The horrible thing I did to protect my son

Bam will be 10 in January. He is the sweetest, kindest person I know. My husband worries that our jacked up world is going to chew him up and spit him out. The only thing I worry about are the women who may try to take advantage of him someday (I swear, I will cut a bitch). But I refuse to "toughen" him up. Truly kind people are in short supply and I will do everything in my power to nuture his kindness.

He is the child who will point out an injustice on the playground (but he does not tattle). The boy who will make sure everyone is included. The kid who, when I held a job last year, asked if I was working so we could give more money to the poor. He tells his teenage sister that he loves her every night before bed. 

Bam has ADD. When he was going to therapy, he was also diagnosed with anxiety and depression (I had assumed the ADD and anxiety, the depression took me by surprise). We don't medicate him. So far his teachers have been supportive, possibly because he doesn't have the hyperactivity part so he isn't necessarily driving them batshit crazy. He has a lot of tics. Weird little movements he does without knowing it. Mostly with his face. Sucking sounds with his mouth, wrinkling his nose, etc. In second grade he was diagnosed with a fine motor skill delay. He was put into speech (I always just thought he sounded cute but is apparently missing sounds from his alphabet). He couldn't tie his own shoes until he was 9 (I still have to help him sometimes). On good days we can read his writing, on bad days it looks like a toddler's.

He obsesses. Mostly over ideas or things. It started at 2 with Toy Story. Then Super Mario Bros. (specifically, Luigi). Most of his after school time in second grade was spent in a Luigi costume. We've dealt with the Minecraft obsession for over 2 years now. We have now added a Doctor Who obsession (he wore a bowtie and carried a Sonic Screwdriver for quite a while). Oh, and zombies and the zombie apocalypse. He has a plan for our survival and I hear about it daily. Throughout all of these he has maintained a Lego obsession, his other obsessions dictate what he builds.

So, to get to what I alluded to in the title of this post, he announced a new obsession a couple of nights ago. Hubby and I were hanging out when he asked if he could watch Netflix. I asked him what he wanted to watch and he enthusiastically answered, "My Little Pony. I'm a Brony!!" Without thinking, hubby hollered back, "The hell you are!" Bam was confused for a minute, hubby got all worked up babbling about crazy grown men doing disgusting things while watching a children's cartoon. I cut him off, told him to hold it for a minute and told Bam to go ahead and watch MLP. 

I calmed hubby down and assured him that our son would not grow up to be a pervert. The next morning Bam asked to watch MLP while eating breakfast before school. I told him yes then sat down next to him. I took his hand and asked him to look at me (he has trouble making eye contact). 

Then I did something I thought was awful. 

I said, "Sweetheart, I don't care if you're a Brony. You go ahead and enjoy MLP, but I need you to do something for me. Don't tell anyone at school. Don't let the other boys know you're a Brony."

He wanted to know why. 

I then told him about the little boy who got bullied so bad at school for being a Brony that he tried to kill himself. I told him that some people might not understand and I couldn't handle it if other kids were mean to him simply because he watched a "girls'" cartoon. 

For the first time in his life, I told him to hide something about himself. And I'm not proud of it. As a matter of fact, it's really eating me up (I do the obsessing thing too, go figure). 

He said, "Sure mom, I'll just watch it and not talk about it at school. That little boy really tried to kill himself? That's so sad, I hope he's ok now."

We had talked about suicide before so we didn't get into it again. He turned back to the tv and his cereal. After awhile he said, "You know, this cartoon has a really good message about friendship."

God I love this kid. Like a love so deep it makes my heart ache. The thought of someone hurting him enrages me.  

Last week a kid called him weird. Bam laughed and told the kid, "Weird is fun!" They're now becoming friends. I think Bam could befriend Attila the Hun. 

Is what I did as bad as I feel it is? I only wanted to protect him. I could care less if he likes MLP. But if someone picks on him because of it, I will throw down on the school grounds. A friend told me that because I explained to him why, it wasn't bad. 

Have you done something to protect your children that went against how you normally try to parent? I was never encouraged in my passions as a kid so I'm usually my kids' biggest cheerleader, getting caught up in the obsession right along with them. 

Knowing Bam though, he'll be over it in a week or two and back to planning our zombie apocalypse survival. 

Almost an alcoholic

Can someone be almost an alcoholic? I supposed it's one of those things where you either are or you aren't but, whatever the case, there was a time when I knew that was the road I was headed down and I felt like there was nothing I could do to stop it. I didn't even want to.

I am the daughter of a recovering alcoholic. My mother would never admit to that label but, she is. She used to buy rum in gallon jugs for Pete's sake. My dad's brother and father were alcoholics. The brother died of his. Just sat down at his mother's kitchen table one day, laid down his head, and died.

My most vivid memory from childhood is from when I was 8 years old. My mom was a bowler and us kids spent a lot of our time in bowling alleys. I remember liking it because there was always quarters for video games and well, bowling alley food. One night she took only me with her. I don't remember if my brothers were home with dad or a babysitter. I think it must have been the end of the season or something because I remember it being more festive than usual and we were there a lot later. If I had been older, I might have counted the rum and cokes my mom drank. If I had been older, I might have told someone not to let my mom drive us home. But I wasn't. I was only 8 and my only concern was to keep playing Ms. PacMan. The evening got late, I got tired. I started asking if we could go home. The bowling was done, now they were just hanging out. Every time I approached, another adult would hand me more quarters. I remember one man telling me to leave my mom alone. When we were finally on our way home, I got scared. Even my little 8 year old brain knew that we were on the wrong side of the road and that you were supposed to drive straight. I still remember the sound of the siren and the lights in the side-view mirror. I still remember my mom pulling over. I still remember watching my mom be put through the sobriety test on the side of the road while a second officer spoke to me. I don't remember a word he said to me, just my mom stupidly trying to walk a straight line and touch her nose in the lights of our van. I remember watching my mother be handcuffed and put into the back of the police car. I remember being scared. I remember being angry. I remember the second officer climbing into my mother's seat and driving me home. I don't remember much after that but I think it was a few days before my mom came home. There was probably more yelling than usual when she did get home but there was so much yelling anyway that it didn't make a difference. I don't remember at what point my dad explained to me that he was the only reason I didn't go into foster care.  

Fast forward to junior year. My mom was still a drinker. By this time I knew and understood the term "alcoholic". She was the worst kind of drunk. All pathetic tears and regrets. It irritated the fuck out of me. You'd think it would've been enough to keep me away from alcohol.

I didn't hang out with party kids, I had never tasted an alcoholic drink. But I was dating an older guy who did party and did drink and the first time I hung out with them I wanted to impress them so I got rip-roaring drunk. Puked all over the place and passed out drunk. I slunk home the next day, knowing my dad was gonna kill me. Strangely, all he did was laugh at me and talk really loud all day. That ended my drinking for the next four years.

My parents divorced around this time. There were a lot of reasons for it, and I was strangely relieved by it, but her drinking did contribute to it.

Fast forward again to where I'm a 21 year old, divorced (yes, the older guy from junior year is my first child's dad and my first ex-husband, there are two of those but that's another story), single mom with low self esteem and a solid foundation for hating all men. I discovered bars. I discovered dance floors and dollar drink night. I discovered a tolerance and capacity for alcohol that impressed men much bigger than I. I had a love affair with tequila. 

I suppose I wasn't a very good mom for a few years. 

At 25 I had had enough of being a struggling single mom and surprised the hell out of everyone (including myself) by joining the Navy. I remember looking at my daughter and realizing that she had nothing to be proud of me for. That hurt. My daughter went to live with her dad for a year while I attended boot camp and a couple of Navy schools. It is the only year of my adult life that I had to myself, where I wasn't tied to mommy expectations, and I behaved as such. I drank like a fish. I was studying to be an electronics technician and the classes were hard. I discovered that if I studied the night before a test with a pitcher of beer in front of me, I did much better (yes, I'm aware of how dumb that sounds but I swear it's true). The base bar was across the street from the barracks I lived in. I stumbled back to my room more often than not (a lot of us old enough to, did).

Fast forward a few more years and I'm married to a great guy who loves his beer. I graduate to wine, Riesling thank-you-very-much. I'm a steady sipper. I buy my wine at Costco. We're both funny, endearing drunks so we enjoy drinking together.

Another couple of years pass. We've added two gorgeous kids to our brood. I've experienced a ruptured disk and have chronic pain. I start slipping down the black pit of depression (didn't know that's what it was at the time of course, we'll discuss that another time). I've left the Navy to be a SAHM/student. 

I do believe I'm digressing...

Alcoholism sneaks up on you (at least in my case that's what it was doing). First you're just having a few with friends on Friday night. Then it's just one glass to unwind at the end of a particularly rough Monday. The next thing you know, and without even realizing it, you don't even need an excuse to drink. It's just something you do. And you'll do it alone. I would start with a glass while making dinner and just sip right on up until bedtime. Sometimes that meant one bottle, sometimes it meant as many as three. When you're a happy, funny drunk, it's hard to see it as a problem.

Five years ago I started having a lot of heart burn which escalated to esophageal spasms (if you ever want to know what it feels like to have a heart attack without having a heart attack, try one of these) and stabbing stomach pain. Three years ago my doc sent me to a gastrointestinal specialist who knocked me out and stuck a little camera up my nose and down into my stomach. Acid reflux. Yay me. I was put on a drug called Nexium that began to quench the fires in my belly. I kept drinking for a while despite the stomach pain that I refused to admit it caused. By this time I recognized it as self-medicating for the chronic back pain and the gaps that Prozac didn't fill.

Two Halloweens ago, at a party, I knocked out a bottle of my favorite wine then spent the next day throwing up and groaning in bed. It was months before I had another drink. Twice in the past year I have done this. The last time, about four months ago, scared me. I threw up until I was dry heaving and could only move when I needed to drag myself to the bathroom. It took me three days to recover. Thank God my kids are older and we were visiting family and daddy was with us to take care of them. On the other hand, it was really embarrassing to know that my kids were old enough to understand why mom was in the bedroom acting like she was dying.

Bam, "Mom, maybe you shouldn't drink grown-up drinks?"

Me, "I won't again dude, trust me, I won't."

But oh how I miss my wine! I miss it like the desert misses rain. 

Last Friday, when I went to the Painted Cabernet, I allowed myself two small glasses of wine while I channeled my inner Monet. It was just enough to make my face feel warm with the promise of better things if I just had another. I wanted more so bad it hurt. I was close enough to home to walk there. One more couldn't hurt. Right? Maybe I could go home and have one more from the bottle that's been in the fridge for the past year? Just one more. Just one more.

*sigh*

I didn't have one more. Because I knew if I opened that bottle in the fridge I would have to finish it, because that's what I do.

Am I an alcoholic? I don't know. I think I could've been. Luckily, I dislike the feeling of dying more than I like the warm fuzzies from a bottle of wine.

My mom would still never admit to having been an alcoholic. She hasn't drank in about five years I think. She and my step-father woke up to the fact that they were abusive to each other only when they drank and quit. She also had a run in with lung cancer and quit smoking finally (I'm a smoker, we'll talk about that nastiness another time).

Anyway, thank you acid reflux. While I hate you for taking away my wine, I think you saved me too.

I KNOW it will still be there tomorrow.

"The mess will still be there tomorrow, go enjoy your kids."

Yes, I know it will still be there. Believe me, I know. But the truth is, I don't want it to be. Our mess is out of control. Like, barely keeping our house off of an episode of Hoarders, out of control. AND I HATE IT. It consumes my every waking moment. Even when I do say "fuck it", I'm gonna go enjoy my kids, it's in the back of my mind. So much time, money and energy is wasted because of the mess. It enrages me when I know we own something but I can't find it. Sometimes, when there gets to be too much crap all over the place, I will actually get a box and just fill it and stick it in the garage (ohhh, that damn garage). I think there must be 5 or 6 of those boxes out there by now. Who knows what's in them. With my luck, there's probably a winning lotto ticket out there.

Something I dream about quite often, and this might seem silly, is implementing a family game night. We have about 30 board games tucked into a cupboard in the laundry room (and one Monopoly game that is strewn across the boy's bedroom-he needed the money). But I can't keep the dining room table cleared long enough for us to play a game. The living room floor is out of the question because we have stupid little dogs and hardwood floors that are covered with their hair. We have a giant coffee table but it's always covered with crap also. The kids' bedroom floors? Are you kidding? They have a path leading to their beds carved out through their crap every night.

Anyway, family game night, it seems like such a simple wish.

I wouldn't mind letting the dishes go, or passing on the vacuuming or dusting, to focus on my kids but I can't even get to these most basic housekeeping needs through the rest of the mess.

I would love to have people over. Would love to host a BBQ every once in a while. A play date. Whatever. But at this point, I wouldn't invite my mom to my house (and her house is even worse, go figure). Friends say don't worry about it, they don't care. But I care. I'm embarrassed, no ashamed, of our house. 

It's like my whole identity has gotten wrapped up in this disaster.

It keeps me from doing things I love. I've been feeling inspired to draw again but can't get through the garage to find my sketch books. Yes, I could go buy more, but that's the thinking that has us owning four battery chargers, three packs of printable business cards, etc. etc. Even if I could find them, there's no clear space to work on. I love to cross stitch but chaos is such a time stealer that there is no time. I love building Legos with my son, but even his Lego table is piled high.

Give your kids chores they say.

It's to the point where that isn't an easy solution. I feel like I need to get it under control before implementing chores and such in order to maintain it. I wouldn't even know where to begin making them help.

Then it comes back to the depression and anxiety diagnoses. It's like I'm stuck in an evil loop. One day I wake up feeling like I got this. Full of energy and ambition. Then just when I get on a roll, I come crashing down. It's all very frustrating.

I beat myself up over it a lot. I feel like I'm failing my family. I have a lot of excuses. Shit, I got a job last year because I felt like such a failure as a SAHM. I know it's mostly in my imagination, but I feel like the world (or at the very least, my neighborhood) is judging me. I cringe any time I need to open my garage door. If someone comes to my front door I quickly step onto the porch and pull the door shut.

My kids want friends to come over but I rarely let them.  A friend of my son's (the son of a friend) once asked, "Why is your house so dirty?" I laughed (my trusty defense mechanism) and said, "Because I'm not good at keeping it clean." His mom manages to keep a beautiful and neat, while still looking lived in, home. *sigh*

People who aren't like me don't get it. Just throw it out. Just make your family help. Just do a little each day. Just...just...just...it's enough to make me want to scream.

And now we've added a toddler to the mix with my grand daughter coming to live with us. Added to the downstairs' mess is three large boxes, three trash bags of clothes, two toy boxes, and a pack-n-play. 

I've been up since 5. I should have cleaned the kitchen rather than getting on the computer, the toddler will be up soon. Maybe I have time to do it before she wakes up. Maybe I'll have another cup of coffee.

I made a list.

Wednesday is the last day at my job.  My boss has no spouse or kids and wanted to know what I was going to do with all my free time.  After getting over my laughter, I'm making a list of what a typical day consists of with my kids and hubby (with or without an outside job)...

1. Laundry
2. 2 hours a day looking for shit I can't find in this mess
3. 20 minutes explaining to the boy why chips don't count as breakfast when fried potatoes do
4. Another 20 convincing him that he can not spend another whole day in nothing but underwear
5. FACEBOOK
6. 1 hour looking for my family's shit that they can't find in this mess
7. PTA duties that I've been flaking on (I'm the Labels for Education and Box Tops coordinator, now also PTA historian)
8. Laundry
9. 3 hours arguing with my children
10. 3 more hours repeating myself
11. FACEBOOK
12. 1 hour looking around at the mess and wondering where to start
13. 10 hours procrastinating
14. 2 hours walking dogs and picking up poop
15. 30 minutes in the bathroom, pretending to poop so they'll leave me alone
16. Two words: SOCCER SEASON
17. 30 minutes, 4 times a day, trying to decide what to make for dinner.
18. FACEBOOK.
19. 30 minutes looking for matching socks.
20. Laundry
21. 15 minutes screaming for someone to bring me a roll of toilet paper
22. 93 minutes trying to get my kids to brush their teeth
23. Another 37 trying to convince the 9 year old to stop talking so he can fall asleep
24. FACEBOOK
25. Once school starts back up there will be 5 hours and 24 minutes spent fighting my child to do his 30 minutes of homework
26. 2 hours of reading in 5 minute spurts between all the rest of this crap (current book:  book 5 of Game of Thrones)
27. FACEBOOK

I know there's more but I gotta, you know, go find something to do with all my free time...

Whatever will I do with myself?

I have worked at a large retailer since January 2013 (hint: I wear a lot of red and khaki).  Last week I put in my two week notice, my last day is the 16th.  I actually love my job but since life has seen fit to make me a 40 year old in a 70 year old's body (herniated disk, osteoarthritis, degenerative disk disease-yay me), the pay off is no longer worth the pain.

Anyway, yesterday was the first time I had seen our store manager since putting in my notice.  She is a twenty-something, unmarried, no-kid-having woman.  When I saw her at the beginning of my 7 hour shift she exclaimed, "I'm so sad!  Why are you leaving us?"  So I explained the state of my body and how I'm spending my time off just recovering from working.  I told her that I was thinking about finishing school and returning when my kids are older, when I could be high enough up the food chain that the job wouldn't be so physical (those who have never worked retail have no idea just how physical a job it is).  She encouraged me to do just that, that she always expected me to go far with the company.

So I went through my shift, working my ass off.  I have a few projects on my plate that I am determined to finish before my last day.  Near the end of my shift, I saw her on the sales floor.  She asked me how my day was going.  I told her the things I had been working on.  Then her eyes got wide and she asked, "OMG, what are you going to do with all your free time??"  (Remember-20 something, no spouse, no kids)

Then before I could stop myself, I began laughing hysterically.  She looked at me like I'd grown a second head.

When I finally got control of myself, I simply told her, "No worries, I have plenty to keep me busy."

I almost started giving her a run-down of the things that would keep me from the bonbons and Netflix life she thinks I'll be embarking on next week, but decided against it.  Some day, when she's married with kids, with her full-time management gig, she will look around at her messy house, undone laundry, etc. and remember her asinine question and think, "Holy shit, no wonder she laughed like a mad woman."

But, at least for the first few days, I foresee catching up on Game of Thrones on my to-do list.  Netflix and bonbons, here I come.

Structure and direction

When your brain is dealing with things like depression, anxiety, ADD, and OCD, it needs a lot of structure and direction.  I'm pretty sure this is why I excelled in the Navy and fail miserably at home.  My brain is usually all over the place, lost for where to start or where to go to next.  Clutter and chaos is the name of the game.  And I gotta tell ya, I hate it.  It drives my anxiety up and my lows even lower.  I know I'll never live a minimalist life (although I think it would be ideal) but I think I have finally found at least the direction I need in a blog I stumbled across a couple of weeks ago.  Slow Your Home is a blog about simplifying your life.  It's about everything from decluttering to knowing you're enough.  Brooke McAlary keeps it simple.  I need simple.  Anyway, from her blog I learned she had a Facebook group for an annual decluttering challenge so I ran right over to join up.  It's exactly what I needed.  Someone to break it down, give me lists, tell me where to go next.  The members share their challenges and triumphs and are incredibly encouraging to one another.  

Baby steps.  Baby steps are good.  I have a bad habit of diving into things headfirst with enough gusto for 10 people then burning out and giving up.  I started with the January challenges even though it was June because it's always best to begin at the beginning.  

The first thing on the list was kitchen drawers and boy, were mine a mess.  We had the ever present junk drawer (although 2 or 3 of them could have qualified for the title) and one we thought it was funny to call the danger drawer.  I did not count the number of items removed but it was A LOT.

Guess which one is the danger drawer?

I'm discovering that slow and steady not only wins the race, it helps real change occur and stick, so I spread the process out and only did a couple of drawers a day.

I found this cool, in drawer knife block at Target.  It is no longer called the danger drawer.

 

 And this is no longer a junk drawer.

This is so crazy to me.  I have never lived in a house without a junk drawer.  I proudly showed my husband and he joked, "Well, it's kinda useless as a junk drawer now."  I punched him in the arm, he laughed and told me it was awesome and good job.  Sadly, my psyche and ego need lots of atta-boys.  It's been almost a week and I still open it occasionally just to look at it.  I spied the tray out in the mess in the garage and put it to use.  I have a small box of things that I removed and will give a permanent home to once the garage gets done (I finally have hope that some day it will actually be a functioning garage).  I plan on adding divider trays to the utensil drawers once I decide on and find the ones I want to use.

The next thing on the January challenge list was medicine cabinets.  This was an easy one and only took about 15 minutes.  I removed 27 items to the trash can.  The next day I pulled out 2 bottles of perfume and 2 of cologne that I can't remember not being in our medicine cabinets.  Not sure why I've resisted throwing them out for years except that they weren't cheap to begin with and it seemed a waste.  Which is a really dumb mindset considering they were just going to waste while taking up space.  If I had found them a new home while they still smelled good, they wouldn't have gone to waste.

 

 

Please note that there is a proper way to dispose of medications.  I purchased postage-paid envelopes to send them to a place that handles them at Walgreens for around $3.

Today I will clean out my purse and my car and since I don't have an entry way, January's challenges will have been met.  The next set will be a little tougher as they include the bathrooms, the laundry room, and the utility closet.

Remember, slow and steady is the way to not giving up and real change.  

I had the meanest parents ever.

I had the meanest parents ever.  Like, they made me do chores  and get good grades and *gasp* eat what was put in front of me.  When I was about 10, my younger brothers weren't doing well in school so my mean-o dad threw out the TV.  I don't remember EVER having dessert after dinner (there was the occasional trip for an ice cream cone but I don't remember those things ever having a place in our kitchen).  The only cereals I remember are Cheerios, Rice Krispies, and Corn Chex (I do, however, remember Count Chocula, Franken-Berry, and Boo-Berry around Halloween).  I had ONE Lego set growing up (still have it but it's been absorbed by the 1000's that my children own) and a handful of Barbies (although I did have the Barbie mansion and silver corvette-best Christmas EVER).  I had ONE Strawberry Shortcake doll (still have her, she is/was so lonely).  However, I did have all the books and drawing paper I wanted, and about a gazillion stuffed animals.  I don't remember ever having to be told to do my homework because I just knew if I didn't there would be hell to pay.  

When I became a mom at the ripe ol' age of 18, I swore I would never be a mean parent.  

Sadly, it took until I was a 40 year old grandmother to realize that none of the things mentioned above were what made my parents mean.  We really were one helluva dysfunctional family, but not because of the reasons I thought all those years ago.  We're still dysfunctional, I have zero relationship with my brothers (I even have one of them and their baby-momma blocked on Facebook) and one that's barely beyond the occasional "Happy Birthday" and "Merry Christmas" with my mother.  My dad and I are ok now that we've both grown up a bit.  Yes, it's sad and I might regret it someday, but I spent many years eaten up by it and decided it just wasn't worth the one-sided effort anymore.  I'm a firm believer that blood does not make family and I've moved past it.

Anywho, I believe that qualifies as digression...

I love my children dearly, and they really are good kids, but they are lazy with  a capital L.  The 21 year old has flown the coop with her own daughter, the ones at home are 9 and 12.  We've never established chores for them, I only buy sugar cereals (ok, not ONLY because the 9 year old's favorite is special K), they have enough toys for 20 kids (and a path from their door to their bed), they're horrified if there isn't something for dessert, and every bedroom in the house has it's own TV, video game console and DVD player.  Now before you go saying "what spoiled brats!", let me reiterate-they are good kids.  They don't talk back (the eldest did/does but now that she's an adult I just tell her to shut the hell up), they argue very rarely and I can count on one hand the number of times one has hit or otherwise physically accosted the other, they do decent in school.  They really are sweet kids, kind and giving, and good friends.  HOWEVER, I have had enough of doing EVERY SINGLE THING around this house.  I just can't keep up.  And having worked for the past year and a half with a lot of young people who have absolutely no work ethic, I am now realizing the error of my parenting ways.  

Something's gotta change.  Something IS going to change.  I can't barrel into it headfirst and without thought or I will fizzle and not stick with it.  My plan is to sit down with them and come up with chores that are appropriate for their ages.  Then we'll discuss an allowance of sorts.  Then I'll hit up Pinterest for a fun "chore chart".  Any parents with known, working systems, I welcome and value your input.

But first, I'm going to go clean the kitchen.