Happy St. Patrick's Day

 

Of the many topics that Hubby and I have discussed over the past week, two stick out in my mind and make me have more questions than answers.

One, I’ll leave alone for now, the other I will throw out there and go with it.

Our oldest daughter, who is 19, is the topic of this discussion. In the past she has had medical reasons why she couldn’t drive. She has been given the OK by her doctor to drive. That OK came almost a year ago. She still has made no effort to get her license. She depends on her boyfriend, her daddy and me to be her ride to and from work. She missed a day of work over the weekend because her daddy and I had other plans and wouldn’t be able to pick her up when she got off and I’m guessing the BF either couldn’t or just wouldn’t.

We told her in January that by June 13th she needed to have her license because Mama and Daddy weren’t playing taxi-cab any longer. She was also told in January to either go to school or she would have to start paying rent (the money would go into an account for her when she does move out…but she doesn’t know that part). She was also told to start saving her money. She has made no effort to do any of these things. No school, no license, no saving money.

All of these things together are frustrating. We would really like to see her continue her education for her sake. In order to do so, she needs to drive and in order to do both of these, she needs to save money. It’s a vicious circle, which she’s making NO effort to get out of.

The only thing she has to pay is her cell phone bill, which runs about $80 and $20 for her meds. So, at the most that she HAS to fork out is $20 (I pay the insurance premium, the least she could do is pay the $20 copay). The cell phone could take a flying leap and she could save herself $80 but that is not my decision to make. She doesn’t really shop all that much. Occasionally she’ll buy something new but even then generally doesn’t spend more than $10 or $20 for an item. Her average bring home pay is about $200-$250 a week, some weeks being a little less if her hours fall under 30.

Here’s the thing. Let’s just say she brings home $150.00 per week (and that’s the very low end), that’s $600 per month. She pays out $100 per month between her cell phone and her meds, $120 at the most if her phone bill is a little high. She pays NOTHING else. So, if she puts $600 in the bank and only pays $100-$120 per month, then she should be left with $480-$500 in the bank, give or take a little.

Her bank account is hardly ever over a $100 at one time. Where the hell is the money going? It’s not going to rent. She doesn’t have any….YET. It’s not going to school. She’s not even thinking about going. It’s not going in MY gas tank. I’m forking out THAT money. Apparently, it’s not going in the bank.

In my mind, that leaves three good guesses of where it’s going. Drugs, alcohol or the BF. Drugs and alcohol are NOT the culprit. If it was another one of my kids, not saying that they are bad kids because they aren’t but, I might would have to revise my theory a little regarding the other two kids but not with my oldest. I know she’s not into any of that.

She has a different set of problems. It’s called the BF. We, Hubby and I, have this amazingly strong feeling that our daughter is the provider of gas and food for them when they go out. They go out at least a few times a week. This could very well explain the lack of money that she has but when we mention it to her, she says that isn’t the case but she can never really tell us where her money is going.

Short of us treating her like she’s 5 and controlling her money (which is the very next step), I don’t really know what to do about this. She’s been told and told and told ‘til we’re both tired of telling and we’re both tired of nothing changing.

Hubby and I are both dead set on the June 13th deadline as far as the license goes. If she doesn’t have it by then, it’s up to her to find a way to get back and forth to work. If she can’t get back and forth to work, she loses her job. If she loses her job, she can’t stay at home. If she can’t stay at home, she needs somewhere to live.

That’s my biggest dilemma. When the time comes and all of these things that have we have put in front of her aren’t done….Can I really kick my daughter out of the house? Does that make me a bad mother if I do?

Why can’t parenting be much, much easier?

Today my baby turns 16.

I'm sure my son won't appreciate the fact that I called him my baby but he is MY baby.

I don't know what it is about the BABY turning a certain age. I think I mentioned before that even when both girls turned 16 and when the oldest turned 18, it was tough but my son turning 16 hits home way too much. I guess it's because he is the last to mark these milestones. I don't know, I can't explain it.

Either way, it is what it is. It is HIS day.

HAPPY 16TH BIRTHDAY

KENT

Ever have one of those days where you wish you could just wipe it out of your memory or skip it all together?

Yesterday was one of those days for me. If I could just go back to Monday and skip Tuesday all together, I’d feel much better.

It started yesterday morning when I had a visit with my dentist. I say visit, like I was having tea and crumpets with him but it was far from any tea or crumpet I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing.


I make so many trips to this dentist between my kids and myself that I feel like I’m part of the family. I feel like I should be taking my place in the Christmas family photo. Oh and let’s not forget about the cruise he just got back from last week. Since my money helped fund it, I should have been along for the ride. Seems logical to me.

Anyway……..

It was a typical cleaning of the teeth. Scrub, scrub, scrape, scrape, pick, pick, etc. Then the dentist comes in stretches my lips like they’re Silly Putty, does some more scraping and picking then sits me up in the chair to have “The Talk”

“The Talk” consists of him telling me that I have a couple of cavities that need to be filled, I really need to consider having gum surgery on the right side of my mouth, and oh yeah…you’re probably looking at needing four crowns.

Well that’s just fucking great!!! Why don’t I just pull all my damn teeth and get me a nice pretty set of dentures. It would be much cheaper and probably less headache. The only reason I don’t do this and probably a completely idiotic reason is that I really, really want to keep what is mine as long as I can.

After he deals me that blow, he puts my x-ray up on the light thingy and studies it. He makes mention that I have a narrow jawbone. He goes on to point out on the x-ray what he’s talking about. He means exactly what he said. The jawbone itself is pretty thin. As he’s pointing this out to me he kind of chuckles and says, “Hope you never get hit in the jaw”. Which I respond with, “Yeah, no kidding, me either. Not my idea of fun”. He then says that if I was to get hit in the jaw (and it probably wouldn’t have to be very hard) that it’s a good possibility that my jaw would shatter because it’s so thin. Then his assistant adds that car accidents aren’t a good idea either.

No shit???!!!!!!! Really????????? Well that just screwed up my plans for the evening. If I didn’t wreck the truck on the way home, I was going to try my best to get someone to knock the hell out of me.

So after all is said and done, I still need work on my teeth and maybe I should consider investing in a full-face helmet.

Like that dentist visit wasn’t bad enough, I also had to take all three of my kids to an oral surgeon yesterday to find out about taking out their wisdom teeth.

Yep, they need to come out. My son, thankfully, can wait a year or two before really needing his to come out. The two girls need to have theirs out and they both have at least one tooth that is impacted up in the gums that will need to worked on but in order for this doctor to do what he needs to do, the girls need to have their braces on first.

So I’m listening to the doctor explain everything that will need to be done and how it will done and the meds and blah, blah, blah and in my head there’s this little cash resister going “Cha-ching……..Cha-ching……..Cha-ching…….Cha-ching”. I think it finally quit because they broke it.

After we finish with the doctor, we’re moved to the finance department. “Great, here it comes…..Cha-ching…….Cha-ching.” The lady goes over the cost and what insurance will and will not cover. Come to find out, the insurance isn’t going to cover that much of it. Most it will be out of pocket cost (times two). We go on to discuss what needs to be paid up front and what type of payment arrangements needed to be made. When all was said and done, I found that aside from the bottom line price, which really sucks, I could at least live with the payment arrangements.

But wait a minute………..

There may be good news yet. I got a call earlier today from a different lady in the oral surgeons office that told me that the estimate was wrong, that the insurance should be paying more than what was stated on the paper. She apologized and said she would rework the totals and mail the revised estimate to me. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this is truly the case and insurance will pick up more than stated yesterday.

As if my knees didn’t knocked out from under me enough financially yesterday, when we got home, we had to make an emergency trip to the vet for my oldest daughter’s dog.

The dog wasn’t able to walk or stand on her backend. When we tried to help her, she just flopped. She hadn’t been up to use the bathroom at all yesterday that we knew of. There were several different issues going on with her that we suspected but didn’t know for sure and the vet pretty much agreed with us.

She said she could do tests for this, this and this but it might end up being that or it might end up being something else altogether. The more the vet talked, the bleaker it looked.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to do was watch my daughter struggle with the decision of what to do about her dog. I wanted so much to make the decision for her but that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. She’s the one that needed to make the decision and I know it wasn’t an easy one for her. As a parent, the only thing you want to do is take your child’s pain away but it is not always possible. There are some things in life that they have to face on their own and come to terms with on their own but that doesn’t make it any easier or less painful.

She finally made the decision to put the dog to sleep and we went from there. There was lots of crying. She was crying because she lost her dog and I was crying for HER and the dog.

Once the deed was done, they brought her to me to take home. That is a moment I’m not likely to forget. She was still warm and felt like she was asleep. We put her in the truck and headed home. The quiet in the truck was almost unbearable. Especially when the only noise was the occasional sniffle or slight sob. I’m still not sure who was doing more sniffling and sobbing….my daughter or me. All I know is that I drove home through a sheet of tears and there can’t possibly be any snot left in my nose.

By the time we got home, Hubby already had the grave dug so it was just a matter of saying our final good-byes and burying her for good. Not fun. Not pleasant. Not anything I want to have to repeat anytime soon but the sad thing is I know it won’t be long before we will have to do the same thing with Baxter.

So that wraps up my day off of work yesterday. Is there any wonder my head feels like it’s about to explode today????

CALGON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where are you when I need you????????

Ok….I want to know……..How much STRANGE can one person take in a week?

I’ve already shared my STRANGE experience with my height phobia that kicked in over the weekend. Tuesday night another STRANGE thing happened to me. Not a quite a phobia this time but fear just the same.

I think I’ve tried to explain “The Tavern” before but for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, it started out as your typical storage shed then was added onto and has since been converted into our poolroom/gameroom/bar.



This is where I go sometimes when I just want to be alone or just to jam to some music. That’s what I was doing Tuesday night. I went down there, switched on the light over the pool table, put in some CD’s, popped open a beer and had a seat. Everything was going fine (other than it was a little chilly in there with no fire). One CD played all the way through then it switched to the next CD.

Once the next CD started playing, it only played for about 30-40 seconds then the volume started going down. I noticed it right away and for whatever reason thought that Hubby had somehow got past me and turned it down. I looked over to where the stereo sits and didn’t see anyone so I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and thought “HMPH…that’s odd.”

Then a few seconds later, the volume went down some more. I continue to look in the general direction of the stereo wondering what the hell is going on. Within the space of about 20-30 seconds, the volume went completely silent.

I walked over to the stereo and noticed that the volume was on 0. I turned the volume button and the volume went up like it was supposed to. I have no idea how the volume turned down and made it back to 0 and I didn’t stick around to find out. The hairs on my arms were standing at attention and my heart was racing like it was in the Kentucky Derby.

I made a mad dash across the yard and into the house. My son and youngest daughter asked me what was wrong. I must have had a weird look on my face or something. I went on to explain to them what had happened and my daughter made the vow to never go in the “Tavern” again.

After a few minutes, my son and I walked back down there. He was curious and I wanted someone with me. We went back in the “Tavern”, turned the light back on, turned the stereo back on and sat there talking for a few minutes.

Needless to say, nothing out of the ordinary happened. My son stayed down there for a little bit then decided to go inside. I stayed. I think I just wanted to prove to myself that it was nothing or even if it was something, then I wasn’t going to let it get the best of me. I did go outside and Baxter (our dog) and bring him inside with me though. I’m not THAT brave. Not that Baxter would’ve done anything anyway. If we were to hear or see something that night, we would’ve looked like Shaggy and Scooby, tripping over each other.