Saturday, November 17, 2012 @ 9:58 AM
Good morning. It is
now about 10 AM and we’re really starting to do something. We slept in until the kitties woke us at 5:30
AM, then went back to bed on the couch until about an hour ago. Rich was in the living room by then and we’d
had a bad nightmare. It had something to
do with being at my uncle’s house, and then we were trying to pack up. There was fishing involved and stuff to do
with quilting … the twins were there and were part of our situation of packing up. I knew that I had insulted somehow my aunt …
I think I thought one of her guests was someone else and I snapped at him
before realizing it was someone different, and then she got angry at me … we
had gone out to the vehicle to finish packing before realizing that we’d left
some of our quilting stuff in the house.
I didn’t want to go back and first one of the twins went in and then my
sister, but they weren’t finding what we had forgotten and in the meantime we’d
started packing a “truck.” There was
something about trying to put back the seats and moving harder objects while
having enough room to sit. I had gone
toward the back to get something and CS had then gone in and tried to move or
change-up something I’d worked hard on and we got angry and yelled because she
wasn’t paying attention to boundaries of what was mine to do and what was
hers. There had been a lot of friction
too in that we felt unwanted and was trying to desperately move on, but we were
feeling waited down. In actuality Chief
was sitting on our legs and we were completely under covers – including head
with a pillow on top of us and our arms down the sides of us with our hands
under us. We felt locked in that
position. The ending of the dream came
with my father being angry at us for causing problems, so he told us we were
going to have to travel back under the truck (where they store the
wheels). We got upset and backed out to
the door of the now moving truck … we were at a stand-off where if he made a
move toward us physically, we were going to jump – commit suicide. I remember thinking that we were being
dishonored in front of our friends and that was part of what we couldn’t
tolerate.
About then is when we woke up and Rich talked to us for a
little bit until we were calm again. One
of the things he’d remembered to tell us was that he had heard the Archie’s
song – Sugar, Sugar. And, decided he was
going to call us his candy girl. We felt
a little romanticism in the air and made it to the computer to play the song …
We liked the words, and by that time were a little better able to leave some of
the other stuff behind.
Part of the dream beside obvious connections to packing our
quilting stuff and the twins (retreat) had been that my grandfather had come up
in discussion and then we were trying to explain some of the relatives –
primarily my Mother’s brother and his family.
We ran up against the memory of our cousin Debbie deciding back after my
Grandmother’s funeral in ’06 that I was too much to deal with and then in the
process of finding that we ran into an email from my cousin Steve. It appears to have been the only communication,
but it was addressed to my sister, his two sisters, his brother and his father
as if I were one of the families. This
is the story Steve took from a copy of something in the email… He wrote:
This sounds like Grandpa
Wes,
> Have you ever wondered what the difference is between Grandmothers and Grandfathers? Well, here it is:
>
> There was this loving grandfather who always made a special effort to spend time with his son's family on weekends. Every Saturday morning he would take his 7-year-old granddaughter out for a drive in the car for some quality time - pancakes, ice cream, candy -- just him and his granddaughter.
>
> One particular Saturday, however, he had a bad cold and really didn't feel like being up at all. He knew his granddaughter always looked forward to their drives and would be disappointed. Luckily, his wife came to the rescue and said that she would take their granddaughter for the drive and breakfast.
>
> When they returned, the little girl anxiously ran upstairs to see her grandfather who was still in bed. "Well, did you enjoy your ride with grandma?" he asked. "Not really, Pa Pa, it was really boring.
>
> We
didn't see a single asshole, queer, lesbian, piece of crap, horse's ass,
liberal pinko - democrat Obama lover, blind bastard, dipshit, Muslim
camelhumper or son of a bitch anywhere we went!"
>
> Almost brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?
>
> Almost brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?
We then sent
a note to Dr. Marvin about these people not seeming safe … we didn’t recall
having received this note, just that there weren’t any more notes sent
afterward. I don’t know what caused them
to stop if it was me or someone else in the family. Just knowing Steve would be the one to try to
include me, but he didn’t seem to comprehend that something like this wouldn’t
be funny to me like most likely the others and that their bigotry was highly
insulting. It did seem to give evidence
as to the un-safety of getting to know members of the family, because we were
so different than their thoughts – especially in their thoughts or respect of
other people.
Dr. Marvin
seemed to agree … he wrote back, “Yes,
consistent with what you described last night. The culture of disrespect
was strong and it seems that she has bought into it. Agreed, not safe.”
The “she” relates to my cousin Deb. Although we’d been very close growing up …
the years had provoked a lot of distance.
We’re still bothered by her statement on not wanting to “bother with us.” I see she is now connected on FB to my sister
and other cousins, and we go between wanting to contact her and be included too
and not messing with it knowing that she could be a dangerous person. In her telling me I wasn’t someone before she
wanted to bother with – it makes her a dangerous person for us … Maybe not for
others, but it doesn’t do anyone any good to be told she isn’t worthy of “bother.” It was one of the most directly hurtful
statements made to me – certainly in my adulthood, although there were plenty
of other toxic relationships. It sucks
to be left out, but then there’s mental health.
I’d rather stay on the side of Dr. Marvin – who I trust as to his
humanity. I’m willing to let go of most
the others. I guess it’s always been
that way … Maybe too like my father “throwing us under the bus.” In a sense it seems that is the situation
with them – they are/were willing to throw us under the bus, because we’d
caused a difference from them – especially in our thoughts of my
grandfather. We thought he was dangerous
to us … and obviously they held him in high respect. The same would have gone for my mother. It didn’t seem to be a problem growing up
that she or my father were so abusive.
In their eyes I’m thinking they felt it must be deserved because we were
the kids and my mother could do no wrong.
I think my mother still respects her brother and his family though I don’t
think they treat her well – they are above her.
I don’t really trust my mother, but I wouldn’t want to see her hurt
either.
Ok, these are much too complex thoughts. I don’t really want to be here, but these are
the sets of thoughts brought up this week in meeting with Dr. Marvin. We had discussed again the last time (my
grandmother’s funeral in 2006) that my uncle was still remembering us as it was
funny the embarrassment I had felt when at his place in Shell Lake, my mother
and most likely others were drunk and she’d flung off her swimming top to be
revealed nakedly. That does seem to be
something that would be TOTALLY inappropriately and frightening to me, but the
uncles memory was how funny it would be that I would be upset. There’s so much I don’t remember of what
happened in those days, but it goes to the argument that we’ve felt my uncle
very crass, though he seems to be proud of it.
These aren’t my favorite thought sets … and
we’re going to try tucking them under again until we meet with Dr. Marvin on
Tuesday. Thursday is Thanksgiving so
obviously we won’t be meeting, so I’m not sure if Tuesday won’t be
lighter. It doesn’t seem that we have
much control over the situation as to what is discussed thought between the
parts, we do have control. Just that we
don’t know what various parts is going to present or where the hardest issues
lie. I think that we finished the major
part of the retreat and then the second half was again spent with family of
past. Toward the end it seemed after
talking about my grandfather and some of the things we remembered from that
time, we had to then again skirt past Dr. Marvin. We almost turned back, but knew that was
against protocol, but we wanted to tell Dr. Marvin how sure the skirting past
him part was related to skirting away from our Grandfather grabbing at us – and
the other female cousins. I recall
directly that we spent nervous energy on being given whisker rubs, we don’t
know much other though the scene seems to have threatened us more on a
different level to have caused this kind of behavior with Dr. Marvin for 13
years. I know that part is coming up and
closer to consciousness, but we’re thinking Dr. Marvin would say we can take
our time with it and that we don’t have to look at more than we can deal with
at one time. It hurts our brain to even
think through that image of walking past Dr. Marvin. It doesn’t seem to matter which party had
been out to that point, whoever walks past him is pretty petrified. It seems that it is about what he “could” do
in grabbing out at us, even though we know intellectually that Dr. Marvin
wouldn’t do anything bad to us. The fear
we have is unjustified in the present and is just too deep for us to have dealt
with even though it’s been like a million jillion years AND we wish that part
to be over. The fear and anxiety is
still real.
Ok, girls … enough enough. This is the point where we feel the need to
eat … I’m guessing that it is emotionally-based. Maybe something … thinking peanut butter rice
cakes.
I’m not settled on what to drink though …
it seems early for pop, but don’t think water would do it and at 10:45 AM it seems
too late to make another coffee. We
could do it, but most times we never get back to then drinking it. Ok, just a bit of pop … *sigh*
Ok, feeling a little better, some space
in-between us and the next thing. We’re
listening still in the background to some fishy stuff. Rich is listening in part to that and he’s
also on his laptop. Not sure what, but I
know that it is infrequent that he gets a chance to relax so we’re going with
that’s a good idea to just give him some free time.
Last night we had been working on the
quilting when he got home, and then we went into the living room to pin the
quilt and to catch up with him, but he turned the channel to some really
negative stuff – people chasing each other with machetes and stuff … so we
complained that it was too violent for us, but he said there wasn’t anything
else on. We started to go back to the
sewing room because we weren’t going to sit through that … but, then remembered
it was about 10 PM and we hadn’t remembered to take our medicine, so we did
that and then shut off the lights in the back room and headed for bed. We watched NCIS which in reality could be
considered similar to the other show in that there is usually some kind of
violent murder, but it seems different in that we’re watching the good guys and
maybe about 5 seconds of violence – to set up the murder – if at that … NCIS
balances humor and injustice so it is at a different level for us. Toward the end of the show Rich came to bed –
his show had been over apparently for about 15-20 minutes and he’d just sat
there thinking we were still sewing. He
likes to crawl into bed with us, but we weren’t happy in that we’d already been
separated about 8 hours and that watching his show would exclude me from being
around him. There was a little playing
that out, but in general we settled down and he let us hold him. That part was nice. I think he wanted to do more, but by then we
were pretty tired and not quite in that mood.
*sigh*
While Rich was out we’d worked on the
writing and something else on the computer – not sure what, but had
disconnected that to eat and watch a couple shows of Anderson Cooper and we
watched some quilting shows, before we finally complained enough to ourselves
of not getting any work done. So then we
made a decision about 7 PM to work on the quilting a bit. We did the first steps in figuring out the
borders and binding, and then cut and sewed those together, then we sewed the
ONE border on, and then cut the backing and padding, and then we attached those
sets together with safety pins. It held
about 36 pins for 27” x 27” of fabric.
The next step will be the actual quilting part. I’ll do that as soon as we finish
writing. We didn’t get to the laundry
this morning because of our general laziness we’re thinking. We got into the late morning up, and then the
settling from the dream and such from writing, and well, we aren’t much past
then, but don’t like doing laundry this late.
Maybe we will though - should probably check to see if the machines are
running. Rich told us that he would be
willing to do the sheets and such, maybe we’ll do a white load if there is
still time. Better check?
Hmm, checked, it doesn’t seem like anyone
is using the machine, but we don’t have enough quarters. I suppose the thing would be to ask if Rich
has any, but then we’d have to do it for sure.
Getting Rich involved in moving isn’t something we want to really do –
both for his sake and ours. We had a
good Domestic Goddess day yesterday – not so excited about it today. We would like to spend some time with Rich
today because he’ll be doing a couple of games tomorrow. For the most part though, we are used to
being on our own for most the day … so would sort of like to just keep our own schedule.
I’d like to be able to write something of
real substance, but I don’t think we have any of that going on in our
mind. We did talk to Mary Ann yesterday
and she was happy that we’d gotten the box mailed. I should say we packed it and RICH mailed it. I think we told you that yesterday
though. She was thinking she’d get it
today already, but we’re thinking probably about Monday or Tuesday. It sounds like she’ll be able to do the work
right away. We also talked to Julie and
she is taking some of the pressure of having enough time to finish the Marine
quilt by saying that we shouldn’t feel pressured and that we could just give it
for the spring event … We’ll let Linda know that to help take some of the pressured
feelings off her. We know that she has
already said she wouldn’t take any more quilts for the year, so we’re thinking
she might feel stuck with our two already.
I don’t know … that’s the kind of thing you just have to ask the other
person so you don’t mislead yourself by information that hasn’t really been put
out yet. Take it easy girls!
I wish I could talk to the twins or LV
Linda today … miss having no contact with them after having had such a good time. Our Linda’s schedules are already changing
and we’re going to have to give-up some of the time we’ve spend together during
our more normal times of 10 AM, 2 PM and/or 7 PM. It’s a switch. I’m a big girl – theoretically at least,
right?
AHA! Wrote the twins a note … might try one now to
the other Linda, and then CS? Yeeks
seems like we’re outstanding on a couple of notes.
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