I Found My Mother's Family

My grandmother died five months ago.

I just found out a few days ago when I stumbled across her obituary online.

Well, stumbled may be a little misleading since I was in fact looking for her, but I wasn't expecting to find out that she was dead.

Actually, I wasn't even expecting to find her at all.

Now before I go any further I should probably clarify a few things, the first being that this is not the grandmother that I used to live with. Nope, that grandmother is alive and about as well as you can be when you are nearly 90, and I'm happy to say that despite the distance that I have put between myself and 99% of my family, she is one of the few people that I am still in contact with.

So the grandmother that I found online, she is the other one. My step-grandmother to be exact, but I never knew my real grandmother because she killed herself when my mother was three. This woman married my mother's father when my mom was still very young, and then several decades later she murdered him (or so the tale goes). After the murder my mother disowned my step-grandmother (a family tradition I guess?). I was roughly 12 years old when she did that and very much like what went on in my family when I disowned my mother, the rest of my mother's family turned around and disowned her.

I guess I do have something in common with my mother.

So... The Dance Recital Was... Interesting...

The Girl Child had her dance recital!!!

That Is Not My Problem

I'm sure Mr. Attorney Man is going to kill me for sharing this story, but oh well. I'm a fast runner so I think I'll be OK.

Several months ago we had a board member meeting for our nonprofit. Because our board consists of people spread an hour in every direction, it can be a bit challenging to find a time and location that works for everyone.

On this particular day we were to meet at 3:30, about 45 minutes away from where I live. I knew it was going to be a busy day so I had stayed up late the night before getting everything ready for the meeting to ensure that I would be prepared, and then I finally crawled into bed around midnight.

The day of the meeting I woke up early — roughly 5am — because I had a million things to do if I was going to be leaving work early. At 1:30pm I made dinner and put it in the fridge for both kids, then I went and got $45 dollars from the bank to pay the babysitter. At 2:00 I picked The Girl Child up from school (an hour before school lets out) and took her to a friend's house because I had no way of picking her up from school that day. After that I drove to The Boy Child's daycare center where I installed both kids car seat's into my babysitter's car (she works at the daycare) so that she could take The Boy Child home after daycare and pick up The Girl Child on her way.

Finally I started my 45 minute drive to the board meeting.

Good Luck With All Of This

It's the weekend!!!!

Last weekend I updated you on the craziness that has been going on in our life, but geez, I've also been so busy at work (and I'm not even talking about running the nonprofit!). Allow me to update you on a month's worth of articles that I wrote while sitting the waiting room during The Boy Child's therapy, and hopefully it will give you something to do if you are taking it easy this weekend!

Here, have fun combing your way through all of this:

************

I rented a human being off of an Internet site, and no, I'm not kidding. It was one of the weirdest things I've ever done and since you all know how strange I am, that's saying a lot. 

"I Tried Renting A Friend And It Was Incredibly Awkward"

My Child Does Not Have Autism

We were packed in like sardines in a can; all six kids lined up in a row watching the magician. I was sitting on one end of our kids and my friend was sitting on the other. 

To my surprise and The Girl Child’s delight, The Girl Child was chosen to go up on stage as the Magician's assistant for one of the tricks. When she went up there I whipped out my phone so that I could snap a few pictures of her ear to ear grin.

After taking three photos I turned to my left to see what The Boy Child's reaction was to his sister being "on stage."

But I didn't see him.

“Wait a minute” I said to my friend. “Where’s The Boy Child?”

As Usual...

As usual, it's been really busy around here and since you guys are always sweet enough to email me and see what we are up to, here's the monthly update!

I've been working insane hours and there's been something else taking up a lot of my time (which we will talk about later this week or early next week), but I've continued to maintain my stance on "No Work Weekends." It hasn't been easy! Just knowing that I have a TON of work that needs to get done makes relaxing on the weekends hard, but I'm determined to remain steadfast in my belief that my priorities are my children and I need to remember that when it comes to deciding where I focus my attention.

Focus your attention on what you most wish to succeed.

So here we are and another month has gone by! First off, Henry has continued to adapt well to the craziness that is our household.

Even though Henry sleeps most of the day, I think he's a little lonely now that The Girl Child has started school for the year. 

What!? Already!? Didn't school just freaking end!? 

Yep, she actually started weeks ago! 

Another Round Of "Conversations I Didn't Think I Would Be Having This Week"

I hadn't done one of my "conversation" blog posts in a while, so I made it a point last week to take a note of at least one strange conversation I had a day, because let's be honest here, it's not like I'm getting any more normal.

Monday kicked itself off to a rocking start when I was at the Chiropractic office that I work at on Monday's (that's it, I'm going to have to make them a label, they have been on here like 5 times already). Anyway, one of the chiropractors and I were going to be hosting a table together at a local festival coming up in our area — him for his practice and I for the nonprofit, but together so that we could share the cost — and I needed to know some of the details for event. As I've mentioned in other posts, he has a very dry sense of humor that unless you know him, comes off as very blunt and unfriendly.

Game on.

Me: What time are you going to get there?

Him: When I get there.

Me: OK, well how will I know if you are there?

Him: Well, if you show up and you see a tent, I'm there. If you show up and you don't see a tent, I'm not there yet. (Chuckles to himself)

Me: Well look at you Mr. Funny Man, laughing at your own jokes, so proud of how funny you think you are with your witty comebacks.

Him: (Looking slightly embarrassed, he attempts to re-route the conversation) Don't wear black. It's going to be hot, so that shirt you are wearing right now, don't wear anything like that.

(Apparently now I need help dressing myself?)

Me: I'm not going to wear black, I'm going to wear tinfoil so that all of my sun will reflect onto you. At least that way when you are standing around with that grouchy statue-like face, you will have a nice Greek tan going on.

Him: I could absolutely see you wearing a tinfoil hat.

Me: Duh, how else will the mothership find me?

And then I turned around, left, and went home.

*****************************

Tuesday:

On Tuesday a good friend and I went to go see Magic Mike XXL in the theatre. 

(P.S. it was awful. I write better text messages than that entire team of writers did coming up with a plot line, but if you were just going to see the actor's bodies, well then step right up and buy a ticket because it did not disappoint)

After the movie my friend and I were sitting in the hallway of the theatre because neither of us were quite ready to go home yet but we didn't really have time to go anywhere else. I told her that we should take a selfie and commemorate a rare outing without kids, and then at the last second I turned and pretended to kiss her.

Mr. Attorney Man And I Almost Died (not really but almost)

Court was… interesting, but not in the way that you might think.

As you know I posted on Monday night that I had JUST found out that I had a court date on Thursday morning to extend my Order of Protection. I was freaking out because this blog was born out of an attack that occurred due to retaliation when I got the initial order. Obviously I didn’t want to go through that again so I had a tough choice to make; risk my life and extend the order, or risk the kid's safety and let it lapse.

I was supposed to let Mr. Attorney Man know on Tuesday if I wanted to extend it or not, but due to a ridiculously busy week and a lot of inner turmoil, Wednesday night snuck up on me and I still had not made a decision. When I got a text from Mr. Attorney Man that basically said “I need an answer from you," I responded back with the only thing that I knew for certain; “how am I supposed to make a decision on something that might get me killed when I haven't had time to make any safety plans?”

In the end it was decided that if my ex showed up we would request a continuance on the case and if he didn't show up, Mr. Attorney Man assured me that the order would be "rubber stamped through" (meaning that it would be automatically extended and I wouldn't have to really talk to the judge) and then it should take a few days before he would even be served with the order, so that would buy me a little time.

I was about as OK with that plan as I was going to be with anything at that point, which really meant “I get that this is my best option but I really just wish that I didn’t have to deal with it at all.”

When I woke up on Thursday morning I felt so unnerved and sick that I gagged on my toothpaste.

I then got ridiculously lost on the way to the courthouse.

I knew that there was some construction going on near the courthouse, so I had planned for it and left my house early, but what I was not expecting was over 6 miles of one-way-street detours that took me through neighborhoods, a construction zone, what appeared to be an abandoned commercial district, and then eventually spit me out clear on the other side of town. When I passed a house with a sofa on the front lawn and a hotel that advertised "we have color TV and waterbeds," I realized that I was in the beginning of every scary movie I had ever seen.

My GPS had gone from continuously telling me to “make a u-turn when possible” to eventually just showing what appeared to be my car floating around in space.

Court Decision

I'm sorry that I didn't respond to all of your messages, I've just been a little overwhelmed this week. I did read all of them and I truly appreciate each and every one of you who took the time to comment, they all meant something to me.

I don't have a long post because it's been a bit of an emotional day, but after pushing Mr. Attorney Man off for much longer than I should have, I decided literally an hour ago that I am going to go to court tomorrow morning for the Order Of Protection.

I'm not sure if it's the right decision or not, I can't even promise that I'll go in once I get there, but I'm going to try.

I'm kind of a mess right now so I'm just going to climb into bed and hope that tomorrow goes quickly.

Thank you for all your support.


Photo Credit