It's been a while. A Really Long While!

It’s time to dust off the fingertips and learn once more how to write. There have been so many things happening that I can’t really wrap my mind around, and I have a memory of being able to make some sense of senselessness through writing. I’m not sure where this little journey will take me, but here goes.

I find myself stuck in a job that I have no hope will survive past next summer. Civil servants have become the enemy of the state. I have really enjoyed being able to help people change the way they approach their lives so that they can experience less suffering. It’s been good, steady work. But there is a fork in the road ahead and I need to start making decisions about which fork I will take.

They still have us attending all these train-the-trainer trainings and I can’t help but wonder if it is just throwing good money after bad. I’m not even sure they will help me as I chose to move forward. But I go, because they are paying me to go.

The agencies we are trying to teach to replace us to are beginning to rebel against us!  This is one of the most absurd things! We are giving them FREE trainings with FREE CEU’s, and they can’t even make the time to attend to the coaching calls without complaining about it. The coaching calls, by the way, only take place once a month, and only last 1½ hours. But they are such a drain.

They keep saying it’s because they are busy. But they don’t even have full caseloads yet. I would think they would WANT to take this opportunity to learn as much about what they are being paid well to do. But no. I am quite bitter about this. Probably because I know that if they do not do this right, the people I have been caring for will have a significant increase in the amount of suffering they experience in their lives.

So there it is.

You can see how this is all affecting me in my home life. I have not really cleaned in over a month – again. I’m not cooking for myself anymore. It’s all fast food, and I am getting super bored with it. My health is failing because of it. My bank account suffers for it. And it’s embarrassing.

Zach is going to start being expensive again. There have been cuts to food stamps, they want to cut HUD, and I will need to pick up the difference. His mental health is good, but I think this may be a permanent plateau for him. He is a lot better than he used to be. We don’t fight at all, and he is keeping his apartment clean. He doesn’t have little drug dealers there all the time taking his money from him. I think he is happier now. The medication does a good job keeping him from being terrified by hallucinations all the time.

Megan is still struggling to manage her money. I keep giving her money, and she did write checks to me, but we still have to see if I can cash them. I brokered the deal between her and my dad that is allowing her to live rent free and will own the house after he passes. It does need to be finished, but it is livable.

I am very proud of her. She is working with autistic kids, and she has a gift for it. I wish I had someone like her working with Zach when he was little. Imagine how he would be doing now. And she is the best mother I have ever seen. Is she perfect? She says she isn’t, which means she is always looking for better ways to do it, which means she is the perfect parent. She has also made a huge difference in my dad’s life! He is happier and easier to get along with. He still gripes at her, but she is learning how to manage it – like he is one of the kids she works with!  😊

Then there is Kris. The big blow up at the Burley competition was a real eye opener. I really thought Megan was not setting appropriate boundaries with her. Boy, was I wrong! She showed me that weekend that she intends to be in charge and right, and she is willing to hurt my grandchildren to do it. I’m just going to write what happened. It still burns.

Megan has a broken crown that she can’t stop playing with. I wish she could figure out how to stop, because the position her jaw goes to when she is playing with it is un-attractive and definitely is the cause of some head pain for her. Other than that, it is probably fine the way it is. She says a part of the stump is still there, but she did have a root canal done on the tooth before getting the crown. But Kris was asking her about it.

When Megan told her, Kris went straight into “I know everything” nurse mode. I hate nurses like that, but I especially hate Kris being condescending like that to Megan.

“You need to get that taken care of!” she said. Letting this go can cause heart problems!” she continued. “You need to take care of yourself, not just for you but for these girls” she nagged. She just went on and on and on. She never asked what Megan had already done, and why she wasn’t able to get it taken care of, because the reason is obvious. Megan doesn’t have the money to go get it fixed.

So, at the end of her lecture, I said “it’s easy to say when you have money.” I didn’t even say it with a snotty tone of voice, I used a neutral tone. But it was enough to trigger a temper tantrum and ruin Aubrey’s night. A night that should have been celebrated because she nearly got to go up for a special trophy (more on this later).

The next day at the end of the competition, I went to apologize. I said “I’m sorry I called you out, I shouldn’t have said anything.” Which of course made her even angrier, and she threw a full blown temper tantrum in front of everyone.

“No, Cheri, you should have kept your mouth shut” she said as she stormed off.  I spent 15 minutes trying to apologize. She told me I was the most hateful person she ever met, “no wonder you don’t have friends” she said. People like you can’t have friends because no one can stand you.” She then stormed off.

As Megan and I were walking out, Kris got on the phone and was calling Megan to come talk to her. What she really hoped for was an opportunity to yell at Megan. I followed Megan, and Kris and I had an angry conversation in which I explained to Kris that she is crossing boundaries everywhere. She tried to come off as the victim. So I reminded her of the first time I ever met her.

We were at the elementary school for a little spring thing. It was almost Ellie’s birthday, and she was really excited about getting a cash card to buy her own toys. To me it was cheaper than me going and buying things because I spend too much when I do that. Ellie was giving me a little sass, which is something I love about the kid. That’s when Kris told her “don’t talk to your grandma like that.”

Well, if you know me, you know that I consider that a huge encroachment of my boundaries. After all, Ellie is and always will be my granddaughter. That means I have the right to decide how I want her to treat me. And who the hell is this woman who just stepped into these girls’ lives acting like she is the new, big, and better parent here? I said nothing. I always thought that was a mistake, until the competition. Of course, she didn’t remember this.

She didn’t remember it because it is her MO to bulldoze over everyone else’s boundaries while over correcting others she perceives have crossed hers. She doesn’t remember any of the things she has done that were really mean. Like telling Megan she was weird for reading Ellie’s group chats (which is a good parent thing to do).

A lot of things were said and screamed. Including her falling to the ground crying about how hard she has it with an autistic child. Imagine someone doing that to me! Really? And her saying she was not princess growing up, that she grew up in a trailer. I still wonder how it is, then, that she leaned to hate dance competitions as a child because she was forced to do them. A parent so poor she lives in a trailer scraping money together to force her child to do something she hates. But here’s the truth, she is highly insensitive to the plight of the less privileged.

She said she has worked hard for what she has. I guess coaching a married man to take steps to divorce his wife is hard work. She had to get a nursing degree to get a job in a hospital where she could find a doctor, or pharmacist in this case, that she could steal.

Her one autistic child is well taken care of – what I wouldn’t have given to have the financial means and the appropriate therapies for Zach when he was diagnosed! “I don’t live in the Taj Mahal” she said to the two people standing there that have never lived in a brand new 5 bedroom house on the upper-middle class side of town. But she made it clear that I only had one option left. Hug it out and be “friends”, which I did for Aubrey’s sake.

We went and had ice cream while she continued to be insensitive to people who have never had much. But this I can tell you. She will only have that kind of power over those kids for a short time. Eventually they will grow up and see her for what she is. She wants to whine that the girls are pulling away from her. But here’s the thing, if you want people in your life, you have to be trustworthy. You have to be able to empathize with others and let them have their own private thoughts, and needs, and let them win and be right sometimes. She’s the kind of step-parent who gets edged out. The girls will want to continue to see their other siblings, but it won’t be on Kris’s terms. And I will do what I have to in order to protect my grandchildren from the wicked witch. For now.

Because right now, the only thing that matters is those girls.

Aubrey has been a dancer her whole entire life. And this year, now that she has completed her growth spurt, she has really started to take off!  The difference in the way that girl has danced her solo since February is immense. I think she has made some of the most outstanding improvements she has ever made. She is more serious about doing it right. She is practicing a lot. She is amazing.

At the competition in question, she really showed her quality. The dance teacher had made them work really hard the night before and not of the girls could even walk. I could tell she was stiff, but she hit every turn, had a perfect tilt, her leaps were spectacular. When it came time for the adjudication, Megan kept saying, “they still haven’t called her!” I didn’t know what that meant. I do now. It meant that they called over 40 girls her age first. We were pretty perturbed that they didn’t give trophies to the top 10 because right after they called Aubrey, they called #8 to go to the front of the stage. She was in 9^th place!  What’s even more difficult is that she actually tied with #8! But because #8 got a higher (by tenths of a point) score than Aubry, she got the trophy. I am so proud of her!  Next year – Watch out. We’re going to have to build a trophy case to put in her dance room!

Ellie had a great year last year in that she found her true calling. She was the lead in the middle school musical and really did it well. But she had some growing pains in her emotional life, so Kris (of course) decided Ellie didn’t need to be doing so much. Megan and Ellie did finally convince Kris to let her join Ovation School of Arts, where she can really get back into musical productions. Right now they are practicing for The Wizard of Oz.

And last Friday she got first place in the 800 at her track meet. I didn’t know she even had a track meet. But she is having another one tonight, so I will be at that one.

As for me?  I am going to get ready tonight to go to Aubrey’s last competition this year. And no matter how she places, she is still the best dancer in the world in my eyes. And I am proud of Ellie who works so hard to achieve the best she possibly can in everything she does. And I am proud of Zach for learning how to cope with some things no one should ever have to face. And Megan, for being Megan, which has always been something special.