Venting (Sorry)

As some of you probably know from Facebook, The Girl Child has had a bit of a rough week and a half.

Because of that, I'm a little bit exhausted and overwhelmed at the moment, but I didn't want to completely neglect you, so if you haven't been on my Facebook, check out these two articles of mine that ran on Huffington Post and Babble. I'll be the first to admit that some of what I write can be a bit of a mindless time filler, but I'm actually really pleased with the way both of these articles turned out.

A Letter To My Fatherless Daughter

My Husband Abandoned Our Family, And The Hardest Part Was Dealing With What Everyone Else Had To Say About It

Aside from that, if I may, I'm going to vent for a minute. And sure, once I'm a little more rested and thinking a bit more clearly, maybe I'll regret this, but not today. Today I'm angry and feel like venting, so that's what is going to happen!!

**WARNING, IF YOU DON'T LIKE TO HEAR PEOPLE COMPLAIN, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY LEAVE NOW**

Photo Courtesy of Giphy.com

Have you all heard of the website "Talking Parents?" It's kind of like if Facebook messenger and email had a baby, you would get Talking Parents. The website serves as a communication mode for parents going through a court case. It allows parents to chat back and forth like Facebook messenger, and it records when each parent logged in and when each message was read. You can upload attachments such as bills, right into the system for the other parent to view, and then you have proof when they viewed them. Best yet the messages cannot be changed or tampered with, so when you go to court you can actually print a complete record of everything that was said and when things were read. (Promise this is not a paid advertisement. Although if any of you work for Talking Parents... I'd be willing to accept some compensation lol.)

At my last court date I requested that the judge order all communication with my ex to be done through Talking Parents, so I would have proof that my ex ignores me and all my attempts to work amicably with him on things such as bills, child support, and anything else that may arise.

It was granted, my ex and I signed up, and THE IDIOT HAS NOT FAILED TO SHOW HIS IDIOCRACY.

Straight From The Mouths Of The Little People I Live With

As usual, things have not "normalized" around here, meaning that my kids are just as weird as ever. I mean I can't blame them since they have me as their mother, but still, I'm pretty strange, so if I'm constantly being caught off guard by how strange my kids are... well then that's saying something.

Nothing to see here people, move along.

Sorry folks, I don't have normal kids. I just don't.

And to further prove my point, allow me to present to you, exhibits Sunday-Saturday:

Sunday:

The Boy Child, after stepping directly into a wet spot on the carpet that I had just cleaned with a heavy duty carpet cleaning solution, looked a little startled and then assured me "don't worry mom, it didn't burn the shit out of me like you said if would if I touched it."

He then ran off to watch the breakfast cookies bake while I pondered my parenting failures.

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Part Three Of The Threatening Female Friend (And All The Hateful Stuff She Said About Me To The Guy I'm Dating)

If you remember from the last part of this unique three-part-post, I had been struggling to get comfortable with the very close relationship that the guy I'm dating, has with a female friend. Where we left off, The Guy had come to the realization that maybe the relationship he had with this female friend, was not as platonic as he had previously thought. Attempting to rectify the situation, he took it upon himself to email her (cringe!) without my knowledge, and tell her that he needed to redefine the boundaries of their friendship. 

If you have not yet read parts one and two, I suggest you read those first! You can find Part One here, and Part Two here.

As for the rest of you, enjoy the conclusion!

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

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Her response to his email was quick, and it was brutal.

Part Two Of The Threatening Female Friend (And All The Hateful Stuff She Said About Me To The Guy I'm Dating)

If you remember from the previous part of this unique three-part-post, I had been struggling to get comfortable with the very close relationship that the guy I'm dating, has with a female friend. Where we left off, I was having a difficult time balancing my genuine concerns over the closeness of their relationship, with my guilt that maybe the cheating ways of the previous men in my life might be the only reason I felt suspicious that something might be going on.

If you haven't yet read Part One, you can find that by clicking here.

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So there we were, him wanting to know what he could do to ease my mind, and me not even sure what I should be worried about.

I’m sure that at this point you must be envisioning some huge, drama filled situation that plagued us heavily on a daily basis, but I promise you it wasn’t like that. It was more like a constant yet almost inaudible level of annoyance, that was still very much there, and would occasionally turn the volume up until we paid it some attention.

But that still doesn’t mean that it ever went away.

Then, several weeks ago, The Guy, the kids, and I were at a park. The Boy Child quickly struck up a friendship with another boy his age, and while watching them play, I struck up a conversation with the child’s dad. We chit-chatted about whatever it is that people talk about while making small talk over the sandbox, and then The Girl Child came running over to me with gum stuck to her arm. Being very aware that she had not been chewing gum, I gagged a little bit and the boy’s dad quickly fished an antibacterial wipe out of his FANNY PACK so that I could clean The Girl Child off.

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

The Threatening Female Friend (And All The Hateful Stuff She Said About Me To The Guy I'm Dating)

“I’ll forward them to you” he said, and in response, my entire body cringed. You see, I’d been dating this guy for a while now, and he had just told his best female friend that he couldn’t speak to her anymore, because of me. She reacted with a string of very pleasant emails that called me everything from a psycho bitch to a complete mental case. She told him that he needed to break up with me, and was livid that he wasn’t defending her. And by livid, I mean she said “FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU.”

So basically, it was a lot of fun.

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

Now let me back up for a minute and say that yes, I’ve been seeing someone. I waiver back and forth between discussing it on here, and not discussing it on here, and I guess what it really comes down to is that I feel like I’ve displayed so much of my dating life online, that I’m feeling a bit vulnerable at the moment. You’ve watched me go on good dates, and horrible dates, you’ve seen me fend off creepy men that I wasn’t at all interested in, you’ve seen me start to fall for people, and you’ve seen me get my heart broken when it didn’t work out. You’ve watched me break a few hearts, and you’ve seen me struggle to date while trying to find the balance that still puts my kids first. You’ve also watched me try and figure out if monogamy or polyamory was for me, and you saw that I landed somewhere undecided.

I’ve basically bared everything from the inside of my heart to the inside of my bedroom, and I don’t know… I guess I’m just feeling a little shy this time around because I’ve already eaten so much dirt while the whole world has watched, that I'm a little full of dirt at the moment.

So to be vague and yet somewhat concrete, yes, at this point I am seeing someone monogamously. Where this will end up, I really couldn’t say. We aren’t living together or anything like that. There is no secret engagement, my kids aren’t calling him daddy, he isn’t paying any of my bills, but we are together. We have been taking things at a snail’s pace (there are kids involved here!) and how this proceeds from there, only time will tell. But as I said, I’m just feeling a little vulnerable these days, and honestly I’m not sure how many more times I can have my heart broken and still find a positive spin on it while I put myself back together. I think, at this point, that I’d almost rather grieve the loss of another relationship privately if it were to come to that, and I hope that you can all respect that. So until I’m a little surer of the unsure, vague it is.

But what I will say, is that so far things seem to be going well… and that is much to the dismay of his close female friend, whose emails were the ones he was forwarding to me.

Allow me set the stage for you:

Shortly after I started dating this guy — who we will now refer to as The Guy (I know, I’ve gotten so creative with these names lately, haven’t I?) — I learned that he had a very close female friend. Aaaannnddd… I’m not going to lie; my radar signals went up. He hadn’t given me any reason to suspect anything and I’d like to think that I’m mature enough and secure enough to handle my man having a close female friend…. but let’s just say that I’m not always that mature.

When It Hurts

When I was about 10 years old, I was running up the stairs to my bedroom when my ankle rolled and gave way. Over the sound of my body thudding down each and every step, was a very distinctive and sickening “popping” noise that sent chills down my spine and a searing pain up through my leg.

Crumpled at the bottom of the stairs in a heap, I laid there bawling my eyes out. My mother — who had been walking up the stairs in front of me — leaned over the railing from the floor above me and told me to stop crying and get up.

I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I do know that the conversation ended with my mother turning her back on me to go pack (they were going out of town), and me crawling up the rest of the stairs to my room.

You see this wasn’t the first time that I had hurt my ankle, and quite frankly I think that my mother was just tired of me complaining about being hurt. But I did hurt, and I hurt almost all the time. Not even just my ankle, but every single part of me.

This is actually The Girl Child pouting about who even knows what (so dramatic, the little girls!) but this is basically an accurate picture of how I felt most days.

Later that night, my parents dropped me and my brothers off at my grandparent’s house, where we would be staying for the weekend while my parent’s went on a short getaway. As I hobbled through the doorway, my grandpa asked me what was wrong. “Oh you know her” my parents both chided, “always the drama queen that one.”

Choking back tears from both humiliation and pain, I made my way to the living room where I sat down until it was decided by my parents that I just needed to walk it off. And by walk it off, they meant jump rope. I was given a jump rope and all but shoved outside where adult faces were pressed against the window and I was told that I could come back in after I jumped rope for a while. My grandpa, assuming that my parents were right and I just needed to "walk it off," was cheering me on.

So I jumped.

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.