Soo Hmm..

Haven't heard from me in a few days, huh? Wondering if life is going so swell I don't need blogger anymore?  Don't really give a fart in space? 

Hehe... if you can't tell, I'm in a good mood.

It's okay, you can come out of your hiding place.  No one is dead or maimed.  I'm just okay.  That's all.

My kids come home next weekend.  I'm really jazzed about that.  Then we go on vacation.  I'm jazzed about that as well.  The summer is ending and in a little over a month I will have yet another birthday.  I'm planning to celebrate by punching a hole in my face if I have the funds for it.  Don't you love how I say that? 

So I got an email from CPCC this morning.  I got accepted.  Yay me!  I have to go in a do the placement tests and paperwork.  I have to find out for certain if my pell grant stuff went through so I can go but otherwise, I am technically a college student again.  Feels funny.

My cat and I are fighting but just the mere fact that the fight is between myself and a cat makes the whole thing kinda laughable.  You should see us, I tell her to go away and she rubs my legs.  I nudge her away and she meows and comes back.  I give up and she hops onto my chest and I become her bathtub.  It's really comical because I don't think she considers it a fight at all,m she probably considers it as a tough row in training her owner.

LOL.

I have decided to try something new and watch football this season.  Stop gasping and looking at me like I've finally lost the bag of marbles God gave me... (I actually hawked them for a long island ice tea in my twenties but oh well) I simply want to see what all the fuss is about.  I don't get it and have decided today that instead of scorning it, I am going to embrace it.

It's a beautiful day out.  Hot kinda but still a beautiful day.

So basically that's all, I just wanted to check in. 

I'm going to go play the Sims for awhile. 

See ya round!

Applying for the Pell Grant...

So I've decided to apply for the pell grant, finally.  I think that now that I am 32, I'm old enough to appreciate a higher education.  At 17 and 18 I can honestly say I didn't.  I really saw it as just when I thought I was free and done with classes, I had to sit in more classes only these were a whole new level of spectacularly boring.

I don't know what I am going to go for.  I want to go for Culinary but a very good friend of mine suggested I use my love of children and my like of educating them to go for special Education.  It's a thought.  Right now I am going to take the basic classes.

Excuse me while I cringe at the thought of a math class...  You have no idea how much I hate math.  I am actually one of the many people who would be totally and completely lost without a calculator.  Go ahead and snicker.  I'm laughing too but it's the truth. 

So let me go and get this done. 

I'm actually kind of excited about going back to school.  The thought of one day getting a j9ob that will enable me to pay my way without needing the help I'm generally scorned for is a bright bright star in the sky for me right now.

C'est La Vie!  Single and Blogging is going to work on going to get some higher education!

Food Stamps...

So once again maybe nine friends on my news feed for Facebook have been passing around the post about the junk food tax and how it will affect people with food stamps.

Why are you so down on people with food stamps?  Contrary to what you want to believe, food stamps are not being paid for by your taxes.  At least not directly.  One would think that a mother/ father feeding their kids any way they can short of putting on a ski mask and robbing a bank or panhandling would be looked on favorably. 

True there are some people out there that seriously abuse this wonderful program.  They sell their stamps for cash and go get their hair done or they sell them to families who just don't want to pay food tax and some shit and some such but here's the thing... not everyone does that and going on a very social media and saying how you are sick of paying for my groceries or you support a tax that limits what we can buy kinda makes you look like a bit of an ass in my book because you are judging me, who doesn't do anything but use what she's given to feed her kids, by the Same standards as the woman down the block selling her stamps, getting her hair done, going clubbing while her kids are eating government peanut butter on stale bread.

You want to feel like you are paying for my groceries?  Fine next month when my kids need food, how about I come to you directly with my hand out and you come buy the food?  Then you can bitch and moan.

True I am not working right now but here's an FYI, I'm looking into going to school.  Even when I was working my job was barely paying my utilities and rent.  I had to beg and plead with my kids father to send money so I could buy food.  Have YOU ever had to beg your child's other parent for money to feed your child??  It's almost as degrading as having to stand in line for hours for the little bit that the government is willing to give.

Social media changed the way government benefits worked once before.  It changed WIC and not for the better.  Before you cold get real cereal and juice for children.  now you can only get basic brands.  No sugar, no taste, no reason to have your kids eat it.

Hey just for shits and giggles, I want to see you put your kid on a completely sugar free diet.  Ever drank Orange juice with no sugar in it?  Love those bland Cheerios with no sugar don't you.  Like that store brand milk that's kinda watered down and expires in three days?  Lets see if they still want to eat. 

You have your high paying job that affords you and your kids everything you want food wise and that great but some of us, we couldn't ask Mommy and Daddy to send us to that Ivy league school or buy us the suits to get that top level job.   We couldn't play sports to get us into a good college.  Some us got to that good college and one fateful night we made a decision that cost us the little bit of freedom we got at eighteen.  Do I regret getting pregnant and not finishing school with my original class?  Not one damn bit cause you know what?  Some of those top achievers who studied and avoided all vices have a pretty little piece of paper that says they can do something to curl up with at night.  I have kids that love me.

And just to clarify, I am not a skeez, a whore, a drug addict, or degenerate because I get help from the Government.  I am a woman that needs help.  Do I call you a uptight yuppie or anything because you think you are in a position to thumb your nose at me?

I don't feel like a real rant.  You out there that think I am a target for you unjust and hypocritical thoughts just remember that in this changing economy you may be on top one day and standing behind me in the social services line the next.  Keep in the back of your mind that the things you are saying you support now may just bite you in the ass one day....

Terminally Single and Blogging is going to step off her soapbox. 

So sick...

I'm so sick of the lies...

So okay I'm just venting... there's no need for anyone to comment or actually read this...

I have reached my limit.  I'm done.  At this point, I just want to throw my hands in the air and say screw it all.

I no longer believe that I am going to find any happiness.  I don't.  I can't.

You know everyone tells you the same bullshit lie that if you just get out there, you'll meet someone.  I know that lie very well, I've heard it about ninety MILLION times now and you know what it ranks right up there with my ex husbands line, "I care about you." with my all time most hated sayings.

It's bullshit.  All of it.  You have to go out somewhere to meet people.  You have to have the means to go somewhere to meet people.  But you can't go anywhere to meet anyone if you can't get to where the people are.  I have two and a half weeks left before my kids come home and what the hell have I done this summer but become the crazy cat lady who has deep meaningful conversations with her cat and played Gourmet Ranch so much that my day actually revolves to some point around when my dishes/crops are ready.  I've managed to knock out six seasons of Nip/Tuck in what?  Four days?  I have learned that there are medical procedures out there that I didn't know existed.  A couple of them I would actually want but that's not the point.  I know McNamara/Troy better than they know themselves at the moment and you know what?  That actually sickens me.

So I guess everyone needs a moment when they say fuck it and just forget it all.  I'm going to clean my house from top to freaking bottom and them since my mom, Angel that she is, has agreed to pay for me to see Harry Potter, I'm going to treat myself.  And then, I think I'm going to get back into my jewelry making so aside from the loss of my belief in love or actual happiness I will have a clean house and a few new sets of jewelry to collect dust on my wall to show for it.

I so can't wait to get my car.  I need it so badly that it's becoming more than something that I want.  I need to get out of this house.  I need to get a job or go to school I need to meet people that aren't little facebook pictures to me.

I need to scream out loud and seriously get a fucking life!

Terminally Single and Blogging is going to sign off now...  I've vented.  I'm not empty but I've unloaded some of my rage for the moment.

bored blog

My head hurts.  Yeah I know that's one hell of an opening line.  But I'm sitting here with Twitter open in one window and listening to my phone get my tweet replies from across the room five minutes after the fact and damn... my head hurts.


So the cat came home today.  She talks back now.  Conversations just got a lot funner. (Oh please I made up that word eons ago... stop looking at me like that...)  I am slowly becoming the crazy cat lady.  As for Mambo, well she takes it all in stride.  She hops in my lap, claws her way painfully to my shoulder to eat my hair and when I tear her off of me and throw her on the bed, she repeats the process three times until I have tired her out nd she falls asleep on my bed.

OH SHIT A MOUSE JUST RAN UNDER MY BED. time to wake the damn cat.

Put the cat on the floor and shooed her under my bed.  She is now looking at me from the corner of my bed with an expresson akin to WTF am I doing on the damn floor.

I love my cat.  I miss my midnight.  She was a mouser.

So I guess that clean thing just got became a more critical need than even I figured.  I'm not worried... It's just an itty bitty field mouse but still standards have to be set.  Fucker gotta die.  This is what happens when your son wants to be the PEAT president and put the mouse he catches outside.  When this one gets caught he's going down the toilet.  I wonder if I can get some glue traps in the morning... Ah who am I kidding... afternoon.

So I'm actually in no mood for this and I'm going to end it before I go into one of my I really want a man tirades.  I mean I do.  I really really do but I'm about to just open my eyes and realize, it ain't gonna happen.

So I'm going to read in bed and pretend that there's someone to talk to in my house that doesn't meow or squeak.

Goodnight.

So... Things were going okay...

Pretty much until about twenty minutes ago... Hence the lack of blogging lately.  There was no need to let the little thoughts in my head escape to my blog because they weren't fighting or shoving for space.  It was all one big happy brain universe up there.

Until twenty minutes ago.  Twenty minutes ago, someone told the thoughts that the space was now smaller and they had to fight for their spot.

I have developed this new saying.  Life is going to go on whether you sit in a corner and cry, stand on a box and scream, or smile and nod.  It is more likely to screw you if you do the first two.  So I've decided to smile and nod and not do bodily harm to anyone.

Until twenty minutes ago.

So My cousin Flo is giving my kids beds, dresser, nightstands, the whole works.  My other cousin, her older sister passed away last New Years Eve and their younger sister is moving into the house on the deceased sisters side.  (Don't try to keep up, just nod and smile.)  I get the furniture that's no longer needed (This is one of the parts where you smile and say 'Awesome!')

I need Randy to go get it.  You see?  You see where my life start to sucketh?  Right there. 

So I called him, texted him, did everything but write him a snail mail letter about three weeks ago.  I reminded him with everything short of a banner in the damn sky.  Cousin calls and says they need to get the stuff gone and soon so I call Randy one more time.  Finally I get a decision.  We'll go up tomorrow.  I will get on the ass crack early train and go up to his town and from there drive to get the truck and then the furniture and back.  Problem number one.  He has a dentist appointment tomorrow and this apparently is much much MUCH more important that his kid furniture so he will get the furniture back to Durham and I will drive the truck to Charlotte.

Don't get me wrong I am not actually complaining about this.  It will be the people that I nearly run over in my attempt to pilot this truck that will be complaining.  As long as I get the furniture to my house I am NOT complaining.

So Flo calls this morning and I told her we are getting a ten foot truck and she says that is not going to be big enough.  I will need a twenty.  I promptly told Randy this via text. (He can't/wont talk because he hasn't put minutes on his phone)  So tell me bloggers...Why did he text me this afternoon and tell me he got the 14 foot truck?

I mean just once why can't he do what someone tells him to do??  We had this problem in New Jersey.  He decided he needed a truck smaller than what he was told and I ended up leaving my mothers couch (so that I didn't have anything to sit on in my living room for six+ months) and my grandmothers coffee table. As well as my deep freezer.  All because he decided that we didn't need the bigger truck.

So now I'm facing that issue and in the meantime a crediting agency calls my house asking for my mother. (She pays the phone bill so her name come up on the directory search)  I told her that my mother only pays the bill she doesn't live there.  She asks if maybe I can help her.  She says she's looking for Randy P Henderson.  So Immediately want to know what she needs with my ex husband.  She then tells me that he is about to be served a summons for writing a bad check with the intent to defraud...  Seems he wrote a very bad check in 2006...

Long story short I cussed him out.  We were still legally married and I wasn't going down for him.

So he tells me he reserved a 14 ft truck. one more time.  I went into my why can't you do what someone tells you thing and he asked when I told him.  I said I sent him a text...

Flo said we need a twenty for the move, not a ten.

Why did the dumbass tell me that he thought I meant she wanted twenty dollars for the stuff not ten dollars???

You guys, I know I didn't get the sharpest crayola crayon in the box but I thought at least I had the dollar store crayon that did some coloring.  I think today I figured out a few things.

1. I got the bargain basement less than fifty cent store crayon that doesn't color at all, it just tears the paper...
2. I understand those people in jail that stare at you blankly when you ask why they went on a shooting rampage and they just say "i don't know... I just snapped"
3.  I honestly don't know how people this stupid aren't spotted at birth and promptly drowned...

So we're gonna skip forward cause I started this post at four something this afternoon and it's now ten and I must get to bed to be up tomorrow...  He paid the people.  tried to guilt trip me because now he has no money.  And realized that sometimes, just sometimes... I might be right.

PS. Kayla's bed fell apart tonight... with her in it.  Think maybe he might have a better understanding of me being right now when I said her bed was falling apart...

Good night bloggers....

Mothers day...

Bloggers this started out as one the absolute best mothers Days I have ever had.  no, not one of the best, THE best.  Maybe topped only by the one I spent pregnant with Jovaughn and got my very first mothers day card.  I got a dress, jewelry, a pretty pink bear, and cards that were really nice and best of all, this was the first year that I didn't give them the money to buy my gifts!  I didn't fund my own mothers day this year.

As my Facebook status said it all, I was in a tiggertastic, wonderfic, terrifical mood.  And yes, I did make up the words because I was just that happy.

Went to church and found out that after I had dressed down to go sit in the nursery like I do on second Sundays that the nursery was closed but that was no big deal I still looked good and the music in church today was freaking banging.  I mean it was off the hook and I don't usually say that about church music.  But it was slamming...

I got a slight headache towards the middle of church but even that was not a huge deal because our organist has a bit of a me complex and without my earplugs I get the headache.  I went outside it was copacetic.

When Church was over we went up to Concord for dinner and bloggers this is where things went wrong.  Dinner was good that wasn't the problem.  It was at dessert.  I don't know what it is about mass dining restaurants like Golden corral and Ryans but something in the chocolate cake always makes Jovaughn's stomach upset.  The strange thing, every time we go he gets something chocolate, like he's glutton for punishment.  Every time I say something to him and every time he swears he'll be okay and every time he's blows up the bathroom so bad we have to spray air freshener in the OTHER rooms just to be in them.

Well this time, he went up for dessert and came back with a slice of cake so damn big I'd be surprised that there was any left on the serving plate.  I told him we go through this every time and this time I wasn't going to do it, that he needed to put it back,  I pretended not to notice that he rolled his eyes.  He couldn't be that stupid to do that in public... Not my son...

But Mommy came in on the end of the conversation and saw the cake and put her veto on it which is to say I suggested he put the cake back, she Demanded he put the cake back.  She then got up to help the girls.  Jovaughn managed to slip past me when he got his next plate and when I looked over he was forking TWO chocolate brownies with chocolate frosting on top.  Seriously??  He put back triple chocolate cake for double chocolate brownies...  Seriously??   I calmly looked over and said he was bringing this on himself and just to be clear I did not have the car tonight and I was not calling an ambulance because his lactose intolerant ass was eating so much milk chocolate.  Again my mom came in at the end of the conversation and she called him out.  I had refused to call him out aside from telling him I wasn't calling an ambulance because I absolutely refused to ruin my mothers day.  I just wouldn't. 

You see he has been doing this for almost two years now.  Whatever I say goes in one ear and totally out the other.  No regard for what I say at all.  If I tell him to clean his room, he shoves everything in his closet and goes about his business.  If I saw wash your ass, he uses a wet paper towel.  If I say put your deodorant on, he put on the minimalist amount and goes about smelling like a heard of elephants that rolled in their own filth.  One time he actually smelled so musty we had to roll the windows down in the car.  If I remind him to change his underwear he might, but it's a toss up on whether or not he'll put yesterdays underwear on or clean ones.  I say take a shower, he wets his arms legs and head with a washcloth while running the shower water so I think he;s taking a shower. 

And rightly enough, my mother had enough of the disrespect for me today.  He broke that last straw on her back today and she called him on it and that little fucker... yes I said it... rolled his eyes.  Well he got called on that too with then caused him to turn on the "I'm so hurt" waterworks.

He cried.  Can you believe that?!?!?  HE cried.  At this point I sent him out of the restaurant cause again.  I'm not ruining my mothers day.

We get home and he promptly goes off.  I said to him do not come back in here until it's time to come home.  I also said do not bring your friends over, because I don't want anyone here.  He came in three times for water, one time in an attempt to come home (And sleep as it turns out because he got up at four am to watch a beyblade movie on netflix...) and the final time he came home I said fine and two minutes later his friend shows up.  To which i said, no you need to go home.  He said he couldn't because his dad just took his mom out to dinner and Jovaughn had told his parents that he could stay at my house till they got back. 

I sucked it up only because I didn't want him wandering the streets but as soon as it started turning dark I made him leave.

At eight, Jovaughn asked if he could go to bed.  Keep in mind that he smells like the afore mentioned elephants.  I told him no he stank and he needed to take a shower.

He rolled his eyes at me.

This time my back broke.  I threw the first thing I could find at him with unfortunately for me was a can of frosting.  My poor frosting.  Then i beat him with my hands since the frosting coing at his head had stunned him long enough for me to catch his ass.

I can't do this.  I don't want to send the boy to live with his father because one, I would lose my house because my three bedroom hangs on three kids.  Two I would have to fight to get him back and three he treats me now the same way his father did then so how is sending him to the prime example doing a lick of good?

Adding the problems with the boy to the fact that with each passing day I grow lonlier and lonlier makes me soak my pillow with tears every night.  I mean it, for the last few weeks, even if I have a good phone conversation and take my melatonin, I still cry myself to sleep.  It's a huge weight on me and I don't know how much I can do it.

Forgive me bloggers but sometimes... sometime I just want to wait until they are asleep, pack a bag, lock the door and walk away.  I want to just go away and not be mommy.  To not have to have eyes rolled at me or to be ignored, or treated like the maid or cook.  TO not have to answer asinine questions to just be me.  I never got to live my twenties.  I was forty by the time I was twenty two.  I never got to just have fun without responsiblities. 

I want that.  God help me, I want that.  I want to laugh with someone.  I want to go out with someone.  I want someone to like me.

Thats what I want.  I want a man to like me.  I want him to like me after he finds out I have three kids.  I want to go out on a date.  I even want to go out and get drunk and wake up with someone in my bed.  Even if it's a Coyote Ugly morning, I want it.

Enough pity party.  I can't let this beat me more than it has.  I can't.

Sorry, bloggers.  I know I don't come here often as I should and when I do theres always something wrong but I try.  I actually intended to come here and tell you about my wonderful day but then it all went wrong.  Well not all.  I refuse to let this taint the whole day.  I refuse.

Le Sigh...

Single and blogging is going to go eat some ice cream and just roll through the tears.  They'll come.  They always come.

As my friend Carrie says...

Fuck me running with a chainsaw...

Man, so we know about the issues with the phone, I think.,.. Here's a recap...

The ex gave me his HTC incredible.  It's an awesome phone and I only know this because I mentioned that I had a friend of a friend that was willing to buy it off me and he said if I wasn't going to use it, he was going to have it unlocked for another line.  Well, shit man, WTF, I gave it a try.  I began Sunday last factory resetting it and guess what, I am so farking glad I didn't go behind the boys back and sell it anyway because honestly the thing would have lost me a friend before he even was my friend and quite possibly  the friend who is the friend in between because the shit just refused to factory reset. 

Except once.

That one glorious time it finally reset and I got all my stuff on it and OMG.  No wait that deserves to be written out... Oh MY GOD!!!  I love this phone.  And then the other shoe flew across the room.  After four days of trying I couldn't get my face book to sync to the farking phone.  I did every single thing known to man and perhaps Verizon to get this thing to sync.

Little aside here, I'm ther person that doesn't actually know her contacts numbers by heart.  I love that my phones sync to my face book and their picture pops up.  This past week I was in contact hell because every single text was like "uhm..." and every call... well we don't really want to know the dilemma  I faced as to whether or not to answer...

So I took it to a Verizon store in Roanoke Rapids where I was last weekend.  OMG.  The woman there... I wanted to snatch that damn butterfly out of her hair and make her eat it hair and all.  I said, "My phone doesn't sync to my Facebook." Her response was, "If I do a factory reset, it'll erase everything on your phone." First pff, I said nothing about a factory reset. So I said, "No it won't Trust me I know this."  She looked me dead in the eye and said "Ma'am that's what a facotry reset does... resets the phone to factory condition." I replied. "I know what a factory reset is SUPPOSED to do but trust me, I'm pretty sure that the HTC factory did not issue this phone with an alarm set for 6:35 am M-F to labeld school and to the tune of 'DJ got us Fallin in Love."

This is where things started to turn ugly.  The warning lights were activated and all sensible people started offering chocolate and rum to appease the beast that was trying hard to stay asleep inside me.

"Then you're not doing it right."  This is what she said.  with a sneer. 

**How many of you have kept track of my phones??  How many of you know that altogether, I have had about eleven smartphones??"****

So now we're completely off the subject of Facebook not syncing to my phone I dared her to factory reset my phone.  She didn't rise to the challenge just yet.  She decided to uninstall Facebook and re install it.  Whe it suddenly popped up she said, "There it's working now."  To which I replied "I never said the app wasn't working I said it wasn't syncing to my contacts."  To which she replied (as she pulled out her phone) (Well that's only on some phones that it does that.  See, it doesn't sync them on mine."

I was very quiet when I said. "You have a blackberry, I have an incredible.  First off you really shouldn't work here if you can't tell that they are by two different makers.  Second off, ALL smartphones sync your contacts to twitter, and facebook and maybe a few other apps.  That's one of their huge selling points."  She realized she might have made me a little perturbed but that didn't stop her... oh no...  THEN she says. "Well let me do a factory reset and you can start from scratch."  To this I smiled and told her to go ahead.

Bloggers that bitch did the exact same thing I have been doing for an entire week and when my lock pattern came up she was so thoughroly confused that she had no idea how to proceed except to let the most heinous words ever to come out of a VZW reps mouth fall. "I don't know what you did to this phone, but the fact that it won't factory reset now voids your warranty."

The beast woke up.  She woke up roaring.  I won't put the EXACT words used here, but the jist of the tirade was that she was untrained, stupid, a bitch, and that I wanted to talk to someone that knew a phone from the crack in their ass.  And that's the nice version.

The guy at the end sudden'y spoke up and said he had an incredible maybe he could help.  She went over there and told him that I came in because the facebook app wasn't working....

Scroll up... Is that what I said when I came in there???

I corrected her and told the guy what the real problem was.  He tried for five whole minutes before he AND his manager said that it was a phone problem and I needed a new one.  The woman pipes in that because I didn't buy the phone from the company my warranty was void and I didn't have the insurance to get another one.  I corrected her again and said that I did because I always get the insurance on smartphones.

Now I've pissed her off as badly as she's pissed me off only she decides that she can do something about it.  She says hang on a second and takes my phone in the back.  When she comes out a whole five minutes later she says the tech guys want me to do the system update on the phone and charge my battery before coming back.  When I brought the phone in there the battery was full.  The system was up to date.  Now it was sudden'y six months behind.  SO I took it and left as there was nothing left that I could do that wouldn't get me locked up for assault and maybe murder.

That night, slowly but surely my phone gave me the equivalent of the blue screen of death on a computer.  Every app died, every text got sent back, every phone call was dropped.  SO I got on my moms phone and called Verizon wireless's customer service.

For forty five minutes the woman on the phone and I walked through a more detailed factory reset and she concluded that my phone was hosed.  And they ordered a new one set to arrive on Monday.

Well Fedex decided that Monday was wrong and it would be Tuesday instead.  no biggie  I coped, I dealt.  This morning the nice Fed Ex man brought me my new phone and even was nice enough to wait for me to switch out the stuff and put the old one in the box and send it off with him.  He was very nice.

It was after he drove away that I put together the new one only for it not to even get past the boot screen that says HTC incredible.

Drove all the way up to Concord to the big store and let the guy fiddle around with the phone.  HE got it to load but it still cut off and rebooted EVERY TIME.  So he's ordered me a new phone that should be here tomorrow.  Only problem is I don't know when I'll be back home tomorrow because tomorrow is my moms Surgery.

Yay, my life is wonderful...

I'm going to cause mass casual damaged to my cupboard.  I think tonight might just be cupcake night...

Single and blogging is back to her old Droid.  Such a tease...

So hate my son's school...

And those of you that read me whenever I actually decide to post a blog now that I'm not one to use the hate word and mean it very often...

But I hate my son's school.

So we covered the bullying thing, didn't we?  If not here's a recap.  Since September the kids at the middle school have chosen Jovaughn to torment.  One day he's fat.  One day he's smelly.  One day he's anything they want him to be.  The boy has come home with torn clothing, fat lips, bloody cuts and even a sprained shoulder.  I have been contacting the school with phone calls, notes, and emails.  TO no avail.  They didn't answer me.

Then Jovaughn came home near tears one day.  He'd been slapped at the bus stop and one of the boys caught it on video on his cell phone.  He later showed it to Jovaughn and told him it was going up on YouTube.  Well after searching YouTube and not finding anything I called the school... again... and this time I was understandably mad.  I told them that if they did not call me back and handle this situation, I would be standing at the next school board meeting to complain about the school and that if I ever found the video on YouTube I was going to sue the school for exploiting a child.  It was a far reach but it hit home.  They called me back.

She said that she was going to call Jovaughn down and have him write out a statement.  Well that was done and this afternoon she called me back.

She talked to one of the kids and even searched his cell phone and could not find the video.  She talked to his father and he said the boy didn't have acess to the internet through his phone (Hello, must not know much about cell phones and how the data can be transferred to a computer and uploaded from there...hmmm)  the other two kids didn't have the video on their phone. (I'm thinking in the three weeks since the incident, it might have been deleted)

So no action was taken except to tell the boys that if they keep up the bullying they will be punished.

I hate my son's school.  If I had a car I would so enroll him in another school....  I hate his school....

hate...

Single and blogging is stuck in a hate loop....

I should be dead...

So today, I logged onto Facebook and I saw the following Status...

My curfew was the street lights and mom didn't call my cell, she yelled "time to come in". I played outside with friends, not online. If I didn't eat what my mom made me then I didn't eat. Hand sanitizer didn't exist, but you COULD get your mouth washed out with soap. Repost if you drank water out of a hose and survived

Needless to say it got me thinking a little bit.

Do you realize that if you are above the ripe old age of 22 and sitting here reading this, you are damn lucky to be alive.  No seriously, I mean it.  Hell if you are older than me and sitting here reading this then hot damn! you must be immortal.

When my mother was a child, her mother took her out to the cotton field in the sun and she picked cotton.  She lived in a house that had a tin roof and was made other wise of nothing but wood.  They climbed the tree in the front yard and shook pecans out of the topmost branches.  They went swimming in the swimming hole on the family property.  If you peed in the swimming hole no one cared.  They went exploring in the woods.

The picked berries off the vine, they drank milk from the cow, they twisted the necks of chicken, took off the feathers and cooked the damn thing and that was dinner.

When my mother was a child she played outdoors from sun up to sundown regardless of bugs. And she did it skirts and dresses.  She risked extreme sunburn and melanoma.  There was no west Nile virus or if there was, it was still on the Nile, and nobody gave a hot damn.  If my mother got bit by a bug, my grandfather put some whiskey on it and boom it's was all good.  If my mother fell out of the afore mentioned tree and broke her arm, one of the elders in her family probably wrapped it up and there was no investigation as to why the child was in the tree.

Do you realize that my mother is so lucky to be alive?

When I was a child.  I played outside.  I woke up in the morning ready to hit the pavement regardless of how hot it was because if I was able to go outside and play then hell, it was a good day.  I drank from water hoses, I tromped around in the great outdoors wearing shorts that would make Daisy Duke proud.  I wore flip flops and poked at strange things I found in the woods with sticks.

I didn't go swimming in swimming holes because by that time (A scant 30 years of civilization later) it was bad.  There were things in there so instead, I jumped in head first or belly flopped into slightly chlorinated water.  If you cam across a warm spot in that water no worries, the chlorine eradicated it soon enough.  I didn't have to wear sunblock outdoors but I did have to have that oh so healthy layer of Vaseline slather on me to protect my skin and consequently make me shine like a shiny eight ball that could be seen from space when the sun shined right.

I didn't drink milk straight from the cow because by the time (again a scant thirty years later) it had to be pasteurized.   I did however, get little Debbie's for breakfast, drank strawberry Quik like it was going out of style.  My cereal was frosted and I STILL added sugar to it.  My bread was full of gluten and it was white or brown.  I ate butter, not margerine, and my vegatables came from a can.

When we climbed trees, it was at camp with a spotter or a group of friends standing below us and if we fell and broke our arms we went to the Doctor who wrapped it up, gave us a lollipop and told us to be careful next time.

When I was in the fifth grade, I came home to my house all by myself and let myself in with my key and did my homework and watched television and ate a snack while my mom finished work and came home.  If she had someplace to go at night, the girl next door came over and babysat me and we watched television and the girl did my hair until it was late enough for me to be yawning every five minutes and just when we saw my moms head lights, I was told to scramble back to my room and pretend like I had been sleep for the last two hours.

We went to the store and I wanted things and I pestered my mother for them relentlessly.  She looked at me and in her most threatening voice told me what she was going to do if I kept it up.  If I kept it up I got a whooping right there in the store.  Other mother might have seen me getting my ass whooped and said "I have to do the same thing in the toy aisle"  The bruises on my ass can tell you for damn sure that not one time did CPS come and save me from that nor did my mother end up on the evening news as a child beater.

I lived through all of that and I survived.  Holy crap am I lucky!!

We are now sixty years from when my mother was a child and while my children play outside and don't actually have to be home until the sun is no longer in the sky there are some that have to be in at a certain hour.  Sometimes, my kids decide that the movie on TV or the computer game is more exciting than playing out in the sun.

And if they go out in the sun, God forbid I slather them down in Vaseline?  No I have to use SPF 6000 because after millions of years of kids running around in the sun, it can now kill you.  My kids go into the woods?  Are you nuts?!?!?  Do you know whats in the woods??  There's bugs, and snakes, and pedophiles hiding in those trees.  There's rocks to trip over, trees on paths, birds that could pick your eyes out.

And swimming!  they still swim and in the same pools as I did but that warm patch, well you know not to go near it now because it turns dark blue to alert everyone that someone peed in water.  The Chlorine that eradicated it when I was a  little girl still gets rid of it but not before it says to everyone "Look that kid had to pee!!!"  At which point EVERYONE has to get out of the pool and the area has to be sanitized.  Cause you know pee inside our bodies won't kill us but swimming near/through someone else in a pool filled with bleach more or less is going to cause untold damages.

If my kid climbs a tree which I think is an extinct sport now and falls out of said tree and breaks his arm, I have to answer a million questions at the hospital explaining why was my child in the tree?  How tall was the tree?  Why didn't I catch him?  Where were his spotter?  Was I paying attention to my child?  And on the heels of that CPS will want to launch a full investigation into my child falling out a tree.

Not only does milk have to be pasteurized now, it has to have water added so that it's only 2% milk cause in the last 60 years cows have ganged up on us and not only created mad cow disease, tainted their milk so that drinking it the way that God intended is bad. And not just Bad, super bad.  Vegetables still come out of a can but now before that can was sealed the vegetables were cleaned and homogenized and sterilized and all that stuff that basically means we killed the shit stuffed it in a can and made sure than nothing that signifies that this kernel of corn or green bean ever actually saw sunlight or felt soil is left evident on it.  Killing, cleaning and cooking a chicken now?  As if!  First of all, that chicken is bad!  He has a disease. Not sure what it's called but it probably has something to do with him being mad.  He has been fed steroids because he was too small. (His steroids cause boobs to grow way bigger and way faster on girls now.  Where the hell was THAT chicken when I was growing up?!?!?)

If my kids find berries on a vine now, they have to look it up to see if it is poisonous and then they still can't eat it because even though it's wild it may have been sprayed with insecticide, because I mean after millions of year helping fruit and berries grow, insects have now decided that spreading diseases is a much better use of their time.

My kids can't come home from school and let themselves in with their very own key.  Why?  Because ther's all sorts of dangers in my house that could kill them if they were left alone for an hour or two.  NO, now I have to fill out forms and sign them up for school based after school programs that will keep them safe from harm and Spongebob until I get off work.  Cause you know, after six hours of school, kids only want more school.  If I have to go out at night, the girl next door has to have a background check before she can come over and watch my kids.  She can't do their hair because well, that would be bad.  I don't know how exactly but that would be bad.  And there's nothing on for kids past a certain hour most places so staying up is pointless unless you have uber cable and they can't stay up anyway because after years and years of kids staying up late, studdies now show that children HAVE to have their eight to ten hours of sleep or who knows what calamity will occur.

If my kids want something in the store enough to pester me for it, I can't turn to them with my Exorcist face on and tell them what I'm going to to do to them if they keep at it, because I'm threatening them.  I can't reach around and spank one of them for bugging me about cocoa krispies because then I assaulting my child.  And the Mom that passed me in the aisles when I was a youngster getting that very same spanking, now rips my child out of my arms, tells me what a horrible mother I am while at the same time calling the police.  By the end of the day, I'm on the nine o'clock news as a convicted child beater.

Let's not go into furniture.  The high chair that my mother sat in as a baby could have wood rot and worms and kill me, so my mom brought a brand new metal and vinyl one when I was a baby but by the time my kids were born, it could have rusted and the vinyl torn and my kids could get tetanus.  The playpen my mom played in as an infant (Rolling my eyes because my mom grew up in the country in the forties) could have so many many bad things in it so when she had me, she had to get the big Graco one that took up millions of miles of floor space.  But I couldn't use that when my kids were babies bcause in twenty years the metal had suddenly decided to buckle and trap my kids inside while the mesh screen would work its way around their throat and down their windpipe if it tore.  My moms toys would have killed me and my toys would kill my kids.

What happened over the years?  I sometimes think that I would have loved to have been a child even back before my mom was born.  They didn't have a million and one vaccines.  If they got the chicken pox, they itched for a few days and it was gone.  Do you realize, my kids have never had the chicken pox and probably never will because there's a vaccine for it.  I had the chicken pox so bad it was in the corners of my eyes and you know what?  Moms from all over bought their kids to sit in the playpen with me because they wanted their kids to have it.  Children have survived a whole bunch of stuff but over time people have forgotten that and the people that do remember that, are considered quacks and freaks because they like me, believe that what didn't kill our elders will not kill our kids.

Terminally Single and Blogging is well... there is no word for what I am right now.  I guess since I'm alive, the best I can say is I am sure as hell damn lucky to be so...