Who Do You Admire?

Here at my house I am the biggest hard ass about little nit picky things. I get this fabulous trait from my beloved mother. Yesterday I was going over the homework and I spied a little piece of paper that my step daughter had in her folder. I immediately snapped at her wanting to know what she was trying to hide. She said it was for an assignment that they were doing in writing. She proceeded to tell me that they were writing about the person that they most admired. I snapped again who are you going to be writing about. She said the person she admired most was me. I immediately felt like total crap. Today as I was going through the homework folders I saw the half finished writing assignment. As I read the paper I started to cry. She said the nicest thing about me. She said that I was teaching her to grow up and be smart and polite. I just felt horrible as I read this paper. I am soooooo hard on this child and she writes a nice paper about me. I do not deserve in any way to be honored in this writing assignment. Her paper has taught me two things. The first is that I need to think before I start reprimanding the kids. I have been way too hard on them. The second thing that I learned is that the things that I am trying to get through to them is actually getting through to them. I am very proud of Kaitlyn. She is a beautiful and intelligent young lady and I hope that she makes all of her dreams come true. Some day maybe she can reconnect with her mom, but for now I will try my best everyday to make sure she is taught the things she needs to know to make her way in this crazy world. I just need to remember to do that in a more kind way, so as to not imitate my own disapproving mother. I'm not bitter or anything....

Sour SIL

I have spent the last few months dealing with a sour SIL. Some days I can stomach the sour puss and some days I want to strangle her and put her out of her misery. I am usually a nice person. I usually would never let anyone know that I do not like them, BUT I am almost to the point of loosing it with this person. I absolutely refuse to go to her house. I will not let my children spend any time alone with her and the holiday season is fast approaching. What am I to do? We recently had a funeral that required the whole family to be together for more than a few days. The day of the funeral I had just had enough of the sour puss poisoning everyone. I had to make an emergency phone call to my sister. I needed to vent before I blew up at my hubby. He was in no shape emotionally to deal with my crazy ranting about his totally out of line sister. The minute our car left the driveway to carry us back home I could hear her poisoning all the remaining family members. I have decided that she is so unhappy with her own life that she is hell bent on making the whole family believe that I am the worst person on the face of the earth. The family lets her continue on because "that is the way she is", but if I speak my mind about anything then I am out of line. Since moving out here I have noticed a big change in her demeanor. Her days are now spent sitting on her back deck slumped in a chair,smoking and complaining about how broke they are and how fat she feels she is becoming. I know that this has become kind of a rant rather than a blog entry, but I just needed to get it off my chest. I don't know how I am going to make it through the holidays. I am hoping that I will not bite my tongue off!!!! Stay tuned.