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theferrett, right? No? Shame.
Did you know he has an equally bright, talented wife,zoethe? Her word count is just as fabulous - today's entry case in point:
The guy who moans to you that he doesn't understand why he can't get a date doesn't really want to hear that he needs a personality makeover and a lot more attention to hygiene; he just wants you to hook him up with someone who will accept him as he is. The woman who can't believe her mother/daughter/sister/father is so stupid about [fill-in-the-blank] and is ruining the holidays by being so obstinate does not want you to point out the ways in which she may be contributing to the problem, or suggest that the olive branch is hers to extend; she wants you to take her side, and if you have any clout with the other party to pressure that person into seeing things her way.
I can't count how many times I've been dropped like a hot rock when I truly said what I saw was at the root of some of the problems brought to me. And I had the gall to insist that people shut up and get on with it; I'd heard all the whining I could handle and remain sane. And they were miserable. Come on. This isn't working. Do something.
It's really, really tough to confront some very basic human failings and nobody likes does it. (She makes a case towards the tobacco and fast food industries. Dead in the black.) Think many people would easily admit they have them?
It was oh, back in the days of yore. Before I married Cliff and wasn't even out of college twenty-something, I was invited to accompany Cliff to a wedding he was asked to be an usher for. I wasn't the only one in Cliff's circle of friends invited in, I remember sitting next to Brian (and I really ought to go try and find him again) and he's never forgiven me for busting him up during the service. Mike married Terri in a very conservative, Southern Baptist ceremony that I kibbitzed about throughout. I haven't changed much - and poor Brian. He tried to be a good boy and not laugh at the preacher.
Cliff, Mike, Terri, Andre and I over the time following continued to do things together after we all graduated, got married and settled into routines (Andre would later move to Minneapolis, marry and start a family, but that was years later) - we used to call ourselves the Diehards because did camping trip after cabin run after camping trip throughout the year. The five of us did everything together. And we had a blast. Seriously.
Then Terri got pregnant. Unexpectedly, completely unprepared. Both of them were still carrying huge college loan debts, and really? Resented having the kid. But they were 'good' about it, and did what they could to make the best of it. They bought a house. Well, two houses. Well, fixers. Well -
They were two very old, (think teens or twenties) California beach bungalow houses. These are the houses they used to build here without any insulation or heating amenities because they were designed as vacation houses - only to be used in the summer as vacation homes. In the thirties, they got bought up as sharecropper shacks and were used year round. They didn't hold up well, to be honest.
Cliff and his family were very adept carpenters. Cliff took one look at the houses and about fainted. Maybe part of one of them was habitable. And that one? The wiring in the walls was extension cords patched together with electrical tape in places. Holes in the ceiling, holes in the floor. The backyards were very fine silty dust, and it coated everything in the house.
Mike was the kind of housekeeper who threw everything on the floor when he was done with it. Fast food wrappers, clothes, books, you name it. Somebody else cleaned it all up when you couldn't get through the room anymore. I made Terri her maternity clothes - Mike wouldn't allow her to buy any. I took the material she had put away for curtains and made her clothes out of it. You can imagine.
I threw her a baby shower at Sis' house (we lived in Montrose at this point, the houses were in Chino) - I think where she worked threw her a shower as well. The baby was darling and shortly after coming home, got eye infection after eye infection after the dogs were allowed to "wash" the kid whenever they felt the need. Oh, the dogs. I forgot the animals. Two dogs in the yard/house - big ones, and the female was so aggressive she wasn't allowed in the house when anyone else was over because she bit anyone who did, and a sheppard mix so incapacitated by hip dysplasia he couldn't do much more than sit and stand (less than three years old, okay?) - and the feral cats came and had kittens everyone in the parts of the house where people weren't. The kittens, they kept and there were more every cycle. They couldn't afford to alter them, y'understand.
Then the roof started leaking on Mike's side of the bed. The diehards got together and volunteered to help Mike replace the roof on the front house.
Financing was got, the materials bought and we began.
Yes, folks. I now know how to do roofing. I am also terrified of heights where I can fall. We took that roof down to the bare studs and discovered the house had caught fire (right over the kitchen, wouldn't you know) at least once before. So we replaced studs, too. Then laid plywood, then tarpaper and then began to shingle.
I spent the first two weekends, both days each, 16 hours each day, on that roof. When the shingles started to go on, I asked Terri how it looked.
She hated the color and said it looked pukey.
About this time, Mike piped up and wanted blueberry muffins. About 10:30 AM, and the baby hadn't even gotten out of his PJs yet, let alone the condition of the rest of the house. Mike was also the only one sitting on the ground, 'supervising.' Terri had expressed frustration over the condition of the housekeeping (did I mention she'd also had a melanoma diagnosis that resulted in loosing a big chunk out of one leg? Yeah - I also looked after her during that convalescence too, Mike had to go do something, can't remember what it was now - ) and we'd all come over and cleaned out, Sis included (shoot, after that baby shower, even she couldn't leave it be. And when Sis and I cleaned the house? We found the remains of dead kittens between the cushions of one of the couches. Just the fur and bones were left. Nobody had noticed.)
Terri was also feeding the baby when he wanted blueberry muffins. She just looked at him like he'd lost his mind.
That's when he confessed that some times, all he wanted to do was rip the baby's head off and put it down the garbage disposal.
I smacked a few nails a bit harder and kept my mouth shut.
Going home that night, I confessed to Cliff I wasn't sure how much longer I was going to be able to maintain. You can't tell them what to do. What was I to do? If I said anything, it was going to sound just like that - trust me.
These were people very dear to me, differences in lifestyle notwithstanding.
And I decided the best thing to do was to distance myself from the situation - "I don't know what to do here. I can keep trying to be friends with Mike, but I can't be honest anymore - and someday, something is going to slip. I'm going to say something, or do something and he's going to go off and it's going to hit everyone we know. People are going to line up on either side of the war I started -
"I don't think I can do this anymore. It'll end badly. Or - it can just end while we're still speaking to each other. I think I'm going to just stay away and let this die off a natural death."
Cliff only nodded. He spent a total of 9 weekends on that roof. I stayed home the balance. This was Cliff, blind in one eye, without all of his peripheral vision in the other eye gone, even more scared of heights than I was, on that roof for six more weekends. You think I'm bad.
And found other places to be when a camping trip came up. Cliff never completely lost touch with Mike, but I think he'd reached his limit too.
Irony? The condo in Ontario that we bought a year or so later? Anyone who's been there? South three blocks and west two. Up half a block. That's where the houses were.
We were there until Cliff passed away in 1998 - and I was there 15 years.
Not once did we call them over. Not when I was desperate for help with Cliff at home, and had other people living with me who frankly, used me rather badly.
When you make a decision like that, you remake it every time you think about it. Every time you think about them. It's a horrible thing to do, you hate doing it and only feel some relief when you remember how much worse it could be. You only do it when you are dead certain you can't do anything but hurt someone you care about.
Andre, bless him, stayed friends throughout - but that's Andre. The last time Cliff was hospitalized, somehow, he got word to Mike and Terri and they came and spent hours visiting with him one day.
I think I had dinner with them before they went home again.
They'd had another kid.
Terri had contracted some kind of chronic liver disease and wasn't expected to live without a transplant at some point in the near future.
She'd also completed her Masters. Working full time.
Mike? Electrical Electronic Engineering degree, got caught in the aerospace layoffs in the nineties and never returned and had been unemployed most of the time. He'd landed a job as a user support tech for a bankruptcy court in some municipality nearby - pulling cable as necessary and sitting around waiting for something to need fixing.
They'd never done anything more on the houses. I think CPS had been in at some point (no, I didn't call), but let's face it. You can't complain about housekeeping and that was the end of it. From what I understand, Mike's home of origin was ten times worse and he was one of five children. He saw nothing wrong with it.
And we were still on speaking terms. Personal victory.
Because even then, I was very, very careful what I said.
We all do it at times. There are times when you just want to vent about a situation that you know you got into for all the wrong reasons. And when people offer answers instead of solutions, it's hard to look at the work involved without despairing. But it is necessary to live a sane, rational life.
When you can't come to the table to discuss answers because you're afraid of the fallout - and you suspect you're the only one with the issue? It's on you to deal with it. Sniping and snarking about what bugs you about the other person? Please. You either address it with them (hope you can) or walk away. With your mouth shut.
And no - never, not ever do you decide personal issues by committee. Trust me on this one - it's ugly. And I've never know it to improve a single thing.
I am a 24K gold, through and through, steamroller. I know it; I take full responsibility when I screw up because of it. Velvet cushions and all. Be careful when you attribute motivations to it, that's all I ask. I don't work very hard out of anger or disgust. I can't work under those conditions at all, case in point.
*sigh*
It's been a year since my older brother communicated with me - he was deeply disturbed at how I had discussed his children's shortcomings to him and had fired off some very unhappy email when he got home after Mom's surgery last year. I responded as kindly as I could manage, and asked him to come talk to me about what bothered him.
..
Nothing.
I'm tempted to send him an olive branch and a note. "Dude, it's been a year. You going to come tell me what's bugging you or what?"
Am I going to praise his kids to the high heavens if he does? That's no answer. I'm hoping I'd have enough moxie to convince him my beef is with them; total strangers that they are, not with him. Would I lie to him and make him happy? I can't. Someday, I'd trip up and the truth will out. Solutions, not answers.
Doomed, I tell you.
I spend not so much time with Sis for much the same reason. I don't trust her not to take a chunk out of me at odd moments. Or - after being my very best buddy, dropping me like a hot rock and refusing to say anything to me for months. Not taking calls. Not returning calls. And when getting her on the phone, it's "what do YOU want now?" *meep* Nothing. Going away now. Sheesh. So not my friend. Don't go over to the house unless invited - specificallly. Don't call unless you have no other option (and consider calling BIL instead) - and really, really rethink it a few times.
Dealing with people with solutions, unable to deal with the answer. Why? Because when it's family, you have to. And hope things improve. That's the suck part - when you want things to work, you hang in there hoping forever.
Well. Here's hoping. Have some Spackle. On the house. Christmas is this weekend. *winks*
theferrett, right? No? Shame.Did you know he has an equally bright, talented wife,
zoethe? Her word count is just as fabulous - today's entry case in point:The guy who moans to you that he doesn't understand why he can't get a date doesn't really want to hear that he needs a personality makeover and a lot more attention to hygiene; he just wants you to hook him up with someone who will accept him as he is. The woman who can't believe her mother/daughter/sister/father is so stupid about [fill-in-the-blank] and is ruining the holidays by being so obstinate does not want you to point out the ways in which she may be contributing to the problem, or suggest that the olive branch is hers to extend; she wants you to take her side, and if you have any clout with the other party to pressure that person into seeing things her way.
I can't count how many times I've been dropped like a hot rock when I truly said what I saw was at the root of some of the problems brought to me. And I had the gall to insist that people shut up and get on with it; I'd heard all the whining I could handle and remain sane. And they were miserable. Come on. This isn't working. Do something.
It's really, really tough to confront some very basic human failings and nobody likes does it. (She makes a case towards the tobacco and fast food industries. Dead in the black.) Think many people would easily admit they have them?
It was oh, back in the days of yore. Before I married Cliff and wasn't even out of college twenty-something, I was invited to accompany Cliff to a wedding he was asked to be an usher for. I wasn't the only one in Cliff's circle of friends invited in, I remember sitting next to Brian (and I really ought to go try and find him again) and he's never forgiven me for busting him up during the service. Mike married Terri in a very conservative, Southern Baptist ceremony that I kibbitzed about throughout. I haven't changed much - and poor Brian. He tried to be a good boy and not laugh at the preacher.
Cliff, Mike, Terri, Andre and I over the time following continued to do things together after we all graduated, got married and settled into routines (Andre would later move to Minneapolis, marry and start a family, but that was years later) - we used to call ourselves the Diehards because did camping trip after cabin run after camping trip throughout the year. The five of us did everything together. And we had a blast. Seriously.
Then Terri got pregnant. Unexpectedly, completely unprepared. Both of them were still carrying huge college loan debts, and really? Resented having the kid. But they were 'good' about it, and did what they could to make the best of it. They bought a house. Well, two houses. Well, fixers. Well -
They were two very old, (think teens or twenties) California beach bungalow houses. These are the houses they used to build here without any insulation or heating amenities because they were designed as vacation houses - only to be used in the summer as vacation homes. In the thirties, they got bought up as sharecropper shacks and were used year round. They didn't hold up well, to be honest.
Cliff and his family were very adept carpenters. Cliff took one look at the houses and about fainted. Maybe part of one of them was habitable. And that one? The wiring in the walls was extension cords patched together with electrical tape in places. Holes in the ceiling, holes in the floor. The backyards were very fine silty dust, and it coated everything in the house.
Mike was the kind of housekeeper who threw everything on the floor when he was done with it. Fast food wrappers, clothes, books, you name it. Somebody else cleaned it all up when you couldn't get through the room anymore. I made Terri her maternity clothes - Mike wouldn't allow her to buy any. I took the material she had put away for curtains and made her clothes out of it. You can imagine.
I threw her a baby shower at Sis' house (we lived in Montrose at this point, the houses were in Chino) - I think where she worked threw her a shower as well. The baby was darling and shortly after coming home, got eye infection after eye infection after the dogs were allowed to "wash" the kid whenever they felt the need. Oh, the dogs. I forgot the animals. Two dogs in the yard/house - big ones, and the female was so aggressive she wasn't allowed in the house when anyone else was over because she bit anyone who did, and a sheppard mix so incapacitated by hip dysplasia he couldn't do much more than sit and stand (less than three years old, okay?) - and the feral cats came and had kittens everyone in the parts of the house where people weren't. The kittens, they kept and there were more every cycle. They couldn't afford to alter them, y'understand.
Then the roof started leaking on Mike's side of the bed. The diehards got together and volunteered to help Mike replace the roof on the front house.
Financing was got, the materials bought and we began.
Yes, folks. I now know how to do roofing. I am also terrified of heights where I can fall. We took that roof down to the bare studs and discovered the house had caught fire (right over the kitchen, wouldn't you know) at least once before. So we replaced studs, too. Then laid plywood, then tarpaper and then began to shingle.
I spent the first two weekends, both days each, 16 hours each day, on that roof. When the shingles started to go on, I asked Terri how it looked.
She hated the color and said it looked pukey.
About this time, Mike piped up and wanted blueberry muffins. About 10:30 AM, and the baby hadn't even gotten out of his PJs yet, let alone the condition of the rest of the house. Mike was also the only one sitting on the ground, 'supervising.' Terri had expressed frustration over the condition of the housekeeping (did I mention she'd also had a melanoma diagnosis that resulted in loosing a big chunk out of one leg? Yeah - I also looked after her during that convalescence too, Mike had to go do something, can't remember what it was now - ) and we'd all come over and cleaned out, Sis included (shoot, after that baby shower, even she couldn't leave it be. And when Sis and I cleaned the house? We found the remains of dead kittens between the cushions of one of the couches. Just the fur and bones were left. Nobody had noticed.)
Terri was also feeding the baby when he wanted blueberry muffins. She just looked at him like he'd lost his mind.
That's when he confessed that some times, all he wanted to do was rip the baby's head off and put it down the garbage disposal.
I smacked a few nails a bit harder and kept my mouth shut.
Going home that night, I confessed to Cliff I wasn't sure how much longer I was going to be able to maintain. You can't tell them what to do. What was I to do? If I said anything, it was going to sound just like that - trust me.
These were people very dear to me, differences in lifestyle notwithstanding.
And I decided the best thing to do was to distance myself from the situation - "I don't know what to do here. I can keep trying to be friends with Mike, but I can't be honest anymore - and someday, something is going to slip. I'm going to say something, or do something and he's going to go off and it's going to hit everyone we know. People are going to line up on either side of the war I started -
"I don't think I can do this anymore. It'll end badly. Or - it can just end while we're still speaking to each other. I think I'm going to just stay away and let this die off a natural death."
Cliff only nodded. He spent a total of 9 weekends on that roof. I stayed home the balance. This was Cliff, blind in one eye, without all of his peripheral vision in the other eye gone, even more scared of heights than I was, on that roof for six more weekends. You think I'm bad.
And found other places to be when a camping trip came up. Cliff never completely lost touch with Mike, but I think he'd reached his limit too.
Irony? The condo in Ontario that we bought a year or so later? Anyone who's been there? South three blocks and west two. Up half a block. That's where the houses were.
We were there until Cliff passed away in 1998 - and I was there 15 years.
Not once did we call them over. Not when I was desperate for help with Cliff at home, and had other people living with me who frankly, used me rather badly.
When you make a decision like that, you remake it every time you think about it. Every time you think about them. It's a horrible thing to do, you hate doing it and only feel some relief when you remember how much worse it could be. You only do it when you are dead certain you can't do anything but hurt someone you care about.
Andre, bless him, stayed friends throughout - but that's Andre. The last time Cliff was hospitalized, somehow, he got word to Mike and Terri and they came and spent hours visiting with him one day.
I think I had dinner with them before they went home again.
They'd had another kid.
Terri had contracted some kind of chronic liver disease and wasn't expected to live without a transplant at some point in the near future.
She'd also completed her Masters. Working full time.
Mike? Electrical Electronic Engineering degree, got caught in the aerospace layoffs in the nineties and never returned and had been unemployed most of the time. He'd landed a job as a user support tech for a bankruptcy court in some municipality nearby - pulling cable as necessary and sitting around waiting for something to need fixing.
They'd never done anything more on the houses. I think CPS had been in at some point (no, I didn't call), but let's face it. You can't complain about housekeeping and that was the end of it. From what I understand, Mike's home of origin was ten times worse and he was one of five children. He saw nothing wrong with it.
And we were still on speaking terms. Personal victory.
Because even then, I was very, very careful what I said.
We all do it at times. There are times when you just want to vent about a situation that you know you got into for all the wrong reasons. And when people offer answers instead of solutions, it's hard to look at the work involved without despairing. But it is necessary to live a sane, rational life.
When you can't come to the table to discuss answers because you're afraid of the fallout - and you suspect you're the only one with the issue? It's on you to deal with it. Sniping and snarking about what bugs you about the other person? Please. You either address it with them (hope you can) or walk away. With your mouth shut.
And no - never, not ever do you decide personal issues by committee. Trust me on this one - it's ugly. And I've never know it to improve a single thing.
I am a 24K gold, through and through, steamroller. I know it; I take full responsibility when I screw up because of it. Velvet cushions and all. Be careful when you attribute motivations to it, that's all I ask. I don't work very hard out of anger or disgust. I can't work under those conditions at all, case in point.
*sigh*
It's been a year since my older brother communicated with me - he was deeply disturbed at how I had discussed his children's shortcomings to him and had fired off some very unhappy email when he got home after Mom's surgery last year. I responded as kindly as I could manage, and asked him to come talk to me about what bothered him.
..
Nothing.
I'm tempted to send him an olive branch and a note. "Dude, it's been a year. You going to come tell me what's bugging you or what?"
Am I going to praise his kids to the high heavens if he does? That's no answer. I'm hoping I'd have enough moxie to convince him my beef is with them; total strangers that they are, not with him. Would I lie to him and make him happy? I can't. Someday, I'd trip up and the truth will out. Solutions, not answers.
Doomed, I tell you.
I spend not so much time with Sis for much the same reason. I don't trust her not to take a chunk out of me at odd moments. Or - after being my very best buddy, dropping me like a hot rock and refusing to say anything to me for months. Not taking calls. Not returning calls. And when getting her on the phone, it's "what do YOU want now?" *meep* Nothing. Going away now. Sheesh. So not my friend. Don't go over to the house unless invited - specificallly. Don't call unless you have no other option (and consider calling BIL instead) - and really, really rethink it a few times.
Dealing with people with solutions, unable to deal with the answer. Why? Because when it's family, you have to. And hope things improve. That's the suck part - when you want things to work, you hang in there hoping forever.
Well. Here's hoping. Have some Spackle. On the house. Christmas is this weekend. *winks*
