I honestly think I'm about to have one of those breaks that causes severe turmoil.

I usually can see them coming and usually something happens between them arriving and me seeing them that helps me derail them but I don't see any side roads that a possible help venue might interceede.  All I see is straight road and my nervous breakdown coming full speed.

So for a week now, I have been texting and calling my ex to find out when he's going to bring the kids back.  I get sent to voicemail and my texts and voicemails are going unanswered.  LIke he is full on ignoring me at the moment.

On top of that, my mom has been asking me for two weeks when the kids are coming home and Sunday when she asked I was in a rush, I was running late to work, and I was tired so what came out of my mouth was probably something that should have stayed in my head. "I don't know, mom, that's a question you should be asking Randy, not me."  Then she made a comment about school supplies and again, something that was much safer wandering around in my head found the mouth door and I said "I'm not a total disgrace of a mom, I got school supplies."  As if that shit cake doesn't have enough layers then she laid in about the uniforms again.  For the five hundred and ninety seventh time I told her, Olivia will wear the green shirts that Kayla wore two years ago and that Jovaughn wore two years before that.  What iI got again was, "Olivia is not going to want to wear that." and "She always gets hand me downs."

First of all, I may sound like a horrible parent here but I don't honestly give a good goddamn what Olivia wants to wear.  It's a school uniform for Chrissake. Yes, I know they will be big on her but right now she will either wear them or wear them.  These are her only two options until I can get to a store to buy her more.  As for her always getting hand me downs.  She's the last child in a set of three.  This is her lot in life as it is for all youngest children.  At some point in their lives more than half of their clothing was worn by someone else. and considering I have to buy a new fucking color every school year because Ranson Middle would rather color code their students than learn them damn names I don't see why I should break my already cracked and leaking bank on brand new shirts that will have nobody to wear them after this school year is over.  So forgive me if I don't give a crap what she wants to wear.

So last night, I came home and for the second day in a row my house smelled like someone took a massive shit and didn't flush and I was determined to find the smell this time.  My nose led me to the garage where I discovered that when I went in the chest freezer on the 11th to give my mom food because she had none, I didn't close the lid.  Yesterday was the 18th.  For a solid week now, the freezer has been open.  Over $100 in food has been molding and rotting for a week.  This was the smell.  So I closed the lid, taped the bitch shut and aired the garage.  Since it's a chest freezer that was third hand when I got it, and this was my fault and my fault only, I chalked it up to a simple careless mistake perpetrated by Dammit Dette and went to look up new chest freezers online.  I was totally not worried about it of the loss of food that had probably been frozen well past it's sell by date anyway.  Why cry over spilt milk, you know?

I still hadn't drained the bullshit tolerance pool when I talked to my mom again last night.  I probably should have.  It has gotten to where if I don't call her, she posts it on my facebook for EVERYONE to see usually in the form of "Where are you? Why haven't you called me?" Gee thanks for making everyone on Facebook think I never call my mom.  I speak to you once or twice A DAY forgive me if that once or twice wasn't on your time.  I have a job now I can't use my phone at work and I try not to use it driving and these days, I'm kinda doing one, either, or both at the same time.  When I get home I usually have enough thought in my head to lock the door and set the alarm before I pass out in my bed.

But I digress... Like I was saying, I didn't drain the bullshit tolerance pool before I called her last night and she informed me that she had called Randy and surprise surprise he picked up the phone for her.  And they had a very lengthy conversation.  He even told her that he was planning to bring the kids back on Saturday.  I work on Saturday from one to ten.  He either needs to be here before twelve or after ten.  But he doesn't call me and hasn't called me so he doesn't know this.  My mother then suggested in that "i know how to run your life better than you do because you're acting like a toddler" voice that maybe I should call him and let him know my hours.

Yeah cause calling and texting him has been working so well for me for the past week.

Again, I should have drained the bullshit tolerance pool because thing that should stay in my head began to come out of my mouth like telling her that she comes off as trying to run my life at times and that at times, she acts like I'm still a child.  This got me a lecture on being an adult.  Because I won't call Randy and volunteer my schedule. He purposefully sends me to voicemail because I "Cause drama and he ignores people who cause drama" (This is what he actually told my mother)  I called bull shit on that and the flag was thrown in my face.  Some more yelling was screamed and then she said "I'm not telling you that you are acting like a child but you are acting like an asshole.  Goodnight." and BOOM.  she hung up on me.  Whoever said that you can't tell when someone slams the phone down because all cordless phones have an END button was very very wrong.  I could feel her punch that end button like she was slapping me in the face, which she probably wanted to at that moment.

Am I wrong?  Why do I have to be the adult here?  And is it really being childish if I don't feel like calling him again to tell him that I won't be here Saturday when he hasn't even bothered to even send a text and tell me he's going to be here?  I mean for fucks sake he told my mom because his balls aren't big enough to call me.  Or text me.  Hell he could even email it to me.  But I'm not being adult?

Man fuck this.  I'm done.  Like I said, I don't see a detour between my oncoming nervous breakdown and now.  So those of you that know me in real life.  If you see my pulling away from you, this is your warning.  I can't handle anything more right now.  And I would rather no one else get hurt in the atomic blast that's about to make landfall.

I want a cigarette right now.  I kinda need one.  My e-cig isn't doing jack shit.

I have to go to work.  I have to pretend to be normal because I need my job.

Tonight is going to so hard I don't think I'm going to make it through it.  Stay tuned, bloggers.  This may actually be the night I get fired from my dream job.

Christmas Cards and Beatdowns.

I decided this year that I'm going to send Christmas cards and OMG! I didn't realize how many friends I have!  I mean I really honestly didn't realize how many people I have.  I bought 48 cards and I think I'm going to need more.  When I was online on Facebook, I never realized how many people I hold close to me.  When in a social setting like that, the numbers don't add up

But when you are handwriting these sumbishes, the numbers really freaking add up.  The last two days, however, I've figured out how to get the envelopes to print in my printer.  They look really cute now.

Still no enlightenment on the stomach issue.  After the coffee and the two sausages I managed to keep down this morning, I felt pretty okay.  We were going to go to the Popeye's on Wilkinson Blvd., but the line was around the parking lot and out into the street.  We drove the 20 miles to Concord Mills.  Just for some chicken.  Yeah, we do that.  Don't judge us.  I felt okay after eating a breast and part of a thigh.  I haven't eaten anything else but then I'm not hungry.  I never really hungry anymore.  Dinner is fun. Did you feel the the exorcist head twist?

I'm having problems on the Ex front.  NOT with the Ex.  It's the girlfriend.  Back in July, I posted on Facebook because I was upset that when my girls were over their father's house, she didn't care one whit for their appearance.  Twice I asked her to help them with their hair and she refused.  She left the house looking runway fly but my girls looked like didn't nobody love them.  And yes I know that the grammar in that last sentence was all off but I don't care.  If you are with a man and he has girl children, as the woman in the house, it makes sense to make sure that when they are leaving with you, and people will look you as a group, that they look at least decent.  But she didn't and I resented that someone who was trying to be a self claimed role model was acting like that.  His godmother came on my Facebook and tried to reprimand me.  I let it go but I'm sure by the tone of the comment I left and the fact that I very soon after deleted her entire family from both of my daughter's Facebooks as well as my own may have clued her into the fact that it kinda pissed me off.  Whatever...  The girlfriend took the post sixteen ways from wrong which is you know whatever I didn't really care, but here's the thing, it's been six months and she's still holding onto it.  She actually snubbed me in front of my children.  I was a good girl though, I only called her a bitch and not even loud enough for her to hear it.

But here's the thing.  My mother called the ex the other day because she baked him a pie he asked for.  She called a cousin in Texas to get this recipe for him and she baked it just for him.  But when she called him, he was in the car with her and it took my mom a minute to realize he wasn't blowing her off, he was trying to get her off the phone because the little bitch in the passengers seat was probably making that weird pouty face that looks extra ugly because she is not a pretty woman.  Apparently, she bitched at him all freaking day about why he had to go to my mothers house and you know what?  He did end up blowing her off that night because he couldn't get away long enough to call her and explain and my mother felt bad.  She felt worse when she found out what her simple phone call had cost him.

You don't hurt my mother.  You can snub me.  You can talk about me.  You can call across the country and tell your friends about me, but You. Don't. Hurt. My. Mother. EVER.  You don't mess with my kids and you don't mess with my mother.

X always says he doesn't want drama.  And I have been moderately good about not causing drama.  I have caused my share, I own up to that but I'm not the one causing this drama.  It's been six months.  Let it go.  No one cares and if she cares so much, she needs to pull up her big girl grandma undies and come talk to me about it.  If she ever had any plans on marrying into X's family, she needs to learn to speak up for herself or she will be run over like fresh track under an Amtrak Turbo train.

Funny story... now... the night that X and I got to consummate our marriage, he paused above me... in me and apologized to me.  I asked him why and he told me that he was going to cheat on me when they went to port (he was in the navy) because he had always wanted a white girl.  To my knowledge, he never managed to get an Anglo Saxon white girl, he got another black woman and a Mexican; the other white meat.

And I realize that someone out there reading this may be mexican, let me be clear I am not slamming you or your race.  Honestly all the slurs are directed at her and her only.  This blog is my way or venting my frustrations on her.  If I don't vent then somehow, I may end up venting them literally on her.  And I'm not a nice person when I am venting.  I usually fight with my words, but I have been known to stop talking and start swinging.  I have also been known to carry my knife to a fight.  I'm not saying I would ever use it, but there comes a point in every cat fight where the brain reaches it's shut off point and anything can happen.

Okay, I'm already yawning and ready for bed.  I have to make the sugar cookie dough for cookies tomorrow and if I make it in the morning, I may can make a batch or two for personal taste testing tomorrow. Heh.

Goodnight, Bloggers.

Don't sweat the petty things...

Pet the sweaty things...

I always hear people say that and I get it but I don't.  I care but I don't.

You know, I used to pride myself that for awhile, I had the kind of relationship with my ex-husband that many divorced people wished they had.  We talked, we hashed out problems with little to know ripples, we so parented with a finesse that made supernanny look like a novice.

But ever since he's moved here, I find that all I want to do is rip his head off and shove it up his ass.  On a daily basis.  Well maybe not a daily basis but at the very least on a weekly basis.

I mean, I don't pretend that I am a mild mannered person.  I couldn't pull off that lie if you paid me a million dollars and got me high on Godiva chocolates.  At best most days I pull off civilized with a very convincing flair. But he pushes buttons in me that only someone that I lived with for so long can push and I wish to everything holy that I could reprogram those buttons so that he can't find the combination that makes me go off like Mt. St. Helens.

This weekend we had a plan.  He kept both of the girl Friday night because he wanted to have a B-day party for Kay.  That was fine but Saturday he was supposed to drop Kay off at my moms and keep Liv.  It was part two of Kay's birthday celebration with my mom.  She bought her her favorite Microwave pizza and a small Ben and Jerry's ice cream and they were going to stay up and have a girls night.

About ten last night, my son Facebook messages me and I asked him if Kay was still there and he said yes.  The answer I was expecting was no, she left awhile ago.  But no she was there.  So I called my ex and asked him why she was still at his house when he was supposed to have dropped her off hours before.  His answer was that when he got to the house to pick her up, she was still in her pajamas and hadn't washed up.  So he left her there and went back to work.  But here's the thing, he fixes ATM's on site so when he went to work it was over an hour or two away.  Now most people would have just put her pajama clad behind in the car and taken her over to her grandmother's house because it was a promised thing.  But no, not him.  Didn't think like that.

There's not to say that there's not fault to Kay in this.  Although I'm not sure that he even told her what time he would be back for her, hence why she was still in her pjs... When I have to pick Kay up at a certain time I say that I need her dressed by a certain time and when I get there, she is dressed.  We have no problems.  I don't know what if anything he told her but I know she wasn't dressed.

Why does this annoy me so much?  Because my mother went out of her way to get stuff that Kay likes so that she would have a good time and he called her at seven to tell her that it would be eleven before he got to her.  Kay goes to bed on the weekends at eleven.  So she would have had no free time at Mom's because it would have been time for bed as soon as she got there.  He knows this.

Another thing that annoys me is that he has no respect for bedtimes in general.  When he returns them on Sunday night's it's always after nine pm.  Nine  and nine thirty are their bedtimes Sunday through Thursday.  This is not a secret. I say it every week.  We've been doing it so long that the girls actually get tired around these times.  But he repeatedly drops them off around ten.

IT makes me want to scream.  I swear I am reaching my end.

He also, and this is perhaps the most heinous of the things he does just to annoy me, brings her to my house.  The girlfriend.  She still has whatever he beef is with me leftover from when I blasted her on Facebook about not giving a crap about the other children in the household and not even stopping to see if they look okay before dragging them out of the house.  She acts like I'm loosing sleep over her not liking me and I need her to understand it's not my place in the world to like her.  I could probably give a half a rat's ass if she doesn't like me, really. I just want for my girls to be cared for when they are in her care and since they only go over there on the weekends and he works on the weekends, those weekends when she isn't at work, she's caring for my kids.  But since she has this thing, I have requested a few times that he not bring her to my house.  Not even to sit in the driveway.  I have the right to request that.  Yet he continually acts like if he just happens to have her in the car, I'm going to be okay with it.

I can't wait until we go to court for this whole custody thing.  I need to go to court.

Do I play my hand or wait...?

So many of you know I tend to talk smack about my ex husband and tell our past on here but I don't usually talk about anything we are going through in the present unless I'm really mad and need to see it in writing before I figure out what to do.  Right now is one of the times of the latter except, I'm not mad, I'm just wondering do I say something now, or do I wait?

I'm going to try for a little back story here but as with my ex and ex family, I'm never sure what what they can find and how they find it so no matter how I safeguard against my writings, I try to keep it at least PG-13 when it comes to him.

In August/early September, I got a letter from Family court saying that my ex was suing me for custody of all three kids.  My son, he already has and he holds onto him like I'm going to sell the boy on the black market if he let's him near me.  His main motivation for wanting the girls is one, that K is overweight, I feed her too much. Two, their hair is always bad. And three they never have any clothes.  Maybe if he takes my reason for living away from me, I will go back to school and make something of myself.

I want to defend here, but honestly, it would be way too long and drawn out.  I would get into personal feelings and probably a few slurs and like I said above, I never know what he/they can find and what he/they can't so let's leave it at that.

I have done everything I was supposed to by the dates that they told me to and as yet, he has not.  I'm covered.  What happens to him is entirely on him.  I do know however that this court case will probably drag on forever until he sends it to the next level and that is not okay.  I think I am going to call Family Court and see if I can get the ball back to rolling because as long as he has this hanging over my head I can't really do anything without someone taking a closer look at me.  Not that it's a bad thing for them to do that but sometimes, I get tired of feeling like I'm under a microscope.  This big black cloud of a court case is hanging right over my head holding a sign that basically says "This woman, right here, is a bad mother."  I need that sign to go away.

I recently had a revelation about my child support payments and after talking to the ex and getting nowhere I decided to play on the hunch and see for myself.  From everything I can figure, everything I thought is correct but the question remains...

Do I play my hand today when he comes to pick up his girls or do I hold onto my hand and play it at a time that is probably going to advantage me the absolute most with the hefty chance that by waiting to play it then, I might screw myself in the bum?

Do you see my conundrum? I can play it and be upfront with him or I can hold it and use it when I think I need it.

His claim is that I never talk to him.  I have about a million things to say about that but I digress.  Could this be constructed as not talking to him?  Could this be like court where I'm holding evidence that could damn him but I didn't share and give him time to correct so it's not in my favor but his?

Life is too freaking complicated for this mess.  Quite honestly, I'm over it.  I can't wait until my youngest is 18.  When she turns 18, I can give it all up and do what I want to do which is be a house sitter.

I know that sounds crazy but I really want to do it.  They get to travel all over the world in some cases and be paid to take care of someone else's house.  I'd get to travel, and all I have to do in return is take in mail, take care of animals, and water plants, maybe clean up after myself.  I could do that.

I always say that if anything happens to my mother I'm not staying in NC.  I probably would until my kids were all 18 for the sheer reason of the ex would have no reason whatsoever to follow me to whatever destination I choose to be closer to his kids.  When they are 18, he can go where they are if he chooses, because where they are is not necessarily where I will be.

I just need to be done with this.  I need to be done with him.  I need to be done with trying to coordinate meet-ups, and appointments, I need for him to go back to New Mexico.  I honestly wish to hell that I had never helped facilitate his move to NC because it has been nothing except heartache and distress for me.  I'm over having to change my schedule to suit him because he pays the child support.  It dawned on my the other day that because I don't currently have a job, he expects me to be his calendar as well as drop everything I am doing to bring the kids to him.  This morning he asked me point blank "Are you going to bring them to me or do I have to come get them?"

This is going to be the real personal part of my post but do you know how badly I wanted to say, "Negro what the hell do you think?  You live past downtown!  I am not getting caught in that traffic.  YOU get caught in it and sit there. And sit there.  And sit there."

Since our divorce, I have had to cancel two meetings with people because he was late or decided to inform me at the last second he wasn't coming.  I'm tired of having to rearrange my life.

I have some thinking to do.  I have about two hours to decide if I want to play regular poker or Texas Hold'em with my info.  We shall see.

I'm not mad.... I'm not mad... I'm not mad...

Maybe if I say that over and over... and over and over, it will reach my brain.

I highly doubt that and not just because my brain is swimming in the great caffeine sea right now.  Once again, one of my daughters has been crushed on the X-IL's "My way is the right way" highway.

I can't sit here and tell you horror story after horror story about my marriage... Well I can, but it wouldn't be fair because somewhere in there, I was kinda a bitch and played the eye for an eye, salmon swimming against the tide, I will survive game for a little bit longer than was decently possible.  I did my dirt too.  When my X-IL's talk about bad seeds, they do have a few stories that feature me as the wicked bitch of the North. I know they do and like I said, I deserve them.

But here's the thing, I have this thing inside of me that does't allow me to kowtow to people trying to dominate over me.  If we can work together and come to a reasonable conclusion I can do that.  If you walk in, tell me "This is how it's going to be.  It's my way or the highway" and you aren't my actual or adopted mother, my teacher or principal in school, or the government, you don't need to be dominating over me.

(I could never be Anna Steele.  Never.)

The night of our wedding, with family gathered around, my X-MIL gave her toast and she looked me in the eye and said, "I didn't want you but I guess I have to keep you now."  Needless to say their entire family laughed and found it funny while my mother and I recognized it for the punch in the face it really was.  That one sentence set the tone of the relationship I would have with my MIL to this day.  If I had known that this was how she was on a regular basis, I would have pulled up stakes before the ink dried on the marriage certificate and run.

We've always been rams locking horns.  I think that was our fate.  She never accepted me as good enough for her son.  I never kowtowed.  She never accepted my daughters, I resented that she showed favoritism to my son only.  She hated that I tried to make my marriage about my husband and I, I hated the fact that she had just enough control over him that just when things were going good she was able to convince him that I was the tramp that got pregnant on purpose.  Not once, not twice, but three times.  She hated that I insisted on running my household my way, and I resented that she kept making it so she got her way in my house from three hundred miles away.  I was an age old story of MIL in Hell and the details may vary but you know the story, I don't need to tell it.

As with any MIL she always gave unsolicited advice.  If the subject was as mundane as how to kill a cockroach and my solution was to crush that bad boy with whatever heavy I could find, her advice is to crush it with the north side of your left shoe in a rotating pattern.  No not that way, this way. And in my x's eyes, mom is always right.

We had it out a couple of times.  More than a couple and for awhile she backed down.  Okay so she was really regrouping but I took my victories where I could and I didn't gloat, I wasn't a bad winner. (Maybe once...)

But then J and K started to gain weight.  They take after my side of the family and we aren't exactly rail thin.  On J, it was considered "more to Sugah to love" and he'd tone it one day when it came to sports.  On K she was just fat.  And what was worse, she said this K, repeatedly.  And if you know K, you know that in terms of her self esteem it's not always up to par and kid gloves are needed. (insert story about the kid that took her parent's divorce very badly here)  K didn't get any more graceful as she grew but that's okay becasue she is her own person and she will get it when she gets it.  But that wasn't okay to my X-MIL.  It was a parenting faux pas on my part that I am allowing her to find herself in her own time.

So recently, I decided that as K will be 13 this year and she's in middle school, it was time she got a grown up hair cut and stopped wearing the stinky cornrows I can do.  So my mom paid for the style cut and tracks that our family stylist (That sounds so awesome to say) to give to K.  She looked awesome.  No, she looked AWESOME.  For the first time in a LONG time, my baby walked around looking ahead of herself and not at the floor.  She was happy and her self confidence was right up there where it should be or damn near close.  My baby was happy.

And one overnight trip to Daddy's almost ruined it all.

X-MIL has moved to down Charlotte to be close to her kids since X-SIL has moved down here.  Personally I think X-MIL has moved here specifically to torment and annoy me but I'm kinda biased on this subject.  On Labor day, X had to work so X-MIL and X-SIL, who both grew up in NYC, one of the weave capitols of the world, took the girls to the pool in X's neighborhood.  Seeing K's hair, knowing that it had glue in tracks and that she had just recently gotten a perm (Relaxer), she gave K a Shower cap to wear in the pool.  Labor day, community pool, splashing.

In the end, my child looked like Erykah Badu when she took off her wrap in The Other Side of the Game video.  I couldn't believe it!  Who does that?!?  And then to send back the advice not to put tracks in my daughter's hair anymore?!?!  My daughter walked in here looking at the floor because she KNEW her hair looked jacked up.  She didn't think there was any way I could fix it so that she didn't get laughed at at school.

I have to say here that I think sheer anger at my X-MIL and X-SIL fueled me to work that deep down magic that all black women are apparently born with but don't always tap into cause dammit, my baby looked like a rock star this morning and she walked out of here with her head held high.

And my mom, my blessed mother walked me down from my water tower yesterday because all I wanted to do was march over there and tell that woman exactly what she could do with her advice and herself last night.  She reminded me that they've always been this way and her jacking up my daughters hair with sheer negligence wasn't a personal attack, it was just her being an asshole.  It was nothing new.  I was over reacting.  I just need to regroup and change my tactics.

So, I'm not mad.  I just need to work on my battle strategy.  It's gonna be okay.

We cool.

We cool...