I’m in a REAL foul mood and need to vent.
Dottie is the as-yet-to-be-divorced
sister who is showing her new boy toy and circle of friends (read: enabelers) more attention and concern then her own two sons (Dan and AJ), both of was already in a bad mood today -
between the rude woman at the voting place and the law students who are STILL asking if they need to show
their ID every time they come in the libbrary despite the fact we’ve had this policy for TWO AND A HALF MONTHS and even reminded them of the policy TWICE in “The Docket,” I was ready to bite someone’s head off to begin with.
THEN I get an e-mail from AJ. He is a 10-year-old, redheaded, bagpiping Weird AL Yankovic fan AND one of the aforementioned sons of the
aforementioned sister of mine. I noticed I was getting e-mails from him again, so I asked if that meant his mom had finally handed over the computer.
Last winter, my husband George and I gave “Seamus,” our first computer, to the Fowler family with the hope that the boys would use it for their homework and become more computer savy, a MUST in this day and age. THier mom already had a laptop, but it’s one the school she works for owns so she’d rather not use it for personal stuff.
WELL, the boys have been spedning most of their time with their dad, Mark, who has moved in with HIS parents. The boys grudgingly stay with their mother now and then, but when they do, they tell me - not their father, but
the 10- and the 14-year-old tell me - that their mom will make them French bread pizzas, sit them down in front fo the TV set and then go off with her friends. Anyhow, Seamus the computer sat in the corner of her home, disassembled, under a cloth and unused. I had HOPED that she would let the boys have the computer at
their dad’s place, since that’s where they spend most of their time and she already has her laptop.
About two weeks ago, I wrote her as nice and as diplomatic an e-mail as I could (conidering what I think of her) and SUGGESTED that the computer go where ever her sons did. Unfortunately, I made the HUGELY
stupid mistake of listening to my husband’s suggestion and call my brother, Nat, to discuss what was going on in the family. My guts told me I shouldn’t - and here I thought I learned long ago to listen to my guts - but I did anyway. It turns out that Nat didn’t know about some of the crap the boys were telling me about, such
as her kciking Dan, the 14-year-old, out of the house a few weeks earlier with such kind words as “You can fuck off and live in that dirty cat box with your father.”
About an hour after that conversation, I come out of the bathroom in time to hear the tail end of a REAL nasty phone message from Dottie, saying that I shouldn’t go around calling people and saying terrible things about her. So I kinda figrued that the
slightest iota of a chance that she would be reasonable and let the boys have Seamus had gone out
the window.
Figuring she hated me anyway - and I can’t say I’m real fond of her at the moment, either - I figured I had nothing left to loose. So I typed up a letter saying Seamus should go where ever the boys go so their homework doesn’t suffer, made four copies of it
- one for Dottie, one for Mark and one for each of their lawyers - and had my husband and I signed all four copies and mailed them out.
TONGIHT, at the end of an already crappy day, I get an e-mail reply from AJ. He wrote, “No. She will not,
never let us have it. AND SHE DOESN’T EVEN USE IT!”
SIGH
I hate my sister. I hate the fact that she can be so selfish, I hate that she is treating her OWN SONS with so little respect and concern, I hate the fact that no one in my family seems to be willing to tell her to get her shit together and actually BE with her sons on her custodial nights, I hate that the two coolest boys I know are going through their parents’ divorce amde
worse by an irrational mother, I hate that there seems to be nothing I can do about, I hate that my brother
irritated her further and made the computer transfer downright impossible, I hate that MY family keeps
harping on Mark’s unemployment (admittedly a BAD thing) as if somehow that will make Dottie and her
actions seem LESS awful soemhow, I hate that I feel like I’m the only maternal relative of Dan and AJ’s
who seems willing to listen to what they have to say rather than dismiss them with, “Well, that’s how life
is” (that’s from my mom to Dan), I hate that I don’t have a million dollars so I could take the boys to DSisneyland every weekend to get them the hell out of their situation more often and buy them their OWN computers EACH and I hate the fact that the crying I’m
doing right now does nothing at all but ruin my make-up. I’m sick of it all.
Patty