I’m getting more used to
the practice of making major life decisions alone.
It was weird when I had to find an apartment, buy a bed, figure out the kitchen.
It was weird when I went on vacation alone. When I bought myself a car.
But the experience of shopping for a house alone is the weirdest yet.
Don’t get me wrong—I have friends & family to talk about it with. I have people I can bounce ideas off, can talk things through with.
It’s not the same as having a partner, though. It’s not like having someone else with skin in the game.
All my life, I’ve considered myself to be pretty independent. But the stakes in this—especially given the crash our housing markets have suffered—feel really, really high. There’s a part of me that wishes I had someone else to decide with.
How much can I afford to borrow? How much of my savings should I sink into a new place? What if I don’t keep my job—will I ever get another one that pays as well as this? How much of a fixer-upper am I willing to deal with? They all feel like unanswerable questions—or at least, questions with a narrow margin of error.
I’m getting more used to it, but it will always be strange, making all the decisions alone.
I’m thinking about buying a house
landisdad and I have gotten through the dissolution of our marital assets, and I’m starting to look for a house in the town that he and the kids live in.
A town where, for the most part, property values haven’t fallen that much. I’m starting to reconcile myself to the idea that if I do that, I will end up either a) spending a bunch of money to buy a house that needs a ton of work (probably through a short sale); or b) becoming a landlord.
I found a real estate agent last week, and we’ve started looking at places. So far, I’ve seen a place that has been an illegal rooming house for 40 years (evidence of which was provided by an elderly, blind tenant, who has lived there for 40 years), a house with a mold smell so bad that I nearly puked when we went into the basement, a house that had been gutted to Sheetrock and plywood, and a house with ivy growing through two of the window sills.
I’m seriously considering the ivy one, though a friend has warned me it may have major structural damage, if any water has gotten in.
The other possibility is that I could buy a duplex and live in one half. That would allow me to buy “more house,” because the rent income counts towards the mortgage. But the idea of becoming someone else’s landlord seems weird.
The idea of making these choices may seem crazy—but increasingly, the kids’ lives are with their friends, in their town. They’ve made it obvious that they don’t want to spend all weekend with me, and I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to spend the next ten years ferrying them back there, and then hanging out by myself while I wait for them.
There are no good choices. Only slightly less bad ones.
friends without benefits
The Potato has been having some difficulty with his best friend, the Turnip, of late. Last week, he came home and said that the Turnip’s mom told him that he shouldn’t play with the Potato anymore. Landisdad & I talked it over, and decided to leave it alone for a few days—to see if it just blew over. But when he came home for the fourth day in a row, and said they still weren’t playing together, I decided to text the Turnip’s mom, to see what was going on.
There’s a part of me that never wants to be that mother. I don’t want to be that kind of helicopter parent that swoops in whenever there is any tiny problem.
On the other hand, the Potato only has one really close friend. And that friend is the Turnip.
In addition, if the Potato had done something—although he swore up and down that he couldn’t think of anything—I kinda wanted to know about it. And as landisdad and I talked it over, we decided that we’d be justifiably upset with the Turnip’s mom if something HAD happened, and she hadn’t mentioned it to either of us.
So I called her, and left her a message. She called me back when I was at work and couldn’t take the call, and then texted me right after—we had a lengthy text exchange, the upshot of which was that the Turnip had been complaining to her about the fact that the Potato wants to play with him to the exclusion of everyone else in their class—and he occasionally wants to play with other kids. So she had suggested to her son that he play with the Potato every other day.
This of course was misinterpreted by the 8 year-old set. I’m not surprised by the misinterpretation, because it was only like a month ago that I got the Potato to understand that the phrase “every other day” means “alternating days” (it came up in a conversation with his orthodontist, who wanted us to start twisting his expander every other night, instead of every night).
In the end, it’s probably going to be okay. But as of the beginning of spring break, they hadn’t started playing with each other again, even on alternate days. If they end up with that ending their friendship, I’ll be sad for the Potato. It’s hard to lose friends. It’s especially hard if the hardship seems one-sided.
Field trip sick…
The Bee had her first overnight field trip this week. She left super-early yesterday morning–landisdad told me she kept peeking into his room at 5 am to make sure he was getting up–and they went to a YMCA camp about three hours away. The kind of place where you sleep, 8 kids in a room, with bunk beds–not tents.
I texted her yesterday morning to tell her to have a good time–but she never responded. This morning, however, she texted me with the words no parent wants to see: “I threw up.”
Ugh.
I texted her back, and then the unthinkable happened–my phone rang.
“Mom, can you pick me up?”
Oy.
I talked to the teacher that was chaperoning her cabin & the nurse–neither of them seemed to think she was exceptionally sick. But I went anyway.
Partly because the Bee never gives in to sickness. That girl will go to school half-dead–the idea that she would voluntarily leave a fun activity made me believe she wasn’t faking. Partly because she actually called me–I mean, she never uses her phone as a phone. And partly because I want her to know that, even in a world where I’m not living with her, she can always count on me to be there when she needs me.
After a long (though very scenic!) drive, I got to the camp & collected my girl. As predicted, she wasn’t horribly sick–but she was sick. When I got her in the car, she cried with relief–I think she was most worried about puking on the bus (& who could blame her?).
We took a leisurely ride home, she slept for about two hours of it (which confirmed again for me that she really was sick–the Bee is a terrible car sleeper). She thanked me several times for picking her up & apologized for the fact that I had to come get her, & I assured her that i was happy to do it, that I know, from my own life on the road, how much it sucks to be sick away from home.
It’s amazing, how this independent & self-sufficient girl can still turn back into a little kid once in awhile. Amazing & special.
it’s odd
the things that you lose, that you never suspected were lost…
like knowing that a family friend is dying….
like having to find out that she has passed, from Twitter….
it’s always something new.
happy pi day #3.14
The Bee’s school had an interesting Pi Day celebration today.
Apparently, during homeroom a bunch of the teachers hid puffballs with the various digits of pi around the school. Each homeroom had to find at least the first 20 digits of pi, and the homeroom with the most got to compete for some actual pie.
The second-round involved having one kid from the various qualifying homerooms memorize as many digits of pi as they could in 10 minutes, which they then had to recite in front of teachers.
The Bee made the second-highest, with an eighth grade boy beating her by memorizing three more digits.
Math can be fun, yo!
this is not a kid post
So if you’ve been missing the kid news, sorry. I’m hoping to get back on a regular blogging schedule soon…
Last week, landisdad and I completed the last transaction in our legal separation when he bought me out of the house. I am no longer a homeowner.
It’s an odd situation–while I’m still at the house nearly every day, it hasn’t really felt like mine for a while. On the other hand, I’ve now signed it over to landisdad (with the caveat in our separation agreement that I can spend parenting time there–time we both need me to be there, with the Potato no longer going to aftercare).
I feel a little less like an adult, to be honest. That’s especially true, since my apartment is once again not habitable, due to more water problems….
a girl in a million
The Bee made dinner tonight.
On Friday, right after we walked into my apartment, she made a snide comment about my apartment not being clean, and I kinda snapped. Those who are my Facebook friends will know that I had no water for a couple of days at my apartment this week—the frustration of dealing with that, coupled with the fact that I had spent several days in the past week nagging the kids to clean up landisdad’s house while we were all there together—made me say to her, “when do I ever have time to clean my place? I’m at your dad’s house or I’m at work. I come home and I go to sleep, and I wake up and I go to work.”
She apologized, and told me that she wanted to make dinner one night this weekend, so I wouldn’t have to. She spent a bunch of time looking at recipes on epicurious, and decided on a menu, including a dessert. She attempted to dragoon her little brother into helping—but he wasn’t interested, and I wouldn’t let her press him into service.
We went out for a while today, and when we came back, I helped her bake her gingerbread cake. (She said, “I told you I was going to cook dinner by myself, but I didn’t say anything about dessert.”) Then she took a break for a little while, and watched Spongebob with the Potato. And then she cooked.
The Bee has really gotten in to cooking over the last year. Landisdad and I set up a ritual, when I first moved out, that we would always have Sunday dinner together (barring work commitments), and she almost always helps to make it. She’s taking a cooking class right now, and she complains a fair amount that the teacher isn’t teaching them enough useful things, in the way a middle schooler can be outraged. (“She taught us how to measure flour! Seriously!”)
So tonight, she made a 4-cheese pasta with broccoli. And it was good. She also made (with the Potato’s help) a kind-of juice spritzer—with hand-squeezed oranges and lemons, tonic & water. I took pictures of all of it to send to her dad—we do that sometimes on the weekend—just send each other pictures of the kids, and what they’re doing when they’re apart from whichever of us isn’t with them.
After we had eaten, she went in to make the frosting for the cake, which was a semi-complicated affair with heavy cream, powdered sugar & lemon curd. Have you ever made anything with lemon curd? It’s like mixing whipped cream with jelly. Weird, but good.
She was frosting the cake, and I carried some plates in to the dining room. And then I heard it. The thud, and the “Oohhhhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooo!”
I went back into the kitchen, and saw it. The cake, on a chair, part of it on the floor. Frosting everywhere. The Bee, sobbing.
I picked it up and put it back on the plate. I put my arms around her and said, “it’s okay.” She sobbed, and said, “now dad’s gonna see the picture and it’s all messed up!” I told her that we didn’t have to take a picture, if she didn’t want me to. I hugged her, and told her that I was proud of her, and that I loved her, and that it could be rescued.
And then it happened. She stood up, and dried her tears, and said, “ok.” And she finished frosting the cake. She carried it into the dining room, and told me to take a picture. She cut it up, and gave it to us, and we ate it. It was delicious.
It wasn’t just the cake that was sweet. It was the maturity.
I started this blog almost seven years ago, when the Bee was in kindergarten. Throughout most of her elementary school career, she did not handle frustration very well. She got angry at herself, she got angry at other people, she got trapped in rage and couldn’t get out of it.
Tonight, none of that happened. And it was a beautiful, beautiful thing.
After dinner was over, I cleaned up the kitchen & washed the dishes. I have never been happier, cleaning up grease & whipped cream, in my life.
overheard in my car
Bee: “You can’t really know someone until you understand what ruined their childhood.”
Me: “…”
Me: “What ruined your childhood?”
Bee: “I don’t know. It’s not over yet!”
some wishes, for 2012
I thought I’d better post in December, and there are less than six hours less. Here are my top ten wishes for 2012:
- That the economy will keep getting better (though if it could speed up a little bit, that would be great). Landisdad’s job is, right now, only funded through the end of 2012, and I’m starting to worry about what might happen if it doesn’t get re-upped.
- That the Grand Old Party will continue to entertain us via their presidential primary, especially by having millions of dollars hurled into internecine struggles to be the most conservative nimrod ever to run for president.
- That, in moving into a new role in my job, I am not making a huge mistake. That the new travel, to new places, will be offset by less travel to the old places.
- That my niece, the Butterfly, who is starting to experience some ADD, will get good strategies from her new therapist.
- That the Bee will keep growing into the beautiful, smart young woman I see more and more of each day. That her eighth grade year will be filled with confidence.
- That she will continue to have good friends, who seem to be (at least from what I can see) free of the “mean girls” gene.
- That the Potato will thrive in the rest of third grade, and will continue to be the funny, goofy boy I love as he moves into fourth.
- That his love of sports will continue to play out in basketball this winter.
- That, as landisdad and I settle in to our separated state, our mutual finances will continue to stabilize…braces notwithstanding.
- And finally, that I’ll start finding something like the joy I once got from writing about my kids on the interwebs again.
