I heard it through the grapevine.....

I am the new topic on the family grapevine! I haven't been the subject since I was pregnant, so I guess my turn is up again being that it has been bout 5 years! Being on the family grapevine is not a fun experience. The main components have bunches of negative crap to sprew about you and the person being talked about may not even know about it! Something should have tipped me off when cousin Hollywood left a message on my voicemail. I didn't get the message till late so I left her a message this morning. Then I get a call from cousin 1st cuz(1st Cuz will be her name for now)today that blew my mind.

Long story short. My grandmother has started drinking heavy. Mostly due to the fact that she is playing super woman! Now in the household we have my grandfather, that pretty much can't do for himself because he has pretty much given up, my mom, who I am just finding out is slipping back into an illness she has and hasn't been actually watching Pooka, and my grandmother, who still works 6 days a week and tries to play nurse, wife, grandma, doctor, mother, babysitter and every other title. She just can't do it and is looking at a bottle to help her cope.

Now the talk of the fam now is that I dropped Pooka upstate for my grandmother to raise while I am "living it up" down here. If *God forbid* anything happened to my grandmother, it would be mostly my fault for putting my responsiblies of child rearing on my grandmother when I was the one who had her. This isn't of course what is happening, but this is my fam's interpretation. 1st Cuz issues just dropped off the family grapevine so when she heard the new stuff she called to tell me cuz she knows how the fam opperates and she knows that if someone doesn't tell you, you may never know your being talked about. Which I assume is why cousin Hollywood called me yesterday. Neither cousin calls me on the phone so I knew it was something.....

Now I kinda guess part of the blame is mine. I knew my grandfather is ill. I knew grandmother is doing what she can to keep her house together. But for some reason I didn't think that my mom was back that far into her illness and that she wasn't watching Pooka! I can really kick myself in the butt for that. I just put the burden of a active toddler on my grandmother! That thought actually made me cry. I know Pooka is only their Friday-Sunday, but that is too much on my grandmother. I just didn't know she was the one doing the caretaking! I didn't know! My grandmother sure aint gonna tell me anything. Everytime I talk to her she tells me how everything is just fine! But when another family member calls her it's another story! How stupid of me to believe everything was fine! Stupid stupid stupid....

So after 1st Cuz finished telling me what the real deal was, I immediately called Baby Daddy. We are in process of making arrangements so that Pooka is never over there for the purpose of being watched. I mean, that was the original plan anyways. But when my mom offered to keep her for free while he was at work. Baby daddy thought it was a good idea cuz it would save him some money and I thought it was a good idea because I'd rather have Pooka with my mother than some unrelated chick.

So now I am just ill at knowing my name is all over the grapevine, but at least I know what the problem is and I have a chance to fix it before my grandmother drinks herself and/or runs herself into a casket trying to be superwoman trying to help everybody! I would never get over being part of her downfall if it happened.

1st Cuz kept saying that she is telling me all this out of love and that if it was her child up there versus mine, and all this was going on, she would want someone to tell her about it. I am thankful and very glad that she did. I love her for it.