The things I learned this craptastic week:

·         Just when you think your five year old is evolving from “monster” to “human being” she throws a ten minute long temper tantrum because you refuse to buy her a guinea pig, and soaks 6 Kleenexes in the bathtub and sticks them to the ceiling.

·         I will never be able to listen to the song “Colder Weather” by Zac Brown ever again without going into a 3 day long depression.  In fact, my lip quivered just now when I typed this.

·         Some of life’s best conversations can be with someone who dialed a wrong number.

·         Shelby can actually make it one whole day without having an “Ouch Report” written up on her.

·         I wanna be a pilot.

·         Anyone who drives into the great unknown with a cat and two dogs, no job and no home, and settles for a roach infested $50 a week room next to a homeless shelter all for his son and gets absolutely no credit whatsoever, is a fantastic, devoted father.

·         Blessings can come in the form of 13 year old girls who gladly will watch your daughter so you can run to the grocery store in peace for a mere pack of Orange Sherbet gum and pizza for dinner as payment.

·         Grown men in business suits turn into befuddled little boys with goofball grins when they see a miniature horse at their office.

·         Just when you think things can’t get worse, they do.  And then, they get better.

·         Wayne’s not coming back.

·         Dogs will drag their butt on the carpet, no matter what the consequences are.

·         Sometimes a beer and a frozen pizza with your best friend is just what the doctor ordered.

The Insights of a 5-Year-Old

If you haven't heard this song (King of Anything by Sarah Barielles) and have a minute, listen to it before you read this entry and pay attention to it:  (and there is an ad before the song starts).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR7-AUmiNcA

So, it's been a crappy week so far...highs, lows, all that crap.  Shelby is very perceptive...she gets things no matter how much I try to hide it from her, to the point that it is extremely frightening what she picks up on.  The following conversations are not word for word because my memory sucks, but they are in no way embellished:

Last night we were on our way to have dinner with my mom and Shelby asked why we couldn't move to "Las Beggis wif Wayne".  I explained to her that I have a job that I love here, and all of her grandmas and grandpas and her school is here, and reminded her she would be starting kindergarten in the fall.  She immediately burst into tears and yelled "But I don't want kindergarten shots, I want to move to Las Beggis!  So I explained to her that even if we move to Las Beggis, she would have to go to kindergarten and she would have to have kindergarten shots.  She pondered this for a while and said "Well how about this...I move to Las Beggis with Wayne and you stay here with the grandmas and grandpas so they don't get sad.  Yeah.  That will work.  Oh, but I'm going to need a ride, but you can drive me there with a trailer wif all my stuff in it, like Wayne and drive back home.  Do they have pet stores that sell guinea pigs there?"

So later, we got home and she was absolutely wild.  She wanted to listen to her favorite song and watch the video, (which is mentioned above).  She watched it about 10 times, and I am pretty sure my neighbors were incredibly thrilled.  At one point I was singing along and she came up to me with her finger to her lips and said "Only I sound like her.  You sound like Duffy."  When she was finally done, she took my hand and pulled me to my bedroom and said we needed to talk about "sum-fing important".  She kicked the dog out of the room and closed the door and sat down against the headboard and invited me to sit down.  I sat, and tried to stare solemnly at her and ignore the bright pink lipstick that she had applied mostly to one side of her upper lip causing her to look like a bee sting victim.  She took a deep breath, let it out, and said "You are not letting Wayne be the king of any-fing."  To which I replied, "Uh no, I am definately NOT letting Wayne be the king of anything because he isn't.  Why are you saying this?"  And she replied..........."I don't think it is fair because you let everyone and everything else be the king of every-fing in your life but not Wayne."  I sat and pondered this for a minute, slightly confused and said "Well, I kind of feel like we should be the king of our own selves and make our own choices and decide what is right."  And then, my dear, tiny, insightful, scary, eerily astute daughter said "But you don't make your own choices and you don't do whatever you want.  You do whatever everyone else wants you to do.  Well, 'cept Wayne and that's not fair because he is nice to you and thinks you are perfect.  Like that part of the song that says "I've tried to make everybody happy while I hurt."  And you hurt now, and now you hurt Wayne."

Shelby doesn't understand jobs and leases and independence and security and decisions that are made in favor of her stability.  Shelby does understand that it doesn't snow in Las Beggis and that they do have stores that sell Guinea Pigs in Las Beggis and in knowing that, she is sold.  But...as for the rest of what she said...just wow.

Tuesday's Almost Here

I wrote him a note telling him I wanted to beg him to stay, but not to worry, I wouldn’t do that because I know there is no point.  I’d never choose a life with anyone over a life with my kid and I would never ask that of someone else.

Dan and my stepmom Lori brought up a good point…here I feel sorry for myself but I made a choice, too.  I chose not to go with him.  If he chooses to stay, he misses out with his kid’s life, but if I went with him, I could take my kid with me.  But as Leslie pointed out…it’s a long walk of shame from Nevada to Indiana, especially with a kid in tow.

But why does this have to hurt so bad?  Why do I have to resent every second over the past few months and the next few days that doesn’t have him in it?  Why can’t I be that levelheaded person that I was a few months ago that just keeps pushing through it without batting an eye?  I guess it’s just been a long time since I’ve felt this way about someone.

What scares me the most is my lack of focus on anything but this right now and the resulting guilt.  A month ago, the thought of my kid being gone overnight would have me in tears.  This weekend with Shelby being gone, I guess it was a relief to be able to just feel what I want and do what I want and act how I want.  There’s so many things going on in my life and in other people’s lives other than this, but this is all I can think about right now.  I keep telling myself once he is gone, once he is at his destination, wherever that may be it will get better and the hard part will be over.  Add on to that, I’m broke right now and when I am broke I can’t think rationally about anything.  Being the rock that Shelby needs and not showing any emotion (because she hates that) is going to be extremely hard this week, but it’s what I have to force myself to do.

He keeps saying this is not an ending, it’s a beginning.  He is fully, completely confident that he is going to go out there and get this great job (in the unemployment capital of America) and we are going to Skype and he’s going to fly us out every couple of months to visit (with my endless supply of days off that I can take from work and all) and eventually we will be out there with him.  He’s going to be a great daddy to Shelby, he says.  We will have this great house, and start flipping houses and buying property and I will get a job with horses, even if it only pays crap because I won’t need to work since he’s going to support us.  He’s happy because he has me, and there is no one else out there for him and he just knows it and it’s all going to be just fiiiine.

I guess all I can do is have the complete confidence that whatever is supposed to happen will happen.  This could bring clarity, it could get worse, God only knows.  I just have to trust that I can push all of the gray areas aside enough to listen to what God is telling me.

Layin' it all out...

When I was 17, I got a really cute neighbor from Denmark.  I mean, drop dead gorgeous.  We got to be friends, and I had the biggest crush on him ever.  I knew right from the beginning that he was only going to be here for a year, but I didn’t care.  He was here for now.  Maybe something would happen and he could stay.  I was in high school.  I was naïve. 

As time got closer for him to leave, it started to hurt.  I was quite the drama queen back then, too which didn’t help matters any.  I think I made him a mix tape.  But like I said, and in my defense…I was friggin’ 17 years old.  Come on, cut me some slack.

When he left I was heartbroken for a long time.  I never saw him again.  He came back to visit me months later and…………….I was away at band camp.  I talked to him a couple times on the phone.  What's funny though is now, 17 years later, he is a Facebook friend.

Years down the road, after a marriage, a divorce, an engagement, the purchase of a house, the birth of a kid, and the death of the fiancé/father of the kid I thought I’d seen it all.  I was wise.  I was bitter.  I was hardened.  Never again would my heart break, never again would I be so silly.  I was a grown up now.

Now I am 34 years old.  Along comes Wayne:  another cute neighbor, another doomed romance.  A couple weeks after we started seeing eachother I was gone.  I couldn't believe I'd found this man.   I still remember him telling me that he was going to be moving away, just weeks into this and I actually cried, which is a big no-no in my book.  You don’t cry over a man.  Especially one you’ve only known for a couple of weeks. 

I finally put it in a different compartment to enjoy what we had for now.  Maybe something would happen and he would stay.

Seems I’m still naïve.

He’s leaving Tuesday.  Grant it, it’s not Denmark, it’s Nevada.  But I’m also 34, not 17.  I have this fantastic job.  I have this little girl that needs stability.  And this time I have a choice…do I give up the job?  Leave my friends and family?  Take my little girl’s world apart?

It’s been a rotten few days.  I thought I had about a month left with Wayne and he told me Sunday, in the feed room at the stable, (this I will never forget) that he is leaving Tuesday.  Today I called a very dear friend that I call a few times a week and haven’t been able to reach.  I got ahold of her tonight and the second she answered I asked how she was and she told me she has lung cancer.  And Friday I have to get a lump in my breast checked out. 

I’m running on empty here. 

So I’m putting all of this in it’s respective compartments.  As one of my favorite people told me, I’m putting it all on God’s big old front porch and letting him sort it out. This blog was supposed to be funny, and I hope I can get my funny back soon.  I’m pretty sure I will, I need something to get me through this that isn’t a prescription or that doesn’t come in the form of a 6 pack.  Right now I am just reassuring myself that the boob will be fine, Wayne won’t be able to live without me and he will come back, and my friend will go to her oncologist tomorrow to find out they were wrong. 

Wish me luck.

Vegas-the non-picture essay:

I didn’t want to go.  I couldn’t imagine leaving my kid and being that far away for that many days.  I resented the word “Vegas” because it meant abandoning my kid.

Holy crap, I had a blast.  I want to go back right now.  Shelby wouldn’t miss me, right?

I was really nervous about the flight, and unfortunately, we got to the airport 3 hours early so I had to dwell on it.  I hate the takeoff.  It scares me to death.   Luckily, there was a “Champs” bar conveniently located next to our gate, which meant I had no problems with the takeoff, but I had a massive headache when we arrived in Vegas.  We got to the hotel and hiked for four miles aimlessly while we looked for our room.  Everyone we tried to ask for directions was either from someplace Asian, or didn’t have their hearing aids turned up, and just nodded and smiled when we asked them where room 1848 was.  After we finally found it we found a gift shop that sold Advil, and had prime rib for dinner and crashed extremely hard for about 10 hours.

The rest of it was a blur.  We didn’t gamble much, maybe spent about $20 between the two of us.  We walked the strip a few times during the day and at night, and went to Fremont street, which was extremely cool and weird.  We visited Hoover Dam one day, and the next we took a road trip to Mesquite to meet the ex’s boyfriend.

The odd part was…I was hoping this trip would bring out some stuff we didn’t like about eachother and it didn’t happen (well for me anyway.  Of course it couldn’t have been HIM that woke up in the middle of the night in a tiny hotel room with explosive…well, never mind.)  But anyway, there were no arguments, no tense moments, no disagreements…just peace.  I spouted off my opinion a couple of times about the upcoming move, but Wayne just quietly moved on to the next topic in his…quiet, non-confrontational Wayne way.  There was NO drama.  AT ALL.  I didn’t even cry or nothing (well, until the plane ride home when he fell asleep with his head on mine, but I swear it’s because he drooled, not because I was a totally emotional mess that I am losing this guy in 3 weeks or anything.)

What sucks though, is I am in denial.  I don’t want to reminisce over this trip.  I don’t want to see pictures of anything except the ones I took or hear about anything Vegas.  I’ve put blinders on so I can’t see what is behind me or next to me but I have my eyes shut so I can’t see what’s in front of me, either.  Thank God I’m busy this week.  I guess I don’t want anything to ruin what little time we have left.  He texted me yesterday that he has a job interview in 3 weeks and I had to force myself to text back a “congrats” instead of throwing my phone across the room.  He wanted me to help him find a camper shell for his truck for his move and I wanted to tell him to shove his truck up…well, never mind that.  Like I told a friend, I keep praying that God will give us more time so I can learn to not like him since that seems to be what happens in all my other relationships!  I guess that’s just not the plan, though.  The more time we spend together, the worse it gets and the angrier I get.

I’ve been through worse.  I keep telling myself that.  I can get through this.  It just sucks when you know that it IS something that can be changed, but no one wants to change it.

Vegas

I have the first few moments to myself I have had in a while...Shelby is at a friend's house and Wayne and Ryan are off watching a guy movie, so I thought I would share some Vegas moments below:



This is what got me on the plane.



Alright fine.  THIS is what really got me on the plane. 

I was wondering why I couldn't feel my lips when that picture was taken, but apparently it's because I don't have any.





I asked him to flex and he went the extra mile.

God Bless the zoom lens.

Oh no we di'nt.



This is how I looked after the second day.



Wayne has a superhuman ability to tell the moment just before the camera snaps...and there you go.  At least I didn't post the picture of the place he gave me to park my bike.









Notice the annoyed sales lady in the background.  Or...is that a look of intrest?



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