Confusion with a side order of guilt, please!

 It's been an incredible length of time since I've written anything. I'm talking more than a year, so bear with me people.

I'm just having trouble figuring out my life right now, I'm hoping this will help me clear my head. See, I have three children, a husband and a desire to provide and develop my career. The problem: not enough hours in the day, or arms on my body. How can I manage everything and be everywhere at once? Duh, I can't. Of course, I realize that.

I'm faced with a difficult decision, once I'm not sure I am capable of making correctly. Do I quit my full-time, dead-end job an hour away? Do I keep working there in hopes that sometime soon someone will recognize the effort and pay me what I need to make the job worth the drive?  Or, do I simply pack my things, give my notice and finish the month?

Adding to that confusion is the fact that my kids need me more involved in their lives and home more. I've been the only one working for several months now due to an unfortunate lay off my husband suffered...while he's back to work now, that means that my ability to single-handedly manage all three kids' activities, appointments in addition to my schooling and the photography business I'm trying to get off the ground is limited. To say the least.

Bottom line is that I can't afford (financially and probably mentally) to stop working completely. But is there a happy medium? Can I work part-time and maintain the household duties and mom duties?

Third layer of happiness: I worked hard to get my degree and an pursuing an MBA. I think I deserve a position with flexibility and a great pay rate. Now back to reality-employers do not care about you or your family or your problems. So I've applied to several places in the restaurant/cafe/beverage industry in hopes that I can find a part time position close to home that can close the financial gap we will face if I'm not working where I am in the near future. However, what are they going to pay-minimum wage? Do I want to work weekends, nights and holidays? Of course I don't! Will I do it? Of course I will!

It's just never ending. I've been at my current job for almost a year.  I'm not happy and I don't love it. I also recognize that it's work and I'm not supposed to love it, otherwise it wouldn't be called work. Is it too much to ask to at least enjoy it? To get paid for my effort and time?

I've also interviewed for a job I'd really like to have for a big company that's the same (hour) distance from home recently. I haven't heard anything yet, but if I'm offered the job I want to take it. But then I have to worry about the kids' activities and appointments. How can I leave my youngest daughter while she's crying and sick and begging me to stay home (like this morning)? This job also pays significantly more, in case I didn't mention it...

In the end, I'm just not sure what to do, what's right for me and my family. I know that I'm stressed out, unhappy and exhausted right now and have been for awhile now. I just want the best for the kids, so if it means I clean toilets, flip burgers, or drive an hour to work I guess that's what I have to do...

The effects of being dropped on your head...by your husband

In approximately the year 2000 I was introduced to my husband. My then boyfriend instructed me which driveway to turn into, and proceeded to introduce me to his best friend Nicholas. I was less than impressed. He was a smoker, and he was arrogant, and he was kind of a dick.

The conversation started something along the lines of, "I'm really strong." To which my reply was, "How strong? I bet you couldn't pick me up. I'm pretty heavy." I am 5'5 and then, weighed 160 pounds. I though that's the heaviest I would ever be...oh how little I knew. Anyways, he proceeded to walk over, grab me and hoist me onto his shoulders, lose his grip on my legs and as I slid down his back and my head connected with the hard ground, I remember thinking: What the Fuck?

The years passed and Nicholas and I weren't each others' favorite person. My high school boyfriend and I broke up and got back together a billion times, as only teenagers do. When I graduated I didn't see Nicholas again for almost a year.

On that day, I was on my way to class at Clark State Community College, at the Brinkman building downtown. He was standing outside (smoking) in a black trench coat and dark glasses. I wasn't even sure it was him at first, and sitting here now I cannot remember which of us spoke first. We ended up ditching class and he drove me around awhile. I showed him my apartment, he took me out to look at one I was thinking of moving to, and we touched briefly on the topic of his old friend...my ex...and my new baby.

I was a single mother at 18 years old. I was reckless and immature, and my "aha moment" was sitting at the Child Support office with my ex (who brought Nicholas and another mutual friend as a support system) and the boy I cheated on him with, while we waited on a paternity test. I haven't felt humiliation and shame stronger than I have ever felt it that day. I doubt I ever will.

So after a day of apartment hunting, catching up and flirting Nicholas and I kept in touch via instant messenger, and email, and phone. One day, while doing homework online at home I got an instant message from who I thought was Nicholas. It was my ex - his best friend - to my surprise. He said Nicholas was in the bathroom, but that he had shown my ex all of our messages and that he (Nicholas) was playing a mean trick on me to get revenge on me for cheating on him (my ex) and that he just didn't think it was right.

At this point I'm not sure why I chose to believe my ex instead of Nicholas, who of course tried to fill me in after he found out what my ex told me. I wish I hadn't because I went through a lot of stuff I probably wouldn't have, had Nicholas and I had our chance then to see where our relationship was going. I broke it off and told Nicholas I didn't want to talk to him again. In the meantime, I continued talking to my ex - we never got back together - but he made me feel like he missed me, and I guess at that point in my life I wanted things to be back the way they were between us in high school. Looking back on that relationship now, I don't think it was ever a healthy one, nor was it meant to be.

Fast-forward to 2004, my twenty-first birthday. My friend Martin, whom I was "talking to" called me to see if he could bring Nick to my party with him that night. I was more than a little surprised that Nick wanted to come, and that I was anxious to see him. That was the night that really started it all.

We met in a parking lot my the mall and they (Martin and Nick) were going to follow me back to my apartment. When I pulled up next to the cream color full-size Bronco, and Nick got out, my heart literally stopped beating. He was so different; he'd lost almost half of his body weight after having gastric bypass, he was dressed in snug jeans and a nice shirt, and he had his classic dark shades on. He looked happy to see me too, and the day progressed.  That night before he took a sick, slightly drunk Martin home, we shared our first kiss. It was bind-blowing, and frankly had he not had to leave, we would have ended up in bed together right then and there.

The rest, as they say, is history. I still have a hard time believing that we ended up together, married for seven years with three children.

Happy, happy, happy....wait a minute.

So the last month or so has been really interesting...if you're someone else. For me, this past month has been one mind-fuck after another. Job #1 was bogus, job #2 was worse. Now here I am, unemployed AGAIN/STILL and not a happy camper. Let's add to the steaming pile by saying that teacher conferences were AWESOME...my oldest is failing everything. Yes, I said everything. Why? I don't know but I can guess.

I have been so incredibly busy between these jobs (worked 60 hours last week) that I haven't been keeping up with his homework and making him do the work. MOTHER OF THE YEAR HERE PEOPLE! I missed my daughter's first field trip ever (preschool field trip, but still) and I didn't see my kids or my husband at all last week. That's not an exaggeration either. Sigh.

I have to leave to pick up my son from scouts now, but more later if I can remember...

Nut house

Okay, so it's been awhile. Sorry. Things lately have been so crazy, I feel like I live in a looney bin most days. Coordinating schedules, trying and failing to find a new job, finally succeeding in finding something and then finding out that I have to take MORE classes and pass MORE exams. I just graduated college - I am burnt waaayyy out on the whole academic thing.

So what am I doing now? Waiting for the lovely state of Ohio to approve and issue my independent state insurance license, and driving to Sharonville (Cinci) almost every day for "training" UNPAID.  This is making me even crazier. I need to make money. All I've done is spend almost $300 for classes, background check, license application, exam, fingerprints; and spend like $650 on a new laptop for work; plus gas. Training is unpaid. This job has the promise of making some real money if things go well. GOD PLEASE LET THIS GO WELL!

My husband put a construction nail through his finger today while building a "fort" in the backyard for the kids, with an air nailer! Squad got called, kids were terrified, husband is in pain. There's finger meat sticking out of the hole. BARF.

I got up this morning and got my eyes examined, hurried home so that he could go to an appointment, then hurried myself to training. Got off from that, went to pick out glasses, went home to make dinner and make sure husband was ok and went back out to pick up the new glasses in hopes that my head will stop pounding and I'll be able to focus now.

I missed "girl time" with my girlfriends tonight. I needed this time. I hope they missed me, is that selfish?

That's all just stuff that's happened this week!

Earlier this month I had accepted a job at a senior home healthcare provider for a non-medical caregiving position. It was the worst thing I've ever done. It paid $8/hour, and I had to deal with really old penis's and poop. Not my cute little angel's poo - STRANGE ELDERLY ADULT POO! I held the position for less than a week and proceeded to explain to the HR lady in several different ways why the job wasn't for me. I have to go pick up my last/first check soon and do an exit interview. Really people? Sigh.

I have filled out approximately 75 applications since graduation August 16, 2012. I have had two call backs, and one was for the terrible position already mentioned. If this job doesn't work out, and turn out to be something I'm good at and like I am screwed. So let me just advise all my friends and loyal followers to forward all mail to the closest nut house, because that's where I'll be.

Also, this is the only thing of substance I've been able to write since graduation. It's terribly disappointing.

Barbara Kingsolver is a genius. It just so happens I am too.

In my final undergrad class, Women's Memoir with Dr. Pringle, the final book we're assigned is Barbara Kingsolver's High Tide in Tucson. It's broken up into essays as opposed to chapters, which I love.


As I skipped ahead on the syllabus and started this book, as opposed to finishing the dreadfully boring Patricia Hampl book, I have fallen mildly in love (sorry Nick).


In her essay "How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life," she writes:

 ...now that I am a parent myself, I'm sympathetic to the longing for some control over what children read, or watch, or do. Our protectiveness is a deeply loving and deeply misguided effort to keep our kids inside the bounds of what we know is safe and right. Sure, I want to train my child to goodness. But unless I can invoke amnesia to blot out my own past, I have to see it's impossible to keep her inside the world I came up in.

Right- this I understand completely. Although she is a little older than I am, so the world I came up in was already starting to become dangerous for children.


She continues:

Now, with my adolescence behind me and my daughter's still ahead, I am nearly speechless with gratitude for the endurance and goodwill of librarians in an era that discourages reading in almost incomprehensible ways. WE'VE CREATED FOR OURSELVES A CULTURE THAT UNDERVALUES EDUCATION [emphasis mine] (compared with the res of the industrialized world, to say the least), undervalues the breadth of experience (compared with our potential), downright discourages critical thinking (judging from what the majority of us watch and read), and distrusts foreign ideas.

Most alarming, to my mind, is that we the people tolerate censorship in school libraries for the most bizarre and frivolous of reasons. Art books that contain (horrors!) nude human beings, and The Wizard of Oz because it has witches in it. Not always, everywhere, but everywhere, always something. And censorship of certain ideas in some quarters is enough to sway curriculum's at the national level. Sometimes profoundly. 

The parents who believe in Special Creation have every right to tell their children how the world was made all at once, of a piece, in the year 4,004 B.C. Heaven knows, I tell my daughter things about economic justice that are just about as far outside the mainstream of American dogma. But I don't expect her school to forgo teaching Western history or capitalist economics on my account. Likewise, it should be the JOB OF THE SPECIAL CREATIONIST PARENTS TO MAKE THEIR STORY CONVINCING TO THEIR CHILDREN, SET AGAINST THE SCHOOL'S BRIGHT SCENERY OF DINOSAUR FOSSILS AND GENETIC PUZZLE-SOLVING, THE CRYSTAL CLARITY OF DARWINIAN LOGIC, THE WHOLE GLORIOUS SCIENCE OF AN EVOLVING WORLD THAT TELLS ITS OWN CREATION STORY. IT CANNOT BE ANY TEACHER'S DUTY TO TIPTOE AROUND RELIGION, HIDING OBJECTS THAT MIGHT RAISE QUESTIONS AT HOME [emphasis mine, again].

If there is a fatal notion on this earth, it's the notion that wider horizons will be fatal. Difficult, troublesome, scary - yes, all that. But the wounds, for a sturdy child, will not be mortal.

Mind = Blown people. This book was published in 1995.  Seventeen years ago this woman was already feeling the same way I feel now. I wonder what her opinion is now, given how worse things have gotten.


Why should "we" have to suffer because a small group of people think that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, The Giver, Harry Potter (series), and James and the Giant Peach should be unteachable, and unobtainable to our children? The national banned book list is ridiculously long, and there are so many books on it that are as equally ridiculous! I couldn't believe it when I looked it up. 


And what's the deal with our education system? It's ok for the government officials to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while the education system gets bastardized and shit on every year? Somehow I don't think the founding fathers would be happy. I know I'm not. The problem is that we've passed the era where people protest and hold the government accountable. Everyone today is content to bitch about it all, but unwilling to do anything about it. I don't understand why we, the voters, and the people who are affected by all of this are content with sitting idly by while the jokers in Washington rake it in and laugh-it-up. 

  Come on people. Get your head out of your asses. Once we lose the education system, there's no coming back.

Minecraft, YouTube and a not-so-sneaky 10yr old

So last night my son tells me he can't sleep in his room because his lightbulb is out. Obviously anyone that's seen me knows I'm not going to change it, even on a chair I'm still too short. Nick is in Key West and so I told Mason he could sleep on the couch upstairs in the living room.

His new thing - because God knows he won't pick up a book to save his life - is watching Minecraft videos on YouTube. For those of us not schooled in video games and other geekery, it's a weird video game where everything looks square and pixelated. 

I sent him to "bed' at 9:30, told him to brush his teeth and we went to sleep. Or so I thought. Around midnight something woke me up, probably Claire because she came tearing out of her room fussing like she does, all freaked out in the middle of me chewing Mason out. He got back onto the computer (his special profile with child protection security) and was still up! When he heard me stomping out to the living room he jumped up and almost fell in his haste to try to scramble back to the couch before I saw him. UGH! 

The joys of parenting. If he's this fun at 10, I can't wait until he's 15. 

Getting down to the nitty-gritty

Well I am literally weeks away from graduating. I just finished my final French class (sad face) and took my final final of my undergrad career. I should be happy but I'm a little sad, and incredibly worried about finding a job.

On another note, while I am only taking one class now and am going to be home more, I really need to concentrate on cleaning and organizing my home. It's a disaster. I wish I could hire a professional organizer to do it for me, but you know how it is.  I have however, just spent the last few hours making stuff that I can freeze and reheat for meals later. I also have been meal planning and making a grocery list. It's like, longer than my arm. Sigh. All I see is $$$$$$. Grr.