Thanksgiving ahoy

I'm going to have to see my mother for Thanksgiving. I really don't want to. I've spoken to her I think once (maybe twice) in the last few months. I had to initiate those calls. I want to see my dad just not her. I know it sounds horrible but if she weren't my mother I would never choose to deal with her. Say what you want but it's true.

I hate that I have mommy issues but I'm so tired of wanting things that in my heart I know will never happen. One Christmas I asked my mom to write down the recipes that I loved as a child so that I could cook those things for my kids. My mom really is an excellent cook. She gave me a chocolate fountain instead that she bought from QVC. You might say that it was a lovely gift. And it was when I received it from her the year before.

She sends lovely hand written cards to my friends when they get engaged or have a child. I get nothing. I don't know why we never bonded but I've wanted to have that forever. I seriously have panic attacks worrying that I am completely going to screw up my kids lives. It's definitely one of the reasons that I didn't want to have a girl. I wouldn't want her to have these same feelings for me that I have for my mom. Somehow it feels different with little boys.

Random Crap

I know I haven't written in forever but I've been busy having my ass handed to me by my Big Boss and dealing with the fall out of all of that shit. A few months back I was foolish enough to thing that if you work your ass off, that good things may actually happen for you. BAH! After much effort and a possible promotion dangling in front of me, I was called into the Big Boss' office and told that while my work is great my people skills sucked ass. I added the ass part. He did say that they sucked though. I apparently pissed off the wrong people when I told them that they can't have everything for free and that if the quality of their data looked bad they might want to run some quality controls prior to giving the samples to me. These incidents occurred at a couple different times but whatever. I sucked. I was too aggressive according to the Big Boss. Would they say that if I was a guy? Maybe I don't know. I was bitter (ok still am) and depressed for a long while. I was told that I needed to meet with the head of HR and learn how to deal with difficult people. BAH. Ok I have done these things because if the boss tells you to do it, you do it. But in the process my self confidence has plummeted into the toilet. I've grown bitter about having put in all the effort only to feel like I was shit upon. Yes I am using this information as a learning experience but it still sucks.

So instead of writing, I sat and have read about other peoples lives. At the end of the day I still have my job but the shine is off the apple a bit. They haven't officially hired someone for that promotion yet but I doubt that it's gonna be me. Maybe I shouldn't even want it. It will require working with those people that are the most problematic.

When I was in the fourth grade I transferred out of Catholic school to the public school across the street. There, I was a virtual rock star. Ok I was teacher's pet but to me that was a rock star. I got away with all sorts of shit, mostly because I finished my assignments before everyone else. I would schedule Mr F's tennis appointments and vet appointments and all sorts of crap. Yeah I was basically his secretary but no one else got to use the phone in the teacher's lounge. When I was in the fifth grade, I was no longer special. Mr D made sure that everyone got a chance to do something special. He used bingo chips. We were all assigned numbers at the start of the year and when he wanted something done he shook the container (ala Vinnie Testa's) and if your number was picked you got to do something cool. Ok I got over that disappointment because I knew that I was really smart. Smarter, in fact than most of the kids in my class. Yeah I knew I was near the top of my class but I was proud of that. I knew that I could lead people. Until one day when we were split into groups. There were four of us in a group. Ann G was in there. She was near the top of the class too. I actually wasn't sure which one of us was smarter. I always hoped it was me because Ann was in the popular group and thus I disliked her.

When you transfer schools and you don't come from some sexy new location (i.e. the West Coast or even Pennsylvania), you either have to be really pretty or really to get into the popular group. Although I'm really cute, I have an overbearing mother and a long series of hand-me-down clothes. I was never going to fit in.But I knew I was smart so it was something. How2 stated these feeling much more eloquently in her Queen Bee post. Anyhow, there I was in a group and it was some sort of mapping project. Everyone sat down and started talking about how to address the task at hand. And when they were done I pointed out that they were wrong and that there was a better, simpler way of doing it. Well Mr D pulled me aside and told me that I wasn't allowed to do that. I didn't understand why. According to him I needed to do what the rest of the group said even if it was wrong. To this day I don't get that shit. Either let me point out how to fix the problem or let me do this by myself.

I bring up this incident, which obvious still bothers me, because in the office with the big boss, I felt like I was in the fifth grade again. If I can't indicate that certain actions are going to compromise the results, because somebody else's feeling may be hurt what the hell is the point? No one cares that my feelings were hurt. I was told not to take it personally but when you are told that YOUR people skills suck, it is personal. Basically you are told to sit there are take it even if it's wrong and then take all the blame when the people are pissed about the results. I need this job so I take it. But it sucks balls.

Why you should not wear a bikini on the beach

So we're well ensconced on our family vacation. I've got WonderDad, Wonderboy, The Alligator, WonderGramma, WonderPapa, WonderGrammy and WonderGrampy all with me. The other day I was sitting on the beach with the Alligator. I was wearing a bikini. It's not too showy. It's got a halter top and a bottom that's big enough to make sure that my butt is fully covered. The Alligator and I were sitting in the surf just letting the waves wash up on us. Suddenly I realized that it felt like I had a just taken a big poo in my bikini bottom. Now of course I didn't! But all that sand had started washing itself up into my bottoms. WonderGramma said that I should go out into the ocean and rinse off. I tried but the sand had actualy worked itself into the inner liner of the suit. Yeah. So I tried as gracefully as possible to leave the beach and change my suit. That suit has now been designated as pool only!

Just Wrong

http://www.chiaobama.com/
I have no words. This is just wrong.

Paternity Leave

Ok so this is probably not going to be a very welcomed notion but I honestly believe that in MOST cases extended paternity leave is stupid. I'm not talking about parents of preemies, sick children, multiples, spouses with massive post partum depression or complications, or couples that are waiting to get into daycare. I can understand the leave in these cases. However, people who take leave months after the child is born who are not doing it for bonding purposes but rather for an extended vacation are ridiculous. I'm sorry. My husband took 2 days off with our first child and 1 day with our second child. I just didn't need him to be at home with us during that time. All the baby is going to do is eat, sleep and poop. Sure he can change a diaper but he wasn't going to breastfeed the little nugget. After 7 weeks of maternity leave I went back to work. The first time I didn't have an option. I didn't qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act since I had only been at my job for 4 months. With my second child, I could have stayed home for 4 months. I was so antsy, I couldn't do it. I'm not busting on moms that take more time. I'm not busting on stay at home moms or stay at home dads for that matter. However, there are a lot of men where I work and where WonderDad work that view this as vacation time. F*CK OFF! Be a man and go to work you lazy bum!

Will this frustration never end?

So I've been irritable again lately. Big surprise. Mostly I've been agitated at my family. Not Wonderdad or the kids but rather my Mom, Dad and sister. Here's the deal. Last Thanksgiving Opa said that he and my mom would come visit this summer. We had taking the kids out there for the umpteenth time and they promised. Thus far no scheduled trips. They actually have not been here since Wonderboy was 2 months old.

My mom and I got into an argument back then about the fact that she could not press on my newborn's belly to get the gas out and that it was not a good idea to have a just fed baby in a verticle incline. She said she had been a mother longer than me. I said that's my kid. She threw a fit and locked herself in her bedroom. The next morning she started screaming at me like a maniac and tried to hit me while I was holding the baby. She then tried to swallow a bottle of pills. Well not really. She put all the pills in her mouth but didn't swallow any of them. She was just being dramatic. What can I say? The woman is insane. She then locked herself in her room and refused to come out and made my dad leave 8 hours early the next day for the airport that is 15 minutes from my house. She didn't speak to me for a year. It was a quiet year. She finally started talking to me again but she never apologized for her behavior. Wonderdad put his foot down and said that until she apologizes she can't stay in our house. They can come see the kids but she has to stay at a hotel. They have never been back.

Anyhow, they promised and they lied. Oma started saying that Opa had to go to Switzerland to get the steamer trunks that have been there for 30 years! How that prevents them from taking a 2 hour flight to see their grandkids I don't know. I was talking to her about Thanksgiving this year. She starts talking about how she has to go to Singapore and to go help my sister who is pregnant with her second child. I said that if she goes to Singapore this year she will not have seen the kids once this year at all since we won't travel to New York for Christmas. And I was annoyed about her going to see my sister.

I'm not evil and all but here's the thing. When I was due to give birth to the Alligator I asked if she was going to come down like she did with Wonderboy. She said, "You've done this before you don't need me." Thanks. So I was irritated that she was so adamant about having to go see my sister. Plus she said that now that my sister's husband is working full time they will need her help. I was pissed because my husband and I have always worked full time. She didn't even see the Alligator until he was 6 months old. She skipped his baptism. She skipped everything else. She only saw him at 6 months because I begged my folks to join my family on our family vacation to Tampa. If I hadn't she would not have seen him until he was a 1 year old. And we were talking at that time! Not that my dad is innocent in all of this either. It's not like he came to see the kids either.

Anyhow, I was talking to my sister and I mentioned that mom was going to visit her. I started to say that I was annoyed at first about the idea but I didn't even manage to get the sentance out. She cut me off and said that she didn't want to hear it. I told her that she could at least let me get the rest of my sentence out which was to say that I was annoyed at first but then Wonderdad reminded me that she was going to have a C-section and her daughter doesn't go to daycare like Wonderboy does so she probably would need the extra help. My Sister just continued to bitch me out and say that she wasn't choosing sides and she didn't want to hear about any of it. I got so annoyed at her yelling that I just hung up. I didn't feel like arguing with her. I didn't feel like pointing out that I wasn't asking her to choose sides. I just was talking and wanted to tell her how I felt.

The thing is that I know my mom doesn't like me. She is only nice when she wants something. It's always been that way. She likes my sister. My sister isn't a bad person. She's just self involved. She never visited me in college. She never let me visit her. She never cared about anything in particular in my life. Hell she wasn't even there when I graduated as salutatorian from high school. When I was a freshman in college I knitted her a beautiful blanket in her school colors. She put it UNDER her mattress so that her mattress wouldn't slip. She's seen the Alligator once at her daughter's baptism. My husband was a godparent. At her wedding I was told the week before that I would be doing a reading and I wasn't given the reading until the morning of the wedding. After saying that she wanted me there when she got ready, she decided that her friends were enough and told me not to bother. There was one family picture. Are you getting the picture here? I've really questioned whether it's me but I seem to have friends and most people I know think that my mom is insane and my sister is a princess. Not just my friends. My friends parents. Hell even some of my parent's friends that are closer to my dad think so.

So why have I spent nearly 32 years of my life trying to be my sister's friend and to get my mom to like me? I don't know I'm taking suggestions.

Another rough morning

I went out to the car this morning, got the kids in and then tried to start the engine. I got nothing. Turns out that the sweet Alligator decided to play with the interior lights of MamaSigi mobile last night. Well with the heat at 6PM still at 101 and the lights on we were left with a dead battery this morning. Not a I can jump this and go battery. No a dead one. One swift call to AAA and they had it jumped enough so that we could go to Sears to get a new battery. Well actually I called Sears to see what the wait was like and they said that they had one tech on hand but he was allergic to battery acid. Who the fuck isn't? I don't want that shit on me either. Really allergic? Luckily WonderDad was still home this morning. He drove to the mall and picked up a battery so that I didn't have to lug BoyWonder and the Alligator through the Sears scolding them to "not touch anything" and "no we are not buying that now". I finally got to work at 10:30. I had to park on the roof of the parking garage. It should be lovely to get into this evening.