Picture problems

My picture problems persist. Now I can't find my camera. It was full of pictures from the Girl's last games, plus a picture that K took when he went to see a former "caseload" of his play a game.

It was the same weekend as my SI picture problems, and I haven't seen it since. So I can't take any pictures, plus my cellphone seems to have stopped "mobile uploading" to Facebook. I can send pictures, but they never show up.

I lost my hairbrush around the same time, so I kept saying that the maids must have put them somewhere, and they were probably together.

I finally found my hairbrush in the medicine cabinet, but still no sign of my camera.

Soccer Sucks

The Girl's latest soccer season ended badly and abruptly. Going into last weekend, we were playing two beatable teams. Her team has not been winning overall, but they've been playing well. They just can't score!

On Sat we played the next to worst team that had come up from Bronze this season, and were losing 0-1 most of the game. Then the Coach moved the 2 best girls (including the Girl) to the front to try and score, and boom, boom, boom - the other team scored 3 times in 5 minutes.

We scored once after that, but it was over. At least the Girl had a sleepover that night to look forward to.

Sunday they played better. This team was doing well in the league, but only beat us by one goal last game, so we felt it was doable. We were losing 0-1 when the Girl tried a little too hard to get the ball, and accidentally kicked an opponent in the face - and got a red card. Which means she's out and the team plays short one player, plus she can't play in the next game. The last game of the season.

This was no relaxed league like this summer's though, because even though I tried to tell the ref it was accidental, he said it didn't matter. I know it sounds bad, but I also know she was just trying hard.

She was crying and said, "This is the last game I'll ever play with this team!" and I said, Hey! They don't know that yet! Plus, we might play in some tournaments with them, or you might decide the other team is too hard core and you'd rather come back.

I tried to cheer her up, but after awhile she wanted me to leave her alone.

The team was a little stunned after that, and got scored on again right away. Another of her team got hurt and they had to play down 2 players for awhile! They ended up losing 0-3, but the team played a lot better than the score indicates.

So we have one more week of practice and another game, but the Girl can't play.

I talked with the coach of the team she wants to go to, and they are struggling with injuries and such too.

We'll have to see what happens.

The Picture Police

This is a tale of two families. One, K's, is confrontation-free. Not that things don't happen that people don't understand, but we are not to ask about them.

Then there is my family, who is pretty much the opposite. From one family we have a history of yelling, and in the other we have the Mystery of the Jade Necklace. For some reason, K and I moved far away from both families and started our own in sunny CA. Possibly because of this distance, we have had pretty good relationships with both families.

All my life I have loved to take pictures. My first was a tiny camera I bought from the back of a comic book when I was around 9. I had a vivitar for a long time, and took a Photography class in college. I loved developing the black and white images, watching them appear on the white paper.

When I grew up and had kids, the picture-taking only increased. Plus now with digital images, why not take 300 instead of 24?

So anyway, you get the picture. I have always tried to be generous with sending and sharing my photography, although at one time I sensed that K's sister E was somehow upset with me about pictures, and was no longer sending us any. It's so easy to offend women, and most of the time they never even tell you what you did wrong. And again, this was the non-confrontation family.

Back in my own family, my own sister E is living with my parents. She has OCD, and lately this has manifested itself in her claiming that people have stolen things from her, as if somehow we've stolen her childhood. BTW she is 12 years younger than me.

So I ask you, what could I possibly have of hers? Pictures. Pictures she says I have taken out of albums and absconded to California with. Most painfully, she even has my parents now questioning where I got the pictures of themselves that I enlarged as gifts for them! So even my most thoughtful gifts are coming back to bite me in the ass.

How do I know after all these years where I got the picture? One thing I know is that I never rifled through someone else's pictures with the idea of stealing them! Unless of course I am evil unknown to myself, like the man in Angel Heart, or delussionaly crazy like the girl in The Double Bind (don't read it!). In that case I'm probably not responsible for my actions anyway.

Then I gave my Mother an electronic picture frame for her Birthday (replacing the one stolen at Christmas) and included a flash drive with some recent pictures from my computer. Guess what? There were none of my sister AND IT WAS NOTICED!! Nevermind that another sister was also left out too, that was NOT noticed. Please people. I only had time to go through my most recent pictures. They're just lucky there weren't all of the cruise last year!

I think my Mother is brainwashed into believing these things herself, and every now and then will say something like "Well there was this one album...." So being worn down from all my sister's obsessing, she asked me a week before my visit to gather and copy all the pictures I have of my sisters.

So I did this, wishing to be done with the subject, and gave a copy of the disc to ALL of my 3 sisters.

In spite of all this, my sister managed suck it up and be nice while my family and I visited there, and we had a very nice trip and visit with her. All my practicing saying, "I don't want to fight with you." was not needed! I was thinking that the situation had improved.

Then the Girl went through my pictures from the trip and pasted some of herself on FaceBook. Then my sister asked why there were none of that side of the family. The Girl said she didn't have any, and my sister said she'd send her some.

Now my Mother tells me that she's offended that the Girl posted more pictures of K's family than mine, and that it isn't the first time that she and Dad have noticed it! She wonders if the Girl doesn't have some sort of identity crisis and wants only to acknowledge the whiter side of the family.

I wish I could say I was completely surprised, but my family often tends to see race as an answer to lots of things. I explained that the Girl only posted pictures that SHE WAS IN, but that didn't pacify my mother at all. She's entitled to her feelings, and she feels offended!

Later, my sister called to say that she finally looked at the disk I'd given her, and it was "bittersweet" because she sees pictures that she KNOWS are hers. She says she knows it was from her disposable camera, and I just told her I didn't see how that could even be true. I took a picture from her disposable camera?

Finally, all my practicing came in handy and I said that no one can make me feel guilty for something I didn't do. She says that is sad, as that means I am delusional.

Am I? Someday she's going to finally convince me that I am going crazy!

It's a short trip, my friends.

With friends like you,

Ok, so I mentioned before about K’s good friend Dan who was selling his house and buying a new one, but didn’t want to use me because he wanted “to keep his friends friends and his business separate.” It seems he'd had a bad experience hiring a friend of his before.

Now I’ve been in the business long enough to know that it’s full of disappointment – next door neighbors, acquaintances, even people who ask you to help them sometimes let you down. So I try to be understanding – I know friends sometimes have prior relationships with Realtors, etc.

But this wasn’t like that. He didn’t know anyone already, and he went out and found strangers to help him. At one point, after K advised him not to talk to me about it, he decided that he’d let me help him look in one little area, but of course that didn’t work out.

The weekend after he sold his home in Palmdale, he made an offer in Burbank with another realtor that was ultimately accepted. And now he keeps insisting that they’re having us over soon so we can see their new place!

My sister says that it speaks to his paranoia more than to my abilities, but when I think about how much money it would have been, I just can't see a way to be OK with that. Yet.

My feelings about the subject are summed up by Dan’s former neighbor, who is also a Realtor and probably also pissed at Dan. At a party at his house, I was saying that I’d made friends and lost friends in this business, and she said, “If someone knows you work on commission, and they don’t use you? They’re not your friend.” They get downgraded to acquaintances – people I’ve known for awhile or even like, but they’re not really friends.

So it's sad. When they first told me they were moving closer to us, I was really happy and excited. We used to be close, but after he got married and moved farther away, we grew apart. Part of that was not being invited over or his wife coming over our house for at least 5-8 years. But this was a chance to put ALL THAT (and more) behind us.

And now he thinks we're coming over all the time? I feel like he's insisting that I tell him its all OK, like the time he made me hug him through the car window. All I will think about when I see his house now is how nice it would have been if we could ALL be happy about it. About all the presents I would have bought them and how happy we'd all be. About how he says they moved here to be closer to us, but then did the one thing that would really piss me off.

Personally, I wonder if it isn't a Freudian thing where part of him doesn't really want to be friends with us at all. But when I talk about Freudian things, the Girl says I'm taking things too literally.

K is such a good person, so much better than me. He'll be able to go over there and act somewhat happy for them. This is the most angry I've ever seen him get towards a friend, though, and I see him making moves to cut down on the amount of Dan in our lives. I've told him not to, that he's usually so forgiving, but even he is having trouble this time.

I guess I am happy for them, but I'm more personally and professionally disappointed. And I don't think it's my job to make him feel better about the choices he's made by forcing myself to go over there and make it all better for him before I actually feel any better.

I think that we're in this world to practice forgiveness, and that's why I'm getting so many opportunities to practice. I'm sure in time I'll see that this was the best thing, but right now it's hard to see.

This is me, complaining and trying to move on.

Dear Mom,

I was thinking about what you said the other day about how none of us wrote to E (my sister) when she was in rehab, and I started feeling bad about that. That I didn't even think of that or know she might like that, feeling bad that I was such an unsupportive sister.

But then I thought, hey, she's not the only one who ever felt like that. I bet a lot of people wish people around them would be more supportive, but they don't go around asking why after the fact and making people feel bad about something they can't change.

I can think of several such times myself, when I didn't feel the love or support I would have liked from my family or my sisters. There were so many years that they never gave me presents that I finally stopped expecting them. And there were several times over the years when I wished that you had been there for me a lot more.

But you know what? I took responsibility for my feelings, and understood that I could try just telling you that I wanted more attention, or just deal with it myself. Even if I had told you, there is no guarantee that other people are going to act the way you wish they would. So I just sucked it up and tried to be good to myself and managed to not tell you about those times.

Should I tell you all about them now? Should I blame you for something you didn't know I felt and can't change now anyway?

I think that the way E obsesses over perceived slights to the point where she talks about them a lot. And the more she talks the more you wish you could fix things for her. If only everyone would change! And so you try to explain her point of view and fight her battles for her.

I know you are trying to help her, but now it seems that I am spending time fighting with you when the fact is I hate to fight. Hate it. And so the prospect of fighting with E is unappealing. And now I am fighting with you too.

Where is all this going to end up? I thought we had a good relationship, but it seems like things are just getting worse.

I know you are trying and I know it must be hard, but I think your efforts would be better spent trying to get her off those ruts her mind goes into and try to get her onto another line of thinking. Everybody has feelings that she experiences, but we have to learn other ways of talking ourselves down, making ourselves feel better. We can't all go around demanding that other people change.

Only we can make ourselves feel better. I can apologize all day, but only she can decide to feel better.