Extra Extra - Read all about conflict in NJ

Had battles with both of my children (the ones at home) yesterday.

       Day begins with very tired L who is finally almost caught up with his work since the musical ended a few days ago. He didn’t e-mail me the work he needed to print before he went to bed last night, so I turn on his laptop to check on it and send it to myself (from L’s laptop to my computer which has a printer)... As I’m working on it to make sure the bibliography & citations are correct, I have to get L out of bed TWICE; he kept getting back under the covers after breakfast.
        I noticed that he had failed to include an important source in his bibliography (although he cited the author’s name after a quote). That was especially galling for me, because it happened to be a source I had lent him and I’d been asking for him to return it for days. Instead he had to find it that morning.  Anyway, when I see another source is missing from the bibliography, it’s too late - L has to go – I had to print it and, in fact, I had to drive him to school.
       For days, I’ve been frustrated because I’ve suspected L has been getting back in bed in the morning. I know he’s tired, but the thing is – those ten minutes of shut eye probably don’t give him any relief and just cause him to rush out of the house in the mornings without preparing himself for the day (and then he calls to have me deliver things if he’s forgotten something – although he is doing this less now).
       So, as we’re going out the door, I hand him the only money I have in my wallet, a twenty, but I tell him that I couldn’t make his lunch because of the work I was doing for him as he went back to bed, and so , whatever he used for lunch would come out of his allowance. Lucas looked shocked, but beyond the incredulous question, we have no time for an argument: I’m a sight – as I pull the twenty out of the little wallet attached to my keys, I drop all my credit cards and papers on the floor and ignore them as I frantically look for shoes and run out the door. When we got out to the car, I had those uninterrupted five minutes with him and I softened my tune a bit. “He’d only have to pay for half his lunch, but he HAD to stop getting back into bed in the morning. It does you no good -blah” (Only one blah, because I really didn’t go on and on – It was very civil.)
       I dropped him off, and told him I loved him; there was no door slamming or ugly looks from his side. And as I drove home I realized that L could give me a ten when he got home, tell me he’d spent ten, and he could actually make five bucks out of this awful punishment... Sigh... Next time I won’t wimp out.
       So, how much did my poor son spend on lunch? Well, he didn’t get home until about 4:00 and then he headed straight to the computer to check facebook etc. When I called him downstairs to ask for my "change" about 20 minutes later, he gave me the entire $20.00 back. I asked him what he’d eaten and he insisted that he hadn’t eaten anything. But, I know that kid. If he hadn’t eaten all day, he would have rushed right to the kitchen that afternoon. (My psychic powers are telling me that he mooched off his friends... Here’s a possible scenario: he tells everyone that I didn’t make his lunch today – maybe he even tells them that his mom said he should buy his own. These kind souls take pity on him and he ends up eating more than usual...) I’m okay with whatever happened – I’m even okay with being the bad guy – I’m just glad I wasn’t faced with the moral dilemma of how to handle it if he’d come home claiming to have lost the money or something. L is a good kid.
       Oh, the ONE thing I am really ashamed of, and KNOW I have to change is that when L sends me a paper, I can’t just print it – maybe fix his bibliography. No, I always read things and even add the odd sentence. God, it’s true, and I know how wrong it is. In fact, many a time (including this specific incident) I’ve added something, realized that I’ve gone too far and then deleted it completely.  This paper was especially hard on me because I'd given L a source last night and explained it to him - to help him clear up a point he'd been confused by.  Instead of correcting it, he just took the entire point out of the essay.  So, I was stuck on that for a few minutes.
     So this tendency or pattern of mine is not good, and it also means that, while it’s true that L didn’t do his part (he was days late with the essay etc.), my obsessive nature also slows this printing process waaaaay down. It’s my terrible secret, but it’s not that I’m an overly ambitious mommy – no it seems to be an obsessive-compulsive trait. My students get a lot more comments on their papers than students of other professors. Just this weekend, another example: my husband gave me a chapter of his book (textbook) to review, and begged me just to give it a “once-over” and fix any big errors. I was NOT to polish for style or anything else... I could not do it. For example, when he included a quote that I found poorly worded, I spent a half hour trying to write the paragraph with less text quoted so that it wouldn’t include the offending snippet of that quote. When H and I bickered about it as he reviewed my revision, I accused the author he was quoting of not having a good editor. Then we lost another five minutes as H changed my brilliant reworking of his paragraph.

But wait, Amazing Almost-Invisible Woman, you haven’t told us about the other fight.
       Well, since day before yesterday I had been getting calls for my daughter V (my husband’s daughter who lives with us when she isn’t staying at her partner’s parents’ house). The caller won’t leave a message except that it’s about “personal finances,” but this isn’t the first time V has received calls and letters because she hasn’t paid a bill. Once –the first time- I even sent a check to a collection agency to get them off her back (later, she swore she’d paid the bill...)**
       Back to the current crisis: So, I call her, I e-mail her, I call her partner and leave a message saying she needs to call me or check her e-mail. Later, when my son answers the phone, they actually tell him that it's Victoria’s Secrets... (Note to self: if you get the call which begins with the recording with a fake sounding British accent telling you to wait for the important call, it’s Victoria’s Secrets bill collection department.) At that point I use my cell phone to text V, “pay victoria secret.”
       I tell her dad that evening and he says, “What? Again? I’m going to have to sit down and talk with her.” But, who can talk with the disappearing, theoretically adult and independent daughter. Knowing that we have bad news for her, she stays away. Yesterday, I only got one call for her – so I was hoping she paid the bill. She doesn’t get home at all until probably after 1 am yesterday: worked until 11 or so and then went to the gym with partner... So, her dad wakes up, opens our bedroom door and yells down the stairs – something about the calls (I don’t hear the exact question as I’ve just woken up.) She answers that she doesn’t know and is starting to explain something when he interrupts her, “Victoria’s secrets. kiss kiss kiss kisss.” Seriously, that’s how angry he is. He gets up but doesn’t go downstairs, doesn’t call her out on what was probably going to be a lie- that she doesn’t know who was calling – and sends her kisses. 
       So, now I was wide awake and frustrated with H. These calls are upsetting to me. I went downstairs to talk to V, but when I didn't see her and she doesn’t answer me, I go back upstairs. Yes, that’s me – I still mean to talk to her, but I want this to be a real chance to talk... (excuses excuses – it’s that I dread confrontation). Anyway, when I come back up, H is mad at me because now I’ve woken him up completely when I sniped at him for his handling (NOT) of the situation. He gets up to go downstairs and so I go downstairs and this time I’m not retreating until I talk to her and she gets the message. I’m in the kitchen and she can’t hide out in the bathroom forever.
       She comes out; I ask her, “What’s up?”
       It’s a bill she has to pay but she didn’t have the money – but she was definitely going to pay it “tomorrow.”
       I ask, “Why do you even have a bill with Victoria’s Secrets?” She doesn’t answer, she just looks down. My hubby comes into the kitchen and sits down to listen at some point. I basically tell V that I feel as though “I am enabling her by taking these calls from creditors and being discreet about it.” In a way I’m acting as though this were normal behavior, and it’s not normal. She’s making really poor financial decisions. I’m not willing to continue to do that – Next time I’m going to ... I don’t know ... tell her mother. I ranted, but not too long. V wasn’t responding anyway; she just looked at the ground. So, I hope that main point was really clear. I’m not going to just continue to take these calls and collaborate by being discrete about this.
       I didn’t say this to her, but it is very frustrating to me to worry about her, but have no power to really demand anything. She is the best person I know at making sincere promises and then NOT follow through. She has mastered the art of strategic disappearances and being incomunicada.
       Bottom line, I have no threat to make – and, believe me, my numerous attempts to reach her through $$ incentives have failed... In a way my only power is to hand this thing off to her mother who is currently living near-by and who will hound her. I know V doesn’t want her mother involved and my hubby and I have supported that decision. V’s emotional and physical separation from her mother was a huge turning point in her life, and she was so proud to see, after she survived, that she was stronger than she thought. She was about 19 then – so it has been over 5 years, but I know that she still has to defend her space a bit. Of course I don’t want to gratuitously involve her mother against V’s will.
       For V, it goes beyond just her mother butting in; as far as I can tell, V doesn’t let her partner know about her $$ errors. I mean, some months ago, Toyota started calling her and was on the verge of repossessing her car. And, as far as I know, nobody found out. V just disappeared to her partner’s family’s house and managed to pay the bill...
       Here’s the strange thing: these are problems over smallish bills – They don’t have to become major crisis. For example, if she wasn’t lying to us, her Toyota Bill of $200 a month was only a month late – in other words, she owed two months or $400.00. Last night her dad asked her how much the Victoria’s Secret’s bill was. She said she was going to pay $60.00. Her dad caught the hedging and insisted, “How much do you owe?” She says only $120.00.
But I think V doesn’t want to ask for help from us, from her partner – her mother has no money anyway, but might be able to help her. No, nobody. Still, she lists our home phone as her phone number – and I have to take these calls – and see the letters.
So, this morning, V got up before 7:00 am came out to the kitchen and told me that she’d set her alarm for 7. “Oh,” I said, “you set it for 7 so you can pay your bill?” Yes. “Do you have the money to pay it?” Yes... It ocurrs to me that it’s not payday – so why did she have the money today but not yesterday or the day before? But I’m never going to find out, probably.
       So, last night I went to bed and felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t offered to lend V the money to pay the bill (instead of waiting for her to ask to borrow it – which she didn’t). We got back up to bed at 2:30 a.m. and I couldn’t sleep. I turned on a lamp and read, of all things, a book about “Mao’s Great Famine.” H hugged me and said he knew I worried about everyone. I had set the lamp on the floor, but still I worried about whether H would sleep with the light. I am worried a bit about H. The other day I looked at him, and he seriously suddenly looked older. Sigh. So, I turned off the light but couldn’t sleep; lay there for a good hour to let H sleep, but I HATE this lying in the dark when I can’t sleep. If I can’t turn the thoughts from preoccupations, it’s not good to lay there in the dark. Finally about 4:00 am, I reach over and slowly open up the drawer in my bedside table where I’ve seen a little reading light that came with the snuggie that V gave me for X-mas this year. I keep reading about famine in China and about how the Chinese are exporting grains and cotton in those years (1958-59...) even as people were suffering from the cold and from hunger. I realize that I am very hungry and also simply too cold to be able to fall asleep (WHY oh why do I go to bed without socks on in the winter when I know that I shouldn’t?), but I don’t want to wake husband. No, the irony of the situation isn’t lost on me – my puny problems are really nothing compared to the people I was reading about.
       Finally, I get up and get on two pairs of socks and another pair of pajama pants. Grab a pillow from the side room – wrap myself up in a sheet and read some more with my little reading lamp, snuggled under the covers next to H. Ahhh... I’m feeling so much better. At 4:40 a.m. I turn off the light and don’t have another conscious thought until 6:25 when H gets up and gripes about the cats who have once again clawed at the carpet under our door until it’s so bunched up that you can’t open the door whithout pulling it straight. And I’m off to another day.

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**funny --but also kind of sad—story. The bill that had gone to a collection agency came from car insurance. Not long after she came to live with us, she got fed up at her dad’s “meddling” (and mine I’m sure) and decided to move out. Well, she’d already gotten her own car insurance when she realized that she couldn’t afford to move out. Wow – this must have been about 4 years ago. So, she cancelled the car insurance but still owed a day or two... It wasn’t more than 40$. What was the “meddling”? Well, it was certainly after the one time her dad seriously did intervene in her financial decision-making (he’s very very laissez-faire). She still had no income, but had managed to put over $1000 on her first credit card. He took it away from her. I think the “meddling” in question was more that he was asking her constantly about her classes... and I was always asking her if I could help her with any of her class work (Didn’t work anyway – to constantly ask her, that is).