Personal items, info and things that don’t fit into my other blog projects… including the occasional rant.
BNET asks this question and offers several views, from family ties to the rules of family governance. Then they ask: Are you in a family business? What are the pluses and minuses from your perspective?
I’d be interested in that answer as well. I don’t have a family business, but cannot imagine working with my siblings.
I sent my sister a long email trying to address the issues that came up in our argument.
She hasn’t responded to it and she hasn’t brought it up. She also hasn’t allowed her children to spend the night again.
I’ve done my part. It’s not my job to be the person who always gives in. I can’t. Not anymore.
If she wants to settle this, then she has to have a conversation with me about it. That’s all there is to it.
I won’t hold my breath.
I had an argument with my sister today. I’m upset and angry and disappointed and sad and a whole bunch of other feelings I can’t even identify right now.
She has convinced herself that I’m mean to her son. Mostly because I tell him “no,” to behave when he’s being a brat and don’t let him have his way all the time.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my nephew. He’s 8 and can be a darling. He’s also drunk on the power his parents have given him. He knows that if he’s misbehaving so badly that I won’t let him spend the night, that means his sister isn’t allowed to come over either.
How is that fair?
He’s been kicking my walls to illustrate his point that I don’t “listen to him.” Behavior I don’t think can be justified. Behavior that immediately follows a request that he shower or lower the TV volume or something similar.
What’s my sister’s response? “I don’t know what transpired that made him do that.” Which is code for “I don’t know what you did to provoke him.” or “You did something to him, so his behavior is OK.”
And, yes, she tells me that if I don’t want one over, because he’s kicking my walls and yelling at me and won’t listen to me, then I can’t have either. Because that shows that I like one more than the other.
With behavior like that, can you blame me?
My sister is raising her son to believe that even though he’s three years younger than his sister, if she gets to do something so does he. I think she’s wrong, but no one pays attention to me.
I love him. I don’t love his behavior. I love my sister. Right now I don’t like her very much.
I’ll get over it. But right now I want chocolate and alcohol, neither of which I can have.
Sucky. Isn’t there a pill to make family relations easier?
My brother is fighting in a war.
Amazing how simple and complex that one statement is to me and those around me. Amazing what catches my attention these days.
Today’s Houston Chronicle has a story about Iran being implicated in a recent attach in Iraq which resulted in the deaths of five American troops. This is a story which, until recently, would not have made it onto my radar. My radar has expanded.
My brother is fighting in a war.
Iran implicated in attack that killed 5 U.S. troops in Iraq
– reported by the Houston Chronicle
[snip]The U.S. military accused Iran today of a direct role in a sophisticated militant attack that killed five American troops in Iraq, portraying Tehran as waging a proxy war through Shiite extremists.
[snip]
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“They attacked us today. A mortar hit about 30 feet from where I sleep,” my brother wrote to me recently. “I slept through the whole thing.”
Only him…
I always worry about niece, especially as she grows older. I see myself in her so much and I see that my sister is intent on creating distance between them. I had a good relationship with my mother, she was always available to help me deal with all my stuff. My sister isn’t creating that relationship with my niece.
Girls today as under so much stress. They are encouraged to do everything, expected to do everything well, and be happy about it. They have to be popular, do community service, get good grades, be involved in sports, and be hip and pretty as well. And if they achieve all of this, it’s just them living up to their potential, not doing anything extraordinary.
It’s very frightening.
The New York Times has a wonderful inside look at the lives of the “Amazing girls”:
Girls by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitious and confident (if not immune to the usual adolescent insecurities and meltdowns). Girls who do everything: Varsity sports. Student government. Theater. Community service. Girls who have grown up learning they can do anything a boy can do, which is anything they want to do.
The look into the pressures they are under, the expectations and the tools and business that thrive on perpetuating the stresses is daunting. It makes me wonder how any of them survive the pressure.
Resources:
Found via Weblogg-ed.
As my brother prepares to leave for Iraq, stories about the war in one way or another catch my attention. In my weired humor, I found this funny:
Number of gays discharged from U.S. military plunges
Pentagon figures show a steep drop, which critics slam as ‘hypocritical’
– reported by the Houston Chronicle
I’m sitting in baby sister’s house, watching her try to get comfortable. She is 39 weeks pregnant and miserable.
I keep telling her that she’s the cutest pregnant person I ever saw. She says that she’s tired of being pregnant.
My new nephew is taking his time.
Lesson learned: never pick a place to live under pressure.
I needed to find a place before baby sister has her baby. I needed to find a third bedroom for little brother. I needed to find a place without my mother’s input. I needed to find a place that I could afford.
I found a place, I rented it, I hate it.
I thought that the drive would be fine. It’s actually less time than where I lived before. But the drive is somehow, more boring, and seems longer. I hate the drive.
The apartment is really a two-story townhouse with two bedrooms upstairs and one bedroom downstairs. The AC doesn’t cool the top floor adequately. If I’m having hot flashes right now, the summer is going to be absolute hell.
We have a bunch of twenty-something bachelors in the place to the right of us. Right now I can hear the thump-thump-thump of drums. Are they actually playing instruments over there at 11 p.m.? What the hell is going on? My mother’s bedroom is always lulled by music. She says it’s too early to complain.
I think I made a mistake in picking this place. It seemed perfect and now I just wished we hadn’t moved.
Did I mention that the apartment management didn’t update our mailbox for a few weeks, so our mail here was being returned? Did I mention that it looks like our mail from the old address isn’t being forwarded to the post office box I rented, even though it’s been more than four weeks?
Did I mention that little brother’s car died, so on top of everything else I have to take him to work at 6 a.m. every morning? (I know, I can’t blame the move for that, but it just adds to it.)
Since the playground is across the drive from my place, every afternoon every child in the apartment complex congregates there. It’s very noisy.
I hate this place. It may be time to buy. Any suggestions?
A few months ago several blogs were covering the question: can you support our troops if you’re anti-war? The answers were inconclusive at best, adversarial at worst.
A recent poll puts the issue to rest:
Poll: Americans back troops, not war
– reported by the Houston ChronicleSupport the troops, oppose the war.
The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that many Americans perceive the alleged atrocities against Iraqi civilians by U.S. forces as isolated incidents while saying the U.S.-led invasion was a mistake, an unusual disconnect that sets this conflict apart from Vietnam.
The survey of 1,003 adults was completed Wednesday, shortly before the announcement that U.S. airstrikes had killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, and the Iraqi parliament’s approval of candidates for ministers in charge of the army and police.
[snip]
Sixty-one percent in the survey said the military is doing all it can to avoid killing Iraqi civilians.
[snip]
My brother keeps telling me that getting sent to “the sandbox” is a possibility. I’d like to think that I’m among those who might oppose the war, but will support our troops.