A Hard Parenting Moment

I recently wrote a post about letting people go.  Well, several nights ago Noah and I were talking, it was late, he had a cold and he started talking about my dad.  It broke my heart, without going in to personal details, basically he was saying things like I wish I could meet Grandpa. He is almost six and has never met my dad. He lives in England with his new wife and it just is far away. I haven’t seen my dad since before I found out I was pregnant with Noah.  Noah kept saying things like where is Grandpa? How far is England? Why haven’t I met him?  I didn’t have the heart to say anything. He went on to make a plan to go see him. He calculated every detail of the trip out to me.  I just went a long with it.  I felt the tears falling down my face because it made my heart hurt so badly.  We have never had the best relationship and again without getting in to all the personal details he has hurt me many times in my life, more than I can count. I had known this for a long time and it is who he is, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.  I was really hesitant to let him back in my life and now Noah’s life back in 2007.  It is really hard because he’s my dad. My five year old doesn’t know, it is sad that he hasn’t met him.  I already have seen him disappoint Noah and continue to disappoint me. I used to wonder if I did something wrong, if I wasn’t good enough growing up? I wondered if it was my fault. 

So, what do I say? I mean I am definitely not going to say the truth to my five year old. I don’t want him to know, if that makes sense. I guess I will just have to go along with it for now and not make any promises. It is not like he has made any effort to see us. He invited us out there when Noah was two.  That’s a long way from home and I would be worried something would happen and we would be on the streets in England to fend for ourselves.  He has never offered to come here once. When he was living in the states, he never offered to see us.  We actually moved to be closer to him and he took off to England.  He has never heard Noah’s voice other than on videos. He doesn’t call, Skype or anything. Noah has seen two pictures of him.  It makes me so sad, because who could want to not meet my sweet little boy. He is amazing and so smart.  It has really turned in to a very stressful and hurtful thing for me so I decided to just let him go. Let him have his life in England and all that and hope he is happy, but I can’t let him hurt us anymore. My heart can’t take it, I don’t want Noah’s heart to hurt or ever feel unloved  by him like I did for almost my entire life.  It just really stinks because Noah is asking about Grandpa all the time now and I know he is genuinely just a kid wanting to see someone he loves.

I Got Something to Say

The title of this post is a quote by the character Jerri Blank from Strangers With Candy. I feel like I should share with my readers some things. I wrote a post a while back called When Blogging Relationships Go Bad about my horrible experience with a company I worked with on my blog. You can read the post here if you are not familiar with what I am talking about. The long of the short of it is, I was working with a company that promised me a full sponsorship to BlogHer in exchange for advertising, posts and even a Twitter party that ended up being a nightmare. I turned and looked the other way while she bashed other bloggers and even a NASCAR star. I did think it was wrong but I didn’t stick up for my fellow bloggers. I feel bad because I should have been the voice for the masses;I thought that she was being mean and rude. I regret that.

After a while I tried to let it go and not let it bother me. I have received numerous requests and comments asking me to tell who it is. I have remained silent as a professional courtesy but in light of the increase of new bloggers, I have decided to break my vow of silence and share with you all so you don’t get taken as well. It was Bea’s Gift Baskets. There I said it. Like I said there are quite a few new bloggers out there and I want to warn them, I don’t want anyone to be treated like I was. It still hurts; even more so with everyone starting to talk about BlogHer and BlogHer related events like the parties. It also still hurts that I spent all that time working on the posts and twitter party that wasn’t review related. They got free advertising. I got nothing but disappointment. I am sure you are thinking well you got those gift baskets at least that is something right?

I went to the dollar store, it is kind of new and yes, it still had eau du Dollar store smell. I was browsing around by the food and I saw an item that was supposed to be “gourmet” in one of those gift baskets. I was like wow; those are the exact same chocolate covered pretzels that were in one of my gift baskets. I just thought well they could have sprung for the Flips if they wanted to be cheap. The Flips are like 3 dollars a bag versus the dollar store ones. It makes me wonder how many more dollar store items are in those overpriced gift baskets.

There is nothing wrong with the dollar store, I shop there. I love the dollar store, but if you are paying 90 dollars for something you should at least get 50 dollars worth of food, a 20 dollar basket then the company nets 20 bucks or something along those lines. Maybe 40 dollars worth of food but there shouldn’t be items that you can get at the dollar store. I just think that is unethical and deceitful. That of course is my opinion.

I just wanted to share this with my fellow bloggers and readers. Maybe even the weary traveler passing through my blog. I don’t want to see anyone taken by Bea’s Gift Baskets like I was. So, how can we prevent this from happening?

1. Make sure you get everything in writing. Granted I had everything in email and that would have been fine, but when you are dealing with something like this extra forms like contracts are a good way to go. I know she didn’t mention contracts once until after she pulled out and didn’t want to do what I consider the right thing.

2. Don’t turn the other way or put up with others that talk bad about other people. Chances are they are bad mouthing you to someone else. You should work with companies that conduct their selves in a professional manner.

3. If your gut tells you it is too good to be true, it just might be or if the person gives off a weird clingy vibe you should probably walk away. Always trust your gut and your heart.

4. If a person you are working with is lying to others, 99% of the time they are lying to you.

5. Talk to others about their experiences, I know that everyone can make up their own minds about things they want to do, but listen to what others have to say and keep it in mind for when you make your decision.

I hope you find these tips helpful and keep them in mind in the future. Thanks for reading!