my frustration with the male species, especially the phylum YOUNG, continues to grow and prosper.
austin is still at this father's house, albeit on restrictions again, this time because he stayed up too late playing computer games. the result is no computers tonight. however, his father is completely unaware of the fact that he is supposed to give an oral report on friday in his dual enrollment english class on a book that he never got and has not read. his efforts to secure a copy of it were meager at best, resulting in my having to drive in the dark to the barnes & noble on libbie avenue to get the book.
i stopped by bebo's on my way home, as i had purchased a dozen warm krispy kreme donuts and had no one to share them with. i gave him the book, and the donuts, and in return i got a lecture from him on again letting austin fail. this time my crime was going over his college essays before he sent them off to UVA's baseball coach for review. in bebo's opinion, i am making austin out to be someone he isn't, and next year he will fail it anyway and they will find it out. he says that i am making no progress with austin's skills and i am just "dressing up the monkey and hiding his tail." in his grand opinion, i am wasting my time and shouldn't do it, period.
as usual, his view is negative and disappointing, something he is prone to and is the reason (in my opinion) why he is perpetually unsatisfied with life. he never offers a solution or anything positive as an alternative. his new campaign is "let austin fail" and so he can learn a lesson. as i told him, there is $60,000 tied up in this personal opinion of his, and i am not about to let austin throw it away because he needs to learn a lesson right now. he can learn a lesson when it costs me less.
it is really infuriating that bebo, who has done almost nothing at all to help get austin where he is, can be so pompous and believe that his opinion should have any weight anywhere. he has lived totally free of any daily or even weekly responsibilities for austin short of paying child support. he is the most difficult person to understand and reason with, as his ideas seem to come out of left field and have almost no basis in anything practical. his taking the phone away vs. computer games only shows how unattuned his is to what austin values. he is very quick to let me and austin both know that i haven't disciplined austin and had he been with bebo, he would have had rules, etc. bebo could have been a discipline asset had he had any reasonable idea about what would be the best way to punish austin. but his punishments have never fit the crime, and have been either totally ridiculous because they were too severe, or nonexistent because he didn't think anything should be done. on this subject we have never been on the same page, period.
there is some basis in his belief that austin should fail at something and take the consequences. but all of the areas he is balancing precariously in have huge consequences, mostly monetary, that directly affect me in more ways than just financial. sometimes i just think bebo would like austin to do badly just so that he could point to me and say i am the reason. had i let him fail at something, he would have learned his lesson, blah, blah, blah. there are ways to teach a lesson, but a life altering one such as not going to college doesn't seem to be a wise move. it is a stupid move, period. i think as a parent you have to step in sometimes and just do it. but consistently baling austin out all the time would be wrong as well, and i have tried hard to stay out of that realm. but it has become necessary for me to be involved with the academics this year because austin is not doing what he needs to do because he is in the senioritis phase. i recognize that, and i am monitoring it. all i want to do is monitor, not intervene. but intervene i will if he does not do what needs to be done. if i have to go and do something that should have been done by him, i will do that and there will be consequences. this time i think it will be that austin will take my car after school tomorrow and clean out the inside of it. he took my time, so i am going to take his.
i am in the land of disappointment right now, and it is not a strange land to me. however familiar it is, i still don't find being here any kind of comfort, and would really like to climb out of this valley and sit on the mountaintops. the view from there surely has to be better, more inspiring, than the shadows i fall in and out of in the flatlands.
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