Frozen Nowhere

Last week I suffered a disappointment.

Not in something that I wanted. But in my identity as a mother…

My son has been lying to me (in particular) about his homework. Yes, he has been lying to his father as well, but the fact of the matter is that he has been telling me every day for MONTHS that he has had “no homework” when, in fact he has been steadily getting farther and farther behind in his work.

Now, because the teachers have decided to allow the children to take “ownership” of their workload, my son has been coasting along without any adult intervention in this. Not once has the teacher or school indicated, to myself (or presumably to…

I often feel like the ONLY parent in the universe who has kids who are struggling. Maybe I’m just the ONLY PARENT IN THE UNIVERSE who will admit that their kids aren’t perfect angels? Maybe I’m the only parent willing to say “hey, listen, I’m struggling to find a way to help my kids”…

Or maybe my kids ARE the only ones who have “issues” as yet undetermined?

Whatever the case, 90% of my interaction with the school/teachers* has been relatively NEGATIVE in nature. It seems more often than not I am being asked to explain WHY one or the other (or both) of my children are having problems.  I am frustrated. I have no set of peers to talk…

I wanted to change my relationships for the better, how am I doing?

 In January I wrote out the things I most wanted to change in my life in 2010, rather than writing out resolutions.  I focused on the 5 areas of my life that I felt I needed to change to start getting back to being more fully ME.

The third of these areas, my relationships, was motivated by not only the realization that my love life was in toilet and I wanted to dump theNoodle, but also because my relationships with my self, my spirituality, my kids, and my friends was suffering (partly BECAUSE of my relationship with theNoodle), and I wanted to make a mindful change.…

Some days it just feels like I am not fully equip to live in normal society.  There are a LOT of days where I feel IMMENSE and IMMEASUREABLE (although, let’s admit it I still TRY to measure it, I measure everything) guilt over the decisions I made in the past few years – right OR wrong – and how horribly I have “broken” things.

Every SINGLE day I deal with a litany of complaints from ALL arenas about my children. Either theEx is complaining because of expenses associated with the children or having to deal with some issue with that the kids are having, or it’s GirlChild’s teacher complaining about how GirlChild BEHAVES. And a lot of the issues are…

Much of my life makes me lonely …
I live (primarily) alone with cats. I have my kids only 2 weeks out of a month, and because my schedule is divided like this it makes it harder to take classes or join groups that require concrete commitments. I want to go out and DO things, but when I have my kids I also want to spend my evenings with THEM, not send them to a babysitter, not after they have been at a babysitter most of the afternoon.
 
I am conflicted.
 
I want to go out and join in things, but I don’t want to give up TOO much of my children’s time… and I don’t want to

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