If you are signed up on Prosebox, I'm Pham on there and I've decided to just start cross-posting and hedge my bets. I will be so sad when OD kicks the bucket for good, but it's obvious that things are being held together with a lick and a prayer so, that's that. I'm just glad so many of you guys are already over there.
So I have no idea how long I've been on third shift now.. three weeks? Time has ceased to be linear now. I never have any clue what day it really is because I exist in a haze that is broken up by tasks rather than actual time. Weekends have become a total mind fuck. But, having said that, so far this is still working I guess. The kids seem a lot happier these days. I like being home at night. I like having more time with the family. Even if they are all kinda assholes right now. The attitude seems to be, well, Mom's home now, so no one has to do anything to help out any more. Well, whatever. I just keep assigning chores to the kids and ignoring Tim. He likes it like that.
I shared this on Facebook, so this is for those of you who don't have me on there. Last night (Thursday night), Tim opened a card from his sister that came in the mail. She had sent him a picture of their grandparents, Savino is named after his grandfather Savino. Tim showed Savino the picture and asked him if he knew who they were and Savino said no. Tim explained they were his great grandparents and that his great grandfather's name was Savino too. Savino looked at the picture and then burst into tears and hugged Tim and said, "I miss him!" and just cried. I wasn't in the room when this happened, Tim told me about it afterwards and I went in and picked up the picture and was checking it out and Savino came in and climbed into my lap and wrapped his arms around my neck and asked me, "When is he coming back?" OK. Now, to put all of this in perspective at this point, Tim's grandpa Savino died many years ago, before he and I even met, and the kids don't know anything about them at all. So Savino had never met him, never talked about him, nothing like that at all. I told him, he's not coming back buddy, he died a long time ago. He started SOBBING and said, "But I just miss him so much!" I rubbed his back for awhile and asked him what would make him feel better and he said through his sobs "To see him again!" I was just pretty flabbergasted this whole time. Savino is a very loving kid but he's not particularly emotional like this, he doesn't really get upset about people or missing them, etc. It was a REALLY left field reaction for him. I explained that he couldn't really see him, but that we could go to Tim's mom's this weekend and talk to Grammy and she could show him pictures and tell him stories about his great grandpa if he wanted. He was down to just quiet weeping at this point, he wasn't hysterically sobbing any more, and he just said, "No, that will just make me miss him more." I offered to take him to the cemetary where he is buried and he could see his grave, and he wanted to do that. I tried to get out of him what it was that he "missed" so much about him, and he couldn't really answer me, he kept shrugging. Now, also keep in mind, he had this huge emotional reaction before he knew that his great grandpa was dead, so this wasn't just some sort of reaction to the concept of death, he was genuinely upset as soon as Tim told him who the man was in the picture. After I agreed to take him to the cemetary, he calmed down for a little bit and I tried to talk to him about how I think that people's spirits are watching over us before and after they're alive and that I thought that his great grandpa was probably watching over him and wanting him to be happy, not sad, and this was a mistake because it triggered another round of sobbing. Like, HEARTFELT sobbing. Broken heart sobbing. He finally did calm down and stop crying after I told Tim that we needed to just stop talking about it with him and let him get distracted with something else. It was just about bedtime at that point and he did finally cheer up a little and went to bed OK.
Today he wasn't sad anymore and was able to sort of talk about it without much of a reaction. He just keeps matter of factly saying, "I miss Savino." He is actually excited about going to the cemetary tomorrow, so go figure. I just hope that we don't get there and he has another breakdown. This is just the strangest thing.
I mean, I'm not a religious person at all, but I consider myself spiritual and I am convinced that Tim's grandpa and Savino had some sort of connection in the before/after-life/whatever. This whole episode just has me completely convinced. It wasn't like someone had put thoughts in Savino's head about this, his whole reaction was 100% spontaneous and genuine. He doesn't go around thinking about stuff like this or talking about missing people we don't see very often. But he has made some interesting off-hand comments in the past few years. One time we were walking in the mall and Haley and I were walking in front of Tim and Savino a ways and we stopped at one point and Tim caught up and said to me that Savino had just turned to him and said out of nowhere, "I remember what it was like before I was born." and then moved right on to talking about a video game or something, it was just this off the cuff comment that he didn't elaborate on and Tim just let it go. He is definitely one interesting little kid.
I'm dreading the years when Savino is going to stop being as emotionally demonstrative and sweet and open. He still loves to flop across my body and snuggle or kiss me and he tells me he loves me so much all the time. He likes to hug. He's also turning into a Boy. Right now he is obsessed with dressing up in his Spiderman costume, or pretending to be a ninja or Power Ranger, shooting play guns and making swords out of whatever he can (even though he probably has five foam/play swords already). He's also a little gamer. He gets less screen time now that I am home to regulate it, but I'm not a Nazi about it. Sometimes I just need to sleep. Anyway, he says stuff like, "This is so LAGGY!" and it cracks me up. 6 yr old complains about lag. Only in 2013.
Haley seems to be doing OK. It's hard to tell with teenagers, but I finally took her to get her hair cut and let her get half her head shaved. You can't really tell with the way her hair falls, but she was pretty thrilled about it. I need to get her more winter appropriate clothes, but shopping with her is still excruciating. It's hard to believe that she is 14, and don't even talk to me about the fact that she will be 15 in 8 months. Am not prepared. She has full on teenager attitude, but I think I'm pretty lucky for the most part because she has been a lot better about doing her chores without an attitude, even though I still have to direct her into it. I have been trying to be very mindful about telling her Thank You for the things she does, even if I have to yell at her to do them. I think it helps. She keeps talking about how she wants to get a job. I'm glad that she wants to, but her grades aren't exactly great right now and I don't think that adding a job would help. She has 5 C's, one A and an F in Spanish. Apparently her Spanish teacher is a dick. I said, look, I'm sorry that you don't like him, but it is a reality that you are going to have to accept and learn to work around. Real life involves lots of dicks that you have to work for and find a way to deal with. She wants to drop Spanish but she's barely one nine weeks in. I just told her she can't fail it. She has to at least pass it and then she can switch to another language next year. High school is not for wimps.
Friday nights are my least favorite so far at work. There's no work. No one comes in before I leave at 7am, so I am just here by myself with nothing to do. Which sounds great. Until you realize that there is a limited amount of ways you can entertain yourself at work, even if you are by yourself. I could go to sleep, but I've been maintaining the moral high ground with sleeping at work and haven't given in so far. Tonight I'm not even tired so there's that too, I don't think I could fall asleep if I wanted to. Last night I watched episodes of Duck Dynasty on Amazon Prime Video. I REALLY want to watch "Orange is the New Black" on Netflix, I read the book awhile back and really liked it, and I started watching the first few episodes first this morning before I fell asleep and then I watched one and a half episodes after dinner before I left for work. But, we can't install shit on our work computers and Netflix appears to need stupid Microsoft Silverlight to watch anything. I could watch on my phone but I'm not sure how much data Netflix eats up and we don't have wifi at work of course. If there was just a way I could download them to my phone I'd do it that way. I think I can watch Hulu on my work computer and I can watch Amazon Prime videos and TV from websites like ABC/Bravo. It's just that everything that I want to watch is on effing Netflix. I've also been listening to comedy bits on Pandora's comedy radio stations. I listen to a lot of Pandora on my computer. I can't log into my Spotify because you have to download something to it too. I might be able to bring my laptop and plug one of our network cables into it, but that seems shady and risky.
I spend hours on Pinterest just looking at stuff. I have been working on Lucas' cross stitch and made good progress on that, but that gets boring after an hour or two. I need to find some sort of craft I can make for Christmas presents that I can easily carry to/from work. I am not terribly interested in knitting/crocheting, I'd rather cross stitch than do that.
I sometimes get lonely but for the most part I am happier not working with people very much. There's less drama.
Things between Tim and I are at a standstill. I exploded at him last week, which these days doesn't even involve me yelling, and just told him that he is completely clueless, he has no idea how I feel and he has no desire to even find out, as long as he is not being asked to deal with my feelings, he is happy. It really doesn't matter to him if I am depressed or sad or irritated or frustrated, he expresses no interest in finding out what is really going on with me. He is content for things to be superficially OK. I even said to him before I walked out to get ready for work, "Just don't even worry about it, we can go back to pretending that everything is fine tomorrow and you don't have to deal with anything" and that is exactly what we did. I've been cooler towards him this week but I am mostly just resigned. I've done literally every single thing I could to benefit this family, working outside of the house, changing my schedule to be able to provide the kids with a parent that is present and involved in their lives, I clean the house and pack lunches and do school drop offs and pick ups. All he has to do is go to work and come home. He doesn't have to pay bills or worry about the kids dr or dentist appointments, homework, anything. And the truth is that he is not going to magically just change one day to want more than what he has, or to want to give me more than I have. But, it's fine because I am just emotionally numb to it all. I really don't give a shit. I could do more for our relationship, I could probably give him more positive verbal responses, I could show more of an interest in him, but honestly, I just don't care. At the moment I'm just mildly irritated. I think I'm just tapped out really, I don't even understand at this point in my life how people have the energy to have affairs because even the thought is repellant to me. I'm not interested in having my "needs" filled someplace else, the thought of it makes me feel like it would be just one more person putting expectations and demands on me and my time. Even flirting sounds like a big chore. So I guess there's that. I'm not interested in straying from my marriage. I'm pretty sure the man doesn't exist who would be able to turn my head anyway.
Well, that wasn't depressing at all! I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me, because it's not like I didn't build this house I'm in, so to speak, brick by brick, choosing it the whole way. I don't feel sorry for myself. It just is what it is, like the weather report.
The weekend ahead of me looks like this, get off at 7am, go home and sleep until about 2pm, Haley will have to babysit because Tim has to go help his brother pour concrete at his parents and that is definitely going to take all day. We're going to the cemetary when I get up and then maybe I can get Haley some clothes and I need to get to the mall to pick up a few Christmas presents, and I have to tackle the yard and get some mowing done because it's supposed to rain on Sunday. FUN TIMES. Sunday we will probably bum around the house, or maybe go somewhere as a family if the weather isn't too sucky, if the weather is nice it's more yardwork to be done. We have Jaden tonight too, hopefully that isn't going to put a cramp in my day. The kids don't have school on Monday for Columbus Day but I have to work Monday night, Tuesday morning they both have dentist appointments and then I'm dropping Haley off at school and keeping Savino home so I don't have to do the afternoon school pick up run because otherwise I am not going to get any sleep since I am going straight from work to take the kids to the dentist. No more AM appointments for these kids, it's going to have to be afternoon appointments from now on.
I managed to kill about an hour writing this, so I guess I better find something else to do. Whee.
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