Winds Of Change ...

Sometimes patience is good. Sometimes recognizing small blessings, small miracles, the wonderful little good things in life can make all the difference.

I am having an amazing  week.

It's the little things. Last Thursday my work called and told me I would have no hours this week, I was actually okay with that because I start nursing school next week and it would give me some decompression time, but then low and behold on Sunday I was rescheduled for a forty hour week, which is also awesome because this is my last chance to work a forty hour week until the end of the semester.

Did I mention, I love my job?

I started going through my reading assignments for my nursing classes (the ones that have to be done before class starts), and it's all review information, it just feels like I'm in the right field, I'm doing the right thing, this nursing school thing is going to be okay.

I won a minor victory with my ex over a schedule conflict with my oldest daughter, which was a victory for her not me.

I was pulled over because my license plate tags were expired and the officer let me off with a no proof of insurance ticket, that can be easily taken care of. He said it was

Unfounded Resentment ...

For the purposes of some back story on blogs I will soon write, this is re-posted from my old blog and was originally published April 10, 2012 ... 

So, I have had an issue for a while now with my mom ... I live with her ... long story if you haven't been following ... and just today my boyfriend had a similar issue with another relative ...

People around us have started building resentments for things that they take on themselves ... in my case ... one example is how my mom always cooks breakfast every morning ... nobody ever asked her to do it ... in fact when I first moved in many times I was on my way to do it and she already was ... then one of two things happens every now and then ... the first is that out of nowhere she blows up at me about how I "never" do breakfast and how I am not pulling my weight ... the second is that one morning she just doesn't do it, but doesn't tell me she isn't going to and then it causes issues ...

In my case, what needs to be understood is that I had been living without a parent for eleven years ... and I've been  a mom for just as long ... I know how to

Lake McConaughy ... Part Two ... My National Lampoon Vacation Continues ...

If you didn't read part one, you might want to catch up, but it's probably not necessary ... just know our first day was filled with missing, skinny dipping teenagers, broken, rented jet-skis, tornado warnings, evacuations, forest fires and setting up camp after the wind blew most of it down ...

So ... day two ... we're ready to put the "fixed" jet-ski back in the water ... and it does the same thing as before ... starts for thirty seconds and then won't start ... I think at this point if the lemon man was the crying sort, he would have been balling ... so, we get back on the phone with the rental people ... and this time he goes alone back to Ogallala to get the jet-ski looked at again ... and hopefully really fixed ...

I head back to camp where I'm left to deal with all six kids and try to entertain the other people there as well ... it wasn't really a chore to entertain people ... it was just hard ... and not at all the way it was supposed to go ...

The lemon man was gone for about six hours only to come back and tell us that the jet-ski wasn't fixable ... the cooling system was dead and the parts were going to take days to get there ... and we only had two days left of our vacation ...

That night was better ... filled with conversation and friends ... the two teenage girls were

Touch ...

Have you ever taken one of those love language tests?... you know ... they ask you a bunch of questions and figure out what love language you are ... well, I have ... and I am mostly physical touch ... I have a lot of words of affirmation ... and then the rest just kind of flitter off into nothing ...

When I was getting ready to leave the hospital after my second child was born, my midwife came to me and said that I needed to be prepared for something ... she told me that never before and never again in my life would I be touched as much as I was about to be ... she warned me that my older child would want to touch me, my husband would want to touch me and of course the baby would need me to touch her ...

She apparently had never taken seven, nine and eleven year-olds on vacation ...

I love to cuddle with my kids ... I love to hold them ... and my goodness gracious was that trip to California (Disneyland, Sea World, Legoland) amazing ... but I have never, ever been

Softball Drama ...

Well, what better to bring me back into the world of blogging than something going on right now ...

I guess this requires some history ... my oldest daughter (who is now eleven) started playing softball when she was eight ... she started with 40mph machine pitch competitive ball on a 10u (10 and under) team when she was eight ...

When she started playing she had an absolutely amazing coach ... we moved to another city and I was naive and didn't know about how the whole competitive system worked in a bigger city ... so she played recreational ball with a wonderfully nice coach who really didn't know how to coach for her first season ...

She ended up trying out for some competitive teams ... but again I was new to this process ... we made some rookie mistakes ... and then she broke her finger during a try out ... it just wasn't meant to be ...

She signed up to play fall ball with some of the girls she played with last summer ... at first it seemed great ... she had started playing catcher last summer and she continued in that position in the fall ... she shared the position with another girl ... and they were about 50/50 ... everyone seemed happy ... as the season went on we noticed that the head coach seemed to get more and more angry ... he had words with more than one umpire ... and then he started in on the girls ... my daughter no longer wanted to play for him ...

Over the winter I tried to get her on to two other teams ... one of them I again lost out on due to naivety ... I knew when and where to sign her up, but I was supposed to have a copy of her birth certificate and they only took cash ... no checks, no debit cards ... so by the time I pulled up her birth certificate, etc., ... the team was full ...

It came down to asking her if she wanted to not play at all or play for that coach again ... she chose playing for him again ... well, she started out slated for catcher (along with the other girl from the fall) ... the coach said he wanted a third catcher because he didn't want any of them being burned out ... an assistant coach jumped at the chance to get his daughter into the position ... and started teaching her how to catch ...

To make a long story short ... as time went by the kids have played about 22 innings of softball (they average about 2 innings a game ... they're timed games, so they go for about an hour and a half regardless of how many innings they go) ... the other girl that my daughter has always shared the position with caught about six innings, my daughter has caught for three and the assistant coach's daughter (the one with no experience) has caught the rest of the innings ... the other girl's dad has stopped coming to the games and is talking about starting his own t-eam ...

Now, if this was all about winning and it was about the better player ... and his daughter was the better player then I would have no issue with this, but that's not the way it is ... even other parents have said that my daughter has skills that neither of the other players do ... and just to make sure I wasn't looking at it through my "mom goggles" as my boyfriend calls it ... I started counting catches vs drop pitches vs pass balls ... the assistant coach's daughter is getting better but she was about 50% ... the other girl was about 75% ... and in the few chances she has had my daughter is about 80-90% ... so it's not about skill ... every time the assistant coach's daughter steps up behind the plate I get sympathetic looks ... and some parents even come up and talk to me ... I haven't been vocal about any of it, so they're doing it on their own ...

On top of that the head coach's daughter is one of the pitchers ... she has missed four games and more than half the practices, but when she is there she pitches all the innings ... despite having two other very capable pitchers on the team ... 

All along, the coach is having major anger issues ... he gets ejected from a game ... in 10u recreational ball ... ejected ... seriously I don't understand ... three other girls have quit the team ... we all cringe at the way the assistant coach yells at his own daughter when she is catching ... or doing, well, anything ... it's not just about my daughter not playing catcher ....

Last night she had a breakdown ... she cried and cried ... and talked about quitting the team ... but she loves the sport ... she doesn't want to quit the sport ... at this point after talking with her father and my boyfriend what we've decided is that she'll go to the game tonight, but her father and I are going to go together to talk to the coaches after the game ....

I, personally, am willing to let her quit ... I understand all the stuff about following through on commitments, but there comes a point when the price is too high ... and teaching her that she has to put up with things she shouldn't have to put up with for the sake of commitment isn't a great lesson either ...

I guess we'll find out what happens tonight ... I'm not looking forward to this ...

Letting Go ... Divorce is Hard ...

Originally posted on my "old" blog ... August 4, 2008 ... 

I am carrying so much with me, so much that I let effect me, I'm just hoping that this will be cathartic, help me to let some of it go and move on . . . I have so much going on in my life right now, so much that is expected, so much that I'm obligated for . . . a lot of stress, both good and bad stress . . . and I need to get a handle on it because I've turned into an emotional basket case - crying at the drop of the hat, or one misplaced innocent action or word from family or friends, or anyone . . . some of this is probably normal, I'm getting divorced, with this comes various stages of grief and stress and whatever else . . . right now I feel like the first and last thing I need is a shoulder to cry on, someone just to hold me and tell me that everything will be alright . . . my finances are well, not even finances . . . my dad who lives 150 miles away is going way out of his way to put gas in my car and help with my rent . . . I miss my kids like crazy when they're gone and they drive me crazy when they're here . . . certain aspects of my job leave me feeling completely unappreciated and at my worst incapable . . . I'm dealing with lawyers and doctors . . .  and I'm trying to hold my shit together for everyone in my life . . . I try not to let anyone in on the emotions . . . because first off, this is nobody's burden but my own, but also I never know the reaction I'm going to get from anyone; sympathy, anger, judgment . . . but no matter what I am countered with nobody has a full grasp of everything I am going through . . . I was asked last night if I still thought it was for the best . . . and yes, absolutely is it for the best . . . there are things that would never be ok, things my kids should never have had to deal with as long as they did, things that I need to let go of because there is no point in me carrying it with me anymore . . . and I'm working on that . . . and of course there are things I miss, as anyone would with anyone they've been with for eleven years . . . most of it is intangible, and actually completely replaceable . . . if someone ever comes along that is willing and I want to replace those things . . . stupid little things . . . a lot of it physical, because I am a touchy feely person, I have a huge desire and need for physical contact with people period not just lovers, or boyfriends, or family but everyone . . . a hug from my friends . . . my boss rubbing my back and playing with my hair . . . it's not sexual just physical . . . but yeah, I miss the stupid little things that helped to reassure me that I was/am beautiful - inside and out, loveable, worth the effort to be touched . . . and these are reassurances that I shouldn't and in all reality don't need, but they are missed and wanted and desired . . . and at some point there will be someone who will be that person to me without all the negativity that makes leaving those things all for the best . . . but as my quote said not very long ago, there's a reason that today is called the present, it is a gift, we cannot live in the past, nor predict the future and live to create it or nurture it, but rather live for today, appreciate what is here, try to ignore what isn't and go to sleep hoping that you wake up the next morning for the gift of tomorrow, but yes, worrying about tomorrow today will do nothing if you don't wake up the next morning . . . so why bother . . . .

15 Days ...

Originally posted on my "old" blog ... November 12, 2010 ... although I added extra information at the end ...  and appropriately this is being scheduled to post on my son's birthday ...

My five year-old son spent 15 days in the hospital, including two surgeries, six in-room procedures and countless tubes, IVs, pokes and other fun things ... so here is the entire story.

First off, I will preempt this by telling all my lovely readers that my middle daughter has a history of chronic illness, and usually when these kinds of things happen, they happen to her. My son does have a history of Reactive Airway Disease (RAD) and has had pneumonia three times, but two of them weren't bad at all and the third was associated with lab-confirmed H1N1 last fall. He did end up on in-home oxygen with that one, and they talked about hospitalizing him, but never did.

So, here is the story of our little adventure this fall ....

On Wednesday October 13, my cute little five year-old boy started off a cold with some sniffles and a little bit of a cough, but nothing seemed too bad, according to his dad (sidebar- my kids go every other month and every other weekend between their father and me, October was their month with their dad). Saturday morning his dad started getting more worried about him, he was spiking high fevers, throwing up almost everything he ate (including medicine), and had a really good, unproductive cough ... Sunday morning my son was taken to urgent care, they said that he sounded clear, his O2 Saturation was in

Moving ....

Originally posted on my "old" blog ... August 9, 2010 ... 

So, I'm in the process of moving ... it's a long story ... but basically I'm moving out of a house that my dad bought for me into my mom's basement ...

When I got divorced I had been a stay at home mom for 7+ years, outside of a part-time job. Nobody gets married thinking they will get divorced, nobody does ... I was actually very judgmental of people that divorced in the past, but now I am one of them, and that is somewhat guilt that I have to live with, especially for my children, but when it comes down to it now I am.

It put me in an odd place though, I didn't finish my education because of the birth of my first and my pregnancy with my second. I didn't have any solid, full-time work history, so it

Labeling Our Children ...

Originally posted on my "old" blog ... October 13, 2010 ... 

I think there is a fine line between encouraging and nurturing the strengths of our children and labeling and pigeon-holing them into something, somewhere that is unfair to them ... so here is my confession/struggle ...

Hi, my name is Lemonade Lady, and I just came back from parent teacher conferences, and this is where I find it very hard to not "label" my children ... let me start out by saying that all three of my children are bright ... all three of them have areas they stand out in and areas they don't do so well in ... but ... here is where the issue lies ...


My oldest is "the creative one" ... she naturally draws better than I did when instructed by high school art teachers ... she is musically inclined, I have never heard her sing horribly off pitch ... not always perfect (and I'm a tough judge with three years of vocal music major fun stuff in college) .. but she is a decent singer ... she is interested in musical instruments and drama ... and writing .. which is about the only academic thing she is interested in ... she has already had plenty of F's and D's and I's and "needs improvement" and "below grade level" and other such negative comments on her report cards ... I fear her parent teacher conferences ... and today was

The Stay At Home Mom Curse? ...

Originally posted on my "old" blog March 14, 2011 ... 

If you had asked me 5 years ago if I would ever be writing a blog like this I would have told you that you were totally and completely nuts ... if you had asked for my honest opinion 5 years ago as to whether or not being a stay-at-home mom was the better best choice for any growing family that could afford it ... I would have said ABSOFREAKINLUTELY ... and then the walls came tumbling down ...

Now before I say all this ... please don't think for a minute that I actually regret the time I spent with my children ... watching them grow ... nurturing them ... seeing every single

Confessions of a Former Mommy Snob ...

Mommy snobbery is not a new subject in my blog ... but I don't know that I've ever dedicated an entire blog to it ...

There are a lot of things involved in mommy snobbery ... the mommy wars definitely are a large part of it ... for those that don't know ... the mommy wars are the arguments like breast vs bottle, co-sleeping vs crib sleeping, baby wearing vs detachment, spanking vs not spanking, etc., etc., etc., ... but my main issue with mommy snobbery and the kind of mommy snob I used to be didn't have much to do with any of that ....

I married young ... had my oldest when I was barely twenty-three ... none of my friends were married ... none of them had kids ... they were in their early twenties ... living it up ... drinking ... partying ... bar hopping ... they invited me for a while ... but after I pretty much flat out said something like "don't you understand I'm a mother now, I have a baby, I don't have time for those childish things" ... they stopped inviting me ... it was funny because in the season finale of How I Met Your Mother Marshall and Lilly have their baby and suddenly they tell their friends they don't have time for them unless they have something to say that is ranked "an 8 or higher" ... I looked at the lemon man and said "see mommy snobbery" ... they even talk about it in sitcoms ... I digress ... for a while I was glad my friends had stopped inviting me ... but then two more kids later I started to realize some things ... and I give credit to a speaker

Living With A Hoarder ...

This post I'm about to write is part of why I started an anonymous blog ... and I still don't know if I'm going to say it all in the right way ... or in a way that people will remotely understand ... but here it goes ...

Many of you that have been reading me know I live with my mother ... I've lived here for almost two years ... one of the many problems with that is that my mom is a hoarder ... she isn't at the level that the people you see on the shows are ... there aren't dead animals ... or at least there aren't any missing animals so I assume there aren't ... and she isn't accumulating more stuff by going to garage sales or digging through people's trash cans or other things you see in the extreme cases they showcase for entertainment ... but she doesn't get rid of anything ... so here we go ...

 

This is a picture of my mom's/our dining room ... the backpacks up front do belong to my children ... but obviously there is much more than that ...

Why I Actually Like Working the Night Shift ... And Why it Works For My Family ...

People tell me all the time I'm crazy ...

Maybe that doesn't have anything to do with my shift though ... but we'll pretend it does ...

I've always been a night person ... I've always detested alarm clocks ... and I've always, always had insomnia ... that alone explains part of why I like working nights ... my current shift is midnight-7am Monday thru Thursday nights and then 7pm - 7am Sundays ... although my position is PRN (basically on call so a lot of weeks I don't work all those nights) ...

But ... the main reason I work nights ... the reason I seek out night shifts ... is that it is

Ummm ... Hot Tuna ...

Background context may be necessary ... so here it is ... the short version ... post-divorce I live in my mom's basement ... I work nights ... I usually do okay until about Thursday picking the kids up from school and still maintaining my sanity from exhaustion, but then it starts to get me ... but at least Thursday nights are my Friday ...

This is an example (capped off by my daughter's amazing version of "the things kids say") of the little annoyances that build up living with my mom ...

Since Monday she has been talking about making "tuna cheese dreams" for dinner ... this is basically a tuna melt with a fancy name that she decided to give it when I was a kid ... well, Monday we ate out because it was an insane day ... Tuesday we ate with and stayed at the Lemon Man's house ... Wednesday their dad took them out to dinner (per

Moderation ...Rising Above Being a Child of an Alcoholic ...

I remember it clearly ... sitting in a meeting with my peers ... none of them I went to school with at the time ... but one I knew from church ... and all of them would eventually become schoolmates in middle school ... and when we saw each other in the hallways in the sixth grade ... we pretended we didn't know each other ... our eyes would meet ... and we would quickly look down or away ... it was a mutual shame we all felt ...

Children of Alcoholics ... COA ... we met in a small room at a counseling center in the middle of the mountain county where I grew up ... we spent an entire school year ... all of us in the fourth grade ... nine/ten years old ... talking about what it was like to grow up with an alcoholic parent ... what it was like when they were either recovering or kicked out of our houses ... and how we could avoid the same fate ...

The experience scared me ... 

**************

Probably in some blog down the line I will talk about what it was truly like living with my father up until he stopped drinking ... the abuse ... the car accidents ... the puking ... the

Every Once in a While ....

Every once in a while ... when I'm writing my blogs ... and I'm grateful that in a sense there is a journal of me ... a permanence of my being ... until the interwebz disappear anyway ... I wonder what my kids will think if they ever come back and read it all ... will they think I was crazy? ... will they be proud that I'm their mom? ... will they have kids of their own and relate? ... I love those little munchkins more than anything else in the universe ... and I hope that when they get truly inside my head ... that they don't think less of me ...

The Stepparent Errr ... Issues ... ??? ...

Okay, so this is going to be a hard post for me to write ... but I feel like I need to write it ... my lemon man is basically a stepparent ... two of my most faithful readers are stepparents ... so I am going to do my best to not be offending or disrespectful in any way ... and I am also going to say up front that my situation may be very different from other people's ... and other moms and dads may feel very differently than I do ... okay ... so that's my disclaimer ...

My kids have a new stepmom ... that's okay ... that I can deal with ... not a big deal ... for a long time through my ex's and her engagement we got along perfectly ... things were going well ... I figured she would be easy to co-parent with ... until the first issue actually came up ... my oldest daughter hadn't completed any of her homework the first month that they had custody of her ...

So, I emailed my ex ... and I could tell that there was some influence from someone else in his responses ... and these conversations are difficult ... it's hard when someone is

Flinching & Cringing ...

I kind of expected ... correction ... I always expected it ... but I remember the first time it actually happened ...

I was at a school function with my younger daughter ... it was a field trip ... and the kids were outside doing their thing ... eating lunch ...

Another mom who was chaperoning started making small talk with me ... little questions here and there ... and then there it was "what does your husband do?" ...

"Well, I'm divorced, but he's a drafter" .... "Oh, I'm so sorry" ...

And then she turned and WALKED AWAY ... she walked away ...

Maybe she was embarrassed by the fact that she asked the question ... maybe she didn't know how to respond ... but she, in that moment, symbolized all my fears about telling

Finality ... The Sense of Being Reborn ...

“I think it happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. And so you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on.”   ~ Nicholas Sparks

My ex is now married to someone else ... I've had people come to me with condolences ... worried about how I'm doing ... and really ... I don't care all that much ... and the part of me that does care ... is extremely glad and relieved ...

His marriage gives me a sense of finality and closure that I didn't have before ... when I first found out he was engaged my first thought was "thank God, because now if I do it I won't be the bad guy" ...

Maybe that sounds cold and uncaring to some people ... but they haven't walked in my shoes ... it amuses me because less than a week before his wedding he told me that I needed to "move on and worry about (my)self" ... I moved on long before he did ...

I remember standing in a parking lot after exchanging the kids and he was yelling at me about finding girls that were hotter than me ... telling me that he could have them ... I

Cutting the Cord ...

I am still getting used to not having my kids with me ... the breaks can be nice ... but it's hard sometimes because since I've had them I've almost always been the sole person in their lives that was constant ... and in many ways I still am ...

For the first seven years I was a mother I was a stay-at-home mom ... so I was with them constantly ... I basically continued as such after my ex and I separated four years ago ... only I got a few breaks here and there ... some weekends ... some weeks ... and then I moved and the only time they were away from me was every other weekend ... which wasn't enough time to miss them really ... unless