So Tuesday was terrible. I didn't get to do anything for myself but I did get some things done off my list. I made a list a few days ago because I was just feeling so overwhelmed. Lists have always helped me to feel organized;even when I'm not. There is something so motivating about being able to cross something off the list. Even if it's something small like "find red lipgloss". When I'm able to cross a few things off, then I feel like I accomplished something, and it's right there in black and white as proof.
So anyway I cleaned my bathroom tub, mopped the bathroom floor and recleaned and organized the drawers and underneath the sink area for probably the hundreth time. I know, I know the key to organization is to keep things organized, right? Yet I just can't seem to keep things organized but I figure if I just keep doing it, then its bound to stick, right? I also cleaned out my big, tall, cabinet that doesn't match anything else in my room, and is solely for housing all of my beauty projects purchased in a fit of "product junkyism". Did I mention I purchased another (okay two more!) beauty products. One was a coconut conditioner that was reviewed on curly nikki and the other was the matching coconut mouse. I have been trying to henna my hair for the last few months, but I just can't seem to make the time. Maybe this weekend but who I am I kidding? I tell you, that's one thing I miss making time for, and that's doing my beauty rituals. I read these blogs like curly nikki and I think "where the hell does she find the time do all this stuff?!" I mean she is doing the henna and the twist n curl's and overnight deep conditioners. Half the time I'm lucky if I get a shower! I think I've figured it out. She must not have kids. It will be interesting to see how much hair gets hennaed and twisted once she procreates. For now I'll just enjoy her blogs and live vicariously through her. She gives some great tips and her hair is gorgeous. Every day when I peek at it, I'm inspired to do something different to my hair. I get that way when I go to somebodies house that's decorated nicely or that is very clean too. I want to go home and emulate what I admire. I guess that's a good thing. Maybe that's why they say you should surround yourself with people you want to aspire to be. If you just sit around with other people who have junky, cluttered homes, and jacked up hair then you're never challenged to change or behave differently. My new friends home wasn't a masterpiece but it was a home like mine yet more organized. You can tell she likes to entertain and she made the kids and I lunch with her little salad spinner and homemade dressing. It just felt nice and has inspired me to start purchasing some home gadgets myself. Yep countertop, make way for the new salad spinner! I'm home so I might as well make it as comfortable as possible, right?
So my question this morning before my kids come in the here (I hear them talking to each other in their beds).
Does going to another persons home inspire you to change your own surroundings?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Stepmom blues
So yesterday wasn't a great day. Today is looking pretty dim. Now I've already prayed and I'm trying to rid myself of negative thinking, but..... I just can't help but get a little pissed off about the taxi service I have to provide today. As a stepmom you can't help but to start feeling a bit resentful (okay a lot resentful) about having to "mother" someone else's child. My husband wanted custody but I feel like I do ninety percent of the work involved in taking care of him. Now I know that he works and I'm at home so, I shouldn't feel resentful, but sometimes I do.
Let's take today for example. Now I did all the leg work/phone calling to get my stepson this interview for a volunteer oportunity. Even when I asked my husband to call he never followed up. So knowing how important this is for my stepson's college applications, I set everything up myself. Today is Tuesday which is my busy day. My three year old has preschool and my two year old has mommy and me storytime at the bookstore. After that we have a playdate. So I have to have everyone dressed and fed, hair combed by 8:30am to get to everything on time. So drop off three year old, and take two year old to story time after our doughnut ritual. Now best believe she will be whining and complaining the whole time;kinda like what I'm doing now. After storytime we will go to our playdate and then go have lunch. Now here is where things get hectic. I have to pick my stepson up from his school at 2:00pm so no nap for the little one's so it's best if I just stay out until around that time and don't even go home. That means bathroom time will have to be in some public place. Have you ever used public restrooms with your little one's? Yeah it can get REAL nasty! So I have to pick him up at 2pm then take him to his interview at the museum. I'll have to get everyone out of the car, because their is no way the kids will let me sit in the car with the childrens museum in the line of sight. Now I KNOW once we get in their the interview won't take long, so I'll go through hell to make the kids understand that we have to leave the museum in order to get my stepson back to school for football practice. Football practice is at 3pm and should go untill 6pm but it always doesn't. Sometimes he calls at 5pm right when I'm in the middle of cooking and says "I'm done early can you pick me up" which I then have to get pack up the kids and stop mid-cook and go pick him up. Well anyway if practice does run until 6pm then I have to pick him back up again from school and take him to tutoring. Tutoring ends at 7:30pm and it's highly unlikely that my husband will get home in time to pick him up because he is working in the city today of all days. Now my husband also has a eye appointment at 5:30 that he had me make but now says he doesn't think he'll be able to make. So I'll have to look like an idiot and call to cancel that when I actually need to go to the eye doctor myself but won't be able to because of my stepson's activities. Now in between all of this I need to find time to cook dinner and clean the house and do some math homework, which I'm already behind in;but I probably won't. Now I will do all of this running around on my stepsons behalf while my husband sits his behind in Manhattan probably grinnin and skinnin at his coworkers and talking sports. Then he'll come home and all praise will go up because "daddy's home!" and he'll look around at the house with that "what does she do all day" look on his face. When he is jabbering with his friends he will moan and sigh about how much work it is to be a custodial dad, and I'll sit there with a sour look on my face, thinking "it must be nice". Oh and while I do all this running around for my stepson, he my stepson will sit there with a ugly look on his face as though he can't stand to be in the same car with me and mumble out one syllable answers to my questions.
Me: "How was school?"
Him: "good"
Me: "Any homework?"
Him: "some"
You see he tries his best to think of me as just a "worker" kinda like the maid or the housekeeper. If I don't speak to him when he gets in the van, then he won't speak at all. I'm not sure if this is just teenager crap or he just thinks of me as the "stepmonster" so figures it's best he not speak to me at all. At any rate when he see's his dad, its all love. Sometimes he tries to speak about me like I'm not in the room. For example if I close the door to his room, he'll ask his dad really loud in front of me "who closed my door;my door should stay open!".
Monday, November 2, 2009
My Monday Rant
So it's M0nday.... I can remember back when I was a carefree single girl with no kids that I dreaded Mondays. They were an end to my weekend and a start of another work week. Now I still dread Mondays but my reasons are entirely different. The main reason is that I'll be alone with the kids again while my husband goes to work. He'll get a break and I won't is pretty much what it amounts to. They (the children) awaken early and thus begins the begging. I need milk! I'm hungry! Can we go somewhere?! Isn't it amazing how kids will repeat the same thing twenty times until they get it? If only I could be that persistent then I could maybe nag my husband into completing all these half completed projects around the house. Or maybe I could nag myself into becoming a published author.
My husband really pisses me off sometimes. He has the audacity to open his mouth and utter complaints and gripes about what I don't do while I sit there looking at all the crap he's started and never completed.
Let's start a list, shall we?
Holes in the ceiling from a yet unfinished recess light project, A half painted wall in the hallway that he started a year and a half ago. A microwave oven purchased three years ago that still hasn't been installed in the kitchen and sits in the basement collecting dust. Linen closets and bedroom closets with no doors. Windows with no blinds. Dry wall patches never painted only sanded. Daylight peaking through gaps that need to be caulked before Central Hudson comes and gets our first born for payment. The insulation of the entire home that he starts every few months completes a little bit and then stops. The atrocious lawn that has more weed than grass that he rarely does anything with including raking leaves or mowing the grass. The handrail that he never put up by the stairs so that the children teeter precariously as they go up and down. The garage that noone can use because he pushed all the junk from the basement that he never finished into the garage (this was so that he could do the floor of the basement-but he never completed it) making it unusable. So now when it rains the kids and I just get soaked as I run from the house to the van. The storm door that was never purchased and installed which further inflates the energy bill. The ceiling in the hallway that he just HAD to put a pull out door in. This was because he needed to get into the attic to insulate... Yeah that same insulation project that he started two years ago and still has not finished. So now every fall/winter the kids and I walk around in sweaters and jackets while he sits in a nice, warm office and repeatedly calls to make sure that I'm not turning up the heat to high. The window pane that freezes and ices over because it's missing an outside pane that he never replaced. Did I mention the basement? Yeah I did but I forgot to mention that the whole wall seperating the garage from the basement is missing... Yep missing. You see he removed that wall when he gutted the house. The bathroom downstairs that will probably never be finished. He's slow with all projects but bathrooms in particular are slower than most. The last bathroom he did in our old condo required us to stay in a hotel and then once that became to expensive, with his mama! The ceramic in the foyer that he never grouted. The grouted floor in the kitchen that he never sealed after it was grouted so now it needs to be grouted again. The stair case that nees to be painted because it looks all cruddy and nasty. The outside door that needs to be painted and the peeling paint around the door that gives it that "I don't care how my house looks appeal". The peeling pink paint around the garage that needs to be removed and painted. The pictures sitting on the floor that need to be hung. I think I mentioned that we still have paper blinds on windows after three years? Yeah I did.
Now you may think to yourself well why don't you just hire someone? Uh Uh that's a big "NO" in my husbands book. First of all their is the financial aspect of hiring somone that he says we just can't do and then their is the reason he won't talk about. Control. Yep he's a control freak who can't admit he's a control freak. We could budget the money to get one project done at a time but he doesn't want to pay anyone what he thinks he can do. In a lot cases he can do it and he is very talented at what he does, but he just never finishes anything.
Our house is a testimony to all of his unfinished projects and I have become so disgusted at looking at them that it cause me not to want to do anything at all. I look at him sometimes and I just get so angry. It can't be healthy to feel this much anger, yet I love him. I came into marriage so naive. I always assumed that in a marriage what was important to you would be important to your spouse. Yet that's not the case. In marriage selfishness rules and I haven't quite learned how to be selfish. I'm trying but it's still very hard for me. When I complain he says that he doesn't do a lot of things because I won't keep the house up. Lies. Even though he attempts to make me feel like an incompetent housewife, I know that I'm not. I'm not perfect but do a whole lot more than a lot of wives and stepmoms would do. I used to get all upset and then attempt to be all that he wanted me to be but now I say "whatever!". He is definitely not perfect and neither am I. So what the hell you come home and their are toys on the floor. You have kids, get used to it. Or who cares that you washed a load of laundry when you got home from work or washed dishes. This is your home too and contrary to your belief system it's not just MY job to take care of the home and children. It's my job when your at work but when your home we SHARE in the responsibilities.
I'm getting fed up with a lot of crap that has been going on in my life. I need to take more control. I need to get selfish...
My husband really pisses me off sometimes. He has the audacity to open his mouth and utter complaints and gripes about what I don't do while I sit there looking at all the crap he's started and never completed.
Let's start a list, shall we?
Holes in the ceiling from a yet unfinished recess light project, A half painted wall in the hallway that he started a year and a half ago. A microwave oven purchased three years ago that still hasn't been installed in the kitchen and sits in the basement collecting dust. Linen closets and bedroom closets with no doors. Windows with no blinds. Dry wall patches never painted only sanded. Daylight peaking through gaps that need to be caulked before Central Hudson comes and gets our first born for payment. The insulation of the entire home that he starts every few months completes a little bit and then stops. The atrocious lawn that has more weed than grass that he rarely does anything with including raking leaves or mowing the grass. The handrail that he never put up by the stairs so that the children teeter precariously as they go up and down. The garage that noone can use because he pushed all the junk from the basement that he never finished into the garage (this was so that he could do the floor of the basement-but he never completed it) making it unusable. So now when it rains the kids and I just get soaked as I run from the house to the van. The storm door that was never purchased and installed which further inflates the energy bill. The ceiling in the hallway that he just HAD to put a pull out door in. This was because he needed to get into the attic to insulate... Yeah that same insulation project that he started two years ago and still has not finished. So now every fall/winter the kids and I walk around in sweaters and jackets while he sits in a nice, warm office and repeatedly calls to make sure that I'm not turning up the heat to high. The window pane that freezes and ices over because it's missing an outside pane that he never replaced. Did I mention the basement? Yeah I did but I forgot to mention that the whole wall seperating the garage from the basement is missing... Yep missing. You see he removed that wall when he gutted the house. The bathroom downstairs that will probably never be finished. He's slow with all projects but bathrooms in particular are slower than most. The last bathroom he did in our old condo required us to stay in a hotel and then once that became to expensive, with his mama! The ceramic in the foyer that he never grouted. The grouted floor in the kitchen that he never sealed after it was grouted so now it needs to be grouted again. The stair case that nees to be painted because it looks all cruddy and nasty. The outside door that needs to be painted and the peeling paint around the door that gives it that "I don't care how my house looks appeal". The peeling pink paint around the garage that needs to be removed and painted. The pictures sitting on the floor that need to be hung. I think I mentioned that we still have paper blinds on windows after three years? Yeah I did.
Now you may think to yourself well why don't you just hire someone? Uh Uh that's a big "NO" in my husbands book. First of all their is the financial aspect of hiring somone that he says we just can't do and then their is the reason he won't talk about. Control. Yep he's a control freak who can't admit he's a control freak. We could budget the money to get one project done at a time but he doesn't want to pay anyone what he thinks he can do. In a lot cases he can do it and he is very talented at what he does, but he just never finishes anything.
Our house is a testimony to all of his unfinished projects and I have become so disgusted at looking at them that it cause me not to want to do anything at all. I look at him sometimes and I just get so angry. It can't be healthy to feel this much anger, yet I love him. I came into marriage so naive. I always assumed that in a marriage what was important to you would be important to your spouse. Yet that's not the case. In marriage selfishness rules and I haven't quite learned how to be selfish. I'm trying but it's still very hard for me. When I complain he says that he doesn't do a lot of things because I won't keep the house up. Lies. Even though he attempts to make me feel like an incompetent housewife, I know that I'm not. I'm not perfect but do a whole lot more than a lot of wives and stepmoms would do. I used to get all upset and then attempt to be all that he wanted me to be but now I say "whatever!". He is definitely not perfect and neither am I. So what the hell you come home and their are toys on the floor. You have kids, get used to it. Or who cares that you washed a load of laundry when you got home from work or washed dishes. This is your home too and contrary to your belief system it's not just MY job to take care of the home and children. It's my job when your at work but when your home we SHARE in the responsibilities.
I'm getting fed up with a lot of crap that has been going on in my life. I need to take more control. I need to get selfish...
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