TLI's Rant: Criticizing Habbits

[Coin]

Edit cos i started to ramble:

you seem to have 3 problems.

1. your dad not behaving in a manner consistent with the advice/instructions he is giving you
2. crazy lady living in your house
3. a badly behaved dog

1. your dad.

can't remember which book i read that contained some good advice for your pa:

"you can't f**k a crazy woman sane". Kudos that he's housing her, but if his motives aren't charitable then i have to say:nono:; by offering her a home and then 'cosying' up to her, that's a little like preying on her cos she is weak. your dad sounds like he has a lot of things going for him, and a few going against him. he just needs to realise that he IS a nice guy, and doesn't need to prove it by becoming a 'holy joe'. the way you describe his consumption of alcohol makes it seem excessive; it might be that he is using it as escapism from the consequences of his low self esteem.


2. homeless lady

homeless lady has issues: she is TRYING to make you angry, so that the atmosphere in the house becomes 'impossible for her to live in' and she can point the finger of blame at everyone else but herself. on a deeper level, she too has self-esteem issues, and her being 'evicted' from your home would mean that the negative image she has of herself is re-inforced, making her worldview fit with what she 'knows'.



3. the dog

the dog is spoiled, and sick. homeless lady is not acting as the alpha, and so the dog is taking over. bet he needs a bath, and some medicated shampoo.

how bad are you allergies? i used to get severe asthma and respiratory distress around animals: it turns out its their dander that causes it. if the dog is moulting (you seem to be describing 'mange') it would aggravate your allergic response. is there a yard where you can 'play' with the dog, and 'accidentally' splash it with a hose?
does the dog get taken for walks? 120 pound dog needs a lot of walking. giving it some exercise will help calm it down.

If you are the one who is feeding the dog, the dog associates you as the alpha male, and will start listening to you. buy a pack of treats, say 'SIT' in a loud clear and don't-mess-with-me voice, and then give him a treat WHEN he sits, not before. make a fuss of him, scratch lightly behind his ears, give him another treat and say 'Gooooood Boy' in as warm a voice as you can manage.

this way, when he is chasing the cat around, theres a good chance he'll stop if you yell.

when your control of him is better, you can hold the cat, and introduce them to each other, and then give him a treat. the akita is doing what his 'programming' tells him to do: chase off rival predators away from the environs of the den. if you enforce yourself as pack leader by feeding the mutt, then you can introduce the cat as 'also pack' and the dog will then include you all in its definition of pack.

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suggestions

you can help both of them here, as you seem to be the sanest person in the house: get out of the house, away from the dog/computer/noisy woman. perhaps go jogging/cycling, maybe a team sport (which would increase the number of sane people in your social circle by a significant percentage), grab a part-time job at a coffee shop/macdonalds/paper-round (its amazing how having control over your own finances can give you greater peace of mind). when the dog is cleaner, and is more used to obeying you when you yell at it, you can take the thing for a walk... and eventually, the dog will recognise you as the alpha, and there's a good chance that the humans in the house will start backing off your case too...

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A Day in the Life of an NPC | Coin | The Journal of Caius Oakley | Build Your Dream Boat

[Jayce]

No. My dad's obsessed with trying to get her to like him, so he does everything she wants. Of course, that's never gonna happen, she doesn't like him, but that hasn't stopped him from proposing to her and spending hundreds of dollars taking her out to all sorts of restaurants that I've never even stepped a foot in myself. He also takes her shopping and buys whatever she wants when she's only shopping for fun. Yeah, she's kinda taking advantage of him, she has to know what he's trying to do, and she's accepting everything even though she knows he'll never get what he wants in return.

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[TLI-Inferno]

See, the problem about the dog is, there is no simply controlling it.

It actually fights any human who orders it with an authoritative tone. It wants to be the alpha male, and it will fight anyone who tries to have power over it. Since it's not my dog, I can't exactly explain any injuries that happen to it when I defend myself, since yelling at it would be "provoking" it.

Also, getting it to be "friends" with the cat... That's never gonna happen. The dog kills any animal it sees. Another dog walked up to it in the park once, wanting to be friends. In about two seconds, he nearly killed the other dog, and it was ripped up on the ground bleeding everywhere before he was pulled away.

The dog's huge and crazy. Every time one of us goes to the store, orders food, or cooks food, I'm the one who has to go up and tell her there's food, and as soon as I say anything I have to listen to the dog bark for about 5 minutes, loudly, until she finally gets it to shut up and opens the door to ask me what I said. Every single time. You'd think the dog would realize my father and I live here, but it still treats us like intruders.

No, we don't have a yard, that's another problem.

The dog does get washed pretty often, but it still smells awful.

And, no, my dad isn't a nice guy at all. He used to be, but a lot of things have happened to him. He's just obsessed with her, and will do anything to try and get her to like him. She knows that. He's always nice for a while, but the moment he "wins" a person over, he goes back to his old ways of mistreating everyone, taking everyone for granted, and blaming everyone for anything that happens. Thing I'm worried about is, literally everything that happened to him, seems to be happening to me, even at similar times of my life. I just hope I can break the chain and make my own life before I turn out like him. He quit TCC right before he got his engineering associate's degree, and I'm going to TCC for engineering. If I get my associate's degree (and I plan to go on to Bachelor's, maybe Master's if I can afford it), then I'll finally be breaking away from the failures that happened to him.

So far, the similarities are pretty creepy... He saw his father commit suicide when he was 3, and got a mean stepfather when he was 4. I got a mean stepfather when I was 4, and saw my sister die when I was 7. He was beaten bloody as a kid, I was a white kid in an all-black school that hated white people, which resulted in me getting concussions all the time and being suspended for whatever damage I did to others while defending myself (the administration was racist as well). When he was 14 and was being beaten, he pushed his stepfather backwards into a chair with one hand, and his stepfather stopped trying to beat him after that. When I was 14 and my stepfather was hitting me, I pushed him back with one hand, sent him backwards and he ended up in a sitting position on the stairs... My father was interested in drawing for years until he took physics in highschool, and then chose to go to Tidewater Community College for electrical engineering and programming. I was interested in graphic design (drawing on the computer) for a few years until I took physics in highschool, and now have chosen to go to Tidewater Community College for electrical engineering and programming (this had nothing to do with my father; I didn't even know he did that until I'd made my own choice). Seems like everything my dad does, I end up doing, without knowing he did it, and figure out afterwards. I just have to make sure I succeed in college, and don't turn out the way he did.

Also, just to keep the record clear, and to make sure there's no unnecessary disrespect towards my stepfather that used to be a jerk: He's a good man now. More like a father than my father. I go out to see him and my mother every couple of weeks, and they're both very nice. He teaches me how to do things, conveniently he's a self-taught programmer and does a bit of engineering as well. He does free/low pay work for other people, and always volunteers to help at the local foundation, and helps the church with wiring and computer problems, occasionally writes a program for them to do things like organize information. I just can't stay there because it's in the middle of nowhere, and I need to go to school. I've been living here to go to school. Those two days out there every other weekend, are like heaven, though. They're simple days; out in the country, just a couple of old games to play, generally do some good, healthy hard work, talk to the nearest friend a few miles out, talk to his parents, sometimes do work there, too. Working in the country is relaxing, and gives you a good feeling. I grew up out there for my first 11 years, but I wasn't able to appreciate it back then, because I was a kid who just wanted to try out videogames like everybody else did. Now I lean back on videogames when I'm in the city with nothing good to do, and enjoy my time working in the country.

For people who only read a small piece and then instantly think "QQ". People, I'm not here to complain, I'm here to talk. I talk about what happens in life. In my life, a lot of it happens to be negative, but I'm not complaining about it, only talking about it. I'm still doing fine, I've still got a few threads (no pun intended) holding onto my sanity, and my life's been turning to a good direction. If everything goes right, I'll have a good future, just gotta stick it out a few years as I go through college until I can get a job that pays enough for a place. Of course, something always goes wrong, that's life. I'll just hope that whatever happens, I'll still be able to get through college.

Edit: Well, of course things have to go wrong... The person who entered my information when applying for student loans (I wasn't allowed to do it myself) entered a different birthday, and now I can't receive the student loans... They require a few weeks before they allow you to try to fix things, and by the time they'll let me change the birthdate it will be too late to pay for the semester. I'll have to get money from somewhere else out of nowhere, because I've got to pay now. I found out about this issue a week ago, but they wouldn't tell me anything about it at the time, and wouldn't tell me when I could fix it...

So, basically, somebody else screws up and I pay for it. That's how it always seems to be. I'll just hope that everything turns out alright, and that I find a way to get things paid for quickly. Semester starts next week. My birthday's also next Tuesday... And none of my friends will be able to come out, because of all kinds of awful things that happened this week... One friend's stepfather killed himself. Another friend got framed and kicked out of his private school, then couldn't get into summer school, and when the private school refused to transfer his credits, he'll end up a freshman in highschool next year... He disappeared, and I haven't been able to talk to him, have no idea what he's going to do. Seems like everybody's getting screwed over at the same time, I won't even bother explaining what's happened to the rest of my friends...