Shut. Up.

A few weeks ago I found myself standing in line at Panera, as I do every so often when Frisbee Boy's Mom (AKA my surrogate mom) invites me to lunch so we can chat. She's amazing, she really is. I've honestly never in my life, met anyone like her. She goes so far out of her way to help everyone, and it's just a quality you often see in today's busy world. When The Girl Child was in the hospital, she and her husband booked us a hotel room for the night. When The Girl Child got home, she showed up the very next day with cupcakes. That's what life is like with her, all of the time, because she is, as I said, amazing. 

I like her and she likes me, so it's usually a good time, but it's also weird.

I mean come on, remember the time her and I went to Goodwill and she convinced me to try on someone's bedroom shoes? Or that time we she and I went grocery shopping, and I got stuck in the freezer?

(Bonus points for anyone who can find that blog in the archives, I know it's around here somewhere!)

That Time I Possibly, Accidentally, Went To A Happy Endings Massage Parlor... And Got Beat Up.

Photo Credit Giphy.com

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

Not long ago, I found myself with a Groupon credit that was about to expire, and with it, I wanted to find an experience that I could treat Frisbee Boy's Mom (aka my surrogate mom) to, since she does so much for me.

After ruling out pregnant skydiving and deciding against getting vajazzled (an idea that she did not immediately turn down), I came across a foot massage advertisement. Now typically, because of the loose joints that my genetic condition gives me, I don't enjoy massages. I tried to explain to The Guy once when he talked me into getting a couple’s massage with him.

Ask him about it.

No seriously.

For some reason I agreed to go with him, and I found myself in a spa much fancier than is acceptable for my class of human. The Guy was lying on a massage table over on his side of the room, making relaxed, groany sex noises, and I was over on my side whimpering in pain.

My massage ended when the masseuse dislocated my rib and I burst into tears.

So when I saw via Groupon that getting just a foot only massage was an option, I figured I’d give it a whirl!

That is, until I really took a look at the wording of the advertisement; “where you come to have all your tensions, of every kind, released, as we hit just the right spot. No one leaves until they have been completely satisfied in every way."

Hum. Now I'm not always the brightest crayon in the box, but even I began to question what goes on there…

Photo Credit Giphy.com

But then I found another place that looked more legit, so I bought two sessions, and that is where this story really starts to get weird.

A couple weeks later, Frisbee Boy's Mom and I showed up bright and early to have our feet massaged. I was immediately surprised and impressed at how authentically Asian the decor of the place was. From the detailed wall hangings to the ornate furniture, it felt like I had just walked in off the streets of China.

I was a little disappointed when I was told that being pregnant, they would not be able to massage the bottoms of my feet due to the risk of inducing labor, but I didn't want to complain so I kept my mouth shut and pretended that I was totally fine booking a massage to have the tops of my feet rubbed.

Because that's totally the type of foot rub people enjoy. The boney part.

You Are Never Going To Believe This

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

Heeeelllllooooo everyone!

My gosh, WHERE IS THE TIME GOING?

I feel like these last few months have just run over me; some great, other parts not-so-great, and a few moments have just been insane.

Can we talk about “insane,” for a few minutes here? Because here is something that I cannot even wrap my head around, and I’d love it if you all could join me in shock, awe, and horror:

Set Previous Stage: Do you remember the last time I took my ex to court? It was the 3rd or 4th time we had gone due to his failure to pay child support, and as usual he whined and cried that he was poor, basically homeless, and had not a penny to his name. Then, in a shocking twist, it came out that he was married and had new kids. He begged and pleaded for one more chance to make things right, because his “kids” (not referring to the ones he abandoned) needed him, and the judge bought the whole damn charade.

Set Recent Stage: Last December, after being given another opportunity to stay out of jail and pay down his arrearages, my ex stopped contributing to the kids medical bills, daycare costs, etc, and fell behind on paying child support. I offered him an agreement to get caught up, just so we could stay out of court, he denied it, and I filed a court petition.

Set Current Stage: My ex hired an attorney. Yep! The man cannot afford to pay his child support, yet he can afford an attorney to explain why he shouldn't have to pay child support. Oh but wait! He actually CAN afford support, because after lying on his financial affadavits all these years, after hiring an attorney who has the responsibility to have his client surrender certain financial documents to the other party (us), SURPRISE SURPRISE out comes the truth; the ex and his wife make nearly 100k a year.

You read that right (although at first I didn’t think I had).

Conditional Basis

I Guess I'm Going To Trial (With A Complete Psycho)

Remember my blog post about the woman who rear ended my car, and then drove away? If you do remember, you’ll also remember that I was able to catch up to her at a stoplight, and snap a photo of her license plate. Then I pulled up beside her, honked, motioned for her to pull over, and she basically laughed, flipped me off, and drove away.

#RUDE

Because chasing her down the street and I dunno, running her off the road or something, seemed like a bad idea, I pulled over and called the police. The police looked at the photo I had taken of her and the damage done to my car, and actually took the time to track her down. When they found her and pointed out the damage to her car, she admitted that she had hit me. She was then charged her with several things, including a hit-and-run.

If you don’t remember that post, well that was basically the entire story so consider yourself caught up.

Photo Courtesy of Giphy.com

Anyway, thankfully she had insurance, and her insurance company assumed full liability and paid to fix the damage on my car. I thought that since the police had found her, she had admitted to the crime, and her insurance had paid for the damages, that all was said and done.

I was wrong.

Because really now, can anything ever be that easy?

Words I Never Thought I'd Say

So….

After I wrote the post where I talked about what a horrible human being my ex is and why he will probably burn eternally in hell and how I don’t like him, I realized something when I said that The Guy I have been dating, stepped up and took care of my kids while I sat in bed and cried my eyes out.

I realized that I owe him a lot more on this blog than just the dramatic trilogy detailing his crazy female friend who hates me, and I think it’s time to rectify that. Because what you don’t know, is that he has been around for over a year, and has been personally dealing with all the crazy stuff that you have seen me going through. And I have to admit, he's done a pretty swell job of holding me up every step of the way.

So why haven’t I told you that much about him?

Because it terrifies me to put myself out there and be vulnerable again. 

I've made a lot of bad decisions in my life when it comes to men. My friends and the people around me have watched me fall, and it hasn't been pretty, and it hasn't felt good. In the same way, I feel embarrassed that I’ve come on here before, all excited about someone I have been dating, only to have to come back and explain why it didn’t work out and that guy is now gone. I didn’t want to solidify another man into the pages of my safe space within this blog, that I thought I might one day want to rip from my memory.

"Maybe," I thought, "if I don’t really talk about it, it won’t be so real; because real hurts you know. When things get real, hearts get invested, and when that happens, you’ve just given someone the power to hurt you."

I don’t know how much more hurt I can take.

So here, and "in real life," I didn’t invest myself into him, not right away anyway. We dated, he asked me what we were, and I told him “humans.” The term “boyfriend,” well that’s too much pressure for me. You see labels create expectations and expectations turn into dreams and future plans and that was all just a little bit too much to handle. In my life, people leave, so let’s just not look at tomorrow, OK? Let’s just try to get through today.

He wasn’t thrilled, but he was willing to give me the time that I needed in the space that I required, and so off we went; day by day. But then suddenly all those days rolled into weeks which turned into months, and then a year, and now here we are.

Invested.

It's That Time Again, Welcome To "Conversations I Didn't Think I Would Be Having This Week!"

I don't know about you, but I'm just not really sure if I even know what "normal" is anymore. I think it used to be some kind of goal that I was striving for, but at some point I gave up and settled comfortably into this:

Monday:

I was getting ready for work and out of the corner of my eye, I caught site of The Girl Child staring at me.

Me: "What?"

Her: "Are you sad that you only have like 30 more years of living left?"

Me: Stares at her in what must have been a shocked and somewhat annoyed looking expression.

Her: "What? I didn't say I was happy about it either."

Tuesday:

The route that we take to get to daycare has us go over a bridge and through an intersection. At the intersection the north/south street has a stop sign on either side, and the east/west street (the bridge) does not. So if you are coming off or going onto the bridge you don't have to stop, but if you are driving on the cross street you do.

Until now.

Sorry I'm Late

Sorry, I've been lazy, so here's a post that has been building up in my file folder for two months now and I just haven't gotten around to publishing it. I have however, gotten enough emails from readers asking "why haven't you posted any of the free weekend activities that you guys do?" to let me know that I'm slacking.

I also didn't realize that so many of you were using my free weekend activities to spark ideas for your own family, so I apologize for being so delayed. If there is any advice that I can give you, it's to go to your local library, recreation center, and park district office and get the informational booklets that nearly every town publishes on a quarterly basis. The booklet should detail all the events and festivals that will be going on in your area, and most should have the costs listed with the event time information.

Because I have absolutely no money for entertainment and yet I don't want my kids to miss out on their entire childhood, I go through the book and put all the free activities right into my calender so that I can plan ahead for the ones we want to attend.

ANYWAY, I figured this extended holiday weekend would be the perfect time to drop this post's enormity on you because some of you might have a little extra time to get through it all! So jumping back to the end of September and moving forward, here is what has been keeping us busy, free and otherwise.

Even More Surgery On Friday; A Message About Flat Tires And Broken Dreams

It’s 11:14 am and I’m sitting in the hallway of a very fancy theatre while my daughter watches a play with her class. I drove her here but she didn’t want me to sit with her, because “mom, that’s embarrassing.” Typically I’d have a lot to say about her attitude, but I’m exhausted and therefore making the executive decision to just let her snarkiness slide.

Plus the play looked stupid.

So here I sit, ushers walking by as they appear to wonder why I’m perched on the edge of a sofa that is probably more for looking at than sitting on, but alas, I’ve never been the most socially appropriate person, so why start now?

I’m tired.

My alarm went off yesterday at 4:00 am and in the dark I bundled my children into the car and drove us across town to Frisbee Boy’s Mom’s house, where she then drove the three of us into the city so that The Boy Child could be seen by a team of specialists at a major university hospital.

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! 

And This Is What Has Kept Us Busy

So, do you want to know what has been keeping me (and Mr. Attorney Man) busy?

Fighting with my state.

The child support office has STILL been withholding my child support payments, since last August! AN ENTIRE YEAR!!!!!

I don't want to delve into the entire story again, so if you are new to this blog I would suggest clicking here and after you read that one, click here before going on. That should catch you up.

But anyway, yes, so the child support office has continued to withhold my money, which makes absolutely no sense because what they do is based off a court order; a court order that they themselves have entered into the system wrong, but my case worker sucks, and has refused to look at the court order.

I'm not even kidding.

I've called her, Mr. Attorney Man has called her, and all she does is insult us. She told me that "as a little white girl" I should just get a better job and that Mr. Attorney Man shouldn't even have a law license. She then informed us that "you are free to haul my ass into court and I'll tell that judge how to do his job," because she knows that she has governmental immunity.

Legally she is protected and we can't take her to court.

Eventually I went to my state representative, state senator, and house republic leader. I provided them with copies of the court orders and a timeline of what had been going on, and they were FLOORED. They couldn't believe what was going on and made it their personal mission to help me.

Unfortunately they didn't get very far.

How ridiculous.

Because the child support office is protected by government laws, they weren't able to do anything either. We even re-wrote the court order with the child support states attorney and that didn't help.

Finally I went to the newspaper.

When some higher-ups found out about it, things started moving along. 

A conference call took place between Mr. Attorney Man, a big wig at the child support office in my state capital, a political leader, and myself. 

At first the child support big wig was less than pleased to be on the phone with us. In fact his conversation started with "I hear that you have been upset with the way your caseworker is handling the case, but we are well within our rights to be withholding Ms. Strong's money." But as the conversation went on and he realized that he was operating off an invalid court order, and that my caseworker had refused to enter my new order (and all of my issues were based upon the fact that they were erroneously working off of an invalid order), his tune changed quickly.

Everything was handed over to the state's legal department and a week later I received word that the new order was in the system, no more money would be withheld, I would be receiving a check for everything that was wrongly withheld from me, and that my caseworker had been placed on probation.

YAY!!!!

I got a refund check (which I turned around and handed right over to Mr. Attorney Man, boo hiss), but then a week later the stupid child support office defaulted the order in their system back to the wrong one, and they started withholding my money again.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

Three weeks later and I still haven't been able to get anyone to fix it.

I am SO ready to move on from this, not only because it's financially killing me and incredibly stressful, but because I have other things that I would rather be doing!!

In fact, here are a few of the other things that have been keeping me busy:

A few friends and I, including The Platonic Hubby, went to our town's free (I love free!) Patriotic Festival.

That Time I Handed A Duffle Bag Full Of Cash To A Dude In A Parking Lot

A couple weeks ago I was lying on the couch, a glass of wine in hand, and I was watching the movie "The Lincoln Lawyer." There's a scene in that movie where the main character — the lawyer — is in his car when his client pays him using a large envelope of cash. I found myself giggling because you can't get anymore straight edged when it comes to how seriously Mr. Attorney Man takes his career and his license (rightfully so), so the thought of him handling a business transaction out of the back of a car was kind of funny.

I like funny.

I drank a little more wine, laughed a bit more to myself, and when I went to bed that night an idea was already rolling around in my head as I thought about the money that I was supposed to be paying Mr. Attorney Man the very next week.

Oh what perfect timing!

Are you getting excited yet?

I was.

I Require Adult Supervision

Last month as my Platonic Hubby and I were trying to figure out something to do for my birthday, the conversation took a turn that looked like this:

I'm the orange-ish bubble

So Saturday night my Platonic Husband, two other friends, and I, spent the night in the city.

There was a lot of planning involved because not only do we have wildly different schedules, but also due to the simple fact that we are chicks.

First, I needed a dress and it needed to fit the kind of budget that a 6th grader might have after getting paid an allowance; meaning that it had to cost less than the $30 that I had left on a gift card that I received for my birthday (I'd like to point out to my real-life friends who read this blog, while you are overly generous, I know what you are up to. Giving me gift cards to places that don't sell children's items or groceries, I'm onto you). Also, I was shopping in between meetings for work, which meant that I only had 30 minutes to find a dress that cheap.

Sounds like fun.

NOT.

And yet miraculously...

But then I couldn't figure out how to get a strapless bra to stay up, and the dress really needed one. I know, at 32 yrs old I probably should have figured this out by now, but when your bra size is "almost," you can usually get away with just using the built in dress-bra, but this time, not so much. So there I was— clueless and bra-less— so I asked The Platonic Hubby for help.

She wasn't much help.

Why Would I Buy That?

A few nights ago after I suffered a minor facial injury that I will take to the grave that I don't want to talk about, The Platonic Husband and I made plans to watch the comedy "The Sex Tape."

I'm the ugly peach color. For some reason it wouldn't let me crop the pics so they are haphazardly pasted together. Sorry!

And as usual, before we started the movie we started talking about everything under the sun, which was how I ended up telling her about these ridiculous clothes that Frisbee Boy's Mom had given me to try and sell (in all fairness they were also given to her, but still...)

"And there is no way anyone is going to buy these things," I explained to my Platonic Hubby. "Not unless I start shipping to the compound. I mean seriously, unless you are looking to go as a Duggar or an 80's inheritance queen for Halloween, no one is going to be buying these clothes."

So naturally, we decide that we must try them on.

Upcoming Surgery This Week

Talk about a whirlwind of a weekend!! Geesh. Is it Friday yet???

Oh no wait. Friday just passed.

Wowzers.

My Friday night ended like this:

A few friends brought tasty things and came over to chill out after a long week, and trust me when I say that it was a LONG week.

Aside from the regular grind of work/school/daycare/dance, I had to spend a little time at the cardiologist. Because I am a medical mutant and there are like 2 other people on the planet besides my kids and I that have the disorder that we have, I spend a lot of time letting doctors and med students analyze me. It really is a great set-up because the doctors get the chance to analyze a Real! Live! Freak! and I get access to medical care that medicaid otherwise wouldn't cover.

Having A Pretend Mom Rocks

Hey all, so it's Mother's Day over here in the US, and as many of you probably remember, I typically hate Mother's Day.

VERY MUCH DISLIKE.

But, I've made a little bit of progress. Last year not only was I pissed that I am a single mother, but I was also pissed that I didn't have a mother. Now although I'm still a single mother, and I still don't have a "real" mother, what I do have is a pretty darn good stand in for a mother, and as I've come to realize over the last year, having a surrogate mom is way cooler than having a biological mom.  It's obviously not the same as having a real mom, no comparison in many areas, but in the fun area having a surrogate mom can sometimes take the cake!

Frisbee Boy's Mom reads this blog as you know and after she read a few of my recent posts she gave me a call saying that we needed to go out to lunch asap because "you need a stiff drink."

See, how can you not like her??

I Have A Surprise For You...

It's Monday!

This is what I woke up to this morning (well technically I woke up to this "yesterday" morning, this post was written at like 2am Monday morning):

A little man standing on my bed while he exclaimed "look how big my muscles are!"

As much as I like the weekends, I also like Mondays. I mean really, there are only so many ridiculous and incessant questions that any single human being can answer before they need a break.

Allow me to explain.

A Kiss From Me To You

The holiday's are over!!!

I don't know about all of you, but I am worn out! 

More than worn out though, I was ABSOLUTELY blown away at how much you guys care about me and my kids. I received quite a few emails asking how our holiday's went and since I truly do care about you all, I figured that sharing a few pictures would allow me to share a bit of our (crazy) holiday's with you.

I Would Like To Introduce You To My Real Life Friends

Trust me,  you are going to want to read this one through to the end....

It was almost exactly a year ago when I started this journey with you all. The blog went up in October but it wasn't until Dec 23rd that my first article ran and a lot of you found me.

I was about to pull out of the parking lot at the grocery store when all of a sudden my blog email inbox started up with messages. Now I'm not saying 1 or 2 came in, I'm talking about several hundred within the first hour. I'm a little dull so I'm sitting there thinking "who the heck are all these people and how has my blog suddenly become the place to hang out?"

Now mind you I put up this blog and I told no one. There is obviously no family to tell, I didn't tell any of my friends, I just put it up and went along my merry little way, writing for myself and anyone else who cared to read. For all intents and purposes I had walked into the middle of the forest that is the Internet, stuck a twig in the ground, and suddenly thousands of people were noticing that one tiny twig.

8,000 people that day to be exact and I had no idea who any of them were.

I drove home, pulled up the blog, looked at the traffic reader, and realized that an article I had submitted to XOJane 7 weeks prior had published that morning and people were now pouring into my blog from there. 

It was about then that the enormity of what I had done became apparent. I had told the entire world that I had disowned my family and then they followed me here where I proceeded to tell them that my husband was abusive and I had been raped.

Because that's not scary at all....

I Met The New Neighbors

So I met the new neighbors.

I was supposed to meet Frisbee Boy's Mom for lunch and she asked me to stop by her house first. When I got there she literally handed me a banana bread and said "I made this for your neighbors so go over there and meet them. Take this with you and don't tell them I made it."

I'm not used to listening to "adults" anymore so this "mom" thing she has going on these days is still new to me. Although, I have watched enough TV to know that at this point I'm supposed to say "ok, will do," and so I did.

That night shortly after I got home, I walked across the yard to my new neighbor's front door and rang the doorbell.

The next thing I know I can hear someone yelling and I, like a total idiot, am looking behind me, above me, and next to me, wondering who is making so much noise.

Then I hear the knocking.

I only then realize that the sound is coming from the window next to the front door, the window where some dude is knocking to get my attention and yelling "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" at me.

"Uh...I live next door, I uh..." and then he cut me off with "HOLD ON."

The door opens and a man with a long pointy beard and an eclectic sense of style is standing in the doorway. "Do you want to come in?" he asks me.

Um no, not really, because I'm a little freaked out now, but you know what? It's 13 degrees outside so I'm willing to risk it.