Family can be a blessing but they can also be the source of major stress, heartache and misery.  I have been getting doses of both lately, and not feeling much like writing but I do know that sometimes it helps to vent a bit so here goes the shortish  (but still probably way too long) version.  Feel free to skip this one if you have better things to do than read as I vent.

Christmas itself was hectic and stressful but rather sweet. My sister and her boyfriend came down Tuesday night with my sweetie Brett and joined me and her two kids, Nadia and Adrian who as I mentioned earlier were both already here.  It had been a very long time since my sister had spent any time with both her kids at once (which is way too long and personal a story to share here) so although it was a lot of work and a lot of expense … I was really glad that I could give her that this year. 

I was also thrilled that I got to actually spend Christmas eve with my Leather family so the tradition of being woken up in the middle of the night was not broken, except this time instead of it being “daddy” that woke me up the whole household at 5 am, it was the “wee one” (who at five and a half is not  quite so small anymore) but her eyes popped open none the less around 2am (less than an hour after her folks and I had finished wrapping and stuffing the last prezzies under the tree), and these was no way in hell she was going to gop back to sleep once her eyes landed on that pile of pretty presents! So I spent the next few hours keeping her amused and occupied while we let mommy & daddy catch a few z’s. We quietly sang songs, played “I spy” as we straightened her room, watched a video and anything else I could think of to either get her tired enough to go back to sleep or simply keep her from tearing into the pile of packages.  She was practically bouncing off the walls with excitement! 🙂 And then mommy & daddy finally got up! Whew!

My absolute favorite part of the holidays is watching her face when she rips open the paper and finds exactly the thing her little heart desired.  Geez, truth be told. I love everything about any time I get to spend with her because she is stilll so sweet and so loving and she is probably the greatest source of unselfish unconditional love that I have ever known. She really is an amazing kid and I truly adore her and the rest of my Leather Clan.  I don’t know what I would do without them sometimes.

Anyway, after the feeding frenzy was over I staggered back home bleary eyed and sleep deprived and crawled into my own bed.  Brett spent Christmas eve and morning on LI with his kids but planned to come back up to be with me and my family Christmas night and we were all invited back over to the Clan’s house for a delicious dinner courtesy of Daddy Myke who is an amazing cook.  After dinner, Brett and I and the rest of my holiday household finally opened our gifts because we (OK maybe mostly I) wanted to wait for Brett to do presents.  It was totally worth the wait! Santa was pretty good to me this year! He brought me a wonderful new laptop and I am VERY excited that my sweetheart has promised to take me on a Disney cruise in March!  Woohooo! 

All in all I think we all had a good holiday.  I was sorry that Brett had to do so much driving to be able to spend time with his family and with me but things will get better in that area next year.  As I said earlier, my sister and her boyfriend seemed to have a really nice time and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves too, so that part was totally worth it.  Thankfully!  I am not overly fond of having my house full of people for extended periods and 7 people is a lot to house and feed!  I had honestly also feared stressful re-enactments of the life long sibling rivalry between the kids, but they actually seemed to get along pretty damn good for the most part.  Sis and her partner stayed 3 nights / 4 days and then I  drove them back down to the island on Friday/  I took the kids with me so that they could visit some friends while I trekked out to check on and spend a bit of time with my dad.

That is never really easy or comfortable. We definitely have a very long history of love / hate drama as well as a lot of emotional / physical abuse that we have never really cleared. These days we only speak to each other a couple of times a year at best.  To make matters worse I almost always either feel a bit ill with anxiety and stress as our visits approach and or feel guilty about not making seeing him more of a priority. (If I was a good daughter I wouyld forgive the crotchedy old bastard and move on right? Or so the voice in my head tells me)  It also loves to remind me that he probably won’t be around that much longer and if we don’t mend our bridges now, we may never get the chance to do so, so I will get to go to my own grave with all these unresolved “daddy issues” but then again who doesn’t right?  Geez that sounds cynical.

Anyway, as if that isn’t enough, it actually freaks me out a little these days to see how old he looks. He has always been as strong as an ox and as stubborn as a mule and he could strike terror into my heart with just a look my whole life but these days he looks old, and heavy and tired when I see him and it’s almost like I grew up with a different person. Like maybe some of it was a bad dream or maybe I just had an over active imagination cause he looks too old and feeble to be the boogie man I remember. Bleh! There are a lot of ghostly skeletons and emotional scars there.. I think I’ll just close that door again for a bit.

On a more pleasant note, I really enjoyed seeing and spending time with Nadia.  She ended up staying 2 weeks and it was really lovely to get to know her again. We took an afternoon to go check out the Vanderbilt mansion and got this photo taken and I also took some very hot pics of her “hanging out in her aunt’s dungeon” as she wrote on her MySpace page where she posted them.  I am adding one of those here also. 🙂

She grew up to be a beautiful and very intelligent young lady.  I hadn’t seen either of my sister’s kids much as they spent the last 4 years or so in foster care on Long Island, but she really made up her mind to go ahead and do something with her life anyway.  She did a couple of semesters at Hofstra and actually got trained as an EMT and then has spent the last year or so in NJ attending Job Corps to become a certified nursing assistant.  Next year she plans to continue on with her training as an LPN but there seems to be an issue with where she is going to stay in the interim.  I’ll come back to that in a bit. 

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Adrian moved up here and in with me about mid Oct after getting bounced out of the Marine Corps during boot camp and dumped in Florida without a pot to piss in.  He called me up collect asking for help and hell, he’s my sister’s child and his only other choice was to go back to foster care which he really didn’t want to do.  He was convinced he was ready to try to make it on his own so I offered him a rent free room in the basement with the understanding that it was temporary, that he had to cover his own expenses and that it wasn’t going to cost me much to have him here.  Well as an unskilled and rather unmotivated “skater punk” it took him over a month to get a job .. any job. 

He finally landed a part time seasonal gig at one of the “cool kids” clothing shops in the mall but at the height of the season, the busiest retail month of the year the most they put him on for was 25 hours.  Which the way I see it gave him plenty of time to look for another job or take a class in something that might help him get a better job (I offered to help pay for a class at BOCES but he wasn’t interested). Nope, he wasn’t really interested in doing much of anything that I could see other than hanging at the mall, chatting on-line to his Pilipino “girlfriend” and skate boarding.

He would do stuff around here to help me onlywhen I specifically asked him too but he simply would not take any initiative unless I stuck a boot up his ass (and trust me I have some seriously nice boots!)  At one point he was offered $12.00 an hour off the books to go spend a day raking leaves and doing yard work for a good friend of mine… he turned it down. A few times when it snowed up here I suggested that he could make some money if he borrowed one of my snow shovels and went out and strolled the neighborhood a bit shovelling sidewalks for some of the ederly and such.  He refused, I am fed up.

My utility bills all sky rocketed in the last two months since he was here and he was into me for over $600.00 that I had laid out to get him here and settled and it pissed me off beyond belief that he would rather lay up here all day long playing Xbox than to go out and at least try to make a few bucks to help out.  Not even a half assed attempt.  I didn’t sign on for this. 

To top it off, I was informed by his case worker that they intended to “vacate the permanancy hearing” or in simpler terms, close his case this week and leave him no exit strategy for going back into foster care, so if it wasn’t going to work out, now was the time to do something.  So I did. I told him he had to leave.  He borrowed money from my house mate and got on a bus today bag and baggage to go back down to LI where he can still be considered for assistance until 21 (whereas here in Dutchess, he is considered an adult). 

I am really hurting over this decision because I truly wanted to help him but it gets on my last nerve when he refuses to help himself and I do not have the time, patience or desire to coddle or enable him.  I have been crying off and on for two days .. and I just don’t know what to do. 

So I have as usual decided to throw myself into work so that I do not have to sit here and dwell on all these feelings I can’t do anything about.  I spent the last 2 days or so writing html code and creating graphics for my NiteFlirt listings. That is kind of fun. I like teasing out the seperate personas and creating the artwork by selecting just the right photos and drafting text to express that aspect of myself. So far it is not really paying off much.  Calls have been slow this week but I have not been investing a ton of money in the “click advertising”. Hopefuly that will improve soon.  I could really use the distraction.  I got a few great calls last night and my little cocksucking slut Tim called me tonight with some excuse why he couldn’t complete his last assignment.  Oy! Men!

So getting back to Nadia; my totally adorable, and way hot lilniece, who is in between certificate programs at Job Corps and asking me if she could come stay here for awhile until she gets on her feet. I need a week or so to think about this.  I know she is far more employable than my nephew but, I am feeling a bit burned at the moment and definitely emotionally drained.  I love them both but it is hard enough living with teenagers that you raised yourself, living with someone else’skids is definitely a trip and I am not really sure I want to go there again, but she pleads so pretty. 🙂 I will keep you posted… in the meantime I think I may crawl off to the bath and soak the day away.  If ever there was a day I needed that, it’s today. 

Ohh and one last thing … I want to send a special belated birthday shout out to my pay Miss Troy Orleans who’s birthday was Saturday the 10th!  I miss you honey and I hope someone is treating you extra damn special right now, you totally deserve it.  Much love!