Rooms are available for well less than you assert. The classifieds from the Ottawa Citizen list many rooms for well under $450:
The same classifieds list full-time retail sales jobs, so there is no reason to not be fully employed.
At a mimimum wage of $6.85/hr on a full time job, you should be grossing $1,200 per month. At that level you will not have to pay tax, and of course as a citizen of Ontario your medical insurance is free. In short, after rent you should have a couple of hundred bucks per week for food, clothes, and bus fare. That is a comfortable amount for a budget.
Do you really want to make life better for your father? Leave the nest so that he can live in peace with his wife. Life is too short for you, your step-mother, and your father to be at odds the way you have described.
I’ve got to agree with Lola (and Matt and others) - stepmom was way out of line.
A personal item, accidentally left in a limited use but technically public space which was not highly used (particularly by a “vulnerable child”), during hours when most household members were asleep (particularly previously mentioned “vulnerable child”) and as a consequence, it was taken by someone other than the owner and is presumed to have been destroyed, even though it would have been much easier to simply place said personal item in the owner’s private space where it could no longer be construed as a threat to anyone, including that “vulnerable child.”
This is not adult behavior, this is emotionally manipulative, punative, selfish and overbearing behavior. This is the kind of act undertaken by someone who is just as Lola described the stepmother - angry, fearful, controlling, miserable.
Interesting that in light of that, so many of you are so quick to accuse Lola of acting childish, using the nature of the living arrangements as some kind of justification for the stepmother’s inappropriate and bizarre actions.
Lola, I too would recommend that you try to find some way of finding another place to live, not because you’ve been out of line, but because you’re currently trapped with someone who will likely never treat you with the respect that you do deserve, and who will continue to accelerate and decelerate attacks against you in order to have her own way. That’s no way to live – in the long run, the money that you are currently saving by living there is no bargain when balanced against your peace of mind.
Good God people, the way you are harping on Lola you would have thought she left her dildos and tittie drops laying around the house. You sound like a bunch of yammering hens.
How hard would it have been for the step mother to pick up the journal and toss it in Lola’s room? Why shouldn’t the 10 year old be expected to know a few rules of privacy? Rules like “You don’t read other people’s journals”.
My daughter who is now 18 years old has always kept a diary and other writings, poems, drawings. . . She has shared some of them with me and no, a lot of them are not suitable for my 11 year old.
Although she is usually pretty good about keeping them in her room, there have been a few times that she was laying on the couch writing or drawing, fallen asleep, and forgot her notebook. My son understands that if he so much as peeks inside the cover and invades her privacy, he would find himself grounded for a week.
It doesn’t matter how old, or who is or isn’t paying rent, any one of us can leave personal things out in any part of the house and trust that no one will snoop (not sex toys or pornos of course ;)). It’s called respect and the stepmother in the OP sounds like she needs to teach her son the meaning of the word.
Lola left her journal out, twice, shame on her, but my God it wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place if there was some sort of respect and trust in that family. Again, how hard would it have been to leave the book alone or if it was in the way, toss it in her room.
Again, you are incorrect, and again you have failed to cite your assertion.
Please go back and read the law which I cited.
Lola has no rights what so ever conferred on her by virtue of paying rent.
I don’t think you even need to go down the rent/rights route, for petty theft is petty theft, regardless of whether or not a person is paying rent. Similarly, a mother’s responsibility for protecting her young child within her home from materials she deems improper, including ideations of self-mutilation, has nothing to do with rent.
But then the underlying issue is not a journal. What it comes down to is that there is discord in the home, and that Lola and her step-mother are not able to work it out between them. It does not matter who has what rights, or who is right. The simple fact is that unless Lola and her step-mother learn to get along, either Lola or her father’s wife will have to leave her father’s home. Time for Lola to leave the nest.
Thank you so much, tlw, and Diane. You have both said very succinctly what I have been trying to get across.
Especially this:
[quote] it wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place if there was some sort of respect and trust in that family.
[quote]
Ten minutes ago, I was loading my darks into the washer when I saw a rectangular-shaped plastic bag on top of the freezer in the laundry room (which is kept locked - why I don’t know). Inside was my journal, with a note from my dad that read; Watch it. I won’t do this twice.
Don’t worry, Dad. I was using my desk as a vanity (since I don’t have one yet, I’ve been living here for 7 months and they haven’t brought any of my furniture up. Until my mom smuggled my futon up while they were at the cottage two weeks ago, I was sleeping on the floor), but I’ve since put my toiletries into one of the milk crates I was using for my bedside table, and now the desk in my room is a workspace.
So my journal will venture outside no more, unless it is in my totebag.
See? I have taken action to make sure it will never happen again. Isn’t that responsible of me?
Plus, I can buy the 'rents a box of Turtles and maybe it will cheer them up. How many points are Turtles in the Weight Watchers plan?
FTR, I meant that the freezer is kept locked for reasons unknown - not the laundry room. Maybe it’s where Stepmom hides the bodies. Or where dad keeps his porno stash.
And sorry about my coding. And the typo in the title of this thread. :smack:
Muffin, I don’t see where I’m "incorrect; not including the “ownership” blunder I made and have apologized for. If we’re roommates, should I come and piss all over your bed because I feel like it? No, I shouldn’t. And guess what? I’m not going to cite that either; basic human decency doesn’t need a law. I never said Lola had a legal hold on jack shit, I said she had the right to be respected as she is a rent paying member of the household. I believe the dictionary definition of a “right” is “something that is due to a person or governmental body by law, tradition, or nature”.
I don’t think you need to go down the mother/sprog route, either. If StepMum is so hellbent on protecting the kid, then teach him to keep his prying eyes/fingers out of things that don’t belong to him.
A woman accidentally leaves a journal she puts a lot of time and emotion into out. Her stepmom throws it in the damn garbage, and now Lola’s a lazy-ass for not moving out? She has a pretty good gripe, if you ask me; I’m with her and Matt and tlw.
And y’know, it’s not always to up and leave your home of years and years and you’re feebly making your first steps out into the real world. I’m there now.
As for whoever said that the journal could be the stepmom’s version of goat porn, um, isn’t there something on the site somwheres about fighting ignorance? If S/M chose to look through the journal, she would have seen that it was an outpouring of emotion that required a lot of time and effort. If she ignores all that and sees only the evil nude body, isn’t that a bit ignorant?
You stated “If Lola pays rent, she has the same rights and privileges of the other household members.”
**
The law that sets out what is due to Lola by virtue of her paying rent is the Tenant Protection Act, and as you can see by reading the cite provided, nothing is due to persons in Lola’s situation by that law.
The house in question is not being shared by adults. It’s being shared by adults and at least one minor. The landlady has already stipulated what she expects to not find in the common areas of the premises and what the consequences are for the stuff if it’s found there. It’s incumbent upon the person who owns the stuff in question to ensure it’s not left around in the common area where the minor(s) who happen(s) to reside on the premises may encounter it.
lola: You’re upset about the stepmother carrying out an action well within her rights and which she already explained to you that she’d do and under what circumstances. Perhaps you don’t see how your stepmom sees your refusal to ensure the minor in the house doesn’t encounter stuff she’s forbidden him to see as your interfering with her rights as a parent.
Muffin, if you want to seriously look at tradition, how about the traditional living arrangement for young, unmarried people - especially young women - up until the 60’s, and even beyond? Even well into their twenties, it was at home, with their parents. And they didn’t move out on their own - when there were issues about boundaries and respect and the inevitable and necessary changes in the parent-child relationship when the child is actually an adult, they were worked out, for the good of the household and the relationship.
And how about the tradition of attempting to have a positive relationship with the children of your spouse?
Why are you consistently implying that Lola is the only one who is having “trouble getting along?” Why is she the only one who has any responsibility for changing the situation? She has described a family dynamic that is very unpleasant, to say the least - and that’s the result of the actions and attitudes of 3 people. It seems to me that 3 people, not just one, have some responsibility to do something to make things right in the household.
And Monty, your “landlady has stipulated” concept might work if Lola lived with strangers with whom her only relationship was financial. She does not. The “landlady” (who is not the sole landowner, nor the sole authority in the household) is Lola’s stepmother, and that makes a difference. And stranger or relative, the “consequences” generated were still wholly inappropriate and completely over the top in its lack of necessity.
And why, why, continue to play up the “protect the poor chil’un” angle when the journal was in a place where the child was unlikely to go, left out at a time when the child was asleep in his bed, and was not the child’s property thereby leaving him with no legitimate reason to ever touch it, let alone read any supposedly inappropriate content therein? His chances of seeing the journal were miniscule. This is like griping that HBO ought not show “America Undercover” specials or shows with adult content at 10 pm, because some kiddie might turn on the television. All of life doesn’t need to revolve around protecting children from things that they probably won’t see, and should be taught to avoid anyway.
Because what should be isn’t what is, and no amount of asserting that it sucks is going to change it: Lola can’t make the other 2 people in the house do anything at all: she simply can’t. Whether they are being reasonable or unreasonable is moot–this isn’t a contest about who is “right”, it is simply a situation that is obviously unlivable for everyone involved. Lola’s pain and resentment fairly leaps off the screen, and I think what we are all trying to do is to encourage her to take positive steps to change her situation, and not simply find comfort in the idea that she is a better person than her stepmom. Rightous indignation is fun, but it is not a solution. Lola needs to do something, and she needs to know that she can do something–there is more than one 18 year old who woke up on their 18th birthday to find there earthly goods on the curb. Lola needs to find out how they manage and emulate it.
This is not, strickly speaking, true. One thing that is sort of amazing in 19th C. history is just how often older children were boarded out: this was a pretty common solution to kids needing to attend high schools that were greater than walking distance away, or as a solution to home situations that were intolerable: people with extra bedrooms often generated a little cash by leting them out, and young single men and women very often lived out from as young as 14. Furthermore, passing children around for extended stays with relitives was another very common way to deal with personality conflicts within families.