Time for me to brag...

We had parent/teacher conferences for the older 3 kids today. After I picked the boys up from their schools, we flew to the conferences.

Although, I do have to say that after driving the She-Beast for so long, I constantly listen for strange sounds when I'm driving. As I was tearing along, I heard this sound. A very strange thwack thwack thwack coming from the right side of the van. I checked the dash - no strange lights. I jiggled the steering wheel - felt ok. Thwack thwack thwack...it kept going. I slowed down a bit, and so did the noise.

Crap. I'm already running late. If I pull over to check and it's nothing, I'm going to be really late. What do I do?

Suddenly I looked down at the floorboard in front of the front passenger seat and I saw Daniel's backpack laying there. I started to realize what the sound was. I carefully reached down to grab the backpack, and it wouldn't budge. Sure enough, I had closed the strap in the door. Mystery solved.

Full speed ahead at that point.

We got to the conferences with about 30 seconds to spare. They all went well. Out of the 3 kids, there were maybe 2 B's and the rest were all A's. They are model students, performing above grade level in almost every area. The teachers had nothing but wonderful things to say about all of them.

It's time like that when I realize that we must be doing something right. Thankfully Ex1 and I have gotten to a point where we can communicate better about everything that is happening and we have gotten into a good routine with the kids. While splitting custody is never ideal, we are making it work - and today helped to prove that.

I just can't wait to get to the point that we can move - if we stick to our current plan, that will happen no later than the summer of 2013. At that point, all of my kids will be going to school in the same district, and life will be so much easier on all of us, but most importantly it will be easier for the kids. They won't have to get up so early to get to school when they're with me, and they'll get home earlier. It's a smaller town where I won't have to worry so much about letting the kids go outside to play without me being on them every single second, and they'll be able to walk to their friends' houses easier. It'll just be better for everyone. I would love to be able to do it now, but we have to get some bills paid off first. It's frustrating, but having that goal in mind is keeping me focused on what I need to do.

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Yay! Tulips!

How things change

I'm just going to warn you now. This is going to be an "off" week for me. Honestly, I've been dreading this week for a while now, and now that it's here, I just want it to get over with and go away.

At the same time, I sat here just now and thought back to where I was a year ago. I was still driving the ever-so-glorious She-Beast (when she wasn't dead) and was constantly struggling to get through the day. I was barely making ends meet and was in constant danger of losing my utilities until I could get some steady income. My divorce was finally final and all I wanted to do was reclaim my life and move on, in any way possible. I had no idea how that was going to happen, but I know that I wanted it so badly that I could taste it.

Little did I know a year ago how much my life would change in the next 12 months. In one message consisting of only 4 words, my world would turn upside down. I would be on the verge of losing everything. I would lean on my friends in unimaginable ways. I would learn the true value of those friendships. I would lose loved ones but still see new life being brought into the world. I would try my hand at dating, only to fail miserably a few times before finally getting it right. Things would start to fall into place in so many ways. I would make an epic road trip to see friends, both new and old, and get to spend time with my family. I would see this piddly little blog grow from nothing to what it is today. I would gain new friends, lose old ones, and strengthen relationships that were damaged.

In short, it's been a crazy year. I'll touch on some things later this week, including some moments in my life that were devastating, thrilling, and one that always makes me reflect on where I've been and where I'm going. Things might get a little deeper than usual, but that's why I do what I do here - this isn't just a place for me to brag about my kids - it's also a place for reflection. I share some experiences in the hopes that they may help someone who has been in a similar place, not that I think that I'm an expert on anything, but sometimes just knowing that someone else has been there can be the catalyst for someone else's healing.

So, bear with me as I get through this week and the memories that are going to surface. Some of them are going to be painful, but I promise that they will be honest and I will not intentionally hurt anyone else with what I feel that I need to say. If I do, let's just discuss it rationally, ok?

With that being said, I hope that we can get into some good discussions this week - if you're not already following me on my facebook page, please come and join in the fun over there.

Plans, Stress, and Rental Cars

Why, oh why…..why can’t I have one drama-free day? Just one? Is that too much to ask?

I found out about a week or so ago that my best friend from college was going to be in the Kansas City area for work for a few days. We have not seen each other since 2004, so there was no way that we were going to NOT get together while she was here. She had no way to get to me, so I had to get to her. The plans started formulating, with a friend offering to take me to Kansas City.

Plans. Plans suck. Plans never work. Saturday morning, as I was racing from basketball game to basketball game, the She-Beast died. Literally sputtered and died alongside the road. I was able to get a hold of a friend who lived in the area and she came and took my kids to the next basketball game while her son came out and tried to work some magic. We towed it back to their house, but couldn’t figure out much of anything so we towed it the 30+ miles home. One theory was a bad fuel filter, so I bundled up the two youngest ones and we walked the mile to the auto parts place and got a new one. I came home and put it on, but alas, it didn’t work. So it could possibly be the fuel pump, which is of course located INSIDE the gas tank – that one is beyond my abilities to fix. I need help on that.

Anyway, driving the She-Beast to KC was Plan B. Plan A never worked, as the friend who was supposed to drive me went out of town for work and still has not been heard from (*gritting teeth*). Plan B was now out of the question. I tried to find a vehicle to borrow – no luck. Finally, I started looking at rentals and found out that I could get one with unlimited mileage for $20 for the day. Sold! I had to beg a ride to Wichita to get it (thank you very much to my 4-year old’s father for that one), but I got it and then I dropped my youngest off with some friends and I hit the road.

The trip up was uneventful. Having no kids in the car was strange, but it necessitated having the radio cranked up as loud as it would possibly go the entire way. I sang along with everything and had a blast. I found some great radio stations and so I had the opportunity to belt out tunes from everyone from Bon Jovi to Depeche Mode to Tim McGraw to Metallica. I managed to get up there just shortly after she checked into the hotel, so we went and grabbed something light to eat and visited for a while before I took her on a driving tour of Kansas City at breakneck speeds. Driving around and talking just reminded me so much of our days in college when we would take so many insane spur-of-the-moment road trips together, including a 17-hour one to see the peach drop in Atlanta, GA for New Years. Word of advice – if you ever have the chance to do that, don’t. It was nothing more than a giant orange pillow with a bajillion drunk people crammed into about a one square block area underneath it. But anyway…..

After our driving tour, we went back to the hotel and grabbed her coworker and we went to what the desk clerk called a “Mex-Tex” restaurant nearby. I’m not a huge fan of Mexican food, but wow – this stuff was good! The waiter was, uh, interesting, to say the least. He just couldn’t comprehend some of the things that we were saying to him – I think he was overwhelmed by three East Coast ladies in one room or something. But we had fun eating too much, talking non-stop, and halfway watching the Patriots lose to the Jets.

I finally left around 8:00pm, 2 hours behind schedule. I filled up the gas tank and hit the road. I got back to pick up my youngest around 10:45 and we got home at around 11:15. He was still awake when I picked him up and was still awake when we got home. He put a movie in (yes, HE put the movie in) and I turned out the lights and he crawled into bed with me and we both fell asleep.

This morning has already involved getting the rental car back to Wichita (and getting a ride back with another friend) and sending out feelers to try to get someone to come and look at the She-Beast to try to figure out what is wrong with her. My mind is going a billion miles a second right now, trying to come up with plans (there’s that word again) to get it fixed, get my daycare business up and running again, get my crafts going again, get my canned stuff going again, and just get some money rolling in again.

It is time, no it is beyond time, to get my act together. This divorce and all of the drama that went along with it is now over. I let myself slide into a very deep depression – one that I’m not sure most people were really aware of. I let things go that I never should have, and I’ve put myself into a very ugly financial position. But the good thing is that now I realize it. I see it very clearly. So now it’s time to fix it. Today’s plan – and yes, I’m using the p-word because I am determined to break the p-word jinx – is to get everything around the house cleaned up and straightened up and make the house look not so…….grotesque. Once that is done, the lists will be made – lists of things that I need to do in order to reclaim my life. And these lists are not going to get thrown away or lost in the shuffle – they will be kept, they will be followed, and they will be completed.

I have a new (or old) last name. I am in a new decade of my life. I am in a fairly new home (it’s been a few months, but it’s still new-ish). It is definitely time for a new start. Going to grab those hypothetical big girl panties and put them on – as soon as the laundry is done.

Introducing: The She-Beast

When my almost-ex-husband and I got married, we bought a nice used mini-van. It was a 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan, and although it wasn't uber-fancy, it served its purpose. When we bought it, my credit was shot, so he put it in his name. No big deal, or so I thought.

Fast-forward a bit to when we separated in May of 2009. I kicked him out (another story in and of itself) and since he didn't have a drivers license (a DUI'll do that to ya) I kept the van. And I kept making the payments. I struggled to keep it, as the payments were higher than what I could afford. I was on a first name basis with a gentleman at Chrysler Financial who worked with me for a long time to keep it from being repossessed.

Long story short, when it came time to renew the tags on it, I couldn't - because it was IN HIS NAME. I couldn't contact him because I had a PFA against him (threatening to kill someone'll do that to ya) so there was no way I could renew the tags and keep driving it legally. I scraped together some money with help from a couple of friends and a church in Wichita and scoured Craigslist until I found......the She-Beast. Then I parked the Dodge in the driveway with the doors unlocked and the keys on the dash until Chrysler finally came and took it away. (As an aside, various lights on the dash came on the very last time I drove it. Darn.)

The She-Beast is a 1991 Chevy Astro with 321,000 miles on her. She was apparently originally dark blue, but now is more of a bare metal/rust color. I've had to do some work to keep her running, but so far she's been pretty ok to me. Adding a couple of quarts of oil per week is getting a little old, but if I can keep her limping along for a while, I'm good with that. It's still cheaper than a payment for something newer (or prettier).

The other night, as I was leaving some friends' house after a WON-DER-FUL evening of hot tubbing and girl talk, I noticed that I had a headlight out. Colorful language escaped my mouth, as I really don't want to be running around rural areas of Kansas with limited visibility, since the wildlife around here seems to have been inbred with some sort of kamikaze instinct. So off to O'Reillys I went today - another group of people with whom I've become too familiar. Ten bucks for a headlight, and I was on my way home through the ice and slush and snow that just made me all the more chipper (not). I debated whether or not to change the headlight and thought about putting it off, but with even more brutal weather on the horizon I figured I'd be better off just doing it.

I got home and determined that according to the directions, I should only need a Phillips head screwdriver. Bonus! I chased the youngest two inside and started on my mission with snow falling around me. After struggling with it a bit (not wearing gloves'll do that to ya) I realized that I needed some other funky tool to get the housing off from around the headlight - some torx something-or-other (would have known that ahead of time had I read ALL of the instructions). Since I managed to maintain custody of all of the tools, I was actually able to find it and tear the thing apart. I replaced the headlight, put it all back together again, and even aligned the headlights better than they've been since I bought the thing.

Now, if I could only get the oil leak fixed as easily.....*sigh*

It's funny to me though....people tell me all the time that they're so impressed with the things that I do by myself. The thing is, I don't think it's anything that impressive.I grew up with a father who fixed EVERYTHING, and I watched. I don't see the point in paying someone to fix something if I can do it on my own. Granted,there are things that I can't do by myself, either because I just don't know how or I don't have the tools, but there are so many simple things that I have done. To me, it's not to amaze people or to show off a skill - to me it is simply survival. I've been in survival mode for so long now that I'm not sure what I would do otherwise. If there's one thing that I've learned over the past few years, it's that I'm a lot stronger than I ever thought I was. I think that a lot of people are too - but they have to discover it for themselves. No one taught me how to fend for myself - it was a by-product of putting myself into a lot of crappy situations. I know that I'm not totally out of the crap yet - but I'm getting there. One day at a time, one battle at a time. Sooner or later, the crap will all be behind me - then the trick will be to not trip and fall back into it.