Day 89 - Relaxing Day

Dear Reader,

Well, let's see.  To evaluate the day I have to remember the day!  I slept late for starters.  My kitten woke me up playing with a fluff ball of catnip she brought up into the bed.  She is so adorable!  Can't believe I never liked a cat before.  She's almost like a dog, though.  She follows me everywhere I go along with the dogs.  

Then I got up, but my husband was just then leaving to go to a baseball game, even though he is sick.  They won so I guess he did make the difference since they lost two games yesterday that he didn't attend!  I got dressed and got a Luna bar, a banana, and some hot tea and went straight to my white desk, now looking so beautiful and neat.  I had my prayer time and read my Bible, and then attacked the drawers!  I found so much STUFF! Including a knife sharpener that belongs to our son.  I didn't even know what it was.  I also found a lot of 3-1/2 inch floppy discs.  Wow!  Was THAT a blast from the past!  I found that you can buy a do-hickey for $15 that you plug into your USB port and it will read the discs and allow you to save the material.  Yeah!!!  This could explain where a lot of my writing is that I can't find on my computer.  I tend to keep hard copies of everything, so I don't think I had actually LOST anything.  Tomorrow it won't take much to finish up my desk, although I do have to go through and weed out a big bunch of files.  I would so like to replace them with pretty files, all the same!  But I am going to do my best to resist that impulse!  I have written out a schedule for finishing this study.  There's no way I am going to be finished with everything by the end of this week!  But I'm going to forge ahead and just stay focused in here until I'm done.  I remember doing the same thing before we moved here.  I had so much writing out all over the place in piles and it took a ton of time to sort through it all and get it organized and in notebooks.  

I didn't eat well, I'm afraid.  We went to a Mexican food restaurant that had changes locations to see if it had gotten any better.  I deliberately ordered a fish that came with a white sauce on it, even though I was sure it contained dairy because (drum roll) I WANTED TO!  And it was really good, but very rich and after I ate it I regretted it and felt awful.  We each had a mango margarita.  For the life of me I couldn't remember what to call it and finally said, "the tequila-based drink you have!"  It was WAY too sweet and I'm sure it had a million calories.  The sautéed vegetables were mostly chopped zucchini, and I'm allergic to that, so I tried to weed it out, but wasn't terribly successful.  And, believe it or not it came with mashed potatoes!  I don't think they had much milk in them, but probably had some.  My husband and I split a York mint and felt miserable the rest of the evening!

We saw RoboCop.  I was so bored I actually almost fell asleep thigh a large section of it!  

I called my mother and she made me sad/frustrated/angry when she manipulated an anecdote I was telling her I order to shred, for the thousandth time, a woman that she has not even seen for forty years!  My mother thinks this woman was better than her (she was) and hates her for it.  So she has several stories she'll spew out given the faintest opportunity.  So... Jesus said, "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."  Well, my mother basically hates everyone, so what does that say?  I hope and think that it just means that she is mentally ill.  But it hurts my heart to hear her go off like ths.  "Then why don't you make her stop?" you ask.  And what that tells me is that you don't have a Borderline Personality mother!  If I stopped her and said, "Mom, I don't want to hear you tell this ugly story about Mrs. So-and-So again.  You are harsh and unkind when you do this  and, if you have a grievance against her, you should have forgiven her decades ago!", you want to know what would I gain from this?  A crazy mother in a homicidal rage.  If you have never seen a BPD in a rage, then let me just say, you don't want to!  I'm  constantly caught in this predicament:  how far do I let her go before I stop her and risk the consequences?  Well, I've pretty much decided that if it is about someone else, I'm going to let it go.  If it is about me or my family, I won't.  But how do you rebuke a 90 -year-old, mentally ill and unstable mother?  Especially when one of your spiritual gifts is mercy?  And how do you know when you are acting out of compassion and mercy, and when you are being a despicable coward and letting her emotionally abuse you?  It's all such a fine line, and I'm so tired of walking it.  

She told me Friday that she could never live with one brother because he's well ... let's just say "strange" and leave it there.  Can't blame her for not wanting to move near him, frankly.  None of us would want to do that.  Then today she said she could never live near my other brother because of one of his daughters who lives near him that she can't stand.  Now, this particular niece of mine is loud and gorgeous and petulant and childish, even though she's 30 now.  Her dad thanks I'm the only one who could handle her.  We were possibly gong to do an intervention in January when I could come down because she bounces from one thing to another and confuses everyone until they give up.  I'm the only one that would be able to force her to stay on one issue at a time because, well, I'm the smartest one in the family and she is no dummy.  Pair that with being adept at manipulation, smoke screens, and confusion ... she's far past what my brother would be able to handle, and her husband CERTAINLY can't handle her.   But anyway, how in the WORLD did I get onto that??  Oh, right.  My mother said she could never live near that brother because of this granddaughter.  Of course, another daughter has moved in with him to be with him and help take care of him.  They get along great and my mom even gets along with her.  But she doesn't want to move there because of the other daughter.  

Now, here's an interesting thing.  I told my husband about this at dinner and said she was just going to have to get over being so picky and learn to get along with the rest of her family better.  Which she is fully able to do.  And I learned that my husband thinks I should invite her to move to New York!!  That he doesn't see how I can not do this, and that it's natural for mothers to incline toward their daughters!  Maybe  he said this because his mother lives in a different state and his sister is the main one who takes care of her and lives near her.  So I should do the same thing.  But what he's not factoring in is that his mother is not CRAZY!  Or MEAN!!  And my mom is both and I have been the daily recipient of it for 25 years.  She has two sons who have never helped me at all and have lived their lives Scott-free and I can't do it anymore.  Can't do it, don't want to do it, and shouldn't have to do it.  If she decides that being on good terms with one of my older brothers is in her best interest, she will quickly be able to do it.  

I had a thing with my oldest brother this week where he made me flamingly angry!  There was an element of pride in my reaction, but it was deeper than that.  I think that, deep down, almost unconsciously, I am angry that he never took care of me when things were so bad at home.  He was nine years older and you read lots of stories about older kids who took care of younger siblings when things were bad at home, but he never did.  He never comforted me when I was terrified, he never got me food, he never in any way tried to protect me.  He never did a thing, and he was 14 during some of the worst of it.  Am I holding this against him?  My mother did some of her worst damage to him, maneuvering things so that he was hospitalized in a mental hospital and given electric shock treatments when he was 18 until he quit hating her.  After a treatment they would ask him how he felt about his mother and he would say, "I hate my mother!"  And she would authorize more shock treatments until he finally responded, "My mothers ok."  Is that nightmarish or what????!  This is back when your child wasn't an adult until they were 21, so she could get away with this.  And the problem is, he doesn't remember any of this because they so screwed his brain up with all those treatments!  And his wife has begged me to not ever tell him!  (And you thought YOUR family was dysfunctional!)

Well, that was quite a venting.  Welcome to a little bit more of my world!  I'm not going to ask my mother to move.  I'm hoping the prices and the property taxes and the weather will keep her from wanting to move where we are going.  If it comes down to it, though, and she says she wants to come up and "find her a place" as has happened twice before, will I be able to say, "I don't think that's a good idea, Mom."  Or will the guilt my father so carefully built within me overwhelm my determination and will keep me compliant and silent?  We'll see.  

Anyway ... Moving on!

I did not tear at my nails today, although I did chew on some cuticles.  I picked up cuticle nippers because I couldn't find mine (I found them, of course, literally as soon as I got home!), and gave myself a manicure as best as I could.  I buffed my nails, too, to try to make them smooth.  Tomorrow I'm planning on putting on some coats of clear polish to help keep me from biting them.  Maybe I'll use a soft pink so I can't see the splits in them and split them apart!  

I have decided to try to floss once a week.  I HATE flossing and can't see the point.  I mean, here I am, 57 years old, and I have had my teeth cleaned maybe six times in my whole life and I never floss and I have never had a cavity.  So how important can it be?  But I decided to start doing it just once a week.  I used my water pic tonight and flossed and ... it didn't even hurt and I scarcely bled at all.  I'm going to try to do this regularly on Sunday nights at least.  

So.  Here we go with the day's evaluation:

1.  Rest: good.  Got plenty of sleep, but did not do any meditation.  Seriously.  How am I going to find the time to do this??

2.  Nutrition: not good at all.  Popcorn at move (with butter), margarita, dairy in my meal, snacked on potato chips, and half a York mint.  

3:  Exercise:  none

4.  Progress on house:  good, got a good amount of work done on my desk and got most of my recipes for events refiled in my huge notebook

5.  Regular work:  pretty good.  Tried on four pairs of shoes that arrived weeks ago and made decisions about them and re-packed them, ready to return.  

Here is, then, my new section I promised to start including:

Why I Did Not Work Out Today:

- didn't want to.  

And there you have it.  The plain truth.  I was planing on going to the Y three days a week, and then I decided to start with just two days a week instead.  I also HAVE to talk to my physical therapist about being my fitness conditioning trainer.  I think my insurance would probably cover it.  I want to drop at least these six pounds and feel healthy and vibrant before we move to New York.   (Without my mother! )

That's it for me.  I love Mondays!  Fresh starts always make me happy, and Mondays are always such a nice fresh start!  I'm raring to go at my projects tomorrow and anticipate being able to tell you that I had a good workout when I next write to you!

Sleep well and have a great day tomorrow!  

Cheers!

Lisa