326. Organizational Behavior, Pt. 50 (Smircich, pt. 3)

I'm sorry I was away a few days, but I had a few things I needed to do... nothing extraordinary though.

I'm just 52 but because of my health I have limitations more like someone in their 70s or even older.  It's difficult to realize you can't do things you used to do.  Sunday I led the prayer and praise time at church and because of my compromised cognitive faculties it was difficult for me.  I used to teach and so thinking on my feet was an every day thing, but I just couldn't get beyond thinking in pretty concrete terms and I think I rambled too.  So I think I better stick with things I can plan ahead for and not have surprises and have to deal with ad hoc things.

This is a combination of the fibromyalgia and the migraine, I think, that are having this affect, and this has been tested as a fibromyalgia symptom of mine.

***

The other news is some correspondence I've had with a cousin.  My family - my two brothers and I -  are just falling apart.  I think my brothers will sort of stick together and I'll end out alone.  However, my brothers won't like me being alone because they need me as bait to help them look attractive to other women.  They want other women to see how they are with women, and I'd be the exemplar.  Only I don't want to be that exemplar because I don't like their attitude towards and treatment of women (only I can't tell them that because then we'd get in a huge argument where they'd end out looking lily white through some magic slight of hand or the other, and I'd end out looking some sort of bad (i.e., bad, crazy, deceitful, etc.).

It really hurts to see my brothers the way I understand they are, but I can't do anything but pray for them.

The one brother who was the caretaker of mom, being geographically close to her (my other brother and I were thousands of miles away), is so angry but hides it except to those he feels closest too - so most people don't know about it.  And he's manipulative as all get out.  He knows where he has an advantage in the family and he works it for all it's worth to get what he wants.  And he withholds things too to make sure it's clear who is the boss and who has the power.  He's wicked.  I told him, for example, that I want the steak knives that go with mom's sharp knives since I let him have the good china and the silver both.  He knows I want those and we're not talking real expensive items either, but something that might have meaning.  But he's withholding them, why?  At the time he said that I "Already got too much."  It's just a game as far as I'm concerned.  And I'm putting together a family heritage cookbook and he won't even help me with it by 1) identifying some names on recent recipe cards 2) letting me add recipes from the slowcooker cookbooks that he wanted and 3) letting me see if there are any quotes I could use from mom's Bible that he has.  This heirloom cookbook is for everyone and it's ridiculous to not be willing to work with me on this, but then they don't really want me to do a good job on it anyway - they would really like it to be a half-baked job so that they could make a mockery of it.  In which case, why bother?  That brother is the one whose anger was abusive to  my mother, basically driving her to suicide.

The other brother is stuck in a small town that is his ex-wife's territory and where he'll always be a foreigner, so I don't envy him there, but he's stuck there while his kids are underage and he's tied to his business.  That brother is very controlling, and he has a history of physical abuse of his children, also, including the one with muscular dystrophy.

My brothers will probably visit each other, but if the one brother shows his anger much, I'm now sure how well that's going to go over with the other brother, because he's going to want to protect his sons.  His anger isn't anything compared to our other brother.  They could get in their mind they want to come down to see me, but I'm not going to allow that.  And the thing is that there's a guard station here at the condo complex so I could always disallow them to come in anyway.  The guard would call me and say that they were at the gate and should they be allowed in and I'd say "No" and the guard would send them away.

If I went to my hometown I might let my brother there know at some point and agree to meet with him there, maybe for lunch or something.  I woudn't stay with him though.

***

The other health thing is that my g.i. system is not working at all.  So I had to use my electrolyte refill prescription - that's the stuff you drink before a colonoscopy.  Pretty drastic stuff!  The last few days I've used heat, massage, enema every known trick under the sun besides everything and all the meds and supplements I already use... and nothing is working.  So I need to make an appointment with the g.i. doctor.  The thing is that whenever he does tests he never finds anything and it always ends out being neurological - from the spinal stenosis.  This, of course, is not a good thing, but I need to verify it with the g.i. doctor.  

You know what though?  It's because of all these health issues that I don't work and I was having so many problems with jobs here in the USA... (and I was concerned about poor career advancement possibilities in Russia! HAH! At least I had steady work in my field!)... So now I'm freed up to write my autobiography instead! Wheee! : Feel crummy > No work > Write autobiography

***

The next program of research in the text is:

"Corporate Culture: Culture as an Internal Variable"

"A second major way that culture and organization are linked is that used by researchers who recognize that organizations are themselves culture-producing phenomena... Organizatinos are seen as social instruments that produce goods and services, and, as a by-product, they also produce distinctive cultural artifacts such as rituals, legends, and ceremonies." (p. 344)

This really doesn't add much to what I've said elsewhere.  The idea of organizational culture being a by-product is interesting, however, and could reasonably fit the Vienna mission.  That's not to say that the culture as it was was a given, but that given the particular leadership and the particular make-up of the board and the member missions dictated the nature of the beast.

***

"Research with this conception of culture is generally based on a systems theory framework.  As such, it is concerned with articulating patterns of contingent relationships among collections of variables that appear to figure in organizational survival. Heretofore, typical variables considered in this research tradition were structure, size, technology, and leadership patterns." (p. 344)

I think systems theory is fascinating, although I don't know as much about it as I'd like.  It can be very useful in program evaluation.  But here we have researchers trying to understand organizations using a systems approach to try to pick up nuances of culture.  Doing it that way you'd pick up culture with a small "c" and I'm not sure how well systems theory is at picking up some of the nontangible aspects of culture, like attitudes and beliefs, so it would have its limits

As to the "organizational survival" issue, I thinjk I can say a few words about that too.  If you think about it, there are a bunch of nondenominational missions, more or less like that one in Vienna that have been around a long time.  Have they thought in terms or "organizational survival"?  Do they plan and make desicions based on organizational survival?  Is that a biblical mandate?  Is that something they should be striving for?  What if God doesn't really particularly want a bunch of stuffy old missions hanging around for decade upon decade?

In any case, it is certain that since the Vienna mission had taken mega big-time security precautions it seems pausible that there maybe have been some concern for "organizational survival," although there were other concerns as well resulting in the security precautions.

***

"Culture is usually defined as social or normative glue that holds an organization together... It expresses the values or social ideals and the beliefs that organization members come to share... These values or patterns of belief are manifested by symbolic devices such as myths... rituals stories..., and specialized language..." (p. 344)

This does make sense, and if it is true, then it's fairly easy to see why I couldn't have lasted with the mission - because I didn't have the "glue" that would hold me to the group.  That is, I didn't share significant aspects of the values and beliefs of the group.   And if it's true that these types of values, ideals, beliefs, etc. generally become manifested by symbolic devices as described in the text, then it's no wonder that I was confused so much of the time about what was going on!

***

"Culture, conceived as shared key values and beliefs, fulfills several functions.  First, it conveys a sense identity for organization members... Second, it facilitates the generation of commitment to something larger than the self... Third, culture enhances social system stability... And fourth, culture serves as a sense-making device that can guide and shape behavior." (p. 345-346)

This really sums up a lot and from this perspective it looks so easy.  I think I realized that by rejecting part of the value system I couldn't identify with the other members.  I might not have been able to say it in so many words, and I did still socialize with them.  But there was a growing wall between us.

I think for those who did come to share the values and beliefs of the mission their focus generally grew to be more on how to please the mission.

The culture would have played an important role in "social system stability", which would have been crucial for security concerns, especially.  And every time a new worker would come they'd have to go through the on-the-job training experience again, so they'd need the system to be as stable as possible.

The fourth function irks me.  I rather rebel against that kind of thing.  I'm not that crazy about anyone "guiding and shaping my behavior.  If I get a whiff of someone trying to to "guide and shape my behavior," especially surreptitiously, I want to know what's going on.  I think that generally I'm pretty amenable to reasonable requests (and even demands), but if there is something potentially unreasonable they want from me  I don't want someone uning underhanded ways to trying to go about getting it out of me.  And if they think I'm going to be an easy study, they might want to think again.  My kind unassuming exterior belies my intelligent and strong interior.  Try me.

***

 "Overall, the research agenda arising from the view that culture is an organizational variable is how to mold and shape internal culture in particular and how to change culture, consistent with managerial purposes.." (p. 346)

This was published in 1983, a few short years before I was in Vienna and before I faced the U.S. military chaplian/Vienna mission H.R. director that fateful day that ended out sending me back to the States for a few months just 5 months after I'd arrived in Vienna.    To refresh your memory about that meeting I must give you some background:

1.  I spent 4 months in Europe in 1981-2 including some time on my own as well as serving as a citizen delegate on a sister-city exchange, and on a study abroad program.

2. I spend 6 months in Europe in 1983 including: on a summer ministry, spending a week visiting a ministry I was interested in, studying Germin in Berlin (and volunteering several times a week at the Betheldiakonewerke, and visiting and making friends several times at a Lutheran seminary in East Berlin, etc.), and volunteering 6 weeks at the Society for the Study of Religion under Communism (aka Keston College) in England.

3.  I was attending an Austrian church in Vienna and doing just fine at the church

4.  I was not given any serious work to do at the mission, but the first couple months I was given software manuals to read when before I had come to Vienna I had offered to take a computer course if they'd tell me what software I would be using and they refused to tell me saying I could learn when I arrived.

5.  Contrary to the policy manual they wouldn't let me take my allotted months (1 month per pledged year of service) German upon arrival, saying there was too much work to do (!!).

There's a lot more I'm not telling you here but the gist of the matter is that I was facing a lot of stress, but it was not from being in Vienna, but it was from the mission.  I got along just fine in Vienna, to church, shopping, even signing up for classes by myself at the volkshochschule (a kind of adult school) and ordering a desk from Ikea when someone told me where it was.  Austria was not the problem the mission was.

So enter the H.R. director, and he has this handy dandy article with charts and everything showing how one has culture shock at certain months and so he diagnosed me right then and there with culture shock.  But if I had culture shock it was culture shock of the mission's culture not of Austria's culture.

But what does this have to do with the text?  I need to get back to the text.

The thing is that it seems as if the mission leadership might have all been reading this text, this paragraph with great eagerness and just waiting with baited breath for the research to come out that might help guide them in creating the most effective culture for their needs, because they somehow saw how culture was vital for their work, for their purposes.  So it's very possible that my boss and his boss and some of the board of director read some of these articles...

... except, it would seem, the H. R. director.  I say that because If he had read these he would have known that it was not the Austrian culture that was the problem but the mission!  But he didn't know!  So somehow he didn't have the same awareness of organizational culture as the others in the administration and he thought the problems I was facing was culture shock as in the usual adaptation in a move to a new country.

However, it does seem a little strange that an H.R. director wouldn't know about organizational culture, but you have to remember that at the mission we didn't have the usual orientation process that you might think an H.R. department would organization, and which would include elements of organizational culture.

***

 I'm sorry this took so long to get out.  I actually wrote it over several days.  I've had a lot going on and a few health issues as well as some things  sort of bringing up family things again.   Overall my lumbar stenosis (basically the whole lumbar is one big mild to moderate stenosis), is getting worse.

My cousin told me more details about my brother's anger but she thinks we should all (me and my brothers) be all re-united sometime - even though she think they have such low view of women.  I don'd want to be re-united with them and have them think that I condone that and have them care for me in my old age.  But I don't have anyone.  I need to find someone to be my 1) living will designee, 2) executor, and 3) benefactor (for various things).

It just kills me to think mom put up with my brother's abuse and she would have received a lot more respect from me but everone was afraid that I'd take all her money, which makes me mad and I want to just let them all go their own way if that's what they think of me.  My cousing made a jab sort of along those lines too when I showed her my calender in case my brothers are saying I'm just going to the beach all day (which mom said once and I think she was just parroting them) and she responded that it was fortunate that I had enough money to affort such good care (my cousing said that).  So I corrected her that since I'm on disability (SSDI) I have medicare (a medicare advantage plan) and medicaid (for being "medically needy" - i.e., being on SSDI), so I don't have to pay that much, but I do have to shop around to find providers that take my insurance.

With friends like that who needs enemies?  Well, the thing is that dad is the one who defined who I was for the family from the time I went to Vienna, and ultimately I think that came from him.  At any rate, it didn't from that cousin.  I suspect she heart it from my brother there - the one that was abusive to my mom.

281. Blog May Stand Still, But Life Doesn't!

It's hard for me to return to talking about the past when so much is happening in the present! I'm still here at my same address, though (i.e., I haven't moved yet). That's for the most part because I'm still waiting for the bank to decide whether they'll accept my offer (it's for a "short sale," which - for those not versed in U.S. real estate lingo - is a sale of a property with a for less than the going market rate. The bank holding the mortgage has to decide whether it will accept the offer from a potential buyer. In my case, I offered the amount the seller - representatives handling the estate of the now deceased owner - presented as being "pre-authorized" by the bank holding the mortgage. However, I eventually learned that this sale amount wasn't "pre-authorized" in the usual formal sense of the word. Rather, it was the amount that the bank had counter-offered to a potential buyer not long before I came on the scene, so the estate handlers sort of assumed that this amount was "pre-authorized".

Anyway, I've been continuing to work on getting the condo set up, and in any case, I'm going to buy a condo at this complex, whether it's this unit or not. But other than that, my health has provided more fodder for news and excitement than I like. This isn't a case where "no news is good news" can be used. That is, the fact that I haven't written here does not mean that I have nothing of interest to write. Au contraire! No, since the last time I wrote to you I've been in e.r. twice (after consulting with my doctors' and health insurance's after-hours services. And, I've been admitted likewise twice into the hospital. However, they still haven't determined with great certainty what is causing my symptoms. O, yeah, and I also have been walking with a walker since my last week-long hospital stay. And the walker is a whole story in itself!

***

The story of the walker goes like this: on my 5th day in the hospital last time a nurse told me she thought my trouble walking was because I wasn't up and walking around enough. Huh? Armed with that stupidity in mind, I vowed to get up and walk around after having my shower (which I had to take sitting on the floor of the bath tub because their rules disallowed either taking a bath (there was not plug for the drain) or sitting on a chair in the shower and I wasn't stable enough to risk standing to take a shower.

This was mid evening. So true to my word, after the shower I made myself presentable (by hospital standards, which means mostly wearing a bath robe in order to be properly covered up and not displaying ones backside, wear the hospital gown ties up. I should mention that the entire time in the hospital when a physical therapist came s/he'd bring a walker and go with me walking up and down the hall a bit, but then take the walker away when the session ended. So I was left to my own devices when it came to walking in the absence of a physical therapist. So walking after my shower meant trying to walk without the aid of a walker. So I got by by holding on the rail along the hall. I reached a corner in the hallway - like a T-intersection where you have to decide whether to go right or left because straight ahead is not an option - I looked both ways and who should I meet but my rheumatologist! He was doing something at a computer in the hallway maybe 20 feet or so away from me. I had missed an appointment with him because of being in the hospital and had asked for a consult with him. He didn't recognize me at first, which isn't that surprising since he'd never seen me in my bathroom and with my head wrapped up in a towel turban-style. After I told him my name he cam over and I told him why I was walking around - what the nurse had said, and he agreed that my trouble walking was not because of muscular weakness due to lack of use (of the muscle(s)). He also offered to write a prescription for a walker for me.

The next morning I asked the nurse about the walker, and she acknowledged having seen the script for the walker in my chart but told me that I wouldn't be given the walker until discharge from the hospital. So based on this information I didn't ask about it again until I was being discharged.

Upon learning I was being discharged I had to arrange for follow up appointments for the following week, figure out how I was getting home (I'd come via ambulance), and otherwise go through the usual discharge routine. However, this was being done by nurses at the same time they were taking care of their other patients too. So somewhere in there I inquired about the promised walker... only to learn that there evidently wasn't a script for it. I insisted that there was a script and the nurse checked and double checked, and it wasn't in my records. So then the nurse said that the doctor would have to physically come in to sign the script. I told them that my rheumatologist had already written the script, and I was told that he wasn't my doctor while in the hospital (?!). I eventually understood that the script had either been either intentionally taken out of my records or accidentally misplaced. I said I wouldn't leave without the walker so I had to say another night. The next morning I was told the script was signed and I'd get the walker Monday at home. Satisfied with that (oh foolish me!), I agreed to be discharged.

Upon arrival at home my neighbor lent me her walker on the assumption that it would be only 2 days, until Monday. I waited... and waited... finally by Tuesday mid-day with no word about the phantom walker I was to receive, I called my doctor's office, the rheumatologist and also my primary care doctor, and I also mentioned it to the neurosurgeon, whom I saw on Monday. So at that point both the rheumatologist and neurosurgeon were working on the walker, but my primary care seemed to be AWOL (absent without leave, a military crime worthy of court martial). Finally, by Thursday I got a call from a company arranging to bring me a walker. The next day someone else came by with a walker, which I did not accept. It turns out that that second walker was from the rheumatologist, so I guess I got the walker the neurosurgeon prescribed. Anyway, I'm still walking with a walker, although the physical therapist is helping me and sometimes I'm able to use just a cane.

***

And this brings me to another point... when I was discharged from the hospital I was sent home with a script for physical therapy at home and a home health aid. A nurse comes by from time to time too.

And what are my symptoms? It quite possibly might be easier to answer that are NOT my symptoms, but I'll try my best to answer what ARE my symptoms: weakness and poor control in the legs, tingling and sometimes pain in my feet, cold feet, poor balance, acting up of my autoimmune allergic reaction (specifically redness in the upper chest and facial swelling), tingling in the face accompanied by fatigue, pain in the mid back and also in the gut, g.i. system slow down/malfunction, loss of feeling in my feet (not good for driving a stick shift/automatic transmission car). So now I have increased medications, have dizziness excercises tacked on to my usual heath routine, have to keep my legs elevated to minimize foot pain, tingling and lack of sensation, have to pay more attention to my g.i. system, etc., etc.

***

At the same time I'm working on getting set up in the new condo and hoping against hope that my general contractor is honest, because I just can't deal with problems on that front on top of everything else. But now I'm living in a personal canyon of boxes in my dinky little apartment. Part of the boxes are from packing up, but a good chunk of them are things I've ordered for the new apartment when I find things I've liked at good prices. I'm having to be my own interior decorator, because even if I could afford an interior decorator, noone will work for you until you own the place. But knowing my health I feel like I have to do as much as I can while I'm reasonably able, because I never know when my health will "head south" as they say (i.e., worsen). And, as a bit of insurance against contractor problems, I'm buying most of the things that they have to install. But things are starting to slow down regarding condo set up, at least as far as what can be done before I actually own the unit.

I must say, however, that my health and the condo prep has been a good diversion from thinking about mom and family. There's no getting around the idea that she's happier where she is now (from a Christian standpoint), but it's hard to deal with all the suffering she'd gone through prior to her death. Lately I've thought about it a bit as things otherwise slow down for me some.

***

Here's the real trigger to my writing today, though. I got a call from a cousin, who's a Christian and has spent some time with mom and my brother in recent years, after dad's death 5 years ago in particular. She called yesterday to ask my forgiveness for her not believing me about my concerns about how my brother there was treating mom. It turns out that since mom's death she's seen the angry side of him that she hadn't seen before, and now one of this cousin's brothers (who isn't a Christian) doesn't want anything to do with my brother because of his anger.

In these kinds of things it's not really appropriate to gloat about being right, because it would be better if I hadn't have been right, and mom's the one that suffered. I've told you here how I've been stymied at ways to help mom, but that mom and dad had things set up so that my influence in family matters was negligible, but my brothers played a major role also in making sure things were set up that way. Still, I'm sorry that mom had to suffer in this way - from my brother. But I hope that you will also see that people eventually come to recognize that I'm right in many of my interpretations of events and people. While it would probably be foolish to claim to be right all the time, I hope you can see that at the very least my perspectives on things probably should not be dismissed lightly. My family had build up an informal mechanism for keeping family issues secret and this mechanism could even fool people close to them, but I saw it for something otherwise (than what they wanted people to believe) and stuck to my beliefs with the conviction that I had enough to go on that I was convinced I was right. One other thing you can learn about me from this is that I don't change convictions easily and also I'm not afraid of going against the flow in my thinking.

It's hard, really, to deal with getting this confirmation that mom was abused by my brother (emotionally and verbally if not physically). The fact that I did as much as I could to try to help maybe alleviates any guilt feeling I might have, but it doesn't help the sorrow of this confirmation that she experienced this kind of treatment. You can see from other things I've written here that my relationship with mom has sometimes been rocky, but in all actuality, I think the ultimate cause of this goes back to the men in our family and the fact that mom was so dependent on them and they were so "persuasive" in affecting her views on things.

In the weeks or couple months before mom's death she had told me that she and dad didn't know about the things I'm writing here. But the thing is that they couldn't have known because I didn't trust dad enough to tell them. If dad had found out I was thinking or experiencing these things he would have very convincingly dismissed them and mom would have believed him and disbelieved me. It would have been very difficult for me to write some of these things things when dad was still alive.

***

I still have a couple more things I need to get done before I return to this blog in full force.

***

P.S. I got to thinking that there is one time when I messed up when I might have been able to maybe help mom. That was when I was living in New York and my brother and mom came out to visit me and my other brother and his boys (mom and brother in Pacific N.W. and other brother with his boys in New England; I was living in an apartment owned by my brother in New England, since I'd lost my second job for health reasons.

The scenario was that I hadn't had a holiday with the family in years so I went overboard on preparations. I should have spent more time with mom, but the thing is that after she left from that visit things would be exactly like they were before and it wasn't like she was going to start let me help her apart from my brothers' efforts. So these kinds of things felt to me manipulative ways to try to sort of suck me into the family "game playing" (in the socio-psychological sense of the term; other members of the family would undoubtedly deny there was any "game playing" going on). The last thing anyone in my family was ever going to do was let me have independent relations with mom. While dad was alive, he could maintain direct relations with me because he was astute at some of the familial issues and had clout enough to keep the upper hand. In any regard, no one in the family but me had any realistic potential of countering him. Dad, for example, was where the buck stopped as far as framing (of issues, individuals, events, etc.) went. I was the only one who questioned him with any conviction. I think I was able to do this because of things I'd experienced apart from the family, but also because of certain knowledge I'd gained and also because of my personality. My experiences independent from the family led to independence of judgement and change in some of my values and opinions. Under the purview of my family it would have been more difficult to come to these divergent perspectives, so the geographic and attitudinal distance combined with certain personality traits provided the opportunity to diverge from our family mindset. One of the personality traits that allowed me this opportunity was that of being independent in nature, which dad blamed for my problems in Vienna with the mission. I will remind you, however, that independent of thought is a well-known American value, which Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous book "Democracy in America" noted in the 19th century. Americans valued independence so much that they speer-headed the unfettered free trade movement in the 20th century. I mean the kind of free trade that is unencumbered with legal limitations and lets the market go where it will. Let's just say that I'm the embodiment of that value and Americans should recognize me as their true child that I am, independent spirit and all. (I hope you understand I'm speaking tongue in cheek here.) And dad, who was quite politicized, held to republican hands-off rule, where the rights individuals and businesses aren't encroached upon by big government. In other words, he valued independence... except, it would appear, in me. Or maybe it wasn't so much that I was the problem as it was that there were limitations to his valuing of independence and I fit into one of these exceptions to the right-of-freedom belief. Or possibly, he was just acknowledging how in reality things worked, but in any case, I felt that he agreed with the limitations of freedom thrust on me (by the mission in Vienna, etc.), so my independence in this particular situation was out of line, and those attempting to limit my independence were right in limiting me. In this case, however, one must try to disentangle what was independence acceptable and when wasn't it, or what kind of independence was acceptable and what kind wasn't.

Anyway, this is all to say that I might have helped mom during her visit to New England, when I was living there. But since I wasn't going to join in the family relations as they were, this help would just have been a short-lived event, until they returned back home and my brother there would once again be the one to come between me and any help mom might get. The only way my help could have been more enduring would have been if she would have stepped in so that I could on an ongoing basis have direct access to her to help her. That wasn't going to happen, because doing this was beyond what she could accept emotionally. Giving me that kind of access to her would be tacitly (if not actively) acknowledging that our family was something other than idyllic.

25. Family (Again)

I hope you've recovered from that last post. This one isn't so cognitive, but it's more problems.

I finally got up the nerve to call mom, and I think it helped that they prayed about it with me at church this morning.

The phone call started out okay; we just chit-chatted about how we were doing, which isn't a whole lot on either end considering our health issues. I could feel the competition thing, what I mentioned in my last post about "might makes right", kick in. I told her I was still sick (since December), the doctors agree that it's a virus of some kind, the infectious disease doctor wants to run more tests, and my fevers are climbing again. She just jumped right in with how someone there had a virus for a month and was sneezing and sniffling... I felt like she was making she I knew my place that my 8 month long virus is nothing much to worry about.

But then when I told her about the thyroid acting up (I'll know for sure later this week from the blood tests, but the symptoms are there) and how I expect if that's so I'll probably have my thyroid taken out. Immediately she jumped on that as being of major importance, that they're actually going to cut something in my body, which is a crisis of sorts. I told her it's no big deal, which I don't think it is. At this point it would be a lot better to have the thyroid out and have that problem all done with - I just wish I could do that with fibromyalgia and this viral thing.

Her response to the possible surgery though immediately made me feel like such knowledge would give her power and she would feel obligated to tell my brothers about it and everyone would come together, she'd be the ring-leader, and we'd all be a happy family again.

Then after she started giving me detailed updates on my brother up north, the one I lived near before having to move back here, and his kids, I interrupted her to tell her that at this point I really didn't care about them and as far as I was concerned there was no relationship there. Well, I won't bore you with all the details, but that's the gist of it.

So now, I feel like I need to share about what happened with my brother and I. This is my side of the story and I don't know exactly what he's telling people, but I know a couple things he's saying that I absolutely disagree with.

First of all, I was sick the whole time I was up there from March of '09 through January of '10, with the exception of the period from about the middle of October to the middle of December, when I came down with this bug.

I should say to begin that I was sort of afraid of how I'd do in the colder climate, because I hadn't been in a cold climate since I got fibromyalgia - before that the cold didn't bother me at all.

When I arrive up there they were having an unusually cold spring and my "fibrofog" was pretty bad. Eventually I figured out that cold and wet for me are a bad combination for my fibromyalgia. I fared better in cold and dry while there than I did in cold and wet. My fibrofog was bad enough that at one point my brother there asked me if they let me drive when I'm like that. Think senile old lady, and you'll get an idea of what fibrofog is like.

Then at the end of May I came down with really bad dizziness that even landed me in E.R. twice. On the second visit they referred me to an ear-nose-throat doctor and put me on an anti-dizziness medication that helped, but I later learned shouldn't be taken for any length of time as it could do more harm than good over the long haul. I couldn't get in to the ENT until August, however, so I was dizzy virtually all summer, although it ebbed and flowed as far as how bad it was.

During this whole time I was trying to be able to do things with my brother and the boys but it was hard because I wasn't feeling well and also still getting situated which is harder when you're not well. I really tried, but I felt like my attempts were not appreciated and I was even put down. My brother kept telling me about all the things I'd cooked in high school that even dad didn't like, and how my dad and brothers would go out to eat somewhere else afterwards.

Well, I want you to know that 1) I won the home-ec award for my graduating junior high class. In high school I made such things, and very successfully too, as beef burgundy, authentic paella, chocolate eclairs and bouche de noelle. The one thing I made that even I agreed was not good was the curried eggs - maybe I just picked a bad recipe. But even when I lived in Russia my cooking was always well received, even when my housecleaning did not meet their standards, so they weren't just being nice to me in complimenting my cooking. And last Thanksgiving I virtually single-handedly put on a very successful Thanksgiving then mom and my other brother were out visiting so we were all together. Because of my health I had to really plan ahead to have it all come together so smoothly, but it did. And then I made tons of Christmas cookies and candies that everyone liked, even such things as nanaimo bars (our family recipe) and baklava.

When I first arrived up there it was soon going to be my youngest nephew's birthday, so I offered to make a cake, and then somehow I ended out also making fondue too. I wasn't doing that well (fibrofog and just recently having arrived), and it was a cake with ice cream in it and I didn't have enough time for it to freeze right, so it wasn't perfect, and then they disagreed about the fondue, some thinking it was too "cheesy" (?). That was my first experience with my brother's criticism.

Then I was invited to their place one evening for dinner so I thought I'd make some muffins to bring along. I mean, here I was being a recipient of all my brother's giving, and it's hard to just be the recipient. So I brought these muffins over and his boys tried them and were still trying to decide what they thought of them when my brother absolutely refused to try them - they were mincemeat muffins and it turns out he's always hated mincemeat. But really, these muffins were very moist and it was like having lots of fruit in them. Still, he barked at his sons asking them if they like the muffins, but saying it in a way that assumed they didn't. So he basically made them agree with him and they started spitting the muffins out.

I was really devastated about. I mean, I'd just lost a job I really liked and did everything I could to keep it while I was having back surgery, but lost it anyway. Then I had to give up my condo, and now my brother is telling me that I can't even cook, I mean that's how I felt.

After that I told him I didn't want to eat at his place because I didn't want it to be just that I'm a recipient of his generosity if I can't also give something. I said I wouldn't mind coming over just to socialize, but not for a meal.

Then my brother had his birthday in the middle of the summer and there were a couple things he was going to do for it, but I wasn't invited to anything! I mentioned this to mom and she may have said something to him and so he agreed to at least come over to my place for a dinner. Again, you have to understand that I'm not well and it's a big deal for me to cook a whole meal like that. Usually I may cook one or 2 things a day and eat left overs otherwise, some of which I freeze. So for me to make an appetizer, main dish, side dish and dessert all in one day was very hard for me. I asked if he liked lasagna, so he liked that idea, and for dessert he said he wanted something light, because he's trying to watch his weight. I asked if a compote would be okay, and he said yes.

So then at the dinner he really liked the lasagna and the crostini. But I made a special salad with its own dressing and he didn't like that so much, the dressing I guess mostly. But then the compote he really didn't like and then he told me he hadn't even known what compote is! I had made that compote several times and I really like it, but the most important thing is I really began to think that 1) my brother is very rude about these things and doesn't seem to know how to be gracious even if he doesn't like something and I thought it was maybe good that he hadn't been oversees because he'd probably just eat at McDonald's anyway. And the other thing I began to think about is that he might be like that with his sons and maybe his ex-wife too. Maybe he does it to make up for his own securities, but it's still not right and I think to live with that kind of thing would be a kind of emotional abuse.

So now on to another aspect of my time there: how he treated his boys. The main thing I saw early on is how controlling he was. I mean, his boys are 13 and 15 and as one example, but when they were with their dad, my brother, the only friends they had over were kids that were the friends of their dad. At that age I would want to start trying to have some of my own friends and get involved in some activities at school or church or wherever on my own, and maybe even work part-time. But their time was very controlled.

In fact, I have been able to do things in the past with the kids of friends of mine. I remember taking the some of some friends in Vancouver, B.C. (they've moved since then) to Stanley Park and out to lunch. And when I was in Vienna I took the daughter of one of my friends out to the zoo and for her birthday I had her over for a fancy lunch. But could I do that kind of thing with my nephews? No way!

Then my mom gave my brother some money that he was supposed to use for us all doing something together in the summer. Eventually it was decided to go to Six Flags on a certain day when everyone could work it out in their schedule. But at the last minute I couldn't go because my dizziness took a downward spin (sorry, I couldn't resist that pun) a day or so before and didn't let up enough for me to be able to go with them. I was really upset because then that meant my nephews really weren't going to see me having fun with them at all.

But I was also very concerned about my brother's controllingness. I don't think he was always like that, but I don't know how that evolved. But then at one point in the summer, in a very spontaneous way, my youngest nephew came up to me - he took the initiative to broach me on this - and almost announced that his dad used to hit him when he was younger. I asked him if he'd left marks on him and he said he had. I told him that was wrong and that was it. But of course that really hit like a sledgehammer and verified my worst fears. And this particular nephew also has muscular dystrophy.

From mid-September to mid-October I was I was doing exercises to help retrain my brain to correctly read the divergent signals from my two ears (the left one is "over-active") and then I began my preparations for holiday cooking. I was planning to look for part-time work after the holidays, because I'd just recuperated and then we were having out-of-town family visit. That visit went well, although I think I overdid it on the Christmas baking and it ended out being too much for Mom.

But meanwhile, I got diagnosed with sleep apnea and on Dec. 21 I stopped by my brother's to pick up some cookie dough in his freezer that I would bake, but I didn't have much time because I had to go to the second sleep study to get fitted with the CPAP and see how I'd do with it. So this was pretty much an in and out zip-zip-zip visit, just enough to say "Hi, I'm here for the cookie dough, talk to you later" and that's about it. But in that short time the elder son came bounding (playfully, I thought) up the stairs and sort of gave his dad a sock in the arm. My brother just flew off the handle and punched him hard back and I thought it was in anger too. I was a bit shocked but I didn't know how to respond, and I'd been trying to find someone anyway to help advise me on how to deal with this situation I was seeing there, so I left, dropped the cookie dough at home and headed to the sleep study, which was about an hour away. The next day when I talked to mom, just our usual talk about what's going on and how we're doing and the like, and I mentioned to her what I'd seen at my brother's. As I understand it, she must have turned around after the call and called my brother up to confront him with it.

The next morning, Dec. 23, he called me from his office (I was in the apartment upstairs) and presented me with this document that you see below to sign. He even brought a friend in to be a witness.

After that and before I moved out he started threatening me that I shouldn't trash his apartment. Huh? I don't know where he got that idea. So then I found a form on-line and printed it out for him to go around the apartment and see if anything was wrong, but he said his lawyer advised him not to sign anything! Right.



I'd like to respond to some of these items here.

1. Rich did not understand about my fibromyalgia and even started saying he was tired of hearing about it. But it takes a lot for me to make myself as functional as I am and something like having to go to a laundromat is very stressful and when you don't feel well and have to sit in those uncomfortable seats if they have enough, it was like taking 5 steps backwards. Before I went up north I discussed the laundry with him and he agreed I could do it at his place.

2. Regarding being welcome or not in his office... I know he's said things about how I would go down there and talk to his secretary and it would disrupt his work. But I only went there when it was something I had to do, like sending a fax to my doctor, which my brother had offered for me to do.

3. I special ordered key chains for his boys with their names engraved on them, and also got them thumb drives that latch on to the key chain. What am I supposed to do with these now?

4. I don't even know his boys' e-mail addresses, although the elder one had e-mailed me sometime before I knew I'd even be going up there to ask for Russian recipe for his class. I think that's the only e-mail contact I've ever had with either of them. Regarding calling them, I'd only called either of them once. The time I called the younger one was when they were away and I was taking care of their dog. They had this routine that if the dog did a poop she'd get a dog biscuit. I ran out of dog biscuits. So I'd mentioned this to our other brother in Seattle and he thought it was funny and suggested corking the dog. So I called the younger nephew and asked when they thought they'd be picking up their dog because we had this sort of emergency with no dog biscuits. You understand, this was all in fun and joking. I think I also called the other nephew once, but I can't remember why.

5. ? Okay. However, he has called me since as the conduit of news about mom. I guess this restriction only goes one way.

6. Oh thank you. I hate to put you out.

7. I found out from the local RCIL office that he could not legally evict me. The RCIL representative said that an eviction had to come from a judge, and since there was no rent agreement and I didn't pay any rent it is highly unlikely that any judge would order an eviction notice. However, getting the signatures and having a witness is a nice faux-legal step. At that point I DID NOT want to stay and do not intend to have any contact with that brother EVER.

8. Like I said above, he seemed to think I'm the apartment trashing type, which is pure idiocy.

9. I don't know what he means by undermining, but I think it means something like letting the cat out of the bag regarding how he treats his sons. I ended out calling family protective services because I had enough concern and would not have any more contact with them to be able to do anything if there really was a serious problem there. I don't know if they acted on it or not, but it's out of my hands now, and I am not reneging on my conviction that there is some unhealthy parenting going on there.

How would you respond to something like this? I was really shocked, and at least one person I talked with said my mom shouldn't have called my brother about the Dec. 21 incident.

On top of it, I was starting to get sick and when I went to the Dec. 21 sleep study they took my vital signs, and found out I had a fever. Before that I just thought it was my fibromyalgia acting up, but a fever isn't fibromyalgia; I'd been feeling unusually worn down and tired. On Dec. 24 I had a fever of 101.8 and I was on 2 rounds of antibiotics before leaving there and driving back down here. Not long after I arrived here I had another relapse, following the 2nd antibiotic, and may have at that point even developed pneumonia as a secondary infection. I'm still on prescription nasal apray and inhalant too.

The previous summer I'd told mom of some of my concerns about what was going on there and she told me that she'd had concerns for years about my brother's strictness with his boys. But after talking to my brother and since then she (and my other brother too) have sided with my brother. I think it's a matter of risks involved in pushing my brother too far. I told one person before leaving up there that I was the most "expendable" person in the family because I don't have a necessary role to play. Mom isn't strong enough to risk alienating either one of them, and my brother in Seattle isn't going to risk his relationship with our other brother, the one up north, over this. Mom's going to try to patch things up though, and my brother up north might try to too, to make it look like he's the big caring brother despite my causing so many problems. (He's so magnanimous!).

Women are supposed to respond to men being loving protectors, right? Yeah, right.

Here's hoping that you're family is doing better than mine! What a soap opera... talk about drama - we got it.

Till next time,

~ Meg