My second grumpy post already today:-(

I already went through the top reason why I feel like shit today, but here are the others.

Second, The Boy is mad at me. He wanted to have a date last night and told him that I was too tired and didn’t have a babysitter and just generally didn’t feel like going out. All of which is true, but this was sort of the only night we had free through about the middle of next week, so I guess I was kind of blowing him off a bit. I invited him to come over to our place and hang out, but he gave me a snippy “No, you should get to bed early if you are tired.”

That has me feeling like shit, too. He did leave me a really sweet message saying that he was sorry he snapped at me and he was just upset that he wouldn’t really get to see me for a bit and that he felt really bad about it. So, I do feel better about it, but I still feel kind of shitty…he is extremely patient with me, and has been really good about dealing with all of my baggage. At the same time, it has to wear on him, and I don’t know how fair it is of me to expect him to keep putting up with it…there’s a lot of girls out there who don’t come with children (gulp…almost teenagers). That sounds worse than it should, I know, and I may regret posting it in an hour or so, but I will deal with that then.

Third, Munchkin had a really bad dream last night and woke up crying. Fortunately, she was sleeping in my bed so she wasn’t alone, but she was still shaken up. She said it wasn’t really about anything, but then she told Smoking Hot Roommate this morning that she dreamt that I died. I know she is being nice not to tell me that, but I still wish she would tell me. [There is a story behind this dream…some day soon, I promise]. I don’t like when she cries and I can’t help her…it is the worst feeling in the world.

Fourth, I have some general seasonal anxiety. I have a ton of work to do this month, plus all kinds of Christmas parties and events to go to, plus a lot of shopping, plus a trip to Chicago which now includes visiting my father. It is all kind of piling up and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, which is a feeling I get occasionally.

The good news is that there is a cure for this...like any good, unbalanced girl of the 21st century, I have a therapist on speed dial… Ok, not exactly speed dial, but I do have someone that I see sometimes. It started because the court made it a condition of my custody arrangement that Munchkin and I go regularly after our mother died. That was supposed to last for like six months, but after about three, she told me that Munchkin was amazingly well-adjusted and we didn’t have to go that often.

I, however, am not quite as well adjusted, which means I have been going off and on for a year and a half now. Well, today is one of those days, and she made some time for me tonight, so hopefully that helps. It usually does.

Not so hot today

I seem to be a little bit stressed today. Which really sucks, because I feel like yesterday was a really good day. The boys at work even bought me a special promotion cake (note: I will absolutely put out for chocolate cake, but I didn’t tell them that;-))

So what happened? A couple of things.

First, my father made his normal once-monthly phone call. For those just joining us (ahem…read the archives!!!) here is a brief synopsis of my father: left before I was born, spent lots of time in jail, I met him when I was 21, he is back in jail. That is the short version…the even shorter version is “dirtball”.

It started out normal, and I wasn’t even that upset to hear from him, to be honest. We talked about Thanksgiving and I told him that I was going to be in Chicago to see his family in a couple of weeks. I think he genuinely likes that I see his brothers and sisters and mother and nieces and nephews…at least he seems genuine about it.

He said that he really hoped I would come up and see him while I was home and I told him that I doubted I could make it, just because there is a lot to do in a couple days and I would rather not spend my festive times at a prison. I knew he would be upset by that, which is not something I really care that much about. But he got kind of quiet.

Then he told me that he is really sick (I kind of knew this) and he doesn’t have a whole lot of time left. I think he closed with “I have fucked up everything I have ever done and I am paying for it. All I want before I die is one last chance to tell you I am sorry in person.”

Well what the fuck is that?!?! I don’t want to sound like a bitch, but I don’t really see where assuaging his guilt is my responsibility. He is the one who abandoned me before I was born, and who probably ruined the lives of hundreds of other people by selling them drugs, stealing things from them to buy his own, or causing serious physical harm in the pursuit of both. He is not a nice man, not to me and not to anyone…I don’t feel like he deserves a lot of sympathy, failing kidneys or not.

But somehow, I am gonna feel guilty about this if I don’t go and see him. I am gonna beat myself up about not being good enough to take a couple of hours to go and let him make his peace before he dies. Which means that I will probably call my aunt today and tell her that I want to go up and see him. Which is a bold faced lie…I don’t want to go and see him, I just don’t want to waste any guilty feelings on him.

At a minimum, it will make her happy, and I suppose that is a good enough reason.

There are a couple other things that have me upset, too, but I don’t want to write about them right now. Maybe later today, that is enough for this post.

That's Ms. SENIOR Analyst to you, Bub...

Yippee!!! Raises for me! I believe I have mentioned before that I am getting promoted as of December 1. I will no longer be the only analyst at the firm…now I will be the only Senior Analyst. Yeah!!!

I got clued into this a while ago, but my official review and salary adjustment meeting was this morning. I have to say, it is kind of intimidating…you go into the room and the partners are all sitting around the big granite table and you are supposed to sit facing them.

It is maybe a little bit inquisitive, so even though the partners include one person (who is really in charge) who is my almost-adopted father, and another who I could count as a close friend (Boss Foxy), I was still kind of nervous. Then they break out a big huge binder full of stuff…mostly reviews written by basically everyone in the firm about you. The 360 degree review process here is a REAL 360 degrees…that makes the nerves even worse.

Long and short, the news was basically good. They like me:-) They really like me!!! What is even better, they are willing to like me 15.7% more next year than they did this year. This is really the first raise I have ever gotten (never been at another job long enough, and last year I got kind of a token because I had just started). My guess is that this is much, much bigger than normal, but I guess I have nothing to compare it to.

I also think that I am supposed to talk about how it’s not the money that is good, it is the recognition of my contributions and all that jazz. While all of that is true, in reality, it really is the money. Lol…I know, shallow of me.

The truth is that I love my job…I like everyone I work with, I am always challenged, I find it interesting, I meet great people, and I feel like I learn a couple new things every day. Add to that the convenient fact that I get paid much more than I could anywhere else, and I think it is fair to say that I couldn’t think of a job I would rather have (ok, maybe underwear model if I got Heidi Klum’s body, too…)

Since I already like coming to work every day, the addition of a big fat raise is certainly nothing but a big fat good thing;-)

Pigtails

Ahh…some lunchtime posting. Well, late lunch, I guess.

Earlier, I forgot the best part of the weekend…even though yesterday was Sunday, there was no lazy afternoon football sex. Why? Because I was working…now THAT is a sign of the times…me being too busy at work to get laid. What have I become?

That’s not the best part, though. The best part is that Big Sis and Smoking Hot Roommate were having a little pampering done. That’s right, I skipped sex AND massages…I am ashamed of myself.

They took Munchkin with them, because they are good big sisters and like to spoil the little twerp;-P Well, they returned to me a little girl that looks a lot like the one they left with, only with a totally new hair color.

That’s right…her adorable blond pigtails had been replaced with adorable dark brown pigtails…Lol. It’s really cute and looks really good on her, but I am sure that I will get some shit about it when I take her home in a couple of weeks. Whatever.

So now her hair is just about the same color as mine. Again. It is naturally, but mine hasn’t been natural in a very long time…one of this days I will go back to being a blond.

Anyone have any more pie?

How was everyone’s Thanksgiving? My was fantastic, even though I ended up working a lot over the weekend.

Smoking Hot Roommate, her fiancé (Adorable Dork) and I went out to meet a bunch of their high school friends on Wednesday. Apparently it is something of a day-before-Thanksgiving tradition. At this point, I know a bunch of the people they went to school with, so it was actually kind of fun to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in a while.

Thursday was all about eating. SHR took Munchkin to a football game, which let me get some work done in the morning…that’s right, working on Turkey Day. Then we went to SHR’s old house (which now belongs to her cousin) and ate. And ate. And ate. And drank. Papa Bear had a wine cellar in that house which is still pretty full, albeit less full than it was when we all got there:-D Munchkin was awfully proud of herself for being able to recognize some of the stuff on the wine labels from her learnings at her wine tasting last summer. And I let her have some…there I go corrupting the youth again.

I had a ton of work to do Friday morning, but Munchkin was over at a friend’s house all day, so I was able to get loads done from home. Working on the day after Thanksgiving is bad, but going into the office would have been worse. She ended up sleeping over at the friend’s, and the boy and I went to a kind-of housewarming party for a couple friends of his. Which was fun...and Munchkin being gone for the night let me do all sorts of naughty things:-D

Saturday, his family has a traditional family thing. It is sort of a Thanksgiving redux…everyone in his father’s family gets together for another big party. That works out really well because it let me get to hang out with him and his family and still have Thanksgving with the adopted family. I totally snuck him off to a random bedroom for a quickie…hee hee. Bad me! Bad me!

It was really fun…they are all nice people, and there are a bunch of kids for Munchkin to hang around with. Maybe it is kind of weird to have my sister tag along with me to the boyfriend’s family function, but she’s part of me. We are a package:-) And The Boy’s mother specifically made me promise to bring her.

I had a thought later on, though. As I have mentioned, The Boy has a twin sister who got married last summer to another woman. Munchkin never asked me “Why are those two girls married?” Seems like a pretty logical question for a little kid to ask…I wonder why she never did.

I suppose there are a lot of explanations, but I think it is interesting that it never came up. Anyway...that's all I have for now...back to work.

Story time!

Random story time…this has no bearing on anything, but it is funny:-P

There are a couple of key figured in this story. First is BFF(girl), my lifelong best friend, other half and partner in crime. Also, there are two other people that I grew up with who we really don’t need for more than this, so I will call them Ben and Sara, which are two completely random names.

Ben and Sara have been dating since they were about 15…a lot of off and on. They go out, one of them cheats on the other one, or finds someone else, so they break up, then get back together. Really it is very annoying. They aren’t really even friends of mine, sort of “friends of friends”. Especially him, who I really only know through her, and who honestly I never liked that much.

I guess I will start during Christmas break two years ago when I was home for a bit. A bunch of us went out, and I ended up talking to Ben for a while, I am not sure why or about what…it wasn’t all that memorable.

For whatever reason, he called and emailed me a lot after that, like we were good friends. Again, I knew him for like five years before then, but only kind of in passing. Sometimes I would respond or talk to him, but not that often…like I said, I don’t really like him, but I was 1,000 miles away and it was easier to just kind of ignore him than to be a bitch.

Well, the following summer when I was home and trying to figure out what to do with myself and my new fourth grader, I was out with a lot of the same people one night. I probably spent like 10 minutes talking to Ben, maybe less. But the next day, he showed up on my doorstep asking if he could talk to me. Kind of strange, but whatever…so we went to get a cup of coffee.

He told me that he was going to break up with Sara because he didn’t love her, he loved me. He felt like we had a special connection and he wanted to help me with my sister and he wanted us to be together and get an apartment and he would take care of me, etc. Not really what I had expected for coffee…

Really I was kind of pissed off. Partly because he was too stupid to figure out that I didn’t like him that much and had someone created this delusional relationship in his head. But mostly because I had plenty to deal with already and didn’t need his psycho-shit to compound it. So I firmly told him that I wasn’t interested. I don’t even think I did the cursory “You are a great guy, but…” I think it was just a flat “No. I am moving her to Boston, and I am going by myself.”

I would also like the record to show that he did NOT break up with Sara, despite his declaration that he has already decided to. Also, I feel like she was different around me the couple times I saw her after that and maybe she knew something. I don’t really know (side note, should I have told her?). And I left within a couple weeks, so I didn’t give it a whole lot more though.

I was home again last winter, though, and happened to see many of the same people again. BFFg and BFFb dragged me out with them all, despite the fact that I really wanted to not see Ben for, well, pretty obvious reasons. They assured me that I could just avoid him, which was basically true.

Most of the night was fine, but somehow some people got up and moved and I found myself right next to Ben. No kidding, he started in on the same thing…and keep in mind that his girlfriend, still, was sitting across the table…he starts whispering to me that he was serious about that and he is in love with me and still wants me to come back.

I guess a more mature person would have said “This isn’t the time or place,” and left quietly, but that ain’t me. I kind of snapped at him, maybe told him to fuck off and got up. We were all sort of done eating, so I ended up grabbing BFFg and heading for the bar, where I kind of filled her in.

Sara and Ben, meanwhile, got into a huge fight and sort of yelled their way over into the bar. Well, he left, and she decided to turn her anger on me. I was trying to steal her boyfriend (her useless, ugly, stupid boyfriend) and destroying her life and I was a harpy and a tramp and I ruined High School Boyfriend’s life and now I wasn’t gonna do the same to her and Ben.

I was actually kind of cool during all this. I told her that I don’t know what it was, that I have no interest and that I have never, and would never speak to him of my own volition. She wasn’t right, though, and kept calling me names. This is about when BFFg started to get pretty pissed and started yelling herself.

Sara said something about me being a slut and BFFg decided that she had said enough, so she popped her right in the mouth. Lol…I know, I know, this is not really lady like behavior and is not something I should be proud of, but whatever, it was hilarious. She threw a right hand and knocked her straight down on the floor.

I don’t really know what happened after that…I was kind of in shock, and kind of laughing a LOT, and we got thrown out of the bar, so I didn’t really see the aftermath. Most of the other people were pretty understanding about what a weirdo Ben can be and felt bad that it got kind of ugly.

The good news is that I don’t hear from him anymore;-) Or from her…they are living together and getting married next year. Yea, you read that correctly…

Who thinks I should go to the wedding? I could absolutely score an invite as the +1 for any one of a bunch of guys…

Anyway, that is just one of many stories about me and BFFg…there are others that involve knives and gang fights…lol. Maybe some other day.

Meantime, Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!

A Can of Worms...

No emails or voice mails of note today…lol. Back to just plain old me. However, I have a completely loaded subject that I think will probably lead to some discussion, so here goes:

I wanna talk about religion. (Yes, it comes up now because I was reading Ally and all her comments today.)

Technically, I am a Catholic, in the sense that I was baptized, raised and confirmed a Catholic. I got first communion and all that other stuff, mostly because my mother sort of made me (well, BFFg’s mother made her, which meant she kind of made me, too).

But I don’t go to church. Outside of weddings, funerals and my sister’s first communion, I haven’t been to church in a very long time (hmmm…10 years? 7 years? Something like that.) It is important to note that this is not a result of laziness…I don’t go to church because I specifically don’t want to and dislike a lot of what it stands for. I do believe in God, and I am comfortable with my own relationship with him or her (or whatever), I just don’t spend any time in an organized church. Nor do I feel like I am missing out because of it.

I also think it bears saying that I admire people who feel strongly about their faith and celebrate it in an organized setting. On some level, I sort of wish that there was a church that spoke to me in a way that made me comfortable doing that. But there isn’t, so I don’t.

That’s not really what I want to talk about, though. I have very personal reasons for doing so, and no one is going to change my mind, so it is not really worth angering anyone. My larger question, not surprisingly, has to do with Munchkin.

Am I being a bad mother if I don’t make some kind of religion part of her life? Just because I have numerous problems with the Catholic Church (and maybe organized religion as a whole, but don’t hold me to that), does that mean I should not expose her to it? What if she doesn’t want to? I feel like most parents force their children to spend time in church until they see the value of it on their own (or, in my case, don’t). And should I sit through services of a church that I don’t follow so that she is exposed to it? Is it hypocritical of me to do that and not tell her what I don’t like about it?

So that is where I am now…she goes to CCD classes like a good little Catholic girl (I don’t know why, I guess sometimes I am willing to defer to my mother.) But what do I do if she says she doesn’t want to go, or if she asks me about my feelings on Catholicism, and on church in general? What should I say?

For now, she actually does go to church…infrequently, but she does. Papa Bear takes her on Good Friday, Easter and Christmas and on some occasional Sundays in between. And I suppose if he didn’t, I probably would…guilt, as we Catholics know, is a very powerful force.

Yesterday Voice Mail, today Email

Still out on the road, and very much looking forward to getting home tonight and sleeping in my own bed...

I got a weird email today from someone…I won’t mention the person’s name via email, but feel free to comment if you want people to know who you are. I am not sure why this bothered me, but it did.

Long story short, it said that I seem to talk a lot about how great private school is and that I shouldn’t write it as if I am disparaging public schools, and that just because a school has a he tuition bill doesn’t mean it is a good school.

Not that I disagree, I just find it really weird that it came to me. It’s not like I am widely-read authority on schooling, after all. Who the fuck cares what I think, and why should I feel like I need to make soapbox speeches in support of public schools? I don’t really see where this is my responsibility. But I am willing to defend my decision making (even if I don’t know why I need to.)

First of all, I live in Boston and the Boston Public Schools are simply terrible. I am not going to send her to a shitty school if I don’t have to. I have been told that when kids are entering 7th grade they should look into Boston Latin School, which is a public school but one you have to get admitted to, and I will do that when the time comes.

And I don’t think it is a good place for her because it costs a lot. I think it is a good place because her classes are small, the teachers are committed, the parents are involved, the facilities are remarkable, the curriculum is challenging and the resources available to the kids to tackle that curriculum are fantastic. It is also within a five minute walk of where we live and where I work, so she is never far from me and I can get her to and from school easily.

Also, I got the schools annual report the other day and they listed the college destinations of last years graduating seniors. There were 23 kids, and I think 3 went to Harvard, 3 MIT, 3 Yale, 2 Princeton, and then one each to Dartmouth, Northwestern, Stanford, Oxford, Duke, Berkely, Cal Tech and places like that. The "dumb" kid from the class went like the University of Virginia or something. I don’t care what the tuition is; they are doing something right over there.

So yes, I just wasted ten minutes writing a response that I had no reason to write. But whatever, I felt like it:-P

Voice Mail

I just got this voice mail from the mother that is taking Munchkin to the Carribean:

"Hey, this is So and So. Listen, my sister-in-law cancelled her trip to go sailing with us, so there is an empty bedroom on the boat. I know it might be kind of boring, but you are welcome to come along with Munchkin and the rest of us if you would like. Let me know if you want to."

That's right...my sister is scoring me sailing trips...lol

I can't go, which kind of sucks a little. I have already taken too much vacation time this year and have much of next year's already planned. Which I guess is ok...I would probably get seasick...and I don't think there would be any cute boys around...hee hee...

Holidays

OK, I will lay off the X-rated postings today…that didn’t seem to go over well (I can’t help it, it’s me).

I want to talk about Holidays, which I think I have sort of touched on, but want to again. Holidays tend to exacerbate emotions. If you are happy, then they make you happier, but if you are depressed, they tend to make you more so. They bring with them a certain kind of stress and intensity that just makes everything more intense. Especially Christmas, but Thanksgiving as well.

I used to get really bad seasonal depression, and I think the Holidays made it much worse. Fall and winter made me terribly depressed…cold weather, short days, I am not sure what it was. And then Thanksgiving and Christmas always seemed to highlight for me what other people had that I didn’t.

I hate Christmas specials and movies…HATE them. Or at least I used to, I could never stand to watch all of the happy, wealthy, two-parent families enjoying each other’s company in a healthy and productive way. The whole season just made me feel lost, inferior and abandoned.

The depression went away when I moved to Arizona. That, of course, makes a pretty good case that the cold weather has something to do with it…and it might. Mostly I think it was just the completely different mood of the place and of everyone I know. I feel like the people I knew in Chicago always felt a combination of beaten down, victimized, unlucky and resentful. They were unwilling or unable to let themselves really be happy because they suffered, and often took great pleasure in their suffering.

The people I met at school came from a totally different perspective, though. Things weren’t always conspiring against them and wouldn’t always turn out bad. People were genuinely willing to enjoy what they had and the people around them. I think it changed the way I look at the world and made it easier for me to spot the things I should appreciate.

I didn’t get any of the depression issues last winter, which is a good sign. Obviously, if it is the weather, than Boston is going to be just as bad as Chicago. I was also so ridiculously busy last winter that I never even had time to stop and think about whether or not I was sad…hopefully it doesn’t come back this winter.

And so far, so good. I kind of made my peace with the Holidays over the last few years, and I think I am genuinely looking forward to them this year. Well, maybe not the Christmas shopping part, but all the rest of it.

This is kind of slutty...

I have to warn you up top here, this is kind of an X-rated post, but it is what I feel like writing about, so you are stuck with it:-P The subject is blowjobs, and more specifically, how I really like them. I won’t be offended if you decide not to read this one;-) I know some of you are fragile…

There are two reasons this comes up now. One is that one of my favorite bloggers…The Overeducated Nympho…has begun a lengthy series on the subject. She is about two parts into it, and so far I agree with most of her feelings on the subject. The second reason is that I gave, in my humble opinion, one of the best blowjobs I have ever given last night. How can I say this delicately…the, um, “sample size is pretty large.”

To back up, I think the reason I like given oral sex is pretty simple. As I have kind of touched on, I am really tiny. If I am 5’1”, it is only because I am on my tiptoes, and I weigh less than (or close to) 100 lbs. Obviously, every guy I have ever known has been much bigger than me, and in some cases, nearly twice as big. Not that I have ever felt physically threatened by a guy, or would be naked with someone that made me feel threatened, but it is just the reality that I am physically at the mercy of, well, everyone. So, to counter that, is there any moment when a girl has more physical power over a guy than when she has his dick between her teeth?

I think it is safe to say that I don’t go down on people that frighten me or threaten me, so I am not sure that this makes a lot of sense. But there is something really erotic about knowing that someone trusts you so much and that you are giving him so much pleasure that he is willing to put himself in the most vulnerable position he can…to complete submit himself to your willingness to make him feel good.

Anyway, I am not sure that really gets to it, and there is a chance that I am just a dirty slut that likes sucking dick as well;-) I also think I am pretty darn good at it, although I will spare you the dirty details about that.

The second part of the story is from last night. We did go to a bar to watch the game yesterday, with Big Sis, Smoking Hot Roommate, the Brain Surgeon and Adorable Dork and some other friends. The Boy was hanging out with his mom (cute!!!) so he didn’t meet us until near the end of the game.

SHR took Munchkin home and I went over to The Boy’s place for a bit. Now, if you have been reading the last couple weeks, you know that he has been a total sweetheart to me lately and puts up with all of my hectic and random schedule conflicts and weird quirks that might drive other guys crazy. What he really wanted to do last night was watch more football (he went to Berkeley and they were playing), so I agreed to three more hours of football.

And then I figured that what he really deserved for being such a sweetie was a really spectacular blow job while he watched the game. Normally, I would be opposed to this sort of thing…I like to be engaged with the person I am with; I don’t like distractions. I am pretty fucking sexy, and I don’t think that you should need some other form of entertainment when I am naked around you. I am pretty entertaining on my own.

But I will make exceptions, and last night was one of them. So I unbuttoned his pants and gave quite the performance. So much of oral sex has to do with the visuals and the audio…that actually goes both ways. Oral sex is better for the recipient if the giver is having fun. So, I started slow, just gently rubbing and playing…it was probably ten minutes before I even got my mouth on it. Then I took my time, enjoyed every second of it, and did everything I could to make sure that he loved every second of it, too.

I would say it took maybe half an hour, which is MUCH longer than I would ever devote to a blow job. And when he was done, I cleaned him up (he wasn’t in my mouth when he came…TMI?...yea, sorry about that), put his pants back on and curled up on his chest while he caught his breath. I know that blow jobs aren’t usually “sweet” times, but I really felt like he deserved some reciprocation of all the nice things he has done in the last couple weeks.

OK, so I blow him all the time, it is one of my favorite things…Lol. But this one was better, I am sure of it…lol.

Anyway, that is what I have for you today. Fantasy football is back this afternoon, and I can promise you there will be nothing sensual and sweet about that…hee hee…

I'm such the social coordinator

The Boy totally read my mind and brought sushi in for me last night. Then we just sat on his couch, watched TV and had sex a couple times. My idea of a pretty darn good date;-) Then he walked me home at about 9:30, we picked up Munchkin at her friends house and I was all tucked in by 10:30. Yes, I am 24 years old, you got a problem with that?!?!?

Then I slept until 10:00 today, which was sorely needed. Munchkin slept in my bed, but she got up early, watched some TV and read, and then she made me a bagel and brought it to me in bed at 10:00…how cute is she:-D

Now I am sitting on the couch working (ok, I did an hour of work and now I am blogging:-P). She is watching Hannah Montana, and I think The Suite Life of Zack and Cody is on next….so a pretty big Saturday morning;-)

I think I will go and pick up Smoking Hot Roommate and Adorable Dork at the airport later on. She is probably planning on taking a car home, but I have nothing else to do, so I think I will take Munchkin in to get them. Or I could get lazy before then and stay here, too.

Okay, this is really funny…Munchkin is a huge sports fan. Mostly the Cubs, but really she loves all sports. Most of my guy friends think that this is just the coolest thing they have ever seen, and one of them just called me to say that a bunch of them are going to a bar to watch the Ohio against Michigan game this afternoon. He wanted to know if Munchkin wanted to go with them.

Yeah, I think I am invited, too, but mostly her…lol. She is something of a chick magnet, to be honest. She talks to everyone and everyone talks to her, and she seems to take special pride in introducing people. I think it’s cute. I am sure someone finds it annoying, but sucks to them.

Going out to watch a game actually sounds like fun, to be honest. I think I will take her over and then we can have dinner there, too. Maybe I’ll call The Boy and Big Sis, too and see if everyone wants to go. Oh yeah!!! I completely just made plans!!! I am so good.

Ok, I guess I should get back to work…phooey.

Is it Saturday yet?

If you get a chance, take a peek at this post about OJ Simpson. Ally is right on; this whole thing is disgusting.

I am finally back in the office today after almost two weeks out in various other places. I still have a gigantic pile of shit to do which will last me well into tomorrow, at least, but I feel more comfortable here. It’s weird; offices can feel like home if you are forced to spend a lot of time in someone else’s office. Not that I would wear a little tank top and my undies at the offices, but you get the drift.

This also means that I get to have lunch with Boss Foxy today, the first in a couple of weeks. So that’s good…I wanna debrief with her and catch her up on what I have been doing for two weeks and get her thoughts on it.

Truth be told, I am completely exhausted. This has been two straight REALLY long weeks, and I will have a lot of work to do over the weekend, too. The first three days of next week will be nuts, too, so I am really looking forward to the break. I have a date with The Boy tonight and I am praying that he says that he just wants to go to a movie or…even better…stay in and watch TV and get take-out.

Smoking Hot Roommate comes back tomorrow:-D And she is bringing Adorable Dork with her (her fiancé, who has been saving the World in Africa for three months). I miss both of them terribly…her because I really haven’t even talked to her in a week and him because I haven’t seen him since July. Which reminds me that I should put gas in Smoking Hot Roommates car since I kind of borrowed it this week and there is very little in there:-) [I have a Jeep, she has a Porsche; what would you do? Lol.]

I decided on Holiday plans, which I mentioned a couple weeks ago. We are gonna do Thanksgiving here with the adopted family. Smoking Hot Roommate’s cousin (who lives in their old house, which I absolutely LOVE) is hosting and we are all gonna go over Thursday for a big giant dinner. Yes, this makes me feel very included;-) They have a daughter who is in Munchkin’s class at school, too, which is kind of off topic, but I felt like mentioning it.

The Boy’s family actually has kind of a post-Thanksgiving family thing, too. So I won’t see him or his family on Thanksgiving, but Munchkin and I will both get to spend some time with them Saturday. I feel good about that, I would have felt kind of bad if I didn’t see them at all. I have to ask his sister what he wants for Christmas…lol. He probably doesn’t know, but I am sure she does…twins are weird!!!

Christmas is gonna be a little tough. I would like to take Munchkin back to Chicago, but she is leaving for the Caribbean (lucky little twerp) on the 26th and I don’t want to have her jumping off of one plan and onto another. I think I would rather take her back for a weekend before then so we can see everyone…well, not quite everyone…and kind of do Christmas then. Maybe the 22nd and 23rd, or maybe even earlier than that. I also wanted to take her to New York for a weekend to see the lights and everything all decked out for the season, but honestly I don’t know when I will get to.

I know that everyone was dying to know what my seasonal plans were…lol. So, there you have it.

I feel like I have been a boring blogger this week…sorry about that. Hopefully I will have a little more energy to be interesting next week;-)

A not nice story:-(

This one is gonna be kind of a bummer, so I am sorry, but it seems like it fits here.

Dimples left a comment to the last post about Whore Bag Aunt, and since I have a bit of food coma at the moment, I am feeling mellow enough to finish that story. This is the real reason that I would like to slice her up with dull razor blades, pour salt on her and then light her on fire. That may sound harsh, but don’t fuck with the Munchkin or my kind-hearted Niki turns into a Jessica real quick (Heroes reference…and Ali Larter is hot…)

Anyway, I got a call from Munchkin’s uncle in July…this being the one member of her family that I have always gotten along really well with. He said that the family court needed just one thing to close out a file on us: some receipt that I still had the money that my Mom left. I was a little confused…my mother had a small life insurance policy through work that went mostly to pay for her funeral and some bills. The little bit that was left I gave to Papa Bear because he was just about to pay Munchkin’s tuition for the semester. But that was left to both of us and I didn’t see why the court cared about it.

And he said “No, not that money. The money that she had left over from her husband and left for Munchkin.” I was completely dumbfounded…how could no one have told me this? How could my fucking mother never tell me this?!?!?

Here is what happened: Munchkin’s father died about five years before then. He left about $125,000 from life insurance to my mother. Surprisingly, she didn’t totally waste it. She paid expenses, paid some of her own medical costs, spent some on Munchkin, etc. By the time she died, there was about $25,000 left which was left to Munchkin (it may have been hers all along…can a mother and daughter have a joint account? Or a trust account? I am not really sure…not that important.)

Again, I never heard about this. My idiot mother (I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, my bad) left her sister, Aunt Whore Bag, as the trustee and neither of them thought that this was something I should be aware of. I was a little irritated that my Aunt would let me take upwards of $20,000 a year in private school tuition from my friends while Munchkin had all this money put away, but mostly I just wanted to make the court happy. So I called Aunt Whore Bag to get a statement or something to show that the money was still there.

The second I asked, I knew that something was up. First, she acted totally fake-surprised that I hadn’t known about it. And then she immediately started backpedaling “Well, the money was for her benefit and I was supposed to decide what she would want and what was in her interest and what was good for her.” This is about when I started to get ultra-furious.

I asked her how much of it was left, and she still wouldn’t give me an answer. “Some of it has been loaned to her cousins…Billy needed this and Joey needed that and Uncle Tommy broke his tooth. I know that she would have wanted to help her family members, and they will pay it back.”

I am sorry, but I simply do not have the words to talk about what a bunch of evil fucking skunks these people are. Who steals from a 10 year old orphan?!?! How low on the scale of human excrement do you have to be to do that? My aunt and a bunch of our other family members looked at this as a completely free pile of money that was theirs to do with as they saw fit. Never mind that it belonged to a little kid with no parents.

After about half an hour, she told me that there was about $6,000 left. I politely told her that if Munchkin didn’t get a check for what was left, along with all of the statements from the account with a detailed record of who took what money that I was going to sick every lawyer I could find on her. And that I would never speak to her again, that she was not to try and speak to either me or Munchkin and that she should inform the rest of the family that I knew who took what and felt the same way about all of them.

I also called her all kinds of names, including the C-Bomb, a word I had never before used and likely never will again use. Actually, I think I called her a shitty, dirty, fucking C-Bomb…

Anyway, she did send the check, and I do know exactly who took what. I gave the check to Papa Bear for some of her school. I would sue her for the rest, but she doesn’t have anything to claim. For now I just ignore her when she calls me all the time crying apologies…and I can’t bring myself to tell Munchkin any of this, either.

About two weeks ago we got a really apologetic letter from one of our cousins and a check for like $750 along with a promise to pay the other $500 he took, claiming that he didn’t even know it was her money, and that Aunt Whore Bag just told him she would lend it to him. That gets him back in my good graces.

I am not mad about the money. Like I said, the money would have gone to her tuition, which is generously provided for otherwise, so it is not like we would actually have any extra money lying around. It is much more than that…how can people who are supposed to love her steal from her? How can someone look at the most vulnerable kind of person, a child with no parents, and steal from her? How could you possibly look yourself in the mirror? I know I can’t stand seeing her, so I don’t know how she stands looking at herself.

Anyway, that is why I don’t speak to a bunch of people in my family, and why I wish evil things upon my mother’s sister, Aunt Whore Bag.

Munchkin's Brother

I feel like I should touch a little bit on Munchkin’s older brother. He is a pretty important part of her life, and therefore is part of mine. I would say that our relationship has been strained over the years, but is pretty good now.

He is about two years younger than me, the son of Munchkin’s father (my mother’s husband). As such, he and Munchkin have the same last name, something of which I am at least a little bit jealous. Not that jealous, but a little (okay, I have considered changing my name, since mine essentially has no meaning as it is.)

I have known him since my mother and his father met, which was when I was about 12. We were never at all close, but I wouldn’t say that we really fought either…more often than not he was living with his mother, but he did bounce in and out of our house. He kind of always had a way of finding trouble, never really bad stuff, but always some kind of mischief. And then right before he finished High School he got arrested for the third or fourth time, this time for stealing cars, and got sent to jail for a little bit (I wanna say 6 months or so, but am not sure).

Munchkin doesn’t know this, and anyone who reads this and knows me is to NEVER mention this to her. She absolutely adores her big brother and he is very good to her. So mum is the word.

He got out of jail about four months before my mother told me that she was sick, and then he was involved in suing me for custody of her. That obviously was not something that I appreciated terribly, not did I appreciate him and my aunt telling Munchkin things like I was trying to "steal her" and "make her go to a scary, strange place" and "keep her away from her cousins". Whatever, water under the bridge.

The problem was that Munchkin really likes her brother and I couldn’t…nor did I want to…just keep her away from him. Which meant that I had to find some way to be civil so she could see him and not realize that I hated him or that I was concerned about her spending too much time around the ex-con.

The good news for me is that he has changed a lot, which has made it a lot easier. After jail he went to work for a mechanic (I guess if you can steal cars, you can fix them too) and has been gainfully employed there ever since. He also has a girlfriend who is a complete sweetheart and is, I think, the real reason he has mellowed out.

She comes across as timid and sort of shy, but I think she knows exactly what she wants, and is determined to get it. I also think she knows his past and has made it pretty clear that he does not get any slip-ups. And to that end they have moved away from the old neighborhood a little bit, and as far as I know (and I have pretty good sources) he never sees any of his old friends anymore, which is all very good.

Basically, he has just gotten his act together. He has a pretty good job, a wonderful girlfriend and they talk about saving and buying a house in the suburbs. The last time he was here, he started asking me all kinds of questions about saving and investing and stuff like that. I think the idea of him making plans like that is a very good sign. [Secret!!! They are actually engaged, but haven’t told anyone because everyone will yell at them that they are too young. But they told Munchkin and she was pretty happy about being the only one to know;-)]

They come out to visit about once every two months. The first times they came I chickened out and made them stay in a hotel rather than with us. But since then, I feel good enough about it to let them stay with us, and in truth they are pretty easy guests. Usually me and Smoking Hot Roommate take his girlfriend out for a day and do girlie stuff while he and Munchkin do something together. She gets super excited for at least a week before they come.

He still does some things that annoy me, but I may be overly sensitive about it. Like we went to see her school one day and he said, maybe joking "Her parents would have hated this place." And while he is correct, I don’t really care and it bothered me that he would say it. Again, he was probably just joking, but there is also a chance he was just being snippy.

And like I said yesterday, he took a lot of the heat off of me from his half of her family by telling them all that the Europe trip was a great idea. When I first told him, he even said that he would help pay for it if need be, which was nice of him. And before she left, he gave her a stack of postcards addressed to him so she could write him every day, which she did;-)

One last thing, he did finally formally apologize to me for the whole suing thing. He told me that it was wrong of him to do it and that she was much better off with me than with anyone in Chicago. I know it can be hard for people to say sorry sometimes, so I appreciated it. So I would say that our relationship is pretty good, and any friend of Munchkin’s is a friend of mine;-)

The Toxic Family

OK, kind of a follow-up to the last post, only this one is about the more toxic nature of some of my family.

I didn’t tell any of the Chicago family that Munchkin was going to Europe until right before we left. Why? Well, despite it being a phenomenal chance to do something really special, I knew that they would all think it was a terrible idea. They happen to be some of the most bigoted, closed-minded, mean-spirited people alive. Not bigoted in the sense that they don’t like people of a certain color or creed, but rather in the sense that they don’t like anyone who isn’t like they are.
OK, they aren’t all that way, but enough of them to really annoy me.

True to form, I told them all, and despite not asking for their opinion, I got it in spades. It wasn’t safe…foreign countries are dirty and bad…her parents never would have let her go…etc. Underneath all of this is that they all hate the fact that she knows rich kids. And her mother and father were exactly the same way. I am not gonna lie, I am concerned about her being around kids that are so spoiled that it warps her world view, but I feel like it is a manageable problem.
They, on the other hand, just assume that rich people are evil. Why? Because they are all poor, and therefore feel like they must blame that on faceless rich people. Never mind that most of them are just plain lazy fuck-ups who barely made it to, let alone graduated from High School…this is all the fault of someone else.

I am getting mad thinking about this, and I am leaving the worst part out. I am too mad to write it, but if someone reminds me, I will write it some day.

Anyway, one of my mother’s sisters tried this "Your mother NEVER would have let her leave the country for a month with those people." Emphasis on "those people" to make it sound like they were members of some weird cult. I have to add that I do not speak to this aunt, and never will again, related to the last paragraph. She has committed un-forgivable acts for which I will never absolve her. I know God says we should forgive, but it should come to no one’s surprise that God is a lot nicer than I am.

She was, however, factually correct. My mother wouldn’t have let her go. More specifically, my mother would have been such a bitch around this other girl’s parents and put in so much effort to not let them play together that she never would have been invited. That, however, is neither here nor there.

I was proud of my response…"Aunt Whore Bag, I don’t care what my mother would have done. I am raising her based on what I think is right, even when that is not what my mother would have thought." Maybe not those exact words, but that was the gist of it…that I don’t feel like my Mother was the kind of role model I should be deferring to. I can raise Munchkin only one way; by doing what I think is best. I can’t worry about doing what others might have.

Well she got pretty pissy and gave me a nasty tongue lashing about being a know-it-all and a sell-out and disrespecting my mother’s memory. Which I ignored by leaving the room. That was kind of the end of it. I got some shit from other family members (but not from Uncle Awesome, who said that not only should I let her go, but that I was completely right in telling my Aunt what I did).

Munchkin’s older brother took a lot of the heat off of me by telling his family and adding that he thought it was a great idea and was ecstatic she was going. I still got some shit, but nothing I can do about that. When someone hates you, it is usually not worth fighting.

Anyway, I am not sure how this is related…lol. But I felt like telling…

Munchkin's Travels

I am not sure that I have thus far really portrayed accurately how cool my little sister is. Basically, people just totally love her the minute they meet her. So I am going to do some bragging:-P Can you be a proud Mom without being an actual mom? I think so…

I forgot to mention earlier that she taught me to play chess this weekend. She has been in a chess class for an hour once a week at school (um…we did NOT have chess class where I grew up…) and she wanted to practice, so she had to teach me to play. She won the first four times, but I did beat her once…I sort of got the hang of it;-)

Anywho…She went skiing one weekend last winter with three other girls. Her friend’s family has a house up North somewhere, and the Mother was away, so the Dad took the daughter and her friends skiing. I don’t think they actually skied, I think they giggled and sat by the fire all weekend. To be expected, I suppose.

The father dropped her off at the end of the weekend and I asked how she was. He said “She is welcome at our house anytime. She offered to help with the dishes, so she is a-ok in my book.” He also told me that the girls were kind of making fun of a girl in their class who is sort of fat, and Munchkin told them all that they should stop because it wasn’t nice and the girl was really nice even if she didn’t have many friends. It takes some spunk for a kid to do that near her friends.

Another time, I got a call from a mother in school. She had a daughter who was new and wasn’t fitting in…she was also kind of heavy (I think it is a different girl) and shy and was having a really hard time making any friends. One day she came home from school more excited than she had ever been because the prettiest, most popular girl (that’s Munchkin:-D) sat down with her at lunch and then the other girls did, too. I had this whole “Mean Girls” image, but I felt good that she was using her powers for good and not evil…Lol.

And then her teacher told me this story: they had a school dance last spring. Three different boys asked her if she would be their “date” (I am not sure what that means when you are 10…). She told everyone that she didn’t think they were old enough to have dates and that it would be more fun if they all just went together instead of in pairs. The teacher told me that everyone kind of followed her lead, and when she asked her about it, Munchkin said that there were 11 girls and 14 boys, so if everyone went with dates, three boys wouldn’t have anyone to go with. I thought that was pretty sharp for a little kid;-) Of course, then she told me that she didn’t like any of the three boys, even though they are the most popular ones…Lol.

So there is some bragging…hee hee. But back to the title of the post. As I have kind of mentioned, most of the kids she goes to school with come from pretty wealthy families (more accurately, all of the come from ridiculously wealthy families), but it is a small community, so everyone knows her story and my story. I think partly because of that, and partly because all the kids and the parents like her, she ends up getting invited a lot of places.

Like Europe, for instance. Last spring, I was at a basketball game, and her best friend’s Mom told me that they were going to Europe for a month on a family vacation in the summer and wanted to know if Munchkin would like to come. They have two college aged daughters and were a little worried that their youngest would be kind of bored. I said it sounded really great and asked how much it cost. She told me not to worry about it, that it wasn’t that big a deal. Which confused me a bit…I wasn’t sure about the protocol for this type of thing and had to have Smoking Hot Roommate convince me that the woman was serious (I bought her plane ticket just to make myself feel better…lol.)

I thought it over for a bit, but figured I would be nuts…maybe even cruel…to not let her see London, Paris, Bordeaux, Tuscany, Rome, Vienna and Berlin during the month of August. So of she went, temporarily adopted member of her friend’s family on a once-in-a-lifetimes cultural trip through Europe. Yes, I was a bit jealous;-) She had a great time, took tons of good pictures and the parents said that she was the easier to travel with than most adults are. They did a wine tasting in Tuscany, and I would have given anything for a drunk phone call from her, but she took a couple sips and didn’t like it…Lol. [On another note, I was hornier than a 14 year old boy all month. Being off the leash brought out the worst…er, best…in me. The Boy saved a lot of the x-rated text messages, and some of them are quite eloquent for basically being porn.]

And now she is leaving me again for about a week and a half after Christmas, this time to sail in the Caribbean with another friend’s family. Hence the need for a new bathing suit from the last post… Her friend’s grandfather has rented a yacht for the winter and the family is gonna spend 9 days with him down in the British Virgin Islands, and they invited Munchkin to go with them. So add that to the places she has been that I haven’t…Lol.

Is it normal that I let people take her away for lengthy periods of time? Probably not, and I am sure some people would find it weird and maybe not healthy. But I don’t care…as long as I trust the people she is going with, I feel like it would be unfair of me to deprive her of some of these experiences. That is what I learned the one time Papa Bear yelled at me…Lol.

OK, this post is too long. I have more, but I will put it in a separate post, and you will have to wait for that:-P

Random Weekend Notes

Ok, Internet working…some minutes to myself…blogging!

The weekend was not terribly exciting. I got home Friday and Munchkin was out at a birthday party, so I went over to The Boy’s place, where he had promised to cook me dinner. He was just about done cooking when I got there, which was good because I was tired and hungry:-) We had a really nice dinner, actually…just really relaxed and it felt really good to be able to put my feet up on a chair while I ate…how uncouth of me!

The dessert wasn’t bad either…hee hee. This is actually kind of funny, but I fell asleep during sex. Well, not during, but immediately afterwards. And by immediately, I mean “while he was still inside of me.” Lol. I was on top and curled up on top of him, and after I orgasmed, I just kinda fell asleep…hee hee. It is a pretty comfy spot to take a nap, if you ask me.

Then we went over to get Munchkin from her party and we all went to Finale for some real dessert…mmm. After that I was exhausted, so The Boy dropped us off and we had a little slumber party. Asleep by 10:00, which I really needed badly.

I had a bunch of work to do Saturday morning, which I actually got through pretty quickly while Munchkin watched TV. Then we did some shopping…she needed a new winter coat and some boots and a sweater or two. Also, she needed a bathing suit…more on that later.

Hmmm…this post has turned dreadfully boring, hasn’t it? Lol. I promise, it gets better in a paragraph or two…She went over to a friend’s house to play for most of the afternoon, and I did some Christmas shopping with The Brain Surgeon (Big Sis’ fiancé). I feel like it is really early for Christmas, but he wanted to get some of it out of the way now.

Anyway…my original plan was that I wouldn’t see the boy until later that night (I was meeting some friends for a drink first). But, with about two hours to myself, that plan changed quickly…;-). There is at least one benefit to having my sex life somewhat restricted, and that is that it creates an urgency that can lead to really fun, really good sex sometimes. Saturday afternoon was one of those times, starting with a to-the-point phone call (essentially…”you have an hour and a half to get over here and fuck me as many times as you can, the clock starts now”.)

The only minor problem was that I was kind of halfway between orgasm #2 and #3 when Munchkin called and said that they were dropping her off in a minute. So I had to get some clothes on quickly and go downstairs to meet her. To be really honest, though, I like feeling like I have a little secret other people don’t know. It is kind of a turn on to see people and know that they have no idea that you were having sex one minute before then, and that you have no panties on and are probably getting the insides of your jeans all wet. It feels kind of naughty in a very good way…and was probably the reason I had to masturbate in the shower before we left.

Saturday night was fun, too. Munchkin tagged along, which is always a good time…she is buddies with most of my friends at this point. I think I was in bed by 10:00 again.

Sunday was kinda fun, too…we went over and watched football with a bunch of the guys that are in her fantasy football league. “Guys watching football” is really an interesting phenomenon, and I am not sure I have enough ink here to get into it. But it was fun and my ex-boyfriend from school made a big play in one of the games, and everyone was super impressed that I knew him. They are easily impressed, I guess…lol. And I could tell that every one of them wanted to ask how big he dick was, but all respected the impressionable mind present and kept it to themselves…Lol.

I had a really good day at work yesterday. The partner told me in the morning that he wanted me to have lunch with a couple of people that work for this company that we are doing some stuff with. He said that they were all really suspicious of him and he wanted me to try and get some information out of them about what they really wanted, and try to figure out who was the decision maker and stuff. Right up my alley…people tend to tell me everything…Lol.

In the end it was like a 3 hour lunch. Just me and four people from this company, and it was really, really good. I don’t know if they liked me or just didn’t feel threatened or what, but I asked a couple of questions and they spilled everything and also didn’t really hide that one of them was clearly the ring leader (or that they had an attorney advising them). So I got back and wrote out everything I learned in a memo and gave it to the partner who was giddy like a little girl. Anytime a middle aged man says “Oh, you remind me so much of my daughter!” you can be pretty sure that he will do whatever you want him to…Lol. Something about fathers and daughters, I guess.

I suppose that I could write a ton here about how men tend to underestimate women in suits and think of us less as equals than as pretty showpieces. But I won’t:-P I just felt good that there was something I could do better than anyone else could. If you need a “I am woman!” post, you can check out this one…it is still my favorite one.

Anyway, this post has been all over the place…I will try and do better next time! In the meantime, sorry for being off line for a couple of days, I will write more regularly this week, I promise. In the meantime, hope you are all doing well!

Internet Problems

I have been sans Internet for a bit, and then mega busy...but hopefully I will have the time and ability to post tomorrow. I miss you all terribly;-)

Ta ta

Yeah, I know how "Days of the week" work...

Did anyone notice anything strange about this post yesterday? Go back and read it again…and maybe you will notice that I completely forgot what day it was…lol.

That’s right, the smart kid over here thought it was Friday when she wrote that. Don’t worry, I remembered shortly after that that it was still only Thursday…duh. So all of that stuff I wrote yesterday, you can just transpose that over to today. Good, now we are all caught up.

This has been an incredibly long week, as you may have already guessed, and I think next week will be just as bad. To be honest, I think this is a deal that is going to get done, which means I will be really, really busy for a couple of months. Maybe not 70 hour weeks away from home, but it is going to be really hectic. And through the Holidays, too…ugh!

The good news is that I will get a big giant bonus when it gets closed, which I am not going to complain about, not even one bit!

I was gonna tell a story today about the time my BFF(girl) got in a fight in a bar on my behalf…lol. Yeah, she knocked some girl right in the teeth, and this is one of the many, many reasons I love her;-) However, it is kind of a long story and I don’t feel like getting into it and I don’t really have time, so that will have to wait. But I thought of it when I woke up this morning and laughed at it again, so I will tell you sometime.

Smoking Hot Roommate is in Spain. I know I kind of mentioned that a little, but not entirely. I just talked to her, though, and she gave me free reign (rein?) to talk about her all I want. I think she likes being an anonymous celebrity of sorts…at least to the dozen or so people who read this every day, that is.

In my initial post about SHR, I mentioned that she has known her fiancé since she was 3. He is super cute, a complete dork, mega smart, really nice, really funny and I adore him dearly. To be fair, he is less of a dork than he used to be, but he still has plenty of dorky tendencies. He is also madly, madly, madly devoted to Smoking Hot Roommate. And for good reason;-) He is now officially to be known as the Adorable Dork.

[Digression…she has held off on moving in with him, I think for two reasons. 1) Even though he would never say it to her, it would upset Papa Bear. And it would have upset her Mother, so I am told, and SHR definitely cares about that. 2) I think she really likes living with me and Munchkin:-). However, he is moving into our old condo soon, and then when she finally decides it is time, me and Munchkin will just switch places with him and move back into the old place permanently. This was actually an enormous thing for me, since it established where I will live for the rest of Munchkin’s school. Ok, back to the story]

In July, Adorable Dork took a leave from work to go and work on a UN water plant project somewhere in Africa. He is an engineer and they need people like him and the company kind of encourages their people to do things like that, so he up and moved to some god-awful place to help save the world. Which I admire greatly, especially given that they have little running water, little access to telephones and are in at least some danger of being kidnapped by roving bands of militia.

This hasn’t been the easiest thing for SHR, although I think she has handled it pretty well, all things considered. She clearly misses him dearly, though, and has been counting the days until he gets back. Well, he is pretty done. And rather than wait for him to come home, she decided that she would rather meet him in Spain and take a little vacation together while they had the chance. So she has been there all week hanging out, and he arrives tomorrow…she is so excited she can’t really contain herself…and then they will stay for another week.

Which will be really good for them and I am happy that they get the chance to do it. Once they get back, it will be coming up on Holiday season, and he will be back at work and I can see how they would get kind of caught up in things and never really take the time to just stop and enjoy each other, this will give them that chance.

So that is where SHR is. And yes, I am really, really jealous…lol. I wanna be in Spain!!!

Anna's Taqueria

It’s been a long week, and I am ready for it to be over. Of course, I will be working tomorrow, but at least that will be in my underwear on my sofa, and much more comfortable than this. The weekend is already looking kind of busy…Munchkin has a birthday party to go to tonight, which gives me a chance have dinner alone with the boy (and have some frantic sweaty sex, too…once in a week is not enough for me;-))

I will have a lot of work to do tomorrow, but hopefully I can do that in the morning. I have some shopping to do in the afternoon (Big Sis’ fiancé, the Brain Surgeon, has enlisted me to help him pick out some Christmas and birthday presents. Normally this would be Smoking Hot Roommate’s job, but she is unable, so I will fill in.) Then I am meeting some friends for some drinks tomorrow night, and I think I will take Munchkin with me because she is so much fun:-)

There will also be no Fantasy Football Fucking on Sunday because SHR isn’t around to let me slip away. I think I am gonna bring her over to hang out with some of the guys in her league and watch the games, though. They are all fun guys and will probably have nachos….mmm.

Moving along… In her comment to my last post, Ally mentioned Anna’s Taqueria. This is something of a Boston institution; kind of a dive of a burrito place. I think there are three or four locations (the on Ally mentioned, I think, is on Beacon Street in Brookline, although there may be another one in Newtown I don’t know of. They are next to each other.) I have never actually eaten there, although people speak very highly of them, and Smoking Hot Roommate grew up right in the heart of Anna’s territory and is very familiar with them. Too funny.

This is another interesting point about being a Mom that I never thought of…feeding children. Not that I didn’t know it would be expensive, I just didn’t know what a pain it is. It is really not reasonable to expect to cook a full, healthy and nourishing dinner every day after work. It takes too long and I don’t have the energy to do it every day. There are easy alternatives, but almost all of them are really not that healthy: pizza, McDonalds, Chinese food. Usually eating out leads to crappy food, too.

I also have to disclose that I am really fortunate here as well because I don’t have to pack her a lunch every day. Their tuition covers lunch, and when they are younger, snacks as well. And the school does an excellent job of not serving the kids really fatty or salty foods or soda or anything.

This is kind of a stupid complaint, I know. Everyone in America with kids has to feed them, and I am hardly the only working Mother in America (I am probably not even the only working Sister.) It is just one of the things that you don’t think about when you envision having children.

Motherhood is really hard…lol. I know, this is not that insightful. I can’t be a genius every day.

More on The Judge

OK, The Judge, part two. This also has a lot to do with my, um… "tense" relationship with some members of my real family. Or, I guess of Munchkin’s family.

I graduated from college in May of 2005. I had this lovely plan and really felt like I was in a good life-place. Smoking Hot Roommate and I said some good-byes and then piled everything we had left into my car and drove to Chicago. We planned on staying there for a week, then heading to Boston where the apartment was going to be newly renovated and ready for us on June 1.

I kind of knew something was up…my Mom was acting kind of strange the week before when she had come out for graduation. But it was a complete bombshell my second day there… "My liver and kidneys are shot and I am dying". There were a lot of questions and some crying and stuff, and then the obvious question: What happens to Munchkin?

There were basically three options: 1) She could come and live with me in Boston 2) I could stay in Chicago and take her 3) Her aunt and uncle could take her in. The Aunt is her father’s sister (therefore not related to me at all) and lived about half a mile from where Munchkin and Mom lived.

The Aunt idea was out off the bat. I don’t like her and I think she would have been a bad influence. She is basically white trash (most of my family is, too) and her own kids are complete fuck-ups. I appreciated her willingness to help out, but it was a terrible idea. The Aunt, however, disagreed.

For me it was really a Chicago or Boston choice, but I was going to take her regardless. For a couple of reasons, I decided on Boston…not at all a small decision, but not the point of this story. Munchkin’s Aunt then made it known that she was not at all happy about this, and would be taking whatever action she could to keep her from me.

I have to blame a lot of this on my mother. I don’t feel like she ever really told The Aunt that she wanted Munchkin with me, and never told The Aunt to back off. I have to feel like that would have helped. Maybe not, though…The Aunt is just basically a bitch. She also never wrote any kind of a will that detailed her wishes. Dumbass. Anyway, I took Munchkin to Boston in August and my mother’s health deteriorated really rapidly after that.

Then The Aunt sued me. She filed suit in family court, protesting my custody. It was actually a suit filed by two people…her and Munchkin’s older brother. Which kind of complicated things, because he is the same relation to Munchkin as I am (half-sibling). Never mind that he was fresh out of jail for stealing cars and was basically a useless piece of no-good. They were suing for him to win custody of his sister, and for both of them to live with The Aunt and The Uncle.

[Incidentally, I feel differently about her brother now. I may write about it some day, but the short version is that he has grown up a lot, loves his sister dearly and has apologized for the whole suing thing. The Aunt is still a fucking bitch that I won’t speak to.]

Their basic argument was that I was too young and not fit to be a mother and that it was not right to uproot Munchkin, take her away from her family and friends and move her out-of-state. It is not an argument without merit in the court’s eyes, I don’t think. Basically, they were saying that she should stay where she is, go to the same school, etc.

My mother was not in any kind of condition to render any sort of statements, so she was sort of out of all of this. Papa Bear hooked me up with a law firm in Chicago to help me, and they were really, really helpful in this. Like, My Aunt applied for an injunction against me taking Munchkin out of the state…which means very little when I already had her in Boston, but means a whole lot when we had to come home for the funeral. I was actually worried that there would be someone who simply wouldn’t let me take her back to Boston. But the lawyers helped navigate all that and get those things taken care of.

I went to see the lawyers right before we left to go back to Boston after the funeral to talk about what would come next. They pretty much told me that there could be an ugly battle full of icky personal stuff about why I would be an unfit mother and stuff like that. They told me that I would need to think about people who would be character witnesses on my behalf.

So I mentioned kind of randomly that I knew The Judge and spoke with him regularly and that he might be a good one since he was a family court judge. They kind of looked at each other with their mouths open for a bit…and then one of them asked kind of dumfounded if I knew him well enough that he would submit a personal letter for me. And I said sure he would, I can call him now. "You know, AM, we probably could have saved a lot of time if you had mentioned that before…"

I guess when you are basically arguing over who is the more responsible person, it helps to have a senior colleague of the person deciding the case chime in on your behalf. To be honest, I don’t know what The Judge wrote. He offered to send me a copy of the letter, but I didn’t want to…I am not sure if that is really kosher or not. It must have worked, though, because the presiding judge kind of told the other lawyer that they should just drop the suit and move on. Again, I was taking her to a different state, but The Aunt probably has a record, and Munchkin’s brother was certainly no prize either, so it isn’t like he just totally pulled rank. But it clearly helped.

As we have seen, The Judge takes his job very seriously. In October, he called to say that he was visiting his daughter at school in Boston for Parents’ Weekend, and wanted to stop in and see the apartment, Munchkin’s school, etc. I had had a suspicion that he was just checking up on us…which was confirmed when his daughter told me "This is four Parents’ Weekends now, and this is the first one he decided to come to…"

So yes, he came out to make sure that I really was doing right by the little one. I am not gonna lie…I sort of knew that, and I took him to a cocktail reception at Papa Bear’s place before a charity dinner completely because I was trying to impress him…hee hee. That was actually good though, I wanted him to meet Papa Bear and Big Sis and Smoking Hot Roommate, since they are all key parts of Munchkin’s life, too.

Anyway, that is kind of the whole story, in two parts.

Missing out on the good parts of being a Mom

I’m tired…lol. I left at about 5, drove all the way home, got there at 7:30, walked with Munchkin over to vote, then went home ate dinner and pretty much went to bed. The Boy was nice enough to drop by for a bit, and since Munchkin was asleep I did manage to get myself sufficiently laid to last me the rest of the week. I feel pretty good about that;-)

Then I walked out the front door at 5:45 to get here by 8:30, which didn’t leave much time for sleeping. Big Sis took Munchkin to school this morning, and Papa Bear is completely bailing me out by babysitting tonight.

I am going to miss one of my favorite Mom things. Every month or so, the parents of kids in Munchkin’s school get together for drinks. Basically it is just a time to catch up, keep in touch and talk about the school as a whole. The parents are very, very involved with the kids’ schooling, and this is just one of the things they all do to keep up on things.

The mothers and fathers meet separately, just because they like to pretend they still have social lives…Lol…don’t tell them I said that! I am, ahem…[puffing up with pride] the only member of both the Mothers group and the Fathers group. Thank you, thank you…really, your applause is too much!

Anyway, tonight the Father’s are getting together and I am gonna miss it, which is kind of a bummer. I always feel responsible and grown-up when I do things like this, and most of the guys make me laugh. I also run across some of them in the course of work, and I feel good that I can sort of talk to them about work stuff on an (almost) even level. Then the Mother’s all make me rat out what their husbands are like when they aren’t around…lol. They are all perfect gentlemen, I promise;-)

I want to follow up on my story about The Judge, but I don’t have time right now…maybe during lunch if I am by myself and have some time. So check in a little later.

The Judge

Ok, as promised, here is my other story…it is lunchtime and I feel like blogging some more…lucky you!!!

I got a message last night from one of the key people in my life: The Judge. He is, not surprisingly, a judge. More specifically he is a judge working in the Illinois family court system, and in an important capacity (which becomes important later on.) He was just calling to check in on me and see how I was doing, which he does periodically.

Now let’s back up, to when I was about Munchkin’s age…a little older, I was in sixth grade. My mother got arrested for being a drunk, which actually happened three or four times. I think she got thrown out of a bar and drove away despite the warnings of a police officer that if she got in the car they would arrest her. So she did, and they did, and that is bad news.

Shortly after that we were in family court because the state was trying to argue that she was an unfit mother. In truth, at that point she was pretty much a waste product, although she always made it to work and kept me fed, clothed and warm, so she was never a total loss.

After the hearing the Judge went back to his office to think about whatever he was gonna do. I told the attorney that I wanted to talk to the judge, and he relayed it to the bailiff who went to see the judge and came back to get me.

Even doday, I am only about 5’ 1" (that is generous) and weigh 98 pounds (my weight is another story…no I don’t have an eating disorder) and I have always been tiny. The Judge is about 6’ 6" and weighs probably 260 pounds. So little, itty-bitty 12 year-old me went into his office to tell him why I should stay with my mother.

I told him that I didn’t think she could survive without me…lol. Which is kind of cute in hindsight. I said that she needed me to take care of her and that she wasn’t a bad mother but that she wouldn’t be safe if I wasn’t there. She was a drunk, but I never missed any school, had all the regular doctor’s visit a kid is supposed to and had good grades.

In the end, he let me stay with her under some rules. Every Friday he was going to call my teachers to make sure I was in school every day, went to all of my classes, did all of my homework and did well on all of my tests. Then I had to be home at exactly 4:30 every Friday so he could call me after he spoke with all of my teachers.

And he did that every single week through 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grade. By the time I was a sophomore in High School, he told me that he didn’t need to call my teachers any more, but that I had to bring him my report cards every quarter and check in about once a month. And that went on through High School.

He sent me a big bouquet of flowers on my 18th birthday and a long personal letter. At that point he couldn’t tell me to do anything any more;-) but I still talked to him about once a month and always faxed him my grades in college when I got them. When I graduated from College I sent him a framed copy of my degree.

Now, there is absolutely no reason for him to do something like that. He easily could have put me in foster care, or just sent me back to my mother. He didn’t though; he helped me and took a genuine real interest in me at a level that cost him a lot of his personal time and energy. I am not going to lie, there was a LOT of schoolwork that I did only because I knew that The Judge would find out if I didn’t. Would I have ever graduated from High School? I don’t know…I probably would have, but I wouldn’t have done nearly as well and never would have gone to college.

So now he is a friend and I feel a real sense of pride when he tells me that he is proud of me. That friendship actually came in really handy about a year and a half ago, but I am going to leave that part of the story out for now.

Shiny Things

You guys make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside:-) I came in kinda grumpy from a short nights sleep in a strange bed and I had all kinds of well-wishes from people…you are all too sweet!
I really have very little to write about today. I got to the office (not even our office…someone else’s that we are working out of for the time we are here) at 6:45 so that I could get a super early start. And I got a ton done, which makes me feel good. I have to drive back home tonight, which is a pain, but I have to do my civic duty (and let Munchkin help me:-), even though Smoking Hot Roommate already took her to the polling place once.)

Really I don’t mind…it will be good to see the little one, and I really get kind of homesick about sleeping outside of my bed. Yes, I am a baby…

I am actually gonna tell a story. Not sure why, but I alluded to it the other day and I feel like telling it at the moment. And Smoking Hot Roommate said I make her cry yesterday with my gushing about her, so I am gonna do it again. This will make me cry, too…lol. But the guys are in a meeting all morning while I am working on something so no one will see me…hee hee.

It is also in kind of the same general topic of my appreciation for the Rocks. [Oh, by the way, I am now referring to them as the Rocks, which is short for Rockerfeller. No, they are not actually Rockerfellers, but they have a name that sort of goes back like that, so this will work as a substitute].

Anyway…Mrs. Rock (SHR and Big Sis’s Mom, Papa Bear’s wife] died a little over 10 years ago. That has undoubtedly had a dramatic influence on the remarkably close relationship that they all have with each other. Mrs. Rock, from what I hear, had little use for many of the trappings of wealth; with one small exception…she really liked things that sparkled. This is actually a trait that both of her daughters have inherited (OK, so they are girls, and we all like sparkly things…)

Mrs. Rock had a jewelry collection that was substantial. Between things that were passed down through Papa Bear’s family and things he bought for her, she had a spectacular collection of stuff. Since she died, Papa Bear has been giving it to SHR and Big Sis a little bit at a time…birthdays, Christmas, graduations, things like that.

Example: when SHR was 16 or 17, Big Sis was home for a bit (she lived in London for like 6 years) and they went out and got their belly buttons pierced. Which Papa Bear was not happy about and apparently threw quite the tantrum, directed mostly at Big Sis. But three years later, he had an old pair of Mrs. Rock’s diamond earrings remade into matching navel studs for the girls.

Back to my story. Neither Big Sis or SHR wears a ton of jewelry, so in about May, the two of them told Papa Bear that he should start giving it to different people, that they had plenty already. Skip ahead to about July [I am jumping around a lot here, let me know if it is confusing].
Every year, Mrs. Rock’s family, who Papa Bear remains very close with, takes over the beach house for about a week and a half. Some day I will really tell you about the beach house, but for now, just believe me that it’s freaking huge (it is a "house" in the sense that the Taj Mahal is a "tombstone"). Anyway, Papa Bear decided that this would be a good time to give a lot of Mrs. Rock’s old jewelry to her sisters, nieces, etc.

And he likes to be kind of formal and stuff, so he had like a whole speech ready and stood up after dinner one night and told them all that he and SHR and Big Sis wanted them all to have some parts of Mrs. Rock to help remember her. Then he started to give the stuff out and had neat things to say to everyone and about everyone. Yes, there was lots of crying;-)

But then he started talking to me, and he said…I am para-phrasing, I didn’t record it…hee hee… "AM, you are very much a part of this family and I think of you much as I do my two daughters. We have never told you this, but you remind us all of Mrs. Rock, and the two of you would have been great friends. We know that she would want you to have these." They gave me a pair of earrings that I wear almost every day now...hee hee. They are teardrop diamonds with a little stud and a pear-shaped hanging stone. Not only are they nicer than all the other jewelry I have ever owned combined…lol…but they mean a lot more.

So there, one more super-sappy story:-P And yes, I am crying again…so what?!?!?
By the way, I got a message from someone last night that I will talk about later. It is another person I owe a ton to, but it is not quite as happy a story.

Busy Monday

Super busy morning...tons of stuff and most of it is WAAAY over my head. And now I am really tired and frustrated at how little I have gotten done and how much I have left to do. And I am eating Chinese takeout for lunch which is just unbelievably awful. But I really want to do a good job for my two bosses today so that they don't think it was a waste to bring me out here. Which means I should stop complaining.

I have to take a moment to talk about exactly how awesome Smoking Hot Roommate is, though. As a roommate, I come with a certain amount of "baggage" which there is no reason to expect a gorgeous, super-cool 22 year old girl to voluntarily take on. She does it, though, and is great about it all the time. There is a certain amount of parenting responsibility that comes from living with a kid, and she could very easily want nothing to do with that, but she does a lot of it, and she gets a super special, extra warm spot in my heart for it.

I am away tonight, which means that she is responsible for getting Munchkin at school and bringing her home, getting her fed and helping her with any homework she needs help with and watching her and getting her to bed. Obviously, it sort of rules out any other plans she may have had. She doesn't have to take on that responsibility, but she does, and I lover her for it.

Big Sis and Papa bear both get a really similar shout out for doing the same thing a lot, but Smoking Hot Roommate gets more of it, and is kind enough to charge me a MUCH below market rate rent as well:-D

Which kind of gets to the thing I was talking about the other day about families and holidays. And I think Ally was dead on with her comment...not that I don't think The Boy will be around forever (yeah, I am pretty sure he will...there, I said it) but there are certain things that are reserved for families. And I may not be part of the family in the strictest sense, but that is just a detail. They are my family and I am part of theirs and I want to spend Holidays with them because that is who you should be with...the most special people on the most special days.

OK, this went from irritated to corny really, really fast. Sorry about that;-)

Big Doings at Work

I just found out that I am going to be very involved in a monster work-related thing, which is good news and bad news.

The good news is that a partner and a principal that I have only worked with a little bit specifically requested me and cleared my schedule for about three weeks for this. Which I think is a good sign that most of the people in the office find me kind of useful, or at least entertaining. As I explained, I am in kind of a unique situation at work, so sometimes it is hard to tell how I really fit in. And this makes me feel good about it.

The bad news is that I will be busy like a mad woman, which will reduce my ability to waste time and do fun things like blogging. Which is ok...I suppose they pay me to do something...I will find some time to check in here.

The other bad news is that I need to be in Western Mass all week, and have to kind of piece together babysitting. Smoking Hot Roommate is home tomorrow night, so she can take Munchkin Monday (how great is SHR?). After that she is leaving town for about a week and a half, though, which means I need to find other arrangments.

So I can stay out there tommorow, and I will come home Tuesday night...I also promised Munchkin I would take her to vote since she has civics fever this season...which means a 2.5 hour drive Tuesday night and another Wednesday morning...ick. Big Sis says she will stay over Wednesday (someone remind me that I have to call school and tell them who is coming to get her every day...thanks) but she is gone on Thursday, too. So I need a babysitter Thursday to avoid another five hour round trip.

Long and short, it will probably be at least two straight solid 60-70 hour weeks, not counting the commuting. And that 70 hours starts today...right after fantasy football;-)

Discussing the Past

I have some time here before we go out tonight…I have been shopping for a while (kids are really expensive…REALLY expensive) and Munchkin is napping happily on the couch next to me. And I want to talk about another thing I forgot to mention from a couple days ago.

If I could get a little familiar for a second…I think the mood for the following conversation with The Boy has to be set. I had just finished giving him a blow job, which is incidentally one of my very favorite things and something which I will write at length about some day (I seem to promise that a lot…) So we were in the brief time that he was catching his breath and recovering, and I was unbelievably wound up and waiting for him to be ready to go again so that I could get my rocks off…

So while we were laying there (it is kind of a weird dynamic…one person is just absolutely aching to get on to the fucking while the other one is kind of in afterglow) and I asked “How many girls have you slept with?” And literally, the question was halfway out of my mouth and I wished I could have taken it back.

Why? Because it is pretty obvious what follows that…and it was not a question that I really wanted to answer right then and there. So, as expected, he answered with a number that was probably pretty average for a good looking, charming 28 year old guy. And the number itself was not a problem, other than it being WAY less than the answer to the follow-up question from him “How about you?”

Now, I am not a slut. But I do like sex, and I have always liked sex, and I have had a lot of it. I consider a slut to be someone who sleeps with lots of people because of a lack of self esteem that causes a need for validation by sleeping around. I recognize that this is not a universal definition, and that there are a lot of people that would consider me a slut just because of the number of people I have been with. But every person I have ever had sex with has been someone that I had some connection to and genuine like for. I am not sure that makes sense to anyone else, but it makes sense to me.

Back to my story…I am not ashamed or embarrassed of anything I have ever done, and The Boy knows that I am…ahem…not a virgin…because I have told him. Nothing to hide, and nothing I don’t feel I can tell him.

But still, the number itself, which I do know and could recreate in list form exactly, is pretty large. Not large like “432” large, but the number of guys I have been with is larger than The Boy’s number by a factor of about 3.

So yes, once I asked the question I immediately wished that I still had his dick in my mouth and couldn’t have said anything…lol. But then he asked me, and I will admit that I hesitated for a second but then I figured “What the fuck, if he has a problem with it, then I don’t know him like I think I do.” So I told him…I guess in hindsight I could have trimmed the number a bit, but what is the point in that? As Popeye says, I yam what I yam.

I think I sensed some surprise from him….he knows a lot of it, but he is also four and a half years older than me and might have figured that his head start would give him more of a chance;-) He gave me a momentarily disturbing “Really?” but that was kind of about it. And then he said “Well then, I better up my game if I am gonna impress you.”

After that he rolled over on top of me, and as he entered me, I very clearly thought “No you don’t. I am already pretty impressed.”

&'s

One very cold soccer game this morning…at 7:30, it was pretty chilly. I did get to break out my little blue wool stocking hat with a cartoon chicken that says “Chicks Rule!” so it wasn’t too bad…hee hee. This was the last game of the season, too.

I got an email yesterday addressed to a bunch of people, asking if anyone wanted to get together next weekend. Really normal, regular kind of thing. One problem though…in the address bar, everyone is listed by the name that the person has them as in their address book. And lo and behold, my email address…MY email address…is listed as “Accidentally Me & The Boy”.

Whoa…

When did I become an &? I don’t want to be an &!!! Maybe someday, but not for a while. Right now I am very happy being a me…I am an individual with my own personality, my own quirks, my own talents and my own value as a human being. This is not to say that I have never considered the possibility of becoming an &, and specifically being Mrs. Boy. The subject has even come up in passing, but always with the understanding that this is like a “years away” not “months away” kind of thing.

Why does this bother me? I know, it shouldn’t…it is one silly thing that one person wrote next to my email address in her address book. But seriously…what gives her the right to call me an &? That is MY decision. Well, I guess it is our decision, because he sure has a vote, too;-)

But am I at risk of forfeiting my individuality? And did I ever have it? I guess I did during college, when I was most definitely a Me. And then after that I kind of gave it up (not really, but part of it) to be a Mom. And now I don’t want to give up the rest of it to be an &.

At least not yet. I know some people are really looking to settle down, have kids, and be a “couple”. By the way, I absolutely hate the word “couple”…I once told a friend I wasn’t coming to her party because she described it as “Oh, we are just having you guys and a few more couples over”…yea, I am kind of nuts, I know.

I guess I wish that I knew what I wanted in that sense. Take a gander at Green Line Boy. As best I can tell (and I apologize for psychoanalyzing at a distance) he and his girlfriend started dating like two and a half months ago and are both completely committed to being &’s. They seemed to jump right into the stage where they had to see each other virtually every day.

Is there something wrong with me? The Boy and I have been together, officially, for almost 8 months now, and I don’t feel like I am nearly ready for that kind of a relationship. Actually, I take that back…I think we might have that kind of relationship…but I am not ready to start to give up my individuality, nor do I want him to do that, in exchange for being known as a couple.

I never want to be known as half of something. I want to be known as my own person, and I want him to be, too.

Is this possible? Am I pursuing the impossible?

Families and Holidays

I forgot to mention…I got a really cute email from Boyfriend’s Mom yesterday regarding dinner the other night. It was actually a really sweet note about how much they like me being in The Boy’s life.

Then at the end there was just a (possibly) throw away line: “We’d love if you and Munchkin made it to Thanksgiving with us this year.”

Now, holidays are a big deal in his family. His great-grandmother is still alive, so her entire family tree makes a point of gathering as often as possible, which is a LOT of people. I kinda wish they wore nametags to make it easier…lol [Did I mention that the first time I met my father’s family they all wore name tags for me? How cute is that?] And being invited to the big family gathering is no small deal…The Boy was actually kind of hesitant to bring me around because it can be overwhelming, but he finally did for Great Grammy’s birthday last summer. And none of them bite…lol

And I would love to go. Obviously, The Boy is pretty high on my list of people I like to be around;-) and so is his sister and her wife. At this point I know a lot of the other family, too and like seeing them.

So what is the problem, you ask? And please don’t yell at me for this, because I am fragile…lol…but I have too many families now. The irony, of course, being that much of my life has been spent wishing I had more of one, and suddenly I have an embarrassment of riches.

For the last year or two, most Holidays I have spent with Smoking Hot Roommate, Big Sis and Papa Bear and their extended family. They really make me feel like part of the family (when I am home sometime I will tell you what they gave me for my birthday, but I am gonna bawl like an infant, so I can’t do it here), and this is really the first time I have ever looked forward to Holidays just because of the way it makes me feel to be included.

But there is also the Chicago family (families, actually). I would love to see my father’s family more, and these are always great times to do that. There are also some members of my mother’s family that I would like to see as well (others that I would like to see only so I can hit them over the head with a brick). And finally, there is Munchkin’s father’s family, which I feel obligated to get her out to see as often as possible, too. Truthfully, I could do without many of them (like the ones that sued me…) but she should see them.

And then now there is The Boy’s family, too. So while Thanksgiving at The Boy’s sounds like a lot of fun, it would mean missing Thanksgiving with SHR, PB and BS. And either would mean not getting back to Chicago, as well.

Believe me, having too many families is WAY better than the alternative. And I don’t want to sound like I am complaining, because I really am not. I guess I am just lamenting that sometimes there isn’t enough time to see all the people you love, and you have to sacrifice the time with some of them in exchange for others. And that leaves you at risk of missing out on the memories that REALLY make families.
Which I guess is my problem…I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do. Most people get a lifetime to be with their families…I kind of stumbled onto mine when I was in my 20’s. So I have 20 years worth of memories and occasions to catch up on, and there just aren’t enough Holidays.