Are the kids alright?

Quite a disappointing month for everyone in the house. Shit does not want to fall into place. Timing is off for everything to work the way we hope it will.

I watched a dumb movie about a widow who went crazy without support. I am beginning to wonder how I am able to cope with my life when the only person I talk to on a regular basis is my therapist. Donno. I wonder why Justin didn't take me with him. He knew I would be fucked here without him. Now I feel obligated to stay here even though in my heart I don't feel I am needed. I hate this town more every day we are here. I feel my optimism for the future being chipped away. I don't know what I am doing anymore. I don't have any tangible goals. No direction. No hope. I feel July creeping up on me. I hate that the one month I always anticipated as the best time for everything to work itself out is now the month I dread most.

My poor gals are in turmoil. I can feel the stress behind their little smiling faces. It kills me that I am not the mother I wanted to be. It kills me that I can't protect them from all the heartache this stupid place has to offer. A junkie shooting heroin into his girlfriend's neck in the grocery store parking lot. Creepy homeless guys leering at them. All the relatives here are sick and dying from treatable illnesses.

May has always been bad. June? We shall see...

Teenage wasteland

I swear my teenagers will be the death of me... The mood swings that come with puberty make me want to smash my skull with a hammer. When it is good, it is very good. When it is bad, it is very bad. My emotions have finally stopped swinging wildly. Now I have to deal with being out numbered by crazy people. I miss crying on Justin's shoulder. He was my rock. That fucker knew how much he meant to me. He knew how much I would need him. >sigh<

It's been a long time since I've rocked and rolled

The third anniversary of Justin's death is coming up quickly. The 5th anniversary of Justin's first suicide attempt just passed. My oldest (now 18 and about to graduate high school), moved out of the house in March. My middle one has had a personality change. She is now my right hand gal! The little one is now 4 years old and a sassy as all git-up. Her Daddy would be proud of all of them!

As for myself, 2 1/2 years of counseling has begun to pay off. It has been an ugly torture, but I am beginning to come out of the haze. I will have completed 3 years at the community college here. I will start as a Sophmore at UNM in the fall. I can't believe I have almost 1/2 of the core classes done. This will be a new adventure for me. It has been a time of change for all of us. So far, so good! : )

WTF?!

So the girls and I spent the Christmas and New Year holidays with Bonnie (jason's biological mother). I was hoping for a nice, restful vacation. I won't lie, I also wanted to be spoiled. It is not often that I am around someone who can afford to buy a new wardrobe for me. The trip itself was nerve wracking. Running two teenagers and a 2 year old through the Denver and Minneapolis airports was a task. We also flew on little planes there and back. I am terrified of flying. Hopping on propeller driven aircraft is most certainly not my cup of tea. I will never do it again!

Bonnie's house is absolutely beautiful! She lives on Lake Minnetonka. We stayed in the basement which is the size of our three bedroom apt in Alb, except that there are only 2 bedrooms. It even has a small kitchen. We were pretty self sufficient down there.

It turns out that Bonnie and her family are a bunch of crazy people. Cyndi Lauper was righ,t "Money changes everything.". Haha! I never would have thought so much misery could come from wealth. I learned so much on this trip. Bonnie has a spoiled son. He screamed in the little one's face. She was 2, he 12! I got in his face and told him the next time he did something stupid like that, I would put him over my knee just like I do with mine, and I didn't care what his parents thought.

This made for an uncomfortable Christmas and 2 weeks we were there, but I don't regret it. That kid is a punk. He desperately needs someone to shake him awake... We all had a bad stomach flu on the way home and looked like a bunch of drunks detoxing after a trip to Vegas. It was terrible. We all managed not to puke on the tiny little toy airplanes we flew home in. I was proud of my girls.

The beautiful land of disenchantment

I have been working on a little rocking chair in my Carpentry class! I started it in august and I am STILL working on it! I sanded it until my hand felt like it was asleep last night. : ) I started working on some floating shelves for the rest of class. They are actually almost done! This class has been a real life saver for me! It gives me time to just be, and not think about my troubles. I have to be focused to avoid losing a finger! I have class with some really great guys. It is nice being around men because they don't want to talk about anything deep. They just want to tell inappropriate jokes. This makes me laugh (which I have really needed!). One of the guys has a crush on me. He is an 18 year old learning disabled (and cute) little mexican guy. If I didn't know better, I would say he is a paint sniffer. He looks totally normal, but he has that slurred speach and lumbering walk of a paint sniffer. He follows me around the shop and helps me cut my wood. He is really a sweet kid. I don't mind him hanging around, but I feel uncomfortable that he makes googly eyes at me the whole time. Not because of him so much as I still feel like a married woman, and I feel like I am acting inappropriately. My main buddy is an unemployed carpenter named Arnold. He is going through the classes so he can get a certificate, and hopefully more/better paying work. He is a really awesome person. He is a short, pudgy hispanic guy who wears a cowboy hat, girlie teeshirts, and has gauge earrings. In Seattle, this may not be strange, but in Albuquerque, it is downright weird! He is 4 years older than I, but he calls me "Mija". It makes me smile. : ) He answers my stupid questions, and helps me cut stuff. He has finished two curio cabinets, a pool table, and two rocking chairs in the time it has taken me to build my chair! He is working on a huge entertainment center now. He will probably have that finished by our next class tomorrow.

I am so stressed out about how i am going to make my Jan rent payment, I can't study much. sucks. I am hoping I can do well enough in my classes to maintian my grade point average. The welfare office decided I am getting $270 mo in child support. HAHAHAHAAAA!! Anyway, they dropped my benefits from a whopping $539 mo to $268 mo. It is interesting trying to figure out how to make ends meet with 4 people in my family! Going to try to make an appointment with financial aid to see if they can help. Also looking into bankruptsy. I am also facing the loss of my car. jason's bio-mother has offered to make my car payment for me next month, but I honestly don't know how I will make the payment after that! Car payment is $340 mo! It would suck to lose my car at this point. I only owe $2000 on it for peeite's sake! I have come to terms with losing it, but the bad part is that the bus system SUCKS out here! If we were in Seattle, I wouldn't worry at all!

We went to Justin's mom's for his birthday. I skipped my carpentry class. she bought a beautiful evergreen tree (not sure what kind) and a bunch of supplies to make ornaments for the girls. It was as a really mellow night. We all had fun. She made dinner for us. Chicken, squash, and her homemade mac and cheese Justin loved so much. She is a vegitarian, so i think it is funny she made a whole chicken for us. She had to suck it up when Justin lived with her because he was the most extreme non-vegitarian alive! My oldest fooled with Leslie's cat, and it attacked her! He mangeled her arm pretty bad. We had cake and sang "happy birthday" to him. I think we were all happy to do something to honor him. It's funny how you are not sure how to celebrate a person after they are gone. You feel like you should do something, but it is like feeling around in the dark. Leslie wants the girls to make ornaments for him (and his tree) every year. The middle one had the idea to do it for father's day, too. How sweet is that? Leslie also gave the girls Halloween goodie bags. She has a knack for knowing just the right stuff to put in her holiday bags. She gave the gals some cash for Halloween costumes, too! Yes, my girls are big and yes, they still dress up. They both have parties to go to. This will be the first year the little one and I will be alone for Halloween. Sadness.....

I have been real lonesome the last few months. My pal Bonnie is mad at me for something. I imagine it is either because I asked her to watch Popie for the Forth of July, the night I had to drive myself to the emergency room because I was covered in hives and couldn't breathe (and spent the next week teetering on death) OR it is because I gave her a hard time about her daughter. I got an email from her daughter while (her daughter) was on vacation in Colorado. She spent the day fishing, and caught her first fish. She was so excited, but she missed Bonnie online and couldn't tell her about it. She started feeling really bad for having time without Bonnie. She knows Bonnie is miserable when she is gone. Anyway, I told her Bonnie is a big girl, and that she should live it up while on vacation. I haven't heard from Bonnie since. I give up trying to figure her out. We have taken such different paths in our lives. I am an old fuddy-duddy mother now. She still gets tattoos with her rent money. It sucks mostly because she was my only friend here. The plethora of calls I got after Justin died really spoiled me! Now the phone has stopped ringing, the kids are teenagers (don't want to talk to their mother), and I am left alone. Don't get me wrong, the little one is super entertaining, but it would be wonderful to have dinner or even coffee with an adult every so once and a while... I am sad that there is a new Saw movie. The movies are the stupidest waste of time, but Justin and I used to watch them together (for some reason!). It breaks my heart that we will not sit holding hands and laughing at the spectical...

On a lighter note... We went to the Balloon Fiesta 8 times in the two weeks it was going on. Once in the morning, once at night. They have a balloon glow followed by a firework display at night. The girls insisted on bringing our new kitten the first morning. The middle one ran across the parking lot because she was so excited! We spent the night at the balloon field for the Balloon Fiesta! It was so great! My dad parked his little camp trailer for us. The middle one brought her friend. It is amazing to wake up, walk out your door (with a piping cup of joe), and be surrounded by hundreds of beautiful hot air balloons! I love the brisk mornings in October. The sunrise is always spectacular this time of year. Oh yeah, the kids had fun, too! : )

I also reunited with my best friend from high school, EJ!! I haven't seen him in 20 years. The last time I saw him, he was leaving for the Navy. He is now a retired officer who works at the Pentagon! Yes, I asked him all kinds of questions but like a good boy he didn't give me any classified information... DAMN!!! : ) He hasn't aged a day. He is now a handsome slice of beefcake! He was with his equally handsome roommate. I blushed... We visited for a couple of hours. I wish we could have spent the whole day together. It was really wonderful to see him! Yes, I am humping his leg. Shut up...

Rain went to homecoming with her boyfriend, Rin. She looked so beautiful. He is a cutie! I can't believe how big she has gotten. My girl is almost grown!

I have been furiously working on two shawls. I am making one for Nammer (Justin's Gramma), and one for my Gramma Bennie. I am 2 1/2 rows away from finishing Nammers. I will post picts when I am done. I get to crochet a lot now. I pick up my hook when I take a break from doing homework. I take a lot of breaks! I want to make something for each of my friends. Luckily, I don't have many... : )

Can you believe it has been a year?

One year ago our lives were very different than they are now. Some things were better then, some are better now. I have been sick for almost 2 weeks. It started with a stomach flu, which cleared up. I got really bad hives and stomach cramps on the forth of July. Drove myself to the emergency room. The girls went to visit their grandmother in Minnesota. I started to feel a little better, but then I got sick again. I had many different ideas about how I wanted to spend the anniversary of Justin's death. In the end, I spent the day puking my guts out. I was so sick I thought I was going to die. Justin's mom picked up the tiny gal and kept her for 3 days. During that time, I thought about everything that has happened in my life in the last 10 years. I got homesick for the people in Seattle. I didn't have many friends there, but they were really nice people.

This week...

I think it is safe to say this week has been the loneliest time in my life. I have always been okay by myself, but as the 1 year anniversary of Justin's death approaches, I find I am alone. Not just the alone of not having a significant other. I feel very small and lost as I struggle to figure out who I am. I have spent so much time focusing my life on my family, I still don't know who I am. I imagine it will get more difficult as July approaches.