Like so many others, I’m back with a new name. Temporarily anyway. I’m not doing too well on the NPD sites. Way too much navel-gazing for my tastes, so even though SSM isn’t my current problem, I want to run something by y’all. And before anybody thinks we’ve had a GEL-like turnaround in the Bube household, I honestly can’t remember the last time we ML. I think it was the first week of January, but I’m not sure.
Monday morning, there was another big fight at home. D18 had been sick most of the weekend. Running out of both ends. W had walked all but one of her dogs and got D14 out of bed and told her to walk the other one. A few minutes later she looked out the window and saw the dog cowering on the ground while D14 repeatedly kicked it. That problem isn’t part of this though. The problem here is W’s reaction. First she went out and smacked D14 in the face, took the leash, and sent D14 back into the house. D14 promptly went into the bathroom and threw up. D18 heard the retching and went to look for W. When she couldn’t find her, she called my mother.
W came back in just as my mother came in the other door and started down the hall. W didn’t know that D14 was sick and just assumed that D14 had called her because of the dog incident. W ran my mother out and then went into D14’s room and started in on her. I really don’t know what happened in there, but I do know that W hit her with the dog leash at least once. D18 said that she heard multiple whacks. W says that she only hit D once and was hitting the bed the other times. D14 says W hit her two or three times. In any case, she also screamed at D14 for calling my mother and screamed all manner of horrible things to her. She then screamed at D14 to get out of the house and never come back. D18 told W that she had called my mother because D14 was sick, but that fell on deaf ears.
I didn’t really even see W until last night. We had a doozy. I told her that the girls are not to have anything to do with the dogs – they’re W’s dogs and W’s responsibility. I told her that her treatment of her kids was unconscionable and totally unacceptable. I was quite calm, but she cut loose on me. I finally told her that if she didn’t like it, she knew where the door was. I talked and she screamed off an on for about another hour and a half. From her perspective, we all hate her. She’s never allowed to do anything that she likes, but is expected to take care of us 24/7. We’ve never appreciated her. She deserves better treatment. I always take the girls’ side on everything and never believe her. I told her to leave. The girls told her they wanted her to leave. She hasn’t done anything right in 30 years. Blah, blah, blah. She did admit to having made at least one mistake, “adopting that little [censored]!!!!!”
She told me she’s leaving. She’ll be out by this weekend. SHe's also telling everyone that I told her to leave - even the kids who know exactly waht really happened. It's like she's living in some parallel universe or something. She slept in the living room last night and has only talked to any of us in short sentences. She asked me if this weekend would be soon enough. All I said was, “I don’t want you to leave.” The kids have done the same. She called me at work today and asked if she was going to be allowed to take her van with her when she leaves. Again, all I said was, “I don’t want you to leave.” I know how good she is and I know that if we say anything more, she’ll find a way to twist it into something else. It’s hard to twist, “I don’t want you to leave” and I want to make sure that she has no way of getting around the fact that leaving is her choice, nobody else’s.
Comments? Suggestions? Should I stick with the man-o-steel thing? Should I apologize? Should I do or say anything about the leaving – assuming that she actually does leave?
