Multifaceted Mama

I am all about helping people out when they need it, but sometimes there is a fine line between helping out and being taken advantage of.  And I think that line is being crossed.  I have a neighbor who is notorious for taking advantage of good-hearted people when it comes to watching her kids.  She took complete advantage of a former neighbor, ruining their close friendship in the process.  It seems to be starting to happen with me now.  Monday morning, she showed up at my door right after the bus left with her two youngest in underwear, wanting me to watch them while she ran to the hospital with a relative.  Fine, I understand emergencies.  She comes back and gets them and 10 minutes later, she is back at my door telling me she needs me to put one of them on the bus in an hour for her.  Um, okay.  That afternoon, the bus comes and she is nowhere to be found.  So, her 2 kids that got off the bus came home with me.  She got home, I gave her her kids, no thanks, no nothing.  Instead, an hour later she is down here informing me that I needed to watch the 4yo the next day (Tuesday) until the pre-school bus came.  Well, I couldn’t, and she got all kinds of huffy about it.  So, instead, she isn’t home when he gets off the bus after school.  WTH?  Then this morning, I get a knock at my door at 0650 and there she is with 2 of the kids, telling me I need to watch them.  NOT a good time, considering I was trying to get my own 4 out and to the bus stop for the bus at 0700.   I had already agreed to watch the 4yo, but not until 0830 and only until the bus came at 1130.  ½ hour later and she came back, took them, and informed me that the one I was supposed to be watching would be back in a few minutes.  Never mind that it was an hour earlier, that she hadn’t even asked.  I think that is what pisses me off.  Not so much the unexpected having to watch the kids, but not being asked.  She tells me, doesn’t ask, and never says thank you.  THAT is what I hate.

But the good part was that I got to chat with my girl Renee, which made it better,… despite the temper fits, the thrown glasses of milk, and the resulting playroom that now looks like a tornado hit it!

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate rain?!  Especially when I have just been to the salon and gotten my hair done?!  Yuck.  I got my roots done this morning, which was beyond needed.  It was getting to the point where the roots were longer than the blonde.  Okay, maybe that is a slight overstatement,…!  I am finally to the point that I no longer need a double process to be adequately blonde!  I guess the lovely brassiness that ensued when I went from red to blonde has finally left!  I am, however, slightly blue until my next shampoo!  Chalaine, my favorite stylist EVER, had to put a drop in to do whatever magic it is supposed to do.  It’s a lovely sort of extremely light lavender blue around my roots, but it will go when I wash it.  I got it cut, too, and I love it.  It is a lot shorter in the back and razor cut all over.  It rocks when it is flat-ironed!  Chalaine also took after me with the wax, which, however much I hate, makes me look so much better!  She does an amazing job with my brows.  Hopefully, my head is now so hot that no one will notice my ass!!  A girl can dream, can’t she?!

Mood: cheerful  TV: Law & Order: SVU

I pride myself on being open-minded and forgiving, but I am definately having issues with the ex-husband.  I didn’t think any of the drama with him bothered me any more, but I am beginning to think that I was fooling myself, that it was just a matter of out of sight, out of mind.  At first, I thought it was just the stuff that had to do with Ka’lani that bothered me, but if I am being honest, there is definately more to it. 

He comes back into my life after years of silence, after a marriage that left me pretty scarred.  This guy cheated on me and lied to me, repeatedly, over the course of our short marriage.  It took me a long time to figure out what was happening because it was so far from how I thought that I just didn’t see the signs that are so obvious in hindsight.  People told me what was going on, but I wore blinders and didn’t believe a thing they told me.  Even after, I did figure it out, I stayed for a long time.  I wanted so much for it to work, but I finally realized that it was never going to, and that wasn’t my fault.  It took me a long time to get to the point where I accepted that, but I did.  Life went on and I thought I had moved beyond the bitterness and the anger.

But now I feel like a doormat all over again.  He has taken to talking to me about his problems with his wife and sometimes it just feels like a slap in the face.  He tells me all about how much it hurts to be cheated on and how lost he feels, etc.  It makes me want to scream sometimes.  I feel like it is a big slap in the face because he clearly doesn’t get or is ignoring the fact that this is exactly what he did to me, but far more times.  He expects sympathy from me about it, and on some level, I do have sympathy.  But how does he not get how much it hurts to hear him talk about how hard it is on him?!  It’s like his feelings matter, and mine never did. 

And no matter how many times I try to rationalize it, it still bothers the hell out of me that he doesn’t acknowledge Ka’lani as his.  It is such a slap in the face to Ka’lani and to me, and neither one of us deserve it.  He has a daughter, who is beautiful, but he has a son, too, damn it.

I guess somewhere inside me I really need some acknowledgement for what he has done, for him to take responsibility for all the pain he caused, to apologize.  I think he is a good guy at heart, I really do.  But it would be nice to really see it.

Mood: hurt  TV: As The World Turns

I think the combination of stress plus no sleep has come back to bite me in the ass.  To say that I feel like I have a tribe of dwarves mining in my skull with very sharp pickaxes would be putting it mildly!  My usual homeopathic remedy of cayenne pepper pills are doing nothing.  Aleve is doing nothing.  We can only hope that my blood of life will help. 

I have been considering seeking out an acupuncturist for my back and neck pain.  Stretching helps but doesn’t last for much more than the stretching itself in relieving the ever present pain.  My friend Renee swears by it and my friend Kay does it, too.  Renee is in TX so I don’t think I will be seeking out her place, but Kay lives just 35 miles away so that is a possibility!  It has gotten to the point that I can’t find a single comfortable position to sleep in, which doesn’t help matters when I already have sleep issues!

There is nothing I hate more than labels, even though I know sometimes they are necessary.  But labels can be so limiting in someone’s perception of you, or your own perception of yourself.  I hate being put in a box because of what someone labels me.  Just because someone labels you as something doesn’t mean that that is all that you are, or that you are just like everyone else with the same label. 

I have noticed lately on social networking sites a trend among a lot of the military supporters out there, the idea that everyone who avidly supports the troops must be a Christian conservative Republican.  That label couldn’t fit me less!  I don’t like being told what I must be, what I must believe, what I must think, just because I am an Army wife, an Army vet and I support our troops.  I read some of the tweets/statuses they put out there and the condescending tone of them against anyone who doesn’t fit their definition of what a true military supporter is about just annoys me.  It isn’t about a difference of opinion; I both welcome and respect that.  It is about a lack of respect for anyone who doesn’t think just like them.  Isn’t that what this country is supposed to be about?  Freedom of choice?  Then why don’t I also have the freedom to think for myself without judgement?

I have also noticed that if you aren’t mainly a troop support & political poster, you are somehow less worthy.  I just don’t think everything in my life has to be about being an Army wife, or an Army vet, or being pro troop.  There is so much more to life, to me.  I think it is okay to have fun, to twit about whatever, to not have to be serious all the time. 

I am an Army wife, I am an Army veteran, and I do support our troops.  But I am also a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, a Democrat, and a pagan.  And none of those things make me less of an Army wife, less of an Army veteran, or less supportive of my troops.  Nor do they make me less intelligent, less legitimate, less credible, or less of a good person.