Frayed Knot

Near the end of last summer, the Boy was really testing my patience. We'd have conversations like this:

Me: Boy? You said you would take out the trash. When are you going to take it out?

Boy: Why are you fighting with me? I've been trying really hard to get along with you today!

Plus I'd been angry with him about a few incidents in Europe. They weren't worth discussing after the fact, but it did change some things. Suffice it to say, he won't be going on any more vacations with us. I look forward to vacations too much, and they are too expensive to waste time being angry.

So I knew that there were problems, but it just seemed like a normal part of his growing up. But somewhere along the way I came to realize that he really has a problem with ME. Not BOTH of his parents, but me in particular.

So being a terrible curious snoop, I found something he had written about me. I found out that he's been telling his friends that altho he loves me, he doesn't really LIKE me as a person! And this particular rant went on to describe a fight that happened in Paris, and how it illustrates all that he hates about my personality.

Well, of course I was upset and my feelings were hurt. I hate the unfairness of it all - that his father could fight with him about basketball his last 2 years of high school, and he ends up angry with ME. And to think I tried to shield him from his father's pressure, which seems terribly disrespectful to my husband now in retrospect. Yet another thing he's made me regret doing for him.

But I tried to look at it all rationally. I've tried to tell him many times that altho I will try to respect his wish for information when he asks me "why?", I won't always be able to do so. Sometimes I'm under stress, in a hurry,
etc. Sometimes I only have a vague idea in my head of what I'm trying to make happen, so I don't even have a plan that I;ve verbalized to myself. But I always have a reason, and I wish he would just trust me.

But he seems to have decided in his head that I just make things up to mess with him, and just make decisions willy nilly because I'm mad and drunk with power!

Plus there's this whole thing about once you tell someone WHY you want to do something a certain way, that opens the door for them to decide for themselves whether or not they think your reason is worthy. Sometimes you don't want to open that door, you would just like things to go the way you are trying to make them.

By the way, this was all about sandwiches that I had made for everyone, and he wanted to eat early. I wanted to wait until we got to Notre Dame, and he asked me why. I was already feeling unappreciated for making these stupid sandwiches that people took for granted, so I just told him it was because I had made them. I thought I had the right to make that call because I had made the stupid sandwiches! I thought even in some kind of playground rules that making the sandwich should give me the decision-making power over them. So maybe I didn't articulate how nice it would be to sit down and eat them as a family, but I don't think he would have agreed that it was a good reason anyway.

Anyway, I know I'm not perfect. For instance, I'm an incurable snoop. I have a temper, but I don't beat my children (like I was) or verbally abuse them (like I was.) But here I am, thinking I have a fine life and how much I've overcome the bad temperment I grew up with, blah, blah, blah, and life slapped me in the face and said, "Your life is not what you think it is!"

One of my favorite movies is Another Woman by Woody Allen, where a woman finds out that her life is nothing that she thought it was. It was such a good movie, but it sucks when that is YOUR life, and you're completely surprised to find out it's not what you thought it was!

So anyway, I'm glad I got this out of my system before the holidays, because I knew I had to forgive him before Thanksgiving. I decided that he's still just a kid, looking at things from his kidlike point of view. I realized that I'm STILL very hard on my parents, and feel fully aware of their flaws even today. And all of our feelings are normal I guess.

I realized that a lot of the things I say discipline wise may seem funny to me, but not everyone thinks they're funny or no big deal. It's strange to me that as much as my kids seem to ignore me, on the other hand some of the things I say seem to loom so large for them, and have way more importance to them than I thought.

I remember once when I was little I told my mother I hated her, and she looked SO hurt! I remember thinking that she shouldn't take it so seriously, I was just a kid after all. So I try to remember that and rise above it to be an adult.

So anyway, I'm glad I was able to get over it so that I could be nice to him on Thanksgiving break. And for this kid anyway, my snooping days are over. I definitely got what I deserved!

Fall

The rest of our Fall has been very busy. After our trip to Indiana, I took Part 1 of a 3-part tax test that is pretty difficult. The whole time I was taking the test I was also praying to God to help me and cursing my bad luck that got me such difficult questions. But, I passed! I do tend to be good at taking tests, but still it was an accomplishment. I got to enjoy it for about 2 days before I had to start working on Part 2.

I'm supposed to be studying for that now, which explains why I am writing a blog post instead. Argh! I hate it!

Then we took a long weekend to visit some friends in Florida. Actually, one of my best friends has a senior attending Stetson Univ, and we went to see her play Vollyball before she finished school. We also have friends who have a condo in St. Augustine, and their son just entered school at Flagler. They were still in town, so we got to visit with them and eat some GREAT food, as well as see two games in DeLand. They weren't having a very good season :-(

I liked that the Charlotte airport had rocking chairs in it. I liked the outside of the Women's room in the Jacksonville airport. I especially enjoyed the BBQ we ate at the Charlotte airport and O'Steens (in St. Augustine), a place that takes no reservations or credit/debit cards. How good can shrimp be? Go there to find out! We really like it in St. Augustine, and it's really affordable housing-wise. I'd love to be able to buy a vacation home there.

That was Halloween weekend, so we left the Girl home to play in her soccer game and go out for Halloween with her friends.

I know I did some brave talking at the end of last season, about how if The Girl's soccer team lost a few girls it would be no big deal. Except that one of our best players left, and some of the others didn't leave until right before the season started. We played in a fun league last summer, where we played boys teams and learned some new tricks. But our official league started up, and we were short 1 player!

Lots of us had tried recruiting girls all summer, but ran into bad luck of one sort or another. We ended up getting our old goalie back, who we once considered too short, but we were now glad to see her. The coach actually recruited one girl at a taco stand, but her skills were behind the rest of the girls, and they were too hard on her. Finally we got a girl who only spoke spanish, but she showed up to almost every game, and that was great.

So even tho I predicted that this season would be a lot easier, it was brutal. We had barely enough girls and NO substitutes. If one girl didn't show up or got hurt, we played short. One ref went out of her way to tell me after the first game how well-conditioned our girls must be, to play a whole game with no subs.

I may have mentioned before that there are 8 teams in our division, and the top 2 go up to the next level (where we were last year), and the bottom two go down to the next lower level. The Girl said more than once that they did NOT want to go down a level, and if the team did, they would probably break up.

They tied the first game and then it was loss after loss. It was painful to watch and live through, and some of the parents took it the worst. One girl was sobbing after games because her parents were being so hard on her. What's the point in that? If I tried telling the Girl ANYTHING about how to play, I'm sure she would quit in a heartbeat.

When they got too negative, I reminded them that every great sports story starts out with a difficulty. I told the Girl, "Everything happens for a reason. I don't know what the reason is for your team to be struggling right now, but maybe it will make you stronger." And I think it did!

Then they beat a team in a game when they were short a player. Then they lost a game, then tied another one, then won again! Slowly, game by game, they clawed their way into the middle of the pack. Finally, in the last game of the season, they won 4-1. It was glorious, being able to score so many goals! It was truly the highlight of the season.

I don't know if they were happier about knowing they weren't going down a bracket, or finding out that their enemy Palmdale Thunder WOULD. Even the team we beat in that last game was happy about that.

Right before Thanksgiving we had some work done on the house. It turned out to be Asbestos in our popcorn ceiling downstairs, so first we had that removed. (Well, first we moved everything out of the basement! What a job!) Then we had the asbestos removed and primed the wall of my bedroom. Next we had a guy come in to redo the ceiling and also put in the new floor. He brought some relatives with him, and it was strange. At one moment they would be yelling at each other in Spanish (such language!), and 2 minutes later they'd be singing (in Spanish.) One guy in particular seemed to be behind most of the singing.

After they left, the weekend before Thanksgiving, the Girl and I started painting. She is really a blessing to me because she's so helpful and energetic. I couldn't have gotten it finished without her. We also roped K into helping paint every now and then. It still needs molding, but the walls and flooring now look great!

Just in time for Thanksgiving!

Netflix and FaceBook

One thing that happened this Fall was that we joined the mainstream internet users and joined both Facebook and Netflix. We're a little challenged with Netflix right now, as most of their "new" movies are ones we saw this summer. Between the two plane flights and the cruise itself, we saw:

He's just not that into you
The Reader (think I missed something in this one)
The Watchman
Bride Wars
Made of Honor
Hotel for Dogs
Bolt (very cute)
Mama Mia
Last Chance Harvey
Wall -E
Benjamin Button
Bedtime Stories (most of it)
Marlee & Me
Horton Hears a Who
Monsters Inc.
New in Town
Yes Man
Mall Cop
Definitely Maybe

And possibly some others I'm forgetting. So we're scraping the bottom on Netflix right now, but hopefully this situation will improve.

I joined FB because someone invited me to be their friend, and the only way to do that was to start my own account. Plus the Girl wanted to, and I told her she could only do it if I was her friend (and could monitor the situation.) It's been around for years, but I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I do. It's a great way to keep up with people you don't see a lot.

I've noticed a few things about FB politics. First, FB got right into my Yahoo contact list in order to suggest people I should befriend. This brought up pictures of people whose blogs I've read and communicated with, altho I'm not sure that they were ready to be that known to me. Now I know what they look like! That seemed like some kind of violation of privacy, but I seem to be the only one who's against it.

Then, the Boy blocked me from his posts when I complained that his cousins could now see his questionable language and pictures. So he filters himself somehow, which I guess is fine, but I still wish he'd be more appropriate. I only hope he's filtering his cousins too.

Then I noticed that the Girl hadn't seen some pics I'd posted, and I figured out that she blocked MY posts! I asked why she would do such a thing, and she said she was just mad at me. Mad at ME? Whatever for? So I tried to unblock myself and think I may have completely deleted myself from her friend list instead.

Sigh.

I've found that there are different ways people can post too much. The first is like my original friend from HS who invited me to be his FB friend. He posts multiple times a day to say things like, "I'm up. I think I'll have coffee now." or, "Time for bed." OK, we all do those things. Should we all post similarly?

And don't get me started about people who post things, but never seem to comment on other people's posts. Why? Do you only care about yourself?

Then there are people my sister calls page hogs, and they post 4 things in a row that take up your whole page! They post their every accomplishment in Farmville, every video of songs they like, things like that. OK people, get a life! Maybe they just like to share.

But I have to admit that there were a few weeks when I first joined that FB helped me immeasurably in my efforts at procrastination. Particularly, Zanga Poker. I was supposed to be studying for a BIG TEST, and I was trying not to think about people drowning in Alaska, so I found FB poker to be a great outlet. Plus, I won lots of money! I started out with $5,000 and now I'm up to $290,000. Now my husband wants to send me to Vegas, but in real life I'm sure people don't go "all in" with such junk in their hands.

At least I hope not.

The rest of September

OK, so what happened in the rest of the month? First, K started having problems at his job. First, they gave him a crumby shift = the worst shift you can get. Basically he has to work during ALL the holidays. He was offended because he works really hard and should get some kind of seniority, but it doesn't work like that. This shift was weak and he is strong, so they stuck him there to balance it out.

Meanwhile, management has been implementing changes that make it harder to do K's job, and not staffing the place correctly to cut costs. K told them he wouldn't be Acting Supervisor during his shift anymore if the staffing levels were short. As it is, K still thought it was weak, and told a Supervisor that it was "a setup" to fail.

K went to work after the shift change, and tried to talk to his supervisor about his shift. His supervisor said that if he wanted to be promoted, he should help him with a mentoring program he's putting together. He implied that the shift would be changed if K agreed, so he said yes.

Then, K did something to tighten things up. Later, after he got home, he found out he was "under investigation" for doing so.

First, he might be promoted. Now, he might be fired? All in the same day. Wow.

Then, he took a shift off for a little "staycation." On Friday night (during his regular shift), there was a riot! Sheriffs were called, kids were shot with paint pellets, people went to the hospital. So much for cutting costs.

Of course Management never took any responsibility for what happened, but one Supervisor kept telling K, "You said it was a setup! You were right!" But, again, nothing has changed, including K's shift.

THEN...

We got a call while K was at work that one of his best friends had died. His friends from High School in Indiana take a hunting trip every year, and this year Rick didn't make it back.

There's one friend from that group who lives out here near us, I'll call him Don. Don looks forward to this trip every year. This year they went to Alaska, a place that Rick had been before and loved. His daughter even lives up there now, so they visited with her before they took off hunting.

They were on their way back to start home. Don had shot a Caribou, the only game any of them had killed. He and Rick were carrying the meat on their backs as they crossed the river. The river was mostly not deep, but somehow Rick lost his footing and got swept up in the current. Don tried to go after him, but didn't get any closer. Finally he got scared that HE wasn't going to make it out, and somehow he dragged himself out of the river.

Anyway, they didn't find Rick for 6 days. Don felt guilty that he couldn't save him and that Rick had been carrying his meat. But they all do that for each other, and sometimes you just can't save people.

It just so happened that K saw Rick in June, right before we took our big trip. He flew back for just a few days, and now he's so glad he did. He hadn't seen him in about 8 years before that.

Anyway, we flew to Indiana, but it took Alaska a long time to release the body, and they had to keep pushing the funeral back. Finally I had to get back, but K was able to stay another day and help carry the casket, etc.

On the plus side, we found that Long Beach has a little airport, and it's really cute.W e also came out of it closer to some of our friends.

But we were glad to see the end of September, and October was a big improvement.

More about that later.

Drama is my life

OK. I was going to write about my trip this summer and all the wonderful places we went, but life went and got in the way and I've been really busy lately.

First, my sister R came to visit in late August, and we had a great time. We went to the Sunset Street Fair, Melrose, Universal City Walk. At the airport we saw Ice T, and she got his autograph. Then she went home and the fires started. A friend of ours who lives at the beach called because he heard we were evacuated! He invited us to his house, and that was nice.

The next night The Girl saw the fire on the way home, when her friends Dad drove right by the fire in the town next to us. She came home crying, and I tried to comfort her. She said it looked like a wall of fire.

The next day I woke up coughing at all the smoke, and had to turn on the AC just to filter the air so we could breath!

But the fire was still a long way from our home. The next day The Boy wanted to move back to his dorm at a certain time. I stopped at the store to get some Starbucks, and in the process of getting pressured to hurry up, I locked the keys in the car! He was SO mad! I asked some policemen who were there if they could open it for me, but they called the Auto Club guy for me instead.

Meanwhile, everyone in the store parking lot was looking at the fire, which was now on one of the mountains behind us. It was an impressive sight, coming over the hills bearing down on us. The police warned us that the street was getting evacuated later that night. The Girl started crying again when she heard this.

The Boy was only concerned about getting to his dorm, so he told her that it would never happen and this was all just a bunch of alarmists getting upset about nothing.

Somewhere around this time the Girl started feeling stronger about the situation. I told her I used to have bad dreams about fires, and I think it speaks to a fear of a loss of security. She agreed, and somehow it seemed to make her feel better.

The next day we went to visit our friend at the beach, and had a nice time. We could see the smoke from a long way on the drive home, but it was dark and it didn't look that bad.

The next morning, at 2:30am, we got a call that told us to evacuate! What?

I was immediately wide awake! I've never been evacuated before. I had gotten a few things together after the police had told us about the possible evac the day before. A few pictures, my best jewelry, my leather jackets and boots. Important papers. A change of clothes. It's strange when you think about what to save when you're leaving your home behind.

So I had the car packed in no time. K decided to take a shower, so there was some waiting for him. Meanwhile, there were police cars driving around talking on some loudspeaker, telling us we had to evacuate.

It was a surreal scene, being dark outside, hearing the police and seeing our neighbors packing their cars. A guy came across the street and told us he'd come to his parents house from Pasadena, when he'd gotten evacuated there. Now he was evacuated here too!

We grabbed the dog and the fish and got into the car. We drove to the local High School, which was the evacuation center. When we finally found it, it was small, it had cots, and the lights were on. Who could sleep in there? Plus there were no pets allowed, so some elderly people were sitting outside with their pets. I thought this was a real glitch in the system, because lots of people have pets.

I also noticed the teenage girls carrying around their pillows and blankets. I was jealous, and now I know what to take if I'm ever evacuated again. A pillow! A blanket! (plus my pictures and jewelry and important papers.)

We drove around for awhile. I didn't want to wake my friend who lives down the hill from us, because it was SO early and I knew there was already someone (and possibly some dogs) staying there. I decided we'd wait until 5am to wake her up.

Meanwhile, I tried to sleep in the van with the dog. Then we heard they might let us go back, so K drove back up the hill, and at 4:30 am they let us return. It was really hard driving around with the fish sloshing in his bowl. We kept telling K, "Be careful! Drive slower!" Poor fish.

Anyway, we got back home and went to sleep. They evacuated us again the next morning, but a man down the street was listening to everything on his police scanners, and he advised us to stay put. He'd let us know if it really got dangerous. We no longer trusted the evacuation system, and it was a hassle to leave home and find a place for the dog.

So we stayed home and watched the fire. The Fire Department decided to burn the hillside nearest us on purpose - to get rid of the fuel and avoid a bigger fire I guess. So we drank a beer and watched it burn and fielded phone calls from people who were worried about us.

The worst thing was the smoke, which came down every night and blew away every day. Since we didn't evacuate, we couldn't leave the house, either, because then they wouldn't let us come back up the hill. This lasted for a few days.

The police drove around, which was good, because there were lots of people who had their valuables sitting in their cars, ready to evacuate.

All in all, it was pretty dramatic, as you can see from the pictures. Now we have to worry about the mudslides, since the hillside no longer has vegetation to hold the dirt.

It's always something, right? I'll tell you about the rest of September in my next post.

Whew!

Blarney and Dublin

The next day of our cruise we went to the Blarney Castle. We docked in Cork, and took a bus to the castle. Of course, I'd heard of people kissing the Blarney stone before, and since we were there it seemed like the thing to do.

It turns out that this Blarney stone is at the top of a dilapidated castle, right at the edge, over a hole. To kiss this stone, you have to lean over backwards, at the top of a castle, over a hole. The stone is at the bottom, too, so you have to lean backwards, hold onto a rail, and lower yourself as far backwards as you can and kiss the wall.

There was a long line, and The Boy grew increasingly more anxious the higher we climbed. Neither one of us like heights, but he has me beat in the anxiety department. When we got to the top he wanted to go back, but since we'd climbed an ancient, small, and winding stairway that was full of people, there was no going back.

So we all kissed the stone and hopefully now are more eloquent and persuasive.

That day we watched the beginning of Bolt (so cute!), Enchanted, and Yes Man.






Day 4 was Dublin. By this time I'd devised the perfect breakfast, and I had it the rest of the trip. Their scrambled eggs tasted a little sweet, and I didn't like the omelets either. But every morning they served eggs over easy, so I'd go in and put some bread in the toaster, then get an egg and a piece of ham. When my toast was done, I'd assemble an egg sandwich and it was delicious. Sometimes I had the fresh pineapple too, as that is a treat.

They served some strange things for breakfast on the ship, probably catering to the many different nationalities on board. Some of the odder things were fried hard boiled eggs, fried rice, miso soup, fried liver, and cooked tomatoes.

I also made sandwiches for times we'd be away from the ship around lunchtime. I'd take a hard roll, cut in in half, spread it with butter, and insert a piece of ham. Yum!

Anyway, Dublin was MUCH bigger than I expected. I don't know why I expected it to be little, but it's a major city. We went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. It was really interesting. In the Long Hall upstairs they had an exhibit about Napoleon, which I also found very interesting.

We walked around the Temple Bar, which is a cool part of town. We went to the big park in town, an it was lovely and full of people. When we stopped to see the ducks in the pond, The Boy spotted a fox across the pond, sitting on a rock! When we were pointing it out to each other, a lady nearby said she lives in the area, and goes to that park every day, and she'd never seen that fox before!

When we went back to the ship, we grabbed a piece of pizza for my snack. One of our favorite things about the ship was the hamburger bar and the pizza station, which were open nearly all day on deck. We really missed them when we got back home.

That night we watched Hotel for Dogs.

Captivated!

That book turned out to be really good! I was taken captive for awhile, but it was worth it. Now I'm back to reality and will post more about my trip soon. I practically promise!