Rope in a Deep Well

I am just going to start typing and let a title materialize out of what I type. I have done some footwork to lessen the financial burden, my time to myself has been shortened and I have had a bloody head cold for a week, not to mention a brewing resentment I need to get rid of.

I did some talking to my banker and was able to rework a loan I have, I had to extend the length which in the long run isn't good but in the right now it cuts my monthly payments down by 1/3, maybe in a couple of years I can increase the payments so I am not paying back so much in interest; this loan was taken out when I was making quite a bit more money. I bought a small car, so my fuel expense has dropped a lot, little Chevy Cavalier with a 5 speed manual transmission, God I love shifting gears again, the car isn't brilliant looking but runs well. I talked to my boss at the hotel and he was able to give me six extra hours a week of work, plus I work every other Sunday. Lastly I bought a trailer, my mom loaned me the money, this will save me $80.00 a month plus I can pay my mom back a couple of times a month instead of having everything come out of one paycheck.

The trailer belongs to I guy I use to work with; it is older but well insulated and has good windows, fenced in yard for the kids, 2 nice size shed for storage, 3 bedrooms and 1-1/2 baths. The kitchen is bigger with more cupboards, my trailer really lacks cupboards in the kitchen, they built on to the dining and living rooms, so they are bigger. Mich and Angel will take the bedroom with the 1/2 bath which is in the front off the living room, Carter will have the little bedroom and mine will be in the back. I need to paint the living room, it is lime green not my color, going to paint it a burgundy for warmth, plus the cupboard doors in the kitchen and bath need painted and a bit of wood putty. 

The main reason for buying the trailer is Mich and the kids moved back in with me and will probably be living with me for quite a while. When the landlord said she wasn't approved to live with me, she moved in with a guy who turned out to be a control freak with a violent background, recently he has been stalking her via FB and driving by the house or finding out from mutual friends what she is up to. It is better for her to live with me, I feel more secure with her and the kids here, instead of her hooking up with some guy just so she has a place to stay, she has been good about not going out at night since she quit dating, she is partying less and is home every night of the week. I have been nervous about the landlady finding out Mich and the kids were here, afraid of being evicted for breaking the lease agreement.

The new trailer is just down the street from the one I currently rent. When I told the landlord I was buying it, she told me Mich was still not allowed to live with me. I contacted a lawyer and he said she cannot tell me who can and cannot live with me, unless the person has a serious criminal record, prejudice doesn't count. Mich copped an attitude when she did the interview with the landlady to get approval to live in this trailer, landlady was talking down to her and Mich being a proud 21 year old who doesn't know anything about having a poker face and keeping her mouth shut, rubbed the landlady the wrong way. Mich can be an arrogant, know it all snot, who doesn't own her mistakes as much as she needs to, she is immature for sure, especially when it comes to putting her wants above the needs of the kids, she sees nothing wrong with going out drinking a couple of nights a week and leaving the kids with someone. Mich hasn't been charged with child neglect from the incident with Carter climbing out the window in July, in fact Child Protective Services were never called. She has a court date later this month and has a Public Defender, so hopefully the charges will be dropped. She has been put on suspense from her job working with the mentally handicap because she can't have anything dealing with neglect or abuse on her record, if the charges are dropped she gets her job back. So Mich isn't a perfect kid, but she isn't a really bad kid either, she does better living under my roof with boundaries than on her own.

My conversation with the landlady has been eating my lunch, she was rude towards me and made accusations about Mich I didn't like. She doesn't know anything about Mich, where she has come from; mother committing suicide when she was 8 years old, dad climbing inside a bottle for 10 years, going into foster care and group homes, completing high school as a teen mother and trying her best to be a mom at a young age. We live a quiet life, the house is alcohol and drug free, since it was reported the girl watching the kids wasn't keeping a close eye on them, she hasn't watched them and will not watch them, when the kids are outside they are closely supervised. Another thing is; I live in the biggest mobile home park in town, I know of a lot of kids who run around unsupervised and you have to drive slow and watch out for them, also I know of homes where people live without approval from the manager. The landlady is one of those know-it-all people who will not listen to what you have to say, she is very prejudice; this was brought to my attention when I talked to her about buying the trailer because the guy I am buying it from is Hispanic and she didn't have anything nice to say about Hispanics even though 50% of the residents here are Hispanic. If I didn't pay my rent, if I had the cops coming around every so often, if my lot was a junk pit, if the kids where running wild in the streets I could understand her being concerned about renting me a lot. I can't explain to her that Mich and the kids are better off and safer living with me, that Mich is at a crossroads and needs to be able to save up to move out. I want to say "listen bitch, I am doing what is best for my daughter and grand kids so butt the fuck out and mind your own business and until we do something illegal leave us alone."

I own and understand her not allowing Mich to live in a home I rent from her, it is her choice on who lives in her property, and I signed a lease saying I would get approval for anyone, be it my kid or girlfriend or roommate, if they moved in with me. Looking at this from a 4th step point of view, the landlady has hurt my pride and since of security. Oh yeah, rental property here blows if you have a pet, only a few mobile home owners allow pets, none of the apartments or houses do, so I am stuck, I looked around and couldn't find a trailer to buy in another park in my price range. Yesterday I realized I had a dozy of a resentment building towards the landlady, I was driving around town with a conversation with her going through my head, wanting to set the record straight with her and tell her I talked to a lawyer and was calling her bluff. Last night when I went to bed I did the only thing I know how to do, I prayer for her and for acceptance.

I don't dig having my lifeboat rocked, I want everything in life to go along smooth. Things have smoothed out again for the most part, money, Mich and kids. The landlady bit will smooth out too once we move, we will live our quiet life, just be another tenant among and few hundred others. I am going to visit my sponsor this afternoon after work, puke on her table for a bit and I will continue to pray for the landlady, it always seems to help accepting someone I dislike, know we will never see eye to eye and move on, might not happen soon but with practice and time it will.

On the lighter side, Angel is really excited for Halloween, she wants to be a tiger princess, not sure where she got this idea but she is adamant this is what she is going to be. I found an orange tutu, plus orange tights, will buy an orange t-shirt, use electrical tape for strips, get her some cat ears and tail, paint her face orange with stripes. I found Carter the cutest gnome costume, little white beard, pointed hat, shirt/shorts with suspenders. I will take pictures and post them. I bought Angel some plastic fangs and she has been in hog heaven wearing them around the house.

Life is still good, even with battling challenges, classes are going well, I will start writing my next two papers for psyche next week. If I wasn't sober I wouldn't have these wonderful challenges. If I didn't go to meetings, talk to my sponsor and others in recovery, work the steps daily the best I can, I would be sitting in a deep well of shit with no direction out.

Peace Love Light

Damn I hate doing the right thing sometimes

So Friday I get a call from my oldest sister telling me my youngest sister visited my dad in the nursing home Thursday which is a good thing but she also left dad a book, “30 Minutes in Heaven”. First off because of the dementia dad hasn’t been able to read a book in quite awhile, second my dad has never been a religious man, he believes in God in his own simple way but nothing more than that. My oldest sister told me my younger sister told dad “you want to go to heaven don’t you”. My words to my oldest sister were something along these lines “oh for fuck sake, he doesn’t need this kind of crap to confuse him or stress him out anymore than he already is”.
My youngest sister has always been self righteous, opinionate and self serving, thinking she knows what is best for everyone else in the family, one of those who points at the splinter in someone else eye while ignoring the log in her own eye. In January of 2007 she admitted herself to a treatment facility for alcoholism; it was there that she found God. Up to this point she was pretty open to the idea of a universal God, one that was all inclusive and didn’t need blood atonement from his son. As she has progressed in recovery through AA she has become very much a Bible thumper, thinking the God of the Bible is the only God. Since we live in a small AA community we sometimes attend the same meetings. Over time we have grown further and further apart, she talks about God in the biblical since in meetings and I talk about spirituality in general. I don’t talk about Buddhism openly, but I do talk about the Dharma without people knowing that is what I am talking about, usually in the context of suffering, ego, selfishness, mediation, right speech, right mindfulness, right view and awareness. It has taken some time but I have finally stopped think that people are judging me by what she says, talk about ego, but because I knew her before she still gets under my skin because I knew the person who was a lot more open minded, someone who was a lot more unselfish when it came to her family. She has become a person who has less and less to do with her family and spends her time with church, AA, AA friends and work. She rarely visits my parents and only calls a couple times a month. She has pretty much stopped talking to me, we see each other at meetings but she doesn’t approach me and I have taken the low road and stopped approaching her but I always say hi in case she wants to approach me. My selfishness is that I feel she needs to spend more time with my parents and find out what is really going on with them instead of making assumptions based on only a few hours a month.
I really wanted to take a copy of “The Art of Happiness” by His Holiness the Dalai Lama or “The Tao of Pooh” to put on dad’s dresser just to spite my sister. I know this is wrong thinking and I had a hard time not obsessing over it. I had small battles going on in my head most of Friday, battles between right and wrong. At the meeting I went to Friday night we discussed the Serenity prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, he courage to change the thinks I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” This prayer always comes back to me; I have to use the tools I have to change my suffering, anger in this case. My anger in part is due to the fact that I perceive that my sister is harming my dad who I have been rather protective of the last couple of years because of his health, I am selfish because I don’t trust others best intensions based on their perceptions of what is right for him, there is a part of me that is being a martyr, damn I hate admitting this, because I have been doing the biggest share of the footwork pertaining to my parents well being and because of this I want things to go my way. I can accept the other Bible thumping members of AA but I can’t accept my own sister being one. I can’t accept that she doesn’t have balance in her life, I see her suffer needlessly, my selfish suffering wanting to fix her suffering. Not sure where all this is going to lead, we are like 2 sword fighters standing at ready waiting for the first one to make a move and commence the battle. It doesn’t have to be this way but I am at loss on how to handle it, so for now I won’t, I will just take care of what is in front of me to do and when my discomfort with the her comes up do my best to release it and fertilize what could become a resentment if I let it.
None of this messes with my staying sober but it does mess with my inter peace. I guess it is time to grab the cushion and see where mediating on it goes. I know that by writing this out I have uncovered some things I hadn’t thought about before.

Comments appreciated