Too good to be true

So I guess I didn't scare you off, huh? Good! Welcome back!

Whenever things start going good for me, I always feel like I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Three times during the past week, the subject of fear of failure/fear of success has come up. And each time I’ve said the same thing – I fear success because I am afraid that as soon as I get used to it and start to be comfortable with it, it will go away.

Sure enough, its starting to. Things were going really great, I made twice as much in the first half of December as I had in November. A month ago, I didn’t know how I was going to get the kids anything for Christmas. And then things picked up and I was so excited that I was going to be able to give them a decent Christmas this year.

Yet here I am, a week before Christmas, and my plans fell apart. Between not getting a payment I had been counting on and an unexpeected bill that came up, I’m back to where I was…wondering how I’m going to afford groceries for the rest of the month.

You know what hurts the most? I was so excited about being able to get Princess the biggest thing on her Christmas list – a Nintendo DS Lite in metallic rose – and I ordered it a few days ago through Amazon plus two games thanks to a buy one, get one free deal they had. Oh it was going to be perfect! One game was some Imagine Teacher (which she loves to do….play school) and the other was some horse riding game and she is crazy about horses. Well I just got the email about an hour ago that the order won’t be shipped because my card was declined. Well, yeah, after having to pay an extra two months on my car insurance there wasn’t enough money in my account.

So there it goes – my pride, the absolute joy just thinking about what it was going to be like to see the excitement on her face when Santa really did bring her the DS. Instead I have to face not just her but all 3 of my kids and explain to them that Mommy was doing good for a while but now its gone again and I’m sorry but this is all there is, maybe next year.

It felt good while it lasted and I am grateful that I was able to pay off some bills this month, get my cell phone turned back on, keep my water from getting shut off. Like I said last night, better to have short-lived success than none at all, right?

Yeah. Right.

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Streaking

No, not the naked kind. The hair kind. And not the fancy schmancy highlights that women (and some men, but don’t get me started on that…) will pay big bucks for.

I’m talking bright vampire red Manic Panic streaks in my black hair, something I’ve wanted to do for a while now even before my roller derby days.

I’m going to do it. I have to or Jason from Gorilla Sushi is going to hunt me down, Fight Club style. (You have to click that link to see what that means.)

I’ll post pics eventually soon.

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We’re all mad here

So I check my email this morning and amongst all of the spam was a trackback to one of my posts telling me this:

Wow. How cool is that? Especially since it came from Jenny a/k/a/ The Bloggess who I think is really cool and I wanna, like, hang out with her whose blog I really enjoy.

Anyway I was reading some of the other featured posts and found a few that really struck a chord with me. I love reading blogs by people who face some of the same obstacles that I do. Not in a “misery loves company” kind of way but in a comforting “you’re not alone” kind of way.

‘Alice in Wonderland’ is one of my all-time favorite stories (and Disney movies). I love the Cheshire Cat so much I almost had him tattooed on my shoulder. And one of the best lines in the whole movie is “We’re all MAD here.”

Ain’t that the truth?

But while most people are afraid of the madness, I embrace it.

The first post I felt compelled to comment on was ‘Manic Depression’ by NakedJen. She writes:

I remember looking at him with a very strange curiosity.  And then thinking to myself, honestly, that my mother had put him up to this.  That the two of them were in cahoots and that this was just her way of controlling me further.  That I was, in fact, perfectly fine.  In my mind, a person with mental illness is not the Valedictorian.  She did not graduate Summa Cum Laude from college.  She didn’t get straight A’s.  She didn’t win national playwriting awards.  A person with mental illness lived in a box.  And drank vodka straight from a bottle to keep the demons at bay.  She didn’t function in every day society.

See, I’m one of those people who truly believes there is a fine line between genius and insanity. Einstein was crazy. Charles Manson was brilliant. No, that’s not an insult to Albert or a compliment to ol’ Chuck. Its true that they were both highly intelligent as well as mentally ill. They both walked that fine line and fell off of it onto opposite sides.

That fine line scares me though. What is it that seperates a brilliant philosopher from the crazy cat lady? If you’ve been reading my blog and following me on Twitter, you’ve probably already safely assumed that I will be falling into the latter category.

Anyway, then there’s this from a woman who calls herself Sugar that wrote this post:

I once had a daughter that was spirited and willful, too. Life was so difficult. Every little thing turned into some huge catastrophe that was impossibly insurmountable. We screamed our hatred and loathing at each other with reckless abandon. How had flesh of my flesh become so hurtful and cruel? How had I become the monster that would yell so many ugly words back at her? I couldn’t handle the chaos any longer and thought that her father could take over. In giving her the space I thought she needed, I’ve allowed a wider gap to grow. In a time when I thought we’d understand one another, I am instead experiencing her cold silence. We have not spoken in nearly six months. I call… I text… I email… to no avail. What does she want from me? I’ve cried that to the night sky so many times lately.

I know the feeling. Sissy and I butted heads for years. Our relationship went from one extreme to the other. We were always either really close to the point where she considered me her best friend and had me in her Number One spot on her MySpace friends list (hey, if you have teenagers, you know that’s a HUGE deal!) or we were screaming at each other with threats coming from me to kick her out and threats coming from her to run away. Then back in February she carried hers out, even though she blamed me and told anyone who would listen – including Princess’ dad and Bubba’s dad – that I kicked her out.

Just a few days ago she told me to fuck off because I told her I don’t have her W-2 forms. Nice, huh? Yet when she sent me a text a couple days later apologizing, my response was not “Yeah, me too. It was “What do you want?”

And then Sugar ends her post with this:

My heart and prayers go out to all the parents that have this heaviness to bear. Remember, though, no matter how difficult your “spirited” child may be, a life without that precious one is immeasurably more painful. Seek assistance in any way, I implore you. Love your child through it all and they will grow and love you back… eventually.

Ouch.

Screw it, I’m gonna go talk to my cats.

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Another 4-legged family member

I was driving home the other day, all alone for the first time in a month since Bubba was babysitting Princess for me while I took care of some grown up stuff. I passed a few signs that said “free kittens” and before I knew it, I was finishing my car ride home with this little passenger.

Meet Roxy.

She is tiny and adorable. She also brought a few fleas visitors with her. So we got her treated. And its so funny because when I lay her on my lap to inspect for stragglers, she passes right out. So she’s either narcoleptic or easily relaxed. She was a little on the scrawny side so I’ve been mixing up kitten formula with wet and dry food to make sure she’s well-fed.

Of course Princess is having fun carrying her around, putting her in baby doll beds. And poor Roxy just lays back and tolerates it. Not bad considering the old guy we got her from said she might be kind of skittish and wasn’t really used to people.

Chevy (Like the Actor), however, is not quite so fond of her. In fact, he hisses at her every time she comes near him. Today was the first time he didn’t hiss at her. He just shot her an annoying glare. I give it a week before they’re curling up and napping together.

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I can’t take much more of this

I don’t know what to do.

As I write this, Princess is throwing an ear-splitting headache-inducing tantrum because Bubba threw away an empty, cut-up, Teddy Grahams box. It had these little cut-outs on the back of the box so I cut those out and gave the boxes to my son to put in the trash. Princess lost.her.mind.

Then as he was taking the trash outside, he started removing a piece of paper that she had drawn on and then taped to our door. That made things even worse. She was sobbing to the point where I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. And you know those stupid little postcards for magazine subscriptions? Don’t even think about putting that in the trash can unless you’ve got a lot of Tylenol on hand.

And now Bubba is pissed off and crabby because he’s sick of listening to her scream. And I get to sit here and listen to both of them scream at each other. I gave up on trying to please them both.

I try to teach my son how NOT to react to her but he just gets mad at me and yells and complains about what SHE is doing. But getting her to stop doing whatever it is she does to annoy him is next to impossible.

So who do I “fix” first? Trying to get Sissy and Bubba to be aware of Princess’ “issues” – she’s an HSC and has sensory processing disorder – and asking them adjust their behaviors is exhausting me. But trying to get Princess not to behave the way she does is exhausting too. Not to mention the fact that when I DO try, everyone acts like I’m “coddling” her and spoiling her and that that’s the reason she acts this way.

I am at the end of my rope. And being single, I don’t have someone else to step in and play referee while I try to get laundry and dinner done.

I am drained and teetering on the edge of depression again.

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