February 29: Quiet Night, NB and the Oscar

It's going to be a very quiet evening.  When I get home, I don't have to rush through dinner and rush my son through his bath and rush off to choir practice.  I don't have to worry about preparing for teaching tomorrow.  (My students are taking a mid-term exam, and  all I have to do is show up, hand it out, sit at my desk, and read.)  We're having leftovers for dinner, so I don't have to worry about cooking anything.  Like I said, it's going to be a very quiet evening.

For those of you who want an update on the NB/Oscar situation, I will elaborate on what has happened in the last 24 hours:

N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

Let me elaborate on what my course of action will be once I get home:

N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

I've decided it just isn't worth the effort or heartache of fighting with NB over the Oscar.  I'm not going to beg her for it.  I'm not going to threaten her for it.  I'm not going to call her bad names.  At least not in public.  I'm not going to be dragged into a battle.  I'm just too tired for that game.

I'm disappointed that I'm not going to have the Oscar.  It was something that would have given me a little happiness for a while.  However, I decided last night that I'll have to be satisfied with the knowledge that I won the Oscar competition this year.  By myself.  Fair and square.  I'm going to have to be the bigger person.

And NB is just a rotten bitch.

Saint Marty still hasn't exorcised all his demons.

Yup, not working for me, either.

February 28: Return of the NB

Those of my disciples who have been with me since the beginning of Saint Marty may remember a recurring character I called Nasty Bitch (NB for short).  NB was a family member who was...Well, I think the name says it all.  For a long while, she was unaccountably cruel to my wife and me.  She made Lent a couple years ago a true test of forgiveness.

Well, NB is at it again.  A couple days ago, I promised to post a picture of myself with the Oscar trophy I won at the Oscar party Sunday night.  Well, I haven't been able to post that picture.  The reason I haven't been able to post that picture is that NB, who was one of the co-winners of the statuette last year, refuses to relinquish it to me.  Yes, NB is turning a usually friendly competition into a mean-spirited fight.  Earlier this evening, I was hugely pissed.  Now that I've had some time to cool down and think about it, I'm still hugely pissed.

NB exists to make people miserable.  She's still a very unhappy person.  She has tons of money, but lives like a pauper, making people miserable.  She could travel, but prefers to sit in the living room in her pajamas watching Lifetime movies, making people miserable.  She could afford a new car, but drives a minivan that is held together by wire, paperclips, and spit, making people miserable.

I think you get the idea.  Now, her newest form of miserable is this horseshit with the Oscar statue.  I wouldn't let it boether me so much, but winning on Sunday night really made me feel happy.  I haven't had a whole lot to be completely happy about recently.  Now, NB has fucked that up for me.

It's late, and I'm tired of being pissed.  I'm not going to let this problem go.  I'm just going to let it go to sleep for a few hours.

When Saint Marty wakes up in the morning, he will start planning his revenge on NB.

Vengeance is mine!!  It's mine, I tell you.

June 25: New Cartoon, Fishing, Mom's Birthday

I don't have much time to post today.  My whole family is currently upstairs, eating pizza and celebrating my mother's eightieth birthday.  I am trying to get this done between dinner and cake.  I have, basically, given myself a time-out because NB is up to her old tricks and I may end up calling her Satan's spawn in front of a large group of people.  It wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure.  I'm calming down now.

My daughter went fishing today with her visiting cousins.  I spent most of the afternoon at home while my son took a nap.  I may have taken a nap, too.  Actually, I did, but it makes me feel lazy typing it.

I played the organ at church this afternoon and managed to play fusion jazz by mistake.  Oh, well.

Sounds like the party is ready to move into the ice cream and cake stage, so I better go face NB again.

Pray for Saint Marty.

Confessions of Saint Marty

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June 28: Saint Vincentia Gerosa

I haven't written for quite a while about Nasty Bitch (NB). When last I blogged about her, she was still up to her old antics of being just plain mean to my wife. She was also dealing with some serious mental illness issues, which she was ignoring/denying. It was not a good situation.

Well, don't think that NB's prolonged absence from this blog indicates any shift in her mental health or general disposition. She is still pretty miserable and goes out of her way to make other people miserable. NB still treats my wife like she's a combination of Lizzie Borden and Eva Braun, and, as far as I can tell, has still not received the treatment she needs to make her situation any better. In short, nothing's changed.

In her, anyway.

I add that qualification to my previous statement because, obviously, something has shifted. NB is still behaving the same way, but I am not consumed by her petty comments, ignorant cruelty, and old-fashioned bitchiness. She has not changed one iota since I began praying for her at the start of Lent this past year.

So, eliminating NB from the list of possible suspects for causing the change in my relationship with her, that leaves only one possible conclusion: me, in the kitchen, with the lead pipe.

Yes, I am the person who has changed in some way. That's quite the statement, considering I like change about as much as I like eating blood sausage. In short, not very much. Picture Gordon Ramsay from Hell's Kitchen screaming, "It tastes like dogshit!" That's pretty much the way I feel about change.

Yet, here I stand naked before you in cyberspace (there's an image for you), a changed person. It obviously wasn't a sudden shift, or I would have bridled against it almost immediately. One of the best ways to insure that I don't do something is to tell me that I have to do it. Think of how many times your mother or father or grandparent or teacher sat you down and told you to finish your peas or apologize to your sibling or read chapter 11 in Introduction to Modern Philosophy and Political Theory. Even if you want to do it--were, in fact, planning to do it--there's the stubborn five-year-old in you that clamps your lips shut, crosses your arms across your chest, and refuses to do anything at all.

However, I have to admit: I'm a changed person. NB does the same things to piss me off; I just don't get pissed off any more, for the most part. This may seem like a small victory in the grand scheme of the universe, but, for me, it's akin to Barack Obama being elected president of the United States. It's huge. I don't know how it happened, when it happened, or why it happened. But it happened.

I now think of how sad and miserable NB is all the time. She could be better. She has the power to choose to be better. She chooses sickness. That's the crappiest thing about mental illness. The person who can help the most is the person who's sick.

I feel angry and sad and frightened sometimes, but I'm able to move beyond these emotions. I can enjoy my son's happy screams. I can get excited when my daughter goes for a run with me. I can say a prayer for some happiness and feel like somebody up above is listening. It's called hope.

NB is like a scratched LP. The needle just sits in the groove, playing the same two musical notes over and over. I don't think NB ever experiences hope in any form, and if I were in that situation, I'd be a pretty miserable person to be around, too.

Vincentia Gerosa knew about hope. Her whole life, in fact, was an exercise in hope. As a girl, she was orphaned, but she spent her youth and adulthood caring for the poor in her native Lovere, Italy. Hope. With Bartholmea Capitanio, she established the Sisters of Charity of Lovere. This religious order cared for the destitute, ill, and young. Hope. Vincentia Gerosa tried to shine light in darkness, instill hope in hopelessness.

I'm not saying I'll never get angry with NB again. I will. I know it. I'm human, and because I'm human, I'm broken. But, unlike NB, I choose to hope.

Do me a favor tonight. Say a prayer for NB. For anyone with mental illness. A prayer for change. For light. For happiness.

For hope.

March 23: Saint Toribio de Mogrovejo

I thought of titling this blog "The Nasty Bitch Strikes Back" (start humming the Star Wars theme with me), but I decided to take the high road. You may remember, Faithful Reader, the last time Nasty Bitch (henceforth referred to as NB) made an appearance in a post. She said and did some not-so-Christian things to my wife, so I went to her house and said and did some very not-so-Christian things is response. The ensuing guilt and remorse I experienced from my outburst ruined the better part of a week for me (think Luke after Darth cut his hand off). I finally ended up apologizing to NB, and, armed with the knowledge that I had done the right thing, the thing both Jesus and Yoda would have wanted me to do, I moved on to my next opportunity to make an wookie of myself.

Well, yesterday, when I spoke to my wife on the phone, she told me NB had said some more not-very-Christian things to her and my daughter and pretty much slammed a door in my wife's face, literally. Of course, my first response was to go to the Dark Side. I had this out-of-body vision of myself screaming at NB again, but the vision that immediately followed was of me having to suck Bantha butt again and apologize. Neither vision gave me much pleasure.

My wife and daughter were at home, out of harm's way, so I decided to pray about the situation on the drive home. I prayed for NB. Her mental state has not improved since my last outburst. In fact, I would say she has gotten worse. She looks like she hasn't slept in about two weeks, and , on a good day, her mood is sullen. On a bad day, she's just, well, a nasty bitch. Since she hasn't had an appointment with her psychiatrist, I know she hasn't started taking any medication to improve her condition. That means that she's still experiencing auditory and aural hallucinations. The last time she was like this, the voices were telling her to kill herself.

As I drove, I prayed for NB. I asked that she be made well, that she gets the help she obviously needs. I prayed that she be happy, really happy--no seeing figures standing in the mirror behind her or sneaking into her bedroom at night, no hearing voices whispering her name or telling her to harm herself. I prayed that she would turn back into the person I used to like, the person I remember going on vacations with. I prayed that she just be a whole person again. Wholeness. I've prayed similar prayers for my wife when she was in the throws of mania or addiction.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, I felt peaceful. I wasn't ready to charge over to NB's house and challenge her to a light saber duel. I was calm and accepting. I saw NB for what she is right now--a sick individual in need of compassion and understanding. That doesn't mean I shouldn't protect myself and my family from cruelty and pain. That does mean that I recognize the source of that cruelty and pain as a symptom of NB's broken mind/heart/soul. And I can pray for her.

That's pretty much what Toribio de Mogrovejo did for a good portion of his life. A 16th century Spanish professor of law, he was appointed bishop of Lima, Peru. For a quarter century, he walked through jungles, forded rivers, wrestled gigantic alien Rancors (just making sure you're paying attention), and exposed himself to things like malaria, leprosy, and heatstroke. Instead of expecting broken people to come to him for help, he went out, met people where they were, and brought them the love and compassion of God. By the time he died in 1606, he had confirmed and baptized nearly one million people.

I probably didn't go as far as Toribio would have gone for NB yesterday. Toribio would have walked to her house, sat down with her, maybe held her hand. He would have asked her how she was doing, listened to her talk about her illness, her anger, her sadness. He would have led her to a better place.

I, on the other hand, patted myself on the back for not calling NB a nasty bitch to her face. I just prayed for her, handed her over to the likes of Saint Toribio, and hoped for the best. Sometimes that's what it's all about: A New Hope.

May the Force be with you.