that's not gold--that's only guilt.
February 12, 2014

Click "recede" for another new post. I write these things and then don't get around to actually posting them. I'm hopeless sometimes.

And sometimes I sit down to write them, but the words don't want to come out. I am feeling pretty blah this week. Don't know why. Maybe it's "my bloody valentine". Maybe I'm tired because this unending and unendurable winter is killing me. Maybe it is just because I didn't bet any rest this past weekend. Who can say?

Spouse talked to Auntie on the phone when we got home from the wedding, and I ended up committing to making her a slideshow of the wedding pictures. Which is a long, fiddly process to put together, so I have to spend time on it each evening. Yeah. More of the same old "you don't really need any time for yourself". I love her, and it isn't that I don't want to do it--I am just feeling really low on resources right now.

And it's kind of frustrating that she will not stop harping on the same old subject of "Mom's jewelry". She is so danged terrified that my sisters-in-law are going to get hold of it and do me out of my inheritance. Little does she know what I really think about the whole thing:

Number one--I really have no interest in owning a large pile of conscience-salve. Most of that stuff came from my dad cheating on my mom, then buying her complicity with gifts of expensive jewelry. I want exactly one piece, a ring that is of tremendous sentimental value. They can keep the rest. As much as "shiny, sparkly things make me happy", this particular stuff only depresses me.

Number two--I was never, ever, ever allowed to cultivate any sense of entitlement whatever. My parents made it very clear to me from a young age that I had no right to expect anything from them. Everything I had was a beneficence they were wonderful and gracious enough to bestow upon me--not because it was my right to expect it. I was expected to work for my keep, and hold down an outside job to pay for my own clothes and school supplies. There was NO FREE RIDE, as they were so terribly fond of pointing out. So after 50 years, is it surprising that I don't expect a damned thing from them? Don't WANT a damned thing from them?

Number three--After watching several generations of family suffer from the disease of hoarding until they were more owned by their possessions than vice-versa...I don't want my life cluttered up with tons of stuff, or my perceptions distorted by a sick view of what is of value. I want peace and quiet, no fights, a house that's lived in, but not cluttered.

I guess I am a typical case. My heart's desire is pretty much the exact opposite of how I was brought up!