An N-Leopard Never Changes Their Spots

[Sadie Wu]

Hey Everyone....I have been busy lately and not around much....but life in the N-field never changes, does it?...lol....My Dad has been a piece of work ever since my Mom died...not sure if he thinks now he has a right to be front and center, or if he is truly thinking about his own mortality, and trying to figure out how great of a send-off his kids are going to give him....(fyi...because he is such an N, I'm guessing most of us won't even show up...lol...)...but he started calling, writing, texting, you name it, and about every message was suddenly all about Mom....how he still loved her, would never have divorced her, still didn't understand why she booted him, and had no idea why most of his kids didn't talk to him, etc.....Now, mind you, he is with his 3rd wife.  Mom stuck it out 24 years....Although none of us liked wife #2 very much, in retrospect, she probably had more brains than any of us gave her credit for at the time, because she only stuck it out for about a month or so...lol....But wife #3 has been around now since like 1977 or 1978....somewhere in there....You'd think she might be a bit offended by his sudden declarations of undying love for Mom, huh?!...lol....

Anyway, my oldest sister and I apparently both had enough at about the same time....I think it was even the same email/day that we finally both responded to separately....I said something like, "Dad, if you honestly don't know what you did, you have got to be the most clueless man on the planet, we're sick of hearing it, give it a rest."....my sister was more blunt....something like..."Gee, Dad, I don't know, maybe your daughters don't talk to you because among other things, you raped them when they were young."  So of course, he responds, denying it, and then asks me for a specific list of his sins, who made the allegations, and exactly what they accused him of....I wrote back once and said he was well aware of what he'd done, I wasn't breaking confidences, and he didn't need to worry about answering to God for anything he hadn't done, so no worries....just give it a rest....Of course, he replied and told me that I needed to get on my knees and ask forgiveness, that I certainly didn't understand our religion or I would understand that God would never allow him to hold positions of leadership or authority in our church and be a sinner, so I needed to repent for my twisted thinking.  I wrote back and told him that I DID understand our religion, and that every person declares their OWN worthiness, because God gives you your free agency so that you can choose wisely or condemn yourself....and that the ONLY person God ever promised He would not allow to be unworthy in a position of leadership was a Prophet, and last time I checked, Dad was not one of those, so perhaps he ought to study the religion and get on his knees and do some thinking and praying.....and then I blocked his emails and haven't talked to him since.....lol...

And then their is the ex-husband...I have been doing my best to let him think he is in charge....it has saved me court costs now for nearly 6 months....which is a record for us...lol....but crap it gets old to deal with that arrogant son-of-a-gun....

I keep reminding myself that I am out of money, and in the long run it is less painful than the mediation, threats of lawsuits from his family, and other crap he will stir up....but I am counting the days until my baby is 19...lol....

The other day he asked me to go get the new glasses for one of the girls...he sent me with my "to do" list....just like old times...lol...I smiled pretty and said, "yes, sir"  "be happy to"..lol..His company had new insurance, and he told me exactly what store I was to go to, and that I was to tell them to pull up his account and all the info would be on file, etc.....so I did everything he said, to the letter....Well, he had failed to mention that I could no longer get transition lenses for our daughter, which we have gotten the past 2 times, and he never told me how much to expect the bill to be.  The last few glasses have been around $150, and she hasn't had new glasses for about 2 years.  My last pair was about $400 and with my insurance from the school dist. it went down to $200....this is the 1st time that our daughter crossed from youth to adult frames, so her glasses were about the same price....$400 and went down to $200...I didn't think anything of it...

So I get back and text N the info...I get a call and he is crapping his pants....the insurance apparently was supposed to be a co-pay deal, and without the transition lenses would have cost $30...lol...bummer...

So he tells me he is going to call the store and straighten out the "mess I made" but he keeps trying to get my "permission"....I know where he is going with that one....so he can tell our daughter that it was my idea and I was the one that refused to pay for her lenses....like what?  She is then supposed to act stupid and forget that she was standing there when I pulled out my debit card and already paid for the glasses in full at the higher price?..lol..

I asked him if he had talked to our daughter about it, and he said that he "believed he had at some point"....and I told him I thought that it was really important to her, and I was willing to pay my half....and he gives me this line about how he "just cannot afford it."....yeah....Mr. "I bought myself an iPod and every possible assessory, but the kids have to pick their gifts out of my 'free' point catelog from work even though I make over $13,000/mo" can't afford half of these glasses every 2 years....lol...

I said, "Just stop.  Any person sets their own priorities about what they are willing to spend their money on....so just say the truth out loud....you aren't WILLING to pay for it."   and he says, "It's a luxury item.  I would like to buy my kids lots of luxury items, but I am just too poor."  What a piece of work......


"I just kept thinking, "Shut up, Sadie, Shut up, Sadie....he'll punish you with mediation or court...."...lol...

so I got off the phone fast....I have done alot of reminding myself in the past few months that my girls really are smart, and they do have the capacity to figure him out for themselves if they want to....

So N calls back a while later and tells me it was too late, they had already made the lenses, and so we were screwed....It was a total accident on my part, but I am not sorry....our daughter should be able to have what she wanted.  Of all of our girls, she asks for the very least.  It is one of the very few things that she has ever asked for, and it is important to her....and I am sorry....he can afford it....if his budget is that tight, maybe he can pawn his iPod...lol...

jerk....

That same daughter came to my house a week or so ago and just collapsed into tears.  She cried for awhile before I could finally get her to tell me what was wrong.  My former father-in-law is now approaching 86, and apparently his mind and health are really starting to go to where it is apparent to everyone.  All of my girls have always loved him the best of all of their grandparents.  She told me that she was worried about her Grandpa and wondering how God was going to judge him because he had been so mean to me and I didn't deserve it, but that he had only been mean because Granma and her Dad had lied to him, so how was God going to judge that and make that right?

I sat her down and put my arms around her, and I told her that her Grandpa had been one of the few men in my life that I believed had honestly loved me....and that I wanted her to always know that I loved him....I always had and I always would....and that everyone had known how much Grandpa and I loved each other, and that is why I believed they had lied to him....because they wanted to try to destroy that love....but she was right, Grandpa was a good man, and if we knew that, we had to trust that God, who knows everything, knew that, too.

Then I asked her what she thought God was probably like.  I asked her if she imagined he was nice or mean.  She said she thought hHe must be nice if He loved everyone.  I told her I thought so, too.  I told her that I didn't picture a final judgment as a time when God was sitting above us on a big throne with glee in hHis eyes, waiting for the fun of punishing us, but that I figured He would lovingly talk to us about what we had done with the stewardship of our lives, and when we had to take responsibility for everything honestly, the real hell of that would be that most good people, when they were being honest, would beat themselves up harder than God would for all the times they were dumb or did something wrong...and He would probbly only have to punish the ones who were still trying to excuse or lie their way through the judgment....lol...

But that the reason God had to be the one to do it was because He was the only one who loved everyone, and who knew every single person involved, and loved them all, and knew everything about everything.....so just like in Grandpa's case....He could consider all the facts...He would know that Grandpa was deceived, and then He could know what parts Grandpa would have done, if any, had he only known the truth...and that is how he will judge him.....at least that is how I imagine it will go...then she asked me about her Uncle, and how I thought he would be judged....I told her that one might be a little trickier, because her uncle had admitted at one point that he understood how her dad was treating us, and then he made a choice to believe something else, so he might have to be accountable in a different way....but that God also understood that her uncle was afraid of a lot of things....he was afraid of being left alone, and afraid of being lied to by a woman....and so he was easily deceived by people....and once again, God would consider everything in everyone's life....which is something we as humans cannot do, and is why we should not try to judge each other.

Afterwards she thanked me for talking to her, and told me how much it helped her.  She asked to see her therapist, though, because she told me that she thought maybe she should be talking to someone over the next few months.  Her therapist had released her unless she requested him....according to the last visit the N took her to before the holidays....so of course I had to talk to N and let him know I was going to contact the therapist and I knew he would want to know why....I just told him that she was worried about her grandpa dying....(thought I 'd keep the part about the whole judgment thing to myslef...lol...especially since it had to do with him and his mom lying...lol...)...but then I said, "You know, it's times like this, when the girls are dealing with death that I wish we would reconsider and maybe take them to therapists who share our religious views, because I wonder how someone from a different faith can help them process their beliefs...."

N's response?  He laughed at me, but no comment....Mr. "I am so righteous on the bench at church every Sunday"....UGH!  I don't really care what a person believes, but hypocrisy will always irk me....and no one does that better than an N....

My youngest daughter said to me this morning, "You know what Mom?  I think Dad knows that he irritates me sometimes, but I don't think he has a clue just hw much I hate him."  I said, "Oh, come on, you dont really hate him, do you?  That's a pretty strong word for your own Dad.  Why do you say that?"  She thought about it for a minute and then she said, "Okay, maybe I don't hate him, but I don't like him very much because he can never tell the truth.  I don't like it when people lie to me, and Dad won't say he is sorry, and he won't say the truth.  That makes me not want to be around him.  Now that I have to be around him so much, with the 50/50 parenting thing, I see it so much that it makes me like him less every day."

And I know just how she feels.....d*mnit....I was married to that for 20 years....and every day I liked him and respected him a little less than the day before....which is why I finally started slipping into that oblivion of denial, because my religious values had taught me that I had promised him and promised God that I was going to try to stay married to him forever.....and what do you do?  It was bad enough that he was mean to me and treated me like crap....but the real h*ll for me was that I could not respect him, which made me like him less and less everyday.....man, that was a lonely way to live....

And now, every interaction with the dork reminds me why I am so much better off....my life will never be the same because of him, and it might not be n-free....but it is soooooo much better....lol.....and at least now I know what to expect....that no matter what he says or does it is always about him, for him, and headed like a boomerang back for him, or else he wouldn't bother.....because an N-leopard never changes his spots....and as long as I remember that, life is good....lol.....

Sadie Wu