Yes, They Stayed

Depression BPD Borderline Personality DIsorder BipolarLook, the decision to leave the kids with Pat was impossible and yet obvious. I grieve not waking to their fighting and kissing them goodnight every night, but it was a decision that had to be made with logic and not emotion.

First, while I am biologically their mother, he has been their primary caregiver from day one. He knows them better than I do, he has attended to their needs more than I have. I would be taking them from the parent that has raised them.

Financially, he will get an increase in government aid this way that he wouldn’t otherwise get.  This may well make the difference between a roof over his head or not.

What do I do, have them live with me then put them in daycare 6 days a week while I work?

No, they are right where they should be.  My heart didn’t want to leave them with him, but it was sound, though painful, logic.  I’ll see them all the time.  Custody will be shared.  He will never deny me access.  It’s simply where they live.

It hurts like hell.

But the right thing is rarely easy and very rarely is the easy thing ever right.

He Gets His Tact From Me

BPD and ParentingMe to Pat: Why are you looking at me like that?

Thomas, very matter of fact: He thinks you’re funny looking.

Me: Thanks kid!

Thomas, still very matter of fact: You’re welcome.  Can we start the movie now?

 

Sorry guys, this psych class is kicking my ass.  I’m doing fabulous in it, though.  Rocking a 99% with 2/3rds of it graded.  However, it is very time-consuming.  Rumor has it my next class is a little less intense.  I could use the easy A.  I’m working for this one, even knowing the subject going in.

 

Ten

Borderline Personality Disorder and ParentingThomas,

I tried to write this for weeks. It was in fact “due” two days ago.  But trying to track down the words for my thoughts and feelings for you is not unlike trying to track down the Loch Ness Monster.  You know it’s there but good luck getting your hands on it.

What do you say about the person who made you a momma?  What do you say about the person who changed your life forever?  I love no one like I love you.  I don’t love you any more or less than I do Lucas and Samantha, but of you three, you were my first real, true love.  My heart grew to give you all equal room.  But equal does not mean the same.  No better.  No more nor less.  But not the same.

As I sit here trying to decide how to put this in words, I reflect on how much of your life I have missed due to my illness.  How many of your early years I was too sick to truly enjoy and properly file away into my momma memory.  I don’t have as many as I would like, but I have some important ones.

In no particular order:

1.  You were born 3 and half weeks early.  The doctors called you premature, I called you ready to get the party started.  You always have been one to prefer your own time frame for things.  Luckily, as far as being a touch early is concerned, you were healthy as can be.

2. You were so close to walking, that when your Grandma and I saw a baby push toy at a garage sale, we figured it might help you along and bought it for you.  You basically, took one look at it, took great insult, stood up, and walked from that moment on.  I’m only exaggerating a very, little bit.

3.  You will forever be my favorite person to sing Bohemian a cappella with.  I don’t care how  many times I get the teller line at work to break out into song with me, you being able to belt out the song I taught you to love when you were only 8-years-old, will forever remain one of my favorite things about you.

4. Dude.  You power read through the first Harry Potter in slightly over 24 hours.  That would be impressive even if I had let you read through the night like you wanted.  The fact you had to keep putting it down and still power read through it is amazing.  Also?  You are old enough that we can discuss books we both love together.

5. Speaking of reading: At the age of 9, your 3rd grade teacher could no longer test your reading level.  You weren’t just off her chart, you were off the elementary school chart.  And at the rate you are going, you’ll be off any middle school chart before you even reach 6th grade.  The government doesn’t even try to track you anymore.  You’re off all their charts as well.  My first and truest love in life has been and always will be books.  Raising a reader means that with all I’ve done wrong, I’ve done something very right.

6.  I remember sitting in Eddie’s living room, way back when you were little and dad and I rented a room in that house, and singing to you how you were just too good to be true.  Still true.  I may get so very angry at you sometimes but you are still too good to be true.

7. I remember the day you realized you were smarter than the rest of us.  You wanted something on the kitchen counter that at 18-months-old, you simply couldn’t reach.  So you looked down, saw the dog’s food dish, turned it over, stepped up, and suddenly could reach.  That was the day I gave up on ever being smarter than you.

8. The love you hold for your sister is fierce.  You do right by her, seeing as how you begged for her long before even Lucas was born.  You adore her and she adores you.  It is beautiful to behold.

9. This entry from the blog I made for you when you were super little, well before your current.  You were 4 in this story.

We went to this Chinese buffet for dinner tonight.  And momma said if I ate a good dinner I could have ice cream.

Me: I want rainbow ice cream.
Momma: They don’t have rainbow ice cream.
Me: Yes they do, I smell it.
Momma: You smell rainbow ice cream?
Me: Yes…. I do!

Daddy gets back to the table and momma leaves to get me my “soft serve”.  Whatever that is.  After a second she comes right back, hands empty with a confused look on her face.

Momma: Pat when did they get rid of the soft serve machines and get an ice cream bar?  And since when do they have rainbow sherbet?
Daddy: I don’t know but you should get him some.
Momma: I am…

She leaves again and then comes back this time with some rainbow ice cream.

Momma: How did you know they had rainbow ice cream?
Me: I smelled it!
Daddy: He told you!

No, I never had a chance to see it.  I’m not tall enough to see the ice cream in the bar.  And no one else was eating any.  No one told me.  Momma is really confused as to how I knew.  Apparently she doesn’t believe me when I say I could smell it.

10. If all your girlfriends can be as sweet as your first girlfriend at the age of 3, Katie, we’ll be set!

 

Love you, kiddo!  You drive me crazy, but I love you!

 

Random Bits

None of these are long enough for a separate blog post all their own, so they are having a lesson in sharing.

Speaking of sharing, my boys share a room.  And almost every morning they wake up ready to brawl, waking the rest of us with the sound of their fighting.  I say “almost” because once a week they wake up in separate homes.  One with my mom, the other here.  So I’ve decided to take a creative approach.  Mind you, I think so far out of the box that my box doesn’t even exist.  What the hell is a box?  This box you speak of, does it hold candy?  Only then am I interested.  Or, maybe if it were a box of puppies.  I digress.  So I’ve decided that from now on, every morning that they wake up and immediately start fighting, that night they have to share a bed.  My husband finds this twisted.  I argue the horrors of sharing a twin bed might shock them into getting along.  Oh, and we’ll go top bunk since it is much harder to fall out of when your brother tries to shove you to your own side.

Hey!  Speaking of falling out of the top bunk:

The NASA technology is gone, now there is just a brace in its place for the next 1-2 weeks.  But only when he plays.  It’s still healing but he needs to be able to let it move when he isn’t being rough and tumble.

On a different note, Guess who is getting a perfect 100% in the first college class she’s taken in over 5 years?  That’s right, this bitch!  It started easy but once you see it possible, you keep it possible.  If you tell yourself you’ll settle for a pass, you’ll only pass.  When you tell yourself you are an A student and you will pull in A’s you get A’s.  I’m telling myself I am capable of perfection. (I’ll settle for A’s.  What do you think I am, crazy?  Yeah, don’t answer that.)

My husband told me he broke the hair clippers, basically meaning I can’t shave my hair off anymore.  And that’s how I got blood stains on my hands.  Then he told me he fixed them so I brought him back.  Slightly zombified.  Slightly.  Or, it’s possible he only seems like a zombie because he threw out his back?  This paragraph has no real purpose other than OMG I finally can get rid of this hair that is way too long.  I spent a week thinking I could maybe grow out my hair.  HAHAHAHAHAHA.  No.  It’s touching me. (I’m not crazy, I’m eccentric.)

Any job letter of reference that starts out

Jane Doe can rappel down skyscrapers with a single bound.  More importantly, you can trust Jane’s set-up so that you too can rappel down skyscrapers, in a single bound of trust that she can get you safely to the bottom.

is a winner.  You want me to write you a letter of reference.  I’m qualified.

I’m a touch slap happy.  We just survived the 1st of the month in banking with an entire 7 employees for the entire branch.   We’ve been known to consider ourselves short on the 1st with a full 12 employees.  Tired doesn’t cover it.  But I’m flying high because I took on a role of leadership over something we were trying to logic out.  I presented the plan, ran it, and it worked like I knew it would.  Flying.  High.

Hey, speaking of leadership.  I would have had a chance to get a promotion that I turned down.  Again, not crazy.  First, starting school and being promoted within weeks of each other does not lead to perfect scores in school.  Oh, I’d still pass, but at what cost?  Sanity is a fragile thing.  And that box is currently upside down as it is, as “this side up” points to the floor.  Oh hey!  There’s my box!

But also, this promotion had I been given it, would have taken me from my branch.  It isn’t like I won’t ever leave my branch, but we are days away from being down to 2 tellers.  One of which, not me, is pregnant due to pop in less than 2 months.  Full line, FYI, is 6-7.  Me leaving before we hire at least 3 more would cripple the branch.  And I can’t do that to my team.  I can’t.  If I had absolutely nothing left to learn from them, it would maybe be different.  Hell, my boss would push me out the door.  She’d rather that than hold me back.  But I still learn something new there daily.  Plus, we have a new teller supervisor(!!!!!!) starting next week.  I am so excited to work with her.  She will be amazing for our line, branch, team.  She use to be a trainer.  She trained all of our personal bankers in fact.  Moral is high just thinking about her joining our team.  It’s her job I’d be taking at the other branch.  It’s a position I’m after in general.  But I’m excited to learn from her first, and then move on.

Finally, and the boss lady only told me about this after I decided not to apply, the other branch is so slow.  I mean so very, very slow.  There isn’t even anything to clean or organize.  I’d last about 2 weeks before they’d have to lock me away because I tried to put the ceiling tiles in proper order based on how many dots or bumps or specks of dust they have.  Hint: it’s so clean there is no dust.

But what matters is that the boss lady told me about the position because she thought I’d be perfect for it, and confessed she got depressed at the idea of losing me.  And not just because I’m a warm body running a window.  And when she told the other manager to expect my application, and then told me I should email the other manager if I wasn’t going to apply after all, the other manager actually put up some fight.  I don’t know what boss lady told her, but my heart if full of warm and fuzzies.  Perhaps my ego too.

Perhaps my ego needs those warm and fuzzies.

Perhaps my boys will be grateful they have adequate jammies as they spend a few night crammed into a twin sized bed, learning how not to fight.

Perhaps I can pull a perfect 100% in every class straight through my bachelor’s and my MBA.

Perhaps you too can rappel down skyscrapers in a single leap of faith in Jane’s rope work.

Perhaps her name isn’t really Jane Doe.

Perhaps I am even more eccentric than you anticipated.

Perhaps.

Dance of the Dragon

If I have my way, my say, Sammy won’t be the only one taking a class teaching poise and grace.  I hope to, around that same time if not sooner, get the boys in martial arts.

I don’t have a specific form in mind.  I’ll go with what impresses me, has a class schedule we can get to, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to attend.

Yes, I know all 3 kids in something has me looking at 200$, or so, a month.

My hope is that martial arts will teach the boys self-discipline, grace, coordination, focus, and listening skills.  And with it a sense of inner strength and self value.

Lucas, whom is set to be home schooled, will also find himself around other kids at least once a week.  I can’t stress how important this is.  When he is around other kids, as I saw today on a playdate I set up for him, he still parallel plays like his sister does.  Yet when his brother is finally home from a day at school, he is so grateful to finally have someone to play with.  The kid boggles me.  Either way, though, I do see that if he isn’t in school he won’t learn how to manage social interaction, whether he misses it or not.

They both could use the self-discipline.

Now to free up about 200$ a month from my budget.  I am, however, working on this.  I’m just not sure to what success.

Only time will tell.

A Woman of Few Words

I spent all weekend at my mom’s doing laundry because my drier blew a fuse and while it’s a 3$ fix I had to order it in because this is a commonly needed part and local ran out.  Apparently this is the fuse that blows when trouble is brewing so it prevents more important shit from blowing, sparking, firing and burning.

So I wasn’t home to write.

Then oh hey, I’m a student now.  Turning work in and all, plus working nearly 50 hours this week to boot, so really, writing is the least of my concerns.  For a few days anyway.

So I decided to keep the 5 posts a week momentum going, I’d spread some baby joy.  I threw in the brothers for free.  I’m kind.