Better and then not so much

First, the good news. I'll be doing transcription for 12.5 cents a line! Woo! I'm getting my own machine, found one refurbished on eBay for about a third of the retail price. So once I get that, I'll be good to go! (Julie, if you're reading this, THANK YOU!!!!) I'm excited. It will be good experience, a chance to see how well I might really like it (i.e., could it possibly become a career for me so I could tell corporate America to kiss my big ol' booty?), and much-needed extra cash.

I think I may have mentioned the childcare reimbursement program at work. The guidelines said your individual income had to be less than $34,000 and family income had to be less than $60,000 to qualify. I made the argument that I am the family income and I make less than $60,000, and apparently I qualify. :-) They'll reimburse you up to $175/month for care for children under age five, and up to $152/month for care for children ages five to twelve. Not a lot, but every little bit helps. So that's good news!

My car is fixed. They couldn't duplicate the starting problem, but the swooshing/sloshing noise I heard was a coolant leak from the intake gasket. Cost to fix: $525. I'm not *excited* about spending that much, but it made me wince, not wail and gnash my teeth. It's painful, but not unbearably so. The service technician said that this repair might somehow clear up the starting problem, but if that continued to be an issue, I can bring the car back and they'll do the diagnostic work for free to figure out what's going on. I thought that was pretty cool, although I hope I won't have to take them up on it. So tomorrow morning I'll take the rental car back, get a ride to the dealership, and pick up my car. J will be very disappointed to take the Kia back - he kept telling me, "Mama, I like this car. It's so CLEAN!" LOLOL He said we should keep it, and when I told him we were just using it until I got my car fixed, he said, "OK, we'll just drive it for a few minutes, then." Silly boy. :-)

And now for my bitchy bits.

Does J just not listen? Has he not yet developed a sense of empathy? I know he's not stupid, I know he can understand what I'm telling him - not like I'm using words that are beyond his ability to comprehend.

I was picking up toys tonight and had a big plastic bucket of them in my hands, so no way to break a fall. I stepped on one that had gotten left out, lost my balance and fell into the entertainment center. My arm and hand landed on the edge, but I didn't seriously hurt anything. I could have fallen all the way down, I could have hit my head on an edge or a corner, I could have gone through the glass front, and been seriously hurt. I told J that this is why I ask him to pick up toys, so we don't step on them and fall and get hurt. His response? Nothing. Not even to ask if I was OK. He just kept on playing and pretty much ignored me, even though he'd been looking at me when I talked to him. When do kids start to learn empathy? It makes me wonder if mine is just a late bloomer in that regard, or what.

And K. Once again, I have the urge to smack him (yet I also feel strangely bad at the same time - read on). I had my cell phone in my pocket, and I was trying to get J to sleep. (Note to self: turn ringer off.) It was right about 10:00, and finally, after a rough night, J was just dozing off. The effin' cell phone rang and he sat bolt upright in bed. It was K - apparently he thought J would still be awake, so he called. Um, have we just met?! Do you not remember that this is about the time every night I'm trying to get him to freakin' SLEEP?! Like I said, it was a rather bad night, so I'm sure I sounded pissy. Kevin said he'd talk to me tomorrow and hung up - didn't say anything about why he was calling at a rather odd hour. After a bit, I then thought maybe something was wrong, so I sent him a text message. He wrote back and said he was just missing J, and thought maybe he'd say good night if he was still awake. So then I felt bad. But then I thought, again, it's 10:00. Even if J is awake, K should know that I'd be trying to get him to sleep, not wanting him to be kept awake. And even a short phone call can rev his engines up and keep him from sleeping easily. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Thankfully J didn't get all wound up and did go to sleep in (for him) relatively short order.

This, after tonight. K picked J up for my late night (turns out I didn't have handbells, since it's spring break this week, but I didn't know that). I got home, K left. Fine and good, until I walked across the living room and stepped in a big squishy wet spot - almost a whole glass of milk had been spilled on the carpet and not cleaned up at all. I asked J if he'd told daddy about the spill. He said yes. I thought and then asked if daddy was asleep when J told him (K had said he was tired, and J had already mentioned daddy sleeping). Again, yes. So K just snoozed away while J put a whole cup of milk in the middle of the carpet (rather than on a hard surface, where cups belong) and (not surprisingly) knocked it over. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Then I found that he'd left J's soy milk sitting out. Milk. Needs to go in the fridge. Soy milk. Not cheap. My frustration knows no bounds. Thankfully it hadn't been out long enough to go off, but still. What if I hadn't noticed it? And a grown man should be able to put milk back in the fridge.

I'm irritated because now I have to clean my carpet again (at least I have the Bissell now). And I'm worried that K is that tired, that he couldn't/wouldn't rouse himself when J said something to him. What if J had gotten into something he shouldn't have? What if he'd set something on fire? What if he'd gotten into something worse than milk? What if he'd cut himself? If K can't be roused by his son, that's a problem - he needs to go to bed earlier if it's because he's up too late, or get some medical attention if he's just physically/mentally unable to sleep. That's for J's good when J is with him and for his own good. What if K falls asleep while he's driving? Worse yet, what if he falls asleep while driving with J in the car? These are the things that come to mind and that worry me - brought on by a big puddle of spilled milk. (I'm not crying over it, I'm worrying over it. That's something completely different.) Not sleeping well isn't healthy. There's a reason sleep deprivation can be used as a form of torture - it makes you feel like crap and makes you unable to function. So I'm vexed with K (because there's a big wet milk puddle in the middle of my formerly-somewhat-cleaner carpet) and worried about him, too (because this kind of tired isn't normal).

I'm going to take a bubble bath and have a glass of wine. I am one big stress kitty right now, and I've got to get up early to go get the rental car back and get my car.