Tedious, Complicated, and Particular: Erika Shupe, Part 8

[mango_fandango]

Erika's the woman who once said that her teenage girls were affected by "hormone poisoning" so things weren't always peaches and cream. Make of that what you will.

[Anonymousguest]

3 minutes ago, mango_fandango said:

Erika's the woman who once said that her teenage girls were affected by "hormone poisoning" so things weren't always peaches and cream. Make of that what you will.

Weird. In what context? What does that even mean? Lol. 

[Coy Koi]

2 minutes ago, mango_fandango said:

Erika's the woman who once said that her teenage girls were affected by "hormone poisoning" so things weren't always peaches and cream. Make of that what you will.

That woman is lucky if that's the only kind of poisoning she's ever subjected to by her kids. I'd be thinking more along the lines of a sprinkle of rat poison in a green smoothie (actually, put it in her Olive Garden to make sure none of the kids accidentally get any).

(JOKING! obviously)

[mallallory]

What on earth is hormone poisoning? 

[Loveday]

3 minutes ago, mallallory said:

What on earth is hormone poisoning? 

To everyone but Erika? The normal mood swings and behavior of puberty. 

[AuLait]

4 hours ago, Coy Koi said:

I don't think you are reading too much into it, but I don't feel sorry for her, just her daughters (and all her kids). I know what it's like to be a teenager with a mother who thinks you're out-of-control and tries desperately to regain the control, when you're actually just acting like a normal teenager. It made my teen years hell and both of my sisters had the same experience. And my mom wasn't 1/1000th as bad as Erika.

I remember once when I was about 14, my best friend and I (both goody-goodies who got straight As, had never tried any substance, etc) went to her house because her older sister (about 18) was having a party. We were not welcome to join the party, nor did we even consider it an option, but we felt cool to just stay upstairs in my friend's room knowing that a party was going on in the house. My mom found out and said I could never go to my friend's house again (and she knew and liked my friend and her parents, she just didn't like her sister, who admittedly was kind of an asshole). She wasn't being hyperbolic, she was dead serious. She did eventually relent, but my entire teen years were filled with ridiculous overreactions like that.

My mom genuinely expected teenagers to not only never do anything they're not supposed to, but to not even want to. I once asked her didn't she EVER get in trouble as a teenager, and she thought about it for a while and then said she remembers getting in trouble a couple times for leaving crumbs on the counter. I am sympathetic to my mom, because she meant well, but she just couldn't relate to typical teenage rebellion AT ALL and she really just was so terrified that we were starting to go down a dangerous path of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Erika, though, is such a soul-sucking, fascist bitch that I can't feel bad for her. Just those poor, poor kids.

Dang, I think our Moms were twins! She really did mean well and wanted the best for us but her parenting was completely chokingly controlling for my teen years. No malls, no movies, no hanging with friends, no boys, no talking about boys!, forced into ugly clothes, etc. etc.  Luckily, I broke my Mom in for my sibs and they fared far easier. But breaking her in meant being a runaway and going through a lot of turmoil in my teen years. No fun at all. Lots of missed opportunities for me and a stressful home life for everyone. We are very good friends now though, mostly because my Mom came to her senses and apologized. I hope that if Erika's kids rebel that she will be open to seeing her own part in it and be able to have a relationship with them down the road. 

[iheartchacos]

Erika's the woman who once said that her teenage girls were affected by "hormone poisoning" so things weren't always peaches and cream. Make of that what you will.

Was that about the perfume Bob bought the girls?

[nastyhobbitses]

27 minutes ago, AuLait said:

Dang, I think our Moms were twins! She really did mean well and wanted the best for us but her parenting was completely chokingly controlling for my teen years. No malls, no movies, no hanging with friends, no boys, no talking about boys!, forced into ugly clothes, etc. etc.  Luckily, I broke my Mom in for my sibs and they fared far easier. But breaking her in meant being a runaway and going through a lot of turmoil in my teen years. No fun at all. Lots of missed opportunities for me and a stressful home life for everyone. We are very good friends now though, mostly because my Mom came to her senses and apologized. I hope that if Erika's kids rebel that she will be open to seeing her own part in it and be able to have a relationship with them down the road. 

I wasn't nearly as extreme, but according to my younger sister, my rebellion made things oddly harder for her, because she's less of a rebel and more of a "negotiate and manipulate my way into getting what I want" kind of person, which means that she puts up a front of compliance, which my mom took as genuine compliance/pliability. Where I would essentially say "fuck that, I'm going to go do what I want", my sister would go along with it until she could find an opportunity to circumvent it through manipulation/negotiation. My mom is starting to release some of the reins on my sister because (like me, but in a different way), she's proven herself to be capable of making her own decisions, but it was a rough few years for both of us. My mom and I have a good relationship now, I think chiefly because I respect her as my mom, and she respects me as a capable adult, which mostly came about because I would just go off and do adult shit (sometimes actual mature things, sometimes deciding to lie to my mom about my whereabouts so I could go get high and take topless photos with my friend after school), handle it on my own, and then tell her about it after the fact. Making unilateral life decisions and consulting her after the decision was made was generally a good strategy.

[Coy Koi]

30 minutes ago, AuLait said:

Dang, I think our Moms were twins! She really did mean well and wanted the best for us but her parenting was completely chokingly controlling for my teen years. No malls, no movies, no hanging with friends, no boys, no talking about boys!, forced into ugly clothes, etc. etc.  Luckily, I broke my Mom in for my sibs and they fared far easier. But breaking her in meant being a runaway and going through a lot of turmoil in my teen years. No fun at all. Lots of missed opportunities for me and a stressful home life for everyone. We are very good friends now though, mostly because my Mom came to her senses and apologized. I hope that if Erika's kids rebel that she will be open to seeing her own part in it and be able to have a relationship with them down the road. 

Ha, well, you got the twin that could admit when she was wrong! My mom can change her ways (and she did) but for some reason she just absolutely cannot admit that her new and improved ways are actually new. That's okay though, we all have our faults.

My mom was the queen of micro-managing and she thought the concept of choosing your battles was the biggest load of bull she'd ever heard in her life. In the mid-90s when my sister and I started to wear the baggy clothes that were in style at the time, she wrote down the maximum sizes we were allowed to wear of various clothing types, and posted it on the wall. And she had all kinds of arbitrary nit-picky rules, like you have to be this age to wear lipstick, that age to wear mascara, etc.

When I got into an abusive relationship soon after leaving home, my mom was completely baffled. She has a relative who married an abusive man, but in that case it made sense, she said, because the relative's mom had been hyper-controlling, but I wasn't raised like that. Ooookay, Mom...

[mango_fandango]

58 minutes ago, iheartchacos said:

Was that about the perfume Bob bought the girls?

No, I think it was in a reply to a comment on one of the Facebook albums. 

[Jellybean]

My MIL used to eat in order with favourite thing last. Until the fateful day when the puppy leapt up and grabbed the piece of steak she'd been saving. All that anticipation gone in a single canine mouthful! MIL is now a firm proponent of 'favourite first' eating.

I don't leave the best for last either, but for a slightly different reason - my digestive system doesn't work very well, so I can only eat a little by mouth (mostly tube fed). I prefer not to mix (amazed to see so many people like me!) so I tend to eat second-favourite and then favourite, and maybe third-favourite and back to favourite again if I have space. Complex logistics and planning!

Have any of you ever used M&Ms as a fortune telling tool? Denounced by my fundie upbringing, so I embraced it in secret - one of my first rebellious beliefs. Happy to share the (really not mystical) method if anyone is interested. One of the biggest advantages is the excuse to eat M&Ms, in my opinion.

[Lillymuffin]

Oh, Jellybean, you can't tease us like that. Please, give us the details! All I ever knew about M&M's fortune-wise was that green ones meant you were horny. (SO not true!)

[Jellybean]

Oh gosh, I'm awfully sorry to have been such a tease!

The Candy Clairvoyance

The person whose fortune is to be divined should take a handful of M&Ms, shake them, and then scatter them onto a flat surface.

The M&M Medium interprets the scattered candies in any way that seems appropriate. I would like to emphasise that this is pure imaginative fiction (my phone wanted that to be fuction) - the only true part of this whole shenanigans is the chocolate.

Disclaimer duly delivered, each colour of M&M represents something different, and the reading should take into account the total number of candies of each colour, their location in relation to others of the same colour and different colours, and the relative balance of colours.

Red - love

Yellow - health

Brown - earth/grounding

Green - money

Orange - family

Blue - work/career

As an example, my handful of M&Ms has 19 candies. Only one of those is blue, so work is not a huge part of my life. That blue is surrounded by red, orange and yellow, meaning that the focus of my work/attention is on family, love and my health. Green and brown are always adjacent, showing that I have a grounded attitude towards money. 

I could go on and on, but I'm sure you get the idea. Eat the M&Ms and be kind to yourselves and those people whose fortunes you imagine!

[mango_fandango]

Another gem of a comment from that article:

 "Some even went so far as to promise that Catholic homeschooling would guarantee she'd never be confronted with trials of secular teenaged and young adult culture." Key word: Catholic. You can't expect unsaved people to act godly. True godliness comes when we put our faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ to pay for our sins-not in our "good works".

I'm not catholic, but fuck off you holier-than-thou bitch.

[Anonymousguest]

34 minutes ago, mango_fandango said:

Another gem of a comment from that article:

 

 

I'm not catholic, but fuck off you holier-than-thou bitch.

I wondered if that would come up, that it was a Catholic site. But oh the irony! We can only be saved by Christ! Not good works! Which is why we homeschool, wear dresses, avoid peers, don't let others teach our kids,Etc. If you do those things and are Catholic, what do you expect? Do them as a real Christian and you'll get real results. Talk about cognitive dissonance. 

[TeddyBonkers]

Article quote:

"Some even went so far as to promise that Catholic homeschooling would guarantee she'd never be confronted with trials of secular teenaged and young adult culture." Key word: Catholic. You can't expect unsaved people to act godly. True godliness comes when we put our faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ to pay for our sins-not in our "good works".

I'm also not Catholic, but...I'm pretty sure that Catholics believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. 

[desertvixen]

2 hours ago, TeddyBonkers said:

Article quote:

"Some even went so far as to promise that Catholic homeschooling would guarantee she'd never be confronted with trials of secular teenaged and young adult culture." Key word: Catholic. You can't expect unsaved people to act godly. True godliness comes when we put our faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ to pay for our sins-not in our "good works".

I'm also not Catholic, but...I'm pretty sure that Catholics believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. 

Last I checked, when we're not too busy worshipping Mary and the saints and doing "works"...

[smittykins]

Or praying the Rosary("vain repetitions").

[TeddyBonkers]

@desertvixen, now when you say "works" is that like feeding the poor, caring for widows and orphans- or is it more like scheduling every second of the day and working for jelly beans?

Because I think I know which one Jesus mentioned and which one Erika adheres to.

[defraudingjezebel]

1 hour ago, TeddyBonkers said:

@desertvixen, now when you say "works" is that like feeding the poor, caring for widows and orphans- or is it more like scheduling every second of the day and working for jelly beans?

Because I think I know which one Jesus mentioned and which one Erika adheres to.

Excuse me, I'm pretty sure Jesus also said, "Blessed are those who schedule, for they will be the organizers of the Kingdom of Heaven"

[SrMaryEloquentia]

4 hours ago, defraudingjezebel said:

Excuse me, I'm pretty sure Jesus also said, "Blessed are those who schedule, for they will be the organizers of the Kingdom of Heaven"

Oh great, that's one thing to look forward to, once I'm dead!

Now please excuse me, I need to thaw some salmon for dinner tonight. Because true salvation is in eating fish on Friday. 

[JillyO]

6 hours ago, defraudingjezebel said:

Excuse me, I'm pretty sure Jesus also said, "Blessed are those who schedule, for they will be the organizers of the Kingdom of Heaven, on purpose."

FTFY.

[Jellybean]

9 hours ago, smittykins said:

Or praying the Rosary("vain repetitions").

If we're talking about Erika Shupe-id here, shouldn't that be 'vein repetitions'?

*smile*

[IntrinsicallyDisordered]

15 hours ago, mango_fandango said:

Another gem of a comment from that article:

 

 

I'm not catholic, but fuck off you holier-than-thou bitch.

I am Catholic (well, was) and always got the sense from these holier-than-thou protestant types that they just sit around doing nothing for anyone else, just focusing on themselves and how great they are and only thinking about other people if it's to look down on them.  I know that's not the vast majority of Protestants but if I had to choose between sitting around doing nothing but contemplating how I've been saved for surely sure because my Bible tells me so, or by getting out there and doing good works and possibly going to hell for it, it would be good works every time.  At least you KNOW you're accomplishing something beneficial for someone you can be sure exists.  And if God doesn't like that...eh.  The older I get the less I care about pleasing someone with that attitude.  Even God.  

Does she think Catholics aren't aware of Christ's sacrifice?  What does she think the whole center of the mass is?  The crucifix?  We're morbidly obsessed with the sacrifice.  It's like when someone makes you a huge, amazingly rich and delicious feast - do you sit around on your ass while they do all the cleanup because helping would somehow diminish what they've given you?  Or do you get up and chip in with the dishes because you're not a spoiled brat?  Sure, the host could totally do it alone, but why NOT help?

[Eternalbluepearl]

@IntrinsicallyDisordered that was a perfect description of how I have also felt about the "no works, only believing in Jesus" stuff too, so thank you. I was raised catholic and never understood the side eye catholicism gets from lazy asses like the Duggars. 

 

Back to Erika:

Whenever she posts something on Facebook, I picture her so pleased with herself until the comments come in. Then, I picture her bewildered and confused. I think she believes everyone will just write "mmm...so nice" and when they don't she is lost. I'm surprised she touches on subjects like rape and teenagers turning away from their upbringing. She's not prepared for nor does she want discussion on the LFOP facebook page it seems.