I've been having a hard time.

Here's the deal, my father died when I was small and my mother yelled at me a lot.  My stepfather was amused by me until my sister was born and then I was an uncomfortable object to have around.

He ignored my accomplishments a lot but appreciated that I was pretty like my mother and there are things I will take to my grave.

I married into a family that didn't appreciate me.  I wasn't a rich girl.  I took their name and I raised four exceptional children without a lot to work with.  They treated me like trash and they treated my children like orphans.  Trailer trash was something that was bandied about.  My mother in law has 9 grandchildren and 4 have college degrees.  2 of them are mine.  One was a national merit scholar.  1 of them is a veteran, that's my child also.

I now have the financial care of my mother in law.  This is the same woman that made certain that I knew that I wasn't and my oldest girl were not her blood relations.  My other three children are all her blood relations and have done so well without the advantages that were given to their cousins.

Every one of their cousins lived with their grandmother and were taken care of for years.

This woman complained about having to take care of two of her grandchildren while their sister was born because she was going to watch a football game.  Our neighbors were going to watch them but they were at church.

This woman told me that it was not her responsibility to help when I gave birth to her grandchildren although she lived nearby and didn't work.  She said it was my mother's responsibility to help me although my mother lived across the country and had a full time job. 

The time has come that my Mother in Law has dementia.  Her youngest daughter used her money in ways we don't understand, but nothing is left to take care of my Mother in Law.

At this point, I'm the one that is trying to pay her bills, but her own daughters have excuses about why they can't help.

I can't afford to take care of her.  If I had the money I would regardless of earned resentments, but I cannot disregard my own medical care in order to pay for her upkeep.  She wouldn't pay for mine.  Holy christ, I had an ovarian cyst blow and was in excruciating pain and my doctor told me to go to the ER but I couldn't get there because I had no car and my husband worked for his father.  I called my MIL for help and she told me she had to pick her other daughter up from work.

She seems to think that she was very sweet to me.  She gave me a perfume I was highly allergic to four years in a row.

She's old now.  She doesn't remember that she disregarded me and treated me like "trailer trash" for so many years.  She doesn't remember that she treated my children like they were less than.

I just don't want to have to pay for her.  Her children should pay for her, not someone she treated like trash for 37 years.

I just can't keep from crying.

All I ever wanted was for my children to have grandparents who made them feel as beloved as my grandparents made me feel.

All I ever want going forward is for my grandchildren to feel as beloved as they should be.  They are amazing and wonderful people and I love them all more than they know.

Smelly Burning Things

Wow, today I saw some things.

There was a fire in the building and it was put out and it smelled really bad.  Burning electricity and melted rubber coating and singed everything that poured smoke out of the bottom of a water fountain.

Gross.

We try to keep panic to a minimum with a student population of over 2500.

What's on fire and do we really need to get out of the building?

I do not think that my floor was in danger but I walked over to see if we needed to get the hell out.  We didn't.

Things are challenging in public education these days.  We have students who cannot read above a third grade level.

I am working on a training in my school where we work with a "random" word of the day.

Yesterday, I took the old dictionary and had a kid point out the word "hernia" then during pride time we talked about what a hernia was and talked about old men who had to wear trusses.

I'm really excited that my students were so thrilled and curious to talk about "hernia."  We found relevance and talked about ways to use the word.

My favorite was "Jonathan, I'm going to give you a hernia if you don't shut up and sit down."

The next class we had the random word selection and it came out "Jew" OMG what a learning opportunity to talk about the word and what it meant and how to use it properly in a sentence ( ignoring the verb form) Anne Frank was persecuted because she was a Jew.

I love that my kids are so open minded and still willing to understand how words change.  I cannot imagine what my next random word will be.

Oh, I had to report the water fountain close to my premises for making horrible noises.   It's a day in the life of what I saw today.