Feel the love

I’m obsessed with floor plans, carpet samples and day dreaming about being in my dream home.  I can’t stop thinking about it.  Last night as I was pouring over blue prints and pondering the pros and cons of various builders…  sacrifice yard space for the perfect house vs. a good yard outside a house I’m not in love with vs. paying $70k more to get it all… the N-Man appeared.  What is mommy doing?  I told him I was looking at houses.  Did he want to see?  Oh YES!  And as I explained the designs and pictues to him I asked, Would the N-Man like to go live in a new house?   He responded with an enthusistic YES followed by an impromptu, joyous dance.  When I asked him which one he wanted to live in, he backhanded my ego by emphatically declaring, I want to go live at Grandma’s House!!

Random updates out of the blue

1. The hoofed on is officially for sale.  I’m sad.  I’m ok with it.  I feel guilty.  I don’t want him to go.  I hope it happens fast.   When I bought him, I knew he wasn’t my forever horse.  He was largely an investment.  And as with any investment, you have to know when it’s time to sell.  And it’s time.  For a variety of horse business reasons, and even more personal ones.  The N-Man is about to turn 3.  (Excuse me for a moment, but how the @%@)&^(&#$ is he about to be THREE years old???)   And every parent knows that 3 is a magic number when it comes to activities.  Soccer, karate, suzuki violin… they all open their doors at three.  And suddenly, come spring, my time will be in demand for other things that are not all about me.  It makes no financial sense for me to own a horse I can only see two times a week when I can just take lessons on someone else’s.  And so, it is official.

2.  X.  He’ll never change.  He’ll never grow up.   Long ago he said he wanted to take the N-Man to visit relatives for Thanksgiving this year.  I was open to it.  Then he told me no, he couldn’t afford it.  I started making different mental plans for my holiday.  Then last week he told me that his father offered to pay for the plane tickets and wanted to know if I was ok with the N-Man going.  My biggest sticking point was making sure we balanced out his complete absences from my major holiday by ensuring he could spend Christmas Eve and most of Christmas Day here.  X’s immediate reaction to that suggestion was to invite himself over for Christmas dinner.

I just got off the phone with him and in discussing it again he once again announce that he would be coming for dinner.  I told him no and,  class=”hiddenSpellError” pre=”">suprise suprise “>suprise suprise, he argued with me.  Apparently because it’s HIS son he can do what he wants.  I offered to bring the N-Man to him later in the evening and he told me that wasn’t acceptable so he would be coming for dinner.  God help me for what I said next.   With no warning to me, my mouth suddenly blurted out  Look, I don’t think my boyfriend is going to be comfortable with my X husband having holiday dinner with us.  

No, you haven’t missed anything.  Yes, I just lied and told my X that I’m involved when I”m not.  But I swear it wasn’t a tactic for promoting jealousy or playing games.  I’m just at my wits end for how to deal with his bullying.  It happens less and less but when it does it’s still unbearable and it seems nothing I do even remotely works.  He just bulldozes me emotionally until I give in and do what he wants, because it’s easier than continuing to fight with him.  But I”ll tell you one thing.  I am NOT having him over for the holidays again. I did it last year and was miserable.  I”m not doing it again.  And blurting out what I did served it’s purpose.  So, to that extent, I make no apologies.

X’s immediate reaction to my non existant news was to tell me that he had to approve the people HIS son spends time with and he would take me to court to prevent ”this man”  from coming to my house for dinner.  Then he asked me how I would feel if he had a  girlfriend and had her over for the holidays instead of me.  Honestly, whatever.  It’s not my place to tell him who he can and cannot have in his life.    I don’t want to have a pretend family dinner with him.  Does he seriously believe that just because we were once married we are still so entwined?  I just can’t wrap my brain around his though process at all.

3.  Aside from his ultimatum that I never date again, X also told me that if he takes the N-Man for Thanksgiving, I have to take them both to the airport.  I told him no on that point too and again he argued.  I have a car seat in the car.  Um, so does he last time I checked.  He needs help in the airport with the N-Man.  Um, so maybe you shouldn’t be traveling with him if you can’t handle it.  He doesn’t want to pay to park his car.  Not my problem.  He finally told me we’d discuss it later and I just reminded him that, no, the issue was resolved. 

It just never changes and it never will.   So long as he gets his way he’s happy.  If he has to compromise anything his mission is to make the entire world a living hell until he does get his way.  I absolutely hate that I have to share my child with this person.

4.  On a more positive note, I’m in love.  Not with a person, but with a house.  And the timing may be perfect.  I love the house that I’ve been renting the past two years, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not our forever home.  As much as I love dating this house, I do not want to marry it.   One mile northwest of us though, there is one that I’m falling for…hard.  New construction in a darling little bungalow style community.  All the same school districts.  Almost exactly the same amenities as my current house, only with bigger rooms, a mud room entry perfect for exploding children, and a full basement to grow into (ie a full basement to lock screaming boys in when the N-Man is older and wants to have friends over to sleep.)  I’ve even picked out the lot I want.     End of the row with green belt open space on one side, backs up to a community playground, only one physical neighbor.  And it won’t likely be released for sale until late spring/early summer.  Exactly the time I’ll be serious about writing a contract.  But don’t hold me to committing.  I reserve the right to change my mind 1,001 times between now and then.

Now what?

I was originally told it would take two or three months to resolve.  Instead it is going to be only one week.  Last week the N-Man made a spontaneous statement that his “Tata” hurt him and described, in anatomically correctly language, the hurt being to his private parts. Social services took notice and got involved. 

When I first had contact with the crisis worker, she described to me a lengthy investigative procedure, during which the N-Man would not be allowed to have any contact with X.  I felt a tangled mix of relief and despair for my child at that thought.  I haven’t slept since it started.  I’m blatantly depressed.   And today, everything changed.  Working in this field, I should not be surprised.   When a two and a half year old makes any kind of statement it should be taken with a grain of salt because, even as verbal as the N-Man is you can never be certain of the context and they are not usually able to follow up with a detailed statement.  Unless there are witnesses or some other physical evidence, there is nothing that can be done.  And that is exactly how it’s panning out. 

The new, assigned investigator came to my house to meet me and the N-Man.   Fickle little boy that he is, he chose today of all days to play coy, be modest about his crazy advanced verbal abilities, clam up, and decide he wanted nothing to do with a visitor he’s never met before. She and I tried for an hour to get him chattering but he was not going to have any of it.  

As she left I asked her what the next step was and was informed that because of his tender, non verbal years, unless she was able to obtain an additional disclosure from him, the police were declining to do any investigation of their own, as it would be for naught.  So she’ll call X, schedule a home visit, which will go well because his mother is back in town and, unless X offers up any explicit information, HA, things will be over.   That’s it.   The file will be closed as unfounded/inconclusive.   Unless someday the N-Man says something more, we’ll never know what happened or what he meant.  The child welfare professional in me fully understands and accepts that reality.  The mama bear wants to throw up.

I don’t know what’s worse.  Knowing a  declaration of that magnitude came out of my child’s mouth or, one week later, having to send that child back over to the person he stated hurts  him.  Do I think X did what our adult minds automatically assume?   I don’t know.  There are a lot of things X has done in the past that I never would have expected so I don’t know what to believe when it comes to that man.  I know I don’t want to believe it.   But I do know there are numerous other things, lack of proper diapering, nutrition, and supervision, that happen when his mother is gone.  So what am I supposed to think?

 How am I supposed to feel knowing what the statement was and that a so called “investigation” that couldn’t really be done yielded a whole lot of nothing either way?  I’m supposed to send him back over there like nothing ever happened? How do I do that? How do I abide by the advice of the co-parenting class I as required to take during our divorce and just sit by and trust, as opposed to  conducting an inquisition the moment he comes through my safe door?  How do I go back to where I was last week?  HOW?  I wish I could gather up my sweet, tiny, little boy and just flee this God forsaken city that I never wanted to live in in the first place and that, at best, I tolerate  because of X, and go anywhere else.

If, at the front end, it felt like a kick to the gut  today’s knowlegdge feels like more of the same but with a pointed, steel toed boot.

From the mouths of babes

If you had timed your reprieve just so and been in the front, first floor women’s restroom of the Denver Museum of Natural Science around noon today, this is the conversation to which you would have been lucky enough to have been privy, coming from the farthest stall on the right.

Mommy’s going pee pee!

That’s right.  Mommy’s using the potty.

Mommy pee pee!!

Yes N.  Mommy’s going pee pee.

Mommy going poop?

No, Mommy’s just going pee pee.

Mommy make poop from your bottom?

No. Not now.

Mommy make poop from your bottom?  Where’s mommy’s bottom?

(Silence.  Praying no one else is in the bathroom.)

Mommy, where is your bottom?   (tries to pull me off the toilet) Look!  There it is!  There’s Mommy’s bottom! No.  No poop.  Mommy not making poop from the bottom.

(Still mortified. Still praying.)

Mommy!   Look!  Mommy’s bottom!  Mommy’s bottom is BIG!!!

You spend all that time teaching them to talk and communicate and looking forward to the day they can just tell you what’s on their mind instead of screaming and crying , and then something like this happens and all you want them to do is SHUT. UP.

Tease!

I spent the afternoon and evening with X.  First at the N-Man’s medical testing appointment followed by a happy family outing to Chuck E Cheese as a reward for being so brave.  You can decide who was bravest and most deserved the reward  because, you’d better believe, I have a tale to tell.  But it’s going to have to wait.

Most importantly, it appears that the N-Man’s kidneys are up and running perfectly and that his urine is only flowing one direction. WHEW!!  But after enduring a tube up the willy and being flushed out with radioactive, or whatever you call it, x-rayable dye while being held down at all four corners, he’s in less than a stellar mood, understandably with a death grip on his junk, shrieking in pain every time he comes close to peeing.  It’s just heart wrenching.  And so much for potty training progress.

Anyway, my attention is needed elsewhere tonight so you’ll just have to wait with bated breath until tomorrow for the other details.

Keeping a promise

I said I was going to write every day for the rest of August, so here I am.  I also  said it might be painful and disconnected.  You were warned.  I had what turned out to inexplicably be an emotionally draining day and presently an over exhausted N-Man is wrapped around my ankles shrieking because… oh, who knows why he’s shrieking?  I don’t.  And most certainly, neither does he.  So short and sweet today.  Off to tend to my motherly duties.

Back on the horse

They say it takes three months to get into shape and three days to completely fall out when you stop.  Been there done that, time and time again.  I know good and well from my re-introduction to riding almost two years ago just how painful it is to get back up on the horse.  How discouraging it is to look back on your past glory while you plod slowly along in the present, thighs burning every step of the way, wondering how you ever did it and if you’ll ever be able to do it again.

Well apparently the same can be said for writing.  It’s been ages since I sat down and made a focused effort to keep things flowing, giving in to excuse after excuse for not being around.  I have amazing thoughts that never get put down on “paper.”  Questions I would love to bounce off the singleton community.  Diddies from the N-Man that never stop.  So what gives?   Resolution:  every day in the rest of August I WILL write.  I will be here.  I will put something, anything out there.  It’s the only way to get back in the game.  It may hurt.  It may be incoherent.  But it. will. be.

To kick things off, five random things that have recently crossed my mind:

1.  The N-Man came home from Florida with what turned out to be a urinary tract infection that spread to his kidneys.   Thus the week long, crazy high fever.  Later this week he has to go in for more tests and an ultrasound to see if there was any permanent damage caused.  Mama bear is worried.  It’s hard enough when he’s in pain, but when that pain involves sticking tubes up his junk…   Oh.  And if X tries to engage one more doctor in a conversation about circumcision because of this I won’t be responsible for my actions.

2.  I loathe my appearance right now.  Not right this second, but in general.   I look tired.  I look old.  My hair is a hippy disaster yanked back in a perma-ponytail because I don’t have an hour a day to blow dry and style it.  Yes.  That’s how long this rat’s nest takes to put in proper order.  I want to chop it off again.  Go back to boy short.  Been there plenty of times and always love it, so why am I so scared to do it again?  Because someone recently told me men prefer longer hair.  And I want to bitch slap myself for even remotely indulging that thought process.  Screw what the general male population prefers.  I want my hair short.  Hmmm… no horse show next weekend.  I think I’ll set up an appointment for a serious mowing and some ridiculously fun colors next Saturday.  I’m also pondering a little nip, tuck to the prodigious proboscis, but we’ll see.  I do guarantee that that most certainly won’t happen next weekend between morning coffee and afternoon stress relief on the elliptical.

3.  Horse shows.  UGH.  I rode like crap today.  No really.  I swear I’ve done this before.  But since so many of the ridiculously thin early twenty somethings that dominate the adult division rode beautifully, but off course, I still managed to pin in every class.  My trainer says I’m definitely getting better.  Hard to believe her on a day like this but deep down I know she’s right.  So no more self loating.  Can’t win ‘em all.

4.  I’m contemplating selling the hoofed one.  No. SERIOUSLY.  I know!  CRAZY!  Not right away, but like in a year or so.  No I’m not hanging up my boots again but as the N-Man gets older he’ll need more and more of my time and the responsibility of actually owning a horse will become harder and harder to fit in.  I can half lease a horse and not have all the vet bills and time commitment to deal with.   Plus, I have to remind myself that I bought him as an investment horse.  It will be hard to justify not crying as I bid him farewell when doing so will  end in enough money to make a down payment on a house.  But right now it’s just a thought.  It’s not going to happen in the near near future.

5.  When making a “Friday night mistake” it is not enough to just ensure that your “mistakee” lives in a different part of town.   Because if said “mistakee”  also happens to work in your neighborhood and innocently stops off at the same grocery store where you shop to pick up a few things on the way back to his different part of town, you could possibly find yourself suddenly ducking and running down the frozen food aisle with your pre-schooler squealing in delight in the shopping cart and catching a raging case of frost bite from stuffing your head in a locker full of frozen brussel sprouts to hide until said “mistakee” has safely left the premises.  Just a thought.

Breeding a brainiac

Today as I drove the N-Man over to X’s house, brand new Wiggles CD happily blaring the lion song, I looked up at the rear view mirror and noticed he had that look on his face. The look that tells me the wheels are turning out of control and I’d better hang the heck on.  I turned down the music and inquired.   What’s up, Baby?   He scrunched up his face and put on an intense, serious look that mirrors his dad exactly.  Yeah. (That’s his new schtick.  Every sentence starts with yeah. ) Lion not king of the jungle.  Lion lives on the savannah.

Coke zero out the nose, all over the steering wheel and windshield.   HowTF am I supposed to respond to a two and a half year old who wants to debate the  environmental distribution and geological make up of panthera leos habitat?