I guess I've mentioned The Betrothal. And the fact that it's this weekend, right?
Well, this storyline actually started last month. For real, it started early in 2010 when I said I wanted a divorce, but we shall only go back to last month.
Her Awesomeness: (That would be me) Are you taking the kids to their football games on your wedding weekend? I assumed they would not be participating in games that day.
The Ex: What time are the games? (Like he hadn't already gotten the emailed schedule).
Her Awesomeness: Evening games. First game starts at 5:00, so the younger daughter needs to be there at 4:00.
The Ex: Are you taking them?
Her Awesomeness: It's your weekend.
The Ex: That's the wedding.
Her Awesomeness: Okay, so, are they going?
The Ex: Are you taking them?
Her Awesomeness: I had assumed they would be doing wedding stuff.
The Ex: No, they can go. All of the wedding stuff should be done by then. Oh, and can you take them that Saturday night?
Her Awesomeness: For the night?
The Ex: Yeah, can you take them?
Her Awesomeness: No, I have plans that weekend. (Which was not a lie, by the way.)
The Ex: *Silence* Uh. Okay, well I'll just tell my folks they have to take them for the rest of the weekend.
It actually went on a little longer than that, just because I wanted to make him squirm in realizing that I was not going to babysit on his wedding night. Helloooo, douchebag, did you really think your ex-wife was going to babysit on your wedding night, especially when it's her weekend off? Um, that would be a great big fuck no. FUCK NO. I mean, really, did he honestly think that?
Apparently so.
So this past weekend I mentioned to the older daughter that I needed to call her grandparents to find out who would be bringing the children to the older daughter's cheer competition this Sunday morning. I'll make yet another assumption and figure that their father won't be the one to do it, being that he will be freshly married. Right after being freshly divorced earlier this year. Imagine my surprise when the older daughter corrected me and told me no, they weren't going to their grandparent's house, they are spending the night with her cheer coach.
Which I'm totally fine with, but I need to make sure all of the cheer stuff gets to the proper place by the appointed time, as I'm not really willing to trust her father to get it done correctly this weekend. So begins several texts back and forth about where the kids would be staying on his wedding night and who would be taking the children to the cheer competition and the birthday party later in the day. What a fucking circle jerk that was. Jesus H. Christ.
First of all, if you don't plan to spend any quality time with your children during your wedding weekend (because that would require actual parenting), then why in the hell would you schedule your wedding on the weekend that you are scheduled to have the children? I mean, this wedding has only been in the works for about a year or so, so he's had plenty of time to sit down with a calendar and figure out my weekends and his weekends. Why not just get married on my weekend and ask to have the children for a few hours on the night before and then for a few hours for the wedding and reception? I know this isn't going to be the fanciest wedding, being that between the two of them, it's the fifth wedding. Yes, my math is inflated, but with this being her second wedding (2) and (+) this being his third wedding (3), that comes up to (=) five (5). See? Makes sense to me.
Second of all, if you are going to pass your children off on someone because of the aforementioned wedding, at least have the decency to make all of the arrangements for cheer competition and birthday parties in advance. Don't open the birthday invitation, see that it's for your wedding weekend, and then hand it to me like it's my responsibility. At least acknowledge the invitation is for your weekend, and then ask if I will handle getting a gift. But again, this would involve The Ex in thinking about someone else. Besides himself.
But it's cool. I'll roll with it and enjoy knowing that whatever I screw up this weekend, it won't be in the form of a legal union. My plans for the weekend, you ask? Well, I get off work at 5:00pm, but might manage to slide out a few minutes early. By 5:45pm, I plan to be bare-ass nekkid in the bed with Guy #1, who will also be bare-assed nekkid, and we will do bare-assed nekkid things like play Words with Friends on his cell phone, and he might even treat me to a shadow puppet show later in the evening. Maybe I'll make a frozen pizza at some point in the night, but maybe not. Maybe it will just be Toaster Strudel - who knows? Saturday morning we will do more bare-assed nekkid things together, and then we will pretty much spend the entire day together at a wine festival. And then Saturday night, maybe more bare-assed nekkid stuff, but maybe stuff with clothes on. The weekend is my oyster, you know? Sunday - cheer competition with Guy #1 in tow (but he doesn't know that yet and I hope he doesn't have too much of a hangover because that music gets L.O.U.D. as F.U.C.K.) and Sunday afternoon, yet a little more bare-assed nekkid stuff and maybe he'll read the paper whilst I clip coupons.
Most of all, though, I'll enjoy *not* being married, because I'm just not there yet.
Showing posts with label my house. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my house. Show all posts
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
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!
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!
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Mommy Is Not Happy
Sooooo.... Mommy is not a happy camper tonight. After yet another painful bout of reading with the older daughter, the top of Mommy's head blew off and Mommy took TV away forever. Well, probably not forever, but for the long and forseeable future. That's it! I'm done! There is no more TV in this house, girls! If you get bored and don't have anything to do, READ A FREAKING BOOK!
I should have done this months ago, if not years ago. But I was being lazy, and I blame myself for that. I should have set the priorities a long time ago, and I failed on that. Well, as of tonight, my children can consider their extracurricular activities re-prioritized by me. I've been getting sick of the sound of the TV always being on, other than when we're doing homework and eating, and I'm most certainly sick of the bullshit advertising and the stupid programming. The programming that never says, "Hey, kids, how about you turn the fucking TV off and read a book?" I am sick of at least one child asking every thirty minutes, "Hey, Mommy, can you buy us... Hey, Mommy, can we have.... Mommy, will you get us..." Sick of it, just simply sick and tired of it.
I know that if I don't get this whole reading thing under control now, it's not going to get better next year. In fact, it will get worse, because next year the work will be harder and the reading more complicated, and I'm sorry, but either of my children failing a grade is not an option. Simply, just not an option. Not for me and not for them. If they fail, it's not going to be because TV was the priority. It's going to be for some legitimate reason. Like some kind of learning disability the school system has failed to properly diagnose. But that's a whole other topic.
As my older daughter was laboring through her word list tonight, I was sitting there beside her, halfway tuned out, looking at my bookshelves with all of my favorite books that have been toted around Prospect, Farmville, the southside of Richmond, Glen Allen and two seperate places in Midlothian. Reading isn't my escape, necessarily, but it's certainly my first love. I was reading Stephen King in seventh grade, sitting up late on school nights in my closet with a flashlight, and by tenth grade I was reading James Clavell and I even gave The Gulag Archipelago a go. Didn't finish it, but I thought it was pretty commendable that I gave it an honest effort at the age of 15. I never shied away from literature classes in college, and even went so far as to take an African Literature class at VCU so I would get to read some stuff that wasn't even near my radar. On the weekends when the children are with their father, and I'm not getting laid, I will sometimes go over to Barnes and Noble and wander for hours, and read little blurbs here and there. When I go to someone's house, I always look at their bookshelves to see what we have in common, and to see if they've got any good recommendations. Right now, I'm reading books on love languages (a relationship book, not a book about THE love languages), the effects of social media and marketing on children (hmmmm), a fictionalized book about Mary, Queen of Scots, and the same damn Clive Cussler book I've been working on for about six months. And a whole bunch of articles on the internet, and a few magazines I've stolen from the various doctor's waiting rooms I've been in (National Geographic, Richmond Family, Garden & Gun, Virginia Living), plus a book on motivational interviewing I'm working on sometimes at work when I eat my lunch, AND Wikipedia.
Not loving to read and not having an appreciation for the written word is not an option for my children. Simply, just not an option. And so, until I've determined that we've moved our reading skills along to the next level, or a point where I am satisfied, there's no more TV. Hell, maybe the TV will just stay off forever. For them. When they're awake. I still need to watch The Real Housewives and Survivor. But for my children, the TV is OFF. Closed up in the entertainment center so they won't be tempted. I am looking forward to the silence, and the sounds of puzzles being constructed on the kitchen table, the sounds of Barbies being played with in bedrooms, and the sounds of pages of books being turned. I should have done this months ago, but it's done now. Let the reading begin.
I should have done this months ago, if not years ago. But I was being lazy, and I blame myself for that. I should have set the priorities a long time ago, and I failed on that. Well, as of tonight, my children can consider their extracurricular activities re-prioritized by me. I've been getting sick of the sound of the TV always being on, other than when we're doing homework and eating, and I'm most certainly sick of the bullshit advertising and the stupid programming. The programming that never says, "Hey, kids, how about you turn the fucking TV off and read a book?" I am sick of at least one child asking every thirty minutes, "Hey, Mommy, can you buy us... Hey, Mommy, can we have.... Mommy, will you get us..." Sick of it, just simply sick and tired of it.
I know that if I don't get this whole reading thing under control now, it's not going to get better next year. In fact, it will get worse, because next year the work will be harder and the reading more complicated, and I'm sorry, but either of my children failing a grade is not an option. Simply, just not an option. Not for me and not for them. If they fail, it's not going to be because TV was the priority. It's going to be for some legitimate reason. Like some kind of learning disability the school system has failed to properly diagnose. But that's a whole other topic.
As my older daughter was laboring through her word list tonight, I was sitting there beside her, halfway tuned out, looking at my bookshelves with all of my favorite books that have been toted around Prospect, Farmville, the southside of Richmond, Glen Allen and two seperate places in Midlothian. Reading isn't my escape, necessarily, but it's certainly my first love. I was reading Stephen King in seventh grade, sitting up late on school nights in my closet with a flashlight, and by tenth grade I was reading James Clavell and I even gave The Gulag Archipelago a go. Didn't finish it, but I thought it was pretty commendable that I gave it an honest effort at the age of 15. I never shied away from literature classes in college, and even went so far as to take an African Literature class at VCU so I would get to read some stuff that wasn't even near my radar. On the weekends when the children are with their father, and I'm not getting laid, I will sometimes go over to Barnes and Noble and wander for hours, and read little blurbs here and there. When I go to someone's house, I always look at their bookshelves to see what we have in common, and to see if they've got any good recommendations. Right now, I'm reading books on love languages (a relationship book, not a book about THE love languages), the effects of social media and marketing on children (hmmmm), a fictionalized book about Mary, Queen of Scots, and the same damn Clive Cussler book I've been working on for about six months. And a whole bunch of articles on the internet, and a few magazines I've stolen from the various doctor's waiting rooms I've been in (National Geographic, Richmond Family, Garden & Gun, Virginia Living), plus a book on motivational interviewing I'm working on sometimes at work when I eat my lunch, AND Wikipedia.
Not loving to read and not having an appreciation for the written word is not an option for my children. Simply, just not an option. And so, until I've determined that we've moved our reading skills along to the next level, or a point where I am satisfied, there's no more TV. Hell, maybe the TV will just stay off forever. For them. When they're awake. I still need to watch The Real Housewives and Survivor. But for my children, the TV is OFF. Closed up in the entertainment center so they won't be tempted. I am looking forward to the silence, and the sounds of puzzles being constructed on the kitchen table, the sounds of Barbies being played with in bedrooms, and the sounds of pages of books being turned. I should have done this months ago, but it's done now. Let the reading begin.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Dog Sitting
I've been dog sitting for the past half of a week, for my former neighbor's dog, because her husband is in the hospital and she just doesn't have time to deal with the dog. I'm not a dog person. I don't generally like dogs, and you may have garnered from a few posts prior that I care even less for dog shit.
I'd like to note that there is just one tiny little letter separating the words dog sitting from dog shitting.
I've been dog sitting and the dog has been dog shitting. Namely, in my house. Which I am less than okay with. The dog arrived last Wednesday night, and first thing Thursday morning, while I was in the shower, she left a little brown treat in the younger daughter's room while the younger daughter was sleeping. The dog then scampered down the hall to my bedroom and left the second half of the brown treat on my floor, and then merrily (I must assume) scampered back down the hallway and left a big puddle in middle of the hallway. Holy dog shit. Are you kidding me? I blame this on myself, because I thought I had time to jump in the shower quickety-quick before I took her out. Apparently not. I also realized upon stomping into the kitchen that I didn't put the cat's food bowl on top of the washing machine the night before and all the cat food was gone. I'll have to assume the dog ate the Indoor Delights Friskies and thus, left me some Indoor Delights.
So the dog and I had a little come-to-Jesus meeting, and then before everyone left the house on Thursday morning, the dog got put in her little pen that I jury-rigged in the living room.
And yes, this is the actual dog. By the time I get done with this whole post her name might be The Dog.
She's not crate trained and didn't come with a crate (hmmm....), but came with a baby-gate-playard kind of concoction. Got home Thursday evening with Guy #1 in tow since it was The Ex's night with the kids, and found that the dog can hold all of her bodily fluids if she's in her little pen. Awesome! Maybe this will work out okay. But then I was at work most of Friday (or pretending to be after my training class finished early and there was.no.fucking.way I was going back to work) and then out with Guy #1 for most of Friday night. I felt moderately guilty, because dogs actually need some attention. I spent a portion of Saturday in the house, and the dog was more than happy to terrorize Guy #1 because he's apparently scared of animals that look like overgrown mutant gerbils. Out and about again Saturday night and still no accidents in the jury-rigged pen.
Sunday morning. It was cold and sleeting outside, and I guess I rushed her through her business outside because maybe an hour after coming back in I found a little brown cookie in the younger daughter's room. Again, I blamed myself for not shutting the bedroom doors. I don't know why she only shits in the younger daughter's room. She hasn't done anything other than sleep in the older daughter's room. Sunday afternoon and she poops outside. Awesome! That second come-to-Jesus meeting must have really done the trick.
But uh-oh. What's that stuck on the hair around her butt? The dog has long hair. Long, thick hair. She's well groomed, and often smells like whatever kind of Avon shampoo my neighbor has been washing her with. Oh, god, is that a turd stuck on her butt? Holy fuck. It is. Oh my god. Fuck. She can't come back in the house with that thing back there, and she can't reach her own butt to clean it off. I guess that's the one good thing to dog sitting a slightly pudgy Pomeranian - when she sneak attacks me and licks me on my face I know that her tongue wasn't previously on her ass.
Anyway, back to the turd stuck in the hindquarter hair. I run in the house and can only come up with... Lysol wipes. Oh well, that'll have to do. I run back outside and put the dog in a mini-headlock and proceed to do nothing more than smear the dog shit all over her rear end. Oh fuck. Oh no. This is not working. Jesus Christ. Are you kidding me again? Pick the dog up and carry her at arms length into the house and then just stand there trying to figure out what to do. Well, into the kitchen sink because I don't know how to wash an entire dog. That's just too much for me to handle. And, Guy #1 was feeling neurotic about my bathrooms on Saturday morning and cleaned them for me, so there was no way I was going to put her into one of the tubs he just scrubbed. So the dog goes right into the sink and I get her into another headlock and try to adjust the water and squirt Dial hand soap onto her ass. Oh my god this is such a mess. Oh Jesus. Well, I certainly can't bring myself to actually touch this soapy, shitty mess I've created and I forgot that I have latex gloves in my bedroom (for doing my toenails, perverts, not the other stuff) so I just get a scrub brush and scrubbed the Dial hand soap around. I am now minus one scrub brush, by the way. Get the soapy, shitty mess off the dog with water that was probably too hot and then realize I have no towel handy to dry the dog. Oh well, I guess while I've got her here in this headlock I'll just take some scissors and trim up the hair back there so I won't have to go through this again. Who knew that Pomeranians have such thick non-trimmable ass hair? This dog might just be related to The Ex. Abandon all plans to trim the dog's ass hair and try to towel dry her with paper napkins. That too was unsuccessful.
Man, I needed a shot of tequila after all of that. Holy god. Actually, what the dog and I both needed a nap after that whole ordeal. But, not for me. Off to see the VCU game. Back in the pen, little fluff ball doggie. No problems Sunday night or Monday morning. At this point we've all kind of adjusted that the dog might be here for a while because my neighbor's husband is still in the hospital. The dog seems like she's enjoying us, the children are enjoying her and the cat lives in the basket on top of the dryer, right next to her food on top of the washer. No more Indoor Delights for the dog, that's for damn sure.
So, we continue on with the dog. I told my older daughter tonight, though, to quit asking me if the dog can come live here for good. The answer is a resounding NO. I'm a cat person. I want to feed the cat, put water in her bowl, scoop the litter box and have a lap available for her to climb in and get petted. I don't want to have to let the animal in and out and in and out and in and out one more time. I don't want to have to crawl around on my hands and knees with carpet cleaner, I don't want some jury-rigged pen in the middle of my living room and I don't want to have to chase a dog around around with Lysol wipes. The dog can visit, for short periods of time... but I'm a cat person. Big ups to the dog for reinforcing that.
I'd like to note that there is just one tiny little letter separating the words dog sitting from dog shitting.
I've been dog sitting and the dog has been dog shitting. Namely, in my house. Which I am less than okay with. The dog arrived last Wednesday night, and first thing Thursday morning, while I was in the shower, she left a little brown treat in the younger daughter's room while the younger daughter was sleeping. The dog then scampered down the hall to my bedroom and left the second half of the brown treat on my floor, and then merrily (I must assume) scampered back down the hallway and left a big puddle in middle of the hallway. Holy dog shit. Are you kidding me? I blame this on myself, because I thought I had time to jump in the shower quickety-quick before I took her out. Apparently not. I also realized upon stomping into the kitchen that I didn't put the cat's food bowl on top of the washing machine the night before and all the cat food was gone. I'll have to assume the dog ate the Indoor Delights Friskies and thus, left me some Indoor Delights.
So the dog and I had a little come-to-Jesus meeting, and then before everyone left the house on Thursday morning, the dog got put in her little pen that I jury-rigged in the living room.
And yes, this is the actual dog. By the time I get done with this whole post her name might be The Dog.
She's not crate trained and didn't come with a crate (hmmm....), but came with a baby-gate-playard kind of concoction. Got home Thursday evening with Guy #1 in tow since it was The Ex's night with the kids, and found that the dog can hold all of her bodily fluids if she's in her little pen. Awesome! Maybe this will work out okay. But then I was at work most of Friday (or pretending to be after my training class finished early and there was.no.fucking.way I was going back to work) and then out with Guy #1 for most of Friday night. I felt moderately guilty, because dogs actually need some attention. I spent a portion of Saturday in the house, and the dog was more than happy to terrorize Guy #1 because he's apparently scared of animals that look like overgrown mutant gerbils. Out and about again Saturday night and still no accidents in the jury-rigged pen.
Sunday morning. It was cold and sleeting outside, and I guess I rushed her through her business outside because maybe an hour after coming back in I found a little brown cookie in the younger daughter's room. Again, I blamed myself for not shutting the bedroom doors. I don't know why she only shits in the younger daughter's room. She hasn't done anything other than sleep in the older daughter's room. Sunday afternoon and she poops outside. Awesome! That second come-to-Jesus meeting must have really done the trick.
But uh-oh. What's that stuck on the hair around her butt? The dog has long hair. Long, thick hair. She's well groomed, and often smells like whatever kind of Avon shampoo my neighbor has been washing her with. Oh, god, is that a turd stuck on her butt? Holy fuck. It is. Oh my god. Fuck. She can't come back in the house with that thing back there, and she can't reach her own butt to clean it off. I guess that's the one good thing to dog sitting a slightly pudgy Pomeranian - when she sneak attacks me and licks me on my face I know that her tongue wasn't previously on her ass.
Anyway, back to the turd stuck in the hindquarter hair. I run in the house and can only come up with... Lysol wipes. Oh well, that'll have to do. I run back outside and put the dog in a mini-headlock and proceed to do nothing more than smear the dog shit all over her rear end. Oh fuck. Oh no. This is not working. Jesus Christ. Are you kidding me again? Pick the dog up and carry her at arms length into the house and then just stand there trying to figure out what to do. Well, into the kitchen sink because I don't know how to wash an entire dog. That's just too much for me to handle. And, Guy #1 was feeling neurotic about my bathrooms on Saturday morning and cleaned them for me, so there was no way I was going to put her into one of the tubs he just scrubbed. So the dog goes right into the sink and I get her into another headlock and try to adjust the water and squirt Dial hand soap onto her ass. Oh my god this is such a mess. Oh Jesus. Well, I certainly can't bring myself to actually touch this soapy, shitty mess I've created and I forgot that I have latex gloves in my bedroom (for doing my toenails, perverts, not the other stuff) so I just get a scrub brush and scrubbed the Dial hand soap around. I am now minus one scrub brush, by the way. Get the soapy, shitty mess off the dog with water that was probably too hot and then realize I have no towel handy to dry the dog. Oh well, I guess while I've got her here in this headlock I'll just take some scissors and trim up the hair back there so I won't have to go through this again. Who knew that Pomeranians have such thick non-trimmable ass hair? This dog might just be related to The Ex. Abandon all plans to trim the dog's ass hair and try to towel dry her with paper napkins. That too was unsuccessful.
Man, I needed a shot of tequila after all of that. Holy god. Actually, what the dog and I both needed a nap after that whole ordeal. But, not for me. Off to see the VCU game. Back in the pen, little fluff ball doggie. No problems Sunday night or Monday morning. At this point we've all kind of adjusted that the dog might be here for a while because my neighbor's husband is still in the hospital. The dog seems like she's enjoying us, the children are enjoying her and the cat lives in the basket on top of the dryer, right next to her food on top of the washer. No more Indoor Delights for the dog, that's for damn sure.
So, we continue on with the dog. I told my older daughter tonight, though, to quit asking me if the dog can come live here for good. The answer is a resounding NO. I'm a cat person. I want to feed the cat, put water in her bowl, scoop the litter box and have a lap available for her to climb in and get petted. I don't want to have to let the animal in and out and in and out and in and out one more time. I don't want to have to crawl around on my hands and knees with carpet cleaner, I don't want some jury-rigged pen in the middle of my living room and I don't want to have to chase a dog around around with Lysol wipes. The dog can visit, for short periods of time... but I'm a cat person. Big ups to the dog for reinforcing that.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Struck Down
I have been struck down by the flu, and I think my older daughter might have it, too. The last time I had the flu was in 2001 and in my mind's eye, it seems like that bout was much worse than this one. I also think I recovered more quickly. It's Friday and I've been sick as shit since Monday, and the doctor at Generic Urgent Care Center said I would be contagious through the weekend. I had gone to my doctor on Wednesday, where he glanced at me and promptly told me I had bronchitis. An easy and likely enough diagnosis, being that I smoke, but according to the doctor yesterday, a misdiagnosis. As much as I like getting a quick appointment with the old Cannuck, I guess it's time to switch doctors.
We don't do flu shots. I have never done flu shots and this round of flu-ness won't change my mind. I'm suspicious of all of these vaccines, and it's not required by law for my children to attend school. I think that there's something to be said for allowing our bodies to develop their own defense mechanisms, and besides, the flu shot is generally only good for one or two strains of flu, and by the time the flu makes it around through my job, the elementary school and before-and-after school care, who knows what kind of convoluted strain I'll end up with. End result is that I could get the flu shot and still get the flu, so why bother with the shot? Maybe my body worked up such an awesome immunity from the last bout of flu I had that it kept me flu free for the past ten years.
Of course, the vaccines that I would gladly take haven't been created yet. I would gladly take vaccines for tuberculosis, Hepatitis C, HIV and cancer, not because I'm out there randomly having unprotected sex in crackhouses while I snack on lead paint, but because all of those things aren't so easily heal-able. But they don't have vaccines for that stuff yet, and prefer to funnel millions of dollars each year into flu vaccines that are only good for one year and that don't even work against all the different strains of the flu.
Now that I've been up and moving about for the past several hours, I'm actually feeling more human than I have since Monday, even though I'm not completely up to snuff yet. The weather is warm and a slight breeze is blowing, so I've thrown open the windows to blow the bad sickness stuff out of my house and hopefully bring in some healthy springtime stuff that will blend nicely with the Mountain Scent Lysol I'm spraying everything down with. I have a little residual dizziness, but I'm not sure if that's a lingering effect of the flu or chemical inhalation. My older daughter is camped out on the sofa watching TV and I plan on camping out on the other sofa with a couple of books, and we'll have a nice relaxing day. With the flu.
We don't do flu shots. I have never done flu shots and this round of flu-ness won't change my mind. I'm suspicious of all of these vaccines, and it's not required by law for my children to attend school. I think that there's something to be said for allowing our bodies to develop their own defense mechanisms, and besides, the flu shot is generally only good for one or two strains of flu, and by the time the flu makes it around through my job, the elementary school and before-and-after school care, who knows what kind of convoluted strain I'll end up with. End result is that I could get the flu shot and still get the flu, so why bother with the shot? Maybe my body worked up such an awesome immunity from the last bout of flu I had that it kept me flu free for the past ten years.
Of course, the vaccines that I would gladly take haven't been created yet. I would gladly take vaccines for tuberculosis, Hepatitis C, HIV and cancer, not because I'm out there randomly having unprotected sex in crackhouses while I snack on lead paint, but because all of those things aren't so easily heal-able. But they don't have vaccines for that stuff yet, and prefer to funnel millions of dollars each year into flu vaccines that are only good for one year and that don't even work against all the different strains of the flu.
Now that I've been up and moving about for the past several hours, I'm actually feeling more human than I have since Monday, even though I'm not completely up to snuff yet. The weather is warm and a slight breeze is blowing, so I've thrown open the windows to blow the bad sickness stuff out of my house and hopefully bring in some healthy springtime stuff that will blend nicely with the Mountain Scent Lysol I'm spraying everything down with. I have a little residual dizziness, but I'm not sure if that's a lingering effect of the flu or chemical inhalation. My older daughter is camped out on the sofa watching TV and I plan on camping out on the other sofa with a couple of books, and we'll have a nice relaxing day. With the flu.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
More Stupid Stuff In My Head
Procrastinating about going to sleep, because, well, if I don't go to sleep then I won't have to get up in the morning and then I won't have to do all that shit that I need to do tomorrow. Like pack a bag to go to a conference and send my children off to my mother's for the night. But I'm only staying one night because the thought of being away from my children on school nights is giving me anxiety. I feel like this routine I've worked so hard to perfect since late August will be totally blown out of the water with if they spend more than one night with my mother. Or anyone for that matter. I'm totally fine with them going anywhere on the weekends, but week nights? School nights? I think not. I also think the separation anxiety I am having from being away for one school night is exacerbated by thinking they will have separation anxiety from me, although, I know realistically that's not it. What's really going on in my head is that I feel like their father has already fallen down on so many promises that if I am not there, they might worry I'm crapping out on them, too.
Taxes. How the FUCK did I go from being married and getting THOUSANDS of dollars back each year at tax time to owing the feds? How did that happen? I have six months of mortgage interest to claim, one child, daycare expenses, medical expenses, sales tax, anything my mother could find to itemize and I STILL OWE????? I am so incredibly pissed at myself for agreeing to let The Ex claim our younger daughter that it's not even funny. Greedy bastard. I guess that's the big fuck you I get for agreeing to him not paying child support, though in his defense (why do I even bother to defend him?) he does pay the younger daughter's child care and some other lightweight kind of stuff. But I'm still mad at myself. I suppose that's what ten years of being mistreated, harassed, stalked and condescended to will do to a person's willpower. I hope he catches gonorrhea.
My mother finished up the taxes yesterday and I signed the paperwork and was getting ready to slide the form in the envelope, seal it up and mail that puppy off. My mother says, "Um, you need to put a check in with that." I was like, "What?" She said I need to mail a check in with what I owe in with the actual tax filings. Huh? That is not how that was working in my head. In my head, I was going to mail the filing in, the guv people were going to review it for accuracy and mail me a bill for what I owed. I was then going to call the 1-800 number on the bill and work out a payment plan with the guv. Kind of like my student loans. I mean, they certainly didn't expect me to pay in full upon my college graduation. Why would taxes be any different? But apparently it is. So fuck again. I just won't mail that one in right now. We're not to the deadline anyway. But I did change my withholdings today. I changed from six exemptions to five, because I've figured in order to have money to feed my children, I'll have to crawl it back each year by one. I don't even know how I ended up with six exemptions to begin with, because I got a copy of my withholding form last week at work that I filled out back in 2005 after the younger daughter was born, and all of the numbers were right. That's the guv for you. Funny math and all where none of it adds up right on one form and all of it adds up right on another form and the two forms don't match when it's time to make the forms match.
I put a profile pic on my blog. It always pisses me off to read a book and I flip to the back cover to see what the author looks like and there's no picture. Hello, I want to know what you look like. Don't be recluse. I guess I need to do that, too. So until I change my mind, freak out and take the picture off, which might be tomorrow, here's what I look like, for that one person who reads my blog who might not actually know me personally.
The suspected East Coast Rapist has been caught. I got a little panicky last week after I saw one of the giant electronic billboards on I-95 with the profile up and I came home and looked it up on the web. I'm still on my news boycott, so I don't know much of what's going on if someone doesn't tell me or I don't see it on facebook. But panicky... I came home and immediately checked all of my windows, because my bedroom windows are low enough that when my children locked me out of my bedroom this past weekend, I ran around the back of the house with a screwdriver, popped the screen off and hoisted my younger daughter through the window to run and open Mommy's bedroom door. Thank god the window itself was already open because that would have required some additional effort on my part. But dropping my child in through the window... I didn't even have to hoist her up on my shoulders, I just lifted her up and dropped her in because the window is that low to the ground. I could have climbed in myself, but the neighbors were in their yard and I didn't want anyone to see how that worked. Of course, if the morons who lived in this house before me hadn't put an actual exterior door knob and locking mechanism on the master bedroom door, this would not have been an issue. My children already know simple lock picking, but we haven't gotten to the exterior locks yet. I was waiting until middle school to teach them about the tumblers.
But after I read about this East Coast Rapist, and I knew that however many victims they know about can probably be multiplied by two or three for the real count, I got a little panicky and rushed around and checked all of my doors and locks. Even though the chances were slim he would select my house, I know that there's another one right around the corner. Maybe literally, but I hope not. Kind of like when people get all riled up about school safety and scanning ID's of people going into the schools and oh my god, it could be a sex offender. Yeah, it could be. Probably won't be, but it could be. I always tell people that they don't really need to worry about a registered sex offender trying to get into a school because there's probably already one with full access to the school WHO HASN'T BEEN CAUGHT YET. But the stay-at-home moms and administrators never really like to hear that and their faces get all tight and squinchy when I say that. That's okay. I know it's true. Jut like all of the parents like to say there are no gangs in Midlothian. Sure. Maybe not like what you see on Gangland, but if there are no gangs in Midlothian, then who put the Gangster Disciple graffiti on the big Electric Company substation box across the street from the fancy new hospital with the bell tower and the marble lobby? Oh, wait, I forgot. GD stands for Growth and Development. My mistake.
And now, I've managed to waste an hour. Time to go pack up for this shindig tomorrow and try to make it through til Friday, when Guy #1 will come over and help me paint the kitchen, which was my big weekend project, except I'm so tired of running around doing shit for cheerleading that I really just kind of want a weekend of nothingness, interrupted only by the cheerleading and basketball banquet on Saturday afternoon that I need to finish making the Pie Sale signs for and bake some desserts. But if I go the painting route, which I won't because I just made up my mind I won't, I'm thinking I can paint and he can sit and watch because I'm kind of anal retentive about painting. Or maybe we'll just hop in the sack at three in the afternoon and see what shakes out. Holla!
Taxes. How the FUCK did I go from being married and getting THOUSANDS of dollars back each year at tax time to owing the feds? How did that happen? I have six months of mortgage interest to claim, one child, daycare expenses, medical expenses, sales tax, anything my mother could find to itemize and I STILL OWE????? I am so incredibly pissed at myself for agreeing to let The Ex claim our younger daughter that it's not even funny. Greedy bastard. I guess that's the big fuck you I get for agreeing to him not paying child support, though in his defense (why do I even bother to defend him?) he does pay the younger daughter's child care and some other lightweight kind of stuff. But I'm still mad at myself. I suppose that's what ten years of being mistreated, harassed, stalked and condescended to will do to a person's willpower. I hope he catches gonorrhea.
My mother finished up the taxes yesterday and I signed the paperwork and was getting ready to slide the form in the envelope, seal it up and mail that puppy off. My mother says, "Um, you need to put a check in with that." I was like, "What?" She said I need to mail a check in with what I owe in with the actual tax filings. Huh? That is not how that was working in my head. In my head, I was going to mail the filing in, the guv people were going to review it for accuracy and mail me a bill for what I owed. I was then going to call the 1-800 number on the bill and work out a payment plan with the guv. Kind of like my student loans. I mean, they certainly didn't expect me to pay in full upon my college graduation. Why would taxes be any different? But apparently it is. So fuck again. I just won't mail that one in right now. We're not to the deadline anyway. But I did change my withholdings today. I changed from six exemptions to five, because I've figured in order to have money to feed my children, I'll have to crawl it back each year by one. I don't even know how I ended up with six exemptions to begin with, because I got a copy of my withholding form last week at work that I filled out back in 2005 after the younger daughter was born, and all of the numbers were right. That's the guv for you. Funny math and all where none of it adds up right on one form and all of it adds up right on another form and the two forms don't match when it's time to make the forms match.
I put a profile pic on my blog. It always pisses me off to read a book and I flip to the back cover to see what the author looks like and there's no picture. Hello, I want to know what you look like. Don't be recluse. I guess I need to do that, too. So until I change my mind, freak out and take the picture off, which might be tomorrow, here's what I look like, for that one person who reads my blog who might not actually know me personally.
The suspected East Coast Rapist has been caught. I got a little panicky last week after I saw one of the giant electronic billboards on I-95 with the profile up and I came home and looked it up on the web. I'm still on my news boycott, so I don't know much of what's going on if someone doesn't tell me or I don't see it on facebook. But panicky... I came home and immediately checked all of my windows, because my bedroom windows are low enough that when my children locked me out of my bedroom this past weekend, I ran around the back of the house with a screwdriver, popped the screen off and hoisted my younger daughter through the window to run and open Mommy's bedroom door. Thank god the window itself was already open because that would have required some additional effort on my part. But dropping my child in through the window... I didn't even have to hoist her up on my shoulders, I just lifted her up and dropped her in because the window is that low to the ground. I could have climbed in myself, but the neighbors were in their yard and I didn't want anyone to see how that worked. Of course, if the morons who lived in this house before me hadn't put an actual exterior door knob and locking mechanism on the master bedroom door, this would not have been an issue. My children already know simple lock picking, but we haven't gotten to the exterior locks yet. I was waiting until middle school to teach them about the tumblers.
But after I read about this East Coast Rapist, and I knew that however many victims they know about can probably be multiplied by two or three for the real count, I got a little panicky and rushed around and checked all of my doors and locks. Even though the chances were slim he would select my house, I know that there's another one right around the corner. Maybe literally, but I hope not. Kind of like when people get all riled up about school safety and scanning ID's of people going into the schools and oh my god, it could be a sex offender. Yeah, it could be. Probably won't be, but it could be. I always tell people that they don't really need to worry about a registered sex offender trying to get into a school because there's probably already one with full access to the school WHO HASN'T BEEN CAUGHT YET. But the stay-at-home moms and administrators never really like to hear that and their faces get all tight and squinchy when I say that. That's okay. I know it's true. Jut like all of the parents like to say there are no gangs in Midlothian. Sure. Maybe not like what you see on Gangland, but if there are no gangs in Midlothian, then who put the Gangster Disciple graffiti on the big Electric Company substation box across the street from the fancy new hospital with the bell tower and the marble lobby? Oh, wait, I forgot. GD stands for Growth and Development. My mistake.
And now, I've managed to waste an hour. Time to go pack up for this shindig tomorrow and try to make it through til Friday, when Guy #1 will come over and help me paint the kitchen, which was my big weekend project, except I'm so tired of running around doing shit for cheerleading that I really just kind of want a weekend of nothingness, interrupted only by the cheerleading and basketball banquet on Saturday afternoon that I need to finish making the Pie Sale signs for and bake some desserts. But if I go the painting route, which I won't because I just made up my mind I won't, I'm thinking I can paint and he can sit and watch because I'm kind of anal retentive about painting. Or maybe we'll just hop in the sack at three in the afternoon and see what shakes out. Holla!
Saturday, September 25, 2010
I Married A Creepy Stalker
I think the title says it all. I'll just get right to the meat of the whole topic. This is his weekend, which means that the children are with him. This also means that this is my weekend to do whatever in the hell I want, which is basically sleep. I got up early this morning to get my oil changed, and then made it back home pretty early, and watched some TV, cleaned my bathroom and my bedroom, and decided I had had enough. Nap time. So I put this little tripe post on facebook that says something to the effect of "I've been up long enough to need a nap" or something to that effect.
I get in bed and drift off, because I can sleep anywhere, anytime. But then the phone rings, about an hour after my post and a half an hour into my nap. It's The Ex. Here's the entire conversation:
The Ex: Hey, Steph, sorry to wake you up from your nap, but where are the shirts that go under the cheerleading uniforms?
Me: They haven't come in yet.
But I'm thinking, it's 80-some degrees outside and they don't need to wear their turtlenecks and besides, the game isn't for another five hours. Why are you calling now about this?
The Ex: Oh, okay. What about the hair bows?
Me: I told you the other night I would bring those to the game with me and do their hair there.
The Ex: Oh, that's right. Well, go back to sleep then.
Me: Hangs the phone up.
And here's the creepy part of this exchange. I un-friended him from facebook in February and my profile and everything on my page is private. This means that you can see my picture, send me a message and send me a friend request. That's it. I know this because I'm super secret about my stuff for the masses, because of where I work and what I do. I'm not one of these people who thinks I have a private profile but don't, I'm one of those people who actually do. When I un-friended The Ex, I cut most of our mutual friends out, unless they were friends who I brought to the relationship. Periodically, I've culled the herd even further down. I left a couple of people who were his friends, because we had the same games, and because I thought these people were mature enough not to be passing on my information to him. As of this afternoon, those few remaining people will no longer be able to count me as a facebook friend.
Well, I realized as soon as he got the first sentence out of his mouth that he's still watching me. I swear, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my heart started beating a little faster. I thought, oh my god, he's still watching me. If you've never felt like an someone is watching you, studying you, memorizing your every move, you have no idea how absolutely terrifying and blood chilling this is. This is how I felt through most of my marriage, although not constantly. But every now and then, I would catch him just staring at me. I would catch him watching me doing nothing. And the way he looked at me then was creepy. He would randomly show up at my office, and if my car wasn't in the parking lot, he would sit there in the parking lot and wait for me to come back to work. Sometimes, when we were married, I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be leaning over me asking me questions, I suppose trying to get me to talk in my sleep (which I do sometimes). He would search my car, go through my phone, find a reason to be in the room with me when I was talking with my girlfriends on the phone, and he hacked into my email. I found out later that he even answered my work cell periodically. There were times during the separation when I was sleeping on the sofa, and I would wake up to see him in the glow of the blinking blue Wii connector watching me in the dark. I would lay there, and fake sleep, and watch him between through my almost closed eyes, and try to keep my breathing even so he wouldn't know I knew he was watching me. He tried to insist that he would be the person who moved me into my new house, and then tried to insist that we should exchange keys to each other's houses just in case of something. Yeah, I don't think so. After I moved out, we arranged for him to drop something off at my house and leave it on the front porch. He texted me later that day and asked if I wanted him to get rid of a piece of gutter laying in the side yard. Okay, we agreed he would leave the bag on the front porch - why the fuck would you be in the side yard? So now I insist that he not drop anything at my house unless it's the children. My mother is of the opinion that he probably rides by my house at night when he doesn't have the children. The whole thing is just so creepy, it's almost creepy scary. I still catch him looking at me sometimes, when we have to be somewhere together, watching me, and I fucking hate it. I hate the way he makes me feel, I hate him for being the way he is and I hate me for marrying him.
The hardest thing of all for me is when I wonder if I was in an abusive marriage. I mean, it was never physically abusive, although there were a couple of fights where things went south so quickly I was pretty sure I was within a few seconds of getting the living shit beat out of me. Of course, when someone is screaming that they're going to drag you by your fucking hair and make you do what they want, this would be easy to believe. I keep going back to this thought in my head, how could I marry someone abusive? How could I have married someone who treated me like this? I'm too fucking strong for this, I'm too smart and I've got too much experience in the ways of how this stuff works for me to have married someone who thinks it's okay to threaten me, to intimidate me, to throw stuff at me, to manipulate me and guilt me into as much as he did. He told me for years that the reason he did all of these things was because of the way I treated him--he had no choice. I drove him to it, and that's left me wondering if I'm the one with the problem, if I'm the one who caused and created all of our problems. But somewhere deep within me, I know that's not it. After all of these years, I feel like the fog in my brain might be clearing and I know that it wasn't all my fault. I wasn't the person that he almost succeeded in making me believe that I was. I think my shroud of denial about this marriage is slowly falling away, and I'm faced with the fact that this probably was an abusive marriage, and no one else has named it as that because either they just don't know, or they don't want to be the person to say it out loud. When I make little pithy comments on here about the psychopath I married, please believe that I'm not joking. I'm being dead serious.
I wonder to myself, what do I have to do to get this man to leave me alone? What do I have to do to feel normal again, to not feel paranoid? Sometimes, I think the paranoia is in my head, maybe this is one of the after effects of being in a marriage that was never right, and maybe this is me just kind of slowly working my way out of the shell shock. He told me for years that I was the fucking nutjob, and that I was the one who needed psychiatric help, and that I was the one who had all the problems. It's hard not to kind of start to believe that, if you hear it enough. I decided a few months ago, the best revenge for all the shit he's done to me will be for me to just live well and look good doing it. But then something like today's phone call happens, and it's hard to feel like you're living well when you're being semi-creeped, or whatever you can call this dysfunctional shit. It's frustrating, too, because he has a girlfriend. Why make comments or worry about what I'm doing? Worry about your girlfriend, although, that woman will turn into me one day and will run the fuck away from him, too. I guess if there's any lesson in this, it will be that The Ex is the first and last creepy stalker I'll ever marry.
I get in bed and drift off, because I can sleep anywhere, anytime. But then the phone rings, about an hour after my post and a half an hour into my nap. It's The Ex. Here's the entire conversation:
The Ex: Hey, Steph, sorry to wake you up from your nap, but where are the shirts that go under the cheerleading uniforms?
Me: They haven't come in yet.
But I'm thinking, it's 80-some degrees outside and they don't need to wear their turtlenecks and besides, the game isn't for another five hours. Why are you calling now about this?
The Ex: Oh, okay. What about the hair bows?
Me: I told you the other night I would bring those to the game with me and do their hair there.
The Ex: Oh, that's right. Well, go back to sleep then.
Me: Hangs the phone up.
And here's the creepy part of this exchange. I un-friended him from facebook in February and my profile and everything on my page is private. This means that you can see my picture, send me a message and send me a friend request. That's it. I know this because I'm super secret about my stuff for the masses, because of where I work and what I do. I'm not one of these people who thinks I have a private profile but don't, I'm one of those people who actually do. When I un-friended The Ex, I cut most of our mutual friends out, unless they were friends who I brought to the relationship. Periodically, I've culled the herd even further down. I left a couple of people who were his friends, because we had the same games, and because I thought these people were mature enough not to be passing on my information to him. As of this afternoon, those few remaining people will no longer be able to count me as a facebook friend.
Well, I realized as soon as he got the first sentence out of his mouth that he's still watching me. I swear, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my heart started beating a little faster. I thought, oh my god, he's still watching me. If you've never felt like an someone is watching you, studying you, memorizing your every move, you have no idea how absolutely terrifying and blood chilling this is. This is how I felt through most of my marriage, although not constantly. But every now and then, I would catch him just staring at me. I would catch him watching me doing nothing. And the way he looked at me then was creepy. He would randomly show up at my office, and if my car wasn't in the parking lot, he would sit there in the parking lot and wait for me to come back to work. Sometimes, when we were married, I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be leaning over me asking me questions, I suppose trying to get me to talk in my sleep (which I do sometimes). He would search my car, go through my phone, find a reason to be in the room with me when I was talking with my girlfriends on the phone, and he hacked into my email. I found out later that he even answered my work cell periodically. There were times during the separation when I was sleeping on the sofa, and I would wake up to see him in the glow of the blinking blue Wii connector watching me in the dark. I would lay there, and fake sleep, and watch him between through my almost closed eyes, and try to keep my breathing even so he wouldn't know I knew he was watching me. He tried to insist that he would be the person who moved me into my new house, and then tried to insist that we should exchange keys to each other's houses just in case of something. Yeah, I don't think so. After I moved out, we arranged for him to drop something off at my house and leave it on the front porch. He texted me later that day and asked if I wanted him to get rid of a piece of gutter laying in the side yard. Okay, we agreed he would leave the bag on the front porch - why the fuck would you be in the side yard? So now I insist that he not drop anything at my house unless it's the children. My mother is of the opinion that he probably rides by my house at night when he doesn't have the children. The whole thing is just so creepy, it's almost creepy scary. I still catch him looking at me sometimes, when we have to be somewhere together, watching me, and I fucking hate it. I hate the way he makes me feel, I hate him for being the way he is and I hate me for marrying him.
The hardest thing of all for me is when I wonder if I was in an abusive marriage. I mean, it was never physically abusive, although there were a couple of fights where things went south so quickly I was pretty sure I was within a few seconds of getting the living shit beat out of me. Of course, when someone is screaming that they're going to drag you by your fucking hair and make you do what they want, this would be easy to believe. I keep going back to this thought in my head, how could I marry someone abusive? How could I have married someone who treated me like this? I'm too fucking strong for this, I'm too smart and I've got too much experience in the ways of how this stuff works for me to have married someone who thinks it's okay to threaten me, to intimidate me, to throw stuff at me, to manipulate me and guilt me into as much as he did. He told me for years that the reason he did all of these things was because of the way I treated him--he had no choice. I drove him to it, and that's left me wondering if I'm the one with the problem, if I'm the one who caused and created all of our problems. But somewhere deep within me, I know that's not it. After all of these years, I feel like the fog in my brain might be clearing and I know that it wasn't all my fault. I wasn't the person that he almost succeeded in making me believe that I was. I think my shroud of denial about this marriage is slowly falling away, and I'm faced with the fact that this probably was an abusive marriage, and no one else has named it as that because either they just don't know, or they don't want to be the person to say it out loud. When I make little pithy comments on here about the psychopath I married, please believe that I'm not joking. I'm being dead serious.
I wonder to myself, what do I have to do to get this man to leave me alone? What do I have to do to feel normal again, to not feel paranoid? Sometimes, I think the paranoia is in my head, maybe this is one of the after effects of being in a marriage that was never right, and maybe this is me just kind of slowly working my way out of the shell shock. He told me for years that I was the fucking nutjob, and that I was the one who needed psychiatric help, and that I was the one who had all the problems. It's hard not to kind of start to believe that, if you hear it enough. I decided a few months ago, the best revenge for all the shit he's done to me will be for me to just live well and look good doing it. But then something like today's phone call happens, and it's hard to feel like you're living well when you're being semi-creeped, or whatever you can call this dysfunctional shit. It's frustrating, too, because he has a girlfriend. Why make comments or worry about what I'm doing? Worry about your girlfriend, although, that woman will turn into me one day and will run the fuck away from him, too. I guess if there's any lesson in this, it will be that The Ex is the first and last creepy stalker I'll ever marry.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Not Feeling So Hot
I think I'm coming down with something. I had a couple of bouts of dizziness the other day, my neck is starting to get stiff and sore (which always makes me think I'm dying from meningitis), I'm cold at night, tired, my throat is feeling like maybe it will hurt tomorrow and maybe it won't. I think the stress of the past two weeks has gotten to me, that and I'm not getting enough sleep.
I'm annoyed that we might have to do cheerleading in the rain tomorrow. I asked the cheer director yesterday about how the inclement weather policy works in regards to notifications, and she said that basically there is no inclement weather policy, that football games are played in the rain. Okay, I know the pros do that and shit, but that's what they get paid for. Me, coaching in the rain? I don't think so. My daughters, cheering in the rain? I don't think so. But since I'm a coach, I can't just blow the whole thing off because it's raining, and I can't show up without my children. This just boils down to this sucks ass. I would hate to end up dying from consumption or something because I was standing out in the rain yelling cheers. Even more than that, my hair would look like shit and my feet would be wet. My feet can only get wet in the shower or pool, and my hair can never look like shit. My body and soul begin a long, slow, painful shutdown process if either happens. And let's not even get into what happens if my makeup runs. My saving grace will be thunder and/or lightening.
I need to get my oil changed, which means that either tomorrow morning or Sunday morning, I'll need to have my ass in Merchant's at seven o'clock to make that happen, unless I want to hang around for about three hours waiting. Not thrilled about that, unless the manager who usually flirts with me is there and is extra quick with my car. I also need to get my windshield replaced, because all of this running up and down 288 and 95 has finally caught up with me. The fourth chip in the windshield is what did it. I now have a nice long crack in that bad boy. I'm just not even pressed, even though I know I should be.
Cheerleading pictures on Sunday afternoon, unless there is rain, and then they'll cancel that. Pray for rain. Pray for rain. Pray for rain. Mommy needs a long day in the bed. Next week is going to be long and hard, mainly because I've got to drive to Northern Virginia on Wednesday and be there by 8:30, then stay til 4:30, and come rushing home for a football game at 6:30. I'm pretty sure I'll be late for everything that day. I hate driving in Northern Virginia. Actually, I don't think hate is a strong enough word. Really, if I wanted to deal with that kind of traffic and asshole drivers, I would just go to Henrico, which I have affectionately (or not) begun to call NoVa on the James. I think it has a catchy ring to it. My friends who live in Henrico aren't amused, but fuck it, they also don't have their porch railing duct taped together. Oh, and did I mention that Wednesday is my birthday? Between driving to Northern Virginia, sitting through a training session, driving back to the RVA, rushing to a football game, rushing home for homework and to make lunches, I'm pretty sure I won't be getting laid. In fact, I'm positive I won't be getting laid. Happy birthday to me. But, since I'm a glass-half-full kind of gal, I'll enjoy that this birthday is not full of The Ex, and it's not going to be full of me having to explain to him that not having sex with him is the only gift I really want.
And... I might be getting a new cat this weekend. Yes, I just put my other cat down, and yes, I had him cremated and just picked up his remains the other day. He's sitting on top of the refrigerator right now, because before he got old and could still jump, he liked to lay on top of the refrigerator. So that's where I put him for the time being, although I'm thinking about moving him to an empty shoebox in the back of the closet, because he liked that more than the top of the refrigerator. The children don't know he's home yet, but they know I got him cremated. My father was cremated, and I had to explain the whole concept to them when he died, which is hard to explain to a five year old. But I explain shit like that to my children, because children can handle more than we think they can. That, and I just think that children shouldn't wonder about stuff. Either I'll tell them and clear all the questions up, or they'll grow up having issues like the issues I have with my mother not letting me say goodbye to my grandmother when she was dying when I was in sixth grade. But about explaining difficult concepts to children, you just have to break it down in simplistic terms. Every now and then, the children discuss the big fire that burned Grandpa's body up, and that his ashes are at the house with Mothbrain. I don't know where in the house Mothbrain put them, because I never asked. I suggested she stick him in the garage or in front of the TV, because those were his two favorite places, but I don't know if she actually did it or not. I think if we cremate people, we should have enough respect to put them where they would most like to be if they don't specify where they want to be. Hence, my cat is on top of the refrigerator until I move him to the closet.
The new cat is my former neighbor's cat, and this woman is like my other mother. In fact, that's what I call her. She's selling her house and moving back to West Virginia, but wants the cat to stay here. So sometime this weekend, I'll be bringing home a lovable Siamese cat who has been fixed and declawed. This cat is also one of the loudest cats I've ever encountered, but Siamese cats are like that. I think she'll fit in fine with us, because my children and I are three of the loudest people I know. It's a little strange, because I had gotten used to the idea of not having any pets, and I was actually enjoying not having any pets. I already have two little cockblockers running around the house, and that's really enough for me. But my other mother, she knows I can't say no to her. I can't and even if I could, I wouldn't. Welcome to the family, Gel. We'll all be loud together.
I'm annoyed that we might have to do cheerleading in the rain tomorrow. I asked the cheer director yesterday about how the inclement weather policy works in regards to notifications, and she said that basically there is no inclement weather policy, that football games are played in the rain. Okay, I know the pros do that and shit, but that's what they get paid for. Me, coaching in the rain? I don't think so. My daughters, cheering in the rain? I don't think so. But since I'm a coach, I can't just blow the whole thing off because it's raining, and I can't show up without my children. This just boils down to this sucks ass. I would hate to end up dying from consumption or something because I was standing out in the rain yelling cheers. Even more than that, my hair would look like shit and my feet would be wet. My feet can only get wet in the shower or pool, and my hair can never look like shit. My body and soul begin a long, slow, painful shutdown process if either happens. And let's not even get into what happens if my makeup runs. My saving grace will be thunder and/or lightening.
I need to get my oil changed, which means that either tomorrow morning or Sunday morning, I'll need to have my ass in Merchant's at seven o'clock to make that happen, unless I want to hang around for about three hours waiting. Not thrilled about that, unless the manager who usually flirts with me is there and is extra quick with my car. I also need to get my windshield replaced, because all of this running up and down 288 and 95 has finally caught up with me. The fourth chip in the windshield is what did it. I now have a nice long crack in that bad boy. I'm just not even pressed, even though I know I should be.
Cheerleading pictures on Sunday afternoon, unless there is rain, and then they'll cancel that. Pray for rain. Pray for rain. Pray for rain. Mommy needs a long day in the bed. Next week is going to be long and hard, mainly because I've got to drive to Northern Virginia on Wednesday and be there by 8:30, then stay til 4:30, and come rushing home for a football game at 6:30. I'm pretty sure I'll be late for everything that day. I hate driving in Northern Virginia. Actually, I don't think hate is a strong enough word. Really, if I wanted to deal with that kind of traffic and asshole drivers, I would just go to Henrico, which I have affectionately (or not) begun to call NoVa on the James. I think it has a catchy ring to it. My friends who live in Henrico aren't amused, but fuck it, they also don't have their porch railing duct taped together. Oh, and did I mention that Wednesday is my birthday? Between driving to Northern Virginia, sitting through a training session, driving back to the RVA, rushing to a football game, rushing home for homework and to make lunches, I'm pretty sure I won't be getting laid. In fact, I'm positive I won't be getting laid. Happy birthday to me. But, since I'm a glass-half-full kind of gal, I'll enjoy that this birthday is not full of The Ex, and it's not going to be full of me having to explain to him that not having sex with him is the only gift I really want.
And... I might be getting a new cat this weekend. Yes, I just put my other cat down, and yes, I had him cremated and just picked up his remains the other day. He's sitting on top of the refrigerator right now, because before he got old and could still jump, he liked to lay on top of the refrigerator. So that's where I put him for the time being, although I'm thinking about moving him to an empty shoebox in the back of the closet, because he liked that more than the top of the refrigerator. The children don't know he's home yet, but they know I got him cremated. My father was cremated, and I had to explain the whole concept to them when he died, which is hard to explain to a five year old. But I explain shit like that to my children, because children can handle more than we think they can. That, and I just think that children shouldn't wonder about stuff. Either I'll tell them and clear all the questions up, or they'll grow up having issues like the issues I have with my mother not letting me say goodbye to my grandmother when she was dying when I was in sixth grade. But about explaining difficult concepts to children, you just have to break it down in simplistic terms. Every now and then, the children discuss the big fire that burned Grandpa's body up, and that his ashes are at the house with Mothbrain. I don't know where in the house Mothbrain put them, because I never asked. I suggested she stick him in the garage or in front of the TV, because those were his two favorite places, but I don't know if she actually did it or not. I think if we cremate people, we should have enough respect to put them where they would most like to be if they don't specify where they want to be. Hence, my cat is on top of the refrigerator until I move him to the closet.
The new cat is my former neighbor's cat, and this woman is like my other mother. In fact, that's what I call her. She's selling her house and moving back to West Virginia, but wants the cat to stay here. So sometime this weekend, I'll be bringing home a lovable Siamese cat who has been fixed and declawed. This cat is also one of the loudest cats I've ever encountered, but Siamese cats are like that. I think she'll fit in fine with us, because my children and I are three of the loudest people I know. It's a little strange, because I had gotten used to the idea of not having any pets, and I was actually enjoying not having any pets. I already have two little cockblockers running around the house, and that's really enough for me. But my other mother, she knows I can't say no to her. I can't and even if I could, I wouldn't. Welcome to the family, Gel. We'll all be loud together.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Suburbia
I am so goddamn tired of these drunk ass rednecks on the other side of my backyard privacy fence with their mosquito torches I don't know what to do. If I can hear your entire conversation through my yard and your yard, and if it's bothering my loud ass, then you are definitely being too fucking loud. I hope the people who live next door to them are as equally, if not more, annoyed than I am. I figure if I stand on the railing of my deck, and launch a couple of beer bottles over there, I could nail one of them. It might take me a couple of warm up throws, but I've got a pretty good arm. I know this because in another life, I would ride around in the back of pickup trucks and launch beer bottles at road signs and stuff. And then, in yet another life, when the RMA used tokens and kept the gates up on the toll booths late at night, I used to play a dangerous little game of seeing how fast I could speed through a toll and still hit the basket with the token. My personal best was about 37 miles per hour. Yeah, bitches. I guess all that combined makes me a redneck, too, though I'm not quite to the level of redneck that these neighbors are.
My neighborhood is a little more blue collar than white collar, and I like that. My last neighborhood was a little more white collar than blue collar, and I didn't like that. Those neighbors were upwardly mobile, always talking about this was their 2500 square foot "starter" house, and they would only be there for x amount of time before they moved over to such-and-such neighborhood. It was all about keeping up. I hated that about that neighborhood, and I hated that if you didn't play that game, then something wasn't right with you. I got to a point when I actually thought about becoming downwardly mobile, because I don't want to chase money and things. Yeah, I want to have clean clothes and a roof over my head and food to eat, but I don't want to be that person who sits around and talks about spending $200 on a pair of jeans, or how much this cost or how much that cost. I'll discuss my daycare costs, because I feel a solemn duty to warn other people thinking about having children, but that's about all I'll discuss financially. I figure if all someone has to discuss is money and what they have, then that's not someone I really want to associate myself with, because to me, you've sold out and you've become a boastful asshole. I guess my downward mobility occurred when I bought my house in this neighborhood. But it's cool, because the houses are smaller and little bit less kept up, and no one here has an irrigation system, but no one here sits around and talks about how much money they just spent at the fancy outdoor mall last weekend. I haven't even met any of my neighbors, other than those jackasses through the backyard privacy fence.
I worry about raising my kids in suburbia. I worry about materialism, and shallowness, and just a general and overall lack of character that most people I seem to meet in suburbia seem to have, those people who I really think get their weekly injection of character at church every week, which really isn't character, it's someone else telling you how to behave, or you shall burn in hell! Not the same thing. But at the same time, I couldn't live in the country, and that's because I hated it growing up. What I specifically hated about it was that we had to drive for at least 20 minutes to get to anywhere, we had to go to the dump, there was no cable service on my road, spotty TV reception (when that shit still floated through the air), and I was far enough out that I couldn't catch a ride with anyone except one girl whose dad looked like he might have been in ZZTop, but I actually think he might have been a retired biker. I plotted my escape for ten years, and came up with my standards for living. I need, and not in any particular order, cable TV, trash service, because going to the dump is fucking nasty and disgusting, and to be able to get to a grocery store in less than ten minutes. I also refused to live in any house with a wood stove, because I will never lift another stick of wood to burn in the my entire life. I might cut some trees down, but I'll be damned if I will ever haul wood to burn in my own house again.
I don't think those are outrageous standards, and now that I have children, I really wouldn't want them attending some rural-ass single A school anyway. I am a product of a rural-ass single A school, and if the education had been worth a damn, I might be a different person now. I'm good with who I am, but I always wonder, what if I actually had an education like the ones my children will get? Hell, what if I had parents like my children have? Anyway, I am stuck in suburbia, because moving out further is not an educational option, it's not a commuting option, and moving in closer is not an option because then I'd have the public schools of the city. No freaking way. Ever. And there's no off the street parking, and we all know I can't parallel park. My parallel parking is me pulling up to a spot that you could probably fit a tour bus into, and making about 47 rotations of back and forth cranking the wheel as hard to the right and left as I can. It's horrible. And embarrassing. Thank god for that show Parking Wars, because at least now I know what end of my car is supposed to be next to my meter.
But I worry about my children, and who they will grow up to be. I don't want to raise shallow, self-absorbed, materialistic shitheads. I mean, I know all teenagers go through that, but I don't want them to be like that when they're actually grown up. I want them to be happy with who they are, be happy with what they've got, be satisfied to not make so much money per year, because money can't make you happy. If it makes you happy, I feel sorry for you. I don't want to raise children who will never be able to look at anyone else with empathy and concern, who will only be able to take, take, take. That's hard to do in suburbia, because there's this constant battle of so-and-so has this, and why can't I have it? Well, because a seven year old doesn't need a fucking laptop is why you can't have it. Because a seven year old who has a laptop and a TV and a DVD player and an x-box in their room, well, that's a seven year who has parents that probably can't be bothered with actual parenting and spending time with their children. But that's a hard concept to explain to my children, because they only see what they don't have, and Mommy doesn't know how to tell them that they don't have that shit because it's more interesting to me to see my children grow and learn and try to see the world through their eyes, than to pack them off to their rooms because it's more fun for me to sit in front of the TV and drink.
I don't even know how I got on this topic, because my intention was to write about the card game of divorce that The Ex and I have been playing. I feel like it's more of a chess match, but I don't know how to play chess, and therefore, can't make the right analogies. Maybe I'll do that next.
My neighborhood is a little more blue collar than white collar, and I like that. My last neighborhood was a little more white collar than blue collar, and I didn't like that. Those neighbors were upwardly mobile, always talking about this was their 2500 square foot "starter" house, and they would only be there for x amount of time before they moved over to such-and-such neighborhood. It was all about keeping up. I hated that about that neighborhood, and I hated that if you didn't play that game, then something wasn't right with you. I got to a point when I actually thought about becoming downwardly mobile, because I don't want to chase money and things. Yeah, I want to have clean clothes and a roof over my head and food to eat, but I don't want to be that person who sits around and talks about spending $200 on a pair of jeans, or how much this cost or how much that cost. I'll discuss my daycare costs, because I feel a solemn duty to warn other people thinking about having children, but that's about all I'll discuss financially. I figure if all someone has to discuss is money and what they have, then that's not someone I really want to associate myself with, because to me, you've sold out and you've become a boastful asshole. I guess my downward mobility occurred when I bought my house in this neighborhood. But it's cool, because the houses are smaller and little bit less kept up, and no one here has an irrigation system, but no one here sits around and talks about how much money they just spent at the fancy outdoor mall last weekend. I haven't even met any of my neighbors, other than those jackasses through the backyard privacy fence.
I worry about raising my kids in suburbia. I worry about materialism, and shallowness, and just a general and overall lack of character that most people I seem to meet in suburbia seem to have, those people who I really think get their weekly injection of character at church every week, which really isn't character, it's someone else telling you how to behave, or you shall burn in hell! Not the same thing. But at the same time, I couldn't live in the country, and that's because I hated it growing up. What I specifically hated about it was that we had to drive for at least 20 minutes to get to anywhere, we had to go to the dump, there was no cable service on my road, spotty TV reception (when that shit still floated through the air), and I was far enough out that I couldn't catch a ride with anyone except one girl whose dad looked like he might have been in ZZTop, but I actually think he might have been a retired biker. I plotted my escape for ten years, and came up with my standards for living. I need, and not in any particular order, cable TV, trash service, because going to the dump is fucking nasty and disgusting, and to be able to get to a grocery store in less than ten minutes. I also refused to live in any house with a wood stove, because I will never lift another stick of wood to burn in the my entire life. I might cut some trees down, but I'll be damned if I will ever haul wood to burn in my own house again.
I don't think those are outrageous standards, and now that I have children, I really wouldn't want them attending some rural-ass single A school anyway. I am a product of a rural-ass single A school, and if the education had been worth a damn, I might be a different person now. I'm good with who I am, but I always wonder, what if I actually had an education like the ones my children will get? Hell, what if I had parents like my children have? Anyway, I am stuck in suburbia, because moving out further is not an educational option, it's not a commuting option, and moving in closer is not an option because then I'd have the public schools of the city. No freaking way. Ever. And there's no off the street parking, and we all know I can't parallel park. My parallel parking is me pulling up to a spot that you could probably fit a tour bus into, and making about 47 rotations of back and forth cranking the wheel as hard to the right and left as I can. It's horrible. And embarrassing. Thank god for that show Parking Wars, because at least now I know what end of my car is supposed to be next to my meter.
But I worry about my children, and who they will grow up to be. I don't want to raise shallow, self-absorbed, materialistic shitheads. I mean, I know all teenagers go through that, but I don't want them to be like that when they're actually grown up. I want them to be happy with who they are, be happy with what they've got, be satisfied to not make so much money per year, because money can't make you happy. If it makes you happy, I feel sorry for you. I don't want to raise children who will never be able to look at anyone else with empathy and concern, who will only be able to take, take, take. That's hard to do in suburbia, because there's this constant battle of so-and-so has this, and why can't I have it? Well, because a seven year old doesn't need a fucking laptop is why you can't have it. Because a seven year old who has a laptop and a TV and a DVD player and an x-box in their room, well, that's a seven year who has parents that probably can't be bothered with actual parenting and spending time with their children. But that's a hard concept to explain to my children, because they only see what they don't have, and Mommy doesn't know how to tell them that they don't have that shit because it's more interesting to me to see my children grow and learn and try to see the world through their eyes, than to pack them off to their rooms because it's more fun for me to sit in front of the TV and drink.
I don't even know how I got on this topic, because my intention was to write about the card game of divorce that The Ex and I have been playing. I feel like it's more of a chess match, but I don't know how to play chess, and therefore, can't make the right analogies. Maybe I'll do that next.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Contractors
I had my gutters replaced today. What a relief to pull up in my driveway and see that there was no longer this big dent in the gutter right over my front porch where it appears that snow pulled it down into this shabby V shape. I have all of my downspouts, everything looks good, and I am happy. This whole gutter and contractor thing has not been easy for me to accomplish.
As I've mentioned in an earlier post, this house I bought was a HUD foreclosure, but really in great shape for a foreclosure. But the stuff that needed to be fixed, well, it needed to be fixed badly. Most of it I arranged to get done before I moved in, or right there abouts. I had to get the locks changed, because according to my realtor, it's common HUD and/or foreclosure procedure to but a screw in each deadbolt so that the new owner will be forced to get the locks changed. It's amazing how one or two turns of a screw in a deadbolt lock can completely screw the whole inner workings up. So I got the locks replaced before I moved in. Got the carpets replaced, because they were in kind-of bad condition, but the kind-of bad condition that wasn't going to improve greatly by me shampooing them repeatedly. After I saw the stains on the padding, I felt really good about the carpet replacement decision. Nothing will reinforce spending money on new carpeting more than seeing someone else's dog piss stains on the underside of carpet and all over the padding. I had some plumbing work done, but that was pretty simple, because a friend of mine did that.
So what was left was gutters, handrails on the porch railing, getting a few pieces of siding replaced, having a hood vent installed in the kitchen, a gable fan installed and maybe some tile work in the kitchen. I called my realtor for recommendations for contractors, because I don't know any contractors and I didn't even know where to start. What I do know is that contractors should come with some kind of recommendation, because a contractor can fuck up your house in short order with little effort. I was not interested in cold calling, because that's just inviting trouble. My realtor gave me the name of this guy she knows and has referred out before, and she said that he's done a lot of work for her on foreclosures, he's a good guy, hard worker, affordable, blah blah blah. So I called him, he came out on the same day, crawled around under the house and found half of the building materials I needed, said he would work up an estimate and email it to me. Thank god I grew up in the country and know a thing or two about contracting and house repair, because I knew what he was saying about all of my repairs was legit, and I could discuss everything with some authority.
A couple of weeks go by, and I hadn't heard anything, but I was moving me in, and then I was moving the children in, and I just didn't have time. I finally called to follow up on the estimate and he emailed it that day. Wow! Looks good. I can totally go with this guy. But no contract for me to sign. So I called back and asked for a contract, and he said that he doesn't normally do contracts (uh oh), but he'll write one up for me. I thought to myself, but how can I sue you if you fuck up and I don't have a contract? A few days later the contract is emailed, and that looked pretty good, too. I printed it off, along with the estimate, and I was getting ready to sign, scan and email back to him with a starting date.
For some reason, I don't know why, I thought, maybe I should check this guy out first. Because I'm that woman who likes to check people out, and I know that what you never suspect can become reality within the blink of an eye. So I got on the computer and did my thing. All public things, mind you. I didn't need to go any farther than the sex offender registry. Oh my god. This bastard is a registered sex offender. Are you freaking kidding me? With a federal conviction for child pornography. Uhhhh, I went from completely sane to completely insane within a matter of minutes. I realized later that part of my panic attack was largely due to the four large glasses of sweet tea I had just had with lunch an hour earlier, but still, a registered sex offender? I called the realtor who had referred me to him, and told her that I didn't appreciate her referring me to a contractor who has had legal issues of that sort. Specifically of that sort. It didn't make me feel any better for her previous clientele when she said, "Oh my god! Almost all of my clients are single women or single moms." The fine little hairs that are on the back of my neck, yeah, they stood on end when I heard that. Needless to say, I didn't use that guy. Never even bothered to acknowledge him in any way after that. I figured if he needed an explanation, I would just email him the link to his own page on the sex offender registry.
The next guy, well, I was less than impressed with him. He was another referral from my realtor, a name she tossed me in the panic of trying to make me believe that guy #1 was a total shock to her as well. This second guy, he was her back up guy. So I arranged to have him come out and look at everything. He shows up and I knew upon sight, this guy was a complete sleazebag. Long hair neatly braided down his back, bad teeth, but no tattoos. Tattoos will tell you a lot about where someone's been, I've found. I hired a guy about five years ago to clean the roof at the house The Ex has now, and that guy showed up, license and insurance paperwork all in order, good estimate, boom! You're hired. He takes off his shirt, has a wife beater on (I kind of like men in wife beaters) and some interesting tattoos. I spent a fair amount of time trying to surreptitiously check out his tattoos. He came down off the roof at some point and we were discussing where he had been cleaning, and I realized. Holy bejesus, this guy has Aryan Brotherhood tattoos on him. Finally! That mini-meta-analysis I did on prison gangs for my senior thesis has paid off! But whatever, because he cleaned the hell out of that roof and I'd hire him again in a minute.
Same kind of strangeness occurred when I was standing in line at my credit union one Saturday right after pay day, and the line was long and slow. Long and slow should only apply to sex, not lines in banks. There was this late 50-ish woman a few people in front of me, all dolled up with hair and makeup done, cute little shorts and silver sandals, like I would expect to see in Chesterfield. I bent down to pick something up at one point and saw a tattoo on the back of her calf. Hmmm, that's strange. She doesn't look like the tattoo sporting type, I remembered thinking. I kept dropping my shit and needing to scratch my ankle, trying to check this tattoo out. Holy fuck, that's a KKK tattoo. Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus, it's the 2000's. Are we still doing that? Well, I heard there were a few of them out in Amelia and I even heard about the secret handshake. I don't know if the secret handshake thing is true, but I'm totally prepared if anyone ever shakes my hand that way.
But this second contractor, he was a sleazebag. I'll go a step further and just call him a straight skeezeball, because that's exactly what he was. He spent more time looking at me than he did the repairs that needed to be done. At one point we had to go up into the attic, and I let him go first, because I didn't want my ass anywhere near his face. And then he tells me when we get up there, in order to install the gable fan, he'll need to undo the wiring for the light, and run this wiring here and do this, and so when I climb up in the attic, I won't be able to use the light switch, because he will have wired the gable fan into the switch. I'll just have to turn the bulb to turn the light on. Yeah, whatever. How dumb do I look? And the tile work over the stove, when I asked if he could replace a couple of tiles that have holes in them? He recommended I just go buy some of those little stick-on pot holder hooks and stick those over the holes because you can't just pop the tiles out. He would have to replace the entire back splash. Yeah, whatever, again. How come the child pornographer said it wouldn't take but about 15 minutes to pop those tiles out, regrout and replace?
I got the distinct impression that this second guy would have been willing to work out some kind of "deal" for the work. Uh, not happening. Ever. If I wanted to screw someone for some house repairs, I'd still be married. No thanks. I got him out of the house as quickly as possible and breathed a big sigh of relief when he drove off. That's one jackass who will never step foot on my property again. I put the call out on facebook, and a few friends came through with recommendations. I called one about the gutters, and will get with someone else for the carpentry work. I hope to get my porch railings replaced next month, because one side is completely rotted and not safe for trick-or-treaters at all. But it's all good, because this is the Southside and if I haven't gotten the railing replaced by then, I'll just duct tape that motherfucker right up.
As I've mentioned in an earlier post, this house I bought was a HUD foreclosure, but really in great shape for a foreclosure. But the stuff that needed to be fixed, well, it needed to be fixed badly. Most of it I arranged to get done before I moved in, or right there abouts. I had to get the locks changed, because according to my realtor, it's common HUD and/or foreclosure procedure to but a screw in each deadbolt so that the new owner will be forced to get the locks changed. It's amazing how one or two turns of a screw in a deadbolt lock can completely screw the whole inner workings up. So I got the locks replaced before I moved in. Got the carpets replaced, because they were in kind-of bad condition, but the kind-of bad condition that wasn't going to improve greatly by me shampooing them repeatedly. After I saw the stains on the padding, I felt really good about the carpet replacement decision. Nothing will reinforce spending money on new carpeting more than seeing someone else's dog piss stains on the underside of carpet and all over the padding. I had some plumbing work done, but that was pretty simple, because a friend of mine did that.
So what was left was gutters, handrails on the porch railing, getting a few pieces of siding replaced, having a hood vent installed in the kitchen, a gable fan installed and maybe some tile work in the kitchen. I called my realtor for recommendations for contractors, because I don't know any contractors and I didn't even know where to start. What I do know is that contractors should come with some kind of recommendation, because a contractor can fuck up your house in short order with little effort. I was not interested in cold calling, because that's just inviting trouble. My realtor gave me the name of this guy she knows and has referred out before, and she said that he's done a lot of work for her on foreclosures, he's a good guy, hard worker, affordable, blah blah blah. So I called him, he came out on the same day, crawled around under the house and found half of the building materials I needed, said he would work up an estimate and email it to me. Thank god I grew up in the country and know a thing or two about contracting and house repair, because I knew what he was saying about all of my repairs was legit, and I could discuss everything with some authority.
A couple of weeks go by, and I hadn't heard anything, but I was moving me in, and then I was moving the children in, and I just didn't have time. I finally called to follow up on the estimate and he emailed it that day. Wow! Looks good. I can totally go with this guy. But no contract for me to sign. So I called back and asked for a contract, and he said that he doesn't normally do contracts (uh oh), but he'll write one up for me. I thought to myself, but how can I sue you if you fuck up and I don't have a contract? A few days later the contract is emailed, and that looked pretty good, too. I printed it off, along with the estimate, and I was getting ready to sign, scan and email back to him with a starting date.
For some reason, I don't know why, I thought, maybe I should check this guy out first. Because I'm that woman who likes to check people out, and I know that what you never suspect can become reality within the blink of an eye. So I got on the computer and did my thing. All public things, mind you. I didn't need to go any farther than the sex offender registry. Oh my god. This bastard is a registered sex offender. Are you freaking kidding me? With a federal conviction for child pornography. Uhhhh, I went from completely sane to completely insane within a matter of minutes. I realized later that part of my panic attack was largely due to the four large glasses of sweet tea I had just had with lunch an hour earlier, but still, a registered sex offender? I called the realtor who had referred me to him, and told her that I didn't appreciate her referring me to a contractor who has had legal issues of that sort. Specifically of that sort. It didn't make me feel any better for her previous clientele when she said, "Oh my god! Almost all of my clients are single women or single moms." The fine little hairs that are on the back of my neck, yeah, they stood on end when I heard that. Needless to say, I didn't use that guy. Never even bothered to acknowledge him in any way after that. I figured if he needed an explanation, I would just email him the link to his own page on the sex offender registry.
The next guy, well, I was less than impressed with him. He was another referral from my realtor, a name she tossed me in the panic of trying to make me believe that guy #1 was a total shock to her as well. This second guy, he was her back up guy. So I arranged to have him come out and look at everything. He shows up and I knew upon sight, this guy was a complete sleazebag. Long hair neatly braided down his back, bad teeth, but no tattoos. Tattoos will tell you a lot about where someone's been, I've found. I hired a guy about five years ago to clean the roof at the house The Ex has now, and that guy showed up, license and insurance paperwork all in order, good estimate, boom! You're hired. He takes off his shirt, has a wife beater on (I kind of like men in wife beaters) and some interesting tattoos. I spent a fair amount of time trying to surreptitiously check out his tattoos. He came down off the roof at some point and we were discussing where he had been cleaning, and I realized. Holy bejesus, this guy has Aryan Brotherhood tattoos on him. Finally! That mini-meta-analysis I did on prison gangs for my senior thesis has paid off! But whatever, because he cleaned the hell out of that roof and I'd hire him again in a minute.
Same kind of strangeness occurred when I was standing in line at my credit union one Saturday right after pay day, and the line was long and slow. Long and slow should only apply to sex, not lines in banks. There was this late 50-ish woman a few people in front of me, all dolled up with hair and makeup done, cute little shorts and silver sandals, like I would expect to see in Chesterfield. I bent down to pick something up at one point and saw a tattoo on the back of her calf. Hmmm, that's strange. She doesn't look like the tattoo sporting type, I remembered thinking. I kept dropping my shit and needing to scratch my ankle, trying to check this tattoo out. Holy fuck, that's a KKK tattoo. Are you fucking kidding me? Jesus, it's the 2000's. Are we still doing that? Well, I heard there were a few of them out in Amelia and I even heard about the secret handshake. I don't know if the secret handshake thing is true, but I'm totally prepared if anyone ever shakes my hand that way.
But this second contractor, he was a sleazebag. I'll go a step further and just call him a straight skeezeball, because that's exactly what he was. He spent more time looking at me than he did the repairs that needed to be done. At one point we had to go up into the attic, and I let him go first, because I didn't want my ass anywhere near his face. And then he tells me when we get up there, in order to install the gable fan, he'll need to undo the wiring for the light, and run this wiring here and do this, and so when I climb up in the attic, I won't be able to use the light switch, because he will have wired the gable fan into the switch. I'll just have to turn the bulb to turn the light on. Yeah, whatever. How dumb do I look? And the tile work over the stove, when I asked if he could replace a couple of tiles that have holes in them? He recommended I just go buy some of those little stick-on pot holder hooks and stick those over the holes because you can't just pop the tiles out. He would have to replace the entire back splash. Yeah, whatever, again. How come the child pornographer said it wouldn't take but about 15 minutes to pop those tiles out, regrout and replace?
I got the distinct impression that this second guy would have been willing to work out some kind of "deal" for the work. Uh, not happening. Ever. If I wanted to screw someone for some house repairs, I'd still be married. No thanks. I got him out of the house as quickly as possible and breathed a big sigh of relief when he drove off. That's one jackass who will never step foot on my property again. I put the call out on facebook, and a few friends came through with recommendations. I called one about the gutters, and will get with someone else for the carpentry work. I hope to get my porch railings replaced next month, because one side is completely rotted and not safe for trick-or-treaters at all. But it's all good, because this is the Southside and if I haven't gotten the railing replaced by then, I'll just duct tape that motherfucker right up.
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