They must take their training from Arby’s, with their damn ‘cheese’ sauce. I’d like a little roast beef with my ‘cheese’ sauce please. Ick!
I debated whether this was better in the Christmas rants thread or here but I think this is the right place.
I love Christmas. There’s the music and the lights. Giving and wrapping gifts. Baking cookies and watching others enjoy them. Seeing family you don’t see any other time of the year. I am a big fan.
Yeah, well, I was. Now I just wish the whole thing didn’t exist.
Problem 1: my daughter gets very stressed around Christmas. It was that time of year when she came to live with us. I thought this year would be different and while it is different it’s certainly not better. She’s like a severe case of ADHD who has gone off her meds. She’s all over the place. Forgets everything. Can’t talk without yelling and goes from being excitedly happy to a ball of flaming tears in 0.2 seconds.
I know that upping my game and being there for her 100% will really help the problem but I just don’t know if I can do it. I feel guilty all the time.
Problem 2: my husband is going to lose his job sometime next year. It’s undetermined as to when but the contract that funds his position is getting cancelled. So, every cent that comes out of my hands for Christmas stuff is a penny we don’t have when his job is gone. I tried to get the family to stop buying the grownups presents. No go. I tried to get out of the $150 dollars I am going to spend on cookies. No go. On top of that, I had to buy dressier clothes (since I have lost weight and had nothing to my name). I couldn’t find any at the thrift store.
Oh, yeah, and my husband is stressed and miserable about the whole situation so whatever energy I haven’t spent on my daughter, I get to spend convincing him we’ll be okay. (Which I still haven’t completely convinced myself of.)
I seriously want to just run away and not go home.
(Aside: I am really looking for some support here. Even just a hug would be nice.)
Okay {{{PP}}}
He hasn’t lost his job yet, you don’t know what might happen between now and then. He may find something even better.
You lost weight. That’s a cool thing.
How old is your daughter?
{{PP}}
{{Cat Whispere/Jimbo}}
{{{Anyone who needs one or would just like one}}
I just had a silly, minor seasonal rant…so, instead, {{{hugs}}} all around.
(((((perfectparanoia)))))
May the virtual hugs be with you.
{{perfectparanoia}}
Well, since this is still the Pit, I’m going to offer support of a different kind - tell your family that gifts for adults are going to be minimal this year, as is the baking - your husband is about to lose his job, and it would be financially irresponsible of you to waste money on these things this year.
LONG mini-rant:
Dear son’s school, are you fucking kidding me? Last year, you indicated that you felt he might have attentional problems. Okay. We talked to his pediatrician and a family therapist, both of whom felt he was normal and possibly having issues because he was bored and youngest in his class, so maybe a little less emotionally mature than his peers. Instead they recommended gifted & talented testing and provided us with some suggestions on how to support him emotionally to help him along. Sadly, the school doesn’t offer G&T testing until 2nd or 3rd grade, so we found other ways to engage him at home.
This year, 1st grade, to quote you, he’s “progressing beautifully” and you have, “absolutely no concerns whatsoever academically.” He’s above average or better in all areas but one (writing), where he’s average. Awesome. Yet he still has some behavioral problems in school, including saying “no” occasionally and frequently not wanting to move from one task to another.
You indicated that maybe he should be tested for sensory issues - possibly contextual processing problems. Okay - I get that. Sometimes he’s not great at reading facial cues and gets himself into big, big trouble before he even realizes he’s overstepped a boundary. And occasionally he seems to take longer than normal to process information. Awesome, I think - the more info we get, the better! This could really help us! So he gets tested. And we wait for the results. Today was The Meeting.
So we go in expecting to meet with the school counselor and his teacher and are instead presented with those two plus the reading specialist, a school psychologist and the woman responsible for administering tests. Oh, shit, I think! My poor kid - what is going on?? So we go over category after category. Each time you cite performance at or far above average and no concerns. Then at the end of the discussion, you remark on how much awesome progress he’s made and how his linguistic, cognitive and social/emotional skills are where they should be. But…
“Still,” you say, “there’s something there. I just feel it. You know, maybe he has Asperger’s Syndrome. So, let’s test him for language, and cognition and do an IQ test and have three months of observation and questioning.”
What. The. Fuck? You just told me he was doing sssoooo very well and you had no significant concerns and that his cognitive, linguistic and social tests came back well above average. And now you tell me my son needs to be tested for Asperger’s? Are you fucking nuts?
I get it, my kid is NOT perfect. He’s occasionally a little mouthy little shit, like many 6 year old boys are. He does stupid, stupid things straight out of jackass. And he and his dad have this weird occasionally contentious relationship, which has improved so drastically in the last six months I can’t even believe it. But you go from ADD last year to Asperger’s this year despite the fact that his pediatrician and a family therapist with a PhD in early childhood development have both indicated he’s fine, but probably slightly immature and kind of bored? The hell is wrong with you people?
I’m so fucking frustrated I don’t even know what to do. And I’m so damn confused!
Homeschool him until he’s in a grade where the district offers G&T testing and programs?
Move him to a district that will offer those things right now?
Also, as a mini-rant, this post definitely confirms that you chose your username well. 
Know thyself, right?
You know, overly, I’m reasonably sure you’re not my sister in law (her English is nowhere near that good), but I’m thinking your son is closely related to my nephew. Nephew’s dad is one of those “emotional rollercoaster” people whose ups are sky-high while the downs require spelunking materials; the mother… if a piece of toast fell with the butter-side up, she’d somehow convince herself that not only is the toast contaminated, but the whole house needs to be scrubbed and treated for salmonella. Some reports which have now become standard (such as warning the parents of the youngest children that their kid may lag behind, which every parent with a kid born in the second half of the year is told) turn into tragedies worth of Sophocles by the time those two are reporting it to our side of the family. That said,
Fuck with a rusty razor wrapped in freshly-made barbed wire all those teachers who think kids are made by Lego. If they wanted to work with interchangeable entities which do exactly what they’re told, every single time, and which do not move or make noise unless explicitly ordered to do so, they should have become programmers.
And fuck politicians who have decided that anybody who does not get through any program in exactly the years the program is supposed to last, anybody who ever retakes a single subject, even people who actually finish ahead of everybody else who took the same course of study those same politicians wouldn’t even be able to start, is an academic failure. They’re welcome to lick my engineery ass until it glows.
Having no knowledge of children, except for the part that they usually start crying when I’m h olding them, I will spare anyone from my advice.
Mostly because of my rant: I think the wedding is off. I think that next week when I go back to AZ to deal with the house, I’m going to just stay here.
According to Bill, there are no Christmas tomalies in Houston.
One of my favorite Christmas traditions in AZ were the woman making and selling tomalies for Christmas money. I’d mostly get them from friends who had a mother or sister selling them.
When I asked Bill when he would start bringing them home, he said that didn’t happen here because they cook them in their kitchens without health department permits.
This is just not right.
No, no Christmas tomalies in Texas. We do, however, have tamales, and many Mexican restaurants will be happy to take your order for them, and the restaurants cook them in the commercial kitchens, if that’s what Bill is worried about.
Also, I’m pretty sure the ones you buy from your friends to assist their mothers’ and sisters’ Christmas Funds are also cooked in home kitchens without health department permits.
I can definitely offer a sympathetic hug. I’m not a parent, and we’re not spending huge amounts on holiday stuff, but we’re looking at DH being laid off about the end of June ourselves, and I can’t seem to get it in gear on the job-hunting front :(.
I have a mini-rant, but it’s work related… Not sure which I should post in, so I chose here.
I love the lunch and dinner special outings with my company. I love that our company pays for them. I love spending time with my co-workers. Now for the rant…
Why do you keep choosing BREWERIES for the meals when you know you have an alkie on the team? I mean, I know I have 18 years (nearly) without a drink, but you’d never think to ask a diabetic to go to a bakery for the meal so why can’t we go to a nice ‘regular’ place that serves alcohol but doesn’t Smell like a brewery? If it were once or twice, that’d be a non-issue, but the default locations always seem to be breweries.
Maybe I’m just bitching too much. Thanks for listening.
Yeah. Hubby does not ‘have time’ to look for a job until ‘after the holidays.’
Of course, I can understand his code and it means he scared to look for a job because:
- He might not find one.
- It means admitting the reality that he is losing his job.
So, take a half hour today and do something job hunt related. Brush off your resume. Look around to see what’s out there.
Then take an hour to do something you want to do. Something mindless like playing video games or reading a cheesy novel.
Anyway, today is going better and thanks for the hugs. They were much needed. Last night my daughter was much better because I was on my mom-game. By the time she went to bed the patience well was totally dry.
My husband has an interview for a job in half an hour. By all accounts, he is uniquely qualified. I hope it works out since it seems be both suck at resume writing. (Really, I remember when you wanted to be concise on a resume. What’s with all the wordy crap now.)
I hope your husband’s interview goes well.
Mine doesn’t think he really has time for job-hunting right now, but since he IS still working full-time at this point, I think that’s valid. I’m a homemaker, so I do have time. I know it needs to happen, I just can’t seem to get in gear.
Sad rant.
I miss my husband. I barely get to spend time with him on weeknights and I have been having to cook dinner for myself every night after a stressful 90 minute drive home from work, we usually crash at 8:30pm and are asleep by 9:30pm, up at 5:30am to do it all again. Next month he’s flying all over the country for internship interviews and I probably won’t see much of him at all. It would be okay if I had anything resembling a social network, but I don’t, and I get lonely. Making friends is hard work and it’s horrible but I’ve always had this feeling that it’s not worth it because our situation is only temporary. We move all the time, so, I don’t really want to get emotionally invested with more people than I already have become. I’m already upset that I have to leave the best job ever and two of the best friends we’ve ever had living right next door. Every time we move, it throws off my routines and I have to learn to live life all over again. I so desperately long for us to find a place and just stay there, so we can build a life.