Goodbye Dad, I Love You

“Mommy, will you always love me?” The Girl Child asked, seemingly at random.

“Always,” I answered.

“Will you always like me?” she asked next.

“Maybe not” I said.

Harsh, I know.

As she stared back at me with a shocked expression on her sweet, seven year old face, I began to explain.

“I will always, always, love you, and nothing that you will ever do is going to change that. You will always be my baby, and I will always be your momma. But, there will probably be times when you make choices that I don’t like, and during those times, I will always love you, but I might not like the things you are doing, or the choices you are making. I might be angry with you, or upset with you, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you.”

She sat there for a minute and as I watched a look of understanding flash behind her eyes, she said “Ohhhh, so that’s what you mean when you always say ‘Girl Child, I want you to go to your room because I am not happy with you. I love you, but I don’t like the way you are acting'." "Yep!" I exclaimed. “That is exactly what I mean. Sometimes people do things that we don’t like, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t love them.”

And when it comes to my children, that will never, ever change. There is nothing that they will ever be able to do, that stops me from loving them with every fiber of my being. That doesn’t mean that I will always be happy with them, or that I will approve of the choices they make, but nothing they can do is ever going to lessen the love that I have for them, and nothing will ever stop me from wanting to protect them.

Because I am their mother, and my love for them runs deeper than the beat of my heart.

**********

I miss my dad.

And I almost hate to say that, but if I denied it, I would be lying.

Sweet Potato Cinnamon Bites (And More!)

Today was a long day and not just because I gave the entire house a good scrub down, did five loads of laundry, wrote two articles, met with a nonprofit client, went to the gym, and took both kids grocery shopping, but it was a long day simply because it was freezer meal stock-up day (full disclosure, I wrote this on Saturday).

Blah.

I am not a fan of freezer meal stock-up day, but what I am a fan of is eating and we like to do that around here at least several times a day. As I've mentioned in past posts, since I don't want the kids eating cereal for dinner every night of the week, I try to set aside one day a month to get as many meals made as possible and stick them in the freezer for the weeknights. Also, because we are on the food assistance program (food stamps), it helps me budget what I have to spend by making a majority of our meals as soon as our assistance becomes available each month. 

This time around I started with 6lbs of chili.

Hell If I Know!

Last week Mr. Attorney Man asked me if I wanted to meet up with him so that we could chat about everything from the nonprofit to my writing career, and my court case to my financial situation. The idea was to basically knock out all the topics in one sitting rather than drag everything out over a series of hard-to-schedule phone calls.

I declined.

Truthfully, I wasn't sure really what I would say in this meeting, and inevitably I felt like it would be a waste of his time.

He's a busy man, and if there is anything I do know, it's that you don't waste the time of a busy man. But aside from knowing that, I'm really not sure what I do know these days.

For example, three companies that I write for, including Yahoo Parenting, shut down last month, and took with them almost the entirety of my paycheck.

I also found out that I'm losing the childcare subsidy that I have for my son, and because of that and the fact that I can't afford the cost of childcare on the salary that I make, within the next few months I will need to transition into become a working mother without childcare.

How does that even work?

I don't know.

Seriously, hell if I know. 

A Shocking Self Reflection, Done Entirely In Selfies

I did something the other night that I've really never done before; I read a few blogs.

You would think, that as a blogger myself, that I would also be an avid blog reader. Unfortunately that is not the case. I know, I know, it probably makes me seem super un-supportive of my fellow bloggers, but the truth is that I barely have enough time to write this blog, let alone read one.

I'm kind of a loser.

But the other day I found myself in bed reading who the heck-knows-what, and for reasons that I can't even remember, I eventually started scouring the Internet for all of the most popular women's blogs. 

And let me tell you, it was quite the eye opening experience for me, because I learned that not only do most of the other bloggers in Internet land have amazing husbands, perfect kids, gorgeous houses, exciting jobs, take lavish vacations, and spend an exorbitant amount of time throwing parties, they also just look... better than me.

Um, like in every single way.

For example, the fashion blogs. How on earth do women do that? And by "that," I mean look so damn good all the time. I must have scoured pages upon pages of bloggers teaching the world how to match plaid with florals, and here I am, honestly just happy if I can match my socks. 

In fact as I write this, I'm sitting in my friend's daughter's old t-shirt, and my underwear. It's not as glamorous as it sounds (humor me and just pretend that before I made that disclaimer you thought it sounded a little glamorous).

But the biggest shocker to me, aside from their totally perfect lives, was how in nearly every single photo of said bloggers, they all looked perfect too. Like it isn't just their lives that are perfect, but them too. With the exception of a few snapshots where a child was eating a melting ice cream cone (please remind me to take a photo of my kids eating a messy ice cream cone, so that I too can be part of the club), everyone looked amazing, ALL THE TIME. I even came across pictures of bloggers painting their bedrooms while wearing white linen sundresses, and copious amounts of photos taken in hospital beds, with captions that practically screamed "I just had a baby 5 minutes ago and look at how perfect my hair and makeup is."

Do you know what I looked like 5 minutes after I had a baby? I looked liked nothing because my head was in a barf bucket, and the last time I painted a room, I wore a shower cap because for the life of me, I cannot seem to avoid getting paint in my hair.

So yea, basically, I'm not them.

I am just not that perfect, which was clearly evident when I migrated back from their blogs into my own. As I started looking through the pages of my own blog, I realized that not only have I clearly not achieved the level of perfection that the other bloggers exude from their pages, but that I have most definitely dropped below a level of "less than perfect" and have landed somewhere that I will just call "why the hell did you post that?"

I mean sure, I talk about rape, domestic violence, and child abuse. I also let the details of my financially disastrous life and humiliating break-ups hang out all over Internet land, but seriously Eden, why did I need to back it up with so much photographic evidence?

I mean all the other bloggers are over there swearing up and down, left and right, that they do not have tattooed eyebrows and they just magically look amazing after swimming in Niagra Falls on one of their luxury vacations, and here I am proclaiming, "THIS IS NOT MY REAL NOSE!"

In The Meantime, I Can't Help But Wonder

Court yesterday.....



Got continued.

Yea I know.

Gah.

Surprise, surprise, my ex was unprepared. He showed up claiming that he hadn't done what the judge had ordered him to do, because we didn't have court until the 9th.

Um, no, clearly court was yesterday, which he must have known, SINCE HE SHOWED UP ON THE DAY THAT WE HAD COURT. WHICH WAS YESTERDAY. IN THE COURTHOUSE. WHERE HE WAS STANDING. BECAUSE HE KNEW WE HAD COURT.

So yea, none of that made any sense, which is much like every encounter that I have with him, and am always left shaking my head and thinking "wtf just happened?"

The hearing was continued and now isn't for another 6 weeks, and to say that I'm frustrated would be the understatement of the century. I've been working off the mental mindset that I just needed to make it to yesterday; that I just needed to hold myself together and get through court, and then I could put it all behind me.

But now I've just added six weeks to my already stressed emotional state; six more weeks until I can put my ex back where he belongs; out of my mind.

But I can't change this. There is nothing that I can do to change this, so I'll wait.

I'll wait, and I'll enjoy spending my time with my two beautiful kids, and the new man in my life who understands just how frustrated I am. And I'll be thankful that for the first time in my life, instead of having someone run away from the craziness that surrounds me, I have someone who is wrapping their arms around me and sharing in the burden of drying up my tears.

I Need A Cupcake For Court Tomorrow

Can someone please bring me some wine and a few cupcakes? Because I'd really like to stuff my feelings down with food right about now.

Tomorrow I have court again with my ex.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

When I wrote my last post, I was angry. And before that, I was scared. And even before that, and even now, I'm just hurt; hurt that I need to chase down the father of my kids and try to get him to acknowledge that our kids exist.

I'm tired.