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My family is insane. Now what?

Phalene — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:58:27 -0800

Crazy Family Filter: Help me cope with my family's mental health issues? (long) I'm pretty sure we're some sort of film and lit cliché: An intelligent but dysfunctional cocktail of neurosises (neurosi?) and mental illness, with a few prodigy and geniuses, substance abuse, molestation and intergenerational issues with neglect and/or parental over involvement. Everyone says their family is crazy, but mine is crazy is a sense that is terrifying, not goofy and eccentric.

I'm not exactly sure when something went wrong in my family, because family legend is spotty a few generations back. Apparently my maternal great grandparents were a trifle over controlling and my great grandmother was said to be prone to depression. Her children, my great aunt and grandmother, were definitely not sane, my mother’s not sane, her sisters are not sane and my siblings are not sane.

My maternal grandmother suffers from substance abuse problems, primarily alcoholism, symptoms of Asperger syndrome, depression and what we think is borderline personality disorder. She refuses to bathe and tries to involve everyone in her sexuality, molesting me, my mother, my first aunt, and my brother, as well as going out of her way to generally expose herself to the world at large. She also does very stupid things like setting herself on fire to get attention, getting into relationships with abusive people, breaking into the apartment to insist someone cancel her credit card while hurling emotional abuse, etc…

My maternal grandfather was just creepy. He molested my mother and I believe he molested her sisters.

Both grandparents were Mensa members. Being intelligent is taken for granted in my family, and remains the most prized virtue of the clan. Less genius family members tend to have self esteem issues. My mother was the ‘dummy’ of the family, and she’s very, very bright.

One aunt was a prodigy, off to Harvard at 16, and settled into computer programming, and merely seems to battle with Aspergers/Depression/No longer being a prodigy now that’s she’s 50.

The other aunt is also Aspie and has been unable to hold employment for six or so years due to crippling anxiety. She has panic attacks, which I’ve gotten pretty good at soohing when she visits.

My mother gets severe migraines from over stimulation (ie a sunny day, getting hot enough to sweat, etc) and is aspie. She prefers to keep no social contact beyond her family, and I think that I may be her best friend, which is awkward when you’re also someone’s child. Sometimes she tells me about events from her past, and they’re fucked up to the point that I can’t cope. She won’t see a therapist yet as she’s ‘too busy’ and it’s embarrassing to call one from work.

My siblings are both either unable or unwilling to attend school. Their father, my stepfather, is prone to depression, which manifested as anger, before he went on Prozac, typically directed at me. At one point this anger led him to threaten me with a knife. I still haven’t forgiven him, and when my mother told me not to provoke him into these rages it put a huge rift in our relationship as well. My siblings are supposed to be home schooled, but are merely left at home all day, alone (they’re aged 14 and 16, so strictly speaking it’s legal) and while my sister gets minimal tutoring in the evenings, my brother is mostly unschooled. The brother is mostly good natured, but my sister reacts to perceived slights by trashing and breaking things around the house. It scares me, because when property of mine has turned up damaged I can’t tell if it was an accident or her being upset.

I'd really hoped that tracking down my father's side of the family would help give me some role models that's weren't batfuck insane, but my father is selfish Aspergers typified and is married to someone who suffers from severe depression. When I visited them for the first time they had a yelling argument over the top of my head about something stupid. I have two half sisters with them I’m sort of worried about.

Needless to say, I’m not sure I’m sane. I have an official psychiatric diagnosis of Aspergers syndrome and have been treated for depression. I’m also very anxious and suffer from obsessive passions. I’m terrified of birthing another version of my grandmother, though I want to have a kid some day. Mostly I’m expecting to get a wee little neurotic person like my siblings are, which is acceptable.

Speaking of which, I don’t know what to do about the siblings. They were pretty much left to themselves. My sister has no friends, the house is filthy and there’s no discipline at all. I was raised with mild discipline and much more attention, and I worry about them. They are fed, however, and loved. I dunno how they’ll cope as adults without highschool, in Canada.

I’m already in therapy, and I’m not sure it’s helping because I don't know what to do when people I love are all insane, not just some of them. I move away in 21 days, which will help, but I’m worried what people like my severely isolated mother will do without me too, so add major guilt.

Any help gladly taken.

I want people to come help me leaflet at this stupid thing.

By The Grace of God — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:01:04 -0800

I have a group with 300 members on facebook. I just set up an event related to the group. I want to invite all the group members to the event but the little button that allows you to do this (well, it was there on Saturday) has disappeared. How do I invite all the group members? Is the button just gone? or does it automatically invite the members now? what's going on?

Many thanks. I will just message all members if I can't invite them but I'd rather invite them!

how can I convert monolithic flac or ape disc images into tracks?

Grod — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:01:35 -0800

I'm fed up with monolithic flac and ape files with cue sheets that winamp can't use. I like 1 track to 1 file. Is there no relatively automatic way to split these files into individual, per track, files? It goes without saying, I hope, that the individual lossless files produced would be conveniently labeled (e.g. composer-work-movement) and properly tagged. Thanks.

help me eradicate the bad unhealthy smell that I can't locate.

Grod — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:19:36 -0800

There's this odor. I don't know what it is or how to describe it except as dry, organic, and searing. Noisome and musty. But not organic like shit nor like mildew. Not searing like acid. Astringent but not like alcohol. A staleness, certainly, that tickles the throat and makes the eyes water. A malodorous fustiness, raw but not putrid. It seems worse when the weather is damp and it only occurs in the room in my old and badly maintained apartment where I spend all my time. It isn't me, though. It could be rotting wood or mold -- the bathroom ceiling had a lot of black mold for some time before I bleached it; it gives me headaches and a dry throat and post nasal drip when it gets bad; but I can't bleach my bed and chairs and sofa and books, nor can I replace them. What could be causing this odor? What can I do to destroy it? The water from my tap smells slightly marshy; the building is over 100 years old and badly maintained; there are many things in a dump like this that could cause this smell. I'd just like to make it stop. Any suggestions?

actionscript help for a non programmer who wants to do it the right way

Grod — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 11:11:55 -0800

OK. So I have five movie clips on the stage named b1 - b5. When the user clicks on one the other four need to gotoAndPlay. I could write a function for one object then cut and paste and just change the names, but that seems inelegant. What I think I need to do is generate an array containing the five objects, then, when the user clicks on one of them, that one is removed from the array and triggers a function that loops through the remaining clips in the array and does the goto. Does that make sense? And if so, how would I do it? And if not, what is a better way? In other words, user clicks on movie named b1 and b2-b5 do something. user clicks on movie named b3 and b1,b2,b4, and b5 do something. Thanks! OH. One other thing. After the stage is cleared of all but one clip (that's the animation that the goto goes to) the remaining clip must play an animation.

My level of experience ranks slightly below that of chipmunk's, so any example code w/ comments would be greatly appriciated.

Tutorials to learn how to make websites in flash in a hurry so I can impress my bosses and turn this internship into a real job?

Grod — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 09:13:35 -0800

Best free online tutorials (video or still) for learning Flash 8 in a hurry? At my internship I was asked to build a website in Flash 8. The site is fully designed as photoshop mockups and written descriptions. I am a Flash novice. The insist on Flash. I said "sure" because I learn fast, but I need examples to learn from. I'm quite good with html, css, and dhtml/ajax type things, but I've never worked with flash. So where do I start? Oh, and if anyone knows a way to keep the "back" button functionality, it'll make me feel less dirty about making a website in Flash.

SciTE + aspell, on linux = how?

Grod — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 19:15:21 -0800

LongShotQuestion. This is one of those small problems that drive me nuts. I've started using Linux. I've settled on SciTE as my all purpose text editor. The documentation makes it look really easy to add a command to invoke aspell. googling shows that it is assumed to be really easy but I can't find a simple example for *nix based systems, only for Windows. Does anyone here use SciTE with aspell? Or does anyone here have the ability to understand the documentation and tell me what I should add to my SciTE.properties file?

finding the cheapest moving service for MA-MD very small load?

Grod — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 16:17:26 -0800

I want to ship less than a room's worth of furniture from a home in MA to an apartment in MD. Google turns up a bewildering array of services and the few quotes I've found (phone and email) seem high. Has anyone done something similar? How much did you ship, how far, and how much did you pay? Who did you use? I'm seriously stumped. It's frustrating because I have a time limit on getting this stuff and I don't know where to start. The objects in question are: a high-backed leather chair, a ~3' diam. standard height marble-top table with wood base, a fancy office chair, a glass-topped rectangular table of modest dimensions (maybe 1.5' deep, 3.5' wide and 3' high), and possibly a large unframed glass mirror. There may be a few additional small pieces but those listed are definate. I'm not the one paying for this but if I can't find a good price it isn't going to happen. It looks like I'm constrained to moving companies since I'll need the objects loaded and unloaded as well as delivered, and I've never dealt with one before. Share your experiences/recomendations/advice please!