I know what you're saying. If you have the time to give me the details, that would be fine, but I won't be able to read them until tomorrow. I am leaving the minute I put the period at the end of this sentence.
dlowan - to whom are you refering?
Gus, I'll send you a pm sometime.
Oh, sorry 'k, it was you.
I did not realise someone had posted in between us.
Ok, I'll get into it a little more here. If RJB doesn't mind. I don't want to high-jack his thread. And I don't want to start a thread all about my family fight. There are some posts about it on the grit and grimace thread.
I've been interested since you first mentioned it, so look forward to what you have to say. (But also don't want you to feel pressured to say it...)
Maybe I misunderstood real john, but I thought he wanted to talk about all this stuff.
Me, I am and have been for a few years alone for thanksgiving, praise be, but also not alone in that I don't feel not thought of (people picturing osso floating down the Tiber)....
but I am quite close to oh, say, fifty people, off and on. Mostly off, but sometimes on.
So, my cousins, one more than the other, have kept in touch with me and vice versa.
I've had a beef with the cousin near my age and thought she had with me, she, my most sisterly cousin. She is always too f'k'in busy, and finally, after all these years, she knows me less than I know her since she has talked much more by multilples and in plenty of detail, leaving me at the end of phone conversations in summarizing mode or editing mode.
(let me list the things I never discussed, while I heard about this and that...)
After some months of my thinking, eh!!!!, she has reached out. She was busy of course.
So recently I have been wondering why I have bothered all these years. What if I don't call on Thanksgiving, will they call me? (no).
Balancing that, little cousin and husband came way out of their way to visit me last year and are keeping in touch.
Little cousin and I maybe keep better contact, however less often and less involved in thought tossing. (We try to not toss thoughts since we disagree on so much...)
Okay, denouement, I've talked at length with both of them over the last week, and we are all in hand.
Good.
I think RJB wants to have this place as a way to vent BEFORE the **** hits the fan. Maybe our story could be aused as a reason why it's good to vent here.
I really don't know how to explain the scene without feeling like I'm being disloyal to my family. But, at the same time, I want to tell you all. I'll work on it.
Osso - I just learned what denouement means and then you go and use the word!
I am full of words which I toss about, sometimes landing well and other times not. The nots land like giant thudcakes.
I looked back at realjohn's starting post and don't get it that we shouldn't talk about all this family hazzerai.
I bet real john will let us know what he prefers to see, re the thread. (I'll be quiet in the meantime.)
The people in my family are the type to bottle up anger. We siblings have various angst with one another - especially we 3 sisters. Some of us are prone to depression to varying degrees. Some have mild OCD tendencies. Some of us are control freaks - also to varying degrees. Some of us would be called sensitive and some are perceived as sometimes callous. We all have strong personalities.
My sister developed a bad case of ticking bomb after the rest of her family let her son open some of his birthday presents without her and her daughter. Some of us noticed she'd left the room after the first present, some of us hadn't. Some of us knew that there was a prescribed time for his gift opening, some of us didn't. Then there was the issue of the turkey and the stuffing. Her hubby was cooking the turkey, she was to do the stuffing - no one told her the turkey was in the oven. So, the stuffing had to be done separately. It doesn't seem like family fall-out stuff, but it was.
We had major miscommunications about all sorts of things. She left with her family after abstaining from the turkey feast, such as it was. There was a brief flurry of loud voices, a little girl trying to mediate among the grown ups, and a request to not talk about it. Ok. So, they left.
The emails started the next day, she tried to explain herself, but she was still so upset that it was hard to see what she was really saying. She touched on her feelings, she felt she was losing her family, she felt unloved, she made assessments of what we were all thinking during the whole shindig (they were all wrong)......
I responded first trying to stay this side of civil and constructive, but not doing very well. My brother responded and said remarkably similar things as I had said. (he hadn't read my mail). My father responded also saying similar things, then her husband tried to explain her to us and we understood more. Then, finally, my mother responded.
The sister had written about sadness and depression, but what we had all seen and felt, we wrote, was anger. I called it suffocating, my mother called it seething. She sort of laid blame on me, but everyone else involved came to my defense. She mentioned feeling like we gang up on her. I have realized we all gang up on one another. In the end, I think we are all ok with attributing the event to bad communication all around. The rest we'll work out over time.
It's caused some or all of us to discuss a couple other melt downs in the past. We've discussed how we (don't) handle anger. We've discussed family counseling and she's even mentioned counseling for herself.
She had mentioned that she thought my attitude to her was based on long-term deep-seated issues I have with her. But, in the end, I think we are seeing some long-term issues she has (stemming from where, I don't know, but not about me at all). She and I have talked about issues with work (I care for her 2 kids full-time). We talked through some mis-perceptions we've had about the way the other views $ and the job itself.
Meanwhile, the weekend was supposed to hold a time where I could sit and talk with my parents, my sister and her husband about how I was going to get through a master's degree. That never happened and it irked my dad to no end.
Everyone's talking about the stress my sister has been under at work (and it has been great). I wonder why no one is verbalizing the fact that I picked up the slack, along with her husband, for her over-work. Not to mention the stress I am under in the rest of my life.
Well, that wasn't brief....
All for lil K getting masters. Always thinking little K is borderline too thoughtful. Know things are more complex.
Plan to shut up soon.
Osso, you are always threatening to censor yourself - I'm glad you don't.
I get into babblefish late at night and well wish I'd censored the next day. I guess I have a series of monitors. Some have to do with a bit of alcohol, but amazingly most don't. I can be just as unwrapped early in the morning. (It's kind of fun to watch from in here in myself...).
Anyway, peace and knowledge to your family.
It sounds to me like the afternoon, though tense, may have turned out to be productive. Good to get some of that stuff out in the open sometime.
Johnboy, as he is wont to do sometimes, started this thread on a whim. This, he thought, will die a quick and lonely death. There was, rest assured, no thought given to what the thread "should be" about.
When Johnboy was a wee lad he was disinclined to keep his crayon marks within the lines in the coloring books. A wise teacher, Sister Linus, admonished some of the other kids in the class who laughed at Johnboy:
"You don't always need to stay within the lines."
And so it is with threads on A2K. Profoundly-johnboy
Oh my indeed...!
That does suck that the sis-drama took away from master's plans.
Oooh, I have all kinds of theories about what's going on with her but they are mostly uncharitable and you have been so focused on being fair (and I'm not sure if these theories are) that I'll abstain.
It sounds like master's plans will happen, at some point, and hopefully sooner rather than later?
I will say that having a sister as a paid employee is itself a can of worms -- having a sister as a paid NANNY, oof.
Ooof in spades.
Parenting brings out our most primitive and deeply embedded stuff anyways....
Thanks RJB! I don't like having to color inside the lines either.
My mother and I talked about Sis' parenting. She's a wonderfully devoted mother. Intensely focused on her children. Almost too focused. But, that's not what we talked about. My mother brought up the fact that my sis is very good about me and my mother disciplining her kids. She's had to step back from that with me,and the kindercare, pre-k teachers. And with my mother. The discipline my mother was refering to was very light commentary like, "S, don't throw that ball in the house" or "That voice was too loud" etc. Nothing I'd consider going too far with anyone's child. But, it was an interesting thing to ponder.
My mother and I have discussed, in the past, the intesity of her mothering. We can't quite figure out whether it has to do with her (sis') early childhood or with the fact that she's a working mother.
We have had a remarkably easy time with our work relationship, mostly. She has been very easy going with telling me how to deal with the kids, what to do with them, etc. I'm on salary and they take 2-3 weeks of vacation every year. But we have had major issues with how sick I need to be to get time off, getting someone home to relieve me at a reasonable hour. Some issues with how much they pay me, but I've given up on being antsy about that - the pay is great when you figure in the time off.
I guess I feel like they should afford me at least some of the benefits they get from their employers.
