Posting three days in a row? What what?

Before I forget this, we were talking about having a Pie gathering at my house in October and I suppose we should narrow down the date so people can make plans, right?  Would Saturday the 12th or Saturday the 26th work better for those of you who are coming?  I've already got at least one person from out-of-town staying at my house and if my fake kids are still living with me then I can give up my bed, I'll sleep on the sofa or in my reading nook chair (assuming my ceiling isn't leaking water right above the chair come October) and then I could squeeze in one more but that's about it.  Unless you want to sleep on an air mattress.  So if you want to sleep on an air mattress and another person wants to fight with me over who gets the sofa and who gets the chair I can fit 2 more of you.  But I'm too fat to sleep on the air mattress - I can't get back up off the floor.  I'm starting to think this is not making any sense, so y'all just leave a comment letting me know which weekend sounds best, and if you are coming from out of town tell us if you need a free place to stay and I'm sure if I can't fit you in my house someone else around Atlanta might be able and willing to.

Speaking of people traveling to Atlanta, I always look forward to getting the heck out of here.  I just made my last car payment two weeks ago (WOOT!) so as of next month I will have an extra $400 per month.  Thank you, Lord.  The responsible thing to do would be to put that in savings to use for my next stupid house repair, but do you know what I really need?  A vacation.

So I went online recently and started looking for somewhere I could stay for a couple of days up in the mountains.  I'm much more a mountain girl than a beach girl.  I really like Blue Ridge, Ga. because it's only a couple of hours from Atlanta and it's a super cute little town with some great shopping and restaurants.  I've only been there once but I kind of fell in love with it. 

But the weekend there didn't start off so great.

My mom got married two years ago and was quitting her job (basically retiring), selling her house, getting married, and moving to Texas with her new husband all in the span of two months.  So she was a bit stressed to say the least.  I picked up the phone and said, "Mom, I want to take you somewhere for a last girls' weekend before you get married and move half-way across the country from me.  Let's go to the mountains for a long weekend."  This sounded like a great plan.

My aunt and a cousin were going to join us for one night, but Mom and I were going for 3 nights.

The first night we kind of thought we might die and no one would ever find us again.

The cabin rental place was running a special so if you rented for 2 nights you got the 3rd night free.  We decided to head up after work on Thursday so that we would have all day Friday and Saturday and we would come back home on Sunday.  Neither of us had ever been to Blue Ridge. 

I found a cabin online that looked wonderful, I sent the link to my Mom and she agreed so I rented it for us.  The listing emphasized MANY times that it was right in the middle of everything.  Right in the middle of Blue Ridge.  That many cabins claimed to be right in Blue Ridge but they were not, but that this cabin truthfully was right in the middle of town.  So we daydreamed for the few weeks until we went about how awesome our relaxing weekend in the cabin was going to be and how we would walk from our cabin to the town for coffee and breakfast each morning, shop for a while, and walk back.

Our weekend away came up and I got off work that Thursday, drove to my Mom's house north of Atlanta to pick her up, and off to Blue Ridge we went.  We had directions to the cabin rental office where we were to pick up the keys and a map to the cabin.  By the time we got to Blue Ridge, it was after 8:00 p.m.  We decided we would go to the cabin and drop off our stuff and then we would run back out to the grocery store and pick up coffee (my Mom cannot survive without it waiting for her when she wakes up) and a few snacks or something light for dinner, then we would go back to the cabin, put on our pajamas, maybe take a whirlpool bath, play games and snack.  We thought this because we thought our cabin was right in the middle of the town of Blue Ridge since that's what the online info told us. 

I was driving so my Mom was in possession of the map to the cabin and acted as the navigator.  We had no clue where downtown Blue Ridge was since we had never been there, and we certainly didn't know where it was in relation to the cabin rental office.  But we followed their directions.  And part of those directions said:  "Turn right on Aska Road and go until it ends.  Then turn right and look for County Road No. _____ on the left.  Sometimes the county road sign falls down so look for two blue reflectors on a tree."  And that's when I knew, we were going to have problems.

We made our way to Aska Road just fine and dandy and turned right. 

We drove.

And we drove.

And we drove.

And we drove.

And we drove.

And then we drove.

And then we drove some more.

And it was getting mighty dark by this point.

And then we drove and drove and drove some more.

This was a curvy, hilly, mountain road and we would pass a cabin every now and then.

We finally passed a restaurant.

And we drove and drove.

And we kept saying, "this can't be right.  Should we turn around?  We're following the directions.  But shouldn't the directions say this road is really, really, really long instead of just saying turn right and go to the end like it's only going to be a few blocks?"

Then my Mom yelled for me to pull off.  We sat on the side of the road debating whether or not we should go back and find a hotel somewhere.  I finally said, "Mom, we are following the directions.  Let's just keep going a little bit further and see what happens."  She wasn't happy about it but said okay.

A couple of miles further we finally reached the end.  I would say that angels sang, but they didn't.  Because it was about to get even worse.

By now it was flat out dark.  It was almost 9:00 and we were on a mountain so there were trees everywhere and no street lights.

We turned right and looked for the county road and it was just a couple of hundred feet up on the left.  I turned on it and pretty much immediately we were on a dirt/gravel one lane path going into the woods.  The directions said to go until the road forked, take the left fork where the sign said, "Entering National Forest." 

Y'all, they were not kidding.  We were in the forest alright.

Then we got good and scared out of our minds.  My Mom started saying over and over and over, "Please turn around.  Let's get out of here."  And I kept responding over and over and over, "Mom, we can't turn around.  There's a really high bank on the left side and a cliff on the right side of the car and I can't possibly turn around." 

I could not drive more than 10 mph because it was dark, scary, bumpy, and dirt/gravel.

We finally came upon two cabins - one on the left and one on the right side of the path. 

"Hooray!" we both exclaimed.  "We've finally found our cabin!" 

Wrong.  Neither one was our cabin.

We kept driving.

Then we came to a dead end y'all.  There was a huge tree in the middle of a circular area and as we drove around the tree there was a gate with a No Trespassing sign.

"OH JUST GREAT!" my mom yelled.  "All of this for nothing?  What are we going to do?"

I replied, "Apparently we're going to turn around and go all the way back and try to find a hotel."

As I turned around, my headlights shined on an opening in the trees off to the left and I decided to go for it.

And then the angels didn't exactly sing, but they made a bit of a whimper for us.  Because our adventurous night was still not quite over.

Our cabin was in a clearing once we drove through the opening.

I'm not going to lie.....we were both terrified to get out of the car.  It was pitch black and we were two women with no flashlights and no weapons in the middle of a forest.

I shined my headlights on the front door and ran as fast as my fat self could and got the door unlocked, turned on the front porch lights, and we grabbed our bags out of the car, ran inside and locked the door.

The cabin was super nice.  The master bedroom was upstairs and there were two more bedrooms downstairs.  We went downstairs to check everything out and that's when we discovered the door leading outside in the downstairs had not been locked before our arrival.  So we held hands and walked through the entire house checking to make sure no one was in there and I'm not sure either one of us breathed the entire time.

Mom said, "we are not sleeping on separate floors no matter what you say."  So we decided to share the master bedroom.

Then we came to the realization that it was 9:15 and we were starving since we had not stopped for dinner.  I found the number of the restaurant we had passed and called them.

"We closed at 9:00," they told me.  I asked if there were any other restaurants nearby and they told me there were not.

Luckily my Mom had thrown some microwave popcorn and a bottle of red wine in her bag and that became our very gourmet dinner.

The next morning around 7:00 a.m. my Mom starts whispering, "are you awake?"

I grumbled and she said, "get up, put on your clothes, do not take a shower, I'll give you enough time to brush your teeth, but I NEED COFFEE.  NOW."

We decided to clock the miles as we found downtown Blue Ridge.  Y'all.

Our cabin was FOUR MILES into the depth of the forest on that one lane gravel/dirt path.

Then we drove FIFTEEN MILES down curvy, hilly, mountainous Aska Road. 

Our cabin was 45 minutes from downtown Blue Ridge.  And yet online they said many times they were right in the middle of everything.  Liars!

Here is a photo of the county road going into the forest where our cabin was and this is pretty close to the main road and not way deep in the woods.  Does this look like it's right in the middle of everything to y'all?  And imagine not knowing where in Sam Hill you are going and driving through this when it's pitch black at night.  I was waiting for Jason from Friday the 13th to jump out from behind every single one of those trees.

On Friday afternoon my aunt and cousin drove up from Atlanta to join us.  We warned them what the deal was.  And we drove them to the cabin while it was still daylight.  And they kept asking, "Are y'all sure you're going to the right way?  There can't possibly be rental cabins back in here, can there?"

Did I mention yet that there was absolutely no water pressure in the cabin and none of us could take a bath or shower all weekend?  I know.  Gross.  My cousin wanted to take a bubble bath in the whirlpool tub and we said, "okay.  Good luck with that."  She ran the water as full blast as it would go for over 30 minutes and there was maybe an inch of water in the tub and the tip of her toes could have taken a bubble bath.  Disappointed is what she was.

I emailed Mom earlier today and told her the next time she comes to Atlanta we need to take a couple of days and go to the mountains.  But I've found a place that I know is not in Friday the 13th territory.

THE END.

Look at me posting two days in a row. The earth must be coming to an end.

Okay, I'm caving to the Pie on the Face pressure and posting again.  Two days in a row.  Are y'all happy?

This is going to be mostly pictures because I am busy, busy, busy here at work.  And someone just emailed me and asked me which IT class I signed up for tomorrow and I wrote her back and asked what in the heck she's talking about because I have no idea what in the heck she's talking about.  So tomorrow probably just got a little crazier than I was expecting too.  Perhaps I should be paying closer attention to my email.  I bet it came in the day I was home with holes cut out all over my house last week.

Which leads to this plethora of pictures.  And if you're friends with me on Facebook you've seen some of these before so you will need to get over it and pretend this is all new, okay?

I want y'all to see what stresses me out before I ever get to my house which breaks every other day:

Dear Atlanta traffic:  YOU SUCK!
 

And after I sit in that crappy stuff twice a day, this is the kind of stuff that keeps happening to my house over and over for 19 months I've lived in it.

I present to you my ceiling in my reading nook.  By the way, do you know how many times in 19 months I've relaxed in my reading nook with a good book?  Zero.  The only time I've sat in the nice, comfy overstuffed chair and ottoman in my reading nook since I moved in my house was when I was in a giant cast and body brace from tripping on my flip flop and breaking my humerus in 4 places when I had to sleep in my reading nook chair for 3 months since I could not lay [lie? I always get those wrong] down.  This giant ceiling hole is repaired now, but this is what it looked like for a good part of the past 2 weeks with a bucket under it and water dripping out of it and my cat constantly drinking gross dripped water out of the bucket:

And here is the reason the ceiling downstairs in my reading nook was all molded and then cut out and gross water was dripping in a bucket so my cat could drink gross dripped water out of a bucket.  This is what the bathroom that my fake daughter and I share upstairs looked like for a bit last week:

I liked that tile a lot.

But because they had to cut out the tile and the tile couldn't be re-used and my house was a foreclosure and I had no clue where the tile had come from originally, I had to have the entire bathtub re-tiled.  I haven't take a photo of it after the grout was added, but here's the work in progress.  And the lady who owned my house previously must have gotten the best deal in the history of the universe on bead board because it is everywhere in my house.  9 closets, 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms (including the walls AND ceiling of the one below), the kitchen and the walls and ceiling of my garage are all lined in it.  It's a good thing I like bead board, huh?

Below is what the bedroom on the back side of the downstairs shower which was ALSO broken looked like for a bit last week.  It was the shower which had a two inch crack in the pipe and guess what?  I had the stems replaced TWICE in that shower already which was about $350 worth of unnecessary work since that wasn't going to fix a giant pipe crack and prevent water from gushing into my crawl space and under the tile in the bedroom below.  And when I posted this picture on Facebook, one of my friends asked if the contractors had painted a wiener on my wall.  No, it's not a wiener painting.  It squiggled the rest of the way up the wall under the bead board and stuff that they had to remove to cut into the wall.  My walls are wiener free.

After my cat was all disappointed that her gross dripped water bucket had been taken away (seriously, she was so sad and walked around the area meowing like her entire world had been torn apart) she decided to drink out of my toilet.  Why are animals so gross?  Two nights I have gotten up in the middle of the night and I had to physically pick her up and put her on the floor so I could use the toilet because she would not move out of the way she loves that water so much.

Maybe this is why that cat has such tummy troubles.  Because instead of drinking her nice clean water out of her water bowl, she's on a quest for the grossest water she can possibly find in my house.  Actually, her stomach problems have gotten a little bit better the past few weeks because I medicated the crap out of her with some stuff the vet prescribed for her.  But she would not eat it if I tried hiding it in cheese, chicken, etc. so I had to buy a pill shooter.  And here is a photo of fake son holding her for me while I shot meds down her throat.  You can see how thrilled she is and her love for both of us was great for about a week and a half of this.  Yes, fake son is really good looking.  Stop drooling, okay?  He's only 18 so get your mind out of the gutter.  And yes, I have stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops which June hates.  You're supposed to be paying attention to the evil slit eye my cat is giving me rather than boys and kitchen appliances.

And if sick cats, bad traffic, and holes being cut into stuff all over my house didn't stress me out enough, this happened a couple of weeks ago:

HOW THE HELL DOES A LIZARD GET INSIDE YOUR HOUSE???

I was sitting on the sofa talking to my mom on the phone and she was really upset about some stuff she's dealing with which is also adding to my stress because I love the heck out of my mom when I suddenly had to interrupt her and scream, "OMG!  Mom I need to call you back because there is a lizard in my living room!"  I'm pretty sure she wasn't expecting that.  Neither was I.  I chased this thing all over my living room with a solo cup so I could take it back outside.  Did you know these things can hop?  Did you know I can scream loud enough to wake the dead?  I finally caught it and got it outside and I hope I never see it's little green self again.

And here I am as a cartoon when I'm about to explode from the stress.

I'll do my best to post again tomorrow with something new.

 THE END.

News flash: I have craziness going on in my life

So our wonderful June is going to take a break.  I don't blame her.  But it has inspired me to really, really, really try to post more regularly.  I'm certainly not saying I'll post every single day like she does, but I am going to try to do better than once a month.  I normally have plenty of blog material, I am just limited because I am hesitant to blog at my house with the two fake kids there since I don't want them to know about this blog.  And sometimes at work I'm simply too busy.  But I promise to try even if no one is here to read my rambling. I've honestly had this post partially written and saved in my draft folder for several weeks and never had a chance to finish it.  Sad is what I am.

Well, I know y'all will be surprised, but since I last wrote more crap has happened in my life.  Seriously, will I ever have a calm week?

Here's a secret:  all of this crap that keeps happening kind of stresses me out.  Like, a lot.  Which is why I'm eating one of the world's largest chocolate and sea salt candy bars right now.  Stress and PMS.  I know you can't wait to keep reading now.

The stress made me get really cranky a few weekends ago and I said something to my fake kids in a text message on that Saturday night that was completely inappropriate and then I felt so rotten to my very core about it that I didn't sleep for three days.  Plus Aunt Flo was visiting and that just doesn't help anything.  Without going into the details, it was about an issue that I have had to talk to them about over and over and over again  that bugs the ever loving crap out of me that they have been doing and I've told them over and over and over again why it bugs me and what would happen if they kept doing it and guess what?  That thing happened on that particular Saturday night.  They were at a nightclub with some friends of theirs when I discovered what had happened to my house because of this thing they keep doing and I texted them and told them I was so angry that they should not come home.  So they didn't come home.  For two days.  I win the fake parenting award of the year for that right there.  Y'all I still feel absolutely horrid about it.  I've apologized profusely to them, I've confessed what I did to Hot Brazilian when I talked to him a couple of days later (he wasn't mad at me at all (he is mad at his kids because of what they did) but it's okay because I'm mad enough at myself for 85 people), and the kids seem okay now that we talked it all out, but I still feel just awful that I said that to them.  I've talked about it with my mom and a dear friend of mine and they said I shouldn't feel as bad as I do because of a bunch of reasons, but I still do.  I feel rotten and awful and no-good and horrible and like a giant turd in a pair of giant stinky pants.

As soon as I sent the text I regretted it and I KNOW BETTER than to react to someone out of anger like I was feeling at that moment.  I knew I should have waited until I had calmed down some.  But I didn't.  And I couldn't un-send the text.  And then my fake daughter responded about 30 minutes later and told me how sorry they were for what had happened and what they had done and then she said that she regretted ever moving to the U.S. and how awful she feels that they are still having to live in my house and she thought everything would be much easier here in America.  So that made me feel even worse.  I hate, hate, hate being as stressed as I have been lately.

I sat fake daughter down later and I told her that it is not the U.S. that is difficult.  I explained to her that being an adult is what is difficult and that being an adult kind of sucks about 75% of the time.  I tried to make her see that this is all hard because she's never done it before.  She's never lived away from home.  She's never had to try and rent an apartment.  Or register her own car.  Or get her own car insurance.  Her own cell phone.  Her own utilities.  Pay for her own food, etc.  I told her she'd be learning all of this stuff and having to do all of this stuff whether she lives here, whether she had stayed in Brazil and moved into her own place, or whether she had moved to China.  I told her when I moved from my apartment to my house I had to do every single thing she's having to do, whether it was establishing new services or moving existing ones and changing addresses with companies.  Yes it sucks giant sweaty donkey balls, I told her.  And she finally said she got it.

One week later, my fake son told me he's planning to move to a country in Europe which I'm not going to disclose right now so that he can play semi-pro soccer.  Which means he won't finish high school.  I got all over him in the nicest way possible and told him as nicely as I could that he's making a huge mistake that he will regret a lot when he gets older.  And he told me in the nicest way possible that he doesn't want to discuss it with me.  Have I told you the situation with him?  He went to another European country last year (taking a year off school and let me tell you his father was completely against it and it was a horrible situation) and played semi-pro soccer and then he planned to come here with his sister and finish school this year.  Only a couple of weeks ago he said that is now not his plan.

Then last week his sister took him to see yet another high school here and he liked it and started saying he wouldn't mind going there if they could find an affordable apartment in that school district. My guess is that his dad has possibly had something to do with him reconsidering. And for the past few days he hasn't wanted to talk about what he's doing so I'm completely in the dark but I honestly think he's kind of in the dark and undecided too.


And why not throw some more MAJOR house repairs into the middle of things.  My contractor gave me an estimate a few weeks ago of almost $4,000 and at the time I had $9 in my checking account.  I cried when we hung up.  I honestly just felt like I was completely defeated by everything going on in my life.  But then he called me again and told me my homeowners insurance would probably cover it and he would fix a couple of other things he knew were messed up in my house that I needed to have done but could not afford for whatever the insurance company would give me.  Yes, I have a super awesome contractor. 

An insurance adjuster came out to my house a couple of weeks ago and he took pictures and he measured rooms and measured showers and measured the exterior of my entire house and he climbed around in the attic and he oohed and aahed over all of the wonderful character my almost-100-year-old house has and I told him he should buy it from me because maybe he could afford to fix all of the crap that keeps breaking in it better than I can.

That is how it came to be that last week I had 4 guys in my house for 3 full days (I told you it was major) working non-stop.  They had to cut a huge hole in my dining room ceiling because of mold, repair the hole, completely re-tile an upstairs shower after they cut into the wall and repaired a leak, he repainted that bathroom, he had to remove bead board and cut a hole in another wall to fix a downstairs bathroom that was gushing water into my crawl space and up under the tile in the room next door (because it turns out there was an approximate 2 inch long crack in the pipe), get rid of all of the mold in that wall, he replaced all of the plumbing fixtures in the downstairs shower, he repaired my kitchen faucet, put some bolts in my stair railing that was becoming very loose and wobbly (the stairs I've fallen down twice and broken my arm on), and he repainted another small bathroom downstairs at no charge.

Poor Hot Brazilian.  When I told him I was dealing with two really bad shower leaks his immediate reaction was to ask, "darling, did my kids do this?  Because if they did......"  I assured him it has a lot more to do with my house being almost 100 years old than his kids doing anything.

But y'all, if one more major thing breaks in my house I honestly don't know what I'm going to do.  I'm already giving some consideration to selling because I cannot deal with this.  And if I do I'm going to buy the tiniest house I can find so no one will want to live with me ever again.  Except for Hot Brazilian when he gets back here of course.  If I could figure out a way to make a living, I'd move my ass right up to the North Georgia mountains and live in a cabin in the woods far away from civilization.  

I hope my next post is full of funny and happiness. 

Oh, I did see a girl's bare ass on Saturday walking down the sidewalk.   Super short skirts, going commando, and a nice breezy morning are not the three best things to combine.

I really don't think KFC is worth all of this.

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?

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........

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.....

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.