Cloudy With a Chance of Redemption

Dilemma: House needed to be rented.

We had a sign up on the front lawn, Twittered and used Craigslist to advertise to the world that we wished to lease our property. We had inquiries but only one couple that we would even consider as prospective tenants. They couldn't afford it, though, which was a shame considering the chemistry seemed to be there.

I lectured myself not to worry because we had plenty of time to find appropriate tenants before we'd be in a financial bind. Still, there was that seed of anxiety that germinated in my subconscious. So, I did what my husband had encouraged me to do. I called the people that we really connected with and offered to lower the monthly rent to within their budget. They immediately accepted and I believe they will treat our house like a home.

I found peace for the first time in many, many days.

Dilemma: Son downloads $900 app from iTunes.

When he text me with this little nugget of information, my composure evaporated in the time it took for the charge to show up on my credit card. Huge parenting fail. And then I got a grip. I decided that I would make him sell his video game stuff to help defray the charges and then he would have to work off the rest through babysitting and allowance deferral. He accepted the responsibility without question. Parenting win. Then, this arrived in my email:

Dear Beth,

Greetings from iTunes Store Customer Support! My name is Mr.R and I will assist you today.

I understand that the purchase of "iraPro" application by your son was unintentional. I'm very sorry to hear that, but do not worry; I would certainly help you with this issue.

Beth, I have reversed the charges for this application to your account. In three to five business days, a credit of "$899.99" should be posted to the credit card that appears on the receipt for that purchase.

Please note that this is a one-time exception, as the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions state that all sales are final.

If you still have any further issues, please write back to this email.

Have a nice day!

Sincerely,

Mr.R
iTunes Store Customer Support

Clouds parted, sun shone...

My son when shown the email, slumped over with relief. I was pretty darn happy myself.

Dilemma: My Ex is a Neanderthal

I don't really want to be bashing the father of my children (again) because, well...he's the father of my children and I already did that here. Nothing much has evolved since then. He's still a knuckle-dragging, responsibility-shirking, emotional cripple of a man. This past weekend was his weekend with the kids and to accommodate his work schedule, they are picked up Saturday night between 6pm and whenever he bloody well feels and returned home Sunday around 5:30pm. Sunday morning, I received a frantic call from my children, from my ex's place of employment. They were hysterical and begged me to come pick them up. I didn't ask many questions. I've learned not to. I found my car keys and left the house.

I arrived at his workplace and they were waiting out front. As we were leaving, the ex thrust his head into my driver's window and bellowed emotionally corrosive nonsense at the children about being "traitors" and "useless" while the two of them cowered in fear. For the first time, I saw genuine loathing in my son's face and I understood that Dylan had reached his capacity for forgiveness. Olivia was in the backseat sobbing hard enough to bring on dry retches.

It was magnificently awful.

When we got home, Olivia went from room to room looking for Dallas. When I explained that he was out doing a few errands, she fell apart. I understood then, that for Olivia, Dallas had been her "real" Daddy for a long time. That night, when I put her to bed, she grabbed my face between her hands and vehemently said, "I never want to go back there again", meaning my ex's house. There wasn't a lick of manipulation in the gesture. She was desperate to get her point across.

It wasn't the first time that I'd received an S.O.S. from my kids and found them emotionally battered, but I resolved that this time, it would be the last. The decision to protect my children, even from their own father, has been remarkably liberating. I just regret how long it has taken me to recognize that my children needed me to intervene.

The weekend was one of the most challenging that I've had to endure in ages but late last night, as I took a mental inventory of events, I was grateful that everything turned out okay. The house got leased, the $900 mistake was rectified and I finally decided to stand up to a bully.

I guess the silver linings are always there; it's just a matter of finding them.

Why I Should Be Medicated

1. My son, horsing around with his friends on the bus, unwittingly downloaded an application onto his iPhone that hit my credit card with $900. Oh yes, I did say NINE HUNDRED FREAKING DOLLARS! . The bright side of this is that:
a)I was several miles away in my office upon hearing the news.
b)The geographical distance between us quite possibly saved his life.
c)I am not currently premenstrual.
d)It's not the first time some wiseass kid has downloaded something using his mother's iTunes account. Apple seems to know how to handle the situation although I won't rest easy until I see the charges reversed.

2. Our house hasn't rented yet, which shouldn't get my feathers in a ruffle because we've only had it advertised for a few days, right? Yes, except I got one, measly inquiry by email. One. And after providing an address and sending pictures, I never heard back from the person, which scares the bejeezus out of me. Man, they didn't even want to look at it, which brings out every, single, insecure, I-know-my-house-has-flaws fiber in my body. We've already put a deposit down on a house in the new city and since neither of us was born a Kennedy, things could get ugly really quickly if we don't put a family in our house tout de suite.

3. My job life is either crazed or not. There is nothing in between. I'm head down, up to my eyeballs in it for weeks or struggling to find enough to occupy my time. When it's nutty, I find myself begging for some relief. Trouble is, when the reprieve finally does come, I'm all out of sorts. In the face of less work, I become disorganized and scattered and develop the attention span of a gnat. Now, is a lull time for me. I should be celebrating. Instead, I'm furiously making list after list, overturning old rocks looking for new opportunities because the truth is, I'm not right in the head when I'm not fully occupied.

4. We're moving.

5. My husband lives someplace else the majority of the week and I have forgotten how to prepare a meal. We may all starve.

Does this qualify as a rant? Whine?

Ah, who cares? It's Friday and I was the lowest on the scale this morning that I've been since my wedding so LIFE IS GOOD.

Whine-O

My husband has been gone from home for the last two days and frankly, I'm coming apart at the seams.

Nobody brings me coffee in bed anymore.

Nobody is there to portion out my vitamins or help with lunch packing.

The laundry is piling up and the dust on the furniture is thick enough to inscribe one's name.

I have no freaking idea how to operate the fancy schmancy BBQ that sits on my back porch so last night, I baked the chicken like I used to do in the old, single days and when it came time to serve the kids, they eyeballed their plates with suspicion like I might be trying to feed them monkey or something. Olivia actually asked me what kind of meat it was and then asked if we could Skype Dallas, all in the same sentence. Coincidence? I think not. She was lucky to have been fed at all considering I was completely disorganized and wandered around my kitchen opening cupboards looking for provisions. I hadn't had to do a lick of grocery shopping or cook a meal IN WEEKS and it was like I had bumped my head and forgotten how to do ANYTHING WITHOUT DALLAS.

I am doing my best Beth-of-Ark impression these days complete with the discussion that I had with my children where,(voice choked with emotion), I explained that Mum needed them to be extra helpful now that Dallas was gone. My daughter is easily manipulated that way so she responded by holding my hand, kissing me and solemnly promising to do whatever it took to make Mum's life easier. Sweet girl. My son just looked at me as if to say, GET A GRIP. Dallas would be home Friday night.

I am so lame.

I need to get my single parent groove back.

Except I don't really want to.

I'd rather whine.

It goes better with the packing.

Taking Flight

My first thought upon awakening yesterday morning was, OH MY GOD WE'RE MOVING.

I've spent nearly twelve years in Bentonville which is the longest that I have squatted in the same place. Ever.

In my entire life ever.

I think I'm considered a local now, in spite of the fact that some people still cock their head to the side, squint their eyes and say, "You ain't from around here, are ya'?" Yeah, maybe not, but I can eyeball a new subdivision and tell you what was there a decade ago.

Now, I'm moving to a strange place where I will need a GPS to navigate my way around. I'll have to find a new dentist, doctor, orthodontist and someone qualified to inject Botox into my head. We're going to have to locate a gym, an organic food market and a farmer we can trust. Registering the children for school means that I am going to spend hours in my house pouring through boxes of paperwork that I have meant to file for YEARS, searching for immunization cards and birth certificates. I will finally be forced to buy that new filing cabinet to replace the one that I dented while using it as a stepladder to clean a ceiling fan. I know that I should look to the positive and embrace all my forthcoming organization but what I really want to do is just pay someone to be me for the next five weeks.

Did I mention that I am master accumulator? Oh yes. After our moving scare last year, I promised myself that I would be much better about my purchasing habits. I vowed that sale prices would no longer cause a blip on my shopping radar. If those cute pair of silver sandals made my Fred Flintstone feet look like encased sausages, the $12 price tag wouldn't matter. I'd leave them on the shelf. I told myself that just because I entered a bookstore did not mean that I had to actually purchase anything, especially considering the fact that there are STACKS of unread books littering my nightstand.

Well, my promises ended up going the way of my New Year's resolutions and yesterday, I paid for my sins when I tackled my closet. It took me two hours. I ended up with a bag of garbage, three bags of clothes, a bag of shoes (some I'd never had on my feet) and Christmas decorations that I hadn't seen in five years. There was a stack of VCR tapes that had been in my possession since before my thirteen year old son was born. I'd held onto them because they were not labeled and I was hesitant to throw them out in case they might contain an episode of Miami Vice that I hadn't seen. It took every ounce of strength but I purged. My closet is now a clean, organized work of art. It may be the only thing that I show potential renters when they come to look at the house.

Yes, renters. Our housing market is still in the tank so there's no way that we can sell either one of our houses right now. We'll be repeating the process we went through last summer trying to find a suitable family to lease our home and I am assuming things will go more smoothly this time around since every single nutbar within fifty miles answered our ad last year and we should have weeded though that element already. Sweet, sweet Jesus, I hope so.

There is a bright spot to all of this work, though. I love our new house. It's got everything we need, in a great location and roomy enough that I will be able to hide from my children if need be. I especially love that we don't own it. Sounds a little looney to shell out an obscene amount of money for rent, eh? Yeah, it sure does and it goes against every financial principle that I've ever learned but at the end of the day, it all boils down to freedom. We've already got two houses we're maintaining and it's not like there's a long line of bankers queued up outside our door wanting to lend us money for a third. Besides, if there is one lesson that this slump in our economy has driven home to me, it's that less debt equals more freedom and I like knowing that we can disencumber ourselves with a mere thirty days notice.

In about three and a half weeks, we will no longer be Bentonville residents. I couldn't identify it Sunday morning but I think that niggling emotion in the pit of my belly was excitement.

Bus-ted

Yesterday was the first day of school for both of my kids and besides being one of the most JOYFUL (should we drive to Missouri and get ourselves some tequila to celebrate?)times of the year, it also means that I've got to get my crap together in the mornings.

I struggle with that. Badly.

Dallas has always masked my deficiencies picked up the slack but come this Monday, he's going to be living in another town during the work week and I'm going to be left behind, miserable, single parent-like, making my own damn coffee. I shudder.

Anyway, back to the first day of school thing. I drove both children to their respective places in the morning and gave them their bus cards which listed which buses they would have to get on that afternoon to get home.

Olivia's day ends around two thirty so when I was getting ready to leave work around 3:30, I text Dallas to ask him if she'd arrived home yet. Negative. Hmmm...that worried me considering she'd been out of school for the better part of an hour. Concerned, I left work immediately and went home. It took me ten minutes. Still no sign of my eight year old.

Dallas had already walked to the park to see if she'd made a detour there which has been her M.O. in the past. Not there. I walked down to her best boyfriend's house (whole other post wrapped up in that discussion) and rapped on his door. No Livvie. At this point, the first tendrils of panic began to weave their way into my thoughts.

It was closing in on four o'clock, there was no answer at the bus information phone number. I started dialing the school when Liv walked in the front door, completely unruffled, no tear streaks and no mud from the ditch that I had pictured her to be lying in.

"WHERE have you been?" I asked.

"Oh, the bus driver got lost," she answered.

Turns out the bus driver was new to the route and spent an enormous amount of time going around in circles until one precocious eight year old girl walked up to the front of the bus and asked him if he needed help. (Guess who that was?) Olivia took him back to our subdivision and directed him to the different stops he needed to make, finally ending with hers.

"You told the bus driver where to go?"

"Uh huh," she said.

This morning, I dropped her at the stop one minute before the bus was due to arrive and panicked when I didn't see any other kids. I figured she'd missed it and I was dismayed at the thought of trying to fight traffic to get her to school and then to get myself to the office on time.

"Relax, Mum," she said. She felt that he might just be running late since he was new to the route and that we should just wait a few more minutes.

"Tim will be here."

TIM! Clearly after yesterday's drama, they were on a first name basis.

She turned out to be right. "Tim" pulled up five minutes later and opened the door for her. They greeted each other and as the bus pulled away, I could see Liv pointing down the road clearly engaged in her new role as bus stop tour guide.