Ladies and gentlemen... My bitchy mother-in-law

I still don't know who was the creature above who created mothers-in-law in the first place. What was he thinking? Was he planning on us needing a replacement for our own mothers? Was it that he didn't like his own mother enough that he needed the rest of humanity to have some kind of a substitute in case someone had issues like him?

My mother-in-law is anything but a substitute mother to me. She's nosy, bitchy and completely annoying. The thing is that at the very beginning, when I met her, she seemed the complete opposite to what I'm describing. Just a housewife with a huge smile and 3 sons, who was happy to have a female individual around his male-crowded house. Harmless, huh?

She played the perfect mother-in-law role for almost 6 years. Now, she became tired of it and Grendel's mum is beginning to replace her. She suddenly realized that what she was doing was out of the number 1 rule of the "Bitchy mothers-in-law Club": you must never treat your daughter-in-law as if she was your real daughter. For that reason, she began doing annoying stuff such as asking my boyfriend to stay at home for dinner because "your grandparents are coming over and when I told your granny you were going to E's house, she became so sad!". Bullshit! She just wanted him to stay at home because she knew we were going to be alone at my house (I live with my mum and she was going out that night). But hey, if she's bitchy, I'm bitchier (does that word even exist?) so I went there, had dinner, and after Leo's grandparents left we came to my house and she ended up there tearing her hair out.

"Jealousy is the green eyed monster" Shakespeare said. Well, in this case I could say "jealousy is the brown eyed mother-in-law". She's jealous of everything Leo does, and even more if he does it with me: "He talks to you" "He didn't say that to me... Well, that's because he doesn't care for me and only talks to you" "He doesn't even call me on the phone" "Sometimes, I know he's with you, but he doesn't call me to say he misses me... That must be because he doesn't love me at all" "When he sees you he's all smiles, when he sees me he's always in a bad mood" "I asked him to lend me some money, he said he didn't have enough... oh, btw, what a nice pair of jeans! Did he buy it for you? Oh, no! I know you work and earn money to pay for them... I just thought that since he said he didn't have enough money to lend me, perhaps he had spent it on you" 



Yeah, she puts a face similar to this one



Okay, so she turned 50 last year and she was unlucky enough to get divorced the same year, so she's going through some "middle-age"/ pre-menopausal crisis and she cries over every single stupid thing. However, she cries even harder when she tries to convince me not to steal her sweet boy from her while looking like Puss in Boots and saying "I know that once you two are married, he's going to forget about this old lady here. Leo's not going to need me then, and I won't see him againg. I know he won't come to see me anymore once he's moved out of here. I won't even see my grandsons!"


Let's face it, after she has called at 1 a.m. on Saturday (Leo stays at my home on Friday and Saturday night) to ask my boyfriend if his car is inside the garage "because according to the weather report hailstones are going to fall tonight", only to attempt to continue the conversation by asking him "What were you doing? Were you awake?", I can definitely say she's nosy.  Was she expecting Leo to say "No, actually I was passionately making love to E?" or " No, E's asleep. I'm watching some porn on the computer now" or "Yes, it's 1 in the morning! I'm trying to get some mother-fucking sleep!". She just wants to know everything. Every.Single.Mother.Fucking.Thing.

Now it's your turn to tell me what should I do? Should I kill her? Should I find her a man? Should I tell my boyfriend her mother is a complete pain in the ass? I tried to say that to him and he laughed and said "I know". How crazy is that?

I just know one thing: I definitely will decline the offer to join the "Bitchy Mothers-in-Law Club" in the future. I don't want any of my daughters or sons-in-law to be writing a post on a blog about how hideous his or her mother-in-law is.

Stupid Facebook posts and bitchy mothers-in-law

There are 2 things that turn me onto a bitchy mother fucker: stupid Facebook posts and my mother-in-law.

I hate those people who think Facebook was created to be used as a diary. Let me explain what I mean by showing you three examples:

Sat., Jan. 28th 2012. 2:07 a.m.
Nicolás says: I'm so bored! I think I'm going to go to bed now. Bye.

Sat., Jan. 28th 2012. 2:12 a.m.Nicolás says: Okay, I'm going to bed now. Bye.

Sat., Jan. 28th 2012. 2:15 a.m.
Nicolás says: Off to bed. Bye.

Is there any need to write the same stupid post 3 times? That makes me yell at him in my mind: we already understood you were going to bed, we don't need to read it three times! We aren't as stupid as you are! Or, as I said to my friends: he wants someone to talk to him because he's bored, but he's an asshole and nobody wants to talk to him because he does stupid things like these.

The same happens with those people who buy something and are desperate to show it... Such is the case of one of my Facebook contacts who bought a car on Thursday and for three days in a row posted things such as: "Washing my baby" (accompanied by a picture of him next to his car), "Feeding my baby" (and a picture of him putting some gas in it), "Taking my baby for a ride" (guess what?? Yes! A picture of him driving the car accompanied the post). I was about to reply to the last comment saying: "why don't you get a real babe instead? Oh, yes, I forgot, you're too busy masturbating thinking about your car that you can't even possibly think about a getting a real woman"

Then, there's always someone who's always willing to ruin a post by making the stupidest comment you have ever read. That's the case of this one...


For crying out loud! What the hell was this lady thinking about? Is it possible to be even dumber? It looks like a post written by Jim Carrey's character on "Dumb and Dumber"...

Okay, I think I'm going to talk about my mother-in-law on another occasion because this Facebook thing gets me on my nerves.

I'm gonna go now.

I'm leaving.

Okay, the bitch is off.

Saturday 9: How do you mend a broken heart?

Trying on a Saturday Meme over here!

1-How did you cope with your biggest heartache?
Well, after yesterday's post I might say blogging. At first I would only cry and become a teary mess any time I had to refer to it, then, in time, I began discussing it with my friends... Right now, I blog about it. I wasn't planning to do it, but I realized I needed it.

2-Who was the last person you visited in a hospital?
My boyfriend, two years ago, when we had a motor-bike accident. Actually, I didn't visit him, I went there with him, does it count?

3-How many jobs have you held in your life? How many of those were part of your chosen career field?
I've held 3 jobs in my life. The first one was as a shop assistant at a perfumery, and it was a complete pain in the ass. I had to deal with crazy old ladies who wanted me to advice them on which stinking bottle of perfume to buy or which varnish color to chose. Then, I began working at the school where I'm working now. And the third one was another teaching position at another school in which I lasted a month: I had to teach 6-year-olds inside a classroom in which, if it rained, you had to use an umbrella because of the huge leaks on the ceiling and also you had to carry a flashlight with you because there was a short circuit somewhere inside of it and the power would go off. It was impossible to work there and also dangerous!

4-How did you discover Saturday 9?
Accidentally! I can't remember the site where I've read about it, but here I am!

5-If you could take the train from anywhere to anywhere, where would "anywhere" be?
I'd take the train in Paris and then I'd go cross-country across France. My biggest dream is to go there someday and visit the Louvre Museum.

6- When was the first time you cooked for someone else?
6 years ago, I made my boyfriend some ravioli with with sauce for lunch. I don't know what I did wrong, but the raviole were all mashed up and the sauce was a bit viscous...They were completely inedible, but hey, I've improved a lot since then! I haven't killed him accidentally, yet lol The funny thing is that he said they were delicious =P he really loves me lol

7-What's the worst veberage you've ever tasted?
When I was 16, an old friend of mine try to convice us that she could make some cocktails. She made one with whiped cream, grenadine and tequila! It was completely disgusting.

8-Is there anything in your life you are "certain about"? Firm in your beliefs? Strong in your convictions?
Whatever you do, good or bad, it always comes back to you. You could say I firmly believe in karma.

9-Do you know anyone who has a very unsual pet?
Yeah, my friend's boss has 2 ferrets: Malena and Moustache. They're horrible, honestly.

Dysfunctional

I was intending to write about something else, but since yesterday afternoon I've been a bit anguished. I created this blog to ramble about anything that comes to my mind and I can't seem to keep something out of it which is what this post is about.

Dysfunctional. Remember how I rambled about how many words can describe us? Well, here I've found another one that suits me fantastically. You may wonder why that is and what this has to do with my post, well, I'll tell you right away.

It was May 2009 when my family began to collapse. My father has always been a complex person to deal with, his mood would change in the twinkling of an eye and he would turn aggressive or even violent towards any one who would dare to face him. Most of the times the person confronting him would be right, but he would have never accepted that. He would start yelling, insulting or attempting to punch you; I remember once I got to work on a nervous breakdown because he had been about to punch me right in the face.

That year, on that month, the day of my nephew's first birthday, he had a huge argument with my brother whom he always treated like crap. He had always seemed jealous of my brother and he had never treat him like a father would treat his son. Because of that argument, my brother stopped coming to my house and instead, my mother and I would go to his house to see him and my nephew. Sometimes, my brother would drop my nephew at home, and my father would ignore him completely because, according to him, the baby didn't like him (how could a one-year-old baby not like someone I really ignore it). The thing is that we, specially my mother, would spend more time with my brother and my father completely lost it because of that.

He became obsessive with my mother and psychologically abused her. He treated her like shit too. He also threatened to kill her in more than one occasion, not because he was going to do it, but only because he wanted to scare the hell out of her. He said things like he was going to hurt my brother or set his store on fire, because, according to him, she preferred my brother over him. Also, he became something like a religious fan and locked himself up in my brother's old bedroom to read the Bible every day and had a cross hanging on his chest.

We got to a point in which I was driving myself nuts and had to be around all the time because he would take advantage of that time alone with my mother to threaten her and all. I was afraid to leave my house, thinking that someone was going to call me to say he had killed my mother.

By December 2009, a few days before Christmas (my birthday, btw) he left to another province because he had relatives there. We felt free at last, because that year was a huge nightmare. My mother was happier, I was calmer, and my brother even came to my house.

On January 2010, one of my aunts (who lives where my father went) called us and told us he was coming back because some friends told him he had rights and that our house was his house too. He came back and as he entered the flat locked himself up in my brother's old bedroom. By lunch time he came out and that's when everything completely collapsed. He pushed my mother against a wall and hit her, and he only stopped when he  heard me screaming like a maniac "Let her go", I still don't know what happened to me there because my mind went blank. My mum says I began trembling and crying and yelled at him so much that he froze where he was, he tried to hug me and I yelled even more. She grabbed my hand and we packed some things and left.

To make a long story short, we left and never came back. We lost everything, all our belongings and the furniture, except for our clothes. He never let us take anything out of the flat. It took us a month to find a new flat, meanwhile, I had to live with my boyfriend and my mum had to live with my brother. We were able to buy some furniture and we had a fresh start in another town.  My mother had to change her work because he went there asking for her a couple of times, and we reported him to the police for domestic abuse. He found a job as a taxi driver, and I've seen him wandering around my block with his car a couple of times.

Two years later, here I am, at my house. Right now my mother is playing games with my nephew in the living room. Everything changed for us. We are still afraid of going out, because we don't know when we might run into him. The last thing we heard about him was that he moved out of our old flat and now lives with his girlfriend somewhere else. He took everything with him, our belongings, everything.

My family's dysfunctional. I am dysfunctional too. This nightmare has changed me a lot. I can tell you I don't hate him, I don't love him either. He's just a person who turns out to be my father. In 22 years I lived with him we had our good times and also our bad times, but after everything that happened I'm not capable of feeling anything towards him. He just doesn't mean anything to me anymore. He's just someone who scares the shit out of me and who, right now, represents a threat to me and my family.

Yesterday was his birthday, and that's what moved me to write this post. I didn't even send him a message. I don't know if he spend it with someone and I don't care either. I know this might be a bit strong to read for some of you, but as I said before, I'm not capable of feeling anything towards him.  Yet, I have been anguished and yesterday was a hard day for me because it reminded me of everything I went through two years ago. I think I might never recover from it, but at least right now it's just anguish, it's not pain anymore.

The importance of being a kid's crush

When I was a student at secondary school I always paid close attention to my teachers; not only to what they said, but also to how they looked like, the way they spoke, their gestures. While I grew up, I remember hearing my male classmates saying how pretty our Psychology teacher was or what a great body our Culture and Art teacher had. They fell irremediably in love with them, because they were young and had a nice body, or a nice face, but also because of how they spoke and the gestures they made. I remember thinking that they were lucky -my classmates, I mean- because we hardly ever had male teachers and the ones we had were old and pretty much disgusting, so we girls fell a bit disappointed.

It was a curious thing to see: the boys were so crazy about these two teachers that even the most barbaric ones behaved like perfect gentlemen and paid close attention to their lessons. They would fail in every subject, except for Psychology and Culture and Art. They even stayed a bit longer inside the classroom even after the bell rang just to wait for them to leave. They wanted to enjoy their presence until the very last second. So, yes, most of them had a major crush on these two teachers, and that was one of the things that scared me the most when I began teaching because you never know if you can handle it (not because I would pay attention in that sense to one of my students, but because they can get confused and interpret you in the wrong way, that meaning huge troubles).

Let's face it: I'm 24 years old and began teaching at a school when I was 19; I was very, very young at that point (I still am, for some people) and could not possibly handle a group of 17-year-old students because of the age difference. So, when my boss at that time called me and asked me to work as the substitute teacher of English of 11-year-old children, I agreed happily.

I don't mean to sound cocky at all, but I'm not that bad physically speaking. I told you before, back then I had 10 kilos less than now, and was 1,70 mts tall (as I am now). My hair is dark brown and my eyes are green, so I'm a bit attractive to some people. The thing is that, while I believed it could not happen because they were 11, I ended up becoming not only the substitute teacher of English, but one of my student's crush.

He was the sweetest child to me, but outside the classroom he was an authentic pain in the ass. The other teachers loathed him! And, back then, I could not understand why because he was such a sweetheart with me and I protected him as if he was my son. However, three years later, when he was in the 9th grade, with 14 years old and almost 20 cms more than me, I turned out to be his teacher again and he made his feelings towards me very clear the first day I entered the classroom with the head of the English Department -who's also my friend, Pamela. He came to us and said to her: "Can I give you a hug? You're the best! You've chosen the most beautiful teacher of English in this school to be our teacher!" I could not believe what I was hearing and he took advantage of that and added, still talking to my friend: "I want to marry her someday, but I doubt she'll ever pay me attention". I was shocked, and my friend told him to behave propperly so that I could like him more (it was just a strategy to get him to behave in a better way because he almost gets expelled from school that year).

Well, the rest of the year was pretty much like my secondary school years and my male classmates liking the teachers: he waited for me to arrive and told me how pretty I looked, or asked me if I was tired, or told me about any song he had heard on the radio he had thought we could work with in class. He would behave propperly, and do everything I asked him (and the rest of the class, of course) to do for my subject, he even studied! (which is much to say because he suffers from the Lack of Attention Syndrome) I, in exchange, would help him with everything teachers help their students,what he didn't understand, what he needed me to explain him again. And obviously, following my motherly instinct, I protected him from the other teachers who didn't know anything about his personal history or his attention issues.  He had to work hard to pass the other subjects because he had nearly failed in all of them, except from mine. I've always valued his efforts and knew how hard it was for him to be there and pay attention, and he realized he knew a lot more than what he thought he knew about the language. He was a good student.

The year ended and he, once more, said that he wanted to marry me, but since he knew it is impossible he said I would always be his crush. And also, he said that apart from that, I was the best teacher he had ever had because I was the most understanding and compassionate and I had helped him a lot throughout the year. I was almost in tears that day, because he really meant it and I was very, very proud of him and his accomplishments.

Now, he is almost 16, and 1.90 mts tall and has a girlfriend; anywhere he sees me he stops to say hello and I always feel happy to see him progress because I've treated him like a son, but he always tells everyone at school that he'll always love his 6th year substitute teacher of English. Being a kid's crush wasn't so bad in the end.

The woman who fought against the zumba lessons and lost the first round.

The other day I saw this picture on a magazine and got me thinking about how obsessed we women get with weight and our body. Someone had the brilliant idea of making women think that if they are skinny or almost rachitic the world will be on their hands. They've made us believe that being skinny makes us perfect and, for that reason, millions of women around the world get obsessed with the image of perfection. 

The funny thing about it is that it doesn't matter how much I disagree with that idea, at some point I ended up believing it and thought I needed to pay a visit to a nutritionist in order to lose some weight. I'm 1.7 mts tall, and I was really thin when I was younger but now, my adolescent years are gone; and after some years of not doing any sport, eating whatever I wanted, giving up smoking and hearing comments from stupid, superficial people about how much weight I've won in these past 4 year I've realized I wanted to lose some weight so I went to see a nutritionist and she told me I had to lose 10 kilos (that is about 22 pounds) to reach my "ideal" weight. She gave me a specific diet to follow and almost ordered me to do some sport at least twice a week.

Since I'm not a big fan of sports because of the clumsiness I've talked you about a hundred times before, I decided to try on some dancing lessons. I mean, one thing is to run, trip and fall while chasing an imaginary person on the treadmill, and another very different  thing is to dance. How harmful could it be? Well, apparently, dancing is a deadly weapon to me.

One of my friends recommended me some zumba lessons (for those of you who had never taken one, it's a mixture of latin rhythms like merengue, salsa, cha cha, mambo, reggeaton, and others) and I decided to take them. The first day I went there not only I realized that I'm even clumsier than when I was younger, but also I'm completely uncoordinated. I mean, I always knew I was a uncoordinated, but not that bad. I tripped a thousand times, I confused the legs I had to move and also accidentally slapped a lady on her arm. In the mean time, I tried to do the cha cha steps and the mambo ones without falling flat on my ass or embarrassing myself even more. Oh, and let's not skip the fact that I was trying to catch my breath every two seconds because it seems that half of the time I was hyperventilating, not to mention that my face was getting red as a beet and also I was sweating like a pig. In the end, I left the class looking like a sweaty, clumsy mess and swore to God I was not coming back.

But, guess what? Two days later my friend practically dragged me to my own, personal hell again and, surprisingly, I was able to complete a full choreography without tripping, slapping or stepping on someonelse's feet... I was still uncoordinated, and my movements were completely ackward, but I felt I was Barishnikov's heiress. 

Today was my 5th lesson and I'm able to say I'm improving. I'm still clumsy and uncoordinated, and I tend to hit people accidentally. Besides we've got a new classmate, a man, and he's way worse than me...  

Random stories of a random girl

So I told you I was going to tell you stories in order for you to get to know me... So, here are some of them!

see? do you remember it?

*Do you remember "Ouch!" bubble gum? It came in a small, pink box and each bubble gum band looked like a bandaid. When I was 3 and my brother was 9 he wanted to race me. I said no, and he said that if I won, he was going to give me a box of this, which was my favourite bubble gum. So, we went outside and the race began, only to end up with me falling and scraping my forehead, my nose and my chin after he had put his feet in front of mine. He was not going to give up the bubble gum so easy... but I won in the end, my mom gave it to me anyway.

*I'm super clumsy, did I tell you that? It's like my presentation card: "E. Clumsy. Teacher" So one day I was at school, I had been working there for two weeks at that point, and that first year I was the substitute teacher -yeah, the one who nobody ever takes seriously.
I was with this group of students which were a complete pain in the ass -oh and I must make a point here: people, don't believe when teachers tell you all children are good, nice and adorable. NO! That's the biggest lie I've ever heard, but I'll talk about this on the next post.
I'm rambling too much, sorry!
Well, as I was saying, I had this group of students which were terrible to work with and I was scolding one of them. I was walking around the room with my "bitchy-teacher" face, saying "Today, after classes, I'm going to talk to your..." And I couldn't say "mother" because I stumbled with one of the desks' leg and fell flat on my knees. Yeah, it wasn't that funny then LOL.

*Two years ago, I was celebrating Halloween with my students at school. Their relatives came to see them because they danced Thriller (yeah, I taught them that, how cool am I? lol) and after that, I was busy offering their relatives some sweets. I approached one of the girls' grandfather and after showing him the cauldron with sweets, I said: would you like some sweets, sir? And his answer, with a polite smile was: "No, thanks. I'm a diabetic" Yeah, I wanted to vanish right there.

So, do you have any funny story to share? Leave a comment, I'd really appreciate it =)

This.Is.Me

Twenty four. Woman. Engaged. Teacher. Student. Daughter. Sister. Aunt. Sister-in-law. Friend. Dreamer. Loving. Caring. Patient. Quiet. Funny. Crazy. Unpredictable. Kind. Polite. Passionate. Reader. Film lover. Music fan. Blogger. Writer. Singer... How many words can describe a person? Is there any way to convey to the reader how you really are through words? In case there is, how many words do you need? The list, I guess, is infinit...

I began working on this blog two days ago, because I needed to vent. Then, I read my post again and it was really depressing, like "read-this-and-you'll-commit-suicide" depressing, so I decided I should come up with something more interesting -or at least I hope it is- to give a fresh start to this blog.

So here I am, trying to think of all of those words that might describe me, but then I realized that it's not enough with words, I'm going to need full sentences and stories in order for you to know me better (and obviously to keep reading my blog lol). So here's a list of things you should know about me:

*I'm terribly afraid of spiders, cockroaches and any other bug you might think of
*I'm the clumsiest person you could ever meet. One of my students once said that I had two left feet, and guess what? He was completely right!

*I don't know how to ride a bike or how to swim (the first because remember? I'm clumsy!, and the second because when I was a child I almost drown in the sea and I've been a phobic since then)

*I'm a book worm

*I'm writing this Blog in English, but I'm Argentinian.

*I love Panic! at the Disco and Muse.

*I'm not short but I'm not that tall either.

*I love coffee

*I was born on Christmas Day (yeah, I share my birthday with Jesus, how cool is that?)

Well, now that you've gotten to know me a bit more, I'm going to start working with the second post which is far more interesting lol.

If you liked or hated my blog, I'd really love to read your comments, I firmly believe in constructive criticism, so I'm waiting for yours!

Have a lovely day!

E.