Looking for a job

I have to look for a job because I need money. I wish I knew where to find a job doing what I am good at. What am I good at? Oh lots of things. None of them that pay money as far as I know. I hate looking for a job. It frustrates me and makes me feel like a failure. God knows I have enough other things in my life that do that that I don't bloody need a job search to do it for me. I love spending time with my kids, I love building other people's connection to the community, I even like numbers. I just don't know what kind of job that adds up to with my slim qualifications of a BS in political science. I really wish that while I was in college I had thought about what would happen and what I would use my Political Science degree to do if I didn't end up going to law school with it. Turns out there is pretty much shit nothing for that degree to do and I wish I had thought of that. But the fact is, I'm not paying my rent this month without some money and my husband is worried and I'm worried and its rubbing off on the whole house. Well nothing to be done about it except for keep looking for a job, but I did want to vent for a little bit.

Ruminations

The question is not "Can you find it in your heart to blame me?" but "Can I find it in my heart to forgive myself?" I do not know how you have found it inside yourself to blame me, because I couldn't find it inside myself to blame you, but I am looking for the strength to forgive myself. OK, I made a mistake. I made a couple of them. I married you when I knew I was too young and silly to look ahead into the future. I agreed to marry you when I knew we hadn't been together long enough to know if that is what we truly wanted. I married you even though I wasn't sure. Why? Oh numerous reasons. I thought I wanted to marry you. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought it didn't matter that we didn't have anything in common. I was in love with you. You were kind and thoughtful and treated me like a queen. What changed? Oh, numerous things. Do you think when we decided to get married that I wanted to feel sad for years on end about our relationship? I get these days where I feel joyous about it and I feel like the world is looking up and you are trying and I am trying and it will be ok. But then the regular life kicks in and more days than not, I feel sad. I feel sad like when you know an animal you are close to and have loved is dying. I feel sad like the whole world is going to change and I don't know how to protect myself. I feel sad like everything has gone wrong and I am in some sort of alternate universe.

To be sure, I don't regret our marriage. I love our marriage. I think that that is why I feel sad. You don't feel sad about something ending that you didn't ever like. You rejoice! And that is not my feeling. Only sadness. Not anger. Why couldn't we have grown together instead of apart? What actions could we both have taken that could have changed the way it went? Maybe nothing. Maybe we were both young and fooling ourselves when we said we didn't need any validation or any approval for our relationship. But the truth is, that stuff is important. Otherwise, people wiser than I wouldn't have warned us. The truth is, we have different visions on life and where we want to go. I never have succeeded in getting a vision out of you and every time I ask, you succeed in making me feel guilty that I want anything else. Why do you do that to me? Of all the emotions, I think guilt is the most powerful. It can hurt you and follow you and make you feel pain for years and years and years. Sometimes, your whole life can be consumed by guilt. And here we are, walking down a road together that I don't really like. I wish this was different. Really I do. But I have tried. I have cried and cried and talked and cried and talked some more. I have hashed out scenarios in my mind and with others, I have set up time for us, I have suggested counseling and I have cried some more. The truth is, I don't really know anything else to do. So in that, I don't know how you can blame me. I know how I blame myself. I made choices that I don't think I can or want to take back. And those have set us apart. But truthfully, I think those hastened us along a path we were already on. The truth is, I want more kids, but I don't want them with you. The truth is, I'm scared and I don't know how to do this to you or our family. I really hate being the bad guy, but I realized tonight that whether you initiate or I do, it doesn't matter. You will still blame me, just like you always do. You will still hurt me, probably unintentionally. I love you. Deeply. But I am certainly not in love with you and I have doubts that our relationship is healthy for me anymore.

Turn Your Name Into a Face - Susannah

Turn Your Name Into a Face - Susannah

This is funny. Mine is sure ugly. I have a huge nose on here. What does your look like?

Open Adoptions

So....my adoption of my older two children was finalized this week! Whew! I am so relieved and I am happy to think that no one can ever take them away from me again. However, it was an open adoption since they were our family and there wasn't really any way to make it a closed adoption. This puts dilemmas in front of me. We have a written agreement with their birth mother to see her twice a year and update twice a year so basically contact 4 times a year and then she gets to call once a month and talk to the kids. I am trying to make myself friendly about this because I think that alienating her will only backfire on me with the kids in the end anyway and because I have this agreement, I will have to deal with her for at least another 14 years of my life. That's a long time to deal with people you aren't friendly with. So the first problem is...I'm jealous. I don't like when the kids hug her or touch her or call her Mommy or anything. That sounds petty but your heart just gets all bunched up and you only want to hate her a whole lot during those moments. I'm not willing to leave my kids alone with her yet, so any suggestions on how to deal? Also, she also has another younger son now and I would like for my children to have a relationship with their half-brother which would necessitate more contact also. Any suggestions?

This brings me to my next problem. Their birth father is actually the one that is our family (my husbands cousin) and he is the one that will be at our family functions. He also happens to be the one that I did NOT make a written agreement with because he would only use it against me in the end. He is a control freak and also a little bit bipolar, if I don't miss my guess. However, he is charming and safe with the kids when he hasn't turned that mindset on where he is only seeing angry. We weren't allowed to have him see the kids while DHS still had custody of the kids (while they were living at my house as foster children) because they wouldn't let him see them. However, he knows we got the adoption papers this week and he already is pressuring me about when he will be able to see them. Now, he hasn't seen them in about a year and a half and I don't want to rush it. However, my husband also is asking me when and where I am going to let this happen. Does anyone have more experience with this than me? I can't totally shut him out, we're family. I also don't want the kids to have as much contact with him as I am sure that he wants. What do you think? My kids are 6 and 4 and I also have a 1 year old son that has completely been raised as the other two's brother and will have to be included in any visits. Any suggestions? My brain is racked with possible terrible things happening (mainly mentally in my kids minds).

What am I doing?

I live in a world where its not ok for me to do what I want and raise my kids the way I want. Isn't the way we raise the next generation of kids the most important thing in the whole world? I'm not talking about silly people that don't vaccinate their children (although your choice affects everyone, so thanks - not), I'm talking about the person that is naturally the better parent (whether that be the mother or the father) and wants to stay home, can. We should make that possible on a social services basis, at least before the child starts school and even after that they really aren't gone more than 6.5 hours or so. I'm tired of coming home and seeing my kids for 3 hours a night and having to do a ton of things in the 6 hour mad dash from when I get home to when I get in bed. Why do I have so much stuff to do? Why aren't there more supports for parents, especially younger ones, especially in schools. If they actually wanted parents to come, there would be a whole hell of a lot more support!!!! Just a rant - sorry. I'm tired.

I want more kids

I know you think I'm crazy. I'm going to law school and I have three beautiful children that I love more than anything and are lots of work. But I want more kids. I wish that I could have Kaitlin and Jordan's siblings that are in care. I wish I could have another baby. I want a whole mess of children running around the house. When I was a child, I didn't think that I was ever going to want kids. But once we got Kaitlin and Jordan, I realized that I love being a parent. I don't know if I am ever going to want to stop having children. I love taking them to fun kid things. I love playing with them in their playroom. I love watching kid movies and having tickle wars and having them love me. Does that make me selfish? I don't want to have more kids for their sake, I want to have more kids for my sake. I love pumpkin patches and Halloween. I love Christmas and gingerbread houses. My husband does not want more kids. He has valid points. 3 kids is plenty. Kids are expensive. He isn't naturally suited to having a lot of children. More children means using more of the Earth's resources. But I feel like maybe later this might be a deal breaker even though I knew going into our marriage that he only wanted one child. He was the one who compromised and gave me three. But am I going to be able to get over my feelings about it? How quickly do I need to make a decision? Before I'm 30? 40? When will it be too late? I love Tony and I have no desire to leave him. He is a good father and a great husband to me. But I want more kids and he doesn't. Is that it? How many times can we have the same conversation? It's not like we haven't communicated about it, we have. I just want more kids and he doesn't. When will I find peace about it?

Awesome OMSI information!

For everyone reading that lives in the Portland, OR area, I just wanted to tell everyone that until March 1st, 2009, every first Sunday of the month is $2 admission day at OMSI. THis is a SWEET deal considering that tickets generally run a pretty steep $7-$9. It doesn't seem like much until you are paying for a family of 5 and then they want to go see a movie in the OMNIMAX. All y'all should go. There are exhibits for everyone and I hear the science playground for kids under the age of 6 rocks! Plus, I really want to go and go through the featured exhibit Mindbender Mansion that is leaving Nov 11th!

http://www.omsi.edu/

Weird kid saying for the day!

Jordan says to me this morning on the way to school, "Mom, God can't drive." I said, "Why not?" He replied, "Because he is REALLY old, almost as old as you, and he can't see anymore."

Thanks honey for the moral boost at 8 am in the morning!

Guilt

To all the working moms out there - why do you do what you do? I read an article the other day about a book coming out that advises women on how to help their husbands with their careers. Now, my initial reaction to this was one of outrage! I mean, how dare they imply that we would rather help our husbands with their careers than have our own?!?! And then I thought, well to each her own, I suppose. But really what comes over me is that everyone wants to spend more time with their family - including Dads. However, just in my very unofficial polling, I have found that really more moms feel the guilt and would like to stay home more of the time than dads do. I'm not saying this is across the board, but generally speaking. Also, if the person would like to stay home more with their family, women are more likely to want to not have a job at all as opposed to men that actually do want to stay working, just less hours. Mind you, this is my very unofficial scientific research. I feel guilty admitting that really I wish that my husband was more motivated career wise so that I could stay home and raise the kids until they were older. I feel guilty wanting to say that to him. I feel guilty wanting to say that to the world. Why should I have to feel guilty? I already feel guilty when I leave my baby in the morning sobbing because he wants me, I already feel guilty when I have to tell them that I just don't have time to play with them right that second because I have to work.

Guilt is the strongest emotion in the world, I think. I don't think it is the most passionate feeling, but I think in the long-term it can make you do things that no other emotion can. Why as people can we not say that we want to stay home with our children? What is wrong with that? Why are people so angry about it? Do they think that when you stay home, you just lay around all day? Anyway, that's my rant for today. I just feel guilty today.

What do I know?

What do I know? My eldest asks me this frequently. I don't actually know what I know and it is really very hard to quantify into words. I want to tell her that I know everything and she can never get anything by me. I'm not sure how long that will go over though and then she will know that on top of the fact that I don't know everything, I'm also a liar. Ah well, I have my beautiful baby who gazes at me like I'm his whole world. I guess he doesn't actually look like an alien anyway. Today we went to the library and it is Children's Day in India and they danced and listened to stories in Hindi and made masks that look like animals faces. They had fun doing that. I wonder why that baby is never quiet unless I have him in the sling? Probably that colic. I am super tired but I have homework to do and I have been procrastinating a long time tonight. I should have been done already, but instead I decided to build me a family website. The question you have to ask yourself is, "Will my family ever look at this? Will I forget about it completely by the time that my kids are old enough to appreciate it? Will I actually add things or will it turn out like this blog?" And after all those questions are asked, you realize it doesn't matter. Because the most you can do is try and write stuff down for your kids to remember later. If some of it doesn't get to them, well I figure that most children don't have a website that outlines all the stories that anyone in their family ever had and they porbably feel pretty comfortable in their family. I am looking into that geneology stuff though cause the family tree tool on this family website thing is awesome! If any of you do that stuff, can you tell me how long it takes and what benefits it has brought you? Do you use any websites that help you?

Hello

So, first of all, Roobios is an extremely funny word, don't you think? Anyway, my brother and I were thinking about what the name and/or title of a leader of bunnies would be (if bunnies were to organize and take over the world) and we have come to the conclusion that Roobios is the obvious answer. So basically, in answer to your question, Roobios is the Bunny Leader/Bunny God. If that doesn't make sense to you, welcome to my brain. Sorry about the confusion. It happens to a lot of people.

Moving on, I am like a huge heifer. So I seriously have not gained one pound throughout this pregnancy (I started out huge - LOL) but really the belly really throws you off-kilter even if you don't gain a thing. I think it's like a center of gravity thing that gets me. Anyway, I can't even sleep and I pray to Roobios daily that he makes the baby come now. I am at 37 1/2 weeks and ready to kill myself. But really, if there is a God, do you really think that he knows you are alive? And if so, do you think he/she/bunny is interested? Roobios is probably way bored with my life. Here is the big excitement for me lately - I am trying to get my kids on an earlier schedule to get ready for school. Now let me testify to you that this has been no walk in the park but for Roobios' sake, do you think that every person that calls me needs an update on how this is going? Probably not, but I find that I don't have anything else to talk about. Other than my dream this afternoon about when I was a CSI in outer space that figured out that the killer was my dog. Also in my dream, the CSI had heartburn. Shockingly, so did I when I woke up and realized that this was still my life. But really, to other moms, how do you get your kids in bed early enough for them to be ready to get up by 6 am the next morning to go to school? I want to die thinking about it, especially since soon I will be woken frequently throughout the night by mewling from the alien wanting food. I think alien is going to be my pet name for the baby. I have always felt that babies look rather similar to aliens. Don't you? Unfortunately, aliens leave to return to their own planet and children do not.

Seriously, I kind of like kids and I really actually love mine even if it isn't coming across today. Today, I hate everyone. Well, except for my youngest because he called me Mom today like three times and since he is a foster child and they normally call me by my first name, my heart melted whenever I heard it. Anyway, if you are reading this and you know me, bring me dinner so I don't have to go into my kitchen any more tonight. I think I have eaten like 4 apples purely because I am too lazy to actually make myself dinner.