Mildly productive

Last night I did the bad mommy thing and left Isaiah in charge and went to the local bar. Now, the little dudes were in bed and had been for quite a while when I left, and I live three blocks from this bar, so I walked, and Isaiah had his phone and I had mine.

I needed a flipping break, its like school started a month ago and I shut off all fun at the same time. A live band was playing and I met up with my friend from work while I was there and we made fun of badly dressed people, people drunker than us, old men who invaded my personal bubble in a weird attempt to flirt. I also got to look over (from a distance) Ben's new girlfriend. She seems more his speed, which is probably a good thing.

The guys sounded great, it was a three hour set, I had three rum and cokes (and flirted shamelessly with the bar tender to get him to mix them strong), and walked home when the last set was over. I hear I missed out on some skinny dipping, as fun as that sounds, not sure group nudity is my thing.

I got to bed by two, and got up at 9:30 with Gideon (my other two are sleepers), he and I walked up to casey's and got donuts for everyone. I admit it, I was a bit hung over and the starchy-sugary stuff was my way of fighting back.

Spent most of today in front of the computer. Wrote one IEP, organized some work stuff so that maybe my days would be more streamlined and less stressful. I also got some stuff done with my online class. I still have one IEP that needs to be written, and new kid who's data needs to be entered (hopefully not a process as involved as writing a new IEP). I also need to find a streamlined way to more closely monitor a couple of students of mine who like to elope and just screw around. Notes to rewrite and copy for students, modifications to get out to teachers, teachers who I need to get to cooperate with me . . . it goes on.

But it doesn't seem as overwhelming as it did a few days ago. I still have a file to send, a file to fax and papers to get folks to sing. I really think going out and laughing and being a little silly recharged something for me. I have guilt for leaving the kids alone. But I need to take care of myself.

Had a fun facebooky day too. Couple of people I went to school with from about sixth grade on for him, first grade on for her, are married. She's a stay at home mom, he's a nurse at a nursing home. They have two kids, the oldest is school aged and she homeschools. She is also pregnant with twins.

The kids are named for Actors or characters from the twilight series. Aside from the fact that I think the twilight series is a streaming pile, I don't really care why people give their kids the names they get. But then the he in the couple has been posting some very pro-conservative crap on facebook that takes aim at teachers and the government for "not allowing prayer in school".

I know I don't go to church a lot, and I don't stand around announcing my faith. The truth is that I am certain that there is a powerful redeeming force in the world, we call him Christ. I know there isn't a bit of good I have worked or ever will work without his grace. I also know that my spiritual struggle is internal. I cannot possibly claim to instruct others in morality if my own journy is hardly begun.

That being said, it pisses me off to see religion misused and used to pick on education. Those two people are both the products of public schools, and public universities. She was the most driven person I knew in school. He kept his head down and worked his ass off.

And now they think there's something horribly wrong with public education? Because we have laws in out country that protect students from being forced to make proclaimations of faith they don't believe?

It is not illegal to pray in school. It is not illegal to read faith-based books or wear faith-based shirts. Any student can pray before school, before a test or before a meal.

What is illegal is to take over the intercom of a school and announce that everyone will observe prayer.

And I'm glad its that way. I live in the bible belt, but I'm pretty sure the prosperity preaching, paranoid, and judgmental Christians are praying to a different god than I am. Because the God I pray to says not to do things that impede the spiritual development of others, to with hold scorn and judgment, to do one's best to help others see the best in themselves, to give without expectation of compensation, to accept others as they are and help them become what they should be with encouragement and by being a role model.

I think the christian god many others pray to is petty, unimaginative, vindictive, judgmental, and has no sense of fun, whimsy, or humor.

My god I'd sit and have a beer with, Their god, I wouldn't want to share a universe with.

So isn't it a good thing we don't allow compulsory prayer is school?

Is it Like a Soap?

Sometimes I wonder why I do things. Why do I blog? Its hidden, almost no one reads and only one person who knows me in "real life" even reads or knows about it.

If there were no such thing as blogs, I would probably have filled volumes full of my thoughts, rants, hopes, dreams and petty complaints. Of course, as much as I move, and as my organisation tends to lean towards "find a clear spot to stack it", I probably wouldn't have them all anymore.

So maybe the attraction is the web-based storage. Maybe the attraction is my need to feel connected to other thinking adults. I don't know for sure. I know I miss it when I can't or don't. I know it's cathartic when I am troubled.

I don't know if I mentioned it, but Noah has been sick most of the week. He probably could have gone today, but he was still feverish last night and spend most of today sleeping or lounging on my lap, which isn't normal for him. He's usually in motion. Playing pretend with toys and leggos, jumping on the trampoline, or just running. He doesn't walk from point A to point B, he runs.

For him to sit still so much, he's still not great. I think my this evening he was better-er. He played/fought with his brother. I love him, but spending basically three days at home with him when I have all this crap from work looming, not really the best for my stress levels.

Tonight Isaiah stayed with some buddies. If Noah stays ok and Gideon doesn't get sick, I'm going to go out to bar with Amanda tomorrow evening. Its been literally forever since I've gone out. I invited Jason, but I don't think he's going to come. Which is just as well. I care about the man, but he needs to either decide to be my boyfriend and consistently act like one, or he needs to get out and stay out of my life. I'm leaning towards getting out.

I doubt if I will meet anyone at the local bar, but a live band is playing, they are heavily influenced by Nickleback, but on a short time scale, that isn't a terrible thing. I briefly dated a guy in the band, ended up ending that mess. It was fun but . . . the man had too many things in his life that were a problem for me. It might be akward. Oh well.

The eye has been declared cured by an actual doc. The combination of oral and topical drops did the trick. The oral antibiotics made my stomach upset unless I kept food in it, and made me feel spacey. I have a few more days supply, but the guy told me to stop them. I looked the drug up and it turns out that constant upset tummy and confusion were actual side effects.

I'm thinking about moving again. When I moved into this big old house I thought my brother would be moving in with me. As it is, I have three completely empty rooms. In addition, its an older house that hasn't been greatly maintained. Its not pretty, its hard to make it look good or keep clean.

On the other hand, the rent is cheap. If I stay and just push myself to vacume more often and invest in some carpet cleaning, it will probably be more tolerable. I can use the money I'm saving on rent to pay down some old bills and improve my credit score.

And it turns out the score isn't that bad, but I have something called judgments, basically I'd been sued. Those don't fall off the credit report. If I can get those paid and cleared, I'll be able to look into getting a loan to buy a home of my own. I also get to discharge most of my student loans after I've taught for five years. That's two more years including this one.

I hate moving too. This house is more or less a known entity. Its always a crapshoot with rental homes. This one looked ok when I checked it out last December. But it was empty and the heat hadn't been on so the musty carpet smell wasn't there.

So I think I'm going to stay. I tend to look at relocation in my life as reinventions. Its gotten to the point that if I'm a little blah, I start looking at other houses, other towns, other jobs. I logically know that this isn't really healthy.

Yes, when you get a job offer that doubles your income, a move is reasonable. But when you have a good income, tend to enjoy what you do, and like the company you work for, but you are a little lonely and depressed, it makes no sense to decide to move.

I'm rambling. If Isaiah were home I'd go on a walk. The little dudes are in bed and probably wouldn't get up. But that's not a risk I want to take. These are the things I talk to myself about when I walk. Then I start to jog and then I don't think at all.

I have the internet back!!!! YAY!!!

Okay, so I realize its silly to mourn the internet when its off and be overjoyed when its back. I guess that makes me silly.

Been kinda blah and in a funk here lately. I know part of it is just that I happen to be susceptible to depression and once that gets started, its this self feeding monster. But I've also had some shit going on.

For starters . . . and this is silly . . . I'm about to turn 30. Its not that I have some hang up about being old. I've always looked young for my age and I never was one of those young women who lived it up, so its not that. Its just that, 30 means I can't claim that I'm still young and have time to get things in order before I'm a real adult. I'm a real adult now, but I don't own a house, have terrible credit, still live paycheck to paycheck, and aside from my children, I have no major relationships in my life. I've accomplished nothing, have little to show for what I've done with my time, and there aren't many people who would notice if I were to go missing.

Like I said, that one's silly.

The relationship thing is honestly something that's bugging me. I know what I want. But I don't know how to go about getting it. I want a partner, husband, whatever. I don't want a lover who shows up for a little fun and then leaves, I don't want a casual friend with benefits who is all intense attention and then falls away later. I want something more intimate, more permanent, and more terrifying.

Terrifying because I am convinced that there is a dark intensity that lives in me that is truly terrifying to others. When they glimpse it they run away.

Then there's the kids. I love my kids. But since school started its been one thing after the other. First it was a stomach bug that knocked down Noah, then Gideon, not at the same time, but apart so that I missed work for two separate illnesses. Then the ended up with lice. That was fun only not so much.

I know lice happen, but I hate them. They keep picking them back up somewhere. I thought it was at my dad's house (his step daughters have had infestations so bad you can see them crawling), but now I think it might be closer, like their dad's house. Anyway, that's a call from school or daycare.

Gideon got sent home with it, I treated all of us and the damn dog. Washed bedding, sprayed furniture with poison. Replaced pillows. And then repeated a week later. Then Noah told his babysitter that he had bugs in his head. So I had to leave work for that. I didn't find any live bugs, but did another round of treatment, combing, washing, and spraying anyway. And found a preventative product that I am having all of them use daily.

And then there's my own health. I'm still fighting that damn eye infection. Its been what, five weeks? Six? The new round of antibiotics finally seem to have done some good, the symptoms are very slowly improving. But the oral antibiotic makes me feel sick to my stomach and a little head spacey too. And I've had to miss work for appointments. Not to mention the fact that when your eye is sick, its sensitive to light so I've been walking around with migraines from that.

Oh, and noah has tonsilitis so he's home most of the week, which means I'm home most of the week.

All this being sick, kids being sick and running around to appointments, aside from making a huge dent in my sick leave, has made it so I fee like I'm gone from work as much as I am there. I have work from the beginning of the year that still hasn't been done because I was dealing with the crisis in front of me. I missed an emergency parent meeting, always fun. And I had a meeting where I left half the papers I needed upstairs in my classroom. So I looked like an incompetent idiot.

Oh, and then there's the fucking para who stormed into my seminar class Tuesday and demanded a student, who had been sent to work on a project on a computer, she interrogated me (in front of my class) about where he was, who was with him, and why he wasn't doing something else. Then when I was absent he eloped again. And she sent a bunch of pissy emails in which she made fun of something I had said (I tend to stumble over words when I am flustered) to the administration and our coordinator. These emails were forwarded to me by the people who got them. She never once sent me a pass requesting he see her, or emailed me about the assignment she wanted him to work on.

And I understand her having a bad day and being pissy once, but to then go into email and putting what I had said in quotes, its out of line. She's a para. She infinitely replaceable(seriously, if you need a job and have taken a few college hours, go be a para). And I feel like she's aimed some sort of mean girl gun at me.

Anyway, I replied to the emails. Yes, he has a powrepoint to do for a teacher who teaches both speech and English (she was quoting me "english or speech" in emails to others), when she asked me where he was (not that its her place and I told her she could grab him then) I had just been cussed out by another student and was in the process of attempting to calm down that situation.

Whatever. writing about it pisses me off. I feel like I am expected to see all, to know all, and to be everywhere so I know at all times what is going on with my students. At the same time I am supposed to have materials prepared for IEP meetings, assignments modified for classes our students participate in, and be available to co-teach, which amounts to sitting in the classroom, taking notes and acting like a goddamn para.

I miss having a class to teach. I thought that we had discussed altering out program so that I could teach at least a skills class. But instead another teacher ended up with more classes. I want to do a good job, I want to do right by these kids and the law, but I also want to feel like I'm doing something besides treading water.

Anyway. Been in a funk lately. Turning thirty. Kids been sick or unable to go to school and I've been sick. Works been stressful. I've been feeling lonely and isolated. And I don't know what to do about any of it.

Because Thursday is a long way off

And I'm missing my connection, I've decided to share something.

This is an email I got from the asshatt after that bad Saturday a week ago last weekend. IF you remember, I had had a seriously bad day and told Isaiah to call his dad to come get him and his brothers.

I would highly suggest that you read this ENTIRE email, word for word, rather than scanning it for what you find interesting, as is your usual.

After this past Saturday night's little problem, I am NO LONGER pandering to you and your every whiney little whim.

You have a temper problem. And I am not going to mess around with your temper any more.

Regardless of what you think of me, or what I have done in the past, I am a person and I will not allow you to treat me this way any longer, period. I don't have to put up with it, and I am not gonna put up with it.

I will come and get the boys this Saturday morning, between 10:00 and 11:00 AM. But I will NOT meet you at your house. I have lost all trust I ever had in you, and so I am naming the following conditions for visitation exchanges:

We will make the exchange of the boys at the Iola Police Department. If you don't know where that is, Google it. But I am not going to meet you at your home any more, nor will you meet me at mine. You can pick the boys up any time between 7:00 pm and 8:00 pm, Sunday night, at the Altamont Police Station. You can text me when you get to Parsons or nearby, and I will take them down there and wait on you. Once again, if you don't know where it is, Google it. There will be an officer present.

Those are my terms. Take it, or leave it. You are not hurting my feelings by withholding visitation, you are only hurting the boys. Regardless of what you may think, they have a good time here and we all love each other very much.

These are the SAME arrangements that I will stick to, until we have established visitation via court order. And then, once that happens, well, I will STILL make exchanges at police stations. As is my right to do so, according to the laws of the state of Kansas.

I will no longer answer phone calls from you. Period. I will answer them from Isaiah, any time he chooses to call. But if you take the phone, I will IMMEDIATELY hang up. I am not going to listen to your angry rants any longer. I will also no longer listen to any voicemails you choose to leave. I have an auto delete feature and I don't even have to hear them.

You may text me in emergency situations, and if I feel that a phone call is a necessity, I will initiate it. Not you.

Hateful or spiteful or disrespectful emails will be SAVED, and PRINTED, and offered as evidence in court if necessary. This won't be hard for me to do, since I have saved EVERY single email you have sent me, and that I have sent you, since I started using my current email address over 3 years ago.

Now, that being said, I will leave you with this.

I was completely within my right to contact state officials about your behavior this weekend, but I chose not to. I called police because when my 12 year old son calls me in tears over how his mother is acting, I am completely right to do so. And no matter how angry or upset you were about it, if the shoe had been on the other foot you would have done precisely the same thing and probably more.

Nobody in this whole wide world owes you a DAMN thing, me included. If you find that you are unable to handle being a mother to our children at any time, feel free to drop them off here with me. They will always have a home here, be loved and taken care of. I will handle that. I will NEVER deny you visitation, and I will not even ask you to pay child support. I will choose to waive that. I don't need it from you and never will.

Let me know about this weekend, if you want me to have the boys. You have my terms. I will not deviate from them, period.

Note the big deal he makes about me being unfit to parent because for a few hours I needed the children out of my hair.

That email was followed by this one

I am guessing since, I have not heard from you, the boys will not be coming down this weekend...

Today I got this:

I have to work this coming weekend. I will be unavailable to take the boys, if you were entertaining having them come down.

Isaiah's birthday is coming up. He has requested a gift card from Gamestop in Pittsburg. That is what I am going to get him. Since I have asked for your address on a number of occasions and never gotten it, I have decided that I will just take it myself to his school sometime near his birthday and drop it off in an envelope there for him. That is, if you are still in the mindset that you just do not want to talk to me, or let me see the kids.

I have already contacted the school. Since there is no legal paperwork stating that I have been barred 100% from seeing the kids, I have permission from the principal, Mr. Stanley, to drop it off there.

I WILL be available next weekend (Oct 1st & 2nd), so far as I know.

To which I replied:

So, I'm a bad, horribly, whiny person with a temper problem because one day in 365 I needed to have the other parent take the kids, but you regularly cannot see them and its ok?

You are welcome to treat me with respect, which means not sending me belligerent emails in which you imply both threats and things that are not true. And you are welcome to maintain a regular visitation schedule with your children. Many adults work who have kids. Very few claim that because of work they cannot parent. But you do?

When you can treat me with the respect I have earned as the sole care-taker, provider, wound kisser, boy scout driver, homework tutor, teacher and houser of these children and act with the humility that a man who doesn't support his kids and isn't interested in parenting time with his kids should act. Then you can have time with them.

In practical terms that means: You don't get to dictate terms, you don't get to call schools and make trouble, you don't have the right to call me names or tell me when I can and cannot contact you.

If you want to see the kids, you will let me know when you will arrive in Iola, you will come to my home or a park (if its above 60 degrees and sunny) and you will wait out in the yard until they are ready to go. You will not enter my house or say one word in my presence that isn't a response to the question "will they need their play shoes?" or "when will they be ready to be picked up?"

I will not be going to any police stations to get them or drop them with you.

He's already replied:

Nothing that I have said to you is not a lie in any way, nor illegal. I made no threats, I simply informed you of what my legal rights are. How you choose to take that, is on you.

However, yes, I WILL dictate terms, because on that one day in 365 you decided to try to bully me into getting what you wanted. So, therefore, my terms still stand. I really don't care if you like it. And no, I caused no trouble with the school. In fact, Mr. Stanley assured me that it was NO TROUBLE and told me he understands completely. He was happy to help.

If you don't like it, and what I say, too bad. You don't get to shut down and decide what is right or wrong whenever I stand up to you. Just because I don't cater to your every whim, doesn't mean you get to dictate terms.

So, if you can't agree to my terms, I will put every resource I have available into an attorney and see you in court.

If you CAN agree to them, well, then I will maintain that visitation schedule with my children.

You don't get to push me around and tell me what I can and can't do. And THAT'S the truth.

To Which I will say:

"every resource" from the man who pays less than a hundred dollars a month in child support and provides no clothing, school fees, medical insurance or extracurriculars? I'm terrified.

Not dead

Just disconnected for a few days.

Stupid cable company.

All is (more or less) well.

Inexplicable

I can't really explain what's wrong with me except to say that normally I am a very strong, resiliant, go with the flow person. But there is this emotional blackness that lives inside me. I fight with it every day. If it had its way I wouldn't get out of bed, I wouldn't shower, I wouldn't go to work or eat properly or go on walks. If it had its way I wouldn't do anything but lay in bed and star off into space.

Like I said, most of the time I keep it beaten down and away from the surface self that deals with the world. But its always there. Its always whispering to me.

Sometimes it finds a way to sneak up on me. If I get distracted, stressed, or worn out, it can find its way to the surface. Saturday was a bad day with a capital "B", the blackness found a way up and none of my usual coping stratagies did much to slow it down. Usually I can distract myself with work, a book, or a move, but Saturday I could focus on anything enough to be distracted. Another thing I can do is sleep, if I can get a good deep sleep, I can usually wake up if not all the way back to normal, at least tolerable.

But the kids were with me this weekend and I can't sleep with them runnning the house. I tried to just avoid them and anything else, but it just kept getting blacker in my head.

Crippling worry with lines of logical causality ran from the events of that morning, through Isaiah's birthday, past Christmas and into the distant future with disaster in their wake.

I tried reaching out. Sometimes a rational voice that isn't from inside my own twisted head can short-circuit the black. But my dad was busy, my cousin was taking care of sick kids, my friend was in Wichita at a family event, and the man I thought of as my boyfriend interpretted my reaching to him as some sort of emotional blackmail.

In other words, instead of getting better, it got worse.

It got so bad I didn't trust myself anymore. I had Isaiah call his dad. I'm sick, I said, I think the kids would be better off if you came and got them. I'll come for them sunday evening. But that didn't help. He turned the conversation into a fight over parental duties and threw in a bunch of implications that I tend to be entitled and lazy before making it clear that he wasn't going to come pick up his kids.

After I got off the phone with him, I was a wreck. What the blackness had started, the (might as well call it break up) with Jason accelerated, and the fight with the asshat pushed everything over the cliff.

I called dad and just sobbed. Nothing was ok. I was a terrible human being, no one loved me or cared for me, I was a danger to my kids. Life was one frustration after another that would never end or improve or get better. I was looking down a long, black tunnel of loneliness and drudgery and I would be walking it alone.

Talking to dad helped. Being able to cry helped. Getting the kids calmed down and off to bed (a little early but not unreasonably so) helped.

It was a bad day for me, but at no point was I yelling, screaming, abusing the kids or threatening to do so.

Then the police showed up. Ass hat had decided that they needed to check on us.

I am now humiliated. I am sure that between people driving past my home and the kids who walked by and anyone in town with a scanner, everyone in Iola knows that a welfare check was done at my house.

I can live with that. What I can't do is live with this black monster any more. I can supress it, but I have yet to know how to get rid of it. And as much as it hurts me by telling me what a failure and disappointment I am, and how ugly I am, and how nothing will ever improve, it has also been a cold, hard core that I've carried with me, past all those who have said I can't do what I've done.

I don't know how to explain it. I did dig out the celexa I had been on and I took one this morning. That shit makes me feel . . . fuzzy.

I know that diagnostically, there is something wrong with me. I know that I have to keep this black monster away. But other than that, all I can do is hope that these very bad days and very few and far between.

Yeah, so that was the highlight of my day

It got worse from there.

Mostly my own fault I guess. I got bummed. I just now I'm going to have to go back to glasses, which means buying another pair, because the ones I have are ugly, broken and out of date. When I buy glasses, the lenses alone run around $300, not to mention the cost of the frames. I want to look decent so frames are probably going to be over a hundred dollars, if not more.

So, that's $500 in the next month.

There goes Isaiah's birthday, and possibly my ability to pay for all our bills. I have to be able to see, there's no compromising on that. There will also be ER bills and the cost of seeing the medical eye doctor too.

Its going to be a lot of money.

So, I got bummed. And my eye hurts and my whole head hurt and the boys were driving me crazy and My guy wasn't interested in spending any time with me and when I let him know I was feeling a little hurt that he didn't want to spend any time with me, his response was that I was acting shitty to get him to do something. That wasn't my intent.

So by this point its around five. The kids are running wild, I feel like crap physically and emotionally (stress plus feeling abandoned and unloved, gotta love the feeling) I call the ex-husband. Tell him I'm sick, things aren't going well over here, come get the kids so I can get some rest (and wallow a little).

His reaction is to accuse me of thinking the world runs around me and turns it into a fight. If he comes and gets the kids, he's going to enroll them in school and keep them forever. Besides, according to him, Isaiah wants to go live with him and has begged to stay there. At this point I blew a minor gasket.

I get off the phone (throw it against the wall really) and call my dad. My dad is in Tennessee, I know there isn't anything he can do but talk to me. But that's all I really wanted in the first place, was a calm, adult voice to speak reason into the spinning whirlwind that is my brain when I'm like this. I sobbed into the phone for a while, then dad talked to Isaiah and convince him to calm down his brothers and take them upstairs and just stay outta my hair.

And then The ass hat calls, he's on his way now. Don't come is what I told him.

I get the kids calmed down and upstairs. And am sitting on the couch doing nothing but enjoying a distinct lack of sensory input when there's a knock on my door.

Its the cops. The ex has called them to come check up on my sons. So down the stairs they all come. They chatter at the police officers while the boss cop talks first to Isaiah, and then to me.

I was so embarassed. I'd been crying on top of the eye thing, so I was all sorts of ugly and swollen, and it felt like half the city drove by while I was on my porch talking to the guy. For the record, my sons were fine and were never in danger, I was just so stressed and tired and out of sorts that I thought they'd be better off spending the night with their dad. I'm sorry, I guess that was wrong of me.

The cop wanted to know what they could do to help with my "situation" so the "problem" didn't continue. The situation being that I'm a single mom with three busy boys, medical bills that keep showing up, and no help. The "problem" being that once is a very great while I get stressed, overwhelmed and sad and spend most of a day crying because I can't see how things will ever get better.

I told the cop I could do with fewer assholes in my life.

And I wish I knew how to actually make things better. I wish I had someone who loved me.