TV families

I have a problem with all these families on TV. Their perfect lives, their perfect problems, their perfect solutions. My family is about as far from perfect as we are close to heaven. These families at warm and inviting even in the troubled times. Always getting along and if not, it takes very little to put it back together. A hug and a kiss and always happily ending.

My family isn’t anything like that. We argue, fuss and disagree on everything. We butt heads more often than not. We can’t get along for anything unless ice cream is involved. We yell, (yes I know I shouldn’t say that) we threaten, (take everything away) we send them to their room for the day (with no TV). It’s never ending. Night time is the worst. You would think after all these years that the nighttime routine would be the easiest but it isn’t. There is tattle telling, hitting, slapping, pinching, poking, touching, looking, yelling, arguing, sneaking, hiding, distracting, everything you could possibly think of to keep from getting into bed. Then you need a drink of water, potty and a prayer. All 2 hours after the “time for bed” alarm goes off. Yes I have an alarm for that, breakfast, lunch, dinner, wakeup, bus and anything else I need to remember.
None of that is ever on TV or movies. It’s always cuddles and loves, ooh’s and ahh’s. It’s I’m sorry and smiles. The family has a group hug and lights out. The only way to get lights out here is remove the light bulb.
Our kids don’t watch a lot of TV so they don’t care if you take that away. We don’t have any video games in our house. They don’t have cell phones, kindles, iPad’s, mp3 players, or anything electronic like that. The one thing they think they can’t live without is books and I will never take their books away.
We do family nights on Friday and Saturday. We pile all the blankets and pillows in the house in the living room floor and watch a movie from RedBox. Pop popcorn, candy, chips, just all the junk food they aren’t allowed to have along with fruits and stuff. So it’s not like we aren’t a functioning loving family cause we are.

But we are not a TV family

Our problems are real. We aren’t civil sometimes. We say things that hurt. We fight back when we should turn the other cheek. We don’t have a happy ending at the end of the night. And it makes me feel that I am a failure as a parent because I can’t ever get that in my house. I fail because a happy home doesn’t happen the way mine does. I know that because TV says so… I know that’s a stupid statement but it gets my point across
What I need is to see real problems that don’t have easy solutions. Problems that occur more than once. Problems that you make the wrong decisions on. I need to see that I’m not a failure. I’m not hopeless. I’m not the worst parent ever. That others go through this and it’s ok. That it’s ok to not like your children even though you love them with all your heart.

I need to know I’m not alone…

So, dear TV families, I do not like you for making society think our families aren’t good enough, strong enough or loving enough…

Because we are

Stressed is Desserts backwards right?

Let me tell you, my life is usually not this much drama but lately that is all it has been. Today, I am 37 weeks and 3 days. I have been in labor for 2 days. Some of it extremely painful, most is not but still labor none the less. My insides feel like ground up meat and I am so sore. I am thankful, don’t get me wrong. I will do this til the end of time if I needed to, I am just tired.

On another note, one of the reasons I am early in my labor is stress. There is so much going on that I can’t wrap my head around it all.

My mom has had breathing issues for a long time. She grew up in a copper mine town in Tenn. and that was the start of many abuses to her lungs. She smoked most of her life, she lived in smogged filled cities, she worked in a smokehouse, list goes on. She was diagnosed with emphysema long ago and about 5 years ago she was put on oxygen.

She had never had a doctor take interest in her lungs until now. She has never had x-ray or MRI’s to confirm anything concerning her lungs. Now, she needs surgery on a more private level but is a big surgery. She can’t because she was evaluated 4 days before the scheduled surgery, to find out, she had pneumonia and several nodules. Her surgeon got her into a lung doctor’s office that was impossible to get into. He has begun a series of test that are leading to another series of test.

Today was one of those test. She was having a lung biopsy. Something you would normally be put to sleep for. She can’t, remember? Her doctor cautioned her, cautioned her a lot, that this could be very dangerous. That her lungs were so bad, they could very easily collapses and he could do nothing to fix it. She has been a tore up mess (excuse my country coming out).

My mom doesn’t see the good in anything. NOTHING. She had herself dead at the end of her doctor’s appointment. She has done nothing but concentrated on the worse. I am her outlet when she panics, so I have been hearing how she is going to not live through this, that my dad will grieve to death or starve from not having anyone to take care of him. THEN, she started in that if she does happen to live through this, she knows she has cancer. She can’t be operated on and she will refuse all treatments until she can come to my home to spend a couple of weeks with her new grandson. I start considering inducement because she could need treatment and I would be the reason she didn’t get it. She could survive easily if she had taken treatment if she hadn’t refused it to come here.

See where I am going with the stress thing? Let’s add to it. My parent’s neighbor’s all live like a small compound. There is the dad, Mickey: mom, Sandra: daughter, Terri: granddaughter, Michelle: great grands, Jasmine and Christian. About a month ago, Terri was walking around the property and was going to pick some wild black berries off the vine. She stepped over into them and thought she had stepped into a fire ant bed. She went home and the next day went to the hospital where she died from a snake bite that was not treated properly. She was a legal guardian of Christian although he has never been adopted, Michelle signed her rights to him to her mom.

That was a month ago, this past weekend, the mom, Sandra walked into the kitchen to take her medicine, sat down in a chair and literally fell over in the floor dead. She had been sick a long time and was completely broken when her daughter died. She was set to be buried yesterday but, yes there is a but, the dad, Mickey had a heart attack and was sent to the ICU to find out he had pneumonia. Mickey has custody of Jasmine and is legal guardian of Christian. Michelle, who is Jasmine and Christian’s biological mother never wanted her children and still makes it clear during all this that she doesn’t want them although they all live on the same property. She has many drug and alcohol problems and has already turned her grandparent’s house upside down. Mickey is a second father to me so this upsets me so much but what is worse, Michelle calls my parents when something happens. My mom has been right there for Sandra’s death, Mickey’s cardiac arrest, when Terri was bit.

This all adds to the fear that my mom has that she is going to die. So she calls me. I have to try to talk her out of her panic, give her reason’s for the things going on around them. Convince her that Michelle isn’t going to get high and rob their house. (they live in the country, there is really no other neighbors, just the few houses in this one little spot in the middle of acres and acres of nothingness.)

So yes I am stressed and ready to find some comfort somewhere. My sister and her daughter was with my mom for her biopsy this morning and everything went fine. That is a relief, now on to the results of the test.