odds and ends

Summer is winding down. And I am coming to the realization that I have wasted most of this summer in kind of an emotional coma, a warped kind of paralysis because of this whole custody thing. Well, the hearing for that is over, and for now Big J is staying, but the battle is far from won because the hearing accomplished absolutely. The judge's decision was to do nothing and revisit the whole issue in six months. So there is another hearing hanging over our heads like a bloated thundercloud scheduled for February. Which means more latent stress. We can't really relax--not completely. We are still under the microscope over the whole thing and it is quite a bummer.

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Now I can waste the rest of the summer worrying about Eighty-Eight Fingers starting kindergarten. He is not ready. He can't sit still. He blasts through the house in constant motion, often flapping his arms as if they were wings--subconsciously--he isn't playing. I worry he will be labeled. I dream of labels like ADHD and LD, I-teams, tests, and doctors that I fear are in our future. I worry he will be teased because he is different. Every time I drive to they grocery store, I pass the grade school with its big, bright play set and oceanic green lawn, and I am flooded again with worry. I never worried about The Girl starting school, not once. And she was my first one. Shouldn't that have made it more difficult for me?

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Remember this? They offered me a job in the wall decor and paint division (I don't know why--I would have preferred the garden section but whatever) for when the new store opens in the fall. I went through the wringer: the application, the two interviews, the two sets of personality tests, and the oh-so-fun drug screen. But, after all is said and done, I turned them down, I wasted everyone's time. Hubz is still going to work his part time job which is much more lucrative--pays about three times what I would make as a Lowe's clerk (now that we don't have to worry about child support being hiked up because of Big J moving back) and I am still going to be the House Mommy. A part of me feels the loss of going out in public and interacting with adult strangers and coworkers on a regular basis. But another part of me, I think a larger part, is overwhelmed with relief. I have become so used to and dependent on this routine we have here, so comfortable in my role as the House Mom, that leaving that and joining the general public working class kind of terrifies me. Once I acknowledged the terror, I realized it was more than fear--the terror felt strange to me. It felt out of place. I mean, it is a job, billions of people have them, I have had several myself in the past. But I did not want to give up my time here with my family, not a minute of it. I am not ready to commit hours of my time to someone else’s' business when I still have my business here. My Fellers are still little, only 2 1/2. Eighty-Eight Fingers is still a handful, and I think that even though he will be in half-day kindergarten in the fall, he will still need me. I have a lot on my plate here and it exhausts me to think about giving up much of my time and energy to working for someone else right now. Maybe someday, but not yet. Looking back at the kid I once was, I never would have imagined myself as a housewife, and I never, ever would have imagined that I would have reveled in being a housewife.

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My daughter and I had a Mommy and Me day Wednesday(is she too old to have a "Mommy" at thirteen?). We went shopping at the mall. She took me to stores filled with fashions straight out of my middle school/high school years. The colors, the prints, the leggings, and leg warmers. Ugh! I thought at first someone had slipped me something in my Gloria Jeans Cinnamon Hazelnut coffee and I was on a strange mental trip to hell. But no! The caffeine buzz soon abated and the stuff was still everywhere. Then she took me to her favorite place ever: Hot Topic. It was like entering some satanic cult hidden cave or something. Everything was red and black and skulls stared at me from the screen-printed fronts of thousands of t-shirts. Someone was screaming bloody murder over the sound system. Slowly, I became aware that that was supposed to be music. I thought I would be attacked by the fifty-facial-piercings apiece clerks with Mohawks and shitkickers and spiked dog collars. My daughter asked me if I would buy her some neon pink fishnets. I told her No and the music seemed to scream louder. My daughter sulked at me like the skull shirts. On the way home she told me she wanted to get a snakebite. I said Give me your arm. She said No, Mom. A snakebite is two lip piercings here and here (pointing to where the canine teeth or "fangs" would be. Maybe I was still in hell, after all. I was wondering if my trip would ever end.

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I got to do something I haven't done in years Thursday. I slept in until 8:11 AM! The Fellers were all tuckered out from their day at Grandma's (they were there with Daddy while the Girl and I had the Mommy and Me Day) running around jacked up on sugar, playing with abandon, and taking no nap because there are No Rules at Grandma's. So they slept in. So I slept in. It was absolutely blissful!