Screaming on the outside.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2082100/Tired-toddlers-risk-lifelong-mental-health-problems.html

See here:-  http://ghostofmylife.insanejournal.com/11907.html

I wasn't allowed an afternoon nap!  My sleep patterns were and are so unnatural and I've said I think this affects me a lot.  Another massive tick in the dysfunctional parenting box...

Sis contacted DH about someone who was on his FB list - not someone he’s met but a lot of shared interests and friends of friends etc.

“As you know I’m on a big pagan e-mail list (because of FOMO syndrome).  This bloke is on there and he’s got a link to a weird group”

Ah, the weird group is one I’m already aware of.  It isn’t a group at all, just a website created by one of our local pagan poseurs with too much time on his hands.  He presents it as a serious movement and when he gets called out pretends it was all a big joke to expose people who really think like that.  People who really think like that consist entirely of him.

Sis, meanwhile, is too thick to realise what a pile of wank it all is - let alone who is behind it - so uses it as some kind of carrot to try to engage us back into the Pagan scene.  I really couldn’t care less. 

He’s a useless drunk who fancies himself as an intellectual and leader.  He thinks he’s a new Gardner or Sanders and wants the attention and recognition of starting a tradition.   If people want to give him the time of day that’s up to them - even if it is a sad indictment on the state of local paganism.  I really don’t care because the local pagan scene is probably the shittest in the country and has been for a LONG time.  He isn’t even the worst example of a local pagan “leader” by a long chalk! 

DH deleted the bloke but, here’s the funny part, Sis kept him (probably a gaming pal and those points are more important than whether or not he’s a total arsehole).

FOMO:  Frightened Of Missing Out.

This is so I can post quickly rather than faffing around on insanejournal.  I like insanejournal but it isn’t the simplest blogging tool in the world.

Sis continues with her twattery.  Having left the pagan group we were immediately (and condescendingly) invited to attend any of the Yule festivities and told we would be welcomed back at any time.  At no point has she enquired why we left even though it must be killing her not knowing - or perhaps she does know and is afraid to ask in case she gets told.

She continues to work as a loan shark.  She continues to try to tart around the kink/lesbian scene in the Fens whilst using her daughter’s alleged romance with a boy from there as an excuse to keep making visits.

Her dog had to be put down.  That in itself was a shame because she was a nice old dog.  However, we got all the drama and further twattery.

First the dog was taken to the PDSA because Sis is officially poor and can get free vet treatment.  The vet’s prognosis was not good and the Doormat was having to provide constant care turning the dog (suspected pneumonia or tumor on the lungs) every half an hour.  She rang DH sobbing about the dog and saying she was unable to make the Christmas Party because of the dog.  Okaayyy.  Five minutes later she was posting allsorts on FB and not mentioning the dog - because the Doormat was, as usual, left to do all the actual work of providing care.

She then posts on FB that she will bring things to the party.  DH told her categorically not to.  She turned up anyway, bringing the Doormat and being away from home for over two hours.  Who was looking after the dog at this point?  No-one.  It was her usual “public appearance” during a crisis brought on by a bad case of FOMO.

On the following Monday the dog was a “lot better” (and the horrible thing is that dealing with Sis you start to wonder how much of ANYTHING she says is either outright BS or being embellished for dramatic effect).  Thursday she calls to say that she has had the dog put down. 

Saturday, Christmas Eve, she posts all over FB, with pictures about the new puppies they have acquired.  Not one but two.  They had gone to one kennels on the Friday just to look and then on the Saturday - returning from taking youngest daughters “boyfriend” back to the Fens - she detours (whilst no-one can escape from the car) to another Kennels and plays her face until the Doormat does his usual and gives in.  FB posts include the classic line “I couldn’t bear to part the puppies so we had both”.  Oh, and they are Terrier Crosses so that should be fun with all the rodents and rabbits in the house.

I’ve spoken before about the pet collection but here is the full story:-

They have, housed inside their small terraced house, two cats, five rats, two rabbits, mice I can’t keep track of (and neither can they) and now two dogs.  At one point they were down to two cats and the old dog and then got some rats.  The rats died and they were “not having any more pets”.   Then Sis decided to get some more rats after some family hoo haa involving the youngest acting like Sis.  To make peace (pretend nothing is wrong) they got three rats and the kids named one each. 

Then they got two rabbits - because Sis wanted rabbits.  Despite being told NOT to introduce strange rabbits to each other they bought one and then another and discovered that, as they had been told, that they had to house them seperately and keep them apart.  This is because the cute bunnikins are vicious little buggers.

Then she discovers from the local pet shop that nobody is breeding rats to sell to the shop so she acquires two male rats and starts a breeding programme.  She knows nothing about rat breeding and this is just another of her money making schemes.

Then we have the drama with the dog and now there are puppies in the house.

There are various reasons for all of this (aside from her being a twat).  First is that she likes the idea of dependent creatures that have to love her - baby animals, baby humans - and she can make a big display of how caring she is.

Second is that the kids are growing up - she lost interest in them the minute they learned to speak and stopped doing exactly what she wanted.  The thing is they are becoming independent - well the younger two are, the older one is still firmly attached by the umbilical cord.  Doormat has been kept docile by having to care for them because he is also the parent who cares about them - she doesn’t she only cares for one person.  In effect, the constant addition of dependent creatures is her way of keeping him “barefoot and pregnant”.  That and all the stress meaning he’s on Effexor and not got the resolve to either stand up to her, kick her out or walk out himself.

The few posts he has put on FB about the new puppies are all to do with feeding, lack of sleep, cleaning up after them and so on.  In short, she’s left him with all the responsibility so she can have something new to play with until the dogs clock who really cares for them and stop responding to her at all.  Still, it’s another 10 -15 years of entrapment for the Doormat and once the collection starts to dwindle she’ll get more pets for him to look after.

On top of this she’s repeatedly moaned in the past when the PDSA have hinted about them making a donation for some of the care they gave the old dog.  Sis’s attitude is “how dare they!”.  Now she’s acquired two more dogs for the PDSA to put on their books because she’s officially poor so gets free vet care along with the free everything else she gets.

Still, as long as she gets what she wants, there will be peace and calm.  The second there is any kind of objection from anyone in the household she goes nuclear.

She’s turning the family into a train-wreck and I’m glad she’s now at arms length.

Another fantastic episode.

Sis decided to go to a party at the arse end of the country. Stay at a hotel for the weekend.  Ostensibly, this is so teenaged daughter can see her "boyfriend" - although she was more interested in seeing another boy and making cow eyes at him.  How do I know this?  Sis has posted pictures of said daughter making cow eyes at the other lad.  

I don't know what's worse, not telling your daughter to quit it or posting the pictures where the supposed boyfriend can see them and be all hurt and humiliated.  Lovely.  Just lovely.

Of course, the real reason is so she can try to push herself on the lesbian/kinky folk down there in that group.  I wouldn't touch them with yours.  I wouldn't touch Sis with anybody's.  

Sis has acquired a pair of New Rock Boots.

This together with the sudden desire for a tattoo is causing some amusement.

Sis is forty two years old, must weigh sixteen stones (and is around five feet tall).

The boots she decided to match up with a pair of skin tight jeans (yes, apparently you can buy them in that size) and a T shirt with a beer logo on the front.  Together with her tired looking face, greasy half-dyed hair (and who the fuck uses mahogany hair dye these days?).  She doesn't use so much as a dab of moisturiser let alone make-up.


In her head she seems to think this is what everyone else is looking at.





What we are actually subjected to is this, twentyyears on.

  


Sorry about your breakfast.
 

Sis is trying to get a tattoo on the cheap.  ('Cause bargain tattoos are a terrific idea...)

For some time she has been saying she wants an old tattoo of hers covered up.  Fair enough as it is manky.  She even got her husband to design the cover up tattoo.  She has not had it done.

She is now blubbering on FB about how she wants a tattoo on her back (not where the old tattoo is) but can't afford it.  Oh, and the sharks she works for haven't paid her for over five weeks.  I shouldn't laugh but I'm going to because if they treat EVERYBODY like shit, why did she assume she would get anything different.

What she wants is a tramp stamp to impress her would-be girlfriend who has lots of tattoos.  She doesn't want to pay much for it.

There are a couple of local tattooists that are VERY good.  I've always been impressed with their work but they are not cheap and they have  waiting lists of six months and over.  She passed unfavourable comment about the cost of one when a friend had some work done there.  The work is awesome and, let's think about it, when you are being PERMANENTLY inked, you want it to look good.

You don't want some emo band's album artwork that, apart from being naff in the first place, will start to blur within twelve months and won't be much more than a blob after a few years.  Which is what she got her daughter from some "really good" tattooist who I'd never heard of, who was within what she wanted to pay and who you don't have to book with.  Funny how she isn't going to go with that tattooist for her own tattoo - she's going even more bargain basement.

The mind boggles.

We have left the pagan group.  I can't stand Sis's behaviour a moment longer and if anyone were to call her out on it they would be labelled unreasonable.  

The problem with self-absorbed people who do things that are wrong is that their denial is so complete.  You will be the bad one for saying something, they will never be the bad one for doing it in the first place.

The latest, the one that has tipped me well over the edge, is that she has taken a job with a doorstep loans company.  Bear with me 'cause it is long and complicated.

She took a loan with them last year so she could go on holiday.  Not for a new cooker or school uniforms or any other kind of emergency that might be understandable for borrowing a small sum.  Nope, she borrowed £300 to go on holiday.  The amount to pay back was £480.  

The guy who sold her the loan then went to work for another doorstep loans company and called on her and said would she like to "switch".  By that point she owed around £350 so she borrowed £350 to "pay off" the original loan.  She then owed £560 to the new company with the amount borrowed plus interest.  

Get this (you couldn't make it up), the loan guy then goes back to the original loan company and tells her to switch back.  So (and I know this is hard to fucking fathom) she takes out another loan for £350 to pay off the second loan - except the second loan is £560.  The shark told her if she paid off the second loan quickly she would only have to pay the original amount and not the interest.  Not true, she still owed £210 interest and now she had ANOTHER £350 loan to pay back £560 on.  All from borrowing £300 to go on holiday in the first place.  That's paying back a total of £1600 by the time she's finished.  

This is a woman who wants to be a maths teacher. 

This is a woman who has already been bankrupt once.

This is a woman who when she recently received £1,000 from her mother didn't pay off any of the loans or her credit card but went on a spending spree buying stuff to "sell" to make money in some mythical new business venture that will fail to get off the ground - because it isn't the first time or even the tenth that she's come up with some grand money-making scheme.  They all fail because she is basically lazy and would rather sit on the computer all day than actually make, sell or do anything.  

This is a woman who is now doing the doorstep loans job getting other people to take loans and collecting the payments for "£6-10 an hour".  Except of course that the position is self employed so she's unlikely to make even minimum wage.

She can't see any of this and you can't tell her.  

Her other half just lets all this happen because she's basically abusive and if he says anything she will literally go into a rage. I've seen it and, quite frankly, thought she should be locked up.  Yeah, I know she's come from an abusive background but that doesn't give her ANY right to abuse others.

Like I said, this is just the thing that tipped me over the edge.  It doesn't include all the other shit and chaos she seems to crave in her life.  I'm glad to be out of it.

One of the worst things of being a victim of bad parenting is that you can see it going on around you and can do fuck all about it because as a childfree person, you couldn't possibly understand...

So, Sis's middle kid is well on the road to destruction with a VILE, self-absorbed, self-centred, mannerless, attitude topped off with general laziness and stupidity as well as a ridiculous attention seeking streak.

Why?  Because she's Sis's kid and Sis can't be bothered to put a stop to it because if she tried she might have to deal with the fact that she herself behaves like this and so does her eldest.

In the meantime, the rest of us have to put up with the external symptoms of the bad parenting - the sulky, rude, selfish drama llama that it has created.

The Romanian Chauvanist Pillock is gone.  Sort of.

He's gone from us and ensconced himself in and joined the chav collective because he thinks that will make us angry.

It doesn't.  He's gone and we're happy because he's gone.  He's not our problem any more.  I'm actually glad he's joined them and not any other group because he will be a problem for any group he is in and he's not going to be a problem for any people I really like.  

It's amazing how the atmo has changed.  Everyone has visibly relaxed because nobody is waiting for his latest "episode" to kick off.  

He did an astonishing diatribe via e-mail about everything that was wrong with the group and the people in it. Seriously, if that is the way his head was processing the situation, he needs some professional help.  Warped would be putting it mildly.  He has not so much jumped to (the wrong) conclusions but actually invented quite a number of things to enable him to point the finger anywhere but at himself.  The problem is that he is so self-absorbed that he's delusional.

Everyone has their problems EVERYONE.  Every member of the group has their issues, some I know all about, others I can only guess at but they don't let their problems interfere with the group.  Anyone who does is either reminded gently or not so gently this is not acceptable.  The group is not willing or able to accomodate people's issues to the point where it upsets either the group harmony or other individuals in it.  

He described people in the group as "aggressive" in their behaviour because they confronted him about his behaviour yet he found it perfectly normal to bellow abuse at his wife because she had called him to say she was in some difficulty.  It's okay for him to be aggresive, abusive and irrational but if anyone else is so much as direct in their dealings with him, he thinks he is being picked on?  Like I said, delusional and not something we have the time, resources, expertise or willingness to countenance in our group. 

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-162241860.html

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/singletons/200910/the-dark-side-siblings/comments

Just what the household needs, three more pets.  So now, in addition to the dog, two cats, two rabbits and three rats there are now three mice as well.  Hey, what's that smell...?

Oh, and it turns out Sis (Sis is just a name I use, she isn't one of my sisters!) has been paying for games from an on-line gaming site for over a year.  Funny how she can afford a monthly subscription for HER but not new school trousers for her son or new shoes for her daughter.  Bit sick of this shit.

I've recently scanned some old photos onto the pc.  I had quite a few from an album I kept as a child.  You can see the difference in pictures that were taken when my sisters were around and when they weren't.  I look anxious in most of them, moreso the older I get, but I look almost terrified in the ones where my sisters were around, even in the "young" pictures.  My face is a mask and my posture so rigid - no wonder I have problems now.

A lot of the pictures I chose to put in the album are animals and scenery.  I guess my happiest memories are those where there are no other humans around - especially family. 

Abused nephew and abusive sister are no longer friends on FB.  I don't know who hit the delete button but it will be good for him.  I suspect it was him and she hasn't noticed yet - it will be High Drama when she does.

"Cryptosporidium parvum causes diarrhea in dogs, cats, rodents, young calves and people. It is found throughout the World. It is passed from individual to individual through fecal contamination. The disease in animals and man is usually mild and self-limiting. Signs of the disease include diarrhea, abdominal pain and flu-like symptoms that can last up to six weeks. The disease is more severe in very old and very young animals and people. In immunocompromized individuals it may cause chronic inflammation of the digestive tract. The disease is passed through fecal contamination from animals or man. The organism is quite resistant to drying and disinfectants so, it can survive a long time in contaminated waste. Signs in people and animals besides loose watery diarrhea include stomach cramps and mild fever. In healthy people, symptoms last about two weeks."

Just thought I would mention it as Sis has come down with something that sounds remarkably similar - as did her eldest and youngest spawn.

Imagine that, in a house that contains five people, three rats, two rabbits (WTF are they doing in the house) two cats and a dog and needs a visit from Kim and Aggie, they appear to have the above.

Funny that...

I cut off contact with my siblings almost subconsciously.  I forgot to send a couple of birthday cards to my BIL and my neice.  I really, genuinely forgot until it was too late.  My sister "retaliated" by not sending me a card which was when I remembered I had forgotten. 

I had a choice to make a call or do something but I sat and thought about it and decided I was happier not having anything to do with them.  It had gotten to the point where we were exchanging cards only and I might as well have been sending them to random strangers.  Some time before I had told the family I wouldn't be doing Christmas presents - there were many reasons for this, but the main one was that I felt very much like I was being taken advantage of by them. 

I had discovered that I only got invited to SOME family gatherings and not others.  If it was some occasion where I could be expected to provide a gift for whoever then I got an invite.  If it was a barbecue or some other casual social, I was forgotten about and often found out when my father or someone let slip about the gathering having assumed I had been invited but hadn't attended.

I also got sick of being the soundboard for my eldest sister's animosity toward the other one and her family.  Every time I saw her she would launch into a diatribe against my other sister, her husband, her husband's parents, our nephews and even my sister's neighbours.  I have no idea what I was expected to do about any of it except perhaps agree and validate my eldest sister's venom. 

I wondered what she said about me when I wasn't there.  She would have to make it up because I never gave her any ammo.  I'm a private person who doesn't like other people sticking their nose into my business.  I never broadcast my life to anyone and especially not her.

He can spank me any time.

You are pushing 40 and acting like a teenager who has just discovered LARP.  You are not any kind of warrior.  You are a loser.  Just another wannabee warrior and toy soldier.  You should have gotten that shit out of your system before you hit thirty, but you were too busy getting wasted to do anything about it.

Your tattoos are shit.  I mean, really shit.  You have tattoos of cartoon characters, your kid's chav names and a BAR CODE.  Tasteful.

Your wife is a vulgar chav slapper.  It's only a matter of time before she finds someone else because she thinks you are a pathetic nerd.

Oh, and your dream woman is Katie Price?  Really?  *shudders*

Like everything else in my childhood,sleep was surrounded by lies.

I could be WIDE awake and full of beans and my mother would say "You need to go to bed, you can hardly keep your eyes open".  Lie.  If I fell asleep in the afternoon, I would be woken up because otherwise I wouldn't sleep later.
 
I would be packed off to bed and lie there awake listening to the TV downstairs or the neighbours arguing next door. 


I don't recall bedtime stories ever.  Sometimes my grandmother would read to me in the day but nobody was interested at night.  I would ask and be refused or even snapped at "I don't have time", "I'm too tired", "I don't know any stories".  More lies.

All this would change on a Friday evening.  If neither of my sisters was available to babysit I would be taken to the social club where my parents were drinking.  They would not leave until gone 11 p.m. and I distinctly recall a couple of times that a few of us kids were playing a game and pretending to go to sleep in a quiet area.  My mother marched over and had a hissy fit because she thought we all really were asleep.

I don't recall a gentle wake up call ever happening at home.  Being yelled at and awoken with the blame for something "Breakfast is ruined because of you"  "You are late" was constant.  If I was difficult to wake up, perhaps that was because I couldn't get to sleep at night because of the erratic sleep patterns and general worry about everything (from being picked on by my sisters to nuclear attack, once you get anxiety you worry about EVERYTHING).

I had to sleep with the light on from an early age.  Sharing a room with my sisters meant that they would come in and out switching the light on and off anyway and generally disturbing my sleep (I never needed the light on before I shared a room with those two).  Their posters would freak me out.  They were bad enough with the light on but I became convinced that the posters were watching me and were "alive" some how once the light was off.  Aside from being the kind of thing kids believe anyway, my sisters had told me this was the case - because terrorizing children is so much fun.

Go to sleep NOW!  Stay up!  Get to bed.  Get up.

I have never been able to go to sleep at will.  Never been one to take a nap in the afternoon unless I have been ill or lost out on so much sleep I just passed out.

The idea of being able to relax and drop off is as alien to me now as it was over thirty years ago.  Being in a constant state of anxiety about bedtime plus all the other stuff means that I simply didn't relax and now when something triggers my anxiety insomnia is the first symptom.  I often wake up and have an immediate panic attack.  This will be over something my brain has fished out of my subconcious.  I will wake up panicking I've forgotten to take the pill (which I haven't been on for over fifteen years), not typed a letter or report for a job I left five years ago or just a general feeling that something terrible has happened and I'm about to get the blame for it.

I still can't sleep.

probably no more than four or five, when  I realised my sisters hated me.  They resented my presence and cared not one jot for my feelings.

About the only thing they have ever agreed on in their entire lives is that I was a mistake, I should not have been added to the family.

It was little things.  They would take things from me, especially food they liked, giving some excuse.  I had been brought up to offer around anything I had - sweets, crips and so on.  My sisters both colluded in telling me they only liked the "big crips" in a packet and I being gullibile (or rather, innocent and trusting) would hand them over. 

I remember being out with the eldest with her future sister in law and some others.  My sister had been given money to feed me during the day.  She bought everyone an ice-cream.  Mine was smaller than the others and even then she wouldn't give it to me in tact, claiming I would "drop" the icecream.  She reduced it to a pathetic stump, removing most of the ice-cream and all of the red sauce and gave it to me with a triumphant smirk.  Everyone thought it was hilarious.  I said nothing, did nothing.  I was powerless and no matter how unfair or unkind she behaved I kept quiet.  

I didn't tell my mother, my sisters had drilled into me not to "tell tales" and my mother took little interest in me as long as I was quiet.  Nothing stood in their way.

I don't remember their bullying being particularly physical except when others were there.  Let's see how hard we can pinch her before she cries kind of thing.  Thankfully, those sort of episodes were rare, and exclusive to my eldest sister but they existed.  

In fact, most of the bullying was instigated by and perpetrated by the eldest.  My other sister is a bit of a tag-along and will go with whatever the more forceful personalities are doing.

At one point, my eldest sister went through a bit of a phase of taking me places with the future in-laws.  I suspect she was trying to show a maternal side to that extensive Irish Catholic family - look how family oriented and caring I am.  

Always, at some point in the outing the opportunity to torment me was taken.  I was shown pornography and asked what it was whilst they laughed at my embarrassment.  I was mocked for sleeping with the light on, being bookish, for taking an interest in ANYTHING they weren't interested in - and especially knowing the names of some bird or creature they didn't or knowing some fact or other.  "Think yer clever." "Shut up, brainbox" and so on.  It wasn't any kind of gentle mocking, it was the callous exercising of authority to keep me in my place.   

It is hard to explain to those who haven't experienced it, but a large swathe of the urban, white working class are actively hostile to intelligence and education.  They certainly were  in the 1970s and 80s.  They were proud they never opened a book or watched documentaries.  Anything they didn't know they didn't want to know and they didn't want anyone else to know it either.

My sister did change in her attitude as she got older but she'd already done most of the damage.  She'd done her part to make a secretive, lonely, anxious child who wanted to learn but knew that it was "wrong" to do so.  Eventually she was replaced by most of the kids I went to school with, also products of the anti-education brigade.  I learned almost in secret.  Our teachers would tear their hair out in frustration after asking us questions they knew we could answer only to have us sit, staring at them in silence.  Ignorance was safety.

There was no where I had to go to see this attitude challenged.  My sisters had already made clear their feelings, my parents were remote and uninterested in what I did at school as long as I didn't get a bad report or into actual trouble so I had to walk a line between keeping them off my back and keeping the bullies off my back.

Teachers were bewildered, not just by me but by other kids they knew were bright but who were "unmotivated".  Not exactly the problem, we were motivated and what motivated us was not being picked on so our energies went into that.  We stayed under the radar but often "surprised" them when we did exams.  How was it that kids that were mediocre and uninterested in almost every lesson suddenly pulled the rabbit out of the hat in the exam hall?  We were learning, we just couldn't let on that we were.
.
I spent my childhood living a secret existence. Perfectly normal reading books were hidden away as if they were porn. I would flick between the soaps on TV, keeping up with them just enough to "fit in", but wanting to watch something else - or go read or write. .
.
Nobody took any interest in me for my sake. Neither parent cared to the point where I felt it. I was that late addition and they'd already done the child-rearing thing and couldn't work up any enthusiasm for doing it again. My sisters were furious I existed. Only one aunt and uncle really bothered with me and that was because they were having difficulty having a child of their own - the only time I got any inkling of what it was like to be a loved child was when I was the substitute.