Posts by asleif_dufansdottir

92

Our Women are spoiled ... and it's our fault!

by Maverick in

here in america we had the most spoiled females on the planet!

american women run the show, guys we are toast!

and i know who to blame!

asleif_dufansdottir

I know that I have to watch myself or I will give her the moon

LOL! But Sheila, that's what grandmas are supposed to do!

I have heard soooo many grandparents say the kids behave better for them than for the parents (starting with my grandpa and grandma...oh, he used to brag about what a good kid I was with him...of course, when I said the bad word in front of the minister [the one I heard from him!] he thought it was funny, mom didn't).

I think that's true for 2 reasons, first, grandparents have been thru it all before and don't sweat the small stuff; second, the best grandparents aren't shy about letting the kids know how much they love them and dote on them, and the kids seem to respond in kind.

8

Collected stories about my JW upbringing...

by kyria in

hello.. i am working on a series of stories about my jw upbringing which i intend to perform as a one-person show in the near future.. i am in the process of putting them up online, and thought they might be of interest to some people here.

(keep in mind that they are still a bit rough!).

they can be found here:.

asleif_dufansdottir

Ky~

I tried to fool myself into affection but I just wasn't getting the same crush on God the rest of the congregation appeared to have. I wanted to believe it, in the pit of my stomach, I wanted to feel something. I thought, someday it will come naturally. I wanted God to be someone I cared deeply for. (snip)

As nice as God was, there was just no chemistry between us.

Excellent! (I relate)

You are a very good writer. I really enjoyed them.

36

I told my mother to stop contacting me

by kyria in

jw
friends

after two months of terribly abusive emails from my mother telling me that i "am not capable of appreciating true love" and her weird delusions that i have no friends and my life is a mess, i finally cut her off.

i blocked her email address, and i told her to stop contacting me.

yes, the jehovah?s witnesses.

asleif_dufansdottir

Git,

Some parents are just not good parents, and trying to continually have a relationship with them is like pressing on barbed wire. Eventually, if you're smart, you just step away.

My husband's father (never a JW) is not a nice person. We worked for him the first 10 years of our marriage. We've been gone 10 years. He thinks nothing of calling at 2 a.m. (still) to complain that since we no longer work for him, he has so much trouble finding people who are good workers. Keep in mind that the reason we left is that he wouldn't pay us what he owed us and was constantly belittling my husband for not doing enough...60 or 70 hours a week not being enough (come to think of it, he'd have made a great elder).

When we first left, he would call whoever my husband was working for, in an effort to get him fired, so we'd 'have' to come back to work for him.

We got an unlisted number to get away from this, and didn't have contact for years. We still don't talk to him very often. It's just too painful. He's always right and we're always wrong. No matter what my husband's accomplishments, they are not as important as working on the farm for dear old dad, in dad's eyes...he's just 'wasting his time'.

My husband didn't tell his parents he was going to college until he graduated (Summa Cum Laude). Why? Because if his dad had known, he would have upped the pressure to return to work for him, instead of 'wasting time' going to college. The 2 and 3 a.m. phone calls would have been right back in style. One of the reasons we moved 1500 miles away is so he'd quit showing up on our doorstep in the middle of the night.

Sometimes the break has to be extreme and the message has to be sent loud and clear, otherwise unhealthy behavior just continues to be a problem.

92

Our Women are spoiled ... and it's our fault!

by Maverick in

here in america we had the most spoiled females on the planet!

american women run the show, guys we are toast!

and i know who to blame!

asleif_dufansdottir

OK, Mav, I'm guilty of not recognizing irony, but this is a topic which I find it difficult to make jokes about.

Not that I don't know girls who I consider 'spoiled' (trust me, I have known more than a few), but I know many more women who have not been. It's just really sad. I will also say that it seems to always be the spoiled brats who get the spouses who will do anything for them. (I suppose because they will not put up with less, and the rest of us will)

Your second description of your daughter sounds like you're raising a very level-headed, if somewhat priviledged (because of your financial success), young woman. My grandpa spoiled me pretty rotten, within his means (my grandparents were very poor people), but in return I never wanted to disappoint him. Same way with my dad. That's the best way to spoil kids of either sex.

41

"I will tell you why you don't believe"

by Sirona in

"do you want to know why you don't believe the truth anymore?

i've just been asked this question by a jehovahs witness who stopped to talk to me in town.

i'd told her i didn't believe anymore.

asleif_dufansdottir

Sirona,

I'd have asked her (at least I hope I would have thought of it quick enough), "So, now that I'm not a JW, then Jehovah's laws like gravity don't apply to me anymore? If something is true, then it's true. Saying that Jehovah has to give you some special gift to see 'the truth' is, in effect, the same thing as predestination. JWs don't believe in predestination, do they??" Tell her she belongs with Calvin and his 'elect', not the JWs.

Wonder what she'd say to that.

46

Were you raised as a dub or did you convert?

by BLISSISIGNORANCE in

jw
friends

i was a catholic all my life then in my early 30s i got baptized as a jw.

a friend of mine when in her 20s became a dub.

she always talked to me about the borg and troof and i listened.

asleif_dufansdottir

Converted. Hubby converted before me (oh, that was a joy, let me tell you). I finally quit fighting it, decided to give it a try. Both out now, still married (amazingly enough)

92

Our Women are spoiled ... and it's our fault!

by Maverick in

here in america we had the most spoiled females on the planet!

american women run the show, guys we are toast!

and i know who to blame!

asleif_dufansdottir

Here in America we had the most spoiled females on the planet! American women run the show, guys we are toast!

Yeah. Haven't looked at the statistics of wife abuse in the U.S. lately, have you?

Haven't read the statistic that shows a woman who kills her abusive husband gets more jail time, on average, than a man with a record of wife abuse gets when he (finally) kills his wife.

The statistics that show that when a woman finally gets the guts to leave an abusive husband, her life is more in danger than at any other time.

Just because we don't enjoy being slaves and waiting on men hand and foot and being pathetically grateful you want us, we're spoiled brats?

Being spoiled means not appreciating what others do for you. I'd say that is true of the men I've known more than the women. The women do most of the housework and almost every bit of the childcare and the men don't even notice.

My friends who have lived in Europe say they'd never marry an American man, because American men are so spoiled and don't do their fair share around the house (all other things being equal). Guess it depends on your perspective, huh?

16

Ozzie's Weekend Poll #85

by ozziepost in

jw
friends

g?day all,.

so how?s this weekend going for you?

strange things have been happening downunder.

asleif_dufansdottir

Not listed: Making sure to greet "the brothers" (guess which ones) at the door of the hall with a hearty handshake. One of our MSs (the one who listened to ZZTop over the hall sound system while working on the literature counter when no one was there) bragged that that's what got him his MS...

17

Your favorite quote from a book?

by pr_capone in

jw
friends

mine is"i refuse to prove that i exist," says god, "for proof denies faith, and without faith i am nothing.

"but," says man, "the babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it?

it could not have evolved by chance.

asleif_dufansdottir

I read this book for the first time when I was a kid...maybe 10 years old, and I knew this was true of me then, and it's still true now.

"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum, always a bum."
--John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley (1962)

49

Maybe I'm not a cultured as I though. :- /

by Elsewhere in

jw
friends

i just got back from going to the nasher sculpture museum in downtown dallas.

they are having a showing of a rare collection of picasso paintings and sculptures that everyone is talking about.. i'm starting to wonder... maybe i'm not as cultured as a thought.

nearly every time i looked at one of his works i found myself thinking: "what the hell was mug smoke'in when he did that?

asleif_dufansdottir

I was talking about something along these lines with some of my friends who are in museum studies last night. I was saying that art was one of those subjects I felt I didn't understand well because I'd always been in music, and it was only the people who weren't in music classes that got to take art in school.

I think it's like anything else...movies, music, literature...it's not always supposed to be pretty. Lots of times it's supposed to make you think, or feel, and is a commentary about something the artist feels deeply passionate about.

Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude" most people find nice to listen to, but it's also very stormy and emotional because it's got a lot of his feelings about the political situation in Poland (he was unhappy about it). Moonlight Sonata is about love (most people think) but it's sad, too.

Literature's like this too. Lots of great literature is kind of depressing, because it wasn't written to entertain people...it was written because the author had an important message he or she wanted to get across...like in The Grapes of Wrath, or something.

Most of us just want to be entertained, which is fine, but we can't expect all artists, musicians and writers to just live to entertain us. They have causes they are passionate about, and they use their art as a tool, and it can be a powerful one. People got up in arms about slavery, not because of news items, but because of books like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (ok, I'm not a lit person, that might not be great literature)

I don't go to movies very often. When I do, I want to be entertained. I want escapism. However, I have friends who see lots of movies and just love movies that are arty, independent, and have a 'message'...I think the less involved we are in whatever form of art, the more we want light enjoyment. The more we become involved in whatever art field, the more we enjoy things that are more "serious".

As far as "art" art...I'll always love the impressionists and probably never have a clue about "serious" art.