Sticking With It
What a week it has been. Eldest daughter is expecting baby number 2 sometime in April. Amidst all the hormones, she and 15 year old stepdaughter (Jules) have come to that horrible place …. the nightmare of mothers and step mothers of teenage daughters everywhere. Jules has become quite the handful. A few weeks ago she asked to get a horse, both her father and her stepmother said absolutely not. Jules is hard on my daughters two horses. She doesn’t warm them up, rides hard, jumps them over stationary piles of rocks and logs, gallops through fields of shoulder high in grasses mindless of rabbit warrens and groundhog holes. In fact back in January she rode 23 year old Justy and when he died the next day, my daughter was absolutely certain it was because Jules had over worked him …. so no, Jules cannot ride the two remaining horses and is not allowed to procure one of her own ….. but she did.
The Saturday before Labor day, she and two older friends brought a horse trailer to the farm while her parents were out, and put a new horse in the field with my daughter’s two. When it was noticed the next morning, Jules refused to say where she got it, did not know if it was up to date on vaccines, and was informed that if she cared for this horse, she needed to find another place for it within 10 days. Jules mother insisted she had known nothing about it, but also warned that if they got rid of it, it would be a felony because Jules held the bill of sale.
There was a verbal war back and forth about minor children not being able to “buy” horses, followed by a text message war from all Jules friends at school to my eldest daughter (her step-mother) about what an evil step mother she is. That was followed by a posting of the horse for free on social media, which started another texting frenzy with school friends of Jules pretending to be adults interested in having the horse ….. which led to my daughter telling Jules to stay with her mother (who actually has custody of her but never keeps her at her house) …. which led Jules to smash the stair railings and banister and several knicknacks were thrown at my daughter and broken … led my daughter to pack a bunch of clothes in her backpack and through the backpack out of the house while making Jules wait outside on the porch to wait for her mother to pick her up … which led to Jules calling the police (on the cell phone I pay for) claiming she was kicked out of her house and had nowhere to go and was only 15 …. which led the police to showing up at the same time biological Mom did ….. which created another insanely crazy dialog … and in the end my daughter and her husband as well as Jules mother not be afraid to discipline her, and then advised her to stay with her own mother until she learns how to behave.
Naturally that didn’t happen. Instead Jules rode the new horse, it got a cut on it’s foreleg that become infected a days later and required an emergency veterinary visit, some antibiotics, some ointments …. lots of wrapping and nursing. Finally the adults found a forever home for the horse, and this past Wednesday it was moved to it’s new boarding facility with it’s new owner.
Now Jules is roaring mad. Slamming things around (not at her mothers at all) calling my daughter a “slut” calling her little half brother a bastard, screaming she can’t wait until they die ……… in general … making life miserable for herself and everyone else.
Want to know what my advice to my daughter was in the midst of all of this? (Thank God I only visit and live 2 hours away from them) … If you ever want peaceful relationship with this child, this may be your last opportunity to repair your relationship with her. (They used to be so close) … Consider taking Jules aside, and telling her that you have been unhappy with they way she doesn’t clean her room, the way she talks to you, the way she slams around the house expecting everything to go her way, but that you can see she really loves this horse and wants it, and even though she went about it in the most horrible way, you have to admit she went to a great deal of trouble and that you are willing to give her a chance to keep the horse if in fact she treats the horse well, cares for it properly, and also starts helping around the house and being more respectful toward you.
Jules Dad is a peacekeeper …. has no idea how to discipline or control his daughter, but wants everyone to be happy. He thought this was a terrific idea, however ….. my daughter’s response was “That ship has sailed!” Bye Bye Horsey. Hello 15 year old female vengence.
On a different note.
Though I am historically terrible at persisting with anything resembling a healthy lifestyle, I did manage (at least this week) to follow rather closely, to a pathetically lax, but slightly healthier manner of living. I smoked less (which was a major miracle being that I am worried for my eldest daugher, Jules, actually the entire family …… I also made wiser food and beverage choices, and even added two days of light exercise to the week.
Did I mention that I am hating this? Yes, I really don’t like it at all, even so, I am still determined (more times than not) to continue to attempt, over and over again, no matter how long it may take, no matter how many times I may fail, to reach a point in my life where eating is more about nutrition and less about instant gratification, where exercise is just plain good medicine that eventually stops triggering every jiggling ache and pain known to mankind, and where smoking isn’t even an option.
Did I also mention that I’ve been trying to work my way to a wholesome lifestyle for my entire adult life? Time and time again I have started on this path only to turn back to revisit all my bad habits within a few short weeks.
The difference this time is that I have only promised myself that I will immediately pick myself up by the bootstraps if I slip up, and continue the journey to where ever it may lead me. I am not pressuring myself to lose weight, in fact I’m not even weighing myself. This isn’t about weight, or how I look, or what size I am. This is about feeling better, moving more freely, and becoming stronger and stronger in body as well as mindset.
It’s the only way I can ever hope to hightail it out of the line of fire next time I visit my daughter and her family!