Monthly Archives: January 2013

31
Jan, 2013

What do you do when you have an evil stepchild?

This is a subject I have wanted to write about for a very long time.  But couldn’t.  It is a very sensitive subject.  Calling my stepchild evil means I am disparaging the child of the person I love more than anything.  However, after many years of dealing with this issue, and the fact that things are getting worse not better, I have decided it is important to talk about this topic.

The answer to the question: What do you do if you have an evil stepchild? is:  NOTHING!  If you truly love that child’s parent, there is NOTHING you can do. You are powerless.  You can’t become evil in return because the your partner will resent you.  You can’t kick the child out because it will cause your relationship to be ruined.  So, if you have an evil stepchild and their parent does nothing to make it better and you love the parent all you can do is what I do.  Cry.  A lot.  Then you just become numb.

I wish more than anything that when Karol and I blended our families, that the children would have the same love for us and each other that we had, but alas that is a fantasy.  Children of re-coupling have their own emotions to deal with.  Possibly jealousy of the new partner or other children.  A sense of loss for the missing parent. Apprehension about moving in with people they don’t know very well. I get all of that, and Bluebell and I were very realistic about all of those issues.  We also understood that we would have to take it easy on “parenting” each others children at first and let them get to know us better.  We didn’t even stay in the same bedroom in the beginning to give the idea of us being together some time to grow on the children.

I read the books, and researched how to be a stepparent.  We felt as though we were doing things well.  I was prepared for the change, the anxiety, the apprehension, the “figuring things out” stage of our new family.  What I wasn’t prepared for was the brick wall of ice in Karol’s daughter.  We realized rather quickly that L was not taking well to living with three boys, nor was she taking well to another parent in the house.  She was 13 at the time.  So I backed off and let Karol deal with her mostly, however, it was impossible for me to never have to give L any directions or “parenting”.  Karol worked long hours, and I was home with the children more than she was.  There were times I would have to direct L to do chores, or pick up after herself, etc.  Not everything could wait until mommy got home.  L rebelled in a BIG way.  Grew sullen at first then downright disrespectful and rude.  She never acknowledged me.  Never spoke to me. Treated me as if I was invisible.

It was awful!

evil stepdaughter

The next few years of  L being in high school were very difficult.  She lived with us off and on, lived with  her father off and on.  Our relationship never improved much, and I just did the best I could to be kind and considerate towards L for the sake of the love I have for her mother.

L graduated and moved to Minnesota to live with her Aunt.  She had a great job welding and making $10.00 an hour (which is good money for a 18 year old kid).  She was safe, and happy.  Then came the call.  “I want to go to school to be a vet tech.  The schools here in Minnesota are too expensive.  I am moving back to Virginia.”  Of course her coming back had nothing to do with school and everything to do with being lonely and missing her friends and a particular boy.

So Karol told me the news and I braced for it.  L was coming home with no job and very little money.  She had bought a car, but that meant a car payment and no job meant we would have to “help” her out.  She came home, and after about a month of “staying with friends” she asked to move back home.  We had no room for her, but told her she could sleep on the couch and put her stuff in a corner in her brother’s room.  We said she could stay until she “got back on her feet”.

What transpired since then has been pure hell.  She did not want to look for a job.  She only wanted “certain” jobs. She refused to do anything around the house to help.  She got a part time job at Taco Bell, then quit.  She got a part time job at Mrs. Fields then got fired. She was pleasant for the first two weeks, then became sullen, moody, and disrespectful.  Mostly towards me.

This is where the crying comes in.  She is a horrible mean person, and I am STUCK!  She won’t even take out the trash!  I will say that in the 6 months she has lived with us she has voluntarily emptied the dishwasher three times, but to me that doesn’t really count.

I am stuck because of the fact that I am not her mother.  If that was MY kid, I would have put her out!  Made her figure out where to stay and how to get her act together.  She would NOT be allowed to live in my house, use my electricity, my water, eat my food and be so disrespectful.

However, Karol is cut from a different cloth.  She feels as though it is her responsibility to “help” her daughter and take care of her.  She does fuss at her, and yell at her to be respectful and help out.  But the bottom line is that makes no difference to L.  She is almost 21 for goodness sake!! She knows that her mom won’t put her out so she just does as she pleases.  She doesn’t care if her mom yells at her. She takes it, and then just goes back to her normal routine.  She doesn’t even apologize.

Now, I suppose you may think I can tell Karol to make a choice, or force her to put her daughter out, and while those options are available to me, if I were to do either one of them, it would damage our relationship beyond repair.  Karol would never truly forgive me, and it would ruin the best relationship I have ever had.  I am not willing to do that, so I suck it up, and know that this will eventually end.

L did get a job recently.  A very good job making $16.00 an hour.  However, she won’t start for another three weeks.  Then of course it will take about a month for her to save up enough money to move out into her own place.    I do see a light at the end of the tunnel for THIS time, but the truth is this will never be over completely.

L recently told her mother, “I don’t like Carol. I don’t want to have a relationship with her.” So my life with Karol will consist of me doing the best I can to be cordial to a young lady who is cruel and unkind.  This is tolerable to me as long as L doesn’t live with us, and I only have to deal with her occasionally.

When we fall in love we don’t realize that if that person has children it is going to be an uphill battle, and sometimes you will never get to the top of the hill.  The walk up the hill can be heartbreaking, but for me I focus on the other side of the hill, when Karol and I are still hand in hand and L is on the other hill.

On a side note, the relationship I have with Karol’s son is awesome, and the one she has with my boys is amazing also.  The 5 of us have a family, and we laugh, and love each other.

L doesn’t want to be a part of that family, and after much talking, and shouting and crying Bluebell and I have come to that conclusion. Karol understands what L does, and how she treats me.  It makes her very sad, because she would never have expected her child to be so unkind and nasty. Especially to someone who has done so much for her. Karol feels badly about it, but she just can’t bring her self to kick her daughter out of our house, so until the day comes that she moves out on her own, I am stuck living with an Evil Stepchild.

I know there are many other people who are going through what I am going through or something very similar but people just don’t want to talk about it.  It is time we stepparents of evil stepchildren come together to support each other!!

 

23
Jan, 2013

Smack talk from the Wii Fit

Last week I gave you a glimpse into my life with teenaged boys.

Today I had a conversation with my Wii Fit that had me saying WTF??

Let me set the scene for you:  I came downstairs to see the boys off to school, and afterwards I decided to check my weight on the Wii Fit.  So I get on the board, (Now I am going to warn you that the parts of the conversation that are me, I TRULY did say those things out loud to the tv.)

Hey don’t judge, I didn’t want to be rude, even if it was the tv…..

So I step on the Wii Fit and the conversation goes like this:
Wii: “Well good morning Carol.  Are you feeling refreshed today?”

Me:  “Yes thank you.”

Wii:  “So, how is Bluebell doing?  I haven’t seen her lately.”

me: “She’s fine.”

Then the Wii got all gossipy: “So how does Bluebell look to you?”
And the Wii gave me 4 options to choose from:
A. She looks the same
B. She looks skinnier
C. She looks bigger
D. I haven’t looked at her
I choose A because it is true.

THEN the Wii Fit thinks it is a relationship counselor and says: “Change is exciting don’t you agree? Maybe you should pay more attention to Bluebell.”

At that point, I was like, “Look here, I pay enough attention to Bluebell.  Watch, I am going to call her and ask her. You’ll see, Missy!”

So I did.  I called Bluebell.

I told her about the conversation I was having with the Wii and she laughed, and laughed……and laughed……  Really?  I expected her to be all angry at the Wii, and immediately take my side. Nope….she thought it was the funniest thing she had heard all day.  I was like, “Listen, I haven’t weighed yet, so I will talk to you later.”  She was still laughing as I hung up.

So I turn back to the TV, hit the A button on the controller to move on to the next screen and THEN the Wii says to me:  “On a side note did you know that dogs become more motivated if their owners pay attention to them?”

Seriously???

You have got to be kidding, now somehow it is MY fault that Bluebell looks the same??

I am NOT joking here people, I can’t even make this shit up. Example:

THEN, finally I weighed myself. And the Wii says, “Oh, you missed your goal.  Do you want to make a new one?  Maybe you need to work harder.”

Then I got all bad-ass and said:  “Listen bitch, I think I have had enough of your smack talk today!  I bought you, I own you, you are mine, and I don’t want any more sass from you!”

I was a tough bad-ass talker.  However, my actions were different.  After I yelled at the tv, I meekly and quietly put in a new goal.

And the saddest part is that I will do it again next week.

Watch this video.  Comedian Kelly McCarron hits the nail on the head:

DOMA causes hardship to Military Gay and Lesbian families

I usually stay away from political commentary, however, I have been reading more and more about the hypocrisy of the Federal Government, and the more I read the angrier I get.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am the kind of girl who does NOT believe everything I read, but the evidence is mounting and I am upset!

When I was in the military and in a same gendered relationship we had to hide everything.  Of course most people were able to put two and two together, but we were not able to be open about who we were in a relationship with.

When President Obama repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), I for one was thrilled. This meant that military personnel would be able to be open about who they loved and not have to hide and be in fear anymore.  We saw the first public Pier homecoming kiss of two women in Norfolk and the first public Marine homecoming kiss .  Both of those sights brought tears to my eyes.

Many Gay and Lesbian military personnel have married their partners and in many states that is perfectly legal.  However, due to the Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, the Federal Government only respects marriages between a man and a woman.  This means that same sex couples are not allowed to have the same benefits heterosexual couples enjoy.  These benefits include military ID cards, access to the Commissary and exchange, not to mention medical and dental benefits.  In addition, heterosexual military personnel receive extra housing money that their single military members do not receive.

This difference in pay has always been contentious even without adding in the same sex relationship issues.  I know single military members who have long complained about the difference in pay, especially when there are no children in the family.  Why should  married person with no children receive more housing money than a single person with no children?  But that is not my concern today.

Today I am concerned with the lack of benefits same sex couples receive due to DOMA.  And when I started doing research to write this to ensure I wasn’t making false allegations it came to my attention that the House Republicans will be spending up to 3 MILLION dollars to defend DOMA when the question of its constitutionality goes before the Supreme Court this year.  So out of one side of their mouths they want to reduce spending and out of the other side they want to spend 3 MILLION dollars to defend DOMA??  Hypocrisy at its finest in my opinion.

President Obama himself has stated that he thinks DOMA is unconstitutional and directed the Attorney General to no longer defend DOMA.  In this past election voters enacted laws to allow gay marriages.  When are the Republicans going to get with the program?  They are not in step with what most Americans want and they will only continue to lose ground with the American people if they keep moving in this direction.

However, my biggest concerns is that our military personnel have been told they are allowed to be open about their sexuality but some have even been barred from spouses groups.  In North Carolina a solider who had just returned from a deployment to Afghanistan attended a couples retreat with her wife.  After being there 24 hours they were asked to leave because they were “distracting other participants”.  The Chaplain in charge of the retreat stated that the couple could not attend the retreat because the program was funded in such a way that it was only for heterosexual married couples.

Another couple who are stationed at Fort Bragg also experienced discrimination by a spouses group.  The wife of a military member was told she could not join the Fort Bragg Association of Officer’s Spouses because she did not have an ID card.  However, that rule was not listed in the Association’s bylaws when she applied to join.

The examples go on and on.  Military spouses having to cover their own airfare and being denied access to military flights.  Military spouses being denied housing pay.  Military spouses being denied diplomatic visas so they can live with their spouses overseas.

These military personnel truly believed that when DADT was repealed they and their spouses would be able to fully participate in military lie as equals to every other military member.  So not much has truly changed.  We are out, that is great, but gay service members are still being discriminated against.  The difference since DADT was repealed is that now it is out in the open instead of hidden.