This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

A few hours ago my uncle and his kids left to do their daily sightseeing.  My cousin J was in the bathroom for a while.  Anyway, I had been waiting for them to leave because I had to take a shower.  I do my usual routine and ask if anyone needs to use the bathroom before I go in.  My grandmother says yes, but she comes out and says that the toilet is clogged.  I hear my mother and grandmother talking in Spanglish (Spanish and English).  They are saying “Too much toilet paper” and “Why didn’t he say anything to anyone?”  This was a few hours ago and we are still waiting for the freakin plumber.  This is why I don’t like having people stay with us for any amount of time; because something either gets broken, or clogged, or too much of something at once is eaten or whatever.  I will repeat myself from previous posts and say that these relatives treat our apartment like some kind of free hotel, with free food and maid service because none of them pick up after themselves.  Sometimes they don’t even take their dirty dishes to the sink.  They’ll just finish eating, get up and leave the plates there on the table.

No Vacancy!!!!!

Since my family treats our apartment as a hotel, I suggest that we hang that sign outside our door.  They only come here to have a place to stay and eat for free while they are in the city.  They try to play it off as coming to see us, but they spend the majority of everyday that they are here sightseeing, and when they come home they watch TV, either in my grandmother’s room or outside, or they are on the computer.  They don’t interact with us in any way, which I actually don’t have a problem with because I don’t want them here to begin with, but it still pisses me off.

I’m never inconvenience directly, always indirectly.  For instance, I am never inconvenienced because I personally have to accommodate someone else, I just have to deal with them being here to begin with.  No one ever asks me to do something that I don’t want to do because they know that I will flat out tell them “No!” and not feel bad about it.  I have no problem being a nasty shrew when I think someone is being inconsiderate, like my uncle and his kids are being.  Really, they couldn’t wait a day or two to come until my brother left, or if they had to come now they couldn’t stay at my uncle Ness’ house with his four empty bedrooms?

I hate when they come because we have to buy milk every single day.  A gallon of milk lasts three days when it’s just us, and we buy milk on the fourth day. With them, it’s everyday, and they don’t contribute anything to the house. Their stuff is always all over the place and it’s just annoying.  I asked my mother when they were leaving and she said she didn’t know.  Typical.  They call us to tell us that they are coming after they have already left their house and are on their way here, and then they don’t even have the common decency to tell us how long they will be freeloading, uh, I mean, staying with us.  Everyone thinks that I am joking when I say this, but I am absolutely serious when I say that when I have my own place, there will be no overnight visitors.  None!  Don’t even ask because the answer will always be “NO!”

Really, What Is It With People

So I have my brother and my two nieces here until Saturday.  After that, my oldest niece will stay on for the rest of the month and my brother and my other niece will go back to Michigan.  Tomorrow we are going to see my brother M in another part of the state.  My mother just told me that my grandmother will be staying home because my uncle and two of his children left Florida today to come stay here.  They had told us they would be coming to visit, but they didn’t tell us exactly when because they didn’t know themselves.  They know that we have three people here already, but that didn’t stop them.  So basically we will be having nine people all together in a tiny two bedroom apartment.  I swear, sometimes I feel like I’m back in my mother’s childhood when she was poor.

This is bullshit.  I am so sick of people being so fucking inconsiderate.  The bedrooms are already filled to capacity, so the three of them will have to camp out like bums in the living room.  My uncle Ness, who only lives an hour and a half away from here, has four empty bedrooms.  I am so sick of the out of town family members who inconvenience us by coming to stay with us when they know that we don’t have the room for them.  They try to play it off as them coming to visit family, but what it really is is they are coming to see big, exciting New York City (oh give me a break) and they want a place to stay and eat for free.  Fucking parasites.  My mom is always telling me “People like to explore when they come to NYC and there is nothing to do upstate”.  Well then let them get a fucking hotel room like everyone else who wants to “explore” in NYC.  Even if my uncle and his two children have to stay here for a few days, the very least that they could do would be to stay at my uncle Ness’ house for a day or two until my brother leaves.  But of course that would be the considerate thing to do and this family doesn’t know the meaning of the word “considerate”. Assholes!

Oh Happy Day

I am actually somewhat happy for once.  My brother V and his daughters A and B came to visit for a few days.  They live in Michigan and we only get to see them once a year.  I wish that my aunt in Michigan could have come and taken my grandmother back with her for a few weeks like she used to do, that way this family could actually spend their time together in peace.  I feel bad for my mom, A and B because they have to sleep in the same room as my grandmother.  I hope that she doesn’t start that frickin sleep talking, or if she does, that they are able to ignore it and get some sleep.  My brother will be sharing a room with me.

I am so glad that my grandmother went to her room at 8:00 to watch her Spanish soap operas and left us alone.  The way I feel about family is this.  I don’t appreciate outsiders.  I don’t even mean people who aren’t related to us. My brother has a few friends that he has known since he was a little kid and those friends are like family.  I guess what I mean by “outsiders” are people who don’t really fit into the family dynamic.  My grandmother is a very vain and selfish person.  She always has to be the center of attention.  It’s almost like dealing with a child, but even children learn that you need to stop being so selfish.

My mother and I were talking earlier.  My mother was worried because my grandmother “remembers things wrong”.  For instance, my mother will tell her some news that one of the neighbors let us know about her family.  My mother will of course tell my grandmother, because there is no reason not to.  My grandmother will then re-tell the story, with herself in the starring role.  She will be the one the neighbor confided in.  She will be the one who comforted our neighbor.  My mother will gently correct her, because she really believes that my grandmother has trouble remembering these things, and my grandmother will get angry and insist that she is the one the neighbor confided in.  I told my mother that this isn’t a new thing, and it isn’t my grandmother’s memory failing.  This is the unnatural need that my grandmother has to be the star of the show.  She has always been this way.  To her, her recollections of things are perfectly correct because she is the most important person in the world. Nobody listens to my grandmother because they know, from personal experience, that things probably happened very differently than from what my grandmother said.

My brother and nieces got here a little bit before 7:30.  First off my grandmother gets B in this crushing hug.  B is only six years old and she has hardly seen my grandmother so she is freaked out.  I asked her if I could have a hug and it was a very gentle hug, and she talks to me all the time on the phone and has seen me every year.  They hadn’t eaten dinner yet so my mother told them we still had plenty of food.  My brother went down to find a parking space, and A served herself some food.  B wanted to wait for her dad to eat.  My brother came upstairs after a few minutes and he and my mom were deciding what to serve B.  This isn’t a private conversation.  They are having this discussion right there in front of all of us.  My grandmother cuts in with “V?  V?!?!!?!!!!  Why don’t you make her eat something?”  Um.  What the f**k do you think they were just discussing?  Again, this is my grandmother’s unnatural need to have everyone’s attention focused on her, and for her to be the one to decide everyone else’s business.

I was telling my mother that this is the only time that I have been genuinely happy in I can’t even remember how long.  I am so enjoying spending time with my family as a family.  I would be happier if my grandmother was at my aunt’s house in Michigan so that we could really enjoy ourselves, but I’m getting off topic.  This is the type of family life that I want.  It is so refreshing not to feel angry and full of rage all of the time.  This makes me realize that I am actually a nice person.

I love my two nieces very much and I have already promised myself that if my grandmother even tries to dictate A’s life in any way that I will speak up.  I’ve kept silent in the face of her obnoxious behavior out of respect for my mother, because even though my mother knows what my grandmother is like, it still upsets her when my grandmother and I have our issues.  However, if she even tries to chastise A for something stupid or just in general, I will speak up.  She is not Lord and emperor of everyone else’s lives.  I will not allow her to make anyone else that I love unhappy.  My mother is an adult and she could put a stop to my grandmother’s behavior if she so chose, but if she starts her nonsense with children, that’s when I’m jumping in there.

My issues with my grandmother run deeper than stupid things like her closing the bathroom door or any other stupid things similar to that.  It is basically the way she is as a person, and how she treats other people, and it isn’t nice.

Street Harassment in the Ghetto

I look at a lot of street harassment blogs, websites, articles, etc.  All of them say that they will edit out or not post things that refer to the race of the harasser.  I notice that this does not apply when the harasser is white.  I can’t count the number of times I have seen something like “As a woman of color I was offended because of the racial aspect to it of when white men abused women of color.” Since this is my blog, I won’t censor myself in that way.  That is not to say that I, in any way, condone using racial slurs, but I feel that race does play a very important part in street harassment.  Not always, but a lot of the time.

I live in a mostly black and Hispanic neighborhood.  My dad is “white”, but my mom is Hispanic.  I have my dad’s skin tone and features.  Very few people peg me as part Hispanic.  Anyway, there is this one particular guy in the neighborhood who seems to single me out for street harassment, like it’s some enormous compliment.  I hate men who talk to strange women with that offensive familiarity.

I was coming home from my evening walk.  I was about to cross the street when I see him talking to a car that was stopped at a stoplight.  I stayed on the side of the street that I was on hoping that he wouldn’t see me.  I was half way down the block when I hear him say in this loud voice “Oh.  The white girl”.  Why are people in this neighborhood incapable of talking in a normal voice?  Why must everything be shouted?  Now it is possible that he was talking about some other white girl, but considering that I am one of the only white girls in the neighborhood, it was highly improbable.  Anyway, I get a little more down the block when he catches up to me and starts trying to talk to me about why I can’t say hi, if I have plans, why not, etc.  I tell him, without stopping that I don’t have plans because I don’t like people.  He says in this sleazy, slimy voice “Well people like you”.  I told him “Well then people can go f**k themselves” and kept walking.

This guy really pisses me off.  One time last week he was with some guy and he saw me and told the guy “That’s my girl”.  I smiled and said “No.  I am not”.  I humor this guy because one time I politely told him to stop referring to me as “Baby girl” and he got angry and started screaming at me.  He wouldn’t stop even though I was all the way down the block and then he started making a rooster noise.  What is that supposed to mean anyway?  It irritates me when he tells people that I’m his girl or whatever because they might actually believe it.  It offends me that someone might actually believe that I would go out with someone like that.  It’s not even a racial thing.  It’s that he is so repugnant.  One time he was talking to me and was essentially bragging that he had to go to court that morning.  Oh you charmer!  What I wouldn’t give to have a man like you as my boyfriend.

One time he came into this pizza place in the neighborhood as I was leaving, ordered a slice and told the guy he wouldn’t have enough money to pay for it.  The pizza guy got angry and told ghetto guy not to come in there anymore unless he had enough money. I’m guessing he had done that before.  Anyway, ghetto guy actually says “It’s ’cause I’m black, right?  It’s because I got nappy hair”.  Yeah, that’s it.  Idiot.

My ex boyfriend and his family have a store in the neighborhood, a few doors down from the pizza place.  Ghetto guy is banned from the store because when we were going out, A (the ex) told me that ghetto guy went in there and was being disruptive and belligerent, and when A told him to knock it off, ghetto guy started making derogatory remarks about Arabs.  A didn’t tell me what he said, but I think we all can guess.  A then told him to get the f**k out and never come into the store again.

I Bow Down To The Master

I am referring to my mother.  This ties in with yesterday’s post.  I was posting about how much I admired my mother for just being able to completely tune out the things that she finds unpleasant.  Today I got to see that in action.

Now I just want to say that I won’t be able to change completely.  I still rolled my eyes and tightened my jaw with my grandmother today.  I truly believe that this woman is in love with the sound of her own voice.  She says really obvious things in this all-knowing way.  It’s like “Thank you Confuscious.  Now have a seat.”  But I am proud to report that I haven’t once felt today the intense dislike that I normally feel whenever I am around my grandmother or even when I think of her.

Anyway, my mother and I were having our breakfast, coffee and bread, and my mother was reading the newspaper.  My grandmother has this irritating habit of even though a person is clearly reading something or their attentions are otherwise engaged, my grandmother has to intrude with meaningless chit chat.  Just another way that she has to have everyone’s attention focused on her.  It used to drive me crazy when my grandmother did that to me.  (The fact that she didn’t even like me, but still had to have my attention focused on her also drove me crazy).  My mother, on the other hand, let her blather on endlessly, not even glancing up from her newspaper.  It didn’t matter.  My grandmother just kept going on and on.  Finally, she walks away.  As soon as she walks away, I say to my mother with admiration in my voice and eyes “I am impressed!  Really!  That’s amazing!  You just completely tuned her out!”.  My mother laughs, but quietly so my grandmother won’t hear.  I say to her “May I please shake your hand?”.  She laughs again and shakes my hand.  And that, ladies and gentleman, is why my mother is awesome.

Becoming A More Positive Person

Most of my posts have been absolutely filled with venom.  Venom against my grandmother, venom against the management of the co-op that I live in.  Just venom aimed at everybody.  Now whether or not these people deserve this venom (and most of them absolutely do) is besides the point.  Some of my favorite bloggers have blogs that portray their problems, if they ever write about them, in a laid back, almost humorous way.  I’ve basically been using this blog as a sort of sounding board to vent all my pent up frustrations.  I can’t talk to my mother about the thing that angers me the most and when I try to talk to my dad I can barely get a sentence out before he tells me that it’s not nice to feel that way.  I would never tell someone that they shouldn’t feel a certain way or that it’s wrong to feel a certain way for two reason.  One, because it invalidates the person’s feelings and makes them bury their emotions even deeper within themselves.  Two, because if a person feels that strongly about something or someone, then chances are the other person deserves it in some way.  But I’m getting off the topic which is about me becoming a more positive person.

The fact is that I’m stuck here, at least until the end of next summer when I will finally (hopefully!) have my degree.  Then I will have researched other options and be starting to put those plans into effect.  Actually, I’m already researching other options.  I’m going to be more constructive.  I’m going to try to learn a new language, like I have been wanting to for years.  I’m going to stop letting a certain someone get my stress level up.  I just have to do what my mother does when she is in what could be a stressful situation.  She just totally tunes it all out.  Really.  It’s amazing to see.  No matter what is going on around her, with the way that she tunes everything and everyone out, it’s like it isn’t even going on at all.  I will definitely have to start using that tactic.  I realize now what it is. It is a survival tactic.  I’ve turned into a bitter, angry person because I have just been letting the anger eat away at my soul.  From now on, I will employ this strategy to become a calmer, nicer person.