sueeeus

the good

My boys are home.  Safe and sound in their room.  Nighty night, boys.  I love you.

the usual crap

I wait around for Gadget to call and let me know what time he’ll be ready with the kids.  No call, so I decided to go to Target and pick up the school supplies on BB’s kindergarten list.  My BB is going to kindergarten!  I can hardly fathom it!  I figured I’d be a few miles down the road in the general direction I need to be.  So Gadget calls around 8 pm and asks where I am, why am I not at the park and ride.  When I get there, he has the nerve to get on my case for not packing enough clothes for the boys, and for not packing baby wipes for LB.  Last time he complained that I didn’t provide enough diapers.  Am I way off here, or isn’t it remotely the least bit feasible and reasonable that their dad should be at least a tiny bit compelled to keep a few diapers and baby wipes and a spare change of clothes on hand for his own kids?  And he dares to criticize me for this?  The man who balks and rages that I’ve gone to the state to ensure that he pays one hundred and fifty stinking dollars a month to support his two sons?  Have I mentioned (I’m sure I have) that that contribution constitutes a whopping 2.5 days of daycare a month.  It makes me utterly sick to my stomach that he dare make jabs about the expense of anything, while concurrently insinuating that I’m lacking as a parent.

Or maybe I read too much into things.  The man knows how to push my buttons.

The suppressing of those emotions, so that my kids don’t hear it in my voice or see it in my face, nearly made me wretch during the ride home.

on a side note

The new kids were in the car, waiting, so I got to meet the four of them.  They are beautiful.  The baby is so squeezable, I just wanted to hold her and cuddle her.  What can I say.  I love kids.  There are three girls and one boy, all under 7.  Their dad shaved their heads because they had lice.  The girls were devastated, as they would be, but they are very beautiful, even with almost no hair.  Beautiful.  One girl asked me “Why did you break up?”  It’s so heart wrenching, how they try to work things out, these little ones.  My BB said he wished we didn’t break up and he wants to live with Daddy, but he wants to live with me and Nicole and all the kids.  Oy.  Explain how that’s not the way things work to a five year old.

LB has a scab with a bruise on his forehead that wasn’t there yesterday when I dropped him off.  Gadget insists it was.  I spiked his hair before he left.  I know it wasn’t there.  Today he’s got scrapes all over his elbow and hand.  Of course he falls.  He’s a toddler.  But please, keep an eye on him, and tell me what happened so I know how he got hurt.

I’m glad Gadget met Nicole and has a family life to live.  I hope they all work out.  I hope they raise those children well.  I just wish he’d be more of a man and a father where his own children are concerned.

thanks, I feel better now

Whatever would I do if I couldn’t throw my thoughts out on my blog?  I’d either implode or explode.  Either way, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Stupid stupid stupidy server that keeps choking, how am I supposed to blog with you being so fickle?

Gadget’s MO is to play his passive aggressive games and not give me the courtesy of any advance notice with regard to when he will take the boys. While it appears there may be a light at the end of this tunnel, since he’s expressed interest in synchronizing the visitation with his new woman’s visitation schedule such that all children can be together for the same weekend, there is no guarantee that he will follow through with any level of consistency.

Anyhow. He called at 8 a.m. Saturday morning and said he’d take the kids, and to meet him at 9 a.m. Nice. Does this give me time to make any sort of weekend plans?

I prefer to be able to make plans. I still sort of fall apart when the boys aren’t here. As much as I yearn for some down time or me time, I still haven’t learned how not to fall apart when they’re not here. A cloud of anguish descends — the grief that we aren’t a family, and I so, so, so want to be a family. Not with Gadget. That ship has sailed. It’s just grief that we aren’t a family, or rather, I’m not a family when my boys are gone. So I fall apart. Because, truly, that’s all I want. Family. Sigh. Therefore, knowing this is how things tend to go, I like to be able to book up my alone time so that I don’t have much time to fall under the spell of that cloud that so deftly and swiftly descends upon me.

Luckily, I’ve been able to schedule very short notice massage appointments each time I’ve come upon a free weekend. If nothing else, this indulgence does much to improve my overall well being. Man hands on me, this time for two full hours, working deep, deep, deep into the bound up muscles of my body. Wow, that almost sounds saucy. I could put a little more effort into that prose and come up with something racy! Massage doesn’t have to be man-hands. I’ve been trying different practitioners, but lately am pleased with this particular therapist. He’s got a little familiarity now with what I need, and because we went for two hours yesterday, he really made some progress and was able to loosen up the upper back and shoulders. I’ve been having chronic headaches, so this is a step in the right direction. And besides, I’ll take two hours of man hands on me any day, even if I have to pay for it!

So this free time can become very expensive. Shopping is one thing that gets me out of the house and that can be done on the spur of the moment. And what struck my fancy this weekend? I stumbled upon this iPod speaker contraption called an iHome, that claims to produce excellent sound. It’s kind of odd looking, and more expensive than the other options, but I figured, what the heck. I can return it if I don’t like it. Oh, I love Costco. Love. Costco is my crack. There, I said it.

Of course I can rationalize any mad spending. See, a speaker solution for the iPod allows me to listen to music without having to wear headphones and carry the iPod around. I seldom have pockets, so have to stuff the thing in my bra. And if I’m dancing around, well, it gets sweaty. Gross! Not to mention potentially limiting the lifespan of my iPod. Electronics and moisture don’t play well together. That’s just plain irresponsible, and we can’t have that!  And singing and dancing to music, reliving memories and experiences that the music evokes, is very therapeutic. Therefore it’s good for my soul. Good for my well being. And something that is good for my well being is worth spending mad money on. Yes? Yes!

I’m good. What can I say.

I tried to wrangle together a date or two within my minuscule window, but it’s just as well that I wasn’t successful. I could get myself into trouble if I acted on spontaneity like that! Instead, I stayed in, drank some wine, bombarded everyone’s FaceBook walls, and cyber flirted. So entertaining. This week I’ve had a sugar daddy offer, a few boy toy prospects, a heap of not-at-all-my-type-please-leave-me-alone pursuers, messages from a small handful of actually nice sounding men, including one or two I might agree to actually meet in person. Maybe. Or maybe not.

It’s fun, but wearying. I don’t really want to look around, troll about, or anything like that. I just want Mister Right-For-Me to show up in front of me, and I want to recognize him, say, “Hello there cutie pie, how are you, where have you been all my life?”, to which he says, “Looking for you, Sweetheart”, and that’s that. We live happily ever after. We don’t have to figure out if we’re ready to meet or even be with someone. We don’t have to figure out if we’re compatible. We don’t have to figure out if we’ll get along until we’re a hundred and one. We don’t have to wonder if the love and honor and respect and compassion and communication and understanding and interest and attraction and affection and everything or anything else will ever fade. We don’t have to wonder if the other will help raise our kids the way we want them to be raised. We don’t have to wonder if they’ll be true and honest. We don’t have to wonder if they’ll always have our back.  We don’t have to wonder if they’ll be responsible and trustworthy. We just jump into forever together.

I know. I’m bat crazy.

hello cutie pie, it's me, bat-girl

I don’t want that sugar daddy, though. That much I do know.

Oh, and that iHome thingy?  Sounds pretty darn good.  Whodathunkit?