Six Word Saturday (8/20/11)

First Week of School is Done

My kids made it through their first week (and so did I).  My daughter is a little spooked about the older kids at middle school but she has several old friends there with her.  I'm excited for her because orchestra is one of her classes (she plays violin) and her other elective is dance.  Yesterday she found out a new friend lives pretty close to our house and they can walk to school and back together.  I still have concerns about her getting teased but I'm trying not to worry until it actually happens.

My son is in his last year at elementary school, so he is one of the "big kids" on the bus.  I bought him five new outfits to wear for school, and this whole week he has insisted on wearing the same three pairs of nylon jogging pants that he wore ALL YEAR last year!  So my idea of having to do laundry only once a week came to a halt on Wednesday night when he needed the three pairs washed again.  The funny part is these three pairs of pants were hand-me-UPs from our neighbor kid who two years younger than my son.  I feel like asking his mom if I could trade five never-worn pairs of pants for more hand-me-ups, since my son apparently likes this kid's clothes better.  (I'm nervous about next month when I go home for my parents' 50th anniversary because who's going to wash his three pairs of pants mid-week while I'm gone?  Not my husband, oh heavens NO!  *mock faint*  Maybe my son could take them over to the neighbor kid's mom to wash!)

Six Word Saturday (8/13/11)

School is going to start soon

Monday is my kids' first day of school.  My youngest son will be in 5th grade, so this is the last year I'll have someone in elementary school.  My daughter will be in 6th grade, the first year of middle school.  My son I'm not too worried about because he's a happy funny little kid with lots of friends.  And I shouldn't be worried about my daughter either but I kind of am.  My husband discussed this with me yesterday so I do feel better about it, but all summer I've been dreading her going to 6th grade.  Sixth grade is when my life really started to suck, honestly.  That was the age when the kids in my school would start going to the mall with their friends, to movies, get-togethers, and the girls were boy-crazy and you were "nobody" if you didn't have a boyfriend.  I wasn't allowed to go anywhere except to church and two youth groups, but my parents refused to drive me so I'd have to find rides from people.  I just remember from 6th grade till I graduated from high school I spent a mind-boggling amount of time alone in my room and most of the time I wanted to die.  So it makes sense that I would be worrying about my daughter starting to have to deal with this.

My husband said that my daughter is a totally different person than me.  She has lots of friends (and she knows which of her friends will be going to the same middle school so she's not worried about being alone).  She is athletic, pretty, and outgoing.  Me and my husband are willing to take her places.  Her circumstances are different than mine were, so she should be just fine.

I'm thinking about posting this video on my Facebook on Monday for the start of school, but I'm not so scared for her anymore.

Going home

Just venting...  Next month I'm going back home for my parents' anniversary.  Although I'm excited about hopefully seeing some old friends, I'm nervous about seeing my family.  I'm missing how I had been able to shove all my feelings down for years and years, because ever since my hysterectomy and being in counseling so long, it feels like the band-aid's ripped off (which hid my ab) and every little thing hurts me. 

I can't even hope everyone will be nice to me.  My family shows love by "teasing," even though things they said would hurt me and then I'd get basically scolded for being sensitive.  I keep having these fantasies in my head where I finally have enough of their shit and say, "You know what, I'd just rather not see or speak to any of you again.  See you in Heaven."  The only reason it would shake them up is because they wouldn't have their dupe to make fun of anymore.

My paternal grandmother wasn't allowed to be around us kids when we were little because she was crazy.  My father only told us ONE good childhood memory of her, otherwise it was known that she was a horrible mother who couldn't get out of bed and take care of her house or kids, and my grandfather always put her in the hospital (mental) when he got sick of it.  She died when I was 12 and I got to see her in the hospital but I was too scared to hug her because she was portrayed as a monster my whole life.  And after she died my mother told us that she was screaming that she "killed the baby" and other crazy stuff during the last days in the hospital and my aunt (her daughter) disclosed that my grandma had an illegal ab after her 3rd child.  Now when I was 12, that made me hate her even more!!!  And I never even gave my grandmother a single thought till I went on the Rachel's Vineyard retreat and hearing everyone else's story made me think "even my grandmother could be here telling HER story" so I did forgive her right then and there.  But does anybody see how messed up it is that the very thing my father is angry and ashamed at his mother for is EXACTLY what they're doing to me?  I'm looked at like the crazy one now.

I wish my parents would admit that having me get an abortion was the wrong thing to do. I wish that they would say I'm a good mother and they misjudged me and I would have been a good mother to Claudia then too.  My mother keeps saying that my grandmother "did the best she could" when I ask her if having a messy house or wild kids meant my grandmother was a bad mother.  If my mother didn't think she was a bad mother, though, wouldn't she just say "no"? 

Anyway I found out on a genealogy forum where my grandmother's buried and when I'm home I'm going out there to bring her some flowers and tell her I'm not ashamed of her and I'm sorry.