So last month and this month were really quite unimpressive for the keyword searches leading to this site. Have I really gotten all that dull and boring? Well, perhaps I have since I don’t update that much. With the new Netrillium invoice coming in telling me that my website is about to cancel should I not pay them this month, I’m reminded of just how much this website is a money pit. No, it doesn’t cost me all that much, and I buy in semi-annual chunks so I don’t have to worry about it for 6 months at a time. What I mean by money pit is that I don’t update it often enough to feel like I’m getting my money’s worth out of it. It’s like a gym membership. You keep pouring money into it and not using it.
However, having said that, I just can’t bring myself not to have it. I think I’m in love with the idea more of having a place to write than actually writing. What if I should get the notion to journal about something? What if something huge happens in my life and I’ve no place to write it down? Sure, I can go back to my free blogger website, and undoubtedly I will when I’m further into the poor house, but it’s just not quite the same. Even with the massive upgrades they’ve done, it’s good but it’s just not ‘my personal space’ in which I paid good money for and.. well, yeah. I like WordPress, a lot.
Which reminds me, I probably should log into my Blogger account. I’m not sure exactly when they delete you, or if they delete you but the last thing I need to do is worry about creating yet another user name.
I wish you guys lived in my head. I know that’s probably a scary prospect for some of you but really, I wish you could. I write the most fantastic entries in my head. They are full of wit and humor and wonderful good reading-ness. Oh and good grammar, definitely good grammar. Sometimes they are sentimental or thoughtful and othertimes they are silly. It all just depends on what’s going on.
The kids are doing fine. The Kid is having a very hard time in school with his behavior though. He’s not a bad kid and so I don’t know why he’s acting out like this. I can gather that some of or most of it has to do with the situation with his grandmother. They’ve put the Hunk’s mom back on 24-hour care. He went to visit her and she told him she just didn’t know why she was still here. She didn’t know why God hadn’t taken her yet, she’s ready. She told him she’s waiting for “Daddy” to come get her. The Hunk has called his father Daddy since he could talk and she’s always referred to him that way and just hearing her say that she’s waiting for her husband to come for her… it was heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. The vision it conjured up in my mind of this man coming to get the woman he loved for 30+ years, to take her out of her pain and her suffering into a place of peace and love to be with him for eternity… well that’s how I want to go.
Back to the Kid though, I know he’s probably acting out because of her limited time with us. I also think he’s pretty stressed out with school. It seems the more he gets in trouble and the angrier and stricter we get the worse the problem gets. Nothing is working and nothing is changing and we’re all just frazzled. Well the Kid and I are since I’m the one that deals with him every day after school. I told the Hunk that from now on I’m not even going to look at his behavior contract anymore. For the rest of this week and next week, I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to know how he’s doing. He (the Kid) and I just need to be ourselves and not worry about all the tension and stress. The Hunk who is the far calmer and more patient parent than I is going to be handling his behavior for this trial period. He sees him in the morning before school and signs his contract every morning so he sees how he’s doing. I told the Kid this wasn’t a free pass to do whatever the heck he wanted in school. If he doesn’t behave, he’s still going to be in trouble, but it is going to be by his father. Not me. I think that scares him more because the Hunk rarely is home to actually “be angry”. It’s all fun and games when Daddy gets home. So we’ll see. I hope that the Hunk can reason with him, and encouragement between the two of us (and not my feeling like I’m at the end of my rope will help). Today is the first day that we’re going to try this out. I just don’t know what else to do.
The Kidlet is a walking amusement park on the other hand and while he makes me happy, I’m also incredibly sad. I don’t have the same stresses and tensions with the younger boy as I do the older and sometimes I feel like I can enjoy the company of the younger one more than the older one. That sounds like such favoritism to me and I definitely do not want to play favorites. There’s guilt there. The Kidlet has such imagination in his play than the Kid did when he was his age. The Kid was content to entertain himself with his toys, cars, whatever. He’s always been laid back, easy going and observant. The Kidlet is the opposite, he is constantly in an imaginary world of invisible things. He gives me invisible presents all day, he fights invisible enemies, and he saves invisible friends. When he does something wrong he blames “The Creepy Guy”. If I wasn’t so mad that there was water all over the bathroom floor and tha the was soaked head to toe I might have thought it more funny at the time. When I asked further who this creepy guy was, he said, “He’s the creeeepy guy…” and wiggles his fingers in that ’spooky’ kind of way. Apparantly this creepy guy lives far far away in the *finger wiggle* creeeepy house.
What have I been doing? Working. I worked for a solid 8 days straight, got a day off, worked a day, got a day off and I’m going to work either the next 2 or 3 days and then get either Sat or Sunday off. Monday the head specialist for my department is going to be back from her time out for her surgery so I will go back to being tuesdays and every other weekend. That is if the person I’m temping for decides that she’s going to retire. She’s on medical leave so technically the job isn’t mine to keep. I’m filling in for her. If she comes back then I’ll put my 2 week notice in again and if she decides to stay gone, then I believe the position is mine. I don’t want to come out and say I hope she doesn’t come back but I very much hope she doesn’t come back. While staying at home every single day has it’s appeal, I actually love my job. The only thing I hate about it is the early mornings. We’ll know the 17th (my birthday, woo) if she’s going to come back or not because that is the day that her leave is over. She did tell the head of my department that she thinks she might want to come back and work 1 day a week, but then again, she might not. So I don’t know if they are going to let her come back and work one day a week or not. That’d put me at every other weekend working. That might not be bad but I’d be out about 50 bucks a paycheck, and when your paycheck is already on the slim side, every little bit helps.
So the gas prices are falling down and it’s been spectacular. I know not all of you are in a place where the gas is really cheap but can I just tell you that waking up to 1.88 a gallon was fantastic. It took only 20 bucks to fill up my car and the empty light was on. It used to cost us 40 bucks. We were spending 80 dollars a week on gas, and now, if the prices hold out for a while (can you see me turning blue from holding my breath?) it will only cost us 40 or less. The Hunk won’t be traveling as much downtown as he was before, about half of what he was doing so that’s really going to save us on gas too.
(The Kidlet just came in, opened up my cell phone and said, “Hellooo Creepy Guy.”)
I know that I’ve never actually said or told you the situation with the Hunk from a year ago that basically shattered my world, my future, my marriage and what I felt like at the time, my entire existance. The thing that forced me to get a job, to live through the toughest time of my life and to make it out on the other side. We hae made it out on the other side, and still making it. We’ve worked really really hard on our marriage and he has worked really, really hard on getting his life together.
The reason he was having to go downtown so much is because a year ago last August he was arrested for possession of crystal meth. He had been using for an entire year and I had no clue what was going on. He lost his job because of it and it nearly destroyed our marriage. It wasn’t just the using or finding out he was arrested for drugs, it was the behavior before finding all this out. The constant money being gone out of hte account only to have him tell me he loaned it to friends (when we were short for rent and food) and the constant avoidance he’d do. I thought he might have been having an affair. It got that bad. I don’t know why I didn’t allow myself to read the signs. I guess I just could never believe that about him. He wasn’t so anti-drug but it just wasn’t a part of our life. I knew he’d done some drugs in the past but the way it was presented to me, and as he believes it was at the time, it was recreational testing. He was a young guy and tried it out. It was like 15 years before I came along. I had no reason to believe that he’d go back to them. He didn’t believe he’d start using again.
His work began to run him into the ground though, and he got in with some guys that did speed to help them cope with the 16 hr/6 day work weeks. He fell into it and said everything was ok for about six months. Then that’s when it started to get control over him more than he had control over it and that’s when things started going bad for us. He wouldn’t talk to his mom, he’d never answer his phone. He’d go out for cigarettes and be gone for 4 hours. He once told me he was going to drop off his mom’s car. It was around 9 p.m. and he didn’t get back until 3 a.m. That was one of the worst nights in my life. His only explanation was that he’d gone to an adult store looking for a gift for me and lost track of the time. I knew that the excuse was flimsy. I could care less what they have in an adult store and he knows that. He had the bag though from the store and what else could I do but keep ranting and raving? (No, I’m not going to tell you what was in the bag and no, I wasn’t impressed.)
I begged him to get help and he said he didn’t need it. He said he had control now because losing his family was the worst thing that could happen to him. He got a job at Target only to be fired 4 weeks later when his background check came back as do not proceed. Soon as he was out the door he was calling his dealer. I didn’ tfind out about it until 2 days later when I came home from work early and he was in the bathroom with the door closed and had the bedroom door locked. It was suspecious to me and turns out that while he wasn’t using at that moment, he had the day before. I left him that night and thought that I was a fool to stay with him to begin with and I felt cheated and betrayed and gullable and livid and angry just doesn’t even cover it.
Due to the fact that we had no money, I came home with the boys and for a long while we were just two zombies living in the same house. I think either one of us was so afraid of saying or doing something that the other would either fall apart or just check out entirely and leave. I felt so ready to so many times. I was in so much pain I was numb, if that makes any kind of sense.
Our first glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel came when he had his first court date. The judge was sending people to jail left and right and we both were scared that was going to be him. He said he sat there wondering if he had kissed the boys goodbye before we left and if that was the last time he was going to see them, and he worried, of all things, about me having to drive home by myself knowing how sheer my terror would be at having to drive the crazy freeways downtown just to get home. If I even knew how to get home (which from downtown I don’t). His lawyer called us out of the courtroom and told us about a court sanctioned rehab program called D.I.R.E.C.T (not sure what it stands for anymore) and that the judge might be agreeable into letting the Hunk go through the 1 year program since this was his first offense and he had a clean record. If the judge agreed, upon graduating the program in a year all charges would be dropped and in 3 years his record could be expunged, meaning this wouldn’t show up on his background anymore.
I saw the light in the Hunk’s eyes at having the opportunity to have this mistake erased from his record and his life and when the judge agreed to his entering the program, he ran with it. This program works in 4 phases. Each phase requires you to complete a certain amount of things before moving on to the next phase, including not being able to move ahead until you’ve been in a certain phase for x number of weeks. It doesn’t allow you to coast through it. it doesn’t allow for lip service. It is such a good program that really holds the person accountable for their actions and helps them.
The hunk is in phase 3 and is about to move into phase 4 (the last) by the end of the month. This means that instead of having to go to 3 NA meetings, 2 drug tests a week (plus any random tests they want to throw in there) and having to go to drug court (just court in which the progress of everyone is gone over) twice a month, he’s only going to have to go and get tested once a week, he only has to attend 2 meetings a week and 1 drug court a month. He’s doing exceptionally well. I’m so so proud of him. He celebrated his 1 year sobriety in late October and things are so much happier for us now.
I still worry sometimes when he doesn’t answer the phone, or when I see money was taken out of the account but he always calls me right back (he’s usually just really busy at work or driving and can’t answer) and he always has paid a bill with the money he’s taken out and I can see that the bill was paid. He’s given me control of the money and lets me hang on to the atm card, although I have let him have it more often since he’s doing more of the shopping than just me these days. His willingness to do anything that makes me feel comfortable is a complete turn around compared to what he used to be.
So, there you have it. That huge big thing that nearly ended my family as we knew it all in a very small nutshell. There were so many emotions and things I was going through, and things that happened but that’s the gist of it and life right now is better than it was back then. He’s working full time at a job he likes, we have a new car that we love, I’m working a job I love but am still able to be home with my kids everyday. I’ve gotten my license after allowing 10 years of fear to steal that form of independence from me. We’ve come out of this huge and painful mistake better people I think. I also think we cherish each other more because of it. It definitely changes something when you’ve gone through the fire with someone. When you’ve had to bail them out of jail and see their shame and struggle to seperate the man from the mistake.
I don’t want to give the appearance that everything is just peachy now, but I finally can see my future again and for so long it was uncertain. He’s done right by his boys and by me in getting the help he needed and putting 110% of himself into it. I guess for him, the alternative was unthinkable.
Alright, loooooong entry but it’s been a while since I last wrote one. 
I have to go pick up the Kid from school. Talk at ya later!
