen. In hindsight, that’s a rather bitter observation… but again, I wouldn’t change the course of my life.

I used to say that I knew it was true love with JM because we could have arguments and I never once worried about whether those disagreements changed how he felt about me. I actually liked that he challenged me. We were intellectually compatible, and he had a will to match my own. So many other boyfriends I had just steamrolled with my personality. We were the very definition of “opposites attract.” Me: dreamy, abstract, emotional… Him: realist, concrete, logical. I felt we balanced each other out, and I was attracted to those things in him that I didn’t see in myself.

I came from a very harmonious home; he came from an impossibly broken one. I knew so much of love, of family… he knew so little. I felt sure I could teach him to love and trust and bring him the happiness that comes with having those things. He seemed to want what I had to offer. It wasn’t a pity thing. It was a desire to nurture and give, which is the core of my personality.

And so we said our vows on that hot day in June 1996, and it seemed right. We hadn’t planned a honeymoon, as we were both still in college. We took an impromptu trip to Colorado as our best man had given us plane tickets as a wedding gift. We stayed in (essentially) a frat house for a few days and slept on a futon. It was fun, but we always said we should plan a “real” honeymoon someday. We never did.

The first 5 years passed fairly uneventfully. I worked as he went to school, then we moved and both worked. We had a lot of fun those years, and had our arguments too. I recall in particular when I burned my foot by spilling a pot of boiling spaghetti on the floor. Where a “normal” reaction to such an incident would be concern for my well-being, his first instinct was to be extremely angry with me. In retrospect this was a red flag – it was an ugly trait that reared its head time and again in our marriage, with me and eventually with our children. I still don’t know to this day where it comes from, but I suspect it is rooted in his need to have control in his life.

Over those first years the subject of having children came up several times. I wanted them, he wasn’t ready. There was always an excuse: we aren’t financially stable, we don’t know if we want to settle down in this city, we don’t have a house… etc. Finally there weren’t any viable excuses left and I was insistent that we start a family if we were ever going to have one. I went off the pill and left birth control up to him… a month later we were pregnant. It was a wonderful time, but once Plato was born it went downhill fast. Plato was a difficult baby: colicky, cranky, loud, only wanted Mommy… he would turn blue and pass out if he got too angry, his head was flat on one side from an underdeveloped neck muscle and he had to wear a helmet… not the best experience for a man who had only ever held one other baby in his entire life. I think JeepMan felt rejected by his son in some way, and he also had this odd concern of showing too much affection to him, since he was a boy. It was a hell of a year.

He made it quite clear at that point in time that he didn’t want any other children. I was dismissive because we had always planned on two, and I did not want to have an only child if I could help it. JM was an only child, but I had a sister and I couldn’t imagine growing up without a sibling. I used to joke that I had raised him already; I wasn’t going to raise another only child.

Only 2 years later did the seriousness of his position on more children sink in. It became a real point of contention between us: I told him that all children are different, that the chances of having another baby as difficult as Plato had been were extremely slim. By this time Plato had grown into a wonderfully easy toddler. The transformation was unbelievable. JM maintained, however, that even if the chance was one in a million, it wasn’t a chance he wanted to take. He felt he had been permanently scarred by the experience we’d had with Plato. I thought he was being a drama queen. He thought I was nuts. We were at a standoff. Then nature intervened. I switched brands of birth control pill and we got pregnant.

The pregnancy with LuLu was fraught with complications, which made the 9 months of anticipation all the more agonizing for JM.  In the end we had this beautiful, easy baby girl, with whom he bonded immediately. It was the experience he should have had with Plato. As she evolved into a headstrong toddler, however, it became difficult again. When things were crazy, he wouldn’t hesitate to remind me that he hadn’t wanted kids at all, and he especially hadn’t wanted a second child. He never said he would change things, but he blamed me when the going got tough.

And it only got tougher the older the kids got. His temper got shorter, the outbursts got more frequent, and the blaming became a daily thing. I walked on eggshells in my own home wondering what was going to happen to set him off this time. We would go for stretches without any serious issues, but there was always the niggling thought in the back of my mind that those times were inevitably limited, that there was ALWAYS going to be another explosion, another argument, another colossal but unintentional trespass on my part that would set him off. In time even the kids were targets of his anger. Those were the times that really eroded my soul. It became my primary goal to protect them from his ire. I slowly but surely gave up pieces of myself, of my identity, to keep the peace. My self-esteem had whittled down to nearly nothing; I took pride in being a good mother and a good career woman.

I had taken a job that required travel. JM and I had both decided it would be difficult on the family but that the financial payoff and the great resume fodder were worth any hardship. It turned out that a job that had promised only about 25% travel ended up requiring about 90% travel. I was gone some weeks Sunday – Friday. It was hard on us all, but especially hard on JM. He had gone from being inexperienced father to inexperienced single father. I am sure he felt that I was out gallivanting while I was away… in reality I was horribly homesick and missing my kids terribly. I was, however, relieved and grateful for the time that I got to spend out of his line of fire, for the room to breathe… and for that I felt guilty, and I worried that the kids were my stand-in scapegoats.

During the last year of my travel, I became increasingly lonely. The emotional abandonment that had been evolving for years at home had reached near-peak levels. Conversations on the phone were brief and cold. The days I was home it seemed I was just “passing though.” I made friends within the corporation with whom I became close, but they were in other parts of the country. I began spending more and more time online, and I discovered chatting.

I began chatting on Facebook, and because I had made “friends” that I only had for purposes of gaming, I met new people. Interesting people. I began to explore new FB apps and found some fun social games. Unfortunately some of these social games had a tendency to walk the line of being a bit questionable in content, but they seemed quite harmless and fun. Still, I didn’t want posts from those apps or people in those apps to be hitting my FB Wall, because JM would inevitably question my intelligence.

So I created a new persona. I felt there was no harm in it… I was passing the time on the road and, frankly, I was in a better mood most days and in a better mood at home since I had an outlet for my creative writing and emotions. A safe, anonymous outlet. I met some fantastic people. I learned that there were many, many people “out there” who were like me: in failing marriages, feeling emotionally abandoned by the one who was supposed to love, honor, and cherish them. There were those who were leading double-lives, unbeknownst to their significant other. There were people who longed for love, for a companion, and simply hadn’t found “the one.” There were the curious, too, putting out feelers to test the waters of what could possibly be available to them should they take a chance.

Of course there were Trolls and Pervs, but they were pretty readily identifiable and infrequent. Most of those types have fairly transparent ulterior motives. I considered myself savvy enough to see through them, and had formed a community of trusted “cyber-friends” who all looked out for each other. It seemed like a great set-up.

Then one day I met “V.” He had seen something I had written in one of the games I played. It was a game where you could post your thoughts, poems, whatever you felt like sharing with people. He was impressed with the way I wrote, he said, and thought I was beautiful to boot. How sweet, I thought, but I kinda just blew him off. I began to notice that whenever I would write things in the game he would usually leave a nice comment on what I’d written, and soon curiosity got the better of me. I visited his page, and found that he was quite eloquent and well-written. Still, he was 10 years older than me and black, so I just figured it wasn’t in the cards. What else could we possibly have in common?

As it turned out, a lot. Soon, he sent me a poem by e.e. cummings that happened to be one of my favorites. More followed by Pablo Neruda and Rumi. We tentatively began to converse, and found we had so very many things in common, and in areas that matter in a relationship. Particularly on the spiritual level… an area of my life in which I had been desert-dry throughout my marriage. V was the son of a preacher, for goodness’ sake. It was the beginning, I thought, of a promising friendship.

Then my world at home began to fall apart in earnest. I left my job under difficult circumstances (downsizing, anyone?), and I figured (wrongly) that a nurse of 14 years specialty experience would have no trouble getting hired. I ended up being without a job for 3 months. I was on unemployment, which was a supremely humbling experience. Recall that “pride in my job” was one of the 2 remaining shards of my self-esteem. It was now shattered. For the first time in our entire marriage, JM had leverage on me in the wage-earning department.

Rather than supporting me during this time, he chose to be demeaning and degrading, even insulting me and reducing me to tears in front of my friends and family. I knew that it had to be over between us. I had considered divorce, even threatened it, for several years… it was time to act. Obviously the “for worse,” and “for poorer” aspects of our wedding vows weren’t being upheld… and the “honor and cherish” had gone out the window long before. I can’t speak to the “love” vow; he has always maintained that he loved me; that he just didn’t know how to show it.

But how to go about it? Here was a man who was derisive to every decision I made that didn’t meet with his ideas of correctness or… Lord help me, sanity. If I said I wanted to leave him he would certainly counter that I must be out of my mind, that I wasn’t serious, hadn’t thought it through, or that I wasn’t capable of being on my own with 2 kids. How did I know this? I’d threatened before, multiple times, and he had always said as much. I truly couldn’t see a way out. I became desperate, and did my best to withdraw from him as much as I could.

And who was there to witness the ultimate demise of my crippled marriage? V of course. We had become cyber-close. I felt that I was already beginning some sort of “emotional affair” with him. I had guilt feelings about that, but they were coupled with the conviction that I needed someone to lean on in this time of hardship. Why not my family? I didn’t want to burden them. I didn’t want to put them in the middle of the sordidness of it all. Besides, the man was so very understanding, and had a gentleness and compassion that transcended the limits of cyberspace. We had actually spoken on the phone by this time, only once or twice, but his voice was like southern honey and the emotion that came through the phone was like balm to my chapped soul.

Then it happened. He had a coaching conference coming up in Iowa City. I checked it out, it was real. I had also checked him out… I wasn’t stupid. No criminal record, and as he was a teacher, he couldn’t very well teach with a besmirched record. He asked if he could meet me while he was here for the conference. I agonized over the decision. In the end, I decided to go with my heart, which was telling me that I could be missing out on something wonderful if I didn’t at least meet this man. The plan became to give him a ride from the airport to his hotel, then have lunch. After all, I didn’t have a job or anything.

The rest, as they say, is history. It was love at first sight, and I’d never believed in that before. He didn’t end up making it to the conference. We spent the next 3 days together, during the daytime, and I was home evenings. I was more convinced than ever that I had to leave JM… and not to run into the arms of V, but to be my own being again. It became crystal clear how much JM was stifling me as a person, or as my mother later told me, “He just never allowed you to be the woman you are capable of being.” So as V returned home to Virginia, I began to make more concrete plans. I had to have it all figured out before I started the ball rolling, because I knew that when I made my announcement, the angry scrutiny would begin, and I had to have an impenetrable defense.

As it turned out, fate intervened. About 2 weeks after I met V, JM found an e-card from him that I thought I had deleted. I was ever so careful about my electronic trail, since we shared a laptop. I honestly don’t know how he found it but he did, and though painful, it was what needed to happen. He confronted me, and I didn’t deny a thing. He felt broadsided, and claimed that he had no idea things had deteriorated so badly. I was offended that he hadn’t taken all my years of tears, letters full of feelings, pleas for counseling, and threats to leave and divorce him seriously. I asked what it was that I was supposed to do to make him wake up and change… to which he pleaded for another chance to make it right. Although he had had so very many second chances, I felt cornered into agreeing to make an effort. After all, this was 14 years of my life I was “throwing away.” But… how many years of my life might I be salvaging in pursuing my happiness?

I attended counseling. So did he. His counselor said I was behaving rashly. Mine said I clearly knew what I wanted and was quite emotionally detached already.  Of course I was… the wound that had festered for so many years was now numb. The cold and clinically obvious choice was to amputate. I was clear to JM that despite his pleas I would not give up communicating with V during this time; I needed someone to lean on. He took this as a clear conflict of interest (which it was) but I felt that by giving V up entirely I was being set adrift in a sea of sharks. Besides, I loved the man already, and couldn’t bear the thought of being out of touch with him. V was predictably patient and understanding of what I needed to do.

At first, JM was overly willing to shoulder all the blame for our failed relationship, even though I didn’t ask him to. I think he thought that if he showed accountability it might soften my heart. In truth it seemed pitiable, and I knew he would hate to be pitied. He sent flowers. He bought cards, jewelry. He set up a weekend getaway for us. I tried; I really did, to believe in the sincerity of these acts. And although I do believe they were sincere, I felt in my heart that they were band-aids. So many chances he had thrown away to be a better husband to me. So many scars I had from the years of verbal and emotional abuse. He used to argue vehemently against that terminology, and I would always challenge him to look up the definitions and consider his actions in that light. I doubt he ever did.

In the end, we are divorcing. I knew it would end this way… as I told him time and again, I can’t force myself to feel what isn’t there anymore. He has asked if I miss having him in the home. I told him to not ask questions he doesn’t want to hear the answers to. I don’t miss him in the home. It is now a place where I can feel safe and secure. Where I can be myself and not feel as if I am under a critical magnifying glass.

The kids are doing fairly well; they miss their dad and I am careful never to say a disparaging word about him. I don’t know if he has afforded me the same courtesy, but I am confident that my relationship with my children is strong and mere words won’t compromise it. I encourage their interaction with him, and offer an unbiased listening ear if they have feelings they need to discuss. Interestingly, Plato observed not long ago that although he misses his dad terribly sometimes, he is glad that the house isn’t full of arguing and crying all the time anymore. I shouldn’t be surprised… my Little Old Man is so very insightful. Lulu seems a bit more blithe about the whole thing, but she needs extra cuddles and gets them in spades.

As for V and I? We are madly in love. It’s been almost a year and a half now since we first “met.” I cancelled my Alter Ego FB account shortly after we began communicating, and haven’t looked back. He has moved closer to me, and hopefully this summer will be able to move to the same town. We’ve discussed marriage; he’s never been married (though he’s had long-term relationships and even helped raise children), and has always wanted to. I am certainly not opposed to the idea. I have never felt this way about anyone, not even close… not even with JM in the beginning, when marriage seemed like a grand idea. Time will tell. The divorce has to finalize first. He has met my family; I’ve met his friends and will hopefully meet his brother and sister-in-law soon. Sadly, his parents are both deceased. He says they would have adored me.

And that, good readers, is my story. 2010 was a year of upheaval and change. I have never been inherently averse to change; I tend to bend in the current and trust in God, or Fate or whatever powers that may be to steer me to where I belong. I look at change as an opportunity, not as a force to be resisted. I am happy, for now. I am content and feel that I am where I am supposed to be in my life at this time. I truly believe that I cannot make a good life for my children if I am unhappy, and I want to be able to model a loving relationship for them, not worry that they might think that fighting and tears are a normal part of a marriage relationship.

I can’t possibly know where my road will take me, but I am on it and I am driving again. It feels good, real good. Maybe 2011 is the year where I reclaim “me.”

Christmas With the In-Laws: A Synopsis

I abandoned, years ago, the hope that whomever I married would be bringing me into a family similar to my own: full of harmony, love, acceptance, goodwill, and contentment. Those dreams were laid aside, albeit sadly, when I knew that JeepMan was the man I would marry - IN SPITE OF his family.

Part of the reason I love him has to do with the fact that he has overcome such a crummy childhood and forged his own path to his destiny of choice rather than stumbling blindly down the well-trodden path that so many of his family before him have chosen. You can read more here about The Story of JeepMan. For now, I'll move past that to this very Christmas.

I am frequently reminded, not-so-nicely, about the stark differences between the family I was born into, and the family into which I married. But never so harshly as the annual debacle they call Christmas.

Invariably, it begins with the fact that no one seems to be able to remember where our little family spent the actual day of Christmas the year before (we do "every-other-year" for Christmas and Thanksgiving). This year, it was Christmas with the In Laws, even though we did Thanksgiving with them as well, since they came on vacation to Moab with us.

Did MY family complain? Did they act jealous? OF COURSE NOT. Their comment was, "Well, with Tiff's new job she doesn't get Christmas off this year anyway, so that should work out great! We'll have it next year!" God love 'em...

Christmas at the In Laws it was: and so the Rube Goldberg Machine was set in motion.

The task: get through Christmas without permanent harm, physical or emotional, being inflicted on any family member. Sounds simple, right?

Well, HA!! I say... HA!

It's NEVER simple when the InLaws are involved.

It started about a week before Christmas. A letter arrived at our house. Addressed to the children. FROM SANTA. Postmarked? you guessed it: the InLaws hometown (forehead slap). The kids didn't seem to notice, nor did they seem to notice that "Santa" writes an awful lot like Grandma. The content was fairly benign, and the kids seemed to forget about it quickly. Until MIL mentioned it out of the blue a couple days later and I was on damage-control duty once again.

I am making the most of these very few years of Santa-Faith, which are numbered, I know. Plato is 7 1/2 and has already expressed doubts. Lulu is darn sharp, and it won't be long after he abandons his belief that she will follow. So who knows? This (and every year to follow) could be IT; The Last Year. I'm determined not to make any false steps and give it all away.

MIL certainly has good intentions, but is severely lacking in the stealth department. The kids stayed with her for 3 days before Christmas as MIL had those days off and I was out of town. Rather then make the kids go to daycare we figured they'd have more fun at her house. Which they did...

When we arrived for Christmas, Lulu ran into my arms screaming, "Mama, Mama!! Santa Claus called us at Grandma's HOUSE! Plato wouldn't talk to him. He was scared. But I did! I told him I was a good girl this year and I want a horse for Christmas!!" Aside from the obvious issue with the horse, I was instantly pissed. I looked at MIL and she was grinning smugly. I raised my eyebrows, she didn't flinch. I looked at JeepMan and he was stunned as well.

But Lulu seemed happy, so I figured, whatever. Not worth ruining Christmas over something like that.

Later Lulu whispered breathily in my ear, "Mama, I don't think it was the REAL Santa who called us...it sounded like Grandpa! I think he was just teasing us." I told her she was probably right, but not to tell Grandpa she knew.

We've told the kids that Santa only brings presents and fills stockings at our house; that at each Grandparents' house the Grandparents fill them. MIL will not go along with this. She insists that Santa fills her stockings (she also calls them "socks" which raises my hackles, but I grit my teeth and stick with "stockings"). As the kids plowed into the stocking booty this year, out tumbled unopened Happy Meal toys and multiple little gifts with Hobby Lobby price tag stickers on them. {{**sigh**}}

You know, because the elves shop at Hobby Lobby and have a contract with McDonald's for their overflow toy inventory.

Hopefully the kids are listening to ME about Santa not actually coming to Grandma's...

Gift-opening proceeded without incident; in fact, I have to give props to MIL for not going completely overboard on the gifts this year. It helps that she bought us a Wii, so there wasn't much left over to create the usual piles of useless, cheezy, lame gifts. One exception: the gymongous gaming table she bought the kids.

It has pool! Air hockey! Foosball! Backgammon...! Ugh. It's big and cheap. And we have no where to set it up in our small house with no storage! And SHE KNOWS THAT.

I don't know why, but we get one of these types of gifts every year from her. They're in a pile in the basement, or at Goodwill, or in the landfill. What a waste.

On to dinner. This is where it got interesting.

JeepMan's cousin Shawn has been in and out of the family's lives for years. He's my age; read: "old enough to know what's right and wrong." He found out a few years ago that he has a son, who is now 9 years old. The poor kid lived with his mother, who is dumb as a rock, for years. Shawn is smart, and managed to get custody of his son. Great, right?

Well, being smart does not mean you make smart choices, or live as a productive member of society. Here's the picture. Shawn has been in and out of jail in several states over the years for drug possession. Finally, he moved back to his hometown, found out he has a son, found himself a stripper girlfriend (ahem, "cocktail waitress in a strip bar," says she), and proceeded to father two more children. They've never married because the welfare (or whatever) is better if she's a single mother.

In the meantime, they've managed to purchase motorcycles for the whole family, drive a Cadillac Escalade, breed pit-bulls, and move to a 3000 sq/ft home on an acreage, brand new. All on the salary of a cocktail waitress and on-again-off-again construction worker....

Doth my nose detect a rodent?

Well, the shit hit the fan a few months ago for them: Shawn was arrested for drug trafficking, the kids were taken away, his girlfriend was arrested but the charges were eventually dropped, everything they own except their home was taken away, the 2 kids of theirs were returned to the home, and his son was sent back to his mother.

"Dumb as a rock" trumps "drug-lord" any day, I guess.

So he's currently in jail for (presumably) a long time. Now if I were the girlfriend, would I show up to the Christmas festivities of my imprisoned-boyfriend's family? No way!! I'd be so freakin' embarrassed I would want to crawl in a hole and die. Not this woman. Nope! She trucked the kids right over and made herself at home. And guess who got to sit by her at dinner? Moi. I heard all about how he's innocent, how hard it is without him, how she has to get home by 4pm to catch his Christmas Day phone call, blah blah blah. Just shoot me, ok? With a tranquilizer dart would be nice.

Also gracing the Christmas table were: JeepMan's grandma, Unclue Mike, JeepMan's cousin LT, and LT's girlfriend.

JeepMan's Grandma is a bitch. I don't use that term lightly. She truly is mean-spirited, manipulative, and consummately negative. When she walks into a room, she just drains all the good energy right out of it. She never talks to anyone, just sits in a corner and glowers, occasionally rising with a dramatic showing of strain and pain, and shuffles out to the garage to smoke. What a wonderful role model for my children, huh? They can't stand her.

Unclue Mike [sic] (that's how he spells his name, really!) recently moved back to be near MIL. He's her brother and he basically exhausted the Workman's Comp system in several states before deciding to come back home and see what he could mooch off his family. He's the one that gave us the Stolen Coffee for our present. He's friendly enough, but is so full of shit his eyes must be brown. A few years ago he had hatched a plan about how he was going to come to the Midwest and find him a bunch of night-crawlers (for free) and drive them back to Colorado for a profit. He's a real thinker, that one! Also a smoker, and suspected former client of his son, Shawn, details above.

The cousin I mentioned is the one MIL decided to give a new life a couple of years ago. It was a rocky situation then, but has turned out as well as could be expected. The cousin and girlfriend are as close to "normal" as any of the family gets; mostly because of the influence of the girlfriend. She comes from a stable and caring home, from what I can gather. They're young, their relationship is volatile, and I suspect they are up to their eyebrows in credit card debt...but they can function socially for the most part. They were an hour late to dinner with no excuse, which severely irked MIL, and they later had some kind of major argument (with lots of obscenities) during which I hustled myself and the kids from the room.

After dinner, all the negative energy had me exhausted, so when Lulu went down for a nap, I fell asleep beside her. Ahhh, bliss. When I got up, half the clan was gone. We left not long after, to go see what Santa left at our house. MIL was all atwitter, telling us not to give any stuff to Goodwill (she hates that), and that she would be checking with the kids and would find out if we did...oooh, I'm a-scared.

We made it out exhausted but unscathed. The kids had a great Christmas at home, and at my folks' house. I guess if nothing else, the kids are getting to witness the dichotomy between families, and they can make their own choices with this valuable knowledge, right?

Next up: A belated crappy gift and the story of my MIL, aspiring sommelier.

Done For Another Whole Year

Every year our little family does the same thing for Christmas: we do Santa at our house, then travel for the day to either my folks' or my in-laws'. I have been married for 11 1/2 years, and we have been doing this routine for 14 1/2 years. We live smack in the middle of either of our families: mine is an hour west, his is an hour east.

14 1/2 years. That's a long time. Apparently it is not enough time, however, for my MIL to figure out that there Might Be some sort of pattern here. Every year (generally the day after Halloween) she calls JeepMan asking if we are going to be at her house for Thanksgiving. Every OTHER year, the answer is, "No, we will be at your place for Christmas; we did Thanksgiving at your house last year," spoken slowly to encourage understanding. And every year, without fail, there is silence on the other end of the phone, then a dramatic sigh, and then a, "Well, I don't know when we will be able to get everyone together, then..."

Let me illuminate what "everyone" means: MIL, FIL, JeepMan's G'ma R (who lives 6 blocks away from the in-laws), Uncle Mike (who scams disability off the government and has no actual job), and us - our family of four. That makes four besides us and two of those four are the host and hostess of the shindig. Now G'ma R is not a traveling motivational speaker or international bonds trader. Her occupation entails sitting in her apartment chain-smoking and wallowing in the despair that she has created for herself through 78 years of her own nastiness. Uncle Mike (who I like to call "UnClue Mike" as that is how he signs his name - oh yes, did I mention that he is an undiscovered candidate for Mensa?) only comes for the free meal, scavenged leftovers, and some doobie if his own drug-dealing son decides to show up....believe me, Unclue Mike will be there whenever.

What it boils down to is that JeepMan is an only child and that after nearly 15 years of us being together it still burns my MIL's biscuits to have to share him or her grandkids with anyone else ("anyone else" being my family).

This year it was Thanksgiving at my folks' and Christmas at the in-laws'. And so it was that yesterday we packed up the posse and headed out. Christmas is never great at their house...we expect that. But this one really took the cake.

We got there and there was the usual: MIL and FIL in the kitchen, cooking. Good smells. The incessant yapping of two ill-behaved Shih-tzu's. The tree so covered with ornaments and tinsel that I couldn't swear that there even IS a tree under all that stuff. No place to put our presents either since each of my kids has between 15 and 20 from the in-laws. The kitchen peninsula covered with appetizers - easily enough for 40 guests. Not sure where the other 32 were coming from but hey, that just means lots of free leftovers for Unclue Mike. The entire buffet table in the adjacent room is always dedicated ONLY to cookies and candy - interestingly it is always placed at a very convenient height and in a relatively secluded location. Perfect for carbo-crazed polysaccharide-plundering 3 and 6 year olds. Unclue Mike with his feet up in the sunroom watching football, snarfing free appetizers and soaking up the free heat.

When what to my wondering eyes did appear? A suprise Christmas guest, holding a beer.

Yes, Grandma R had decided to fly her other son from Phoenix to Iowa for Christmas. Yippy. Skippy.

This is Unclue Tim. He is referred to in a previous post: Quiet House/MIL Rant #2 as the father of LT. He is still a drug dealer, though obviously out of jail. Turns out his parole officer had to be petitioned to get him up here for the holidays (call me discriminatory, I take this as a bad sign).

He and Unclue Mike are still embroiled in a mostly passive family feud stemming from at least 20 years ago when allegedly someone sold someone else's trailer out from under someone and didn't give someone the money.

LT is doing as well as can be expected up here in Iowa. He hates his dad. I can't blame him when I hear about his sucky childhood.

MIL hates Unclue Tim because he is steadily sponging "her" inheritance money away through loans from Grandma R.

So here he shows up and all of a sudden a tolerably crappy Christmas just morphed into a Jerry Springer Christmas. No there were no fistfights - although the day might have been more entertaining for it. We got stuck at the loser table (which one you might ask? - the one with Unclue Tim and G'ma) listening to G'ma R regale us with, no, not "tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago." We got to hear how many of her friends have died or are dying, and how she fell off a chair onto her butt bone whilst trying to reach something heavy from a high shelf.

Why do old people do that? Remind me when I am old not to climb on anything higher than my floor. My grandpa was seventy-something years old and my Grandma came home one day to find him on the second-to-top rung of an extension ladder that was leaned up against a flagpole. On a hill. Well, the flag was wrapped around the pole and not displayed properly! What was any self-respecting WWII vetran expected to do? Mayhap 'tis honorable to die adjusting a flag...

While you're at it, remind me to not talk constantly about who died and how. But I digress.

LT got the honor of sitting across from his beloved father while G'ma R badgered him about how many times he was going to be able to come visit before his dad left in a week. The rest of us ate in silence. My kids didn't eat squat. Just bounced around uncontrollably having binged on the refined sugar extravaganza on the buffet table in the next room.

In the end, gifts were exchanged and my kids reaped a sickening amount of Crap-They-Will-Never-Miss-If-We-Can-Get-It-Straight-To-Goodwill. My MIL has been aforementioned as a compulsive shopper; Christmas is the ultimate showcase of her...ah, disability.

We had planned to do a White Elephant gift exchange, but as only 4 of the 8 people participating had gifts (me, JeepMan, MIL, FIL), and as we KNEW what we had brought and what my MIL probably wrapped up, we decided to skip it. So we are a $25 gift card to Buffalo Wild Wings and a $25 gift card to Menards richer, when we could have been a pair of earrings and a pair of pajama pants poorer.

After Unclue Mike scrounged all his leftovers and Unclue Tim slithered silently out the door to G'ma R's, we said our goodbyes. We forced the trunk of the Focus down on that great pile o' crap, and hit the road.

JeepMan headed straight to the fridge for a beer when we got home and flopped exhausted into his recliner. "Well, my white-trash Christmas is over for another year, thank God."

Note to self: Next year is Thanksgiving with the MIL, Christmas at my Folks'. Don't know when we are going to get "everyone" together for Christmas....but I am sure we'll figure it out.

Quiet House/MIL Rant #2

Wow. It's quiet.

The kids are at mom-in-law's house. She finally got rid of her houseguest, so we let them spend the weekend there.

I guess that needs some explaining.

As you are aware from my previous posts, MIL's ideas often don't jive with JeepMan's and my ideas. Last October, she dropped a bomb: she was bringing her nephew to live with her. Her nephew, JeepMan's cousin (I'll call him LT), fit any conventional description of a "troubled" person.

LT grew up in the southwest. His father (JeepMan's uncle) is a drug dealer, currently doing jail time. LT grew up in chaotic circumstances. His mother died of heart failure, waiting for a transplant, when LT was only 13. LT's father had sporadic employment and was evicted from more than one home. They sometimes lived in hotel rooms. LT had no guidance or supervision, did poorly in school, and never had an example of a responsible person to model himself after. MIL decided he needed "a better life." Generous, right? So what's the problem?

The problem is that LT was 20 1/2 years old when MIL decided to "give him a better life."

MIL said she was bringing him here to the midwest, letting him live with her for a month, then kicking him out of her house if he hadn't found a way to make it on his own. This scenario was fraught with potential pitfalls, as JeepMan and I saw it. LT didn't have any life-skills. He didsn't have any idea of what a responsible adult was expected to do. He was so under-educated, he couldn't even get a driver's license because he couldn't pass the exam! How was this young man supposed to come to a new state with no savings or driver's license, get a job, save some money, find a place to live, and become independent within 4-6 weeks?

Well he arrived last November. About that time, we told MIL that the kids would not be allowed to come to her house and spend the weekend while LT was living in the house. Formerly, the kids would go there once a month or every other month to spend a weekend. This was great - the kids enjoyed it very much and we liked having some couple time for ourselves, too. However, we don't know LT. We have never known him. He was an absolute stranger that JeepMan just happened to be related to. He was a 20-year-old kid with a sketchy past and no guidance. We simply couldn't have our kids staying in the same house with a young man we didn't know or trust.

When MIL found out our position, she blew up. She yelled and screamed and accused my husband of being suspicious, passing judgement, and being a jerk. She made threats of legal action to force us to let the kids come for weekends. JeepMan and I were stunned and angry at her actions, but we stood our ground. Our children have had no unsupervised visits with MIL since October. We simply cannot trust strangers around our children, especially young adult male strangers with unknown morals.

MIL has calmed down since then, but we have seen her underbelly, and are certain that we would never want our children to go to her in the event of our untimely deaths (God forbid). I would like to believe that her impassioned (but certainly misguided) response to our decision was motivated by her devotion to the kids. There has never been an apology, or even an acknowledgement of the fact that we were simply being responsible and protective parents.
In fact, neither she nor us have spoken of it since it happened; it sits there between us like the proverbial gorilla in the room.

LT has moved out - 6 months later. MIL found out after just a month or two that having LT living with her wasn't going to be the experience she had romanticized in her own mind. LT didn't want her controlling him and she is, to her core, a control freak. She felt that since he was living in HER house he needed to follow HER rules and do what SHE wanted him to do. It didn't take long before he was staying out "too late," drinking "too much," and doing "too many" things she didn't know about or condone. I think in the end he was pretty desperate to get away! He now has a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant, and a coworker/girlfriend who hasn't yet tired of chauffeuring him around. After a few months of blowing his paychecks on Playstation games and fancy cellphones-and-cellphone-accessories, he and his girlfriend scraped together enough money to get an apartment together. He has been told that he cannot return to MIL's place.

I hope the best for him. He seems like a nice enough guy, though I still wouldn't trust him with my kids.

So this weekend is the first that the kids have been away for 6 months. A small part of me feels a little queasy about this. The kids will definitely be interrogated (subtly) about the weekend when they get home; this is no different than before, though. The time to ourselves is really nice every once in a while, and I think kids should spend time with their grandparents sans parents. We have stayed nearby both sets of grandparents specifically to facilitate this kind of relationship between the generations.

JeepMan and I had a nice meal together last evening, then walked around our local ped-mall, enjoying the perfect cool evening and listening to a free outdoor jazz concert. We stayed up late, then slept in this morning. For lunch, we had panini sandwiches on the patio at a little Italian deli. We went shopping, and I bought some new plants; he bought some new bolts. I puttered in my flower beds while he puttered in the garage. He is still in the garage and I am blogging. Soon I am going to take a nice hot shower (uninterrupted by peeking children wondering if they can get in with me!), then we will head out for a good dinner and maybe even a movie that isn't animated...

Life is good.

But... I can't wait see Plato and Lulu tomorrow. I'll grab them and kiss their chubby little cheeks, hug them close and press my face into each of their hair - inhale their indiuidual scents: shampoo, sweat, sunscreen, and that special Plato or Lulu musk that goes up my nose and straight to my core, exhilirating the primal mother within me.

Yeah, that'll be great too.

JeepMan's OCD

I wrote on an earlier post that I would write sometime about JeepMan's OCD (for anyone who doesn't get it, that's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). It drives me absolutely crazy.

Does he really have OCD, you might ask? Well, clinically he might not qualify, but if you are logging the amount of time and energy he and the family have had to devote to his obsessions, I would give a vehement YES.

The strange thing is that his OCD seems to be direct-able by him to the things that he wants to obsess about. The Jeep, for instance. Or purchasing things that excite him (often Jeep-related). Or the lawn.

A recent example of his OCD: last weekend. I took the kids swimming last Friday evening. I did this not only to have some fun quality time with Plato and Lulu, but to get us out of the house for JeepMan's premeditated obsess-fest. He had told me that he was planning to do some maintenance on the trailer that we use to tow the Jeep, and to "get the truck ready to pull the trailer." Silly me, I thought when we bought the truck last month that it was ready to pull the Jeep...I mean, it has a hitch, four tires, and an engine! So I knew we would not see him Friday night anyway.

Well, his plans changed. He went out with his office for pizza and beer on Friday. Fine, no big deal....until Saturday. Saturday ended up being spent doing all the things that were supposed to be done Friday.

I can't even tell you what he did. There was a lot of banging from the garage. There was a mysterious grinding sound, some kind of loud whiny air-tool sound (right when the kids needed to be napping, of course), and I think I heard a few expletives from time to time. It wouldn't be so bad but this puts me on "kid duty" all day, and I can't get much done while keeping 2 kids from killing or mutilating themselves and/or each other all day.

The other rotten thing is that when he is doing these kinds of things he is in a foul mood until he is completely done. So when I went to take the kids outside later in the day and they got in his way, or wanted to talk to him, he was short and cranky with them. There is no use trying to reason with him when he is in the "OCD-Zone."

Anyhow, I thought the episode was over on Saturday. Was I wrong. Sunday started with the kids whining, wanting to do "something fun." What, I don't know, but JeepMan said we would all do something fun that day. Little did I know that "doing something fun" involved hooking up the trailer, driving the Jeep up onto it, and "going for a test drive" in the truck. OK, now this bores ME; you can imagine what fun it was for the kids. Granted, we did have a fun evening, but this little fiasco took up a good chunk of the day.

So there went our weekend, thanks to my husband's OCD. And it's not the first weekend that's been obsessed-away.

Other examples:

-When we did our landscaping, I can't believe we didn't end up divorced. Every damn landscape block we laid had to be leveled in 3 directions, checked, rechecked, and rechecked again. And we laid probably 500 landscape blocks. It nearly killed me.

-When JeepMan took out the Jeep/Trailer/Truck ensemble, he had to take pictures. Lots of pictures. From all angles. If you look through our photo CDs you will find hundreds of pictures of the Jeeps, close-ups of tires, pictures of parts and tools. Tell me, who is ever going to look through these?

-Our lawn is perfectly manicured, fertilized on a schedule, and trimmed to a precise height based on what time in the season it is.

Now, I love this man. I love that when he does something, he wants it done right. I guess I just wish I could direct his obsession toward the dishes, or our house, or finishing the basement.

M-I-L Rant #1

We were riding in the car last night after eating out (which we do too much). It was pretty quiet, then Plato dropped this bomb:

Plato: Mom? I've had a shot drink before.

I looked at JeepMan, who was driving. He frequently tunes out the kids when driving. He didn't offer any explanation.

What is a shot drink, Plato?

Plato: Well, you drink it from a little glass and you chug it.

We often have chugging contests at the dinner table to see who can finish their milk first...MILK. It's a fun way to encourage dairy intake.

Where did you have this shot drink?

Plato: At Grandma's.

I could feel the heat rising to my face. I forced my voice to stay calm. Of course I knew which Grandma. My mother would never think to give my kids shots of any kind. I looked at JeepMan: blank expression.

Are you listening to this?

JeepMan: Yeah, my mom had us all do shots for St. Patty's.

That's it, no elaboration. I could see that I would have to pry it out of him.

Shots of WHAT?

JeepMan: Well, Mom and I had Bailey's and the kids had chocolate milk.

Plato: Yeah, Mom, I CHUGGED it!

The Boss: ME TOO MOM!!

Somehow the fact that it was "only" chocolate milk didn't make it that much better. I have an issue with the fact that the kids are even being exposed to this kind of behavior. Now I know I was a relatively naive kid, but I truly didn't know what a shot was until I was about 18. I guess I believe in keeping my kids oblivious to things like this as long as possible. It's not like naughty words and sexual innuendo, which kids are just going to be exposed to on some level by their peers at a relatively young age whether you like it or not. Things like shots are things you can choose to deny or severely limit exposure to until they are quite a bit older.

Rational as that may sound, try explaining this concept to my mother-in-law. The fact that she was such a great mother to my husband (choke) doesn't help much; the fact that she could never comprehend that something she did was wrong renders it impossible.

Final example: her idea of funny is taking pictures of my children wearing beer caps and putting empty beer bottles up to their lips.

Call me crazy - I don't see the humor in it.

The Story of JeepMan

Looking back through my posts I get the impression that I am portraying JeepMan as a jerk. While it's true that he can be a jerk, I can also be a real...pain. Most of the time we get along fine. As I have already said, he is a really good dad. And I have to give him props - he does very well considering his background. It's amazing that he is not more of a jerk, or a deadbeat dad, or in jail.

JeepMan (I'll call him JM for this story) was born to a very young couple in a tumultuous relationship. JM's dad was a dope dealer who left (or was kicked out of the house) when JM was two. His dad was in and out of his life until JM was about 8, at which time he was put in jail for drug trafficking and for having false identity (he always had an illegal alias). He has been in and out of jail ever since.

JM has few good memories of his father. He says the only good thing he got from his dad was the ability to throw darts and play pool (both of which he does very well). JM remembers being taken on drug deals with his dad, and to this day associates the smell of cigarettes with the dope deals. He remembers going out "for fun," and driving along gravel roads looking for license plates in the ditch that his dad could put on his car so his own couldn't be tracked. His dad never paid child support. He tried to stay in touch with JM over the years, from jail, but JM never had a desire to reciprocate. Go figure.

JM's mom, on the other hand, lived a pretty wild life. JM had to switch elementary schools at least 10 times, sometimes going back to one he had attended before. This was because his mom frequently moved in with whatever boyfriend she had at the time. Then when they would break up, they would move out. JM never made many friends, and the ones he made he couldn't keep. JM was an obese child, which didn't help his social situation. JM was put into situations where he was exposed to his mom's, ah...adult activities... Suffice to say activities a child should not be exposed to. He witnessed fighting, occasionally his mother being hit. When he started high school, his grandparents bought a house for he and his mother to live in so he wouldn't have to be moved around. About this time, his mother was beaten so badly by a boyfriend that she was hospitalized. By this time he was so jaded that he walked into her hospital room and told her she got what she asked for, then walked out. She changed the locks on her house, then a week later gave the same guy the new key. JM moved in with his girlfriend.

He was with this girlfriend for several years. When he moved to college, he found out after a few months that she was cheating on him. She got pregnant by this other guy, and eventually married him. About this time we became friends. He went home for a summer and one of his mom's boyfriends convinced her that JM should be paying rent and buying his own food. He never went back after that. A few years later we started dating and eventually got married.

The saga still continues with his mother. Very long story short, she has gotten married to a good man with a very good income. She has embraced the "rich-bitch" lifestyle wholeheartedly, and seems to forget her former destitution and poor mothering. It is difficult for JM to be around her most of the time and their relationship has been strained (though she seems blissfully unaware of this). To top it all off, (and a whole other story) his grandmother is basically a psycho. Hope it doesn't run in the family.

It is amazing to me that JM has any idea of how to be a husband or parent. His best friend in high school was from a picture-perfect type of family and he spent a lot of time at their house. That is probably the best thing that ever happened to him in his youth. I have to give him credit for doing the best he knows how, but it has been difficult. When we have our problems, I always have to remind myself that I KNEW who I was marrying. I can't make up new expectations, change the rules.

So that is the short version of the story of JeepMan. I'll post this now and add to it if needed later.