Step-family Talk

Headed off for another fun-filled day of picking up kids. I swear it just doesn’t get any easier. It’s not the driving that is the tough part either it is having to try to arrange a pick up time with his ex that is really a pain in the ass. My ex and I have a pretty set time that he picks up and I drop off every other weekend. If there is a change we call the other party and we are civil about what needs to happen to make it work for both of us. Unfortunately for us that just isn’t how it works with Love’s ex. She likes to hold all the cards which means no set pick up and drop off times. She likes to arrange them just before every other weekend.

It is a little game she likes to play called, “What can I do to make it difficult”. I know it probably sounds like I’m just bitter about her in general and I kind of am, but honestly she doesn’t even attempt to make things work smoothly for anyone involved including herself. It is just beyond the point of being ridiculous anymore.

Do you ever get the feeling that you are being ignored? You call someone a few times, leave a few messages and get nada in response. Of course, sometimes you are just being paranoid but there are the times when you are actually being screened, ignored, and avoided.

That has been the case each time we’ve tried to call Love’s ex to set up a pickup time to meet her to get the kids on Friday. I’m not sure what she thinks she will accomplish by ignoring us. I honestly think she hopes it will tick off Love and he will call her all upset and then she can say… “oh look at the effect I still have on him. Yada yada yada”

We’ve called and left messages at least three times this week and gotten zero response so it will be interesting to see if she ever calls. Considering we should be going tomorrow to get the kids if we are getting them. And you never know with her whether she will actually send them or not.

State Statuate in my state says that a parent must be given liberal telephonic parenting time, which the state deems is at least two days a week. That is the state written law. However Love’s ex just doesn’t really seem to care at all about what the state says she is supposed to do she pretty much does whatever she feels like doing which is totally and complete bullshit if you ask me, but hey, nobody asked me, right?

Anyway every time we call there to talk to the kids (which isn’t all that often because of past events) she ignores us. I don’t think my hubby has been able to speak to his kids in nearly two weeks which is absolutely ridiculous.

I may not be the best ex-wife on earth, though I’m probably pretty close, lol…but come on now. There is such a thing as just being a bitch for the sake of it. URGH

Tuesday seems like as good a day as any to quit complaining (even if only for just the one day) and start sharing a little information that might be helpful to step parents out there. So I’m going to offer a little review of a step parenting website every week on Tuesday.

Today I took a look at Step-Parenting.com Now my biggest problem with this website is the vast majority of the infomation that is offers is available only by buying it. I know we all have to make a living and I’m not saying there is anything wrong with making a little extra doing what you know and offering advice (with a fee) to those out there struggling in that area and willing to pay. But for me it just doesn’t work. While I’m all about being a better step-mom I just simply cannot afford advice that I have to pay for.

They do however offer a number of cost free articles about a variety of issues facing step parents, such as ‘How To Handle a Hostile Ex’. Now that is an article we could use around here.

I hate having to explain things to my children that I shouldn’t have to be explaining. I shouldn’t be the one that has to explain them when it is my ex who is the one doing the things in question and I definitely shouldn’t have to explain them to a nine year old, who in my opinion is WAY too young to know or have to worry about such things. But I find myself doing it more and more as my ex-husband, the selfish fellow that he is, continues to do things while he has my kids that my kids have been taught from birth are wrong.

There is nothing like trying to tell a crying nine year old that while his father isn’t a bad person his actions are not in accordance with our beliefs. It’s not a conversation I should have had to have. I am tired of being the one who always has to explain things, the one who has to be the tough, strong, stable shoulder, the only person who seems to bear any of the burden of raising these children in the way they should be raised.

I am so tired I could just scream. And I just might. But hopefully only to myself. Maybe I’ll lock myself in the bathroom or go for a nice long drive once Love gets home from work. I just really need a break from being a sane grown up. I need a minute to cry or yell or forget that I have responsibilities and my life is sure to become more not less difficult as the years go on.

Things are going pretty good at the moment, aside from a few minor issues that are sort of / kind of dealt with. Anyway things are sailing along relatively smoothly which of course being the cynic that I’ve become lately leaves me wondering what we have just around the bend. What sort of issue is just lying in wait to spring out at us when we least expect it.

Yes, the calm before the storm. It gets to feeling like perhaps we are just in the eye of the tornado. You know what I mean. That there is definitely more trouble to come but you’ve got to just get your bearings and catch your breath and pray you survive the back end of the thing.

We are supposed to get the kids tomorrow which shouldn’t be a big deal but it always proves to be interesting. There is always some last minute change of plans or some reason she can’t possibly meet me at the court ordered halfway point. I don’t know why we let her walk all over us except that to be absolutely honest it is just easier than fighting with her all the time. Besides the fact that I feel like she actually gets a kick out of fighting with Love. Like to her it means there is still some spark there. And believe me those embers have long ago died out. Thank goodness.

It is actually comforting that she is such a beast because that is the one thing I don’t have to worry about is the two of them ever deciding it was a huge mistake and they should try again. She torched the hell out of that bridge.

Yesterday started out to be a normal day with only a few things to do. And then with one unplanned event the whole day took a giant nosedive and suddenly my not so awful week has become packed with stuff. I’ve got nearly as much to do this week as I had last week and basically one less day to do it in since I’ve got to spend most of Friday in the car picking up the kids. I just pray that Love’s ex doesn’t change around the pickup time on me. That seems to be a favorite habit of hers. I think she just likes to see if she can get me riled up. Which she does. But I never let her know that. Would give her way too much satisfaction.

So today I have just a few hours this morning where I don’t have something scheduled. The rest of the week is mostly packed with crap that needs doing. What I really need around here is an errand runner and a maid. That would be lovely. Of course you have to have money to have employees and sadly I have nothing but a shortage of that around this joint. I guess I should just feel lucky that I got a break over the weekend to sort of prepare me for the coming week.

Last week was just ridiculously busy. There wasn’t a single day or night that we didn’t have something going on. Family functions, ball games, doctors appointments, etc, etc, etc. It was great and awful. I hate weeks where you don’t even feel like you have a chance to breath. So the weekend of nothingness was literally the best few days I’ve had in a long long while. I got to sleep in a bit on Saturday and sort of refresh myself and we lounged around a good part of the night watching movies and enjoying the lack of kids.

Which I know sounds mean and awful. But believe me I need an occasional break.

This week unfortunately looks like it will be just as busy as the last one. We’ve got haircut appointments, work related stuff, family stuff, ball games, stuff for the kids school. UGH UGH UGH. I’m a tired old woman and I need a lot more rest and relaxation than I’ve been getting of late. I wish that I’d clean out an old closet and find a genie in a magic lamp who would grant me three wishes. The first would be to be insanely wealthy so I could relax and pay off everyone I owe and help out family members who could use the money as well. After that I’d just want a few minutes of peace and quiet a day.

Not too much to ask, right, LOL.

Okay I honestly know exactly how cynical of me it is to think let alone say what I’m about to say but I can’t help it. It isn’t that I look for the worst in people because really in most cases I will give people the benefit of the doubt. I will assume that they have good in their hearts and wouldn’t intentionally do things to harm other people but with Love’s ex that is just not the case.

She is for an absolutely lack of better words. NOT NICE. Not even close to being nice. She sometimes goes out of her way to be cruel. So I have to tell you that I’m getting more and more nervous by the minute.

She has been pleasant, nice, even overly accomidating the past few weeks and it is totally freaking me out. Take yesterday for instance. Love called her up to see if it would be possible to switch weekends so we could get back on track and she was, in his words “Very nice”. Now, I know I should just be grateful and pray she is become a better person deep down inside, but the logical part of me says, “Hello….other shoe about to drop. Watch your back. Don’t let your guard down.”

Now how awful is that???

We have had kids (either mine or his) every weekend for the last three or four months and let me tell you…It sucks. I know I shouldn’t complain as most people have their kids all the dang time but we are still newlyweds, well sort of. Anyway we’d gotten quite used to having a ton of kids one weekend and then NO KIDS the next. Leaving us with a bit of time all for ourselves and it was lovely. Really lovely.

So Love has decided in an effort to get our weekends back on track he is not going to take his kids this weekend and arrange with his ex wife to take them next weekend so we can get back on schedule. I’m not really certain how this will work out since there are many times when she would rather do anything than what we ask her to do, but lately she has been a bit more accomidating so fingers crossed she will allow us to switch weekends to get things back on track. Since she kept them two in a row which is what threw us off in the first place.

So hopefully we will have a child free weekend. I do so need to relax a bit, maybe even sleep in for a little while on Saturday and try to regain my bearings and get a bit of my lost patience back.

I should have stayed in bed this morning. I knew when I got up that I should go back to bed. I drank my morning Pepsi and I did a bit of writing but the comfy pillows and sheets were screaming my name. Begging me to come back and warm them again.

However, I stayed awake. This was my first mistake of the morning.

My oldest son woke up and apparently thought to himself…”What can I do to make Mom feel like she is losing her mind today?”

And then he proceeded to do just that. He is disagreeable about absolutely everything. It took us nearly an hour to get through TWO PAGES of math problems. Not even very difficult math problems. He wanted me just to hand him the answer on a silver platter and hello that won’t teach him anything so I made him figure them out. Mostly because I knew he could.

Then he complained about my plans for tonight and “why do we have to do that” and “why can’t we do this instead” and OH MY HELL STOP IT RIGHT NOW JUST STOP IT BEFORE YOUR MOTHER EXPLODES!!!!!

I’m not sure why some days he seems to take such joy in doing and saying things he knows will upset and irritate me. Honestly he is so much like his father somedays I just want to cry.

I rarely give out a lot of advice about how to be a step-parent mostly because I’m new to this whole gig. My main purpose with this blog is to share my experiences as a parent/stepmom with the hope that someone out there reading it will realize that they aren’t alone in this somewhat scary role of stepmonster

There are a lot of great and very informative websites that contain tons of information and tips on how to make your blended family work so today I took a little look around the internet to see what sort of information I could come up with. Trying to be a bit more helpful than I usually am.

I’m not usually one to read ultra-religious based self-help books but there is a couple in California that has a serious of just such books that are designed to get your blended family up and running. I read a bit of what they have to say and it sounded like fairly reasonable advice. Besides that they have a lot more years of this whole blended family thing under their belt than I do.

So here they are…

Authors Don and Kathy Coryell have a blended family.

Here is a link to the website showing the news article all about Don and Kathy.

When it comes to a new step family adjusting to each other it really is the little things that show you that you really and truly are making a bit of progress. When Love and I first got married my kids, my oldest in particular, wanted not a lot to do with him. I hated it because I knew it made him feel somewhat bad and it lead to hurt feelings, him trying to avoid the kids, etc.
Well last night I realized we were making a bit of progress. After dinner he went upstairs to relax as he’d had a long day. Usually he hangs out with the kids and I until their bedroom so they noticed his absence. First my youngest asked where he was. Then when it came time to put on jammies he needed to get a shirt out of my room. I told him to go ahead, but knock first. I heard him run upstairs and knock and go into my room where he stayed for a good five minutes teasing around with Love.
Earlier in the day my oldest had drawn some pictures he was quite proud of and he asked if he could go up and show them to Love. That about shocked my socks right off and I think it had the same effect on Love as he mentioned it later after the kiddos had gone off to bed.
It is nice when things start to come together. Of course things aren’t perfect but it is wonderful when they start to look like it all might actually work out someday.

It seems I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few weeks getting myself into various kinds of trouble with various members of my family. Honestly it’s gotten to the point where enough is quite literally enough. What I’d really like to do at the moment is dig a hole to China. You know like you believed you could do as a kid. Just start digging and keep going straight and eventually you would end up in a totally different place on the other side of the world.

I have decided that while it is great SOMETIMES to live so very close to mostly all of my family it would be very very very…did I say very??? nice to have a bit of distance between us all. Even fifty miles or so would probably do the trick. I’m not saying I literally want to move all the way across the world but I need my space, ya know.

Of course, I feel like a totally jerk for thinking this way let alone feeling this way but what can I say it is absolutely the way I feel. Of course a move would affect the kids as well and Love and I. For instance it would put us farther from my ex and closer to Love’s ex, which is not necessarily a good thing. Though it isn’t a bad thing either.

Ugh. Why can’t life just be easy. That would be nice, right.

Here is the thing… When you are dealing with exes you never really know what is going to happen from one day to the next. My ex was supposed to pick up the kids at a specific time yesterday and since I am letting him take until Saturday morning since it is his brothers wedding, even though it is my weekend, you would think he would be considerate enough to show up when he is supposed to, but….NO

Of course the reason he was late was because he had to run home and change his clothes and pick up his girlfriend.

So they both come to the door… and I really don’t like her, we are talking borderline hate her. Not because she is with him, but because she has a nasty habit of telling my kids that she thinks I’m wrong a lot and that irks me. So anyway they come to the door and I’ve had a long day and I had just changed into my jammies which sort of accentuate my growing pregnant belly. The wench has the never to look at my stomach and ROLL her eyes at me.

Now normally I’m nice and this was no different for the most part, but I couldn’t resist waiting until she was looking at me again and then looking at her fat little belly roll (which is bigger than my preggo belly) and giving her a sucks-to-be-you look.

Maybe not the nicest thing but what’s a girl to do?