I promise I am not dead....

Or I wouldn't be writing this right now.  I have been quite busy with:

1. Foreign exchange hosting.
2. Work as usual.
3. School, yeah I am not doing it for a degree... far better, for money.
4. Training for my run.
5. Planning my trip across the Pacific.
6. Trying not to murder my husband's child.

Not dead and not the race I have been training for.

Mother

Almost a month late on this post. Not for a lack of time but just waiting.  This year Andy's dad and I had to make him call his mother on Mother's Day.  Few and further between are the requests for him to call home.  I can only assume lack of interest.  For a while, when he would get into trouble or misbehave he would ask to call home, I assume to complain about how unfair life is.  He has since gotten over that nonsense.

You suck, you can't play with us.

Tuesday was another typical day for me.  Well typical in that since my last blog post I have been working 13 hour days, including weekends.  How does that saying go?

I digress, as usual.  So Tuesday shortly after the mister takes Andy to crappyassfootball practice, I get a text about the coaches acting like idiots.  Here is the scenario:

The practice field that SMYFL uses belongs to a junior high school.  During regular school hours, which last Tuesday ran business as usual since it was the first day of school.  All campuses in this city are closed campuses, meaning all perimeter gates are locked, for the kids' safe keeping I suppose.  I don't see how a perimeter gate will keep the crazies out if all they need to do is hop over or climb under a fence.  Which brings me to what happened next.  

Football (American Football) is stupid.

I really don't understand the fascination with the sport.  And my husband can do without it too, so un-American of us.  But our son just started football today.  What?!  Yeah, I know sounds like counter-intuitive to put him in a sport we both hate.  Guess who else hates it, or so he said up until the very second we walked onto the field: Andy.

Woke up on the snarky side of the bed.

Literally and figuratively!

Snarky, my dog was on the side of the bed I woke up on, that's a good thing.  Nothing like waking up next to undying loyalty and wagging tails right?  The morning started out so nicely, I was looking forward to work and later pottery.  I was looking forward to the child returning to school until I was reminded what a pill it is to get him going to school.  So my mood quickly shifted to snarky and seems to have stayed with me.  I left while he was in the midst of his school routine, not listening, lolly gagging and running late as usual.

I feel like Hank right now.

Any moment now I feel like I could just be less helpful than I tend to be at work.  Or tell a co-worker to shut up because I am tired of hearing about their children.  There is a child in my house, I don't want to hear, see or be around others when I am at work.  Work is the great escape and I like my job.  Well at least until recently.

Enrichment, it's a necessity of life. (Part 2)

This is a continuation to part 1, I have been on holiday and busy with life so I am a tad behind.  Not to fear, Hawaii story time will be on it's way soon enough.

At one point I even took Andy with me to have breakfast and just chat.  I tried to explain things that are important to me.  I tried to find out what is important to him and how we can function more smoothly as a family unit.  I think I bored him to death but at least he enjoyed his pancakes that were drowned in syrup.  Maybe the breakfast and chat was more for me but I am hoping he listened not just heard some of what I had to say.  I am also trying to be receptive to what he has to say but it's so hard when he is obviously lying.  He isn't very good at lying either, he should just give up and come clean about stuff.  During our breakfast I asked him if he wanted to carve pumpkins for Halloween.  Guess what he said, go on, guess.....

Enrichment, it's a necessity of life. (Part 1)

He leaves his socks on at the beach.

"School-age children between the ages of 5 and 14 spend up to 80% of their time out of school.  These hours represent an opportunity to help children grow and acquire important social, emotional, cognitive, and physical skills and to help them develop lifelong interests.  This time can also be used to provide support for the academic challenges faced by children each day in school."

I pretty much know that enrichment is a good thing to have in life, not just as a child but also as an adult.  And when this little Andy person came to my house he was very lacking in enrichment.  His social, emotional, academic and emotional growth has been stunted by his previous living situations.  My little brother has a bit of a chip on his shoulder because my mom never signed him up for sports.  Granted my mom couldn't afford them financially.  She also could not afford the time required for the free, school related sports my brother was so interested in.  As a result my brother has his boys signed up for a sport during the different sport seasons through out the year.  Enrichment.  I don't want to have to help invest my time to provide enrichment but then again I want to help Andy grow into a better adult than if he would have stayed with the mother.  (I still, very much, want to maul her face off and feed it to rabid monkeys.)

Foot in mouth disease, I have it.

"Because I am hard, you will not like me.  But the more you hate me, the more you will learn.  I am hard but I am fair." - Gunnery Sergeant Hartman

I looked back in my posts to see if I had written the story of how my father gave me away as an infant. But I couldn't find the story.  Suffice to say when I was a baby my father, who was kind enough to pass on his legacy of lunacy sprinkled evenly among his fine children, gave me away to my grandmother.  Story goes, my father threatened to steal me away to Mexico but my mom wouldn't have it.  And then the details are a little blurry.  My mother stayed with my father and agreed to give me up to live with my grandmother.  Something about a suicide threat from my father bla, bla, bla.  My grandmother's youngest child at the time was just about to graduate high school.  So she was young enough to take on a baby in the house.  With the help of my aunt and uncles I was raised in my grandmother's house.

In my about I talk about my gramps suffering from Michael J. Fox disease with a little extra dose of Alzheimer's.  My aunt ended up having to quit her job to help care for me and my grandfather whose health deteriorated at a rapid rate.  When my aunt stopped working she pretty much became my, "Sir! Yes, sir!" or as I affectionately called her, "Mommy-tia."  She was hard on me because I needed to learn.  She was hard on me because I was difficult.  She was hard on me because I had to grow up and function as a normal member of society.  Though now I thank her stern, rigid way of disciplining me.  I also know that some of my hang-ups and hiccups in personality probably stem from abandonment issues and authoritarian parenting by my guardian.  Pile some of that on top of some of the traits my dad left behind, which if diagnosed would land him in a category close to my own.  If not the same category I was diagnosed as when I was still too young and angry to make use of my therapy.

Unfounded Allegations

If the last episode of Reluctant Motherhood wasn't enough to make me want to run for the hills screaming, it's gotten even better.  Or is it worse?  We got a phone call from Child Welfare Services because we have been reported for domestic violence and drug abuse.  The only abuse going on is my poor, frail mind having to assist in rearing a child that is not mine and not right.  Maybe CWS can take me away.  Whoever reported these lies is more than welcome to take Andy home and tell me if they survive, sanity in tact, after 2 weeks.  No, even one week with him.

So the day we got the call advising us to come down and answer some questions at the CWS office, they had already interviewed Andy at school.  And at first I was worried about having CWS poking about our business.  And then I got curious as to who would possibly make such wild allegations!  And then it was mild amusement that some busy body had nothing better to do than make up stories about two people trying their best to raise a mini-tyrant.  Bring it, we have nothing to hide and are not doing a damn thing wrong.  Investigate away!

Parasitic little monsters... lice and children.

I forgot all about lice.  I vaguely remember getting them in 3rd grade when an infested child in my class was caught throwing her lice at other kids.  Or at least that's the story my mom likes to tell, who knows.  Maybe there was a disgusting filthy in my class throwing her parasites on other kids.  I also recall that most kids who became infested suddenly returned to school with blunt bobs for the girls and shaved heads for the boys.  I wasn't so lucky.  I had long hair, mid way between waist and shoulders.  I didn't get a cute bob, I ended up covered in Rid and spent the better part of a day having the lice comb rip enough hair out of my head I could have made my own Furby.  I need to stop thinking about it, I wonder if that is why I took the scissors to my own hair and kept it short until about now.

Revenge of the Bathroom Nightmares

So last night during dinner, Andy told me I should pack my suitcase and move out.  Maybe he was joking, maybe he wasn't.  I can never tell with the kid because to him everything is a big joke.  Jokes on me!  Yay.  Earlier that day I advised the mister to have a chat with Andy because he was being wasteful, again.  I had already discussed proper use of toilet paper and not to be wasteful with it.  But he didn't listen and has been using toilet paper to wipe down the foggy mirrors after his shower.  The discussion I had asked the mister to have had slipped my mind and his.  So the discussion was not had before Andy had his shower last night.  I went to bed early so I could have a nice early morning run.

***Warning: Do not keep reading if you don't want to hear about tampons and periods.***

And yet I tolerate you....

Recently a title suggestion for my blog made me chuckle, "Domestic Adventures of a Reluctant Stepmom".  Except it feels more like misadventurous adventures than anything else.  Reluctant yes, very, if I had a crystal ball that let me peer into the now about two months ago when the bomb was dropped.  Would I have high-tailed it to the hills of Rome?  Or would I be experiencing these misadventures still?

"See, I want to believe you

And I wanted to trust you

And I want to have faith to

Put away the dagger

But you lie, cheat and steal"

Bathroom Nightmares

After bath time our floor was ending up completely soaked.  So we warned Andy not to make a wet mess of the bathroom or he wouldn't be able to have baths; only showers.  That night the shower ended up a soapy wet mess again, so we decided showers, until he can behave in the tub.  I still had yet to figure out how, if he was showering, the bathroom was ending up just as wet as when he had a bath.  The other night I was walking by the bathroom and I heard the shower running and saw the light from under the door flick off and on several times.  I had my hubs come ask him what he was doing.  He claimed he was showering still.  Apparently the floor was getting soaked because he would run to play with the light switch several times while taking his shower.   Why he runs between the light switch and the bathtub when he showers to flick the lights off and on a few times is beyond me.  Now we know how the bathroom ends up completely wet at least.  Issue has been addressed and the aftermath of bath time is much drier thankfully.  I don't even ask to know why anymore.

I am thankful...

That Andy did not come to us with a potty mouth.

I am also quite thankful he came with a sense of humor.

And I am now starting to understand that the logic of a child's mind has been so far removed from me as an adult it is somewhat refreshing.  Sometimes my uncle will tell my husband about what I was like when I was younger.  I remember and laugh at how awesome/ridiculous I used to be.

My momma was on welfare.

So now that the blind rage has subsided, I will have to agree with one of the comments on my previous post; it all boils down to the parents.  Parents are the ones who are responsible for feeding their children healthy and nutritious meals.  And before anyone that may pop by and reads decides to give me an earful for getting pissy over government aide: my mom was a recipient of AFDC and Foodstamps when I was a young little whipper snapper.  Just so you all know, I am not sitting high on my affluent soapbox talking down to the poor.  I know poor and I never want to be there again.  I work hard so I don't find myself having to ask the public for help.

Fuck EBT and the horse it rode in on!

So it's now be over a week as step-mother to a 9 year-old boy.  Upon his arrival, armed with McNuggets, he voiced his love for them.  The following day, he microwaved what he had left of said McNasties and ate them.  For lunch that day he had instant ramen noodles with a slice of processed cheese.  He said he loved the stuff!  We took a trip to the grocery store which I managed to somehow survive without breaking a glass bottle of wine open and drowning my face in it.  While heading home I asked Andy, the step-kid, "What's your favorite food?"  And he quickly replied, "7-11."