Secular Confessions

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Originally Posted by demigraf

By the way, I don't think you're being oversensitive, because you have a right to feel every feeling you have. I just hope that I could offer some ways of thinking about your situation in an empowering way, to lessen the hurt you feel. I've been around you long enough to believe you can soldier through anything life throws at you, and hope you see yourself as resilient as I see you.
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Thanks for this, Myles. I am so fortunate to have such supportive friends in here.

I am not sure I am really articulating my problem well. My mother is certainly overprotective but I do have strategies in place for dealing with that - I really do take steps back when I need to and I don't let myself get overwhelmed the way some of the ladies on APA in general seem to. And she certainly isn't pushing me to have kids although I know it would make her extremely happy. It's just that she is a mother to the core (which she should be!) and I think my own issues of having that role denied me are making me impatient with that role if that makes sense. I wonder if there is some inner part of me that resents her having that role with me when I don't have it at all. The whole Christmas stocking thing I posted in Random really sums everything up in a nutshell - DH and I would like to have our own Christmas together as a family. He's in his 40's and I'm nearly there and just because we are the "kids" in the relationship doesn't make us any less a family of our own. But my parents just as much want to have that parenting role, (my mother much more so than my father), and I think the fact that my sister and brother live on the other side of the country makes it even more intense. It's just hard and I think holidays in particular bring all of those issues to the fore. In particular I think DH and I both resent that we don't have our own kids to open presents with in our own house Christmas morning and we resent being forced to continue to play that role for my parents.

You are right, Myles, and I am a grown woman and I DO have a family of my own, kids or no kids. It has no bearing on my independence. It is just hard. Thanks to all of you for letting me vent about it.

My mother can be - not judgmental exactly, although she is to a certain extent - but really more of a gossip about family issues and concerns. She spends a lot of time discussing how others live their lives even though she is a very accepting person for the most part, especially considering her generation. But she puts family first, and she has complained to me that I place more emphasis on my relationships with long-distance friends (you guys :) ) than I do with my cousins and other extended family. I love my cousins - but you guys are my friends. And that takes priority for me over distant cousins who, honestly, haven't extended that interest to me any more than I have to them. Not that I love them any less, but we are in different places and there are too many issues in the way with some of these relationships.

Topic change - Shelley, that weekend sounds like a blast! Let us know how it goes and I would love to see pictures of your outfits!

And Ash, that's great that Travis is doing so well with reading. I had no doubt he would be a great reader with you as his mom.

That makes sense Mandy and I can totally understand how feeling pressured to spend Christmas morning with them would be unpleasant, to say the least. I'm wondering, though, if they might become even more annoying when you do have children...like be there at your door at 4:00 a.m. so that they could witness their grandkids opening their presents. :P lol...you know how some parents are just like that. No matter what, they'll find anyways to make their children cringe. Mine do as well...in other ways. :)

I also understand how at least subconsciously there could be some resentment toward your mom for being able to be a mom when you haven't had that chance yet.

I know I had a lot of resentment toward my own mom for not being a mother to me...and while that may not really be surprising, I also attribute that to my desire to have so many children. Way deep inside, I think I was trying to mother my inner child. Our parental relationships are very profound and no one can escape them.

I did understand what you meant all along Mandy...sorry I got tangential. Your initial post on the topic was very thought provoking for me. I'm glad you at least have us to let it out to. And I'm 100% with you on this group of friends being more important that our extended families. :P

Ok, I lied. The whole gun issue is enough to not only make me judgmental, but very, very vocal. :P I'm really not understanding the support of civilians owning assault weapons and magazines. Beyond not understanding it, it's making me angry on a level that's starting to scare me.

Way down deep in the depth of my soul where I think the darkest things, I've actually had thoughts of saying, "If only you and your children become the victims of gun crime, then I'll support it." but of course I don't really mean that. I'm just so angry.

And sad. I fear our society will never change its thinking and for generations to come, innocent people will continue to be victims to mass shootings. How is that an acceptable risk to some people? I just do not get it.

That's exactly the problem I have with it too, Chrissy. It's like when you get a toy and you find out it's faulty or it has lead or whatever, you take it away, right? That is what I equivocate guns to, except it's much more obvious. Guns are not a toy--their purpose is to kill and yet we still let people run around with them.

Mandy, I'm sorry if I completely missed the point of the article you quoted. It is very thought provoking and I never thought about that whole process of people becoming different things like aunts and mothers and uncles and how it really is a developmental stage.

Mandy, this article about Urban Tribes kind of suits the bill for what you are thinking about as far as becoming distant from your parents, even though you are married and it doesn't involve the parenting/child aspect. It's about how your friends and those who are involved in your daily life become much more important than your (extended) family, because they are who are around you all the time. I was involved in an urban tribe when that article came out. We did exactly that sort of stuff. Theme parties, whitewater expeditions, everything. It was a blast. We were there for each other through the heartaches, through the triumphs, through everything. Now we've all split apart and I can't call anyone if I'm having a rough day, though I know if something absolutely catastrophic happens I can have people donate to a cause or come to a once-a-year-party.

Thanks, L. I will read that article.

Kate, no need to apologize. I wasn't upset - you asked a good question. We all read things with the perspective we each bring to the table and that's actually one of the things that is really cool about this group. Different insight without judgment.

Jennifer, reading back over the thread I realized I didn't congratulate your sister on her engagement! Such a special moment for her, even more so than for most.

Oh Jennifer, I forgot to say congrats to your sister too!

Shelley, that camping trip sounds totally fun. I would be really interested in doing that. I love historical re-enactment. I was very involved for several years in medieval re-enactment, and developed a character and sewed clothes and painted scrolls and had a sword and shield and went to war (drove all the way out to Pennsylvania and to Phoenix) and camped in a canvas tent and did calligraphy and was apprenticed and did first aid at battles and helped at feasts and learned the dances and built a rope bed because it was too uncomfortable to sleep on furs on the ground. It was so much fun. The kids at those events were well cared for (I loved watching over them) and had a lot of freedom and a lot of fun. It was definitely roughing it, in that it was too cold or too hot or not modern conveniences, but it was really wonderful in so many other ways, and the people were great. Definitely nerdy, but great. DH gives me a hard time about that period in my life, but I don't regret it.

L, I was kind of on the fringe of one of those groups when I was dating my author ex. He knew a lot of people heavily involved in medieval reenactment and we hung out with them. Nerdy but awesome people. I probably would have gotten way involved if our relationship hadn't ended. Who knows - we might have run into each other if you were going to events near Phoenix!

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Originally Posted by daylilies

That's exactly the problem I have with it too, Chrissy. It's like when you get a toy and you find out it's faulty or it has lead or whatever, you take it away, right? That is what I equivocate guns to, except it's much more obvious. Guns are not a toy--their purpose is to kill and yet we still let people run around with them.

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Exactly. When people abuse a privilege, it's taken away. Or it should be.

Congratulations Jennifer!! That's wonderful news!

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Originally Posted by AmeriBrit

Shelley, that sounds like an amazing weekend; I've love to do something like that. I'm looking forward to camping trips when the boys get a little bit older. I think I could definitely live in Florida. It's somewhere in the USA that DH would probably enjoy living as well. He's been there, but I have not! His whole family went when he was 17 and stayed in a villa and did the whole Disney World thing. My whole idea of Florida is based on the Golden Girls, I have to admit! Maybe one day we secular ladies could be the Golden Girls? LOL

The Ford garage fixed my car for $400; it was a coil and a spark plug that needed replacing. I'm sure they ripped us off for that price, but DH insists that we take the cars there so that on the books when we sell the cars on, we can say that they have only ever been serviced by official Ford garages. I'm just glad it wasn't something major. Now I am thinking about getting a new car. My car is an '04 model. I like the look of the Hyundai Qashqai and the Ford Kuga. My dream car is still a VW Bug, but I think I'll have to wait til the boys are out of booster seats for me to ever think of realistically getting one of those.

Today at school, a parent came in in the morning and asked to speak to me. They let me know that their child had not done their homework because they couldn't understand it and they (the parent) didn't know how to do it either. I thought it was very brave of them to admit that and I felt a little sad that they couldn't understand it. It was 10 questions of very basic algebra like: 5 + x = 6; what is x? I think I would be horrified if I couldn't help my 5th grader with their work, but you never know with the things they learn these days! Speaking of learning, Travis is doing extremely well with his reading and got moved up a level at school. They do color bands here, starting with pink, then red, then yellow, then blue and then green. They are expected to be on green by the time they leave kinder, and Trav is well on his way to being there. As someone who loves to read and who spent most of her childhood living out daydreams in books, I am so thrilled! Oh, and as well, Cash watches when Travis is sounding out words, and he has been mimicing the sound, and it's so cute. He'll pick up a book and go, "Buh, eh, tuh." :)

And my last random thing for this post-I have been taking vitamin D, and I can really tell a difference! Thank you to all of you who recommended that!

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Sorry Ash, I actually saw this post from my phone and wanted to respond, but then when I clicked the link in my email notification, it took me to the last post and I'd forgotten about this one by then. I suck.

Anyway-I'm glad your car is fixed. If things are done there like here, and I have no reason to suspect they wouldn't be since it's Ford, I'm not sure you could have gotten the work done much cheaper elsewhere. Maybe in labor fees, but Ford's are notoriously more expensive in parts and they don't have many options. We've have a few Fords and unless they were well over 10 years old, we had difficulty getting parts from Autozone or Napa. Almost all of them had to be ordered through the dealership-at a high cost of course. VW does the same thing.

That's cute about the parents admitting they couldn't help their kid with their homework. While even I could figure out the example you showed, I admit to having to tell teachers I couldn't help my kids with their homework. In elementary school. When I say I'm 'bad at math' I'm really, really bad. I'd memorize things just long enough to take the test, but none of it stuck. After so many years of being away from it, none of it looks remotely familiar to me now. It's very frustrating when your kid doesn't 'get it' and you're no help. Teachers expect parents to help, but honestly sometimes I just couldn't. And I know I'm not alone in that. It's created some bad feelings when I've had teachers give me an attitude about it too...I mean, they do it all day long, every year. Of course they know it. How the heck am I supposed to when it's nothing I use ever? I don't lie to my kids either. I admit they likely won't need it as an adult (beyond basic addition and subtraction). I don't and never have. :D Ugh-don't even get me started.

What were you taking the Vitamin D for?

I totally feel you on the math, Chrissy, and it's even worse because the way the teachers want the kids to solve the problem can change. DH and Josh both have the same kind of backwards way of doing math. I can't even explain it. They arrive at the right answer but the way they get to it is sort of on the abstract side and I can already see Josh might have issues with showing his work.

That too. There was one thing I recalled in math and was helping Jesi with once. When I showed her how to find the solution, she 'got it' and was like, "That's so easy! Why don't they teach it that way in school?" There was work shown, but she didn't get credit for it because it wasn't done the way the teacher taught it. FML. That's when I get the attitude towards the teachers...you want them to learn it your way and do it your way only, then do NOT expect me to help. :P

Yeah my aunt and her wife have called my sister over before to help the kids out with their grade school homework....I think it's usually been math. they would probably call me or my DH but we live 5 hours away.

My DH is a math person...he almost majored in it for college but ended up doing geophysics...should have maybe stuck with the math! He thinks it is fun and liked to make up programs for his graphing calculator. Now that is pretty nerdy. LOL Or maybe I am nerdy for finding that hot? LOL
Me, I used to be able to do math just fine but in high school when I had calc at 7:30 am, I dropped it. Too early for it and I didn't need the credit.

What I hated was biology class where we had to copy things into our notebooks and were graded on it. I have no art talent at all so my drawings sucked. Instead I had my 10 year old sister draw them in for me. I still remember her being like what is mitosis and thought her version was much funnier (mitosis are full of crud....translated that is my toes have fuzz between them). She thought she was hot stuff doing 9th grade homework in the 5th grade.

LOL Jennifer, I hated drawing things in science class too!
I didn't have any siblings to do it for me either :(
I think it's ridiculous that kids are graded on how they got to the answer. I didn't think much of it back then but thinking about it now, it makes no sense. Nobody cares how you find the right answers in real life...

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Originally Posted by daylilies

LOL Jennifer, I hated drawing things in science class too!
I didn't have any siblings to do it for me either :(
I think it's ridiculous that kids are graded on how they got to the answer. I didn't think much of it back then but thinking about it now, it makes no sense. Nobody cares how you find the right answers in real life...

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That's for sure. And, if some aspect of a person's job utilizes math a lot, they'll 'get' it. I can look at an office space and know whether I need 10 or 15 ft of ethernet to reach the jack. Because I did that a lot. Before I worked in this field though, I couldn't just eyeball it and tell ya what I'd need, and that resulted in a few trips back to my office to get the other size. :) lol

I'm a math dork. I do math all.day.long. But I also do it backwards from most other people but get the same answer. I always have. I agree that if you show your work and get the right answer, how you do it (unless it's fundamentally wrong somehow) shouldn't matter.

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Originally Posted by daylilies

LOL Jennifer, I hated drawing things in science class too!
I didn't have any siblings to do it for me either :(
I think it's ridiculous that kids are graded on how they got to the answer. I didn't think much of it back then but thinking about it now, it makes no sense. Nobody cares how you find the right answers in real life...

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I can understand a kid being asked to show their work, so the teacher can be sure the kid understands the concepts, and didn't just copy the right answer from someone else. They really shouldn't care if the kid used their method or someone else's as long as their methodology/logic are sound.

I did okay in math in school and college, but never really got it until I did it for my graduate program. The funny thing is that I got much better grades in math at the lower levels than I did at the graduate level, because the classes were geared towards people with math/physics undergrad background, and regardless of how hard I worked, I couldn't make up that kind of lost ground. But, I knew that a B in that math class was worth 10 A-s in my undergrad calculus class, so it was all good.

Jennifer, I'm a biology major that can't draw. And in India, they make you draw *everything* - structure of a leaf, a root, stem, cross section of the eye, ear, earthworms, millipedes, snakes - I can't even remember the other 100 things. It's good to have a mom that can draw. She drew in my 'records' (where neatness counted), and I drew well enough to get by on exams. She told me in 10th grade that she won't be doing that any more; thankfully, one of my artistically inclined cousins showed me some tricks on how to get break down the big picture into more manageable smaller bites, and do decent drawings. Fortunately, there is very little by way of drawing in college here, even for a biology major.

Well for my birthday tomorrow my gift is, starting a new job!!! My stomach is in knots. I haven't worked outside the home since March 2008. My sil called today and said they need me to start tomorrow. So now I am scrambling trying to figure out what to do with Gilly the 2 days he doesn't attend school. And my dh is going on a 2 week conference, beginning next week. Ack! The new job is working at a doctor's office. Luckily they train you, and I get to wear scrubs, so that is easy. I am excited, but so nervous at the same time!!

:hooray: How exciting! Was this in the works all along? What will you be doing?

Congrats on the job! That is exciting.

Congrats and good luck Shelley!

Chrissy, I am terrible at eyeballing stuff. It's one of the things that I felt would hold me back when I was cooking in restaurants. I could never eyeball what size pan I'd need to cook something in or how much diced potatoes would fit in a specific bowl, things like that, so I'd feel like a dork, going back and forth to get different pans and things. Ugh. I do it at home too. I dirty every pan in the kitchen making one meal, sometimes.

Congrats on the new job, Shelley!

I do that too, Kate.

I do that when I'm cooking too sometimes...I think it's easier to judge/guesstimate a linear foot length than how round a pan do I need to fry up these 4 pork chops. :P

Ehhh...maybe a little bit.

My husband is gifted with that kind of thing. Good thing...he'd be a pretty incompetent cable guy if he weren't.

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Originally Posted by daylilies

Ehhh...maybe a little bit.

My husband is gifted with that kind of thing. Good thing...he'd be a pretty incompetent cable guy if he weren't.

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:laugh: I could only imagine!

Shelley, I came on today to mainly look for a picture of Gilly dressed as New Jersey's son. :) Happy to hear that you are starting a new job. I hope you love it and find a new routine quickly.

Speaking of math problems, one of my favorite job interviews was one where the interviewer placed a page of code in front of me. It was in a language I'd never seen before (because it was proprietary), and then he put another sheet in front of me and said "these are the variables in the code. Given these inputs, I want you to tell me what the outputs are going to be." He said I had 10 minutes to solve it. I was just about done in 5 minutes; I had it down to simple arithmetic and then I was done, when 2 ladies walked into the room. I apologized and said I thought I'd had 10 minutes. They said, "No problem. We don't want to know your solution, actually. We want you to talk us through how you got to the solution. We want to know how you think." I thought that was pretty cool that they wanted to know my thought processes. Though, in light of this discussion, I'm wondering what would have happened if I'd gone about solving the problem in one of the backward ways Lisa was talking about. I wonder if they'd have hired me then?

Congrats, Shelley! Hope it all goes smoothly.

Myles, that interview sounds awesome. I bet they wouldn't have cared what the method was. As long as it was logically sound.

Oh that would have given me a panic attack!