Reposting

This will be my life in just a few more weeks.... 

Where Did My Day Go?

A few quick updates: the youth athletic association that I am coaching for is obviously run by morons. A big group of morons. The disorganization runs far beyond the cheerleading section. And that's all I can really say about that right now, mostly because I'm too annoyed to be able to write halfway intelligently about it. On another topic, I was trolling around on craigslist last night and came across a picture of a penis with a watch on it. I'll address the first part of the sentence -- I'm a troll, except not the live-under-the-bridge kind of troll. Hi, my name is Stephanie and I'm a craigslist troll. About the penis and the wristwatch, I was like, who does that? Who actually puts a watch on their dick and then takes a picture of it? I don't know if he was trying to demonstrate his girth, because a sewing tape measure would have done just fine, or if he was trying to say something else, like, "Heeeeeyyyyy, it's penis time!" Too weird. What a freak.

I've survived the first two days of the children being back to school and I feel like I'm going to die. This will be my first full year of being a single parent, although in previous school years I felt like a single parent but I was also really bitter and angry that another adult was living with me but didn't do much to contribute other than give me guilt trips about why I wasn't doing more. So this will be my first full year of being a single parent who isn't bitter and angry all the time. Although the schedule is killing me, I've enjoyed not being really pissed off about why I'm stuck with everything. Maybe it was me subtracting that other, grown child I was raising?

This has been my schedule for the last two days. I expect that it won't be this hectic on the days when we don't have cheerleading practice. Those will be the days I live for.

5:45     My alarm goes off. Hit the snooze.
5:54     My alarm goes off. Hit the snooze and lay in bed and pretend that some hot guy is laying next to me.
5:57     Get up. Stumble out on the deck and smoke a cigarette.
6:08     Shower.
6:19     Wake the children up.
6:23     Pour a healthy bowl of really sugary cereal for both of them. Go dry my hair.
6:31     Get the first child in the shower. Remind them to wash their hair and their ass with actual soap and shampoo, versus the imaginary soap and shampoo.  Start on my makeup. Tell the other child to go make her bed. This isn't so bad, because the younger daughter has decided that making her bed is a pain in her ass, so she just sleeps on top of the covers every night. I'm down with that. As long as the bed is made in the morning, I don't care where you sleep, as long as it's not in my bed.
6:41     Ask if child in shower has washed hair and ass and am told no, they haven't. Think to myself, what the fuck are you doing, then? Get loud and irate with them, and yell hurry up! Your sister needs to take a shower!
6:42     Get myself dressed.
6:48     March into the children's bathroom and tell the child in the shower to get out now. I don't care what's washed, just get out. Get the other child in the shower and start blow drying the first child's hair. Feel pleased that they actually did manage to touch some kind of soap somewhere on their body when I find a few suds in their hair.
6:53    Still trying to get hair brushed out for drying, because of the drama of tangles. I don't know if she's shampooing her hair with a football cleat, but it sure does seem like it.
6:55    March into the bathroom and tell child in shower to hurry up! We need to go!
6:56    Blow dry hair halfway, because the child's hair is too long for me to want to do the whole job. Tell that child to go get dressed.
7:00    Make sandwiches for lunch. If I was smart, I pre-packed the lunch the night before and all I have to do is slap some PB&J together. Oops, the bread is frozen. Fuck.
7:07    Finish the lunches, tell the other child to get out of the shower. At this point, we've used more water trying to get hair and asses washed than an entire village in Africa will use in an whole week. I'm sure of it. I wonder what the next water bill will look like.
7:09    Dry the other child's hair, tell the child who just got dressed to brush their teeth and put on their shoes.
7:15    All hair is dry. I need a drink at this point. Tell the freshly dried child to go get dressed, and no, you can't wear just underwear to school.
7:16    Smoke another cigarette on the deck and get annoyed that some child is coming out on the deck to bug me. I need some quiet.
7:25   Make my bed, because having a freshly made bed keeps me from getting back in that bitch. 
7:30   Brush my teeth, finish my hair and makeup, put on jewelry.
7:42   Throw backpacks, lunch sacks, water bottles off on children. Tell them to go outside and hurry up!
7:45   On the way to before and after school care. Realize my lunch is sitting on the kitchen counter. Oh, well, I can eat some air for lunch. It's cool.
7:56   Arrive at childcare, rush children in, sign in and then they don't even want to give me a kiss? What the fuck is up with that? All this drama and no kiss for Mommy? You should be grateful you have a Mommy as awesome as me.
8:01   Bolt out of childcare, hop in car and rush to work.
8:18   Traffic is backed up on 95. Fabulous.
8:35   Make it to work five minutes late. I don't really care.
8:35 - 5:05  Try to be productive. Realize around 11:00 I haven't paid my bills yet and still need to clean out my purse. Dump contents of my purse out on my desk and spend 45 minutes sorting through my bills and organizing my purse. Take 25 minutes to go eat lunch in a co-worker's office after I find a can of diet soup in my desk and then eat half of my co-worker's chicken salad. Did I mention I only hang around people who share? Besides, he's on a diet and I'm just doing him a favor by eating some of his food. 2:00 comes and I realize that we'll only have fifteen minutes to eat dinner, so I take another lunch break and run to the grocery store to buy some Lunchables. Because I have just made them Dinnerables.
5:05    Leave work, traffic is backed up on 95. Fabulous again.
5:35    Arrive at childcare, bolt in and rush the children. Hurry up! We've got to be at cheerleading practice in precisely 50 minutes!
5:50   Get home and feed my children a wonderful Dinnerable, tell them that if they want more food after cheerleading practice, they can have some goldfish. Try to negate this in my brain by telling myself that it's okay, you packed totally awesome lunches today.
6:00   Change clothes, check my blog. Get sucked into facebook.
6:20   Rush children out of house, back in the damn car.
6:35   Arrive at cheerleading practice five minutes late. I don't really care.
6:35 - 7: 30   Cheerleading practice. I want to throttle some of these children. My stomach is making funny gurgly noises and feels funny. We need to get the hell out of here and get home because Mommy does not want to use that nasty porta-potty.
7:40    Get kind of testy with older daughter's cheer coach because they've run 10 minutes over on the practice and we have homework to do! That wasn't it at all, Mommy's stomach feels really bad and we need to get the FUCK outta here.
7:42    Realize I won't be able to make it home. Make a mad dash for Food Lion.
7:49    Arrive at Food Lion and goose-step the children inside. I'm pissed at myself at this point for ingesting about two gallons of caffeine today because this is what happens when I drink this much caffeine.
8:05    Emerge from Food Lion, okay, let's hurry up because we need to review homework and Big Brother is on, dammit!
8:15   Arrive home. Review homework and praise older daughter effusively for having the foresight to have gotten it done at childcare.
8:25   Big Brother! Because my priorities are straight!
8:35   Realize I haven't watered the my newly seeded topsoil. Fuck. Run outside during commercial breaks and water the topsoil, though I'm pretty sure I missed a lot because it's dark outside and one of my flood lights is burned out.
8:58   Big Brother is over, I've watered all I'm going to do during commercial breaks, children in the bed.
9:10   Get up from a few minutes of just staring stupidly at the walls.
9:15   Pre-pack lunches.
9:30   Send a few emails.  Troll around on craigslist and alternately stare at facebook.
10:00 Holy shit, where did the day go? Fart around on the internet and pack up book bags. Sort through the bill receipts.
11:10  In bed. Pretend some hot guy is laying next to me. Think about doing it all over again tomorrow and pass out.

At this rate, it'll be December in about a week. I can make it to the summer, I swear I can

Vacation

My kids went on vacation today. I am so incredibly annoyed about the whole thing I can't even begin to put words to it.  Of course, they went with douchebag and The Girlfriend. I'm pissed because for ten years of being married to that complete asshole, we went on exactly two vacations, both times to the beach, and he bitched and moaned the entire time, because he hates the beach. We went on vacation for our honeymoon, which was to the Outer Banks, because I refused to fly anywhere. He wanted to go back to the place he had his first honeymoon and then pouted for weeks when I refused. Maybe the honeymoon would have been more enjoyable if we had taken separate vacations.  And then, fast forward to 2009, we took our first family vacation, and he bitched and moaned about that one, too, even though I had found a completely decent house to rent a block and a half off of a beach access during high season for $600 a week! Tightwads of the world, unite!

I'll assume he didn't hate the beach but just hated me. Well, dickface, it's mutual. I sent him a text today and told him that I needed the address where the children would be staying for the week, well, because I need to know where in the hell my children are. He texted the address back and I didn't bother to acknowledge it or to say "Have a great time" or any of that nice shit. Nope. Nothing from me. Simply because I know how much it pisses him off when I don't acknowledge his texts. So right after work I came home, hopped on Google Maps and googled that bitch. Yep, because that's what any self-respecting, sometimes bitter ex-wife would do. I'm pleased to report they are staying at a condo development about five miles from the beach. I can't find any real estate rental information about it, other than it's owned by some guy in New York, so I'll have to assume it's some sort of time share. I hope that my kids have a great time and I hope he has a miserable time and gets sunburned on his nasty furry chest that he refuses to manscape. See, I'm already feeling better.

My vacation starts on Saturday. Guy #1 asked me to go back to his hometown in Indiana and meet the family. I didn't realize what a big deal this was until all of my guy friends started weighing in with their opinions. Apparently, meeting a guy's family IS A BIG DEAL. How the hell would I know this? I've never had to travel to meet anyone's family before, so this is new. Dating is still kind of new. Dating someone with kids is still kind of new. Traveling with a kid to meet the family is new. Traveling with a kid and the dog to meet the family is new. I'm just a tiny bit antsy.

I don't travel well, and this is probably because I never do it. In my adult life, I've taken one honeymoon, one family vacation, one weekend trip with a girlfriend to the beach (for which The Ex gave me shit about for three months afterward) and one trip to Illinois to take my grandfather to his World War II reunion, so that didn't even count as a vacation. I've gone out of town a few times for a couple of conferences and I hated that and I'm already working on my excuse to get out of the next conference. But when I say I don't travel well, I mean, I don't travel well. I'm like that purebred Afghan hound that alternately howls and pukes the entire trip, all the while trembling and shaking. Seriously. This is why I've never moved far away from my family, and this is why I have an aunt who lives in Seattle who I haven't seen since 2003. And I have no intention of seeing her unless she comes back to Virginia. She's kind of a weird, left-wing, spinster aunt whom I've never really known beyond Christmas cards and I already told my mom when my aunt dies she's on her own to get my grandmother's stuff back to Virginia. I also have a stepsister in Alabama that I see exactly once or twice per year, when she comes back to Virginia. I'd like to think I'm that kind of person that doesn't come to you, but you come to me. Like the Godfather.

So Saturday morning, Guy #1, his teenage daughter, dog and I will be loading up in the car for a nice 15 hour drive or so to Indiana. Yeah, mapquest says 12 hours and some minutes, but with a dog (and me) it will be about 15 hours. I know this and have told him this, but he doesn't believe me. I am guessing that by the time we hit mid-Kentucky all four of us will want me to be riding in the trunk. Bound and gagged. And then, after we finally get there, I get to meet his ENTIRE family. Which will not be stressful to me *at all*. Not at all. I feel kind of like I did when the people at work gave me employee of the quarter and I guiltily felt like I had bamboozled them and then felt obligated to work about three times harder to make them think they hadn't made a bad decision after all. Which I am still sure that they did, because the quarter after they gave me employee of the quarter I got in trouble with one of the big wigs at work which resulted in me having to write a letter of apology and sitting in my office sobbing for hours at a time.

So given that experience, God only knows how this is going to go. I'll assume a few months after this trip I'll end up having to write someone a letter of apology. I've unfortunately heard all these great things that Guy #1 has told his family about me on the phone and I'm like, HOLY FUCK! I have got to go to another state and pretend to be fucking phenomenal now! OH MY GOD, the pressure is on! I can fake being phenomenal in the next county, but I've never had to do it in another state. I've got exactly one week to live up to all of this shit he's told his family about me! And so, arriving in Indiana sometime Saturday night will be the Stephanie version of Betty Crocker meets Carol Brady meets June Cleaver meets Claire Huxtable (except I'm not black) meets Cagney and Lacey (just because I thought they were tough as hell when I watched them on TV) meets Daisy Duke meets Wonder Woman. Which is a joke, because most people know me more of a Roseanne kind of person. Minus the factory job and polyester pants. And then, because I do have some semblance of manners, I'll feel obligated to be on my best behavior the whole time and be the best and most unobtrusive house guest there ever was. I won't sleep in the bed, I'll just sleep under it. I'll scrub the bathroom down every day and fold my clothes and zip my suitcase back up every morning, I'll go to bed at 7:30pm and stay in bed until 7:30am, and I won't eat more than an anorexic teenage girl. I'll set lots of other rules to follow (and I'll write them down and carry them in my wallet just to make sure I'm doing everything right). Because really, who the hell wants a sloppy house guest who just makes themselves at home? Not me, that's for damn sure. This is also why I don't allow people from out of town to stay with me, either. Get a room, for chrissakes. I am not going to be your fucking Courtyard at the Marriott.

And then, we will make our way to Chicago where we will stay with other family members and I get to pretend all over again, and blissfully, on Saturday morning, I get to face one of my greatest fears when I hop on a big, old jet airplane to fly back to Richmond (well, let's hope the jet airplane isn't old). My kids are moving back home that weekend and my work schedule isn't workable for me taking Monday off. I shall decompress at the Chicago O'Hare bar bright and early Saturday morning, and then I shall visit the Philadelphia airport bar as well, because the plane that's taking me from Philadelphia to Richmond is kind of small. At least this trip makes geographical sense and not like the time I flew to Atlanta from Richmond, because obviously the most direct route from Richmond to Atlanta is through New Jersey. The last time I flew I almost had a panic attack when we started backing away from the terminal, so I'm not sure how this one is going to go, being post-9/11 and all. I can only hope my TSA fondler is a good looking dyke.

I'm pretty sure Guy #1 still doesn't realize how high my level of maintenance can go. He probably will after this trip. If he's still speaking to me.

High Kicks and Stuff

Did I mention that I'm coaching cheerleading again this year? Although, this time around, I'm not quite so "Helen-Keller-teaching-paint-by-numbers" ish, meaning I actually have a clue as to what's going on. And, I'm coaching my older daughter's team, and I'm not even in charge - I'm the assistant coach! Perfecto! This means I just have to show up and take direction from the real coach, and when I do pass on tips and instructions to the girls, they actually have the capacity to listen and follow directions, unlike the five and six year olds that I coached last year. This year is also easier because I know what to expect for the games, halftime, homecoming and the county-wide cheerleading dance competition. So I feel pretty damn good about volunteering again this year! I also love that my kids will remember that Mommy was right there in the thick of it, and was at every game, like I know The Ex won't be.

This past Thursday night, I was out at practice, wearing my non-work clothes, since I'd shown up the practice in work clothes on Tuesday, and yeah, I did a couple of high kicks. I mean, what kind of coach doesn't demonstrate this stuff? Apparently the smart ones, because when I woke up on Friday morning, I couldn't move. Literally, I couldn't move. I wiggled around in the bed for a few minutes, and then just barely managed to slide out of the bed onto my knees, and then finally managed to grab hold of the side of the bed and get myself in a somewhat upright position. Pain was radiating out of my right glute, straight down my right leg and ended somewhere in my calf. Oh my god, are you kidding me? I decided I could hobble into work to get my laptop and then hobble home, but then I realized I could barely make it in to the kitchen. Nope, work was not going to happen. I knew instantly I had done this with one of the high kicks I had demonstrated. Couldn't be anything but that.

Off to the doctor, who snickered inbetween writing me prescriptions. Guy #1 sympathetically laughed, as did the coach of the team, most of my friends and my mother. The only two people who didn't laugh at my were my children, little loyalists that they are. My mother had to come over and get them straight for dinner, and that was after my former mother-in-law had to bring them home. Saturday morning my mother had to come over and take care of them, because I sure as hell couldn't do it. Not only was I still in severe pain, but I couldn't really function because the meds were finally starting to work. Basically, I got no time with my kids this weekend because I couldn't function, and I'm really pissed off and disappointed at myself for that.  I wasn't able to take them to the birthday party of a little friend (passed that off on a girlfriend), I wasn't able to go to cheer camp (which I really did want to do), and I did just barely manage to get school supplies purchased. I don't remember much of anything else, except I very strangley opted to watch the Season 2 marathon of Top Shot on History channel.  Some of those guys were hottttt! And manhandling some heavy duty armament! But, I digress....  Everything I did do this weekend was with my mother, and that was painful enough by tonight. I love my mom, but jesus christ, she was getting on my last nerve to the point that I was just ready for her to LEAVE.

My back still hurts, but I am pretty much done with my medication. I can't be all foggy-minded and disoriented at work, because then I won't notice when someone else is like that either. So I'm just doing the Aleve thing right now, and it's working okay. I'm done with high kicks, though, and I'm not even going to try to bust out the splits for the girls to be impressed with.

And oh yeah, I discovered a leak in my roof tonight, just a mere week before I go on vacation. Not really what I needed. The stress of traveling is enough. I've thought up a million and one ways to get out of this trip, except I committed to it when I bought my plane ticket home. Because that one hundred dollars will not go to waste, and it's a non-refundable, non-transferable ticket. So regardless of anything else, I will have to get my ass to Chicago some kind of way to fly back home in about two weeks.

Lastly, Guy #1 and The Ex met today, somewhat awkwardly when we all decided to eat lunch at the same restaurant. I mean, really, in Chesterfield? What are the chances of that happening? I only wish I could have looked better, but damn, I could barely focus my eyes. It helped when The Ex and The Girlfriend walked off and Guy #1 made a snarky comment about the shoes The Ex was wearing. Again, why in the fuck would an almost 45 year old man wear checkerboard tennis shoes? I'm embarrased that I have to own up to having been married to his sorry ass.

Stay tuned for the roof saga!

Summertime

Well, summer has come and almost gone. I took a long hiatus from my blog because I just had to step back, get myself together and breathe. I was such a nervous wreck in the few weeks before and after my children left for the summer that it was all I could do to just get up and pretend I was fine. And now, I've blinked, and summer will be over before I know it. Okay, not actually over-over, but I consider summer to be over when they move back home with me for the school year. Which will occur in exactly 17 days. So I have exactly 17 days to get everything else done this summer that I have been planning to do.

Here's my list:

1. Get my kitchen painted, stuff hung up on the walls and a window treatment up. Check. It felt really good to get a lot of my artwork out of my closet and hung up in the kitchen. And voila! I love my kitchen even more than ever!

2. Get my bathroom painted, tile around the top of the shower stall, and install new hardware. Did not happen, and it's not going to until next summer.

3. Paint Guy #1's daughter's bedroom in his house, put up new window treatments and try to help her get organized. Not done to my satisfaction, but she seems to like it and I've decided I'm just not going to agonize over a bedroom that's not even in my house. So check mark on that one.

4. Buy a hood vent for my kitchen and get it installed. The fact that I have live wires protruding from the wall in the cabinet over the stove makes me feel something like a cross between an idiot and a daredevil every time I stick my hand up there. But no, the hood vent has not been purchased, namely because it costs more than $26.79 at Home Depot. Maybe a winter project.

5. Replace tile back splash in the kitchen behind the stove where some previous resident removed the microwave shelf over the stove (that probably wasn't to code anyway). Nope. Next summer.

6. Get my porch railing replaced and painted. Check mark on the replacement, half a check mark on the painting. The whole thing has one coat on it, and goddammit, I'm just not going to paint outside when it's 300 degrees. And I'm not going to pay someone to do it. So maybe a check mark minus.

7. Power wash deck and front porch and stain. Nope and nope, but I've got the name of a guy who does a buddy's cul-de-sac and I am going to give him a call. The fact that his business name is "Yellaboy's Powerwashing" makes me wonder how much jail time this cat has done, but whatever, I need my shit washed. If he's licensed and insured, he's in!

8. Go somewhere, like the beach. Nope and it's not going to happen. Guy #1 invited me to the beach in May, but it was my last week with my kids and sorry, but I just couldn't blow my last week off with them to go to the beach. I had hoped we could maybe sneak off for a few days here or there... but it didn't happen. I'm not even going to lie and say I'm not disappointed.

9. Lots of sleepovers with Guy #1 and going out, having fun, drinking a little wine... Yeah, no. This is what happens when you have kids living with you. I have 17 days to get this accomplished. Obviously, this is not going to happen. Maybe next year, maybe not.

So that's what I've gotten done this summer. A fair amount of shit around my house has gotten done, and I think I'm ready for my kids to come home. I'm tired of sitting around. Time for cheerleading and football.