Ready, Set - Stay

I'm feeling just a trifle disconcerted -as well as discombobulated- tonight mainly due to the upcoming holiday this week.

I've posted several things over the past week or two or so pertaining to the topic of "thankfulness" and while I truly do believe the words I put into those posts, today I'm looking forward to this Thursday not exactly in the best light. The thing is, I can't really put my finger on why.

Granted, my kids and I will have "our" own Thanksgiving meal - all of us together -probably next Sunday. "Favorite Son" has to leave tonight to go to work so most likely he will be on the road, who knows where, when Thursday rolls around. The older daughter, her fiance and my older grandson won't be able to be here because Carrie has to work -Wednesday and Thursday nights, both -she works midnight shift so it would be really hard for her to get up here for a big meal, get-together and still get some sleep that day too. And, heaven knows, she goes without adequate sleep way too often as it is, so I wouldn't feel right trying to have our big dinner and her not getting some much needed rest.

So, it will be Mandy, her husband, his dad and sister, the two little ones - and me. The 16-year-old is going to be at her mother's I guess for the day. Somehow, the prospects of roasting an 18-pound bird for five adults just doesn't sound enticing to me - especially when most likely, I'll have to do a repeat of the entire meal come Sunday then -but at least that one should include eight adults and two little ones but still - all I can think of is that I am going to be cooked out or "turkied" out. I'm just not sure which right now, ya know.

Add to that, there is the factor of the situation with my aunt and her daughter -and my cousin who has power of attorney there and who also is quite ticked off with me and my daughters. He recently put our aunt's home up for sale - a move I hate to see but I realize the necessity for that happening. I had expressed an interest to him back in May that I would like to have access to all the photos - old, old photos - my aunt has in the house so as to scan them into my computer, save them to a dvd and then be able to share them with other cousins around the country who might also be interested in some of these pictures. I don't want any of my aunt's belongings and I don't want the pictures to keep them - just to scan them and return them to my cousin and he can do with them as he wants after that. In May he seemed agreeable to allowing me that access - today, I rather doubt he would be so kind.

His reasons for being so totally ticked at my girls, at me, center on the fact he feels with the proximity of where we live to the nursing home, we should be able to visit them frequently. Unfortunately, that is not always the case as my girls both work - neither of them work the same hours every week, both have other constraints with their children and I also have constraints to my getting over there due mainly to the fact I watch the two youngest of the grandkids and I am not physically able to manage to take both of them together to the home. I can manage Maya to a certain extent, provided she doesn't get spooked when we get there over some unforeseen thing or event which would send her into meltdown phase. Add to that, this fall was a very difficult time with both kids and for myself as well as we had horrible sinus infection colds, ugly coughs that hung on forever and I sure as heck don't want to take those germs into a nursing home and put people's lives at risk of contracting an infection even slightly as bad as the kids and I had to endure. He is right though when he says we do not visit our aunt enough -I agree with that - but I have no alternative at this time to bring into play to correct the entire situation. He argues the point that HE babysits HIS grandson, who is six months older than my little grandson here - however, what he doesn't put into the equation is the factor that his grandson is considered "normal" for a two-year-old whereas neither Kurtis nor Maya is quite on the same scale. He may not think it makes a difference but if he were to have the same issues to take into consideration, I think his logic might be shown to be a bit askew.

So I suppose because for so many years, our holiday traditions were centered around this aunt, this cousin, and now the situation is totally upended and I feel sorrow at the loss of the "family event" this was for all of us for so many years and guilty too because some of the issues involved are beyond my control - the kids, my own health concerns, the other factors with my kids and such. I feel that right now I am being a "Gloomy Gus" about the entire matter and it's affecting my energy levels, my interest levels too. I haven't given a thought to what I will or should fix for either meal - the one Thursday or the one come Sunday and that is something I usually had some type of system in mind anyway in years past.

I have to confess that the news last Thursday of the death of one of my blogger/e-mail friends really was quite unsettling to me too. I feel like I have lost someone I've known for a long, long time -closely too, like a good friend or neighbor -and yet, I never met this man, never spoke to him on the phone, but there was something about him, about the level of communication I shared with him that made me feel he was one of my best friends. Is it possible that by the simple act of reading someone's thoughts posted in a blog, commenting, then eventually sharing other information via e-mail for roughly a year, that one can feel -for lack of a better term - "raw" inside knowing that person is no longer with us? I don't know, can't explain it, wonder if maybe I'm just over-the-top with sentimentality or something but his passing has left a gap, a hole, for the loss of a very good friendship at any rate. On a side note here too - if anyone reading this was also a reader of Bob's blog and would like a copy of his obituary, I located it yesterday in the Sunday edition of the Calgary Herald. You can access it online or if you wish, e-mail me and I will send you the copy I have in my files here.

Maybe tonight I'm feeling a trifle guilty too over a little issue I had earlier this evening with my little Princess. She was not behaving very well - not in the least - we had words, she refused to listen to my warnings about picking up, cleaning up the mess of toys she had strewn across the living room floor, then she got very angry with me which involved a meltdown and her hitting, slapping, kicking me. Those actions eventually got the better of me and I disciplined her in two ways - neither of which she found pleasant. I took all the Baby Bratz dolls, their paraphenalia and put them into a plastic bag and stashed it in my room and I gave her two little cracks across her behind for the really obnoxious behavior on her part. When I can't get her to settle down enough to listen to anything without resorting to those means, I always feel guilty as hell and like a major hypocrite too because I'm doing what probably appears to her as the same thing I am trying to get to cease and desist in her. How DO you discipline a child that lashes out though? I -or we - can't allow her to continually go on without having boundaries and yet, how do you ascertain when or where she actually is comprehending those boundaries too? It's a situation I rarely encountered when my kids were this age but then, they understood fully warnings, etc., whereas Maya sometimes does, sometimes doesn't and there are times too when you realize - often after the fact - that she knows exactly how to "push buttons" too though. After I did discipline her, she became very docile, very loving and fully capable then of doing what I would term "sucking up" to me. It's a dilemma and I really wish I knew how or a better way to cope and contend with this factor in the household. Any suggestions, anyone?

So that's where my head is tonight and trust me, it's not a really upbeat, pleasant place right now. I know I'll work through this but for the moment, it's dragging on me a good bit. And, for that tone, I do sincerely apologize. Maybe I need to watch a movie that played yesterday on the Turner Movie Channel again - "The Miracle Worker" -perhaps I could learn something from Ms. Annie Sullivan.