Adventures of the Randolph Family

Hockey Pucks, Poo Cookies, and Lead Weights

2012-01-25T23:54:00.000-05:00

Let's see, here's how it all works out so far...

1) No sleep due to a wheezy baby and my own emotions which seem to have grown into a three headed monster and are once again taunting me with visions of sleep but allowing me none.

2) Overwhelming guilt about two epic character fails on my part. I'm not used to screwing up but when I do... dang. (If you were unlucky enough to catch the last post before it was deleted, I'm sorry. That's about all I can say).

3) Trying to cook burgers so the kids could have a real meal that wasn't 100% from a box. Had gas turned too high when I lit the burner and toasted my hair and eyebrows. Hmmmm.... I need a haircut anyway. Guess it's mandatory now.

4) Hamburgers were served as either hockey pucks or bloody. Hard to see what you're doing in the dark.

5) Tried to save myself with the kids by making cookies. They turned out ok but it suddenly dawned on the big kids that the hamburgers and cookies resembled poo patties and, well, though I laughed, I just wanted to throw away my mom card and run away.

6) Had to run to the grocery store to buy litter when I realized I was completely out and the cat had decided she wanted a refill. She filed her complaint in the middle of the office floor multiple times. Left the kids home and occupied to make the quick trip but returned to drama.

7) Finally got everyone in bed only to realize that I don't have a darn thing to give Dasha for her birthday tomorrow. Oh well. I didn't have anything to give Grant last week, either. Maybe I can just call it another new crappy tradition.

8) Crawled in bed with my laptop in order to get some work done (backed up to paramount status) only to flip channels and find "My Best Friend's Wedding." I'd never seen it before. I have now and wish I hadn't. Not what I needed.

9) The sheer magnitude of emotions and questions right now are pulling me down like lead weights. In the beginning of this journey, the emotions were definitely real but they alternated from high to low and were almost surface level emotions which could be quelled by throwing something or screaming. What I'm dealing with now... Nope. I could throw all of the shoes in Payless and it wouldn't help a thing. There are points when I cry out to God and there are days when I scream in anger at Him.

10) Through all of this, I've come to realize that the team I work with at school couldn't ever be replaced. Knowing that seven other insane ladies have your back can make all the difference in the world! We've laughed so hard that our stomachs hurt. We've cried together. We've even discussed... well... I'll never be able to tell those women what they've meant to me over the last... 12 years? Really?... That makes me really old! Anyway, there are definitely bright spots in all of the darkness right now.

So, that's a snap shot of where I'm at.

Good night, all.

Safe

2012-01-21T23:16:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday to a 12 year old who knows more about living than most adults

County science fair

Accepting 2nd place in microbiology against a bunch of 12th graders

Annie's first hair cut

This week was a non-stop barrage of events and escapades. While Grant's birthday and science fair win were definitely high points of the week, they were gut wrenchingly bittersweet, as well. He's 12. He's not looking for my stamp of approval. He simply wants his dad. When I texted Eric a picture of the 2nd place ribbon, Grant got teary eyed and then mad at me for some ridiculous reason. I'm guessing this is what the next few years will look like for me. Next week, we'll celebrate Dasha's 14th birthday and hopefully have a few minutes to catch our breath from the past week. I don't have too much to spill right now. I'm just kind of in a holding pattern. If I move to the left or right, I might just lose my grip and slip off of the edge of solid ground. So, I'll keep still for now until I can regain some strength and process the piles of poo that seem to be building up around my ankles. In one of those piles is a final court date with a little memo attached saying that I'll have to do quite a bit of retelling and talking with the judge and that one session might not put an end to this nightmare that I'm walking through. I may have to be poked, prodded, and tortured a second day (or more) to satisfy the questions and time constraints of this judge. Like I said, I'm going to stand very very still as if I were hunting for rabbits like Elmer Fudd and wait for my strength to return. In my current state, the decisions I make aren't rational. The projects I finish are half-a@@ed. And, my heart just isn't in it right now.

This completely sums up my position right now. I just want to let the guard down and be safe for a while.

To the one who's dreams are falling all apart
And all you're left with is a tired and broken heart
I can tell by your eyes you think your on your own
but you're not all alone

Have you heard of the One who can calm the raging seas
Give sight to the blind, pull the lame up to their feet
With a love so strong he'll never let you go
oh you're not alone

You will be safe in His arms
You will be safe in His arms
'Cause the hands that hold the world are holding your heart
This is the promise He made
He will be with You always
When everything is falling apart
You will be safe in His arms

Did you know that the voice that brings the dead to life
Is the very same voice that calls you to rise
So hear Him now He's calling you home
You will never be alone

These are the hands that built the mountains
the hands that calm the seas
These are the arms that hold the heavens
they are holding you and me

These are hands that healed the leper
Pulled the lame up to their feet
These are the arms that were nailed to a cross
to break our chains and set us free

Good night, all.

Unraveling...

2012-01-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: This has not been spell checked, grammar checked, or even reread. This is the raw truth as it came out of my brain and oozed through my fingers.

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. I'm still here but seem to be hanging by a thread. Here's the quick version. Maybe the full length version will come when things settle down but I wouldn't hold your breath on that one! I don't think things will settle down here for the next 18 years.

1) Christmas was a blur. I survived it and the kids did, as well. The decorations came back down in an uneventful manner and were tossed into the garage where they're still piled up.

2) Dasha got sick first. I took her to the doctor and they said that it was just a cold. Then, a few days after Christmas, Annie got sick. I started to make my ususal assumption that it was a cold and just try to treat it at home. However, since it was the day before New Year's, I went ahead and took her to the doc just to have it checked out. They asked their normal quesitons including, "Is she wheezing?" Of course, I answered, "No." Why would I screw around with a wheezing child? That's what landed us in the trauma bay at Scottish Rite with Ansley. I'm no dummy. However, after the doctor listened to her, she pronounced that she was in fact wheezing. At that point, the room started to spin for me. I don't think I've ever felt quite that alone. There I was imagining walking the same road we did with Ansley but alone. My imagination went wild. I was handed a small mask connected to a nebulizer and told to hold it over Annie's little screaming face until the medicine was gone. I knew the drill all too well. I'd done this a million times with Ansley. The moment the nurse left, I joined Annie and cried like a baby, too. The what-if monsters had their way with me in that little treatment room. That was an all time low for me. After finishing the treatment and rechecking her pulse-ox, we were written a myriad of prescriptions and dismissed. Talk about kicking you when you're down, after dropping off the prescriptions, I realized that I couldn't pay for them - even after insurance benefits. They were all Tier 3 drugs and... well, that's just the truth of it. I can't begin to tell you what it feels like as a grown mother of 3 to have to ask your parents to buy your child's medicine. Humbling doesn't even touch the situation.

3) So, with Dasha and Annie sick, Grant was bound to get it too. Yep. He ended up having to go to the doctor and get a prescription too.

4) With this particular bug that everyone has, coughing seems to attack in the middle of the night. I haven't slept through the night in over three weeks. I've been awakened by sounds of coughing, choking, gaging, and puking. My armor is wearing thin at this point.

5) Then, there's Dasha. I honeslty don't know what to do. While I'm purging my deepest thoughts here, I'll go ahead and tell you the truth of the battles with Dasha lately. She's learned to manipulate. When things don't go her way, she has learned the art of making everything someone else's fault - especially Annie's. "Dasha, how did this CD player get back into your room. I put it in my closet last night?" Dasha says, "Annie wanted to listen to music and went and got it." Annie says, "I did not get it. You went and got it and told me to dance with you." Suprisingly enough, Annie has learned to dispute some of the claims. After a complete meltdown last weekend and a string of lies, I'd had enough. I sat her in the hallway with a book to read while I did laundry. She began banging the wall like an animal and screaming that she hated me and hated living in this house. I snapped. Lack of sleep, lack of help, and lack of general sanity had weakened my nerves and I simply snapped. I picked her up, tossed her over my shoulder (all 100 pounds of her) and hauled her downstairs and onto the front porch. I plopped her down and said to her, "You don't have to stay here if you don't want to." Real mature, huh? As I turned around, the look on Grant and Annie's faces literally brought me to my knees. We all stood there looking at Dasha sitting on the porch still ranting and raving. What am I supposed to do with her? Many people laugh and say, "Oh, those teen years." No. That's not acceptable. Just because she's a teenager, she's not going to yell and scream at me and be disrespectful. I don't care what her "special" needs are. That's just not going to happen. I opened the door for her to come back in. She spent the rest of the day doing odd chores that I found for her. I'm simply at a loss. Some days, there's no drama. But, more than often, something is going to fly through the air whether it's her yelling or a hair brush. Argh. This is not the ride I signed up for.

6) In an attempt to save some of my remaining sanity, I decided to go with a couple of friends to walk around the outlets this weekend. I found a sitter and left. I simply needed a break. However, I will admit here what I've admitted to only one other person. A few friends had tried to set me up with a "friend" of theirs and kept bugging me to meet him. They'd given him my number (I may still kill them all) and he'd called a couple of times. I asked a teammate what I should do and she encouraged me to just go have some adult conversation. So, I agreed. (Strike one for me). I met the guy on Saturday at a local sandwich shop. I had the sense to make sure it was a very public place and mid-day. I didn't tell anyone other than that one friend where and what I was doing. Please remember that I haven't been out with anyone other than Eric - ever. First date was with him and that was it. I don't have any experience in this realm. So, the guy comes in and introduces himself and that was as good as it got. Every other word made me sink down further in my seat. I've heard of guys with the mouth of a sailor but this guy would have made a sailor blush. Then, he started with the racial remarks. I knew I had to escape but I hadn't planned an exit route. Duh. I did have to meet my friends a bit later but that was a couple of hours later and I couldn't take it that much longer. So, I lied. I'm admitting it to everyone. I lied. I picked my phone up, pushed a couple of buttons, and then told him I needed to leave because one of my kids was sick. If you want to get technical, all three of them were sick but I'm not even going to justify it. And, looking back, why didn't I have the nerve to simply get up and walk out and tell him he'd do well to go and gargle some Clorox? What I really didn't expect was his octopus-like moves as I left. He made out like it was to be a hug but, um, well, no. All I knew to do was jump backwards and walk out the door. If this is what the dating world is like, I'll go to my grave single and feel safe knowing that I won't have to worry about rouge hands grabbing what is defnitely not theirs. This guy was supposedly a "good, church going gentleman, whose wife left him a few years ago." Ha. With moves like that, he hasn't been in any church that I'd frequent. Those are moves you'd pick up from watching COPS not at church! The realization of the mess I could have gotten myself into and the what-if monsters tourmented me for the rest of the afternoon. I didn't tell the girls I met what my issue was. I just told them that I wasn't feeling too well. At that point, it sure wasn't a lie.

7) No. It hasn't been all gloom and doom but I really do feel like I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth. With all three kids sick, school work closing in around me, and the feeling of being a complete fool on Saturday, I'm just ready to crawl into bed and stay there for a few weeks. The major bright spot in all of this was that after my yearly physical this moring, I managed to reach a weight loss goal that I really didn't think was possible. I don't know how it happened between the Pop Tarts, Dora the Explorer cereal, and holiday goodies. Nonetheless, I'm thankful and will take some time at some point to celebrate my goal.

So, for all of you who've emailed wondering what happened to me, this is what I've been wading through. I could make a list of 50 things that I've learned over the last month and I know that all of those lessons are valuable but... When can I have a break?

Speed blogging - Our Christmas Adventure

2011-12-28T23:37:00.000-05:00

Rub a dub dub, Look in Dasha's tub...

Look where you'd find a pair of crusty undies to rewear...

This is the spot to head for a swim indoors...

This is the one thing that Annie can't open by herself - yet...

Check out where mom gets lost every night...

For your last stop, go back and check under the big coniferous.

Something to wear...

Something to play (or use to irritate others)...

Something to play...

Checking out the gifts in the fridge... (This was the hardest clue for them to get)!

Something to play (and irritate others with)...

The girls checking out the spot to swim indoors. (Please check out the doll in the tub. See! That's what happens when you take tea time with Annie)!

Annie's "something to learn with"...

So, that was Christmas morning. The scavenger hunt had it's good points and bad ones. The good: It took the kids over 2.2 seconds to unwrap everything. The bad: It left a trail of destruction throughout the entire house! (In hindsight, I guess I could have followed behind them with a trash bag but that kind of defeats the purpose. Bummer).


This was Annie's "something to learn" gift, part 2. She loves this bike! It's a balance bike and doesn't have pedals. She just kicks herself around the house and has learned to glide down the straightaways. Look out for your ankles and toes, though!

This was simply the icing on the cake tonight. I started to put this on Facebook but I don't need any of my students' parents running across it. When I got ready to dump Annie into her bed, she had concocted a "swing" for her doll and was incredibly proud of herself. Um, yeah. What was I supposed to say? (That wasn't the best part, though). When I tried to tell her that her doll was ready for bed and didn't want to "swing" anymore, she handed me the undergarment back and innocently said, "Here, mom. You can put your boobs back in the drawer now." I admit. That was my undoing and I couldn't help but melt to the floor in laughter.

I have so many thoughts but so little time. I have NyQuiled two coughing children (never mind the warning label - they're tough little suckers)! And, I've salined the littlest nose and given her honey. This house is literally vibrating with coughing. Annie hasn't slept in two days now and she's currently talking to herself in her room about seeing the Christmas lights at Life College this evening. It's 11:23. She got up at 5:30 this morning! She didn't have a nap. I think she's either delirious from coughing or the sugar in the honey has a major adverse reaction on her. Who knows but I think I'm probably going to have another bed buddy tonight. (She's like a stinking octopus that must have at least five out of eight tentacles touching you at all times)! So, I'm going to head to bed in hopes that the two big monsters will sleep without coughing and that the little one will rest at some point (or crawl in the bed with me and watch a movie and let me sleep)!

So, there's the short version of the Randolph Christmas.

Good night, all!

Oh yeah, I forgot. The biggest task that I'd been avoiding for the last eight months was tackled successfully today. There were definitely some sketchy moments but the job is done. MY closet is now clean, organized, and contains only MY things. I felt like a major rock star when I emerged from the closet with one bag for Good Will and another full of other "stuff" that Grant and I decided to trash. I think I'll sleep with the closet door open tonight just so I can stare in amazement at my job well done! :) If you've never cleaned out the closet of someone that's "moved on" (be it dead, moved, or other wise), you probably couldn't understand the weight that's been lifted off of my shoulders! Whew! (I can now successfully use that closet as a holding tank for any unruly children, as well. Did I say that out loud? Oops)!

Detours in the Darkness

2011-12-27T00:11:00.000-05:00

So, I have hundreds to things racing through my head tonight.

1) Which child put the Krispy Kreme ornament in the garbage can? It certainly didn't jump all the way from the box of ornaments in the garage to the garbage in the kitchen. Hmmm.... Once again, when dealing with broken hearted kids, it's not their words that you have to look out for. It's their actions!

2) The story that Diane Sawyer aired tonight hit me at a level that simply knocked the air out of me and grounded me like a plane in sleet on the Hartsfield tarmac. It's Dasha's story except with Down Syndrome children and in the Ukraine instead of a child with Cerebal Palsy in St. Petersburg, Russia. Blah. This was not the detour down memory lane that I needed tonight. (See the link below to the story. Don't watch it if you're in a hurry or on the edge of a emotional breakdown already). If you don't know Dasha's story, I'm pretty sure it's buried in the depths of this blog somewhere. Forgive me for not going deep sea fishing to find it and link it right now.Diane Sawyer's Angels Story

3) Where is the darn maid? The house still looks like a bomb went off despite an entire day of cleaning.

4) The list of serious topics that I have to add to my blog keeps getting squashed and pushed to the side. This little detour wasn't on my list, either.

5 - 100). I'll have to save these for another day. I have three sick kids that are alternating between barking like seals and sounding like they're coughing their lungs up and I'm taking on snot at an alarming rate myself. (The doctor lovingly says not to give them cough medicine but to elevate their little heads, saline their little noses, and give them lots to drink. Um, yeah. About that drinking part... Do I get to choose what they're drinking? And, would NyQuil be considered a DRINK? If so, bottoms up little ones)!

Seriously, I know that I'm teetering on the edge right now. Between the gaiety of Christmas (said with obvious sarcasm at this point in the game) and ridding my home of the remainder of the decorations, I'm ready for a couple of hours (or days) of solitary confinement. Maybe I'll be able to post something real before 2012 ends. Maybe.

Good night, all. (cough, cough, cough, cough...)

Keeping It Simple...

2011-12-24T22:06:00.000-05:00

Always fun to teach the newbies how to destroy wrapping paper!

Perfect. Now she can wreak major havoc without harming herself.

As usual, completely thrilled with something simple as long as she's with friends and being social.

The patriarch looks on like a life guard watching for children to drown in the wrapping paper remnants.

His first successful capture! The paper might not taste great but he'll eat it just to prove to everyone he can!

"Hmmmm.... I could smack you with this and then sit back and serenade myself to sleep since I haven't napped!"

Randolph girls try to help clean up the path of destruction. It looked like an F5 went through!

Here's where I made my most stupid mistake of the night! I should have made a run for the van and high tailed it out of the state! (Every time I see this photo, I think about that commercial where the grandparents run after the taxi screaming, "Don't leave us with the kids")! This was my golden opportunity and I missed it!

The boys... who knows what they were doing but this is probably the only picture we'll ever have of them all together without them holding signs saying "Cherokee County Sheriff's Office - Inmate number ....." The four of them together could do untold damage.

And then there's Pooh. Pooh is as old as I am. There are photos floating around of me as a toddler crawling all over him. He's been through quite a bit but he's managed to keep his honey pot and stand tall with dignity! I can't have Christmas without Pooh! (See my Facebook post to see how Annie finished him off for this Season).

So, there's the children's picture book edition of tonight. Now, I'm trying to figure out how to assemble the remaining items that Santa didn't assemble. (Next year, I'm hiring the elf from MIT with a Master's degree in engineering. The fruitcake I hired this year can't remember to make sure that the screwdriver is set to "screw" and not "unscrew" and spent an undetermined amount of time trying to figure out what the problem was and even thought the screws were the wrong size. Nope! Here's your sign)! Anyway, I've been so busy that I haven't had time to really get emotional about anything. I know it's coming but I'm hoping to hold it off until I can get things tied up here (literally - maybe with duct tape).

Every year, Grant has asked Santa to hide his gifts. ??? This doesn't make much sense to me. However, in an attempt to do things differently this year, all gifts have been wrapped, numbered, and hidden throughout the house. Each gift has a tag with a clue that leads to the next gift. Annie probably won't understand the "game" in having to hunt for her presents but I'm hopeful that the adventure will keep little minds occupied in the morning. (I'm also hoping that Dasha won't consider the oven a routine hiding place after finding one of her gifts there)!

So, as I tucked Annie into bed tonight, I had to promise her that Santa would NOT be entering the house AT ALL! I told her that he gave me the presents and I'm going to put them under the tree. (See how I'm hanging myself on this one? They won't be under the tree! They'll be in eight different places)! Anyway, I'm hopeful that she'll sleep because I know the big kids will be rolling out of bed especially early in the morning!

As I settled Dasha into bed tonight, she lobbed a question at me that I've waited seven years to hear from her. "Did I have a mom in Russia?" Come on, now! Why on earth does this need to be asked on Christmas Eve night and what in the world made her think of this now? We had a very simplistic conversation that I'm sure didn't even begin to fill the gaps that she's obviously suddenly realized exist. It's not that I mind telling her. I just needed time to prepare what I was going to say. She has NEVER asked about this before and we'd just kind of left it up to her. We didn't feel like we needed to purposely stir things up for her if she was content with the knowledge base she had. Ugh. I promised to have a more detailed conversation with her tomorrow. She's supposed to write down any questions she has. I don't know that this will work but it would sure help me. I'm sliding this issue to the back burner for the night, though. Maybe I'm wrong to do that but... She can just add it to the growing list of other things she can tell the therapist! :)

Good night, all!

Hey, Clark! It's like the gift that keeps on giving! - NOT!

2011-12-21T23:57:00.000-05:00

A year ago, I sat in The Melting Pot listening to what I already knew was true. He'd been unfaithful. However, there was hope. "We" decided to work it out. In a very intimate moment, he gave me the beautiful ring back that I'd hurled at him days earlier and ask me to go to a week long counseling intensive in Branson, MO. He said things that every woman would want to hear. He made promises about the future and raising the kids that would melt any sensible mother from the inside out. My heart and mind may never come to an agreement on his true intentions. Did he really want to fix things or was it all a ploy to make it look like he'd tried?

A year later, I gave him what I deem as the absolute worst Christmas gift a wife could ever give a husband, my signature on the final divorce decree. (Although, I'm not naive enough to think that he sees the gift as "bad." He's already looking for his passport so he can start planning his honeymoon). Now, I'm just waiting for a date to appear before Judge Mills on the stand and answer questions about the oddity of the decree. (Part of the draw to the uncontested status was not having to go to court. However, I didn't know that due to the stipulations in the document, I'll still have to stand alone on the stand and justify and clarify. Does someone have some extra Prozac or even some sort of tranquilizer dart you could use on an elephant? He doesn't have to attend. Just me).

Oh how I've changed in the last year. God has provided for me in ways that I would have never imagined. Time and time again, God has used strangers, co-workers, and even weird family members (sorry) to meet needs over the last year. Bills were paid. Children were fed and clothed. Tears were wiped. Bail money was promised. Accomplices were drafted. (Oops. Did I say that out loud)? Seriously, it absolutely never failed. Just when I wondered how the ends would meet or how I'd make it through another lonely night, someone reached out. If you were one of those people who stood in the gap for me and the kids, all I can say is, "Thank you." Words could never begin to cover my gratitude.

So, for tonight, I won't say that I'll go to bed without shedding a tear. There are moments when I still cry out to God and question, "Why?" I wouldn't wish the feeling of standing in a cold attorney's office initialing and signing page after page documenting the rules and regulations of dealing with three beautiful children like they are simply pawns in a sick game on my worst enemy. Yeah, they deal with more than that but my biggest heart ache is knowing that there has to be a legal document detailing what the man who created, delivered, and even baptized these children can and cannot do with them. While I signed and initialed, Annie stood at my feet swinging Elliot (her elf) and asking if she'd see Daddy again today. That was just about my undoing. The paralegal had the sense to keep flipping the papers for me to sign before I got tangled up in the emotions of the beautiful blue eyed doll baby asking me for her Daddy. Crapolicious! Merry stinking Christmas, Eric. I just gave you a gift sort of like the Jelly of the Month club from Christmas Vacation. It's the gift that'll keep on giving. Now, if I only had Snots the dog and Cousin Eddie, I could fry the cat in the Christmas tree and possibly get all of the lights in the bushes to come on.

Good night, all.

Three Stooges and Booger Picking in Church

2011-12-19T02:47:00.000-05:00

Taking a sensible picture with the Three Stooges takes lots of Tylenol and tranquilizers!

I seriously kept waiting for one of them to poke the other in the eyes and then the third one slap the offenders' noses while making that distinctive Three Stooges noise! You may be ooing and awing over this but let me promise you that the "sweet factor" was in the negative zone. They were head butting each other!

Then, I became the target. Even though those ornaments are plastic they sure do sting when lobbed at high speed and close proximity! It was all fun and games until they purposely started beaning me in the head!

I can't even begin to caption this picture. The closest I could have come would have been Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest at this point in the photo shoot. (By the way, did you know those monkeys had real names? My kids at school did a worksheet about things found in pairs and triplets and they had to look up their names. Hmmm... Just random food for thought).

I finally finished the Christmas card and ordered them. They won't be here until January 3rd but at least I can put a big Sharpie line through "Design / order Christmas cards" on my list!

Then, there was the live nativity. Annie was not thrilled with the animals and ended up going nuts when the baby Jesus screamed at her. (Who knew it was a real baby? None of my children would have EVER laid still in a manger in the cold quietly)!

And then, there's this. Geez. My dad was in the "line up" when Grant received his new rank at the last ceremony. Grant actually shook his hand and then reached up and bear hugged him. Wow. I'm sure no one sitting around me understood my sudden emotional melt down.

So, this is what I can tell you so far to catch you up. Christmas has been different this year. I've had LOTS of firsts over the last couple of weeks such as eating alone in a restaurant (I sat with my Kindle like a nerd but I really enjoyed it), bought a complete outfit at Old Navy (I can now wear tops and bottoms in sizes they carry - haven't EVER been able to do that), ok'd a final draft of a divorce document (words don't even begin to cover this one and I still find myself in shock and feeling a little dirty - ok, no lectures needed, that's how I'm FEELING whether it's right or wrong - the thought of having to say that I'm divorced and use the word ex to describe him... I don't know...), assembled a bike (you can add to that one that I also learned how to correctly use a ratchet), paid off a credit card (all by myself which means I'm down to student loans only now), and survived a week of finals with middle schoolers. Those are just a few firsts I've had that I'll put on the record.

When I've had some time to let my thoughts settle to the bottom of the fish bowl, I'll fill in the blanks. But, for now, I have one child with the croup and coughing horribly and one who is alternating between vomiting and having blow out diapers. Tired, yes. Exhausted, yes. Fit for the funny farm, definitely. Content, absolutely.

For the first time in months, I'm finding myself content. This is the journey I'm on despite how I got here or whose fault it is that I'm here. I'm going to walk this journey to the best of my ability and avoid as many pot holes, poo piles, and detours as possible.

So, that's the serious side of life right now. Consider the rest of this entry the end credits where they show bloopers...

Our church doesn't have a nursery yet so Annie has to sit with me. This morning, I tried to corral her in my lap to keep her from dancing to the reverent Christmas hymns that the students were singing. She straddled my lap, stuck her finger up her nose, pulled out a treasure, and proclaimed, "Look, I found a booger!" I shushed her while trying not to laugh and then she forcefully said, "I have more. Get them, Mama!" Oh yeah! Add Booger Police to the list of jobs now. Where's Mike Rowe and Dirty Jobs? Between changing the diapers tonight and the boogers, the episode he could have shot in this house wouldn't have been able to be aired.
While stuck in traffic yesterday, Annie asked Dasha what the yellow sign was on the side of the road. The sign said, "Blind Drive." Dasha told Annie that the sign meant you had to be careful because they taught blind people how to drive in that area. I didn't even begin to try to undo her instructions. (The side of me that keeps taking me out of the Mother of the Year category wanted to say, "Yes, baby. And, here's YOUR sign!)"
Since Dasha's finger has been broken and taped / splinted up, she has to be careful how she picks things up. I caught her in the bathroom using her teeth to pull the TP off of the roll. Come on, now! I'm so thankful that I caught her at that point in the process!
I've been selling some items on Craigslist that haven't gotten used in a while and each time someone comes by to pick something up, Annie says, "Craig is here!" That was amusing the first time but then she handed me one of her famous lists and told me that it was Craig's list. Oh boy.
And then, there's Grant. He has simply become a comedian and he's going to get me in HUGE trouble! I can't help but laugh at him! As I was driving into my parents' neighborhood, two squirrels refused to get out of the road. So instead of turning them into someone's easy dinner, I stopped and waited. Grant quickly started providing dialogue for the squirrels. "Hey, look Bevis! What's that big white thing rolling toward us."... OK, so the whole thing went on and on but by the end, I was laughing so hard because he'd driven the conversation in a manner that the squirrels ended up as extras in the song Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Ok. So, it's not as funny when I type it out here but I had a serious Depends moment and he's just full of these off the wall comments that are mildly inappropriate but so darn funny that I have a hard time not laughing!

So, I'm now going to head to bed since this simply entry has taken me nearly three hours to write! I've changed bed linens once, cleaned piles o puke twice, and redistributed cough meds once. (And changed out a load of linens, scrubbed carpet, and prayed fervently that I wouldn't succumb to the desire to hurl, as well. I don't do puke)!

Hopefully, over the next two weeks, I'll have time to get my thoughts together and documented here. I'm not due back at school until January 2nd and I've already turned my edits into the magazine for January so I'm kinda sorta a free bird (minus getting ready for Santa and such). Yee haw!

Good night, all!

White Flag - Take 2

2011-12-08T21:15:00.001-05:00

Once again, folks, I'm waving the white flag and absolutely no one seems to notice. I really can't take much more without simply crumbling.

Yesterday, Dasha crawled into the van with an ice pack on her finger. When I asked what happened, I sort of lost the story after she told me that another special education student has been escorting her to car line each afternoon. Um, I think this is one of those "blind leading the blind" kind of situations that you should avoid for liability sake. She fell while on this student's watch. The other student told Dasha she needed ice. Dasha obeyed and followed her to the clinic which was closed. Then, the student escorted Dasha to the office. (No teacher had been notified of the fall, yet, even though this is the same place where they call me multiple times in a day to tell me she's fallen). So, the other student then gave Dasha some other directions which she obeyed, as well. By this point, I'd sort of lost track of the possibility that Dasha's finger was really injured because I was so aggrivated about the whole situation. By the time I got to my parents' house to drop Annie off so I could take Grant to music lessons, her finger was swollen and turning blue. Ok. Deep breath. We've had enough sprained fingers in this house to know that this is pretty much SOP for an injured finger. The oddity was that Dasha was crying. This is the same girl that rips earrings right through her ear lobes without wincing and pulls teeth (not loose ones) without any regard to pain. So, if she cries in pain, it probably really hurts.

After a phone call to a friend who works with sports injuries, I splinted the finger and hoped for the best. However, after having to bathe and dress her last night and this morning, I was beginning to think that this might be more than a sprain.

(I haven't contacted the school about the incident yet because I need to rein in my "Mama Madness" before I do something that I'll regret. It really stinks sometimes to work in the same county that your kids attend school in. It's hard to be a faithful employee while also wanting to bang the heads together of other employees for not treating your child like they would want you to treat theirs)!

After a crapalicious morning involving the van doors being frozen shut, me slamming my own dang finger in the door, and then leaving my school work at home, I just wanted a few moments of quiet time. Oh, wait. I work in a small room surrounded by 23 children. Getting a moment of quiet time isn't really feasible.

By the time I sat down to check my emails at 2:45 this afternoon and turn my cell phone on, I saw that the middle school had called about Dasha's finger and had emailed me. Perfect. (The school had also emailed me wanting to know if I ever had Dasha's hearing rechecked. Ugh. Does it ever end)? Anyway, I rushed out the door to go and pick Dasha up from school and then nabbed Grant and Annie along the way.

To make a long story short (ok, I guess it's already long), we ended up at urgent care because our pediatrician's office doesn't do x-rays. Urgent care did a set of x-rays, told us it was broken, and then told us to see a pediatric orthopedist. (If you want to do the math, that's $35 to pediatrician's office to be told we needed to go to urgent care. A $35 copay to the urgent care. And, now, we'll have a $45 copay to the orthopedist). I'm thinking that I'd like to have the teacher that was supposed to be "in charge" of Dasha cover those costs.

I'm just done. I'm tired of trying to be super mom. Heck, I've royally failed at being super mom. Who am I kidding? I'm honestly tired of being plain old mom right now. Yeah, that sounds horrible. My lows have been offset today, though, with Grant's announcement that he made first chair in band (um, I think we "bought" first chair via private lessons) and that he's student of the month (with a celebration that I need to be at tomorrow at 2:30). Ugh. I left early today to go get Dasha. Now, I have to leave early to go celebrate with Grant. I simply don't have enough energy to keep juggling all of this!

My plans when I rolled out of bed this morning? Ha. My plans were to take the kids to dinner tonight to celebrate Dasha's sixth year as part of our family. Six years ago yesterday, we stood before a judge in St. Petersburg, Russia and took her as our own. By this afternoon, honestly, the feelings surrounding that day were shaded with thoughts like, "She would have been better off with the other couple that wanted to adopt her. They had more money, more time, and..." You can see where that thought trail headed. Anyway, we didn't get to celebrate tonight unless you call string cheese sticks and the urgent care center a celebration.

I'm just exhausted. I can't get everything done at school that I need to and with all of the changes, I'm not even sure what I'm really supposed to even get done. I can't keep up with everything that the kids need and, once again, I don't know that I really fully understand what we're supposed to be getting from this whole middle school experience. And, honestly, Christmas has just done me in, too. Between trying to make Santa happen for three kids (You've heard of a hard candy Christmas? This is a Craigslist Christmas), working an extra job, and making sure that my finances will pull us through the end of the year, I honestly don't know how much more I can take. Every time I turn the TV on, there's some sappy Christmas movie with a happy ending where they fall wonderfully in love which just makes things even worse for me. I just want to run into someone's arms, let the armor fall to the ground, and cry for days. If I start crying, I really am worried that I might not quit. I'm tired. I've tried to fight a good fight but it just doesn't ever seem to be good enough. I have to find a way to make this work but how? (Please note, this is NOT a plea for any sort of financial help. While I have greatly appreciated the generosity that others have offered, I'm beginning to feel like a charity case which I am not. I am an able bodied person who has managed to provide for her family's food, shelter, and needs for eight months without missing a single mortgage payment, bill, or other necessity for the kids. Maybe that sounds prideful but considering that I didn't even know how to pay a bill eight months ago or live within the confines of a strict budget, I guess I do take pride in that).

OK. Enough whining. Maybe now that I've logged my complaints here, I can walk away from the keyboard and focus on grading the mound of papers that I fell asleep in last night or figuring out what I can do to recognize all of Grant's achievements this week (he has a major scout ceremony on Saturday where he'll get to move up another rank - not too many 1st class 11 year olds), do something to celebrate Dasha's adoption day, and then celebrate living through another week with Annie and still having all of my fingers and toes attached.

By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life. I Timothy 6:19

Good night, all.

Confessions of a Struggling Mama

2011-12-05T23:06:00.000-05:00

OK. Let's get this straight now. This is a "no judging" zone. If you're easily given to finger pointing or assumptions, please click on that little X in the top corner of your screen and go back to watching TV.

For the others, here's how it works. I have been completely side-swiped by the last few weeks. Every living thing in this house has at some point plotted to add at least 15 new gray hairs to my head. The drama at school has done absolutely nothing to improve the situation, either. Here are a few of the highlights.

Potty Training 101 - I'm not qualified to teach this. I think I need a remedial course.

When she finally agrees to "go," we first have to find the potty, empty all of the "treasures" out of it that she's stashed there, and then she prefers to do business in the living room with the TV on. Out of the hundreds of parenting books that I've seen, I've yet to run across one that lists any of these issues with potty training. Maybe I'll try the old commando trick during Christmas break. Who knows. I've had lots of people make comments like, "Don't worry about it. I've never seen a kid go off to school still in diapers." Um, well. I can very vividly remember a kindergarten teacher at our school calling administration when they discovered one of their little darlings was wearing a diaper! I really don't want that child to be Annie!

Then, there's the cat.

This once docile animal has turned into a smaller version of Lucifer. She hides in nooks and crannies and then jumps out like some rabid attack kangaroo. The next time she leaps off the top of the refrigerator toward me, she might end up on a one way shuttle to the local Chinese restaurant. Any one want kitty-kitty for dinner?

And, something as simple as plugging my phone in turns dramatic with Annie on the loose!

I ask her a hundred times if she'd seen the cord for my phone. Each time, she said, "I don't know where it is!" Almost two days later, I found it in her room. When I held it up and asked her about it, she said laughingly, "Oh, there's my jump rope!" Nooooooo! I just want to plug my phone in so I can call 9-1-1 when the kids try to tie me up or lock me in the closet with the cat!

And then, there's this monster.

OK. Yeah, she still has the paci. Wanna make something of it? This is the most peacefully she's slept in several nights. She has been traumatized by the thought of Santa coming down the chimney! She keeps waking up screaming, "He's coming in! He's coming in!" Yeah. That goes over real good with me at 3:00 a.m. Last night, I don't know how I managed to stumble across the hall and into her room without running into the wall! The first time she did this, I was terrified of what (or who) I would find when I opened her door. I admit to putting the baseball bat under my bed after that night. Looking back, yeah, that's pretty funny to think about me going after some intruder with a baseball bat when I can't hit the broad side of a barn with anything! But, I figured it was better than stashing a knife under there! Can you imagine the damage Annie could do if she made a discovery like that? Anyway, Annie is simply doing me in these days. Tonight, we pretended to "lock" the chimney shut and I promised that Santa would have to ring the door bell before coming in. Once again, looking back, that was sort of stupid. How is Santa going to deliver the toys undetected if he has to ring the door bell? D-oh!

Beyond the Santa melt downs, twice in the last week, she has gone into hysterics in the middle of a store because she "smelled" daddy. In WalMart, I understood her fit. Someone did walk past us that was wearing cologne or aftershave or something smelly that smelled like Eric. However, I don't have a clue what triggered her, "I smell daddy," melt down in the middle of the post office. Ugh. It's nearly impossible to convince a two year old that they are wrong - especially a Randolph two year old. So, I'm purposely avoiding taking Annie into any stores for the next few days, weeks, years... who knows.

Then, there's Christmas. The issues surrounding this go so much deeper than I'm capable of putting into words right now.

Anyone remember these ornaments? Our wedding party signed these and they've hung on the tree every year since then. I've also added one ornament each year with a sentiment about something special that happened that year. What the heck do I do with these suckers? I told a friend that I'd thought about using them as clay pigeons and trying to skeet shoot with them. I was quickly reminded of my crappy aim and told to put that idea away. I mentioned several other suggestions and a friend with Solomon-like wisdom way beyond my years told me just to pack them away that one day I would be able to look back on them without losing my lunch (and dinner). And these ornaments are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tons of other things that just evoke memories that I'd prefer to lose. If I knew that a lobotomy would cancel out some of the haunting memories, I'll admit that I might consider it since insurance won't pay for a memory zapper like they have in Men in Black.

I really am trying so hard to stay positive and keep the kids busy. Annie doesn't remember too much about Christmases past and Grant doesn't say anything but Dasha... dear Dasha. She seems to say the absolute worst thing possible when I'm at the absolute worst place to receive it. She doesn't mean to do this but she's just confused and asks questions when she finally pieces her thoughts together. More than once, her recollections about the past have been the last straw for me. "Remember when we..., Daddy used to..., I wonder what..." To her, they are innocent questions, to me (and I think to Grant), they are like SCUD missiles aimed directly at our weakest points.

Anyway, in an attempt to keep things cheery, I took the girls to the Christmas parade this weekend. Grant was camping for the weekend with the scouts so it was just us girls. Now, I hadn't been to the parade in years and really underestimated how many people would be there. I did take Annie's stroller this time and two folding chairs but I didn't really think about helping Dashing navigate the uneven path for quite a distance from where we had to park while balancing two folding chairs and pushing a stroller. I don't think I've ever prayed so hard as I did Saturday night about keeping the tears from spilling out. It wasn't Dasha's fault that we had to walk a lot further than I'd anticipated and it wasn't Annie's fault that her cinder block butt weights the stroller down so much that it's hard to push nowadays. We finally managed to get into position and watched the parade, though.

The stroller contained her long enough to get from the van to the street.

Dasha was just as excited as Annie but was exhausted from the walk.

Annie took her jingle bells and rang them for the runners as they went past.

She kept leaning out into the street to tell us what was coming next.

This was the highlight of the night for her. She LOVES marching bands and actually ducked under the rope boundary to "tap it out" (translates into dance) with the band.

We all managed to have a good time and walked away with some new fun memories. When we got home, we finished putting some of the non-emotional ornaments on the tree and had peppermint sticks. Once again, someone needs to add a chapter to a parenting book entitled, "How to Decorate a Christmas Tree with Toddlers in the House." This chapter should detail the mathematical equation used to determine at what height you can safely begin hanging ornaments so that little hands won't snatch them. Last year, we told Annie to use a "one finger gentle touch" and she did fine. This year, um, let's just say that last year's tactic is a joke this year. I started placing the breakable ornaments about three feet up the tree only to turn around and see Annie dragging her stool over to the tree so she could reach them. When I derailed her fun, she started putting markers, pencils, and blocks into the lower branches of the tree. And, those items are still there. I figure if she sticks with moving those around, maybe she'll leave the other ornaments alone. Maybe.

So, I don't even have time to begin addressing the big kids' attempts at turning my hair gray over the last few weeks. Believe me, they've both taken their best shots at me more than once! I'll save that insanity for another post. From Dasha being completely boy crazy to Grant deciding that school isn't really to be taken seriously, they are both on the brink of major consequences. Like I said, I don't have the time or energy to get into that tonight. The bottom line is that I'm exhausted physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I'm trying to pull it all together so Christmas doesn't turn out to be a memory to be forgotten but dang... Between helping Santa make Craigslist purchases and chasing those across the city to acting as one of the elves and trying to assemble "stuff," I'm already weary. (Here's another fact for the parenting book - Do not try to assemble a bike without having the proper tools or at midnight. And, do not assume that a Craigslist purchase will provide you with all of the correct screws and bolts to reassemble the purchase so think twice about the Black Friday price that comes with all of the correct pieces)! These are things that no one warns you about until it's too late.

Anyway, tonight, I'm headed for bed to collapse. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Teachers should receive combat pay for the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Good night, all.

The LORD says, "I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts. It was I who sent this great destroying army against you. Joel 2:25 ~This has been major food for thought for me this week.

Traditions and Elves

2011-11-27T22:02:00.000-05:00

For my own sanity, this will be quick. I've had many emails and texts from folks checking in to see if I was still holding my own. Of course, my answer has been, "Things are fine. I'm doing alright." That's what I'm supposed to say. The truth of the situation looks a whole lot different.

Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year for so many reasons. But, this Season is also wrapped in layers of memories. Decorations, activities, traditions. They all are bubble wrapped in memories.

At this point in the game, I've managed to get the Christmas tree up (lights but no ornaments) and get the lights across the hedges. Neither of these tasks was easy - physically or emotionally. However, there are three kids residing in this house that take a great amount of comfort from "normal" right now so that's what I'm trying to give them. The tree, the lights, the promise of a trip to see the lights at Life College. It all just makes my stomach churn but brings them joy.

However, I'm also trying to do a few "different" things this year simply because it is different. We've never had an elf visit us at Christmas. I've heard about the elves that visit and cause untold damage to homes and then report back to Santa about the behavior of the kids. Well, I'm sure not about to purposefully let something into my house that is going to cause any more chaos. So, I hand picked an elf from the... where do elves come from? Maybe they come from the far corner of the Cabbage Patch. Who knows... Anyway, I chose an elf with a quiet demeanor that is not given to being overly mischievous. He and I have a deal. If he sits quietly and lets the kids hold him gently, then we'll give Santa a good report. If not, he knows that I'll leave him sitting where the cat can cuddle up with him and do whatever she likes with him.

Elliot the Elf arrived tonight since it's the first night of Advent. I'm doing my best to keep things centered around here and not let the real meaning of this Season get shoved to the wayside. Anyway, he'll meet the kids in the morning. Here's to new traditions...

I'll post more about my struggles with this holiday later. For now, I'm trying to psyche myself up for the next three weeks of school. I'm a huge proponent of teachers getting combat pay for the month of December. I think some parents decide to give their kids Pop Tarts and Mountain Dew every morning and then put their darlings on the bus headed directly toward me. When you enter an elementary classroom in the month of December, you can literally feel the air vibrating with the excitement oozing out of the kids. Yes, there are moments that you want to savor and make last forever when you get a glimpse of the excitement through the eyes of a child. However, there are many other moments when you want to just close your eyes, ball up into the fetal position, suck your thumb, and keep saying, "Find a happy place. Find a happy place. Find a happy place." The minute I did that, though, I'd find a child standing over me asking, "Can I go to the bathroom?" Whew!

So, the short answer to your emails would be that I'm struggling but it's an inner struggle that hurts in a way that no physical pain could ever cause. Wading through the holidays seems like walking through a mine field. In fact, I guess I sort of feel like a mine sweeper. Some of the mines I run over are duds and don't inflict any damage. However, others that I thought were duds blow up in my face and leave me with shrapnel sticking here and there and take quite a while to recover from. But, I'll press onward because I know that there's something bigger and better on this journey for me and the kids. I'm not sure what the timing looks like on that "bigger and better thing" but I know it's out there and it gives me reason to keep moving.

Philippians 3:13-16

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

Good night, all.

So much to be thankful for... (Take 2)

2011-11-24T18:59:00.000-05:00

OK. So, it's pretty obvious that You Tube and I aren't the best of friends. Navigating all of their legalities makes me nuts. Anyway, here's my tribute to today. I do have so many things to be thankful for.

(Hey, K.H., you'd better do wonderful on finals no matter what I post here)! :)

Failed Santa Attempt, Leaf Pile Demolition, and Potty Training Stand-off

2011-11-19T21:59:00.000-05:00

An hour into the wait to see Santa and his reindeer, Annie decided that she'd rather play a game. She can unlock my phone, scroll through the apps to find what she wants, and launch her games. Disturbing doesn't even begin to cover her techie intuition. She can also open iTunes and find her videos. The girl needs her own devices but I'm just not ready to hand over an iTouch to a 2 year old. It's SO wrong on SO many levels.

We forfeited our spot in line and just went to sneak a peak of Santa and his reindeer. My butt was frozen and numb so hers had to be, too! However, I had to promise her that we'd visit him later so she could tell him to make her a pink bike and a drum with sticks.

Destroying Papa's leaf piles was much more entertaining.

Definitely nap time!

The girls analyzed and sorted acorns into different groups. The last sorting consisted of which acorns were pizza and which were smoothies.

The girls decided that the pile of leaves was their car and they went for a drive. (Papa and Grant gave up on raking a LONG time ago)!

She said she found the prize leaf! Her imagination borders on neurotic sometimes!

So, that was the excitement for day one of my Thanksgiving break beyond a trip to Target to buy Annie some real panties. She chose Dora and Littlest Pet Shop. I'm so over this potty training thing! I gave in and bought a bag of M&Ms, too, to bribe her with. However, when we got back to the van, she started screaming for the M&Ms. I told her that she had to tinkle in the potty first. The little crumb-snatcher looked me dead in the eye and said, "I don't have a potty here, Mama. We're in the car. Give me some now and I'll tinkle at home later." When I told her that she'd have to wait, she let out a blood curdling scream and started calling for Grandma. Hmmm.... She's not even three and knows that Grandma would've ripped that bag of M&Ms open in a heart beat and hand fed them to her to keep her from screaming like a wild animal. Me? Nope. I crawled into the driver's seat, turned up the radio, and pulled away from Target looking a lot more calm than I felt.

Here's to an uneventful Thanksgiving break.

Good night, all.

Life's Temptations

2011-11-16T21:16:00.000-05:00

Here the facts are. I won't mix emotions and facts. It's a toxic mix this week and I don't want to have regrets.

1. She's eating weird things again. Last night, she licked dinner plates clean that had been sitting in the sink since Sunday night. This morning, it was random trash from the floor of the van. Tonight, it was another pencil. She's taking the mega-vitamins as the doctor ordered but it's not helping.

2. She's stealing again. I just found a pencil in her agenda that I knew didn't belong to her. She admitted to taking it from the teacher's desk while the teacher was in the hallway. When I asked her if she would have stolen something from the teacher's purse, she said, "I couldn't find her purse."

3. She has a new binder in her bag that I didn't buy her. She said that she ask her teacher for it because I wouldn't buy her a new one.

4. Her social studies test says across the bottom, "I love Mrs. Zomer." When I asked her how that got there, she said that she and another student were talking about who they would marry when they got in high school.

My sense of humor has been sapped dry. My best attempt at parenting tonight came when I served her a bowl of pencils for a bedtime snack. As soon as I did it, I felt miserable. How old am I? That's something one of my students would do! Frustration simply overwhelmed my senses. I simply don't know what to do with her. If she clearly shows that she's hiding something, doesn't that indicate that she knows that it is wrong? If she has the ability to discern right and wrong and understands that wrong choices hold consequences, why does she keep doing the same darn wrong things? Doctors don't offer many suggestions beyond removing things from her environment that might tempt her to make wrong choices. Um? Let's see. How in the world would I do that? Reality is filled with temptations. In fact, without temptations, how would we ever develop the ability to choose between right and wrong? Temptations are a daily part of life whether you're talking about eating an entire bag of Oreos or stealing a pencil. There comes a point of accountability when you have to assume responsibility for your actions - good or bad.

So, as we get closer to Thanksgiving, I will continue to be very thankful that Dasha has a stomach of steel that can tolerate staples, graphite, erasers, and petrified crumbs. I will also be very thankful that she has a pencil fetish and not a jewelry one. I will also continue to count the many blessing that come with having next week off! Whew!

Good night, all.

Googling at the Randolph Mental Facility

2011-11-08T23:03:00.000-05:00

I know that there are some folks that believe that the majority of the antecedotal stories I post here are figments of my imagination. Come with me on a little trip (yeah, a four hour tour...) through my day and you'll see that no one in their right mind would make this stuff up!

Annie doesn't understand the idea of having a day off or of this "time change" thing. So, she woke me up this morning by standing next to my bed and saying, "Mama, mama. You sleeping?" The clock clearly read 5:23. I pulled her in bed with me and handed her my phone so she could watch a video. That lasted for about 20 minutes. (Dear Nick Jr., you need to make a feature length Fresh Beat Band episode, please, that lasts longer than 20 minutes). So, at 5:45, I crawled out of bed and started a load of laundry. By 7:00, Annie and I had eaten breakfast and she had drawn me a "map" of what she wanted to do for the day. She thinks that she is Dora and loves maps. I can't even think about taking her into a store without giving her an index card with some things for her to check off and a silly "map."

We planned to MAKE play dough using a new recipe I found on Pinterest which used Jello. The only stores open at 7:00 a.m. are WalMart and Kroger so we opted for WalMart. We picked out grape, strawberry, orange, and blue explosion Jello and cream of tartar and headed back home.

Then, the real mess started.

At first, she didn't understand why the Jello boxes didn't have play dough in them. I guess she didn't understand that we had to cook it. (That was a very frustrating conversation). So, in the end, the dough was cooked and Annie went off to happily play with it.

By this time, Grant had crawled out from his lair. His list for today included cleaning his room and working on his science project. The room cleaning part of his list went as normal. There was lots of huffing, lots of procrastinating, and way too many things getting crammed into the closet and the hamper. But, he managed to finish and then we started the process of figuring out how to actually DO the science project that he'd dreamed up.

He wanted to test the bacteria levels in tea from different restaurants. Ok. That's a great idea. But, how in the world do you do that? Thanks to Google and You Tube, we found out that you have to use something called agar in a petri dish to grow the bacteria. Yeah. Let me just run to the cabinet and pull out some agar from my stock pile. Huh? Where do you even buy this stuff? Once again, back to Google we went. As usual, we've cut the time limits pretty close on this project so we didn't have time to order anything (let me clarify - I didn't want to PAY to have something express mailed). I started calling lots of really weird and shady places asking if they stocked agar. I even called the pediatrician's office. (They got quite a laugh out of that). On a last ditch effort, I called the school supply store about ten minutes down the road and they had one vial left of the stuff. Geez. So, we loaded up and went to get this weirdness - plus petri dishes.

It's a powdery mess that you have to mix with distilled water, boil it, let it cool, and then pour it into the petri dishes to solidify. Yeah. Once again, why couldn't my child just want to test how much liquid different brands of diapers hold?

So, I guess we'll just watch and see over the next few days which tea had the most bacteria in it. We're going to get two more batches of tea from each place to make sure that we have solid data. Don't we sound scientific?

And then, there was Dasha's report. I saw the instruction sheet last night and it is due tomorrow. Yeah, me! The topic of this report... Day of the Dead. It's an official holiday for some cultures. Believe me. I had to Google that too! For this report, you were supposed to pick a dead relative, pet, or other person and basically create a shrine for them. Now, you have to understand that my "Are You Kidding Me?" filter kicked in the minute I saw the information sheet. When I asked Dasha about it, she said, "I'll just do a box about Ansley." Oh boy. Grant went nuts. Grant is very guarded about his memories of Ansley and doesn't like Dasha to even talk about her. (Add this to the therapy list, yeah, yeah, yeah). So, who else could we do? She named off two other people that she's known of that have died and neither was a good fit for this project. (I tried to convince her to do it on Grant's guinea pig that kicked the bucket last year but she wanted to do it about a PERSON). Geez. Once again, I did a Google search for "dead famous people." Really. That's what I typed. My choices were either Michael Jackson or Steve Jobs. I persuaded Dasha to go with Mr. Jobs.

We Googled more about Jobs to complete the report. (Yeah, there was a written report, too. See? The guinea pig report would have been much easier and no one would have known if it was true or not - like the part about me putting the dead creature in a Rubbermaid box and putting it in the big freezer because the ground was too hard for me to dig a hole in)! Although, I guess I'll have to admit that Steve Jobs was a very different person. Dasha immediately zeroed in on the fact that he was adopted and didn't go to college. Oh well. Never mind the stuff about Apple and Pixar.

So, the project is now complete and ready for school. I wonder what other parents thought about this project? Couldn't they have simply said something like, do research on a deceased person and create a collage or media product to show their life? Nope. Much more creepy to do it this way.

So, in one day, I made play dough, created a warm cozy environment to grow tea bacteria, and created a shrine to Steve Jobs. And you people think I make this mess up! I haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet.

About 9:00, I was sitting at the desk working on school papers when I heard a dripping sound. I thought it was the cat doing something weird. (I didn't even bother to go check). But, suddenly the dripping turned into more of a pouring sound. I walked out of the office and into the kitchen to see a waterfall coming out of the air vent in the ceiling. There was a puddle on the floor that spanned most of the kitchen. My first thought was, "At least this isn't poo water like last week AND it's on the tile and not the wood floor." My second thought was a bit less positive. It was something like, "Oh, crap. The ceiling is going to fall in and then what am I going to do?"

My adreline kicked in and I started yelling for the big kids to bring me towels and garbage cans like I was some rock star surgeon in the ER. They are lucky I wasn't saying things like, "Stat! Stand back! I'm not gonna lose this one!" Anyway, we dried up the small lake and stood back and just watched the waterfall. At one point, Dasha looked at me with her face squished up and said, "What is going on?" I couldn't help myself at that point. I looked her back without a smile and said, "Well, maybe you should find an umbrella because we have ourselves a kitchen storm and it looks like it might just go on all night long!" She didn't laugh. I think part of her thought I was serious. She proceeded to go look out the window and tell me that it wasn't raining outside. Ugh.

I called my dad. He analyzed the situation. By the time he left, we'd come to no conclusions. The water was coming from the general vicinity of my bathroom. There's still no conclusion at this hour (2 hours later). However, the rain has stopped now and I'm just left with a floor full of wet towels and a garbage can full of water. Who knows when the rain will start again. Eric reminded me that we do have home owner's insurance for things like this. Oh, yeah. I kind of forgot about that. I'm terrified to know what the deductible is, though. Oh well. The joys of home ownership.

So, this is the sort of fun we have at the Randolph Mental Facility on a day "off." Jello dough, growing bacteria, honoring dead people, and having inside rain showers. In what other house could you do all of that in one day? No where that I know of unless you're wearing a straight jacket! And, heck, I don't even enforce that our guests wear straight jackets! Half of the time, someone is running around naked (not me).

This is where I find myself at 10:55 on Tuesday night. I'm really trying to stay focused and see this new turn of events as merely a distraction from the journey I'm on. But, I'm telling you, this distraction is like one of those darn gnats at the beach that you just want to zap.

Good night, all.

Sewage leaks and Lurking Monsters

2011-11-03T22:53:00.000-04:00

OK. I'm still alive. I'm still amazed at the emails and messages that overflowed from my boxes to make sure I hadn't committed myself to some asylum or been locked up at the Sheriff's Office. It's nice to feel loved! :)

If I didn't completely turn the lights off, shut the elevator down, and loose all of my marbles today, it won't happen.

Here's a quick recap before I crash into bed.

1) 6:00 a.m. - I got up early to shower and try to make myself semi-presentable for the conference this afternoon. Thinking that I had somewhat accomplished that feat, I headed downstairs. However, when I stepped off of the bottom step this morning, I found myself standing in water. Someone (I'm thinking the only male in the house) stopped up the toilet last night but didn't bother to tell me and for some reason, the water had seeped out of the bathroom, into the foyer, and stunk up the entire downstairs. This was NOT a job for a towel. I can't quite remember the exact number of new expletives my children learned from me this morning. I absolutely have to get a rein on my tongue. I'm convinced that my temper is directly tied to my tongue. Whew. However, due to the minor flooding of sewage, breakfast became a second thought. I hustled the kids out of the door. By this time, I was crying (the expletives had ceased spilling forth), the kids were scared that I was really losing it, and it was stinking cold!

2) Did I mention that I was still wide awake at 3:30 this morning? Sleep just would not claim me. I even took a swig of NyQuil at 1:00 a.m. When I'm sleepy, nothing is right. So, about 6:45, I called my teammate and made a plea for her to call me a sub for a 1/2 day. I was on the edge of a real breakdown and I had poo water to clean up before it seeped underneath the flooring and caused even more damage.

3) 7:00 a.m. - Chick-fil-A drive through. I can get away with not feeding Annie breakfast. She eats at Fatima's every morning despite what I might feed her. However, Grant and Dasha aren't so keen on starving. So, I ordered their breakfasts and my diet lemonade and headed for school. Somehow, I got behind every single Cherokee County bus. I didn't get to school until 7:20 this morning. That's the latest I've gotten to school in years! I hate to be late!

4) 11:15 a.m. - I handed my class off to a lady name Mrs. D with an island accent and made a run for the van. The van has become my safe-house. I sat in the van and simply cried. No hysterics. Just crying. I'm not even sure what I was crying about. I finally collected my remaining senses and drove home. It took the next hour and a half to clean up the now congealed sewage from the floor. I mopped the floor about 3 times with new water every time just because I didn't even want to believe that poo germs were stuck in the wood. Ugh. My naked feet walk on that floor. Annie wallows around on that floor. Gross. Then, I decided to put the last coat of spray paint on my Goodwill find of an end table. I felt a moderate amount of success upon the completion of that job. However, stupid me left the table on the patio when I went back to school and it got rained (poured) on and warped. Yip. That would be my luck. If you're wondering, the table is still sitting on the patio. I didn't even bother to try bringing it in.

5) 2:00 - I finished up sewing a bag I'd started for Annie only to realize that I snipped the seams too close and cut through the sides of the bag. Okeedokee then.... I crossed that off of my "to do" list. My list didn't say anything about making a bag with a solid structure. Deconstructed is the new look for jeans. Maybe I'll start a trend in toddler bags, too.

6) 3:00 - Headed for the middle school. I knew I'd be a little bit early so I ended up parking in the church parking lot and crying some more. For real? Where are these tears coming from? You'd think I was PMSy or something. I was worried about what Eric would say. I was worried about having to sit in his general vicinity for more than two seconds. Could I hold it together? I was lucky enough that some old employees from Little River saw me along the way and I was able to chat with them when I arrived at the school and had to sit in the cold lobby where the potential for awkward moments was maximized.

7) The conference was just fine. We learned that Dasha had made a name for herself with other guy teachers and seems to have quite a few crushes. Nice. I'll add this to my list of concerns with her. It seems that one teacher had to threaten to "sign her agenda" if she didn't stop hugging on him. Ugh. There weren't any surprises beyond that, though. And, I have to admit that I wasn't really surprised. She just wants attention from males. She always has.

8) Left the middle school. Went to mom's house. Picked the three tornadoes up. Took them home and delivered them to Eric. He wanted to take them to eat. Ok. So, they left and I was lost. I know, I know. I say I want to get rid of them for a while and then I say that I want them back. The grass is always greener on the other side. So, I sat and ate a bowl of Cheerios while the power blinked off for a while. Then, I graded math tests, watched two episodes of Sister Wives, and finished off the Snickers from Halloween. Nice compliment to the Cheerios! I'm sure my blood sugar will be out of whack in the morning. But, my biggest monsters of the night showed up while I was curled up on the sofa with my math tests and the cat. For some reason, I thought the kids would be back around 6:15. Now, I can't trust that I heard that correctly because any direct verbal communication between us seems to get garbled somewhere between his mouth and my ears. But, I started wondering if maybe he would actually take the kids and leave. ??? I don't think he would but... So, those "what if monsters" danced in my head for over an hour. Should I text Grant? No. I don't want Eric to think I'm checking up on them. But, what if they're headed for the state line? I seriously never even fathomed that this would be a monster that would lurk in my mind. Trusting someone with your kids is a big deal especially when that trust has been so badly broken. Back when all of this first happened, I used to have these very vivid dreams that Eric and his friend would swoop in and take the kids and disappear forever. I still get teary eyed thinking of that vision of Annie screaming out for me. Maybe that's why I got so crazy tonight. That whole dream was just so persistent and so dang real. Night after night, I'd wake up crying and be left with nothing but the vision of Annie reaching out for me and me feeling helpless. Blah. I'd like to put a permanent lock on the box that contains that stupid dream.

Ok, ok, ok. We've already had this discussion before and I said I wasn't even going to post anything this week. However, I'm hoping that by purging my thoughts here, they won't follow me to bed tonight. I'm stinking exhausted. I need to leave the monsters behind on this screen and not under the covers with me.

So, I'm heading to bed knowing that the alarm will go off way too early in the morning. I'm also going to make sure that all toilets are flushed and all children are really tucked (glued) into their beds so I'm not greeted with another sewage leak in the morning. I'd threaten to put everyone back in diapers if this happens again but that would be way too expensive!

Good night, all.

Compromises and Distractions

2011-10-30T22:53:00.000-04:00

I told you that I was struggling this week and that was no lie. Next week, the battle will intensify. I'm already a weary and wounded soldier but I'm trusting and leaning on my faith to get me through. I'll give you the summary and then sign off. And, I can tell you that I most likely won't post anything again until next weekend. Sometimes, it's best to keep all of the beasties creeping around out of the public view until I've had a chance to fight them and put them back into their boxes.

Last night, about 9:00, I decided that I would make it to church today no matter what. So, I laid out clothes for everyone and made sure that things were ready to roll. I knew that I had to stop for gas before we hit the road so I even added time into the equation for that. (I tried to fill up yesterday but my debit card kept saying "not authorized." I only had the girls with me so I didn't bother to get them out of the van and lug them into the gas station).

So, when my alarm went off this morning, I drug everyone from their toasty little beds and started the routine and torture of getting everyone ready to go. While I was in the bathroom, Annie hoisted an empty laundry basket onto my bed and then climbed in it. She kept saying that it was her "boat." Ok. No problem with that. But, then, I guess the sea got rough and she decided to stand up and surf in the basket. She proceed to surf off of my bed and onto the floor. She even managed to land in the basket. Her award for a superior landing, a bloody lip and a black eye. Strike one for getting to church on time. Note to self - do NOT allow a toddler to surf on the bed in a laundry basket!

We made it to church just as the music started. Since this church doesn't have childcare, all three kids piled in around me. Annie colored for the majority of the service while the older kids pretended to listen. I'm hoping that something did actually sink in, though.

Ok. Check. I attended church with the kids. I heard the message but I didn't really let too much of it sink in for fear of softening the scabs. With three kids in tow, there's no room for emotions beyond happy to be visible while they're around.

Next stop, IKEA for three light bulbs. After sitting on I-75 for nearly 40 minutes with Annie screaming that she was hungry and the sun was in her face, I finally got brave and put my life in the hands of the GPS to find a way to the big yellow and blue warehouse that did NOT include I-75. We made it with relatively little drama which was a good thing. We had a quick lunch and grabbed what we needed (ok, I did pick up two timers, an umbrella, and a small garbage can for the car - a little more than the light bulbs). Oh - and as a side note, one of three bulbs was broken when I opened the package so I'm STILL short by a light bulb!

My plan was to let Annie nap in the car and head toward the pumpkin patch. We still had not gotten a pumpkin. For some families, it's ok to grab a pumpkin from WalMart or Publix. We've ALWAYS gone to Burt's Farm to get a pumpkin. It's just tradition. I knew that I couldn't do Burt's this year for a multitude of reasons but I had intended to take the kids to a pumpkin patch. Shoot. I even bought the Groupon coupon for the place in Oxford - so much for that. Anyway, my plan of Annie napping was one of those pipe dreams. She preferred to sing the entire way. Better than screaming. I decided to give the kids a treat and stop by Krispy Kreme. Last year, Eric got the kids some pumpkin doughnuts there and Annie has never forgotten. She asked for them a few weekends ago and it took me forever to figure out what she was talking about. So, we stopped at the big Krispy Kreme joint (the hot sign was not on) but we did get pumpkin doughnuts. Then, it dawned on me. Orange and black icing in the van. My sister would KILL me if she knew I'd even toyed with the idea after she had my van detailed for my birthday! So, we took the fried sugar cakes back to my parents' house. Hee hee! Grandma just loves her grandkids too much to complain about a trail of orange icing on her floor AND they have a dog that will lap it all up!

Next stop, Berry Patch farms for a pumpkin. I knew it would look like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree but it didn't matter. It was more about the journey than the actual pumpkin. However, Annie was at meltdown mode by this time and I was over the journey AND the pumpkin. I drove to WalMart to pick a pumpkin out. I told Annie we were going to the pumpkin patch at WalMart but she didn't fall for it. The big kids were disappointed, too. But, what was I supposed to do? Believe it or not, WalMart was out of pumpkins. They had the ones that look like gourds and have big chunky nasty warts on them and then the tiny little ones. I bought a prepackaged bag of the little ones hoping that Annie would find them so novel that she would forget about the "patch" part of the deal. It worked - momentarily. So, for the first time in 14 years, I don't have any pictures from a pumpkin patch to add to the scrapbook. Blah.

Anyway, by the time we got home and I put Annie down for a nap, I realized that she was running a fever. Nothing horrific but enough to put me on edge and make her feel lousy. So, I Tylenol-ed her and put her down for a nap. While she napped, I tried in vain to finish her blasted Cookie Monster costume. I would have been better off to have paid the $30 on etsy to buy the thing. After 300 yards of tulle (the kind that comes in rolls of 25 yards) and too many battles with the cat who thought it was a new toy, the costume is still not finished. I'm out of hot glue and I can't use the stuff I normally use to fuse things together because the iron melts the tulle. (I learned the hard way). Blah. Blah. And blah! She might just have a costume with a one eyed monster. Maybe I could show her a picture of that monster from Monsters Inc. and tell her that she'll look like him.

Currently, all three kids are in bed. Lunches are packed and I have a few more things to finish up for school before heading to bed myself. I just wanted to make a few comments before I sign off for the week.

1) My biggest hurdle for this week will be Eric's visit. He is bringing his friend with him again. This is not what bothers me. Both of them will be spending time with the kids. Grant thinks she is wonderful and fun. Dasha thinks she is pretty and nice. Who knows what Annie thinks. I'm handing my three most prized possessions over to someone who willingly walked away from his family and someone who knowingly ruined a family. And, the kids (at least the big ones) think this is all ok. What if they prefer her over me? Where is the line when I say, "No. I won't expose them to this."? However, if I say that I don't want the kids around her, he won't come. I want the kids to be with him. They miss him horribly in ways that you could never even begin to put into words. But how do I protect them from this sin without keeping them from their father? What's the right thing to do?

2) The second punch in the gut that I'm waiting for is Saturday night. They (kids plus him and her) are all going to hang out with some of "our" old friends. Heck, these folks used to be our Sunday school teachers. They stood with us as we lowered Ansley into her grave. We've vacationed together. We've shared way too many intimate silly secrets. They are welcoming them in with open arms. She is literally stepping right into my shoes and showing up on the doorstep with my husband and my kids. What have these other folks told their kids? "Oh, by the way, Mrs. Susan looks a little different. She will look a lot younger and..." This worries me. Grant still doesn't tell people that his parents are getting divorced. He tells them that his dad is working in TX. So, when he shows up and his old buddy starts asking him questions about the girl that is with his dad, what will he say or do? And, what will Annie do? She'll be in a different place with only Eric and her. She hasn't seen Eric in weeks. He doesn't have a clue about her fears and securities right now. Does he know that she hates thunder and will not sleep without her pink puppy? Who will comfort her when she gets cranky or upset or tired? Grant? Probably. But this shouldn't be his role. He's not the parent. Crap. This whole thing sucks. Why do the kids have to go through this? Yeah, I'm sure this girl is nice just as Grant, Dasha, Eric, and Eric's mom continue to rub in my face. I know. She was so nice that she ruined my family without regard to a binding union. Yeah, I messed up and didn't do everything perfect but we stood before God and made the deal. Yeah, real nice. I don't care if she's the freaking Queen of England. She didn't have enough respect for my kids to leave their father alone so why should I trust that she'd have their best interest in mind now? What if.... Oh, those darn what if monsters are simply everywhere. I can't trust either of them with my innocent kids!

3) For the last 20 years, my life has been one compromise after another in order to make everyone else happy. I'm over it. While I am definitely in a bad spot right now, I know now more than any other time in my life that I have the resources I need to keep my integrity and not have to make compromises regarding my wants, desires, and needs. Now, I just have to figure out how to work all of this into the above two issues. Easier said than done.

So, I'm sure I'll have major regrets about hitting "publish post" by midnight. However, I'm not going to compromise and sugar coat my feelings right now. This is where I'm at. I have a serious job to protect my kids and set a Godly example for them. Knowing how to set that example when it's in the face of this kind of choice is overwhelming. But, as I said, this is where I'm at. I won't apologize for stating the truth. I'm sure that someone will read this and get majorly offended but that's their problem. I want the legacy that I leave for my kids to be nothing more than pure. Not tarnished. Not filled with my own selfish choices. I want them to look back at me and know that I did my best at every corner to seek God's will and do the right thing - even if they don't like it now.

Now, I'll finish up my school work and get ready for tomorrow. Hair painting and ice cream with 22 kids. Finishing up a Cookie Monster costume. Cutting a pumpkin. Dealing with a sick toddler. Going to the bank to get my debit card off of the "fraud" list for the third time - thank you MetLife for screwing with my identity and causing untold amounts of drama. And then, getting ready for a major SACS - CASI visit at school on Tuesday. Then, Thursday, we (Eric and myself) will meet with Dasha's teachers to try to get to the bottom of all of the problems at school. Then, on to Friday and Saturday. Hopefully, by then, I'll be able to reset the "numb mode" enough to enjoy my day off on Saturday.

Anyway, I won't post again until next weekend to give myself time to figure all of this out and an opportunity to filter the monsters that might be lurking around the corner waiting to snatch me by the ankles and drag me down like those urban legend guys that grabbed women in parking lots from under their cars. Nice, warm, fuzzy bedtime thought, huh?

Good night, all.

Having My Butt Kicked

2011-10-27T21:31:00.000-04:00

And this, my friends, is the single thread that I'm holding on to right now. Somewhere amidst the constant chaos, there is a calm peace at my core that I can momentarily retreat to for escape. There's no time for luxurious blogging tonight. There's only time for fragmented thoughts...

Letter stating that MetLife screwed up the taxes on maternity leave with Annie and I'm now responsible for more taxes and must file and adendum. Yeah. Just what I have time to figure out. And, that was three freaking years ago!
FedEx letter stating that MetLife compromised my "identity" and that they have voluntarily paid for fraud protection for me for the next year but I need to pull all of my credit reports and contact any creditors. Once again, their screw up has now become my problem. This seems to be a common theme in my life right now.
SACS visit at school next week which translates to everyone walking on eggshells, gearing up for a major dog and pony show, and a race to see who can do the most butt kissing in the shortest amount of time. Perfect. Newsflash, I don't have time to kiss anyone's butt. They can just kiss mine!
Sick two year old who has decided that eating dinner is optional and that it's much more fun to wake up at 2:00 a.m. screaming that you're hungry and want a snack.
Thirteen year old who has simply jumped off the deep end and I'm really wearing out trying to tread water to pull her ashore. Homework lasts from 4:00 until 9:00 or until I call a time-out and say, "Screw it." Last night, we subtracted mixed numbers with different denominators for 2 hours but she still failed the test today.
Eleven year old that wants to talk constantly and tell me everything but I'm not really listening. Yeah, I hear him but I hear him over the roar of Annie clambering for me and Dasha saying she still doesn't understand the homework.
Three calls from the school nurse today about Dasha. Seriously? She fell twice and then had a surprise "visitor." I didn't need to be informed about any of this. She falls often and never goes to the nurse. When I got her home, I figured out what was going on. She had several substitutes and she was milking their attention to the max. Neither fall left a single mark on her.
I've yet to figure out costumes for Halloween. Annie wants to be Cookie Monster. Where did she get that from? She doesn't even like Sesame Street! I found a cute pattern but that means I have to find time to make it.
That audiologist appointment she had... Well, who knew that an audiologist wouldn't write a pediatric prescription and that our pediatrician wouldn't honor the paperwork faxed over and write one for us. Now, I have to figure out a time to get her in to see the pediatrician to get a prescription for her ears (plus pay another co-pay).
This doesn't even begin to cover lesson plans, house keeping, yard work, grading papers, dealing with the next book report, or sleeping. I just don't have it in me to be all things to all people. I'm empty.

I'll admit that this is the closest I've been to simply losing it. After dropping Grant with my mom so she could take him to music lessons last night, I seriously thought, "I wonder how far I could drive on the gas that's in my tank?" Then, I realized that would simply strand me in the middle of nowhere with two hungry and cranky girls. No thank you. I'll revisit that thought when I'm alone. I just want a morning when I could sleep past 6 a.m. and a night when I could fall into bed before midnight and sleep through the night. My mind is at about a category 5 hurricane right now worrying about next week and all of the things that will happen. It's like the first time when you take your kid on a roller coaster and they sudden want off and begin screaming when they see what really lies ahead of them. Yeah, I'm that kid screaming to get off of the coaster - except I'm all alone in the seat and no one seems to be listening.

Maybe I'm simply a whiny whimp. I don't know. There are so many other women who've walked this road and seem to come out of the ride unscathed. Why can't I get it right? I have a roof over my head. A good job. Supportive co-workers and family. A solid faith that I'm clinging to. What am I missing?

So, tonight, I'll spend at least another three hours sitting here finishing up masterpiece lesson plans in case the SACS group decides to peek at them, setting up parent conferences, and feeling utterly alone. If you think I'm a whiner, then stop reading. I dream of just one night going to bed and not sleeping in a huge bed alone and having someone else go to comfort Annie in the middle of the night or busting Dasha for taking her braces off at 3:00 a.m. I'm so weary of being the responsible one. Just one night I want to plop my butt in front of the TV and ignore everything. My kids deserve my best but no one is getting that right now because there's nothing left to give other than mandatory maintenance.

Yes, I will overcome this and look back at the journey I took and probably thank all of the therapists, pharmacists, and host of other folks who helped me through. But this leg of the journey is kicking my butt. It's hard to fight when you're weary.

O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer. . . . All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. . . . I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. . . . I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. . . .

"But you, O LORD, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. Deliver my life . . . Rescue me . . . save me. . . . . For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help. . . . . They who seek the LORD will praise him" (Psalm 22:2, 7, 14-15, 17, 19-21, 24, 26).

How do you spell relief?

2011-10-23T22:25:00.000-04:00

So, here's the Cliff Notes version of my day.

6:00 a.m. - Annie crawls in bed with me. I try to snuggle her under the covers in hopes that she'll go back to sleep only to find out that she's naked from the waist down and has just peed in my bed. I'm not kidding, folks. The girl has a serious thing for peeing in my bed. Why? Why can't she mark her own territory? It's a whole lot easier to strip a toddler bed and change the linens than a freaking king sized bed! Argh. Good morning!

7:00 a.m. - Laundry is started and Annie has been fed. I started vacuuming the rugs so I could pull them up and use a real mop (not a Swiffer) to clean the floors. Blah. I hate real mops. They take too much effort.

8:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. - I'm not sure where this time went but I think it got sucked into a time vaporizer. I know I cleaned out the gazillion products from under the kitchen sink. (Minor melt down over tossing the orange hand cleaner stuff that Eric used to get grease off of his hands). Annie napped. I got Dasha started on finishing up her book report. And, Grant came home with all of his stinky belongings in tow.

From there, it was sort of like a downhill ride. The more help I tried to give Dasha, the more combative she got. Grant was sound asleep upstairs trying to recoup two nights worth of sleep in a couple of hours. Annie was, well, as she usually is - everywhere.

By 5:00, Dasha was still at the table working. She'd had several breaks but she hadn't made much progress. At that point, I finally told her that I was going to set the timer and she had to have the essay outline finished. What was I supposed to do? She didn't want my help but she hadn't even completely finished reading the stupid book (remember, the one about Judy Blume and sex)? At some point, my mom was kind enough to drop some dinner off. I gave Dasha a break and Annie decided that she wanted to "paint." That's what she calls using markers.

However, when she couldn't get a perfect circle drawn on the paper, she lost it! She kept screaming, "The marker won't let me draw a circle!" Yeah, that'll sure work out. Blame the marker. She finally settled back down and continued to color while I helped Dasha try to complete the blasted graphic organizers for the report.

But, then it started again! What's up with this kid? Normally, she's demanding but doesn't turn the water works on and off again constantly. She just figures it out herself and does what she wants to.

If you've never thought about this before, please do so now. If the markers are washable, tears will simply make them run! The black smudge of marker she had on her face ended up running down her cheek an onto her white (of course) shirt. I told her she looked like a racoon and she got even madder! At this point, I just told her to go and wash her face off and I went back to working with Dasha - until I heard water sloshing onto the floor.

Blasted little bugger! Last time I checked, she couldn't reach the stopper in this sink. I guess she can now. Oh well.

So, that's how the evening went. The kids all alternated taking turns to see who could produce the most drama. Grant wanted my undivided attention (meaning don't look at Annie when she's crying, don't look at Dasha if she throws something, and surely don't swat at the cat for clawing at the rug). Annie just seemed to want to be hysterical for anything she deemed uncooperative such as, well, everything. And then, there was Dasha. At some point in this whole debacle, I took Annie upstairs to give her a bath. While I was doing that, Dasha erased EVERYTHING that she'd done over the last six hours. Not just a sentence or two. Everything. Poof. Vanished. Gone. When I tried to calmly ask why she'd erased it all, she just said that she didn't think it was right. I think I remember my explicative filter blinking "overload" and then saying something to her like, "Well, something that was wrong was better than the nothing you have there now!" At that point, I had to text Eric and tell him to take over the show. He Skyped with her for a while but she just doesn't get it. She does not put any value in doing work for the sake of learning. She puts value into not getting into trouble for not doing the work and getting caught, though. I can't wrap my mind around it. Now, I know that 13 year olds don't walk around saying, "Oh goody! I get to learn something today to fill up this cavernous noggin sitting on my neck!" But she just doesn't care at all. So, when I'd adequately calmed down, listened to Grant retell every detail of his camping weekend, and put Annie to bed, I tried to reason with Dasha. Why do I do this? It just frustrates me more. I tried to explain the value in reading a book and showing the teacher the things you learned but she just sat there and stared through me. Then, it's like she just snapped. She propelled her head forward and smacked it square on the table. Again, and again, and again. I told her to stop. I told her she was going to hurt herself. It's like I was talking to a wall. When I finally grabber her, she had quite a mark on her forehead. Once again, I tried to reason with her about not hurting herself. Once again, my reasoning did not resonate. I tried to refocus her and figure out if there was any use in trying to even complete the project. I mean, you can only whack your head so many times before work becomes counter-productive. Strangely enough, she seemed to settled back into the idea of finishing her project and started working again. I edged a few feet away into the kitchen to try to put the dishes away. She started talking to me about her classes at school and it was like she didn't even remember what had just transpired. It was like she just hit "skip" and skipped ahead by 15 minutes - not even fast forward - I mean skipped. When I started talking to her (on her terms because I was really getting freaked out), she told me that she would act better when things went back to "normal." Ok. That's a great statement if I knew what "normal" meant. So, I asked her. Unbeknownst to me, that was not the correct question to ask. She got mad again and started yanking at her hair as she answered me. She said, "Normal is when I won't have to do this hard work anymore and things are fun!" If I hadn't been so freaked out, my sarcastic mind would have probably spewed something out like, "Good luck with that! I guess you'll never see normal, then!" No, I didn't say that but the whole situation was just crazy!

A few more minutes passed and she seemed calm again. I told her to go on to bed. No, once again, the project is not finished but I can't do this crazy stuff. Is this some sort of hormonal thing or is this really something bigger? I've mentioned this to the psychologist and their thought is that it is the only way she knows to manipulate situations but this was just... creepy. There's even a little piece of me that wonders if I should put the baby gate in front of her door tonight to make sure she stays put. I admit. I'm a little afraid of her when she gets like this. She might be little for her age but she is strong as an ox. Ugh. So, she went on upstairs and left me trying to find my bearings. When I did go upstairs to trade out loads of laundry, I heard her riffling around downstairs in the glass jar where I keep pencils. (Every sound in this house is amplified with these hardwood floors)! I went down to see what she was doing and I just stood there astounded. She was taking the mechanical pencils from her book bag and putting them back into a package of new ones through a little hole in the back. I didn't even know the bag was opened. When I asked her what she was doing, I scared her to death. She told me she was getting a new pencil for school. Ok. Nothing wrong with that. (I've been giving her mechanical ones because she can gnaw on the plastic without it actually coming off like the wooden ones). But why was she sneaking them and putting the old ones back in? I didn't even ask. I just opened the package and dumped them all onto the counter and picked out the ones with used erasers (my clue that those were the old ones). She watched me do this but said nothing. Then, she went to bed.

Someone help me. I'm not cut out for this! I've been working with kids for 15 years. I have three degrees in dealing with kids. I have special needs kids in my classroom most years. But this? And the other baffling thing is that the teachers at school never see this sort of behavior. I feel like they think I'm making this stuff up. Why? Like I have time to sit around and dream up this mess. Poor Grant has gotten really good at staying under the radar and keeping Annie with him when these things break out. Tonight, he ended up diapering Annie and dressing her for bed because I was dealing with Dasha. He even baked the cookie dough mom brought and then Annie helped herself to an undisclosed number of cookies using her blasted step stool again. That thing is going to have to go!

Ok. Enough of that. I'm lost. I will call the pediatrician tomorrow and see what to do next.

Like I said, all I want is one drama free day. No book reports. No divas. Just quiet and calm.

So, now I'll head to bed and fold clothes for the next hour to even uncover my bed. Blah. I'm going to invent disposable clothes that you don't have to launder, fold, or put away. You just pull out a nice new set each day. That's what I need!

Good night, all.

Naked Apple Trees, Empty Petting Zoos, and Mountain Meltdowns

2011-10-22T22:44:00.000-04:00

Choice A: Stay trapped in the house all day and clean. Choice B: Take both girls to an apple orchard in Ellijay using the Groupon coupon that I bought several weeks ago. Duh! I took choice B!

Here's how it all worked out. Annie got up around 5:15 because she was hungry and had decided that daddy was going to take her to the beach today. ??? I don't know where in the world she came up with that plan but she was quite determined no matter how I tried to reason with her. Not today, honey, it's too cold. No, daddy's not here right now, maybe later. Maybe he can take you when it's gets hot again. Nope. Nada. She didn't buy any of those excuses. She just kept on. So, by 7:00, I was already about to scream. She'd even dumped her entire dresser to find a bathing suit and started frantically looking for her "floaties." Not the kind of morning I had been dreaming of.

So, I decided to load up the girls and make the hour drive to Ellijay to go pick apples. As any good teacher / mom would do, we talked about how apples grow on trees and then the farmers or machines pick them and take them to the store so we can buy them. This was the discussion that dominated the drive (also interspersed with music from Cinderella, Enchanted, and Mary Poppins).

As I discussed the logistics of the farmers getting the apples to stores with Dasha, I kind of lost track of watching the GPS. You know, those things are great IF you have a signal! I'd chosen to use the app on my phone instead of plugging in the TomTom. However, I didn't realize that I lost cell service at some point so the pretty blue dot on the map (me) stopped moving while the van full of crazies kept barreling down the highway. When I hit Blue Ridge, I realized that something was wrong. Duh! I plugged in the real GPS and then had to back track almost 20 minutes! By this point, the girls were getting hungry and tired of being in the car. I was seeing dollar signs as I had just wasted quite a bit of gas and now I was going to have to make an unplanned stop for food. (I'd packed pretzels and water bottles but the girls destroyed those before we ever left Woodstock)! Oh well.

We did manage to find the orchard which was actually not even correctly routed on MapQuest! Argh! However, the place was swarming with people. I'm convinced that every person there had at least ten kids and out of those ten kids, at least four of them were screaming! If you don't know me well, you might not know that I HATE crowded places! But, after driving that far, by golly, we were getting our 1/2 peck of apples and a hayride!

We had to wait in quite a line to even get to the ticket booth to trade our coupon in for the goods. However, when we got to the cashier, she said in a cute little southern drawl, "All our apple trees are empteeeeeee. I'm gonna give you a bag and you can just go over there and pick you some apples out of them there bins that they got filled with different kinds of apples." What? I just spend 90 freaking minutes telling the girls about picking apples from trees and now this. Nice.

The trees were indeed bare. However, tons of rotting apples littered the ground. Annie insisted on trying to pick some up. Of course, she picked up the most rotten and squishy apple in the entire orchard which popped open and oozed nastiness all over her hands. Do you think I had any wipes with me? Nope. Of course not! So, as she whined about being yucky with apple guts, we walked toward the other big draw of this orchard - the petting farm. Uh um. The petting farm consisted of a couple of goats, a baby cow that some young 4H students were showcasing, a turkey or two, and two little puppies. Yeah. Not what I really had in mind.

Ok. I tried to keep it all positive. At least I wasn't at home scrubbing toilets or mopping floors. So, we headed off to the next attraction, an apple cannon. I admit that the views were spectacular despite the naked trees and shabby petting zoo. I love the fall and I especially love the mountains at this time of year. I'll admit that I did have quite a time trying to fight off the memory monsters that kept trying to creep in and bring back so many trips from years past. But, the girls and I enjoyed the hike across the orchard and discussed the different kinds of trees and the horrific smell of rotting apples.

So, we reached the apple cannon (that would be singular - not plural) to find a massive line. By this point, both girls were tired of walking and hungry. They were more amused with the thought of sitting down than hurling apples into the valley with a weapon.

So, we decided to hand off our tickets for the apple cannon to a group of kissy faced newlyweds and head back down the hill to the hayride. Did I mention that both girls were already exhausted? Yeah. I didn't take the stroller out of the van because Annie never wants to ride and it just becomes a piece of luggage for me to drag around. However, today, she sat down and started crying for her stroller. Nice. Stranded at the top of a mountain-like gravel paved hill with one child having a tantrum, one constantly falling over her own feet from sheer exhaustion, and me wishing I'd taken the opportunity to pee before we'd ever started out on this journey.

By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, I'd carried Dasha on my back for part of the journey and had Annie clinging to my front. I felt like one of those weird sloths that carry their babies in every possible manner from tree to tree. At one point, I started getting pissed off that no one around had even offered to help but what would they do? And, honestly, what would I have said? Sure, why don't you carry this 90 pound child down the hill like Heidi for me? Uh, no. After making it back to level ground, Annie had stopped crying finally, Dasha has reestablished her footing, and I was dreaming of being at home elbow deep in a toilet bowl scrubbing it clean.

We picked our apples from the bin with Annie wanting to know (for the millionth time) why the apples were in boxes and not on the trees like we'd talked about. I'll admit that an ugly little voice in my head just kept thinking, "Just get the dang apples, kid, and let's get this over with!" Did you know that 1/2 peck of apples equates to about 8 apples? And, if you choose ginormous apples like Annie did, you'll only get about 5 apples in 1/2 peck! Oh well. She settled down and then..... Crap. I'd lost Dasha. She was just standing right there picking her own apples from the boxes. I mean, in less than ten seconds, she vanished. Remember who you're dealing with here. I'm a completely paranoid mama and I'd still tether each child to my belt loops if I didn't think they all bolt in different directions and pull my jeans to my ankles or just rip them right off of me! So, I picked Annie up (who, of course, started protesting by screaming) and went looking for Dasha. She had walked inside the building talking with another girl about her age. I spotted her pretty quickly but that surge of adrenaline that propelled me through those 120 seconds completely zapped my energy and patience levels. We took our 1/2 peck of apples and went to the van. No hayride. No apples pies. No apple cider. No nothing. It was just too much.

All I wanted was a fun outing to the orchard. That's it. I wasn't expecting anyone to stay clean or even keep to a specific schedule. I just wanted to go and have fun. Fail. It was a fail for me, at least. I think the girls can look back on it as a fun thing but Annie is still ticked about not getting pick the apple from the tree and Dasha may never roam more than about 3 inches from my side after the leveling I gave her once we were in the van (with doors and windows shut tight to avoid any strangers hearing my insanity)!

And this, my friends, brings us to the end of our fun-filled day at the orchard.

Tomorrow, I'll scrub the toilets, floors, and even the windows before taking another "fun" journey. I know that I can't rely on Grant to fill in the gaps of helping me with the girls all of the time but for outings like this, I'm just going to have to admit that I can't do it by myself. Physically trying to help Dasha maneuver in crowed areas is tough when it's just the two of us. But, when you add Annie into the mix, it's just too scary.

Now, I still have a Groupon left that I bought to a pumpkin farm in Oxford, GA. Anyone want it? It expires on 10/31 and there's just no way that I'm going to do this again next weekend. There are plenty of other little pumpkin patches I can take the kids to in this area without risking completely losing my sanity (or one of the kids).

I'm not even going to begin to address the whole event of Dasha wandering off. She still doesn't see the problem and didn't even consider it wandering off since she could technically still see me. Scary is about the only thing I can say. It's days like this when I completely understand why single moms run into the arms of the first living, breathing (even if it's on life-support or oxygen) thing that crosses their path. It's simply a matter of someone to help carry the load (or child). Never mind all of the mushy gushy romantic stuff like love. I can completely see where it becomes more about survival. No, I'm not uploading a profile to some dating service or anything. I have no heart or mind for that kind of journey at this point. I'm just saying... The burden is very heavy and on days like today when I literally and figuratively falter under the load, help would be nice.

I'm off to finish up the laundry before Grant comes charging back in tomorrow with a pack full of nastiness from his camping excursion. He's probably still wearing the same outfit he left in (including underwear) but absolutely everything will have to be washed from the sheer stench of being in his vicinity. I wonder if I have enough Clorox left? Hmmmm....

Good night, all.

The Journey: Lessons Learned

2011-10-22T00:10:00.000-04:00

So, it's late but sleep eludes me. Each picture in this movie represents some sort of lesson that I've learned over the last six months. From learning to lay flooring to juggling three kids, the learning curve has been steep and I'm still not to the top of the curve but at least I'm holding on...

Addendum to lightening bolt targets for tonight...

2011-10-20T22:36:00.000-04:00

Fail. Tried to help Dasha with the Judy Blume book report. She forgot the book at school so I downloaded it to my Kindle. Pretty smart, eh? Never mind that I just spent money that I didn't have for a book that she won't read. Anyway, as we filled out the graphic organizers to write the essay, one of the paragraphs had to be about an interesting fact from the book. When I asked Dasha about this, she said, "Sex." After I calmly put the pencil down and stopped imagining it as a lightening bolt, I asked her what she meant. She went on to tell me that Judy Blume wrote books to help girls and boys understand sex. Yeah, I remember the whole taboo deal with reading Are You There God, It's Me Margaret. But, why has Dasha not retained anything except that Judy Blume had been divorced twice and writes about sex? When I asked Dasha what sex was, she said, "You know. It's when boys and girls start liking each other. Like me and Andrew." The M&Ms that I had resorted to crunching down on to keep myself calm all just got stuck in my throat and time froze. Do I ask more specific questions or just wait for her to say something? I don't want to lead her to say something she doesn't mean but.... I finally asked her how she and Andrew had anything to do with sex. (Andrew is the kid that in her last period class where there are only two students and a teacher). Her reply, "That's what we do." Look, I just finished a major blog post about how I'm struggling here. This is NOT what I can handle tonight. That whole crap about God won't give you more than you can handle is malarkey. I didn't know whether to run from the table, up the stairs, to my bed, and hide under the covers or sit there and wait for her to elaborate. I didn't have the energy or the faith in my legs to hold steady to run. I waited. She finally said, "Andrew and I are kind of like sex. We like each other and are friends. Sometimes he even carries my books and helps me." I want the 4-1-1 on this Andrew kid. I've avoided any conversations with Dasha about sex. Heck, she can't even remember to put deodorant on and still streaks naked down the hall without one thought of modesty. What am I supposed to say? Do I have to address this now? A freaking Judy Blue biography just put me in a position that I really can't handle right now. (When I scrolled through the book, there were many references to Blume's writings about teen sex and how controversial her books were at the time).

Seriously, people. If you have any connections with the owner of this ride that I'm stuck on, would you please forward my S.O.S. to them?

The book report will not get done tonight. The teachers can think whatever they want to about me and my parenting skills. Whatever. Maybe I'll just leave Dasha at the sitter with Annie tomorrow. I hate this journey! I don't like this path! I'm feeling a bit like I took the road less traveled in the yellow woods but now I want to go back and change my mind. Never mind what a difference it might make! I want to be on a nicely paved path where I can see where I'm going and maybe even have someone along with me to help carry me when I trip and fall or get too tired to keep going! AAAHHHHHH!!!!!

Hey, Zeus! Can I borrow your lightening bolts to zap a bunch of folks in the butt?

2011-10-20T21:45:00.000-04:00

Tonight my thoughts are rambling. They are being thrown to and fro. Yes. No. Wrong. Right. Why? Why not? Do. Don't. The only thread that binds all of the reckless ideas into some semblance of order is weariness. Weary. So, tonight, I won't spend effort to try to put things into any kind of chronological order or even piece the thoughts together. This will simply be a vision of what it would look like if all of the thoughts from my mind flew out of my ears and slammed themselves all over a brick wall like graffiti. (Sounds like a scene from Roger Rabbit).

Today marks six months. "No, I can't stay home with Grant today. I'm leaving." That's what he said. And he left. He had it planned for months and just waited for the right moment. I was the idiot not to see it. The signs were all there. Naive. Not any more.
I'm tired of holding it all together. The roller coaster ride is getting to me. I just can't stomach much more. There aren't so many loop-the-loops any more but the constant hills are making me long for solid ground. I hold my emotions in at home so the kids don't think mom is upset. The worst question is from Annie. "Mama, why crying? You sad?" If only she knew. At school, there's no time for my own personal drama. I'm juggling the lives of 24 children who deserve my stability and attention. So, please tell me when I can drop my armor and just be weak and weary without concern that I'm letting someone down or that someone is going to drive their spear through me while my armor is off and I'm resting.
I feel nothing short of hopeless with Dasha right now. Forging my signature. Filling in her agenda with her own made up assignments. Hiding papers. Telling teachers that I send her to bed without feeding her dinner. Telling other teachers that I don't allow her to do her homework. Emails from those teachers with accusatory undertones about my parenting skills. Hey, I never made any proclamations about my parenting skills. They suck when it comes to Dasha. Last night, I finally solved the mystery of her agenda not being filled out. She doesn't fill it out during class and then comes home to fill it in with whatever she "thinks" the assignment should have been. She also leaves out writing down assignments that she'd rather not do, like book reports. So, after completely losing every shred of my sanity last night trying to reason with her, I sent her to bed. Mind you, this was after about 4 hours of homework drama. No, she didn't finish some assignments. Did I really care? No. (When I sent her to bed, she spent the next 30 minutes in her bed punching her headboard with her fists like a wild animal). I sent her assistant principal and teachers an email telling them about the problem of her filling in the agenda. Heck, she has a para-pro for two periods, a small group resource class for two periods, and a class with only two students in it for another class. Why can't someone check to see if she's writing crap in her agenda? I'm not asking them to do it for her! The other problem is that she has yet to receive any consequences for not having her homework completed - all year! So, why in the world would she actually do the work if she doesn't have to have any consequences? Anyway, the teachers responded with emails telling me how sweet and hard-working she is and that they just think she's doing her best. Seriously? Doing her best is concocting her own homework assignments? Is this a creative arts school where she gets bonus points for imagination? So, tonight, she's been at the table since 4:30. She had to do a ton of classwork that she didn't do from yesterday and today, homework from both days, and she has a very elaborate book report due tomorrow that she hasn't even finished reading the book for. Anyone read the biography of Judy Blume? Yeah, not me either. But, I don't feel like I can send her to school tomorrow without it all done. I feel like my own freaking reputation is on the line. They already think I'm a crappy parent and that I'm asking too much of her. Heck, I haven't even begun to check right and wrong answers so I'm really not even asking anything of her academically other than to have some sort of product to turn in. A friend keeps telling me that this is not really a reflection on me but on her hardships early on. Ok. That sounds sweet but it doesn't make me feel any better. Do you know what I think when a kid continues to not turn in homework? My first thought is, "Why can't your mom or dad help you make sure this gets done?" Sorry. It's true. Children are definitely a reflection of their parents and I feel like Dasha makes me look like a major loser. But what do I do with her? Her room currently only has a bed, book shelf (it was too heavy for me to move), and her dresser. I took everything out of her room and set goals for her to earn it back but she doesn't even care that it's gone! And, while I'm trying to deal with all of this, Annie and Grant are left to their own devices to entertain themselves. I only have a few waking hours with them a day and this is how I have to spend them. Once again, this sucks and I can't keep it up.
I can't even keep writing all of this out tonight. Dasha is now ready to start her book report and just realized that she left the book at school. Come on! Do I cry? Do I scream? Do I simply walk away? What do I do? I just need a safety zone to unravel. Yeah, mom and dad watch the kids but I'm still ultimately "on call" if something happens. Yeah, I can get a sitter. But, once again, I'm ultimately "on call." My life rotates between giving to my kids at school and at home. I don't feel like I'm "getting" back from anyone! Take, take, take. Yes, that's my job as a mom and teacher but there has to be a point where you wave the flag and ask for a time out.
And, then there's Grant. He baffles me. He tells me one thing but his dad something different. Then, I'm assumed to be a liar making up stories to make Eric feel guilty. Come on. I don't have time to concoct lies to cause injuries. I just don't know what's going on with Grant. Is it just the preteen thing? He can be so loving and sensitive and then do a 180 and act like he's just insulted by my very presence. I've had a stomach bug for the last two nights and he's actually stood over me in the bathroom and pulled my hair back as I puked. He's freaking 11 years old. That's not his job! Then, he told me that someone should invent something to hold your hair back when you're sick. I hated to tell him that it's called a rubber band. Then, when I'm engaged with Dasha, he takes Annie and distracts her. I can hear him playing kitchen with her over the monitor and it just makes me feel like such a loser. He's having to be the sane adult and protector while I act like a raging lunatic. Ugh.
Then, there's the subject of church. If you're easily offended, just stop reading now. I don't have any filters functioning to keep things PC or even polite. Consider yourself warned. Basically, I've lost my place in church. Church seems to be for married people or young single people. The sight of couples sitting contently though service together makes me crazy. Selfish, yep. I just can't stand to see it. Beyond that, I'm trying to figure out a few things about the "church" in the role of an adulterous relationship, as well. Back in January, we sat in a new small group together and laid out the story and trials of what we'd walked through and where we were headed. (I feel like SUCH a fool now thinking about that night. The things he said about where our path was headed were lies and I wonder how many people sitting in the room knew it before I did). Anyway, one couple in the group said that they had had an affair and cheated on their spouses but they were simply "soul mates" and just meant to be together. They left their spouses and got married. Then, they went to church, joined a small group, and felt safe to share that their marriage was born of sin. I almost vomited as they told the stories of cheating and how "right" they were for each other. I could think of nothing but Eric and Her sitting in some small group telling the same sort of story. Now, mind you, I thought that WE had chosen a different road and were heading toward putting US back together at the time. Eric and I even talked about the other couple's conversation. But now, to think that a church would embrace people in these kinds of relationships bothers me. Maybe I'm really wrong. Probably. But, how can they just waltz into a Holy place and play the "God game?" Eric tells Grant that he goes to church every Sunday now, too. Once again, where is the church's place in this? I know that "love one another" is the starting point but when does someone point out the sin? As I write that, I can hear someone saying, "What about the log in your own eye?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember, I said this was not PC or even reasonable. However, when Grant brought up going to church last Sunday, I just didn't know what to do. Sitting through a service is so hard. Yeah, I should focus on the message and not others around me but it's so hard! Seeing husbands and wives whispering back and forth. Holding hands. Crap. The whole thing just makes me sick. I absolutely know that I'm being selfish like a two year old and saying that if I can't have it, no one else should either. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to brain battles. I have the head knowledge. A lot of it. But, getting it to an application stage is sometimes very difficult. So, I guess this all basically boils down to the fact that I'd like to summon the powers of Zeus for a few hours and lob lightening bolts at all of the people that I don't think deserve to go to church. Sounds reasonable. Right? Argh. See? When I write all of these rantings down, somehow, I see how stupid they sound and I can just argue with myself even more about being reasonable and Holy. How do I get a foot-hold to get back to that place? Do I harden my own heart and put on more armor to hide everything?
Well, now that I've confessed that I'd like blow up most of the known world with lightening bolts, I think I've pretty much purged my rage for the evening. However, I now must go and help Grant roll up a sleeping bag and stuff it into a sack that looks like would only hold a washcloth - not a ginormous sleeping bag, and help him finish packing for a big camping trip. In my attempt to help, I keep asking him if he remembered to get this or that and he rewards me with huffing. Geez. On the last trip, he was upset that he'd forgotten TP so what am I doing wrong by asking him if he packed it this time? I just can't get it right! Then, I get to go "help" Dasha fill a bag with items that represent Judy Blume, decorate the outside of the bag, and then write a five paragraph essay. That ought to be fun considering I haven't read the 220 page book! If it were Grant, I'd probably send him to bed and just do it myself. That doesn't work with Dasha. Her first words to the teacher would be, "My mom wouldn't let me do my own book report. She did it and made me go to bed!" Then, the teacher would send me another accusatory email. Maybe she'd like to take Dasha for the weekend and see how long she could endure.
Bottom line, I need a break. I need to let my guard down and let the emotions out. I've found myself in a state of anger and rage that I haven't know in some time. My numbness mechanism seems broken and every single thing zips right through to my soul and stings like a hot dart. Someone asked if I was depressed and needed some meds. I don't think so. I've talked with my doctor about it and she would write me a prescription without hesitation but I just don't see this as depression. I just feel like I'm in war and I keep losing battle after battle but I can't put down my weapons or armor for fear someone will need protecting or someone will try to attack me. It's weariness. Not depression.
What an entry this has been. Like I said, the thoughts are like splatters on a dark alley wall. They are messy and probably violate some sort of city ordinance but they are real and represent what's thrashing around in my noggin right now. So, sweet dreams to all as I go and learn about Judy Blume and pull out the glitter and glue. Blah.

Good night, all.

Drunken Monsters Having a Keg Party

2011-10-15T20:49:00.000-04:00

Days like this don't even deserve taking a Mulligan on. I got nothing accomplished with my side-kick in tow today. Then, I realized that I somehow entered the mortgage payment twice in epay and was rewarded with counting pennies to pay for gas when my debit card wouldn't work. (And, I don't have a credit card so I was literally stuck). Then, as I tried to change the light bulb in the light on the front porch, I fell off the step stool and into the holly bushes. Normally, I would have waited to handle such a task until daylight but several cars have been broken into in our subdivision (including mine - didn't take anything but left my GPS on the ground and greasy hand prints all over everything) and I've been leaving the front porch lights on for my own sanity. Now, to finish laundry and cleaning up the corpses of millions of little flying ants that must have crawled in through the window (closed) and decided that the end of their journey should be on my windowsill. Really?

I'm not quite sure why anyone is still reading this stuff because I'm struggling to even find humor in this journey right now. Yeah, I know I'll come out on the other end of this dark tunnel in a little bit but, for now, the light that I see at the end of the tunnel is only the light of a freight train headed straight for me. I'm finding out that when you're at your darkest point on this journey, all of the monsters and haunts suddenly feel the freedom to come creeping out. All of those thoughts that float in the back corners of my mind in the cobwebs start to surface like, "What was so great about her that he'd leave me and three kids in this mess?" Or, even better, "What's wrong with me that's so horrible?" And then, there's the recounting of the laundry list of things that he said were "wrong" with me and I wonder what I could've done differently to keep him here so the kids would at least have a dad. I've already battled these monsters and I knew I hadn't slain them but I sure thought that I'd done enough damage to render them incapable of eeking out of their dark corners. But, they seem to feel quite confident to creep out in the darkest moments. And tonight, they're having their very own kegger right in the middle of my brain. Drunken monsters rummaging around. Knocking over boxes of thoughts and memories that I'd packaged up and stacked neatly in the very back shelves of my mind.

I just want a day to reset and battle the monsters and throw them out. I don't think it's possible to completely kill these kinds of monsters but I need time to do enough damage to knock them out cold for at least.... oh, maybe 50 years!

So, I'm not headed to bed any time soon. I'm back at a point where I dread sleep. The monsters come out the minute I close my eyes. Tomorrow, I will get up and do my best to open the windows of my brain and let the light shine in and send the furry beasts back to their corners so I can take care of the business at hand and get off of this dang detour on my journey and back on track.

Good night, all.

Charlie Brown's Teacher and Monster Spray

2011-10-14T21:42:00.001-04:00

Yep. This about says it all. Just when I think I have things mildly under control and can collapse onto the sofa without worry that the house will burn down around me, this kind of thing happens. What makes children so darn strong willed? She says she wants milk (warmed). I don't get it fast enough. She decides to get it herself. She managed to open the refrigerator, get the milk, get a cup, and was opening the microwave when I found her. Heaven forbid, I was trying to change the loads of laundry. The bright side of this is that she hadn't tried to actually pour the milk into the cup yet. Ugh.

So, it's Friday night and supposed to be my favorite night. I'm beginning to think that there's not ever going to be a favorite night again because they all seem quite alike at this point. If I'm not putting out fires (like the one Annie could have started), I'm trying to keep up with the chores. If I'm not doing chores of some sort, I'm mucking through tweenage drama. Pardon my selfishness, but when I do simply get a night off?

I did manage to make it through school this week. That's another bright spot. This week was supposed to have been a bit less stressful than last week but that sure didn't work out.

While the Boosterthon team was at our school, I got a letter full of rage from a nutty parent wanting me to know that she completely disagrees with fundraisers and just wants to give a flat donation. Um, well. First of all, why blast me about it and why don't you just do it? This set the tone for the rest of the week. We also had benchmark testing which doesn't mix well with Boosterthon. It's kind of like feeding a kid a whole bunch of Varsity dogs and then putting them on a roller coaster that is on a direct flight without any stops. So, after doing my darndest to bribe the kids to do their best, here's what I got.

This was the science benchmark finale. I'd already told this kid's mom that he was having a hard time getting through the entire test each day and was getting lost in daydreams. I think I simply sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher to her. We'll see what she has to say when she gets the email with this picture attached. (No, I'm not heartless enough to not notice the sad face on the creature. I see it). Do parents think that I really like taking my own personal time to call and gripe about their child? Believe it or not, I have much better things to do with my time - like getting Annie her milk before she does it herself! I just want to meet the folks that think all of this standardized testing is appropriate for eight year olds. Come on! I can't begin to tell you how many kids were sucking their thumbs by 2:00 this afternoon. They were exhausted. They couldn't even hide those sleepy little secrets that normally only sneak out when they are at home sacked out on the sofa! And, the crying... Oh, the crying. I had kids crying this week that probably wouldn't shed a tear if you stuck an arrow through their arm. Anxiety, excitability, and exhaustion just don't make great foundations for testing how much a kid has retained.

Let's add to the drama of dealing with a classroom of mostly melting down kids, writing a grant proposal in less than a week, picking new insurance plans, finalizing report cards, and attending to various other silly jobs!

For Grant, keeping up with his homework has become my burden. I can't recount how many times he's told me that he finished his homework in class only to find out that it wasn't completely finished and he thought he'd be able to finish it during homeroom. He's also given me the slip about tests. When questioned, he tells me that he knows everything and got a great grade. Usually by the next afternoon, I have an email from the online grade book saying otherwise. So, I now get to go back to holding his hand through homework every night in order to keep his grades up. Should I care? Should I just let him fall on his face and get kicked out of advanced classes? I just don't know. He's SO capable but he's just not motivated. Blah!

For Dasha, a trip to the audiologist proved to be nothing less than interesting. Remember how she failed the school's hearing test? Well, the school wanted me to take her to the county audiologist but they only had appointments during school hours which would have required me to take another day off work. Ugh. I only have so many days to spare and I'd much prefer to use those when one of the crumb snatchers is really sick! So, the pediatrician advised that I take her to a private practice. Yeah, no surprise there. Ka-ching! They saw "co-pay" written all over that one! So, my mom was generous enough to deliver Dasha to the appointment. The discovery... she has fluid behind her ear drums. To most kids, they'd be shrieking in pain. To Dasha, nothing. We've had this problem before. So, as Grant finishes up his antibiotics, Dasha will start a round of her own to take care of the fluid. Then, hmmmm, yip, we have to go back for a recheck. Ka-ching! Seriously! I'm convinced that by the end of the month, the co-pays will surpass the mortgage! Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful that I'm not paying completely out of pocket but this is getting old. Dasha's hearing was impacted slightly on one side by the fluid but she can certainly hear well enough to know what we're saying to her!

For Annie, well, there's not much to say there beyond, "She's Annie." She's still working on the potty training issue. She does beautifully at the sitter's house and even wore "real" panties today. However, when we get home, NOPE! In fact, when I went to change her Pull Up tonight, she peed right on my bed - again! What the heck! It's like she's a dog marking her territory! That's the fourth time she's peed on my bed. Do you know what a pain in the butt it is to strip a king sized bed and change the sheets?

I mean, look at her! This is what she deems appropriate table manners. Her butt never lands in the seat. And lately, both feet don't even touch the chair. The sitter swears to me that she sits at the table there. Ugh.

For me, well, there's just not too much to say. I know that I'm in a bad place when my dad tells me I need to get some rest. (This coming from a man who might not notice if one of my arms was missing). I've had less than five hours of sleep per night for the last couple of weeks and then in the other 21 hours, I've gone non-stop. Yes, I'm tired but if I stop, who will pick up the pieces when they start to fall? Trying to juggle work, side jobs, kids, homework, and chores - all of those things are necessary. It's not like I'm trying to play golf five days a week and could just drop an extra curricular activity. Nope. The minute laundry becomes and extra curricular activity, please let me know.

Yes, it all seems to be doom and gloom. That's not true. There has definitely been laughter and playfulness within the house and at school. In fact, the biggest laugh of all came from Annie this week. She's suddenly become "scared" of monsters and yells and carries on when she sees something she deems as scary. I thought I was being a super mom and grabbed the squirt bottle of water from my bathroom that I use to tame her mane in the mornings and told her that it was "monster spray" and would get rid of the scary things. It worked beautifully that night. However, when I went to fix her hair the next morning and used the same spray bottle, she started screaming at me and melting down (not what I enjoy at 6:15 a.m.). She said, "I not a scary monster! Don't use that on me!" Oh. Hmmm... Point taken. She went to the sitter's house with crazy hair and I added "spray bottle" to my grocery list. Like I said, there are definitely moments of fun but once the kids are in bed, it's like the clouds descend and the reality of my current life closes in on me. Bills, the future, the kids, Christmas, divorce, keeping up with the pace of things... all of those monsters start to haunt me and they don't seem to respond to the monster spray. (However, I think there are some people who resort to alcohol as their own personal monster spray and I can certainly understand why).

So, as I wrap up for the evening, I am waiting for a load of laundry including Grant's scout attire to finish up. Grant has to be at a scout clinic at 6:45 in the morning. Dasha has her respite day at 10:00. So, Annie and I will.... who knows.

Good night, all.

Doing the Macarena, Tango, and Cotton Eye Joe

2011-10-11T22:49:00.001-04:00

Yeah, everyone has seen the quote. I know. Nothing original. But, I'm just making a point. I've done a jig. I've done the Macarena. I've even done a bit of Cotton Eye Joe followed with a Tango but the storm just won't seem to pass. It's late and I won't begin to go into too much detail but Monday was L O N G. I figured out why Dasha has acted so nutty lately and it can be directly linked to her lack of sleep and focus on playing her Nintendo through the night in order to "beat" the Tale of Desperaux game. Grant spent his lunch at the silent table today which was a first for him. Although, I think I was more shell shocked than he was. Annie peed and poo'd in the potty today for the sitter but came home and made puddles and piles in the floor like a puppy. I've gotten three surprise bills that caught me completely off guard. And, to top it off, the beautiful picture wall that I worked so hard to finish is now laying across the foyer in pieces. The stupid 3M picture hooks obviously don't like cold air and they all gave way. So, I now have broken glass and frames littering the entryway. Perfect-O! So, I've danced my heart out trying to wait the storm out but I need to sit the next dance out and catch my breath. No, I'm not giving up on dancing through this storm but I just need to let my feet rest because these darn tap shoes are wearing blisters on my feet and on my soul.

Good night, all.

Liability, Who's on First, and Extreme Home Makeovers

2011-10-09T23:20:00.000-04:00

Saying that it's been, "One of those weeks," just doesn't even begin to cut it! It's been one of those weeks that would have made any sane person reevaluate their life and simply shake their head and then do a Google search for "psychiatric help." Me, on the other hand, came out relatively unscathed and just a little tired.

Every afternoon last week involved some sort of "out of the ordinary" planning. From having Grant's gangrene hand checked out to picking up Dasha's braces, it was just enough to put a ding in my my numb force field, though.

This week (and last week) at school, we're hosting the Boosterthon team. Yes, these guys come in and help our school raise an incredible amount of money but they're like Wiggles on steroids! I swear that they all have Red Bull IVs tucked into a vein somewhere! Anyway, my "kids" won a poster contest this week that I didn't know about until I was leaving school last Friday. So, I spent my Sunday night on the patio spray painting a big foam board so that my "students" could finish the poster. Bottom line, my "kids" won the contest and got to have time on Friday afternoon in a bounce house. OK. Let's look at this logistically. There's one of me. There are 21 of them. Hmmmm... 1 to 21 ratio of 8 year olds to adults. The odds were stacked against me to start with. I did my darnedest to lay out my expectations about rough housing and other such activities prior to leaving the classroom. (Did I also mention that I have way more boys than girls in my classroom)? When we finally left the classroom and headed to Romper Room, the kids all started eying me like they were all waiting for some undisclosed signal to surround me, tie me up, and have their own way in the bounce houses! I was wrong. They actually did a great job! Whew! However, the liability of being responsible for someone else's kid in one of those inflatable death traps was nothing short of nerve racking. I started the time trying walk between the two inflatables and monitor. I'd split the kids into four groups and had planned to rotate them very methodically. Ha! When will I ever learn? Eventually, all of the kids sort of figured out where they wanted to play and settled in. At that point, I stationed myself at the bottom of the huge slide and simply took pictures. I figured that I'd at least be able to have a picture to show their parents to prove that I truly was monitoring the situation! After our time was up, all 21 kids and I walked away without having any major injuries. (One student did knee himself in the mouth and cause one of the brackets of his braces to split his lip. He opted for "self-care" and continued to play)!

And, that was the drama that closed out my school week. However, I brought home my own assignments which are still sitting neatly in the back of the van. Between yearbook layouts, grant writing, and planning for next quarter, I'm still not ahead of the game.

OK. So, that was kind of long-winded just to give you an example of what a "normal" day looked like for me last week. I'm so thankful to have tomorrow off. Although, when I get my check at the end of the month and I'm missing a day's pay, I think the glory will wane.

While I don't have the extracurricular drama scheduled for this week like last week, the week started off with a birthday party today that was nothing short of... well, wowzers. The party was at a cute little "farm" in downtown Roswell. It was like an old house where each room had been turned into a themed playroom. Then, the outside was simply whimsical. Twinkle lights, fairy wings, and tutus were everywhere! Though all of the other guests were 7ish, Dasha fit right in.

The main activity at the party was a spa. The girls had facials, manicures, and pedicures. I started off on Dasha duty and Grant took Annie. (This was my little cousin's party so family from AL was there. This meant that Grant was forced to go and visit with them. He was NOT thrilled with the girly-ness of the situation). Anyway, as I watched Dasha, I noticed that she wasn't listening to what the host was saying. She was simply waiting to see what the other girls were doing around her. I'll admit that these kinds of situations make me very nervous. I like to fade into the background in social situations like this and I just don't have any need to "stand out." Dasha, on the other hand, enjoys being in the spot light and will do nearly anything to get herself there. Many times, her attempts to gain the spotlight are nothing short of embarrassing in my book. However, others keep telling me that the things she does aren't that outlandish. I don't know. I feel so guilty admitting that I'm nervous that she's going to do something ridiculous and I hover over her to try to squelch anything out of the ordinary that she might say or do. So, I just stood over her. Am I waiting to catch her being "bad?" I don't think so. But, as I watched, I noticed that she was watching the girls around her more than the host. This has NEVER been the case before! If you ask her what she perceives that others think about her, she will look at you cluelessly and tell you that she didn't know other people even have thoughts about her. (So many times, I've asked her something like, "What do you think your school friends would think if they saw you eating like that?)" So, why was she watching the other kids? I was dumbfounded. When we got home, I asked her. She told me that she couldn't see the host (remember the failed eye test with the new glasses) and she couldn't hear the directions (remember that audiology appointment she has on Thursday). Really? How could this be?

So, I'm left with trying to figure out what to do. She has brand new glass AND just had another vision test. The doctor won't give her a stronger prescription right now. As for the hearing, who knows.

I just feel helpless with her. Some days, she seems to have it together. Other days, I feel lucky if I can treat her like a five year old. How can she memorize how to play a song on the piano and keep that in her memory for weeks but can't remember a simple addition fact or even her phone number? I understand the logistics of how this can happen. (I have a degree in educational neurobiology. Of course I know what the text books say). But, putting this into daily living experiences is maddening. As we got ready to go to the party this afternoon, I went to help Dasha with her hair and couldn't even get the brush through it. Her hair was hard as a rock on top. It was like she'd shellacked it. Had she put gel in it? Had she found my hairspray? What in the world? Questioning her is like being trapped in the "Who's on First" joke. You ask a question. She gives you an answer that doesn't answer your question. So, after a very long Q&A session, I found out that Dasha has been out of shampoo for over a week now. Crap. Her hat hair was actually nothing shy of an oil slick that had simply congealed. I should take complete responsibility. I know. But, why in the world couldn't she have told me that she was out of shampoo? How hard is that? Should I be bathing her every single night? I do help her get into the tub and get the water started but I let her do the scrubbing. Ugh. I don't know what to do.

Currently, she's upstairs reading. Remember those book reports that keep "sneaking" up on us? Yep. She had another one due last Friday that I was clueless about. It wasn't written in her agenda until Saturday. She knows enough to cover her tracks and go back and write missing assignments in her agenda after the fact. But, that's not even my biggest gripe. The teachers have yet to take any "points" away from her. She misses assignments weekly but there is absolutely NO consequence at school. Mean mom is the only one that's fussing about it! But, Grant has missed several points for having to go back to his locker for a forgotten item or for missing a homework assignment. I'm going to have to set up a conference with the teachers. I feel like I'm left with two choices. Choice one is to leave her in general education classes where she only picks up minimal understanding but is surrounded by mainstream peers. Choice two is to have her put into resource classes where she might simply be stuffed on a computer every day and not learn anything (we know this from prior experience) and be surrounded by other special needs students. To an outsider, the choice would be to obviously go with option one. However, option one leaves me constantly struggling to fill in the gaps, figure out the missing pieces, and try to convince her that she, too, has to follow the rules even if she doesn't receive any consequences. I'm pulling my hair out and the other two kids are suffering because of it, too. From 4:00 to 9:00 each night, I'm focused on Dasha and getting her assignments completed. Many nights, we have to complete things that she didn't finish in class, too! (Heck, she has a para pro! Where is this para pro when Dasha is staring into space and not doing her work)? I wish I had the resources to put her in a special school where they could teach her on her level (third gradeish) and fill in the gaps that are still missing from her time in the orphanage.

Please don't think that I don't love her. I do. I'm just stumped as to how to parent her. I don't know what's best for her and I feel completely lost with her right now. She frustrates my perfectionist tendencies to no end but has her own set of gifts that needs to be developed. How do I do that?

Then, there's Annie. I don't understand her, either! She is such an adventurer and doesn't have any need to fade into the background. She will run to the middle of a room and "tap it out" or hold her own ballet in the middle of an aisle in WalMart. She's full of life. You know, when I stumbled into this journey, there were many nights when I thought that having a two year old along for the journey would make things more complicated because I couldn't reason with her. I've changed my mind. Despite the fact that she has Eric's soul and completely reminds me of him in so many ways, she is full of life and keeps me going. She gives without expectation (unless you have food) and receives with the excitement that you only see in children. But, I still don't understand what motivates her. She's stubborn and will get what she wants no matter what anyone says! There is a definite reason that children are meant to have two parents. Two heads are better than one. Not a day passes when I don't worry that I'm squelching her spirit and putting limitations on her abilities that Eric would be better to direct since they're so similar. However, all I can say is that I'm doing the best I can. God has to know and see that and be making provisions for her. I will do whatever is necessary to mold her into the person she's meant to be but for now, the mold I'm holding simply has a big question mark across it.

While I'm on the subject of kids, I might as well go ahead and throw Grant into the discussion. Thank goodness, the mega antibiotics that he's been on for the last few days have helped his hand. The swelling is down considerably and he's beginning to regain movement in his thumb. Whew! The next time he has a scouting adventure, I'm going to bubble wrap him! And, I'm going to ask the scouts to have a refresher course in wound cleaning! Step one should be to clean the area! Step two should THEN be to apply Neosporin and a Band-Aid. Leaving out step one doesn't produce fantabulous results! I'm not going to go into sloppy emotional details about Grant tonight. There's just not enough time. Some days, I understand him. Other days, I'm clueless. My confusion with him, though, is simply due to the fact that I've never been a preteen male. (Yeah, I know. Big newsflash)!

So, tonight I find myself not understanding my children. I'm on a day-to-day basis with them. You know those desk calendars that they sell at Christmas time that have a page to tear off each day? I need one of those with parenting instructions for each day of the year. Had I had a calendar like that, October 7th should have said, "If you have a preteen male, do not text him lovey things - even if you just want to check on his life-threatening injury." Boy, having something like that sure would have saved me some drama on Friday! Yesterday's page would have probably said, "Do not assume that your 13 year old will express her toiletry needs to you. Give her a checklist to fill out each week." Maybe that would have saved me the helmet hair drama from this morning. And, hopefully, somewhere in that calendar, a page would have a pointer that says something like, "Do not remove your toddler's Pull Up on freshly washed sheets. The mere smell of clean linens will make her forcefully pee and soak the sheets." If anyone runs across a calendar like that, please let me know. Or, if any of you have Dr. James Dobson on speed-dial, I'd be more than happy to have his number. I think when he got a glimpse of the Randolph kids' profile, he might give up on publishing parenting strategies. Maybe I should just research what types of literature jail wardens read to know how to handle their inmates. That might be a better parallel. (If that didn't work, I could find a zoology book). Whew!

I'm headed to bed (after I change the sheets that Annie peed on and then sat on with diaper rash cream on her bare butt). I finally got my picture wall finished in the foyer and it feels good to mark a completed project off of my list. The only piece that I still haven't finished in the foyer is finding the correct light bulb to go into the Ikea sconce. Who knew that it took a weird bulb that I should have bought while I was there? I really don't want to go downtown to buy one light bulb. That's kind of like sending an alcoholic into a bar to get a glass of water. Ikea is definitely like kryptonite to my budget and going there for simply a light bulb would be a challenge. I'd have to leave my debit card in the car and take in exact change. Argh! Those darn Swedes! But, I am really pleased with all of the "home makeover" jobs I've done in the last few weeks and proud that I've done them all on such a budget. Who knew that a little Krylon over a table from Good Will could give you a completely new and unique piece of furniture? When I get everything finished, I guess a tour might be in order. Virtual field trip? So, for tonight, I am heading to bed. Tomorrow, I'd planned to take the kids to the apple orchard but the forecast is calling for rain and, honestly, I don't know how I'd manage to get Dasha around on the uneven terrain. I have orchard and pumpkin patch coupons from Groupon that both expire at the end of this month so I have to figure out the timing soon!

Anyway, good night, all!

Children as a Business, Marriage as a Contract, and Stupidity

2011-10-06T19:06:00.000-04:00

Just a quick overview of today...
BLAH! I just wasted four hours of my life!

I'm convinced that the class I attended today was intended for folks without any common sense. I've tossed the idea of even posting anything around for the last hour. Am I simply putting others down to make myself feel better about sitting through a parenting class that I thought I was "above?" I really don't think so. Seriously! I think I was the only one in the room of over 100 without my butt crack hanging out (I don't think it was), a ring in an odd place (no comment, y'all), or that wasn't enjoying the class. The class should have been marketed as, "How to Do Divorce: Jerry Springer Style."

If you've never attended a course on how to parent through a divorce (state mandated, thank you very much) then you might not have a clue why I'm whining so much!

First of all, they packed over 100 people into a small courtroom. The lady sitting next to me was sitting in her chair and mine. For all I know, she might have been sitting in her other neighbor's chair, too. No. I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just telling you how darn cramped it was. And, in case you didn't know, I DON'T like to be touched by strangers or be in crowded places. My overlapping friend also had on some perfume that smelled similar to possum potion number nine.

While the speaker thought he was quite funny, his lame jokes just drug things out. He covered topics such as, "Don't Use Your Children as a Bargaining Tool, Don't Fight in Front of Your Kids, and even Don't Forget About Your Kids." Some of the attendees were asking questions about these topics which made it quite obvious that these topics were like headline news to them. My favorite question was from the man sitting across the room. He raised his hand and said (mumbled), "I'm tired of paying child support to four different women. It's getting old and I just can't afford it. I can't work because I have a disability." Um. I admit. My first thought was, "Well, darn mister. Obviously, you've got one body part that seems to be functioning quite well if you have twelve kids between four wives!" Seriously? And, I'm assuming he was getting rid of wifey poo number five if he was taking this class. I don't think anyone would pay for it and take it just for entertainment!

The other odd thing about the course was that most of the attendees were there with their spouses. I guess everyone was in varying stages of the divorce process. Maybe you get a buy one get one free deal if you go together. The room never got silent. At all times, there was bickering going on. The couple in front of me was arguing over whose friend ratted out their affair to the other. There was a serious undertone of hatred running rampant throughout the room. I've never been so relieved to know that everyone came through a security check as I was sitting there in that cramped court room.

The sad thing, never once was marriage mentioned as a sacred union or as anything more than a contractual obligation that could be dissolved with a bit of money and red tape. They never mentioned all of the increased risks that kids have when they have divorced parents. It was all about how to quickly dissolve your marriage and move onto another marriage with your kids in tow. At one point, they started referring to the kids as a business that you had to deal with despite your hatred for their other parent.

So, those were the facts of the day. The whole thing was asinine and almost irreverent to the institute of marriage. My emotions that went with the lecture throughout the four hour torture were much different. The tears started flowing within the first two minutes of this "therapist" beginning to talk about how much divorcing spouses hate each other and how that hate impacts their kids. Maybe everyone else in the room was able to look at the big picture but every time this guy said, "Kids," I imagined Annie, Grant, and Dasha. Not random kids. My kids. Our kids. Every time he said, "Spouse," I thought of Eric. Somehow, there's no hate with the thought. Sadness, yes. Acceptance of the situation, yes. But not someone that I'd want to poison as the couple behind me was discussing. I had no idea that you could put Clorox into someone's drink to "knock them off." Yeah, I knew you shouldn't go sipping the stuff like a cocktail but I'd never considered using it like that!

To me, it was all personal. The tears silently flowed (along with the snot) for the better part of the first hour. Of course, I didn't have a tissue with me and I was blocked into the corral and couldn't move out to get one. I just kept swiping my nose and face with my hand like I was three years old. When I left, I even had snot tread marks down my pants. Nice. I know you really needed that information.

Bottom line, I went. I sat. I got the certificate. That was the goal and it's now accomplished. However, I'm completely emotionally drained and still so stunned that folks don't have enough common sense to know what's good for their own kids. To top off my day at the circus, I picked the kids up and got everyone settled into homework only to find that Dasha had done more wrong than right today. When I started quizzing her about the teachers' emails, I noticed she had black marks all over her front teeth. Yep. She'd eaten another pencil. However, she didn't see the problem with it since it was "only a little one." I just couldn't engage. I took her pencils away and gave her crayons to finish her homework. I guess if she eats those, she'll at least have rainbow teeth instead of slate gray ones. I also ended up handing her over to Eric via video chart for some back-up. When she returned to the table to finsish her homework, she looked bewildered. I asked her what she was thinking and she said (and I quote), "I don't understand why everyone gets mad at me when I eat pencils. I have more pencils in my binder and it's not bad." Tomorrow morning, maybe I'll just serve her pencils for breakfast. I don't get it. What used to be once or twice a month drama has turned into everyday drama and I just don't have the mental capacities or patience to try to work it out logically with her. She simply doesn't understand logic!

This drama is all added to having to "milk" Grant's hand again, help him write the answers for his homework, and remember how to do 6th grade math.

Then, there's the sitter's frustration over trying to potty train Annie. Have I mentioned how stubborn Annie is? I guess Annie continues to go under the table at the sitter's house to poop. The moment Fatima sees her head under there, she takes her to the potty and waits for Annie to do... nothing. She puts the Pull Ups back on her and waits for her to head back to the table to take care of business. The sitter said that this went on all day long. The minute I put Annie into the car seat this afternoon to head home, she said, "I needa go home and poop in the potty." I brought her home and she went directly to her room and came back downstairs with the box of wipes and a diaper and asked me to change her diaper. Geez. Like I said, she may never potty train. She can just transition from Pull Ups to Depends. I don't really care right now.

So, this was my day and it's not even over yet.

I'm just looking forward to this long weekend. I'm not looking forward to having a furlough day and trying to figure out how to budget for that but I am looking forward to the extra day on Monday. I have tickets for an apple orchard and a pumpkin farm from Groupon. Maybe we'll do one of those things this weekend just to get out of the house. Or, maybe we'll just have nap time all weekend!

For now, I'm heading to find Dasha and make sure that she finished her homework and make sure that Grant's hand is milked again and wrapped up properly. Do you know how hard it is to wrap a child's hand with stretchy gauze so that areas A, B, and C are covered but areas D, E, and F are left open? I'm thinking about getting a cotton gardening glove and simply cutting holes in it in the correct spots and letting him wear that!

Good night, all!

Breaking Down

2011-10-05T21:07:00.003-04:00

Today has been a day for the history books. Emotional doesn't even begin to touch the road I've stumbled down today.

Remember Grant's little injury? Well, when he got up this morning, it was wickedly swollen and red. He was upset that he had PE today and wouldn't be able to sit out since he didn't have a doctor's excuse. I assumed that he was simply whining because he didn't want to run laps. SO, I helped him finish getting dressed since he can't maneuver his arm through his shirt and I got the girls ready to go.

First, I had to drop Dasha off at my parents' house so they could take her to her tutoring gig.

Next, I had to drop Annie off at the sitter's house.

Finally, I made it to school myself. Grant grumbled the entire way into the building so I asked one of the office staff their opinion of his situation. As she looked at his hand, her eyes bugged out and she quickly said that I needed to take him to the doctor and asked if she should get me a substitute. Crap. I told her to find me a sub for the second half of the day and I'd just get him an appointment at the pediatrician's office. Then, I sent Grant on to catch the bus for the day.

I dwelled on what to do. The pediatricians' office doesn't do x-rays so I knew they'd send us somewhere else to have that done anyway so I just chose to go to the Children's Healthcare Urgent Center. The problem was that I now had to make sure that I had plans that were good enough for a sub to follow for the remainder of the day AND I had to make sure I had everything together for tomorrow since I'd already planned to be out on Thursday for that parenting class. To say the least, I was majorly frazzled.

Somehow, I managed to get it all together and left the building around 11:30. I picked Grant up at school and headed to the doctor. When we signed in at 12:10, there was a ginormous sign that noted the wait time was between 90 and 120 minutes. Perfect-o. I love being coughed on by other people's children and watching them puke on themselves. I insisted that Grant and I take seats in a remote corner and act as if we were criminals trying to hide out. He willingly agreed and there we sat. And sat. And sat. And sat. I kept looking at the clock and doing the math. I had to be in car line to pick Dasha up no later than 3:20 in order to get her to the other side of town to pick up her new braces.

Finally, they called us back and the triage nurse checked him out and then stuck us in a room with Yo Gabba Gabba blaring. That might be soothing for a 3 year old but it was nothing shy of irritating to me. I'm convinced that the person that invented that show was high on something (even it was spray paint) when they created that mess.

Finally, the doctor came in and looked at Grant's hand. He abruptly called for the nurse to move us to the trauma room. This is where my major undoing began. The minute that doctor said, "Trauma room," my mind did a major rewind to November of 2004 when the doctor at Scottish Rite said the same thing to us about Ansley. (Mind you, I hadn't even been in the urgent care facility since I was there with Ansley. That was bad enough to keep remembering them trying to give her a nebulizer treatment and declare that she might have asthma). Anyway, I know that I turned three shades of white when the word "trauma" came out of the doctor's mouth. The only thing that might have saved me was that the doctor had a very thick Indian accent and "trauma" sounded something more like "traaamaaa."

While I was focused on keeping myself upright, I neglected to realize that Grant was about to lose it, as well. He didn't have any idea about my struggle. All he knew was that the doctor was acting like something was very wrong and he was scared. My enormous 11 year old giant of a child actually reached out for my hand and hid behind me. I wish I was kidding. I was like a car perched on a ledge ready to fall off the edge into oblivion. The only thing that was tethering me to the ground was Grant. I was trying so hard to act "normal." Do you know how much energy that takes? Trying to keep your feet on the ground, your guts in your stomach and off of the floor, and your mind focused on a foreign doctor's instruction is just about too much!

So, I'll spare you the gruesome details of the procedure that followed. If I hadn't already been in numb mode, I would have been out cold. Poor Grant. He was laying there on a gurney with a nurse readied to hold him down if I failed on my job and the doctor hovering over him. It's one thing to have a sick infant who can't verbalize their needs or feelings but to have a very alert and very verbal kid laying there like that... Memories that I thought I'd packed away for good came flying at me from every direction. What ifs started swirling around me. The looks and smells of that cramped little room just added to the situation.

Finally, the doctor proclaimed that he was done with the procedure and that he'd emptied the abscess. Oh, did I mention the actual problem? His hand was immobile due to the infection that had set in. I thought the swelling was from a sprain or even a broken bone but, nope, infection was the culprit.

Then, there were x-rays to confirm that the stick which punctured his hand had been completely removed and that all "foreign objects" had been cleared. When Grant heard the possibility of there being more stick left in the wound, he plopped down in the chair and the tears started. In his mind, he was already doing the what ifs. What do you say? Telling him that it won't hurt anymore is a stupid lie. I ended up saying all I could, "We'll figure it all out."

When the doctor proclaimed Grant's hand to be stick-free, he moved on to the next plausible catastrophe. He said that he was worried that the tendon might be infected. If that was the case, we'd have to go to the children's hospital and have a hand surgeon look at it. Nice. Did he have to say that in front of Grant? I surely didn't want to hear it but...

So, we were finally dismissed with a prescription for some massive antibiotics and strict directions about what to do with the wound. We'll have it rechecked on Friday to see if the swelling and redness have subsided. If not, I guess we'll be at the hospital. Please, no. I truly don't know if I could make it through that journey with Grant.

Obviously, I'm skipping details but at this point tonight, I think my brain is purposely blanking out some of the sights and smells as a defense mechanism.

I ended up dropping Grant off at mom's house and leaving him there while I rushed to the middle school to pick Dasha up for her doctor's appointment. I admit that I hit a low that I haven't had in a very long time along the way. I cried like I haven't cried in weeks. Grant is my baby. He's been through so much. Damn it! He doesn't deserve this! He watched his baby sister die. He turned off the dead-lined monitor that she was hooked to. He endures lots of trials with Dasha. He's lost his dad. And, now, to watch him lie on a bed shaking in pain... It's too much. The boy deserves nothing shy of a major vacation. I know he can be a royal pain in the butt. However, the what ifs that took hold of me standing in the trauma bay of the urgent care center all started morphing into very scary monsters. Those monsters overshadowed all of the stupid things Grant does to his sisters (and his clean laundry).

By the time I'd gotten into car line to pick Dasha up, I was grateful that I had a few minutes to get myself together.

The remainder of the evening was much less traumatic. However, my big fear has now become wondering if Grant would even tell me if he was having any of the signs of a severe tendon infection in an attempt to keep himself out of the hospital. I keep asking him how his hand feels. I'm not trying to be a ninny but I think I need to hear him say that it feels "fine" in order to keep some of the what if monsters behind their respective doors.

So, I'm heading to bed to collapse. I'm hoping that the what if monsters will hear my fervent prayers and go away and allow sleep to capture me for at least a few hours. Tomorrow, I have to get up and deliver the kids to their respective places and then deliver my own butt to the Marietta courthouse to listen to the million and one ways that divorce can screw up a kid and the million and one ways to make it all better. Hopefully, I can divert my seething aggravation to having to waste both my sick days and my money on this course. Why does someone else's crap become my inconvenience and my job to clean up? As I've said a million times, I would have NEVER thought this would have been the journey that I'd be on.

Tomorrow is another day.

Good night, all.

Juggling While Running the Race

2011-10-02T21:21:00.000-04:00

I just don't even know where to begin. I'm seriously weary. I feel like just when I'd gotten good at juggling sixteen balls, someone threw in numbers seventeen and eighteen just for fun. Now, I've got to decided if I should work myself into a dither trying to keep all eighteen balls in the air or just drop them all and walk away. Obviously, walking away isn't an option. And, truthfully, trying to pick up all eighteen balls after they land and roll away like the meatball on top of the spaghetti (if you don't remember that song from your preschool days, come to my house for a while) just sounds overwhelming.

For the last two weeks, organizing my thoughts and posting them here has been on my priority list. However, my children seem to have the knack for sabotaging that list every single weekend.

Here are the simple highlights from the last few weeks. I'll add details when my children all grow up and move out (maybe).

Two weeks ago...
My fall break was refreshing. I got a lot of things done to the house that I've been trying to do for weeks. Pinterest has become a dangerous place for me but also a great site to figure out how to do things for cheap and free! However, I made just enough of a mess during my "staycation" that it lingered throughout last week and is still haunting me tonight! I'm learning that if I don't invest at least an hour in domestic upkeep each day that things begin to mount up to critical proportions.

During the break, my birthday fell on that Friday. I made the final payment to pay the divorce lawyer that day. I can't even begin to open Pandora's Box on this whole subject right now. It's something I said I'd never do. But, I did. Once again, I have to frame everything on this unexpected journey knowing that I'm operating with integrity and in the best interest of those I'm now totally responsible for. I've found divorce lawyers to be nothing shy of man-hating, emotionless, fighters so, to say the least, they intimidate the crap out of me!

I must also mention that on the Friday before break, a random parent delivered an envelope to me in my classroom and gave me some special instructions for the envelope. Yes, I found it a bit strange but I did as I was told and realized why those directions had be given upon opening the envelope later that day. The gift in the envelope was anonymous (I sure haven't had too much luck with anonymous friends) but completely overwhelming. These days, it's gifts such as this one that remind me that God's promises are true even when those dark clouds seem to be surrounding me. I've tucked that special gift away for a very specific day. If that anonymous person happens to read my nutty thoughts, all I can say without sounding silly is, "Thank you."

Last week...
So, we head back to school. Within a couple of days, Dasha's teacher emails me with some issues. (Heck, this wasn't even the teacher of the class that she has a 53 in)! So, Dasha needs to be at school for tutoring this week by 7:30. Um. Huh? I have to be in my classroom by 7:20. Yeah. I've had to enlist my parents' help with that deal. It just so happens that Grant also has to be at school early to make up a math quiz since he has a C in math. Really? Like I said, they are tag teaming me in the crazy department. To top it off, the nurse from the middle school left me a message about looking for forms in Dasha's binder about her failing her eye test and her hearing test. Yeah. I've already done the partying with the opthomologists and specialists about her optic nerve issues. It aint gonna get any better than that, lady! She just got new glasses and those are the best suckers money can buy so just move her desk up in front of the board or put our name on the list for a seeing eye dog. I don't know what else to do! As for the hearing, she had tons of ear infections as a baby that didn't get treated so she has hearing damage. There's absolutely no where to document that on the one gazillion forms that they send home with the kids at the beginning of the year and I really wasn't in a spot to write some sort of cutesy "Get to Know You" book to send her teachers. That was the good thing about having her at school with me. Everyone knew who Dasha was and they knew what was going on. With that being said, I did at least email the nurse back with an abbreviated version of Dasha's history and attached a scanned copy of her last record from the optometrist and the pediatrician's visit from last week, too. Yeah, the pediatrician would (and I quote), "Like to see Dasha going to see the psychologist at least once a week during this very turbulent time." I started to reply, "Do you know what the word C O P A Y means?" No, I'm not going to let finances stand in the way of Dasha getting medical services that she needs but the therapist that she was seeing just wanted to "hang out" with her and then not tell me what was going on due to patient confidentially stuff. But, they sure thought a week at the adolescent psychiatric facility would serve her well. Hmm.....

Back to reality. Oh, wait. This IS my reality.

This weekend...
Friday night, I decided to take on the yard. We don't have a big yard. It's only about 1/8 of an acre but the HOA seems to target our yard so I don't let things get too far gone. I started with mowing the grass. That was pretty routine. I did have trouble starting the mower but when it finally fired, it was like some cartoon show and a huge gray smoke cloud eeked out of the engine. I kept waiting for a blazing fire to start but when it didn't, I quickly mowed the grass while watching for any flares or fireballs. Then, I got brave. The yard desperately needed edging. The edger we have looks like some sort of weapon. It has a huge metal blade on the bottom and I'm convinced it could slice your shin into thin slices just like they do meat in the deli. After quite a bit of wrestling with the beast (in the front yard, of course, so all of the neighbors could see), I got the death device started. Then, I realized that I didn't know how to use it. It had a trigger like a leaf blower but wheels like the mower. Hmmmm..... I ended up trying out several different positions with the awkward thing before figuring out how to settle the blade in between the grass and concrete. However, my aim was nothing shy of horrid so every time I got too close to the concrete, sparks spewed from the blade. At one point, a spark landed on top of my fabric tennis shoe and I was terrified that it would catch on fire. So, there I stood stomping one foot with the other. I just don't even want to know what the neighbors were thinking. I bet at least half of our street had congregated in the house next door to peek out of the windows yet be shielded from any flying debris. Finally, I did get the hang of it. It looks as if moles dug trenches throughout the front yard but, by golly, I dare the HOA to tell me that the sidewalk needs edging. I trenched the darn thing! I could fill the trench with water and call it a mote around the house! Ha! (Oh, while all of this was going on, the kids had been sequestered to the deck playing sand. This way, they were away from the debris field and hopefully, out of ear shot of the naughty things coming forth from my mouth. If Super Nanny had been here, I'd STILL be in the naughty chair)! When it came time to crank up the weed eater, I was so grateful that it was out of gas. I'm smart enough to know that it takes some weird ratio of oil and gas and, darn it, I didn't have any here and it was too late to run to the store! Bummer!

As silly as this sounds, six months ago, I would have walked away from the yard debacle in a torrent of tears. This week, there were no tears (unless you count those of the neighbors that were crying from laughing so hard). I call that moving in the right direction. Every day it looks a little different but I do recognize it.

Then, there are times like today when a simple trip to Home Depot sends me over the edge. I get so mad that I can't anticipate the ridiculous things that are going to set me off! I needed four nuts to sink into a piece of ply board in order to finish my beautiful bench. (Thanks, Pinterest). However, after scouring the aisles, I couldn't find what I needed. There was nothing hanging in the "nut section" that matched the description of what I needed. I couldn't find any employees to help me, either. Annie was standing in the bugging whining about wanting to get out and climb the ladder that someone had left in that aisle. Dasha was tripping over displays. And, Grant was walking around like a zombie. No, I'm serious. He was truly acting like a zombie. There I stood. All I wanted was a $2.00 baggie of nuts. Heck, I'd brought three major nuts into the store WITH me but I wasn't asking for miracles! I ended up plucking Annie from the bugging and darting for the door before the tears overtook me. Once again, the tears were not for Eric. Those are all gone. These tears were shed for simply wanting to feel some comfort in a moment of frustration and have a little bit of help with the kids. It can just be overwhelming. There are some moments that you just want someone's arms to run into and hear them lie and say, "It'll be ok."

I came home and collapsed on the sofa where Annie promptly climbed on top of me and brought me the remote. I cued up her Fresh Beat show and dozed through about four episodes. Yeah, she definitely maxed out her TV time for today but she can just add it to her list to take to her therapist one day!

The piece that I missed in all of this was Grant's bike spill. Saturday morning, he was to do a huge bike ride on the Silver Comet Trail with the scouts. Dad went, too. I'm not sure what happened but Grant ended up meeting up with gravity in a bad spot and went face first to the ground.

He bloodied his elbow, knees, and then took a stick to the soft, squishy skin between his thumb and pointer finger. Honestly, the stick gouge probably should have had a stitch or two. But, this morning, his whole freaking hand was swollen. Is it broken? Sprained? Going to need amputating? We all know that I'm crappy when it comes to diagnosing injuries. I went with my usual plan of action, self care. I guess if it's still as swollen and nasty tomorrow, I'll have to take him to the doctor. He's walking around holding his arm to the side so he doesn't bump his hand. I can't ever tell if he's being dramatic and trying to get my attention or just truly in pain. Ugh. I'm clueless as to how he's going to write tomorrow and manage his books but I guess he'll figure it out or the nurse will be calling me about being delinquent with him, too! (I'm wondering how many strikes I get with this lady before she reports me to some official).

Bottom line, yes, this is the abbreviated version of my life right now. I never know what silly thing is going to send me into a tailspin and, honestly, I never quite know how long it will take me to recover. I'm simply taking it day by day. I believe the kids are doing the same. Each morning, they draw straws to see who will get to play "Push Mom Over the Edge." I pity the person who plays tomorrow because I don't think I'll have too much of a fight to put up.

This week is crammed with various craziness that won't allow much rest, though. Tomorrow, we have a marathon faculty meeting. Tuesday, I have lots of other school paperwork to get done. Wednesday, Dasha has to meet with the orthopedist to get her new shoe inserts. Thursday, I get to go to a divorced parenting class to learn how to properly parent as a divorced mom. This is part of getting a legal divorce in GA. Hmmmm..... I wonder what they are going to tell me. I have nothing to offer but sarcasm about this. I'm missing a day of work plus having to pay to take the class plus having to juggle my kids' schedules around to make the timing work. Yeah. I don't remember ever signing up for this journey but I keep stepping in every conceivable pile of dog crap along the way! Like I said, I am not looking forward to having to give up one of my "sick" days to do this. My hope is, though, to be able to hand off the certificate from the class to the lawyer on Friday and then walk away. (I'm sure there's another pile of poo to drag my shoe through somewhere, though).

So, as you can see, I'm just weary. Oh, what I wouldn't do for a weekend off. A weekend just to do what I want to do and not be responsible for three kids. To sleep past 6:15 a.m. To pee without someone offering to help me. To have a snack or drink without someone asking to have some. To watch a TV show that doesn't have characters that burst into educational songs about sharing and caring. Or, to talk with someone on the phone without having three crumb snatchers all decided to pretend like they are on the Jerry Springer Show! Yes, I love them dearly but I need a break. They need a break.

OK, so before I end up heading down a road that I don't need to traverse tonight, I'm going to quit. I still have several loads of laundry to do and breakfasts and lunches to pack. Tomorrow is another day and I need to be ready to run the race.

Good night, all.

Blind, Deaf, and Polka Totted

2011-09-29T21:53:00.001-04:00

I promise that I'm not hiding. If I was, I could guarantee you that you wouldn't be able to find me and I sure wouldn't be posting! It has been an excruciatingly long week. My sister and her little man have been here so we've been hanging out with them in the afternoons. That's great but I haven't gotten laundry done or any of those other dreadful routine chores that I hate to do anyway. To top it off, Annie has decided to take option B for sleep this week. Although I never got the instruction manual, option B seems to be NONE OF THE ABOVE! She's gotten up at least three times every night and just wants to cuddle and then go back to sleep. While she's zooming back to nighty night land, my brain gets stuck in the ON position and I'm awake for hours. Ugh. I'm so glad that tomorrow is Friday.

Despite my exhaustion, the drama has been pretty low on the "A Night in Jail Sounds Good" scale. I think the worst of things was the notice that Dasha had failed her vision and hearing screening at school and needed to be rechecked by a "professional." Um. Does anyone remember my trips to the eye specialists, the mega-dollar glasses, and questions about the costs associated with a seeing eye dog? She was at the eye doctor in July and the specialist in August. She just got a new pair of glasses last week, too! Really? Was the eye test chart written in Japanese? As for the hearing, she just had a physical last week and they checked her hearing. She's always had poor hearing due to all of the untreated ear infections she had as an infant but she can pass the tests if she pays attention. Crap. Do I call the school and explain all of the juicy details and give them my excuses for sending a "blind and deaf" child to school? Or, do I just take the form to the doctor's office and let them handle it for a cost of $35? Oh well. If that's as bad as it got this week, I guess I can live with it!

Grant has been on edge all week but has had the sense to stay under my radar for fear of being shot down! He's nervous about his bike ride on Saturday but tries to act like he is just worried about the other boys' actions. Whatever. He's terrified of falling off of that bike and eating a mouthful of Silver Comet dirt in front of the other kids. Remember, he didn't even know how to ride a bike at this time last year! This is all new to him! I'm sure he'll survive (and the other kids will too).

I did enjoy my sister being here. It was fun to get to play with her little guy and then hand him back to her when he got fussy! That must be a little like what grandparents feel like. Today, my sister decided that she would have my van detailed for my birthday. I don't even want to know what it cost! I'm convinced that all five of us could have lived in that van for at least a week on the pretzel crumbs, water bottles, and general crumbage under Annie's car seat. The poor soul that cleaned the van actually pressure washed the mats and then steam cleaned the seats and carpet. That van hasn't been that clean since I bought it five years ago! However, it was definitely a wonderful feeling to drive down the road and have to pull the visor down to protect my eyes from the sun's glare. Usually, the sun couldn't even get through the layer of grime on the windows so we had no need for sunglasses or visors! It was one of those gifts that was completely unexpected but was SO appreciated. Even Annie noticed the clean carpet and said, "Mama! Look! The carpet is not poka totted! It's clean!" I wanted to remind her that it wouldn't be polka dotted if she wouldn't shake her cup of milk in the mornings and let it rain milk! So, somewhere, there's a car detailing worker going to sleep cursing my van and it's mysterious owner. (I'm sure my sister did NOT claim the van as her own and made sure that the worker knew that she'd never drive such a beast)! :)

Happy almost Friday!

Good night, all!

Crappy Wait Staff, Dancing Divas, and Going Commando (or not)

2011-09-27T21:56:00.002-04:00

I promise, I'm doing the best I can. I'm pooped! I pulled out of the driveway at 6:20 this morning and didn't get home until 7:45. I can't even type without having to continually backspace and respell. So, here's another shake down of my day in pictures. Maybe I'll have enough energy and time to actually put some kind of wisdom onto this page soon.

Grant has been working toward a 50 mile bike ride for a scouting badge. After these endurance runs, he walks funny for a few days! :)

He (and my dad) made it 26 miles on the Silver Comet Trail. Whew! He didn't like this trail as much because of (and I quote), "All of those old ladies walking at the speed of backwards make it hard to ride! I'm afraid of knocking one of them down and breaking their hips!" Such wisdom for an 11 year old. My reply to him was simply, "Please don't knock them down. They are older and have much more insurance than we do!" (Think Fried Green Tomatoes)!

And then, there's the morning glory call from Annie! She stands on her stool and waits for her milk and breakfast. I didn't get it ready to go fast enough this morning so she went into pout mode. Hey, I know I'm deficient in the kitchen. This is why I'm not a cook OR a waitress! She did stiff me on the tip! See if she gets service with a smile tomorrow morning!

Annie discovered babies. Believe it or not, this terror is actually very gentle (or she was while she was being eyed by three adults). She LOVES her little cousin and was quite envious of his paci! (We've told her that we need to give her pacis to him since HE is a baby)! Nope. Didn't work.

So, we did the trial class at ballet / tap today. Annie was SO excited! She hung from the windowsill watching the older girls.

When it was her turn, she was a bit intimidated at first and didn't understand being in a group setting AND having to following instructions instead of give them. My blood pressure was rising as I noticed that I could see the cracks of all of the other little girls through their leotards meaning that they were NOT wearing diapers and (hopefully) potty trained. Since there were no Code Yellows (or browns) on the floor, I assume that I am correct. It was Wizard of Oz day at dance so the girls all dressed up like Dorothy, danced over the rainbow (with the disco ball on), and marched around the yellow brick road. It was cute. Now, I just have to decide if I really want to do this every week. Yes, she'd enjoy it but is it really worth the money at this age? Decisions, decisions.

She liked the ballet shoes she borrowed but the tap shoes were the big deal. What two year old wouldn't love shoes that amplify every stomp they make? She acted like a professional tap dancer and kept jumping around. By this part of the lesson, she'd warmed up to the teacher and tried to commandeer her as her own personal dance slave. It worked momentarily until the teacher realized she'd been had! Anyway, she enjoyed it and talked about it for the rest of the night!

There's the daily wrap up. I'm heading to put a load of underwear in the wash so there's no drama tomorrow morning about having to go commando because of my inadequacies as a maid. Geez. I purposed that everyone simply turn their undies inside out or turn the front to the back but Grant was not amused and Dasha didn't get it. AND, of course, Annie could care less. She's more interested in what character is on her panties than what she's put in them or if they're clean! (Anyone have a carpet cleaner)? So, I'm going to bed to collapse. Hopefully, I'll find the time and energy to update my "soul status" before Christmas!

Good night, all.

P.S. - Dasha is still here and intact. She's had an incredible amount of homework (classwork sent home) to finish each night so she's been stuck at the table or at grandma's throughout a good bit of the weekly drama. What am I supposed to do? If I overrule the teacher and tell her to quit and leave it, she goes to school proclaiming in a bratty way that, "My mom said that I don't have to do this!" But, if I let her muddle through it (she didn't do it in class when she was supposed to and sure didn't ask for help), it means that I get to endure a three or four hour homework marathon complete with tears and tantrums (from me).

The Weekend Review - Picture Book Style

2011-09-26T22:09:00.001-04:00

Five minutes into our trip and Annie is already looking for an escape.

Get familiar with this photo. It's the only one that they all smiled in so it'll probably be our Christmas card photo since this won't happen again - EVER!

Gave up on the backpack the "leash" was attached to and then Annie decided to hold her own leash. Kind of defeated the purpose but she thought was in charge of someone. (We didn't tell her that it was HER)!

She was mesmerized with the scuba cleaners until one of them waved to her.

This is how the remainder of the trip was spent. Ow. Thirty five pounds of toddler gets heavy! Who cares what Annie thinks! Next time, I'm taking the darn stroller in!

Grant receiving an award at scouts that certifies him to play with fire. Hmmm... Who thought up this award? That's kind of like giving a boy permission to destroy.

You wouldn't know that he'd just himself a little temper tantrum, now, would you? Preteens are like Jekyll and Hyde!

And, this certificate allows him to use an axe, knife, and other sharp objects. Once again, who thought these things up? It HAD to be a man! No mother would ever ok these sorts of rewards!


I got a chuckle out of this one. Every now and then, you see a glimmer of Grant's pride shine through in a positive way. He was so proud of his accomplishments.

So, my internet has been on the fritz so I didn't get anything else posted and I'm done for the night. I took a new vitamin / herb supplement last night about 10:00 only to realize at 2:00 that the bottle clearly said that one of the side effects could be insomnia. Ya think? So, I think I finally drifted off to bed around 3:30 only to have the alarm go off at 5:15. Blah. So, after a night of having to play nice and be social at the scout banquet, I'm toast! Playing nice is really hard work! I'd like to think that I'd get to spend some time posting stuff here tomorrow night but Annie is having her first "ballet" class tomorrow night so I'm sure that will throw everything into a tailspin. I'm losing track of the days of the week simply trying to keep up with everyone's activities! Geez.

So, for tonight, I'll say, "Goodnight." I am heading to bed as a proud mama after watching Grant (trying not to remember his silly temper tantrum which made me wonder if he was really just a 2 year old stuck in an 18 year old's body). Lunches are packed. Clothes are laid out. Laundry is spilling out of the laundry area and down the stairs. Annie left banana bread crumbs all over the counter and kitchen floor but I'm convinced they'll be much easier to sweep up after they lay there all night and get stale (or a caravan of ants comes to have a midnight buffet). BUT, by golly, I'm going to sleep! No vitamins tonight and no insomnia. Just sleep.

Good night, all.

M u s t h a v e s l e e......zzzzzzzzzz

2011-09-24T22:47:00.003-04:00

No. Not "Must have sleeze." That's not even how you spell it! That kind of sleeze is sleAze! Geez. I'm over here about to drop with exhaustion and I see where your mind is...

Anyway, I'm still alive. I'm just exhausted after a week of intense elbow grease around the house. However, I must say that I'm quite proud of what I've gotten accomplished. The downstairs (minus the powder room with dark green walls infused with dust bunnies) has been revamped, re-curtained, re-decorated, and basically is now all mine. It looks like I want it to. (Oh, minus the hand-me-down couch with the nice blue and yellow country checks. Gag. But, hey, they were clean and free when my parents upgraded)! I'll post pictures tomorrow. I've spent less than $75 cash for everything so that diva on HGTV who claims she can Design on a Dime doesn't have anything on me!

Beyond that, things have been pretty quite. I did watch another birthday pass by. There wasn't much fanfare this year but that was ok. I had a pretty serious case of the "mind storms" on my big day so quiet was a good thing. We also "celebrated" the one year mark since my dad's stroke. It's hard to believe that whole ordeal was only a year ago. Heck, I just can't believe how much has happened in the last year. With every Christmas card I write, I talk about what "season" of my life it is. Well, I'd like to tell you that the "season" for the last year has been Hell but there have been some very good things that have come out of those dark clouds. I've learned a LOT.

Anyway, I have quite a blog entry going on my private site and I think by tomorrow I'll be ready to pull it here to the billboard of my life. As I said, I've dealt with some pretty heavy feelings this week and I try not to spew those recklessly (think projectile vomiting). It's amazing how much I've changed in 5 months. Wow.

So, as for tomorrow, we're headed to the aquarium with Dasha's special needs group. This time last week, my plan had been to stash Annie in the stroller and hope that Dasha wouldn't need me to carry her out. She's really having a hard time but she throws a royal tantrum when we talk about stretching her legs. Her physical therapist even went so far as to tell her that if she continued to ignore the needs of her legs that she'd end up having to have another surgery. Dasha says she doesn't remember the first one so I'm not sure if it even registered with her. I'm lost with how to handle her. (This loss doesn't even begin to cover her attempt to steal M&Ms from Publix this week or the discovery of her love letters to Grant's teachers - yes, she'd already delivered a few without us knowing). Anyway, back to tomorrow. When Annie saw me put the stroller in the back of the van this afternoon in preparation for tomorrow, she went nuts! She sat down in the drive way and wailed, "I not ride in stroller. I walk! I hold Gant's hand!" Blah. So, without further ado, I dug through the newly organized boxes in the garage and found just what I was looking for - a leash. Yep. I found one at TJ Maxx several months ago for less than $5 and I got it just for an occasion like this. Oh crap! I guess I should clarify! When I say "leash," I mean one of those things that is designed to tether a child to a parent. Not a real dog leash. Although, I might need those for Grant and Dasha. Anyway, I'm surprised that I'm really going to use that thing! I've always been SO judgmental of parents who "treat their kids like dogs." That was all before Annie came along. I figure that I can endure her wails throughout the aquarium tomorrow about wanting to walk and then trying to juggle Annie and Dasha with Grant getting completely frazzled and embarrassed OR I can simply leash the girl up! We'll see how it goes. For all I know, she might just unsnap the dumb thing and take off. If you hear that a small child disappeared at the aquarium and showed up in the sea otter enclosure, you don't even need to think twice. I'm sure it will be Annie. (Now, if you hear about a child ending up as shark bait, that might be one of the big kids or me).

I'm heading to bed to collapse. I was waiting up for Grant to get home from the Monster Truck race but I guess he and dad are being really wild and crazy and staying out past 10:00! Oh well. He'll just be a major pain in the butt to drag out of bed in the morning (especially with his 26 mile bike ride this morning - he may be walking funny too)!

So, tomorrow, I'll try to revisit my emotional spewage and repost here so you'll have a bigger picture of what's going on in my cyclonic head. I can tell you that the clouds are beginning to clear although fog frequently sets in. (Anyone else hearing strains of Bob Marley singing, "I can see clearly now the rain has gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.
It's gonna be a bright, bright, sun shiny day)? For tonight, though, the only thing I "see" is Mr. Sandman sandblasting my eyeballs shut!

For now,
Good night, all.

Fabric Houses, RTV Compound, and the Spin Cycle

2011-09-20T22:40:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Tuesday! I thought I'd be proactive this morning and get all of my errands done before lunch time. That way, I wouldn't have any excuse to bolt from the house when it was time to clean the garage. So, I left the big kids asleep and took the little monkey with me. I enjoy time alone with Annie. Although her constant talking can cause my ears to bleed, I can just never anticipate what's going to spill out of her mouth!

My first stop was WalMart. I needed some thread to finish sewing a dress. Of course, WalMart didn't have anything even close to the color I needed. Crap. That leaves me with driving toward the mall to Hobby Lobby or Joann's. I hadn't anticipated taking Annie into either one of those stores. Oh well. I didn't really have a choice in the matter. I sorted through my coupon envelope and realized I had a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby so I headed there. While trying to find the right color of thread, Annie spontaneously started playing house in the fabric section. She walked in between each rack of fabric and named off what room it was. She said the area between the two racks of baby fabrics was for her cousin Anderson. I asked her where my room was and she quickly pointed away from the fabric section down toward the seasonal area and said, "You can just go over there." Nice. I'll remember that when she wants to crash in my bed tomorrow! Anyway, she chose her "room" and quickly laid down on the bottom section of the rack and said, "Night, night. I need a get some rest so I'm not fussy." I left her there and finished looking for my thread. Don't panic. I could see her and she could see me. But, as I guessed, her "nap" didn't last too long. She popped up and said, "Good morning. I so glad to see you!" (That's what Fatima tells her when I drop her off each morning). So, my quick thread run turned into about 30 minutes of playing house in the fabric section. At first, I was antsy and ready to get out of that place (I'm sure that feeling is still related to my van flooding in the parking lot) but I quickly realized that I'll never be able to recapture the moments of playing house with her between the bolts of fabric. So, I joined her. We got weird looks from a few customers but most of the patrons in that section were older ladies who recognized the moment for what it was and ask Annie if they could look in her room or where the kitchen was. Annie had declared the area with the novelty fabrics which had some with coffee mugs and others with cherries as the kitchen. Duh!

Wanna know the crappy part of the whole story? When I finally convinced Annie to leave her house, I'd picked up a coloring book (yeah, you got me, I bribed her out of the store with a coloring book - like you've never had to do that to avoid an all out melee) and I completely forgot to get my thread. I put it down at some point and just never picked it back up again. I started to turn around and go back but I decided that I'd just roll that task over to tomorrow.

When I got home, the big kids were both out back playing in the sand. Honestly! Sand, crayons, and Legos are the only toys in this house that transcend all age groups.

I put Annie down for a nap and conked out, too. Playing house was just too intense for me (coupled with not going to bed until after 2:00 a.m. the last two nights).

However, there was no escaping the garage after nap time. It's been haunting me for weeks now and I'd like to think that I just wasn't emotionally ready to dig through everything that's been piled out there but I think the bigger excuse was that the job was just too big and I didn't want to start it! So, with the girls stationed in the drive way around a bucket of sand and Grant standing by looking like I'd ask him to go to a tea party, we started moving boxes out of the garage. Heck. It wasn't as bad as I'd anticipated. Most of the boxes that had to be opened and examined were ones that were packed two years ago in anticipation of moving to Lubbock. They were shipped to a storage building in Lubbock and then when things went south last October, they were brought back to Georgia. Like I said, the majority of the boxes were full of books. We have enough books to start our own library. It would be pretty heavy on military fiction and non-fiction, parenting books, grad school books that I never tried to sell back (need to try to find a place to do that), and enough children's books to fill up a school's library. Nothing sentimental other than a few titles that were nothing more than ironic which dealt with marriage or family. After putting all of Grant's camping gear in one area, the books in another, and mounding up the Christmas decorations which need a new box, there were only a few boxes left. One box simply said, "Ansley, Kids Pictures, Kids Stuff." I was wearing down physically (this was nearly 4 hours into the job) and I just didn't think I could stomach it so I stashed it to the side. I'll open that one another day. The other "box" that was haunting me was my cedar hope chest filled with my wedding stuff. I opened the lid just to "smell the cedar" but the memories came seeping out and just about unraveled me. I picked up one old letter from the top of the chest and scanned through it. The last phrases that were written on the letter were just simply too ironic. (I'm using that word instead of saying that the words were hurtful because at the time they were written, they were precious). I swear there are some times when I think there's something inside of me that wants me to crawl into a hole and have a pity party. Why in the world did I even open up the chest? If that wasn't stupid enough, why would I pick up a letter? Dumb, dumb, dumb. Maybe it's just emotions. Who knows. I managed to close the chest up like Ghostbusters trapping a ghost in their little metal box and finish up the job.

Or, I thought I finished it up. As I swept out the few remaining areas of floor space, I swept a package of RTV compound out from under a shelf. Yep. That was the breaking point. Not the books, not the pictures, the RTV compound. (If you don't know what RTV is, it's something like silicone that you use to "glue" junk together - especially cars). The RTV didn't remind me specifically of Eric. It reminded me of the security of having someone on hand to help take care of things when they break or blow up. You just never know what a comfort that is until it's gone. He'd used the RTV to patch a crack in my oil pan. If that happened today, I'd either have to ask Dad to help fix it or go pay mega bucks to have a "professional" do it. These are the kind of grenades that blow up in your face that you didn't see coming. There's absolutely no sentimental value in that stupid package of RTV (now in the garbage) but it just represents a comfort and security that I sorely miss.

After the garage was cleaned and pictures of the crap I need to get rid of were taken for Craig's List, the kids and I grabbed a $5 pizza for dinner. If you're in the Towne Lake area, you need to try Pizza Pilot. You can get $5 pizzas for pick up and they are way better than Little Ceasars. Ugh.

I had one final project on my list for today. I've been looking at a blank wall in my dining room since repainting and trying to figure out what to do there. I saw a really neat picture of a room where some decorative person had hung these beautiful plates with fancy ribbon from a curtain rod. I finally figured out where to buy those beautiful plates and I quickly realized that they just weren't THAT beautiful! However, I didn't dismiss the idea from my mind completely. Then, when I was in Old Time Pottery on Sunday, I saw these neat metal stars. They were painted a horrid reddish-orange color but you can change just about anything with Krylon! So, I bought a few of the stars and repainted them. (Pretty sad that the spray paint cost more than the silly stars). Then, I disassembled the curtains in my bedroom and transplanted the rod into the dining room. This is what I ended up with. I must say that I like it. I put some of those silly little touch lights behind the stars and it just gives it a magical glow. You can't tell that from the picture, though. I'm still working on the bows for the stars. I may have to enlist help from a bow-making friend at school. I'm used to tying shoes and hair ribbons. NOT making picture perfect package bows. Anyway, it's a work in progress but it's something that I wanted to do and, by golly, I figured out a way to make it happen!

So, I'm heading to bed tonight knowing that tomorrow will be a very LONG day! I was stupid and made doctor's well-check appointments for BOTH girls for tomorrow morning. Both girls have to have shots. Dasha seems nearly immune to pain so the shot won't bother her but I have some definite questions I'd like to ask the doctor about this whole "transition to be a woman" crap (like should I be worried that Dasha's boobs are still VERY different sizes) and I'm not sure how to tactfully ask those questions with both girls there. Maybe I should write the questions down and have the doctor call me. Anyway, then, Dasha has an appointment to get her new braces tomorrow afternoon. The appointment itself is not dramatic. It's getting her to wear those braces that becomes the struggle. The braces (orthotics) for her shoes aren't that bad but the night splints / braces are the ones that she sneaks off in the middle of the night. Blah. Anyway, back to the well-check appointments. Why do they ask stupid questions on these questionnaires that force you to lie? For example, "Does your child use a pacifier?" If I say, "Yes," I'm setting myself up for a lecture. I know it's a bad habit. I know it'll only get harder to get rid of. I know it's screwing up her teeth and her speech. BUT, is the doctor willing to come put her to bed at night without it? That's what I thought! Another question says, "How much television does your child watch each day?" My answer should be, "It depends on mom's mental stability as to how much she watches!" I do love my pediatrician but sometimes, in their plight to make everyone do everything according to Academy of Pediatrics recommendations, they lose sight of real life!

Anyway, time for one more load of laundry and bed. I'm determined to actually fall asleep before 2:00 tonight! I've just had a hard time turning off the washing machine of thoughts in my head. Currently, I've got it set to spin cycle so I hope it won't get off balance and just stop mid-cycle. I NEED SLEEP before tomorrow's fun begins!

Good night, all!

Satan's Goats, Dead Man Walking, and Strength

2011-09-19T00:51:00.000-04:00

Come here, little fellow. I won't hurt you. (The little goat literally butted her. He knew better)!

I'm hoping that this isn't foreshadowing.

Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. NOT! These things were so food motivated that they'd knock you down!

"Again? Again? Mama, I wanna ride again. I ride a horsey to town!"

Isn't he cute? (About the time she said this, he started chewing on the string to her jacket).

Annie wasn't bothered by the goats that kept piling on her.

Dasha, on the other hand, thought it was a little overwhelming!

While the mini goats distracted her, the billy goat on the other side of the fence ate her hair. Oops.

Both girls agreed that they'd ask Santa for a horse like this. Um, NO!

These things were just weird. They were incredibly soft but looked like someone glued the wrong head to their body!

So, while Grant was off camping and wrangling younger scouts (ha-ha-ha, I knew payback would come one day), the girls and I headed off to the farm. We spent several hours there - most in the mini goat pen. If you didn't know, I HATE goats! I truly believe they are very closely related to Satan! They have weird rectangle pupils and nibble you with germ infested tongues. Uck! However, the girls both loved the miniatures and I felt like I could easily drop kick one of the little munchkins if they got too aggressive. (I seriously dislike goats. Goats and owls)!

Anyway, the girls had fun and I managed to get both girls to take a 2 1/2 hour nap afterwards and I was able to get the house on a path toward cleanliness. Despite my new job charts and ideas about organization, it's just hard to get it right during the week and it takes me all weekend to get things ready to go again on Monday. Blah.

Sunday morning, I admit that I just didn't roll out of bed in time to get everyone up and dressed for church. For some odd reason, Annie slept until 7:00 and then snuggled into my bed with me until nearly 8:30. That's never happened before. I'm terrified that she's getting sick or an alien has taken over her body. Anyway, upon accepting that I wasn't going to make it to church on time, I started trying to reschedule my day. I've been looking high and low for an area rug for the living room. With the new floors down, it's very cold and hard. (Duh, it's a floor). However, I was not prepared for what a rug costs! So, this morning, with both girls in tow, we went to Garden Ridge, Old Time Pottery, and two Big Lots in less than two hours. No luck. I came home and searched overstock.com and did find something reasonably close to what I want and what I can afford. It's sitting in the "cart" waiting for me to make a decision. Ugh. It's a freaking rug! It's not even handmade or one of a kind. It's a R U G! I just need something cushy on the floor so Annie will stop slipping and busting her butt and I will avoid the inevitable fall, as well.

Beyond that, today was quiet. I did manage to make a quick run to Joann's. I absolutely admit that I have a fabric addiction. I could wander around the store and dream up uses for every single piece that I find. Today, I only left with a total of 2 yards. I got two different Halloweenish fabrics to make Annie a skirt out of and a cute fish pattern to make her a dress to wear to the aquarium next weekend. We'll see if all of that actually happens!

So, as I'm wrapping things up for the night, I'm listening to Grant stomping around upstairs. He was none too happy that I insisted that he empty his camping gear and put it away TONIGHT upon arriving home! Last time, I ended up discovering some of his homemade MREs which had molded themselves together. I think it was cheese and summer sausage with grapes. Gross. I had to toss the containers. I was afraid to open them without a Hazmat suit. Anyway, he just came and flashed a ziplock bag at me and told me he was going to put it outside in the garbage can. I didn't ask him why he couldn't put it in the kitchen garbage but he eventually made it crystal clear why he didn't! He said the boys hadn't been able to "bury" their toilet paper at the camp site this weekend and they had to put it into a baggie. Are you kidding me? This is why I don't have any desire to camp with these nutzos! He then went on to tell me about a game called Dead Man Walking that they play that's sort of like (and I quote) "hide and seek on crack." He said that you wait until it's pitch dark and then the boys scatter about in the woods and try to find each other. Stupid me, I asked, "Don't you use your headlamp?" The look I got could have silenced and entire football stadium of fans. I was schooled on the basics of the game at that point. Basically, he and the other older scouts were able to stay hidden in the woods due to their "skills" and the other younger scouts all found each other. I started to ask Grant if he wanted to go play this game in the backyard knowing that I'd be the oldest and I could simply come back into the house and lock him out. What a stupid game! When I'm in charge of a bunch of kids, my ultimate goal is to NOT have them scatter into the darkness but, heck, what do I know? (He's also complaining that his ankle hurts from falling down an embankment in the dark while playing this game. Duh! If he broke it, he can get out his scout book and read up on how to make himself a splint)!

So, tomorrow, my day will consist of getting Dasha to two doctor's appointments and trying to finish up laundry and beginning the job of cleaning out the garage. I've given myself a very stern warning that the garage must be clean before Friday. (Don't worry, I didn't scare myself too bad, though). I bought several plastic tubs to stash items in that stir up emotions. I'll just put those to the side and deal with them as time allows. Now, I know myself well enough that the buckets I bought were pretty small. Me and my smart arse would try to say that everything out there brought back memories - including the caulk gun and the box of nails.

As for my own emotional state, I had quite a breakthrough yesterday as I headed out to rug hunt (trip #1) alone. Instead of pulling up a playlist, I just set my phone to "music" and "shuffle." Of course, the first several songs were complete lovey dovey mushy songs that I deleted from my playlists but not from my main library. I suddenly realized, though, that I was able to make it through the songs, and even sing along, without getting all weepy. The images and feelings that the songs used to conjure up no longer haunt me. It was like someone had deleted the album covers from the iTunes account. It did sting a bit that there really weren't any memories popping up -just nothingness- but, at the same time, I suppose it's a milestone of moving on. I guess I thought that it would take longer to flush 20 years of memories out. (Not to say that all of those flushed memories won't come surging back up from the sewer tomorrow along with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)!

Anyway, as I continued to look back over the last five months and then the last year, the title for the book I'm working on finally came to me. Stumbling Into Strength. It's what I've done. I didn't go looking for strength. I had been content relying on the strength of others. However, I've had to "cowboy up" and look up. On more than one occasion, I've found myself hiding under rocks and trying to run backwards but as I continue on this path which is filled with ruts, pot holes, and booby traps (church giggles, again), I've found the ability to rely on an inner strength that I never really knew was there. Yeah, that strength has seen me through some pretty crappy chapters in my life but I'd never tried to nurture that strength or even acknowledge it. For now, in the words of Forest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that!"

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13

Good night, all.

69, Watching the Oars Float Downstream, and Evidence of Change

2011-09-15T22:18:00.000-04:00

More rambling thoughts from today...

"Mom, what is so funny about the number 69?" As I pulled up to the traffic light, I pounded out an SOS text to Eric to make sure he answered that one for Grant.
Echocardiograms must lead to at least 50 cases of broken ribs every year. I understand the importance but, dang, I feel like I took a beating.
Dasha has learned the art of making me feel like I'm stupid. Remember the book report drama from last week? Yeah. We're back in the same boat watching the oars float downstream. She has a test over a book tomorrow. I'd been asking her all week what "test" meant where it was written in her agenda. She was supposed to finish a chapter book to take a test on tomorrow. Has she finished? Nope. However, a small miracle must have just occured upstairs because she just alerted me to the fact that she'd finished a 200 page book in under 40 minutes. Hmmmm.... So, she's going to fail the test tomorrow and get assigned another book report. I keep waiting for some little evil character to pop out of the file cabinet singing, "Second verse, same as the first! I'm Henry the Eighth I am...." I've also felt a bit like Bill Murray waking up hearing "I've Got You Babe" in Groundhog Day. Crap.
Then, Grant has a writing assignment due tomorrow. He's played the Eddie Haskel role all week when I've asked him about the assignment. He made it sound like he had it nailed. Then, he suddenly had a rubric which needed to be signed to be turned in with this award winning paper. I read it. It reminded me of the Aldi toilet paper. Grant is a very capable writer and I wasn't hoping for some prize winning piece. I was just looking for a coherent story with a plot I could follow and sentences I could read. I got neither. So, I told him that I'd sign the stupid rubric (I can't remember the exact words I used but I don't think they were PG) but I'd be emailing his teacher to let her know that I didn't approve of his writing but that I simply saw it. Now, he's stomping in his room. I keep waiting for chunks of the ceiling plaster to chip off on my head. Basically, he has a few more minutes to get his act together or he won't go camping this weekend. If you want the honest truth, here's how my speech to him would have sounded if I was completely truthful. "Grant, because I won't allow you to turn in crap, I'm holding you accountable for turning in reasonable work. If you don't do that, you can't go camping which means that I'm punishing myself, too!" Anyway, I'm SO done with homework.
Oh, here's the funniest (scariest) thing of the entire day. Dasha was still coughing last night and this morning. So, I gave her cough medicine at 6:30 a.m. At 8:00, she went to see the nurse (knowing darn well that I'd already given her meds) who also gave her cough medicine. At 9:00, her reading teacher sends me an email telling me that Dasha seems to be sort of spacey and "out of it." Ya think? Duh! They are lucky she was still sitting up right! I'm pretty pissed about the whole situation but I know the nurse thought she was acting on Dasha's behalf and she doesn't know that Dasha would stand there and let her over dose her. Tomorrow morning, I do believe that I'll be passing out shot glasses filled with Nyquil to this entire house! Maybe it will make me numb to the drive to school and keep the kids quiet. (For those of you with DFACS on speed dial, I'm just kidding. I'd never give Annie a whole shot glass of Nyquil)!
But, on this life journey I'm on which is filled with pot holes, booby traps (I get the church giggles every time I say that), and other monsters that pop of seeming nothingness, I'm holding it together. Despite a tense doctor's appointment and the homework drama, I made it through without completely losing control. I can definitely look back over the last six months and see the strength I've gained. A friend mentioned to me the other day how much I've changed. I guess I can't really "see" it since I'm right smack in the middle of the crap every day but when I steal a moment to get quiet and still, I can see the evidence of those changes and they aren't all bad.

"What if trials of this life are your mercies in disguise?"
~Laura Story

I just wish someone had told me about the masqurade so I could have been better prepared!

Good night, all!

Snorting Smarties and Faceless G.I. Joes

2011-09-14T21:30:00.000-04:00

Random thoughts for Thursday...

I'm convinced that getting 3 children out of the house by 6:20 is impossible without making someone cry.
Teaching as a profession has become more about butt kissing, teaching to a test, and making sure that everyone thinks that everything is just rosy. One of these days, that inevitable thing called REALITY is going to slap some of these folks across the face and they are going to wish that they'd seen the writing on the wall when their children were still malleable. As for now, I'm a nurse, waitress, statistician (one that needs to know how to skew data in many directions for many reasons), custodian, mama, teacher, and hopefully a miracle worker for a classroom full of students. It's no wonder the education system is such a train wreck. It's the darnedest thing! If teachers have to spend every moment trying to wade through red-tape and guess what the ever-changing rules are, they just can't TEACH!
Grant's "know-it-all" attitude is bugging me. I told him that I'd pick him up in car line today because he had a music lesson. Nope. Dasha tried to tell him, too. I'd written everything down in HER agenda but he said it's too embarrassing for me to write it in his. Well, tomorrow, I'm thinking about using Sharpie to write it on his forehead. We'll see how embarrassing that is! I pulled up to pick them up and one of the SPED teachers was standing with a very distraught Dasha. Dasha just didn't understand why Grant wouldn't listen to her or even look at where I'd written the instructions in her agenda. Blah!

Waiting at my school for an extra 40 minutes with the girls while waiting for Grant to show up proved to be nothing short of exhausting.
I know I'm naive but I can't figure out if Grant is being serious about kids smushing up Smarties during lunch and snorting them. I can definitely see it happening in my mind but I don't want to believe it and I sure don't want to think that Grant finds it amusing.
How is it that I don't have enough time during the instructional day to cover all of the standards I need to cover but Grant doesn't do a blasted thing at school? Today, he had "free time" for math period, and "free read" time during reading. He played badminton during PE and didn't do anything in SS because the teacher was dealing with a rogue student. When are they actually going to learn something (other than how to snort Smarties)?

After a drama-free music lesson, Grant decided to use fingernail polish remover on his G.I. Joes to remove the Sharpie "blood" he'd spattered on them over the last few years. He didn't realize that finger nail polish remover would also take the paint off of the Joes, as well. Duh! To top it off, he poured the entire bottle of remover into a good bowl. Can you imagine what my bathroom smells like right now? If I don't make it into work tomorrow morning, someone might want to check on me. The acetone smell might have done me in during the night! Ugh
I have to admit that most days, I'm pretty proud of the emotional damage I can take without flinching too much. I don't think I'm really becoming callused but I think some of the deeper wounds are healing nicely and can withstand a bit more poking. After receiving a tax bill in the mail with several digits in it and a note about where to remit payment to, I probably would have crumbled a few months ago. I didn't even lose my cool tonight, though. I was happy to learn that this sort of bill is already accounted for in my mortgage but, who knew? I sure didn't! Whew! There were some other bullets that came whizzing past me today, too, but I was able to watch them and then move on. Now, I was absolutely aware of the fact that those bullets were zipping very close to me but I maintained complete control (and no one was injured)! :)
I'm looking forward to my break next week and I've got quite a "to do" list but I do plan on doing some fun things with the kids, too. Grant has a camping trip this weekend so it'll just me and the girls. I'm not sure what kind of mischief we can get into but I'm sure we'll figure something out!

Good night, all.

TP and Clean Monkeys

2011-09-12T22:17:00.001-04:00

Once again, I find myself speed blogging. Here's the dirt from today...

5:15 a.m. - Cat decides to crawl under the covers to get warm but gets distracted by my feet and decides to attack. It wasn't pretty. Attack cat trapped under the covers with my feet. Instinct tells me to move my feet and get them out of the way. The cat's instincts obviously tell her to attack whatever is moving. It took me way too long to untuck the covers and kick (oh, I mean lovingly nudge) the cat from under the covers! I decided to go ahead and get up.
6:15 I got everyone ready to go. I had a Martha Stewart moment last night and threw some stuff in the crock-pot for breakfast so I really thought I'd covered every base possible that could become a potential hazard this morning. I got the girls into the car with their breakfasts but Grant streaked back in the house moaning and fussing. Perfect. I thought he was having intestinal issues but he had just realized that he'd forgotten to grab his supplies for band including a $40 mouthpiece. After a few moments, I went back inside after him. (Yep, I left both girls unattended in a running van. At that point, I should have realized that my sanity was already waning)! I ran upstairs and tried to help Grant find the mouthpiece to no avail. I believe my words to him were, "Oh well. I guess you'd better just take your punishment like a man!" Real loving, huh? I convinced him that we weren't going to spend any more time looking and needed to leave.
6:35 I pull into the sitter's drive way and unbuckle Annie. I'd bought her some new Play-Doh to "share" with the other kids and she was so excited that she insisted on carrying it. No! No! No! Big fail again! About three or four steps away from the van, she face planted onto the cement. If anyone had been sleeping in a two mile radius of the sitter's house, they were definitely rudely awakened! I handed her off to the sitter and fled the scene!
7:55 For some mysterious reason, I've lost all sense of time. Instead of taking my kids to gym today, I took them to art. Having to back track with a group of 30 kids eats up quite a bit of time so I was left with only moments of a planning period.
1:00 Office calls to let me know that Dasha is sick at school. She was coughing and threw up. I asked if she was well enough to stick it out until the end of the day. The nurse said she thought that it would be fine since she didn't have a fever.
1:45 Office calls again and asks me to call the middle school. Nice. Taking a phone call when you're in charge of 20 kids isn't that easy. I found someone to cover my class for me for a few minutes and returned the call. Ugh. Dasha had coughed so hard that she'd thrown up again AND wet her pants. (OK, this happens to me regularly even when I'm not sick so I couldn't be upset). I told the nurse that I'd head over to pick her up as soon as I released my students at 2:10. I got my things ready to go and headed out when the students left.
2:20 I'm stuck in car line and can't leave Little River. Because of where I park to get Dasha into the building, the car line snakes right behind the van and blocks me in. This isn't normally a problem but it sure was today. Crud.
2:45 I finally picked Dasha up, went to get Annie, and then headed back to wait in car line for Grant. Blah.

So, you can see that it was just all of the little piss ant things that bugged me today. However, when I got home, I put my pjs on and just collapsed. I played with Annie for a bit and then started getting Grant ready for scouts. About the time my dad arrived to pick Grant up, UPS knocked on the door and delivered a huge box. It was obviously from Amazon. Now, I've been waiting on new checks to come and new glasses that I ordered for Dasha but I was pretty sure that neither of those things would arrive in a box that size. When I opened the box, I found 48 rolls of toilet paper! I laughed so hard that I cried. Honestly, the laughter I received from some jokester sending me TP far outweighed the value of the actual paper. I haven't laughed like that in quite a while. However, Grant is currently hiding the paper as if it was gold. He just doesn't appreciate the industrial sand-paper variety of paper that Aldi's carries!

The contrast to my attitude pre-TP and post-TP made me realize what a curmudgeon I've been lately. I get so focused on everything that needs to get done that I lose sight of what I have and what I have gotten done. It's all relative and I just need to keep it in perspective.

The ending to my night came, though, as Annie read her books after I'd tucked her in and closed her door. She was reading a book with pictures of different babies who all are "messy." Some of the babies have food on their faces, others have paint, and one even has dirt. Then, the last few pages show the babies getting baths. I could hear Annie narrating the story and talking about the different pages over the monitor. Then, when she got to the "all clean" pages, she said, "My daddy gives me a bath. I needa tell him to come home so he can get me all clean." Ok, I managed to avoid having any sort of real emotional hiccup and kept working on cleaning up the kitchen. But, she kept reading. A few moments later, she said, "I just don't know where daddy is. He's not in the 'puter. He's not in the phone. He's in Texas. He come get me and get me clean and say I wuv you monkey." Crap. Crap. Crap. Why is life through a child's eyes always so different? It's so easy, as an adult, to get callused to routines and life in general but children just have tender hearts that don't scab over like ours. At that point, I did go back upstairs and rock her for a while. She didn't say anything else about daddy but my heart just aches wondering what her little mind is thinking about.

So, I'm heading to bed with a heavy heart but a bathroom full of TP! I've drugged Dasha with cough medicine in hopes that she'll sleep soundly and feel better in the morning. I guess I'll have to leave her with Annie's sitter tomorrow if she doesn't feel like going to school. I don't have any sick days to "blow" and since she's not running a fever, she could just watch TV and lounge. I absoutely hate to do that but that is now part of "normal" around here.

Good night, all.

(Oh yeah, Grant didn't have band today AND he found his mouthpiece under his bed. Pointless drama)!

And, after doing a quick proof-read, I realize that I changed tenses about fifty times. Sorry! I don't have energy to fix it but I think you can follow the crumb trail I left.

I Long to Be Irresponsible

2011-09-11T22:04:00.001-04:00

Tired. Productive day. Counting down five more days until fall break. Then, a visit from my sister and her little man. I'm looking forward to playing with him and then being able to hand him back when he gets fussy! I'm currently looking for the most obnoxious toy that I can find to buy him as a repayment for all of the things my sister sent my kids over the years which caused massive messes or loud noises. (She always had a thing for loud toys without on / off switches)! Payback will definitely be quite fun!

Very little drama today. Thank goodness! Grant biked over ten miles today and only had one incident with gravity. He'll be really tired and sore tomorrow. Dasha is sick with a nasty cold so I'm trying to keep her loaded on vitamin C and away from everyone else. Annie played Play-Doh all day so she was a happy camper. I'd always banned Play-Doh in the house due to the carpet but now, she can drop as much as she wants on the floor and I can easily pick it up!

As for me, it was one of those days when I had a hard time finding the girl that keeps posting about moving on and being strong. I just wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep. I wasn't too interested in facing the list of things that needed taking care of and I sure wasn't interested in reality. I can absolutely look objectively at the situation, though, and know that this was just a hiccup in my "recovery" and that I can move forward tomorrow. However, today I just wanted someone to sweep in and save the day and let me be irresponsible for a few hours! Being irresponsible in the presence of three kids usually ends in disaster.

Good night, all.

Tigers, Snot, and Revelations

2011-09-11T01:22:00.001-04:00

Seriously? There are some days when I just stay on the edge of my seat all day waiting for America's Funniest Home Videos or Candid Camera to pop out from behind a pile of clutter of toys.

Annie decided that instead of the normal version of Reveille this morning as her wake up call, she'd go with something a bit more dramatic. Instead of gradually waking up to her chattering away in her own bed, I was shocked awake by her dumping her sippy cup of water into my bed. If it hadn't been shocking enough to wake up to a Lilliputian standing next to the bed staring at me, being waken up by a crumb-snatcher acting like she's trying to melt the wicked witch was a bit more alarming. Ugh. Yeah. Good morning, world. (She didn't purposely dump her cup but she's learned to squeeze the cups so that the lids pop off and she can drink from them like "big girl" cups).

I managed to crawl around the puddle in the bed and obey the princess' demand for milk. (I made sure I put the milk in a cup that couldn't be squashed open to reveal its contents). Anyway, I left Annie on my bed watching Blue's Clues so I could get a shower. All I wanted was a quick shower. I'd already given up on any luxuries like shaving or conditioner. Heck, I'd even come to terms with the idea that I might not even get to use soap! However, I didn't even get that far. About the time I turned the water on, Annie entered the bathroom. She likes to stand outside the shower door and chat. Usually, I don't know what she's saying so I just, "Uh huh. Really? I didn't know that," to her and she'll finally wander back to the bedroom. Nope. No luck this morning. She started stripping! She decided that she wanted to take a shower WITH me. Ugh. I just wanted three minutes of semi-peace. But without much ado, she slung the door open and jumped in. At first, it seemed to work out ok. She stayed in the corner of the shower and out of the direct flow of water. Then, I heard it. Any mom knows the sound. It's THE grunt. It's not a grunt like a pig. It's a grunt like you'd force out during child birth. Yep. Before my poor brain could even comprehend what was going on, Annie announced, "Mama! I pooped in your shower!" At that point, there was no soap, conditioner, or shaving. It was off of the radar. I carefully lifted Annie around her creation and out of the shower and then got the heck out of Dodge myself. (Yes, I did clean the mess up but Annie stood by and narrated the whole situation which just made me even more aggravated). It wasn't even 8:00 yet and I already felt like simply going back to bed.

However, Dasha had to be dropped off at her play group by 10:00 and I still needed to run to the grocery store to grab her something to take for lunch. So, I pulled the big kids out of their nice toasty beds and got everyone dressed.

I managed to get Dasha where she needed to be and get to Barnes and Noble before their 11:00 story time. I've decided that story tellers at B&N are the ones who drew the short straw at the last department meeting. The girl doing the story today looked like she came out of the cast of L.A. Ink. I kept waiting for Annie to say something Annie-ish like, "Look! She drew on herself with markers. Not good!" But, she didn't. Thank goodness. The storyteller started reading the first book and didn't even hold the book so the kids could see the picture. Annie kept looking between me and the storyteller. I didn't know what to do. I finally asked the girl if we could see the picture. She flashed the picture for about three seconds and moved on. By this point, there were only three families left sitting in the area. And, I've got to say that I was really hoping one of those families would leave! They had a toddler that kept trying to go through my purse and then was climbing all over Annie with a very snotty nose. Ugh. Why don't people think? I don't particularly care for my own snot, much less another kid's snot! Anyway, the storyteller at least had enough survival instinct to know to offer the kids their snack before she started the second book. Annie munched happily on her animal crackers without even looking toward the storyteller. She was definitely over it but stuck with the game to get her food. I was silently counting down the pages until the end of the book when Annie yelled out, "I a tiger! Roar!" It seemed completely random until I realized her animal cracker was in the shape of a tiger. The snotty nosed toddler screamed back at her some indistinguishable war cry and charged at us. I eyed the parents to see if they were watching their little angel turn toward the dark side. Nope. They were both in their own cyber worlds with their cell phones. As the little snot nosed bull came toward us, she ended up tripping over one of the benches. She went face first to the ground and then started howling louder. That scared Annie who started crying, too. The other kid's parents looked at me like I'd thrown their little darling to the ground. I looked toward the storyteller and she was actually smiling at me. Was she smiling because she'd be the first employee to get to witness a baby brawl or was she smiling because she was thinking about inking up the other kid with devil horns? Who knows.

At that point, I took Annie and went looking for Grant. The middle school has a reading program called Reading Counts. The kids have to read books within the program and get passing scores at intervals throughout the year. The tricky part of this is that the kids are assigned reading levels and they can only read books within their levels. Brainy Grant tested out with a Lexile level of something like 1030 which is about a 12th grade reading level. Um. I can't really think of any content appropriate books that I'd like him to read that would be on that level. And, the middle school doesn't have too many book on that level so we've resorted to having to purchase the books ourselves. In order to get Grant out of the store, I had to Google the Lexile levels, then the tests available at the school, and then cross reference to two and find some sort of match on the shelf that had what I'd consider safe content. It was so frustrating. While I was doing this, Annie was crawling up and down the aisle roaring like a tiger.

There comes a time in your life when you just sort of admit defeat in certain areas. Maybe defeat isn't the right word. Maybe it's more like you just finally accept the cards you've been dealt and agree to learn to play the game using those cards. Standing there in the young adult fiction aisle at B&N, I felt like I'd been dealt a hand of UNO cards and got a bunch of Draw Fours and Reverse cards. All I wanted was to go in, listen to a cute little story, enjoy crackers, let Grant get his book, and possibly even reward myself with some Starbucks. I didn't think I was setting the bar too high, but obviously I was.

So, we made it out of the store and headed back home. Dad was finishing up the flooring and still using the circular saw which Annie is terrified of. Every time he uses it, she does that scream and cry like she's truly scared out of her skin. So, I ended up having to rock her to sleep for nap time but when I stated to lay her down, she popped right back up and said that she was scared that the saw would get her. Maybe I'm a sucker. I don't know. I took her and put her in my bed. The sheets were still damp from her cup explosion but I just threw a towel over it and figured she'd never notice.

This is the drama that I muddled through before lunch time. I'm just plain old exhausted and I don't really see much relief in the near future. I accept that this is the new "normal" but how do I balance all of this craziness with the kids with the demands of the house, school, and work? That's not even taking into account the fact that I'd like to have a shower at least once a week. I can't continually rely on my parents to watch the inmates but I can't afford to constantly have sitters coming, either.

I did have one small revelation, though, tonight as I worked on some school things after I'd put Annie down. I needed to create a behavior chart for a student who is really struggling to get work finished and work independently. I decided to make the kids chore charts. In my feeble mind, I figure that if the job assignments are written down, I won't have to continally nag at them to take care of business. I still need to come up with consequences or rewards for completing the tasks each week, though.

We'll see how it goes. Grant wandered into the office as I was printing his chart out and he just about dropped dead. He was definitely not happy but, hopefully, this will set the expectations and boundaries so the kids will know what I expect and, honestly, what I need.

So, now that it's after 1:00 a.m., I'm going to go and get the last load of laundry out of the dryer and fold it and get ready for Annie's ambush in about five hours.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds and trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

So, I'm heading to bed to sleep in my still slightly damp bed and hope that tomorrow morning, Annie will decided to use the old game plan of simply calling out to me from her bed.

Good night, all.

Middle School or Mental Facility? and Other Things Inquiring Minds Want to Know

2011-09-09T22:19:00.000-04:00

OK. So here's the quick version. It has been a very long week!

Here's the slightly expanded version.

I'm not sure who decided to invent this thing called "middle school" but I'd sure like to meet them. I'm quite sure that they didn't have any kids of their own! In some other language, I believe middle school means "holding tank for emotionally unstable preteens." I don't know what goes on at that place but I'm beginning to get some ideas. Every day, Grant tells me about a video he watched. (Today, was a video on space and asteroids wiping out the Earth. I wish I was kidding). Both kids watched a VERY dramatic video of 9-11 today. Grant gained some new insight. That's fine. However, Dasha gained more information that she just doesn't know how to process. I guess many of the kids cried during the footage which piqued her interest. Just moments ago, I passed by the bathroom door where she was getting a bath and heard her say, "So, you are worried about the terrorists and the Twin Towers? I'll write that down. What else are you thinking about?" It's like she was role playing as a psychologist. I didn't know whether to run away screaming or keep standing there listening. (I did the second and she just kept asking her imaginary client questions about their concerns about 9-11. I now know the questions I need to ask her, though)! Anyway, middle school is just too hard for me! I don't know what goes on. I understand even less based on the kids' renditions of their days. Argh!

Grant has been a complete mess all week! He's struggling with which parent to pledge his allegiance to. Everything I've read says that those types of concerns are normal but Grant never does anything in "normal" style. He has to take everything to an extreme! I don't think there has been a single night this week that he hasn't had a tantrum which involved tears and growling. I ended up simply sending him to his room tonight for being disrespectful to me. Maybe that was wrong and maybe I should have stopped by the bathroom to ask Dasha the psychologist about it but I went with my gut. The situation with having two separate parents isn't going to go away for him and we're all going to have to learn to work through and live through the changes. Stomping, huffing, eye rolling, and using a condescending voice aren't allowed (except by me in extreme situations). It's time I take this house back. I've let him get away with SO much for the last six months because I've felt sorry for him but now, I'm seeing that I've created a monster. I thought about calling the flying monkeys that tormented Dorthy and seeing if they wanted to hire him as an intern or seeing if any theaters in the area were doing the story of the three pigs and needed an understudy for the Big Bad Wolf. Yes, I'm being dramatic but I'm just caught off guard by Grant's sudden moodiness, lack of self control, and general attitude of disrespect. Ack!

Dasha has been equally nuts this week. I won't even begin to go into all of it but she is just determined that if things aren't fun or easy, she won't engage. Her grades continue to fall despite everything I try to do to help (which has become less and less as the week drug on). She's back to eating "non-nutritive" items despite the mega-vitamins I give her. And, her legs are getting worse by the day. She doesn't find her stretching exercises to be very fun and often they are uncomfortable so she has meltdowns when I enforce the exercises. One of her legs is so tight that her whole body is now lilting to the left. This coupled with all of the walking she has to do at school is making her back hurt. It's a major domino effect. Where does it stop? What's the last domino? A wheelchair? She does see a physical therapist at school and privately but the school-based therapist is struggling with her, as well. How do you force a 13 year old to physically do what you want them to? Heck, how to I get her to do ANYTHING I want her to do? I've done positive reinforcements, consequences, and even enlisted my parents to dangle carrots but it just doesn't matter. Blech!

Then, there's Annie. For the next publishing of Webster's Dictionary, you'll find a picture of Annie under "D I V A." Here's another monster creation of mine. Her mouth never stops and she has an opinion of EVERYTHING! Tonight, she could hear the marching band at Etowah High School from the living room. (I had the windows open to let in the cool air). She insisted on going outside to "hear them louder." I didn't realize that she thought they were going to march right down our street. Fail number one! When she calmed down, she was intent to hear the drums. I'll have to take the kids to a football game one night. Annie would love the band and I think the big kids would enjoy the game. Anyway, here's part of my conversation with Annie. As you can tell, she requires very little verbal response from me other than the obligatory, "Uh huh. Yes. Really?"

Like I said, it's been a long week. Tomorrow morning, I get to drop Dasha off for 4 hours of respite care. I hate to admit it, but I'm really looking forward to it. It's so hard to find activities to entertain everyone in the house! It's hard for us to even enjoy the same movie together. We can't do any physical activities right now with Dasha so that cuts out a lot of things. Grant doesn't appreciate anything with a hint of a girly flair. And, Annie just isn't old enough to do some things. (Don't tell her that. She wouldn't agree). I don't know what we'll do tomorrow but I'm thinking that Starbuck's Passion Tea and Barnes and Noble would be a good start. I can watch Annie take over the island nation of Sodor while playing with Thomas the train and Grant can wander around looking at books. I don't know.

On the emotional front, I'm holding up. This weekend wasn't as bad as I'd anticipated. Eric's friend came with him and Grant met her. I was unbelievably ok with it. The girls haven't really said too much about the visit but it just stirred up Grant's yearning to be with his dad. Grant had decided that he was going to go to TX for September break to be with Eric and then basically told Eric that I'd ok'd the deal. That whole situation unraveled into a big mess but that was after Eric had already gone "home" so that was my Labor Day and Tuesday night drama. (My answer would have been, "No," in the beginning if Grant had bothered to check his flight plan through me. However, the, "No," he ended up getting came with quite a bit of scolding). Anyway, right now, I'm on a pretty level playing field when it comes to accepting that I'm a single mom without a husband. My ups and downs are based on the trials that the kids are throwing my way right now. I've done this coaster long enough to know that all of this could change at a snap of someone's fingers and without good reason but for this moment, I'm going to enjoy thinking that I know what's going on in my emotional world.

So, I'm heading to bed knowing that tomorrow, I'll drop Dasha off and then try to do something mildly entertaining with Grant and Annie, and then get to come home to finish laying the flooring. We still have to finish the foyer. (There was a bit of a speed bump when we found that there was an entire nation of ants living underneath the slab and underneath the door jamb. Termites plus ants. This pest control service is going to get rich off of my critters)! So, it'll be a fun Saturday! Hopefully I'll have enough energy left over to begin cleaning out the garage. I've started the task three or four times only to run across sentimental items and give up. Maybe I just need to go to WalMart and buy the biggest plastic tub I can find and put all of the things that stir up my emotions in the box and throw the lid on so I can deal with them a little at a time. Oh well.

Good night, all.

Getting Dehydrated Peeing Out a Forest Fire

2011-09-07T22:56:00.002-04:00

While I am trying in earnest to process my thoughts and feelings and be still and quiet, Annie knows nothing of that sort of activity. On Tuesday, due to a scheduling snafu, I had to pick her up from the sitter's house and detain her in my classroom for a couple of hours. Ha! She pulled all of the kids' stools from under the table and computers and used them to create her own drum set. Her drumsticks? She used markers which she swiped from some poor unsuspecting student's desk!

While this post doesn't really give a window to my soul right now, know that things are bumpy around here right now and it really doesn't have too much to do with this weekend's visit. The older kids have decided to jump off of their own cliffs and unbeknownst to me, they each had one of my legs tied to their bungee cord. In the last 48 hours, Dasha has eaten a pencil, a stick, and some undisclosed item off of the van floor. Grant, on the other hand, has had rolled from one tantrum to another. I can't band-aid their issues quick enough to squelch the leaks and I sure haven't had time to process the marbles rolling around in my head.

Please know that we're all still intact, though, and just trying to muddle through this mess. I haven't given up and I haven't stopped blogging. I do keep a private blog that's become more like a 24 hour holding tank for my really nasty thoughts (yeah, believe it, it can get worse than this) and I've done quite a bit of blogging there - not because I'm full of rage or even forlorn. Waiting is the best word I can put on my life right now. I'm just trying to be still and not act in a rash manner or in any manner that wouldn't uphold my own integrity or pave a solid path for the kids to follow. It sounds so easy when I type it out. But, when you dump the real life participants onto the page and try to make them run the path, it's not so pretty.

Anyway, I do appreciate all of the emails and calls (and my mom was a bit panicked when she started getting the calls, too)! :) I just need some time to sort through everything - especially with Dasha. (She did get a waiver to ride the SPED bus from my school to the middle school. Whew. However, someone made fun of her and she was clueless what was "funny" about the "short bus)."

Once again, thanks for checking in. I'll post more of my guts when I've had a bit of time to let the dust settle and when I don't have two kids still up (10:45) doing homework. Why do teachers think giving busy work for homework assignments is a good idea? Copying 20+ definition from a glossary? Writing a book report on a book that you failed a test on? Duh! She didn't read the book so how the heck are we supposed to do a book report on it in one night? Do these folks have kids of their own or are they simply raising goats or other livestock?

In the words of an unexpected friend, I feel like I'm trying to "pee a forest fire out!" (And, I'm feeling a bit dehydrated! Waiter)?

Good night, all!

The Language of Silence

2011-09-05T20:09:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, silence is the only language that can express your feelings. I'm thinking that there's going to be silence for quite a while in my life.

Big Bad Wolves, Flying Monkeys, and Evil Step-mothers

2011-09-02T22:42:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, I will hold my head high. I will not apologize. If this is the road I've been called to travel, then I'll travel it with nothing but integrity and confidence in knowing that I'm doing what's right.

Now, not very far beneath that layer of spunk is the layer that is full of anxiety but I will keep my eyes lifted and keep to the path even if I do feel like Red Riding Hood with the Big Bad Wolf chasing me through the forest!

I'm turning the page and leaving the Wolf behind. (It'll be my luck that the next page of this story book will land me in the direct path of flying monkeys or evil step-mothers).

Good night, all.

Leader of the Crazy Pack Rises to the Top

2011-09-01T22:45:00.000-04:00

Ok. Let's just get this straight now, I'm speed blogging. It's 10:27 and I will walk away from this computer no later than 10:45. I have to or I'll find myself face down on the desk in a puddle of drool tomorrow morning!

Dasha has reached her maximum potential for crazy. Her progress report grade for Technology is a 19 because she just didn't want to finish her assignments. She lied to me and told me that a huge chunk of papers was classwork and could be thrown away but it was actually stuff that should have been turned in and is now recorded throughout various classes as zeroes. (This is my fault according to her). To top it off, I got a very concerned email from her case worker at school today telling me that Dasha had been telling her all sorts of things about Eric's visit this weekend. This teacher just wanted to cross-reference Dasha's tales. It's a darn good thing she did because Dasha had told some real whoppers! When I took her to get fitted for her new orthodics this afternoon, she told the guy that I didn't make her stretch her legs any more and that she didn't go to PT because I didn't have money. It took all I had not to knock her off of the table! Sorry, but that's just how I felt. It was like every time her mouth opened, lies spilled out. Now, she has, of course, found that she can get lots of attention when she tells the sad story of her daddy leaving but this has got to stop! (By the way, she does still do PT but not on a regular basis because of her middle school hours and she sees her school-based PT once a week)!!!

So, Dasha was sent to bed at 9:30 still having quite a bit of unfinished homework. I just can't continue the battle. I feel like I've sustained enough damage tonight to be clinging to life by a thread. I admit to giving up and simply waving the white flag when it came to her school work tonight.

Anyway, Dasha has really tried my patience today and I'm just worried that this is a glimpse of what next week will have to hold after Eric leaves again.

While the drama over mean, median, and mode was going on with Dasha, the pest control guy (Mr. Dirt) was here wiping out the termite colony. This meant that I couldn't put Annie to bed because he was drilling into the wall directly beneath her bed and making quite a racket. Argh! At least the little buggers in the walls are dying a slow death right now. Serves them right for snacking on my house! Monday, Mr. Dirt is coming to dig a trench around the house and fill it with some sort of termite barrier. When he said he was going to dig a trench, I wanted to ask him if I could fill it with water and just call it a mote. Then, you'd better believe that I'd be importing some alligators from the Okefenokee for my mote!

Grant has had the good sense to lay low and even conned his grandpa into taking him to the bike park. He's done with the drama for the week and I think he's honestly exhausted from the anticipation, as well. He keeps bringing up the visit and the agenda and making comments about it. I've really tried to keep my pie hole shut but dang, it's so hard!

Annie has been Annie. She is consistently unpredictable and I'm ok with that because I know not to put any bets on her behavior!

So, I'm heading to bed frustrated that I don't have the laundry finished or half of the cleaning that I wanted to get done before this fun fest starts Saturday morning. (Where can I get rid of a bunch of carpet and padding? It's piled on the deck in the back and I sure can't throw it all on the curb for the garbage in the morning)!

Good night, all!

Going Huxtable, Snacking on TP, and Anxiety

2011-08-31T21:45:00.000-04:00

There's not too much to say today. School is finally falling into a somewhat predictable routine and the kids are finally beginning to come out of their shells. On our way to have pictures made this morning, one of my boys turned around and said to me, "My mom won't even be sad that she forgot to make me dress up because I'm so H O T!" As he said this, the patted his rear. Geez. Maybe a bit toward the inappropriate side but at least I'm finding out that some of the kids have a sense of humor. Whew!

As for other things, I still don't have any word on what the verdict will be with Dasha's bus situation. I do know that she took three pretty major spills today, though. I absolutely understand someone's hesitancy to take responsibility for her when they have 30 or more other kids to watch, too. So, I've just sort of decided to let this whole situation slide to the side of my brain where dust bunnies live and I'll deal with it when I have something more to work with.

Beyond that, the biggest drama was more huffing, puffing, eye rolling, and stomping around here. At one point tonight, I had to go all Cliff Huxtable on the residents! Grant has decided that his only job between 4:00 and 9:00 should be to hold the office chair down with his butt and play Roblox online (like online Legos). When I ask him to do something like put his laundry away, he starts huffing and puffing like a freight train. At one point today, I called him Thomas the Tank. He didn't think it was funny. Lately, he doesn't seem to think too much about me is funny. But, while I was dealing with Dasha's homework and Annie's meltdown over not getting to drink a cup of milk left over from yesterday, I asked him to run upstairs and grab something for me. He huffed like he was working on the third little pig's house made of bricks! At that point, I just told him that he had two choices. (All of the books say let the kids have a choice - so I do). Choice one was to do what he'd been asked to do and be a "happy helper" when asked. In return for being a happy helper, he gets dinner and fresh folded laundry. Choice two was that he could find his own meals and do his own laundry and still have to get up off of his butt and help. I'm really not sure which option he chose. He is currently loading his laundry in the washer but he did clean his room up, too. Hmmm..... I might should sleep with one eye open tonight! I guess this is just "normal" middle school junk but it makes me nuts! There's enough work around here for five adults! I can't do it all myself and the big kids are more than capable of helping out. Why must he be some dramatic about everything?

And, just for kicks and giggles, I'll tell you what Dasha was doing while I was going Huxtable on Grant. Dasha decided to load this dishwasher. I think she was trying to stay under the radar, actually. However, she decided to put all of the scraps from the plates down the disposal. This included napkins, Annie's plastic fork, and a baby wipe that I'd used to clean Annie up. I heard her turn the disposal on from upstairs. Instead of making a sharp hum, it sounded like it was chewing on a blanket. I finally managed to fish everything out of the disposal only to watch Dasha "feed" it more napkins. Yep. I went nuts on HER at that point. When I asked her why she kept putting the napkins down the drain, she said, "I just don't want to walk to the trash can." OK, folks. Everyone is quite aware that I'm not playing with a completely full deck these days. I have way too many Jokers and Jesters in the deck and not enough Aces. But, when Dasha tells me something so ridiculous, I can literally feel my blood begin to boil. I'm not sure how long I stared at her before beginning Lamaze breathing and walking away. I sent her upstairs to get her bath only to find her sitting naked in the bathroom floor eating toilet paper. No, I'm not kidding. I didn't even ask, "Why," this time. I just told her to spit it out. (No, it wasn't the new softer TP that someone left in my mailbox! (Very funny, DB)! Grant already stashed those rolls in my bathroom)! I mean, what am I supposed to say or do? She's eating freaking toilet paper! Why? She's always eaten all sorts of weird things and the doctors have hundreds of reasons for it but it's just so hard to accept that this child who is capable of functioning "normally" some days would sit naked as a jay bird in the bathroom floor and snack of squares of TP. I'd like to be able to tell her that it would hurt her stomach but it never seems to. She must have the guts of a goat!

Anyway, beyond these minor hiccups in the day, things were pretty normal. Tomorrow, I have to take Dasha to have new braces cast. Fun. She has to have new knee immobilizers, foot something or anothers, and then new orthodics for her shoes. Fun.

As for me, I'm very anxious about this weekend. There's a huge part of me that feels like Eric gets to come back and play Disney Dad and be the fun one and take the kids fun places and do all of the things that I'd like to do with them. Yes, I know that it's a matter of priorities and that I could leave the chores behind and go have fun but I'm the one that has to face those chores when the begin to back up. And, the finances I have are already spent on necessities. Pooh. I guess I'm just always curious, too, as to what Eric is thinking. Is he thinking, "Geez, I'm so glad I left that bitch?" Or, does he ever even think about it? It's just one huge mystery. What I thought I knew for almost 20 years has vaporized into a mysterious thing. I don't even know where he lives! Oh well. It ultimately doesn't matter what he thinks. He made his choice over a year ago and although it's taken me almost six months, I've made mine too. He can't have me back even if he wanted me. Despite my decisions, I'm still anxious as to what the fall-out with the kids will be when he leaves. I'm pretty sure that Annie will spend the next couple of weeks asking where he is again. Hopefully, she won't do the tears this time, though. But, I just don't know what to expect of Grant and Dasha. Both of them want to be part of his world but he holds them at arm's length not wanting them to know any of the details of his daily life but just wanting to play dad at a surface level - just talk the talk, never mind the walk. Maybe this all sounds ugly. Maybe he reads this crazy stuff I write. I don't know. Maybe his relatives read it to him or call him to tattle on me and what I "said." I don't really care. This is my blog and these are the thoughts that I need to purge from my brain before heading to bed. Anxious about how well he'll play the role while he's here. Anxious about the aftermath that'll be left for me to clean up when he goes back to playing house. And, wondering if he'll even make it back for Thanksgiving or Christmas and what that will look like as a single mom. That's my reality.

Tonight, I'm heading to bed. I'm not taking any papers upstairs to grade and I'm sure not going to start more laundry or even turn the dishwasher on. I'm done.

Good night, all.

Joe Dirt, Billy the Exterminator, and Bad Bananas

2011-08-30T21:04:00.000-04:00

Just checking in. I probably shouldn't say it but it was a pretty smooth day. Homework is finished. Bathrooms are cleaned. Laundry is "in progress." One child asleep. Two children reading. I'm about to try to hack into the school's grading system to fish my grade book out of cyberspace and then I'm going to bed, too.

The best part of today was the visit from the pest control guy. My parents have used the same company for... since dinosaurs roamed around, I guess. I called their "people" to get a second opinion on my mortgage-sized termite fix. When the guy walked in, I didn't quite know what to think. He looked like he'd walked straight out of the movie "Joe Dirt." If my mom hadn't been standing there, I might have laughed out loud. Anyway, Mr. Joe Dirt went back outside and crawled around under the hedges in the front yard a while and then paced the perimeter of the house and all inside the garage. Then, he came back in with a handful of dirt. He said, "See here. You got 'em in the molding out there yonder 'round your winders." I was in a real bind at this point. I was struggling with having Joe Dirt standing on my new floor with a handful of dirt and hearing him say that the little buggers had invaded the window frame, too. Cry? Laugh? Suck my thumb, rock back and forth, and say, "Find a happy place, find a happy place?" I ended up just staring dumbly at him for a few seconds. He asked me to come 'out yonder' with him and look at the damage for myself. Yep. I could see where they had snacked on the window molding (which had been caulked up and painted over by the last crew that painted our house - nice). When I finally admitted to him that Terminix had also surveyed the damage and relayed to him what their damage report said, he looked quizzically at me. The guy on Saturday told me they were in the soft part of the stucco. This guy told me that I don't have soft stucco. I have hard coat. He then began using a huge crow bar to chip away the bottom few inches of stucco to prove to me that there wasn't any Styrofoam in there. He invited me to stick my hand up under the stucco, too, but I know my limitations. Heck, this guy was like Billy the Exterminator and Joe Dirt rolled into one. Are you getting the image now? Anyway, he then went on to show me that the Terminix guy hadn't even tried to pull away the landscape cover from the wall to check a thing. I'm not prone (at this point in my life) to blindly believe what other folks tell me so I surveyed the situation myself. He was right. Not a piece of the decaying pinestraw behind the shrubs had been moved in any location other than the one Mr. Dirt had just exposed. Long story short, I ended up chatting with this guy for a while. He and his wife have two grown sons. One of the boys has Downs. I wish you could have seen Mr. Dirt's face when he talked about this child. He said that he's non-verbal and simply likes to sit and watch movies all day. He said that he had to transfer all of the movies to VHS tapes because his son gets excited and starts throwing them and can ruin them. Not once did a look of frustration cross his face. Geez. I wish I could be more like that. But, back to the bugs. Basically, the little colony these critters have set up will only require a heavy spot treatment and then the rest of the house will be treated, as well. This guy will also do all of the stucco removal and handle the whole job for $700. So, the first guy is going to charge me $1300+ and that didn't include any of the demo. Mr. Dirt was lucky that I didn't give him a big hug! So, by Saturday, the colony having the all night buffet in my walls will be on its way OUT! Thank goodness! And, instead of destroying the sheet rock inside the house, this guy only needs to put several small nail-sized holes in. I admit that I did ask him how much he'd charge to get rid of the other "bugs" in the house (as I point to the rest of the clan - Annie sitting on the table eating ice cream, Grant at the table blowing air into his water so it splashed up in his face and was making Annie laugh hysterically, and Dasha trying to figure out how Grant was doing it but simply submerging her face in her glass). The guy said, "Anything with two legs or under gets way out of your budget, mam."

As for the update on day two of Grant's sex ed class, he wasn't as amused today as yesterday. I guess the novelty wore off. Today was on HIV and AIDS. He didn't have too much to say about it. However, I did learn that my joking around yesterday with him about terminology for out of control parts backfired. Now, he's acting like he's in 4th grade and commenting on anything that resembles, well, you know - a banana. I finally had to put an end to the silliness when Annie picked up a long Lego and declared that she had a "banana." Yeah, she was pretending to have a real banana to eat... oh, my.... ok. Let's change topics. Anyway, no more body part names in front of Annie. Dasha has been sequestered to the library during the sex ed classes for the last two days. She thinks that she's having some sort of privilege. I can't imagine what the girls are learning!!! Can you imagine the look on her face if she'd had to listen to some of those conversations? Wow.

OK, so I'm heading into cyber space now and then to bed.

Good night, all.

Captain's Log, August 29, 2011 - Sassiness and One-Eyed Willy

2011-08-29T23:05:00.000-04:00

3:00 a.m. - "Mama, I scared. I cuddle in your bed?" This was sweet when it started about 2 weeks ago. The girl sleeps like she's a squid. She literally puts her legs across your back (or in your face) and can't sleep unless at least 70% of her body is touching yours.

5:30 a.m. - "Mama, what that noise? Mama? Wake up Mama! I hear the birds."

6:20 a.m. - "Mama, I wanna take my blocks to Miss 'Tima's house." No problem until all gazillion of them spill across the sidewalk while trying to get everyone to the car.

7:00 a.m. - "Oh, Mom! I forgot! I need more lunch money!" Perfect timing since I don't have any cash or my checkbook!

7:01 a.m. - "Mom? I forgot to get some of those things from the box at home and I don't have any in my bag." Well, now. I don't have any of those things in my purse so I guess I'll go try to barter crayons for pads.

7:15 a.m. - "Bye, Mom! Wish me luck! I'm going to learn about S E X today." Yep. He got my attention with that one! I'd forgotten that it was sex ed day.

7:30 a.m - bell rings and students enter

7:45 a.m. - "Ms. Randolph? I just can't stop itching." As I gingerly look around to see what body part is being scratched, yep, it's the part that kids normally complain about being itchy if it's not clean! Ugh. I managed to say something like, "Did you tell your mom about this before you got on the bus this morning?" The kid looked at me bewildered and said, "No way!" Seriously? I don't know if I should feel privlidged or degraded. (I talked with mom a bit later to find out that he's on meds for a yeast infection. I didn't know boys could get those)!

8:00 - 2:30 p.m. - Thankfully, pretty uneventful but productive and fun all at the same time.

3:10 p.m. - As I pick Annie up from the sitter's house, "Mama's here! Look what I made for you!" She handed over a car made from bristle blocks. Seriously? She's 2 years old! When I told her we needed to hurry and leave, she hugged the other little boy and gave him a kiss on the cheek. It was quite sweet until my warped mind fast forwarded about 15 years and replayed the scene! Ugh!

3:40 p.m. - "Mom, do you know what a stiffy, wood, and a long dong are?" At that point, I had two choices, play completely dumb and blow it all off or act wise beyond my years and mortify him with some other names that he could add to the category. I went with the second option and got the reaction I wanted - a completely mortified 11 year old! Timeless! I did revisit the conversation with him to find out more about what he'd learned in sex ed today. I was very thankful that his band director was the point of redelivery for the information and that the group he was with was pretty tame. I do admit, though, that I love those moments when I can completely shock him into thinking that maybe I'm not SO old that I don't know anything at all!

4:00 p.m. - "Mom, don't you have a code to use to get my social studies book online?" I limply drug myself to the office and riffled around in the file cabinet to give her a solid, "Nope!" She stomped off toward the table. (These new floors make everything ten times louder so it sounded as if a herd of elephants was trekking through the house)! I followed the herd to figure out what drama was about to unfold. So, tonight, she didn't bring her social studies book home and chose not to fill her agenda out because she "didn't have time." Hmmm.... My sassy retort was, "Maybe I just don't have time to feed you dinner tonight." Ok. Not so mature and not very appropriate for a mommy but I was tired and didn't want drama. Without missing a beat, Dasha sassed back, "Well, maybe I don't want any dinner!" Lamze breathing was never handy during child birth but I've found it quite useful when trying to convince yourself to slow down and walk away. In retrospect, my response to her sure wasn't very loving or caring and I guess she simply responded in like nature. Put another gold star on my chart, please!

6:00 p.m. - "Grant, go get your uniform on. Papa will be here in just a minute to take you to scouts." Once again, I was met with stomping. I'm going to have to start some sort of marching band or step group to give all of these stompers a constructive outlet for their stomping! OOOOOHHHH! I just figured it out! I need rolls and rolls of bubble wrap! They could just stomp their little hearts out popping the bubbles! (I shock myself with my Solomon-like wisdom sometimes)! Anyway, Grant did go get his uniform on but then informed me that he needed quite a bit of money for some stuff at school. Really? I might as well just let the county divert my paycheck to the middle school! Oh well.

6:15 p.m. - As we're eating dinner, Dasha is literally sitting with her mouth hanging open letting mac n' cheese dribble out. It was like watching some sort of mental patient eat! My conversation with her began something like, "Dasha, when you see other kids at school eating like animals, what do you think in your head?" (Note, the whole time, I'm hoping that she keeps those thoughts in her head and doesn't say them aloud). She responded to me with a questioning look, "I think they are gross!" Ok. At least she recognizes what table manners should NOT look like. I responded with, "What do you think other people think about YOU when they see you eating like that?" She just sat and stared at me. I didn't know if she'd even heard me. She just had a blank look. I finally asked, "Do you ever think about how other people see you?" She finally answered, "No." She was serious. She absolutely lives in her own bubble without any worry of those around her. I guess, in a way, that's a blessing but there are some definite positive things about peer pressure. - like Grant deciding that showering isn't such a bad thing when other kids begin to notice your stench! Anyway, it's moments of realization like tonight that I just wonder what the future will hold for Dasha. She's 13 and oblivious to what others think about her. Wow. That explains a lot but also gives me quite a bit to ponder!

7:30 p.m. - "Mama, I don't need a bath tonight. I don't smell like a pig." Oops. I guess she'd overheard my pleas to Grant about showering a few too many times! Ok, yeah, I admit. I didn't bathe her. Bathing her is like trying to bathe a wild cat with 15 arms and legs! She's fine until you get her hair and face wet. Then, she's like a little Gremlin bursting out of its pod! In fact, she gets crazy enough to be the gang leader, Stripe!

8:00 p.m. - "Dasha, I asked you to get a bath while I got Annie ready for bed. What happened?" The girl looked at me and said (this is verbatim), "I decided that I'd rather just read for now and get a bath later on when I feel like it!" Once again, Lamaze breathing saved me from a night in lock up at the Cherokee County Sheriff's office! Where has the compliant, sweet girl gone?

8:30 p.m. - "Mama, I scared. I want in your bed! You cuddle me now!" Crap, crap, and more crap! The girl is persistent and conniving. (Maybe you can't / shouldn't really call a 2 year old conniving). I told her that we weren't going to my bed and that I'd rock her and read her another book. Of course, she picks the worst Dr. Seuss book ever written for me to read to her - There's a Wocket in my Pocket. I hate that book! I would gladly read Caps for Sale, Old Hat, New Hat, or even If You Give a Moose a Muffin (or a Mouse a Cookie or a Cat a Cupcake - basically - don't give animals human food)! Anyway, the read was worth it. She actually fell asleep right in my lap and started snoring before I'd finished the book. It was the kind of sleep where they just go limp and you have to carefully put them into bed for fear of an arm or leg getting twisted up under them. I admit that once she fell asleep, I rocked her quite a while longer. It's one of those things that I won't be able to do with her forever. (Good grief. The thought of me trying to put Grant in my lap and rock him is just hysterical. Ugh - especially after his questions this afternoon).

9:00 p.m. - "Mom, how do twins form and why are sperm called tadpoles?" This was a complete sneak attack. There was no warning before he lobbed this at me. Maybe it was his way of paying me back for my earlier response to his question in the car. I was able to answer the last part of his question without any problem. (I didn't know quite how much he knew so I started off very vague but he kept asking for more details). I did my best to answer the first question based on what I'd learned in Mrs. Pittman's biology class back in high school. Heaven help me! If I'm struggling to answer these questions for him at 11, what am I going to be telling him at 18? Do they make a "Puberty for Dummies" book? I figured it was a good time to debrief about what he'd learned today, as well, though since we were already on the subject. I was glad to hear that they'd been told to "keep it in your pants" but not thrilled with the "here are ways to hide your ------ (multiple choice of vocabulary after our earlier conversation)." Maybe this is a good conversation to have with a boy. It's sure not one that I would have ever thought to have. I got quite a chuckle when he explained the different ways of keeping out of control objects (um, I guess that would be an object - not plural) off of the radar. This conversation led back to matters of the heart and he shared what he was thinking with and processing right now. He never fails to amaze me with the depth of his understanding. There were several moments when I had to call a time-out just so I could process what he'd said. He likes to talk in metaphors and similes. It's like trying to have a heart-to-heart conversation with Socrates. At one point, I wanted to cry out, "Must. Stop. Energy. Levels. Depleted. Brain. Hurts. Must. Rest." Geesh! Anyway, my heart breaks for him because he truly "gets" so much of what's going on right now. I finally sent Socrates off for a shower. He's been in the shower quite a while. I don't dare go near the bathroom for fear of what might be going on, though. How am I supposed to deal with this? I'm in foreign territory where I don't know the rules of engagement and I feel like I'm going to take a bullet to the chest at any moment! Ugh! Boys are so weird!

10:45 p.m. - I'm heading to bed having successfully procrastinated and can now justify that it's too late to clean up the kitchen or finish grading papers. I stink at time management. I've got to get this figured out. The moment I have the kids situated and have my first free moments of the day, I just feel like doing nothing productive! Oh well.

I did not delete last night's post as I'd planned to do. In a few weeks, I want to be able to look back on last night as a turning point - a defining moment. Last night, the light that has been flickering on and off in my brain stayed lit. The light is on and I'm definitely home. I am a person of worth whether he wants me or not. My kids are worth fighting for and so am I. I will not go down with the ship. In the words of Annie, "Argh! I'm a pirate!" (I won't be calling any pirates "One Eyed Willy" after my discussion with Grant, though)!!!!!!

Good night, all!

Grieving the Loss

2011-08-28T22:40:00.000-04:00

Throughout the counseling process, the counselor continued to talk about identifying your losses and grieving them individually. I had quite a list of losses. However, tonight, I'm adding a new one to the list. I'm grieving the loss of the person I "thought" I was married to. I thought there was integrity, a Biblical foundation, and a strong conviction for family first. Tonight, I officially know that it was all a lie. I'm not grieving the loss of Eric. Jana can have him. Obviously, they're perfect for each other - A man who would openly cheat on his wife and leave her alone with no help with three kids and a silly young twenty-something who knows that she's seducing and sleeping with a married man but continues to do so. I don't want him or need him. I don't know him. He can ride off into the sunset with his beautiful new lover and I'll simply bid them, "Adieu." It's kind of like that moment when you realize the truth about Santa Claus. Except with this, I don't even want to savor the memories. I want to be brain washed of it all. That would be doable if it weren't for the fact that I have to look at Annie every day who has his face, his attitude, and his soul. She's a walking memory. It was all one big joke. Sometimes, I think I should grieve the loss of my innocence, too. (Along with the kids'). Just when I think the roller coaster is slowing down, I realize that the operator was simply pressing the clutch in to down-shift and increase the speed with no regard for the posted speed limit.

Good freaking night, all!

Rows vs. Columns, My Gingerbread House, and RAGE

2011-08-27T17:09:00.000-04:00

Update...

Flooring - Ask dad to start staggering the slats this morning. It doesn't work. The end he started with doesn't line up with slats that you have to cut. So. I now have a mishmash of rows, columns, and staggers. Oh well. We stopped for the night. Dad was SO tired. He was having a hard time picking his feet up and his speech was so slurred that I had to keep asking him what he'd said. Since his stroke, this is an obvious indicator that he's exhausted. I feel so guilty that he's worked himself into this sort of spot. He told my mom that he wants the house to look perfect before Eric gets here next weekend. I hate it even more that he feels that kind of responsibility and pressure.

Squatters - As we moved the baseboards from the front wall, I noticed a huge blackish-brown spot on the back side of the molding. Upon investigation, I realized that it was a hole with bugs in it. Perfect. More inhabitants that don't pay rent. My hope was that these were some sort of wood eating ants but I knew better. I called Terminix (I cancelled my pest control contract with them last month - of course) and ask them what to do. They said they'd send someone out immediately. As soon as they acted excited to send someone out, I knew that this was not going to be cheap. They were seeing dollar signs and I was seeing stars. So, the guy came out and confirmed that the little squatters were termites and that they were in the front wall of the house. I now know that termites find stucco to be a very yummy snack. I finally ask the guy the big question and wanted to know what the financial damage would be to get rid of the critters. He pulled his phone out and started punching in numbers. Then, he just showed me the screen. He didn't even say it out loud. The screen simply read 1320. I'm smart enough to know that they didn't dispatch someone immediately on the chance of making $13.20. I couldn't help it. My eyes welled up and there was no stopping the tears. I know the guy thought I was a loon but that's more than my house payment! He didn't stop there, though. He continued to tell me that we could hire a Terminix contractor to cut the stucco off the front of the house above the soil line for $25 per foot. (There are 23 feet involved). But, since he was such a "nice guy," he told me that I could rent an emery cutter for about $100 and do it myself. This idiot had seen the inside of my house with the flooring going in and he thinks I'm competent to cut the front of my house off? Crap was definitely NOT the word I was thinking. The guy finally asked me if I wanted him to come back on Monday or Tuesday afternoon to do the work. Um, no! When he realized that I was about to completely lose control and have a real live melt-down, he said, "Well, we do have financing. How's your credit?" I wish I could have summoned Clark Howard and Dave Ramsey and had them attack this guy. However, I guess I have to figure something out before the stupid little bugs eat my house like it's some gingerbread house made of cookies and icing. I'm going to make some phone calls on Monday and see what my options are. For now, I guess there's an all night buffet going on in the wall of my living room. (On the bright side, if we hadn't removed the baseboard, who knows how long those little bugs would have gone unnoticed).

I seriously thought I was over having ill-thoughts about Eric when these things happen. This would have happened even if he'd been here. Those bugs don't really care whose house they're nibbling on. But, as I swung the hammer over and over again putting those boards into place, I noticed that dad kept moving further and further back. I have a feeling that the sheer anger swirling around in me right now might just give me enough energy to finish the whole dang floor by myself this afternoon! Swinging that hammer felt pretty good.

Anyway, that's the majority of my day. I'm posting now because once I go retrieve the kids from mom, I have a feeling that it'll be a roller coaster until I drop into bed at whatever time tonight.

So, here's an early, "Good night, all," but I'll also add, "Don't let the bed bugs bite!" Do termites bite people?

The Eye of the Hurricane?

2011-08-26T22:48:00.001-04:00

I've waved a white flag. I've tried to reside in "numb mode." I've tried to pretend that this is the new normal. Nothing is working.

When I got to work this morning and turned my computer on, I had an email from Dasha's IEP holder at school. The email simply says that she doesn't need to continue riding the regular bus. She needs to ride the special ed bus (the short bus) because she's having too much trouble getting on and off the bus. No big deal. Right? Wrong! When we wrote her last IEP, there wasn't a special ed bus that leaves from my school (where the kids get on) to the middle school. I can't drop her off via car line because the kids can't go into the middle school building until 8:00 and I have to be at school by 7:20. The math just doesn't work. I could transfer her to our "home" school so she'd be in district and a special ed bus could pick her up at the house but our zone doesn't catch the bus until a little after 8:00. Same problem. I can't leave her home alone to catch the bus. Perfect. So, I've filed a petition to see if they will divert a special ed bus to our school to pick her up. What happens if I get a, "No?" I'm not sure but it might just be the last straw for my emotional stability. Why? Why? Why? I've been through this a hundred times. What lesson am I supposed to learn from this journey? What's the "take away?" I thought I had figured all of that out but the barrage just seems to continue.

To top it all off, I came home to find that Dad was laying the flooring down. Once again, let me preface things with how grateful I am. However, he hasn't staggered any of the slats. They all line up in rows in columns like grid paper. There are huge seams running across the floor where the slats end and begin in unison. What am I supposed to do? He completely wore himself out today but was so proud of his work! I tried in vain to remove the boards myself so I could spend the night re-laying them correctly. But, I can't budge the darn things without damaging the tongue-and-groove mechanisms. I'm sure the sight of me and Grant sitting on our butts both tugging at the same board was hysterical to outsiders, though. Ugh. At this point tonight, I think I'll just suggest that we start staggering them where he left off. Maybe I can find a beautiful rug to lay down over the other area for distraction. Crap. My heart can't bear the thought of making my dad think I'm disappointed with his workmanship but it's just blaring not right. (Having his blood sprinkled across the boards as evidence of his hard work doesn't help me too much, either, where he sliced his finger with a box cutter). I'd just decided to wait a few weekends to start the job so that we could enlist the help of some more knowledgeable folks. However, once he started ripping up carpet yesterday, I knew that there was no turning back.

So, I'm heading to bed knowing that in the morning I get to face my dad and potentially hurt his pride and trying to figure out how to keep Dasha in school while keeping my own job. Just some light brain teasers!

There have been bright spots this week and I know that I'm letting the dark clouds block the light but DANG! I just can't seem to catch a break!

"I cry out, 'My splendor is gone! Everything I had hoped for from the LORD is lost!'" (Lamentations 3:18 NLT).

My prayer is that I can begin to see more bright spots and less thunderstorms as I close out this chapter of my life. I don't like being like this. I don't like the fog that clouds my heart and prevents me from experiencing life with the kids to its full extent. No matter how much I try to keep things in focus using this lens, though, it seems like the cloud just follows over my head - kind of like Pooh and the little black rain cloud. The faster I run, the faster and larger it gets. At this point, we've moved through thunderstorm, tropical depression, and right up the scale to a category 5 hurricane! I'm tired of being fearful of those calm moments. I don't want to always wonder if I'm just standing in the eye and waiting for the winds to begin whipping back through and wreaking havoc. I'm also tired of removing a few sandbags thinking the storm has passed only to figure out that the storm surge hasn't reached it's full potential yet. Basically, I just want out of the storms and some clear skies for a while. I know that I was never promised an easy life and I'm ok with that but I didn't know that I'd have to endure this sort of crap.

Good night, all.

Help! They're losing brain cells and I can't find them anywhere!

2011-08-25T21:55:00.000-04:00

Thursday's Drama...

I emailed Dasha's teacher for the class that she has a 34.75 average in. Apparently, this is all self-directed and Dasha is failing because she takes too long. Hmmmm..... I'd have a whole bunch of pissed off parents if I told them that their kiddo was failing because they weren't pacing and monitoring their own work and then didn't tell them until a few days before the module was closed out. So, she has to go to school early for makeup sessions which will still be computer / self driven and it really won't change anything other than the fact that she'll have longer to sit there not knowing what to do. When I went to sign her agenda after she'd told me that she didn't have any homework, I found notes from teachers saying that she hadn't brought her things to class and should do them for homework. Um, guess what! Those same books that she didn't take to class are still in her locker at school! Am I really surprised? Dasha told me that she could just do all of the work during homeroom in the morning. We'll see how that works out for her.
I came home to find Dad ripping carpet and my current hardwoods out of the foyer, living room, and dining room. The furniture is simply stacked on top of itself and all of the kids' things that were in the rooms are now stacked on top of the precariously perched furniture. I hadn't gotten all of the odds and ends and crap out of the areas so I'm clueless as to their whereabouts. My old antique clock is now laying on the floor with a lamp sitting on top of the beveled glass front. I'd move it but I can't get to it. As I said, I'm so grateful for the gift of new floors but I would really like to have a better plan in place before bringing in a demo team of one and letting him loose with a crowbar and box cutter! He plans on coming back tomorrow morning to finish off the hardwoods (glued directly to the concrete slab) and take the molding off. I'm now Googling and watching as many You Tube videos about laying 12 mm laminate flooring as I can find hoping to save this situation from disaster. (I even Googled how to use a table saw and install the blade correctly). Anyway, enough of that. I should be thankful and just leave it at that.
Grant told me that he only had a bit of homework so helped Dad with the demo. Funny thing, about 8:30, he suddenly decided that he had more than just a "bit" of homework. I just finished doing a worksheet on prepositions, writing sentences from the Wizard of Oz with prepositional phrases, reading The Wounded Wolf, and doing a worksheet about character motives, conflicts, and story elements for Grant while he tackled his social studies. (By the way, this would be the same social studies class that has shown an "art" video two days this week with tons of nude relics. Yeah). Grant also just informed me that he didn't do well on his preposition test (maybe because mom did the homework) and needs to be at school at 7:40 in the morning for a tutoring session and to retake the test. Hmmmmm.... If I have to be in my classroom and receiving kids at 7:30, something isn't going to work out so well!
And then, there's Annie. Annie is pretty consistent in the insane department. She still has a cold so that doesn't help her attitude much. She hates it when her nose runs so she's resorted to asking you if she can wipe her nose on your shirt. It's gross! I guess the sitter lets her do this. After she slimed me the first time, I gave up and became her personal walking Kleenex, too. Oh well. Her newest trick today was turning every word into at least four syllables. I swear she must have watched Hee-Haw today or something like that! She sounds like some country bumpkin! When she answers "yes," she says "yea -aaaaa - sss." And the word "then" comes out "theeeee-unnnnn." It's so weird but funny. If it continues on, I think it'll lose it's humor, though. She also completed her first "real" puzzle today. It had 20 pieces and was of Tinkerbell. I was pretty impressed. But, at the same time, my heart broke a little to realize how fast she's growing up. Before long, she's going to be ten (still with a paci and diapers, though)! Anyway, Annie can be my undoing with her temper or my bright spot with her revelations about life. I'm more thankful for her everyday - especially as the older kids seem to be veering toward a mental facility or a maximum security prison.
As for me, I'm over middle school. So far, the only positive thing I can say is that the building is nice and clean! I can't begin to tell you how many videos the kids have watched and how many questionable conversations teachers have engaged in with students. I can see that two of Dasha's teachers actually teach and one of Grant's teachers but the other teachers seem to hand out busy work and then expect the kids to go home and read their text books and figure out the missing pieces. Problem is, when Dasha comes home, ALL of her pieces are missing and we're left at ground zero! I can NOT continue to teach 24 kids all day long and then come home and reteach the 6th grade curriculum. I'm so tired that I literally don't remember driving to work this morning. While I'm trying to keep everyone above water academically, I'm still trying to shield everyone from the emotional shrapnel flying around, too. Eric is coming to town for Labor Day weekend so that will add another layer of stuff to deal with. So, this weekend, I will pretend to be Bob the Builder and learn to use a table saw and lay laminate flooring with Dad. Maybe it will be a time of bonding or maybe it will be a time of wondering how my mom let him live this long! Who knows! I'm just praying that this floor goes together as smoothly as it's supposed to. Now, I'm heading to crawl into bed with a humongous stack of papers to be graded. I literally fell asleep in this same stack of papers last night while I was grading them. Hopefully, I can stay awake long enough to get the necessities taken care of so parents won't begin to wonder who in the world they're leaving their babies with all day long! I am thankful, though, that my classroom has finally begun to fall into a routine and the kids are finally coming out of their shells more and laughing at my lame jokes to puff up my ego a bit. I still haven't gotten comfortable with administrators wondering around my room with clipboards making unknown notes and then silently leaving. Are they taking some sore of data on my sanity status? (This is happening to every teacher, though). I guess it wouldn't bug me so much if I thought that these folks even knew who I was! I've never really even spoken to two of them personally (although one of them lives up the street from me and I've been SO tempted to station myself in the shrubs and lob Nerf darts from a high powered toy at her as she walks her frouffy little dogs). I don't expect to be their best friend or even their friend but I'd like to at least have them know my name before they start analyzing who I am as a professional. OK. Enough of that. Once again, the flip side of that coin is that I'm SO thankful to have a job that affords me great hours (sans the 6:20 a.m. departure), insurance, a solid enough salary to keep everything turned on, food on the table, and a roof over our heads. Whew. That's actually a whole lot to be thankful for. Although, I may have a roof over my head but I might not have flooring under my feet after tomorrow! Ah. That's minor, I guess. So, as I said twenty minutes ago, I'm heading to bed to grade papers and make sure that all of the other inmates are locked away and won't be trying to wrap me up in the massive piece of carpet that's now laying in my backyard with who knows what kind of spores and mold living in it. Good night, all.

Gimme a break!

2011-08-24T18:30:00.000-04:00

So, this is simply an "I'm alive" kind of post. Yes. I'm still alive and so are all three of the Siamese Fighting Fish that I have trapped under one roof!

After I discovered Grant's cleaning secret (nothing like Victoria's), he was pretty bummed to know that he'd be on techno restriction for a week. He tried to negotiate his sentence but he really should have hired a better lawyer because he lost. The remainder of his days have been spent on school work which he decides to get serious about at 9:00 at night and then goes to bed after midnight only to have me literally drag him from bed the next morning. This morning, his wake up call came via a squirt bottle of ice water.

Dasha has spent her days this week on homework. She starts as soon as we cross the threshold and only stops for dinner. Ususally, I have to wave the white flag about 9:00 and simply call it quits. I just checked her grades online to find that she has a 34 average in one class. It's a technology class. What the heck? When I started to question her about the situation, she couldn't even tell me the teacher's name. When I ask her if she ever asked the teacher for help, she told me that she had to log into her computer and "text" him for help. I give up. She can barely get her thoughts from her brain to her mouth much less make those thoughts take another route and have to be typed out. Do I talk to the teacher? Do I give it more time? She thought a 34 was good.

Then, there's Annie. She's had a cold so that always put her in a most jovial mood. NOT! Despite her attitude, she still continues to amaze me with her verbal abilities as well as her agility. I'm beginning to think I should skip the swing set idea and go for something more along the lines of one of those agility courses that trainers use to work with dogs! Anyway, today, while we were waiting in car line to pick up the big kids, Annie and I were discussing animals and where they live. When I asked her where a cow lives, she quickly and frankly said, "Chick-fil-A!" I admit, I didn't correct her. It was too cute. (I'm dwelling on that cute anecdote as she clings to my leg whining that she wants to go "somewhere." She hates being home and prefers to be on the go constantly)!

As for me, I'm hanging by a thread. Trying to deal with this whole middle school drama has been too much. From the things that the kids are hearing and asking questions about to the sheer volume of seemingly pointless homework assignments, I'm weary. I was glad to mark Curriculum Night off of my list last night since that is another one of those situations where you have to smile all night and pretend that the parent you're talking to doesn't belong to the kid that told you earlier in the day that they slept in the bed every night with mommy and daddy and showered with daddy sometimes. (Not so bad until you know I'm talking about a little girl)! I'm convinced that some gene pools simply need a couple of gallons of Clorox added in every few years! (My pool might need some muriatic acid)! Anyway, I thought I'd feel better after that was over but now I'm moving on to trying to destroy my living room and dining room in order to put this new flooring down this weekend. It just never seems to end. Yesterday, I discovered that my poor van's air conditioner was, indeed, fried by its attempt to swim on Saturday afternoon in the flooded parking lot. To top it off, my counselor has decided that she doesn't think I'm serious about the sessions and thought I should "look for other options." Um. Yep. Be glad to. I quickly told her I'd be glad to send the notebook back to her, as well. Maybe I should see if Dasha's therapists offer buy-one-get-one-free sessions.

Things aren't as bad as I'm making them sound. I'm just tired and so frustrated with the big kids. Between homework and attitudes, I feel like I'm running some specialized wing that houses mental patients! Without my parents' help over the last few weeks, I really don't know what I would have done. They have constantly prepared dinners, watched the kids, and are now putting down new flooring. I really never thought I'd be one of those people who ends up being dependent on their parents again in their 30s but I guess I'm there. I really don't like it. When it's their money, I feel like I have to give them the final say on things. No. They don't expect that but I feel that way. I just can't figure out how to make this work any other way.

Anyway, I'm headed off to bathe a grumpy toddler, check homework for a native Russian speaker doing prepositions, and a freaking whiny butt who keeps procrastinating about finishing homework and once again didn't bring the right books home - not to mention the pile of papers that I need to get graded and the pile of laundry piling up and now flowing down the stairs. When do I get a break?

Good night, all.

Girly Cupcakes, Swimming Vans, and Hidden Undies

2011-08-20T23:21:00.000-04:00

OK, so just when I thought I'd figured out what MY problem was, everything hits the ceiling AGAIN! As I've been dissecting my feelings over the last couple of days, I figured out that my love tank is empty. This sounds silly. Yeah. Basically, I've given all I have to give and I'm running on empty! I give to 24 children all day long plus do the ridiculous bidding of the administrators and politicians running the building. Then, I head home and give to all three kids until they drop off to sleep. Then, I give to keeping the house in running order. Some nights, that means paying the bills. Other nights, that means doing laundry or packing lunches. I'm just all give out! There's nothing left to give. Kaplooey! Zip-O. Done.

Then, my question became, well, "How do I refill the tank?" Yes, there are absolutely ways that I can re-energize and renew my spirit but I'm even emotionally empty. There are no more tears to cry. There are no more tantrums of "It's not fair-itis" to throw. There's truly nothing but auto pilot.

While I was pondering this, I decided to try to do something fun and different with the kids this morning. I heard about a cute little cupcake and ice cream shop across town. I figured the kids would love to substitute one of those choices for a PB&J sandwich for lunch so we loaded up and headed out.

They're coming to get my food!

Do you seriously want me to share this?

I thought I was doing something nice. Grant actually was quite a pill (that's putting it kindly) all the way to the store but I figured he'd get over it. When we got there, Grant and Dasha decided that they wanted ice cream instead of a cupcake. Geez. We could have gotten ice cream back on our side of the world AND I had budgeted for cupcakes - not ice cream that you pay for by the ounce! I tried to curtail the big kids' toppings and encouraged them to choose lighter toppings like sprinkles instead of M&Ms. That didn't go over so well, though. Oh well. So, two cups of ice cream and one cupcake took a $18 chunk out of the budget. Are you serious? These folks really thought highly of those cupcakes! Like I said, "OH WELL!"

As we got back into the van, Grant suddenly got sullen again. I'd just about had it. I finally told him he had two choices. Choice one was to tell me what he was pouting about and choice two was to tell me what he was pouting about AND have a consequence. He burst out with, "That is such a chick joint!" What? Really? Are you kidding me? After a few more questions, he told me that all of the GIRLS at school talked about going to this little cupcake place and he felt like I'd insulted his manliness by "forcing" him to go there. Hmmmm... He sure didn't seem to mind it so much when he was downing his $7 cup of ice cream! I really tried to just let it go and believe that this was just one of those weird middle school things that I was just going to have to go along with despite not understanding it. Meanwhile, the girls were in the back of the van talking about going to grandma's house to get more ice cream. My thought was, "Yeah, you could have two gallons of ice cream AND M&Ms!"

When we got back home, I gave Dasha a list with three chores on it to complete while I went upstairs to finish laundry. I'm trying to get all of the DVDs and toys out of the living room before we start the job of ripping up the carpet to put the new flooring down. I know that if I have things clean and organized before the demo begins, I'll be in a much better place mentally! Anyway, I put Annie down for a nap and told Grant that his room had to be cleaned before he could do anything else. I also told him that it needed to be done up to MY quality standards - not his!

I left the kids to their various tasks and headed to my room to fold the tower of laundry that was oozing off of my bed. I ironed and folded for almost an hour before I heard a scratching sound. I thought maybe Annie was up. Nope. I went to check Dasha's room. One of the jobs that she'd needed to tend to was moving some of her winter clothes into a plastic storage box. The scratching was coming from inside the box. Yep. My cat. Inside the box. Lid snapped on tight. Should I cry? Nope. It doesn't help. It just depletes my energy. When I asked Dasha to explain the situation, she could only tell me that it was an accident. Yeah. And my finishing off those chocolate chip cookies was an accident, too! Whatever! Believe it or not, I just walked away. I still haven't even addressed it with her. It doesn't seem to matter. She'll agree that it's a bad thing today but then do it again tomorrow. It's pointless. I guess I'm just going to have to give my poor old cat away. She's too old for this kind of torture. I just went back to folding laundry. I really sort of felt like Rainman. Standing there taking great comfort in folding clothes. Kmart sucks. Kmart sucks. Kmart sucks.

Then, this afternoon Dad and Grant went to a race at Dixie with the scouts so I decided to try to convince mom to let me stash the other two inmates with her. Mom agreed to take charge and I was left to figure out what to do. I had two options. My first option was to go and get a pedicure. This is a major luxury but one that I try to take every so often. My second option was to go roam the fabric store without any children trying to kill old ladies on scooters or escape from the buggy (remember that trip)? I decided to head to the fabric store. I've wanted to make a new curtain for my bathroom for some time so I thought tonight would be a good night to look for something suitable. Mom asked me to return a couple of things for her at a neighboring store while I was out. Obviously, I agreed quickly for fear that she'd renig on the babysitting deal!

I took the longest route possible to the fabric store. I opened the sunroof, the windows, and turned my music up. It was just what I needed. (If I'd only known what was coming next, I would have just gotten onto 285 and kept doing laps all night long)! When I reached Hobby Lobby to return mom's stuff, I noticed that it was getting cloudy and I thought I heard a rumble of thunder. The ONLY concerning thoughts I had at that point were about Dad and Grant at the race and being pretty sure that they didn't have an umbrella and calling Mom to tell her that Annie has just developed quite a fear of thunder. So, I stopped and called Mom and then went on in the store. About the time I'd finished the transaction, the bottom fell out. It was like the scene from Forrest Gump where he describes the rain as "coming up from the ground." Oh well. I decided to roam around the store for a bit while the rain slowed to more of a monsoon-type rain. I could hear the rain pelting the roof but I really didn't think too much of it until someone on the loud speaker said, "Could the owner of a white van please come to the front of the store?" Yeah. At best, my thought was, "Crap!" I was quite sure that they weren't calling me to the front to tell me that they were going to give me a million dollars for driving a white mini-van! Nope. There was quite a gathering of folks standing in the foyer of the store staring toward where I'd parked the van. The van was swimming. Yep. The water was up over the door jamb. All of these jerks standing there were laughing about it. As I stood there wordlessly trying to figure out what to do, I just felt lost. Some how, I finally got my senses together and realized that I could wait the rain out but the water in the parking lot probably wouldn't recede very quickly. The drain in the parking lot was obviously stopped up. Or, I could just make a run for it and crawl in through the back of the van and try to move the van before any more damage was done. I went with the second option. I literally shoved my way through the amused patrons and ran toward the van. Before I reached the van, the water was up to my calf. Not good. Now, I had all of those goof-balls watching me, too. So, I popped the back of the van with the remote (yeah, real cool like Knight Rider or something). What I'd neglected to think about was the stroller and the box of clothes that were stowed back there to go to the consignment store. Great. Somehow, I managed to crawl over everything and over the back seat knowing that everyone was watching my wet butt struggle over the seat. By this time, I was majorly pissed and crying. For me, those two things don't translate into grace or patience. I finally dropped into the driver's seat and looked around to see that most of the carpet was dry. That was at least a bit of good news. As I put the key into the ignition, I suddenly wondered what would happen if the van wouldn't start. Thankfully, it did. I backed out of the water without any more drama. I drove around the parking lot a few times to make sure that the brakes were ok and that nothing was going to blow up. There was some shrill belt squealing but it stopped eventually. (I'm not sure if the belt just blew off and the poor van didn't have the heart to quit on me or if the belt just dried out).

So after a wet vac and some elbow grease, I think the van will survive. My emotions, however, are shot. I started off the day in the "numb" category. Normally, that is like "safe mode" and protects me from tears or other outbursts. It didn't work today, though. I know the people at the car wash where I vacuumed the van thought I was completely nuts. I didn't care.

I finally got back to Mom's and grabbed the girls and high-tailed it to a safety zone - home. I went back to the comfort of doing laundry after I had the girls in bed. Grant and Dad were still at the race so I went into Grant's room to grab his laundry basket. I figured that when he'd cleaned his room up this morning he'd unearthed at least a couple of pairs of undies from under his bed. Hmmmm. Empty hamper. How? Wait a minute! Yep. As I pulled his mattress back from the wall, I found everything that had been littering his floor stuffed behind the bed. The deal was that he was supposed to clean up based on MY cleaning quality standards - not his. Does he think that this would meet my standards? His room was supposed to be cleaned before he went to the race tonight. He tricked me. Do you remember my statement about feeling like the big kids had decided to both play the crazy card on me at the same time? Yep. This is just more evidence.

So, Grant will be sad to know that when he gets home, his phone will no longer do anything more than make phone calls. No internet, games, or anything else. And, he won't be surfing the internet on any of the home computers, either. I have truly never had to put him on a serious "restriction." Maybe that's why we're dealing with it now. I don't know. I'm sure not in a position to figure anything out tonight except how much Nyquil I can take without doing permanent damage! Geez.

I do admit that I rolled around in quite a bit of "It's Not Fair" ooze over the last few hours. I kept thinking, "While I'm dealing with one snotty nosed child that hasn't slept through the night in a week, one child with Pig Pen's genes, and one who seems to be intent of knocking my cat off, he's going out to eat, going to concerts, and sleeping in." I don't even know why I travel down that road anymore, though. It's not like it makes me feel any better and it sure doesn't change anything. I just don't understand. Don't get me wrong, though. There are days when I'd like to walk away from everyone and everything for a breather but I could never do it for than more than a day or two. It's been almost three months since he's seen the kids. How? I've got to tell you that absolutely NOTHING could keep me from these kids even at their craziest moments. I just don't understand. The kids don't understand. Oh well. He's not the man he once was I guess.

On that note, I'm going to bed. My head is a hurricane of thoughts swirling around and my heart feels physically heavy. (No, my blood pressure is just fine, thank you. I had a check up on Wednesday and got a clean bill of health minus the sinus infection)! Anyway, I know hundreds and thousands of other women have walked this road and probably had worse situations than I have. I just don't know how they do it. Where I used to think I was strong, I now find that I'm weak or maybe it's just that I'm broken. Too much to figure out for me tonight or even for a counselor in a year!

Good night, all.