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

Venting ... Venting ....

I shouldn't have to do this 38 minutes into Christmas Day ....

My mom overtook Santa ....

I only get to do it every other year as it is .... this is the last year that my oldest probably even remotely still believes ... and I go upstairs to do it and she did like half of it already .... because it was "late" ...

I say, "we didn't even get home when I was a kid until well after midnight"

She says, "well I was twenty years younger then"

I say, "well I'm twenty years younger now"

.... I didn't lash out ... made one comment when she said she was going to dump Santa's milk in the sink and I said I was going to drink it ... and otherwise I kept my mouth shut ...

But ... I am seriously pissed off ... I know she bought the stuff, I get it ... but my grandma almost always bought my Santa stuff ... and my parents actually got to play Santa ... and seriously ... every other year as it is ... one more freedom, one more thing she tried to take away from me and did pretty much end up ruining ... I couldn't do it my own way ... couldn't just do it myself ... or even with her help because we worked together or I was asking her to .... she just did it ... on her own ... and acted like it was nothing ...

This is a big deal to me ... the Santa thing only lasts so long as it is and I only get half that time already ... like I said ... vicariously parenting my children ... undermining my parenting and my control over them ... and the things around them ...

I feel violated and like another freedom and parenting right has been taken away from me ... and now in the morning we go back to smiling so my kids can enjoy their Christmas, but my flipping goodness ... can this shit stop already ...

Elation ...

Elation ... there is no other word I can use to describe how I feel about being able to see my honey tomorrow and every single day for the next week ...

My kids are super excited too ... it means more to me than any present I could ever get ... and no, my warden didn't change her plans or rules or whatever you want to call them, but we found an alternative at least for a while ...

So, I will have a week full of love and support from him ... and then the social events that we'll be attending will add to more of that ... Christmas, New Year's ... his birthday ... a week of celebration ... a week of love and support ...

Totally and completely ... elated :)

Friends, Hope & Isolation ....

Before I turn in tonight I just wanted to take a minute to breathe, to decompress to find a way to get some of these feelings out and make the stress subside ... at least slightly ...

First off, I will tell you all that have been reading my blogs lately ... that I do smile, I do laugh ... I do love my life ... I love my children ... I love my man ... I love my friends ... the three of them together make my world whole ... they keep me going ... they validate my feelings (even the negative ones) ... I am not depressed as a whole ... I am pissed off over a situation ... over living conditions I can't control ... over my parenting being undermined ... my relationship being compromised ... I am pissed off about being treated like a delinquent teenager ... when I have no reason to be ...

I am sad that I am isolated ... sad that I feel like I live in a prison with concrete walls and floors and one solitary, underground window with a grate on it to complete the feeling ... I am sad that my children have to live this way ...

I thrive on my solitude ... I do ... I like love my alone time .... but I came across a quote ... that helps me come to terms with why I love solitude and hate isolation;

“Solitude vivifies; isolation kills”  ... Joseph Roux

For me ... that says it all ... I could go on with other quotes that mean a lot to me right now ....

“Isolation is a dream killer” ... Barbara Sher

                                          or

“Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.” ... Thomas Carlyle

... both of which mean a lot to me as well right now ...


I embrace the negative feelings ... they are as important to human nature as the positive ones ... and I would rather feel amazingly strong negative feelings than not feel anything at all ... I would rather be pissed off than indifferent ... I would rather be depressed than indifferent ... I would rather be in pain than indifferent ....

Indifference is (in my dimestore psychology) a trait of a sociopath ... someone that feels no empathy for others ... indifference ... is almost ... inhuman ....

I embrace my emotions ... throughout the spectrum ... sometimes I am a doormat ... because I am way too empathetic ... but why would I want to change that ... why would I want to scale down the level of empathy I have for others?

I have hope that there will be a brighter future ... I have hope that my children will never have to live like this ... and I have knowledge that if they do ... I will not degrade them or undermine the things they hold most dear ... I do believe I am a victim of circumstance ... a victim of other people making decisions ... a victim of people wanting to help ... and getting frustrated that things aren't moving fast enough and in the end just giving me enough rope to hang myself with ... of digging me a deeper hole ... I have moved twice because I had no choice ... I have left two jobs because I had no choice ... I chose to be a stay at home mom ... which is the only choice that I personally made that left me in this place ... everything else was the result of someone trying to "help" me ... but just because I feel like a victim does not mean I'm moping in a corner not doing anything