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. 

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.

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.

Some things never change

So, earlier this afternoon, some friends of my husband came over.  One of them, E, the wife and my husband’s current girlfriend, was going to go to a little get-together this afternoon and had invited me along.  I declined as politely as possible, but she still was holding out hope that I would change my mind and go with her.  The husband and their two kids, along with my husband and son were going to go look at a property our church group is thinking of buying into.  

As his friends were coming into the house, I had to go use the toilet.  My husband followed me into the bathroom and said “So, are you going with E or not?”  

I told him that I had not planned to go and he looked completely crestfallen.  ”OK,” he mumbled at me, and then just stood there staring at me, looking like a little whipped puppy.

I asked him what was wrong, and he said, “Nothing.”  I had an epiphany then as I realized what was going on.  He was angry with me for not wanting to spend the afternoon with the people he wants me to hang out with.   

See, the problem is that the people he wants me to hang out with are about 10 years younger than me (some more than that), most of them are childless and to them, the point of life is to get as drunk as possible as often as possible.  Now, I am not condemning that lifestyle at all.  If it works for them, cool, I have no problem with that.  I’m merely saying that THAT particular lifestyle is not one that works for me, and I don’t really have anything in common with most of them.  I can’t talk about my son, as they don’t care.  And that’s cool.  I probably wouldn’t want to hear about other peoples kids if I didn’t have any, either.  I can’t talk about my job, as I am a college student again, and they are done with college and work in offices and such.  I am studying nursing, and most of them don’t want to talk about blood and guts and gore.  Again, that’s cool.  I can’t talk about my new cat without memories of my other two cats flooding in and making me cry like a baby.  I don’t know these people well enough to cry like that in front of them.  

They like different kinds of music than I do, different kinds of movies, they have completely different lives than I have and I respect that and think it’s cool, but there is not much for us to talk about.  It’s very difficult for me to get to know people in the first place, and I kind of prefer hanging with people my own age or slightly older, or kids.  I get kids and I like them.  Young adults, not so much.  

So, now my husband is pissed off at me because I am not the person he wants me to be.  We have this argument every couple of months when he tries to force me to hang out with his friends without him.  I have my own friends, and we have a few mutual friends, and I am fine with that.  Apparently he is not.  I keep thinking that it’s time for me to move on.  That he wants me to be someone that I am not and that is not fair to either one of us.    

I don’t like my father’s girlfriend

I got a phone call from my mother who has been divorced from my father for 20+ years a couple of days ago letting me know that she had heard from my half-brother that my dad is in the hospital and is not doing very well. He has pneumonia, his lungs are bleeding and he is having heart problems.

The problem with this is that his girlfriend called my brother and not me. My brother called our mom, not me. I am upset that my dad is sick, and I am angry that the bitch-woman couldn’t be bothered to let me know.

Now, there is a history between this woman and me. When I moved out of my dad’s house I was not able to take everything immediately, so she decided to have a yard sale and get rid of everything I had left behind. Except my jewelry box. She kept that and all my jewelry. I asked her for it back and she refused to give it to me. I asked my dad for it back and his response was that I had left it in the house so obviously I didn’t want it that much. She stole other things from me too, not just my jewelry.

Over the years I have learned to keep my mouth shut around her and not to talk to my dad about her because he takes her side every single time, and she has made it abundantly clear that she detests my brother and I. But, her not even bothering to let me know that my dad is in the hospital is unforgivable in my opinion.

Hey, just wanted to let you know…

I have feelings. I have emotions. Contrary to your beliefs, I am not cold and unfeeling. I am not an “Ice Queen”, and if I am grumpy, it’s only because you have treated me like crap for so long. It hurts me when you sneak off behind my back and fuck someone else. It hurts more when I read about this on the internet because she is so proud of fucking you she just has to brag about it on her blog so that all of our friends can find out the good news, too.

It bothers me when reading about your latest fuck-buddy on the internet is the first time I hear about it. It bothers me that you gave her permission to post it on the internet without talking to me about it first.

I resent the hell out of you for getting fired from your job and sticking us in this position. Not having any money, not having heat or central air and not knowing if we will still have a house to live in come January. And instead of going and trying to find a job, you go and find a new girlfriend instead.

There is much more that I want to say, but I can’t do it right now. I will have to come back to this later I suppose.

what do I think I am doing?!?!

Well, I am now halfway through my CNA training program and the clinical experiences and the classroom training are just sucking the life out of me.

I decided to borrow the money to go through this program because it’s relatively fast, and since my husband has been unemployed since August of last year and we have had no real income since then (mostly just financial aid money), we need money desperately.

I found this program, thinking it would be easy to get through (which it is), and I figured that I could get a job quickly and get some money coming in, and later on, go back to school to become an RN as I have desired to work in health care my entire life.

Sounds like a great plan. Except for one small thing.

I don’t know if I even have what it takes to finish the training, and I know that I will not be able to do this job once I am done with the training.

My second “real” clinical experience was awful. I was pooped on twice, hit, screamed at and called names by a woman who didn’t want to be messed with any more. And that was all less than two hours into my 8 hour shift.

I think CNA’s are amazing, and I admire anyone who is willing to change adult diapers, wipe poopy adult butts, bathe them, dress them, brush their teeth, and everything else that the CNA’s do, but I don’t think I am the right person for this job…

Right now I feel like I want to run away screaming, never to return, and I kind of resent my husband for forcing me to have to do this.

He has not even been looking for a job at all, so it has become my responsibility to take care of him and our son while he sits on his ass all day long playing computer games… I know what I want to do now. I want to go through training either to be a Surgical Tech or to be a Respiratory Therapist.

Either one would be fine with me. It takes about a year for either one, and then I can make a lot more money, enough to take care of my son and I just fine.

And let my husband sit at home on his ass all the time. If I am going to be treated like a single parent, I may as well be one, right?

My life just gets worse all the time

Back in August of 2010, my husband got fired from his job.  It was his own fault that he got fired.  He was sexually harassing three of his coworkers, and that is something that companies don’t take lightly.

Since he was fired because of his own actions, he is not eligible for unemployment benefits, so he decided that after being unemployed for a couple of weeks that he would go to a temp agency and try to get another job.  He went back to the same place that had gotten him the job he had been fired from.  No biggie, except that with the economy so bad they were being extremely picky about who they would help, and since he had been fired recently, they refused to help him.

So, he decided that we could live on his student loans instead of trying to find a job.  His student loans are about $3,000 per semester or $6,000 per year.  We can’t live on that.

We did okay on the initial $3000 from August until November when we ran out of money and were flat broke.  He then decided to cash in his 401k and we got another $1500 or so which lasted us until January.  I feel that I should mention that our mortgage payment is $800 a month and our utilities are around $400/month.  Also, in November, he applied for a job doing data processing for the IRS.

Anyway, I homeschool our son and we belong to this great homeschooling group and they gave us boatloads of food for Thanksgiving and again at Christmas time, so we had enough food for several weeks, but we couldn’t pay the mortgage or the bills.  We somehow managed to slog along until the end of January, when he got half of his financial aid money.

We paid the house payment and the utilities and bought some food and then were broke again, but the IRS had him come in for 7 days of training so we had two paychecks to help us out, and he finally got the other half of his financial aid money in February.  After the training, he was told that the IRS would call him back when they needed him.  So far, they have not.

We are out of money again, he has no job and no real plans to go look for one, I am enrolled in a training program, but that doesn’t start until the end of April, so I won’t be done until the end of June and we don’t have enough money to last that long.  Our mortgage payment is not going to be made for April, our gas and water are going to be shut off, as is the electricity if I don’t get the money together for it soon.

To make things worse, the heater died in our house, so now we have no heat (the air conditioner didn’t work when we moved in, but we didn’t know that at the time) and it is cold in here.  I am pretty much at the end of my rope here and don’t know what to do.  I can’t keep living this way, cold, broke, not knowing when or if more money will be coming in in time to keep us from being homeless and starving.  But I don’t know what to do.  I am going to go through my training if at all possible and see how things go from there I guess, but I don’t have enough money to support us until the training is over.

Wish me luck, I am going to need it.

How I would spend $1000 in about 20 minutes

Sinking of their home-made boat

If someone were to hand me $1,000 and give me an hour to spend it, my first stop would be the bill payment center so that I could pay my utility bills (and keep my gas and water from being shut off), then with the rest of the money I would go to the bank and pay my mortgage payment for April, and that would take care of all of the money.

I currently have no income and have two utilities in danger of shut off and electricity is not far behind. If I don't get my house payment made, in a couple of months we may be homeless, too, so paying that is my priority right now.

Would I like to take that money and spend it frivolously? Absolutely! I would love to go buy a bunch of clothes and new glasses for me and my son and just have some fun with it, but alas, when one has a child, irresponsibility has to wait.

I Don't Really Have a Hometown

On the move – July 1st

This prompt made me laugh. I didn't grow up in any single town. My parents were infected with a horrible case of wanderlust and we never lived anywhere longer than just a few months. By the time I was 18, my parents had moved us 42 times. I went to 9 different high schools. Until I was an adult, the longest I had ever lived anywhere was about 10 months.

Even now, I don't have that great of a track record. The longest I have managed to live anywhere as an adult is 2.5 years. I'm trying to do better because I have a child now and I don't want him to have to go through the same things that I had to go through when I was growing up. We recently bought our first house, so hopefully we will be living here for a while!

Ah, Roomates.

Oh my god, the horror stories I could tell. I have had roommates for about half of my adult life. Some of the experiences have been pretty good, but most have not.

One of the worst happened about five years ago. We had a housemate who got a wild hair and started snooping around on my other housemate's computers, reading their IM's and e-mail and stuff. He found a conversation, assumed it was about him, and blew up. They were not talking about him, but he would not believe us.

He moved out a couple of weeks later, and had the water/sewer/electric service shut off when he left as a final, angry act of revenge. Now it was January, cold and snowy when he left us with no heat, water or electricity, and I have a child who at the time was seven.

I called to get the utilities turned back on, but it turned out that there were some repairs that had to be made before they could turn everything back on, and our landlord was slow to make the repairs. We were without utilities in the middle of winter for close to a month.

All because one nosey, paranoid roommate jumped to conclusions.

I like thunderstorms!

That totally depends. If it is during the day, I am likely to be out in it, enjoying the sensation of the rain falling on my face and the good smells of the wet earth and the wet pavement. If there is a lot of lightening, then we open the windows and enjoy the sounds of the rain falling and the breezes that blow through the windows.

If it is evening, we will most likely light some candles and talk with each other and play board games. After my son is put to bed, I will read or bring out my notebook and pen and write.

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.