Archive for June, 2010

So my date went well!

At first it didn’t look as if it would happen – he had car problems on the way home from work and wasn’t sure whether he’d make it, but he called a friend of his who worked on cars who was able to get it running safely so that he could come and pick me up. He then had this friend wait at his house while we were on our date so that he could fix the car when we got back.

I thought that this was a pretty valiant effort, when he could have just canceled. I was impressed that he went through all that rather than just rescheduling.

Also, what a good friend!

We wound up going to have drinks at a local bar very close to my house because he didn’t want to stray too far due to the fragility of his starter at that moment. It was sort of divey, but I was down.

It should be noted that he opened the car door for me every time, which was awesome. I find that men very rarely do this, and it pretty much melts my knees.

He seemed sort of shy and nervous, but he opened up after half a screwdriver or so and started to talk more, and we shot the shit for a while. He has a somewhat wicked sense of humor, which I love, and he’s very into music, a lot of it very obscure stuff I’m not familiar with, but some of it punk rock and other stuff I really like.

I was very good – I only had two beers. Plus, we didn’t stay out very long due to the friend waiting to fix the starter.

All in all, he was courteous and funny and really nice, and I will definitely see him again. We made plans to have dinner very soon.

He kissed me at the end of the date, and it was good. Very good.

So, we shall see.

I’m all about stretching this process out and not jumping headfirst into a relationship. I think that’s a major mistake I made with Norton. Everything happened so fast and I got caught up without really knowing enough about his personality and principles, and well, it crashed and burned.

I’m taking this one slow.

In other news, I posted some furniture on Craigslist today and Jesus, I am getting about four thousand e-mails. This is certainly going much better than when I posted the sporting goods. I have a woman coming tonight to look at the J-Man’s loft bed, and hopefully my mom’s dresser is going to sell soon, too.

Happy Wednesday.

So, I have a date tonight.

So soon?

Yes.

I thought about it, and I thought about it some more, and then I thought, why the hell not, and then yesterday I went back upon the dating website and perused around a little bit. I got a few messages from a few different people, and one of those messages happened to be from someone who lives in the town I am moving to.

The guy seemed relatively normal and nice, so we messaged back and forth for a while, and we wound up talking for most of the afternoon.

We made a date for tonight, and then he called me last night to talk for a while, and he asked me whether he could come over and smoke a cigarette on the porch with me.

Now mind you, I was already in my sweats with my face washed and my hair disheveled. I looked like absolute crap, so I said no. He asked me why not.

I thought about it for a minute, and then I thought, “Why the fuck not?”

Twenty minutes later, we were smoking on the porch.

I sat out there with him for about an hour or so, smoking and talking, and he seemed like a really nice guy. He works full-time and goes to school full-time for computer information systems, and he currently lives at home to help support his parents.

He’s six years younger than me, has never been married, and has no kids.

He deejays part-time, too, at a local club.

I don’t know whether this will go anywhere, but for right now, the guy seems fun and personable and outgoing and nice, and I think it’s a good idea for me to get back out there rather than stay in and mope.

So tonight we’re going out for drinks.

I’m really not too nervous, since the guy has seen me in my ratty sweats with no makeup, for Christ’s sake; so I can really go nowhere but up at this point, and also because he just really didn’t have that effect on me.

So, there you have it. A promising first date. Something fun and light.

It should be noted that Skittles howled loudly the whole time I was outside on the porch because her Mama was not In, so much so that my mother had to get out of bed and spray her with water.

Heh.

In other news, The J-Man is still sleeping. Given the fact that the J-Man NEVER sleeps past seven-thirty, I should probably go make sure that he is still breathing.

Over and out.

Happy Tuesday.

Well, the weekend.

I did break up with Norton once and for all, since there was apparently some ambiguity there.

He called me last week and told me in no uncertain terms that he was totally uncomfortable in my home (if you have ever been to my home, you know that we are a welcoming sort, and rarely is anyone uncomfortable), uncomfortable around my child, and maybe uncomfortable in his shorts, who fucking knows, just plain uncomfortable and unhappy.

He then proceeded to attack everything about my parenting style and my kid.

BUT he still loves me.

That’s a pretty big But. It’s even bigger than my butt.

I cut him loose, primarily because someone who has only been around my child say, FOUR TIMES really doesn’t have the right to cast aspersions on the way that I parent or the way that my child acts.

My child is not a monster. I may have to tell him to do something ninety-five times on occasion, but he is twelve. Those of you with twelve-year olds, past or present, will get my drift.

This was his Big Problem. That, and the fact that the J-Man occasionally spoke without being spoken to first, and things of that nature.

Apparently Norton is of the Old School, in which children are to be seen and not heard, and hellfire and brimstone is to be rained down should a parent have to say something more than once.

It just ain’t so in my house.

I get irritated with the J-Man, sure. I can even think back to the day in question and remember that he was particularly deaf to my lips that day and was not listening when I told him to move the XBox into the other room or whatever it was I was harping about. I can also remember I didn’t really scream at him due to the fact that Norton was there.

But fuck if I’m going to be judged by someone who A) only has custody of his own (much younger) kids a few days a month, B) has only seen me interacting with my kid on a scant few occasions, and C) has made virtually no effort to interact with said kid.

I’m pissed. PISSED about all this.

Therefore I just sent him an e-mail expressing my displeasure and basically said that I wanted my stuff, and he AGAIN sent me an e-mail railing on about the shortcomings of my parenting and my child and how I needed to take his advice as a superior parent.

Well excuse me, buddy, but you’ve only been a parent for four years. Get back to me when YOUR kid is twelve.

Yeah. I’m irritated. A little bemused as well, but mostly irritated.

So, there was that.

Then we had a realtor come by to look at the house and possibly sign papers to sell it.

It was a no-go. Apparently the market value of our home is approximately Jack Shit, going by the value of the homes in the surrounding area that are currently selling or have recently sold.

It wouldn’t be worth it for us to sell it right now, so we are going to rent it out.

This is going to be a serious pain in the ass, I can already smell it. Renting in the ‘hood is a dangerous game. No one has credit, everyone is suspect, and people don’t take care of shit that isn’t theirs. Hell, people don’t even take care of their OWN shit.

I am trepidatious.

Still, we are forging ahead with this move, and our tentative move date is three weeks from the weekend.

In still other news, my laptop tanked. It won’t even turn on. A Guy from Dell is coming this week, supposedly to replace the A/C adapter and the motherboard, but I have yet to receive a call to let me know when he is going to do so.

Stress? I has it.

Happy Monday.

I have to see the psychiatrist today.

Now I’ve been accused of not giving the shrink a fair shake, and really, I don’t think that’s an accurate assessment. You have to understand my symbiotic relationship with the man.

I see him once every two or three months, he prescribes drugs, and I take them. The appointment goes down like this:

He asks me a few questions. Am I still living with my mother? Yes. Eternally. Do I have a boyfriend? Not anymore, bitch. How is my son? Hormonal. How is my health? Craptastic. How is my mental health? I haven’t climbed up on any rooftops with any Uzis lately, so everyone should be pleased.

Then he assesses my makeup. This is very important. I have learned during the course of our six-year relationship that makeup really matters to my doctor. If I have no makeup on, he will try to increase my medication load, for no makeup means I am deep in the dark depths of dire depression. Conversely, if I have artfully applied makeup, he will try to take away my precious anti-depressants, because I must be feeling great in order to beautify myself in such a manner.

I have learned to walk a very, very fine line and simply apply a small amount of makeup, just enough to look moderately alive but not too done-up as to look pretty. Because, as all women know, Pretty Means Healthy!!

I find this whole thing both ridiculous and hilarious and wonder if he treats all his female patients this way. Maybe he was taught this in med school. Makeup for Mental Health!

Blush for Bipolar!
Eyeshadow for Anxiety!
Dermablend for Depression!

Maybe he’s not really a flaming idiot. Maybe it’s just something they teach shrinks these days.

Imagine if I actually fixed my hair. I’d be off the meds for sure.

What the doctor consistently fails to “get” is that when I’m feeling great, it’s usually because my meds are working, and to take me off of them would be sort of stupid. Yet that is usually exactly what he wants to do.

One day I’m going to walk in there in full makeup, a hot dress, heels, and done-up hair, and tell him I’m completely suicidal just to fuck with his head.

That’ll learn him.

Happy Thursday.

I guess everything balances out, because I do have more good news.

I saw my eye doctor yesterday, and had some testing done, with shitty results; which is not, of course, my good news. My visual fields were for crap, and my vision itself was horrible.

I should mention here that I did just recently learn that by pressing Control and + in Firefox I can increase my fonts to astronomically large sizes, which has pretty much changed my life. No more hunching over the screen and squinting like a crone! Yay!

Anyway, the eye doctor believes (and so do I) that the Lamictal I was previously on for seizures helped my eyesight a great deal, and going off of it really screwed up my world.

If you’ll remember back a bit, it even helped my bum right eye. Unfortunately, my insurance stopped paying for it, and I had to stop taking it.

The eye doctor said that he would call my neurologist and see whether the two of them working together could somehow get me back on the medication.

What I was wondering was whether I could take it concurrently with my Topamax and Neurontin, because really, the Lamictal didn’t do shit for my seizures.

Anyway, the doctors conferred, and one or both of them called my insurance company, and lo and behold, the insurance company agreed to pay for the generic version of the medication! What really stuns me is that miracle of miracles, this all happened in ONE DAY.

Therefore I am back on the Lamictal, in addition to my other seizure meds, so hopefully this will cause a positive change in my vision like it did before.

The eye doctor believes that the reason my vision is shit is due to a nerve inflammation behind my eyes, and that the Lamictal somehow has an effect on those nerves. He doesn’t quite know how or why, but he admits that the brain and the optic nerves are mysterious things that are often difficult to explain.

I’ll take that, I guess. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that this works.

I’m really hopeful.

In other news, it has been storming off and on lately, dramatic storming with loud, booming thunder, and both the J-Man and the cats have been beating a hasty retreat down into the basement as if their little asses were on fire.

The J-Man does this because he’s read too many WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY pamphlets at school. The cats simply go batshit crazy when loud noises occur.

The TranceCave has become a haven during these storms, and we all curl up on the bed and watch stupid cartoons (power permitting) until the thunder and lightning passes.

In other news, I am smoking. I know that I suck and I am stupid and I am going to hell and I will get emphysema and the baby Jesus doesn’t love me any more and I am polluting the air and I have stank breath and I am filthy and undesirable and horrible and dirty and smelly and black-lunged and stupid and vile and evil and all countless other rotten things, I KNOW THIS, but you know what? I am sick of apologizing. I’m stressed, I’m having five seizures a fucking day, and I just don’t care right now. I will quit before the move.

Sigh.

The truth is that I feel as guilty as shit about starting again, and I hate it.

I do have good news, though. I’m running on good news.

Happy Wednesday.

The J-Man does not have mono, or strep, or any of the other nasty and nefarious viruses he was tested for. He merely had some weird rogue virus that led to a yucky infected throat that for some reason was resistant to the first round of antibiotics.

This round of drugs seems to be working well, as his throat swelling has gone down quite a bit and his spirits have much improved.

So, there is that, and I am glad. To have been stuck with mono in the summertime would have seriously sucked.

In other news, I am pricing flights to Vegas, and they are sky-high. Over four hundred dollars, even on Southwest? Ri-damn-diculous.

I am waiting, and I am also contacting a family friend who is a travel agent for advice on how long to wait so that I don’t get screwed. Word has it that the oil spill has driven up flight prices, so I’m hoping that they will eventually fall, but the question remains whether they will fall before I go to Vegas or not.

I need this trip big-time. I need some time cavorting with my crazy internet friends more than I can say.

Also in the works is a family trip, and we haven’t quite figured out where we’d like to go yet. I’m thinking one of those indoor waterparks up near the Wisconsin border, but my mother hates to drive long distances, so she is thinking somewhere a little more local. We’ll have to hash it out.

Also, there is the move.

You may be wondering why I haven’t moved yet, given the fact that we have been moving for, oh, a fucking ETERNITY.

Yeah.

I’m pretty much packed. We’ve painted. We’ve cleaned. We’ve organized. The garage sale is a go next weekend.

The reason things have been moving so slowly, I believe, is my mother’s attachment to her house, which is her baby.

My mother loves this house.

I think she’s seriously reluctant to leave it, and I think she has some reservations about moving in with my stepdad, too.

Hell, I do, too, if I’m being honest. The man has OCD, and while we are clean, we are not THAT clean. It’s a little scary to think of bringing a twelve-year-old into a home in which a man organizes his salt shakers and vacuums on an hourly basis.

Still, I’m of the just-shit-or-get-off-the-pot school of thought. I think we ought to just DO it. I’m tired of all this hemming and hawing and would like to stop bringing over the odd box and bag, hire movers, and get it done.

You just try moving my mother, though. She is a ninety pound mountain.

I am being as patient as I can, and I am consoling myself that at least we have a date set for the garage sale, if not the move.

Sigh.

Eventually it will happen. It has to, or the J-Man will have to be homeschooled, and damned if I’m doing THAT.

Happy Monday.

…the J-Man is sick with some mysterious malady that seems to be lasting forever.

Before the SummerBash and before his birthday (the child is now twelve, and while I’m not going to go all Dooce and write an exhaustive letter regarding the fact that my preshus baybee has reached this milestone – LORD, can you believe it?? Twelve!) the doctor started him on antibiotics for an icky throat and a bad cough and he seemed to rally a bit.

Then later this week, the throat seemed to become even ickier and the cough returned, so back to the doctor we went. He ordered a stronger course of antibiotics, a chest X-ray, and some blood tests, apparently fearing something vile. He mentioned mono and walking pneumonia, but he also did a throat culture for strep, and that’s what I’m leaning towards since his throat is all bumpy and full of pus (TMI – beautiful imagery!).

So far the chest X-ray came up clear, but I haven’t received word on the blood tests, so we’re waiting. The poor kid is crabby due to being kept in the house, but I really don’t want to have him outside getting overheated and more sick. It’s bad enough he got sicker after the first round of antibiotics, probably largely from sitting outside in the rain at that damned concert.

All of this sucks because we’ve been invited to a rather stellar outdoor birthday party tomorrow, but rain is expected and I just don’t want to risk either the kid getting sicker or infecting other kids.

For Father’s Day I baked my stepdad approximately two hundred (and I’m really not exaggerating) burned peanut butter cookies. He likes them brown and crispy, to the point in which they are almost inedible, so I spent the morning burning cookies. What a waste.

My father wants “hip, fitted shirts” to wear out dancing, so I am going shopping later today for him. Basically anything a man half his age would like, he’d like, so he’s easy to shop for.

And regarding the previous entry, thanks for your comments; and no, I am certainly not calling Norton, because I do agree with all of you that I’ve been unceremoniously dumped, and I have way too much pride to ever cross that line.

If he did love me, it obviously wasn’t very much, or he would have at least had the courtesy to call me and tell me what was going on, or tell me he no longer wanted to be with me.

I have to just let it go.

To all you dads out there who are there for your children and make the time to be both present and active in your kids’ lives, have a wonderful Father’s Day.

Happy Saturday.

So. Apparently I’m single again.

I really don’t know, because I haven’t heard from Norton all week, but my mother tells me I’ve been dumped, and the general consensus is that yeah, I’ve been dumped.

I sort of have to agree.

This is what went down, and maybe you can tell me what you think.

So last Friday night, before the SummerBash, Norton spent the night. What I didn’t say in my SummerBash post was that he was quiet. I mean silent-as-the-dead quiet. I don’t think he uttered one word to the J-Man, and he sure was reticent when it came to talking to me.

I had a couple of seizures, which have been happening a lot lately, but really I was fine, and later that evening in bed we talked, and he expressed that he’d been feeling down.

I was understanding, or so I thought.

The next day, he didn’t say a single word to the J-Man or even to me without prodding, and when I asked him what was wrong, he said, “Nothing.”

By the time we left for the B-Bash, I was getting a little irritated, namely because I felt I had put a lot of effort into interacting with his children, and he was putting absolutely none into interacting with mine. In fact, he was making it clear that he was downright miserable.

During the car ride over the kids asked a couple of questions about where we were going, and why we didn’t take the (shorter) iPass route through the toll booth, and he totally snapped on them.

Now I understand that kids can be a pain in the ass, but kids are kids, and kids ask questions, and I thought that it was totally unnecessary.

That concluded the interaction of Norton and the children.

He sat stone-faced during the concert and did not speak to me once, except to tell me that he was leaving my seizure-having ass with the kids to go sit in the car, which pissed me off even further, because there were medical personnel all around, and I did not want to be dragged into the back of an ambulance should an incident occur.

Anyway, the whole day was a fiasco. I understand that the B-Bash was loud and crazy and not fun, but I didn’t force him to go. I could have taken my father, who would have had a great time. I told him going in that it was going to be a loud rap concert, and I paid for everything.

He left that night without a word, and did not call me the next day.

On Monday, my mother had asked him to paint the inside of the garage and clean the gutters, so when he came over, I asked him what was wrong.

“Sometimes I’m just quiet. I don’t know what more I can tell you.” Then he went on about his business.

He did not speak to me for the rest of the day, and then left. He has not called me since.

My mother thinks that he was frightened off by the seizures, but he knew going in that I had seizures, so I really don’t think that’s it. I don’t know.

I don’t know what the fuck to think. This is the same guy who, just a week ago, was telling me how badly he wanted to move in with me.

I don’t get it.

I don’t get it at all.

And to end it like this, without so much as a phone call or even a damned e-mail, was a dick move.

So, there you have it. I have been dumped. I didn’t cry or freak out, mainly because I have been so mad that I haven’t had time to do so.

So endeth the saga of Jen and Norton.

What do you think?

Happy Friday.

So, yeah, the Summerbash.

First of all, we got there about two hours early, because the kids were ridiculously hyper and excited, and a pre-party was promised.

The pre-party wound up being a few scant booths in the Toyota Center parking lot and a stage on which a very small boy was rapping. People seemed to be into the small boy/rapper, but I was more into the fact that they were giving out free samples of Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee, because I knew that this was the only free shit I would score all damned day.

After waiting in line for a while and watching the two 14-year-old poster children for Abercrombie and Fitch in front of me make out furiously until I was nauseous, we entered the arena.

The first thing I noticed was a margarita stand. Strange, I thought, since nearly everyone I saw looked underage, and I figured I’d only see the odd beer vendor.

I was so, so wrong.

This place was packed to the max with alcohol. Mai tai stands, rum runner booths, vodka lemonade stands, margarita joints, all at the low low price of at least ten dollars a drink. Beers ran from eight to twelve dollars depending on the brand and who you bought them from.

Needless to say, I only had one eight-dollar beer, and that one hurt my little Jewish heart quite a bit as it went down.

The kid from down the street was sent to the show with only twenty dollars, but of course he wanted a t-shirt, which were twenty-five. I was faced with a dilemma. Should I let the little miscreant buy a shirt, floating him five dollars to do so and then pay for his food and drinks the whole evening? Or should I say, “Hell, no,” and make him buy his own food and drinks, which he actually didn’t have enough money for in the first place?

I let him buy the fucking shirt.

Pushover?

Yes.

I also bought the J-Man a shirt.

Total spent so far after only walking a few feet into the venue: 30 dollars.

We found our seats, which weren’t too bad, and sat down. B96 on-air personalities came out every so often and screamed at the crowd, and they had a few deejays spin some tunes, which weren’t too bad.

The opening act was a boy band that I believe was called Wow, but I was so disinterested in them that I can’t be bothered to check. They stomped around for a while with sound effects and sang about three songs. One had a pink Mohawk. It makes me sad to see old punk culture raped so by the current generation. If an old school punk had taken one look at this kid he would have turned him inside out and nailed his three-hundred-dollar tennis shoes to his liver.

I’m probably not listing the acts in order, but you’ll have to forgive me. I was more interested in watching the fact that the crowd (which was ninety percent little white girls, by the way) was drinking like fish. I saw a few people get carded, but not many, and people were ordering multiple drinks to bring back to their underage friends. It was ridiculous.

They should have called it SummerSmashed.

The next act – I think – was JLS. This was a cute little English boy band/R&B act that kept me mildly interested for a few minutes.

Between acts, we were shown both commercials and videos. I didn’t mind the videos, but fuck if I am going to enjoy watching commercials after paying exorbitant Ticketmaster prices. That was bullshit.

The New Boyz were a rap act that had very low pants. One of these guys had his pants belted directly under his ass and had to keep holding them up so that they wouldn’t fall, which was comical. He was running and dancing and holding his pants as if he had a load in there.

This is what America’s youth finds attractive, people.

Perez Hilton came out to introduce his pet act, Travis Garland, and told a long, rambling. awkward story about Lady Gaga that made him seem, well, awkward. I have nothing but love for Perez, but he was not in top form at the B-Bash.

Also? Nobody seemed to give a shit about poor Travis Garland. The crowd was not wowed.

One act I enjoyed was Iyaz. He was a rapper, so I did surprise myself a little there, but he was good, and then he was joined by a cute Asian girl named Charice, and they did a couple duets, and they had good rapport and were pretty talented.

More DJs, more spinning, more commercials.

At some point, a very, very high individual started to run through our row of seats, high-fiving people and grabbing people’s hands and ruffling people’s heads. I would surmise he was on ecstasy, because he had that dazed sort of smiley look about him. At one point, he tried to high-five Norton; and Norton, who was not quite having the time of his life, was not having any of it. So, he grabbed my hand. I played along, and then he moved a row down, where there was a concrete ledge that dropped down about six feet. High Guy almost fell off of that ledge about ten times, and people started nodding for security. We saw him being dragged out of the show about ten minutes later.

Druggies are fun.

Cascada was up next – I think – and I have to say I probably enjoyed her performance the most. She was another Brit performer who sang and danced to a number of songs I do not know, have never heard of, and probably will never hear again, but the J-Man knew them all, was singing them at top volume, and was going insane. So, Cascada. Not bad.

More DJ spinning, more commercials, more digging into my wallet for food, Gatorades, Dippin’ Dots. With the amount of money I spent on this concert, I could have taken a nice trip somewhere.

Jason Derullo was talented and also very fun to watch, because A) he could sing, and B) he took his shirt off.

By this point in the evening (about five and a half hours in), everyone was drunk. EVERYONE. All the little white girls were going white girl crazy from their vodka lemonades, plus whatever they’d already ingested in the parking lot. It was a crazy scene, and I was starting to get a little nervous for the kids.

The kid from down the street was totally overwhelmed, I could tell. He sat, bug-eyed, taking it all in, just staring.

The J-Man was rolling with it, dancing, laughing, and singing his fool ass off.

The drunk girls were beginning to gather into groups and hump each other wildly. Norton left for the safety of the vehicle.

Finally, it was time for the main act – Ludacris.

Ludacris hit the stage, and people lost their damn minds. I am not kidding. The arena was a sea of waving hands and screeching white girls.

Ludacris began to yell “LUDA!” and the white girls began to screech “CRIS!” This went on for about, oh, twenty minutes. After that, Ludacris began to rap.

I am sure Ludacris is a very good rapper, but I did not know any of the songs and could not tear my eyes away from the drunkenness. All around me, everyone was dancing and stumbling and humping (even the beer vendor), and all I could think was, “Shit, I have GOT to get these kids out of here.”

“Two more songs,” I said. “That’s it.”

The kids moaned a little bit, but I think they didn’t protest a lot because they also were starting to see the gravity of the situation. No one wants to be stomped upon by some drunken high-schooler’s wedge.

So, we left, and the kids claimed to have had an absolute blast, but I think the B96 Summerbash is definitely meant for an older crowd, preferably an over-21 crowd, but I don’t think anyone there got the memo.

I suppose the burning question is whether I will give up my beloved indie music and punk rock and start cranking B96 full-time.

Don’t bet on it.

Happy Monday.

So today Norton and I are taking the J-Man and the kid from down the street to the B96 Summerbash, a large rap conflagration whose headliner is one Ludacris.

Ludacris.

You read right. I am going to a Ludacris concert.

Yeah.

I will no doubt be either laughing my ass off or crying tears of deeply-felt sorrow by the end of this strange evening, so wish me luck.

Ludacris.

Jesus.

Happy Saturday.