Walking barefoot in November…a bigger blessing than I would have imagined

Today is a good day. I’m done working at The Big Box Store for the day, and I’ve had my lunch. But that’s not the best part. The best part of today is that it is 61 degrees outside, and I walked to my mail box today in my bare feet. In November.

In North Dakota. That’s right…”We’re having a heat waaaaaave, a tropical heat waaaaave….” Whoo!!

Usually we’re shoveling show right about now. In fact, we already had our first snow storm of the year, but it has all melted away, and life is good again. Or at least it was feeling pretty good until they showed up.

My ex came to pick up Younger Son today, and just happened to bring his sleezeball girlfriend with him. After a year, one would think that I would be over having to witness the reality of this woman, but for some reason, it still messes with my head. This woman has some pretty big brass ovaries, shoving herself into my life and the lives of my kids. She’s probably going to want my grandchildren to call her ‘Grandma’…

…not while I have breath in my body. But, I digress.

Anyway, as I was saying, it was such a blessing being able to walk in the grass in my bare feet, and feel the sunshine and warm breeze on my skin. It doesn’t blot out the bad stuff, but it goes a long way to making me feel better. These warm days are precious and numbered. The Weather Guy says we’ll be back to the regularly scheduled weather program by the middle of the week. Time to get back outside and enjoy it while I can!

So much going on…aaaahhhh!

Aaaaahhhh!!!

Yes, it’s been one of those weeks where everything is happening, but nothing of any importance is getting done. Between family being in town, being in the middle of changing jobs, still cleaning up after the bathroom remodel and now trying to get the house ready for company, I’m just about cooked!

The boys are out at the State Fair for the 2nd night in a row, I’m finally getting down to brass tacks and getting some cleaning done. It’s so much easier when there’s nobody here but me. As I was rearranging some furniture in the living room, out popped the printer I bought two months ago and just never did get installed. I keep telling Older Son that I’d get to it, but just couldn’t make the time. So, tonight, I made a command decision to just stop procrastinating and just do it. So, now it’s finally hooked up and ready to go. He’ll be pleasantly surprised when he gets home tonight.

I mentioned that I’m having company this weekend. An old friend of mine is coming to stay with me Friday and Saturday nights, and we’re going to the Sugarland concert Saturday night. It will be the last night of the State Fair, and it will be a good weekend. I’m kicking it off with a pizza party, and perhaps some margaritas…hmm…margaritas!! It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good homemade margarita….hmmm!

My kids are my parents’ best revenge

I had to get after Younger Son today, and now I feel like crap. I have told him time and time again how to do this particular chore, and he refuses to do it unless pushed

Facsimile of me pulling my hair out, curtesy of Google Images

and prodded, let alone do it right. Once he finally got going on said chore, I heard slamming of things, stomping around and nasty muttering. I’d had it…that was just the last straw, and I let him have it. I told him in no uncertain terms that this behavior was unacceptable and if he didn’t turn his ship around and sail straight, there would be consequences. He finally gave in, just did his job and got it done. Had he just done it to begin with, he’d have been finished a lot sooner.

Parenting is messy. It’s hard and mostly thankless, not that I think I need any thanks…I chose this. It was my decision to bring children into the world and part of that is following through to make sure they have the skills and knowledge they need to be successful once they get on their own. Teenagers being teenagers, aren’t going to blindly follow directions. They have their own thoughts about how things ought to work, and tend to be very black and white in their views. Things are either wrong or they aren’t…not much gray area. I remember being that way, and I am sure that my Mother has most likey just now fallen down in a giggling heap on the floor. I’ve no doubt that she has a detector that picks up on when my kids aren’t at their best, which triggers a manic laughter reaction. She did tell me once that my kids would be her best revenge on me. Now I find myself telling my kids the very same thing. While I can certainly wait to become a grandparent, I’m sure going to enjoy their kids exacting my revenge on my children for me (Muhuwhahahaha!).

What really chaps my cookies is that I had to be the heavy even when their father lived here. He rarely ever disciplined them, unless it was an extreme circumstance. Otherwise he was just the “good time” parent, and he had a tendency to do their chores for them, rather than make them do it themselves. Less confrontation and responsibility that way, you know.

The good news is that I have really good kids. They don’t get into trouble, they get good grades, and generally do what they are told. As things go, I could have it a lot harder.

Now the storm has cleared off and everything is back to normal. Hopefully things will stay that way for a while. I might take on the responsibility of having to be the heavy, but I sure hate doing it.

Frenzied before 8:30am

Everyone put on your seat belts, strap on your head-gear and put your tray in the upright and locked position. It’s going to be a helluva day, folks.

My Dad beat me to my house this morning, if you can believe that. He’s already measured my eaves troughs, and been in my attic. Gods bless him…I don’t know what I’d do with out him. It it wasn’t for my Dad, my house would most likely fall down around my ears.

The drywall guy has been here this morning already to do what little he needed to get done, and I’m expecting the flooring guy at any minute.   It’s been a crazy day already and it’s not even 8:30am!

That’s ok…By this weekend, I will be back in my house with a brand new bathroom. It will be nice to sleep in my own bed again!

The wisdom teeth and the worry wort

It’s a little after 6am, and I’m already showered and dressed for the day. I’m letting Younger Son sleep in until 6:30. Today’s the day his wisdom

teeth come out, and we’ll be there by 7:30 for his 8am surgery.  I keep telling him that he’s lucky. When I had my wisdom teeth out, I was awake and it took over two hours. He’ll get to nap through it and it will take about an hour for him. Piece of cake!

This is pretty much what Younger's X-ray looked like - wisdom teeth impacted!

I feel like a big fat liar, even though I know he’ll come through it just fine… he’s a strong kid and he’ll come through this simple out-patient surgery with flying colors.  The thing that goes through my head like a terrible feedback loop, is that I keep remembering what it was like to have the dentistry equivalent of a hammer and chisel banging away in my head, as the dentist quartered my teeth so he could get them out.  I need to quit winding myself up like that, but it’s so nerve-wracking to hand over my child and know that he’s going to hurt when it’s all done. I know that it is probably typical for a parent to feel that way, and yet I feel like the biggest wuss in the world. Time to suck it up.

6:33…time to put on my brave face and roust him of bed so he can get showered and dressed. It’s show time…

Nice weather and a good long walk…

Today was the first day of the year that I could get out and go for a good long walk. It’s got to be close to 60 degrees today, which is just right. During this long Winter, I’ve missed walking so much, and I think it’s because that’s what kept me sane from April until the snow fell last year. Not only did I lose a lot of weight (which I gained again over the Winter months), but walking constantly, multiple times a day helped me physically rid myself of tension, depression and anxiety so that I could function. It didn’t take it all away, but helped a lot.

Watch out...here I come!

So, Spring is here again and I’m itching to get outside. My ex husband had time scheduled with the boys today, so I decided just to go for a walk and be away from the house when it came time for him to pick them up. Being 15 and 17, they don’t need me around at all times, so I took the opportunity to salve my sanity. Yesterday when he picked them up I had to see him, and speak to him, and it was excruciating. I’ll never admit that to him or the kids, but there’s still a knife hanging out of my back, and every time I have to see or interact with him, it gives a good sharp twist. That’s what I have to work on this year…knife extraction. If I am to be completely honest with myself, the only reason it’s still there is I give it permission to be there. Part of the reason for that is that I’m hanging on to my anger… and I like it. I don’t want to not be angry about the kids and I being cheated on and dumped so carelessly, and, quite frankly, I just can’t imagine a time when I wouldn’t be angry about it. However, it takes a lot of energy to keep that up, and I suppose that one day I will just be too tired to keep it up any more. It would help a lot if my ex and his hussy would just kindly drop off the edge of the Earth, never to be heard from again…is that really too much to ask?

But, I digress…back to walking.

Not only does walking help drain off the negative energy I have all pent-up, but it gives me real time to think. While I listen to podcasts on my Ipod the whole time I’m out, sometimes I tune it out in favor of working stuff out in my head. Sometimes I pay sharp attention to whatever podcast is coming though my headphones, just for the pure distraction. The motion of walking and the mental distraction gives me time to reset, especially when I’m out walking for an hour to an hour-and-a-half.  I anticipate that once I get rolling, all this walking will help me take that weight off again, too, and hopefully I can keep it off.

Now that we have walking weather again, I’m hoping to get the boys out of the house to go walking with me more often…one at a time. Late last summer I was able to get some time alone with each kid. It was nice to just be able to talk about stuff alone, which was helpful given the eventful Spring and Summer we had last year.

So, now that I’ve had my walk for the day, I find I want to go for another one! I’ll have to start going early in the morning again every day now…and the evenings too.

An anniversary and an epiphany

Yesterday we went out to run some errands really quick. On the way to our first stop, Older Son said something that really annoyed the crap out of me, and I couldn’t quite let it go. It wasn’t that he said anything particularly incendiary, but it was the way he spoke to me that really lit my hair on fire.  After that I had a really hard time being civil, and I can’t even remember the content of the comment. I just remember the sound of it and how it made me feel.

By the time we made it to Walmart I was in such a snit I could barely see straight. The boys both went to Game Stop, and I went into Walmart and did my shopping. By the time they came back I was still angry and upset and couldn’t figure out why. I finally figured it out when Older Son turned to me and chastised me for purchasing a particular piece of fruit…in a tone his father used to use on me all the time. Then it hit me…I wasn’t angry at Older Son, I was angry with my ex.

I’m approaching the anniversary of when my world exploded and my marriage died. I don’t feel that I should have to worry about approaching this kind of anniversary, but for some reason my body isn’t listening to any good advice. In the last few months I’ve been depressed and feeling the need to hide. I’ve had no energy to do anything, and would like nothing better than to go to my room, close the door, and lose myself in a good book. But I spent the better part of ten years doing just that. The difference between now and then is that I tried to medicate myself back to happiness. I think I must have been perscribed almost every antidepressant/anti-anxiety med at one time or another. They all come with their own little quirks, and they all come with their own side effects. The side effects generally cancel out any benefit you might get from taking a given medication.

The last thing my doctor put me on was Lamictal, which is an anticonvulsant, after having diagnosed me with Bi-polar II. This particular malady causes a person to stay in a depressed low and have almost no manic periods. She must know, right? So, I took it  and hoped for the best. After being on that for a year, the side effects of the other medication went away and I had no problems. I continued to improve and things got so good at work, I ended up getting promoted to a job checking other people’s work. After a while, I quit taking it, feeling like I didn’t need it any more. Turns out I was right. The Lamictal didn’t do anything for me, really, but I was able to get all that other crap worked out of my system and get to know myself again. Not only did work improve, but things improved at home too…or so I thought. Just about this time last year, when I was riding high on my success, my husband was planning a trip to visit family, and plotting to cheat on me with an old girlfriend from high school….the bastard. More about that in a later rant. I’ll be doing a lot of that in the coming weeks.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I can at least identify why I’ve been so out of sorts and put an end to it. Life starts today, as it does every day…all I can do is take it one step at a time.