Telling Tales

Boy, I've been somewhat "out of the loop" the past couple of days -almost all week really, as I just realized tonight that I hadn't done many real posts this week. I've been reading blogs -using Google reader -but that doesn't register on people's sitemeters that I've been around to visit, does it. Unless that is, I click into the blog and comment and I've even been pretty much a lurker this past week too.

Trust me when I tell you all this, it is no reflection on the content any of you have posted that I didn't comment - more just that I've been in my own little world here the bulk of this week and just quiet I guess. There are times when I just seem to lose my blogging voice, for lack of a better description I guess.

Part of this is because I was engrossed in a little project here -knitting a little vest type top for Miss Maya. I finally got it finished early this morning. I'll have to take a picture of her modeling it for everyone to see. It's nothing fancy - just a little sleeveless vest but she's happy with it, her mother liked it and I'm okay too with the way it turned out for me. Sometimes, when I get into knitting, things go fine and dandy and I don't run into any problems with various stitches or instructions - whatever -and other times, I get a project started and run into a roadblock or two or ten which often causes me to get really frustrated and toss the project into the "I don't want to deal with this" pile. Sometimes I come back to those things later and things clear up and I get them finished and other times, I end up ripping out what I had knitted and then, don't mess with the knitting stuff for a long time after that. This item though went fairly smoothly and I wanted to get it finished before something like the boredom or a problem cropped up so I had to just keep at it until I finished it.

Now, I'm moving on to another craft project - crocheting a baby blanket. I usually don't have that many problems with crochet as long as it is a relatively easy pattern and is something like a baby blanket -nothing with increases and decreases and fancy stitches with the crochet to begin with ya know.

Tonight, we had a bit of a situation here that I'm about to explain to you and I'd appreciate any comments as to what you think, what you would do or would have done.

Here's the scenario: My son was at his house this afternoon - doing some clean-up type work around the place and said he was sweeping the stairs from the upstairs to the first floor, backing down the steps as he swept. Suddenly, a voice called out to him -just about scared the living daylights out of him as he hadn't heard anyone come in -and when he turned around there was his cousin, standing there. An unexpected visitor.

Now, a little background here. My nephew, his cousin, has issues. He's been very heavy into drugs and alcohol abuse too and his judgement levels, as a result, are very flawed at times - especially if he is on some drugs or drinking -whatever.

The guys hadn't seen each other for about two years or so now so my son was happy on one hand to see his cousin -and yet, on another hand, it was also upsetting too because Clate and his girlfriend had plans for this evening plus, the nephew wanted to kick back and relax (if you want to call getting high or smashed "relaxing" -not my idea of a good way to have a mini reunion there.) So anyway, CLate ended his cleaning and they sat down, had a couple brews, etc. I happened to call up to his house and thus found out my nephew was there and spoke to him briefly on the phone too. His plans, or so he said, were that he was going to stop down here and visit with me a little bit too.

Now, anyone who has dealt with a close relative or friend who has a problem with drugs or alcohol - or both -can most likely understand this but still it can be a bit of a quandry. I love this kid dearly, really I do but I hate what he has allowed to happen to him. His brain cells are really majorly "fried" much of the time from his use and abuse. He has no common sense at all much of the time now. My son knows this too but my son feels sorry for his cousin and thinks he can "help" by doing what he did today.

For some reason or other, my nephew -though he had shown up at my son's with a car -asked my son if he could borrow his pickup truck and my son, because he thought he was kind of helping his cousin, allowed him to borrow said vehicle. THen as he thought things over a bit after his cousin had taken off in the truck, Clate called my son-in-law, upset, telling Bill what he had done. Bill then called and ratted my son out to me. So I called my son and asked him to give me the details - which he did - and I promptly then read the riot act to my son as this move was extremely foolhardy for him to loan his cousin his pickup truck!

Eventually my son and his girlfriend did track the nephew down -camped out at the local pub here in town - and he got the keys back to his truck then and they came down here then to my house. (Left the truck though sitting at the bar as I had told my son he didn't need to be trying to drive it either now and at least as long as he got the keys, it would be safer that way.

Well, we had a very lengthy discussion then about this whole situation. My son felt it was more or less his family duty or obligation (sort of -ok, his thought process sometimes gets a bit convoluted too) that since his cousin wanted to borrow his truck, he should let him do that. He has this fear that "well suppose my cousin had something happen to him, then what?" Geez Louise boy, that was exactly what I was trying to tell him -Suppose something would happen to him -driving your truck! -what do you think would be the upshot of that? It's this strange, misguided idea that well, I have to try to help my cousin, ya know. Yeah, you do but loaning him your pickup truck when he is totally unreliable is not the epitome of sound thinking!

Then it went to well, what if I hadn't and he'd left in the car he arrived in and my response to that was "So what! You still have to do what is right and NOT loaning him the use of your vehicle is actually WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE RIGHT THING TO DO!"

I'm telling you -dealing with people and their convoluted logic sometimes just totally exhausts me!

Try explaining the principle of "Tough Love" there, will ya, please! After discussing this -at length -then for a couple of hours, I "think" I finally got my point across to my son. DO NOT under any circumstances, ever again, allow your cousin to bull-woof you into loaning him any vehicle!!!! NEVER! Because to not loan him a vehicle -or money too -is actually helping him and not a bad way to handle the entire situation.

End of the discussion here -now, what's your stance on a predicament like this? Would you have chewed Clate a new A-hole or just blown it off?

Now that I told you that little tale of the day, here's something else in the "Tale" department.

The "Mother of This Lot" gave me a new award yesterday and I'm just getting around today to acknowledging it and hopefully, to be able to place it on my sidebar too. (Don't know if BLogger has gotten around to correcting the problem in which you can only scroll down about maybe a quarter of the way down your sidebar on the page layout page yet. Here's hoping that's fixed though.)

So anyway, here's the nifty new award from "Mother of This Lot" given to me! Pretty snazzy don't 'cha think?