I was the oldest child in my family.   I can also say I was a bastard older brother, mostly I think it was because I always wanted to be a single child.   So far barring any other additions (extremely unlikely) I’m the oldest of eight.   So my dreams of being a single child didn’t really play out as expected.   My sisters, well I was always protective of them.  My brother on the other hand….  Well we’ll leave it with the fact that we have never gotten along for any length of time.

While there are a few good stories I have about my brother, I’m going to start with one of the ones I was most proud of.  It was how I killed my brother.   Granted he is still alive and well and in November had his second child.   So I didn’t really kill him, but he thought I did.

One day my brother was being extremely annoying, but he was always up for dare (once in high school we managed to convince him to run down the street naked when there was six inches of snow on the ground).   Well that day I had a plan.   Now I’m sure almost everyone reading this has learned the method to check and see if a nine volt battery is still good.  Well in all honesty there are a few methods.

Method 1. – Plug it into something and see if it turns on.

Method 2. – Using a battery tester

Method 3. – Putting a penny across the two terminals and see if it warms up (great for melting crayons).

Method 4. – The old tried and true method of licking the battery terminals and see if you get a shock.

One day I decided to teach my brother method four.  I would say I was nine or ten years old, so he would have been four-five years old.   At first I explained the procedure, he (smartly) did not believe me.  So he wanted me to do it first.  I licked the battery, and was assured it was live.   I also showed no emotion to the shock of licking the battery (this was key).   I then proceeded to hand over the battery to him.  He was still sceptical but he proceeded to lick the battery.

His head shot back from the surprise shock ( I think it was a new battery).  He was upset at this time.   At first he was going to tell on me.   I then proceeded to tell him that licking the battery was going to cause him to die within a day.   There was no cure and there was nothing he could do about it.  He didn’t believe and pointed out that I licked the battery first.    I told him that I didn’t lick it at all, that I just acted like I did.  So I wasn’t going to die at all.

This had him livid and crying, but as he was about to run downstairs and tell my parents, I asked him what they would think if he told my parents that he did something so stupid.   He was upset and stayed up in the room for a little while discussing what to do.  Eventually he went down and told my parents.   I of course got yelled at for that one.  I can say that it was worth it though.

I’m going to die?

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

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.

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

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

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

Stargate Atlantis Season 3- more Stargate goodness.

Amazon Synopsis:

With Stargate SG-1 now permanently off the data screen (except for a TV movie or two) after ten productive seasons, it appears that the fate of the universe is now the responsibility of the Stargate Atlantis crew. Based on the latter’s third season, whose 20 episodes (plus a wealth of bonus features) are made available here on five discs, we’re in good hands.
Three years into it, Atlantis has retained numerous familiar elements while continuing to evolve steadily. The core cast is intact, with the cocky wiseacre-hero Lt. Col. John Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) and the egotistical, neurotic genius Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) still the most entertaining of the bunch; as the series explores the characters’ personal lives and backstories, we even meet (in “McKay and Mrs. Miller”) the latter’s sister, who’s every bit the wiz that he is. On the other hand, the roles of team leader Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson) and members Teyla (Rachel Luttrell) and Ronon Dex (Jason Momoa) are neither especially well-written nor well-played. The return of Richard Dean Anderson (and his sense of humor) as General Jack O’Neill, the SG-1 mainstay during most of its run, for a few cameos is most welcome, as is the presence of the Wraith, the series’ principal villains (SG-1 fans will also recognize the “sentient machines” known as the Replicators from that series). With their flowing white locks, cat-like eyes, pale, almost translucent skin, ultra-fine black leather dusters, and, in one case, shades that would make a Hollywood hipster envious, the Wraith remain the coolest bad guys on the sci-fi scene. We already knew that they feed on humans, but this season brings some startling new revelations, particularly in “Common Ground,” an excellent episode that finds Sheppard and a Wraith (Christopher Heyerdahl) forming an unlikely alliance against a mutual enemy; we also witness the return of the Wraith known as Michael (Connor Trinneer), who was the subject of the Atlantis team’s ongoing “retro-virus” experiment (designed to make Wraiths human) in Season Two and plays a significant recurring role in Season Three. Other developments are apparent as well, but most dramatic of all is the death of one of the team’s key members.
Stargate Atlantis isn’t the most original TV show ever created; in fact, elements of The Running Man, Alien, The Abyss, Enemy Mine, and other sci-fi works are sometimes so obvious that the characters themselves mention them in dialogue. But as always, the action sequences, special effects, models, and other technical elements are first-rate, as are the bonus features, which include episode commentaries, featurettes, and photo galleries.

For some reason it’s a considered a cardinal sin in society to talk about people behind their backs.  In my family however it’s an Olympic event.   I’m not sure my mother would get the gold, but I’m sure she would at least get the silver.

When you live in a split family you get used to what you can tell one side or tell the other. The hard part however is not admitting you talked to the other side at all. Once my mother finds out she grilled me on what my father had to say, though I never really passed the information along that he gave me. In the reverse I never passed it along the other way either. I was not the hub of their game of telephone, nor was I going to start to be.

The whole issue that led up to us not speaking she still blames on my father.  She thinks my father sent me on some fools errand that was not accurate. Ironically what my father told me was accurate by my mother’s own admittal. My father however didn’t prompt me to take action, what I wanted ot do to help my sister was for myself alone. It was me being a big brother.

The irony of this it seems what I hear through the family grapevine that my father seems to get more blame for me not talking to my mother then I do. Who would have thought. I obviously must be a puppet that can be controlled, that has no independent thought or feelings. I know some people are like that, not me though.

The whole problem is that it’s not just my mother. Like I said talking behind the back is an Olympic sport in these parts. Whenever I try to lay out what everyone is saying to everyone else, I’m the bad guy. I’m the bad guy because I lay it out on the line.

Well I guess this is why I’m blogging about it, I’m laying it out on the line.

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My mother loves to gossip.  She loves to spread gossip.  She loves to receive gossip.  If you are familar with the musical “The Music Man” at all she is one of the “Pick A little, Talk A Little Women”

She would go to the community pool under the pretext of watching my sisters swim. If however there was no one to gossip with she would pack up and either take my sisters home, or get someone else to watch them. I’m sure my mother misses the hey day of the beauty parlor where all the women sat around and gossiped. I’m sure in some areas these still exist, but not really in her neck of the woods. Besides she felt superior becuase she had “her” beautician that she went to.

Her beautician always made sure that her hair came out with that blond color that she was born with. All those pictures I’ve posted of her as a toddler on up that have dark hair? Well I guess my mother believes that those are all bad exposures since she swears the blond she has now is her natural color. Ironically it’s because of her and the lies about her hair color that I refuse to ever dye my hair to hide my gray. I’m not going to tell people my hair is a certain way. Granted I’ve dyed my hair black for a costume, I’ve also done purple and blue – heaven help those that thought those colors were natural. I actually have my mother’s native hair color, I’m just not in denial.

My mother would love to gossip. She would spend hours on the phone talking to friends about who was having marriage issues, who was having works issue, who bought something new, and who was stuck with something old. If she didn’t have any friends at a given time she would either try to get me involved (I never had an interest so I’m sure she bored of me) or she would enlist my grandmother (who had the same enthusiasm as I did).

You would think she would like to discuss something of interest, but the most poignant she ever got to real life events was what new Longaberger baskets were coming out or discussions about Dr. Phil and Oprah – it seems to her these are the messiahs of the new world order. Who knew?

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I don’t have my child yet, let alone more then one. I do however suspect parents have a favorite child. If not a direct favorite, at least a favorite to do certain things with. My parents were no different. I could pull out favoritism on my father’s side, but that doesn’t matter, when that was evident and apparent I didn’t like him very much. My mother on the other hand is what this piece is really about anyways.

My mother’s favorite child was either the trophy child or the youngest child. Sometimes they were the same child, other times they weren’t. I’m not going to say I was never the favorite child, I was quite a bit. i was the oldest child of her six, so being the first I’m sure she always had a bit of pride in me (of course now that this web series has ran….). But like most families the youngest child, the baby of the family, was always doted upon quite a bit. As far as i can remember I never minded, so that never bothered me.

The trophy child on the other hand was my brother immediately behind me. He was as spoiled as my youngest brother. He seems to have turned out just find, though a strong sibling rivalry is still there. Now I’m sure the question s why is he the trophy child. Well at one point he decided that he wanted to live with my father.  This was all well and good and lasted a few months (year?).  Until he started getting disciplined.

On a weekend visit to my mother, my brother just didn’t go back to my fathers.   My father didn’t fight custody over the matter, if my brother wanted to live with my mother, so be it.   The key is that my brother had hardly any rules placed upon him.  He was the biggest wild child of all of us.  That doesn’t make him a bad person, he seems to have turned out alright.   I don’t care that I had more rules placed upon me, I’m the oldest, it’s my job to take the brunt of everything.  I’m perfectly fine with that.   Maybe that’s why I’m so accepting of life now.

My brother got away with this because back in my mother’s brain, if she didn’t indulge him, then she would loose him again to my father.   My father and brother were very close when he was younger, this was my mother’s way to split a wedge in there.   It took years for my brother to talk to my father again, a lot of this is because of the poisoning that my mother had done.   He was her trophy over my father and she wasn’t going to let go of that.   I’m sure he doesn’t look at it that way, or is even aware of it.

My sisters on the other hand got both the poisoning against my father (it didn’t take) and none of the perks.   Even a decade after my brother had left the house, my sister (from the same father) had a much harder time and more rules placed on her then any of hte rest of us had.   She was actively disciplined, yelled at, and talked down to.   I’m sure my youngest brother won’t ever go through and be treated that way.  He’ll be coddled and spoiled, and probably living with my mother until he’s thirty, or at least until he wises up.

In the end it works out though, my brother can do no wrong in my mothers eyes (heck she even drank with him underage).  She has the same blinders towards him that her parents have towards her.   He gives her love, he doesn’t question her, he doesn’t push her to be a  better person.  Since they view the world in similar ways and there is no tension between them, he has become her perfect child. During my mother’s latest separation my brother even told my father that she didn’t have to worry because we’d take care of her. I’m not sure where this “we” comes from. Never was I going to financially support my mother, even when we were getting along.

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While I lived in Oregon, a lot of my life was peaceful on the family front.  I only spoke to my mother maybe a dozen times tops while I lived there.   I didn’t have to deal with her drama on a weekly or daily basis.  I was 2500 miles away and it was easy to avoid.  Just don’t pick up the phone.   That part is really easy for me, since I hardly notice the phone or pick it up naturally unless I’m on the clock and the phone could be work.

I either had to deal with family emergencies or the occasional holiday call. i didn’t talk to any of the family with regularity until I was traveling for work, at that point I was talking mostly with my father. Occasionally I would call and end up talking to one of my sisters. They would tell me of what my mother was doing to them. Some of it was exaggeration, some of it was deserved, but some of it was not.

In the few occasions I thought my mother took it too far, I called my grandmother.and tried to get her to intercede on my sister’s behalf. Sometimes she didn’t believe me, seeing how her daughter couldn’t do anything like that. Other times she said she had talked to her about it and couldn’t take it further. Neither of my grandparents are bad people. They both have my love and complete devotion. They are just in denial over what my mother actually does.

Neither of them are callous. They have both earned my respect. My grandmother once even told me that they have enabled my mother to be helpless and rely on other people. She also said it was a mistake and never intentional.

So while in Oregon life was good. The stress of family was at the lowest point ever, I didn’t worry about it.  I’m almost there again.

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My grandfather taught me a thing or two about respect.  I’m not going to say we see eye to eye, but I did manage to learn a few things.   The largest being that you earn respect.   My father taught me that you have to deal with the consequences of your actions.  My mother never learned either of those two lessons.   Somehow because she had the biological ability of having children that it meant that her children would have to respect her.   I however never had such a notion.  I also have never claimed that my mother was the sharpest tack in the pile.

My mother complained a lot to me that my seventeen year old sister called her a bitch all the time.   I stated that this was normal for seventeen year olds.   I also felt that my sister was working 20-30 hours a week, going to school, and planning for her future was better grounded then my mother who worked maybe 4 hours a week.  My mother would call my sister a bitch, and wonder why she got the word thrown back at her.   I’ve brought this up to her and she denies it.   I have witnessed it though.   Xie has witnessed it. My sisters can attest to it.   However my mother turned my grandparents against my sister over this.   They thought was sister was the wild child that no one can control (do we need to go back to school and work compared to my mother?).  They thought my mother didn’t deserve that language tossed at her.   They also have a strong refusal to believe that my mother would ever call any of her children such language.

HA.

My mother was using that language directed at my sisters before they were even teenagers.   My grandparents still think that I (in my thirties mind you) is still just telling stories and making things up about my mother. I don’t know how my grandfather who taught me you have to earn respect ever gained it for my mother. The only thing that comes to mind is that she is a woman. Xie sometimes gets annoyed when my grandfather states that if I die, that I need to make sure that I provide for her. My grandfather is a bit sexist and thinks that women have a hard time to provide for themselves. I don’t completely fault the man, he comes from a different generation and my grandparents fit into very traditional gender roles that younger generations don’t follow any more.

Their daughter has not earned the respect of any of her children. Instead of inspiring her children to do more and be an example, she tries to elicit pity from them. This isn’t anger, my mom generally gets pity to pity her so she can get things. This is her control mechanism. This is why my brother states he will take care of her and my grandparents still do. I want help from people because I need help, not because they pity me. To be pitied is all around just sad, to be truly undeserving of pity because you got yourself into the mess; doubly so.

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During this time where really my mother was in complete financial distress and squeaking by.  However she couldn’t stop buying frivolous things at all. She was glued to the home shopping channel, when she didn’t have the money to buy something out right she would jump on their payment plan. When she was really excited about something she would call my grandmother.

I swear something was being shipped to the house every other day from the home shopping network. If I had to venture a guess during the months between I moved back and when I cut off communication she had to spend the equivalent of a couple mortgage payments. It got to the point that she attempted to hide this purchases from me since she knew that she was going to get a lecture from me.

She continued about how she needed her house modernized so it looked good “for the children”. This was her priority in her life. No job, no income, three children living under her roof, and she’s complaining about the flooring (which was adequate and better then some other people’s flooring).

There was an extreme lack of food in the house. There was tons of dry cereal and maybe if you were lucky bread and peanut butter. She ordered out more then cooked anything meaningful, she would also go grocery shopping every day so she could get out of the house. Ironically she didn’t buy much of anything.

My seventeen year old sister who was working had to buy her own food for lunch’s and mostly dinners also since “supper” conflicted with her work schedule. Now for some people this would seem like a fine thing to do, but my mother was getting hundreds of dollars a month in child support for my sister. Yet my sister never seemed to benefit from it. Instead I would have hear about my seventeen year old sister using my mother’s make-up or wearing my 12 year old sisters shirts (yes my sister was almost that small, but also liked tight fitting clothes). Never once did I hear her say anything good about my sister, it was more complaints on how much she cost or the attitude she gave.

To my chagrin my grandparents paid to have new flooring done for Christmas. Sometimes I think my mother is as spoiled as my youngest brother.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Yesterday I gave you the setup of what was going on when I first got back, let’s keep filling you in.   Even though I didn’t live in the house I was becoming the man of the house (again), what I didn’t fulfill chore wise, my sister’s boyfrined filled in on.   Neither of us were happy about it some of the inane chores she had us doing.

One of these was Christmas decorations.  She always thought all of her children loved decorating for Christmas.  I stopped enjoying it around ten years old.   I had to crawl through the attic and dig out all of the decorations.    I had to deal with, well that needs to come done, but not that.  Those are the old decorations.   Why didn’t she throw them out or sell them I still can not fathom.  The “attic” was the crawl space above the garage that you had to use a  ladder to get up there.

My eleven year old sister wanted to climb up and help.  My mother said it was too dangerous and wouldn’t allow it.   My nine year old brother then threw a temper tantrum that he wanted to come up and was really throwing a fit.  My mother was going ot allow him to come up.   My sister still couldn’t come up because it was too dangerous for her still.   I wasn’t going to allow it.   I didn’t allow my brother to come up either.  If it was too dangerous for his older sister, it was too dangerous for him.  My mother pleaded with me to allow him to come up.   I said no, if she couldn’t be consistent with her decision, I wasn’t going to support her inconsistencies.

My youngest brother was still throwing a fit but I shrugged it off.  My little brother (was not sure about now) the dictionary definition of a spoiled child.  He would run wild and do whatever he wanted.  My mother would support it and give him whatever he asked for, allowing him to do things that were “too dangerous” for his older sister, and the boy would not take no for an answer.

One time when I was babysitting the boy I sent him to his room for punishment.   He wouldn’t stay in the room so I applied a trick I learned when my next in line brother had that room.   If you looped a strap around the door handle to the bathroom door handle immediately across the hall you couldn’t get out.   This I admit was exasperation mode for me, since I didn’t want to spank a kid that was twenty-one years younger then me.   The kid didn’t want to stay in that room and thought no one could force him (since my mother never disciplined him.   While I was sitting on the stairs working (right outside the door) he wsa taking apart his window and trying to climb out of the second floor since he felt no one had the right to punish him.

Before you think this is my babysitting norm or I was endangering the child.  His only stipulation was that he had to go stay in his room for 15 minutes straight.   That obviously was too much for him, so that’s why it came down to locking him in for fifteen minutes.

My mother never wanted to be a mother.  She wanted to give the love (in her own wway) but she would always let the youngest child run wild and do whatever they wanted.   It just snowballed down to the extreme with my youngest brother.  She was in love with being a mother, the same way a little girl is in love with a having a doll.  She wanted children around to dress and show off, yet didn’t want to discipline, didn’t want to teach anything of value, and didn’t want to deal with anything bothersome.

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Rather building up to the explosive end, I figured it better to start at the end and show how it built up to that.   Hopefully this will allow me to end this journey with something nice to say.   Since we’re not finished yet I guess I won’t know.  My family is screwed up, tht’s not a lie.   I don’t think however it’s any more unique or screwed then anyone else’s.   So I guess as I go through this journey I will classify us as normal.   Some scenes may seem absurd.   Some will seem strange.  I however grew up with a better life with then some people I know so she would be responsible for that.   However i can’t go home again.   She told me so, I have no home except my own.

Tomorrow I’ll give more background leading up to the last day I talked to my mother face to face, however we’re looking at that day first.   Time to go back 2.5 years ago.  I arrived over to my mother’s house to help my sister out.   My sister had special juice my father had purchased for her (i don’t remember why), and it was being drank by my other siblings (not my fathers children).  My youngest brother, was actively allowed to enter her room at all time and she wasn’t allowed to lock her doors.   My mother was actively looking to drive her out, though she was waiting until she graduated.

I came over to come to my sisters rescue.   The first thing my mother does is deny any of this happening.   Then she comes and admits it, but comes up with excuses on how the different things happen.   At this point trying to maintain the peace all around I offered to bring in a mini fridge for my sister and buy a lock for her door since my mother can’t maintain boundaries for my youngest sister from both my biological parents.   Since my sister was the last one of the four of us in the house, she got it hte worst.   All the problems that the rest of us went through kept compounding on her (why my sister talks to her now I can’t fathom).

The first excuse is that my mother won’t have a locking door in her house because my sister doesn’t need privacy that no one would invade her space.  Secondly she said she wasn’t going to pay the electric bill a mini fridge would cost, my step father at this point came down the stairs and started to chime in.   I told him to shut the hell up (ok I used stronger language), the man who had abandoned my mother for over a year had no say in this dicussion in my book, he had been back less then month.

I had heard my mom cry about how much she hated him.   The main reason they got back together?  The noble thing would be to say it was love, maybe it will be again for them.   However my mother’s excuse to me over the previous month of deciding if she was going ot take him back was two-fold the first is that she didn’t want to die alone – fair enough.   The second was the part that disgusted me, she didn’t feel she had to work.  She complained that this was her time to enjoy with grandchildren and she shouldn’t have to work.   She told me how she was going to pay all the bills with her inheritance and be happy.  That was the life she always envisioned and she was upset she wasn’t going to get it.  She sounded like the preppy girl complaining that she came in second place in a beauty pagent, and if she cried and screamed loud enough someone else would fix it.

She got back together with him, not for love, but live a more comfortable life.   Why I won’t explicitly say that, someone who lies in bed with someone else for money as the primary reason…….

I knew this, my siblings knew this, my wife knew this.   He held no power over me and I wasn’t going to have any of it.   He had put my mother through months of pain, helping my mother out because of this was part of the reason I moved back to Ohio from Oregon.   I had been a part of that house and family for many years.   At this point he asked me to leave.   As I’m walking out I’m still arguing on my way to the car.   My mother told me the words that are opposite of what I’ve been told that a mother is supposed to say – she told me that it wasn’t my home anymore.

I had grown up my whole life with my mother telling me that it would always be my home.   She however would choose to be with her part time husband and choose his side over mine.   It wasn’t the first time she did that though.  My step father told me to never come back and I wasn’t welcome there anymore.   So be it.   My mother has relinquished what she wants or believes in for her comfort.   She tries now to deny what she said (like she always denies what she says) but my wife heard it also and her jar dropped.   My wife had seen the drag out fights amongst my family, and this wasn’t the worst.  This was my mother clinging to safety and the fear of being alone.  If I thought she did it because she wanted to, because love made her do strange things, then I would forgive.  My mother is more calculating in protecting herself though.  She will protect herself over the expense of others.

For the record if my step father ever shows up on my door step, the first thing I’m doing is calling the police.

This is the incident that is the proverbial straw.  Does it sound stupid?  I’m sure it does.   I won’t deny it.   Starting tomorrow we’ll be working on how we got to here.

Read Part 1 Here

Last week it seems my grandmother fell and cracked her tail bone. No one told me. I’m am very unhappy about that. My sister told me last night at the VCMA practice. I had stopped by my grandparent’s house last night before practice, but no one was home. I then stopped over at one of my sister’s apartments, no one home. Then I went ot another sister’s apartment, no one home. I though it strange, but let it go.

Then practice started, my youngest sister showed up (she plays saxophone in the band), and told me the news. On the drive back to my mother’s to drop her off (I don’t get out of the car), my grandfather called me. I asked if they were going to be awake, he said yes, so I rushed over there.

My grandmother seems fine, that I’m very happy for. My youngest sister has now be given explicit instructions to call me me immediately any time if she hears that something has happened to either of my grandparents. My mother wants to give me a cradle that my great Aunt Doris (pictured below feeding me) bought for me as a baby.  I’ll take it, she can leave it at my grandparent’s house and I will pick it up.   I don’t know how giving my mother is going to be though when she reads the series I’ve written for next month called “A Month With Mom”.   We’ll see.