the toxic mom throne
hubby's sil wants to sell her hubby's portion of the farm. his brother is in advanced stages of huntington's disease and hasn't been fully capable of making such decisions for a long time. it really is her decision out of necessity. she is a bred, born and raised houston girl and has lived there her entire senior life. the dry, dusty plains are as foreign to her as any port she has visited in her vacation travels. with gratitude for the devotion she is showing in the caregiving of hubby's disabled brother, we are working with her to simplify her duties. we have first dibs on buying their half of the farm and she is working fairly with us in return.
now to come up with the $1.1 mil we need to keep the farm intact. . . those pesky details. . . again i sigh at the fact that my in-laws paid less for this farm in 1965 than they paid for the fil's last cowboy cadillac in 2009. that very cowboy cadillac has since been repurposed as hubby's "bee buggy." he uses it to tend the three apiaries scattered across our 130 acres.
finally! ! ! the perfect excuse to get rid of the toxic mom throne in the tourist trap 190 miles south of here. the real estate market there is as insane as the entertainers, politicians and educators who populate the still booming metroplex. we don't anticipate it taking long to sell the place at a ridiculous profit.
alas, that calls for reentering the place to take an inventory of what we still have stored there and make a toxic bucketful of decisions on what to do with all that accumulated crap. i haven't been there since ys's funeral in 2019. ys and his wife's thing piles were precisely where they left them before the fatal accident. i suspect they still are. the woman who has been living there rent free is not there to act as a clean up woman. she is only there to keep tabs on the place for us. aside from that, i haven't been there since 2016 when i started the farm restoration project here. when i abandoned that body of notions in 2017 to begin my big river tour, i launched from here. my place on the toxic mom throne hasnae interested me since i was awarded the toxic crown.
next week is thanksgiving break. the munchkins will be with their mother's family for the entire week. hubs and i have decided it would be a good time to do that unpleasant do. the sooner begun, the sooner done. small steps, big faith and lots of prayer.
once more i leave the mood icon on the rapid cycling median.
Replies
as the countdown begins, our morning coffee talk this morning left me feeling ready for the test of just how far hubs and i have come in "getting on the same sheet of music" since i increased my social distance to other states in 2017. in regards to the house we bought as a retirement dream and abandoned as a middle age child crash pad, hubs and i are still operating out of different libraries. the two of us have not spent much time there together. in 2011 when we bought the place, he was still a workaholic tech executive who didnae spend much time at home. my complaints about catering to middle aged children were nothing more than a sign of **my illness**. the middle aged cherubs were eager to join his gossip circles in reinforcing that notion. it was my **not working** responsibility to care for the **children** and i had no right to complain. yo! ! ! mister tech exec! ! ! those "children" grew to middle age while you were busy being busy. at least we are agreed on the "not working" part of the gossip. once i removed myself as the buffer between himself and the non-corporate realities of the situation, he began to admit to seeing a bit of what i was trying to tell him during our still frequent communications. slower than a corporate executive removing ass-covers, but? ? ? small steps, big faith and lots of prayer.
fast forwarding to the third year of our second parenting career with our youngest son's three orphans, i am risking the sin of pride over the new normal we have established to give these children an honest chance at life. hubs still has business at the old place, 190 miles south of here and has begun to admit that he is suffering anxiety and panic attacks over going there and staying at the old place. here on the farm, heavily distracted by the needs of still young children, i have begun to feel safe discussing the old place with him. he is still a bit disparaging over my calling it, "the toxic mom throne," but is quicker to admit he needs to find his own word for ^it^.
will returning to our last domestic tit for tat playing field regress us to the old normal?
testing, 1, 2, 3. . .
I have tried twice now to respond here at both times the site has kicked me off.
I will try again..
It sounds like this dealing with the selling of the old place is bringing up a lot of agitation, anxiety
and triggers..you are dealing with it well though by talking it out here...
My brother taught me the word "adulting" applicable for any type of headachey task us
adults have to do. A friend of mine is also facing clearing out and doing something with
her deceased mom's home. She can't seem to do it though...it's been years!
Kudos to you for taking the holiday week to get 'er done!
Bravo and way to go!!
I agree. Major undertakings and you are doing great working your plan one step at a time ((hug))
mark, yesterday when i wrote the initial post, i unintentionally hit "save draft." i'll bet that's why the site wouldn't let you respond.
i love that term, "adulting." it does, indeed, work nicely for those headachy responsibilities of independence.
:)
(((((Arfie)))))))
Here with you
Will be lighting candles for you the whole time
Sending lots of support, hope & many prayers
Gentle hug <3
thank you, missy. prayers appreciated.
and thank you for the reminder of the prayer candles. think i'll pack a stash of them to burn while i work to dismantle the toxic mom throne.
as i prep myself for the hard and unpleasant week to come, i find myself believing that i have processed the strictly personals of the toxic mom and monster-in-law awards far enough that they donae ruffle my feathers much anymore. i sincerely feel them as reflections of the middle aged children who gave the awards than my personal realities. those middle aged children know even less about my life than the busy executive who has honored me with similar awards of his own.
it be that busy executive who worries me. he retired from the corporate gig back in february, but the habits are still very much with him. he has come a long way in acknowledging that his socially distant water cooler expertise doesnae have the omniscience to know all the facts of life outside his corporate busy buzz. here on the farm, it has gotten much easier for us to talk about those ancient ^its^ without interrupting one another, etc., butttttttaaaaaa. . . will we be able to maintain that progress at the scene of our old habits?
here's to hoping the stretching of our current comfort zone will bring closure to all those bygone nightmares.
just hoping and praying. . .
of course ES chose this particular week to launch another round of text (email?) attacks. i find it eerie how routinely the people in my life seem to sense without knowing that there is activity they are interested in going in my life. hubs is his target for this go round. hubs reads his email on his phone, and i didnae note whether the attack was via email or text. the big diff between to two would be whether or not ES is once more without a cell phone. the man goes through tech toys faster than i go through socks. i often walk outdoors in my socks, so i go through them quicker than your average pedestrian. ES's curseful ranting is all too familiar and, again, the shrink who guided us through YS's college breakdown popped up on my shoulder saying, "don't engage a psychosis." let them vent it out, from a safe social distance, of course. no venting on my body, please.
i am dancing with joy over how open and civilized the discussion has been between hubs and i. processing the emotions attached to knowing our son is homeless and feeling disinherited is harder and hurtier than a cattle stampede, but that not-so-simple fact has yet to launch into our domestic tit-for-tat family tradition. it has been long enough since his last text attack that there is a sense of relief that he is still alive.
nothing in ES's rants indicated that he had a clue on our plans to sell the house. there is not a fiber in my being that believes he wouldn't have rant worthy opinions of the move, so i am fairly confident of his ignorance. he would, likely, have far fewer opinions of our being in town, so i am far less confident of his ignorance there.
sorting. . .
methinks we're holding steady in the stormy sees.
letting god lead the dance.
last day before the real trial begins. . . my colon is acting up and i have muscle aches in my shoulders. 2 nag flags that anxiety is nibbling away at my serenity. most of my mental chatter is an affirmation on why i feel it wiser to deny my maternal wish to see my son. more toxic mom honors are the best hope i can see in such an encounter. worst case boggles the mind with the renewed memories of his creative cursing. yes, dear, you are the only person in the world with needs of their own. yes, dear, you are a mere victim of life. yes, dear, your schemes of justice deserve immediate enactment. kill the maggots.
note to self: sarcasm is the greek word for "tearing of flesh."
the selena version of "sukiyaki" has been my therapy song for the last few days. unrequited love is a universal phenom.
llega la hora. . .
excitement is a volatile mix. the right and ready excitement in the air this morning carries distinctly different flavors for the young and the old. the children are looking happily confident in their week with their mother's family. hubs and i feel reasonably confident that we can trust that excitement. the mother's family still looks suspiciously demanding and unstable to our unstable senses, but the familiarity is on a steady curve. we think. we pray. we step in faith.
the dismantling of the toxic mom throne is largely unexplored territory. the nuts and bolts of preparing a house for market are familiar enough to us. more so for my gypsy life than hubby's 5th generation legacy, but between us there is balance, when we are able to balance between us. alas, the two wings of our relationship do launch into the egg shell waltz all too easily. the egg shell waltz can explode into domestic tit-for-tat with dangerous ease.
the unexplored territory is in returning to the scene of some of the meanest tit-for-tat in our 42 tit-for-tattery years together. our shared (?) prayer is that over the course of building and stabilizing our little ship of fools we have learned how to recognize when we are egg shell waltzing and sweeping away a few egg shells instead of cracking more eggs to add to the pile. just praying. letting god lead the waltz. god seems to like the blue danube waltz. it be the tune which always pops into my head when i remind myself to let god lead the dance, typically complete with the geese from "fantasia" illustrating the point.
time to pack. . .
((((Arfie))))))
I hope everything goes okay as possible
Sending support, hope & prayers
Gentle hug <3
Big hugs Arfie!
thanks guys. the kids have been delivered to the maternal family and i am taking some decompression time to shift gears and take inventory of what all needs doing and which items we might want to keep. space is already in short supply in the new house, so i don't believe we'll be able to keep much. for sure, it's allot. small steps, big faith and lots of prayer.
so far the most consistent emotion in the psycho cauldron of the toxic mom throne is relief that i will finally be getting some closure on this period of my life. for this week, i even find myself grateful for eldest son's estrangement. curses, name-calling and harsh judgements are nowhere on my wish list just now.
amen arfie! you deserve good closure!