Ha Ha, Hee Hee, Amy

No vent today. Just something that made me laugh. A few weeks ago in South Georgia, the radio stations started to play Britney Spear's "If You Seek Amy." They played the song with no edits, at least so far as the title of the song and the chorus were concerned. I don't know if the DJ's and the radio stations don't quite get that the song has nothing to do with some chic named Amy or if they just ran the song by the FCC and the FCC gave them a thumb's up. Either way, I was surprised that the song, which I find funny in itself--it reminds of this poem that this guy in high school got the clueless English department to publish in the school's literary magazine that spelled out a similar sentiment when you read the first letter of every line--got any airplay in that part of the state at all.

Now here I am today, driving along in my car, in the suburbs of Atlanta, a town that I'm sure considers itself much more progressive and liberal than any town in South Georgia, and I hear the same song, only it went something like this:

"But all the girls and all the boys are begging to ha ha, hee hee."

Luckily my fountain drink from the QT was too watered down to drink. Otherwise, I might have had Cherry Coke in my mouth and spewed it all over the Redneck Mobile's windshield. Yes, all the girls and all the boys who were begging to ha ha and hee hee had me ha ha and hee heeing as well, at least for a few seconds anyway. Then I turned the station.

Seriously, Atlanta, loosen up. Better yet, give Amy a call. She might be able to help you in that department.

Rewriting History, Idiot Father Style

Did you know that I used to be anorexic or that I was hospitalized for it in the 12th grade? No? Me neither, but apparently that's the story that my father has been telling everyone lately. Nice, huh? Add this post to the category of Things I Didn't Bite My Tongue About a.k.a. Things I Chewed Someone Out About in the Middle of an IHOP Restaurant.

So how did I find out my father decided to rewrite history and make me into the poor, underfed heroine in an after school special? I started paying attention to Step Skank's snarky comments. Usually I tune the woman out or just ignore her altogether, but after the hundredth time I heard her say, "Well, if Chandler doesn't start eating, he's going to end up in the hospital just like you," I decided to do something about it.

Before any of you get too concerned, Chandler isn't anorexic either. He is just a picky eater. He likes what he likes, and doesn't like what he doesn't like. It's that simple. However, Step Skank seems to think that, if what Chandler eats doesn't come from a cow or pig or isn't deep fried, it isn't really food. In other words, if he eats chicken, fruit, and yogurt, then he has to be anorexic. If he eats red meat, then he's a growing boy. Some logic, huh?

As for me, I have never had an eating disorder. What I did have--the thing that landed me in the hospital in the 12th grade--was pseudomembranous or antibiotic-associated colitis. To put the condition in the simplest of terms, pseudomembranous colitis occurs when you take an antibiotic, usually of the broad-spectrum variety, and the antibiotic, instead of killing off the bad bacteria in your body like it's supposed to, kills off the good bacteria instead. The bad bacteria then takes over and eats away at your colon, bit by bit. If the doctors catch it in time, they can treat the condition with vancomycin. If they don't, then it's goodbye colon, and you spend the rest of your life crapping into what amounts to a Ziploc bag on your side.

Luckily for me, the doctors went the vancomycin route and left my colon right where it should be. Nevertheless, I spent six long weeks in the hospital for that condition and that condition alone. Did I loose weight while I was there? Well, yeah. The only way the colon can heal itself is to shed its damaged lining, and the only way it can shed its damaged lining is to send said lining down the remainder of the digestive tract in the form of--you can all cringe now--diarrhea. Who wouldn't lose weight after six weeks of the runs?

Did I have a feeding tube at one point? Again yeah. After all, it's a little hard to eat solid food when you have a tube in your throat breathing for you for four of those six weeks. I had to get nutrients somehow.

But was I anorexic? No, no, and no. But I guess anorexia makes a better story than your daughter crapped herself for six weeks so that's what my father is telling everyone 15 years later. Like I don't have enough to deal with right now.

Anyway, once I finally figured out that anorexia was what Step Skank had been implying, I let her and my father have it. I didn't care if we were in public. I was tired of the two insinuating that my mother didn't feed me or I didn't feed myself. Heck, if my father had ever bothered to take an active part in my life back then, he might have realized that I ate all the time; I just had a high enough metabolism that I didn't gain 500 pounds from it. As for my mother not feeding me--in trying to defend himself, he claims my official diagnosis was malnourishment, as if--what a joke. She was the only one who did, and without any help from him or his rarely paid child support, I might add.

Well, poor little Step Mommy couldn't take it and left the restaurant. My father, meanwhile, kept insisting that my hospitalization had nothing to do with an antibiotic and everything to do with my eating habits or lack thereof. He swears right and left that Dr. Wolfe, my gastroenterologist, told him that was what was wrong with me. Seriously, a gastroenterologist told him that? Why would a gastroenterologist even be involved with an eating disorder case? And why would said gastroenterologist prescribe vancomycin for that eating disorder? Or do two different colonoscopies? I wouldn't think any of those things were the norm in the treatment of anorexia.

But try telling my father that. Try telling him anything logical period. I think he lacks the brain cells needed for logic to compute because he didn't hear me. He just continued to insist that he was right and I--the one person who should know better than anyone else what happened to me--was wrong. I can just imagine his conversation with Step Skank on the ride home. "Oh, the poor thing. She's still in denial 15 years later. We're going to have to stage an intervention. After all, recognizing that you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery."

Yeah, I recognize that I have a problem all right. My problem is that I have the world's most-screwed up family. There. I said it, but how do you recover from that? Now that Sarah Palin has resigned as governor of Alaska, I guess I could recover by moving there and buying me a nice little igloo to hide in.

Wait. I forgot that I don't like the cold. Oh, well. I guess I'll have to settle for beating my head against the wall while my father, my grandmother, my sister, or someone else rewrites even more of my history. Good times.

It's My Life, Right?

A couple of posts ago I said that I had spent the last two months biting my tongue, so much so that if I didn't stop biting it soon, I would bite it off. I wasn't just talking about sister drama; I had other drama as well. Chalk this vent...um, I mean post...up to other people telling me how to live my life.

The day after my mother died, I got a call from her friend at work, the one from the previous post that was supposed to be her partner-in-crime on the Coyote Ugly outing. She said that my mom's boss wanted to talk to me and asked if I could come by the office early the next morning. I said that I would. What was I going to say, no? I just assumed that he wanted to talk to me about her life insurance, pall bearers, cleaning out her desk, or the like.

Well, you know what they say about assuming... As it turns out, he didn't want to talk to me about any of those things. Instead, he and her friend wanted to tell me what I had to do next. I had to call DFACS and have them see how messy my mother's house was. I had to tell them that the mess was all my sister's fault (which it was, but I digress). I had to hire a lawyer and file for custody of my nephew. I had to take whatever job the boss found me, get an apartment, and pay off my mother's car so I could have "reliable transportation." Basically, I had to change my entire life because he said so.

I just sat there stunned and didn't know what to say, other than, "Uh, okay." I felt like I had been called to the principal's office, only to find out that Tony Soprano was now the principal. By the time that I left his office, I had an appointment scheduled for the following Monday with an attorney and my whole life laid out in front of me, whether I liked that version of my life or not.

When I got back to my grandmother's house, I spent the rest of the weekend silently stressing over what I had been told to do, plus being barraged by a stream of old ladies and nosy, distant relatives who all told me that, now that my grandmother no longer had my mother at her beck and call, I was expected to move in with her and wait on her hand and foot. (Not their exact words, but that was the essence.)

I don't know if I have ever mentioned it in this blog before, but every night for the last few years my mother had to run errands for my grandmother the moment she got off of work. My mom worked 12 hour days so that meant she had to run these errands at 8 p.m. at night. Most of the time she was lucky if she got home and ate dinner by 9 p.m. Then she had to deal with Tina, Chandler, and four dogs. Basically, she never had five minutes to herself.

I used to tell her that she didn't have to do those things for my grandmother and that she needed to train her the way you would train a dog. In other words, she needed to tell my grandmother that she would only go to the store once a week and if she ran out of anything other than insulin during that week, she would just have to wait until the next week to get it. After all, the woman could live without cigarettes and Diet Rite. She might not me a very nice person to be around, but she could live just the same. Of course, my mom never did that. She just dutifully went to the store day after day after day.

I didn't want that to be my life. I didn't want to give up my goals and my dreams to spend the rest of eternity waiting on everyone else, putting everyone else's needs and wants in front of my own. In a way, I feel like that's all I have ever done anyway for the last 33 years. For instance, I didn't want to go to Rollins for undergrad. I wanted to go to USC. It was my first choice. I got in to USC. I even got a small scholarship, but I didn't go, primarily because all anyone did my senior year of high school was tell me not to move to big, bad L.A. In all honesty, I never really wanted to be a lawyer either. I just wanted to write a script about one on TV. However, all I was ever told was how I needed to be a doctor or a lawyer or some other "somebody" and how film school was just a pipe dream. Obviously I listened because here I am now with a useless law degree, not able to get a job in a law firm if my life depended on it.

I'm also right back to people telling me what to do. Forget the customary "I'm sorry for your loss" or "If there's anything I can do, let me know." Instead, all I got in the days immediately proceeding my mother's death was, "What are you going to do for everyone else?" or "This is what you're going to do."

Those of you who have read "Let the Family Ventfest Begin" probably think I should have kept the appointment with the lawyer, and maybe I should have. However, by the time Monday rolled around I was so angry over everyone telling me in one way, shape, or form to give up my life that I didn't go.

There were other reasons I didn't keep the appointment as well. First my mom's boss failed to write down the appointment time and the name of the lawyer that the appointment was with so I had no idea where or when to go. Second, I spent that afternoon running Chandler from store to store trying to find him a bathing suit so he could go swimming with his friend down the street and at least for an hour think about something other than death. Third, the closet optimist in me wanted to give my sister the benefit of the doubt. I had hoped that, once she got over the initial grieving period, she would get her stuff together. Finally, I was scared that the courts wouldn't place Chandler with me or with his father and would instead stick him in foster care. Chandler had just lost my mother. I didn't want him to lose the rest of his family and his dogs as well.

I thought that, once I missed the appointment, people would get the point and leave me alone. They didn't. Instead, my mother's coworkers told me that I needed to give up my dogs and get an apartment with my sister. Say it with me now, everyone--WTF??????? Give up my dogs? I'm not giving up my dogs. As corny as it may sound, those dogs are my babies. I'm not about to trade them in for a two-legged dog with a bad dye job.

And get an apartment with Tina? Why? I have a house. The offer I had on it fell through the week after my mom died because the guy lied to his loan officer about all the child support he owed. I took it as a sign that I don't need to sell it right now and that I need to stay put. So why should I give my house up? Why should I get rid of everything that I own and everything that I have worked for and give up on the hope that one day I may have a career that I actually enjoy, get married, and maybe even start my own family just so I can take over as chief enabler for my sister and grandmother? I mean this is 2009, folks. Women can take care of themselves now. They don't need a man or someone else to do it for them, and it's about time that my sister, my grandmother, and every busybody around them realized it.

I've got a raging case of heartburn right now just typing this because I know that I'm probably being badmouthed right and left in my hometown for not doing what everyone else thinks I should do, but like I said in the title of this post, it's my life, right? It's not theirs. They shouldn't get a say as to how I live it or get to tell me that I have to give it up just because my mother died. Why don't they just tell my grandmother and my sister to grow up instead? Why does it all have to fall on me?

I'm going to go take a couple of Tums now, not because some busybody wants me to or because that's what you're expected to do when you get heartburn, but because I want to. My life. My heartburn, and despite what many back home may think, the former is not up for sale.

Today's Smoky Soapbox in Honor of My Mother's 55th Birthday

Hmm...Looks like I scared some people off with my rant about my sister. Sorry, but I had to let all that venom out somehow. Well, for the few who are still left, hopefully you won't be too offended by today's post.

Today would have been my mother's 55th birthday. Her New Year's goal was to lose 55 pounds by her 55th birthday and then go with her best friend to the Coyote Ugly in Panama City and act like she was 25. Obviously, she's not going to get to do that now. You can blame it on asthma. You can blame it on the flu, or you could blame it what I blame it on--smoking.

My mother wasn't born with asthma. She didn't have asthma as a child or young adult; she only developed it within the last few years. She wasn't genetically predisposed to it; that is, asthma doesn't run in our family. She also was never exposed to asbestos, toxic mold, or any other asthma-inducing environmental factors except one--second-hand smoke.

For 54 years, my mother--a woman who had never even picked up a cigarette except to throw it away--had second-hand smoke blown in face on almost a daily basis. My father smoked the entire time they were married. My grandfather smoked until he developed emphysema. Even then, he continued to light up until the doctor put him on an oxygen tank. My great grandfather--my mother's mother's father--smoked until he attempted to throw a cigarette out of his car window and ended up setting the backseat on fire. My grandmother smokes at least a pack a day. My sister smokes that much as well. Basically, the only people in my family who don't smoke are me and the dogs.

A few years ago my mother had her lungs x-rayed. The x-rays showed that she only had half the lung capacity of an adult her age. Half. That's it. She asked the doctor if second-hand smoke could be to blame. He told her that it very well could be.

Now I know what a lot of you smokers are thinking. Very well could be isn't the same thing as definitely is, and you're right. It's not. Putting my lawyer hat on for a moment, I know that very could well be would never stand up in court. It would never prove that second-hand smoke nuked my mother's lungs and ultimately caused her death.

However, in taking off the lawyer hat and putting on my daughter one, I know that it did. I believe that, had my mother's parents, grandparents, ex-husband, and daughter quit their habit early on or at least aimed their smoke elsewhere, she'd be sitting in the passenger seat of her best friend's convertible right now, getting ready to dance on a bar top, down some shots, and do other things that would make me want to disown her. Because seriously, folks, who dies of the flu or asthma these days? Seriously, who?

So if any of you are looking for an incentive to quit or a reason not to start, there is one. It doesn't matter which side of the cigarette butt that you are on; smoking kills.

Okay, I'm stepping off my soap box now. I missed the first half of the Michael Jackson memorial, and I want to see if I can find any clips of Brooke Shield's speech online.

Let the Family Ventfest Begin

So I thought with my sister out of town for the week--she took my nephew and all of her friends to the beach for a week and, surprise, surprise, didn't invite me--I would have a peaceful week at home, hundreds of miles away. Yeah, right. My father just called to inform me that, while feeding my sisters' dogs last night, he found a half-addressed and sealed envelope from her to me in the living room. He said that he couldn't tell what was in it, and he was scared to steam it open, in case he couldn't get it to seal back, but he thought that I would want to know.

Great... Now before any of you start to think the envelope contained a hand-written letter all full of sentimental what-nots, thanking me for taking care of her son and her dogs for the last two months or apologizing for threatening me with arrest--a topic I'll get to later--let me tell you a little about my sister. She's not a nice person. She's not even close. The day someone confuses her with Marcia Brady, Mother Teresa, or Little Suzy Sunshine is the day hell freezes over, unthaws, and freezes over again...twice. She's also not the type of person that I would ever associate myself with in real life. In fact, if we weren't related, our paths would probably never cross, except for maybe in lockup, where I would be handing her my business card, offering to represent her in court. Then again, maybe not. Even a lawyer has standards, especially this lawyer.

Why can't I stand her? Oh, where do I begin? Here's the quick version. She's 28 years old, but she acts like she's about 8, and that's probably giving her too much credit. She's never had a real job in her life, unless you count the few weeks she worked for her best friend one summer wiping down tanning beds. She's also not looking for one any time soon. After all, it's hard to look for work when you sleep to 3 p.m. every day. Ditto on the degree. Even night school is too early for her.

Sleeping, by the way, is pretty much all she knows how to do, except for tanning, partying, smoking, and cussing. Too bad colleges don't have degrees in those fields. If they did, Tina would be well on her way to a Ph.D. by now. But seriously, that's all she does, day in and day out. She sleeps to 3 p.m. every day, gets up, goes to the tanning bed, comes home, changes into whatever the newest fad is in skankwear--remember my post from a few months ago about the cut-off black slacks--leaves again to go drink the night away at parts unknown, has someone drop her off at my mother's house around 3 a.m., throws up all over the front porch, and then passes out on the couch. That's her life.

I thought that my mother's death would be a wake up call for her, a big, fat reminder that she needs to grow up, join the land of the living, and start taking responsibility for her life and for her son's. It wasn't. In fact, if anything, my mother's death has just given her an excuse to continue on her path to nothingness. Now if anyone asks, she can just claim that she's sleeping late and drinking all night because she's depressed. Uh-huh.

In case you think I'm exaggerating, here are a couple of pics that prove my point, pics that I stole off of her MySpace page. They were all taken AFTER my mother died, just last week in fact. Here is drunk Tina:

She's the one on the right with the four beers in front of her and her head in the pitcher, and yes, I'm pretty sure that they're her beers, not the girl's next to her. I know this because I went to bed one night with no drinks being by the pool and woke up the next morning to find seven empty bottles of beer next to it. Unless there's a drunk ghost in the house, they all belonged to her.

Here is pissed off, I'm-such-a-bad-ass Tina:

She's the one in the middle with the three chins. Yes, I know that description is mean , but after the two months I've had, I've earned the right to be that mean.

And finally here is the Tina that the rest of the family gets to see on a regular basis:

Okay, that one didn't exactly come off of MySpace, but it's still an accurate depiction of Little Sister Dearest.

Now guess where her 9-year-old son was when all of these were taken. That's right, with me, the only adult left in the family. While she was out partying every night, I was taking care of her child. I was making sure he got fed, bathed, and went to bed at a halfway reasonable hour. I was the one taking his mind off the fact that he found my mother's dead body. I was the one making sure he was okay now that the only stable influence in his life is gone. Me, not her. In other words, I was doing what my mother did for the last nine years, being the mother my sister refuses to grow up and become.

I didn't just watch him at night. I watched him all day long as well. With the exception of the one week that I spent in Atlanta last month, bringing back a truckload of my mom's things, Chandler spent nearly every waking hour with me. If he ate, it was because I took him to a restaurant to feed him or bought and cooked him groceries. If he got dressed, brushed his teeth, or bathed, it was because I told him to. If he picked up his report card or went to the library to get books to read, it was because I drove him there. Once again, me, not her.

Do I get a single thank you for that? Not even close. What I get is my sister throwing a temper tantrum because she thinks I'm responsible for half of her utility bills until the sheriff shows up and kicks her out of my mother's house.

Do I owe her money? Um, let's see. In May, I paid half of the utility bill for April's electricity, even though I didn't live there. I then had to turn around and pay all of MY utilities as well. Subsequently, I used all of my blogging money to either buy supplies to clean the house she trashed or put food in her child's and dogs' stomaches. When that money ran out, I used my half of the measly $200 we were able to get out of my mom's account before the bank froze it to, once again, feed her child and drive him around, which included driving him to the last day of school because she was too hung over to do it herself. Wait, let me rephrase that. I used my fourth of the money. The other $50 magically disappeared out of my mother's wallet one day, about the same time that my sister supposedly went to Steak-n-Shake one night in Valdosta and only bought a milkshake. Yeah, I've seen the MySpace photos of the night in question. She bought a hell of a lot more than milkshakes, and it wasn't just at Steak-n-Shake, if you catch my drift. Meanwhile, we only had $5 left to eat on for the next week. Oh, and since we got the check from the insurance company, I've probably spent close to $2000 on her child, buying him the computer that I knew my mother wanted to get him for Christmas and that I knew my sister never would (hasn't stopped her from using it on a daily basis, however); the printer, wireless router, and software to go with it; food (both groceries and restaurant food); clothes (all of his clothes were either stained, too small, long-sleeved, or ill-fitting hand-me-downs and I knew, for a fact, that my mother, the person who usually bought his clothes, never wanted him to look like a throwaway); gas; toys; toiletries; dog, rabbit, and newt food; supplies for camp; and general household items. If it wasn't for me, my sister wouldn't even have had toilet paper to wipe her butt with because I have bought every last roll in that house since April 29.

What has she bought with her half of the inheritance? Beer. A bag of dog food that caused my mom's 15-year-old Cockapoo to bloat up three sizes before I threw it away. A bag of cotton candy for Chandler, and a week at Mexico Beach. That's about it.

So do I owe her money? No. If anything, she owes me, but try telling her that, which brings me to that little topic of a threatened arrest that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Right before I drove back to Atlanta, my sister and I had a huge fight over a storage unit. After my mom died, I rented a unit to put her things in. The deal at the time was that we were supposed to half the unit, but as usual, my sister couldn't bother to get up during daylight hours to go with me to the storage place. Consequently, the only name on the contract was mine, and I was legally responsible for the entire bill.

Back in June, after another sisterly blowup, I rented a Ryder truck, emptied out my half of the unit, and had my father drive that half up here and put it in my garage. When I drove back down, I had every intention of helping my sister finish emptying my mom's house and paying for half of the storage bill, even though I no longer had anything in the unit. Well, those intentions went out the window after about the hundredth time Tina pitched a fit about the electricity bill. I got so sick and tired of hearing how much I owed her and how much electricity I used up--who cares that she did the same to Mama for years or that I only used that electricity in the course of caring for HER son--I finally said screw it. I told her that she had to either put the unit in her name or tell me where she wanted her stuff dumped, because I wasn't paying to store it. Her free ride--the one that our mother gave her for the last 28 years--was officially over. I couldn't pay my bills and hers, too, not unless I wanted to lose everything I owned in the process. I don't.

As you can imagine, that went over well. After two days of battling it out, she finally agreed to go by the storage place and put the contract in her name. The caveat? She refused to do so until I gave her the keys to the unit.

Well, if it's one thing that I know, it's how malicious my sister can be. Hence, the Godzilla pic above. I wasn't handing over those keys until she showed me proof that the unit was now hers. Otherwise, I knew what would happen. She would take the keys and refuse to transfer the contract, and I would be stuck paying the $115/month rental fee on the unit until I had a locksmith come out and cut the lock off. She would assume that it was her due right, given that I owed her on electricity.

After a few hours of Chandler going back and forth on the phone and from the driveway as our intermediary, Tina finally went and put the building in her name. Five minutes later she came by my grandmother's and had Chandler inform me that, if I didn't turn over the keys right then and there, she was calling the police. I told Chandler to tell her, fine, I would give her the keys, but first she was going to show me a signed contract. I didn't and still don't trust her as far as I can throw her. Trust me when I say that's not very far. Once Chandler was out of earshot, I also said, "Let her call the police. I'm sure they and DFACS would be real interested to know about the kind of mother she's been for the last nine years. If that's the kind of game she wants to play, let's play it."

She gave Chandler the contract. I gave Chandler the keys. We haven't spoken since. So do I think that envelope my father found is full of heartfelt goodness? Not even close. At the least, it's a letter in which my sister, in her sloppy, drunken penmanship, cusses me out and tells me that I'm dead to her. At the most, it's a temporary restraining order or a demand letter informing me of her intent to sue, should I not turn over the $200 plus dollars for the electricity bill every month. Either way, that envelope is about as far away from a Hallmark store as you can get.

I know that my mother is just SO proud right now (cue the big eye roll), but you know what? She created that monster. She was the one who enabled my sister's behavior for decades. Now Chandler and I are the ones who have to live with it. If my sister wants to go down some legal path, like to sue me over an electricity bill or to lie to a judge and tell him that I'm a danger Chandler in order to get a TRO, when I'm the only parent the kid has had for the last two months (even my wicked stepmother said he might as well be mine), then I say this. Bring it on, little sister. Bring it on. Only one of us went to law school, and it was so not you.

Thanks for the Condolences

I'm finally back in town, hopefully for good this time, which means this blog should be up and running again soon. I want to thank everyone who continued to stop by while I was gone and who left your condolences on my previous post. I plan on visiting each and every one of your blogs in the upcoming days, as well as the blogs of those Entrecarders who visited but didn't leave a comment. Considering I have two months worth to catch on, it may take me a week or two, but I promise I'll get to your blogs eventually. For those of you who follow this blog because of my fan fic, I'm starting on update as soon as I finish posting this post and folding a ridiculous amount of clothes. (There's nothing like rewashing "clean" clothes because they smell like your sister and grandmother's cigarettes.) Check FanFiction.net or my other site for the update in a few days.

A quick head's up. I may spend the next few posts venting about my dysfunctional family. I've spent the last two months biting my tongue, especially in regards to my sister, and if I bite it any harder I may very well bite it off. This blog is the only place I can let my frustrations loose and save my tongue. Maybe some of you can relate.

Again thanks for your concern and for continuing to stop by. Your support meant a lot. I hope you all have a great Fourth of July weekend!

No More Posts for Awhile

My sister called me this morning and told me that my mother died last night. I have to go out of town and deal with everything. As such, I won't be posting for awhile.