I need to find another word for useless!

You see, I'm trying not to use that one for Glory's hubby. It's what pops into my head all the time though! Ok, probably because Daddy uses that term when describing him and he really is spot-on!

The name I have for him in the left column index just isn't working for me! I have to say that I don't hate him and want him to vanish off the earth, but because Glory loves him fiercely I sure wish that he'd wake TF up and see that there is more to life if you actually DO something!

Just before Christmas Glory called to tell me that she's pregnant. This is her 2nd pregnancy and she's really nervous because her first ended in a miscarriage right after the beginning of her 2nd trimester. Very bad scene to say the least. (Had to have 2 D&C's and then also contracted salmonella!)

And her husband hasn't been employed since May. His family that is near them has basically shut them off because they wish he'd straighten his @$$ out too. He can't get a job because his SSN gets run and he needs to 'clear a few things up' about his previous job before anyone else will hire him. Read between the lines here and you'll know what I'm saying, ok?

They came to see me for Christmas. Having him in the hosue and seeing how useless he is on a daily basis is completely frustrating. One day I took them out and had him throwing a wrench into that even though we dropped him off while we went shopping. I'll mention that one of the days he went to visit a friends he left the cord to recharge the cellphone. The friend left to visit family several states away, locking the cord inside. Looking around we found several places that had the cord for $40. FORTY F dollars! Maybe that's not a lot but when you're on vacation, out of state, barely swung the $$ for the plane tickets... who TF needs to spend $40 on replacing something that you just should have been responsible about in the first place?!

And who gets to pay for it? Not his no-job-having @$$!

Now they are back 'home' where they've been living and looking into moving to another closer state. She gave her notice at her job and plans for a week of settling things for the move. I've suggested that she send her husband ahead so that he can begin job hunting and settle the dogs in. (They are sharing a housde with friends, so that's at least taken care of ahead!) Let him start standing up and taking some responsibility! I understand that she is beginning to feel that if she's not there that it won't get done, and that he NEEDS her to guide and prod him. That is SO not the way it's supposed to be though! Heck, she already has one baby, him!

So, can you think of another name for him that isn't 'that' mean? I love lists to choose from! HELP!!!!

I don't like to post angry all the time and I'm quite angry lately. I've got a few skills that 've learned along the way and they're just not helping me out enough right now. So I've been quiet, with a few comments on others' blogs here and there. Please know that I do go in and read quite often, and I try to comment when I hit a moment of clarity. Sometimes it just hits me and isn't as clear but I give it a shot. Comments can come to mean a lot and I know that, so even if I just feel a quick "I agree with you" comes on I've tried to do it.

I have a job now and I went to orientation the other day. It's not in my career fied, it's a seasonal job in retail, and I'm working the midnight shift. Hey, I need to generate an income and not spend most of it on childcare so this is my first best option. We'll see how I do, if they offer to keep me after the holidays or not and if the shift is working for me. I have my first night shift tomorrow. If anything send me lots of wide awake vibes!

And I may have to talk about things with Mystery and Jabber lately. I'm really ticked at Daddy that things have been evolving to the way that they are and I've tried to work through some individual issues as they've come up but let's just say that I'm getting tired of being the invisible effing maid in my own home. Courtesy doesn't exist except a occasional "Sorry" and neither one of them would do a darn thing different the next time. This has been proven time and time again. The only saving grace lately is that the fall sports season is over so they both go to TW's house from Friday until Sunday. Peaceful.

On the brighter side here. We will have a new President soon! Yayyyyyy!

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Man, that was a lot of typos when I hit post. Sorry, I meant to hit draft and check better! Hopefully I'll come up with a better post next time but I'm also on Cha.ntix and a week into it, so I know that isn't helping my disposition either, but I'm at 4 days with no butts and it is the right thing to do. I'll be back soon!

If you don't like it then just go ask Daddy!

I should preface everything that I say to Jabber and Mystery with that phrase! Because I'm obviously never the final fucking word around here!

The boy needs help with organizing things. Partly because he's a boy and partly because of his ADHD. He has this fun little way of having a fucking answer for everything, even if there wasn't a damn question asked. If he said that's why he did "x" then it's justified. End of story.

Well, maybe it makes fucking sense to him, but that doesn't make it fucking right! It may also not be a big fucking deal, but when you add all the damn little things together then I just plain get screwed. I've tried telling Daddy that since he gets tired of having to come home and straighten things out then maybe if he'd give me a little bit of authority he wouldn't have to! Most of the time my crap is with Jabber just because Mystery doesn't give a crap and I've given up on so many things with her. If she wants to be an ignorant, selfish child and have every damn thing her way then she's going to fucking find out one of these days that it just ain't like that!

She can't get a job. Maybe because she doesn't like know like how to like speak english? Her nervous laugh and then follow up sarcasm probably doesn't impress any prospective employers either. Minimal effort is a typical teen thing and I realize that but when it comes time to MAKE an effort she doesn't even seem to realize what would it would look like to make one. When she isn't getting just what she wants here by simply stating that she has already planned it then she just runs off to MIL's house around the corner. This usually puts me on MIL's glare list and I don't get spoken to for over a month. Whatever. They can baby her all they want and take care of her ass for the rest of her life. I just can't wait until she gets the hell out of this house! I'm not really pissed at her today, but those are some things that are part of the package.

Jabber loses things all the time and forgets them or just plain assumes that someone else will cover his butt. He has more places to put things in his bedroom than anyone else in the house, but every time he has to put things away and he doesn't feel like doing it he makes up a new place for stuff. What is a dresser for? Clothes, right? Well, because he doesn't want to pay attention he has made his top drawer (which used to be for shirts, not underwear like most 'normal' people) into his junk drawer. I do understand a junk drawer, but that means stuff that doesn't have another place to go, right? In his case it's also a transition drawer for stuff that he just didn't feel like putting where it goes. This can include clothes.

One drawer for pants and shorts, one drawer for jammies and long-johns and one for socks, undies and UNDER shirts. Right? Last spring because he decided that he no longer wants to fold shirts he has been hanging ALL of his shirts in the closet, except for pajamas and UNDERS. Want to know why I'm doing that one in all caps? Because it is supposed to be the ones that are worn under! Damn, that was hard, right?! To him that just means the ones that are supposed to be worn under, but if he feels like being 'cool' then he'll wear them wherever. I'm sorry but I don't approve of wife-beater shirts being worn as public clothing. Between that and the pants hanging down your ass I just cringe every time I see them. You DO know that the pants thing started in jail, right? The convicts had to wear jail issue and since you can't wear them too small many had to wear them too big. Then they hang.
NOT something that I believe that ANY of our children should aspire to! Call me old fashioned! Even Charming knows that I will tell him to put a belt on or do something so that I don't have to look at his butt or his drawers. It's funny, but he listens to me when I say that too!

The things that's pissing me off today is that yesterday he decided to start screwing with things and put things where there is no order. If he could do it well then I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it, but it's just another means to escape doing anything without being half-assed. His stuff is thrown in new drawers and the entertainment center. Hey! How about getting some of the junk out of the junk drawer and into there so that you can put clothes in the drawer where they actually belong?! Ok, this isn't even what's pissing me off. Last night I told him that when he finished his daily job (which I had helped him with initially and then he had slacked off on and it could have been done 3 hours earlier instead of waiting until right before bedtime) I told him that it needs to be done the right way. He gets fucking paid to do this job and then he only fucking halfway does it, and expects to get paid?! After doing his job he needed to bring order back to his clothes in the drawers or I would be taking them out and putting some order to them myself, which would mean that he may NEVER find some of them again.

About 10 minutes later while I was putting Daisy to sleep he came upstairs and I heard him whispering to Daddy in our room. He brought some clothes up with him and I'll bet you $1,000,000 that he told his father that he didn't want to put his stuff in order like I asked him to.

Call me a control freak if you wanna', but when I told you something and you fucking run to Daddy to screw me over, then I'm pissed at YOU! Oh yes, Daddy gets it too. He fucking knows better than to think that this is an out of the blue thing with Jabber. Maybe it doesn't make a ton of sense on the choose your battle scale of things, but if I could get some fucking backup on some of the smaller stuff then there wouldn't be as many fucking battles. Just call me tired today. Tired of feeling that they are sponges and all I get is the wrung out nasty stuff that is left in a puddle when you wring it out.

I have to move on to other things today. Guess what I'm doing? I'm in a cleaning mood and I'm going to clean the crap out of some parts of this house! Ha! Daddy will know what that means when he gets home, but my guess is that he won't ask until way later! When he's looking for his stuff!

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I have to say too that I don't always cuss that much, or I make it look like I would cuss but try to be a little polite with stars instead of some of the letters. I also have other online communities that I'm a part of. I have a private blog for my family. It's mostly the pretty one. Cute or embarrassing photos of family members are posted there along with the basic updates of things going on. Not real big on the colorful, actual commentary there because it's family that I might not share all of the information with, kwim?

So I come here. They don't know about this blog. Nobody who knows me does and I kind of like it that way because then I can vent like this when I need to. I am part of a message board that are women from a specific topic area and it's private and we all talk about everything there. Well, some things I just don't bring up there too much anymore because they have no clue about step family stuff. In their beautiful world with their beautiful husbands and their beautiful children who sidestep from time to time my stuff about wanting to call the cops on Mystery gets met with complete disbelief and poor you responses. Go to counseling. Screw that! I want someone that reads to tell me that she sure did sound like she was out of line, being a bitch or whatever was the case at the time.

How about the rest of you? I mean the four of you that come by here more than once? Do others know that you blog? Read your stuff? Are they IRL folks or online pals that know you from another group? Ever get an itch to reveal youself?

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You HAVE to choose?

Oh, NO I don't and neither should they! HAVE to, that is.

It's just not necesary to be that dumb. Mystery's school "ECI" (Emergency Contact Information) sheet came home and there are some things that these people just have never gotten right! That and I knew that we were adding TW to the mail list this year so that she doesn't 'borrow' our copy of progress reports and report cards and then never return them. This is something that she has always been completely with her rights to do, but for whatever reason has not asserted herself. Well Boo! If she doesn't want it then she can call the school and tell them! How's that going to look/sound?!

But this wasn't even the 'fun' of yesterday. On Jabber's form they had him checked off for Black and for White. I told the lady at Mystery's school office that they had apparently switched her status because it has NEVER been simply one of the other. (I think I would know!) She stood there and showed me the computer screen and said that she can't change that.

I love when I have a clue about how to work a computer and other people don't! Hold down the control key to select more than one from the list ya dummy! Ok, not everyone knows that stuff but when you have a job which requires some computer skills you'd think that this might be one of the basic ones? Shoot, to me that's like not knowing how to copy & paste! I mentioned along the way here that the folks at Jabber's school in town are capable of doing that with his information and that I really thought that since they use the same system that they would be able to do so as well. I asked if I needed to call the superintendent's office to make sure that this is a function that the schools were capable of and then I ended up leaving the office with her and the young gal beside her talking about me. You can tell when that happens because you turn around and their mouths are in a freeze frame, right?

I went home and called the data people at the school department. I figure that I can ask them if the system is capable of making this choice before I go over everyone's heads. After waiting on hold for a minute she told me to talk to the VP at Mystery's school and that she had consulted with another worker in her office who confirmed that this IS something that the system is capable of. I got voicemail when I got through the VP's line and I haven't gotten the call back that I asked for, but it's very interesting to see that the online system now reflects the change that I requested in the first place!

Time to get the old biddy behind the counter to drop the attitude. Maybe she doesn't think people should be both, or able to choose more than one? Maybe she doesn't care? White privilege isn't always in your face stuff, you know? I think it is important for the statistics for the school as well as the more important point of not making a child choose. Heck, if your mother is french and your father is greek then which one are you supposed to choose on a form? How do you make the choice? Choose which family customs you are most familiar with and practice more? What if one isn't more than the other? I remember looking at one of these graphs back when we were looking to buy our home in this city. Wondering how much of the statistics are actually true? My preschooler isn't in the public school system yet but please know that I'm prepared to start out with her from the very beginning of Kindergarten and work my way through bugging the snot out of people that could care less because it doesn't affect them!

Let me get off my pedestal now and go do something that isn't going to nag at my brain! I just had to say that these people that work for us really ought to be checked on their own biases and how what they do and say affects other people. Whether they care or not.

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