I'm listening to a whole bunch of disco music while writing this post. I don't know if that really matters, but I thought you should know that I am doing a great chair dance while I'm typing.
So the kids are back. Last week when they moved out and my mom showed up from Texas at the exact same time and we helped them move, I forgot to mention that then later that night my brother who lives in Kentucky and his family arrived. They left on Monday morning, I had taken the day off work to spend with my mom and my other brother and his family because it was my niece's 16th birthday. Then I worked the rest of the week. On Tuesday after work I graduated from physical therapy from my broken wrist. Woot! Then on Wednesday night, the kids moved back in right in the middle of a torrential rain storm at approximately 11:00 p.m., on Thursday night my mom and I went out to dinner, and on Friday night my brother who lives here in Atlanta and his family came over to my house for dinner and they were all sitting in my house when I got home from work so I didn't even get 30 seconds to decompress from work and Friday afternoon rush hour in Atlanta. Then my mom left on Saturday morning to head back to Texas, I took my fake daughter to the DMV to get her license and it was packed so it took a good while, then I had my neighbors over for a few hours on Saturday evening so I had to get food ready for that.
My fake kids stayed with some friends of theirs overnight on Saturday.
Guess what I did this past Sunday?
I spent the day on the couch in my pajamas with a pillow, blanket and the remote control and I don't know if I've ever felt so happy in all of my life. Except that I was beyond the point of exhaustion so I had a splitting headache that would not go away and so I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I should have. The kids came home in the afternoon, looked at me and said, "what's wrong? Are you sick?" And I bit my tongue. "I'm exhausted from the two of you living with me!" I wanted to scream at them.
But there is some good news! Fake daughter changed jobs and is making more money as of this week, she got her car registered so she can drive it now and I don't have to take them everywhere they need to go, and the fake son got a job so he's making money and he's received an offer to play soccer and get paid for it (he played semi-pro last year). So maybe they will have enough money fairly soon to get a decent place to live.
However, Monday was the first evening they could take their car out and I went to run some errands after work because I had not had a second to do them last week. I had made one stop when I got a text that the kids had locked themselves out of the house so I had to go home. They were all dressed up and sitting on my back deck. I commented that they looked nice and the fake daughter said they had been about to leave to go out to dinner when they locked themselves out. She was wearing a super cute dress and I asked where they were going to eat. "KFC," she replied. I laughed on the inside.
Turns out, they had no idea where a KFC is and they were using the GPS on their phones but this was her first time driving around Atlanta and it's, you know, kind of a big place. I honestly don't know where the closest one is either because I never eat there, but they had told me they would bring me some dinner back home.
They left my house at 8:00 p.m.
Fake daughter texted me at 9:30 p.m. to tell me their car was smoking and overheating but one of their friends is a mechanic and was going to come help them.
I called her at almost 11:00 p.m. to see what was going on and she said, "we're on our way home but we've gotten lost 3 times already. But I think I've been on this road before so we're okay." They were on the expressway going right through the middle of downtown (the Connector for those of you familiar with Atlanta). I told them if they could stop and tell me where they were I could come get them but she insisted they would find their way home. I live about 10 - 15 minutes from downtown.
I ate a bowl of cereal, put on my pajamas and got in bed to read for a while. I stayed awake until I heard them come in. At midnight......
The next morning (yesterday), I had to drive fake son to work on my way to work so we were both in the kitchen eating some toast. And he caught my toaster oven on fire, but that's not the point of this part of the story (yes, there was fire in it and smoke billowing through my kitchen and he said, "what should I do?" and I said, "oh, I don't know. How about turn it off?"). I saw a bag of McDonald's in the refrigerator and he told me they never found KFC and went to McDonald's instead and that was what they had brought home for me. So yeah, they were gone for 4 hours to end up going to McDonald's. And there is a McDonald's less than a mile up the road from my house. Oh boy. He also told me their mechanic friend never made it to help them because they stopped in a gas station and this really nice guy came running out and told them how he loves to help people and sold them a bottle of stuff to pour in the car to fix it. The mechanic is going to look at their car this weekend though so who on earth knows what they poured in it.
But I think between all of that stuff happening on Monday night and them both working hard yesterday they were worn out. So we were all in bed by 9:00 last night. I then woke up at 11:30 thinking I had been asleep all night and could not sleep for the rest of the night. And I'm reading this weird book that I really can't decide if I like or not but cannot stop reading so I read a lot of it last night. It's called "The Night My Husband Killed Me" and it was free a while back on Kindle so I downloaded it. It's written from the point of view of the ghosts of famous murder victims. So far I've read the parts about Natalie Wood and Nicole Brown Simpson and I've started the part about Sunny von Bulow. It is a bizarre book for sure.
Y'all. If I survive all of this, I deserve a medal. Or at least a giant brownie.
Oh, after June started talking about the Curly Girl Method over on the Pie, I started that this week. It's working really well so far and I've been getting tons of compliments from people at work about how great my hair looks. Let's hope it keeps working.....
In other news, will it ever stop raining in Atlanta?
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
They're baaaaccckkkkk. Well, almost. Tonight they will be back.
Well, y'all. My kid free life lasted all of 3 days.
I was contacted this morning and my fake daughter told me the apartment they moved into was sprayed by a pest control company yesterday and it is apparently infested with all types of disgusting bugs. One fell on my fake son's head and he shaved all of his hair off and sat outside for the rest of the day.
And now they've asked to come back to my house until they can find another apartment. Obviously I told them they could, so they'll be back tonight. I may live in the 'hood, but at least I'm not infested with roaches, spiders and centipedes.
And the story continues........
I was contacted this morning and my fake daughter told me the apartment they moved into was sprayed by a pest control company yesterday and it is apparently infested with all types of disgusting bugs. One fell on my fake son's head and he shaved all of his hair off and sat outside for the rest of the day.
And now they've asked to come back to my house until they can find another apartment. Obviously I told them they could, so they'll be back tonight. I may live in the 'hood, but at least I'm not infested with roaches, spiders and centipedes.
And the story continues........
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Well, this was a crazy weekend.....
I got home from work on Friday night and I thought the two craziest things that were going to happen would be having to go to the cable company to return some equipment and trying to figure out where I was going to fit 8 people sleeping in my house Sunday night when I have 3 beds and only 2 of the people are in a romantic relationship with each other.
I just changed all of my TV and internet stuff to a new company because after having my house re-wired twice by my previous provider, my internet would still go out several times per week requiring me to unhook everything from the router and modem, unplug everything, get it all hooked up and turned on again, reboot my computer and it was making me insane. I had been with the previous provider since about 1987 through college apartments, post-college apartments, my apartment while I was married, my apartment after I got divorced, and in my house I'm in now. So this was kind of a big deal for me and I felt like I had gone through a breakup when I called them last week to cancel my service. I then canceled another service today which I've had for almost 7 years so now I feel like crying and eating chocolate because of all the breaking up I've been doing. I told them it's you, it's not me so that was kind of different than most break ups. But still. Breaking up is hard to do.
Saturday morning I planned to drive to the cable company's office down by the airport which is about 20 minutes from my house and return my equipment, then come home and maybe work in my yard if it would stop raining here in Atlanta for at least 30 minutes so that I could then spend Sunday cleaning my house, washing sheets, and getting ready for squeezing everyone in my house overnight.
Only that is not exactly how my weekend went.
I got home from work on Friday night and my fake daughter didn't get home from work until almost 9:00. She told me the family she's been working for owns rental properties and they had taken her to see an apartment that just became available. She said she liked it okay, that they told her when another apartment becomes available in one of their properties in a nicer area they will allow her and my fake boy to move if they want to (which made me wonder just what kind of area this apartment is in), and that they were putting new carpet, new flooring, and doing a lot of painting because the previous tenants didn't take such great care of the place. I questioned her about several things including some things that are really important to their specific situation which I'm not going to disclose on here and she quickly admitted that a whole bunch of stuff was not exactly worked out in detail pertaining to their situation. But she kept insisting that she wanted them to move to this apartment.
I reminded her that all they had at that point were the clothes they moved here with and she said the apartment is not furnished. So I asked her, "do y'all plan to sleep on a bag of clothes? And what do you plan to cook in/on or eat in/on? You have no dishes, no pots or pans, no silverware, no glasses, no beds, no pillows, no sheets, no blankets, nothing to sit on, no shower curtain, no broom or mop to clean with, no vacuum cleaner, no nothing. You have clothes and flip flops and a bicycle and that is all you own in the world and that is not going to be fun to survive on."
We sat and made a very specific list of all the basic stuff they would need and then we discussed how much all of this was going to cost and I suggested a couple of places we could start looking. I also told him that since I'm almost 45 years old, I have accumulated a whole bunch of crap over the years and probably had duplicates of a lot of stuff so I would start going through my kitchen and pulling stuff I can certainly stand to spare and that I had a set of dishes I've been trying to get rid of for years which they could have.
Then I made the mistake of suggesting that sometime soon we should go to Ikea because it's inexpensive and a great place for people who are starting from scratch and that is how I ended up going to the cable company and then spending 5 hours in Ikea on Saturday afternoon which my stupid plantar fasciitis loved so much. So much. When the fake daughter asked if we could go, we both thought the fake son would go as well and I was prepared to take my Kindle and sit somewhere while the two of them walked around because my feet are so screwed up. Only he decided to go play soccer all day and since Ikea is gigantic and it was crowded, I felt I should walk with her. And now my feet are in excruciating pain. Amen.
She bought a couple of mattresses and because they are from Ikea they came rolled up like burritos and wrapped in plastic as only Ikea can manage to do, and a whole bunch of other basic stuff and we boxed it up when we got home and put it in my garage and I knew it would sit in there for a while so I could go through my house and figure out what I can donate to their apartment, until they really got this apartment stuff figured out and made sure it was going to work with their specific issues they need it to work with, figured out how to get utilities hooked up without any credit history, and signed a lease, etc.
And we all went to bed Saturday and honestly I was awake half of the night worrying about whether or not I've done a good enough job and if I've taught them enough to live on their own in a new-to-them country and then trying to convince myself to stop worrying so damn much (I am a huge worrier and have been all of my life) because they are not my kids and it's not my responsibility and knowing they are going to make mistakes and that's how you learn the most important lessons in life but at the same time wanting to throw my arms around them and protect them like a mama bear even though I'm not their mama. And then I understood just the tiniest bit how it must feel to actually have children.
We got up Sunday morning and they helped me clean the house and we all washed our sheets and blankets to get ready for all of my family who were coming to stay at my house Sunday night, and they were trying to help me figure out who could sleep where, and then they told me they were going to walk up the street to a shopping center and that they'd be back in a while.
They came back home around 4:30 and I was still cleaning my bedroom and had to take a shower, and my fake daughter said, "okay, I'm going to start packing our clothes up now." And I said ??????????
She told me the owners of the property had texted them while they were at the shopping center up the street and said they could go ahead and move in so she had called a friend of theirs and the friend said she could come over after she got off work and move their stuff for them in her van. By 6:00 when my mom arrived at my house from Texas, they had all of their belongings piled up in my dining room and then my mom and I helped them load it in their friend's van and they were moved out of my house by 6:30 Sunday evening. I went from wondering if this particular apartment was going to work out for them to them having moved out in a 2 hour period.
And I sat there with my mom at my kitchen island in stunned silence.
Y'all, they did drive me insane a lot of the time but they are good kids and I grew to care about them so, so, so much. And I want them to be okay.
They moved without knowing if their specific major issue is going to work out for them to live in this particular apartment, they are living there with the owners having the utilities all turned on in their names so if the kids can't get them turned on for some reason I'm not sure what will happen, and they have no signed lease. I know they are excited to have their own place and I'm glad to have my own place again too.
But I'm aware I could soon receive a phone call that things aren't working out like they hoped and that they need to come back. And whether y'all agree with me or not, I'd welcome them both back in my home in a heartbeat if they find themselves in a bad situation.
And that was my crazy weekend.
I also talked with Laurie on Sunday and she said she would love to come back to Atlanta for another Atlanta Pie Party this fall. We kind of decided on sometime in October and I'm happy to host it at my house again if y'all want to get together. Can y'all throw out some dates in October that would work? I don't have anything planned that far in advance so I'm totally open at this point. Laurie and I said we should try to convince June to come down as well. I have two bedrooms and beds available for them to stay with me now.....
I just changed all of my TV and internet stuff to a new company because after having my house re-wired twice by my previous provider, my internet would still go out several times per week requiring me to unhook everything from the router and modem, unplug everything, get it all hooked up and turned on again, reboot my computer and it was making me insane. I had been with the previous provider since about 1987 through college apartments, post-college apartments, my apartment while I was married, my apartment after I got divorced, and in my house I'm in now. So this was kind of a big deal for me and I felt like I had gone through a breakup when I called them last week to cancel my service. I then canceled another service today which I've had for almost 7 years so now I feel like crying and eating chocolate because of all the breaking up I've been doing. I told them it's you, it's not me so that was kind of different than most break ups. But still. Breaking up is hard to do.
Saturday morning I planned to drive to the cable company's office down by the airport which is about 20 minutes from my house and return my equipment, then come home and maybe work in my yard if it would stop raining here in Atlanta for at least 30 minutes so that I could then spend Sunday cleaning my house, washing sheets, and getting ready for squeezing everyone in my house overnight.
Only that is not exactly how my weekend went.
I got home from work on Friday night and my fake daughter didn't get home from work until almost 9:00. She told me the family she's been working for owns rental properties and they had taken her to see an apartment that just became available. She said she liked it okay, that they told her when another apartment becomes available in one of their properties in a nicer area they will allow her and my fake boy to move if they want to (which made me wonder just what kind of area this apartment is in), and that they were putting new carpet, new flooring, and doing a lot of painting because the previous tenants didn't take such great care of the place. I questioned her about several things including some things that are really important to their specific situation which I'm not going to disclose on here and she quickly admitted that a whole bunch of stuff was not exactly worked out in detail pertaining to their situation. But she kept insisting that she wanted them to move to this apartment.
I reminded her that all they had at that point were the clothes they moved here with and she said the apartment is not furnished. So I asked her, "do y'all plan to sleep on a bag of clothes? And what do you plan to cook in/on or eat in/on? You have no dishes, no pots or pans, no silverware, no glasses, no beds, no pillows, no sheets, no blankets, nothing to sit on, no shower curtain, no broom or mop to clean with, no vacuum cleaner, no nothing. You have clothes and flip flops and a bicycle and that is all you own in the world and that is not going to be fun to survive on."
We sat and made a very specific list of all the basic stuff they would need and then we discussed how much all of this was going to cost and I suggested a couple of places we could start looking. I also told him that since I'm almost 45 years old, I have accumulated a whole bunch of crap over the years and probably had duplicates of a lot of stuff so I would start going through my kitchen and pulling stuff I can certainly stand to spare and that I had a set of dishes I've been trying to get rid of for years which they could have.
Then I made the mistake of suggesting that sometime soon we should go to Ikea because it's inexpensive and a great place for people who are starting from scratch and that is how I ended up going to the cable company and then spending 5 hours in Ikea on Saturday afternoon which my stupid plantar fasciitis loved so much. So much. When the fake daughter asked if we could go, we both thought the fake son would go as well and I was prepared to take my Kindle and sit somewhere while the two of them walked around because my feet are so screwed up. Only he decided to go play soccer all day and since Ikea is gigantic and it was crowded, I felt I should walk with her. And now my feet are in excruciating pain. Amen.
She bought a couple of mattresses and because they are from Ikea they came rolled up like burritos and wrapped in plastic as only Ikea can manage to do, and a whole bunch of other basic stuff and we boxed it up when we got home and put it in my garage and I knew it would sit in there for a while so I could go through my house and figure out what I can donate to their apartment, until they really got this apartment stuff figured out and made sure it was going to work with their specific issues they need it to work with, figured out how to get utilities hooked up without any credit history, and signed a lease, etc.
And we all went to bed Saturday and honestly I was awake half of the night worrying about whether or not I've done a good enough job and if I've taught them enough to live on their own in a new-to-them country and then trying to convince myself to stop worrying so damn much (I am a huge worrier and have been all of my life) because they are not my kids and it's not my responsibility and knowing they are going to make mistakes and that's how you learn the most important lessons in life but at the same time wanting to throw my arms around them and protect them like a mama bear even though I'm not their mama. And then I understood just the tiniest bit how it must feel to actually have children.
We got up Sunday morning and they helped me clean the house and we all washed our sheets and blankets to get ready for all of my family who were coming to stay at my house Sunday night, and they were trying to help me figure out who could sleep where, and then they told me they were going to walk up the street to a shopping center and that they'd be back in a while.
They came back home around 4:30 and I was still cleaning my bedroom and had to take a shower, and my fake daughter said, "okay, I'm going to start packing our clothes up now." And I said ??????????
She told me the owners of the property had texted them while they were at the shopping center up the street and said they could go ahead and move in so she had called a friend of theirs and the friend said she could come over after she got off work and move their stuff for them in her van. By 6:00 when my mom arrived at my house from Texas, they had all of their belongings piled up in my dining room and then my mom and I helped them load it in their friend's van and they were moved out of my house by 6:30 Sunday evening. I went from wondering if this particular apartment was going to work out for them to them having moved out in a 2 hour period.
And I sat there with my mom at my kitchen island in stunned silence.
Y'all, they did drive me insane a lot of the time but they are good kids and I grew to care about them so, so, so much. And I want them to be okay.
They moved without knowing if their specific major issue is going to work out for them to live in this particular apartment, they are living there with the owners having the utilities all turned on in their names so if the kids can't get them turned on for some reason I'm not sure what will happen, and they have no signed lease. I know they are excited to have their own place and I'm glad to have my own place again too.
But I'm aware I could soon receive a phone call that things aren't working out like they hoped and that they need to come back. And whether y'all agree with me or not, I'd welcome them both back in my home in a heartbeat if they find themselves in a bad situation.
And that was my crazy weekend.
I also talked with Laurie on Sunday and she said she would love to come back to Atlanta for another Atlanta Pie Party this fall. We kind of decided on sometime in October and I'm happy to host it at my house again if y'all want to get together. Can y'all throw out some dates in October that would work? I don't have anything planned that far in advance so I'm totally open at this point. Laurie and I said we should try to convince June to come down as well. I have two bedrooms and beds available for them to stay with me now.....
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
A response to a comment left on this blog
I do plan to write a "real" post soon - hopefully in the next day or two.
However, a couple of hours ago, someone anonymously left a comment on my last post. In case that person doesn't go back and read when I reply in the comments section, I decided to make this a post of its own. Plus it's a little lengthy to be a comment.
So this is in response to Anonymous:
I appreciate your concern, but my eyes ARE wide open and my boyfriend is not a con artist. I was previously married to an alcoholic with Tourette Syndrome, he was bi-polar, he developed some drug issues and tried to get me to do drugs, he routinely told me how I needed to eat a salad but he was going to have a McDonald's burger and a milkshake because I have a weight problem but he didn't, and he was secretly offering marital funds to his mom behind my back. So I've been in a horrid 10 year relationship which had me crying more than I was laughing, and I didn't enter this one with my eyes closed or being accepting of someone who I didn't feel was treating me right.
One of the problems with having a blog is that you can't tell everything sometimes and people make assumptions when they only know part of the story. It's understandable. I don't really owe anyone an explanation, but here's as much of one as I feel like I want to offer on here:
My boyfriend isn't UNABLE to find time to visit me or his kids - he can't get here because of visa issues. And he's having the issues in the first place because he was completely honest with our government about some stuff and because he's NOT a liar or a con artist. They kind of gave him a way to lie his way back here (and they knew he'd be telling a lie) but his work down there is fighting corruption and he felt like he wouldn't be much better than the corrupt people if he lied.
We get cut off because the internet SUCKS in the middle of the Amazon jungle. I've been there to visit him so I saw it first hand. We were staying in the nicest hotel in the city and I had to reconnect over and over and over again just to get a one paragraph email to my mom telling her I had arrived safely. It took me about 4 hours to get one paragraph sent to her. I went with him to an internet cafe while I was there and he could not stay connected to do what he needed to do. We visited several offices (banks, government offices, etc.) while I was there. Guess what? They had problems too. The internet sucks there. I didn't understand it when he told me just how bad it was until I saw it for myself, so I don't expect you to understand it either. Also, when you write a blog you sometimes focus on those crazy moments when the internet cuts off right at an important moment in a conversation and you don't write about all of the times you finish a conversation because those times aren't as interesting to read about.
When he was here in the U.S., he regularly drove 6 hours round trip from other cities he was working in just so he could take me out to dinner and see me on a Saturday night. He invited me to drive to the cities he was working in if I wanted to (and I did a couple of times) because he had nothing to hide. He would come to my house if I was out of town to take care of my cat (he doesn't really even like cats - he's a dog person) and he would go to the store and cook me a week's worth of meals so I would have something healthy and good to eat when I got back. He would arrive at my apartment, see something needed fixed and just fix it without me asking. He paid for some healthcare I needed when I couldn't afford it (it was over $1,300). He gets angry with me when he hears me putting myself down for my weight, not feeling like I was good at something, etc. He left me about 10 times as much money as he needed to when he left for Brazil to handle something for him. His goal in life is to open a children's hospital or a place to teach children life skills so they can better themselves. Does that sound like a con artist? He prays with me. He sings in his horrible singing voice just to make me laugh. He goes to the store and loads up on vitamins and natural remedies and makes me organic healing "teas" when I'm sick. He pretty much forbid me from doing some things when I was in the Amazon with him that I thought sounded super interesting because he knew they could put me in harm's way. He cried when I went there because he said he realized no one else there spoke English and I was putting my life in his hands because I would not have known how to even get out of the airport in a taxi without him there and he realized how much faith and trust I have in him. These are just a very few ways he shows me how much he cares. He has never asked me for anything in return in the 7 years we've been in a relationship. He has repeatedly checked in with me to make sure I'm okay with our relationship and the fact that he isn't around.
What you don't know about me is that I don't want a guy who is sitting across the table from me 3 meals per day, calling me 10 times while I'm at work to check in with me, sitting with me on the sofa every evening, and in bed with me each night. I have never been in a relationship like that and it would make me completely insane if I was. Just because most women want a lot of together time doesn't mean there aren't some of us who don't.
You also may not know that my ex-husband and I were in a long distance (international) relationship for quite some time. And back then the internet wasn't common (I didn't even have a home computer and mobile phones were something only rich people had installed in their cars) and we had to write letters to each other which sometimes took 2 months to be delivered because neither of us could even begin to afford international phone calls. I was also in a long distance relationship with a guy here in the U.S. (me in Atlanta, him in D.C.). This is not my first time around this block.
He did not "leave" his kids with me. They are legal adults and moved here against his wishes. He checked with me about 10 times to make sure I was okay with them staying with me before they came. He begged me to be honest with him about whether I was okay with it. He fought with them a lot about it because he wanted them to wait until he can get back here (he's told me this and so have the kids) but they would not wait. He wants them to move back home but they want to live here. Again, they are legal adults so he can't force them. He has apologized to me profusely that they have been in my house for so long and has been in tears telling me he knows how it has disrupted my life and how awful he feels about all of it.
He is a real man. And our relationship probably wouldn't work for 90% of people, but it works for us and that's all I need to worry about. It seems it probably would not work for you and that's okay because you're not in the relationship. You don't know me and you certainly don't know every detail of my life and our relationship.
I'm not an idiot whether you'd like to believe that or not. But again, thanks for your concern.
However, a couple of hours ago, someone anonymously left a comment on my last post. In case that person doesn't go back and read when I reply in the comments section, I decided to make this a post of its own. Plus it's a little lengthy to be a comment.
So this is in response to Anonymous:
I appreciate your concern, but my eyes ARE wide open and my boyfriend is not a con artist. I was previously married to an alcoholic with Tourette Syndrome, he was bi-polar, he developed some drug issues and tried to get me to do drugs, he routinely told me how I needed to eat a salad but he was going to have a McDonald's burger and a milkshake because I have a weight problem but he didn't, and he was secretly offering marital funds to his mom behind my back. So I've been in a horrid 10 year relationship which had me crying more than I was laughing, and I didn't enter this one with my eyes closed or being accepting of someone who I didn't feel was treating me right.
One of the problems with having a blog is that you can't tell everything sometimes and people make assumptions when they only know part of the story. It's understandable. I don't really owe anyone an explanation, but here's as much of one as I feel like I want to offer on here:
My boyfriend isn't UNABLE to find time to visit me or his kids - he can't get here because of visa issues. And he's having the issues in the first place because he was completely honest with our government about some stuff and because he's NOT a liar or a con artist. They kind of gave him a way to lie his way back here (and they knew he'd be telling a lie) but his work down there is fighting corruption and he felt like he wouldn't be much better than the corrupt people if he lied.
We get cut off because the internet SUCKS in the middle of the Amazon jungle. I've been there to visit him so I saw it first hand. We were staying in the nicest hotel in the city and I had to reconnect over and over and over again just to get a one paragraph email to my mom telling her I had arrived safely. It took me about 4 hours to get one paragraph sent to her. I went with him to an internet cafe while I was there and he could not stay connected to do what he needed to do. We visited several offices (banks, government offices, etc.) while I was there. Guess what? They had problems too. The internet sucks there. I didn't understand it when he told me just how bad it was until I saw it for myself, so I don't expect you to understand it either. Also, when you write a blog you sometimes focus on those crazy moments when the internet cuts off right at an important moment in a conversation and you don't write about all of the times you finish a conversation because those times aren't as interesting to read about.
When he was here in the U.S., he regularly drove 6 hours round trip from other cities he was working in just so he could take me out to dinner and see me on a Saturday night. He invited me to drive to the cities he was working in if I wanted to (and I did a couple of times) because he had nothing to hide. He would come to my house if I was out of town to take care of my cat (he doesn't really even like cats - he's a dog person) and he would go to the store and cook me a week's worth of meals so I would have something healthy and good to eat when I got back. He would arrive at my apartment, see something needed fixed and just fix it without me asking. He paid for some healthcare I needed when I couldn't afford it (it was over $1,300). He gets angry with me when he hears me putting myself down for my weight, not feeling like I was good at something, etc. He left me about 10 times as much money as he needed to when he left for Brazil to handle something for him. His goal in life is to open a children's hospital or a place to teach children life skills so they can better themselves. Does that sound like a con artist? He prays with me. He sings in his horrible singing voice just to make me laugh. He goes to the store and loads up on vitamins and natural remedies and makes me organic healing "teas" when I'm sick. He pretty much forbid me from doing some things when I was in the Amazon with him that I thought sounded super interesting because he knew they could put me in harm's way. He cried when I went there because he said he realized no one else there spoke English and I was putting my life in his hands because I would not have known how to even get out of the airport in a taxi without him there and he realized how much faith and trust I have in him. These are just a very few ways he shows me how much he cares. He has never asked me for anything in return in the 7 years we've been in a relationship. He has repeatedly checked in with me to make sure I'm okay with our relationship and the fact that he isn't around.
What you don't know about me is that I don't want a guy who is sitting across the table from me 3 meals per day, calling me 10 times while I'm at work to check in with me, sitting with me on the sofa every evening, and in bed with me each night. I have never been in a relationship like that and it would make me completely insane if I was. Just because most women want a lot of together time doesn't mean there aren't some of us who don't.
You also may not know that my ex-husband and I were in a long distance (international) relationship for quite some time. And back then the internet wasn't common (I didn't even have a home computer and mobile phones were something only rich people had installed in their cars) and we had to write letters to each other which sometimes took 2 months to be delivered because neither of us could even begin to afford international phone calls. I was also in a long distance relationship with a guy here in the U.S. (me in Atlanta, him in D.C.). This is not my first time around this block.
He did not "leave" his kids with me. They are legal adults and moved here against his wishes. He checked with me about 10 times to make sure I was okay with them staying with me before they came. He begged me to be honest with him about whether I was okay with it. He fought with them a lot about it because he wanted them to wait until he can get back here (he's told me this and so have the kids) but they would not wait. He wants them to move back home but they want to live here. Again, they are legal adults so he can't force them. He has apologized to me profusely that they have been in my house for so long and has been in tears telling me he knows how it has disrupted my life and how awful he feels about all of it.
He is a real man. And our relationship probably wouldn't work for 90% of people, but it works for us and that's all I need to worry about. It seems it probably would not work for you and that's okay because you're not in the relationship. You don't know me and you certainly don't know every detail of my life and our relationship.
I'm not an idiot whether you'd like to believe that or not. But again, thanks for your concern.
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