Elise

My sister Elise had a son 2 months before I did. My mom had a falling out with her and didn't try to see or contact her or her son either. On mother's day Elise called our mom to try one last time to fix their relationship. Mom told her if elise wanted to talk to her, she should write her a letter because she didn't want to talk to her. Horrible, right? 3 months later, after this mess with me, she calls Elise. What is she thinking? That she's going to get Elise on her side? Elise has nothing to do with this situation. It makes me sad, because I know that my mom is going to do all the same manipulative things to Elise that she has done to me my whole life. I hope my nephew isn't as affected emotionally as my first son has been.

Aaron

I had a baby (aaron) on May 18, 2010. During the pregnancy my mom had no interest or involvement whatsoever. When he was born, my son Kyle called her to let her know, and she didn't express any interest in coming over to see the baby (or me). In fact, the next time she called was a week later, wanting to take Kyle and Marie to mcdonalds and the park. When she got to my house, she stayed in the entryway, waiting for the kids to get ready. She did not acknowledge Aaron, or ask about him, the entire time she was here, which was about 10 minutes. Then she left with the kids. When she came back to drop them off, it was the same thing. She didn't call again for almost 3 weeks, which is when I told her she wasn't welcome in our lives anymore. Also, she wrote off my sister and HER new son, about 3 months before this. Has yet to express any interest in them either.

Reasons I did what I did

OK, so I decided last week or so that I didn't want my mom to be in my kids' lives anymore. I have tons of reasons for this. Unfortunately I deleted most of them... So now I have to remember everything and log it here. Ugh. 1) She's irresponsible. When my mom was living with me, (rent free), she was babysitting Marie when she was around 2 years old. Marie had just learned to open doors. Billy and I were on our way up the stairs, and there was Marie, at the top, in a shirt and a diaper. She was VERY close to the stairs. We went up, the door was open, and my mom was in a back bedroom, getting ready for work. She was sitting on the floor, putting make-up on. She didn't even know Marie had opened the door, or was even out of the room. Another instance with Marie: My mom heated up some food on a plate in the oven, and then fed a two year old off of the plate. Marie burned her chin badly enough that she had a mark for over 2 weeks. (Luckily it didn't scar.) I'm going to keep adding these types of things as I remember them, and as I can handle it. I'm kind of sick to my stomach now... 6/13/10 My mom moved in with me when i left josh. More on that situation later. When my mom finally moved out, she did it by throwing all her belongings in a pile, threatening to rip the computer out of the wall (because she bought it, but only because she INSISTED we have a better one than Josh), and screaming obcenities at me including the phrase "Josh was right. You're nothing but a follower and a bitch." Billy witnessed the whole scene. Oh, and so did the kids. She talks to my 10 year old (and has for several years) about sex and tells him stories about "the fosters" which were her physically and sexually abusive adoptive parents. She tells him stories about situations at work that are completely inappropriate for a child, involving drunk people, adult conversation, etc. I have asked her on numerous occasions to stop, and she insists it's not a big deal.

Reaction to my mom getting a lawyer

This is copy/pasted from my Facebook.

Ok so a half an hour before I left for my gig tonight, Billy goes to check the mail. Inside is a letter from a lawyer, and a notice that there's a certified letter at the post office from the same lawyer.

In the letter the lawyer states that he has been retained by my mom, and that I have 7 days to respond. Also that she was "devastated" by her ... See Morenot being able to see her *3* grandchildren (although the first time she came over after Aaron was born, she didn't acknowledge, look at, ask about, or try to see him), and that she "loved" me and my husband, which is complete BS since she's told me straight out that she doesn't like me.

He goes on to say that he wants to "resolve the situation amicably" by letting her see the kids again. I just don't know if it's worth all the hassle. Maybe she can just come over here on Mondays for a couple hours while one or both of us is here. But she is such a negative influence, and is not a healthy person for Kyle to be around. He did something last week that was TOTALLY dishonest, directly relating to her. And she's so inappropriate with what she talks to him about. Like he's an adult... I don't know.

I can't believe she even has the opportunity to do this. Like, when did it become ok for the court to have the opportunity to tell me how to run my family? I'm not a drug addict. I'm not an unfit mother; the whole point of this whole thing was in, what I believe to be, the kids' best interests...

I'm reposting this on my blog, where I'm going to start logging everything... I'm so pissed that I deleted everything on there... I'd have saved myself so much time.

ANYWAY, if you read this, thanks for letting me vent. Any and all suggestions are more than welcome. :)

http://onecrazystitch.blogspot.com/ if you want to follow along.

Tick Chart and Stitching for Lyme

I accidently deleted this chart, so I'm posting it again*. It occurs to me that now I have to go in and fix all my broken Ravelry links... ugh.

*Upon further review I can't seem to find it... I'll keep looking, but otherwise I'll post a new version. I have some other charts I want to post anyway. I suck.

Ironworkers Local 433 Chart

I made this totally awesome hat for my husband, who's a Union Ironworker. Apparently it gets REALLY cold up there on those tall buildings in the winter. So he needed something very visible (hence the bright orange), but also very warm. So I thought "Hey, double knitting is warm. And that's something I haven't tried yet." And here ya go!

The hat is knit with the spud wrench pattern only, included in the knitting. The "433" was added later to both sides using duplicate stitch because (and I learned this the hard way) when you follow a pattern in double knitting it has to be reversible... which most letters and numbers are not...





If you have trouble saving the chart to your computer, I'll email it to you. keriboyle (at) yahoo. If enough people ask, I'll make it a pdf or something.

So what do YOU do when you can't sleep?

I, apparantly, post on my poor little blog.

So when I deleted all my internet crap, I decided that a big reason for doing it was that I wanted to protect my kids. Then it occured to me that I can't COMPLETELY leave them out of my blog (as referenced by the picture below), so I'm going to compromise by changing their names. Right now all I have is "Chicken-face" for my daughter, (there's a story), but eventually I'll come up with names for my 2 sons as well. I just don't want to use DD and DS like everyone else. That's just me being me.

I'm having mixed feelings about deleting all my old posts. It's kind of like going back and destroying your high school journal: it's cleansing, but you can't help but wonder if there was something important or insightful somewhere back there... Of course, in order to find that insightful-ness, you'd have to go back and re-read all the crap, and I just don't have the energy for that. Not to mention I deleted the pictures from my Flickr without thinking which ones might be important... that sucks... (Did you know you can't easily find out which of your pics are linked somewhere? Unless I'm completely retarded, which is possible, but if there are links that need pics with them, I have all the old pics on my computer - I just need to re-upload them to Flickr.)

So what am I up to? Does anyone really care? Well, I don't care if no one cares, I'm going to post it anyway, nyah, nyah.

I've been spending the majority of my free time making cloth diapers. I use these patterns from Little Comet Tails: Little One Size Diaper, Little Starter Cloth Diaper, and Sprightly Soaker and Underwear (pictured at the right).

I'm also sewing all my own cloth wipes, burp cloths, mama cloths, nursing pads (my own pattern which I'll post here someday, maybe), and whatever scraps I have left are used for quilt blocks for receiving blankets (which I NEVER thought I'd be able to make, but turns out aren't that hard at all).

I've also been working the BWAT office a lot, since I can't be any princesses other than Fiona from Shrek 3 anymore, due to my huge belly.

I've only got like, 6 more weeks to go, though, and I'm getting REALLY nervous... I'm having the baby at home, all natural and stuff, and it's kind of just now starting to get in my head that "oh by the way this is going to HURT." I know I can do it, but it's all that insecurity and what-not that's getting in my head.

Anyway, that's all I have time for now. I forgot how time-consming blogging is...

Being safer, or maybe just letting go

OK, so I am starting over. I'm deleting everything I have online about my kids and my *real* personal life. I don't know exactly why right now... other than I don't want random people looking at my kids. Or something. I dunno. Maybe I'm just really paranoid in my pregnancy, and maybe this is the online equivalent to chopping all my hair off, but here it is. So yeah, we'll see what happens now.

Flock and schtuff

So I was trying to find a good browser for my MacBook, and for some reason IE for Mac didn't work and Google Chrome didn't work. So I downloaded Flock and HOLY CRAP it's awesome! It's got all my things I do in the sidebar, and it'll remind me to blog. I don't know how well I'm going to do because in order to use it I have to switch the internet connection to this computer, but we'll see!

I might be using this as a "home office" since I can't use the computer in the living room and still claim it as a tax write off... Dude... taxes SUCK. Right now we're fighting to have some of our refund given back to us after it was offset to pay back some old student loans... normally I'd just leave it alone and chock it up to experience, but I was kind of planning on that money to, oh, pay for the delivery of my third child? Also, most of the refund was supposed to be Bill's so it's not really fair that he's been married to me for 4 months and he has to pay for my debts, is it? Anyway, that's what I did TODAY and maybe I'll actually post again in the next few months... MAYBE I'll get a bug in my ear and upload my pictures to Flickr and I'll actually have PICTURES in my next post! We shall see.