jlf1961
Posts: 14840
Joined: 6/10/2008
From: Somewhere Texas
Status: offline
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Those that know me on the boards have heard me refer to my sister, niece's and great nephew. However, none of those people are blood relatives. Yes we consider ourselves a family, but there is no actual genetic link between us.
A little back ground.
Tami, the woman I call my sister, was my mother's care giver before she passed. I had met Tami on the internet on a social site and we talked first over the net, then over the phone. When her boyfriend died of complications from injuries and a massive infection he developed during the necessary hospital stay, I invited Tami to move to live with me and my mother.
Admittedly we tried the whole "relationship" thing but quickly discovered we made much better friends than lovers, and I have grown to depend on Tami over the years in ways that is more akin to a brother sister relationship than anything else.
When my mother had her heart attack five years ago, Tami was with her at the emergency room, and my mom asked Tami to look out for me. Mom's reasoning was simple, I suffer PTSD and am bipolar. Since moving back to Texas to help my mom who had MS deal with keeping up the house and yard work, I had had two major bouts of depression, one of which resulted in my mother having me committed.
A year after that, Tami moved down here. Mom and her had talked a number of times on the phone, and after a few weeks, mom was calling Tami her daughter.
Gizzy, Tami's daughter was estranged from Tami after she and her kids' father divorced and during the hearing, he made a big production out of Tami's occasional use of pot and speed. At the time, Tami was doing aerial construction for a local cable company in PA. She lost custody of her kids, and was granted supervised visitation, even though there was no evidence of any mistreatment of the children on her part.
The abuse of her children happened after her ex met a much older woman, (he is my age, she is 79 this year.) Her treatment of the kids put one in a mental hospital then a state group home, drove Gizzy out of the home when she was 16, and she kicked the oldest out the day he graduated high school.
Tami's youngest, DJ, moved down here the year Tami and I bought the home we are now living in. He was the one that spent a year in a psych ward followed by living in various group homes until he graduated from school.
Last year, Tami's oldest, Crystal moved here and lived here for a few months before going back to PA to deal with a divorce she was going through and a child support issue she was dealing with. That worked out so well that her ex had her arrested for harassing due to her attempts to get him to sign the divorce papers, which made no sense since he was living with a woman and had two kids with her.
The judge in the child support matter decided that the fact Crystal had a job here, and was asking the court to set up a plan where a third of her check would be deducted to pay the back and current child support did not mean anything and promptly had her jailed until she had set out the back child support and through work release was making current payments.
Crystal has three children, by three different men, and she had gotten out of a rehab center prior to her moving here. The reason she did not have custody of her children was a heroin habit.
Now how things stand today, Tami is married to a decent guy and is happy, Crystal has plans to return to Texas when she finishes sitting out the back child support, and the place that had hired her has promised her that she will have a job when she comes down.
At my urging, Gizzy got her GED, and now has a management job at a local burger king.
I consider these people my family, since most of my blood relatives wont have much to do with me due to an incident between me and my father, who has not spoken to me since 1980.
When I had major surgery last year, we notified my biological sister, who said all the expected stuff, but when I went into the hospital, Tami and Gizzy were there, my sis Peggy took a vacation with her husband and children to Mexico, and I never got so much as a card from her.
And then there is Damian. The little guy is 20 months old come the sixth of next month, wearing 3t clothes because anything smaller is too short for him (Damian's father stood 6ft 8.) Damian 's dad is serving a minimum of 6 years for drug possession and three counts of burglary.
Gizzy, Damian and I go to the gym for 3 hours Monday through Saturday. Gizzy's present boy friend prefers to sleep till eleven. After dinner, which I cook unless Gizzy is off work, when it has cooled, Damian and I work tend to the garden. He 'helps' by following me around the garden and "telling" me what weeds need to be pulled or what veggies are ready to be picked. He has two other "chores" he helps me with, feeding the dogs in the evening, and he helps me take the dogs outside during the day and at least twice before his bed time.
Gizzy's boyfriend is supposed to be watching him at night while Giz is at work, but Damian prefers to spend his time in my room, kicked back on my bed watching music videos off my other pc, with his and my dog Blu laying next to him. When it is bed time for the little guy, he demands his second of two bottles of the day (the rest of the time he drinks out of sippy cups) and marches his little butt into my room, climbs up on the bed and gets into "his" corner of the bed and lays down and again watches music videos until he goes to sleep.
David, giz's boyfriend has never mistreated Damian in any way, other than when he gets frustrated, he tends to get loud, and he is a little rougher disciplining the dogs than I like. And since he is Giz's boyfriend, you would think Damian would gravitate to him.
All of this is important because after a loud and heated debate between Giz and David when she got home from work (I did not hear this debate, I was asleep in my room with the door closed.) This heated discussion ended when David stormed out of the house and went for a walk. It has been about two hours and he still is not back, but that is beside the point.
Although they were not in the same room as Damian, they were loud enough that Damian woke up and went out to the living room, which is the point that David stormed out.
I built Damian's new toddler bed in my wood shop, along with his dresser and new toy box, which went into the room that was my former man cave. Now granted, it is not fancy, no ornamentation, a simple white pine with that was stained in a red maple stain, and sealed with 10 coats of polyurethane. When Giz tried to help purchase the wood, or pay me for my time, I refused to take anything. I painted the room in a color that Damian picked out. (okay, I showed him about six different colors and used the one he picked up.)
I went so far as to put things in his room of mine that he seems drawn to, which is fine with me. None of the stuff I used is inappropriate for a toddler. I bought a small mp3/stereo and stored the music from my computer that he likes on it, so he has about 32 hours of music ranging from 80's rock, to classic rock to Celtic folk music and contemporary native American music. The lamps I put in his room are two touch controlled lamps, one with a Native American theme and one with a wolf theme.
Giz woke me up in tears, (she said she was not crying, but was only tired) and told me how much more Damian seems to want to hang with me, rather than David, how since David got fired, other than a few phone calls to former employers where he had been laid off, he really has not made much of an effort to find a job, and of all the men she had ever been involved with, I was the only one that was dependable enough to make sure her son was provided for.
Up until two hours ago, I had everyone in my life neatly placed into the right niche and knew precisely where stood in relation to everyone else. David does not know it yet, but he is sleeping on the couch, she locked the bedroom door so he cannot get into the room. This is something new, and she has given him two weeks to find a job or move out.
Since all the loan paperwork and everything dealing with the property is in my and her mom's name, I feel she overstepped her authority a bit.
Something has definitely changed in the last twelve hours, and at this point I have no clue as to exactly what. Gizzy has never came to me before to discuss any problem she has going on in her life. Hell when she is stressed, upset or anything other than happy, all she has ever done is come to me and ask me to take her, and now, her and Damian on a drive to get her out of the house. There is never any conversation during these drives, other than one of us pointing out something interesting.
Thus sums up the cause of my confusion. Gizzy is an independent, self reliant, high motivated young woman who never brings the drama in her life to anyone, except, on occasion her mother, regardless of what time of day or night it is. Her mom is on the road with her husband right now, and Giz could have just as easily called her cell phone and talked to her about tonight.
The only thing that David did for that room was to help me move my stuff out and Damian's stuff in.
I posted this because I felt the need to talk to someone about it, and at this time in the morning, collarme is the only place I could talk.
Feel free to state opinions, jump my ass for overstepping my bounds, or pointing out what I may have done wrong in this situation.
_____________________________
Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?
You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.
Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI
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I am confused, and I hate being confused... - 
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