Clever Escape

We are now fully moved into our new apartment. It was a long, annoying process both aided and hindered by friends who either helped out or bitched out. Conveniently, all the people we have helped move in the past six months were moving to different states and therefore couldn’t help us move when it was our turn.

Excuses, excuses.

Just because you are in different states…

Anyhow. New Apartment. New internets. Less room. The washer was broken and the showerhead in the second bathroom sprayed down the entire room whenever it was turned on. And of course, that is the shower that Sunshine uses and it never occurred to her to worry about the lake in the bathroom that was created every time she took a shower. Or, you know, mention it to us.

But really, what can we expect from a child that has absolutely no responsibilities unless she is here with us? Reprogramming her to the way we do things every time she gets here gets really old.  Especially when she is only here for three day weekends or something short like that. By the time she is back to doing things like saying please and thank you and picking up after herself, it is time for her to go back to her mother’s!

My brain is all over the place. We don’t have everything unpacked yet and it messes with my state of mind…boxes and piles everywhere. Bleh. I’m tired of unpacking and trying to find a place for everything. We had to go to Ikea and buy a desk and pantry, cause there isn’t one here and we left my husband’s desk in NY last summer. Even with the new pantry thing there isn’t enough room for everything…and the openings on the existing cupboards are too small to put our plates through.

Ok so this is full of random thoughts and no flow whatsoever, but my husband said I needed to write something today so there you go.

Maybe I’ll have better brain activity later.

Now, I know that this is going to shock most of you. Totally floored me.

You may want to sit down for this one.

That is, if you are standing up at your computer. Which would be abnormal. But just in case, make sure you are seated.

Sunshine tried to call her mother today, and…drumroll…”this phone is temporarily out of service“.

I warned you. It’s a shocker, that one. Especially considering that her mother has called her ONCE in the FIVE WEEKS she has been here.

ONCE.

IN FIVE WEEKS.

And that was two days after she arrived here. Nothing since then. Her grandfather called once about a week ago. But that is it.

My mother? Has called at least six times. Nick’s parents? Comment on her site almost daily. But her mother? Nothing. No communication at all. So we told her she should call her mother. And, somewhat reluctantly, she did. And it was out of service. We told her to call her grandfather and find out why her mother’s phone wasn’t working. He gave his phone to her mother, who didn’t answer her question at all, just said that it would be back on by the end of the week.

In other words, as soon as her husband came home to give her some money to pay the bill.

His phone, though, is on and working. Why they don’t have a family plan, I don’t know. Maybe his phone is a work phone or something. Which is assuming that he isn’t working under the table anymore, and is actually filing his taxes and stuff, and I’m sure you can guess the likelihood of that one.

Anyone that has been reading this blog for any real amount of time (as in, pre-deleteeverythingIhaveeverwritten) knows that her phone gets turned off all the time. ALL THE TIME. What if something had happened to Sunshine? What if we couldn’t get a hold of her? What if her father didn’t answer the phone either, or check his messages, as they are all prone to do? What then?

And what if, by some chance, Sunshine was actually interested in calling and talking to her mother, but she hadn’t been able to get a hold of her this entire time?

I mean really. One thing to not call all freaking summer. But to make it impossible to be called? That is a whole other level.

I shouldn’t be surprised by either. And really I’m not. I am not surprised that her phone was turned off. It is a common occurance and a big factor in why we got her her own phone on our plan. And she never calls when Sunshine is with us. Ever. Not even when we had her for six months straight. Nothing. We would have Sunshine call her every couple of weeks, but why go through the effort when it just ruins Sunshine’s day anyway?

And also typically, Sunshine was upset when she got off the phone. She does a good attempt at hiding when she is upset, and I am not looking forward to the day when she can actually pull it off, but she was visibly not happy. When I went to tuck her in, before my husband read her her bedtime story, she said that July sure went fast.

Is that why you were upset after you talked to your mom? Cause she made a big deal about how you were only here for another few days?

Yeah. I like it here.

I’m sorry you feel sad. July did go fast, but you will be back here before you know it!

Yeah. I wish I could stay here. If only it weren’t so hot!

Hey, it’s only really hot during July. And it won’t be July anymore when you come back, so no big deal.

I wish I could put more effort into defending her mother’s actions. I know that she is upset that she hasn’t called her all summer. She is upset that her mother made a big deal over she “only has to be there a little while longer”.

She does not understand why her mother does the things she does, or why her life has to be the way it is, why we all can’t live closer together. But it is NOT MY JOB to defend her mother to her. It is starting to get easier to stop myself from doing it. I used to think that I needed to protect her and her vision of what her mother is supposed to be. But I can’t do that for her anymore. I can’t excuse such noxious behavior anymore. I don’t have it in me. She is just going to have to figure it out for herself.

No, not moving blogs. Moving my life. To a new apartment. Hopefully a short-term thing, until we feel ready to get a house. Financially, that is. Otherwise, I am SO ready for a house. I’m tired of packing up all my stuff and carrying it around and changing all my addresses and stuff. That crap is so annoying.

Not that I don’t like moving. I like living all different places. This time, though, it’s not so exciting cause we are just moving closer to where I work. Nothing really new and exciting. Except that it is a ground floor apartment. That is cool. And a way, way shorter drive to work. That is cool too.

I may or may not have mentioned that my husband has horrible ADD. Therefore, he is not the packer. I have to be the packer. Were he to try to help, which he has in the past, it would end up taking twice as long because I would have to finish doing whatever it was that he had been doing because he would get distracted by something shiny and wonderful, or find something he had been looking for three months ago and have to do whatever project it went to, or a piece to something that he had already packed and would have to therefore unpack everything and put it all together right.

Yeah, so. I’m the packer.

In theory, I am just the packer and then he is the mover.

In theory.

Usually I end up doing a large portion of the moving as well. And it looks like that is how it is going to be this time around too.

I have lost count of all the people I have helped move at one point or another. Basically almost everybody I know. If there is somebody I know that I haven’t helped move, it is probably because they haven’t moved yet.

Conveniently, though, I helped these people move away. As in, they aren’t here anymore. Here, where I am. Where I require assistance in moving. Bleh.

Plus Sunshine is here. I hate moving when she is here.

One, it is really annoying to have her everywhere.

Two, I can’t just throw her whole room in boxes and leave it. She needs clothes and a bed and entertainment.

Three, I have to entertain her somehow.

Four, I feel really, really guilty about spending our last week with her packing up and moving shit. That is not fun.

And to top it off, it is expected to be over 100 the entire time.

I think this is the one and only time I have ever not liked the heat.

We have one week left before Sunshine flies back to her mother’s. From where she will be flying to PA the next day. Then driving to my in-laws house three days later. Then back to PA five days later. Then flying back to her mother’s four days later, to start school three days after that.

Who came up with this ridiculous schedule?

In two days time she will be spending a minimum of six hours on a plane. That is assuming that her grandfather got nonstop flights, which he never has before so probably didn’t this time. He tends to get overnights. Great idea with a child, right? Last time she was five. And spent eighteen hours in JFK. Brilliant.

We offered to fly Sunshine to PA directly from here, which was turned down. Turned down because it would have given us another three days with her. But then her mother said we could take her five days early for winter break.

WTF?

Where is the logic and reasoning here?

It is not ok to have her three days longer to save her from a ridiculous plane trip across the country, but it is ok for her to miss two days of school at winter break (ridiculous days, the 22nd and 23rd, who schedules school on THOSE days? really? Oh yeah, THEY do) to come down here.

I’m not sure why I even ask that anymore. There is no logic and reasoning.

But then, I am trying to be more positive. I’m sure she has a reason, even though I can’t even come up with anything ridiculous at the moment, with no allowances for logic.

I would really like to be able to get a long with her. I would really like for her to make an effort to acknowledge my husband as a parent, and not someone that Sunshine goes to visit occassionally but really has no right to any opinion about anything that happens in her life.

And on top of that, I hate seeing her leave. I would almost want her to come here less so she won’t leave us as often. Leaving is horrible. Saying goodbye is horrible, while she is talking about how she wishes she could stay here, with us. What a hard life for her. To always want to stay, yet to go. To want one parent, but miss the other. To dream about all of us living so close she could just walk across the street to see the other person whenever she wanted.

But it will never happen. And she knows that. Short of us winning the lottery and bribing her mother with obscene amounts of money to move here, which would be hard to do since we don’t play, we will always live far away from where her mother lives.

The end of the summer sucks. At least I will have moving and work to distract me.

I keep forgetting to tell you all that my friend who spins drum & bass and moved to Colorado is broadcasting online again. Actually, he started up again like a week after he moved…and I never said anything. Oops!

Anyhow, he is still on Tuesday nights, is still awesome, and the chat room is still available. Go to Jungletrain.net and look for DJ Darkstar tomorrow night. He starts at like 6pm Colorado time, so whatever that translates to wherever you people are.

It would totally make his day if you login to the chat room and tell him clevrgrl sent you to listen, just DO NOT MENTION THIS BLOG. As far as I know, he doesn’t know about it, and I would like to keep it that way