This post has multiple parts to it, so fair warning I’m guessing this one is going to be long.   Lately I’ve been more and more annoyed at traditional hard copy media.  It’s a pain in the butt to deal with and takes up way too much physical space (for those that know me you find that sentence greatly amusing).

Pictures

This started happening over the last year with photo albums.   Photo albums are terrible.   It means normally that one person has a copy of the image and you can’t share them.  It is essentially technology of the last generation.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in having prints, but the pictures themselves.

I’ve made it my mission to start getting the family photos and scanning them in.   I’ve managed to get most of my father’s photos from the era he was with my mother.   The ones I’m missing are any he has of the kids hanging on the walls in his house.   My next run is going to be the pictures from his current family (so a good 15-16 years worth of pictures to go).

My grandmother on the other hand has been very tightfisted with her photos.  I can understand her being protective, but so far I’ve managed to get 59 photos out of her to scan (out of literally over a 1000-2000).   I have managed to scan my photo album, and more recently used the digital SLR and took pictures of my scrap book from high school.   So both of these can be tucked away in boxes that I don’t need to look at and take up physical space in my house.

All the photos I have are now uploaded to Flickr.   You can also read about my photo sharing issue with my mother over here.

Continued tomorrow in part 2

When I was four years old I really wanted to see Flash Gordon, even at that young age I was a sci-fi junkie.  Neither of my parents however were too keen on seeing this, I think the answer was always no.  I’m not sure why – I think Queen was still popular at the time.   I know that it was based on pop ideals and all in all it wasn’t that great of the movie – but geeze when your four year old is obsessed with something this small and it isn’t going to hurt him in anyway, indulge him.

My grandmother in Greenville seemed to agree with my modern view point on it.    We were down visiting and she agreed to take me.   We only managed to get down to see my grandparents in Greenville a couple times a year, so my grandmother spoiled me when she got the chance.  We went to the movies and I loved it, to this day I still immensely enjoy this movie, more now because of the memories then the movie itself.   After the movie my grandmother took me to McDonald’s and I had a hamburger and french fries with lots of ketchup.

What I have outside of memories is the rest of the story that I had forgotten over the years in direct memory, my parents in later years filled in the blanks.  My grandmother originally was going to get me some food during the movie’s intermission.   It had been so many years since my grandmother had been to the movies, that she thought there still was intermissions.   By the time the movie was over she felt bad that I hadn’t eaten and taken me to McDonald’s.

This grandmother died when I was young,  so I only have a few vague memories and stories about her.  I’m sure the rest I have will make it to the blog eventually.   The interesting side note is my wife once criticized Flash Gordon, I relayed this story to her, and never since has she bad mouthed the movie.

Image from here

I’m going to go out on a limb and call out ages here, I could be wrong.   The first time my brother operated a vehicle he was four years old, which would make me around nine at the time.  The location – my grandparent’s house.  My grandparent’s driveway used to be on a hill.   I always enjoyed just speeding a bike down that hill – if I had to guess it was probably about five cars deep.  So it was about fifty feet long with about twenty of that being mostly flat.

We were getting ready to leave my grandparent’s house and my mother sent my brother and myself out to the car.   Now since this was along time ago (in a galaxy far far away?) some details on which family car this was has been lost in the ages.  I remember one car and different parents remember others.   I’m fairly sure at the age my brother was he doesn’t remember which car it was at all.   What I can tell you is that it was a stick shift.

I was sitting in the back seat of the car and my brother was climbing around the front of the car.   I was reading a book or comic book in the back seat of the car and I noticed my mother coming out of my grandparent’s garage and walking towards the car.   At some point in this my brother had removed the parking break and managed to get the car into neutral.  The car started rolling down the hill.   My mother saw this and started running towards the car.  She made it to the driver’s side car door, but she couldn’t open it.  Somehow my brother had managed to lock the car door.  I was in the back seat frozen in fear (shock?) at what was going on.   My mother was yelling at me to jump in the front seat and stop the car or unlock the door.   I just couldn’t move.

Down and down the hill we went, I know that it took less then a minute or so , but at the time looking back it felt a lot longer.   We passed the end of the driveway and were moving into the street.   We crossed the street and ended up in the yard of the house across the street (luckily my grandmother lived in a cul-de-sac and there was no cross traffic).  In the yard across the street my brother managed to scratch the side of the car across a telephone pole, just missing hitting it by inches.

Since he didn’t hit the pole I guess you could say his first experience was a success.   That isn’t what it felt like for me sitting in the back seat.

Between posting my mother’s email to me, or some random notice I get from a website.  It would seem that sometimes I either do not value privacy or exploit others.   This isn’t the case.    I post things I think are interesting – sometimes it’s the personal moments in my life.    If you send me an email in confidence and ask me not mention it to anyone, or post it online – you don’t have to worry about it making it out for public consumption.

Yes this post is short – kind of a blah type of thing post – kind of how I feel right now anyways

Tonight the weather was bad so instead of taking what would be an unsafe over three hour commute home I decided I was going to get a hotel room.   My wife had called and warned me before I was really aware of the weather so she was aware with no surprises.   I managed to get a room that in a clear day would take me less then eight minutes to get to the office.   Tonight it took me over twenty to get here.  The last three minutes was getting into the snow entrenched parking lot that was on a slight incline and had about 5 inches of unplowed snow – I spun the car sideways getting in.

When I was consulting I stayed in many hotels.  I also learned before you went anywhere in bad weather to get a reservation.   So at this hotel close to work I had reserved my room, it came to around forty dollars before tax.    Let’s have a tour through the room and see if it it’s worth it.

The following pictures were taken with my cell phone so please excuse the quality.

This is my coffee table – seems someone didn’t like it very much.

Bathroom shot one – somewhat normal right?

Still somewhat normal – not great by any means though…

OMG – WTF IS THAT????   First here we have the MELTED hair dryer plug  then you have that round knob next to it.   Did you know it took me a good five minutes to get the light on in the bathroom because of that damn knob.   You see you have to turn it, and then the light is on a timer, when the timer runs out the light goes off.   Maybe this is a green initiative by Days Inn.

Another standard Bathroom shot.

Well I at least have tissues I can cry into.

I’m glad it wasn’t hot – I don’t really want to touch the air conditioning knob.

Mobile blogging station / Bed shot.

Another bed shot.

Such neat and orderly hangars they have around here.

Ah – I can iron my clothes with this conveniently placed ironing board.

On closer examination – maybe I don’t want to use this ironing board.

Look a TV, The Bucket List is playing – I don’t think this hotel was on their list of stops in the movie.   Also if you adjusted the location of the TV – the picture goes bad.  It’s not a wiring connection either – it’s just retarded.

My mother had that lamp – she got it over twenty years ago.

My heater that doesn’t fully heat the room

I call this area the west wing.

I think this coffee maker would make a lot of people cry – and those styrofoam cups are the only cups in the room.

My alarm clock, it would be my jelly bean station, but I don’t have any jelly beans.

Cross advertising – I’m not sure which name is getting dragged through the mud on this deal….

This is where the air conditioning would have come out with if it was below freezing outside.

Well at least I have a smoke detector, I’ll be safe for the night.  Something looks a little wrong though.

Yes this is the way I found it.  So if I die in a fire tonight – you all know who is to blame.

I’ve stayed at bad places, but this may be one of the worst.  It does look nice on the outside though.

BTW – I think I know what happened to the iron and why it’s gone.   There seems to be a melted carpet spot in just the shape of an iron on the floor – it didn’t quite come out though – pity.

You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing something cool with the Nintendo Entertainment System.   This unfortunately is not the case.  Where the Nintendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire.   I desperately wanted an NES.  This was sometime around seventh or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nintendo was in full swing, you can see one of the commercials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games.   About five years earlier he got us a Commodore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy – my parents fell for the whole “give you kid a computer and he’ll be computer literate for life” crap that they were handing out in the eighties.  A computer was meant for learning and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn something on.   I learned I never wanted to be a programmer, that’s what I learned.  I could go to my neighbors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Classic – but me – I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t getting anything else.

Picture from here

We moved to Vermilion the summer before my seventh grade year.   I’m sure I started begging for a NES around that time if not earlier.   I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nintendo I was going to have to earn it.    This meant getting a job.   I don’t know about your area but for Vermilion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12-13 year old kids.   The one thing that did open up was the ability to get a paper route.  The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11-12 year old to deliver papers, but Vermilion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Picture from here (not me)

Another boy was giving up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long transition with me so that I could learn the route.   By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my little punch card slip ring for billing, I had a carrier bag, and I also had baskets on the back of my bicycle to carry newspapers in.   I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face.   I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stupid it looked.  Of course being a geek on the nth degree anyways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I struggled through it.  I was a newspaper boy for the Lorain Morning Journal.

You may say that I learned character and fiscal responsibility because of that job.   You would also be wrong.  I hated that job with a passion.   I struggled for the first couple months to get through it.  The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action System which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zapper).   I was impatient to get it, so impatient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school.   You would think this being the first large purchase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the system myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there.   I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there.   I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait.   Eventually my mother pulls up in that blue dodge caravan (minivan) we had.  She had done other shopping and had a ton of bags.  Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales person who told her the Sega Master System was the better system to buy since it was faster and supported more colors.  WTF?  I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Master Sytem.  No one owned a Sega Master System, only people with no friends owned a Sega Master System.   I was not going to own a Sega Master System.    I told her with certainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Master System.  We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nintendo Entertainment System.

My mother then started laughing.  Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nintendo Action Set.   You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way – ever.   She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV.  I think by the time she flushed the toilet I was already on World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros.  I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep.   The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grandfather thought it was good for me so I kept plodding along.    I delivered papers a 3 AM Christmas morning wasn’t that quite the thrill, not.   I would definitely preferred to have been sleeping.    More and more of my customers were moving to prepaid accounts, which cut into my money.   You would think it wouldn’t have effected  my bottom line, but I lost out on tip money from these customers – and to this day I believe the Journal used some creative account billing to the paper boys.    My grandfather thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grandparents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grandfather and my mother in delivering the newspapers.   Now I don’t know about you but if someone would have driven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actually like the job.   He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it.  The funniest thing was after about a year they started loosing money also and it became not financially viable for them either.    I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my families relationship with the Journal after so many bad experiences, it didn’t.  For the last few years my sister (now 22) has a motor route in Vermilion delivering papers.   I guess she makes really good money at it.   It would seem the third time is a charm.   I don’t think my brother or my sister ever hated it as much as I did.   I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route location of my paper route.

I never truly finished my “Month With Mom Series“, I was working on the novel for NANOWRIMO, and then came back and ran out of steam to finish the blog article series.  It’s take me over a month, but I wanted to address a couple comments.  The first came from my youngest sister who still lives with my mother and step-father:

Ok well im just going to say what I feel . About the part 2 and part 3 , I feel she should of never ever took him back . He is not a father and doesnt act like one. He does not bother talking to us all the time except for my yonger brother usually. And is mean to the pets . I dont even like him living in the house . And seems like he doenst even try at all . But I still dont get what she see’s in him. When he was in Columbus it was better without him . But thats all im gonna say .

She seems to have some of the same feeling that I do on the issue, at least when it comes to how my mother dealt with my step-father during their separation and the reconciliation.    So this is similar feelings coming form someone that is thirty-two and someone that lives in that household and is thirteen.   This is also her father, it might be my step-father, but it is her father and this is the treatment she feels that she gets.  Don’t forget that I had another sister pipe in on her feelings.  My own father has read my series, but thought it would be best to not leave public comments, I guess in some ways he is a wise man.

This next comment was left by Groovymarlin who runs her own blog, but I knew through playing SWG with.  This comment was left on part 20 of the series (also the final part I finished).

I’ve been reading these all along and I have to say they’re fascinating, though maybe not for the reasons that you think. I’ll just summarize my thoughts so far:

1. Your mom is obviously a very shallow person. It also sounds like she was a little too selfish and self-centered to be a very good mom.

2. On the other hand, you were all fed, clothed, received medical care, etc., etc, growing up yes? My point being – she may not be a very good mom, but there are much WORSE moms.

3. A lot of your complaints about her sound pretty nit-picky to a third party. I’m sure that to you, just about everything she does is annoying and obnoxious and irritating. But to an outsider, a lot of the things she does sound like…things that middle-aged women do. However…

4. Your opinion and view of her has obviously been colored by the truly negative things she HAS done in the past, and therefore every one of her transgressions is magnified to you.

5. Your mom seems to have a bad habit of using people, but remember: people allow themselves to be used. Your grandparents in particular seem to have no problem allowing her to manipulate them. Is it right? No. Are they adults, and capable of deciding for themselves whether to allow this? Yes (at least as far as we know – if at some point due to age or health they become unable to make these decisions on their own, then there would be a real problem).

I think in general you’re handling the mom situation the right way, which is to just let her do her own thing, as long as it’s not hurting you or your own family. I feel pretty bad about some of the things she said about, to, and in front of your sister. That passive-aggressive shit is not cool, not from anyone, and especially not from a mother. But what can you do about that, other than give your sister your emotional support and help her do her own thing as well? Nothing.

People suck, don’t they?

Ever since I read this comment I thought it would be a good blog post on it’s own for a reply instead of loosing it in the noise of comments that no one would ever read, just like my sister’s comment above.  Though she says I’m handling this the right way and can see where I am coming from I wanted to address a couple of the points.

Point number two stated because we were clothed, fed,  and had medical care that she couldn’t have been a terrible mom, there are crack addict mothers that can do the same.   When I was 16 I had a job where I pulled a muscle in my chest.   It kept going for a few days where I didn’t tell anyone that I was having trouble breathing.   Everytime I took a deep breath it physically hurt ot breath.  Not to the point where I couldn’t breath, but to the point where I thought something was wrong with my heart since it was in that vincinity.  Like eveyr male I ignored it as long as possible and finally mentioned to my mother.

My mother thought I was making it up and yelled at me for making her take me to the doctor.   Stating she didn’t have the money for it (my parents were divorced by then).   I think my grandparents ending up paying for it.   It turned out I didn’t have heart problems like i was afraid, but a pulled chest muscle like I said.   I had been hyper-ventilating for days, which means taking breaths faster and more shallow then you normally would.  I hadn;t noticed since it seems we are taught when you are hyperventilating you are gasping for air.   I was proscribed codeine for the pain, every once in awhile to this day the problem will creep back for a week or two and I just deal with it since pain medication is the only thing they can proscribe.   My siblings have had similar doctor experiences where my mother only reluctantly took them after we plead the case to my grandparents since my mom thought it was some sort of attention plea.

I never asked for medical attention from my mother.   Besides getting teeth pulled for braces the last major medical thing tha tI had done was in elementary school when I got chronic ear aches.   So this wasn’t a case of my mother always dragging me ot the doctor and me haivng nothing wrong with me, it was serious to me, I was in tears fearing the worst about my condition and thinking it was my heart.

A similar issue goes with the getting fed thing, my mother has always chosen not work.  Because of this she happily took advantage of the free lunch program for the local schools.  I can’t say that my sibling are still on it, yet for two years of my high school I was.   It seemed to her better to get her kids free lunches then to get a job.    She has worked the welfare system so she could go on buying things from the home shopping network and Longaberger baskets, but send her children into the free lunch program.  that is selfish and naive, and if she had been cutting back on other things maybe I would have more sympathy and understanding.

So did she keep clothed, fed, and medical care – only when it suited her, she didn’t have pay, it didn’t effect other people’s appearance of her, or she was forced.   I still wonder what school officials thought about me wearing hundred dollar tennis shoes (since she wanted us to look our best) while getting free lunchs.

Number three stated I was pointing out alot of nit picky things – I mentioned earlier that alot fo these were small things, things that eventually broke me and caused me to cut off all communication with her.    I don’t deny some of hte things were small, but it is also the small things that shape us.   The big things we overcome; my mother didn’t beat me, she was the person that cared about herself first and her children second.

Number four stated that I magnify the issues and focus them on myself.   I was the whipping boy, after me it the third in line, then the fourth (my brother second in line didn’t get the whipping boy treatment), now it’s my sister that’s fifth in line.  I can say what I felt was slights to me and things that I have a right to complain about.   If one day my siblings decide to tell their own stories alot of similarities will line up, since this is what they tell me “off the record”.   Eventually maybe I’ll get some of them to talk about their own experiences more.

I’m also however not going to deny that I’m writing about the things she did that annoyed me or set me off.   These feelings will seem stronger to me then outside forces.    Some of it is truly petty, but I needed material to write and I did leave some bigger things off the record for the moment, writing this piece reminded me of the doctor’s issue I mentioned.    I’m not saying I’m done with this series, but for the moment I’m done writing about it.   I may do some more pieces in the future, but it will be about the larger things she did when I have the time, energy, and motivation to write about them.

If your interested here are the links to the stories so far:

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

Read Part 7 Here

Read Part 8 Here

Read Part 9 Here

Read Part 10 Here

Read Part 11 here

Read Part 12 Here

Read Part 13 Here

Read Part 14 Here

Read Part 15 Here

Read Part 16 Here

Read Part 17 Here

Read Part 18 Here

Read Part 19 Here

Read Part 20 Here

I think I knew from our first date that my wife was going to be the one I was going to marry.   Granted I literally broke up with my ex the day before I asked her out, but it all worked out.   Though I was twenty -one and she was eighteen it was the first real date either of us had been on.   We had started “going out” with people before, but it was always meeting and doing things in social situations then you labeled as a couple and doing things was just being together and not really a date.  I did ask one girl out on a date previously, but it turned into a double date, so this was my first real date.

It was in September of 1997 and I managed to get off work early and get a hair cut, then I went out to one of our customers and bought her a bouquet of roses.   We went to Chi-Chi’s in Lorain, Ohio driving there in my 1986 Ford Escort.  I ordered a mexican pizza which they burned and she had me send back, and I believe she ordered the chimichanga’s .   We talked about going to the movies afterward and decided on Conspiracy Theory.   Walking to the car I asked her if I was the type of guy she could fall in love with (me=geek, not the best social skills).  She said maybe.   I asked her if I was the type of guy she could see herself marrying, she said she didn’t know.   We then drove over to the movie and had a wonderful time.

A few days later she was having problems with her parents, she was at a cross roads and all upset.  She was sitting on the front stoop of her friends house and that was the first time I ever told her I loved her.  She cried in my arms (not from me saying that, but because of the other stress) and said it back to me.   Three months later we were engaged. Thirteen months later on Jan 2, 1999 we got married.  From that first date until about 2004 when she went back to Ohio to visit family while I was stuck working in Oregon, we never spent more then 24 hours away from one another, over 2600 days of seeing each other at least once every day.

I’m not going to saying everything has always been fantastic, we’ve had our ups and downs.  We have managed to stay together and stay in love.   I love her more each day, and now she is going to be the mother of my child (last year we did say we would do something special for our 10th).  We are opposites, but we are also twins, we are stronger together then we are apart.  We are both critical thinkers, yet I’m the only one that thinks she is the better of the two of us – so sometimes she is wrong.

She is the core of my being and the center of my universe, even though I don’t always show it.   Her thoughts and dreams revolve around mine, like mine do around her.   She is my wife, and I love her.

I’m sure some of you have figured with everything going I’ve been lax at getting more stuff up.   Well a new year is coming soon and I’m hoping ot be back on track of at least getting three worth while posts out a day.   I’m also hoping to get a couple of new blogs off the ground (aren’t I always saying that?).    I also have at least two podcasts that I put off because of time that I need to go chase down the interested and plan things out.   This next year is exciting and I have alot of goals.  There is some clean up I need to finish before this year is out.

1.  I need to get the rest of the photos from my father to get scanned.   The one above is one from the start of that set.  Since I didn’t know how to find a topic photo for this random post, I thought that would do.   Yes that is me.   You might think that is make up but I really had black smudges like that on my face for most my life (j/k).

2.  I have a few comments that I need to address.   Two deal with my month of mother that I never finished.   It would almost seem that one of the comments stopped me from going on, that isn’t the case.    I had caught up on my   writing to that day ( I wrote most of it weeks in advance) – I didn’t have the steam to get going anymore – I do have one or two left in me – so maybe tonight I’ll rock those out.

3.  A schedule and a focus for my future writing – I want to get focused and get things going in a well rounded and regulary scheduled fashion.

Look forward to more coming very soon

Picture from here

It seems through some of my affiliation that I am attached to that people feel the need to forward me chain letters.   Even if it was something I believed in, I wouldn’t want a chain letter.  I would prefer to read your own thoughts.  It seems someone sends me mails with a religious bent to them.   Some of them rail against the separation of church and state, something that even as a christian I hold very dear (for some reason most Christians don’t want it separated since they naively believe for all eternity they will be the dominant religion).   I’m more pragmatic.  I don’t think the dogmatic moral laws of each different little christian sect should be represented.   I’ve had my immediate say.  Let’s look at the first chain letter in this new series.

Picture from here

A 15 yr. Old SCHOOL KID IN ARIZONA:

New Pledge of Allegiance (TOTALLY AWESOME) !

Since the Pledge of Allegiance
And
The Lord’s Prayer
Are not allowed in most
Public schools anymore
Because the word ‘God’ is mentioned….
A kid in Arizona
Wrote the attached

NEW School prayer :

Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene.
The law is specific, the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.
In silence alone we must meditate,
God’s name is prohibited by the state.

We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks..
They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the ‘unwed daddy,’ our Senior King.
It’s ‘inappropriate’ to teach right from wrong,
We’re taught that such ‘judgments’ do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.

It’s scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school’s a mess..
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!

Amen

If you aren’t ashamed to do this,
Please pass this on.
Jesus said,
‘If you are ashamed of me,
I will be ashamed of you before my Father.’

Not ashamed. Pass this on..

Let’s go through this section by section:

Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.

Well ironically we still have in god we trust on our money, what people don’t realize is that “God” on your money has been found legally to be an abstraction and doesn’t necessarily refer to a Christian Diety.   Religious freedom was one of hte purposes of this country.  Once you start choosing an officially sanctioned govenerment religion, or teach the tenets of said religion you undermine the purpose that we were taught in school on why the first settlers came here.  (Yes I know that story is not quite as simplistic or accurate as we were taught).

If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.

Ironically I don’t think we have thought police anywhere – like everything else it’s a don’t ask don’t tell world anymore.  If your flaunting anything that’s against school rules however you will be punished.   There have been exteremly few federal cases over this so I’m not quite sure it would really be a federal matter.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene.
The law is specific, the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

What’s wrong with different colored hairs at all?  Mine has been natural.  Mine has been jet black.  Mine has been purple.  Mine has been blue.  There is nothing wrong with this.  My sister however almost got expelled from school because she dyed her hair bright red (not natural red).   I almost went and fought this at the school board, but she backed down (I’m sure with my mother’s coaching of not wanting to look bad to the neighbors).   We’ve lost the freedom of personal expression in schools and it’s not just prayers.  Besides if you really need to pray out loud I find you creepy.  Your like the guy at the video game store who picks up every title and reads the description out loud since they seem to lack any inner monologue.

For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.
In silence alone we must meditate,
God’s name is prohibited by the state.

Um, yes please be silent.  I pray, but I find you audible prayers creepy.  “Dear God please make my genital warts go away” – come on that would just be extremely creepy.   That’s the kind of thing I know some people pray for.  We want to pretend that they are all praying that the sick get better or the orphanage finds a savior donor so it can stay open.  It isn’t.

We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks..
They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

I’m fairly sure that guns were outlawed in most schools before the bible.  Granted I know some rural schools were teh kids could check in their gun when they arrive because they were hunting before school.   Do we really have to point out on how many levels that is wrong.   We’ll stick with just the hygiene issues.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the ‘unwed daddy,’ our Senior King.
It’s ‘inappropriate’ to teach right from wrong,
We’re taught that such ‘judgments’ do not belong.

I don’t see anything wrong with this – I have great grandparents that were probably married younger then someone who is the prom king or queen.   You can always judge someone, but when you have a holier then thou attitude it just doesn’t fly.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.

Hmmmm, you complain about pregnant senior queens and unwed fathers, but rail against birth control – I won’t point out the irony.

It’s scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school’s a mess..
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!

I’ve gone to a private school and I’ve gone to a public school – let me tell you the Christian schools still have the same issues with the ten commandments as part of the curriculum as public schools have without.

I’m not alone – someone else railed against this with their own poem – read it here.

This year was the third attempt I’ve made at the National Novel Writing month, and my third failure.  I am neither heartbroken nor discouraged.   I did write over 50,000 words in the last month, it was actually closer to 75,000 words.   It just wasn’t’ all towards the novel.  For that I did about 10k words.

It was not lack of ideas, I had enough to at least double what I put into it before I would sputter out.   It was two things, the lack of time and the lack of effort.  I whole heartedly take the blame for not finishing.  I also didn’t finish the series about my mother, though there was another reason for that (coming in one last mother post).

Thought I would gie everyone an update since the last month was a slow one for me and the blog.

My sister’s email I published yesterday has my stories out of whack now.   I was originally going to relate the story of my mother and the cedar chest, but I already did that.   If you missed it, here it is:

I will now give you an example I have full memory and first hand knowledge of. It was at a family holiday dinner a few years ago at my grandparents and somehow the morbid subject of what we would like if my grandparents passed on. I stated I would only want one thing, a cedar chest crafted by my grandmother’s cousin. My grandmother chimed in that it was going to be given to her cousin’s family, well my grandmother has said that my whole life, so for thirty years it’s still been sitting there. My mother then said I couldn’t have it because she wanted it. Selfish? Well let’s continue this story.
A few minutes later my mother asked me why I wanted the chest because she thought it was ugly and tacky. I said it was something that would always remind me of my grandparents, their house, and the memories. To me the chest is kind of like a symbol of my grandparents. This prompted me though to ask why did she want it if it was ugly? Her answer? She said she wanted it because I said I wanted it. So I was shocked and called her selfish, I think that was my annual fight that year and I left. It was petty, you would think as adamant as she was when she said she wanted it, that somehow I knew there was a secret stash of money tucked away in it. Nope, she is just worried about someone else getting something she can’t. What a great mother.

I’ll get re-organized through my drafts and getting something new up tomorrow.  Even writing about her is aggravating and putting me all out of sorts.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

Read Part 7 Here

Read Part 8 Here

Read Part 9 Here

Read Part 10 Here

Read Part 11 here

Read Part 12 Here

Read Part 13 Here

Read Part 14 Here

Read Part 15 Here

Read Part 16 Here

Read Part 17 Here

Read Part 18 Here

Read Part 19 Here

Day late…

If you haven’t caught on to this series yet I have mother issues.   Because I have my mother issues I need to sit down and logically recognize what they actually do to me.  Things my mother has made me.

Growing up I was extremely self conscious of everything, how I looked, who had what, etc…  What has happened as an adult is that I just don’t care.   I don’t care what you have.  I want what I want for my own reasons.   As I’m getting older I can care less what society thinks about me, so essentially I’ve become the polar opposite of my mother.   Though Xie will tell me that isn’t always the case.

Because of growing up in my household I learned to thrive in chaos.   This is great in some of things I do since I can make order out of chaos (well at the same time creating more chaos around the thing I made in order).  Unfortunately for those around me this isn’t always a conducive environment for those that deal with me.

I get my anger from my father, and I’ve spent many years getting that in check and controlling.   It’s something I have to deal with.  I have learned however people like my mother are the ones that are most likely to set me off at a moments notice.  This is why I didn’t marry a girl like dear old mom.   My father after the divorce seems to have his anger issues in check, can we say common denominator?

I base(d) alot of what I know about relationships from my parents and their interaction.   When things aren’t going well in my own relationships I’m completely oblivious since things aren’t explosive like my parent’s relationship was.  While our child isn’t born yet we don’t know truly who the enabler and the disciplinarian will be.   I’m pegged for the enabler, and that’s not necessary a good thing.   If I get that from anyone it’s going to be my mother.   I just need to make sure my son doesn’t become a spoiled brat.

Frustration at stupidity.  The exasperation I get over comments that are idiotic, that comes completely from my mother.   I have mentioned her belief that ninja humanoid turtles were possible. I used to do all of her proof reading for her college homework when I was in high school, and I was responsible for the rewrites.  When I was about fourteen she said she was smarter then me.   What she may have meant to said was wiser, though I don’t think that was the case, since if she was wiser or smarter she would have said the word wiser.   Also for anyone wishing to defend her on that one, she still says she is smarter (Oprah must have told her she was).  I have a standing offer to pay for an IQ test so we can settle this once and for all, if she is write (highly unlikely) I may just kill myself since it will be proof that intelligence means nothing. On a side note recently I was just talking about sitting for the Mensa exam.  I don’t know if I’m Mensa smart, I may not be, but I’m confident enough to actually sit for the test.

The last thing is I get insane over little requests people ask of me.   I better be in the right frame of mind because I can go ballistic if it’s something they can do for themselves.   I’ll give you the story I use to describe this whenever I talk to someone about her.   When I was in high school I told my mother I was going to be taking a bath (yes I’m a boy and I like baths get over it).  She acknowledged me and said she was going ot cook dinner.  At this point everything is fine and dandy.   About 10 minutes later I’m in the middle of reading a book and my mother starts screamiming my name.   Now this isn’t a your in trouble name scream, nor was it a where are you at name scream.  What it sounded like was the “OMG THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE” scream.   I threw on a towel and rush down the stairs.

Well the emergency?  My mother needed a wash cloth to do dishes .  Her answer about me being in the bath?  “I forgot”.  In ten minutes she forgot what she had been told and acknowledged (and I’m sure she heard the bath water run) and put all of that aside for her immediate need of a wash cloth.   To make matters worse, she thought I was down in my room.   Now our family was a plit level.  The kitchen on the main floor, the bathroom on the second floor, and my bedroom on the lower floor.   In theory give or take ten feet I would have had to expend the same amount of energy to come from my room or the bathroom to come to the kitchen.   She would have expended half the energy (minus the energy to start yelling) to go down to the second floor and get it herself.  It was absolute pure laziness.   I pointed it out to her, and she didn’t care.   She wasn’t old or invalid, she was healthy and approxiamately the same age as I am now.   The worst part, I was dripping wet, freezing, and I still had to get the washcloth.

I was a sucker and should have said no, but I was a mama’s boy.  That story though is an example of many many things that are quite similar.   Because of her necessity or decorating the house for the holidays, I now loath decorating for the holidays/  I have never had a christmas tree in my  house, that may change next year with the kid on the way.   Compared to my mother’s house and her record breaking three christmas trees she did one year, my house will be quite sparse.

My mother likes to tell people how things are to be decorated and have everyone else do the work.   After the divorce I became the man of  the house.   I learned to loath the holidays.  When your mother is healthy you shouldn’t be fifteen and being Santa Claus setting up the tree late at night for your siblings, but yet I was.  I love the holidays, I just hat emy mothers version of them.  These days though i’m preferring Halloween over Christmas, black and gory for the win.

Ok  I’m stopping now otherwise this will become the post that will never end.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

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Read Part 9 Here

Read Part 10 Here

Read Part 11 here

Read Part 12 Here

Read Part 13 Here

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Read Part 16 Here

Read Part 17 Here

A while back I received the following email from my sister (It’s been mildly edited to protect names and some grammar):

So I just read your blog..

I must add something.. and you make me realize mom doesn’t ever say anything nice about me.. and I’m not writing this to bitch about her either but its true.  I went out to eat with her, our sisters,  and our youngest brother the other day and she told our youngest she couldn’t get any peircings because “no preppy girls have them” and how they look like trash.
okay, well she was refering to me

Second.

I told summer she should really think about going to EHOVE (the local vocational school – creeva). Mom goes EHOVE is for people that don’t do good in school and our youngest sister doesn’t want to be apart of that (the sister writing this went to EHOVE – creeva).  Okay.. diss to me again, which i said something.

Third.. mom asks me if i went to Trip Ohio in 8th grade cus our youngest sister will be going next year.  I say, no because she didn’t have the money for me to go so I couldn’t.  I told our youngest sister that at the dinner table and mom denied all of that and said i was lieing.  Right.. my older sister said the same thing thats why we both didn’t go.

THEN..

mom tells me to shut up, then our youngest brother makes a comment to our youngest sister..

“You know why mom is mad at you?   Because you act like [sister writing this email] that’s why she hates you..”

So i wonder what she tells our youngest brother, she hates me?

Nice.

I stormed out of there and left.

Obviously I have replaced my sibling’s names with their rank and order.   We don’t refer to our youngest sister as our youngest sister (who by the way is two years older then my younger brother).   I just don’t want to be the reason their name shows up in a google search.  I did think it was important to show that my views on my mother are not mine alone.   I did receive permission from my sister to use this email, so there is no surprises.

Read Part 1 Here

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Read Part 17 Here

Read Part 18 Here

This one is a day late……

A few months ago I wrote about the girl that was my longest relationship before my wife.  Well this girl was a lot like my mother.  She was very bossy and wanted things a certain way.  She cared about the appearance of things and not the reality.   I don’t want to hash everything I wrote in the other post here again, so I won’t.   Read the link if you want ot hear more about her.

On the other hand, during that whole on again off again relationship, I managed to essentially date and live with a girl just like mom.  It was the relationship from hell, and I’m sure part of me deserved it.  The best thing is after the relationship was over and I was with my future wife I saw how much that girl was like my mother.   It also made me realize how much I’m like my father.   So in turn I realized how much it was never going to work out.

Maybe my anger towards my ex bleeds over to the anger I have my mother (or vice versa).  Who knows.

This wasn’t meant to be a long post, but more of one stating that I did not marry a girl just like mom.  I just dated one.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

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Read Part 16 Here

Sorry – this one is a couple of days late.

My parents don’t get along. I mean really don’t get along at all. I’m not sure I can stress this enough. My father always seemed to be doing what he did in the best interest of the children. My mother on the other hand was in a money grab and used leverage. This was nothing out of the norm from before the divorce however.

From about age seven until age fifteen, I was keenly aware that my parents did not have a good marriage.  I remember telling my friends that my parents were going through a divorce.   Ironically, they managed to keep going and going (along the way they also had two more kids).  My parents were a mismatch from the beginning, and if I had not entered the picture they might not have gotten together.  They did and now for some historical information.

My father attempted to be the disciplinary or the family, my mother was the enabler.   She was very much the enabler.   If  my father tried to set something down (this is looking back mind you), my mother would take a position just to be the opposite of him.   Of course if my mother wanted to agree with him, I could just bring out that everyone was doing something, this would normally allow me to gain her consent.

Now some of this I remember and some of this is stories passed down, I’m going to try to remove the bias and just give you some examples:

When we were living in Elyria, we didn’t make a ton of money.  Sometimes we were scraping by month to month.  It something that happens to a lot of families, and even as an adult I still find myself doing that most the time.  One month we had twenty dollars left in the bank account.   My father was counting on this money to provide lunch meat for himself for work.   My mother on the other side had other plans.  Knowing full well how much money was in the bank she went out and bought wash clothes, effectively draining the bank account.

My mother was never happy with what she had.   My father was constantly remodeling to her tastes.   He learned a lot of things about working on a house, so I guess you could say that’s a good thing.   I however remember the house always being in the state of flux as some project or another was constantly being performed.  Of course now as an adult I leverage my father for knowledge he gained from that experience, but my wife can’t live in that sort of atmosphere.  So that tidbit is something to take for taste.

During the early nineties my mother decided she wanted her own money.   That’s a good thing.  She decided she was going to make dolls and enlisted my father and my grandmother on her venture.  She made enough to buy a living room set after hours and hours of labor and sewing on all three of them.  I remember I did a bit of stuffing myself, but I don’t believe I did much else.   Now you would think that this is a good example of the family working together.  However, my mother didn’t seem to understand the concept of “cost of manufacturing”.  She believed that it was pure profit and just poo poo’ed all the money that it cost to create the dolls before sales.   Thinking back I hope my father set the profit margin, since my mom would have probably sold them for a loss and then went “Golly, look at all the money I have from sales”.

Before moving on to the post divorce era I’m going to relate one last story.  There was a movie I wanted to see (I was 15) – it was “People Under the Stairs” and I wanted to go with a friend.   My father said no, it was an R rated movie and he didn’t want me to go.   My mother snuck money to me and dropped me off to see the movie.   She was in full enabler mode.   Later when my father found out the fight between them was explosive, don’t mix two volatile chemicals together.   I have my father issues I may write about another time, but this month is about mom.

After the divorce my father and I didn’t talk for a few years.   We talked lightly after awhile, but it didn’t start getting regular until I was traveling for consulting.   This led to a whole new ball game in dealing with them.  I didn’t want to accidently pass information from one side to another, but at the same time I had to make my feelings known.   I would get my fahter to talk about things my mother had told me – indirectly inquiring.   I also did the same thing on the reverse.

The problem is I normally sided with my father’s point of view.   I was this go between, trying to maintain peace on each side of the family.   When I first moved into my house i was in the middle of everyone, so my house was going to be the holiday get together place.  A Switzerland where neither side could fight.   Well that didn’t last long before i stopped talking ot my mother.

The most interesting thing was the Thanksgiving when we first moved back to Ohio.   On my father’s side all of his siblings still get together the weekend after Thanksgiving to have a family meal.  My brother lives next door to my father.  My mother was staying at my Brother’s house that day……

Somehow, in some wierd mix up of the galaxy, my mother invited herself over to my father’s house.  (I’ve mentioned that they do not get along at all).   Her excuse was to see all of my aunt’s and uncles who could care less about her.   The rest of the family completely agrees that she was there only to see the house and see how my father was doing.   I don’t know how she managed ot get the nerve, but I wouldn’t enter the den of a place where I know I’m not wanted.

But maybe she just wanted to see if my father’s curtains made her look fat……..

Read Part 1 Here

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Read Part 11 here

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Read Part 15 Here

At one point in this whole debacle where I stopped talking to my mom, Xie thought she would try to mend things. She dropped me off at burger king to eat and went over to my mothers to talk (this is all second hand mind compared to most things I’ve written). Xie sat her down and told her she was going to push her children away one by one if she continued down the path she was going. That my mother had to pick herself up, get a job and move forward being an example (I’m sure Xie will comment on this story to fill in more details).

The selfish thing my mom said to my wife? “You don’t have to have a job why should I?”

Now because this is second hand I normally wouldn’t have included this, but I wanted to point out Xie’s effort. This wasn’t the first time my mother had said this. There are a lot of answers to this.

1. Xie has a supportive husband that hadn’t left her once and possibly will again
2. Xie spends her free time learning and expanding herself – my mothers expansion comes from Oprah and Dr. Phil
3. Xie doesn’t have two children at home not even teenagers yet that need to eat and hopes daddy will give mommy child support money
4. Xie isn’t a leech that feels entitled to it, she has offered to work many times, I don’t understand why both of us need to be miserable for a few extra bucks

While my mother is grazing the home shopping network for things to buy, Xie is doing Algebra out of text books for fun. There is a world of difference. Most notably my mother needed an income she could trust to take care of her kids and not ask friends and family for money to get by.

I will now give you an example I have full memory and first hand knowledge of. It was at a family holiday dinner a few years ago at my grandparents and somehow the morbid subject of what we would like if my grandparents passed on. I stated I would only want one thing, a cedar chest crafted by my grandmother’s cousin. My grandmother chimed in that it was going to be given to her cousins family, well my grandmother has been saying that my whole life, so for thirty years it’s still been sitting there. My mother then said I couldn’t have it because she wanted it. Selfish? Well let’s continue this story.

A few minutes later my mother asked me why I wanted the chest because she thought it was ugly and tacky. I said it was something that would always remind me of my grandparents, their house, and the memories. To me the chest is kind of like a symbol of my grandparents. This prompted me though to ask why did she want it if it was ugly? Her answer? She said she wanted it because I said I wanted it. So I was shocked and called her selfish, I think that was my annual fight that year and I left. It was petty, you would think as adamant as she was when she said she wanted it, that somehow I knew there was a secret stash of money tucked away in it. Nope, she is just worried about someone else getting something she can’t. What a great mother.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

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Read Part 14 Here

My Mother, a grown woman now in her 50′s is still scared to death of her father.  She will do anything to avoid getting a lecture from him, this includes just telling him what he wants to hear, regardless if she is sincere or not.  My grandfather does have wisdom, but at the same time he doesn’t understand the world I live in, so I will challenge him, or tell me when he is wrong.

My mother on the other hand sometimes gets upset and will snap at him, but for the most part she cows down to him, or turns to my grandmother for support.  I think in her mind, if she attempts to placate him the issues won’t be there, the fear she has, the feelings of inadequacy that she seems to show after dealing with him.  She tells me I don’t understand.   I do understand, my grandfather is one of the most intimidating people in the family.   My siblings are still scared of him, we also all adore him.  My wife thinks he is just like a big gruff teddy bear – I’m not sure I would go that far…

If my grandfather showed up at my mom’s house unexpected and she noticed him, well then she would attempt the ten second clean up as he walked to the front door. I know she loves her father, but she (at the time anyways) dreaded his visits because she knew she was going to get lectured.

Like I said I stand up to my grandfather, my grandfather once asked my mother why she doesn’t stand up to him like I do. Maybe it’s a challenge to help her grow. She has somethings she definitely needs to work before she is capable of not being that ten year old girl in his shadow any more.

Read Part 1 Here

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Read Part 11 here

Read Part 12 Here

Read Part 13 Here