The reason I call her Sybil is #1 when she was younger she sorta looked like Sally Field. #2 She is absolutely psychotic. I’m not just saying that. She fits the mold for Borderline Personality Disorder to a T – similar to the multiple personality disorder like in the movie Sybil so it’s a good name for her and there are definite similarities. Norm ignored the blazing red flags when they were dating – the hypochondria symptoms, the vainness, the OCD, the “save me!”, “be my hero!” cries. She a complex creature, definitely hard to figure out and ‘see through’ so I don’t blame Norm for wanting to be her hero.
The root of Sybil’s dysfunction truly lies with her parents and some of that dysfunction sadly, has been passed onto the girls. Sybil’s parents are spawns of the devil…seriously. They are some of the scariest people I’ve ever met. They are second or third cousins, knew it before they got married and married anyway. They both came from nice families and they both happen to be the black sheep or bad apple of the family. They had three children, Sybil is the oldest I believe, she has a younger sister who is actually worse than her (more vindictive and overall hateful) and a brother who is basically harmless but is the male version of a gold digger.
The five of them are known as a clan. They destroy everything they touch and despise anyone who disagrees with them and their methods of madness. They have no real friends, none of them. They use people for financial gain and typically when the one being used figures it out, the clan is dropped like a hot potato. Laziness is a common theme among the clan. Sybil has no job and never really cared to be productive other than reproducing for the clan. She is pretty and has used that to get men to care for her and now for her children. Sybil’s sister lived with her parents for over 10 years after high school while she obtained a degree in nursing. She took roughly two classes a semester and didn’t work. When she finally got her degree she took a job as a nurse and claimed to have gotten injured to the point of having a disability on the job in which she collects disability for. Although she has had no problem bearing children and picking them up well into their childhood during that time. Sybil’s brother is known as the laziest fireman in the firehouse. Has married wealthy women twice before and is married a third time which will probably end in either divorce or death. His new wife is a detective and apparently trigger happy; we think she’s just going to shoot him one of these days.
Sybil is now living with her parents (in their basement apartment thingie where her sister lived a short time ago), has 4 children (Norm’s 2 girls) and a boy and girl from her second husband- we’ll call him Mark (cuz he was her mark/target when she left Norm.) When she left Norm he was fairly certain she was seeing someone else. We suspected Mark because they got married 6 months and 1 week after her and Norm’s divorce were final (State statues require a 6 month delay in remarriage after a divorce is final, what a coincidence) Anyway, he was wealthy, worked for the family business and totally adored Sybil in high school. He was recently divorced when they hooked back up so it was a match made in heaven. Mark was the financial power house behind the first custody battle we fought so we didn’t like Mark very much. Add to it that he bought Sybil a big beautiful house, a big sparkly ring and spoiled her rotten which ensured she didn’t have to work.
We suspected there was trouble in paradise after the first custody battle but couldn’t be sure. We had heard he was accused of hitting her and moved out, moved back in and then they called it quits. He filed for divorce and she filed a restraining order. We didn’t believe for a second that he hit her. Sybil is the queen of false allegations as we had been victims of her delusional allegations for years prior. She was just playing her cards in the game of divorce and she new she had a serious card player at the table and there was a lot at stake since Mark had money. When Sybil & Norm got divorced, Norm just folded and walked away so she didn’t really need to play her games.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Putting a stop to the clothing 'issue'
Took the girls shopping this weekend at a local outlet mall since the child support adjustment has sort-of gone through. Sybil is reimbursing us until it officially changes with the state/county/whomever. We almost fell over when she dropped that check off but I digress. Not that they didn’t have plenty of clothing but I’ll admit they didn’t have as much as they should. Sybil has spoiled them to the point of no return so they don’t expect any limitations to their expenditures. I realized that rather quickly on a shopping trip last spring when they both proceeded to put $10 underwear in the cart.
I told them if they could manage to get 5 full ‘winter’ outfits with $200 they would a $100 bonus to spend on whatever they wanted –clothing related (shoes, fancy underwear, whatever.) Don’t even ask me why MN needs fancy underwear because I am baffled and a little sick to my stomach about it.
MN was hardest to shop for because she’s 12 and wants to wear Juniors clothing and she’s tiny- like a size 10 or 12 in dresses and jeans. Trying to find a pair of “skinny’ low rise jeans (which are the only ones she’ll wear) in the kids section is next to impossible. I had some luck at Old Navy but those weren’t ‘cool.’ So in Juniors she’d be like a size 00, which barely exists. Why don’t they just go into the negative in sizes? I think we had some success at like Rue 21 or Pac Sun…thank the LORD because if we had gone a whole day shopping with her coming back with a few t-shirts I think I would have lost it.
Overall the trip was successful and I’m really proud of how conscientious they were with their budget. I think their math skills improved a bit too because there were a lot of sales for them to calculate the % off. We of course then had to have “the discussion” about how they need to make an effort to keep the clothing from us and from their mom straight. For example, they had their mom drop off a bag of clothes that they wore on Thursday and Friday then they wore one of their new outfits to school on Monday. They fully expect to pick the clothes up that their mom dropped off for them whereby keeping the ones from our house and taking the ones from their mom’s. So on Wednesday night when they come again (BTW- we get them every Wed & Thursday overnight and every other Friday-Monday) they’ll probably be wearing something from their mom’s but that outfit they wore on Monday is still over with their mom. They’ll wear another new outfit from us when they leave on Friday and leave the outfit from their mom’s (maybe or pick it up) which is where we will loose outfit #2, so on and so forth. Seriously, they would think this is okay. They’ve done it already. We’re missing a lot of their stuff and it’s hard to keep track.
So we made the rule this weekend that they are no longer allowed to have their mom drop off outfits. They need to manage the situation on their own. Sybil is enabling this behavior and it needs to stop. I can understand if it’s for something special like a dress or something but the day to day stuff needs to stop. They have plenty of clothing and they need to make due with what they have. Hopefully this weekend will have assisted in stopping the madness. We shall see.
I told them if they could manage to get 5 full ‘winter’ outfits with $200 they would a $100 bonus to spend on whatever they wanted –clothing related (shoes, fancy underwear, whatever.) Don’t even ask me why MN needs fancy underwear because I am baffled and a little sick to my stomach about it.
MN was hardest to shop for because she’s 12 and wants to wear Juniors clothing and she’s tiny- like a size 10 or 12 in dresses and jeans. Trying to find a pair of “skinny’ low rise jeans (which are the only ones she’ll wear) in the kids section is next to impossible. I had some luck at Old Navy but those weren’t ‘cool.’ So in Juniors she’d be like a size 00, which barely exists. Why don’t they just go into the negative in sizes? I think we had some success at like Rue 21 or Pac Sun…thank the LORD because if we had gone a whole day shopping with her coming back with a few t-shirts I think I would have lost it.
Overall the trip was successful and I’m really proud of how conscientious they were with their budget. I think their math skills improved a bit too because there were a lot of sales for them to calculate the % off. We of course then had to have “the discussion” about how they need to make an effort to keep the clothing from us and from their mom straight. For example, they had their mom drop off a bag of clothes that they wore on Thursday and Friday then they wore one of their new outfits to school on Monday. They fully expect to pick the clothes up that their mom dropped off for them whereby keeping the ones from our house and taking the ones from their mom’s. So on Wednesday night when they come again (BTW- we get them every Wed & Thursday overnight and every other Friday-Monday) they’ll probably be wearing something from their mom’s but that outfit they wore on Monday is still over with their mom. They’ll wear another new outfit from us when they leave on Friday and leave the outfit from their mom’s (maybe or pick it up) which is where we will loose outfit #2, so on and so forth. Seriously, they would think this is okay. They’ve done it already. We’re missing a lot of their stuff and it’s hard to keep track.
So we made the rule this weekend that they are no longer allowed to have their mom drop off outfits. They need to manage the situation on their own. Sybil is enabling this behavior and it needs to stop. I can understand if it’s for something special like a dress or something but the day to day stuff needs to stop. They have plenty of clothing and they need to make due with what they have. Hopefully this weekend will have assisted in stopping the madness. We shall see.
Friday, October 24, 2008
What I sent:
Sybil,
Norm received his pay stub and it's showing that you're getting the full amount (Child Support) again. Once you receive the $, can you please provide Norm a check for the difference which is $X00.01, it would be greatly appreciated. Please let us know if there is an issue.
Also, Norm still has not heard back from you regarding MS's contacts and glasses and how you want to proceed. He was hoping to hear back from you so we can finally get this taken care of. I feel bad for her that she's still struggling to see at school. I went ahead and rescheduled an appointment for her to get her contacts because I didn't feel it was fair to MS to wait any longer. They have openings on Tuesday but since that's when you have them I did not know if you had any availability so I scheduled her for next Thursday at 10 a.m. This is not convenient for us because I work and Norm is roofing but it was the soonest I could get her in. If you can take her on Tuesday it would be better (they have availability between 3-5p.m). so she doesn't need to miss school.
Also at the very least she will need glasses. Norm was also waiting for your response to order her glasses. If we go with the ones online they take about a week to get so please respond so we can get your approval in writing and order them. Again they run about $50 total including shipping. I'm not sure why you haven't responded as I understand you have been checking your e-mail but I would think you would be eager to address this since you seemed rather concerned about getting them in for the appointments.
On a side note, I understand the girls brought over another bag of clothing from your house. We would appreciate it if you would discourage them from doing this and we will as well. It just makes it harder for them to get the clothing back and forth. We are taking them shopping this weekend again so hopefully they will get clothing they will actually wear. They have plenty of clothing as I said. We have taken them shopping many times and occasionally they come back with nothing or very little so I hope that will not be the case again.
What I wanted to send:
Sybil,
Tomorrow you will be getting $x and although you deserve $0, legally you're still entitled to $X, please drop off a money order or cashier’s check for the difference (which is $x since I know math is tough for you) immediately following the deposit into your account before it goes negative and you can't make a withdrawal. You're personal rubber checks are not worth the ink used to print them.
Why the F*ck are you ignoring the e-mail that YOU asked for you psycho b!tch from hell! Your idiosyncrasies are really starting to piss me off. We paid for the contacts already- are you really too busy whoring around to take your precious perfect daughter to the follow-up? We're ordering the glasses and I'm glad you will have no say in what they look like.
You've messed up your girls’ brains so much that they think the only brand of clothing they can wear is Abercrombie... good luck keeping up with standard of living when your sugardaddy drops you on your nasty boney bootie. Have a sh!tty weekend.
Sybil,
Norm received his pay stub and it's showing that you're getting the full amount (Child Support) again. Once you receive the $, can you please provide Norm a check for the difference which is $X00.01, it would be greatly appreciated. Please let us know if there is an issue.
Also, Norm still has not heard back from you regarding MS's contacts and glasses and how you want to proceed. He was hoping to hear back from you so we can finally get this taken care of. I feel bad for her that she's still struggling to see at school. I went ahead and rescheduled an appointment for her to get her contacts because I didn't feel it was fair to MS to wait any longer. They have openings on Tuesday but since that's when you have them I did not know if you had any availability so I scheduled her for next Thursday at 10 a.m. This is not convenient for us because I work and Norm is roofing but it was the soonest I could get her in. If you can take her on Tuesday it would be better (they have availability between 3-5p.m). so she doesn't need to miss school.
Also at the very least she will need glasses. Norm was also waiting for your response to order her glasses. If we go with the ones online they take about a week to get so please respond so we can get your approval in writing and order them. Again they run about $50 total including shipping. I'm not sure why you haven't responded as I understand you have been checking your e-mail but I would think you would be eager to address this since you seemed rather concerned about getting them in for the appointments.
On a side note, I understand the girls brought over another bag of clothing from your house. We would appreciate it if you would discourage them from doing this and we will as well. It just makes it harder for them to get the clothing back and forth. We are taking them shopping this weekend again so hopefully they will get clothing they will actually wear. They have plenty of clothing as I said. We have taken them shopping many times and occasionally they come back with nothing or very little so I hope that will not be the case again.
What I wanted to send:
Sybil,
Tomorrow you will be getting $x and although you deserve $0, legally you're still entitled to $X, please drop off a money order or cashier’s check for the difference (which is $x since I know math is tough for you) immediately following the deposit into your account before it goes negative and you can't make a withdrawal. You're personal rubber checks are not worth the ink used to print them.
Why the F*ck are you ignoring the e-mail that YOU asked for you psycho b!tch from hell! Your idiosyncrasies are really starting to piss me off. We paid for the contacts already- are you really too busy whoring around to take your precious perfect daughter to the follow-up? We're ordering the glasses and I'm glad you will have no say in what they look like.
You've messed up your girls’ brains so much that they think the only brand of clothing they can wear is Abercrombie... good luck keeping up with standard of living when your sugardaddy drops you on your nasty boney bootie. Have a sh!tty weekend.
Torn
Torn about how to feel about the girls hiding in their room all night, the "clothing situation" and their other random behavior. I know it's somewhat normal for teenagers to dissociate themselves from their parental units. Add to it that they have cable and internet access in their room. Part of me thinks they should be around us more. The placement change happened less than a year ago and this could be a coping mechanism or just normal behavior. They’ve been brainwashed to despise us so I get that they aren’t going to jump at the opportunity hang with us. I’m a bit at a loss as to what’s “normal” with teenagers.
The clothing issue drives me up the f-ing wall, across the ceiling and back down again. It shouldn’t. I am fully aware of this. I totally ‘get it’ that I am overly pissy about the fact that both of them have gobs of clothing at our house yet insist on shuttling clothing from their mom’s back and forth. We’ve spent hundreds on clothing for them and they don’t wear any of it. Clothing THEY picked out. They continue to complain to Sybil that they have none at our house. Why? I’m sick of asking them. We’re taking them shopping this weekend for what? More clothing they WON”T WEAR? My eye is starting to twitch…I need to drop this.
Random behavior especially from Mini-Sybil is baffling to me. They get up at the last minute to get ready for school. They shower at night so they can sleep longer in the morning. MS gets up and decides that she want to curl her hair. Now this may seem minor but I assure you it is not. Curling this girls hair is a full hour task. Her hair is stick straight, thick as molasses and half way down her back. It’s gorgeous and impossible to curl in the 5 minutes she allots herself to get ready in the morning. So, of course, they are running late this a.m. and she’s getting mad because she doesn’t have enough time to finish it. Hmmm…where’s the common sense? Probably out by the curb where she left her forethought. Poor thing is just absent sometimes.
The clothing issue drives me up the f-ing wall, across the ceiling and back down again. It shouldn’t. I am fully aware of this. I totally ‘get it’ that I am overly pissy about the fact that both of them have gobs of clothing at our house yet insist on shuttling clothing from their mom’s back and forth. We’ve spent hundreds on clothing for them and they don’t wear any of it. Clothing THEY picked out. They continue to complain to Sybil that they have none at our house. Why? I’m sick of asking them. We’re taking them shopping this weekend for what? More clothing they WON”T WEAR? My eye is starting to twitch…I need to drop this.
Random behavior especially from Mini-Sybil is baffling to me. They get up at the last minute to get ready for school. They shower at night so they can sleep longer in the morning. MS gets up and decides that she want to curl her hair. Now this may seem minor but I assure you it is not. Curling this girls hair is a full hour task. Her hair is stick straight, thick as molasses and half way down her back. It’s gorgeous and impossible to curl in the 5 minutes she allots herself to get ready in the morning. So, of course, they are running late this a.m. and she’s getting mad because she doesn’t have enough time to finish it. Hmmm…where’s the common sense? Probably out by the curb where she left her forethought. Poor thing is just absent sometimes.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Poking the Monster
So Tuesday night, Norm says that the girls want to go to the football game on Wed nite - it's the last one of the season. I reminded him that we all had dance- we belong to an ethnic dance group that meets twice a month to practice. Norm and I teach, the girls and Norster all dance. He remembered but was still leaning toward letting them go since it was the last game of the season and they go to all of them, plus they actually called to ASK if they could go the day before. (Whoopidy freaking do da.) Never mind the fact that MN is only 12 and shouldn't really be hanging with her older sister at a high school football games, but I digress.
Norm and I talk about it yesterday and that we will need to drive them all the way down to the game (45 minutes South of our house) and then drive all the way out to dance (half hour North East of hour house) to make it to dance by 7. I said, wait a minute, this is an AWAY GAME??? He was like "Yeah." Uncomfortable Silence.
I wasn't real happy with the situation for several reasons. 1- thier grades stink, 2 it's a school night, 3 he was letting them bail on an obligation they had, to go "watch" a game they don't understand (so they can hang out with their friends.) 4- it was totally out of our way to take them and would mean we'd have to leave right when we got home in order to make dance on time and wouldn't get home until late which meant Norster wouldn't get to bed until about an hour after his bedtime. The entire situation STUNK from the word go.
The stench just got worse as the night progressed. Norm wanted to look up their school progress prior to letting them go when we got home from work so we got out late. There was no time to eat dinner so we stopped at McD's so I ended up with a stomach ache the rest of the night. We ended up being 30 minutes late for dance. When we went to pick them up from the game they asked if we could give a friend a ride home- didn't have any more room in the car so they asked if we could wait until her dad came to get her. 30 full minutes late her dad finally shows and we don't get home until LATE. I was NOT HAPPY to say the least and tried my best to bite my tongue. Norm just can't quite understand why I'm upset...
Norm and I talk about it yesterday and that we will need to drive them all the way down to the game (45 minutes South of our house) and then drive all the way out to dance (half hour North East of hour house) to make it to dance by 7. I said, wait a minute, this is an AWAY GAME??? He was like "Yeah." Uncomfortable Silence.
I wasn't real happy with the situation for several reasons. 1- thier grades stink, 2 it's a school night, 3 he was letting them bail on an obligation they had, to go "watch" a game they don't understand (so they can hang out with their friends.) 4- it was totally out of our way to take them and would mean we'd have to leave right when we got home in order to make dance on time and wouldn't get home until late which meant Norster wouldn't get to bed until about an hour after his bedtime. The entire situation STUNK from the word go.
The stench just got worse as the night progressed. Norm wanted to look up their school progress prior to letting them go when we got home from work so we got out late. There was no time to eat dinner so we stopped at McD's so I ended up with a stomach ache the rest of the night. We ended up being 30 minutes late for dance. When we went to pick them up from the game they asked if we could give a friend a ride home- didn't have any more room in the car so they asked if we could wait until her dad came to get her. 30 full minutes late her dad finally shows and we don't get home until LATE. I was NOT HAPPY to say the least and tried my best to bite my tongue. Norm just can't quite understand why I'm upset...
Numero Uno
Should have started this many years ago when I first entered the life of Step Monsterhood. I never kept a diary but I have a pretty good memory so I can plug it all in here.I married a man with two beautiful girls, at the time they were 3 and 6, sweet and innocent. I can't say he didn't warn me. He told me his ex was nuts, but they all say that right? I mean, I said my ex was nuts, but in reality he was just immature and a little on the obnoxious side. That's really about it. Mentally he was pretty stable but we parted ways rather quickly anyway after I realized shortly after the wedding that the fighting wasn't going to stop, ever.
So here I am almost ten years later and trying to find that special little place in the step-parenting world we all seek...sanity. The girls are now 12 and 15 and we have shared placement (for those of you unfamiliar with the term- it means we have them in our home living with us 50% of the time.) Things are...(on a scale of 1 being bad and 10 being awesome) about a 5, maybe a 4 or 6 depending on the day and the chaos and drama surrounding that day. Silly, silly me thought it'd be about an 8 or 9 but maybe I had my hopes up too high, or too much faith or too much ignorance...can't quite put my finger on it just yet but I'll let you know when I do.
Over the last -lets just say 10 years cuz it sounds better- it's been rough. 2 major custody battles, psych evaluations, false accusations of every type of abuse you can imagine, 10 different therapists/shrinks (not for me ;), a few ulcers and tens of thousands of dollars spent on legal fees boil down to nothing more than the ability to say "we did everything we could." Did we WIN??? Yes and No. But we are certainly paying a dear price for whatever it is that we won.
So here I am almost ten years later and trying to find that special little place in the step-parenting world we all seek...sanity. The girls are now 12 and 15 and we have shared placement (for those of you unfamiliar with the term- it means we have them in our home living with us 50% of the time.) Things are...(on a scale of 1 being bad and 10 being awesome) about a 5, maybe a 4 or 6 depending on the day and the chaos and drama surrounding that day. Silly, silly me thought it'd be about an 8 or 9 but maybe I had my hopes up too high, or too much faith or too much ignorance...can't quite put my finger on it just yet but I'll let you know when I do.
Over the last -lets just say 10 years cuz it sounds better- it's been rough. 2 major custody battles, psych evaluations, false accusations of every type of abuse you can imagine, 10 different therapists/shrinks (not for me ;), a few ulcers and tens of thousands of dollars spent on legal fees boil down to nothing more than the ability to say "we did everything we could." Did we WIN??? Yes and No. But we are certainly paying a dear price for whatever it is that we won.
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