Oh boy ...

[calumet]

... have I got a mess on my hands. To dispense with the least of it first, Baldy has withdrawn the bait and no of COURSE I am not chasing after it. He's also been behaving erratically. Not my problem, but puzzling anyway.

The real mess is my young adolescent daughter, who has been telling me in that non-verbal but eloquent way that children have, that she has been feeling unhappy and lonely. Can't really blame her. Life can be tough, and her mother has been a tad distracted. However, I am arranging for her to have plenty of people to talk to soon--psychiatrists, other adult relatives, and so on.

Let's see, what else. I have to have our very sick family dog put down this weekend. Work is not going well--over my dead body my boss has made some very poor business decisions, and we are trying to play catch up. For some reason I have a headache. I probably won't be doing much dancing and whatnot for the next little while.

Q: Help.
A: 50.2.4.5.6-->39.

Change operators come up as 36 yin and 6 yang. These tell me that I am to fight for, but not with, my daughter. Everything else looks pretty much like a bird's eye view of a plate of spaghetti. Help.

 

[dobro p]

First of all, sorry about your dog.

Second, you can handle the Ex and the boss, cuz you're tough.

Now, what does that leave? The two most important people in the equation. Let's start with your daughter. I think you should go easy on her. Remember that dream you posted where you're crushing the girls' dreams? I thought that was a pretty telling dream, pretty revealing. But why go easy on her? Well, I can think of three reasons - first of all, her life ain't smooth and easy either, and she's living with her single mom, which isn't easy and she deserves a break. Not only that, you're older and wiser (no, really!) and you're responsible for tending the plant of her development. At this point you can't do a lot of shaping of that plant, but you can create positive conditions for it. I like your style, cuz for me it's fun, but sometimes it seems like there's not a lot of tenderness on your palette when you start applying paint to the canvas of your life. And I'm not suggesting you exercise tenderness in her direction, but maybe go easy. And finally and most importantly, if you go easy on her, you're going easy on yourself, and that's what's key here I believe. You know how to be tough to survive - okay, you've learned that lesson and you exercise it with gusto. But can you learn to let the other part of you be itself - the part that hurts and is foolish/innocent and trusts? Can you let that part of you be? It's a different kind of toughness. It's like: "I'm tough enough to make it without having to be tough all the time."

50.2.4.5.6 - anyway, what you drew here is the reason I opened things up the way I did above. This oracle signals transformation in you at the deepest level of meaning you have access to now. Three parts out of four are very, very positive. The fourth part (50.4) is saying that somewhere in the situation you're disgracing yourself in some way by upsetting the process of transformation in some way. Fair enough, you're upset these days. But you're basically on track. Which is good to know, cuz there are so many changing lines in this that you have to take Hex 39 into consideration as well - it's a big part of the picture. And Hex 39 means 'difficult proceeding', 'limping'.

So, put them together and you get: a not untroubled but overall very positive transformation that involves loads of difficulty. Again, a perfect snapshot of where your life is right now.

 

[calumet]

The dog's been sick for quite awhile, so that was no surprise. But you know, I'd been starting to feel halfway decent again, sad and empty but more and more relieved--forgive me if this sounds melodramatic--each day I felt a little more relieved to have freed myself from the cycle of psychological battering. And then my daughter decides to enter the Land of the Troubled Adolescent.

You'd think a person could take a break.

 

[calumet]

No, that's not fair. Whatever is eating her, she held it off until I could help her deal with it. I just hope she waited long enough.

 

[jeanystar]

Calumet,
Just my opinion, but I feel loneliness is a universal disease, epidemic, and adolescents are so aware and sensitive, they feel it keenly.

MIght be a good, great, thing for BOTH of you to spend some time connecting, really connecting.
Doesnt have to be a big deal, either....cuddling on the sofa ( teens can be surprisingly receptive to this), or going out to a dinner for two.
My daughter and I watched "Jack the Bear" last night. We both cried. And it connected us.
Sorry about your dog

 

[dobro p]

Sigh.

"Doesnt have to be a big deal, either....cuddling on the sofa ( teens can be surprisingly receptive to this), or going out to a dinner for two."

If my mom or my dad had decided suddenly to cuddle me on the sofa when I was a teenager, I'd've left home. I mean, constant criticism and anger is one thing, but sudden cuddling! Nah, no way. I'd'a left.

 

[calumet]

Dobro, you're a guy, or anyway you come across as one. This isn't a good time to get me started on the topic of what your typical male over 24 months of age typically does when offered simple affection.

I'm not sure my daughter would go for a cuddling session, either. She'll still kiss and hug me good morning, good night, hello, and goodbye, except on those rare occasions when open warfare has broken out. We both love SOME LIKE IT HOT and Johnny Depp and any really funny movie, and there are comfy sofas here and warm things to cuddle under while watching movies. So maybe it's worth a shot. I have my doubts, but appreciate the suggestion and may try it.

The dog is still with us, sicker than ever, because I spent the vet's euthanasia hours at a sports tournament, watching my destructively acting-out daughter play her sport brilliantly. Happily, I didn't need to ask the Yi whether to spend the day having the dog euthanized or watching the tournament. And no, I am not the sports equivalent of a stage mother. In fact, I rarely attend the games, partly because I have other things to do and partly to reinforce the notion that this sport is her thing and not mine. Still, it was gratifying to watch her score the point that put her team into the finals. She will be fine after a couple of years of psychotherapy and after several additional years of driving me insane. I'm thinking that learning something about a martial art would help her, and for more than the obvious reasons why you want a lovely young girl to have some self-defense measures at her disposal.

Baldy has set the bait out again. I imagine it's supposed to be tempting, but instead it just reminds me that I taught him to think I am a complete idiot. He apparently has found companionship, hopefully having taken in the lesson that it it is not cricket to conceal an intent to limit things to fun and games. Wanna bet? I don't know who the lucky woman is and don't especially care, but I am reliably informed that he continues to make unsucessful runs at 25-year-olds. The time may be coming to prune that grapevine. I think I must have unknowingly turned a corner somewhere along the line because it occurred to me earlier today that there is practically nothing that could induce me to do anything more intimate with him than say, "Get lost."

Q: Help.
A: 30.3.6-->51

I guess that's mostly good, right?

 

[dobro p]

Yeah, I'm a guy. I like hugs, but it was my wife who taught me that. Wasn't much physical contact at home when I was growing up. That's why, now, I know that different households are, well... different. What works for one won't work for another. Anyway, if you both like Johnny Depp, you're halfway to success already lol.

30.3 means celebrating a passing, celebrating the end of a cycle. It's tough to do this, I find, but some are better at it.

30.6 talks about the advisability of an 'off with their heads' approach, which you're taking in relation to the guy.

It doesn't come across as 'mostly good' to me; it comes across as 'difficult times but mostly dealing with it'. There's small element of shock stirred into everything.

 

[calumet]

Dobro, I was reading 30.3 slightly differently, though on the same track. I read it as a criticism of and a suggestion to lose the desire to remain in a cycle that must end--a cycle that might be typified by, oh, let's say, a relationship. When a thing is winding down, you need to let it wind down. Decrying and fighting the inevitable profits nothing. It's that simple. So that's how I read the line. Of course, as you point out, I tend to paint in harsh hues and not in pretty pastels. What you may or may not consider a pretty pastel is my belief, now and into the foreseeable future: It's not me, it's him. As personal as this feels, I refuse to take it personally. The guy's a mess and suffering a midlife crisis that could last for the next 20 years.

And yes--off with their worthless, waste-of-carbon heads!