It's been quite a week.

Christmas was pretty fun. J has decided he likes puppies (good thing, since we did get two - more on that momentarily). He chased Kevin's parents' dog to the point that she started running away when she saw him. LOL And one of my step-relatives (I've got a ton) brought her little chihuahua to my dad's house, and J chased after that - "here, doggie, come here, doggie"! LOL It was nice to get to spend Christmas Day with my family (step-family and all) - it's been a long time since I was able to do that, and even longer since I was able to do it without stress (K and my dad didn't get along, and K never did particularly warm up to the step-family - I think of them as mine just because their mom married my dad, but he didn't see it that way). J got far too many presents, and I got some nice things, too, even though my dryer was my big present. I got some smell-good stuff (Amarige, yummy!), two really pretty candleholders, a Target gift card, and lots of fun things in my stocking. J had a very Bob the Builder Christmas - lots of Bob Legos, a talking Scrambler and talking Travis, and a host of other things. (Including a huge box of crayons - I have K's mom to thank for that, I'll be calling when J tries them out on the cabinets!)

It was sort of a bittersweet Christmas, knowing this was the last true "family" Christmas with K's parents. I'm sure it baffles them that K and I can get along so well, drive across the country for Christmas and all, but don't feel like we can stay married. But I know from my point of view, I could never trust K's feelings for me again if we had decided to try to fix the marriage - he didn't set out looking for a romantic relationship, but fell into one (well, not a relationship, necessarily, since the feelings were never actively returned - although I'd eat my hat if she didn't feel the same about K as he felt about her - but inappropriate feelings for someone not his wife), and didn't back away from it when he realized those feelings were developing. I'm not waiting for that shoe to drop again. So that's my biggest reason for getting out of my marriage. And if K isn't happy being married to me, I'd never want to make him stay - that's just asking for misery down the road. So I'm sorry the divorce will upset K's parents, but it's not my job to make them happy. (And no, no comments were made during Christmas - it was just a nice visit.)

I filed the divorce papers yesterday. Today I'll mail the waiver of citation that K has signed, and once the court has gotten that, I can call for a hearing date. We have to take a co-parenting class before things can be finalized. That's not a problem, though, since I reckon we're better off in that department than a lot of people getting divorced are. So it's kind of mind-boggling to think that in two or three months, I could really be a free woman again. What a way to start off 2006, huh? :) Here's to good things in the new year.

And yes, we have puppies! K and I talked, and we both think it's a good thing for J to have animals, so he's helping with the costs. He's even offered to come over on Friday night, sleep on the couch, and get up with J and/or puppies should they need attention so I can get some sleep. :) (I'm telling you, we get along better as friends than as spouses!) And the puppies are cute. Lots of work right now, and sometimes it's a challenge wrangling both puppies and boy. But J is so excited about them, I couldn't take them back (the woman I got them from said they would take the puppies back if it didn't work out - nice option to have, but I'm trying to think long-term here). He's still getting used to them, but overall he's excited about them. We've named them Bonnie and Clyde. I should have named Clyde "Houdini", since he can get out of most everything. And Bonnie is still small enough to slip under the gate between the kitchen and living room, so I've got heavy things in front of the gate. I'll get something set up outside, with shelter, so they can play outside during the day while we're gone. Their first vet appointment is next Wed., Jan. 4, for shots and worming. Bonnie has more of the schnauzer look, and Clyde looks more like a terrier. They're pretty good about sleeping - they settled down in their beds when I started turning the lights down last night, and I didn't hear a peep from them until 5:50 this morning (J woke up at 5:40, and I think they heard us talking). It helps that they're used to sleeping together, and I think it helps that there are two of them - they can keep each other company. It's tiring, but I think we'll all adjust OK. And they won't be puppies forever. I'll post pics when I get some good ones taken.

I have a lot of J funnies to share from the trip, but I'll have to do that later - after being out of the office for a couple of days, I am slammed with work. AACK.

Swingsets and road trips and puppies, oh my!

The swingset is now in the back yard. J loves it. We had to go try it out last night, and this morning the second thing he asked (after asking if we were going to school and having a fit when I told him yes) was, "Can we go outside and go down the whee?" LOLOL So we had to make one trip down the slide before we left. Once it warms up, I seriously don't think he'll ever want to come inside again. I need to shorten the chains on the swings and the trapeze - J is so tall that they don't need to be quite so long. But it was money well spent (spent by K, not me, as I have none) to get it put together - had K and I tried to do it the night of Christmas Eve, after J went to bed, well, that would have just been ugliness.

As an added bonus, the guy who put the swingset together was in the construction business for years, and does all sorts of handywork - painting, plumbing, electrical. I told him I'd have to keep his number, that I'd have all sorts of jobs I'd need his help on!

I may be crazy, but it looks like we're going to get puppies. YIKES! A co-worker forwarded an e-mail to me - someone was looking to sell nine miniature schnauzer/toy terrier mix puppies, and I'm hoping to get two of them. I called the woman who has them for sale - got her voice mail and left a message, so hopefully she'll call me back. I thought two puppies would be better than one, that way they'd have some companionship while I'm at work. I've never had inside dogs before (my pets were always outside), so this will be a new experience. (The good thing is, I'm already used to a small boy having accidents on the carpet, so if a puppy pees on the carpet, it's not the end of the world.) Ye gods, puppies and a three-year-old, have I completely lost my mind? And with puppies and a swingset, J will now want it to be Christmas every day. LOLOL I'll have to get a fence put up now.

And the road trip cometh. We're heading out tomorrow after we're off work - I get off at 2:00, so we'll probably be heading out between 3:00 and 3:30. I think people are confused by the fact that K and I are traveling together. I just talked to my dad, and he asked if K and I were back together. I said no, we're friends, we're J's parents, and we get along well enough to travel together for Christmas, but we're not back together. I hope K's parents aren't getting their hopes up that us traveling together means we may be reconciling, but I'm afraid they may take it that way. I guess it is odd for exes to get along really well, but K and I do. I personally think it's a good thing.

At any rate, we haven't even left yet, and I'm already tired. I have a ton to do tonight, so I sure hope J goes to sleep at a halfway sensible hour. I'd like to color my hair, but if it doesn't get done, well, then, it doesn't.

Sleep. J fought bedtime until about 10:00 last night, but was up only three times. Woo. I actually got a 2 1/2 hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep, from 4:00 (the last time I got J back to sleep) to 6:30 (when I quit hitting snooze on my alarm). Woo woo. I'm still tired, but at least I haven't walked into any walls today.

Work to do: Lots. Motivation to do it: Zero.

It's almost my phone time. I'd better log in and take calls - happy happy, joy joy.

I've stopped making sense

It's official - I'm so tired I'm not making sense anymore. It's all I can do not to lay down on the floor under my desk and go to sleep.

Yes, sleep hell continues. Last night J fought sleep until 10:00 or so, had two rounds of bad dreams (crying/talking/thrashing in his sleep to the point where I had to go in and soothe him, but he didn't wake up), and then woke up at least three times (maybe more, I've lost count). I'm fried. When you fall asleep walking out of the bathroom and run into the wall, that's not a good thing. (Yes, I did that at work this morning - fortunately, no one was around to be entertained by the spectacle.)

This has got to be something beyond just the usual three-year-old desire to put off bedtime. If it were an occasional thing, and just whining over going to bed, I'd chalk it up to his age. But fighting sleep every night when he's so tired he can barely stand up (so it's not like he's caught a second wind and is running around all energized), waking up multiple times every night - there's bound to be more to it than just not wanting to miss something. We have an appointment with his pediatrician on the 27th. Hopefully she can either help us figure out the cause or refer us to a specialist who can help. This isn't good for me or for J - we both need our rest, and we aren't getting it. I hope we can figure something out before I just collapse in a heap.

While we're in Louisiana, with grandparents handy, I'm just going to let them bond with their grandson while I go find a room, close the door and take a much-deserved nap. That would be the best Christmas present I could get, I think.

J's swingset is being put together today. I gave up on the idea of keeping it a secret from him - I just told him Santa came early and one of Santa's helpers would put it together for us. He was good with that! He was so excited this morning, watching all the parts come out of the box. He wanted to go down the "whee" (the slide) right then, and I had a heck of a time convincing him that it wasn't put together yet to where we could! I asked him if he was excited about the swingset. "Yeah." I asked him if he'd ever want to go inside again once it was put together. "No." LOLOLOL

Only an hour and a half to go - let me try to make myself concentrate on work enough to actually get something done.

Does coffee come in an IV drip?

Either I'm getting old, or I'm just too sleep-deprived for words. J went to sleep around 9:45 last night (I think), and then he was up at least four times during the night (I think I lost count) - "Mama, come lay down with me." Most of the time he went back to sleep in fairly short order once I came and sat with him (didn't lay down, he wanted to sleep on the floor and there's not enough room for me, him and all his toys), but once or twice he was restless and took a bit to get settled. And then of course I had to pry his little butt out of bed at 7:30 - "no, Mama, I want to lay down!" I said, well, of course you do, you were up half the night! So I'm just fried today.

I've been doing some research on possible allergies that might affect a child's sleep. One thing that seems fairly common is a milk allergy. J is already drinking soy milk, but he does eat a lot of cheese, and he's had a good bit of it in the last few days. I may try cutting cheese out of his diet and seeing if it helps. If not, he has a follow-up with his allergist Jan. 4. I'm going to ask her if we should do allergy tests again to see if anything shows up now (he was tested at 18 months, and he was just too young for anything to show up then). I'll make dietary changes if it means both of us getting a good night's sleep.

The Christmas party at work yesterday was pretty fun. It was nice not to have to worry about answering the phones for half a day. Of course, today we're all being asked to answer incoming calls. Have I mentioned lately that I really hate phone time? Had I wanted to work at a call center, I wouldn't have wasted time and money going to law school.

I talked to K's mom this morning. I know they're going to take it hard when we file. We've always done big Christmas stockings for Christmas morning, and she was saying that K won't like the stuff that's in his. I asked her why not, and she said it was house-type stuff, that as long as he still had the apartment, he might as well have things to go in it. She said she was hoping he'd have been back home by now. She also said that K's grandmother (who'll be there Christmas) doesn't know about the separation - again, she didn't tell her because she was hoping this would have blown over by now. I feel bad knowing that they'll take this hard, because I know they will. I just couldn't tell her right before Christmas that we're going to file. *SIGH* I know, it's not my place to make sure they're happy, but still - they're family, and I hate that this will hurt them.

I'm sure I had other things to write about, but this fog of weariness has driven anything I'd planned to say clean out of my mind.

Ready to face another week? Hardly.

Today has been another day with J in grumpy, whiny, full-throttle three-year-old mode. He woke up twice last night - not for long, just long enough to get me out of bed - and didn't get up for the day until after 7:30, so I thought he might have gotten a pretty good rest. Apparently not. He was a grump from the get-go - he'd freak out and howl over the least little thing. K came over, and several times J told him no, go 'way daddy, I just want mama. And when K was leaving, J wouldn't give him a hug for anything - said he didn't want to. He was fussy like that the rest of the evening, and I'm not sure why. He was asleep before 8:00 tonight - either he's really tired, possibly having a growth spurt, or he's getting sick. I sure hope he's not getting sick, especially not right before our trip to Louisiana.

So the work week ended on a sour note with my plans falling through, and I'm still bummed out over that. I was hoping I'd have heard from Brian today, but I haven't. He doesn't have Internet access at home, so I don't usually hear from him on weekends. Sometimes I do, though, and after things didn't work out for Friday, I was hoping he'd have made the effort to go by the office and write just a little note. Nope. I'm trying not to be bothered much by that. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

It looks like we'll be filing for divorce after Christmas. K asked me today if I'd worked on the papers any more. I said I had, and that I'd printed them out. He looked over them, and there weren't any big surprises there. I'm taking the 27th off to rest up after the trip home, and K said that since I'd be off then anyway, we may as well go ahead, finish up the paperwork and file - that way I can do it that day, without having to take any additional time off work (since I'm in the doghouse for that). So before long I'll be on the way to officially being a single woman again. It's kind of an odd thought - not necessarily unpleasant, just odd. I've been married almost 11 years. It's kind of weird thinking I'll no longer be part of a couple. Not necessarily where I envisioned myself 11 years ago, but not necessarily a bad place to be, either.

I'd better get some sleep, just in case J wakes up at 5 tomorrow. I hope not, but you never know.

Monday, ugh. At least we have our Christmas party at work tomorrow, so I only have to work half a day - the second half of the day we'll be playing.

Saturday

It's been a tiring day. J was home earlier than I'd expected - the original plan was for him to be home around noon, perhaps even a little later. Well, my phone rang just before 10 this morning. J had decided he'd rather go to the big house and see mama than go to Little Gym, so K said they'd be here shortly, after they went back to the apartment and picked up J's things. J was so excited to see me, I could hardly be mad about that. But having not much more than a good night's sleep to myself, combined with the disappointment of last night's plans falling through, has served to put me in a funk most of the day. Not a good day to forget to take my Wellbutrin.

My garage door opener has now started acting up. Great, another thing to fix. I must find a better-paying job, or win the lotto, or both. I'm tired of not being able to fix things that break or pay my bills on time (yeah, and I just thought bankruptcy would solve the problem of too much debt and not enough cash - apparently my current job doesn't even pay enough for me to make ends meet and buy a couple of Christmas gifts, too).

I can't believe we'll be traveling to Louisiana in less than a week. Just thinking about that trip makes me tired, and we haven't even left yet. I'm taking the 27th off, and I am SO looking forward to that mental health day.

I'd better get some sleep. J was snoring by 8:30, and I hope he'll sleep until at least 7:30, but of course I can't count on that.

It's raining on prom night...

My hair is a mess,
It's running all over
My taffeta dress....

(Does anyone but me know that song, and am I really dating myself by the fact that I know it?)

No, not really. Prom is long behind me. But that's sort of how I feel right now - I had a fun evening to look forward to and it was taken away from me due to events beyond my control. Brian was going to come up tonight, but he called and said he'd have to cancel. The alternator went out in his car - of all the rotten bad timing. We talked about the possibility of me driving down there, and he said he'd thought of that, but that it was one thing for him to make the long drive (about 90 miles) in dark, drippy weather, as he only had himself to worry about, and another thing entirely for me, as I have a son who needs me. So we're going to try to get together the first weekend in January. With all the Christmas goings-on, it's not going to happen before then. I'm disappointed, to put it mildly - I know it's not the end of the world, but dammit, I was looking forward to a night out. My opportunities to get out are so few and far between that I hate to miss one. Nice to have the time at home all to myself, but still. It's a letdown.

It was so nice to come home yesterday to a bathroom that wasn't all humid and damp, and SO nice not to hear the sound of water constantly running in the pipes. I'm very, very glad to have my shower fixed.

One of my co-workers was let go today. It was one of these announcements that comes with no warning, so-and-so is leaving to pursue other opportunities. I don't know all the whys and wherefores, and there may be something I don't know, something he did that led to him being let go. I just hate to see this happen to anyone, especially at this time of year. Merry Christmas, huh?! And whenever one of those e-mails comes out, we all worry a little bit that we could be next. I may gripe about my job, and may not think it's ideal, but a paycheck is infinitely preferable to no paycheck.

I really, really want to win the lotto. Then I won't have to worry about working, or at least I'll be able to do something I really enjoy, and not just something that has decent salary and benefits.

Better!

My mood is better today - not so much like a little black rain cloud.

My shower is fixed!!!! Yay!!!!! K called around 11:45 to say the plumbers had finished. And they'll send a bill in the mail - I think that's the first time I've ever heard of that, every other person I've had come out has collected on the spot. I'm just glad that tonight I'll be able to scrub that shower and give it a damn good cleaning. And that I won't hear the rushing river in my bathroom anymore. I shudder to think what my water bill will be next month.

And today is one day closer to Friday! I have plans this weekend - Brian will be driving up to see me. We're going to see The Chronicles of Narnia - I've heard it's good, and I love C.S. Lewis, so I'm excited about that. Tomorrow is my late night at work - suck - but at least I've got something fun afterward to look forward to.

As for work - the group that usually answers our incoming calls from the 800 number is out of the office all afternoon for a team-building session. That means we all have to take calls from the 800 number ALL AFTERNOON. That's my idea of hell. I think I've said this before, but there are not enough words in the English language to describe the depth of my dislike for phone time. And to have to do it for four hours - ugh, that just makes my stomach hurt.

J is still sleeping in his room. Granted, he was on the floor of his room last night rather than in his bed, but he was still in his own space and I was in mine. So hopefully that's a trend that will continue.

Now it's off to my afternoon of phone hell. UGH.

Has anyone seen my Christmas spirit?

Because I don't seem to have it. Or maybe it's just that everything feels flat today. I'm tired, my job stresses me out, and it feels neverending.

On the bright side, J is now sleeping in his own bed again, for the past two nights (he did wake up at 3:40 this morning wanting to sleep with me, though). The little stinker finally fessed up that he was just telling me there was a ghost so he could sleep in mama's bed. Now he'll tell me there's a ghost, and I'll ask him if he wants me to make the ghost go away. He says, no, it can stay, he's a happy ghost. Stinker!!! So hopefully we can both start getting a good night's sleep.

I missed our team Christmas party on Monday afternoon - I had to take J to the doctor. Surprise, surprise, he's got a sinus infection. He's all congested and coughing, so I'm sure that doesn't make it any easier to sleep. Hopefully the medicine will kick in soon and he'll get to feeling better. (Not that being sick slows him down any, I just know it's a fairly rotten feeling to be all stopped up and have a goopy cough.) Never mind that the whole team was out of the office at the party anyway - since I wasn't at the company-sanctioned event, I had to use 1/2 a sick day to miss the party. I wasn't surprised, just irritated. And maybe I'm wrong to be irritated, but I was anyway.

I've decided that the parent with primary custody gets child support as hazard pay. It's hard work getting J up and dressed every day while getting myself dressed (it's hard to get dressed without your child asking questions about body parts you may not quite be ready to answer when he insists on following you into the bathroom and tries to run off with the towel you've wrapped around yourself!); hard work telling him every morning that we don't have time to play, we have to get ready for work and school (and dealing with the attendant meltdowns - it breaks my heart that we really don't have the time to sit down and play of a morning, because I know he just wants attention from his mama); hard work prying him off my leg at daycare and trying to reassure him that I love him and will be back as I'm leaving him someplace he says he doesn't want to be (yes, I know he likes school once he's there, and I don't usually cry over drop-off anymore, but it's still hard to handle him watching me reproachfully as I leave); hard work wrangling him to bed 12 nights out of 14. It's just hard. I wish that one morning out of five I had the luxury of getting dressed without a small boy shadowing my every move and without having the added stress of daycare drop-off. But logistics don't really allow for J to stay with K on a weeknight - given where he lives and the way he goes to work, it would be a challenge for him to get J to daycare and still get himself to work on time.

And this may sound bad, because I know K is a good dad, and I know he loves J. But sometimes it seems like it's easier for him to sort of "turn off" being dad for a bit, secure in the knowledge that J is with me. I'm talking about in a social context. K is very good about his weekends with J - he takes the whole weekend unless there's some special circumstance, and he sees J a lot because he comes over in the evenings and also some on my weekends with J. But he has a lot more flexibility in terms of making plans than I do, and I guess I'm jealous. If he wants to go to lunch on a Sunday afternoon, or to dinner on a weeknight, he just calls and says he won't be over. And he goes out and does what he wants to do. It's not that he's skipping out on his appointed time with J - he isn't. But he has the freedom of knowing that he doesn't have to worry about finding child care for J because J is with me. I'm limited to every other weekend as far as making any plans (until I find someone I can trust to take care of J), since we've agreed that no one spends time with or meets J until we're fairly sure that person is around for the long term (not necessarily marriage, but certainly more than just a casual date or two or three). I don't like that, having so little time to do things. Of course, since the guy I've gone out with a couple of times lives about 90 miles away, we're pretty much limited to seeing each other on weekends anyway - it would be a challenge to go out on a weeknight! But who knows, I may end up going out with someone local at some point, and when I'm to the point where I'd be interested in a long-term relationship, that would be something hard to accomplish if I could only see the person I was interested in every other weekend. I'm going to have to find a babysitter at some point. All that whining and I'm not sure what point I was trying to make, or even if I had one. I just wish I had a little more leeway in terms of making plans, were the opportunity to make plans to present itself.

At least it's Wednesday. And the plumbers are coming first thing tomorrow!!!! WOO!!!!! Tonight is the LAST night I have to hear Niagara Falls in my bathroom. Good thing, because the dripping/splashing/sploshing and the sound of water running in the pipes has gotten me to where I'm just about ready to poke a stick in my ear so I won't have to hear it anymore. K said he'll be there to let them in, and I'm very thankful for that. (Now why is it I can ask him to do something like that, but would feel funny asking him to take care of J during my time with him if I wanted to go out?) I can't wait to have that fixed. I am going to scrub my shower and get it CLEAN. Hard to keep it clean when you can't ever get it dry. And now I can fix the caulking that's coming off in one corner.

I have to make cookies for J's Christmas party on Friday. Maybe I'll work on that tonight, if he goes to sleep at a decent hour. I've got to finish picking up as well, so the plumbers don't trip over toys as they try to get to the bathroom.

Feeling like the worst mother in the world

Bedtime continues to be hell. Last night was bad, tonight was worse still. Every night just makes me feel more and more like I'm no kind of mother if I can't figure out how to help my child get to sleep. Tonight I tried the "ghost spray" (some Glade air freshener I bought today) on a friend's suggestion - J wanted nothing to do with it (even though he seemed excited about the idea of spraying the ghosts away earlier in the day), and didn't even want to go into his room tonight. I tried asking him what he didn't like about his room, what happened to make him not like his room, everything I could think of. He just kept getting more and more worked up, howling that he wanted to sleep in my bed, wanted to go in my room, until he was nearly hysterical. Finally he came into my room with me, and he's so tired that he passed out on the floor of my room, still screaming. He's asleep there now - I just covered him up with blankets. I can't pick him up off the floor when he's sound asleep, and if I wake him up trying, who knows how long it will be before I get him back to sleep. But now he'll hardly go in his room at bedtime (he doesn't seem to have a problem with it the rest of the day), and he sees ghosts all around the house (my room, bathroom, kitchen, outside) and outside the house (we went to Little Gym today and he said there was a ghost on the truck next to ours in the parking lot).

I have NO idea how to proceed next, but I know something has got to give. I've made the room brighter, made the room darker, laid down with him (we used to do that and he'd go on to sleep in his bed), sat next to the bed and held his hand, had a warm bath before bedtime. I'm running out of ideas. I can't keep sleeping with him in my bed - I'm not rested, and the longer I go and the more tired I get, the shorter my temper gets (not good for me or him). He's not resting well, because he's tired during the day (but won't nap), and that's not good for him. And I can't let him sleep in the floor every night - I'm not sure he'd do it intentionally if I made a little pallet for him and asked him if he wanted to sleep there instead of actually *in* my bed, and I don't want him to just scream himself to sleep every night. And it just hurts me to see him so worked up, almost scared to go to sleep.

I know children are supposed to be more sensitive to paranormal phenomena than adults, and all of the going on about ghosts makes me wonder if this is more than just a phase and he just can't articulate what he sees, and it just happens to show up most in the form of not wanting to sleep in his own bed. I'm baffled, and very, very tired.

It seems to keep getting worse, and I have no idea what to do. I feel helpless and frustrated, and the fact that I'm tired and getting more tired by the day makes it worse. Bedtime shouldn't be this kind of a fight, and I don't know how to make it any better. It seems to me that this goes beyond just being afraid of missing something, just your run-of-the-mill fighting sleep, and it seems to me that it's more than him wanting to sleep with mama. I don't know what it is - bad dreams, paranormal phenomena, something I haven't even thought of - but there's some reason for this, and some reason it keeps getting worse. I just hope I can figure out what it is and address it before J and I both burst into flames.

And if this is all I seem to write about, it's consuming my life. I'm tired, yet nighttime doesn't necessarily mean rest. (Yes, I know, I should have/could have gone to bed when J passed out at 8:15 tonight, but I have things to do that didn't get done during the day because mama was J's favorite plaything. The dishes and the laundry won't do themselves.) The thought that, "Oh, crap, bedtime is coming up" lurks in the back of my mind all day. I'm not sure who dreads it more, me or J. And it SUCKS.

Too much fun for one person to handle

Daycare was closed today, since the local school district was closed, and I couldn't have gotten out of my driveway anyway - it was a solid sheet of ice. So I was home today, using a vacation day on a day when it seems to me the office should have just closed. But no one asked my opinion on that.

I called work this morning - we're supposed to check our manager's voice mail to see what's going on in the event of bad weather. Well, since the bus and trains were still running, my work opened right on time at 8 AM. Not even an hour or two late. We were encouraged to make every effort to be there by 8 AM. I left a message telling him I was using the vacation day I'd asked for yesterday, my driveway was covered in ice and daycare was closed, and that I'd be in tomorrow instead of taking the vacation day I'd planned. Does it not occur to them that not everyone can ride the bus or train? (Like I'd want to ride a DART bus on icy streets anyway - those drivers are maniacs on good days.) I'd have to drive 20 miles to get to where I could catch a bus or train. And my co-worker who lives down here made it to work. I'm like, oh great, thanks for making me look bad. Granted, he doesn't have a small child whose daycare is closed, but still - it makes me feel like they'll be looking at me, wondering why I couldn't make it in when he could. K told me not to worry about it, but I have to. I hate working at a job where I *do* have to worry about this. I think my old job had the right idea - if Dallas schools closed, they closed. The Dallas school district doesn't always close, but they'll close when the transit system may still be running - and if it's bad enough for them to close, then we shouldn't have to go to work. I'm sorry, I don't think there's anything about what I do that's so crucial that it can't wait a day because of icy roads.

And it sucks that this ended up being my day off. I love spending time with J, but I was really looking forward to a mental health day - I'd planned to take a vacation day tomorrow. Icebound with a three-year-old, after a fitful night's sleep because a small boy kept squirming and putting his feet in my face and trying to fall off the bed (yes, J slept in my bed again last night, and is there tonight - how in the world can I get him back in his bed?!?), cannot be considered restful under any circumstances. *SIGH*

And now I am frazzled. J was in full-throttle whiney three-year-old mode most of the evening. "I want, I don't want, I like, I don't like," and on and on. And that's always fun on a day where you can't get out because of the ice, and once the ice melts, it's just too damn cold. My damn shower is pouring like Niagara Falls (not just a drip, not just a leak, but a whole damn river), and I was going to fix it on my child-free day off tomorrow, which I'm now not getting since I had to take today off because of the stinkin' ice. The noise of the shower and of the constant running of water in the pipes is making me crazy, and thinking of the damage it's doing to my electric (since it's a hot water leak, the water heater is running all the time) and water bills is making me sick to my stomach. And since it's a hot water leak and it's freakin' cold in my bathroom, the steam is condensing on the shower ceiling and the bathroom windows. I wish I had the money to call a plumber, because I don't know when I'll have the time to do it myself. Even my next free weekend, which is only half free because of K's Christmas party (his work actually has a nice holiday get-together, so I told him J could come home Saturday afternoon so he could go to that - it's a nice restaurant and I told him he'd better bring me some goodies! LOL), I won't be home until 8:00 that Friday night (it's my late night at work, oh joy), and I don't want to start shutting off water and trying to dismantle my shower that late - what would I do if I really screwed it up around midnight and needed a plumber right then? I don't know what to do. I need a miracle like yesterday, for a Wells Fargo armored truck to accidentally lose a bag of money in front of my house or to win the lotto or something.

On the bright side (if you want to call it that), my driveway has cleared off nicely. So at least I shouldn't have to worry about missing another day of work tomorrow. But I get to go back to God knows what amount of crap that's accumulated in my e-mail, my inbox and my voice mail. It's amazing how much stuff there can be to deal with after just one day out of the office.

Ugh. Someone please tell me 2006 will be better, because 2005 has pretty much royally sucked ass.

Reprieve and winter weather

My dad isn't coming to visit this weekend after all - he called earlier this week and said he had a doctor's appointment on Friday, that it would be too much on him having that and trying to get ready and travel, too. So he and my stepmom will come visit after the holidays.

But we will be going home for Christmas. K and I talked, and his dad is having some health problems that prevent his parents from traveling. So we decided that, swingset or no, we'll drive to Louisiana for Christmas. Both of our dads are getting old, and we won't have them forever. So right now it's more important for J to get time with his grandfathers than to be here on Christmas morning. We're going together - yes, we get along well enough that we can make a 7-hour car trip together! LOL I'll see his family, although I doubt he'll want to spend any time with my dad when I go over there. And family is happy we're coming home, so I'm glad we're going, although I'm really not looking forward to the drive - it makes me tired just thinking about it.

And yes, we have winter weather in Texas!!! Yuck. Midlothian schools were closing at 12:30, and the winter storm watch/warning was all over the news this morning. Of course work didn't close. Oh, wait, we did get an e-mail saying that we could close early at 5:00. OK, technically that is early, since our hours are 8 AM to 7 PM. But 5:00 wouldn't have done me a lick of good. K said the afternoon news was saying that things had gotten a lot worse by late afternoon, and that Highway 67 (the way I come home) was one of the worst areas. There was a wreck at 67 and I-35 - right where I go home. Had I waited, that could have been me. So I told my manager around 11:00 this morning that I was taking half a vacation day today (I'd planned to use it on 12/19) because of the weather and because Midlothian schools were closing at 12:30. I also told him to just put me down for a vacation day tomorrow as well, that if daycare was open and I could make it in then I wouldn't use it. Work will be open tomorrow unless the mass transit system shuts down (and how often does that happen?), so since I can't get out of my driveway, I reckon I'll be using that vacation day. If I get in trouble, so be it - it's not like you can plan ahead for bad weather, and they don't pay me enough in one day to meet the deductible on my car insurance if I get in a wreck.

As it was, I nearly did. Things didn't seem too bad, and then it started sleeting when I got to Cedar Hill. The stuff was freezing on my windshield, even with the defroster on, which is never a good sign. And on one of the several overpasses I cross on my way home, my car hit a patch of ice and swerved back and forth several times before I got across the bridge and it righted itself. Let me tell you, my heart was in my throat, and I prayed and cried the rest of the way to daycare. I was so close (less than 10 miles at this point), and I would have been just sick had I gotten in a wreck then. And if I had, I don't know that K could have made it from his apartment because the roads were getting icy (he'd already made it home - he offered to pick J up, but I figured I'd be fine leaving at 1:00, I wasn't expecting any really bad stuff on the roads). I was oh, so very glad to pull into the parking lot at daycare, and beyond glad that I'd chosen to leave at 1:00 instead of waiting until 2:00 or 3:00, or God forbid, 5:00. At that point, the rest of my trip home was on surface roads - no more overpasses.

It was sleeting pretty hard when I got to daycare, so I went in and got Julian (poor baby, I woke him up from a nap! He was sound asleep - why can't he do that at home? :lol: ) and we headed for home. When stuff is freezing on the hood of your car that's been running for 45+ minutes, that's COLD. As soon as I was safely home, I called work and told them that anyone who lived south might want to leave right then, before it got any worse.

It's been sleeting off and on all night, with some snow mixed in, and the last time I checked, my thermometer said 22 degrees. The wind chill is in the single digits, and it's just f***in' nasty cold. I'm glad we don't get much of this in Texas - I couldn't stand it!!!

And now J has taken to sleeping in my bed. ??? Night before last, bedtime was a pitched battle, with him having a screaming fit about not getting in bed and finally telling me he was scared. It took over 30 minutes for me to finally rock him to sleep, and he was up three times during the night. I finally told him to get in my bed at 5:00 AM or so - I figured that at least that way I'd get to sleep until my alarm went off. Last night he wanted nothing to do with sleeping in his bed, so he slept with me. (I thought about picking him up and moving him to his bed after he was asleep, but I could have no more done that than I could run a four-minute mile - he's a big boy, and 43 pounds of dead-asleep weight is hard to lift!) This morning he said something about not being able to see the mirror (the one that came with his gigantic dresser, that we've never been able to get put on the dresser - it's been sitting at the end of the hall for ages), and I finally got it out of him that he didn't like the mirror. I asked him if he'd sleep in his bed if I moved the mirror, and he said yes. So I put it under my bed (no small task, as the mirror is almost as tall as I am and pretty darned heavy). But did he sleep in his bed tonight? Noooooooo. There's a ghost in his room. So he's snoring in my bed again. My mattress is a good three feet off the floor, and I'm scared to death that he'll fall out of the bed. AACK. No wonder my hair is turning gray.

Has anyone seen my attention span?

I seem to have lost it. I'm fidgety today - not in a bad way, just in an "I-don't-want-to-sit-still-and-concentrate-on-work" way. Only two hours left.

I'm taking Friday off. My leaky shower is driving me crazy, and I am DETERMINED to fix it. I'm about 99% sure that it's just a washer needing to be replaced - that's been done twice already. Ideally I may need new fixtures, but if I can replace the washers myself, perhaps I can buy myself another year or so to get to a better place financially to be able to afford a really complete fix. But I can't stand the dripping, dripping. Not to mention that it's the hot tap leaking, so now that the weather has cooled off, the warm water is condensing on the top of the shower and on the bathroom window. Yuck.

I'm sure I've got stuff to write about, it's just not coming to me at the moment. So I'd better get back to work - I'll write more later.

One miracle, coming up?

Pray, light candles, send good thoughts, whatever - I need 'em. The IRS is looking to fill two tax attorney positions here in Dallas. Starting salary is just under $63,000 a year, which is more than what I make now, and gee, a tax attorney position would actually *use* my legal education. I was thinking just today that I really need a miracle - maybe this is it. I've sent in my application online, and I'll fax the rest of my required documents tomorrow. The closing date is December 16, so I don't expect to hear anything before that. How cool would it be if I could start the new year with a groovy new job?!?!

Oh, enough already.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention earlier. I've had to deal with the Cingular crap, right? Other things will go to hell in a handbasket while I get that squared away by paying the $267 a month for the next two months - not sure where it will come from, but it has to come from somewhere. Well, yesterday I got a bill from a collection agency saying they were trying to collect for Charter Communications (our cable company) to the tune of about $130.00. WTF?! I canceled the cable sometime in 2003. Have I heard anything from Charter about this alleged debt? Nope - I haven't heard from Charter since I turned in the cable box. I didn't include it in my bankruptcy because I didn't know it existed, but what the hell?! Isn't there some kind of statute of limitations on how long a debt can hang out there before you can try to collect? So the crap just keeps on rolling. Finances suck ass, I'm borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and I don't know how long I can keep on doing it or when it will get better (or when these freakin' ancient history debts will stop being dug up). I need a miracle - to win the lotto, to have a fabulous job fall unexpectedly into my lap, to inherit from a long-lost rich relative, something. I can't keep on functioning like this.

Weirdness abounds

N (K's birth mom) called me on my cell at 2:45 this morning, asking if I'd just called. Of course I said no, I was sleeping. So it was a short call and I went back to sleep. She called me this morning and left a message asking me to call so she could explain about that call. So I called her back. I'd left her a voice mail last night around 6:00, and I figured the message had just popped up really late, and that's what she got to make her think I'd called.

But no, it's freaky. It wasn't just a message showing up - N said they'd gotten the voice mail yesterday, way before this happened. N's phone rang four separate times between 1:30 and 2:00. J (her husband) answered and someone actually said "This is Lisa", and that everything was fine when J asked if things were OK. Then the phone rang again and no one would say anything. So it wasn't just a message popping up. I can see where they'd get worried in that situation, and would call to check. J read the number off, and it showed up four separate times. My phone
doesn't show that I've called N's cell other than last night on my way home and then this morning after she'd left me a message to call her - no dialed calls in the middle of the night, so it's not even like I was dialing in my sleep. No calls in the middle of the night show up on my cell phone call records. That's just too weird, especially given that J (my J) sees ghosts in every corner these days. Teddy (my birth brother, who died in a car accident in 1998, before I met my birth family and who we feel sure comes by to visit often) needs to stop playing with my phone. Time to establish ground rules - no waking the boy up, and no playing with the electronics in the middle of the night. Oy vey.