Ayn's Multiple World

Let's Introduce You to Rich's Fishy World

Good morning this is me. It is a Saturday morning and about 5 am. We’ve been up for about 45-50 minutes and we found ourselves sitting down to see the Donnie and Marie interview on Larry King. That was pretty good actually. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to see it especially last night because she seemed pretty goofy. She laughs a lot or at least did on the show. But, I paid more attention to the message rather than the delivery this time. I know I liked them when I was a kid, but we weren’t like way out in our liking of any singer. Just we knew of them. I never watched their day time show so I don’t really have an opinion of it, but you gotta like something about a mother who has 8 kids. Wow! Go for it!

They said that they think one of the kids started a fire in the garage that burnt down half of the house. Yeeks. Kids are tough – she also talked about one of the kids going through drugs. Plainly she’s gone through some hard stuff. I would be difficult not to. I think kids of stars have it pretty tough … there are so many things to live up to and different variables about.

Wow … We’re really having a loud thunderstorm.

Whoops … went back to bed and now we’re up again. We slept for an additional 2 hours. It’s now about 8 am and fishyman is up too … he’s watching his fishy shows and having some coffee. He’s going to need taking a shower soon, because he said he had to leave by 9 or 9:30 am. Today is the day he’s going to meet his two oldest at his mother’s for their Christmas. Pretty certain it’s not a good idea for me to be there. Afterward his daughter and her girlfriend and the girlfriend’s son are going back to their mothers and then Rich is going to take his son back to Joliet. It’s his birthday and he’s going to a party with his friends. I think that Rich isn’t going to be home until about 10 pm tonight. It will be a long day, but hopefully we have plenty to keep us busy.

Yesterday we almost got a couple of chapters edited. We left out on having to read chapter 11 for content. We’re up to June. This chapter is about 50 pages long – not too bad. I was pleased with where we were going, but at some point we had to stop so we could get in some writing. I don’t think that was a complete effort either. I think we got further, but haven’t gone into having been over at Rich’s mother’s and Bud’s. We’ll get there today. I have to think though if there isn’t any left-over’s that I have to do to get other parts written out. I think we’re going to need skimming what we already wrote about.

Ok, we’ve got to wait on that because the Internet isn’t responding directly. But, we will do that in a moment. We might as well start on the situation at Rich’s mother. We know we haven’t done ANY thing there yet.

Hmm, the first thing is that we left the house here on time. We left about noon.

I’d gotten prepared a couple of hours early so I wouldn’t slow Rich down. I think we were working on our book before that, don’t recall really, but that makes sense.

The ride out to their place was nice. I don’t recall too much of it except that I really was looking forward to seeing them again. There might have been a little anticipation about meeting Rich’s brother and his brother’s kids, but in general I was in a good mood.

Rich’s mother was in the sunroom when we came in. She had said to put the coat in the back bedroom, so I did that after giving her a smooch and I heard back in that area that the shower was going so we could figure out that the brother was still getting ready. Later he said that he’d expected Rich and us to come in a little later. That worked out fine. It gave us a chance to talk to Rich’s mother and Bud a bit before adding that extra pressure.

I wish I could remember more the conversations, but I’m not at that point yet. I do remember that I was worried that Bud and Rich’s mother were a little crabby toward each other. It seemed that they were pushing some envelope. We stayed clear of that and just maintained our lighter conversations with Rich’s mother. Rich and Bud were back and forth between the sunroom and the kitchen. Rich was being a little fuss-budgety. He seemed to be pushing his mother on this issue or that. I tried to stay out of it, but we talked about it a little last night. He seems to think that he’s doing his mother a favor by challenging her and a little bit of managing her, but she’s aware what he’s doing and obviously doesn’t want to be managed. I can see her point in that I know how Rich could be.

On Rich’s behalf though, he’s doing it out of tough love, because he doesn’t want to see his mother deteriorating. So, basically, he is trying to keep her safe and she’s like rebelling against the parts of being managed.

I find that when I’m there that I gravitate toward being next to her. I saw that when we first came in and sat with her in the sunroom, and then later when we sat in the living room for the gift giving part. She seems to appreciate being to turn toward me and having a nice light chat. I don’t have to be in the position of Rich or Bud of trying to make sure she does things right. It’s not that I don’t care; it’s just that it’s not my role. My role seems to be of an appreciative girlfriend of Rich who has waited forever and a day to meet her and listen to her stories and concerns. I really, really like her.

She seems to make sense to me. We talked to Rich a bit about it last night when we were driving to or from the fishy store. Our thought was that he cuts off his mother if he’s heard the story where our thought is that questions need to be asked to progress her conversation. I like always to ask questions to figure out where people are or what’s important for them. If she’s telling a story then it’s for some purpose and I want to understand what she’s interested in with each particular story.

I think she also appreciates having someone to listen to her. I don’t think that many of the others are patient enough to go into details. But, I’m not sure about that. I got a chance to see how everyone reacted to her … and maybe more specifically how her grandchildren reacted to her. They seemed to do it well. They were like not disagreeing with her like some of the other, but they’d watch her carefully and do a little chuckling. It was done in good spirit though. I really had the impression that they loved her a lot. I think there isn’t over communication though, because Rich’s Mom said something to them about not calling enough. From what I understand they live closer to her than anyone else, but most likely as young people go they get caught up in their own lives.

Maybe we should stick with them now just for a few moments. I really, really have to say that I liked Rich’s brother and his two daughters a lot. It seems like there relationship might be a little strained too, but maybe because he doesn’t seem to read them on an “In-the-know” manner. Mark’s grandson was there too and I think the part that blew me away was how the entire group of them – with the exception of Rich and us was into scolding the younger child. He was just 5 years old. They talked about paddling him and things like that. I think the grandchild was confused by everyone being on his case. Sometimes he cared and other times he didn’t. He was being controlled more by the gifts and other treats than anything else. I think that Bud and Mark were the worst.

They seemed to want to up-do each other in being the one who got Chance to listen.

He seemed like a nice kid, but he had energy to spare and it was tough for him in such a small place not to be moving around. He had this cute little electronic guitar that played music he could move too. That’s the gift that he brought with him and captured the majority of his attention. He didn’t seem like he was into trouble more than any other kid. Actually he was pretty well disciplined. The other thing he wanted was to swirl in one of the chairs that Bud had been sitting in and Rich’s Mom usually sits in. I thought it was pretty creative for him to find such a simple pleasure. But, this wasn’t something that the older folk seemed to want him to be doing.

We sat down at the end of the table where the girls were. I was really happy about that. I was also across from Rich’s mom and even though the girls were toward the end, I had a very comfortable seat at the table. I don’t know how it happened, but we started interacting with the girls. Their names are Crystal and Brandy. They are really nice. I felt bad for Brandy though because she had a cold and wasn’t feeling tip-top. I think one of the coolest things bedside they seemed very honestly nice was that they were such good friends of each other. You know in the way we talk about our boys that we appreciate kids who get along with their siblings.

One of the things we talked about and I was real excited about was that it appeared that both of them had lost a lot of weight. I was interested in how they did it and they seemed interested in the surgery. There wasn’t a lot of time to go into anything in real depth, but they were the kind of people that I would like to talk with some more and get to know. Rich didn’t seem to know a whole lot about them. I think that they may not have gotten together for over 2-3 years. This is a big shame, because if Rich could know them, it might be a good relationship to them.

Rich in general though around the girls seemed pretty formal. He said that he didn’t feel it appropriate to really getting to know them as in having interactive talks. I thought that was a shame.

On the way home last night it came up again. Rich seems to think of his family as uneducated and I think this somehow causes differences in the way they respond to each other. He was saying that I was treating them different than people usually do in his family. I thought we were having a good introduction conversation and Rich seemed ok with me relating to him, but I think I talked to them more in one day than they had talked to Rich in a lifetime. Rich is a little strange here in that he’s really concerned with not getting into the business of other peoples’ kids … he does it the same way with Bob’s kids. So in general, they don’t as adults talk too much about the kids. It’s a lot different when we are with our kids. I think that Rich’s kids might have a more open relationship to his wife’s family too – especially Jill to her aunt.

I don’t know more of that than that though. Just know she really likes her Aunt and the Aunt seems easy to talk to.

Rich had a chance to talk to his Aunt last night too. He seems friendlier on that relationship. It seemed that they were genuinely interested in how each of the other was doing. Rich talked both to his Aunt and Uncle. There was a little part that I could hear about his Aunt saying something about her sister – Rich’s mom drinking at 9:30 am. I know that Rich had said something before about that being one of Jill’s experiences. He thought out loud though that Jill wasn’t around enough to know that … so he discounted the message that the Aunt was searching out.

I think they are all trying to help and I have no reason to doubt that Jill saw what she did, but it was most interesting that Rich defended his mother with both his Aunt and Bud in saying that he didn’t think she was drinking as much as all of them did.

As proof for his pudding he said that she’d gotten a drink at dinner about 3 pm, I don’t know if he saw that it was topped off, but he knew she got one more drink – a dramboey (sorry messin up the spelling on that one), but then everyone got one of them and it was used to make some toasts. The thing was that she was still working on that dream when we left about 6:30 pm. Maybe the point most interesting was that as interested as Rich was in helping his mother including the drinking, he didn’t seem to like that all others were making her out to be a bigger drinker than he would publicly admit.

We’ll let all this go though. I am concerned for Rich’s mother, but it is not my duty to be a mother hen with her. I get the best role in just listening and talking to her. With that I’m just having the best of times. I think she still likes me and both her and Bud on our way out the door was very clear in asking that I come back any time. I told his mother on the way out the door that after fishy season started that Bud could go with Rich fishing and I would come and stay with her if she liked. We were on our way out and there wasn’t much time for her to respond, but I think she heard what I said.

I think that the slight friction built up with Rich and me last night talking about the situation is that he was seeing as does Bud his mother from a caregiver’s perspective and at that they see her as not very cooperative. That’s not my role, and it won’t be my role even if I’m there to be with her if Bud was out with Rich.

I would be in a role to make sure things were safe, but I would be listening for her cue.

It’s now 9:40 am and Rich has just left. We talked a bit about the families. His daughter called while Rich was getting dressed and I was glad she called back a second time to say that Dawna and Nick were going with. Rich is still trying to make out that his mother is somewhat out of it, but this morning he said only by 2% … I can live with that … I’m pretty sure I’m out of it a lot more. Rich sees his reactions toward his mother as keeping her tuned-in. He wants her not to lose her cognizance. I don’t think that’s one of her goals. I see him worrying over her moving a bit so that her body doesn’t atrophy. I think it’s hard, but that kind of concern from the mother’s perspective has to come from a really deep place. I think part of that is in general as we age, we want to consider ourselves valuable to the people in our life. Hopefully, that will inspire her forward. I think really though she needs more conversation as to everything in general and not to be JUST told to do such and such.

I don’t know if I finished it before, but we were saying that Rich considered the kind of talking I might do as foreign to his mom, brother and the brother’s family because of my education. I think people can be educated and very unintelligent as to their relating to people. I like the sincerity I feel between the girls and how everyone feels toward Rich’s mother. They may think she’s doddering, but there’s no doubt they all love her. I don’t think I’m in a position of becoming her best friend, but we have a big affinity toward her because we both love Rich so much and I know that Rich loves her and I want to do everything I can to appreciate those spaces.

It might seem like I’m doing or saying stuff that isn’t my business, and I think that Rich’s kids might think that, but as Rich’s love I feel it important to appreciate his family as much as I do my own. He was right in that the gift-giving was slim, but that might be how our family should be. Rich gave his brother a $50 gift certificate and the brother gave Rich a $50 bill. I think that was sort of funny. Rich and his brother both got trailer hitches with was the greatest gift.

The guys tend to get shirts the women pajamas scarf’s and mittens. Chance got the best gifts … he got an assortment of nice toys. I think there were train and trucks and such like that. He seemed pretty happy and he wanted to get right home after the gifts were open. I don’t think he’s particularly comfortable, but more that he was tired and might have wanted to play with some of his Christmas gifts. In general, kids do their best at their own places.

That’s about it on family for the time being. I’m still thinking that someone is going to say something and the kids are going to know I was at the grandmother’s. I hope that will be fine, but in general I see just that relationship will be the center of their conversation with each other and with their mother and most likely other in-laws. I don’t like being put in that position, but it seems fair. I like to think of the relationships I’ve just been in and I’m pretty sure it’s a human thing to do this in general. I don’t expect that they are going to like me, but the best scenario would be if they were interested because I’m important to their Dad, rather than somehow being the one that is making their lives hard. I don’t mean to hurt any of them. In this respect, I will stay low back as long as Rich and his family need me to be there.

I do see a little something though in that the kids seem to want more of the truth. It’s just that Rich doesn’t seem to think they can handle it. This is more like the management kind of stuff we’ve been talking of with Rich’s mother. I know it’s done because they all love each other and are trying to take care. Just there needs to be some honest and less protective conversations. I think they have to be safe, but I think people in general do better with the truth, then in being subverted from knowing what’s going on. As to Rich’s wife – I’m sorry for her situation. I do feel she had an extra 20 years she could have improved her relationship with Rich – and I felt all along that Rich was looking for that. But, at some point she’s going to have to cut her losses and move on. We can’t be doing every mention of my name is a major disaster and attack on her and her family. Life happens.

I know I’ve got 14 years on her in handling her as “the other woman.” Most likely this is a great part of where I am now and she is not. I don’t want to talk about anyone overly though. They all need a chance to work through their thoughts and feelings, just as I do here in my blog. I think that if I ever were to really publish, then these thoughts are going to become not to private. I guess in saying just this little I have today and along the way … it is hoped most that they will one day understand that I was concerned with their welfare … just I fell in love with their Dad and he me. There are others that appear nobler in turning away the love of their life because of previous arrangements. I guess neither me nor Rich could be considered noble. But, they might one day appreciate that we both lived with him remaining married to the mother to making her life and their relationship as whole as it could be. No one has ever wanted her to be hurt, although it was obviously one day going to happen. I know how she holds on to this, and I can only hope she won’t use it to make the rest of her life miserable. Or, for that matter the life of her kids. One day … we’ll all just move on.

I would like to know the kids one-on-one, but I’m also prepared to have a separate life from them, if that’s truly what they want. We’ll have to see how things work out, right? Ok, good enough … let’s try now to move on.

Where I’m at mostly is that if I’m not writing I will go back to editing. We tried to do that a little this morning, but didn’t get real far. There’s a couple other things that I wanted to talk about.

I guess we’ll start with being in Rich’s fishy-world last night. He came home fairly early from his poker game and napped while my hair dried, and then we went to the fishy store. It was very, very foggy out there and hard to see too far ahead of ourselves. Rich did manage to find it though *giggle.* He drove our car because he said that he wanted it not to just be sitting. That was fine with me. I don’t really recall what we talked about on the way there. I think basically, we were both getting a little of our day communicated. That seems to be an important step of bringing us back together. When we are separated – he has experiences and I have experiences and it’s nice to share the basic of that because we were both in places important to us, but then the point of being in a relationship is to then share an experience and then go on from there.

Sharing the fishy store was something I’d been looking forward to. Mostly we’re just a follower and we want to be open for Rich to talk about whatever it is that will come to his mind. He had decided a head of time that he wasn’t going to buy anything, but he did end up buying a lock for his boat and a cover for his motor.

Poor guy … he knew that from the start he was going to keep track of anything necessary for the boat.

I had in mind the idea that he was going to need looking and being putsy, so we let him know we were going for the little motorized cart thing. He hemmed and hawed for a few moments, but I think we finally both came to terms with it. He said that half the point was to get me out walking and I said half the point was just to get me out of the house. That seemed like a draw between us. When we got to the store though, someone else had already been using the two carts they have there. So, what we did was to take one of the two wheelchairs, so I could walk to wherever we go, but then sit down while he was looking through things.

I didn’t know if he was going to look for any boat thing in particular and we did end up just walking up and down to get a general idea of what was there. He was seeing a lot of things that he was going to need, but he only got the basics of what he needed immediately. He was appreciative that Bud had shoveled the snow around his boat hitch so that no one could get at the boat. The thing that he spent the most time with was that he was looking at a Hummingbird fish-finder or depth-finder … whatever they are called. I think he was looking at a 900 series, but now I see by going to the Hummingbird site that there is an 1100 series that seems to be about the same amount of money that he was looking at yesterday. We’ll have to bring this to his attention.

Already looking at the top model which is the same price as the lesser one at Bass pro it seems they have a map on it that covers the question that Rich was having yesterday. Basically how do you know the footage of things going closer to the shore. You know is it 15 feet, 10 feet, 4 feet, etc. Now I’m looking at the 1197c SI Combo NVB for $3000 I see that there is a special map just for that purpose. He didn’t see it nor was the salesman very good at the store. The description on the Hummingbird is that it features a massive 10.4% display, Sid Imaging and DualBeam PLUS sonar with up to 8000 Watts PTP power output, GPS Chart-plotting and advanced Fishing System capabilities. It includes unit cover and in-dash mounting kit. It also includes Navionics Gold and HotMaps Premium charts that are pre-loaded.

WooHOO!!!

This is what they look like:



cool, Hmm?

Fishface is going to go all out on this one I think. We teased him about not having spent much on fishing over all these years. And, then we reminded him how old even his golf clubs were. He says that he is going to do it right the first time and then hold onto it forever. I think that’s pretty cool. I can see too that these sonar systems have updating features where you can get new stuff off the computer.

That seems like a good deal. This tool is about the only one the boat didn’t come with. It looks like batteries though – he needs two more are going to cost about $60 each. He’s worrying because and I would most likely agree … there is a lot to be purchasing.

We looked at life preservers, fishy nets, anchors, rope and a whole lot more, but didn’t pick up anything else. We did ask the fishy guy and he said that probably about January 8th or so there will be a fishy show and he might be able to pick up there some kind of good deal. This above item hopefully will be found for less, but one way or another it seems to be an extremely big part of Rich’s needs. He’s really bent on learning everything about it. He sees that other guys have sonar’s, but really don’t know how to use them. He wants to know it all!

AHA! He will like that. I found the manual for the sonar above and we’re downloading it. I will send him a copy. Then he can start reading up. He’s really bent on fishing by February. He wants to go south. Oh man … he’s going to like that … it comes with a 196 page user manual. Hehehe better get this to him right away! Shoot, my screen is frozen … this will take a few moments. It’s ok, we’ve got some time to devote to fishyface.

Ok, ok … that’s a done deal. Moving on … basically, I think that this is the most expensive other object on the boat. BUT, yes everything is going to add-up … He’s going to keep a journal. I would like to teach him seriously how to keep a blog.

Hmm, maybe I could open one up? Or at least find a fishy cover. That way he could access it any time he was on his computer. HMM??

Hmm, maybe I could help him start something up. Looking now for skins. But, I’m thinking he already has a list of stuff he wants … I don’t know if he has the receipts with him though of the things he bought yesterday. We would like to show him that he could collect a picture of the item along with the receipt cost. Think it would be a real good deal for him. And, then like when he was there (he always brings his computer) it would be there too. He could show his site to the fishy guys AND, he could be downloading pictures to the site of the events he’s at. It be a REAL good idea.

Shoot the Internet is running slow this morning. It’s taking forever to load and it’s incomplete at that. The Internet is working … just not so great.

AHA! We started a blog for Rich … we’ll have to see if it takes. This is what it looks like …











I’m going to close it now for awhile. I don’t know what he’ll think of it, but we’ll try to show him how adaptable it is and convenient to his being on the Internet. I picked out a design that had a lot of room for changes and additions.

It’s got a lot of places and numbers of widgets. I tried to be a little creative in what kind of fun things he could include, but I wouldn’t be disappointed if he cleared the whole thing out and started fresh. THAT’S IF – he would like to keep his journal online. We could pass code it to be private so the only ones that see it is the one’s he chooses. But, for now it's at Richsfishyworld.blogspot.com

One way or another at this point, it is certainly fishyman friendly!

Ok, now … gotta get out of that space too. We’ll have to wait until Rich wakes up tomorrow … we’ll try to let him have a cup of coffee first to wake up and then maybe if he takes his computer over to the table and opens it up then we’ll show it to him. Hmm, maybe we could just email it to him … that would be a nice surprise. Let me set that up.

Ok, done deal. I’m not getting too much done though of what I need to be doing. I think I’m going to post now and get back to editing. My play stuff is all worn out. Just love that gosh darn nice fishyman!

posted by Ann Marie @ 12/27/2008 02:06:00 PM Comments: 0