Grrr...

So I said I'd post when I knew something more about student teaching. Well, I do and I don't. I got an email Tuesday afternoon from the program coordinator that he had heard from the school I was waiting to hear from the previous afternoon and they couldn't take me. Great turnaround time, huh? Yeah, he's just my favorite person in the world. Anyway, he asked me if Central Bucks School District would work for me, but warned me that it's a long shot, if not he said his only other option would be Philadelphia School District.

I wrote him back that any of the high schools in Central Bucks would work for me and gave him a few schools in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia that I think wouldn't be an excessive commute.

I also had a nice long conversation with my classmates before seminar on Wednesday night. It seems like a lot of other people have had problems with this student teaching coordinator that's given me so much trouble. I told them all about the problems that I've had with him and the college over my time there and some of the things he's said to me that were discriminatory regarding my disability and everyone agreed that if I don't have a placement by Monday (the last day to drop or add a class) I should the university. I've been thinking about suing for a while now. The reasons are many, dating all the way back to 2008 when I did student teaching for the first time. At that time, the advisor at the College of Education advised me that I would be okay graduating without my certification, that I should be able to work for private schools because they don't require teachers to have certification. The truth, which I found out once I started looking for a job, is that since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, in 2001, no schools are hiring uncertified teachers, private or public, so I couldn't use my degree to teach. Another reason is that they're not continuing the post-baccalaureate certification program after this semester, so if I don't student teach at Temple I'll have to go to Delaware Valley College, which has a similar program, but will cost me another $12,500+. So I should be able to sue for lost wages (maybe several years worth, but at least one), for tuition paid to Temple for this program I won't be able to finish, for the difference in tuition between Temple's and Del Val's post-bacc programs, possibly for disability discrimination, and for additional damages for the wages that I'll lose while going through another program. I don't want to have to do any of that though, I just want a damn placement and to be certified at the end of the semester.

At Last

I went to the doctor yesterday, MRI in hand, and finally got a diagnosis as to what's wrong with my hip. I have osteonecrosis or avascular necrosis of the femoral head. Meaning that the part of my femur that butts up against my pelvis to form my hip is dying due to lack of blood. This is caused by either my long-term steroid use, my lupus, or both. It's frustrating to have another major medical issue to deal with, but at the same time having a diagnosis makes me happy. That may seem odd for those of you who've never had a major illness that wasn't immediately identified, but I'm sure you can understand how frustrating it is to just not know what's going on with your own body.

The treatment options aren't great. It's not like I can take a pill or do some physical therapy and this will go away. It's probably going to require a total hip replacement, which causes a problem for someone as young as me because the lifespan on prosthetic hips is only about 20 to 30 years and I'm planning on making it well past 58. They can do a revision on the surgery and extend it's life by a few more years, but they're not always successful. There are also new kinds of hip replacements including ceramic and metal-on-metal that purport to last longer, but they have not been around long enough to have really been tested and both have problems of their own. There may even be options for me that don't actually require replacement of the hip, but rather an implant of some other kind, or even injecting my own stem cells into the necrotic parts to try to regrow the bone.

I'll know more about what my options really are after I see an orthopaedist at the Rothman Institute at Thomas Jefferson Hospital on the 1st of February. I'm also getting a second opinion at Abington Hospital three weeks later, just to be sure about where I want it done and who I want to do it.

Rothman and Abington both have great programs, with rapid recovery that has you up out of bed and walking in the first couple of days. That sounds painful, but also exciting and less like I'll be an invalid for some length of time afterward.

Alright, that's all I wanted to say about that for now. No news on the student teaching front, but I'll let you know when I know and I'll let you know more about the hip surgery once I know more.

Déjà Vu

I really thought I'd set things up so that they'd go smoothly for student teaching this semester.  I had a meeting with the Associate Dean of Teacher Education and my Disability Resources advocate, we worked out what accommodations that they could give me without disrupting the goals of the program and I came out of that meeting feeling like I could be comfortable about how they would move forward to find me a placement.

That was probably mid-to-late October.  When I hadn't heard anything about my placement by mid-December, I emailed the program coordinator.  He told me that they were working on a placement at one of the local high schools, but they hadn't secured anything yet.  That made me nervous, but I figured I'd wait some more and give them a chance to work things out before I went to someone farther up the chain.  After all, what else could I do?  I just hoped that I'd hear something before the first day of student teaching, January 19th.  Alright, I wasn't really going to wait until the 19th, but I did give them until last week.  I tried getting in touch with the Student Teaching Coordinator all week.  After leaving message after message on his voicemail, I called the Associate Dean last Thursday (who actually answered the phone after two rings).  He admitted that they weren't having much success finding me a placement, but assured me that they were going to continue working on getting me a placement that worked.  He also assured me that if I didn't get placed by the 19th it wasn't going to be held against me.

I have Graduate Student Teaching Orientation and then my first Student Teaching Seminar on Wednesday afternoon/evening and then on Thursday...well probably nothing.  But I'm all ready to go!  I've got lots professional looking new clothes, I've got a nice new bag to carry all of my lesson plans, notebooks, and supplies. Unfortunately, not knowing what grade and subject I'll be teaching, what book I'll be using, I feel unprepared when it comes to the subject matter.  When they're training you to be a history teacher, all of the classes are very specialized, like The History of the American Presidency, Colonial America, The Modern Middle East, Race in America, American Military Culture, Dissent in America, you get the picture - SPECIALIZED.  When you get a job, part of that job is to become an expert in the subjects that your teaching.  The first time you teach a course, you're learning almost as much as the students are, especially when it comes to the specifics and the organization of the materials.  So once again, I'm nervous as hell, I hate not having prep time before I get into the classroom.  I'd like to have the textbook, had time to design some powerpoint slides, get acquainted with the material and my cooperating teacher well before I got into the classroom.  As things stand now, I'm going to be working my ass off that first week just trying to get ahead of the materials so that I can plan ahead.

On the positive side of things, our Christmas went well.  The custody swap went beautifully.  We had the little man on Christmas Eve, which we spent having a "Christmas Morning" here and then  going to my mom's for dinner.  Christmas LM went to his mom's house and then BF and I went to my dad's in-laws for the day.  We also had another get together on the 26th at my dad's with the Earnest family.  It was great to see my cousins, who I rarely see, and really just to see that whole side of my family.  It was a long day, but a really nice time.  And then for New Year's Eve, we went to my cousin and her family's house for a nice little get together, which ended promptly at midnight when we figured out that we are too old for New Year's Eve to be the all-night party it once was.

My hips are still doing pretty terribly, but I had an MRI about a month ago and I have an appointment with my rheumatologist to get it read on the 23rd of this month.  I'm hoping that she'll agree to do a hip replacement surgery to just end the pain in my hips and all of the other trouble that my hips are causing; my ankle is a wreck, my leg is always turned out to the side, my knees ache, and now my lower back is acting up as well.  Not that I would be able to have a hip replacement until after student teaching, but if all went well I would be laid up for the summer, but I could be ready to teach by the fall, or at the latest the spring semester of next year.

Alright, I suppose that's it for now.  Not really all that much going on without school going, but things should be speeding up pretty soon.  Not too much I hope!

Halloween!

Our Little Bat!!

After

Last night almost ended well. I told him that the decision to not get my pills was a dumb one, but that I'd been under pressure and hadn't had time to think it through. This turned into a second fight about how I fail to take responsibility when I screw up. We spent the rest of the night reading and went to sleep without another word.

We spent another half an hour arguing this afternoon and then ignored each other for a while. I just didn't have any more fight left. I suggested we go out and eat before his Xbox 360 session with his friends. He didn't have any objections, so we headed down to the local casual dining establishment and sat down.

We ordered, made small talk, went over plans for the upcoming holidays and a probable trip to Williamsburg, Va. next month, nothing especially deep or emotional. We never fight for long; for this one to last through to this afternoon made it a particularly long one. I apologized for screwing up yet another one of his birthdays (I don't have the greatest track record, but I always make up for it to some degree). He listened and it just got better.

I still stand by the fact that I don't have a lot of control over my life, but this is one thing I could've made happen right. And it sucks that his birthday being a success or failure is entirely my responsibility, while he shares the responsibility for mine with my family, but he doesn't have local family, I'm it. So this one's up to me and I've just got to suck that one up.

It's not the same with everything else we argue about. I still maintain that I can not be the primary person responsible for making sure the house is tidy and that there are clean dishes and laundry. I cannot control my illnesses and what's going to be a problem at any particular time. I cannot control the speed at which my doctors attend to their messages or whether their staffs and my insurance company work together for an outcome that is beneficial to me. But I do resolve to control what I can when I can and to stretch myself thin just to make him feel happy and appreciated because he is my best friend and the love of my life and because he does the same for me. Maybe not stretching himself thin, but it's as much his fault that he's not sick as it is my fault that I am.

We've still got a lot of bumps to get over and I'm not saying that from here on out it'll be any easier, but we've been through five years of hard times and we've stayed together through all of them and now we've got a great therapist and we're both ready and willing to work to make this better for both of us, to realize the future that we know we love each other hard enough to achieve.

So that's it, just figured I ought to give you all the rest of the story.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

The Greatest Birthday Ever

I've been through a tiny bit of hell this month.

First, my Social Security benefits got cut in half because Pennsylvania stopped paying for my health insurance in June and they decided to take July, August, and September's premiums out of one check.  And let me remind you that I get less than nine hundred dollars to start with, so the remaining funds were meager, but still enough to pay my car insurance and student loans.  There were two real problems: BF's birthday would fall before I got my next check and I'm now tasked with taking LM to school (which, to be fair, I do entirely voluntarily).

Taking LM to school is something that I like to do.  It's a long ride and it's nice to have time to talk and tell jokes and just listen to him go on about whatever's on his six-year-old brain.  The one bad thing is that it costs me ten dollars a day to drive him back and forth to school and those days really add up in a month where I'm already on a super tight budget.  So I've had to borrow money from BF a couple times and he hasn't liked it at all, especially since I took advantage of a sale at JC Penney a few weeks ago and bought some winter clothes (because I've put on some weight since last year and nothing fits anymore).  The money, about $60, has become a really raw spot between the two of us and I don't understand why. He pays for lots of things in our life and I pay for what I can, but mostly I just pay my personal bills (about half of my income) and spend the rest of it on incidental things like dinner out for the two of us, clothes for LM, books, and other stuff for myself.  He's never made a big deal about how I don't fork over a certain amount of money to him each month before now, but apparently he's been stewing on it for a while.

Now, the other problem: BF has a totally different concept of what birthday's are all about than I do.  He sees it as the one special day in the year that's all about making him feel special.  I don't.  I see it as a nice excuse to spend some time with friends and family and all the gifts or dinners or whatever other perks there may be are nice plusses, but optional.

Another little bit of hell that's been going on is that I have a real problem getting through to my pulmonologist.  Her staff either lose my message, don't deliver my message, don't convey the seriousness or urgency of the message, don't call my insurance company about prior authorizations on the drugs they prescribe or pre-certifications for tests that the doctor orders, or just screw things up in one of several other ways.  This last time it was about my Oxycontin.  Now just a brief bit of background, I've been taking Oxycontin for 2.5 years now, before that it was darvocet, and before that it was ultracet.  I've been addicted to pain medication for about 7-8 years now and I go into withdrawal pretty quickly when I don't have it.  So I called my pulmonologist a few days before I was scheduled to run out of pills and left a message asking that she write me a new prescription for the drug (you can't get refills on narcotics in PA) and leave it at the front desk for me to pick up.  When I showed up at her office, which is an hour drive from my home, two days later, there was no prescription for me and the doctor was out of the office and on vacation from that day forward.  Fuck me! I asked if another doctor could write a prescription for at least enough pills to hold me over and the receptionist said that she would check, came back and told me that the nurse practitioner was going to write it.  So that's what happened.  Apparently, Nurse Practitioners can only write three days worth of a prescription, so she wrote me three prescriptions and told me that they would leave a message for my doctor to write a full prescription when she got back which would be on Halloween.

I couldn't make it downtown on Halloween because of all of the stuff I was doing with LM at school, but the next day, after picking the boy up from early dismissal, I set about to go down and pick it up.  At this point I had no pills left and had only taken half a dose that morning.  I had tried to call the doctor's office to make sure the prescription was there twice earlier in the day, but after 20+ minutes on hold had hung up and opted to call back later.  I called back when I was halfway there (I had had to stop by BF's work to borrow some money because I had neither gas nor money to pay for it).  I finally got through to the receptionist who told me that I should've called earlier to see if it was there and that she hadn't left the doctor a note when I had been in the office previously, that she had left it up to the Nurse Practitioner.  Not what she had said previously, but whatever I just wanted to know if my prescription was there or not before I got too far into the city.  After putting me on hold for what seemed like forever, she came back and told me that the doctor said I could pick up the prescription today.  I told her that that wasn't going to work for me because I was already out of pills and needed them that day.  She put me on hold again and when she came back she said that the doctor said I could come pick it up at four o'clock that day (it was just before two at the time).  I wanted to scream.  I had a kid in the car who hadn't had lunch and on his early dismissal day had already spent two hours in the car and now she was telling me that I could drive the 45 minutes back home only to turn around 20 minutes later and return to Center City.  I also had made an appointment for LM to get his flu shot that evening at 5:45 and didn't know whether or not we'd be back in time for that.  So in the split second I had to make the decision I told her that I couldn't make it at four and that I'd be in today.  Looking back it was a bad decision.  I could have cancelled LM's doctor's appointment or maybe even made it back in time and the extra driving wasn't going to kill either one of us.  But when put in situations where I'm already frustrated and have to make quick decisions, I don't always make the right ones.  So the result was that I didn't have any Oxycontin for last night or this morning.

When I woke up this morning I felt heavily drugged, withdrawal will do that to you, it's like it sucks all reason and equilibrium and energy from you.  As I said before, it's BF's birthday, but despite that, I had to ask him to take LM to school for me and to be late for work as a result.  When they left I climbed back in bed and slept for two hours until it was time to go to an appointment with my rheumatologist, right around the corner from my pulmonologist.  She had squeezed me in for an appointment because the pain in my left leg has gotten so bad that I limp all of the time, I have trouble with stairs, with getting up or sitting down on the couch, with getting in and out of be, with standing, walking, pretty much everything you need to use your hips and legs for, including certain private acts.  Driving to the doctor was as bad as I thought it would be, which is why I hadn't drove with LM.  I had trouble keeping within the lines, I was out of it, I definitely shouldn't have been on the road, but I needed to see my rheumatologist and I needed to get that prescription, so I did it, I'm not proud of it, but I did it.  So I saw the doctor and she wrote me the prescription instead of making me go next door to get it from the other doctor and an order for an MRI to try to figure out what's going on with my hip.  Pretty awesome.  Then, I had to make a decision - would I go home and get the 'script filled right away or would I go to get BF's last birthday present.  I decided to get the present, hoping that the pharmacy in the mall would fill my prescription.  Driving there wasn't so bad my concentration was a lot better and so was my equilibrium, so I wasn't such a menace.  The pharmacy at the mall couldn't fill it, didn't have enough pills, but I just forgot about that and went about my shopping, picking up the gift and getting back to my car as quickly as possible.  I hauled ass back home to my pharmacy where they quickly filled my prescription and I gobbled down two pills before I even left the store.  I came home and laid down for half an hour, waiting for the pills to kick in, waiting to feel a little more normal.  By this time it was 4:50 and I only had an hour until BF got home from work.  I wrapped his presents and got them all set up where he'd see them when he walked in.

Then he came home, opened the new space heater he'd bought, got the mail, then asked me what we were doing tonight.  You see not only does the day have to go perfectly, and the gifts be thoughtful, but I also have to take him out to dinner (or make him dinner, which is not a possibility with the state of my legs).  I told him I hadn't really planned anything, but we could go somewhere he liked, I had $25, and I'd pay him back tomorrow for anything we went over that.  He was pissed.  I hadn't made him dinner and here I was "asking him to pay for his own birthday dinner."  I didn't know what to say.  We've spent a couple birthday's at home just enjoying each other.  My last birthday, we went to my mom's for dinner and he got me a gift that he wasn't "happy with, but couldn't think of anything better," my mom hadn't gotten me a gift at all, but that was okay with me, it was all okay with me because I was spending my birthday with people that I enjoy, having a nice time.  Then he proceeded to ignore my gift and blast me for how much I'd messed up his morning because he was 45 minutes late and he got crap from his boss, who was out of the office and couldn't deal with a problem with the phones that had happened in BF's absence.  Then he started digging into me about how I never take responsibility for anything and how I don't do anything around the house and how I make everything his fault and how miserable I make his life.  I didn't know how to react but to defend myself.  I'm sick, I can't take on many responsibilities because I never know what's going to happen with my illness to keep me from living up to them.  I can't keep house or cook because I can't be on my feet for long and it's difficult to go from standing to sitting over and over again if I try to do things in small pieces.  I also reminded him that he doesn't do nearly as much housework as he should and that I am not a maid.  I don't work because I'm too sick to work, not because I have chosen the stay-at-home-mom route and have accepted all of the responsibilities that go along with that.  We went back and forth for a little while and then he pulled his usual move and escaped to the bedroom.  I let him be and started this post.  He came out a while later, said some more insulting stuff and them asked me if I wanted to go have dinner (since it was getting late).  I told him "no," I wasn't going to go if he was going to be mad at me for the whole meal.  This apparently pissed him off and he stirred up the fight again, but I wasn't going there.  I told him I had bought half of his gift last month (September) when I had money, but was counting on getting the best, most expensive part this month (October).  I said it would have been a lousy gift without that part, but that if I would've planned to take him out to dinner I would've had to not buy the gift.  He didn't respond with much.  Then he stopped talking to me.  Then he went out to the kitchen and said that he was going out to get something to eat, did I want anything.  I asked where he was going, he said he didn't know, I said I couldn't tell him what I wanted without knowing where he was going.  So he zipped up his coat and left, coming in 5 minutes ago with a Wendy's bag which he set on the arm of the couch and then departed to the bedroom again.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do.  I'm so frustrated.  If I could pick up and become the perfect housewife he wants, I would.  If I was just being lazy, I'd get off my ass.  If there was something that I could say to make him understand that I don't do this because I like it, I'd love to know what it is.  I think we're both getting to the end of our rope here.  I don't think that it can go on like this for much longer.  He's too unhappy.  I'm used to unhappy, being chronically ill makes you perfectly suited to deal with disappointment every day of your life, but I don't want to lose him.  I love him more than anything in this world and I think that if we could just overcome these hurdles we could have a really happy life.  I just don't know how to do that and it scares the shit out of me.

Scarlet Begonias and a Touch of the Blues

When I was in 9th grade I met the other me, I guess you could call her my soul mate. I don't know if they exist, but I know that if they do, she's mine.

She was a year younger than I was, but we were both old souls and Aquarians to boot, so we knew that things like age were unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Initially she rubbed my then best-friend, Brooke, the wrong way, the same way I'm sure I would have felt if Brooke had started going on about a new girl that I was going to love. I mean when someone comes along and has a life-changing moment with you best friend, starts hanging out with her all the time, audibly clicks with her on a level that you never have even approached, you might tend to get a little ticked off. I don't think that Allie had a "best-friend" per say, but more like a smattering of close girl friends. I on the other hand had a very serious relationship with Brooke.

Brooke and I had been inseparable since the first day of seventh grade. I had started that day apprehensive, the geeky girl at a new school with no real friends. The class was set up with two rows of desks on both sides of the room and one at the back. I took on of the seats in the middle of the back row as the side rows had filled up. She was the last person to come in and she came and sat down right next to me. That was it. From then on we were attached at the hip. She was like the older cooler sister I never had. She new just how to rebel, but still get your parents to do stuff for you. She knew all the music to listen to that was both incredible and would make it clear that "THEY" didn't understand us. She had a closet full of band tee shirts and oversized jeans, and enough eyeliner to paint our world black. She taught me all about bands, makeup, boys, cult movies, pot, lsd, tequila, and worlds more. Most of all she taught me that I was not just some bookworm sitting in the corner not fitting in, wearing the wrong clothes, listening to the wrong music. She saw someone special and wow, did I feel special. This beautiful, 5'10, 120lb. anti-goddess had strolled into the classroom, sat down next to me, sized me up, and decided that I wasn't a loser, I was Her New Best Friend.

It went on like that for a while, the two of us, unbreakable. Then I met Allie and things changed. I learned that I didn't have to be so hostile to the world around me, that there were other equally rebellious ways to act out that maybe wouldn't worry my parents quite so much, or scare my classmates. For a while the three of us were the best of friends. Boys would come and go, sometimes stealing one of our three for a little while, but always returning her, usually a bit wiser.

Brooke always just seemed a little bit angrier at the world, a little more sullen, everything with her was just to another degree. As we grew up she needed the approval of guys more and more and of us less and less. But we let her go do her thing, never completely, always keeping in touch, eating lunch together, seeing each other at parties, but by the time she was 17 she was dating a guy who'd been legally buying beer for years and he had her under his thumb. It's sad when no matter what other people tell us we just can't see how beautiful we really are.

But as Brooke drifted away from us, Al and I just got closer. We had sleepovers every weekend, staying up until the sun came up talking about anything, and everything, and nothing at all. We dated best friends. We shared pregnancy scares. We tried ecstasy together and danced among the stars. We trekked around this great city, enjoying our immortality, testing our invincibility. We cried for each other's losses, and celebrated each other's triumphs. She became my sister in this life, just as surely as she's been my mother, or my daughter, or both in others. When we had a group of friends, we shared our love with them, when the group shrunk down to just us plus one, let's just say he got to feel how much love there really was concentrated between the two of us. We spent glorious summers throwing caution to the wind and squeezing every last drop of enjoyment we could out of the night. She was my first real love, though so much more than a lover as it was not her body I yearned for but her mind and her fellowship. I don't think many have seen anything like us, it was really the experience of a lifetime.

We would see Brooke, though less and less as high school came to a close. She had gotten involved with some really negative people and some really killer drugs. They had a serious problem with strong women. Women who demanded to be treated as equals. Women who could hold their own and didn't need a man to sanction their happiness, or existence for that matter. They had no problem having Brooke around them. Looking back now, she appears so tragic to me. Depression had such a deep, nasty hold on her, but she rejected the medicine and therapy that could have helped her in favor of heroin and emotional abuse. I should have done more to help her. It's something that I'll regret not trying harder to stop for the rest of my life. Because she was my first love and she deserved better. Better than her jerk boyfriends, better than sqatting in bad parts of Philadelphia, and better than dying because of the hold that awful drug had on her.

Allie and my relationship stayed close until it came time for her to go to college. I was a year ahead of her in school, but because of my partying ways and my inability to balance that with school, I stayed where I was and attended community college. Allie managed that balancing act as if she was born to do it. Parties and drugs, but homework got in on time and done well and she had the brains to boot! So off she went, to our mutual dream, Boston. She came home and visited a lot in the beginning, as she was still dating a guy who lived here, but once that ended her visits became fewer and fewer and we saw less and less of each other.

We still see each other from time to time, chat on the phone once every couple months, but she's busy with work and her boyfriend and school(Just finished her Master's at Columbia, Lucky Bitch) and I'm busy with BF and the LM and being sick (you'd be amazed at how much time that last one steals), so we don't get to talk or see each other as much as we'd like to, but I guess that's what happens sometimes. I haven't stopped loving her with all of my heart and when we do see each other, the only way you can tell that anything's changed is all of the new stories we've got to tell each other.

So where did this tale come from, why now? I guess I was just feeling blue myself and in need of a real girlfriend and I realized that I just don't have that anymore and I don't know that I ever will. As much as I love BF and even though he's my friend as much as my lover, he'll never be her, and that's ok. But I really do just want her and it's really hitting me, now that she's setting up her life and her career in NYC, that she's not going to come back here and have a life side by side with me and that our kids won't know each other, let alone play together, and we're not going to grow up to be little old ladies together.

Tonight, that's breaking my heart.

So thanks for listening to me again. It help's to be heard.

Melancholy Baby

Do your kids ever just break your heart into pieces without even noticing?

LM was asked to draw a picture of his family this week.  He drew his mom, his mom's boyfriend, his mom's boyfriend's daughter, and his dad.  He captioned it "Dad me Mom [pseudo-step-sister] and Dad," Notice who's missing?  Yep, that would be me.  And notice that he's calling his mom's boyfriend "Dad" when he's never called me anything but "Rachel."  Yeah, I felt like I'd been punched in the chest as I sat at the table trying not to cry or puke, the two things that my body seemed to think were an appropriate response.  I didn't want to make him feel any worse, but damn was I feeling blasted into a thousand pieces.

I've been in love with that little boy since I first met him with his long dark eyelashes and his adorable stripey pajamas.  I loved rocking and singing him to sleep at night. I changed diapers as if they were nothing to be bothered about. I watched him grow and develop, learning to walk and talk at the exact same time.  Watching that talking move from words to sentences at lightning speed.  Watching walking turn to running just like that ::snap::.  We worked together (and when I say we I certainly include his dad and mom in the mix) to do the potty training thing, high-fiving his achievements and reassuring him when he didn't make it.  Started school together, taking pride in every step he made in reading and writing and math.  Beaming as everything seemed to come as easy to him as it had to all of his parents.  I love watching him grow, coming up with crafts we can do during lazy afternoons, making Halloween costumes, decorating the house for Christmas together.  I love being his step-mom.  I love that I've been in his life from the beginning, from before he could remember anything else, but with this one picture, I felt as if I didn't exist.  It was like all of the effort I'd put into shaping this little man into a great big man was invisible to him.  Like I was invisible to him.

His dad followed him into the living room and had a had a talk with LM about how he'd hurt my feelings by leaving me out of his family picture.  LM said he'd just forgotten and miscounted at the time that he drew it and that he was really sorry.  I felt awful for him for being in that position.  He didn't mean to leave me out - he's only six, he just forgot.  He wasn't being malicious, trying to hurt me.  It's not his fault that at his mom's house they stress the whole concept of family, and what everyone is to everyone else, and all of that, while at our house things are more relaxed.   We don't say "Our family trip for today is..." or tell LM that I'm his stepmom and he should call me mom or something else to symbolize that.  It's up to him here, and I feel like over there, at his mom's, his very impressionable mind is filled with ideas like "call X your sister, call X Dad, that way we're more of a family" And I'm not saying it as direct or blunt as all of that, but up until as recently as right before our court case in August, LM was calling these people "my mom's boyfriend" and "my mom's boyfriend's kid" and I can't imagine him just coming up with new titles for them out of the blue like that, especially since he was still at the same school in the same class with the same kids he'd been in class with for two and a half years.  Anyway, somehow he seems to think that they're more of a family than we are, whether that's because of the names they call each other, or the fact that they have two kids and we only have one, or just because the word "family" is stressed throughout their everyday life, I don't know, but I do know that it hurts to feel like our family is secondary in his mind, or not even a family at all.  And that hurt was just amplified when he symbolized his family as all of them plus his dad.

So while they were in the living room talking about how the picture had hurt my feelings, BF did something that I'm really not sure was a good idea or made anything better; but was clearly done with the best intentions.  He told LM that he should apologize to me and redraw the picture with me in it.  He apologized ever so sweetly, gave me a big hug and kiss, and told me he didn't mean to leave me out, that he'd just lost count.  Despite the sweet, loving way it was delivered, I was unable to really take it to heart because he was doing something that his dad told him to, not something that had just come to him, it was forced, he felt like he had to apologize and fix it.  But I smiled anyway, gave him a big hug and said thank you.  Then LM started on his new picture of his family, this time with two moms, two dads, and one pseudo-step-sister.  He didn't label this one, so I had no chance to see if he'd call me "Mom" like the Ex's BF is called "Dad," but it was a nice picture and he even asked me if I'd like "fancy" or "regular" hair - the difference, "fancy" hair has a flip on the bottom, "regular" hair is straight.  I smiled and chose "regular," realizing that this might hurt for a little while, but children hurt their parents, often inadvertently, and it happens to every mom at some point in their children's lives.

I love our sweet LM and while he might frustrate or annoy me or break my heart, he's as stuck with me as I'm stuck with him and I wouldn't have it any other way.  I love him more than the world itself.

The Ex - Updated!

How do you deal with an ever-present frustration in your life?  Mine's BF's Ex-wife.


Since our whole court debacle over where LM went to first grade, where she won, she has become more and more of an overwhelming frustration.  Immediately after our court case she tried to renege on the transportation plan that she'd proposed to the judge and was questioned about for an hour.  She also tried to get BF to agree to give up one of our nights with the LM because that's what's convenient with her school schedule this semester and she, for some reason, thinks that she has the right to have more time with LM than we do.  BF was having none of that, so he told his lawyer what was up and once faced with further court time to re-decide the issue. she backed down and agreed to do what she said, under oath, that she was going to do .  It's like she thinks she's the mom and she gets to call all of the shots, like there isn't a second person in the picture with full parental rights.


And it's not just that that burns my ass, she's deceptive and manipulative and straight out lies to us to get what she wants and it's hurting LM.  Last weekend they (she and BF) worked out a deal where she would get to keep him until 8:00 pm on Sunday rather than the usual 10:00 am and we would be able to get him after school on the 28th so that we can go camping.  She's never on time, so 8:00 came and went and they were nowhere in sight, no phone call, nothing.  LM has to go to bed at 8:30, so we wanted to get to spend a little time catching up with him before bed, but clearly that wasn't going to happen.  We got a call close to 8:40 from her saying that she was still about ten minutes away. Her excuse for being so late was that it rained going to and coming from their destination.  She has no respect for our time with LM; she knew it was raining and that it would take longer to get home, yet she didn't leave early or anything, she stayed exactly as long as she'd planned to.  Then when LM finally got home we found out that they were late because they stopped at Cabela's, a national chain of hunting, fishing and outdoorsy stuff mega-stores.  We found this out because he's crying and talking about what a jerk his mom is for stopping to look around a store he had no interest in when he was supposed to be going home to spend some time with his dad.  He felt like she had cheated him out of time with his father, something that she does on a regular basis.


The week before, she asked if she could keep LM late on Saturday night because it was her birthday.  Totally rational request, I mean if we were having a birthday celebration for BF's 30th birthday, I would hope she would allow us extra time with him so that he could attend.  The thing is, she didn't want to spend extra time with him.  She went to a concert with her boyfriend and left LM with a babysitter, her sister Sara.  So the extra time she was asking for was not for her to get to spend time with her son on her birthday, it was so that her sister could spend more time with LM, time that he should have been spending with BF and me.


I felt lied to, manipulated, and just disrespected.  I feel that way often.  She's always late, usually by an hour or more.  She has no respect for my time because I don't work, something she blatantly said to BF a few weeks ago.  She's still bitter about their divorce, which she openly admitted would have happened with or without my influence.  She also still really bitter that LM stayed home with me when he was 2-3 instead of going to daycare, she acts like I took time with her child away from her, regardless of the fact that she would have been working and he would've been in daycare with strangers during that time even if they'd stayed married.


Right now, she's trying to make me put LM in the Halloween costume she made for the school party rather than the one I'm making.  She also wants me to copy her on every email I send to LM's teacher because, in her words, I'm "usurping [her] role as his mother, " and, "actual parents are traditionally the points of contact." Guess what - I'm an actual parent, LM calls me his parent, the court calls me his parent, I’m his parent.   Finally, she says that "it would be best for [LM] that if anyone represent him, it be [BF] or I." Why? She give no reason, but I called shenanigans on all of it.  I'll be driving LM to school in the costume that I made him, which he's really excited about.  She going to the party, so if she feels like embarrassing and upsetting LM by making him change costumes in the middle of the party, that's up to her and she'll deal with the consequences.  I hope she doesn't.  I hope she doesn't put him in a position where he has to choose between parents over a Halloween costume.  I hope for once she can be unselfish and let go of control long enough to let him have a good time.  And I realize that I could also be the bigger person and get the costume from her for him to wear to school, but he's already so excited with the costume that I'm making him.  He loves the idea of having two different Halloween costumes, he helped pick out the fabrics, he helped me to fit his mask and is really interested in all of the parts that I'm sewing, and he loves the idea of being something more "scary" for school.  I'm not going to take that away from him and I don't think anyone should.


What's sad is that I would have understood how she was feeling and considered changing things if she hadn't been so rude and demanding.  She didn't ask me a single question, she just told me what was going to happen.  Clearly, she doesn't have any negotiating skills.  When you want something from someone or you want someone to do something your way, the least thing you can do is ask rather than demand.  Being bitter and excessively assertive isn't going to get you anywhere.  And it didn't.


These are just a few of the recent episodes that have angered me.  She does it on a pretty regular basis.  


I'm stuck with her, she's LM's mom so she's not going anywhere, but I'm as close to him as a second mother and I'm staying right where I am too.  The most important thing for me is that this doesn't spill out into an arena where LM has to deal with the fact that his mother and I think so very little of one another.  So far it hasn't and I won't be the one to do that to him.


So how would you/do you deal with these kinds of people in your life? I'd really like to know because I'm at a loss, but I hate being angry with her all the time and it drives BF crazy.  He's able to just brush off her various unpleasant behaviors, but I just don’t know how to do that.




**UPDATED**


Here I was thinking that she was going to play the good mom and not bring LM into this little dispute over where and when he will wear which costume made by whom, but apparently not.  


Tonight as we perused the racks at JC Penney, he came to me with a look of concern on his face and said that his mom had told him that she was supposed to make his Halloween costume, not me.  


Faced with what was so clearly a little boy dressed up as a punch in the gut (definitely not the iSomething costume LM said the Ex was planning), I simply told him, with as light an air about it as possible, that I could continue making his bat costume and he could wear it to school, or he could wear the costume his mom was making him, whatever he wanted.  
He said I should keep making the bat costume.  

LM's Halloween Costume 2010