Flashback Friday

I am going to follow the "theme" that Jill over at Scarymomy started with her Flashback Friday. You know those uncomfortable questions that you are not quite sure what to say or how sarcastic you should be in your response. Go check out her post! After reading mine first of course!!!

( I would like to add that now that my atty is making progess in this case, I am not feeling quite as bad as I was. I am feeling much more confident and certain that my son will come home, and things will work out the way they are meant to be-my son home.)

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

How do you do it?
How do you do it?I just don't know how you do it.How do you do this?How do you make that trip so often?How, how, how.I hear that an awful lot. I always have the same answer. I do this because I have to. I really do not have any choice. Sure I could not go. But is that really an option? This is my son here. I will do whatever needs be done to see him, and try to bring him home. If that means getting another job, ok. If that means no time or money for any extras and eating beans for dinner every nite, then that is what I would do. Thankfully for me (and my co-workers) I have not been reduced to beans every night.Often folks tell me that they could not do this. I am so strong for being able to stand this. They don't know how I get through this. How do I get up and function every day? The truth is I don't. What choice do I have though? I have trouble sleeping, I have nightmares when I do get to sleep. I find that I am irritable. I have been told a couple of times by the gals that I work with that I am being crabby. ( I am just glad that I work with people who are not afraid to tell me I am being grouchy. Then I can try to adjust my attitude and not take things out on them.) I am often short tempered with my family. I do not attend any family functions because it hurts too much. I used to go to my sister's house with my mom and we would have dinner all of us girls. My sister's husband works on second and she has two little girls. I used to want to take my mom or my sister and her girls with me when I went shopping. Now I only take someone when I am going to one of the grocery stores that are about 40 minutes away. That way the cost of gas is offset by the savings that all of us receive. I have tried to go on a couple of family outings, but I do not have as much fun as I used to. I try to avoid family get-togethers. I feel like something is missing. And it is. My heart and soul are missing. My son is missing.I have talked briefly to one of the pastors at the church that my sister belongs to and I rent a house from. They are willing to listen, but do not feel that they are qualified to help me in any way. This is beyond what they are trained to deal with. I cannot go to "traditional" therapy because that would be like waving a red flag in the air that I am "not mentally stable" to my ex and his attorney. Now mind you I would be getting therapy for the stress this is causing me and how to help my son deal with his stress and unhappiness.I cannot talk to support groups because there are none. I do not fit traditional support groups because my child did not die and he is not missing. He is lost, but not in the sense of the support group. You cannot find support groups for this because of the "symptoms" of the diagnosis of MSBP. According to the "symptoms" if I talk about this I am seeking attention and must have this MSBP. If I do not seek help, then I must have it because I won't talk about it. So I have decided that there is no point in keeping quiet.That is where this blog comes in. I get to vent out all of my feelings and start getting the awareness out there. This can happen to any mom out there. I get to use this blog to type out whatever I am feeling at the time. If I am frustrated and want to repeat myself 10 times over something that my ex said or did to my son or to me, then I can. No one tells me they are tired of hearing it, there's nothing we can do, or try to change the subject. If I put it on here, You can just skip over it. :) And that is okay. I know that there are not lots of people out there reading this and that is okay. It makes me feel better just putting it out there. In this very unhappy time of my life, I can at least get some satisfaction through this blog.

Walwart - from the 15th

I went back to walwart last night to exchange a few things I purchased a couple of weeks ago. I had a really good trip and will actually post my total here for you. I used up a lot of salad dressing q's in this order buying the dressings I thought my mom used. Turns out I was mistaken. So I had one bottle that was already past the expiration date and eight more that I needed to exchange. I also needed to exchange some of the wheat thins that i bought. I thought with my q's I would try the artisan wheat thins. I got the wisconsin colby, yeah, not so good. At least to me. So I had three more boxes to exchange. I got the regular whole grain kind. I then went to get the dressing. They only had three fat free bottles! The shelves were empty. So I took my three boxes of wheat thins and my three bottles of dressing and stated looking for vitamin water on my way back up to customer service. I could not find that either. Not in the water aisle, not in the drinks aisle, not in the center aisle. It was no where to be found. This is why I do not like our walwart. They have a lot of stuff but never the stuff I want. I get to customer service and she refunds the rest of my money. I am holding it aside as I will use it to get the other six bottles later. Anyway here are the totals of that trip from a couple of weeks ago:
Total purchased: $85.36
total q's used: $49.13
total tax: $1.92
Total Spent: $38.15
Savings: 58%
Not too shabby for a walwart run.

Makin' Bread!

Mary Hunt over at Everyday Cheapskate/Debt Proof Living has posted a link to her blog and in the blog is a link to a book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Check out her blog to get the scoop on this bread. While you are at it, sign up to receive her daily emails. They are packed with great money saving ideas. I signed up and I absolutely love getting the tips and stories. I bought the book and will update with how it goes. I can't wait to get it in!

Challenge update

Wow, did I spend a lot of money this weekend. I have to say I did not save any money really at all. I did use a bunch of the $1 off vitaminwater10 q's. I got free water for us for the weekend camping. That was good since it was hot. We went to walwart on Saturday night, Sunday night, and I went with my son on Monday morning. I spent each time I went. Not gobs each time, but for a total of $31.42, I think that I should have planned my trip a bit better. Most of the food prices are higher, and the tax is way higher. I could have saved a bunch to have thought ahead and brought the stuff we wanted with us. And not forgotten things. And not decided that we could do without it. Only to need it.... Live and learn. I will do better next time. Of course next time it will only be me, and I am just dandy with pb&j sandwich. Or would have been except I forgot any kind of bread....I had a spoon though, I was good!

Plus the gas prices have started their annual climb, so the gas for the trip cost more. Also had two extra nights at the campgrounds. We played mini golf, played a few games at the game room (0nly 50 cents each-not the money breaker), and went on the water slide.

I did not do any other shopping or hounding since last week since I was getting ready for my trip. I think I brought my average down this past week. Oh well. I will try again.

How you doing?

What I did not do this weekend:



I did not get sunburned-oh woohoo, you have no idea how happy that makes me!

I did not stay at a hotel-saved me some money

I did not miss any days with my son

I did not buy water balloons-my son has asked for these for weeks now

I did not bring very much money home



What I DID do this weekend



I did HAVE A BLAST WITH MY SON!!!!!

I did go down the water slide

I did buy a water gun- to have a water fight cuz we already had one water gun

I did stay at the campgrounds

I did cook on the campfire

I did have an extra day with my son

I did play all day

I did wear a hat to keep my face out of the sun

I did play games with my son - bakugan and pokemon and nintendo(gameboy and ds)

I did watch a movie

I did walk with my son

I did take several pictures

I did spend every available minute as close as possible to my boy. We sat next to each other for nearly the whole time.



This was a pretty costly weekend. I had three days with my son. I went down on Friday afternoon. I left work a little early. Thank goodness I got gas the day before because gas rocketed up on Friday. It cost me about $15 more to fill up the night before than it has for several trips. I stopped to get gas again later and prepayed to $50. I did not quite get a full tank and I was not even out! Then we had to check into the campground on Friday night. That cost an extra $10 because my mom went. I do not need to check in on the Friday night. I can sleep anywhere. My mom however has to plug in for her sleep apnea machine, so from now on when she goes I guess I will be paying for an extra night. We got to the campgrounds only to find that someone was parking their vehicles in our spot. They got up the next morning and left in one of their cars so we took that opportunity to start unloading since they vacated our campsite. Then they come back and the guy tells us that it is his campsite. I sort-of-in-a-nice-way argued with him that I have been staying on this campsite for nearly a year now for every other weekend and am pretty sure I know which one is which. He tries to tell me that he was told he was in the wrong spot and he was supposed to be where we were setting up, but that since we are all unloaded and he was already unloaded the day before it was all okay and he did not worry about so neither should we. There was plenty of room for all of us. No shit!? Well, good thing since I had that site reserved for over a month. I spend a lot of time there, I know where all the sites are. But, whatever! I did not plan on moving my stuff anyway. So we just smile and say that's all right. We'll be fine. We go get cleaned up to go get my son. No problems with that. I take S straight back to the campgrounds. We finish setting up the site, S rides his bike a bit, we play a couple of games on the nintendo's. Then he wants to ride his bike more, but with me following to go all the way down to the ball field. Now going to the ball field is easy. It's all downhill. Coming back would then all be uphill, ya know? So S cannot ride up a hill yet. It is too hard he says. So I have to push the bike. Then he tells me it is too hard to walk up the hill, he cannot go any further. (Drama anyone?) I am trying to be nice to him, and let him sit on the bike while I am pushing as long as he helps. HOWEVER, I will not do it again. If he rides his bike somewhere it is his responsibility. He can bring it back. If it is too hard to ride up hill and too hard to push uphill, then leave it at the site. S begins to tell me I am mean and his dad is right about all the stuff he says about me and that I am mean (notice he is repeating himself?), and this is all just not nice of me. Except I am still pushing the bike. I did make him get off of it because it was too heavy with the bike and him going uphill for this fat-out-of-shape mom. (I discovered this past weekend that I definitely need to start working out or something!) We kind of get into an argument about him even saying that, it is not acceptable, and if he feels that way and does not really want to come home, why does he tell me he wants to come home. He does not really answer me just says now he wants to go play mini golf. I told him no, we were not playing anything if he thought it was appropriate to talk to me like that. He pouted for a minute and said he was sorry. I informed him I was not pushing his bike back and we were not driving across the park since we could cut across the tennis courts and grass to get there faster than driving all the way around the park. He insisted he would push his bike back. So off the three of us go to play golf, with S riding his bike. We get down there and pay our fee and pick which color of ball we want. This goes really well with all of us with the same score for about three holes. Then S starts making some really really good shots, he got a hole in one, he got several in two shots. Yeah, then there was me, and there was my mom. We never got a hole in one and the first couple that we managed to get in two must have been a fluke. I think we both had scores of over 50 when we were done, to S's 38. I think, it might have been 35 because I think he miscounted a few times to go against his favor. He was just really bouncy and silly when he discovered he was beating the pants off us. We wander up to the office so I can pay for the campsite. It was a lot cooler in the office so S and mom come in with me. S wants to play air hockey and pool. I play a game of air hockey with him, and mom plays a game of pool with him. The games only cost 50 cents each so this part is no big spendy part of the weekend. Time to go back to the site. I tell S lets cut across the field because it will be faster. He cannot ride his bike up the road anyway, he will have to push it because it is a hill. Let's take the short cut. I offer to help him push a bit since pushing through the grass is much harder than the road. I tell him when we get to the gravel, he can take over pushing. He tells me how tired he is and that he cannot possibly push the bike. So leave it here. I told you I was not pushing it all over the place for you. He starts getting mouthy and hateful again. I smack his arm and tell him to watch his mouth and he hits me back. I grab his arm and he starts howling and crying about how I am hurting him, that is his hurt arm. Of which I know nothing about. I ask mom to take the bike, we are going to find a little privacy in the bathroom which was fortuitously right there. I drag him into the bathroom and tell him he needs to talk to me and explain what the hell is going on, why is acting this way, saying these things and being hateful to me in general. He starts sobbing on how tired he is, his dad kept him out late last night, kept him up late when they got back, and how come I did not come to his game the night before. AAHHHH, now we are getting somewhere. I explain that I was driving and I cannot go to the games when they are not on my days unless I take off work, and I am saving my days for court and when he comes home. He stops crying so hard, and we talk for a minute or so about does he still want to come home. He says he does. I ask why he says things like that about me being mean. I tell him if he is telling everyone that I am mean that the judge will not let him come home. He apparently only tells me I am mean. His dad tells him I am mean and he tells his dad that I am not mean. He only says that to me. Because he was mad and tired. We hug and put a cool wet paper towel on his arm which he holds in place like a badge of honor, he's so tough because he was able to stop crying and his arm was all better. It did not even hurt now. We spend some down time watching a movie and playing video games. I get him to lay down for a bit. He did not actually nap, but he did rest. After which he was a new boy. He was quite cheerful again, and did not say anymore mean things.



After taking him back to his dad's house, my mom and I discussed how much bad behavior my son is learning down here. He is learning how to lie, to cheat and to be manipulative. When I confront S on his behavior that is like what he displayed for a couple of hours on Saturday, I basically get told that is how he behaves down there. Everyone behaves like that. The kids at school, his dad, everyone. I wonder how this is going to go when he gets to come home. It will be a whole new world to him to be around people that won't tolerate that kind of behavior out of anyone.



I did not say this in front of my mom, and I am not sure that I would want to, but I have also noticed that this piss-poor attitude and behavior is almost always worse when she comes down. I don't know if it is coincidence or what. He does want to see my mom, but he always has a bad day on Saturday when she comes. The Sunday visit usually is just fine, it's just the Saturday. We (S and I) have many visits where he may have a bit of attitude, but no other displays of hatefulness. Just sometimes he is down-right mean when it is just the two of us. Of course since we had three days this time, once we got past the Saturday readjusting, Sunday and Monday were just fine.



On Sunday and Monday, we had good days. We played and goofed off. S had some money to spend, so he wanted to go to walwart on Monday morning after I picked him up. He bought a couple of toys, and I bought cheese, the water gun and donuts for my mom. We had a water fight on Sunday and Monday. We went on the water slide on Monday. We just really enjoyed ourselves. We spend a lot of time just being together which is the best part. When it is time to pack up, S really likes to help take the gazebo down. It is much easier than the one from last year and he is able to help with all of it. I think it makes him feel useful and helpful. He likes to feel like a big boy. Which he is, just was hard to do anything with the last gazebo. Plus it keeps him busy until it is time to go. Neither of us wants to dwell on the fact that the end of the visit is nearing. We get everything loaded and S climbs in the van and off we go to his dad's. The end is here.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for a speedy court date and a satisfactory ending. I am ready for all of this to be over.

Flashback Friday

I am going to try to remember to participate every Friday in Flashback Friday, hosted by Jill over at ScaryMommy. Now my blog has not been around long enough to have flashbacks from the blog. I also have only had a digital camera for a short while. I do have a picture to share though. My son has had a camera for about three years now. This picture represents about half of all the pictures that I have from my son S.

I mostly throw these pictures away after a while, when I think that S won't notice that they are missing. Now I can keep them forever on a disc because what fun to show S the super photographer he used to be! I do have to admit however, he is getting better. I swear I have not seen an up and close eye ball shot for a couple of months! Or the ever popular "Up the Nose See all My Nose Hairs" type of shot.

Gee, what will I do with no more nose hair shots?

Preparing For the Weekend

Tonight I am going to stop at Wags to get some ice cream. I love love love Bryers ice cream. Just most of the time I refuse to pay what they ask for it at the store. But you can't beat BOGO free and a MC to boot! I have a couple of MC to use on the ice cream. In my neck of the woods, it is $6.29. So I will get two for the price of one, which will be even cheaper with my coupons! So $4.29 for two with 1% food tax=$4.34 ish. I can totally handle $2.17 for a quart of Bryers! I have some leftover christmas candy (the old fashioned kind) that I am going to break into little pieces for a topping. What a tasty treat! I am also going to get some goodies to make s'mores. We love s'mores and S (my son) has been asking for them. We will get to roastin' those marshmallows and makin' some gooey goodness. Right now at Wags, they are 2 for $6 for the graham crackers and Hershey's bars, and get a bag of marshmallows free. I also have a q that if I get chocolate and marshmallows I get $1 off Honey Maid graham crackers. I will hope for it to go through. My favorite cashier should be there tonight, so I most likely will be in luck. Hopefully for less than $10 I can get all of it. I do not have any RR to help offset the price, but these are pretty good deals for my area and I do not want to miss them just because I am out of RR.

When I get home, I have to check in the super messy garage to see if my mom's folding table is still in there from my yard sale last fall. If it is I will load it into the van. I also have to wash/dry a load of clothes, wash the dishes, sweep the floor in the kitchen, and then take out the trash to get ready for the weekend. I will also try to remember to dump one of the litter boxes. I am going to try out some new litter. I got some Yesterday's News litter a while back. I am going to dump it in there and see how it does while I am gone. If it can hold up to the "weekend gone" test, then I know that it is good litter. I will let you all know what I think of it and how it held up, and more importantly, what my kitties thought of it. They are totally laid back on litter choices and will use just about anything without protesting. My favorite litter was Swheat Scoop. Unfortunately there are never any q's for it and it is super expensive. So back to Tidy Cats.

I had my mom order me a book the other day. I am super excited to get it. It is called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I could get the basic recipe off the internet, however, I prefer to make whole grain bread. I could not find the recipe for that. I also would like to see the variations and directions to make lots of different styles and types of bread in an easy fashion. I read over on Mary Hunt's Debt Proof Living where she is joining the BYOB challenge. It stands for Bake Your Own Bread, has nothing to do with beer! I am hoping that this is another challenge for me to try! I will let you know when the book comes in. On the Debt Proof Living blog there is a link for the bread book authors. It is artisanbreadinfive and is the official website. I will let you know if it is as easy as it sounds.

If you are participating in the Challenge, how are you doing? Got any good ideas to pass along?