Second let me say, I don't mind helping them out, but I do expect them to hold up their end. I have multiple phone lines, I did not get that many phone lines with the intention of giving them to my brothers. But a situation arose in which they needed reliable phones and I helped them out. My deal with Tom was simple, cover the additional $30 dollars the line would cost my plan. My deal with Mike was babysit when I needed it and be looking for a job.
Third let me admit, that I have been sick since Sunday evening. I was in denial about this fact but finally broke down and stayed home today. Anyway, I get cranky when I don't feel good. I don't like not being able to get up and out like I need and want to. Not feeling well makes me cranky. When I'm cranky, sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my good sense. I am not as bad about this as I used to be. But occasionally it happens.
Ok, so, background set, here's what happened.
I stayed home today. Putzed around the house in joggin pants and a crummy tee shirt. I emptied some boxes, washed and folded lots of laundry. I hate folding laundry. But I must have shuffled, folded and put away most of the clothes this family owns. By the time four rolled around and it was time for me to go get my little guys and run some errands there was quite a pile needing to be put away sitting on the couch.
Errands run, boys got, yard played, dinner made and just about to be served . . . . . and in walks my brother Tom. Its the end of the week, he's once again broke and blaming those ariund him for it. (me for expecting him to pay me back for the thousand I loaned him and his phone, Mike for existing, his co-workers for working against him) He plops himself down on my couch and starts tossing throw pillows, onto the pile of folded but not put away laundry.
I make a (sarcastic and annoyed) comment about not tossing them on something I've worked on, and he goes off. I am ungrateful, I take advantage of him and people he knows, and I am a horrible mother and a filthy pig mother to filthy pigs . . .
I am not one to take and not give, so I gave back. Told him if that's how he felt he could get his work truck out of the garage I was paying rent on, and get his friend's untagged truck out of the yard. He could find a way to work without the phone I keep turned on. (that was the funny part because he took it out and was going to break it until I reminded him that he'd bought the phone, I only paid for the line). After (honestly calmly) telling him to leave a few times, he got into the work truck and left (but not before being reminded to at least take the laundry he'd left in my machine yesterday with him).
Of course, my children witnessed this. Of course my sweet little boys say their uncle calling their mother nasty names and threatening to call social services to have them taken away. Of course my oldest who looks up to his uncle and enjoys special kid-uncle time saw and heard all this too.
And me? Well, part of me is thinking, I lived just fine before the guy hitchhiked his way into town, I'll live just fine without him feeling like he needs to be entwined in my every day life. There is another part of me that REALLY wants my money paid back NOW and would ENJOY calling sprint and figuring out how to turn that phone line off. The rest of me, just hates the whole situation. Hates that these clowns are all I have around me to deal with. Hates that the one girl friend in town I have who can do any sort of babysitting things she needs to make $40 an evening off me. Hates that despite all the work I've put into banishing it, the specter of my crazy mother still haunts this family.
I look at this mess. The kids that are rowdy (funny but so rotten), the house that is never and will never ever be perfectly clean (I hate housekeeping and don't do it well or often enough), the family full of drug addicts, alcoholics and criminals, and I ask myself, is it any wonder that my normal state is one of loneliness? I would be cruel to ask another person to step into this mess with me. And what stable, sane person would want this in their life?
And with all this swirling around me . . . I'm still sick, still have almost no voice, still have to go to work tomorrow, still have to supervise a ball game tomorrow evening, still have to clean up that apartment saturday and "check out" sunday. It never ends. Ever. And all I really wanted was for someone to not trash the folded clothes.
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