Frozen Nowhere

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…

For the last year and a half I have used the same cell phone — a Samsung m510 in green — and had been very happy with it. I had moved from a service provider that did not have coverage for me for most of my province to the crown owned service provider that allowed me to be covered everywhere (with very FEW exceptions in the most remote areas) for not only analog services, but also digital services like text messaging…
 
Until this weekend… when my phone decided that it was pretty much DONE with the business of acutally being a PHONE. Suddenly my phone was not ringing (or vibrating OR blinking) when calls were incoming, even when

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The problem with the weeks I am alone is… well… that i’m ALONE. Completely and totally alone, and I really start to feel it.
 
When the kids leave its like all the life is sucked right out of my place and I just don’t know what to do with myself.
 
This is new for me.
 
I spent more time as a lone parent while I was married than I did as a parenting duo. I never felt that my marriage was a true partnership, and I was alone a LOT during that 10 years even when he was physically present in our home.
 
So I thought that I was used to being alone, immune to loneliness.
 
I

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Beyond the sickening fear that my ex is going to fuck my life over even further, I have been having an okay time.
 
One of the things that has been going on is that I have been cutting K out of my life. About 3 weeks ago I “slipped” and allowed him to convince me that he had changed and that he was ready to be my friend rather than to sit around whining all the time about how much he loved me, or, alternatively, how much I had screwed up his life (or rather how he had screwed up his life FOR me). But it was just another round of “feel sorry for me for missing you”

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Okay, so in the last month or so I have finally started to put some thought into what it is that *I* think makes a good relationship for ME. Maybe I should have thought of this years ago, and decided my future based not on whether someone seemed to like me well enough, and might be able to provide for me and future children that we might have, but really think about what qualities that I wanted in a mate — basically before I “settled” for someone I thought would be good to me (which, it turns out that he most certainly was NOT good to me, and even now I laugh when he says “if you need anything, let…