NOBODY LISTENS TO ME!!!

Those 4 words are the story of my life, I swear. I have never been a risk taker. I have always figured that if I learned from my mistakes and even by some of the mistakes I've seen
others make, I'd be ahead of the game. I suppose this makes me a bit of a "lightweight" but
paying consequences has never been my idea of a good time. It is pretty aggravating though
when you constantly warn people not to do foolish things, they ignore you, and then you're stuck
picking up the pieces when EXACTLY what you said was gonna happen, happens. My husband
is the king of this and unfortunately it came right down the gene pool to our daughter. These
2 can really drive me to drink with this. With Olivia, well she's 11. You can understand that
kids do have to learn things for themselves sometimes. But if she does something that I have
warned her not to, and the wheels fall off , I do not coddle her or show her
any sympathy. It's the ol' "don't come crying to me, you made your choice," deal. I think
it's a dangerous habit to get into to clean up all your kids' messes. If they screw up, they gotta
deal with it. This is how I roll here. Too many people nowadays do not take responsibility for themselves. It's a learned behavior and a big peeve of mine. Unfortunately, there are WAY too many times that these screw-ups take me down with them and I have no choice but to try to salvage the situation.
So things happen in life, I get it, but I am so sick of dealing with the avoidable stuff over and over
again. This post would go on forever with examples of this( I am SO not kidding when I say it is a main theme in my life) but the latest is this. Tim hurt his
back doing practically nothing. He was at an estimate and heard something click after getting up
from an oddly low chair. That's it. Days upon days of excruciating pain, 1 trip to the ER, 3 stat
MRI's, a PET scan, crutches, me hurting my back helping him, and time unable to work and now what, the RPITA (hint: first word
is royal) is doing the most idiotic things and getting ticked off at me for asking him not to. Everytime I turn around he is doing something he shouldn't be: yardwork, lifting, waxing the car.
A lot of this stuff is just not necessary and can be done later. Nope, not in his mind. For instance, we cancelled a trip to Tennessee that I have been looking forward to for a long time
because sitting was the hardest thing for him and we were going to drive it.
We salvaged at least part of Olivia's school vacation by spending half a week in CT. The day before
we are to leave, mind you Tim is still having issues with his back, I walk out my front door to find
him in the yard on his hands and knees pulling clumps of grass out of the front mulch beds. Now
in my experience, that pulling motion is about the worst thing you can do for your back if the 5 months of agony from a bulging disc I had thanks to pulling a shrub out is any indication. I said,
"Tim what are you doing? We have to drive 3 hours tomorrow and then spend days walking! Are you kidding me? You are gonna hurt your back and mess up this vacation." He tells me to leave
him alone in a not-so-nice way. I was fuming. Later that night, out goes the back again. He got in the car
to drive the next day and couldn't do it. I was not feeling the greatest that day but had no choice but to drive. Our kid was in the car and we were setting off on vacation so I bit my tongue but I wanted to SCREAM!!!! I have no doubt in my mind that the gardening had something to do with it. You cannot do that stuff whilst in the throws of a back injury!!! So now, he just had to deliver wood to a job site. Usually, we have the companies deliver it to the job site but this time, it was delivered here and he was bringing it
there himself. So him and our employee finish putting a coat of polyurethane on today's job
and Tim sends Alan home(Al had to use the john) and tells him to just wait for him, he will load
the truck and pick him up and they will deliver it together. So I just watched Tim(actually tried to
help as best I could) load his pick-up with
a whole shipment of solid oak wood flooring which is banded together in pretty heavy bundles. I said, "Why are we paying an employee so you can do this with a hurt back?!!!"
Again with the nasty come-back. I hate throwing this at him but I said, "ya know, you're not
the only one who is put out around here when you mess up your back. This is ridiculous." I just
can't win with this stuff. After he had his transplant, he was out working in the yard and trimming
sticker bushes of all things(he was NOT supposed to be doing any of that) and I was so furious
I said to him, "it's obvious you don't care what I say or how difficult it is for me to have you in the hospital and a kid to take care of at home so maybe you should start thinking about how traumatizing it is for your daughter everytime I have to take you to the ER." I swear the stress,
combined with my variable(read high) blood pressure is gonna have me stroking out. I tell my family that I want "nobody listened to me" carved into my headstone. I told this to my very funny brother-in-law once, who said "Make sure they print it twice!" Good one Mike.