They get it! They really get it…

Do you remember when you were a kid and something happened that showed you that your parents were really actual human beings. When you first started to realize that they were not always your mom and dad–that they had lives before you were born. Well, my son, I’ll call him Mr. Melodrama, had that moment with me a couple of days ago.

I had found my old lab coat in a bag of old clothes I was sorting through, and decided to wash it. Once it was done, I tried it on to see if it still fit, and it does. Mr. Melodrama wandered into the room while I had it on and he looked at me kind of weird, then went and got my stethoscope and brought it to me. I hung it around my neck and stood there, looking at him. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he thought.

Finally, he said, “You used to cut people open. Is that a real, hospital-issue stethoscope? Did you wear that lab coat in the hospital? Did you really listen to people with your stethoscope?” I told him that the hospital didn’t give me the stethoscope, I had to buy it, but yes, I was involved in the cutting open of people, and yes, I wore the lab coat in the hospital, and yes, my stethoscope had actually listened to numerous people’s hearts and lungs. His eyes just shone and after a moment, he said, “Cool.” Then he asked me to listen to his heart and then he listened to mine.

That is one of the best things about having a kid, that moment when they actually *GET* something. When you see the light of recognition spark to life in their eyes. It’s pretty awesome and actually makes up for some of the frustration. Also, there is no better feeling in the whole world than when they spontaneously run up to you, fling their arms around you and yell, “I love you, Mommy!” in your ear–you know, that ringing, tingly I-will-never-hear-right-again feeling? Yeah, that’s the one, only better.

Christmas disaster

I am not a Christian, nor do I play one on TV.  (I don’t even own a TV.)  However, we always spend Christmas morning with my husbands’ step-father, his current wife and her family.  We get together, have breakfast, open presents and chat with people we only see twice a year.  Then, around 1:00 pm, we go home, use the toilet, gather more stuff together and head down to my mothers’ apartment and spend the afternoon with my mother, her mother, my brother and his wife.

There are always cameras present at these gatherings, no matter whose home we are in, there are cameras.  Grandparents like to take photo’s of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  The opening of gifts is the perfect time to take candid photos. 

Every year, there are numerous photo’s taken at breakfast and then at the opening of the gifts at my husbands’ family gathering.   Neither one of us like to have our picture taken, but we both tolerate it in the name of making grandparents happy. 

Except this year.  There was no camera at the breakfast gathering this year as a family member had been buried just two days before, so the celebration was a bit more subdued than usual, and no one thought to take pictures this time.  That was fine with me.

After driving an hour to my mother’s apartment, we went in, sat down chatted for about 10 minutes, and my grandmother grabbed her camera and tried to take a picture of my husband.  He got this horrible expression on his face and covered his head with his jacket.  My grandmother said that she just wanted to take one picture of him and he got angry and said that he didn’t like having his picture taken and he didn’t want his picture taken.  Grandma said that she would just wait and try to get a shot of him when he wasn’t expecting it, so my husband got extremely angry and got up and left.  He went outside and spent the next two hours huddled in the car.  He only decided to come back inside after everyone had left and it was getting dark–the time that I was ready to start back home. 

Today he says that he was coming back inside to chat with everyone and that he didn’t realize that everyone else had already left.  So now my family thinks my husband is an asshole because he had to have a temper tantrum about having his picture taken.  He never acts that way at his own family gatherings. 

I guess it’s different when it’s your own family doing things to you?  I don’t know.  I do know that I was embarassed, and kind of humiliated and felt it necessary to apologize repeatedly for my husband trying to ruin the fun for everyone else. 

Some parts of my life suck sometimes.

The State of my life.

My life is very interesting sometimes.  Sometimes I despise parts of it, sometimes I love everything about it.  Right now I can’t figure out if I should despise this one part or if I should embrace it and love it. 

I met a guy.  This guy pleases me immensely.  I barely know him and yet he inspires in me feelings that I have not had in a very long time.  Feelings that I honestly did not know I was even capable of having anymore. 

But, alas there is  a problem.  Probably a few problems with trying to pursue a relationship with this OMG sexy man.  First, I am fat.  I know many men do not like fat women, but I know that he has been with women about my size, so I figure he must be okay with it.  Plus, I have gotten the impression from him that he is interested in me.  But, still, I am fat.  I am reluctant to unleash my fatness on other people unless they make the first move. 

I am terrified to make the first move, but I really feel that at least exploring the possibility of getting to know him better is the right thing to do.  (Okay, my hormones think it’s the right thing to do.)   Unfortunately, I am worried about being rejected.  I was already rejected a few days ago, and I really don’t think I could handle being rejected again so soon. 

Second, I rarely see this man.  When I do, I can almost feel the sparks flying between us, but since I see him so rarely, I am not sure if I should have a go or not. 

Third, he lives about a half an hour away from me and  works even further away.  There is not a whole lot of time for us to get to know each other.  I know that is not such a big deal, but it still could be a factor. 

Then there is the fact that he has no children and I do have one child.  I know he is okay with children, and eventually he would like to have children, but I don’t know that he would want to like to have a child right from the start.  A ten-year-old child at that. 

This whole experience makes me appreciate men even more, though.  A man feels an attraction to a woman and he has to wrestle with all the same things that I am going through.  “Will she think I am a dork?  Will she be attracted to me?  Will she reject me?  If she does reject me, will she be nice about it?”  It’s so hard!!  How do men handle it?! 

I don’t know.  I will be seeing him either this Sunday or the following Saturday.  Maybe I should just pull him aside and talk with him.  Or, I suppose I could send him an e-mail.  Or hope he finds this somehow and reads it and somehow magically knows that it’s me talking about him. 

Just complaining today

So we got our car back from the shop.  We had it for about three days and then it refused to start again.  We called the shop back and the mechanic said he would stop by and take a look at it sometime that day.  He never showed up.  The next day he called and apologized and sent a tow truck to pick up the piece of crap car to tow it to the shop to look at it there.  Three days later, we still have not heard from the mechanic.  My husband finally called this afternoon to try to find out what is wrong with the car, and the mechanic cannot figure it out.  He doesn’t know what’s wrong. 

Stupid car. 

In other areas of life, things are also not going very well.  My husband’s girlfriend is just about to get fired, it will probably happen this coming Friday.  I had originally told him that if she gets herself fired she was going to have to leave because we cannot afford to support her lazy ass, but today I have been thinking that it might just be better if my son and I go and let her stay here.  He seems to prefer her most of the time anyway, and our son and I are just in the way, kind of a cramp in his lifestyle it seems sometimes, so I am trying to find someplace for us to go.  My best friend said that we can come there, but we cannot bring our cats so that won’t work. 

I am afraid to leave though, because I have no job, no car, absolutely no money and two cats and a child depending on me to provide for them.  I don’t know how I will be doing that and it terrifies me.  What if we wind up homeless?  I don’t think I could handle being responsible for making my almost 11 year old son live on the streets.  We don’t even have a car to sleep in. 

Anyway, it’s getting late and I really need to use the bathroom, now that the girlfriend is out (she was in there for about an hour this time.  I can’t believe that it takes that long to pee), so I am going to stop my pity party for now and go get ready for bed.

Back from the dentist

As I mentioned yesterday, my husband broke one of his teeth Saturday night at work.  He had a dental appointment this morning to either get it pulled or to find out what it was going to take to get it fixed.  Turns out that the dentist pulled out the small broken part and decided to put a crown on the tooth.  This is going to cost us $1200.  Our son had to have an eye exam and a new pair of glasses yesterday and that cost us $365.  We got a phone call from the shop where our only car is being worked on yesterday and the mechanic told me that they can’t find the part that they need to fix the car, but if they do manage to fine the part, it will add another $100 to the cost, which is already at $1100. 

We don’t have the money!  We used our Health-care spending account to pay for the glasses and eye exam, but the dentist we had to arrange payments with and the mechanic of course wants the money when we pick up the car.  Who knows when that will be…  I wish we could afford to have a second car, but since we can’t, we have to make due on foot and by borrowing a car with expired license plates.  I hate my life sometimes–I don’t want my life to end, just to change for the better, but I don’t know how to change it.

When it rains it pours…

I had decided back in April that I wanted to study Respiratory Therapy and searched high and low for a training program.  Finally I found one, got all the information about the school and program, went through the application process, secured financial aid and passed my two required interviews with flying colors.  Everything was all set for me to start school today, when all hell broke loose. 

The whole mess started on June 1st actually.  My husband’s girlfriend lives with us (this is a source of much stress and unhappiness for me, but at present there is nothing I can do about it) and she drives a car that technically belongs to a dead guy.  The license plates on the car expired at the end of May, and when she went to get the car licensed in her name, she was told that before John died, he signed the title over to her, but he signed it in the wrong place, so she cannot get the car licensed.  She needs a death certificate and proof of his funeral and the whole thing is now tied up in probate, and who knows when it will be resolved. 

She can’t drive the car now, since it has expired plates, so I became responsible for taking her back and forth to work every day (the trip to drop her off and come back home and then go pick her up and bring her back home takes two hours).  My husband and I only have one car, so wasting so much time taking her to work makes it difficult to get anything else done since we both need the car. 

Anyway, last Wednesday, my husband set out to go do something and managed to get about two blocks from the house when the car died and would not restart.  We had to have it towed to the shop and the next day we found out that in order to fix everything that is wrong with it is going to cost around $1,000.  Two problems with that–we don’t have that much money and the car is not worth putting that much money into.  So, the girlfriend has to ride the bus to work now, my husband is bumming rides to work with co-workers and I missed my mandatory orientation for school. 

My husband got paid on Friday and with the little bit of money that we had in our savings account, we will have enough money to replace the fuel pump, the main problem with the car, so that it will run again, but who knows when we will be getting the car back.  So that is one problem solved, but we are still without a car.

Then, out of the blue, Saturday night at work, my husband broke one of his teeth.  Fantastic.  That’s more money we have to come up with now because it hurts him and it needs to come out, but we have no way for him to get to the dentist as we don’t have a car, and we don’t have the money right now.  Crap. 

Wait, it gets better.    Sunday morning, my son was in bed reading when the ear piece fell off his glasses.  It is broken beyond repair.  We tried electrical tape and super glue and the ear piece will not stay on the frame, so now we have to have his eyes examined and buy him a new pair of glasses which takes money that we don’t have because of the dang car and my husbands tooth.  So my son is without glasses right now, my husband is in pain, we are flat broke, and we still don’t have a car.  Oh, and since I was not able to make the orientation for school, I am not going to be able to go, which since I don’t have any way to get there anyway, I guess it’s okay, just upsetting.  Every time  I think something is going to finally work out for me, everything falls apart.  Life sucks sometimes.

Sorry for the whining here.  I’m just frustrated and upset.

It’s been a while

I have not posted for a while and I am sorry for that.  There is a good reason, though. 

We were hit by a large pickup truck with a big snow plow on the front.  During the accident, I hit my head on the “Oh, shit!” handle and suffered a brain injury.  Two days after the accident, I also developed Post Concussion Syndrome as a result of the injury, and the doctors in the ER told me that it could take up to a year to fully recover and that some people never fully recover, but that most people are symptom-free by three months after the brain injury occurs. 

Fortunately for me, this seems to be the case.  I am feeling much better now, with only occassional bouts of dizziness. The ringing in my ears is getting better, I have regained most of the strength in my arms and legs and my pupils are mostly the same size again.  My memory and concentration problems are mostly gone, too, and the headaches are not constant anymore, they are infrequent and getting better every day.  The thing that continues to plague me is the insomnia and resulting fatigue.  I haven’t slept more than about 5 hours in one night since the accident. 

I had a birthday two days ago.  We went and played lazer tag and it was much fun.  I like lazer tag.   

My husband’s girlfriend still lives here, I can’t remember if I mentioned that in a previous post or not…  She is here and Saturday night she threatened my son, so she will not be here much longer.  Either she goes or my son and I go.  I will not have her threatening my 10 year old son. 

So, now that it is very late, I need to go and try to get some sleep.  I will write more soon.

Where do we draw the line?

I threw a small birthday party for my husband this past weekend.  I invited six people, four adults and two kids (in addition to the two adults and one kid that live in our house).  Someone asked me if it was okay for the adults to bring alcoholic beverages to be consumed after the kids had gone to bed. 

As I am not a complete prude, I said that yes, that was fine.  When everyone showed up, they had several bags of alcohol, and were intent on getting totally drunk.  Okay, that was fine.  I have carpeted floors for people to crash on if necessary, and a nice futon that is really the most comfortable piece of furniture in the house, and that is available for sleeping on as well. 

The party progresses, we eat lots of food, devour most of a half-sheet cake, and then people started drinking.  I cannot drink because of the medication I am on for my blood pressure.  After several hours of drinking, one person excused herself to go to bed.  The kids were already all asleep and it was starting to get late.  I mean around 2:30 am late, not 10:00 pm late.  I went to the kitchen to put the leftover food away and when I went back to the living room, the remaining four adults had paired off with each other and kissing very deeply.  I stood there for a moment, surprised by this turn, then went over and stroked my cat who was curled up on the recliner.  No one noticed that I was even in the room.  I decided to go use the bathroom and brush my teeth and start getting ready for bed. 

When I was done in the bathroom a few minutes later, I went back to the living room, where things had not changed much except that now, there was some heavy petting going on in addition to the deep kissing.   Not being the jealous type necessarily, I decided to go on and go to bed, though I was slightly miffed at their behavior and the fact that no one had invited me.  I didn’t want to join in, I just think it would have been nice if someone had acknowledged my existance. 

Anyway, I went into my sons bedroom and crawled into bed with him.  Then I proceeded to lay there, listening to the increasingly loud sounds coming from the living room, and after a while, there were obvious orgasms happening. 

Over and over and over and over, for the next hour and a half.  At one point, they were so loud that they woke up my son and he went out of his room to get a drink.  The living room is visible from the bathroom, so I have no idea what he saw…

They finally shut up, and I finally managed to get to sleep, and slept for all of three hours. 

Around 7:00 am, my husband came into our sons room and asked me if I would like to go sleep in our bed.  I asked if everyone was gone and he said they were, so I extracted myself from my son’s death grip and went to lay down in bed. 

Long story short, my husband and the other people at the party had gotten drunk and started making out.  Soon, they were all naked except for their socks and performing oral sex on each other, with the two women switching back and forth between my husband and the other guy.  The two men had no sexual contact with each other. 

When confronted with my anger, the three other people involved all claimed that the entire situation was my husband’s fault for not telling them that it was not okay for them to do that.  Hello!?!?  They should have asked if it was okay, not just assumed…  so now I have three less “friends” than I had before.  If they are not willing to take responsibility for themselves and acknowledge that they should have asked rather than just assuming and then are willing to pin all the blame on someone else, I don’t need them for friends. 

My husband is to blame for it, too.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not excusing him here.  He is as much to blame as the other three, but my point is that there were four adults in the living room, and I was available, and no one asked if it were okay.  So, now, I don’t know what to do.  My son may have seen them in their little orgy, and that is unacceptable to me.  This is not the first time my husband has done something like this, and I am sure he will do it again in the future. 

Part of me thinks I should just call it good and leave, but I have no car, I have no real job skills and no money for living on.  I don’t know where I would go or what I would do or how I would support my son.  Life is scary sometimes, and I don’t know what to do.

Alone

I am technically married.  I say technically because I feel like I only have a piece of paper that says that I am, I don’t feel most of the time that I have an actual husband.  My husband is either gone most of the time or sleeping.  When he is not gone or sleeping, he is using his computer and ignoring us. 

My husband works nights, and I have a 10-year-old son who is in school all day.  At night, my son is sleeping and my husband is gone and I am alone.  During the day, my husband is asleep and my son is gone and I am alone.  Around 4:45, my son comes home from school, spends an hour or so telling me about his day and doing his homework.  During that time, my husband is usually gone.  He is a college student in the evenings.  He gets home around 9:15 or so, goes in to have a nap, gets up at 10:15, gets ready and leaves for work.  At least that’s what he does most days.   One day a week, he leaves for class in the late afternoon and doesn’t come home at all until the next morning. 

While he is gone, I am stuck here at the house with no car.  It really sucks not having a car of my own.  During the day, while my husband is sleeping, I have the car, but it runs so poorly that I can’t really go many places because it overheats after about 20 minutes of driving.  So many days, I only get to get out of the house to go to the grocery store which is about 10 minutes away, and then back home. 

I am a college student, too, but my classes are all online because I don’t have a car or a babysitter.  I am also a writer, and that is how I earn a little bit of extra money.  I don’t make enough to really live on, or to even make a significant difference in our income, but every little bit helps, right?

Anyway, the point of this post is that I am tired of being alone.  I would like to have someone that I can hang out with and have fun with.  Someone to talk to and just BE with.  I have friends, but of course, they all have lives too and kids, and jobs and can only get together at times of day that I can’t meet up with them. 

This is sounding much whinier than I intended when I started writing it, so I am going to stop for now, but hopefully I will work on it some more tomorrow when I am not so dang tired.

Growing up

I am getting older (aren’t we all?) and I am a college student. I am having an awful time deciding on a major. I’m a Junior now, and my University is kind of expecting me to pick something already! There are so many things I am interested in, I simply cannot narrow it down to just one thing.

I have always felt pulled in the direction of health care, but cannot decide which branch I would want to study. I’m not entirely certain that I have what it takes to be a nurse, not in a hospital anyway. A nurse practitioner I think I could handle, or a nurse-educator, but not a “regular” nurse. Don’t get me wrong. I think nurses are awesome people that I admire greatly and I am extremely glad that they are willing to do what they do. I just don’t think I have the personality to be a nurse. In real life, I am pretty quiet and sometimes painfully shy and I just don’t think those are good qualities for a nurse to have. I may be wrong, but a nurse so shy they can barely speak to people they don’t know is probably not the best thing.

I think it would be kind of cool to be a doctor, but I don’t necessarily want to invest ANOTHER 6 years or so in my education. I want something that I can get into relatively quickly and contribute to a decent living for my family. There is Phlebotomy, Respiratory Therapy, Ultrasound Technician, Surgical Tech (which I have done in the past), and many other things. When they all sound interesting and potentially fun, how can I choose?!?!

The thing that I have been thinking about this afternoon, however is commiting to the educational requirements necessary to get where I want to be. I am reluctant to just be finishing up my schooling when I am 45 years old, but does it really matter? So what if I am 45 years old and just getting started doing what I want to do. I am going to be 45 anyway, so doesn’t it make sense to be doing what I want to do when I am 45? Shouldn’t I be doing something that makes me happy?

That question brings up a whole other set of questions and thoughts for me.

Why do we settle for doing things that don’t make us happy? Yes, I know there is the societal pressure that we all feel to “grow up and get a job,” but why are the jobs we so often get something that we have merely settled for? Are we hoping that this job will only be temporary, but it winds up sucking us in like quicksand and before we realize it, we are so deep in that we can’t get out?

There is also the pressure that is placed upon us by our families and friends. They expect us to get jobs as soon as we either turn 18 or graduate from college, and to become independent and autonomous–little islands of self-sufficiency bobbing around in an already overcrowded stream. Just because we have turned 18 does not mean we are “grown up”.

Lately I have been wondering: why do we stop growing up? Someone somewhere decided that once we hit the age of 18 we were adults and therefore done growing up. But that’s not true. Isn’t growing up about acquiring the wisdom we need to survive? About experiencing changes and learning about ourselves? Is that growth not something that continues to happen to us our entire lives? If we all stopped gaining knowledge and wisdom at the age of 18, there are so many things that would never have been acomplished. I think that “growing up” should be a life-long process. Something that we never quite finish doing, not something that ends once we reach a certain age.

So with those thoughts in mind, I am off to see if I can figure out how I want to spend my time while I am growing up.