It’s election night for the Queensland State Government.  Mr K has been in his element all day.  As the gorgeous Vin Diesel as XXX would say ‘He lives for this shit!’   He’s been standing around getting ignored and abused handing out How-To-Vote cards for a friend of the family who is running for the greens all morning… ceremoniously dragged us all down to go vote at our local booth and did his utmost to try and impart some of his fervour for the ‘democratic process’ in the Small Child while he was at it.  Needless to say he failed at the latter in a spectacular fashion – but then what 7 year old IS interested in voting and politics???  None really… unless you count Mr K himself who as a small child apparently ‘scored’ a ballot box after an election and kept it in his bedroom for several years.  I have no idea what that is about so yeah… he’s certifiable.

I think he’d love to run for office one of these days, but we all know that’s impossible for someone such as he with so many skeletons in the closet!!!  Anyway he’s off doing his best uber-political geek impression and hanging out at the Tally Room tonight (of all things to be doing on a Saturday night) and I’m hangin’ out doing wine and cheesy goodness with Yale which is far more useful expenditure of time imho.

So yeah… other than that ’twas a boring day.  I went shopping about bought some Tuesday Tops and picked up some winter things for the Small Child, went off to vote and that’s about it really.

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I used to think that mine was a tight knit family.  We used to have lots of family dinners AND (now this might be quite shocking) we used to actually enjoy each other’s company.  I know!  Who’d’ve thunk???  There was only the five of us – my Mum and Dad and us three girls – BigSal, myself and Trish and I remember having an almost idyllic childhood full of great family memories and fantastic camping holidays.

There was only 15 months age difference between myself and BigSal and we had to share a room until I was about 14 (oh she used to drive me nuts!) but we often had similar interests, liked similar music, were into the same things and did lots of things together as we had many mutual friends.

My little sister, Trish and I didn’t get along so well when we were really little… I was 10 when she was 6 and BigSal and I had largely grown out of whatever she was into by the time she was into it.  But when she was in high school and I was working, we used to hang out a lot together, go shopping a bit… I’d take her to the movies, buy her clothes and ‘right’ brands of sneakers and shit that I would have liked when I was I was still in high school but never had the money for  🙂 

Unfortunately Trish and I had a bit of a falling out when I was about 23 or 24… she was staying in my room and looking after all my stuff while I was in Europe for several months (co-incidentally my parents were in Africa at the same time) and when I came home a week early things were shall we say… in a the state of disarray?  She had been sleeping with her then boyfriend/now husband in MY bed (yeah this shouldn’t be a big deal but when you’re a little OCD and germophobic like I am…. Ewww!).  There was crap everywhere, the house hadn’t been cleaned, the kitchen was a general plague area, there was stains and drips from cups on my expensive stereo equipment, not a thing in the whole house to eat – not even the makings of toast… and then there was a dopey German Shepherd she had ill advisedly acquired that had obviously been bored stupid because it had been running laps of the backyard to the point where there were tracks worn in the grass.

So here was Borys…. straight off a 28 hr flight (half of which was spent sitting beside a gross little masturbating asian guy) arriving in BrisVegas at 0600, expecting a happy homecoming and instead come home to this huge shitty mess.  As soon as the shops were open I jumped in the car and went out to do some grocery shopping and then I spent until MIDNIGHT cleaning the house, washing my sheets and trying to figure out what to do about the grass before my parents got back home.  Trish didn’t come home that night at all.  She stayed at her boyfriend’s place and when she turned up the following morning I was going to have a chat about a few things with her.  But she never came into the house… she jumped out of her boyfriend’s car and jumped straight into her car and drove off to work – without coming in to check on anything, without feeding her dog and still not knowing I was back.

Needless to say, by the time she came home from work that afternoon I had had plenty of time to stew… and I did what I often do in such situations –  I roared my terrible roar, gnashed my terrible teeth, rolled my terrible eyes, and showed my terrible claws and….. she has never forgiven me for it.  I have several times tried to talk to her about it.  Tried to talk to her on the phone, wrote her a few letters and emails over the years and basically tried to recover our old friendship.  But the little bitch holds a grudge tighter than a frog’s arse is water tight… so I gave up and we’ve ended up an uneasy equillibrium which largely involves me tiptoeing around her and trying not to offend her delicate sensibilities and she for the most part I think prefers to pretend I don’t exist rather than grow the fuck up and try talk to me about it.  But que sera sera….  and that’s all I have to say about that.

So yeah, sort of close, we didn’t hate each other and we used to socialize together quite a lot which was always lots of fun.  Famliy dinners around the little kitchen table at Mum’s laughing like hyenas at the stupidest of things and then laughing at Dad who’s lopsided grin (Bell’s palsy years ago) used to crack us up anyway.  But when my Dad got sick, things changed a lot.  The laughter went away and several years on, it hasn’t really returned. 

Trish lives out of town so we don’t see her that much.  Big Sal is really busy trying to run the Pizza shop, hold down her job at the Govt AND managed two rambunctious preschoolers.  My Mum is still trying to learn to live her life all over again without my Dad which as you can imagine is quite the adjustment after nearly 40 years of marriage.  We’ve all become so wrapped up in our own lives now… which happens to everyone I guess.

However I’ve just had a bit of a disagreement with the family (unfortunately with my Mum… when I should have been taking it up with my sisters) and I realized that they don’t tell me anything.  I’m the last one to hear about plans for family gatherings.  Trish turned up here for Mum’s birthday the other week (at my place) and no one told me she was coming.  They all went down to Tambourine last weekend to picnic and see the glow worm caves… and I didn’t get invited.  Trish cancelled her cabin for the big family cruise we were supposed to be taking next year and didn’t tell me that either (even though I was co-ordinating all the bookings etc).  They just don’t tell me anything anymore and I’m starting to feel a little like the poor country cousin,

And worst still…. I thought about our interactions over the last couple of years and I realized tonight that they don’t ask me how I’m going.  They never call to see how my back is holding up.  They don’t seem to have noticed that I’ve been having a rough time and they haven’t offered to help or anything at all over the last 18 months which have been really fucking hard and painful for me. 

As it happens, I think there has been more expressions of sympathy, support and concern coming from my friends who read this journal than there has been from my own family… and that saddens me… quite a lot actually.
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I’ve been so wrapped up thinking how much my life totally sucks arse that I honestly thought I didn’t know anyone who’s having a worse run of it than me lately.  I don’t know if that’s because I’ve been ridiculously insular or if it’s just a willingness to accept the appearance of normalcy in the people around me.  Either way I hadn’t thought any of my friends or family were facing any particularly difficulties… that is until this afternoon when I got a swift reality check upside the head in the form of an unexpected visit from my cousin and his wife.

Everyone has a favourite cousin or relative who they got along with really well growing up – well Erick The Half-A-Bee was my least objectionable relative and he’s just about the only family member on one side of my family who I willingly keep in touch with.  He and his wife live up the coast, their children are now grown and have families of their own now and they’ve got a handful of grandchildren who they dote on and an even larger handful of step-grandchildren who receive their equal share of dotage too.  Unfortunately for them, with the beautiful grandchildren came not one… not two… but three psycho hose beast daughters-in-law.

I will state up front that I’m not making this shit up… I don’t think I could if I tried.

DIL#1 (a very fitting abbreviation) has accused the Erick the tee-totalling Half-A-Bee of sexual harassment after SHE was observed having gotten blind drunk and started suggestively draping herself all over him and sitting on his lap at a family function.  Whereupon her husband had to drag her away from her embarrassed father in law’s lap and bundle her into the car to take her home.

DIL#2 has five children all to different fathers, one of whom has been removed from her care as he has special needs (and who she selectively fails to acknowledge the existence of, depending on her audience) and has yet another little one on the way.  She has 4′ tall gates made of steel bars put on the entry doors to her children’s bedrooms and she locks the children in their rooms every night.  If they need to go to the toilet at night they have to call for Mum to unlock their gates and take them to the toilet.  This particular DIL also has a propensity for sending the children to bed (locking them in of course) at 3pm without dinner if they annoy her.  She is also fond of sending them to bed without bathing them and sometimes in heavy wet nappies.

DIL#3 also has issues… she has four children (naturally none of them share a father either) two of which are on medications for hyperactivity and antidepressants.  Her elder children (the medicated 7 and 5 year olds)  are routinely encouraged to physically discipline their younger 3 year old brother by smacking him with a wooden spoon in her absence.  When she is in the proximity she has been heard to say ‘Smack him again he was very naughty’ as it appears she can’t be bothered getting up off the couch.  😐

The three sons in this picture have become hollow henpecked versions of their former selves and two of them are under psychological counselling themselves for depression and stress related conditions which have been so severe as to prohibit them from finding and keeping gainful employment.

Last year Erick The Half-A-Bee and his wife (seeing the writing on the wall) decided to become foster parents to 1) help the local community and 2) be in a position to take in their grandchildren should the need arise.  They’ve provided emergency accommodation for a number of children since then and about four weeks ago DoCS contacted them to see if they would take on a 5 day old detoxing infant whose mother is a drug addict that at 21 has had four children all of which have been removed from her care.  It’s a huge undertaking – agreeing to foster an infant knowing they could be with you for 18 years or they could be taken back to their mother at a moments notice if the mother cleans herself up.

Anyway…. skip forward to last Friday, baby is now six weeks old, and we find representatives of the Department of Child Services on Erick The Half-A-Bee’s doorstep at 5pm to remove the baby from their care.  It turns out that DIL#2 and her children were staying at Erick the Half-A-Bee’s house for a while and during their stay, Erick and his wife had finished making dinner and were about to put all the children the tub after an afternoon playing outside in the mud and with the horse to get them ready for bed.  DIL#2 said the children were fine to go straight to bed and they didn’t need a bath.  Erick pointed out they were pretty dirty from playing outside and he thought they should have a bath before going to bed on all the freshly washed linen.  DIL#2 then launches an attack about his implication on her parenting skills and the following day they all pack up and leave.

Shortly afterwards DIL#2 and DIL#3 (who owes Erick The Half-A-Bee money) get together and decide to tell DoCS that Erick The Half-A-Bee was a danger to the baby because he had lost his temper and drove off his car in a fit of anger.  This did occur.  He did lose his temper.  With one of his sons in a totally unrelated incident. And yes, he did indeed drive off in a less than impressed fashion on the occasion in question – however, the foster baby was with his wife.  At home. Not even in the same town as Erick The Half-A-Bee at the time.

So DoCS take the baby away after hearing such an accusation- naturally they have to err on the side of caution in situations such as these which then necessitated Erick The Half-A-Bee driving three hours to BrisVegas to sort the matter out with DoCS.  The claim made by DILs#2 and 3 were taken very seriously… until another relative who had seen them directly after they had contacted DoCS decided to contact DoCS herself and let them know that the DILs were laughing and gloating about how they’d ‘fucked over Erick The Half-A-Bee with Child Services’.  And then of course other details began to unfurl when DoCS found out the maiden names of the DILs.  It seems they had no knowledge of this pair because they had called in the information and left their new married names.  Upon investigation it turns out that in the past they have done this to other people… made false claims of child neglect AND (this really boggles the mind) they had EACH made claims of child abuse and/or neglect AGAINST EACH OTHER in the past when they had fallen out with each other at various times.

Needless to say, the baby has now been returned to Erick The Half-A-Bee and his wife and the whole affair has done naught but add fuel to the fire for when Erick The Half-A-Bee might have to pursue grandparents rights to gain access to their grandchildren.  So yeah… while my life is somewhat fucked by circumstances beyond my control, at least I don’t have people (family at that)  trying to fuck my life up by maliciously slandering me and setting Govt departments onto me with fabricated stories of deleterious encounters.

Erick The Half-A-Bee is trying to be philosophical about the situation and said to me all families have problems…  like bullshit.  Not all families have problems like these!  

You can not choose your relatives too carefully.
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