G'day Fleur!
[Oh my, this is a LONG one!]
Just came in from out front with DS. Trimming down the sparse weeds out there. Such an attitude change in DS!! He's still out there finishing up with the blower! He seems to be taking an interest in our house lately, and when he thought I didn't trust him for the car loan (from the bank but in my name), he's got it paid up until late November!
He is showing more pride in his room and the new car. That car is a beauty! Power everything and even a backup camera. It's better (and newer) than my little car, but it is his "office", too, when he works his PT job and needs to take it "on site" and sit up all night in it. I'm really pleased with his new attitude! He's a good son!
I wonder if my own attitude change (sans MD) is affecting his attitude as well. I finally went to sleep at 2am last night and set my alarm for 6:45am so I could get out there in the front yard with the weedeater. That's usually my job alone and if I don't do it, it doesn't get done. It will be 102ºF for the next 3 days and I just couldn't do it in the heat, so the crack of dawn it was. He met me in the garage and hit the weeds with as much verve as I did! AMAZING!
That said, I've been contemplating a visit with MD lately, or at least a phone call to my brother to see how she is doing. It's almost like an addiction and I'm being drawn to it. On the other hand, I know exactly what I'll get, and that is not good for my psyche. I continue to have the nagging thought of what I might feel when she actually dies (always her fervent wish since my father died in 2011). I really don't want to be around all that negativity, especially right now! So what is drawing me towards her??! Habit?? Some sense of longing for the "cookie baking Mama" that she never was and never will be? Dr. Phil says, "You can't give what you don't have." Or am I doing it to somehow gloat over her, now that she's powerless, obese herself, and miserable, unable to further harm me (at least physically)? Why not just live my own life and leave her out of mine?
So a call to my brother? "How's MD?" I haven't spoken to him in a year's time already. Last time I did that was because MD had told me that her single tiny room there at the nursing home cost $15,000/month and I found that hard to believe! DB told me that they had raised the price in the last month from $5700 to $6200 - still a pretty steep price, but around $10,000 short of what the lying MD had told me!! I don't need these people!!!!
I've also been pondering MD's favorite word: ELEGANCE/ELEGANT! She LOVES to "be elegant" or for things to "have elegance". Maybe that's why I shy away from such pomposity! And the funniest thing about it is that she was born into a real
Grapes of Wrath scenario!
Oh my! I just looked up the word pomposity to make sure that it was right when describing MD (I often look up words) and OMG! DEAD ON!!
Synonyms and Antonyms of pomposity
an exaggerated sense of one's importance that shows itself in the making of excessive or unjustified claims
" restaurant reviews that are written with a pomposity that will leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth"
Synonyms of pomposity
arrogance, assumption, bumptiousness, consequence, haughtiness, hauteur, high horse, huffiness, imperiousness, loftiness, lordliness, masterfulness, peremptoriness, pompousness, presumptuousness, pretense (or pretence), pretension, pretentiousness, self-consequence, self-importance, superciliousness, superiority, toploftiness
Words Related to pomposity
authoritativeness, bossiness, bowwow, brag, dominance, high-handedness
condescension, disdain, scorn
chest-thumping, inflation, self-assertion, side [chiefly British], snobbery, snobbishness, snobbism, snootiness
attitude, cheek, cheekiness, impertinence, impudence, sauciness
boastfulness, bombast, braggadocio, bravado, strut, swagger, triumphalism, vaingloriousness, vainglory
cockiness, complacence, conceit, egoism, egotism, pride, pridefulness, self-assumption, self-centeredness, self-complacency, self-conceit, self-content, self-contentment, self-opinion, self-partiality, self-satisfaction, smugness, swelled head, vanity
superiority complex
Near Antonyms of pomposity
bashfulness, demureness, retiringness, shyness
diffidence, self-distrust, self-doubt, timidity, timidness
lowliness, meekness, mousiness, passiveness, passivity, submissiveness
quietness, reserve, reservedness
Antonyms of pomposity
humility, modesty, unassumingness, unpretentiousness
As I read these descriptions I noticed that MD had a ROLE to play as the pompous one, BUT that I ALSO had a ROLE to play! That was the FORCED ROLE of the "NEAR ANTONYMS OF POMPOSITY" (listed above) and that she
deliberately groomed her child "opponent". Naturally, she was always the "WINNER" of every "battle", and she sometimes blatantly used my father as backup, as her enforcer, if she needed additional brute strength, and she'd threaten me with it. But this type of behavior really did affect me since I was always cast in the ROLE of "LOSER". I could never "win" against, as she put it, their "UNITED FRONT". Daddy Dearest always followed her orders, too, without question most of the time. That can really make a difference to an infant/child/teen/adult, especially coming from their mother!! IT IS ALL HER FAULT!! SHE AND HER NARCISSISTIC NUTTINESS IS THE ONE TO BLAME! SHAME ON HER!! What a horrible thing to do to a child, even more to do it to your OWN child!!!!!!!!
But it did happen and it happened to me. I was left holding the bag of insane impressions of "what's wrong with
me??", years and years, decades and decades of therapy, low self esteem, and self loathing, trying and trying to figure out WHY. Right up until I recently quit seeing her, she continued to push this negative impression of me TO ME. She is great, perfect, and above fault (according to HER), and I am beneath contempt, loathsome, and beyond help (again, according to HER). Anything less than complete damnation of me is unacceptable. I am dirt, and only she is worthy. And there is NO DOUBT in my mind that she would continue this lifelong set of behaviors towards me to this day, starting with the first visit.
So why go see her? Even asking DB about her? I'd like to dig that urge to see her out of my psyche and
rid myself of it once and for all.
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I just looked up "superiority complex" since MD used to say that frequently: "I don't have an INFERIORITY complex! I have a SUPERIORITY complex!!" This statement was made DECADES AND DECADES ago, well before there were computers! So there was never a way to check and understand what that truly meant. It means that when a person is outwardly bragging that they have a superiority complex, what that actually means is that they have an INFERIORITY complex!! She felt very ashamed of her past, of being abandoned by her own parents and having been adopted by my grandparents when she was 6, and that she suffered from self loathing (and thereby loathed all females as well).
I was a disappointment to her as soon as I was born to her at 17 after a LONG and painful labor. In addition, once born I
CRIED a lot (perhaps due to MD's own inner turmoils and stress which was then felt by me) AND I was a lot more work than my teeny-bopper MD was ready for (hence, diapers, feeding, and more intimate and psychological growth needs of an infant, like love and kindness, which she didn't have to give). I also made it impossible for her to be closer to my father as he went off to work and she was "stuck" with this squalling infant and living in my grandparent's house for the next 1½ yrs! I slept in a bedroom BY MYSELF while my parents shared a bedroom with 2 twin beds with my then unmarried Aunt M. who worked graveyard shift. Not one person there had had ANY prior experience with an infant. Not even my grandparents!
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Sorry this is so darned long. Went to see "the doctor" today due to a UTI. I ended up seeing this nincompoop Nurse Practitioner who says I have plaque in my right carotid and then went on to...oh, who cares? It was a bust, to put it mildly. I did get my prescription. I am so frustrated!!!! So I came home and watched my dear Dr. Jason Fung (the Intermittent Fasting guy's youtube videos). That idiotic NP gasped when she had asked if I felt that I could fast for a few hours and I replied, "Heck, I fast every day for anywhere from 18-23 hrs. every day." and she blurted out, "OMG, YOU'RE STARVING YOURSELF???" I assured her that I simply wasn't hungry, not on keto foods (they're very filling and one meal usually does it), and it goes on from there!
She was so dumb, so misinformed, yet in a position of authority. Dr. B says the same old crap (whenever I can get an appointment with him!), I'm sick of it, and I'm simply not going back there EVER. And all she wanted me to do was to see 3 different SURGEONS to operate on my hands, feet, and whack that plaque out of my neck which she added could CAUSE a stroke!!! NUTS TO THAT!
So what I've decided to do for my health is to not sit around "as much". And towards that end, I took my dogs for a walk this evening, one at a time, first Spot and then Dot. They LOVED it! I'm going build up to walking them each around the block once a day. Healthy for all of us. And the cooler days are coming soon (THIS WAS THE LAST OF THE 100ºF DAYS!!
) and I can get back out in my yard and do some healthy, heavy work. I'm going tomorrow to pick up the last of the potting soil (30 bags) and bring it home in the pickup and begin to tote it one by one into the backyard (along with the manure bags that are already in the truck's bed) with that new GardenGlide. I will start with one bag per trip and work up from there to two bags or three if possible. And then 'THE GARAGE'!!!
I also have a TON of pruning and clean up work to do. It's all good healthy work and I plan to do it one step at a time, resting as needed.
After the debacle at the doctor's office, I attempted to finally resolve the nightmare started by the Russian hackers (can you believe it!!??) back on Aug. 5th where Amazon blocked my entire account and store card. I was EVENTUALLY successful tonight, but have still not made a purchase. I'm looking at a lot of kitchen items (new measuring cups/spoons/scoops, dust covers for my wire shelves [which get "dog dust" from their pen on all my baking pans that I use for cooking - UGH!], and I'm staring glassy-eyed at a new Empire Red Artisan tilt-head KitchenAid stand mixer. I now realize that way back in 2001 I bought the wrong one. I bought the "professional" one, the one that doesn't tilt, but rather "lifts" up and is a royal pain to scrape down the sides while making Keto bread and cakes. I have to stop the whole shebang, lower the bowl, scrape it, missing half of the bowl due to the beater in the way, lift the bowl back up, and mix it again for a minute, and then do that all over again. A real pain! The new one would have the fancy self-scraper and a glass measuring bowl. Man, I'm thinking about it. I may get a self-scraper for my current stand mixer now as well. You only live once.
I'd better get to bed now. Lots to do in the morning!
Honeybera
That's not what the last guy said. So I turned to Annie's Annuals (and perennials). She's as close to me as this faraway Lowe's is where I was going to go pick up some California Fuchsias. And our dear Annie not only has those plants, but a TON of others, too! So nuts to Lowe's!! They aren't the ONLY nursery around here. Heck, they're not even close to being "the best". But Annie's IS!! It's just a long trek by myself. I'm hoping that DS would go with me. ♥♥He's awfully good to his mother!!♥♥ 
My sympathies to you and your family. I am somewhat surprised that what has happened to 
It has left me with two thoughts: #1. Just what a lucky person I am to be alive, to have been born me, to have had all the blessings and privileges in my life (and not just the abusive curse that is MD), and that my grief over the hurt I've experienced is finally waning, and #2. Seeing the mess Dorian has left behind, it reminded me of the rotten and deliberate nastiness that IS MD!!