April 19, 2008

Happy Saturday!

It is definitely one for me. Except for just a few minutes, I've had a pretty good day today :-) My family and I ended up spending gobs of time together, I avoided a serious sunburn in the meantime, I'm good and tired and I even got a nice amount of exercise in.

D had an outing for her Girl Scout group---they planted trees as a service project. She was gone from about 8:30 to after noon. They were supposed to plant the trees at the primary school here in town, but ended up planting them several other places. Thinking my daughter would be at the primary school, which is less than a half a mile from my house, and since I need to get my butt up and groovin' if I want to start losing weight again, T, P and I walked down to the primary school. On top of big sister supposedly planting trees there, there are 2 playgrounds for P to play on. And he LOVES to play on the smaller one---which has equipment much closer to his developmental level than the bigger one---he goes up and down pretty well, and even went about getting to the highest slide on his own. Which he does pretty well---he's really very careful, but mommy of course still tries to be as close to him as possible, still advises him to be careful, and still worries when he gets close to edges, etc. But I'm proud of him because he does pretty well and he loves it so much. Anyhow, we didn't find out that her group didn't get assigned the primary school like they had thought until her troop leader showed up to tell us the girls were almost done, and they'd be coming back over to the school soon. We of course weren't the only parents there---the neighbor whose girls are also in the troop (they will be appearing later in the post due to something from last night that bled over into this evening), and a father of one or two other girls in the troop were also there.

After we got D, we went to "A Taste of" downtown, which is also connected to the college's Earth Week celebrations. A big name is coming to campus this week, to talk. It almost makes me feel bad that I'm no longer going to college, as there are lower priced tickets. But I wouldn't be able to go anyhow, so I'm not having a big fit about it. We ended up over at the grange for a while, doing this and that, eating some of the free food, listening to people, etc. Kept me from getting a sunburn at least, so that's a good thing.

Then we came home, and the part about the neighbors and something from yesterday bleeding in...well, the grandmother of the girls came along to their little field trip last night---they toured McDonald's, and a local chocolate store (a really good, high quality store), and then the older girls did some research at the college library. Well, I guess the neighbor girls wanted D to ride with them, but D wanted to ride with some of her friends from the troop, and the grandmother didn't like it, after the 3 of them did a little arguing, and said something to the mother. I guess D had said that her friends got to see her only once a week, but the neighbor girls she can see every day.

The thing of it is, the mother made a comment to D, when she came over to see the girls, asking where they were, according to D the mother said "oh, the girls you see too much of?" This is something of an on going thing with this house and us, in that the mother has a fit whenever, for whatever reason, D ends up playing with another girl in the neighborhood or just in general, more than her girls. Usually it's simply because the girls are not allowed out for a period of time, or D herself has been on restriction. Or the family has had a period of time where they were off doing things, or we had a period of time where we were off doing things---obligations for other organizations or activities, or lots of time at my mom's, or sicknesses, time together a lot with the family, what have you. Back when we were first here, to keep the peace, I went along and made sure that D played with the older girl most of the time. The problem is, in part, D is the older of the 3---their oldest is 2 years younger than D, and their other girl is 3 more younger than that. So, we have a wide range of ages involved (there are no other girls the younger girl's age in this immediate area, and there have never been), plus the younger girl is DEFINITELY spoiled.

My problem now, and what I plan to express to the mother should (when) this come(s) up again, is that if I were to tell her daughters she was only allowed to play with my daughter or have any real problem with her daughters playing with other kids (which I don't---right in front of D or not), then SHE would raise all high holy hell. I, however, know and understand that (a) the 3 girls have other friends and (b) there is NOTHING WRONG with them having other friends that they also spend time with. I will be trying my hardest to (taking a page from the series of sermons [? not sure if it's right to call them that at this church, but I guess that's probably the most appropriate word for them] that the pastors have been doing on conflict) bring a bucket of water to the matter and not a bucket of gasoline, while also confronting the truth with some grace, (a grace sandwich---compliment/grateful, grace-full comments sandwiching some truth), and not avoiding the subject. I wish I knew where all my notes are from the sermons, as I'm pulling a lot of this out of my head, and I'd really like to work from exactly what the sermons said. But I think I have the general gist of the last 3 or 4 sermons, hitting the high points. I'm also making sure to deal with the log in my eye before I confront this speck (seriously, though, I would think that the log is in her eye and the speck---doesn't exist in mine, because I don't EXPECT other kids to play with only mine, I know that everyone has more than one friend, I learned that when I was the age of the youngest of the girls) in her eye.

Tell me, after all this long explanation, if you've stayed this far, what do you think? Am I right to be upset about this? Is she being, as I feel, two faced and hypocritical about it---thinking others should do one thing while allowing her kids and herself doing another? Do you think I'm accurate in my assessment? Could there be something I'm missing?

Right now, these people and this situation is one of the things on my list of why I want to get out of here. They have been for a while---not just because of this, but also because of having to listen to that woman yell at her kids, and HOW she yells at her kids---including her form of dealing with putting her kids to bed being (1) keeping them up late, then (2) yelling at them when they (inevitably) wake up again in the middle of that night. I've had to deal with that since the younger girl was the age of their son---who is 9 months younger than P, as they conceived their son (I really didn't want to know this) on the day I was in the hospital having P. Even before that, as she was 6 months old when we moved in, and it started that very summer (we moved in here in June). And the apple doesn't fall far from the tree---the grandmother yells at all of them, from the mother and father right down to the littlest one, just as much if not more. I can't WAIT to get away from these people and be able to ignore them when I see them! Because I will. Good thing D should be going up to Cadets soon, so that then she won't have to be in the same BUILDING with the youngest, or the same troop and level as the oldest of those two girls.

I also want to get out of here, though, because I'm sick of this house, I can't stand the landlord and his lax ways, I want someplace I can use for a home party that I'm not totally embarrassed to bring people into, someplace where I can put things where they belong (you know, like tires in a garage, snow things in a garage, dirt in a garage---potting soil---P in his own room, etc etc.), I'm sick of jumping each time I hear a car come down the driveway when T's running late, wondering if it's him, I'm sick of listening to neighbor's---the people upstairs, the ones I spoke of before, ANYONE who lives in this godforesaken trailer park---business! And I want my own place. Why I haven't called anymore numbers (though I have been collecting them), I don't know. I even saw a nice little house with a for rent sign out front. But the last 2 times I got the number of a for rent sign, look where we ended up---with a landlord who was a dead beat---and a dead beat for a landlord.

So, enough negativity! I'm so happy I'm done with the Penny Saver route. No pressure! I was able to enjoy myself! Now I just have to find other outlets to plug/sell/promote my candle biz!

I'm trying to figure out how to change the look of my blog. I'm sick of the all white, and I seriously wonder if the color and organization are scaring people off. I try to be jovial, but it doesn't always work. I seem to be scaring a lot of people off, I can't get people to be interested in talking to me for long very often. If at all. No one wanted to sit with me at the last MOPS meeting, which I found really odd.

2 comments:

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Unknown said...

My Dear Allison, I wish I knew some magic thing I could say to you that would help you with the issues you face. But I don't. All I can say is - just be you. Because YOU are a sweet and honest person. And no one could be anything better than sweet and honest.