PMS. I have some. At least I think I do. I never keep a schedule of it, I just kind of figure that when I start getting irritated that the people around me are still breathing – I’m close to bleeding.
Yesterday was blechy. Jes has left. Again.
I just can’t keep doing this with her. Everytime something happens that doesn’t please her 100%, she bolts. All I can see in the future is her using that baby as a pawn, a manipulation tool to force me into giving her her way all the time or she’ll take it away.
My gut response is to try and keep myself from bonding any more than I already have with the baby-to-be. Self-protection I guess.
I’m truly thinking about telling her not to come back. And yet… the words stick in my throat because…. the baby bump.
What was the catalyst this time, the horrifically awful event that caused her to run away from the evils of this house?
The end of allowance, and my refusal to do it again at any time in the very near future.
Not just for her. For all three of them. And not because I am determined to “ruin her life”, as she thinks. (As if allowance is the life-ruining factor she needs to be worrying about anyway. Jeezus pleezus.)
Here was the deal with the kids and earning an allowance.
Allowance had stopped working in the way that it was supposed to. It had become a source of fighting, between me and them, between Master and I, and within myself.
Here’re the ways in which it went wrong:
First, there were hassles over what it was supposed to be used for. This was a lot of where Master and I would start to bicker. He felt that it should be used for anything they *wanted*, and while I don’t disagree with that theory, I would tend to disagree with what was a want and what was a need. (Imagine that huh? A slave who wants to haggle over wants and needs. tee hee)
An extension of the ‘wants and needs’ disagreement was that it seemed like I couldn’t buy them something for “just because” without him thinking it should have come out of their allowance. Again, he had legitimate points, but so did I. And unfortunately, the kids had picked up on some of the discord between us about it and were playing that in their favor, the manipulative little monsters.
But these things between him and I were being worked out as we went along. That wasn’t even the reason it all blew up, but it was a mitigating factor in the final decision.
They had a very small, very reasonable, list of chores to earn their allowance. They had to do simple things like make their bed in the morning, put their clothes away, help clean up after supper, take out the trash, yadda yadda yadda.
But all of a sudden, they seemed to think they didn’t have to do anything that wasn’t THEIR chore. There was no spirit of cooperation anymore, no willingness to help someone (me, mostly) do anything. Not that I expect cheers and cartwheels when I ask someone to set the table or dust the living room, they are teenagers after all, but about the 100th time I heard “No. That’s not MY chore.” I’d had enough of it.
If there wasn’t a monetary attachment to doing something, again, they thought they could refuse to do it. Everything I’d ask was answered with “how much will you pay me?”
Uhh. Nothing. That’s how much.
I was in a constant cycle of having to remind them to do their chores, of tracking them down, asking them if they’d done it yet, being told that yeah, they were coming to do it in “five minutes, Mom!” and then, an hour later, the table still isn’t cleared, I’m getting tired, I don’t want to clean the kitchen at 9pm when THEY are ready, finding that they’d “forgotten” to scoop the litter box for 3 days straight, they’d “forgotten” to take the trash out…. blah blah blah and excuse after excuse and wah-wah-wah-wah.
Plus, they’d lost any and all motivation to find other ways to actually earn money. When I was a kid I did all sorts of unpleasant things to earn spending money. I detassled corn in the summer (if you’ve done that, you’ll agree it’s a suck-ass job for a kid), I babysat on the weekends and in the summers instead of hanging out with my friends.I waitressed. For one short and disasterous time over a summer, I delivered pizzas. (Me and directions? Are not friends. I cost that poor restaurant more free pizzas than were paid for I think. I was the worst delivery driver than any delivery driver in the history of ever.)
But I’d mention to them about looking for work like that and they’d sigh and “Nah” and “don’t need to” and “why?”.
And, this is where Jes factored into it the most, what it was being spent on just was burning my ass more and more.
She would save hers until she has enough to make a trip to Wisconsin. Which, on the occasion that the three of them would cooperate so they could go together, I was much more okay with it. The other two kids liked to go down there and spend the weekend with their old friends, too, so they’d all chip in one week’s allowance and that was enough to cover the gas there and back; they’d leave after school on Friday, come home on Sunday, and it was all hunky-fuckin-dory.
I knew where they were and I knew when they were coming home.
Jes doesn’t like doing it that way. She doesn’t want to only have Friday through Sunday. She wants to stay there for a week or two. In order for her to have the gas money without needing her brother’s and sister’s contribution, she has to save all of her allowance for a month. So she was in this cycle of saving for 4 weeks and then taking off for 2 weeks.
Her car, the car we gave her? Needs some work done. We did not give her that car so she could drive it into the ground by zipping off to Wisconsin and Illinois all the damn time. And the fact that we’re struggling to figure out how we’re going to pay for her baby while she’s pissing away money so she can go get laid once a month? Umm. no. There are a lot more important things she needs to be saving her allowance for.
So the whole thing accumulated into one big fight between the kids while we were gone the other night. I heard all about it when we got home and it all started over Jes saying that she wasn’t going to take Am and B-man with her anymore because she doesn’t like having to come home at the end of the weekend. She wants to stay there for that week or two.
And I’d just had enough. Her selfishness and her irresponsibility, on top of all of the other problems with the whole allowance business, on top of the fact that we’re not exactly rolling in the dough anyway and if that sacrifice from us isn’t properly appreciated?? Enough is enough, you know? Seriously.
And I’ve been threatening to do this if things didn’t shape up for quite a few weeks anyway.
So I told them all that I was done. I was done with allowance, done with chore lists, done done done. They can just do without until some of this other stuff improves. Or forever. Whichever comes first.
Am and B-man? They’re not stupid. They knew it was coming and they know why. They heard the warnings, they chose to ignore them, and they get that this is the consequence.
Jes? Not so much. Back to that entitlement syndrome of hers. She thinks that she is earning that money and should be able to do what she wants with it.
She thinks I’m only trying to keep her from seeing the baby daddy (who is still unemployed and has made zero contribution to anything).
She thinks I’m being unfair.
She thinks I don’t want her to have any fun.
She thinks I only want her to sit around the house and be miserable.
She thinks since we gave her that car, she can drive it without oil, drive 3,000 miles on bald tires, and that we shouldn’t say anything. Because it’s hers.
She makes me so tired. One day with her is like two weeks with the other two, I swear.
She doesn’t think she should be still be treated like a child, yet she’s doing *nothing* adult-like in any way whatsoever- nor can I get her to admit that even getting allowance is pretty childish.
She’s still just 17 and lives here and *should* be treated like a child, especially considering that she acts like she’s 12.
Everything is “not fair” or “not my fault!” when it comes to her, and even though it’s not my fault she got pregnant and not fair that we have to pay for it, she’s too stuck on how “not fair” it is that I took allowance away and how it’s “not her fault” that the other two kids have to go to school and can’t take off for weeks at a time.
So she gets pissed, she says she’s going to leave, I tell her to do what she has to do, she calls grandma crying and whining, my mom wires her money- and she leaves.
She writes me this long ass note about how it’s “not fair” (scream) and how she doesn’t want to leave but she doesn’t think I’m being “fair” (scream) and it’s not “her fault” (scream)
Round and round we go. Didn’t we do this same thing last month over something else?? And the month before that?
Fucking tired of it, of her, of the drama. Maybe I’ll take a big ol’ pass on being a grandma after all.
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Uncategorized | kaya | 
Monday September 28th, 2009 7:19am | 
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