Random Daily Thoughts

It scares the shit out of me when I find myself at the tail end of a drive that I do all the time and then realize that I can’t recall the last 10 minutes. What if I had a car full of kids, what if there was some maniac on the road? Is it auto-pilot?…a lapse of short term memory?...a brain fart?...Are you actually ‘there’ and on the ball…but just don’t remember? DAMN!!! That annoys the hell out of me.


The saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” gets me like a freaking hot knife…right through the fucking eyeball!

I understand its meaning and intention…But here is why I have ‘issues’ with it. To start with…I am a man. I read into things and then THAT becomes their factual meaning and intended purpose on this earth.

I am in the midst of a nasty divorce and do not get to see my two boys as much as I should. I am unemployed and we are scraping by. I am not able to provide for my family the way I’d like to. I smoke. I have a tendency to ‘have talks’ about every ounce of waste that comes out of my body. I am not married to the woman that I love….and the list goes on.

BUT…I am happy. I am with the woman that I love. I do get to see my boys. Mariah and her kids love me. We are not starving. We have the things that we need to survive. We have friends. We are healthy and we have an amazing extended family …….SO…one way to look at it…It ain’t broke.

Do I just scrap the whole, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it thing? I HAVE to find work. I NEED to finalize my divorce. I YEARN to be a bigger part in my boys’ lives. Etc.

SEE….That is what goes on in this ‘so called’ brain of mine.

When 'Recall' does not work

Ever had a nasty email go to the wrong person? The one that it was about?
Well, that just happened to my ex...and it was sent to me.

Here goes!

First Email…to a friend of hers – but it got sent to me accidentally

Can you please hang out at the school, at pick up to make sure he's there on time to get J (7 yr old)? How much you wanna bet the a-hole won't spend the time with them alone and takes them to Santa Monica to be with the other trailer trash? Not that I should trust him to do homework with J(7 yr old)...he can't spell for shit anyway!

Thanks and see you tomorrow night.

My response…

I am not refusing to communicate...you have sent me 5 or 6 emails today and are trying to 'run' my visits. I will pick them up and then have them home by 7PM.

Secondly, this weekend we are going camping and the boys will not be able to go to the birthday or the play date. Please let your friends know. We are leaving on Saturday morning and will be back Sunday evening.

1st 3rd and 5th weekends and every Wednesday are my time with the boys and, unfortunately for you, I will be deciding what we are going to be doing. It is not your place to; tell me what I should/can do with them, tell the boys about events on my weekends (you should inform me) or expect that I report in to you on everything that we do. You leave town and don't tell me where you are going, what flights you are on....I have yet to receive any reports from either school or doctors about how things are going...who is not communicating?

And feel free to stop bad-mouthing me to the boy's friends' parents...I think that just makes things much harder with respect to me bringing them to parties/events for those families.

Her response…

And, you are showing my friends that you are an asshole but doing things like this. And they see what you write about me. I'm not making you look bad, you are making yourself look bad.

Then she had my 4 year old call me to say that he wanted to go to a party that she told him about. Then she got on the phone and yammered on until I had to hang up on her.

Then I got this…

Wow. You are an asshole.

I am not trying to run your visits. You know nothing about the boys' day to day routine because of your refusal to communicate, so I have to let you know about their routine. You don't care about their dietary needs / restrictions even though I have mentioned them to you in the past. You haven't even logged into the Our Family Wizard site in weeks...on which I outlined our trip to Disney and the details. There haven't been any school reports, but again, I put everything including emergency numbers, etc in the Our Family Wizard because I am doing my part.

E is one of J’s (7 yr old) BEST FRIENDS and you already said you'd bring them to her party. If have it in an email and you told E’s mom you'd let them come.
C was one of J (4 yr old) best friends and you are denying them the opportunity to see him on his first and likely only visit back for a long time. You are purposely denying them of important events because of vengeance and ego. I just told the boys that you said they can't go to the party or to see C because you are taking them camping, and they said then they don't want to go to your house this weekend. They can go camping anytime. These are people that are important to them...who are a part of their everyday lives. All of their friends will be at these events. And, E’s Mom is calling you because E’s best friend now won't be at her party and she is very upset.

CANNOT WAIT TO go to court on the 9th.

...oh wait...then I got this one

I wish you would think about your children. You said you'd talk to them about it tomorrow? To put the burden on a 4 and 7 year old and go back on your promises to them, as you admitted on the phone, is awful.
And, clearly you were drunk when I just spoke to you --- are all the children in your house asleep?
Again, I look forward to our trip to court on the 9th.

....shit....and then this one

Also – I have many emails in which I offered to switch the weekends with you – weeks ago – because of this weekend’s important events. And, you said you’d bring them to the party since you couldn’t switch and would let me know about the Sunday event with their friend who moved away.

I will make sure to bring those emails to court. You can go camping anytime, but instead are choosing to lash out at me via to the boys’ detriment. That is quite obvious.

WTF?

Drama Unveiled !

I am completely losing my freaking mind here. I don’t even know where to start.

After getting home from volunteering at the kid’s middle school today, we got phone calls from both middle school kids saying that they were called into the school counselor’s office and were interviewed by Social Services. Upon hearing this, Mariah about lost her mind, while puking all over her insides.

We had no clue about any issues and we immediately called the school to find out what was going on. They explained that Social Services interviewed the two kids today due to an investigation that they are conducting. We hung up and could not dial the number for Social Services fast enough. With sweat pouring down our faces, we were given the number for the woman assigned to our case.

After leaving her a message that we were concerned and wanted to find out what was going on, she called back about 15 minutes later. She explained that they received a call from an ‘anonymous’ source claiming ‘general neglect and emotional abuse - that we; are alcoholics and drug addicts, leave the kids unsupervised for hours at a time and allow parties for our high school daughter with drugs and alcohol.

Now we were also told that the call came in on Saturday the 7th of February (the same day that I told my ex that if she did not bring my boys to me for my first overnight visit, that I would call the police.)

As the report is confidential, I can not say for sure who made the accusations, but I do have my suspicions. Now…I know that she dislikes, hates or distrusts me…and does not like Mariah (whom she has never met) but making accusations to CPS is absolutely out of control. How can someone who has never met Mariah or any of her kids, who has never stepped foot in our house, who has never spoken to anyone in this household and who knows no mutual friends…make any accusations?

I understand that she wants to punish me and …be the boss of me, but attempting to have Mariah’s kids taken away from us – just so that I won’t get further visitations with my boys, is absolutely insane!

Now…the allegations are false and the interviews today went very well…but I guess I am just at a loss for what to do. Do I find a way to fight back? Do I leave it alone? Do I say “OK…what do you want of me? Do you want me to walk away? Do you want me to be in our boys’ lives?....WHAT?” I kind of feel that she is just attacking with whatever she can …and since I’ve been granted the overnights…she has taken out the ‘big guns.’

I don’t know … but what I do know is that this drama needs to stop. Bottom line is that I think it would be great if we could invite her over to sit down with a glass of ‘JUICE’ and smooth things out …see what she wants and find some middle ground so that none of the kids are in the middle of this ridiculous battle.

GOD…GRANT ME THE SERENITY…

Overnight Excitement

I am very excited to announce that tomorrow I get to have my two boys spend the night with me. The last time I spent the night with them was September of 2005.

The divorce and visitation/custody proceedings have been long and drawn out. It is nice to know that things are finally moving forward. I have been spending weekend days with them but until now I have not been able to have them sleep with me.

I know that the first few sleep-overs will not be easy as they are used to being with their mother, but I am so happy that we will be having this time together. I have spent the last few days taping some shows and some of my favorite childhood movies for them, cleaning and setting up their room, preparing their beds and stocking up on their favorite foods.

Again…I can’t even venture to tell you all how happy I am …but at the same time I can’t help but to feel anxious and worried that they might have a hard time adjusting to sleeping at my house. I want it to be smooth and worry free for everyone. I know that it will all work out and that they will love spending every other weekend at my house.

Well….everything is ready and now…I just have to wait until tomorrow morning.

Introducing.... Me

How the heck did I end up here? The first I heard from Bedside Talesman was "I have been told by a few people now that you need to get involved in this new blog that I started...".

To which I replied "A few people told you I need to get involved? I sense smoke being blown up my ass, but that's alright!"

In any case, I happily accepted the offer.

Since this is a bunch of guys who may or may not know each other from our main blogs (I only knew Bedside Talesman and Southern Sage before) I figured I would start by introducing myself.

I'm very happily married for 15 yrs to my college sweetheart (check out her blog here, if you're so inspired) and we have 2 kids, Darling Boy, 8 yrs old, and Princess Persistent, who is not quite 3 yrs old. My wife is known on the blogs as Another Suburban Mom (ASM) and as Veronica. We've been through a lot together- finishing college, several graduate degrees, numerous moves and job changes. We are both career-driven individuals trying to balance work and home lives.

I LOVE being a dad. Not to say it doesn't drive me nuts some days... But sometimes I wonder if I'm doing things "right". I imagine that I'll share some of those doubts here.

Some of my baggage is that not only are mine and my wife's parents divorced, but there are serious issues with both of our fathers. My dad is an alcoholic, recovered now, and a wonderful grandpa to the kids, but not so good when I was growing up. He tried, he really did, but in many ways I hope I do "better" with my kids than he did with me. Is it bad that I look up to my step-father as a role model more than my own dad?

Veronica's dad? When she was getting ready to head off to college he informed her that he thought she was destined for failure and by helping pay for her education he would be wasting his money. Their relationship declined from there, to the point when we got married 4 yrs later he was not invited to our wedding. When each of our kids were born she wrote him a letter telling him about them, in an effort to repair the relationship and allow our kids to know their paternal grandfather. His response? Absolutely nothing. We never heard from him.

So that's a little about me.

Thanks for the invite- this should be fun!

Posted by Hubman

OCD Sucks !!!!!!

Due to some technical difficulties…or my ever-present OCD…I had to erase all of the timers for shows set to record on our satellite system. There were some conflicts and things just weren’t working right (as smooth as I’d like them to be.)

As to not forget any shows…and again letting some OCD seep out, I first made a list (I love lists) of everything that we, as a household, wanted recorded on a regular basis.

35 freakin shows!
And 25 of them are shows primarily for Mariah and I.

What the hell are we thinking? How are we supposed to watch 25 hours of TV a week?

That made me think about it in relation to other things in my weekly schedule…fine…It was an excuse for me to make another list.

Here is what I cam up with…In order:
Sleep – 56 Hours
TV – 25
HoursWriting / computer / work – 25 Hours
Homework help – 10 Hours
Laundry/cooking/household chores – 8 Hours
Carpools – 8 Hours
Sex – 6 Hours
Volunteering at the school – 4.5 Hours
Shopping – 3 Hours

A TOTAL OF 145.5 HOURS!

Being that there are only 168 hours in the week…I have about 22.5 hours unaccounted for. (I know I do other things so I will not stress about ‘losing time’ or anything.)

Now, looking at this list…I know that I need to move SEX MUCH HIGHER in the list, additionally, I am spending roughly 47% of the hours in the week sleeping and watching TV…WTF!? Like I don’t have better things to do.