The next chapter…..

Come on over to my new blog and read about the next chapter in our mostly girls only life. And the damn kids…..

Bad Parenting 101-Holding a grudge

We all have a list of things that our parents did that we won’t do to our kids. Well, maybe others don’t have a list but I do. After becoming an adult, I started realizing that most of my issues stemmed from my childhood. And I decided that I was not going to do these things to my kid. But, sometimes these things have been ingrained so deep that you don’t even realize that you are doing it.

As a kid, whenever I would get in trouble there would be a punishment and then the subsequent cold shoulder, silent treatment, and other mean girl type behaviors, from my mother. So after doing my time, I was still paying for my crime. This made me feel like crap longer but it sure was shoved into my head that I was bad and needed to be punished. Making me feel like shit for a long time was the fun part for my mother.

I, however, didn’t realize that wasn’t how a parent is supposed to act. I thought that holding a grudge was a good idea because it really made it sink in that you weren’t happy with your kid. But I didn’t purposely pretend to still be mad when I wasn’t. At least I didn’t think so. I took a step back from myself the other day and realized that was exactly what I had been doing. I got over being mad about a bad behavior pretty quickly but would continue to act as if I was mad because I was afraid of her feeling like she had been let off the hook. But that is a ridiculous way to look at it.

Kids deserve the chance to change. They need to be forgiven for mistakes that they have made in the past and those mistakes should be forgotten. There is no worse feeling than having a mistake you made 5 years ago thrown back in a child’s (or a now adult child’s) face so a parent can make a point. And I know this because it is done to me on a pretty regular basis so why am I doing this to my daughter, even though it’s on a smaller scale? When I am no longer mad about whatever the bad behavior is, I should not longer act like I’m mad at her and just letitgo! How will she ever learn to forgive and forget if I don’t model that for her? And how will she ever be able to change and learn from her mistakes if I don’t leave them in the past for her?

(There must be a parenting instruction manual somewhere that someone is not sharing because this is too complicated to not come with some kind of assembling directions!)

Cover letters, resumes, and interviews…oh my

All this interviewing and job searching has got me thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life. There are people out there who make a living from something they love and feel strongly about so why can’t I.  With the perfect chance to start anew I starting meditating on what I want to be when I grow up.

I’ve been doing Human Resources stuff for a bit now and had planned on getting my Professional Human Resources certification so I could go into HR management but that doesn’t really get me all excited. What gets me all fired up and excited???  Going Green! I’m always, always giving people advice, solicited and not solicited, on how to go green. I’ve given a bit of advice on here on ways to go green. So wouldn’t it be great to help people go green who really want to and save our Earth?!??!  That would be the greatest thing ever! 

So, I started doing a little research on what I could do now. There are companies out there that you can pay for their kit and training and then go to people’s houses and do an audit, but I don’t like that idea. I want to be a professional and a couple of hours training a professional does not make. Plus, I don’t want to peddle overpriced “green” products. It’s so easy to go green and save money! I make my own cleaning products that I could easily teach people to make. I make all my own beauty products (hair and skin) but I won’t give those recipes away. They are going to be passed down to my daughter. But I a m working on getting that little business back up and running (turns out I wasn’t as far in over my head as the SCORE guy told me I was. Not sure if that was a sexist thing or not) and my products are going to be reasonably priced so everyone can afford to have all natural products. So why not start my own Eco Consulting business. I could help people make their homes greener and help businesses go green!  And to be considered a professional, I’m going to get my MBA in Energy and Sustainability Studies!  I’m researching different schools right now.  But to start I’m going to take the green part out of this blog and start a going green blog to get some ideas out there and get a good fan base for when I’m ready to start the business.

It’s really amazing how much better you feel when you have an idea that you are really excited about!!

I was scared…….of myself.

After I was laid off in March I went on an emotional roller coaster ride. I was happy to be out of a job that I hated and excited to spend the summer with  my daughter. But I was also worried about how I was going to make ends meet and find another job.  But then a miracle happened. The week my severance ended and unemployment kicked in, I started getting regular child support. It was coming every week at the same time and it lasted for about three months. This really was the strangest thing since in the nine years that child support has been in place, I have never, ever received anything on any kind of regular basis. Add that little bit of help to my amazing budgeting abilities and I was ok on the financial front.  But once the beginning of school started to get closer, I found myself having zero motivation to do anything.  After she went back to school, my day consisted of two-three hours of job searching and then the rest of the day sitting on the couch in front of the TV. I’m not even sure of how long this was going on before I realized it but it was too long. One day I just took a look at myself and was scared of what I say.

Because I was out of work I no longer had insurance. I applied for Medicare through the state of New Hampshire but I qualified for a plan that had a $2,000 deductible per month (yes that’s three zeros, but no we don’t need to fix the health care system).  I was making about $10 an hour on unemployment and that’s what I qualified for (the child support had stopped by then).  There was no way I could afford a therapist without health insurance so I was stuck trying to figure out what was going on all on my own. In May, my closest friend in the area didn’t come to my graduation party and I told her that I was hurt that she didn’t come but that I would get over it because it helped me to see that we weren’t as close as I thought we were. She then told me that we were only friends for so long because we sat next to each other at work (that’s the short version).  Needless to say, that really stung. I let so few people get past my wall because I want to avoid being hurt like this. I had also cut off contact with my best friend in Maryland after an incident that was fueled on by my now ex-friend so I didn’t have him to talk to either. I’m very bad at crawling back with my tail between my legs and my emotional state could not handle anymore rejection so I didn’t even try to reconcile with him (I have since gotten over myself and we are now working to get back our friendship).  So, that really left me to kind of wallow in my own self pity and that I did.  The only thing getting me up and out of bed was that I had to get my daughter to school. The only thing getting me to take a shower and get dressed was that I had to get her off the bus and get her to dance lessons. The only thing keeping me from sinking into a very big hole was my daughter (yet another time in my life that she has saved me from myself!!).  She is why I figured out what was going on with me.

Then one day while sitting at the dinner table with my daughter, it dawned on me. I had no more sense of self. I defined myself as a single mom who worked full-time and was in school. I supported my family and was working towards a better future for us, but now I wasn’t. I had finished school and it didn’t seem to be helping me get a job and I was no longer supporting my family. So then who was I? That, I didn’t know. It all goes back to  my childhood (again!). My mother always judged everyone on their jobs and material possessions or anything superficial so that was how I judged myself.  So now I was no one. I had never dealt with self-pity before.  Before motherhood I got drunk and did drugs to forget about it. And after motherhood, there just was not time for self-pity. There was always something that needed to be done.  Now, I had neither of those defenses to fall back on so I had to face it.

I started by making a list of who I thought I was. Then I stop turning the tv on. I sat down and read those books on spirituality that I had just been flipping through before. I knew there was still a hole in my spirituality but I hadn’t figured out what it was. I now think I have figured it out (that is something for my next blog post).  I started working on that list of things that I wanted to get done around the house. And I just went outside again. I think that I may have a reverse version of that seasonal condition (I can’t remember what it’s called) but I am more happy in the fall and winter than I am in the spring and summer so I think that may have had an effect on my emotional state as well. I went outside and gathered beautiful leaves with  my daughter. I started researching different organizations that are working towards helping the earth that I could get involved in. I started experimenting with my lotions and stuff again and came up with a new idea for that. I played with my poor dogs who had not been getting much attention. I had a conversation with a friend who I had never really let see my soft, inner, wounded side.  She made me see that others saw me as more than I had been seing myself and that helped push me forward.

I think that going through that funk, as I like to call it, actually helped me to see ME better. It really started me looking at who I am and see myself as the many faceted person that I have always been.

It’s never too late to make a difference, right?

I’ve been watching Whale Wars on Animal Planet. For those of you who have never heard of it, a quick rundown.  Paul Watson is the leader of the Sea Shepard Crew. He was in Greenpeace in the 70′s but decided that picketing and all that kind of stuff wasn’t doing anything and wanted to have a bigger effect. So, he got together a crew and they sail out near Antarctica and fight against the Japanese fleet who are killing whales under the guise of research. They put their lives on the line to try to save these whales. It may sound crazy and I thought it was at first too, but now I completely understand. There have been several times when I was somewhere and sticking to my new veggiesaurus life style was a hard choice. But then I thought off what these animals go through and reminded myself that this tiny bit of suffering is nothing compared to their suffering. That made me understand what these guys are thinking.  There are plenty of laws out there to protect the whales but no one there enforcing them. These people are protecting what can’t protect itself and that is really an amazing thing! 

And I want to be part of it. 

At this point in my life, I obviously have way too much responsibility to pick up and go sailing to Antarctica to protect the whales.  I have a mortgage to pay and all the bills that go along with that .My daughter needs me here, though if there was no chance of her getting hurt, I would bring her along with me.  But can I do something here that fulfill this dream of mine to make a difference in this world?  Is there a way to change society’s new status quo that  continues to destroy the earth and hurt our most precious, helpless beings, the animals?

When I think back to the years before I had my daughter, I want to find that girl and beat the shit out of her. The thought of all that time wasted, drinking and doing drugs and partying kills me now. Not to mention all the stupid things I did while doing all that partying.  I’m still not sure if it was all rebellion or trying to hide from myself. I spent a lot of time growing up feeling like I needed to hide who I really was because it was never good enough for my mother. So, I don’t know if those years of being high on one thing or another was my next step in avoiding the real me.  But, I digress….

I guess regretting what I did in the past isn’t really helping me in the present so I’m taking it as a lesson in not wasting time.  I just hope that I didn’t miss my chance to make a real difference somewhere, somehow.

Walking the road of my beliefs

I figured out that part of my problem with myself is that I have all kinds of beliefs of who I want to be but I don’t LIVE who I want to be. Part of my problem is all this self-sabotaging that goes on. I’m not entirely sure why I do it but I know it has something to do with the idea that I’m not good enough. And throw in a bit of no belief in my own abilities and you’ve got a big slice of self-sabotaging pie. It of course comes from my childhood but I can’t use that excuse anymore because I am an adult and I’m responsible for my own actions. I was in therapy trying to clean up my self-esteem but it got to be too expensive.  I was reading a book about daughters of narcissistic mothers but once I got to the part about how to fix yourself, I stopped. Self-sabotaging again or inability to take the necessary steps to fix myself?? No idea.

So, the first step in lining up my beliefs with my actions has been going vegetarian. I’m getting a lot of crap from family about it. Of course my mother insisted that it wasn’t good for my daughter because she lives in 1972 when they believed that vegetarians can’t be healthy. I started to explain to her and then rememebered that I don’t have to explain myself to her anymore so I just said, “This is the decision that I have made for my family and all I’m asking is for you to respect it.” A roll of the eyes and some snide comment under her breath and the subject was dropped. 

I’ve been learning more and more about veggies and actually learning to like them more. I’m trying new things that I normally wouldn’t and liking them. I’ve realized that any meal, anywhere can be vegetarian. I just eat more of the sides and not the meat. My daughter has been kind of fighting me on it now. Which is strange because she never liked red meat before. But yesterday she had a cheese burger at my parents’ house and then today my mom was making steak tips and Dancing Chick wanted to stay there to eat them.  Maybe her body is craving iron or something. I need to figure out a way to get more iron in her diet and maybe we can avoid this.

I also want to explain to her why I’ve chosen to stop eating meat. I want her to understand the extent of the horrors at factory farms but I don’t want to scar her by showing her the videos that I have seen. It just wouldn’t be good parenting. So how do I get the point across without giving her nightmares? 

I haven’t decided what my next belief will be to put into action but I have a feeling it’s going to be starting over on the Eightfold Path once I get this veggie stuff into a habit that is no longer a habit but just who I am.

Going Vegetarian

I’ve been listening to “Skinny Bitch” on my iPod while on the treadmill. I bought the audiobook a long time ago but didn’t listen to the whole thing. Then a friend of mine was talking about it on Facebook so I gave it another shot. The part that I missed was when they read an excerpt from the book Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry . It was so horrible that I started crying on the treadmill and couldn’t listen to the whole thing. I knew that the factory farming industry was bad but I had no idea. Then I ended up over at GoVeg.com and found this video (WARNING: This video is awful, no horrendous, no, there’s no word to describe it. I could not watch the whole thing but I can’t get the picture of a poor baby piglet having his teeth cut and screaming out of my head). The thought of helping these assholes do this to these animals, makes me gag, literally.

So I’m trying some recipes and trying to get my daughter to go along without kicking and screaming. I had already started curbing our addiction to processed foods by making snacks and treats at home.  She hates red meat so that’s not a problem. Tonight we had the only red meat thing that I didn’t have to fight her on, tacos. I used Morning Star grille crumbles and she loved it. Though the vegan brownies with tofu that I tried, were not a hit, thanks to @sleeplessinsimi I have a better recipe that I will be trying hopefully tomorrow.

We are two girls who have become junk food addicts and who are scared of veggies. Can we really make this much of a change?

Have I found the secret to happiness (well, my own anyway)??

I was laid off on March 5th.  It’s now May and I haven’t been this happy in a long time.  The first month of being laid off was stressful and scary but then something happened.  I realized that I’m going to be ok. I realized that I can make it on my severance pay and then unemployment. I realized that I wasn’t yelling at my kid. I realized that I was happy again and the only thing that changed was that I didn’t have to go to a job that I hated five days a week.  Could it really be that simple?

Maybe it was because I was tired and had so little time to get things done.  Maybe it was because I was sitting in traffic for 2 hours a day. Maybe it was because I wasn’t exercising. Maybe it was because I never took time for myself. Maybe it was becase I felt like a bad mother.  But I don’t think so. I was mad in the morning because I had to go to a job that I hated everything about. I was mad when I got home because I spent the day at a job that I hated everything about. On Saturdays, I was mad because I had a million things to do and only two days to get them done in. On Sundays, I was mad because I had to go back to the job that I hated everything about the next day.  And of course, I was mad while I was at the job that I hated everything about.  So, that’s pretty much being mad at every waking moment. Could all this being mad be the reason for the above mentioned “maybe it was because”s? Hmm, now that can’t be good.

Since not having to go to the job that I hate everything about I have started talking to my daughter more. I have stopped snapping so quickly at my daughter. I have started exercising and feeling better about my myself because of it.  I have been working in my yard and realized that it is a great meditation. I have started a class this term and haven’t had to be up until 1am trying frantically to get everything done. The last three years have been filled with nights of 3 or less hours of sleep.  There have been times since becoming a mother that I was working two jobs and going to school walking around in a haze of tiredness and stress.  That’s not anyway to live.

So where does all this realization leave me?  After spending Dancing Chick’s entire April vacation with her, at home and only fighting with her once, I realized that I want to be able to spend time like that with her. I have never had that chance. So, unless something  great comes along (I will still continue to look) I will be staying home  with my daughter through her summer vacation and on unemployment (I’ve been paying for it since I was 15 so why  not-I went to high school in Kansas and because of farming, you can work at 15).  This will also give me the time to finish the last three classes (YAHOO!!!!) that I need for my degree. I can be a college student.  And, by then I will have a degree and will have many more options  in the business world.  And hopefully that will help me find the job that will pay the bills and make me happy.

I know that 55% of Americans don’t like their job. And I know that in this economy, you really shouldn’t be picky about what job you have. But I’ve learned that how you spend 40+ hours of your week has a major affect on your emotional well-being.  And in my family, my emotinal well-being is what keeps all this together.  And that’s important to me.

My graduation..another way for my mother to be a martyr.

I graduate on  May 15th.  It’s been a very long, hard, frustrating road. I will finally have my Bachelors degree and I can’t wait to be done. I was supposed to graduate last year but buying the house took up too much of my time so I had to drop classes that I had already registered for.

So, this year, I am most definitely graduating. Nothing is standing in the way. I have three classes and that’s it. So I will technically be done in August but I get to walk in May.  I found this all out about three weeks ago. Since my mother was all gung-ho last year about throwing me a big party (since I won’t be having a wedding and all-yeah, she reminded me of that sevearl times) I told her about it. Her response, “Yeah right. Like you did last year.”  Thank you so very much my loving mother. When my gown and cap and everything arrived, she say them sitting on my dining room table (a week after I told her I was graduating) she commented something about it, but I don’t remember what. Then I talked to her about the fact that it’s a two-hour drive to my college and I have to be there at 9am, blah, blah. I waited hoping that maybe she would say something about having a party. Nope.

Another week passes and she asks me again what time the graduation is (and I’m the one with Alzheimer’s) and I comment that I don’t think I’m going to invite other relatives with it being so far away. Then she says well would you rather go out to dinner with us or have a party?  Um, WTF!??!  I just sat there for a minute hoping she would say I’m just kidding. Nope. She just stared at me.   I tell her I would like a party.  She then points out to me that unlike last year, she is working now and will need me to help her.  Grand.  The rest of the time we spent at their house there were several comments about how there is only three weeks until my graduation and how much she is going to have to do for it and how there is only three weeks and blah, blah, blah.  I tell her that if she wants to do it the week after that would be fine. On and on about how she doesn’t know how she will do it.   Then she calls me this afternoon and asks me again when I want to have the party.  Again, I tell her the Saturday after graduation is fine. Then she called again tonight and had DC ask me when and what time I’m having the party.  Um…again WTF!  You haven’t had to pay for a wedding for me (as you love to point out so many times) nor did you pay for me to go to school. The loans that will follow me around for the next ten years are proof of that. We never had birthday parties growing up. Her reasoning was that we didn’t live near our family. Ok, fine but there hasn’t been one since we moved back here six years ago. I did, however, help my dad plan a giant surprise party for her and helped her plan several birthday parties for my dad. Yes, I realize how petty that sounds, but this is really the only thing that I was hoping she could do for me.  You know, my one time in the spotlight.

I know that I shouldn’t expect my mother to do anything for me without either holding it over my head or using it for her own martyrdom but I really thought this would be different. I really thought that the second hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life might make her proud of me and that she might want to do something nice for me with no strings attached. I thought that parents were supposed to want more for their kids. Since she has no degree (which by the way is my fault for being an “accidental pregnancy”)  I thought she would be happy.  Silly, silly me.

Why do we ignore the Red Flags??

I’ve had plenty of relationships that ended with me feeling like an ass because the red flags were all there for me to see!  So I hate to see a friend ignoring them.  Is it that we hope that we are wrong? Are we thinking that we can “change” them?  Is it that we really think maybe the red flags aren’t there?

A friend of mine was dating a guy (we’ll call him Red Flags) who was divorced. Red Flags’  kids were horrible, horrible children who were not disciplined at all. His ex-wife would go out on the weekends that he had the kids then lie and tell him she was getting a cold so he had to keep them longer (putting pictures on Facebook of yourself acting like a drunk whore he night before doesn’t help your “I’m sick” story) and he would leave them with my friend. I guess he had a terrible divorce and that was his excuse for not wanting to marry my friend (we’ll call her Heartbroken).  So, Heartbroken really wanted to have a child and told me that she was ok with him not wanting to get married, though it was news to me that she didn’t want to get married.  I told her that it seemed strange to me that he wanted to have a baby with her but not get married. She brushed my concerns aside and continued on her way.  She got pregnant, had a beautiful baby boy and everything seemed great. Well, they seemed great through Facebook and MySpace. I had moved up to NH from Maryland by then so I wasn’t there to see what was really going on. Long story short, Heartbroken just found out that Red Flags has been cheating on her since their son was 4 months old (he is now a year and a half).  She moved out and is telling me she never say it coming and can’t believe he would do this to her.  I don’t want to make her feel worse so I’m not pointing out the obvious red flags that followed this guy around because it’s easier to see the situation when you’re standing outside it.

This is the third friend of mine in the last year to find out that her boyfriend was cheating on her and/or lying about this or that, and being completely shocked by it after he was waving red flags in her face.

Why don’t we see that if they don’t want to marry us there is a reason (and him not being able to afford an engagement ring is not one of them)?  Why do we continue to wait and wait hoping that he will someday get it together and actually make a commitment? Why do we think that if he’s willing to have a baby with us, he’s committing?  A man having a baby with a woman is not a committment for him. If he wants out, he’s committed to every other weekend and maybe paying child support, not to the child’s mother.  Why don’t we listen to our friends when they try to warn us about the Red Flags of the world? Why do we waste so much of our time and energy on these Red Flags??