Thank You Jen @ PIWTPITT

I've been meaning to write an email to Jen thanking her for what she does and giving me a huge shout out but decided to post it here with the hope that it may help someone else. 

Dear Jen,

I met you when your Elf post went viral. Like most other people on the planet, I laughed and almost peed my pants while spewing coffee all over my computer screen.  Before your post, I didn't know there were other mom's out there that felt the same way I did.

As I got to know you through your writing, I too thought we were related.   We have kids almost the same age with boys as oldest, I met my husband online and I am tired of over achieving moms that are too busy planning potty parties that their  douchey dad husbands can't attend.   We even have the same first name!  My kids go to a school FULL of OAMs and I feel like a loner ALOT!  Your blog made me feel a lot more "normal".

There was another post of yours that really helped me out. Your post about starting a blog finally helped me "find my voice".   I had thought about writing before, but had a hundred excuses why I couldn't. Most of them were about how I wasn't perfect enough or funny enough or not an English major and therefore will make too many grammar mistakes.   But when you wrote that post and suggested finding my voice, a ton of stuff hit me.  I can make people laugh, I do it all the time.  If I do this , I'm doing it for me and no one else.  If nobody likes what I have to say, they don't have to read it. If a grammar freak can't stand my writing, they can move along to the next blog. I also realized this would be a good way to learn that I don't need to be perfect and that I would never get better if I never tried.

Thank you Jen!  Thank you for making me feel "normal" because I'm NOT an OAM and thank you for helping me find my voice!

Your distant cousin,

Jennifer

I'm a Complete Mess

I have been an absolute stress ball the last four and a half months. Between my son's troubles, traveling, Magnus traveling, running the kids everywhere, birthday parties, shit with Magnus and 1,000 other things that have popped up along the way.  It's all come to a screeching hault. My son is doing pretty well, kids' activities are winding down, no more birthday parties, no imminent travel and no pending crisis.

I have nothing left to occupy my mind with, so the big bad self critical voice is coming out full force.  And I just don't have the energy to fight it anymore.  This is all the crap swimming around in my head right now:

Went into my therapy appointment thinking I had been doing good and left feeling shitty.

Discovered the meme generator and everything was about some error on some video game. Made me feel like I'm not funny because I can never think of anything funny to make one. And now I can't even find anything funny on there because everything is about a video game.

Set up a Tumblr account and can't figure the damn thing out.   I can't find my own stuff to share anywhere. Even if I did I'd question whether it was really funny or not.

I'm pissed off at my mom for screwing me up.

A big page shared my page today and I got maybe two likes from it. I suck at this and should just give up.

Grammar Nazis make me feel like an idiot.

Can't figure out why Adsense won't work on my blog.   I really wish we'd get the laptop fixed.

I Never have any energy to get this house straightened up, but I hate living in all this clutter.

Certain bills have stacked up and need to be paid.  Just makes me want more money.

My job is boring as hell. There is nothing intelluctually stimulating about it. I'm not even sure it serves much of a purpose. However, it IS a paycheck.

Why can' I just BE HAPPY?  Just for an hour!!!  If I was happy for an hour, I'd be unhappy that it wasn't longer.

I tried losing weight earlier this year, but all I did was self destruct every attempt I made.  I have to go see my skinny health nut sister in laws in a week and a half. I emotionally eat.


I can't think of a picture to put with this post.
I am very afraid of where I'm going to end up on this downward spiral.

This Parenting Stuff Isn't Easy!

Last week my son's teacher sent me an email saying he was crying over little things and seemed more anxious than usual.  I honestly wasn't too surprised since it is almost the end of the year.  I talked to him about it and he said he was nervous about field day. Last year he didn't win any ribbons and he's worried he isn't going to win any this year.  We run into this issue with EVERY sport he plays in or any type of competition he participates in.  If he doesn't hit the ball, get the ball or win some sort of award then he gets bent out of shape and his whole world comes crashing in on him.

For awhile I avoided putting him in competitive situations because he couldn't handle the let down. But after we got him stabilized on meds, I signed him up for baseball.  I was still hesitant because of past experiences, but I wasn't doing him any favors by helping him avoid challenges.  He has done real well with baseball. In the begining he would get down on himself because he wasn't hitting the ball. However, unlike other times, he seemed to be handling it better.  He kept practicing and finally made contact between bat and ball. He was sooooo proud of himself and really understood how good it felt to stick with something and succeede. I really thought we had made a brakethrough.

Then I got an email from his teacher today about trying to make someone else flush the toliet for him. It may not seem like a big deal as an isolated incident, but my son has a history.  I know why he did it. He's anxious. When he gets anxious he doesn't think about what he's doing. It's like something becomes disconnected in his brain and he just does things he normally wouldn't do.

My first reaction was to tell him he didn't have to participate in field day. I just want him to get through the last week of school without a series of incidents that ruins all the work he has done this year to improve his behavior. As soon as I had the thought, I knew it was the wrong choice.  If I give into him, I'm teaching him to avoid difficult situations. If I give into him, I'm not giving him a safe environment to experience failure. In reality, I'm only making his perfectionism and anxiety worse.

What I need to do is help him identify when he is feeling anxious and what happens when he is. I need to make him feel safe and secure when he has to confront something difficult. And I need to teach him effective ways of dealing with his anxiety.  The only problem with that is I don't know how to do it myself!  How am I supposed to teach my child?!


Through this whole delimma I am reminded that as a parent, my job is to make the right decision, not the easy one or the one my child wants me to make.  Even if that means he will experience sorrow or despair or failure.

Even Blessed People are Dysfunctional

I've spent a lot of energy beating myself up for not being a happier person.  The past five years haven't been the best, but when I put it in perspective it sure could have been a lot worse. But even knowing this, I'm not happy. I'm not sure I'm wired for happiness.   See, look at that hopeless statement.

I often ask myself why can't I feel blessed for what I have and get over myself.  Why can't I be one of those people that walks down the street feeling blessed just to be alive. To be happy no matter how much crap is thrown my way. To never get down on things when life hands me an orchard full of lemons.  I've got it way better than lots of people out there, so what the hell is wrong with me?

I was having a talk with one of my friends on a day I was feeling sorry for myself and she told me to "just be happy".  This is a friend that tried to get pregnant for over five years. When she finally got pregnant, she developed complications and had her baby at 27 weeks  He died at two weeks old. As if that wasn't enough, she learned she had cancer. OMG!   How does one go through this and come through it feeling blessed and able to tell someone else to "just be happy". And what the hell is wrong with me that I can't "just be happy"

My therapist (everyone say hi to Jennifer, my therapist because she reads this and asked for a shout out) says its because I'm real. As opposed to being fake.   I'm real because I experience emotions at a deeper level than happy people.

She says that people that are always happy are just protecting themselves from feeling the painful emotions someone like me does.  She would know too because she's one of these "glass is always half full" happy people. So being happy no matter what is just a defense mechanism that people use to avoid feeling painful emotions.

I have to be honest with you, I sure wish I was one of these people, at least some of the time. I feel like I am always emotionally spent because of how "real" I am.

What My Van REALLY Says About Me

Like everything else in my life, my van is a disaster.  It's far from perfect and I avoid cleaning it because with in five minutes of it being cleaned, The Princess and The Boy have trashed it again.   Despite telling myself I don't give a shit it's not perfect, it bothers the hell out of me. Or it did, until someone gave me a different perspective.

I was dropping my daughter off at school in carpool the other day and the teacher helping her out of the van commented that my van was messy. I was a little embarrassed until she told me not to be.  She said her car was just as messy and that it was a sign she would rather spend time with her kids. EXACTLY!

I spend LOTS of time with my kids!

Maybe too much time!

Since therapy is all about being analytical, I thought I'd share what else my van says about me.

This big dent in the side of my van says if I ever had an extra $500 laying around I wouldn't spend it on the insurance deductible to get this dent fixed.

This is the third seat. It is also my traveling bed.  Very often I find myself traveling for work and if I haven't had enough sleep the night before, I fall asleep at the wheel.  See the comfy pillow and blankets back there?  They come in quite handy when I need to find a parking lot somewhere and get some more sleep.  Usually an hour or so and then I'm good to go the rest of the day.

This is my broken pilot's seat.  I can't move the seat forward or backward. This, along with the dent pictured above (oh and the windshield cracked in two places) are proof to my mother in law that we waste money. You see, if we would stop wasting money on private school and therapy for two people, we could afford to fix my van.  It also annoys her that the one time she visits and stays for three days, she needs cushions to help her reach the pillows. Oh fucking well!

Finally, this is the back of my van.   I use it as storage for all the shit I'm too lazy to haul in and clutter my house with.  Also, if I brought this stuff in, I'd have to put it away. I'm too busy spending time with my kids to put shit away. This is also where I stash gifts. Unfortunately, The Boy has caught on to this, so now I have use a blanket to cover things up.  You can also tell that I like shopping at Target.

So from now on, I'm not going to be embarrassed about my van.  Whenever I criticize myself for it not being cleaner and dent free, I'm going to remind myself that the time I spend with my kids cuddling, laughing and playing in the yard is going to mean more than a pretty van. I would rather spend my money on private school and therapy (ok, not really, but given the choices I have) than on fixing dents and cracks. If my MIL doesn't like it, she can pay to have it all fixed!

A Dysfunctional Perfectionist's Guide to Throwing a Birthday Party

I'm a craft whore. I love doing crafty things.  I also love birthday parties.  Throwing homemade birthday parties gives me the perfect opportunity to get a little crafty. But, I'm also a perfectionist that looks for fault in everything I do.  I tell myself that putting together a birthday party will help me practice how to control my self critical voice.   Here is how I threw a Pirates & Princesses birthday party for my daughter and all the ways my self critical voice tried to get the best of me.




A Week Before the Party

1.  Buy all the ingredients you will need for the cake.  Panic and drive to three different grocery stores looking for graham cracker sticks. Get pissed that you live in a town with a grocry store monopoly. The town you USED to live would have graham cracker sticks.  Completely flip out on yourself and convince yourself the party is ruined because the cake won't be perfect.

image from familyfun.go.com
I couldn't find the graham cracker sticks to put 
around each layer of the cake.

Special note: Make sure you buy a whole pineapple (not one already cored that would make your life easier) to make the cute strawberry & pineapple boats with. Leave the pineapple on your counter with the kitchen window open so you can infest your house with fruit flies.

**Apparently I did not save the website where I found the idea for these glorious pineapple strawberry boats.  Picture a chunk of pineapple with a strawberry on top skewered with a sword cocktail pick.**

2.  Start making the wooden pirate ship you convinced yourself you could assemble without the help of your husband because you knoe he hates these things.  Immediately accept your husband's offer to help and then watch him start cussing at it and breaking it within 15 minutes.

After your husband has thrown up his hands, take over building the ship, because if there isn't a pink pirate ship centerpiece, the party is ruined.

Note:  Have your hot glue gun heated up and ready to go. You're going to need it!

3. Panic about the state of your house, but avoid cleaning it because the kids will just trash it again.

**No picture available, use your imagination**

The Day Before the Party:

 1)   Make the cake. Don't panic when one of your cakes comes out looking like this because you can still salvage the top circle from it.

2)  Make a special trip to the grocery store for the ONE ingriedient you forgot for the icing.  Don't go to the closest grocery store, drive clear across town so you can get the $3 sword cocktail picks you need for the pineapple & strawberry boats even though you arent going to have time to make them.  Apparently, you bought the pineapple for the soul purpose of infesting your house with fruit flies.

image from Webhats.com

  3)  Start spray painting a styrofoam ice chest brown so it looks like a treasure chest.  Run out of paint and make a trip to the hardware store for more spray paint.  Think about how ridiculous it was to buy a three inch tall can of spray paint and become frustrated at wasting money.

You're going to need a heck of a lot more

spray paint than this to paint a styrofoam cooler!

  4. Set the table and allow yourself to actually be proud of something you did.  Tell that self critical voice to go to shut the fuck up.

Clearly, this adorable table would have

been completely ruined without the pirate ship!

   4. Finish the cake and tell yourself it turned out pretty awesome.  Remind that self critical voice it needs to shut the fuck up.  You CAN do some things right!

Not exactly like the picture, but 

it was enough to make a 4 yr old happy!

The Day of the Party

   1. Wake up with PMS and start losing your mind because your kids are already wound up over a party that doesn't start until 2:00.

  2.  Order balloons and then head over to the craft store for more shit you realize you do not have.  You really should have all your crafts DONE by now, but you don't.

  3.  Stop at Starbucks for some frappacino crack

  4.  Get almost all the way home before you realize you forgot to pick up the balloons

  5. Run out of time to make any of the food you bought.  You can always use those cocktail swords you HAD to have to fight the fruit flies.

    6.  Finish decorating.  Continue panicking.  Start cleaning up the house.

    7.  Bribe your daughter with your make up so she will put on the outfit you made.  Pray she will keep it on at least until the party starts.

    8.  Panic and then be secretly happy when everyone arrives 20 minutes late.  That much less time you have to fill!

    9.  Worry about not having food for people even though you know nobody will eat it.


FINALLY allow yourself to relax.  People are having a good time even though your self critical voice tried to convince you otherwise.


Tell yourself to never EVER have another party in your home. Seriously.  EVER!  Even if it is an excuse to get your house somewhat clean.

The Last Five Years

Five years ago my husband decided he wanted to change careers.  It would mean he would have to leave for six months of training and that we would have to move somewhere, but had no say in where.  It was a complete crap shoot if he would make it through all the levels of the hiring process. I supported him because I didnt want him living with regrets and I didnt want to be the reason for regrets. He was unhappy and stuck with his current job, I didnt like my job, we weren't comitted to living where we were living the rest of our lives, so why not?

A year and a half later, he makes it through the entire hiring process and leaves for training.  I had six months to sell our house, find a new house and find a new job for myself while working full time and being a single parent to two kids.  When my parents found out about this, they lost it. They accused me of walking away from them and leaving them to die. I am an only child and my mom thinks I am her life, except when she thinks I'm an ungrateful bitch, or leaving her to die, or won't let her manipulate me into hating my dad. 

 I made it through all that shit and we moved to Mississippi. The fucking cesspool of the country.  Every sterotype you can think of about Mississippi is true. I often say time travel is possible when you live in Mississippi. You travel back in time when you get here and into the future when you leave. In someplaces, I swear time stopped in the 50s.

 About six months after we moved here, problems my son has had since he was one, problems that everyone told me he would outgrow, started becoming worse problems. When he was one, he would hit stuff if he was frustrated. He was kicked out of a daycare at three because the daycare thought he was a liability. Every time I tried to get help, people told me he would outgrow it, or I just needed to do this or that with him. I tried fucking everything and nothing worked. He would have raging fits where he would bang his head on the floor over the littlest thing.   He was in kindergarten now and he would still throw uncontrollabe tantrums and they were only getting worse. So, I found a therapist for him. She sucked. That summer he got kicked out of a summer camp for choking a kid three times in two days. I took him for an evaluation where they found nothing wrong with him other than he was highly intelligent - top 99% of the population. They suggested therapy again. I found a new therapist.

During that same summer, I got a phone call from the sheriff's dept in TN telling me my mother had been arrested for domestic violence.  Apparently, my dad had become delusional and was convinced my mom was going to kill him. He was trying to build this case of her being violent towards him so she would go to jail. He was also getting back at her for when she threw him in jail 20 years ago. Sooooo, all night to TN to bail my mom out of jail. My mom has just as many crazy problems as my dad. At the same time, my dad was missing (long story in itself, but I found him). Also, since my mom had been arrested on domestic violence charges, she couldnt go home.  For two and a half months!!!  She had no place to go other than my house. Oh Fucking Joy!!! While at my house, she had many tantrums and told me my husband didn't care if she died because he wouldn't stop chasing my two year old daughter that he was trying to get in the bath and fix a wrinkle in a rug so she could sit down.  I had to do SOMETHING to get her out of my house, so I took time off work and drove back to TN and went to court to get permission for her to move back to her house. My dad was now living in Arkansas with my grandma.  I made at least two more round trips up there and in the end, my mom ending up moving to Mississippi. Oh fucking Joy.  I had JUST gotten away from them and now she was moving five minutes away from me. Again.

During this whole time I'm miserable. My job sucks and I've left everything that I had in TN. It's impossible to make friends here unless you are from here, belong to a country club and go to church. I have NOTHING in common with these people. Nothing!  

My son starts first grade and the problems start again. He gets suspended twice for hurting kids and if he does anything else he will be kicked out of school. He goes to a private school. He NEEDS to be in this school because of his intelligence. He would be swallowed alive in public school down here. His school even told me I needed to start finding options other than public school for him. I'm a fucking mess!  A year of Therapy has done nothing for him!  I finally decide he needs medication. My sweet kind hearted seven year old son needs medication. He is my child through and through. I have blamed myself to the heavens because he is sick just like me. I've also had my whole childhood dug up because I'm living every painful part of it again - thru him. He is seven and says he wants to die.  I finally find one of the only child psychiatrists in this hell hole and diagnosis him with ODD which is Oppositional  Defiant Disorder and gives him drugs. Ahhhhh. Drugs!  Finally!!!  Well, we go back for a follow up and the doctor decides my son has ADHD too. I'm livid because we had him tested by an world renowned ADHD expert who said he didn't have it.  At this point, I thought maybe I was living in denial.  Maybe he does have ADHD, what the fuck do I know anyway?  So we start him on ADHD drugs and they make him crazy hyper. 

Then I get arrested. Because a black cop with a massive chip on his shoulder in Mississippi thought a white woman in a minivan and her three year old thought I cussed him out. He called reinforcement cops in and my husband had to come get my daughter because I was going to jail.   I was so pissed, so I decided to go psycho on this man. There is nothing worse than being in a car with a screaming child, so I started screaming my head off. It drove him bonkers. It's all I could do to keep functioning at that moment. While I was sitting in that jail cell waiting to be released I wanted to die. I wanted to walk out in front of a train and end it all. But, I couldn't do that. Suicide is the most selfish act and my son was fucked up enough.  The arrest happened a year ago and it still isn't resolved. I have to go back to court in June for it. 

After I got arrested, I started an intensive outpatient therapy program.  It helped some. I learned to start putting up "healthy" boundries with my mother.   I dealt with a lot of shit from when I was a kid.  A year later, I'm still in therapy and still figuring shit out. 

My son started second grade and problems started again.  More suspensions.  But this year he has an amazing teacher.  She adores him  and sees the sweet child that he is.  My son's doctor is still fucking around with medication and FINALLY decides that my son DOESN'T have ADHD and just has a hard time living in a world of mere mortals because of his intelligence.  NO FUCKING SHIT YOU DUMBASS!!!!!  I had this conversation with him months prior and he thought I was an idiot!  Moron! 

Then I got arrested again. Seriously, WTF God?  Haven't I been through enough?  Isn't being arrested once in a twelve month period enough?  Apparently not.  And this time, my husband was in Vegas for a guy's weekend with his brothers.   I got pulled over for an expired tag and discovered my license had been suspended. I had NO CLUE I was driving with a suspended license.  I guess God was sort of on my side, because this cop just took me to the station and let me post bail. No jail this time. But guess who had to some pick me up?  My mom. 

Now that my son is doing better and I'm able to put that stress behind me, I'm realizing my marriage has been a mess ever since my husband got his new job.   It just doesn't fucking end. And my parents are having crazy spells again.   I have managed to make one friend. I tried to make another friend, but she quit talking to me after she realized I wasn't going to drink her curch kool-aid. Even though our kids adored each other. But you know what, I don't need that kind of drama in my life. 

This is a cliff note version hitting the highlights of the last four years of my life.  I have been in a deep deep hole for a very long time. Not realizing how deep that hole was, but finding out that it could go deeper and deeper.   I think I'm starting to slowly get better. Things that go wrong don't send me into an abyss of despair like they used to. I can actually fall asleep without melatonin some nights.

Baby steps.