"Things you should never say to......."

As I scroll through Facebook at least once a day I will see the title, "Thing's you shouldn't say to...........". Usually it's new moms, parents that have had a miscarriage, any other race than your own and so on. It will start out with a victims story of sorrow and defeat and how they are unable to emotionally cope. Then it is followed by a neat set if rules I'm am sworn to remember and never ever violate or I will cause them severe stress thereby essentially re victimizing them again.

In this world of social media and lack of physical social contact, making face to face interactions more complicated by imposing rules that no one will be able to follow is completely unrealistic. Because lets face it, when I want to try to make a friend and go up to speak to someone, what the hell am I supposed to talk about? The weather? You can't even bring that up it may trigger someone like Lightning Rod Reg.

Most people have no desire to  psychologically traumatize the very people they are trying to get to know. It is fair to try to find common ground so you can have something to talk about to develop a relationship or at the very least enjoy a friendly chat.

I have seven children. I birthed four and three are my husbands from a previous marriage. We have a his, mine and ours situation. Our four oldest are adults. We have a grandchild from one of them. Our three youngest are from us. Are you following me? 

So only one of our oldest (his) speaks to us right now. One of the other oldest (his) calls occasionally if she wants information like her birth cert, etc. She is never friendly and it is always very short. One of the other oldest (his) NEVER speaks to us, ever. And then there's the fourth adult with her own child (mine). She texts out of the blue as if we are still speaking and just as abruptly as it started several days later she stops speaking to us again for several months. 

We have also had a miscarriage. It was very sad and we do privately talk to each other about this child regularly. I am happy to discuss it with anyone however I am unlikely to bring it up unless the subject is brought up. I understand some people are still suffering from their loss and it may not be as easy to be as open.

This is all very traumatizing. So when someone asks me how many children do we have, it's complicated. I would never impose some silly social rule that you shouldn't ask me how many kids I have because it drums up trauma. Ask me. I ask other people. I want to know if we have anything in common. I want to talk about silly things 2 year olds do. I don't want to be the start of a downward spiral of depression for anyone. But honestly if someone is so emotionally fragile that a simple question like "Do you have children?" can spark serious trauma, that person needs help. I'm not be funny here. I'm serious. That response is a good indication that you are in need of mental health care assistance.  I've been there and it's hard to decide if you are just sensitive or if you are very close to the edge of a serious depression. Err on the side of caution and try some therapy it worked for me it couldn't hurt to try.

So ask anyone anything you want. If you are coming from a place of kindness and true curiosity ask away. I have been told so many times that people would rather be asked, "What happened to your legs?" More than they want you to ignore them and not say hi! I guess it comes down to intent. If you are offended by someone asking you, "Do you plan on having children?" Decide what is the intent. I am hard pressed to believe they want to make you depressed. You never know they may have gone though infertility as well. They could have great information you would have missed if they had been too politically correct to ask.

Nothing has really changed in seventeen years.... Except everything.

I have never felt old until I went to the OB/GYN after the age of 35 with my second pregnancy. On my chart is "Advanced age". That stings a little I must say.

Although we are completely thrilled to finally be starting a family of our own, somewhere deep down we are both wondering if we are going to survive round two. 'At our advanced ages', we totally know what to expect because we already did kids.......Several times before but on the other hand that was back when things seemed a little simpler and we had loads more energy.  Now they have gadgets to do things we never dreamed of! Do we need all this crap?

We have decided to stick to the basics because lets face it you can't teach an old dog new tricks and if it worked the first go round why fix it. One of our recent decisions went like this:

Because I am a tree hugging homesteading nature loving hippy everyone naturally assumes I will be using cloth diapers. After a long painful deliberation with my husband we have decided to take the easy way out go with disposable because we are both pretty sure we will be too tired to do any extra laundry.

Our friend, Kevin,the other night asked where the nursery is going to be. Because we are in the middle of building our house we will just put the crib in our finished room up against our bed. Easier to nurse that way I say. Kevin said he doesn't believe in co sleeping. Well I don't believe in getting out of my nice warm bed 3 times a night to wander down a dark hallway to feed a screaming kid. Again laziness wins.

We are fortunate to have the experience to know our parenting styles well enough not to be fooled into thinking we will be super hero parents that do everything right. Kids and babies are messy, if we have learned anything from the past it is to embrace the easy way.

I had however forgotten that being pregnant is totally inconvenient. You can't drink wine, you pee yourself every time you _______ (insert: cough, sneeze, turn the wrong way....etc.) and you can't wipe your butt very easily which makes for extra long bathroom trips prompting my husband to ask if I am "OK". "Not really honey I may need some assistance in wiping my ass...Any volunteers?.....No one."

This will surely be an adventure that will most likely be extensively documented in our adult children's therapy sessions in years to come.

Wish us luck.

Why Face Book is killing my social life.

It finally happened! I got my feelings on Face Book. I didn't see it coming, after all I am above all that shit right? Wrong-O!

So it all happened when a friend that I don't see much de-friended me. I couldn't figure out why. I sent a thoughtful message and this is what I got:

"Oh Gees,this is fb you know,not real life.Besides its not like we message back and forth anyhow. Don't get your feeler hurt,besides what is the point of this anyhow.

You have something to say to me use the phone. FB is stupid."

You know what? You're right friend. Social contact with people is non-existent any more. My phone won't ring for days! I say - Thank you friend. It took a friend to show me the errors of my ways.

Recently contact with the outside has been smaller and smaller. Truthfully when people stop by it spurs irritation rather than happiness. What is happening to me? The fake FB world is now the preference. Instead of liking FB because long distance contact can be maintained, it has overruled everyday relationships.

Some changes need to be made. Remove my profile? Is that overkill? Limit FB time to 1 hour a week?

Perhaps a little break is in order? Maybe I can have my husband change my password to remove temptation?

*Update on the less than thoughtful message from my friend. This friend had a pretty shitty summer and sent me a very thoughtful message that apologized for the less than tactful previous message. I dropped a funny card off to him but we are still not friends on face book. Good. I prefer him to be a real friend anyway.

Family the second worst "F" word

I was born into a family that, on my fathers side, has given me 12 aunts and uncles and countless cousins. Some alive, some passed, all whom just couldn't take me for one reason or another when they found out I was in foster care at the age of 3. Every one of them I have spoken with has explained to me how they are really sorry and wished they could have helped me out but they are so glad that things turned out OK.

I am writing this to tell you, "I am NOT OK!" Your conscience should not be clear and you should absolutely feel like an ass. That's right I said it. How do you like me now?

I was bounced in and out of 7 foster homes and back and forth to the orphanage several times. My childhood sucked.

All I every really wanted was a family. I have tried to create relationships with 'blood' - family members but it seems that they all think I am the jerk. Perhaps it is my 'Take no crap attitude' or the fact that I will 'Tell you like it is' is not what you want to hear. Either way I have been cast aside again by the very family that couldn't be bothered to help me out the first go round.

"The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict." This is a quote that comes to mind when I think of my dear ole Bright family. I do not however subscribe to the theory of heaven or hell so the meaning of this quote has very immediate meaning for me, meaning your hell starts the minute you selfishly turn away from a fellow human in need. You will grow sickness and unhappiness because after all you reap what you sow. 

Enjoy.

 

Followup from when job interviews go wild....

So after going through the interview from hell.....I was offered the job. REALLY? After all that they asked me to come to work for them.

Finally a job where I was working around semi-intelligent people -

*Note: This is not to say that I think of myself as wildly more intelligent than the people around me just merely that it is wise that I avoid "The blind leading the blind" type situations.

- So I thought. The same woman that tried to bring up my website and had forgot to plug in the internet *giggle giggle* was also the same woman that seemed to let it escape her attention that I live 35 miles away from the job over a mountain that sometimes has really bad weather.

In the interview I said I live 17 miles from Cheyenne. She interrupted that as 17 miles from Laramie. (back to intelligent people) This woman has a doctoral degree in education....Explains a lot about the state of our education system.

I was let go today because when her boss (my big boss the one I haven't even met yet) had my paper work cross her desk she asked, "Why did we hire someone from Cheyenne when I specifically made a policy that no one from Cheyenne would be hired due to the bad attendance experience, because of road closures, we had with the last girl from Cheyenne?".  -insert the sounds of only cricket's in the distance -

So I am back on the trail of trying to find a job. Thank you University of Wyoming for totally screwing my summer. I am getting married in less than 7 weeks so getting a job right now seems a little pointless doesn't it. 

On the bright side, I can now go on a honey moon after I am married. Down side it won't be beyond our driveway because we can't afford it.

My luck has got to turn around soon or I will just apply for disability on the terms that I am obviously the crazy one around here!

When job interviews go wild.....

So as my search for the perfect job continues I finally wrangled a job interview as a liaison for the Education Graduate Program at the University of Wyoming!!!

I am one of those people that you can take to a karaoke bar, a bat mitzvah or even your grandmas funeral and I can make it wildly more fun. My super powers of fun, however, end when it comes to job interviews.

The old, "What are your weakness's?" question can always be answered one way....  My weakness is job interviews! I act like a total putz. I look like a deer in the headlights with the possibility being totally "On something."

In my coveted UW job interview they explain how their main interest in me is the fact that I can develop and maintain websites. I proudly explain that I love that type of work and go on to boast about the website I created for my job search to set myself apart from the competition. 

"Well", says the Assistant Dean of UW, "Let's take a look at this website!"..........................NOTHING! She can't pull it up!

At this point I am digging my heel into the floor to see if it might be soft enough for me to dig a hole and bury myself so the pain of humiliation will finally stop.

As you can imagine the rest of the interview was tense. All I could think about was how nice it would be to bury myself under the covers when I got home in the safety of my bed.

Today I get an email with the slightest essence of jest..

"Hi Christine – just wanted you to know we found your website right after you left. It was user error …. I wasn't connected to the Internet :)"

Funny. 

After profuse profanity (to myself) I came to the realization that Haiti will freeze over before I get a job offer from this place. Great. Finding a date wasn't even this hard.

So onward and upward the job search continues.....

Children the only chattel you can't legally sell.....

The fact is that your children can abuse you, rob you, destroy your reputation, cost you thousands with little to no return, even land your ass in jail but they don't really have to take responsibility because they are "Kids".  From 0-18 years kids have a never ending get out of jail free card. Anytime your kids does something that makes you want to abort them some asshole has to say, "But they're kids. That's what kids do. They will apologize when they get older and have kids of their own."

At what point do you have to say enough is enough?

Parents are only people we have a end point to the pushing of our buttons. The questions is what is an OK end point? Is it when your kids having been screaming for hours destroying everything in the house? or When they stand on the front porch of their grandmothers house screaming, "Fuck you!. I fucking hate you! I don't want to go home with you. I am going to live at my fathers/grandparents house. You suck! I don't ever want to see you again!" At what point will the same assholes from above with the great parenting advise say, "That is the breaking point, you shouldn't have to take that."?

Parents are supposed to be perfect robots. The only emotion we are allowed to have is love. The problem is parent robots are not realistic. Our job as parents (in the emotions department) is be a test subject for how the rest of the world will react to your emotions.

e.g. -  You run up to me after school and give me big hug and say you love me. I in turn feel motivated to reward that behavior with letting you stay at your friends home on Friday night.

~or~

You have a melt down and scream how much you hate me and you don't want to live with me because my rules are to strict. I will not be as inclined to drive you and your friends around all weekend listening to music that makes me want to slit my wrists.

There are no right answers when it comes to parenting. No hand book but a thousand critics. For myself I will continue shooting from the hip and going with my gut.

As a parent my gut says: If you want to live with your dad or grandparents or whatever, go for it. If you want to cut off all communication and cut me out of your life, that's a choice you will have to live with. My gut also tells me that when you come back to mend fences when you are older and have your own children you will find that bridge has long been burned down never to be rebuilt. The lesson here is how far you can push peoples love. Now you will never have to learn that from anyone else and I have done my job as a parent teaching you how the world and the people in it operate emotionally.