• Who is this chick anyway?

Nova Terra

~ Just another way of stalling on my other writing

Nova Terra

Tag Archives: siblings

Haven’t heard from YOU, either!

23 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

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Tags

being fat, disability, norovirus, parenting, sf cons, siblings, total knee replacement

The boy (25) is off at a furry con all weekend; the girl (26) just reamed my sheep about being lax on him. I blame teh interwebs.

Teh interwebs are apparently all full of people claiming that they have Asperger’s and thus should be immune to Things They Dislike, like trying to find Aspy-friendly work. She sees her brother as having embodied this attitude, which is untrue.

The girl finds fault with everything the boy does; the boy feels like he’s double teamed and that we are out to get him. Meantime, the real problem is that he’s a teenager in an adult suit. I am still parenting him, and parenting is more complex than making rules that carry consequences. The girl (who never plans to have children) can’t see that. So I have a war going on at my house all the time. She snarls when he’s here; she takes advantage of his absence by yelling at me about what a bad parent I’m being. In my opinion. she needs to open up a 20-ounce bottle of Detachment and rub it all over.

Part of this tangle is that she blames him for having been housed and fed by his father while we were off having Adventures with Homelessness, losing bunches of our stuff and being fed rice and beans every night (not our culture). Needless to say, she can find tons of compassion, support, and excuses for her well-homed (and jobless) boyfriend, so it’s not like she’s a work ethic Nazi. No, there is just something broken in her brain–she has had a hard life, and now she has a personal demon. It’s not fair. Between that, and that she offers “suggestions” in a near-snarl–it’s hard to accept her as co-parent de facto. (Mind you, she’s sweet as pie to Me. I consider her one of my best friends.)


They were both very sympathetic when I came down with one of those norovirii last weekend. I’m still fighting the residual fatigue, and this is the first writing I’ve gotten done since I semi-quit my job. (I was depressed to see a panel at Arisia entitled “Don’t Quit Your Day Job.” I was too sick by that time, which is probably just as well.)

I made the mistake of not being firm with the Arisia volunteer team that I needed a sitting job; instead, the cane got put in a corner and I was run off my feet by a gluten-free vegan (sorry, GFVs. Every one of you I’ve met has been bossy) drill sergeant barely out of her teens, meaning that her people skills were still shaky. I escaped to eat lunch and found the staff den. Wish I’d had my test meter bundle, as I was wobbly, sweaty, and nauseated. Next time I will pay more attention to self care: (I should assign myself that sentence as a punish lesson.) “No, see the cane? I’m not physically able to scamper about putting food out. At least, not for long.” *sigh* Next time. . . . While waiting for the Ride in the lobby, I had the great joy of watching the costumes. Everybody was there. from Princess Ozma to Carmen Sandiego to a patient Pyrenees in golden leather armor from the Golden Compass.


Next time it might be a moot point, because my right knee is getting replaced in two weeks, and as soon as it heals (3-4 months) I’m putting the left knee on the chopping block too. We shall see. I’ve picked up 15 pounds since losing the cardio of the walk up the hill to work, and I’d like to get out of this body. I’ve never been this fat before, and it gets in my way. I’m still just as supportive of fat acceptance as ever, but the most intimately close chapter of it has closed for the winter.

I want my body back. I’m 5’3″ and 280 lbs.

Oh yeah, I’ve heard BAD things about long-term outcomes for “the surgery” so for once my conservative PCP and I are in agreement. It will have to be dietary changes (needed for the diabetes as well) and exercise, which is where the knees come in. Wish me luck.

 

 

Living Dolls

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by lionsofmercy in Blog

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

childhood, Christmas, imaginary friends, prodigy, siblings, toys, writing

Before my family of origin reached a certain level of no-return disintegration, we had Christmas, and I had birthdays; and I could count on getting presents as naturally as I could yams and can-berry sauce on Thanksgiving. The red bike that Dad had to put together after I was packed off on Christmas Eve. The microscope. The doll (“Beautiful Crissy”) whose hair grew as you yanked it out of her head through a foramen previously unremarked (now in Gray’s as the sulcus crissaeum). The hair was auburn, her eyes were violet, and she succeeded at being almost alive.

Almost.

The sorts of physical things I wanted and did not get were ephemeral child-wishes, unfulfilled because they were just that. I don’t remember any particulars, just that there was a whole layer of the world marked “Baby Stuff,” meaning that they were appropriate enough for my age–but not for Mommy and Daddy’s prodigy, “4 going on 24.” I was taught to scorn and to sneer at other children and their puerile little urges: I was going to Johns Hopkins by way of Barnard, boy howdy!

As might have been predicted, this attitude and the fact that my Stanford-Binet IQ of Far-Too-High might as well have been tattooed on my forehead made me unpopular. So the thing I wanted more than anything else was a sibling, so that I’d have somebody to play with.

But my mother’s uterus was tilted, so none were forthcoming. I grew up alone and lonely–no living dolls to help diaper and love, to boss around, to bring into my complicated universe of talking animals and superheroes.

It worked out in the end, I guess. I had imaginary friends instead, which became the bedrock of my growing up to be a writer. (So much for med school–as it turned out it was Harvard (English) by way of the University of Wisconsin (Art)–I really do wonder if my father, had he lived to be in the audience in Harvard Yard, would have thought the PhD to be as satisfying as an MD. Probably not.)

As a matter of course, my daughter had to have a sibling, so my own far superior uterus plopped forth a little brother for her. And she hated him on sight, and has more or less hated him for the 23 years since. Very little playing together; and her deep mournful desire was to be an only child. I’m told that that’s the way it goes: When dolls become really and truly alive, they bring a world of complications.

As for me, some things never change, and the thing I wanted for Christmas this year was that rubber-band loom I kept seeing in the toy and craft stores. Baby Stuff; I think it’s marketed for the 8-12-year-old market. Instead, I got a superabundance of very nice soap and a beautiful candle holder shaped like a lotus. (My daughter has bad taste in perfectly lovely little boys, but excellent taste in tchachkes.) And thus adulthood–one is very clean and has pretty things, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Especially when one has a little slab of plastic all one’s own, and can (feeling naughty) go to the store and get it for oneself. So there, Mom and Dad.

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Nova Terra

just another way of stalling on my other writing

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