Perfect Attendance ...

I hear the words "Perfect Attendance" and I cringe .... all I picture is little germ factories running around the school getting other kids sick ... and as a mother with two kids that get sick far more, and far worse than other kids it almost infuriates me ... now I guess let me say that my kids have, on occasion, gotten perfect attendance awards for quarters or semesters here and there ... I'm not saying "if your kid sneezes, keep them home" ... but seriously ... if your kid is sick ... for their sake and the sake of all the other kids keep them home ...

I understand some people are in the difficult position of having to stay home from work themselves to take care of a child that doesn't go to school; I understand there are challenges, but sick children should still stay home .... even the schools usually send home guidelines ... "please keep your child at home if ...." and then list off a bunch of symptoms, etc., when your child should stay at home ... as parents I think it's an obligation to follow that ...

I have two kids with decreased immune systems ... most kids might get one out of five "active, live"  viruses they're exposed to, two of my three get pretty much every virus they're exposed to and they get sick for usually twice as long as other kids as

My New Journey ...

So, from the very beginning of this little blog I've been writing I put "body image" in my description, although it's rarely to never something I've blogged about  ... yet anyway ... but it is something that I probably should.

I'm taking a new weight loss/get fit journey, and I've started a new blog to help me on that road, to give me some accountability ... something that I think I need ... if you're not interested in reading it, that's fine, if you are, then feel free to do that as well ...

What I will tell you all on this blog is that body image is something I struggle with; and the thing is it's not just where I am now, it's actually a fear of being skinnier, being hotter, being a lot of things ... my ex-husband used to fear that, fear me being "hot" and actually admitted to me that he would try to sabotage my diet, that he would get mad at me for being successful, I guess he felt if I wasn't the perfect package that other guys wouldn't be interested and that gave him some security. For me, I have some fears in losing weight; the thing is I've been on both sides of this ... I've been the "hot girl" ... I've been the girl that could just make eye contact with someone in a bar or club and get them to come dance with me or talk to me, the girl that worked at an amusement park and got hit on once an hour on a slow day, I've been the girl that knew she could steal her friends' boyfriends, although (except that once) never did .... and then I had kidney surgery ... and I got pregnant ... damn those maternity clothes ... my whole life I had been pretty much able to stabilize my weight with my clothes, when I felt like my clothes were getting tight, I would diet for a couple weeks and all would be well, but when I had kidney surgery, I couldn't wear anything with a tight waist band for a few months, plus I wasn't very active post-surgery, I gained weight, I managed to lose almost all of that, and then I had babies ... and those maternity clothes, well, they're killer ... anyway, I now am about 90 pounds heavier than I was when I conceived my first child, 110 pounds heavier than I was when I graduated from high school ... and I have dealt with the opposite end, I've dealt with the jokes, and the remarks, I've dealt with being at clubs and bars and hearing chubby chaser jokes and fat jokes ... so here is the thing ... now in some ways I'm afraid to go back ... because I'm afraid that I will be angry at the positive reaction ... I'm afraid that if guys start to notice me, I will just automatically think they're jerks, because they wouldn't have given me the time of day when I was fat ... I'm afraid of silly things like if my boyfriend touches me more, will I be pissed off at him and think he's being superficial ... but the thing is I'm not alone in those fears, many, many women have the same thoughts, the same ideas, the same fears ... because once you've been on this side of it ... and had all the positive attention pretty much go away ... to go back is to acknowledge a few things ... A) you had control of it, and chose not to use it ... B) the bulk of the world operates on a superficial level and it's just so wrong that you, as a person, can change nothing but your appearance and completely change the way the bulk of the world looks at you ... and C) you have to face your inner demons that is just like the rest of them, the part of you that is also superficial ... some of these fears have stopped me thus far from achieving my weight loss goals, along with other factors that I will dive into more in depth in my weight loss blog ... but regardless ... it is time for me to be healthy, to face those fears head on ... and honestly, to probably be a happier person on the other end ... if you want to join me in this journey you can follow my new blog here ... Killing My Inner Nutritional Overachiever & Dealing With Her Lazy Twin Sister Too ... the "plan" commences on February 1!!

Misguided ... Well ... Everything ...

So, after some though and some conversation and a few more tiffs with my mom, I have come to a few understandings ...

First and foremost is that I will never convince her that my priorities should be important to her, however, that doesn't mean that I need to make them unimportant to me ... that means that we need to come to some kind of understanding ... and I have no clue how to do that ...

Second is that she is not being honest with me, for whatever reason she isn't ... all along her main argument as to why my boyfriend can't stay here is that it is a matter of her privacy .... a matter of her not being used to have testosterone in the house, her  not being able to walk around in her nightgown, etc., ... these are her main reasons ... but, she's going away for a week in February, close to Valentine's Day, so I say to her, well since you won't be here, can he come stay, since your privacy won't be an issue ... she tells me that she still has a problem with it ... so what exactly is her problem? If this was standard behavior of parents with grown children in the home, I may understand, if she was holding a moral high ground, I may understand, but it's not and she's not. The standard among my friends who have had to move back in with parents due to this lovely economy we live in (the number of friends that are doing that seems to be growing exponentially by the way), is that they are basically just living there like they would live anywhere else; friends, lovers, etc., all visit like normal, and they continue to maintain their lives. But, regardless, she is not being honest with me ... she is having issues with something else, whether it is me not being single and miserable (sidebar - I did at one point ask her if she was jealous and her reaction with her no, and the expression on her face, was downright insulting, then I clarified that I didn't mean about him in particular, but that I wasn't alone, that I had somebody to call mine, someone to hold, someone to talk to, and then she shut down), whether her issue is just him period, as mentioned before I kind of get put in the middle of really both of them not having any respect for the other, and really not being able to push it aside for the purpose of my sanity ... but she is not being honest with me ... and honesty is big with me ... I have walked away from more people over dishonesty and hypocrisy than I have anything else ...

Third is that I think that she may be misguided in her thought process as to why exactly I moved in with her to begin with. This speaks to her undermining my parenting, the other day my middle child was upset, we had been talking in the car for a good 45 minutes before we got home and we got home, my mom said something to her, she said something under

Guess What?

I found a little hidden button to restore my blog ... it's back ... and it's working =p

Very, very happy about that :)

Another Black Sheep Day ...

It was my daughter's 8th birthday party on Sunday ... we had a party, that was mostly for the kids ... my ex and I worked together to throw the party ... at first my daughter said the only adults she wanted there were myself, her dad and our significant others (sidebar ... I was impressed that my mom was gracious enough to allow me the gas to drive and pick up my boyfriend to go to my daughter's party, that she absolutely insisted he needed to be at) ... but my mother was an addition, followed by my father and my stepmother ... I think that my daughter (well, that daughter) ... doesn't like the stress that certain people add to our lives either ...

Anyway, we got to the pizza place and I had forgotten my camera, so my boyfriend and I ran back to the house to get it, when we left, my ex and my mom were the only adults there ... when I came back my father and my stepmother were there ... now I wrapped myself up in the kids and doing all the normal party stuff I've done at my kids' parties for the last 10 years ... keeping the kids in line ... making sure everyone was okay ... but with the adults ... I felt like a black sheep ... as my mom, my stepmom, my dad and my ex all sat at one end of the table whispering and conversating and basically ignoring the rest of the party ... my boyfriend and I kept the kids entertained and kept things going ... and they sat down there all bonding together ... I must be an awful person ... I must have done something truly awful in my life, in a former life, in whatever life you all

Mixed Bag ...

Unfortunately (or fortunately) this isn't an uncommon scenario around here, but on Friday my ex husband asked me if I would be willing to take the kids back 7 hours early this weekend ... because he had some place to be Sunday night and wanted to beat the snow ...

I'm usually agreeable to these schedule changes, because I figure some day I may need a favor and if I'm not agreeable or somehow bitchy about it then he may not be very willing to help me out when I need help ...

However, when I had full custody and he only had them every other weekend he would do things like this as well .. now that we have straight 50/50 custody he still does and, according to my children, leaves them with their grandmother quite a bit when he does have them ...

I am all for parents having a life of their own ... I have seen what it does to parents who completely revolve their lives around their children ... I think date nights and girls nights and boys nights and all these things are important to the psychological and mental health of entire families, not just the people participating ... it isn't a good lesson to teach our children that they

My Love/Hate Relationship with Zynga ...

So as a gamer that has gotten into everything from Tetris to Halo, Bejeweled to World of Warcraft ... and been known to play for hours on end ... I love the Zynga games ... it gives me something to do as the unemployed boredom sets in ... and you can play them all on different levels ... you can set it up so you have to be there checking on it every 20 minutes to half an hour or you can let it go for two or three days at a time ... or walk away completely for however long and come back and pick up where you left off .. mostly ...

Their games are simple, yet well thought out ... designed to be something you can just do for the hell of it, or be competitive about ... they give you a sense of accomplishment through ribbons, medals and prizes ... for the most part I do like these games ...

I hate that they make you spam your friends in order to accomplish almost anything ... I love that Facebook made it so the friends that really don't care at all can block the applications altogether ... I hate that in pretty much every Zynga application except Farmville the missions, medals, achievements, accomplishments, etc almost require you

Clingy ... Like Static ....

Okay, so I'm going to take a break from venting about my personal life to dive into the World of Warcraft (shocking I know) ... and some of the issues that have come up there over the last few years ... I urge those of you that don't play the silly little game to read this anyway ... because honestly, it applies to people in many areas of life, from work to school, to that one annoying neighbor ...


When Cataclysm was released on December 7 ... I dove right in ... tied for the first 85 in our guild (will explain guilds in a second as it is relevant) ... was having fun with new leveling areas, new races (they released a werewolf race with the Cataclysm expansion ... very exciting) ... and new end-game content .... but then .... like a cheese grater in my social heaven .... came the "annoying ones" ... I know I sound like a bitch ... and sorry for that ... I'm really not ... but when you use a game as an escape from reality ... that's exactly what you want it to be ...

So, I am part of a guild with over 300 characters ... among 100+ real life people ... so over one hundred living, breathing people are sitting behind their keyboards and play in this same guild/group as I do .... basically 10-15 million people are active World of Warcraft players around the world at any given time, they are then broken down into about three hundred "realms" or servers .... so on a server there are still tens if not hundreds of thousands of people ... guilds give you an

Supervision ... or lack there of ...

Okay, so this is something that is kind of hard to blog about for me ... because it feels more personal than the feelings I put out there all the time ... I guess I'm worried about judgment ... and actually that leads me to another post that I will write in the near future ... but ... here goes ...

... so yesterday my stuff finally went through for food stamps ... so I'm officially on food stamps and in 45 days or less, once I meet a few requirements and they get done processing my information ... I will be on maximum TANF for a family of 4 ... TANF my friends, is welfare ... straight out cash benefits ... welfare ...

Last night, for the first time in 5 months I went to the grocery store by myself .... no supervision ... nobody telling me that this brand is better than that brand ... nobody telling me anything ....

I could taste the freedom ... I don't even think I bought anything I was told I couldn't in the past ... although today I completely plan on buying bottled water ... which my mom refuses to buy ... and I know my green side sounds unheard from right now ... but it is something that I've learned about myself ... I drink more water if it's readily available and refridgerator cold ... I refill the bottles with my Brita filter thingy .... so a case of water lasts me months .... but to not be able to have it at all has been frustrating ... and I have noticed I'm dehydrated .... you can pass that off as me being lazy ... but to be honest ... in this little basement I'm in I have four cats ... and anyone that knows anything about cats ... knows ... that if I have a glass of water sitting around .... one of two things will happen ... it will either get knocked over or filled with cat hair and for me at least seem undrinkable ... so yes, I will be buying bottled water with my food stamps as my one thing that has been always denied to me ... other things have been negotiated ... brands, substitutions, etc., .... plus as much as I hate Wal-Mart for their practices, I walk into other grocery stores (including Target) and see things for double the price and it makes me cringe .... my money will go further shopping in places that I know have good prices ... but anyway ... last night I didn't buy anything that she ever would have denied me or my children, really, I mean I bought my kind of bread ... and bought each of the kids a treat, one wanted oreos, one wanted rocky road ice cream, and one wanted Coke (I bought the mini-cans) ... I told them this won't be

I honestly don't know where to start ... the last two weeks have been a rollercoaster ride ... with a plummet this morning ... but I don't think I'm done, or anywhere near the bottom yet ...

... so I left off with the Santa thing ... anyone who doesn't understand why that would upset me has their head squarely up their behind ... I mean really ... that's a parent's privilege and right ... and I only get to do it every other year ... had I asked for her help or gone up and we'd done it together .... well that would be different, but that she took it upon herself to do it, with no consideration that I would want to is complete and total bullshit ... and then she said "I left (such and such) for you to do, because I figure you get to do something" ... wait ... GET ... get ... okay ... that's great ... lovely ... MY parenting privileges, something that as parents we actually look forward to ... and she's going to basically say she'll "allow" me to do part of it ... so yeah, who is the mother and who is the grandmother ...

Christmas was okay, my dad didn't get me anything or do anything, which is what I requested of him ... "please take any money you would have spent on me for Christmas and use it to pay off the debt you feel I owe you" ... that was my Christmas wish to him ... and my mom ... my mom still did some stuff for me, although it's all tainted by the fact that I asked A) for nothing and then B) for something non-monetary that she refused to give me ...  I don't do "consolation" prize very well ... just like I don't do getting buttered up for bad news very well ...

The kids and I went to my boyfriend's grandparents' house on Christmas Eve for a while ... they got to see their puppy which they really appreciated ... and spend some quality time with the man they call their stepfather and his family ... which despite their own set of dysfunctions (and I would say that in many ways they are more dysfunctional than mine) .... feels more like a family to me than anything I've felt in years ... we were welcomed with open arms and hugs .... and just an amazing sense of welcome .... and maybe the thing about his family is they embrace and accept the dysfunction ... they don't judge ... they don't see things eye to eye ... and sure they have their gossip ... they hold their grudges ... but they stick together ... they call themselves a "clan" ... and rightfully so ... if you do wrong to one, you do wrong to all ... and their major issue of the moment is a member of the clan in their minds "abandoned" her children ... and they still accepted her ... being a surrogate member of this clan ... I will tell you that this family, this amazing, loving family, has very strong feelings about my father and what he did ... they threatened to go march on the lawn of his workplace with picket signs saying "if he doesn't care about his own family, what makes you think he would care about yours" ... technically speaking he holds a public position and the voters have a say in whether or not he stays there ... this family that has taken me in ... has vowed to do everything in their power to make sure he loses his job ... which I have mixed feelings about ... but when my own family doesn't even want to know my side of the story ... well ... I wonder which ones I feel closer to ... anyway ... Christmas Eve with them was pleasant ... we headed out, I wanted to go to church, but three overtired kids with only me to control them ... well, we skipped it ... we went and saw the Denver City & County building all lit up ... and then drove by some more Christmas lights and then we headed home .... and then that's when the Santa thing happened ...

Christmas afternoon the kids went off with their dad ... I spent some time getting some stuff together and headed back to my boyfriends' grandparents' house ... where again I was more than welcomed .... they made sure I knew where to find food, drink ... even a toothbrush ... they told me they missed having me around ... the couple few of them that were on Facebook expressed empathy and concern based on some of my posts about the BS around here ... the day after Christmas, Sunday, brought a wonderful surprise .... a good friend of my boyfriends who has now become a good friend of mine gave us Broncos tickets ... and for an amazing game ... was probably one of the best home games of the year ... so that was good for both of us ... it was fun ... and something neither of us gets to do often or ever ... that was followed by