Erika

OK I know I have been gone for a while, we’ve been at my Mom’s swimming for the last few days, but man…I hardly recognize this place.

I don’t have much to report other than another sunburn…truth be told I wouldn’t mind the sunburn so much if it eventually turned into a tan. No tan for me, I burn, I’m miserable, I peel, and then I am back to the pasty white I started with.

Oh, here’s something exciting….I’m back to my natural hair color, I think? It’s been so long since I’ve seen it, I’m not sure what it really looks like. I grew tired of the orange/blonde the pool’s chlorine was creating so for the summer at least I am back to being a brunette, well almost.

The little girl I babysit and I are having a girls only day on Friday which will include lunch, some light shopping, a manicure and highlights. My mother has started the betting pool at 10 days until I cave and go back to the red.

Tomorrow the kids and I will be hanging up all our 4th of July decorations. Believe it or not I am the last one on the block to decorate. Our little town take the 4th very seriously, you can’t look 20 houses in either dircetion without seeing someone’s done up in red, white, and blue.

I also promised them that if they behave we can make ice cream. I just bought a soft serve maker and the kids are dying to try it out. Once I catch up on some blogs ( if I can figure out how ) I have to make the base for the ice cream and let it set up in the fridge.

Logan has his intro to Kindergarden orientation tomorrow night as well. I can’t believe he is starting school this fall.

So that’s all that is going on here, I hope you all are well. 

I’m finally home after being at my mother’s since Monday.

This may come as a real shock to you all but my house is a disaster. Apparently Ethan has yet to be formally introduced to the Pledge and it’s good friend Windex.

I think he must have been rewashing the same plate, as there were none in the sink, it is however full of silverware. He is also down to his undershirts with no armpits left and underware with very little elastic.

So I will be playing catch up for the rest of the day. It’s amazing…the man has an MBA but the use of a MOP escapes him.

I actually feel thinner today, maybe all that swimming is paying off. I don’t think I am going to weigh myself though, I think I will go by how I feel for a while.

Some exciting news for me, a good friend and her husband, the chef, are more than likely going to be buying a resturant near me. She called the other day and asked if I would be interested in a part time asst manager position.

The hours would be split between daylight when the kids go back to school and some evenings and weekends. I would also be responsible for booking entertainment on the weekends once they get it to that point.

They need someone they can trust, it very easy to get robbed blind in that buisness. I think it would be great and obviously they will work around Ethan’s and the school’s schedule.

That’s all I have to report, I’m off to tackle the mess made by my husband.

Well, I have just finally fought my way out from under a mountain of dinner dishes.

My father and Ethan got together and decided that their Father’s day dinner should be a Thanksgiving style one with all the trimmings. I’m suprised they didn’t want me to put up the freaking Christmas tree too.

My kitchen was like a sauna, there is a reason we have Thanksgiving in November when it isn’t 90 degrees.

It was a nice day sweat box and all. Ethan was thrilled, my brothers got him a ton of garbage stickers. In my town you have to buy stickers and put them on the bags for them to take them, silly I know. Every Sunday someone in the neighborhood is always going door to door begging for an extra few stickers. Ethan should be set until the end of summer…it’s the little things.

 Yesterday I booked our long vacation weekend for the last wekend in July. The kids don’t know, and they won’t until we get there. I’m really excited because the resort we are going to has outdoor concerts in the summer and the week we will be there the Doobie Brothers are playing.

I always do some kind of Christmas in July for the kids, so this weekend will be perfect.

I’m going to go get a greatest hits CD tomorrow and start playing it around the house, that way the kids will be familiar with the music by the concert. They will be so suprised, I can’t wait!

That’s about all to report, we will be spending the next few days at my Mother’s swimming. Hopefully there will be no head injuries this time. I told the neighbor kid that if he wanted to swim again on my watch he needed to wear a helmet.

OK so yesterday it was about a 1000 degrees here, so I decided to take my boys and the 11yr old girl I babysit ( Kathy )for to my mother’s to swim and to have a movie night/sleep over.

I called my brother and he wanted to come swim too and said he would be on his way to pick us up shortly.

So we walk over to Kathy’s house to get her clothes for the night and we were greeted by her 8mo old Lahsa Apso.

Out of nowhere the dog starts frantically running in circles.

Kathy starts screaming and crying asking what’s wrong with him, and I no sooner get the words, ” He’s just playing ” out of my mouth and the dog falls over and goes into a very violent Grand Maul Seziure!

It lasted for about 3 minutes and the he just layed there in a rigomortis like state for another 10 minutes until he finally came around…..the vet said he has a seziure disorder and put him on phenabarbitol, he’ll be fine.

Let me tell you it was pandamonium with the kids, my 2 and KAthy were hyperventilating they were crying so hard…and my poor brother….

In the middle of all this I tryed to call his cell to tell him where we were, it didn’t answer and I thought I hung up the phone. Well I didn’t, so his voicemail was recording the whole thing.

He was driving to my house when he got the message and all he could hear were the kids crying and me saying, ” It’s OK it’s OK, it’s called a seziure….you have to calm down so I can help him, we’re going to get him to the Dr. right now. “

The poor kid thought it was one of my boys having a seizure and damn near broke the speed of sound trying to get to my house.

Then today while we were swimming at my mother’s, he neighbors came over to join us.

18 yr old girl, her 13 yr old brother and is 13 yr old friend.

While just swimming, the neighbor boy went underwater and smacked his head on the bottom of the pool. He didn’t dive in or jump….he just went from standing to swimming and managed to split his forehead open and gave himself a concussion.

He came up out of the water bleeding and disoriented. Both of his parents were at work, so I performed 1st Aid until the ambulance got there. Thankfully his father was only 5min away.

He never lost conciousness but came damn close a couple of times.

They released him from the hospital, he needed stitches, has a minor concussion, and looks like someone repeatedly punched him in the eye.

My brother and a family friend are taking the kids to the movies tomorrow, so I will be enjoying some much needed quiet time.

So how was your day?

OK which do you want first, the good news or the bad news? We’ll do the bad news first…

Bad News: I ate like a rabid wolf today.

Good News: I walked over 7 miles today.

Today was Jarod’s school picnic at the local amusement park. Holy cheese fries and cotton candy BatMan!

From snow cones to funnel cake, corn dogs to waffle cones…we ate it all.

I know we walked at least 7 miles because that’s the last number I remember reading off my pedometer before I lost it, so hopefully it will balance out?

We had a great day though, we arrived at the park around 11am and left just before 11pm. I am sunburnt and blistered and exhausted but it was well worth it.

The kids had a blast, Jarod was so excited to see his teachers from the last 3 years. Do you remember how odd it was to see your teacher out in public? Eating, laughing….being a real person?

I am also happy to report that things are back to normal with Ethan and myself. He knows how wrong he was and is doing his best to make amends.

He even won me a little stuffed bear at the park, of course I had to be a shit and win myself a stuffed dog the size of a small car.

I have two kids passed out on the couch I have to haul to bed, have a great one Buddies.

It has been a very trying weekend, I’m feeling conflicted about writing this. I don’t want to give the wrong impression of my husband, but I need to get this off my chest….

Ethan and I do not fight often, maybe a couple of times a year, BUT…when we do fight it’s all out warfare and always about the same topic.

He has a problem processing stress, so whenever he is feeling overwhelmed or stressed out he refuses to talk about it and just supresses it, sort of.

It’s a bunch of subtle things…heavy sighs, closing the cupboard doors a little too hard, pounding on the computer keyboard, ect…

By the end of the day the tension in the house is palpable and I have spend the majority of that day saying things like, ” What’s wrong?”
and ” Are you OK? “  Knowing all the while that a fight is brewing, and fielding those questions about him from everyone he comes in contact with that day.

I’m from the position of  ‘If you don’t want to talk about what is bothering you, don’t make it obvious to everyone that you are upset.’  

By 4pm the shit had hit the fan, and we were in a full on screamer. The kids were at the park with my Mother.

Nothing like this has EVER happened before, but during the arguement Ethan flipped out and smashed a very sturdy, expensive, wooden TV table into about 15 pieces.

He was totally red in the face, screaming at the top of his lungs, and slammed his fists into the table and sent the pieces flying.

I grew up in a house like that with a man (father) who would take these childish, rage filled tantrums and destroy things. I WILL BE GOOD AND GOD-DAMNED IF I WILL LIVE LIKE THIS NOW!

He swore that had the kids been home it never would have happened, to me that implys that his behavior was by choice.

It seems pretty cut and dried to me, either he was totally out of control or this stunt was a calculated move. He said that he couldn’t answer that because either way he looks like an asshole….I agreed!

I do not believe Ethan would ever hit me, but I would be a fool not to recognize that this is always how abuse starts, and I told him so.

I also told him in no uncertain terms ( I will spare you the string of explatives I used while doing so ) that if he EVER pulled another stunt like this again I would divorce him…I meant it and he knew it.

To top it all off, I got a call from a dear friend lastnight and she was crying hysterically.

She and her 12 yr old son were planning a day at an amusement park about an hour away a few days ago. Because of possible storms she decided to stay close to home and took him for ice cream and bowling instead.

So she came home much earlier than expected, and found the front door dead-bolted….unusual.

Finally she got the door open and found her husband stark naked and well….aroused.

She starts (loudly) asking what the hell was going on, and her son goes outside to avoid the fight. He walks around the house and catches a woman crawling out of the basement window.

The husband’s excuse?

He claimed that his friend stopped over unexpectedly and just as he was about to take a shower. after his shower he realized that he had no clean clothes in the bedroom and asked her to go to the basement to get him some.

He didn’t want to be ‘caught’ naked, so he locked the basement door, and when she was coming back upstairs she would knock to signal him. Then after he unlocked the door, she could pass the clothes through.

So the reason she was crawling out the window was because…..

He forgot he had locked her down there!

Can you believe this?

As you all know, Jarod has become a new Buddy and is trying to lose some weight, we have decided to do this together.

While I am excited by this, I was not prepared for the opening of the emotional floodgates I am currently experiencing.

You see, I have always been overweight. I was bribed, companioned, comforted, and rewarded with food as a child and then the next moment berated for eating it and gaining weight.

I was on the recieving end of some extremely hurtful comments from family members as a child, prodominantly, but not exclusively, from my father.

One of the many that sticks out in my mind was as I was walking out the door to go to the prom after taking pictures at his home. He pulled me aside and leaned in to say something quietly to me. Like a fool I thought he was going to say something nice or of the parental advise nature….big mistake.

He whispered in my ear, ” There is nothing funnier than a fat girl trying to look sexy. “  I think that pretty much sums it all up.

Years ago he claimed that while he was wrong in his approach, he was trying to motivate me to lose the weight.

I would sooner cut my tounge out than speak to either of my children like that, so the concept of that escapes me.

While everyone told me to lose weight, no one taught me how. While they berated me, they still fed me….and so on and so on.

So as I explain food labels and calories to my son, I can’t help but wonder why no one ever did it for me. It seems so simple. No one would hand a child a copy of War and Peace and demand that they read it without teaching them the alphabet first right?

Is it crazy that I find myself in the deep recesses of my mind jealous of Jarod and Logan’s childhood?

I am grateful for the perspective given to me by my experiences, and my ability to properly parent my children because of it. However, I still become enraged at the memories and astounded at the ability my parents had to go against the most natural instinct to protect and love their child unconditionally.

I know this all must sound extremely childish and at my age I should be over this by now.

All of this just crept up and smacked me in the face the other day when the ice cream truck was crusing through the neighborhood.

Jarod and Logan heard the music and went running to the jar of coins we keep on the counter for just this occasion. Half way out the door Jarod just stopped and said, ” I guess I can’t have ice cream truck anymore huh? “

I told him that of course he could, he just needed to pick one of the low fat sherbert things (Ninja Turtle or Vader heads) over the gooey chocolate things, and save it until later (he had just eaten).

He was excited and sprinted out the door. That’s when it hit me, in my house growing up that conversation would have gone a whole other dircetion. Starting with ‘ So this is how you think you’re going to lose weight? ‘ and ending in tears.

Ethan is beginning to think that I am planning to divorce him because of all the overnighters at my Mother’s house.

The kids and I are off again tonight after dinner, hopefully they will get used to the idea of her having a pool and some of the novelty will wear off soon.

I may have to invest in one of those God awful swimming caps. the chlorine is pulling the color out of my hair like crazy. I’m very quickly turning into a strawberry blonde….I don’t look good as a strawberry blonde. It clashes with all the grey.

I feel like I home just long enough to do the laundry and clean. It’s good exercise though.

Jarod is quite pleased with himself being a new Buddy and all, thank you to all who responded to him. I must single out one buddy in particular…Shannon. She sent Jarod a Star Wars booster note and he couldn’t be more thrilled.

I think she may be trying to out cool me!

So I’m off to get dinner on the table and then a swimming we will go.

OK, so I was wondering….who was the evil person who invented funnel cake?

We finally came home from my mother’s house this eveming just in time for the first of the many carnivals and street fairs that come to our little town every summer.

This one is especially fun for the kids as it sets up shop at the park diagonal from my house. The can see the whole shabang from their bedroom windows, here the music, and yes…smell the food.

Chese fries, and corn dogs, and snow cones…oh my! The even sell deep fried Twinkies and Oreos at the funnel cake stand. The Oreos and Twinkies are dipped in the funnel cake batter and then fried. If you are quiet you can actually hear your arteries slamming shut as you eat them.

I did succumb to the funnel cake Buddies, and I am paying for it. My body is angry at me. Truth be told…it was worth it, anthough I feel like I ate a bowling ball.

The kids had a blast, and we spent way too much money on games. My couch is covered in cap guns, beaded necklaces, and a variety of stuffed animals.

Thankfully there were no goldfish won this time. Last year the kids won three and they were dead within a week.

Finally I wanted to thank all of you for your words of encouragement and support after a very trying week. The unconditional support and friendship here never ceases to amaze me. 

Thank you! 

Shhh…listen, do you hear that? It’s quiet!

My house guests are gone and are setting up in a an apartment. Through the genorosity of my family and friends, we were able to gather together enough furniture, clothing, and appliances to get them started.

I have to say a special THANK YOU to my cousin and our Buddie Heather. As we speak she is driving to my house with her two kids in tow and a thrown out back from West VA to drop off some baby clothes and a swing. Heather…you rock!

Our final day of all living together ended on a somewhat sour note. We had all planned a trip to my mother’s to take the kids swimming Friday. Long story short, a problem with their car made it impossible for all of us to go. 

A problem that had I been made aware of it earlier, I could have made other arrangements for transportation for them.

When I expressed that I wasn’t happy about the situation and at the fact that my kids were going to be very disappointed, one of the women said, “Well, your kids are going to have to learn like ours did… things come up.” 

Granted my nerves were worn thin, I exploded! 

I screamed that while a great deal of their situation was beyond their control, the majority of it was caused by very poor, very selfish, and very badly thought out choices.

My children will never get used to the kaos that their’s live in! My children will never learn to accept that there is a chance of being homeless or hungry or filthy because of their parents’ lack of planning.

I hate to admit it, but the truth is that the situation they are in is mostly of their own making. While I feel compassion for them, I can’t help but feel angered by the decisions they have made and the effect it has had on their children.

Bottom line…you relinquish the luxury of making one bad call after another once you have children.

Anyway, they are on their way back to having a stable home of their own.

I will be back in full Buddy mode on Wednesday. The kids and I are going to be spending the next few days at my Mother’s pool.

Finally, a proud Mommy moment. Jarod brougt home his results of the standardized testing this year st school. He scored in the 98th percentile. He is quite proud, and I am very proud of him.