So tonight I was having a chat about politics with my step-mom. The topic of gay marriage came up, and this is what happened:
Step-mom: Is it really legal now? Who voted for it?
Me: Well, yeah, the majority of Americans now support gay marriage. About 70% now.
Step-mom: It’s disgusting! I think it’s disgusting how they get close to each other from behind. Yech.
Me: Uh yeah, people are strange these days. America isn’t like other places, I guess.
Step-mom: It’s becoming a fashion these days, I think!
Me: Well, I don’t know if it’s a fashion, but it’s certainly a cultural thing.
Step-mom: So disgusting.
By “how they get close to each other from behind,” she was referring to gay sex between men. And she basically thinks that being gay is a fad. I felt so awful pretending to be a conservative homophobe. V_V
@BlackBloc
Hugs for you if you want them, and for the people who were affected by that tragedy. =[
Yeah, people are SO willing to risk their lives for fads. Being murdered (or, historically, imprisoned or executed) for being gay is just like extreme sports, innit?
Ally,
I’m sorry about your parents being that way… That’s awful.
Sorry this sounds cheesy, but you could give the sisters stuffed animals as a present. Kids already like them because they make them feel safe and secure. If you gave one to each sister they’d have something for comfort and also something to remember you by. Plus it would probably help them understand that you don’t want to leave them, but it doesn’t look suspicious to your parents.
That’s a wonderful suggestion. Thank you. =] I think I’ll get them the stuffed animals for their birthday. Hopefully they’ll like the gifts because 1) those stuffed animals will be the first gifts I’ve ever payed for with my own income (before I had no money to get them anything because I received nothing but gift money from relatives and allowance from my father) and 2) they are at the age at which they probably wouldn’t be embarrassed by such a gift.
The thing about little kids is that they’re going to understand eventually. They will forgive you eventually.
I can’t think of what else you could really do to help them… Maybe talk about how they shouldn’t let their mother make them feel bad? Or if things ever get bad(like her hitting them) then they should get help(actually I’m not sure if that would help them, since police sometimes won’t do anything but jail the abuser for a month).
I think growing up with their mother calling them those names might take a toll on their mental health. They need to understand that they aren’t shitheads or whatever, which is why I suggested talking to them about it, that way they know not to start believing that they are shit heads.
Sorry if you’ve thought of this stuff already or I’m being not helpful… It’s hard to help you through the Internet in this situation. Even though this is tough, leaving is the best option, and your sisters’ pain won’t be forever.
I hope they do forgive me. And I really wish I could tell them directly that they don’t deserve to be treated that way, but that will open me up to the wrath of their parents, who are known to get furious and aggressive. All I can really do is tell my little sisters that verbal attacks and slurs are never nice, that they don’t deserve to be called such awful names, etc. without openly blaming their parents. Because they tell their parents about the things I say.
Oh yeah, didnt you say you had a brother that would help if you forgot any papers? I’m sure you could still give cards and gifts through him, but obviously not anything that would give away what happened.
Your sisters will understand, and like what cloudiah said, you’re actually setting a good example by not tolerating abuse. Also don’t forget that what you’re doing is perfectly legal, since you’re legally an adult.
Yeah, I think my brother will be able to do that, actually. I don’t know how things will turn out in the months to come, but hopefully he’ll also be able to give letters to my little sisters.
Anyway, I really appreciate your help, and I apologize for not responding earlier. Thanks, auggziliary. ^_^
Over 24 hours later the train is still burning. 10 municipalities downriver have taken preventive measures for their water supply, though there is no evidence yet of contamination. Investigators can’t yet get in the area so there is still only one confirmed death, but there was 60ish people in a bar about 10 meters of the point of impact… so we expect bad news.
@Ally: I haven’t felt that I had anything useful to ad in terms of advice to you, but I’ll send you some internet hugs anyway for all you’re going through, and good luck.
One good thing about direct 24h news channels: Just saw a news guy choke up after giving an interview to the sort of people that news channels usually screen out on principle out of their distorted views of “objectivity” (irate grandfather who lost his son and son’s wife, and who works in railway maintenance, *fuming* at the state of the law that allows petrol train to go into towns when he knows tracks are not being maintained properly and there’s other routes that are most costly but don’t go through towns).
I hope somebody recorded this and puts it on YouTube, I was only half-listening and didn’t get to my DVR on time.
guffaw-ferrets
11 years ago
Oops — internet glitch + traveling + a personal sads = I didn’t check back into this thread.
cloudiah — thank you so much! Will email you ASAP. To my knowledge, this horse is in Oklahoma and he may be coming up for sale either officially or through a claims race. It would be great to find him a home — since if you can’t tell, I love him and wish I could take him myself, but alas. Just knowing someone else loves him will be enough, though 🙂
BlackBloc, I heard about that story; it’s so terrible, and it’s gotten so little coverage in the US — if I wasn’t a committed news junkie I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard about it.
guffaw-ferrets, OK is kind of far away from where I am, but I promise I will forward it to my horse-loving friends and maybe they’ll know someone who knows someone…
cloudiah, that’s shocking – it’s hardly been covered? I think it was front-page here. Prominent, anyway.
guffaw-ferrets
11 years ago
cloudiah — awesome! I’ve contacted an Oklahoma racehorse rescue operation as well; often if someone is interested in a horse in another state, the bunch of us big-hearted softies can get a network together to transport the lucky critter to his or her new home. The better-funded foster/rescuing operations are definitely big on that, since they really want to see their animals end up with forever friends.
The last frontier is the Fugly Horse of the Day community — sometimes they rub me the wrong way in various respects, but you can never say they aren’t deadly serious about their rescue efforts. They can get the horse-trailer equivalent of a carpool together in a matter of hours if it’s urgent, and have moved ten or fifteen horses over long distances in one go if multiple people in different areas are interested in multiple horses from the same general area.
And people on FHOTD are always moving horses out of Oklahoma, since that and Washington State are sadly where a lot of older or unprofitable racers are sent to … well … die … so that actually works in everyone’s favor here.
So now the thread has learned some random trivia regarding grassroots equine rescue communities and tactics.
guffaw-ferrets
11 years ago
BTW: horsie on the left in the following picture looks very much like the horsie I am trying to save, right down to the attitude (sorry, not feeling up to image-embedding) —
His buddy on the right coincidentally looks a lot like the horse my mother and I ended up taking in when I was a teenager, who is also coincidentally a distant cousin of the horse I’m trying to save now. It’s a small horsey world.
I wish I could keep a horse so I could help you 🙁 I am only in contact with cat people, though.
guffaw-ferrets
11 years ago
Thanks, katz! We need all sorts to assist the Furrinati, so it’s okay.
And FYI, the horse in question doesn’t seem like he’s in immediate danger — I think he still has the same owners as he did when I knew him, and they didn’t come across as the type to just destroy an animal (or send it to auction, same diff) at whim. Now that the horse isn’t making money for them anymore, they’re running him in $5k claims races (which means anyone can “claim” any of the horses for $5k and effectively take over ownership) instead of just sending him to kill, so that’s a great sign.
I think, with any luck, the horse community at large should be able to get him a nice retirement home before he’s in hot water. I’ve often thought about calling the owners outright and telling them I want to help this guy find a home, but haven’t wanted to do so until a plan was in motion — if it ever seems like things are getting dire, though, I might just bite the bullet and ring ’em up with a calm appeal to their emotions.
So, we live in this little house out in the woods, and right now, Husband works a night shift, so it’s just me and the dogs.
I was just about to fall asleep, when my Tibetan spaniel flew up from the bed, ran to the living room and jumped up on the window sill, where he stood barking his head off. My German Shepherd dog soon started barking as well, ran to the front door, opened it and ran out with all the toy dogs following her… (The GSD can open the front door herself by standing on her hind legs and using her front paws). I grabbed a bath robe and followed them out in the yard, but didn’t see anything or anyone. Still, I wonder if some burglar were there checking things out, considering the reaction of the pack, and also considering the fact that there’s been a lot of burglaries in the area? The Tibetan spaniel will bark at deer too, when they try to steal our cucumber, but the GSD has never bothered about veggie-stealing deer…
The interesting thing is that the two oldest of the toy dogs will always bark at anyone who enters our yard unless Mum and Dad very explicitly welcomes zir. GSD girl on the other hand – she’s been out alone in the yard when a worker has arrived to do some job at the house, and then, like an idiot, wandered straight into the yard with the big dog in it before alerting us that he’s there. This has happend twice, and both times, GSD girl just grabbed some toy and tried to coax him into playing with her. We’ve been joking about how she’s so totally not a guard dog. But this time she just ran out into the yard ROARING.
CassandraSays
11 years ago
How is she with other dogs? Could she be reacting to a non-human?
I can’t be certain of what it was, of course, but she’s never reacted like this to another dog either… She’s confident but very friendly with other dogs as long as they don’t get too close to the yard or the car. Then she’ll give them a few barks to point out that “this is mine”, but she’s still pretty cool about it.
Actually, the only other time I’ve seen her really angry like this is when we did the Working Dogs Club’s mentality assessment test, and she faced “the ghosts” (basically people in KKK-like costumes acting threateningly).
That’s why I was so freaked out… Gonna sit by the computer and drink tea for some time now before I go back to sleep…
CassandraSays
11 years ago
Hopefully she chased off whatever it was? Still, scary.
I’m trying to get closer to my sisters (for reasons that are probably readily known, especially for people who have read the last page). I’ve been telling them stories, starting with the one about me facing a man who almost followed me home from the train station. (Don’t worry – I made it completely PG for them.) The older one inspired me to tell that story somehow. And before they went to sleep, I gave each of them a (wanted) hug – the first hugs I’ve given to anyone in months.
I expected them to be averse to the storytelling because they’re 7 and 8 now. I suspected that they’d be embarrassed. But almost every other night ever since I told them that story, they’ve been coming to my room asking me to tell another real-life story. And it really makes me happy to see that.
Tonight they didn’t come up to my room, and I honestly felt kind of sad about that, even though I don’t want to pressure them to hear me tell stories (I’m doing it because they want me to, anyway). And they were busy with talking to the neighbor as well. Next time I think I’ll try to tell them about some of my very bizarre dreams.
So yeah, things are getting a little better, although I still can’t help but feel awful when I realize that this kind of relationship I have with them now is on shaky grounds because of my circumstances.
HORSEY UPDATE! Today I received the following email from a rescue operation I’d contacted:
“Aldous is in the hands of connections that have donated horses to us before. We will keep an eye on him this meet (Remington Park starts next month). His connections take pretty good care of their horses and they know we are here when they need to retire a horse. I’ll keep you posted and thanks for the heads up.”
I think I’m gonna cry. This is so awesome. He’s still gonna need a home someday if anyone is interested, but he’s not in an emergency, he’s not going to suffer or be destroyed for no reason, and he’s going to be okay.
Oh, and now you know his name is Aldous. As in “Huxley.” We were obviously both made of matter from the same star.
Unimaginative
11 years ago
Dvärghundspossen, my sister’s dog (German Shepherd-St Bernard mix) was like that. Big, goofy, happy, never met somebody he didn’t want to play with. The only time he barked and growled was when bears (not people, not the neighbours’ dogs) came too close to the yard. (The yard backed on to the forest, and we often see bear scat on the walking trail.)
We Hunted The Mammoth
So tonight I was having a chat about politics with my step-mom. The topic of gay marriage came up, and this is what happened:
Step-mom: Is it really legal now? Who voted for it?
Me: Well, yeah, the majority of Americans now support gay marriage. About 70% now.
Step-mom: It’s disgusting! I think it’s disgusting how they get close to each other from behind. Yech.
Me: Uh yeah, people are strange these days. America isn’t like other places, I guess.
Step-mom: It’s becoming a fashion these days, I think!
Me: Well, I don’t know if it’s a fashion, but it’s certainly a cultural thing.
Step-mom: So disgusting.
By “how they get close to each other from behind,” she was referring to gay sex between men. And she basically thinks that being gay is a fad. I felt so awful pretending to be a conservative homophobe. V_V
@BlackBloc
Hugs for you if you want them, and for the people who were affected by that tragedy. =[
::rolls eyes::
Yeah, people are SO willing to risk their lives for fads. Being murdered (or, historically, imprisoned or executed) for being gay is just like extreme sports, innit?
::hurk::
BlackBlock, how horrible! 🙁
@auggziliary
That’s a wonderful suggestion. Thank you. =] I think I’ll get them the stuffed animals for their birthday. Hopefully they’ll like the gifts because 1) those stuffed animals will be the first gifts I’ve ever payed for with my own income (before I had no money to get them anything because I received nothing but gift money from relatives and allowance from my father) and 2) they are at the age at which they probably wouldn’t be embarrassed by such a gift.
I hope they do forgive me. And I really wish I could tell them directly that they don’t deserve to be treated that way, but that will open me up to the wrath of their parents, who are known to get furious and aggressive. All I can really do is tell my little sisters that verbal attacks and slurs are never nice, that they don’t deserve to be called such awful names, etc. without openly blaming their parents. Because they tell their parents about the things I say.
Yeah, I think my brother will be able to do that, actually. I don’t know how things will turn out in the months to come, but hopefully he’ll also be able to give letters to my little sisters.
Anyway, I really appreciate your help, and I apologize for not responding earlier. Thanks, auggziliary. ^_^
Over 24 hours later the train is still burning. 10 municipalities downriver have taken preventive measures for their water supply, though there is no evidence yet of contamination. Investigators can’t yet get in the area so there is still only one confirmed death, but there was 60ish people in a bar about 10 meters of the point of impact… so we expect bad news.
@Ally: I haven’t felt that I had anything useful to ad in terms of advice to you, but I’ll send you some internet hugs anyway for all you’re going through, and good luck.
One good thing about direct 24h news channels: Just saw a news guy choke up after giving an interview to the sort of people that news channels usually screen out on principle out of their distorted views of “objectivity” (irate grandfather who lost his son and son’s wife, and who works in railway maintenance, *fuming* at the state of the law that allows petrol train to go into towns when he knows tracks are not being maintained properly and there’s other routes that are most costly but don’t go through towns).
I hope somebody recorded this and puts it on YouTube, I was only half-listening and didn’t get to my DVR on time.
Oops — internet glitch + traveling + a personal sads = I didn’t check back into this thread.
cloudiah — thank you so much! Will email you ASAP. To my knowledge, this horse is in Oklahoma and he may be coming up for sale either officially or through a claims race. It would be great to find him a home — since if you can’t tell, I love him and wish I could take him myself, but alas. Just knowing someone else loves him will be enough, though 🙂
BlackBloc, I heard about that story; it’s so terrible, and it’s gotten so little coverage in the US — if I wasn’t a committed news junkie I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard about it.
guffaw-ferrets, OK is kind of far away from where I am, but I promise I will forward it to my horse-loving friends and maybe they’ll know someone who knows someone…
cloudiah, that’s shocking – it’s hardly been covered? I think it was front-page here. Prominent, anyway.
cloudiah — awesome! I’ve contacted an Oklahoma racehorse rescue operation as well; often if someone is interested in a horse in another state, the bunch of us big-hearted softies can get a network together to transport the lucky critter to his or her new home. The better-funded foster/rescuing operations are definitely big on that, since they really want to see their animals end up with forever friends.
The last frontier is the Fugly Horse of the Day community — sometimes they rub me the wrong way in various respects, but you can never say they aren’t deadly serious about their rescue efforts. They can get the horse-trailer equivalent of a carpool together in a matter of hours if it’s urgent, and have moved ten or fifteen horses over long distances in one go if multiple people in different areas are interested in multiple horses from the same general area.
And people on FHOTD are always moving horses out of Oklahoma, since that and Washington State are sadly where a lot of older or unprofitable racers are sent to … well … die … so that actually works in everyone’s favor here.
So now the thread has learned some random trivia regarding grassroots equine rescue communities and tactics.
BTW: horsie on the left in the following picture looks very much like the horsie I am trying to save, right down to the attitude (sorry, not feeling up to image-embedding) —
http://25.media.tumblr.com/56d232efa80b589d3e39891852e654e5/tumblr_mlb8xmZjzD1rua20go1_500.jpg
His buddy on the right coincidentally looks a lot like the horse my mother and I ended up taking in when I was a teenager, who is also coincidentally a distant cousin of the horse I’m trying to save now. It’s a small horsey world.
I wish I could keep a horse so I could help you 🙁 I am only in contact with cat people, though.
Thanks, katz! We need all sorts to assist the Furrinati, so it’s okay.
And FYI, the horse in question doesn’t seem like he’s in immediate danger — I think he still has the same owners as he did when I knew him, and they didn’t come across as the type to just destroy an animal (or send it to auction, same diff) at whim. Now that the horse isn’t making money for them anymore, they’re running him in $5k claims races (which means anyone can “claim” any of the horses for $5k and effectively take over ownership) instead of just sending him to kill, so that’s a great sign.
I think, with any luck, the horse community at large should be able to get him a nice retirement home before he’s in hot water. I’ve often thought about calling the owners outright and telling them I want to help this guy find a home, but haven’t wanted to do so until a plan was in motion — if it ever seems like things are getting dire, though, I might just bite the bullet and ring ’em up with a calm appeal to their emotions.
Fuck, I just got the worst scare!
So, we live in this little house out in the woods, and right now, Husband works a night shift, so it’s just me and the dogs.
I was just about to fall asleep, when my Tibetan spaniel flew up from the bed, ran to the living room and jumped up on the window sill, where he stood barking his head off. My German Shepherd dog soon started barking as well, ran to the front door, opened it and ran out with all the toy dogs following her… (The GSD can open the front door herself by standing on her hind legs and using her front paws). I grabbed a bath robe and followed them out in the yard, but didn’t see anything or anyone. Still, I wonder if some burglar were there checking things out, considering the reaction of the pack, and also considering the fact that there’s been a lot of burglaries in the area? The Tibetan spaniel will bark at deer too, when they try to steal our cucumber, but the GSD has never bothered about veggie-stealing deer…
Dvärghundspossen, well yay for the dogs, but that is scary.
The interesting thing is that the two oldest of the toy dogs will always bark at anyone who enters our yard unless Mum and Dad very explicitly welcomes zir. GSD girl on the other hand – she’s been out alone in the yard when a worker has arrived to do some job at the house, and then, like an idiot, wandered straight into the yard with the big dog in it before alerting us that he’s there. This has happend twice, and both times, GSD girl just grabbed some toy and tried to coax him into playing with her. We’ve been joking about how she’s so totally not a guard dog. But this time she just ran out into the yard ROARING.
How is she with other dogs? Could she be reacting to a non-human?
I can’t be certain of what it was, of course, but she’s never reacted like this to another dog either… She’s confident but very friendly with other dogs as long as they don’t get too close to the yard or the car. Then she’ll give them a few barks to point out that “this is mine”, but she’s still pretty cool about it.
Actually, the only other time I’ve seen her really angry like this is when we did the Working Dogs Club’s mentality assessment test, and she faced “the ghosts” (basically people in KKK-like costumes acting threateningly).
That’s why I was so freaked out… Gonna sit by the computer and drink tea for some time now before I go back to sleep…
Hopefully she chased off whatever it was? Still, scary.
Yeah, I think any burglar or whatever ought to have been deterred by an entire pack of dogs running at them barking like mad.
I’m trying to get closer to my sisters (for reasons that are probably readily known, especially for people who have read the last page). I’ve been telling them stories, starting with the one about me facing a man who almost followed me home from the train station. (Don’t worry – I made it completely PG for them.) The older one inspired me to tell that story somehow. And before they went to sleep, I gave each of them a (wanted) hug – the first hugs I’ve given to anyone in months.
I expected them to be averse to the storytelling because they’re 7 and 8 now. I suspected that they’d be embarrassed. But almost every other night ever since I told them that story, they’ve been coming to my room asking me to tell another real-life story. And it really makes me happy to see that.
Tonight they didn’t come up to my room, and I honestly felt kind of sad about that, even though I don’t want to pressure them to hear me tell stories (I’m doing it because they want me to, anyway). And they were busy with talking to the neighbor as well. Next time I think I’ll try to tell them about some of my very bizarre dreams.
So yeah, things are getting a little better, although I still can’t help but feel awful when I realize that this kind of relationship I have with them now is on shaky grounds because of my circumstances.
Ally, that was sweet with the story-telling.
HORSEY UPDATE! Today I received the following email from a rescue operation I’d contacted:
“Aldous is in the hands of connections that have donated horses to us before. We will keep an eye on him this meet (Remington Park starts next month). His connections take pretty good care of their horses and they know we are here when they need to retire a horse. I’ll keep you posted and thanks for the heads up.”
I think I’m gonna cry. This is so awesome. He’s still gonna need a home someday if anyone is interested, but he’s not in an emergency, he’s not going to suffer or be destroyed for no reason, and he’s going to be okay.
Oh, and now you know his name is Aldous. As in “Huxley.” We were obviously both made of matter from the same star.
Dvärghundspossen, my sister’s dog (German Shepherd-St Bernard mix) was like that. Big, goofy, happy, never met somebody he didn’t want to play with. The only time he barked and growled was when bears (not people, not the neighbours’ dogs) came too close to the yard. (The yard backed on to the forest, and we often see bear scat on the walking trail.)