Two more sleeps
Mood:  celebratory
Just two more sleeps until I see my honey again! Yay! In the meanwhile I guess I better clean the house... I kindof let things go while he was gone.. heh.

Updates
Mood:  a-ok
My sweety is still out of town. This is the longest we've been apart EVER and it's killing us. The good news, only three more 'sleeps' before we're back together.

His dad is improving drastically and we're all very thankful for that. Peter has been hanging out at the house getting everything ready for him to come home. Cleaning, painting and generally making himself useful. It's been good for him - passing the time until he starts his new job. And it's allowed him to spend some time with his parents as an adult. He moved out at 19 and never went back. He told me that the past week he's learned more about his parents and thier lives then he's ever known before.

Friday I fly down there so we can spend the weekend and then we're flying back together on Monday. I CAN NOT WAIT!!!

Everything else in my life is status quo.

I feel boring.

Is that - improvement?
So, things have improved here. Peter's dad pulled through. Unfortunatly the hospital is going to hang onto him for a while. This leaves Peter living at home and taking care of his mom. He's really good about it, and he's using the time to learn a LOT about the stock market from his dad, and get things taken care of around the house for his mom. It's hard on both of us. We don't like being apart. In fact we're very bad at it! Peter has been gone a week already and he won't be back until August 1st. He starts his job August 2nd. If his dad isn't home before then, he's asked that I go down when his dad DOES go home so that there is someone there to make sure he settles back home alright. I told him I would do it gladly.

Other then that everything is ok. My job still sucks, but at least I don't feel overwhelmed by bills etc.

I'm picking up my girls this weekend. We're planning a 'girls' weekend - formal shopping in San Francisco and a trip to the Ren Faire. Fun!

But I still miss my honey.

A Day of extreems
Mood:  hug me
We've known all this week that Peter's dad wasn't doing too well. He was rushed to the hospital on Friday night unable to breath, went home, and then ended up back in the hospital on Wednesday. His dad has some cronic issues that makes breathing problems especially hazerdous to him. So this has been worrysom. But Peter's Mom kept telling us that everything was going ok. In the meanwhile Peter had a job interview yesterday. He came away from it feeling good, but with nothing solid. He's been looking for 9 weeks now and I've been doing everything to try to keep our household afloat...

This morning he gets a call from his sister. His mom had broken down on the phone - things wern't going as well as she had been leading us to believe (something I had suspected all along). So, Peter's Sister "Mickey" immediatly bought two plane tickets (One for her and one for Peter) so that they could go and see thier father. In the meanwhile, I'm trying to deal with my situation at work, fend off bill collectors, keep his spirits up, be supportive and try desperatly not to crumple into a heap.

While on the way to the airport Peter got a call. He had gotten the job, and they had been so impressed with his interview that they wanted to call him right away! Suddenly 3/4th of my stress and worries just up an vanished. To tell you the truth I actually got lightheaded. All I could do for about 15 minutes after hearing the news was sit at my desk and cry. The best part is that he doesn't start until August 3rd so he's got pleanty of time to take care of his Dad and Mom.

Thank you God for the job, and look after my honey and his family.

Advice/Comments Suggested
Mood:  crushed out
Peter has an ex-wife. He also has a son. He also has parents. Elderly parents who have money.

The ex-wife seems to feel it's within her rights to contact elderly parents and invite them out to dinner. A dinner that THEY pay for.

Peter is livid. He's asked her several times to stop contacting his parents. He's asked several times that his parents to stop going out with her.

He's told her time and time again...Leave my family alone, you are not a part of it anymore. It's been nine years...

Personally, although I love my ex-mother-in-law like a 'mom' I would NEVER contact her the way that Peter's ex is doing. It's rude, disrespctful and CREEPY. The only time I've ever contacted her is to email her copies of pictures of the kids and THAT was only after Richard asked me to.

Peter of course, thinks that she maintains contact (besides the free meals and nice resteraunts) in the hope that they will include her in thier will.

So, what does the community out there think? Are there people out there who maintain relationships with ther ex-in-laws? (And I'm talking about more then passing by the house to drop the kids off or keeping them up to date on progress/milestones) I'm talking about deliberatly trying to maintain a 'look, were all one big happy family' atmosphere.

(She's even brought her new husband along to these dinners - how sick is that?)

Family oh how we 'love' them
Mood:  crushed out
My mom came to visit this weekend. She lives several states away and I'm always glad to see her. I'm one of those lucky people who's mother is a great friend. She's loving and supportive and I'm incredably lucky person to have her in my life. She also brought along my nephew. We'll call him "Terminator" "Term" for short. He's four and a one man wreaking machine! It's not that he's BAD per se. He's just undiciplined. Unfortunatly my sister has her work cut out for her just surviving. She's a single Mom, works at McDonalds and spends a lot of her spare time dating all the wrong men. Term's Dad is completely out of the picture, one of the few things everyone in the family is thankful for.

It was actually kind of amusing watching my mom be 'Grandma'. She spoiled and coddled and pleaded... all the things she never did to us. I finally got tired of watching her be taken advantage of (and my house be destroyed) and took things into my own hands. Needless to say Term has a newfound respect for Antie S, and his behavior improved as the weekend wore on.

What was even more surprising was Peter. He played and tickled and tossed Term around. He got him juice and crackers and even put him in the 'time out' chair when it was nessisary. I was actually really impressed with his parenting skills. (As I think he was impressed with mine).

So, after a weekend FULL of Term's company we have desided...

We are SO GLAD we arn't going to have any kids!

The joy of parenthood
Mood:  happy
Last night I got that call that all parents of teenage drivers dread. "Your daughter's been in an accident."

Luckily, no one was hurt in either car, but the vehicles, well, they are in sad shape. The real consiquences to my duaghter though are much more then I think she ever expected.

So far, it looks like she'll keep her license. She wasn't cited on the spot, but may still be, we've got to wait and see. She was driving into the sun when the lady in front of her stopped for a crosswalk. There wasn't anyone IN the crosswalk, but the lady stopped anyway. (There are witnesses to confirm all of this). C (My daughter) hadn't pushed the seat up and was driving with her toes, PLUS was chatting with her brother as she drove. She wasn't speeding or following too close, BUT wasn't paying 100% attention either and ended up smashing into the back of the other car. She ended up hitting hard enough to wrap the radiator around the engine and push the front end against the cab hard enough to jamb the doors shut. The other car is pretty much a wreck as well.

Needless to say this has shaken her up, but what her Dad has desided has gotten her even more upset. First - she's grounded for a week because she was driving FROM someplace that she hadn't told him she was going. I have mixed emotions about this. She's 17 - she's got her license, what's the point if you're still tied to a leash. Still a week isn't that bad - considering.

Second he's told her he'll no longer pay for her insurance. THIS in my consideration is pretty fair. They had told her from the begining that they would pay for her insurance unless she got into an accident or got a ticket. So, she's got to pay the concequenses. This again is not a really big deal. She's got a summer job and will probably make enough to pay for at least 6 months of insurance to get her through her Sr year.

Now, let me tell you about the car she wrecked. It's a 1980 chevy stepside. There was little about this thing that would make the 'commoner' go 'wow'. It sounded like crap, ran on a 'good' day and was a 100 footer. (It looked good from 100 feet away). It had neet little quirks like no A/C and a driver's side door that you could only open from the outside. Yeah, it was a great 'project car' and had potential, but it was a project that had never gotten past the 'it would be cool to...' stage. Richard bought it after the divorce with the money he got from selling OUR house, instead of paying off our bills like he was supposed to. He paid $3500. Because of this, (and other STUPID purchases) Most of our joint bills went into default and I have a credit history from HELL that includes a reposessed car. (No, I'm not bitter - really I'm not :P) Needless to say, I wasn't sad to hear that that the damn thing was totaled, though not happy that my daughter was the on in it when it went.

Now, here's the kicker. Although it was her Dad's decision to NOT carry extra insurance on the truck, (after all the thing was payed off) he's now decided that it's C's responsability to replace it! This means that she'll have to spend her Sr year WORKING to pay for a vehicle that she'll never own. To top it all off, it had always been our agreement that she wouldn't get a job (except for small summer jobs) until she graduated so that she could enjoy highschool to it's fullest and concentrate on keeping her grades up.

I just want to strangle the man!

Ok - I've vented. Thanks for listening.

Testing
Just testing email blogging - I doubt this will work.

6 months later...
My goodness how time has flown.

Nothing really turns out as you would expect - but then we all suspect that. Peter's bid to 'work for me' has turn into a bust. There's a lot of reasons for that.

1) We didn't plan well financially. We always said that we needed to pay off our bills (like cars and credit cards) before we did something like this. But, we convinced ourselves that we could make it on my income alone - We couldn't/didn't.

2) Peter's a perfectionist. Our business is webased and he's been working on our website for six months now... That's right, six months! He's rewritten in in three times.

3) Fear of failure. I think this is the major reasons for the rewrites and delay in launching. Peter's a lot like me. He kind of feels that if I never tried, then I never failed. So, we sit on a 99.9% complete website that he continues to tinker with, no customers, no income, no savings and every credit card maxed out.

Needless to say, he's going back to work. The difficult part of this is that he's in IT. And jobs in IT are not exactly easy to come by around here. Especially not entry level jobs. In the past month of and a half, he's had a couple of opportunities that seemed really close, and then fell through. One company dicked him around for over three weeks - letting us feel like there was a real hope there, and then finally telling him 'we hired someone else.' Luckily we've got friends and family who are there to love and support us in our time of need. If worse comes to worse we'll sell one of the cars. We're not going to end up in the streets.

To add to all of this stress, in April my client let me go. Now, this isn't in the sense that I work for a company who pays my salary weather I'm at a client or not, it is very scary. Especially since my company wasn't exactly doing well at the time. Add the factor that the client wasn't really saying 'WHY' they were letting me go, four months before my contract ended, and I was one STRESSED out chick!

Two weeks back into the office and I got called into the bosses office. I was told they didn't feel like they had enough work to support me, but that there was a 'non-consulting' position available they would like to offer me. Oh, and by the way - it's a salaried, non-bonus AND a cut in pay. Now, understand we were already struggling because of Peter's 'work from home' position. AND in being sent back to the home office, I was having to pay $200/month in commuting costs. I got them to meet me 1/2 way in the difference in salary.

I'm still trying to figure out if I like the position or not. I feel as if 90% of my capabilities are going to waste, but I also see a potential for great things to come of this. It's the potential that keeps me sane. there are days though when I feel like I've just taken a 16 year set BACKWARDS in my career. I told my company that I would give the position one year to mature. It's going to be a challenge as I already find myself sneaking looks at the want ads.

Other then being broke and hating my job, life is good. Peter and I are still madly in love with each other. We celebrated four years together in May. Even with all the job stress and lack of money we still see each other as our refuge. As long as that's the case, life is good.

I'm still fat ;)

The kids are good. C (my 17 year old daughter) passed her driver's test last month. Nothing in her lifetime has ever signified the fact that 'she's growing up' as much as that has. She starts her Sr year this year - then it's off into the big wide world. I'm so excited for her! M (my 14 year old son) starts high school this year. He's planning to play football (with a LOT of encouragement from his dad-Richard) I can't say as I'm happy about it, but what's a mom to do other then pray - a lot... My baby girl, S (11) starts Jr High. She's still sweet, loving and incredibly naive. In a way I hope she never changes, but I'm also afraid that someone's going to take advantage of her some day. Again, what's a mom to do, but give her some advice and pray... a lot...

I may try updating here a little more often. I don't really have friends, and kind of need the outlet. The struggles with money and my job, and dealing with an ex who still makes me want to throw things (mainly him) some days make me want to curl up in a dark place and never come out... letting it out like this is cathartic.

Have a happy 4th a July.

-S

Yes, it's me, I'm here. No, things haven't gotten any less busy, BUT I think I need my 'ME' time. I've started to do a little better on my priorities - not working myself to death and yet still getting a lot done. I figure I can take a few minutes to update here.

The big news. Peter quit his job! After being dicked around for so long by them I finally got him to agree just to say 'screw you!' and turn in his resignation. Even after that they kept asking him to stay, but not fix any the issues he had, and the reasons he gave them for quitting. Oh well. Now he's working full time for me. Heh. He's working full time on our two businesses. Hopefully one of both will take off soon and we'll have a little extra income. I'm hoping they both take off this year so that by the end of 2005 I'll be able to quit MY job. That's the plan at least.

In other news I'm making the big push to lose weight again. I'll not detail THAT struggle here. You can check out MY weight loss blog over in the links.

I'm off now to go read up on what of some of my favorite people are up to!