Blame Game

My sister blames it on me, because I yelled at her and made her feel like garbage.

I yelled at her... and made her feel like garbage... because we have one week until our trip to Europe and she has not once reached out to ask, "what are we doing? what should I pack? What else do I need to do to prepare?"

I yelled at her... and made her feel like garbage... because my hubs and I had spent one year looking forward to this trip and planning it without an ounce of gratefulness from her part.

I yelled at her... and made her feel like garbage... because she ignored our calls and our emails to get her more involved.

I yelled at her... and made her feel like garbage... because I didn't take into consideration how busy she was while we were planning all this, among the other things like I myself working two jobs, hubs taking his test, and our running our daily household operations.

I yelled at her... and made her feel like garbage... because I didn't have a honeymoon, and while extending her the trip of a lifetime to come to Paris and Prague with us, didn't think that she'd feel awkward being with her sister and brother in law.

Yup. It's my fault.

And, now, since she has said, "well this is how it's going to be," she is not excited. Not. Excited. not excited to be going to Europe. not excited to have the opportunity of tasting over 200 cheeses in France. not excited to get tipsy of French wine among dozens of hot French guys with French accents. not excited to go to the Eiffel Tower. not excited to see Hub's family again, who have been preparing months in advance for this visit. not excited to meet Hub's grandma for the first time.

And, it's my fault.

She says that she needs "to seriously take different variables into account"... here are my top five recommendations of variables:

1) You're a twenty-three year-old who does not know how to think for yourself. Did I really have to call Ma to tell you how to act???
2) You suck at time management and can go on Facebook 27 times a day to post, tag people, and etc, but can't find the time to figure out what you would like to do in Paris. And I quote from a convo with you, "I have no idea to in Paris!" Really? Really?? No. Idea.
3) Saying "I'm grateful" does not mean that you are grateful. Gratitude is expressed in actions and demeanor, not just simply saying "thank you," which you haven't yet said, btw.
4) Similar to 3, saying "I won't be a brat" doesn't mean your words and behavior don't already inflect your brattitude, and it certainly does not make us feel any better.
5) It's not all about you or your feelings. Don't let your shallow, fragile mind get the best of an amazing opportunity. An opportunity which we'll think twice of extending to your "grateful" ass next time. (Did you just see how I did that and put the grateful in quotation marks.... I'm being sarcastic, because I know you're not....)

Notice, I did not place blame of your attitude on a generation of Filipino immigrants who became parents, provided every security needed, and enabled their child to become so sheltered that they would not know how to survive in the real world. I could have, because I have a severe tendency to broaden my scope and think of Fil-Ams in general; but, I didn't.

Because, after a certain point, you are who you are based off your decisions in life. You've chosen to be petty, brash, and an egomaniac.

And it's my fault that I made you feel bad because I "unjustly yelled" at you, rather than the fact I pointed out your inadequacies and you refuse to admit to them.

GROW UP.

Divergence and remergence

I wonder how many blogs start with "it's been a long time since my last post..." or something to the same effect. I feel that blogging is a sort of venue for intellectual vanity-- the blogger having some idea or turn of phrase or opinion of weight and necessity to be contributed to the landfill of similarly important information that throws askew Google search algorithms.  For me, blogging is a way to excercise my extensive SAT vocabulary while attempting to wax philosophical over personal mundanities. Making somethings out of nothings.  It's also fun to think that I've documented my life and made things public record so that one day I'll get caught by someone I know saying something I probably wouldn't say without the guise of anonymity.
For the record, my lack of posts have been due to two things:
1) a number of exciting events in my life that have made me so busy and left me with little time to post.  I got married to the one and only love of my life last June and have been in this honeymoon phase that couples go through, although I've never had a honeymoon.  However, that will change in June when we have our makeup honeymoon in Italy! I don't know what excites me more about the trip-- seeing the Pope @the Vatican, running into George Clooney in some cafe, or the thought of seeing the Situation.  A certain trinity of sorts. :)
Work's been going strong, and I'm up for that contrversial performance pay if my students did well on their science assessments; I'm banking that my students unfaltering admiration and respect for me motivated them to do their best.... I banked all of my retirement on it. I guess performance pay's only controversial if you don't get it, but either way I think it's a great incentive.
Other than that, I've been taking several little weekend getaways as west as Texas, south as Miami Beach, and north as New York City. Life's been good.

2) My online interactions, when non work-related, have been passive in nature; my facebook friends can attest to this. This quite possibly is due to newser and stumbleupon.

So, here I am now, posting, because I'm in a car making the 4-hr trip down to visit maminka (mother in law), and I just downloaded "blogger" for android phones and I wanted to try it out.  Just for ambiance, it's a beautifully blue-sky day, we're listening to Pitbull on Pandora.  My husband is driving and getting real stuff done with his phone- calling his babicka, mom, and uncle, and making travel-related inquiries on orbitz.  Ah, technology.

I feel though, through recent events, we're on the precupice of greater things to come. I won't verbally speculate as to what, for fear of being jinxed, but if I continue blogging regularly, undoubtedly it'll get mentioned. If not, I'll at least leave these clues: third time's the charm, and an active search to fill an empty chair at the dinner table. 

I've got so much going on, Obama can outsource Stimulus packages to me.

I am so in over my head with things, I decided to delineate and vent. It seems that these days, lists help organize ideas. Literally, to do lists are my lifesavers. That and mini chocolate bars, but I digress.

1. WORK--> I've become an inadvertant workaholic, but not a true workaholic considering I don't do much work after work. However, I spend countless hours there, and I feel like I never do enough for it. Thanks to the fiance, who is a true workaholic. The darned reason I feel like not enough is done because I spend the majority of my work time being repetetively teaching the same lesson to different students with only one hour of productivity. Meanwhile, the time I spend teaching is also spent geting on to children to be productive and not waste time.

2. Wedding--> 4 months away..... still need to hunt down current addresses (outsourced to the sister), plan a honeymoon with a fiance who's dragging his heels on non-family wedding-related things, write a wedding program, rent a limo, get a hair/makeup guru that will enhance my natural beauty (or at least paint natural beauty on for me to last a 8 hours), meet with a caterer, get a honeymoon suite, figure out giveaways and oots (out-of-towner baggies), seating arrangements, coordinate dance lessons; I don't even want to think of what more needs to be done.

3. Money schemes--> I'm a coupon-cutting guinea pig in a contact lense study who also moonlights as a waitress. Lame. I'd love to make a spreadsheet on how much extra I'm making on this, but again, takes time. My next ideas for $$ are investments include toxic assets and playing the lotto.

5. Fiance--> I'm praying that he does not read this, because I'm going to just let all those pent-up frustrations spew forth as a deluge upon this blog. Where to begin? Here's his career in a nutshell: hotly pursued as an interviewee->puts in overtime with feelings of something to prove->gets noticed by all the right people->one of the most decorated rookies in recent time in his company->golfing tournaments-> doesn't pass the FE->reapplies for FE, works super hard, neglects studying-> doesn't pass again->lands big multimillion dollar client, works harder->feels neglected by superiors->doesn't pass again->having difficulty getting progress in his project->Questioning career path, discontent. It's hard to hear his complaints about working while I'm doing all this work as well. Chalk it up for personality differences. He's a feeler and extrovert, and I'm a thinker and introvert. He blames it on this, and I say he needs to change his outlook. Outlook is a choice, is it not? Can you not say, "You know what, things are bad, but here are some good things" a la Julie Andrews, circa Sound of Music?? No, I'm not enough for that, and I'm seeing more and more that I give tough love and don't show that much pity. IE, I'm becoming more of my mother. Whooooooooaaaaa.............


I cannot believe I just admitted that.

Enter his mother. She came in one weekend to comfort him. I felt a bit of a conflict in the way she does things-- overspends on items, cooks and packs the fridge to max capacity, tells him he can find a job somewhere else and to do what makes him happy. Sure, he can do what makes him happy, but we're getting married and have to pay that off. We need to be fiscally responsible and save. We're gonna have kids one day that'll be going to college. She seems concerned, and I tell her, "Yanni needs to change the way he responds to these problems, or else no matter where he goes and what he does, he'll have the same issues." Does anyone take this seriously? no. It's no wonder that he reacts this way, because his mother enables him to complain and drop it when things get tough. "Do what makes you happy." That's what poor people say to themselves to justify having the low-paying job, because usually the job is not as taxing. And NOW I've officially turned into my mom. I've never correlated job to happiness before-- I don't know why, it's just not how I was brought up.

He seems aimless now about wedding planning, about job. He used to have a plan of getting an MBA, and that has stalled because of that damned test. He is happy to have me, but I just feel like he's demanding more out of me. There used to be a time where I felt like I had to prove myself to him and I wanted to do it. Now, I feel like he wants me to put him and his needs before all my ideas, ventures, etc. I feel like I'm taking backseat in my life.




Then again, what do I want out of life? That should be the title of my next blog.