TheMommyBlog

Friday, August 29, 2008 Familybits

I haven’t left the house in three days. Since I broke my current eyeglasses, I have a choice between wearing them one-stemmed and crooked or wearing the ones that are two prescriptions old. I’ve stocked up on books from a new favorite author, but she writes so much like me that I get all frustrated that I can’t get it together to redo my first book and finish the second, and maybe split them up four ways. She must have an awesome editor. I need an awesome editor. It’s two hundred degrees out and I hate the heat. I took off ten pounds as of last week, but my current routine will put them right back on unless I go climb an ancient structure for four hours twice a week. My mom is selling her house and moving, and I want to help and am ready for the call, but I don’t know that I want to see the house all torn apart (termite repairs) and empty because my heart will hurt. I haven’t seen where they are moving, but hope to when they get the keys in a week. I’m constantly re-juggling furniture and room dimensions in my head so we can have a plan for how to make room for Phil once we’re married. We need a bigger dresser, but the one I have is a family heirloom, was my mom’s and then mine since I was five. Daphne needs a smaller bed, but ditto on the brass bed. It was mom’s, then mine as a child, and now hers. Sense a theme here? We cling to things that have been touched extensively by previous generations with a desperate sort of alacrity. I can’t bear to give them up, and it breaks my heart to see the marble dresser that matches my night stands (handed down from Mom) in Gil’s house, minus half the marble for the top. I don’t know what I’m going to do when the garage is drywalled and I have to put all that crap somewhere so we can use the middle of the room. Why do I have all this crap anyway? There are roughly five hundred books in my shelves, but they represent countless hours of escape and entertainment and learning, hours that saved my sanity and opened the world to me. The same world I’m avoiding by sitting in here, day after day, in my pajamas. Fortunately, I will have to change out of them to pick up the children this afternoon. I need them. I need to parent. It helps me do grown up things, to take care of the house. To take care of myself. Because when I’m alone I’m just on hold.

Thursday, August 28, 2008 Familybits

I’m on the line with the unemployment office and bagging specimens so we can get a positive ID on these flying things! They fit the flying ant description, but those antennae seem a little too perky for ants. And Terminix can’t send anyone until Tuesday! Sure, I’ll wait! How many could invade in six days? Piece of cake!

So I’m posting this picture of one of the ones I caught in a baggie. Maybe someone out there can tell me wtf it is. Prize: a TMB, Pear Soup, or Wonderbelly tshirt or cap.

And yes, I know, my camera is shit all of a sudden. I can’t get it to focus properly. My best friend may come back with her camera to try again. She just stopped by with Bing cherries because she was sure I hadn’t eaten yet, and I totally broke down. I know I need to go out and run a marathon or something but it’s two hundred degrees out there and I don’t even want to open my eyes except to read. UGH.

So, come on over and bring a bane of your own. We’ll get through it together. And I’ll make blender drinks and when Phil gets home we’ll talk him into making his famous guacamole.

*sobs*

OMG I just covered up the heating vent next to my desk. All doors and windows are shut. What if that’s where they’re coming from? … if they are, I don’t want to think about how many more vents I’ll have to close. I just lifted my three hundred pound desk to pull the magnetized cover all the way over and I think the other vents are under dressers. Just shoot me.

OMFG I just got spam inviting me to join the ever-growing and lucrative field of medical bill collections.

Thursday, August 28, 2008 Familybits

I’m sure this is a first-week-only thing, but my kids have been coming home with the greatest homework assignments.

On Monday night, my eldest grabbed me from behind and gave me a bear hug.

“What was that for?”

“I’m supposed to hug two people for my homework.”

Later, as I was folding laundry in the kitchen, he sprawled on one dining chair and put each foot up on another. I kept folding.

“Hi, Mom!”

“Hi, baby!”

“So, notice anything?”

“That you’re watching me and smiling in a creepy way? That you’re taking up three chairs? That you’re wearing two socks I’ve been looking for?”

“I was supposed to put on two different socks and see if anyone noticed.”

“Ah, well find out if you get extra credit for having another pair just like it.”

And then last night, my middle son called. “Hi Mom, I need you for my homework.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. I’m supposed to tell each person in my family two things I like about them.”

“Okay, then! Shoot!”

“These are the two things I like about you: one, you’re snuggly, and two, you’re a nice and lovable mom.”

“Well, then we match. Thank you, sweetie, that makes me very happy.”

“Goodbye, Mom, I love you.”

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Me, Me, Me, Bad Mood Dude

So I’m sitting here, posting and emailing resumes and generally trying to get my kittens together, when Collections calls again to see if I can pay the rest of that ER bill from last Spring—actually there were two bills, one for my ER visit and one for Dylan’s plastic surgery to remove the remains of a tick—for which I can’t even remember if I was insured. I think I was still struggling to prove it amid one company canceling my policy (oops) and then scrambling to reinstate it… oh, hell, I don’t know why but I’ve been having the worst time coming up with the cash and I’m totally dreading having to go over the entire year with the Insurance company to get reimbursed. It’s a lot of money, so I will do it, just not now.

So I finally tell the lady, FINE, take it, here’s my routing and account information, take the whole thousand, I hope it clears, asshole, squeezing my eyes shut and rubbing my forehead. When I opened my eyes, there were a dozen little winged ants crawling up the french door three inches in front of my nose.

What the fuck? We took care of one pest issue after another, and have been battling flies the size of badgers as part of the maggot fallout, as it were, so we should be done, right? RIGHT?

Oohhhh, no, we’ve got a whole new type of ant…fly…thing. I grabbed the nearest cleaning substance (not really for cleaning but I do remember how it stings) and sprayed the crap out of the windows and then sat down and cried. Y’all must think I live in a pig sty. Not so. It’s a really great little house. I’m just a magnet for shit no one wants to deal with.

And now, having showered and put on my flannel pjs, I am retiring to Daphne’s room to stare at her serene, calming blue walls and read until Phil comes home.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Bad Mood Dude

Lately, I’m Will Ferrell running around a racetrack trying to put out the invisible fire. You can’t see it? Well, that’s just because you’re not the kind of team mate who’ll knock me to the ground and use your body to smother the invisible flames.

Anyone want some of this crack? Got it at Target. It was on sale.

I’m amazed any of you keep coming back when you don’t live in my head and see and hear what I do when things go sideways. If it’s going well, I’m thanking Jesus, 8 pounds 6 ounces baby Jesus, new born, not even spoken a word yet. If it’s not, I’m begging Tom Cruise to use his witchcraft to get the invisible fire off me. I’m very impressionable, apparently.

But jiminy, enough with the tests of character. Things are going well. I have a future with someone I love to pieces. I have three beautiful, bright, healthy children. I have managed to hang onto the house for years despite employers going out of business, running out of cash, people crashing into my car in front of the kids’ school, TWICE, and being uninsured or on the verge of it for longer than I can count back, in months, using all fingers and toes.

The kids are insured with their father and have been since I left the foundation in 2005, and suddenly his company is going all kinds of haywire and implementing COBRA even though they’re just changing hands. It’s a company that feeds families, not a hot potato, forjeeperssakes, so please treat it accordingly! So now he’s resigned and COBRA is sucking the life out of him. I have my own COBRA cross to bear, and I swear the two bills combined make up damn near half a mortgage.

I haven’t heard back from the EDD on unemployment, haven’t had an income since May, and am spewing resumes like a woodchipper hoping to get some kind of paid work with benefits. I am a multi-talented person, folks, and I can do most anything I put my mind to, but at some point I need a little push. A little leg up. A little freaking opening.

Do I want to be collecting unemployment? No. Do I want to consider filling out the reduced-cost lunch program so my kids can eat for less at school? No. Do I want to try to attach my ex’s wages? No. Do I want to borrow more money now that I finally don’t owe anyone else anything anymore? No. Do I want to keep driving a car that has a broken seatbelt and three windows that don’t go up and down like they’re supposed to? No. But I do want to keep trying.

Hard times are causing my ex and me to snap at each other, challenging each other’s money management, raiding drawers at each other’s house because we KNOW we bought clothes for the kids but can’t find a single pair of shorts ten minutes before school starts and I know all the laundry is clean and put away.

I’m going to sell my former wedding ring. I’ve seen places like idonowidont.com, but don’t know which of all the similar sites is most trustworthy and productive. I don’t think I’ll get what it’s worth at the jeweler’s. What did you do with your rings when you split up? Did you have to sell them? Did you prefer to keep them for posterity? Do you want to buy a beautiful, 2.5 carat, three-stone diamond ring set in platinum? For you, special deal today.

Time to finish coffee and get looking again for a job. I was all excited to see a records/database/web manager position at the school district office when I went to ask for test scores this morning, but the final date for applications passed last week. Testing is just ending. I could have done that job in a heartbeat. Until then, I’ll just keep doing my job with my children and hope for more Karmic blessing.