I’d really like to vent about work but 1) it probably isn’t a good idea and 2) i don’t have time to write the whole back story before the spin cycle’s over.

I’m amazed at how much PB & J have grown.  They’re still a bit anxious with all the changes we’ve gone through but starting to settle in.  PB’s suddenly an independant child who wants to tackle the world on his own terms but sometimes needs to return to the security of Mama.  J’s articulate and verbal and less and less shy.

And me, I think I’ve grown too.  A back bone that is.  I’d lapsed back into my shy doormat alter ego, again becoming the girl who’s coping skill consisted of “curl up in a ball and don’t move.”  That’s good advice with a wild bear.  Sadly, that’s also how I was tought to cope with the world.  Over the years I’ve gotten better at sticking up for myself.  Alas, it took being directly threatened to snap me out of it this time.  But dang it, that’s not all I am.  I am also someone who’s willing to fight for something she believes in.  So, in a sense, I’m growing up, too.

so there you go.  i can’t even stay still long enough to give you a proper post.  maybe when i get the computer un-packed i’ll do better.

Today there are half-packed boxes everywhere.  My brother and I made a “plan” for all the work my house needs before moving.  He understands my planning by lack of planning.  Somethings can’t be predicted.  I make a goal with some extra time built in to it.  I come up with a loose idea of how things will happen ideally and a worst-case scenario.  Then I go along with whatever comes my way.

But I feel like things are under control.  I have a direction I want to go and the resources to get there.

I’m starting to love my new house.  It will have one less wall, new paint and floors, a water heater and several dozen little things taken care of before we actually get to live in.  It has hideous tile in several places.  The fireplace is green brick.  J pinched her hand in a door.  PB thinks we should put his bed in the closet.  I have tons to learn, including how to drive the little tractor.  My shopping list is pages long and more money than I can get through my head.

I spent the weekend running like mad nearly every second, not even sitting down to eat but grabbing bites between packings.  I’m done for the day.  I’ve got a bit of laundry to finish up, a few things to ready for tomorrow, and that’s all I can manage at this point.  We brought my mom lunch today (soup’s such an easy way to clean the fridge and use up ends of things), Bro and G’ma and Bapa all came and looked at my house,  I packed and cooked and cleaned.  I’ve been trying to get Gcat to let me look at the paw he’s limping in.  I’ve killed a dozen black widows as part of the outside cleaning project.  I’m tired.  My allergies are still terrible.  I’m calling it quits for this one.  I have a plan and it doesn’t leave room for burning myself out before the end.

I want to write that I own my own home but it doesn’t feel at all like home when I can’t move in yet.

As it was one I could afford it needs alot of work and care.  But atleast the work will benefit me and mine.  I have something substantial and solid to show for the daily toil.  My family has a secure plave to live and grow.

I’d like to celebrate but I’ve got to be chipper and alert for tomorrow’s toil.  Well, they probably would understand if just this once I was a wee bit hungover but I wouldn’t feel right about it.  Also, my job’s not all toil, just often seems like it.  And besides, maybe by the weekend I’ll finally be over whatever this sinus crap is.  I start to feel alittle better but then it comes right back with a vengence.  I’m taking all kinds of allergy meds already.

Right, I haven’t been here for a week now.  Let’s see, in the last seven days:  I’ve been miserably sick since last Saturday (OK, that’s 10 days), I faced the reality that I won’t be making it to the gym for some months and cleaned my locker, my car broke, I got the car fixed, I managed to hold my cool through all the stress leading up to buying the house, PB required a sick day after a vomiting incident (why can’t he do it before I shower and dress?), and I bought a house.  That ought to qualify for the longest/shortest seven days ever.  Oh yeah, and the kids have started wondering around in the middle of the night so I’m not sleeping.

All this grown-up stuff makes me feel old.  Even worse, realizing that I understand all this grown up stuff.  I keep feeling like I should go play outside with the kids while the adults take care of business.  Insurance jargon.  401K plan changes (me in a room with middle aged men, does no one else in their 20′s realize that the company automatically invests a percent without anything from us?).  Yeah…. I feel…. boring already.  But then again, this ordinary life is what I’ve worked to hard for.  There is no nut-case in the bed room clicking the safety on his rifle.  I know where dinner’s coming from.  If the roof leaks I’ll learn how to fix it.  We have a damn good life, really.

I’m going to start by doing something terribly out of character and blowing off the evening’s responsibilities in favor of a hot shower and an early bed time.  If I can breath well enough to sleep, that is.

And next week I will have a house.  I will, also, for the first time in my life, really owe money.  Somehow buying a house feels like almost as much growing up as giving birth did.  It’s another tie to me, another thing between me and total freedom.  I know that the self-imposed stability is good for me, has made me settle down and well, grow up, but there are still days I miss the freedom of me and the road and a greyhound ticket or clunky car.  The adventures will still be there when the kids are grown.

I will have faith in myself, in life, in the spirit.  Fear and anxiety and worry are only useful when they’re channeled in the right direction.  After that they just use up energy I don’t have to spare.  I will change what I can (myself) and learn to live with what I can’t change (everything else).  To paraphrase the serenity prayer.

I might be naive, I might have a bad case of foot-in-mouth syndrome, I might be lonely and poor.  But I am also exactly as strong as I need to be.  I do what is right even when I don’t have to and/or don’t want to.  I provide a good enough home for my kids.

This, too, will pass.  As my mentor and boss keep saying, “just hang in there.”  And damn it, I’m too stubborn to just give up.  Ever.  On anything.  And thus, I know I’ll make it, somehow.  I’m incredible like that, making it work, somehow.  I can fix dinner with nothing but bread crusts and canned vegetables.  I can design machines worth my house several times over.  I can find my glasses, in the dark, under the bed, after the cat dumps the table in the middle of the night.  I can make straight A’s in physics while up all night with a new born.  I can explain gaskets and radiators to my son.  I can fix my daughter’s buttons just right.  I can write.  I rock, I’ve just got to remember that when being needled and pounded in the rat race.

I feel very much alone.  I know that I am infinitly better off alone than I’d be with a ball and chain around my ankle dragging me down.  But, damn-it, I need something human and adult.

I Facebook stalk, just for the illusion that I still have friends.  I look through pictures my First Serious Crush’s wife took of him.  In eight grade I was the only one who wanted him.  Damn, he’s really hot now.  And married with beautiful children.  And I wish that I could have been content with him when I could have had him.  Wish that I’d bowed my fool neck and joined his church.  Wish that I hadn’t wanted so badly to learn everything, even the dark, that I was willing to loose the most beautiful relationship I ever had.  I hope he doesn’t ever stumble upon this, because I’m sure he’d recognize himself.  And he has found a happy life which I ought to stay away from, as I have always and only wished him the best.  But sigh.

And really, I am quite blessed to have friends and family and even co-workers who care for me.  It’s just that between kids and work I’m practically locked up all the time.  When I do have an evening that isn’t used to manically catch-up on housework I still can’t afford a baby-sitter.  Once in a while my mom takes the kids but so often I beg her for emergency favors that I hate to ask her to give up a Saturday night.  Everytime I ask if there’s a weekend she could take them she says she’ll check her schedual.

I’m too poor to do much anyways, by the time the bills are paid there’s nothing left.  I spent everything I had to take the kids to Sonic after their check-up and shots.  OK, actually there’s a 5 hidden in my car incase of energencies and a 50 hidden somewhere.

I used to take my books down to the coffee shop when I needed company.  I never had to study long before I’d run into someone I knew from somewhere.  I can’t do that with 2 kids sleeping.  I can’t do that when my goof-off fund is down to nothing.  I buy a magazine every month and a Sunday paper 2 weeks out of 3.  Exciting.  Seriously, I have 1 TV channel and kidnap my neighbors wireless when the signal reaches this far.

And I really need just to have an adult interaction.  I’ve been invited to a church function where they might have a free nursery where the kids can play.  I’m lonely enough that if they offer child care I think I’ll go.  And pretend that I’m just fucking fine, thank you.  I have a good poker face.

I’m filthy.  I hurt.  I’m tired.  I’m still dehydrated after many glasses of water.  I’m hungry less than an hour after dinner.  I’d forgotten just why I went back to school to get a desk job.

I want someone to take care of me.  I came home, got the kids and fresh load of scavanged boxes into the house.  I snacked them.  I (thankfully) managed to get out of my greased and grimed clothes.  I started dinner, emptied the trash, did laundry, put dished away.  Severed dinner.  Did more lanudry, cleaned up dinner.  Did more laundry.  Got kids into PJ’s, teeth brushed, read to, tucked in.  There’s more laundry.  The sink’s full of dishes.  The stove is burried under dirty pans.  I’ve got piles of things to sort and pack.

I want someone to take care of me.  I want to come home and have someone to open the door when I’m dropping stuff and my two year old just got taken out by an escaped box riding hurricane force winds.  I want dinner to be almost reay, just far enough out I can take a shower first.  I want the chores done.  I want someone to lift the PB into bed when I can’t manage to move a thumb higher than my face.  I want someone to get J to hold still long enough to take the last of the Easter candy off her face.  In other words, I want a wife.

But not really, this is just a joke I have with myself.  Only one person has ever appreciated this joke.  She has a high-maintenence husband and an adult son who often functions like a 12 year old.  And so, having a similarly twisted idea of humor, she gets my Working Single Mom joke.

But finally, my children and I will have some place that is ours.  I can improve it to my heart’s content.  I’m already thinking about flooring and paint, finishing the garage to make another room, buying a big freezer, putting in a dishwasher.  It comes with a baby tractor I’ll have to learn to operate and maintain.  PB’ll love that, we get the garden tractor.  I want to put up a good fence and plant an honeycrisp apple tree.  We’ll put up the little wood swing set and slide my mom bought for the kids when one of her friends moved.  Someday I’ll build a nice covered porch and put a swing on it.  J can have the Winnie the Pooh decals I took off the walls when my sister bought her house.  PB can have is own room to keep his big kid toys in.

There won’t be as much space for my books, I’ll have to cram them all into my bed room.  There isn’t any grass (yet) for the kids to play in.  There’s alot of things I’ll have to learn to do myself.  After all, I won’t be able to just call the landlord anymore.  I’m hoping to convince my brother to help me with somethings and teach me about others.  I don’t even own a ladder.  I have some small tools.

I’m scared, I’m worried, but oh, so, happy.  We will have a home.  It’s a little home, just right for PB & J and I.