On Losing My Anonymity

We were in the car, all six of us, a few girls that I knew and a couple that I didn’t. We had been in the car for a while when somehow the topic of Botox came up, which immediately segwayed into the topic of plastic surgery. As the girls were commenting on what they considered would be "going to far," eventually the conversation turned to me. I laughed and then said “well hell, I don’t know what kind of judge I would be, I’ve already had a nose job!”

I then braced myself because I knew exactly what was coming next.

Every single head in the car, with the exception of the driver, turned around in their seat to get a better view of my nose.

They all do it, every single time; anyone who has just learned that I had a nose job. They want to see exactly what it looks like — judge the work if you will — and in doing that they most often judge me. I can see it in their eyes before the words even start to stumble out of their mouths. It usually starts with something along the lines of “…..oh… well… wow. I mean it looks great! You can’t even tell… I never would have guessed. I mean no one would ever know.”

And that is just it.

When it comes to nose jobs, people assume that you would never want anyone to know. They assume that having plastic surgery on your face is something that you would be ashamed to admit, that maybe you don’t want anyone to know that you are now “fake pretty” — that you paid to look like this.

There seems to just be something inherently shameful about admitting that what people see might not be the “real” you.

Plus, there’s something culturally shameful about admitting to being vain and that’s the only reason people have “nose jobs,” right?

I get it. I 100% get it.

If you remember, I had the surgery done to correct a nose that was first broken when I took a knee to the nose as a child — a break that literally shoved my entire nose upwards and instantly created a large bump. It was broken several more times over the course of my lifetime and eventually settled leaning off to the left side of my face.

OH. EM. GEE. NO!!

The Girl Child had curriculum night at her school a few nights ago. Because they didn't want a bunch of kids interrupting the teachers and parents, the school had a drop-off classroom where kids could stay and watch a movie; both of my kids were excited to go.

There were two sessions that night and I ended up being the only parent that showed up in my daughter's class for the second session, which you know, totally rocked because the teacher and I got through everything really fast.

Unfortunately it wasn't fast enough though, because when I got back to the drop-off room The Boy Child was just coming back from the bathroom, by himself. 

The teacher, probably not having any idea otherwise, had sent my just-turned-4 year old down the hall, by himself, to find a bathroom.

Not. A. Good. Idea.

The Boy Child didn't share in my opinion though and was pretty excited to tell me that not only did he get to go wandering around all by himself, but he had gotten to use the men's room for the first time ever.

Sick Children, Crazy Ex's, Disowned Family Members, And A Really Creepy Bug!

A friend and I took our kids to the zoo.

The biggest attraction came during lunch when we found a crazy looking caterpillar.

To say that we were interested yet terrified would be the understatement of the century.

At one point my friend got him to cling onto a stick and when she swung him in my direction I must have broken an Olympic record the way I (from a seated position) leapt over our table and escaped to safety.

No freaking way was I about to let that thing touch me!! Even the kids were flipping out as is evidenced by my friend's screaming son.

The Domino Effect (OH GOSH MAKE IT STOP)

My water heater broke.

Not nice water heater, not nice.

Now I know what some of you might be thinking (those of you who have never had the unfortunate experience of having a water heater go out on you), "oh well good thing it's summer and super warm outside, it would suck if that happened in the winter!"

Well I'm here to tell you, IT DOESN'T MATTER.

The water was just as damn cold now as it would have been in December. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that it's coming from like 10 feet below ground, but it wasn't just cold, it was ARCTIC style frigid.

It was so cold that even though I was determined to get my morning shower in (trust me, no one wants to see my un showered hair in the morning), I ended up sitting on the side of the tub and giving myself a sponge bath. It was just so cold that I couldn't even get in.

It was so cold that I hurt my neck.

True story.

Give The World A Reason

I'd like to introduce you to our new family member, Henry.

Almost a year ago The Girl Child's grief counselor had recommended that The Girl Child get a pet. I guess many times children who are bottling up their emotions will talk to animals in ways that they won't talk to other people, and a big part of their healing process is being able to talk about what happened.

Unfortunately our budget has not really been conducive to bringing a pet into our home, but in the best interest of my daughter it was definitely something that I hadn't completely written off either.

I thought about it... a lot.

Please Take All The Animals

So as I've said roughly 8.7 million times before, I live on the edge of nowhere. In fact even my neighborhood seems to be becoming part of the field these days, seeing as how every spring we become engulfed in corn husks that blow off the fields from last years harvest.

Excuse the poor quality, I was sitting in my car waiting for someone and didn't bother to roll the window down when I snapped these pictures.

You guys, those are corn husks. Piles and piles of corn husks that blow onto my street from the fields and set up camp. 

It's like the field is eating us.

Although if I had to choose between the corn wandering over or anything from the farm on the other side of me wandering over, I'm going to choose the corn because the other farm next to me is a yak farm.

Yep, a yak farm.

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.