Tuesday, August 28, 2007

My Quandry...

So for those of you who are just joining the group, DH and I and our two children moved in with my mother because the transmission went out on our car. At the time there were no other options. Now, however, my mom has gotten (I hate that word) a truck from her dad and her brother, and it is available for us to drive instead of a rental car. Now we can save the $600 a month that would go toward said rental car. Although DH hasn't been able to actually drive it yet; it needed insurance and registration and the taillights weren't working. It has insurance and working taillights now, just waiting for the registration.

Anyway, enough blathering. My quandry is, should we move out now? (It's more like can we move out now? Can we can we can we? Please please please, I beg of you!) It certainly wouldn't be the smartest thing I've ever done financially, but it would be a pretty wise decision healthwise. (Physically and mentally) I wouldn't have to hear that anything with vegetables other than peas or corn is "weird." No more cookies around, no more ice cream, no more candy bars. I never bought that stuff at my house, yet it's a constant presence here. (My mother is relatively thin, though. I don't know how she does it.)

I'm tired. I hate it here. I'm cranky all the time, and I keep gaining weight. This is a huge step back for me. I keep bouncing between renting an apartment now and waiting and seeing if maybe we actually get that one in a million chance that we could buy a house in the spring. I just don't know what to do. The other day DH was telling me that I need to just wait and see. I hate that idea. I hate not knowing, at least a little bit, what I'm going to do. I need a direction, an end to look forward to. I just don't want to make yet another bad decision.

DH is going to start working out with me starting September 1. My dad is coming home this weekend, and it seems that he's actually started taking his diabetes seriously. He's asked for healthy food. So I think that all this could actually give me the start that I need.

I'm going to look at apartments on Craigslist. Even if we don't move, I can dream, right?

Monday, August 27, 2007

Reflections on Relatives

This post is actually not about my mother! Can you believe it? Instead, it's about my MIL. (Can't get away from mothers of one kind or another, I guess.)

So I don't think it's necessary to go into the whole sordid situation here, but basically late last week--Thursday, I think--DH's sister called our house crying. I thought it had something to do with my dog--we have two dogs that we had given the ILs a year ago when we were in an apartment that didn't allow them, and MIL called Wednesday to say that one of them had died. Everyone is claiming not to know why, but it was obviously heatstroke due to negligence.

Anyway. SIL called crying, DH got home and called her back. Seems that MIL had, for some reason apparent to no one but herself, gone over to where SIL was and called her several names and said anything she could think of to hurt SIL. Including that she slept with SIL's boyfriend's dad. Why this was deemed to be hurtful to SIL I will never know.

So...DH calls MIL and leaves a very angry message, demanding to know why he's getting phone calls about her behavior, what the hell is she thinking, she needs to explain her actions, etc. He started out calm but he just kept getting angrier and angrier. Shockingly, the excessively needy MIL does not call back until Sunday night. She is incredibly rude to my mother, who answers the phone, and incredibly rude to DH. First she demands to know who is calling, then says she has told FIL everything and he's on her side. DH doesn't ask if she told him that she's going around bragging about cheating on him. He wishes he had. Then, she starts to tell DH "If you don't stop running your mouth..." At which point he cuts her off, says a certain rude two-word phrase, and tells her not to come up anymore. Then he hangs up on her. I'm about 100% sure we'll be getting a Crazy Letter (we've received them before) in the next day or two.

Hmm. Guess I did tell the whole sordid story anyway. But that wasn't the point of this blog. I was thinking after all this, and I've told DH this, but I think that they all need to cut ties with their mother. There is so much more going on than this--this is just the latest thing. My mother has had her share of crazy moments, but she has never actively tried to hinder the progress of any of her children. MIL has made children quit jobs, kept them from going to college, kept them from going to sports events that would have allowed them to excel in the field and probably get scholarships, pushed SIL (the same one) to have a baby at 18 before she was married instead of going to college...the list goes on. She has also gotten into physical altercations with at least two of her four children. I have told DH that I think she's jealous of her children. She herself is either a high school or junior high drop out. I don't think she wants her children to do better than that, even though all of them already have, and she's trying her best to keep them back.

We would all like to think that our relatives have only our best intentions at heart when they say or do things to us. We would especially like to believe this of our parents, namely our mothers, but sometimes that's just not the way it is. At that point, when you realize that that person is actively trying to hinder your progress in life, you should cut them out. It will be excessively hard if it's a parent, but it has to be done for your own sanity. What purpose is there in having them in your life? You know that they do nothing but hold you back, and you know that if they haven't changed over the last twenty or thirty years, it's not happening. That's just the way it is. If you realized that a food you were eating was poisonous, you would not continue to eat it. This is the same thing. She is leeching poison into her children and doing her best to rot them and make them shrivel up and die inside. Frankly, if I have anything to say about it, she will not be around my children anymore. She won't get her chance to poison them like she's poisoned the others. If they get rid of the poison now, they'll have a chance at recovery. If not, it'll ruin their lives.

Sorry if that seems a bit melodramatic, but it's the truth. I read a lot of self-improvement stuff, and the number one rule in almost everything is to surround yourself with helpful people that want you to succeed. MIL obviously doesn't want that for any of her children. Why I'll never know--I can't imagine ever doing the same thing to my children.

MIL almost got chewed out by my mother--MIL treated her like a secretary when she answered the phone and my mother almost did the same thing DH did--use a certain two-word phrase and hang up. My two sisters have been putting her in the middle of an argument about my youngest sister using her as a babysitting service when she "just needs a break," which is every other day; my older sister thinks this is ridiculous and doesn't hesitate to tell anyone, mother or younger sister included, and both of them rag on my mother for complaining or not complaining. Top it off with the fact that my brother called Sunday to tell her that he was shipping out for Iraq and it was about the worst day anyone could have picked to get an attitude with her.

I am fully expecting that MIL will show up at the boys' birthday party in three weeks. DH thinks she'll call up crying a few days before and beg to come up. I don't think so. I think there's a scene on the horizon, and I have no qualms about calling the police on such an occasion. I've done it before with others, I'll do it again with her. If it was at any time other than my children's birthday party, I'd be looking forward to it. It makes me sick that I could even imagine that she would do such a thing as ruin her own grandchildren's birthday party, just to be a vindictive witch.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Same old same old

Same passive aggressive mother, same reversion to emotional eating...everything is as per usual. I've given up on buying a house next year. I won't survive that long. I will either eat myself to 300 pounds or I will punch my mother in the face and be kicked out.

We're going to sell off the appliances we have in storage that have been accumulated for a new house and use the money to sell the car. My dad's cousin owns a store with a one bedroom apartment over it; right now that sounds great to me. I'll deal with a sofa bed to be free of this place.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

I'm starting a nervous breakdown pool

It's for my mother, but hey, why not me, too? My brother left for Iraq either today or yesterday, and she's not happy. (According to my sister, he didn't actually leave for Iraq, he's got a layover somewhere for two weeks. But I guess it's all the same to my mom, and for that I can't blame her.) I'm trying to be sympathetic--hell, I can even be empathetic, I have two sons and I have been trying very hard not to imagine what it would be like to see one or both of them and know that it may very well be the last time I'll see them alive--but she's not making it easy. How can I be sympathetic to someone who tells me that me and my family are filthy and disgusting? Take it with a grain of salt. That has become my mantra.

I have gained at least five pounds since living with her, probably more. But that stops now. I will not let her make me revert to emotional eating--well, again, anyway.

Before my brother left, we had some pictures taken. I got them off my mom's camera and onto my computer and I am not at all happy with what I see. I look six months pregnant in all of them. The only decent one is one where I am posing with my siblings and I'm behind my sister. Here's one of the worse pictures. I'm the one in red.

I've never been particularly photogenic, but this just...ugh. (By the way, that's my sister holding my youngest, her husband behind her, and the back of my oldest's head.) I don't want to look like this any more. I think that from now on when I need a kick in the pants to get back on track I need to have someone take a candid picture of me.

I almost went to Taco Bell today. My mom was driving me crazy, my 25-year-old husband is having stomach pains because of her (onset of an ulcer?) and I was just done. I couldn't even fathom the idea of being there another day, let alone another six months. I was actually counting the money in my purse to see what I could get, and I just said, "Stop. This is not what you want." So far it's worked. And I'm right, it isn't what I want.

You know when they say that you have to lose weight for yourself first? I honestly think that if my main reason for losing weight was for myself--and especially if it was noncosmetic--I wouldn't do it. "Health" is kind of a nebulous idea at my age. I feel fine. I can walk up a flight of stairs just fine, I can ride a bike, I can do pretty much whatever I want to do. I will be drenched in sweat, but I can do it. To me it's not enough to say "I want to get healthy," even though I have a strong family history of diabetes. There is no diabetes meter that I can see my risk go down with my weight. (I'm sure there's a calculator of some sort online, but you know what I mean.) So I need something stronger than that. To be honest, most of the time my strongest reason for losing weight is revenge. Well, maybe revenge isn't the best word. I want to show people that I can overcome obstacles. That I am not a fat lazy slob. That I can be pretty. I want to show them that they were wrong about me. Right now I want to show my mother that she cannot break me. She cannot drag me down with her, and she will not make me turn to fast food for comfort because she's taken her bad day out on me.

OK. Enough of that. I can hear the swelling of the violins as I shake my fist in the air. I think I've griped enough for today. I'm going to go look at real estate online and dream.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Hurry hurry hurry

Just a quick post before the library closes...that's where I get to go to use the internet now. Yay fun, especially considering that during the week DH doesn't get home from work until they're ready to close, so if I come down I get to sit outside and feel like I'm a thief. Anyway.

Dieting is...eh. Not good, not bad, just pretty much not anything. I'm trying to pay more attention to my eating and do the stuff I've learned from the Beck Diet Solution--I have my card with reasons that I want to lose weight that I read twice a day and before meals, I eat sitting down, and I have my diet picked out. Just slow going right now. But I'm still here, I swear! At this point it's looking like we may be able to get out by February. That would be nice.

Have to go...hope everyone out there is doing well, I don't have time to visit other journals today. I hope to be back soon.