Alright, so I'm gonna do this in bullet form because I don't feel like typing forever, as well as when I started this journal I was a little
bit "under the influence."
* So, I probably need to start being careful about what I show to which friends. That last real personal journal I wrote while stoned off my ass? I showed it to another friend I trust a lot and now it feels like her whole outlook about me has changed to something akin to a sex fiend. Like the only reason why I'm her friend is because I want to get in her pants. =/
* I have no idea how to live with a shopaholic. It feels like Natalie has no idea how to curb her spending habits. Take this past summer, for instance. Yard sales abound. Natalie had trouble passing a yard sale without slowing down or stopping to look at it. And then, she had even more trouble not buying anything from said yard sales. And even now, when yard sale season is over and done with, she goes and places a $1000+ layaway at Walmart. Without care about the bills and such we already have difficulty paying off...
* Natalie is one of those people that didn't have very much growing up. She had all the essentials, but didn't get much of what she wanted, so she ends up with the idea that her kids deserve whatever they want, or that they can never have enough clothes/shoes. Except that she spends so much on clothing that she ends up having to sell most of what she buys later on just to cover the debts she's wracked up from spending so much money.
* Her little girl, Autumn, is driving me absolutely crazy. She's 7 and acts like she's still 3. If she wants something, she'll throw a fit til she gets it. If she doesn't like something, she'll throw a fit until she gets what she likes. She's trained herself to throw up whenever she eats any kind of vegetable. She faked crying so much that the fake cry has become the real cry. And three quarters of what she tells me is a lie.
* Currently, she's throwing a fit because she wants a bath. She says she "hasn't had a bath in a week" so obviously she's aced the art of exaggeration, as she was washed last night. Both kids (but Autumn especially) can't get to sleep at night without the television being on, and both will throw fits if they're told no TV.
* Natalie doesn't know how to punish her kids. She can't stand by her word. At the beginning of this year, the both of us agreed that there was to be no Xbox Sunday through Thursday of the week during the school season. That rule lasted a week. I try to enforce that rule, and Natalie discards it at the drop of a hat (or a tear, as is the norm).
* Her son Jonathan is an absolute wuss of a 9 year old. Yes, I get it, he's young, but Natalie let's him cry for EVERYTHING. He doesn't get soda with dinner? Cry. Doesn't get to play Xbox as soon as he gets home from school? Cry. Doesn't get a toy from Walmart even we don't have the money for it right now and Christmas is right around the corner anyway? Cry. Doesn't want to go to the football practice he begged and pleaded with his mother to put him in (that cost her $50 she really didn't have in the first place just for signups, not to mention the nearly $200 she spent on his equipment)? Cry. And when he's crying because he's not getting something his sister has because his sister got into something she wasn't supposed to, instead of punishing Autumn for getting into shit, she gives Jonathan the same thing and Autumn gets away scot-free.
* Then there's the Xbox. It's mine. Natalie knows it's mine. But apparently I'm not allowed to say who gets to play it and when. The kids used to come to me for permission to play, and then they bypass me and go to their mother when I told them no. But they found that more often than not, when I said no, it stayed. So now they bypass me and go straight to their mother. And when I say no after she's said yes, her word stays. It's pissing me off. I'm about to go buy a little diary lock and lock the prongs of the power box to the console so that they have to come to me for permission, because only I will have the key. And you know what? No Xbox Sunday through Thursday. I don't care if they're off for fall/winter/spring break. It's still the school season, and it's not summer yet.
* I have never wanted so badly to hit a little kid than when I came here to take care of Nat's kids. They need to be spanked or have some sort of punishment more than just being yelled at, but I'm afraid that if I spank them, I'll bruise them. Natalie has informed me that if I spank them, I'm to use a paddle or my hand, but I used my hand once on Autumn for lying to me and ended up leaving a hand-shaped bruise on her butt. And I didn't swing that hard in the first place. And even if I do spank them, I'll be the only one doing it. Natalie doesn't spank until she's been pushed over the edge, and even then it's a 50/50 chance.
* Then there's the cat. We have three cats now: Shimmer, the oldest, Shine, the middle (she's the one I rescued from under a Walmart semi), and Cortana, the youngest (the orange and white cat that Nat's always wanted). Shimmer is going through... something akin to an extended heat, or something else. Constantly chirruping, constantly trying to run outside whenever the door is opened, rolling around on the floor, and PISSING ON EVERYTHING. That cat has been beat so many times for pissing outside of the catbox, you'd expect her to have learned by now. But no, she's still doing it. And Natalie's always talking about how we have to get rid of her, but when I offer to punt her out the front door, Nat waves me away and doesn't do anything about it. We don't have the money to take the cat to the vet to find out what's really going on, and it's gotten to the point now where we have to keep our bedroom doors shut and chase her out of the rooms if she gets in them at all. I'm starting to wonder what cat stew would taste like.
I'm gonna stop there for now and come back to this later. In another journal, probably.
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