Obsessed, grace-less and stuck in a rut

I'm not even sure where to start without giving away too much information. I guess it would be safe to say that I had a falling out with a very good friend, a friend I've had for over 10 years. One who has been there for the births of all of my children. One who we shared similiar paths in life in more ways than one. One who I valued and loved and still do.

Through the years, we all grew. We found people to share our lives with instead of just dating, we had our own children instead of babysitting, we found careers instead of just something to get some cash with. We moved into homes with yards and bought lawn mowers and had cook outs and family get togethers. We were still a tight knit circle....dysfunctional at (most) times but still tight knit.

Between my family and friends, I think I now associate the word dysfunctional with love and friendship.

The falling out....

I was already overly flustered and angry. I called my friend to update her on the flustering situation, to which she said she was mad at ME for! I lost my temper and yelled, and my loudness was splattered with obscenities. My mouth was crapping out more than I could hold in. It was bitter. That I will admit to. I was overly frustrated and angry. I immediately knew that I had messed up.
Silence followed......I half commented/ half inquired that I had been mean.? My friend confirmed and said she was getting off the phone.

The texting war ensued. I was careful to keep my tongue and not let it loose again. The things she said were hurtful and attacking. Things that weren't even like her. I will admit that I spewed back, but was careful to not attack anything personally about them or any of their character flaws. Angry wasn't even the word for what I was feeling...at that time it was pure hatred. How dare she blow this all out of proportion...and then attack me and Chris! In the end, I texted to let her know if she wanted to blame us that was fine, hurtful words weren't helping anything. We would be gone. She said she was walking away from me and chris...not the kids. I agreed.

And that was it....just like that. Everything was done and over. No more friendships. No more get togethers. Nothing........

Two weeks later, I haven't let it go. I'm angry, bitter and hurt. I rotate between the three. I don't understand how I am the complete raging lunatic and this time Chris just keeps saying, It's going to be Ok. That makes me angry at him. For what reason, I have no idea. Rational thoughts have left me.

I don't like when people are angry with one another or fighting for any reason. It makes me anxious until it's resolved. I often stick my nose in where it shouldn't be to try to mend things or get people to try to put themselves in the other person's shoes. But, this time I am the other person. And, in all it's ridiculousness, I do understand why my friend would say such mean things. I can understand her feelings, even if I don't agree with them. The awful thing is, I can't be the voice of reason since I am the enemy.

She has discarded me. I can't seem to get past this. Our close knit group was comprised of mostly her family members. Which she let me know...was HERS, not mine. That hurt. That was probably the most hurtful thing she said, besides blaming my husband for basically ruining her family. There is a birthday party coming up, which will be held next door to our house. The anxiety of it has invaded my dreams. I don't think I can go. I can't face them. I can't face the whole family. Not yet. I don't think I can muster enough pride to sit and face them all looking at me, judging me, blaming me. I can't take sitting there while friend ignores me. I can't take feeling taunted....

I know I should just bow out gracefully while I have a few strands of dignity left. Grace has left me. Rational thoughts have left me. I want my group back. I want my friends back. I want my little family back. Everything is changing and I hate it.

It's a thin line

between productivity and laziness. Or at least it is for me. Why must it be all or nothing? Most people clean each day. They do their daily chores, put things away when they are done with them, utilize hampers and sleep in beds instead of on couches.

With Chris on third shift and noone coming to visit me anymore, my house has been a war zone. I truly hate cleaning. I would much rather spend my time doing whatever I want to do. And that pretty much boils down to everything BUT cleaning!

Chris comes home from work and goes straight to bed in the morning after waking me up. He then sleeps until Devin gets home. When I get home with Nuby and Peyton in the evening, he's usually still in waking up mode. I spend some time with Devin, usually pick up the living room and kitchen quickly while Chris either runs to get us food or makes us something. We eat, play with the kids for a little bit, put them to bed and then Chris leaves.

Once he leaves, I do NOTHING. I put on my jammies, make a coccoon on the couch and watch endless episodes of The Nanny.

I need to snap out of it and get my arse into gear! Any suggestions?

Blower (snicker)

Fall. What a wonderful time of year. The air turns crisp and starts to nip at your nose and ears. Kids all get to dress up in costumes and collect free candy from strangers. The first frost comes and the leaves all turn the most magnificent colors....and this is all done while the trees strategically crap hoards of before-mentioned-leaves-gone-dead onto your yard.

Leaves, leaves, leaves....most people start raking, blowing (snicker), sucking, burning, throwing away leaves little by little as they fall. Not this guy! I wait until every one of them is on the ground. Aaaaand...they are now all down.

We are in the final days of halfway decent weather. So, while watching the kids enjoy these last days on our multi leaf covered lawn, I decided that I wanted to be productive and re-discover our yard.

Me (yells from other side of yard): "Chraaaaaaas, Where's the leaf blower?"
Chris (lifts head, looks semi annoyed at the obvious answered question): Garage
Me (I see he's not getting the hint): "Can you get it for me?"
Chris (Stares at me)
Me (Does my best to look sweet and innocent. Can feel lip curling up, nose scrunching in a beast like manner and eyes squinting. Standing in the sun is not helping my cause)
Chris (Sighs, drops what he was being productive with to help me on my productive way. He gets out and unrolls two extensions cords, plugs everything in, straightens everything across the yard so I don't get tangled and hands me the leaf blower)
Me (While he does all this, I stay in my same spot that I yelled from and wait for my royal slave loving husband to bring me my leaf weapon)

Our front yard is pretty big and we do have numerous trees...which in turn produce craploads of leaves. Add into that the fact that they were all soggy on the bottom layers from the morning's melted frost...and I probably should have just used a damn rake. But, my lazy ass kept justifying in my head that leaf blowers were made after rakes, therefore MUST be better. Right?

I blew and blew and blew (snicker) until my arms were vibrating, my ears were ringing and I was using my uterus (heh...who knew it was good for other things too?) to maintain some stability to keep the blower from careening completely out of control. In addition to my vibrating arms and ears...I now feared that my reproductive organs might vibrate out, fall down my pant leg and be blown into the woods, buried in a mountain of crunchy leaves to probably then be eaten by a deer. And who says I never did anything to contribute to the great outdoors?

I blew with such intensity (snicker) and concentration that 45 minutes into it, I realized that I was chewing the sides of my tongue raw. Don't judge, everyone has a wierd tic they do when they concentrate. Mine just happens to be chewing on the sides of my own tongue similiar to how one would chew gum.

Chris eventually came over and took the blower to help out. I jittered over to a tree and sat watching him blow (snicker snicker). After a few minutes, I jumped up managed to drag my ass off the ground and hobble over to take the blower back. This was my mission... My battle... My war...

And................

I lost. End of story. A little short of halfway through the front yard, I caved and gave up. This morning I woke up and my back still hurts, my forearms ache and I'm wondering if the leaves will be removed from the yard or if they will stay until the snow thaws.

ps. I left the blower in the driveway for Chris to unplug, wrap up the cords and put everything away. All while he grumbled about my not so productive productiveness. He loves me. Maybe I'll have him get everything out for me to continue next weekend...

NaBloPoMo just sounds dirty, doesn't it.

Like some kind of deranged perverted telli tubby!

I just needed to get that out and in front. I guess I picked the right month to rejoin the blogosphere. I have so much to tell and with the excuse of the National Blog Post Month, I can write every day!

I believe all of my loyal followers came to facebook with me and have been following along there. But, for those of you who haven't, I got hitched! That's right, took me thirty years but I finally found someone dumb smart enough to see how wonderful I am.

We were engaged over 5 years ago, have planned and cancelled two weddings, have damn near killed each other, have laughed, have loved, have cried, and most important of all, we have found our way...together.

Since I am 30, we do have three kids and have been living together for 6 years...I decided it was better for us to do an out of town wedding with just our family and closest mutual friends. This meant that I had to cut our original list from 350 to 100 or less. It wasn't really as hard as a anticipated. I did go over by about 40 some guests, but luckily alot of people don't want to travel.

We were married at a chapel in the woods. It was extremely remote. No cell phone coverage, no wifi and no GPS signal. It was great. For the most part, everyone came and stayed all weekend. I can't decide if I had more fun the day before the wedding or on the actual wedding.

The weekend was nothing short than magical. It makes me very sad to think that I will never ever ever have all my family and friends all in one spot like that again. Big buffet style meals, drinking games at night. Kids galloping in hoards together.

Chris' oldest brother was shaking. I'm not sure if he was nervous about being so close to my chest region or if I was just that damn heavy. Either way...I thought I was going down at any second.

My daddy.

Sucker! I now own half of your soul!

The boys had a blast! They weren't too fond of picture taking though. So, I didn't press the issue.

Notice the cake on Chris' forehead. My ONE (really, you believed me when I said one?) rule I had that day was not to shove cake in my face. The one day of my life I make an attempt to look decent and what did he do? He shoved the cake in my face. While he gently smushed icing on my cheek, I pelted my slice at mach 10 where it didn't just hit him in the head, but was more like embedded into his skull. Take that! Oh yeah, the half of the soul that I own....it's grounded when we get home!

Nobody should ever give me a microphone when bon jovi is on. I'm a loooooooaded guuuuuun. Yeah.

This is now my all time favorite picture of me and my little brother. This picture sums it all up.

Pre-cake being thrown. My mom spent ridiculous amounts of money on this cake. Poor cake collapsed on it's way to the wedding.



A weekend full of keg stands, more laughing than my sides could handle, arm wrestling, rafter pull ups, dogs, cabins, grilling, enough beer to fill a few pools and I cried halfway to South Carolina when we left. I couldn't believe it was over. Me and Chris both agreed that we should have skipped the honeymoon and stayed in the cabins with all of our families and just had a good time.

My next few posts will be a break down of the events of the weekend and the wonderful fun memories we all got to make and take home with us.

Hello?

UPDATE: I've narrowed it down to people not using internet explorer are the ones who see my blog all messed up like. Still trying to figure out how to fix this!

I had someone tell me that it was difficult for them to read my blog and it was all jumbled and full of computer lingo....is anybody else seeing this?

And does anyone have any suggestions?

Cleaning up after the war

Much has happened during the past year.

Devin (and myself) survived his (our) first year of Kindergarten. I do have to tell you all...it was hell. At the beginning of the school year, I had visions of dancing and twirling in slow motion with his teacher through endless fields of flowers with nothing but blue skies over head and the leafy green trees clapping us along in the breeze.............................SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEECH. BumP

That was the sound of my dream being ran over and killed. My visions left me ill prepared for the year long turmoil and battle. Perhaps I placed too much faith in mankind or teachers or the whole school system. But, who wouldn't? Aren't you supposed to be able to trust your child's teacher's judgement? I did. Even when I didn't fully understand it, I backed her recommendations 100% in hopes that the year would turn progressive and Devin would start moving along.

But, week after week, Devin would get off the bus with his head already hanging down because he had another bad day. Siiiiiigh. There's nothing worse than watching your child's self worth diminish. Well, I'm sure there is, but last year...there wasn't.

Have I ever mentioned to you all the hatred I have for the color system that is used in the school systems. It varies from school to school in appearance. Some teachers try to call it the stop light system like that is supposed to make humilation more fun. Basically, each child starts on green. If they violate a rule, they are called upon to walk to the front of the room and move their marker to yellow which serves as a warning. If another violation is made they move to blue which serves as a note home. If another violation is made they move to red which results in a visit to the principal. However, there is no standard set of rules of use and teachers can move you to whatever color they want whenever. The color system was the bane of mine and Devin's existence last year...along with his teacher who I finally figured out had a personal vendetta against my then 6 year old.

I could fill this whole blog with Devin's Kindergarten adventures and how every faculty member in that school now knows both me and my child by first name. I could fill posts with the countless visits I made to his school to speak with librarian's, paraprofessionals, his teacher and the principal. But, I'll let them filter out little by little as my mood suits me.

Last year was hard. This year has kicked off swimmingly (I've really been wanting to use that word lately)! His teacher works very well with Devin. His new tutor works well with Devin. The paraprofessionals work well with Devin. I keep holding my breath waiting for the ball to drop, but so far it hasn't.

A few things I learned last year...

• I had to learn that my child does read people and that just because someone is older than him doesn't make him wrong.

• I learned that adults are more judgemental and less patient than I gave them credit for.

• I learned that not all adults are as judgemental and impatient as I was learning.

• I learned that even though I'm only one person, I can stand up to an entire school and make a change.

• I learned that I may not have a degree but that doesn't make me inferior and that I CAN stand up.

• I learned that you need to hold the tears in until you get to the car or at least outside of the office! (learned that the hard way)

• I learned that it's hard to put your foot down when snot is running in your mouth, you can't see through the tears and the principal can't understand anything blubbering out of your fat mouth.

• I learned that my (then fiancee) husband argues how I do things at home but will back me 150% when push comes to shove. (Usually to the point that I would NOT allow him to go to school meetings with me)

• I learned that second guessing myself doesn't make me a crap-ass parent. It means that I care and allows me to re-assess myself.

• I learned to lean on the people who love my kids, the ones who always see the positive. Their love for Devin helped me when I felt like I was battling a negativity laser beam reflecting it's red dot on the center of Devin's forehead.

• I learned that when Nuby starts school next year that I will be prepared for whatever the school may throw at me. But, with his laid back personality, it probably won't be much.

Oh, the stories to tell you all!

Not to leave out Nuby and Peyton...

They are both doing wonderful. They both attend preschool together now. Nuby is slowly converting Peyton over to the dark side of being an insomniac with him. Will I ever sleep? All three of them are getting so big so quick. They all walk, talk, wipe their own butts and feed themselves. What's a mom to do with herself.....oh yeah, blog.

Till tomorrow...or whenever my friends.

Jump Rope for Heart follow up

I had given up attempting to keep up with blogging and had abandoned happy mayhem and settled for reading a few blogs here and there until recently. I spent the past two days blogging old posts, reminiscing and laughing. I've decided to return, if for no other reason than to get my memories down on print for later remembering.

Obviously, much has transpired since my last post and I'll try to keep my posts short and recap one at a time to not bore you (if anyone) out.

I'll leave off where I left off.

Devin's Jump Rope for Heart.... Don't forget to pause the music at the bottom of the page before playing the video.



I've included the youtube video in case anybody hadn't seen it. I would have loved if his webpage was still active, but it's not. Please make note of my my professional jumper jumps without his rope. hahahaha

When we started we set the goal with the lowest goal they would allow~$50. I figured that was alot of money for one boy to raise and figured that I would more than likely end up donating the majority of it.

So, with Devin's eagerness pushing me along, we made his website and posted it around 9 o'clock at night. By the next morning we had already exceeded that goal. So, I raised the new goal to $100. Through the generosity of family, friends and people that I have never and will never meet...Devin raised over $700. Little by little his website thermometer exceeded and poured out.

Every day we would check to see where we were at and every day I was left speechless. The greatest thing was that Devin could have cared less about the gifts that came with each tier of donations he met. I did call the school to see if I could come and get video footage of the actual jump-a-thon to post to all of the givers, but they wouldn't allow it since there would be other children in the video. He also couldn't believe how much Devin had raised. He raised more than anyone had in the eleven years he had been coordinating all of Austintown's jump rope for heart events.

As a mother, I could not have been more proud watching my son make an earnest attempt to save "sick heart". As a person, I was moved beyond words at the generosity that people gave to support the legacy of Shawn and the heart of a young boy.

For those of you who donated or followed Devin's heart journey...I thank you!