you can wipe your ass with my damn house

welcome to my life right now.

Aside from starting the day dealing with FECESCAPADE 2.0, it was a relatively normal day. Did lots of laundry, cleaned in the kitchen, cleaned more in Oksana's room (found more hidden pockets of cat pee, and lots more toys that need to be cleaned thanks to that), took care of animals and kids. Talked to OJ about our 2012 budget and wrote out a document that lays out where the money should go from each paycheck. Butted heads a couple times over how to best deal with money. Agreed to start taking the Financial Peace University class that starts next Tuesday. I'm sure we'll butt heads some more, but I think the group support will be good for us.

Right now our financial strategy consists of figuring out which steps would fuck us over the most for the longest, and then taking what appears to be the best path in that minefield. Walk away from the house? Short sell? Declare bankruptcy? Can we declare selective bankruptcy and keep some of our accounts out of it? Just stop paying some of our credit cards and wait until they sell them to collections and settle then? Pay off all the rest of our debt? Keep deferring things like student loans for the rest of our godforsaken lives? Decisions like that, where none of them are any good but some are (I guess) better than others.

I was surprised today when my mother told me that one of my cousins, whom I've always considered very savvy, thinks that the best thing for us is to walk away from our home. I know some of my other relatives think that's the case, but to hear that someone who is wealthy, intelligent and well-informed on a lot of matters like this agrees kind of surprised me. It's still hard for me to wrap my mind around. I mean, I understand that our house is worth about $100,000 less than what we owe on it... and that there's a good chance we'd never even get back to up to amount we owe on it in our lifetimes. But it was a risk we took, an obligation we signed up for, not to mention an emotional investment as well... and it's just hard for me to say 'ok, time to walk away'. Part of it feels right, but a lot of it feels wrong. I hate welshing on obligations and I hate the idea that my decision will make the overall economic climate worse.

Financial Peace

I've always been a fan of Dave Ramsey, but I've never really put effort into following his ideas... or much of any ideas about finances, really. I'd dabble in fixing our finances but never really committed for more than a short while. Good intentions, bad follow-through. After reading about a friend's experience with Dave's Financial Peace University (and her recent encouragement to check out one of the local FPU classes that will be starting soon), I convinced OJ that we should take the class. It's $100, not very much to spend on one's financial future. I think taking it together, spending dedicated time for 12 weeks talking about our finances and ways to make things better, working together and finally building a solid partnered financial foundation in our marriage, is a good idea.

OJ is skeptical about the fact that it is a Christian-based program and that it is held at a church. He's become very atheist over the past year or two. I told him there was no way I was entertaining the idea of moving to the Bible Belt (North Carolina) with him if he wouldn't even take a class because it was held at a church. I'm sure we can filter out any God messages and apply them in our own spiritual / ethical / moral way. He also doesn't love the idea of paying someone (AKA making THEM rich) to give us 'financial peace', but I maintain that people's time and efforts are worth paying for if we learn something / get value from it. AND, as I said, $100 is not that much for two people to invest in a 12-week class.

I don't know which class we will be taking yet; I have sent an email to the most likely one with some questions. Hopefully we'll be able to start soon.

I wonder if there's a way to take these methods and convert them in such a way that they could be applicable to weight loss and clutter management. I could become the next guru of fixing up your life!

I Am A Recovering Hoarder

This is the area I've recently spent the most time on in my home. I've been, quite frankly, dreading showing these pictures to the world at large. It's no secret to my family and friends, and while everyone chides me from time to time about being messy (except for my brethren-in-chaos, who sympathize with my plight), it's just sort of an accepted fact.

When I'm showing the world at large though, or even when I'm sitting privately in a room talking to my new therapist about some of the possible OCD tendencies I have, and I'm trying to describe my problems and really face up to them so I can fix them and move past, it sort of stares me right in the face: I have hoarding tendencies. I may, in fact, be a hoarder.

I might be something of a hoarder in recovery, because getting rid of most things has become much, MUCH easier for me over the years, BUT it's an overwhelming task to accomplish on my own. It's an overwhelming task to accomplish while struggling to learn how to organize things that I keep, balance housework, tending to a family, working (in whatever form it may appear in my life; nowadays that's primarily writing), having hobbies, having a social life, and just generally feeling overwhelmed and anxious almost all of the time. I'm trying to take it day by day and do my best.

I was, am, horribly embarrassed to share the before pictures with the world. This was my dining room. This is the room people see when they come to my house. This is what greeted anyone that happened to look through my GIANT GLASS FRONT DOOR. This is one of the rooms we tended to use the most. How did we ever function around all of this?

This isn't even the worst of it. That's the part that really embarrasses me. Just one room, eh, everyone's life can get a little out of control from time to time. But this was our most LIVABLE room. So, yes, there's more to come.

But for now, I will revel in the accomplishment I have achieved over the past week, and enjoy my peaceful, organized, clean dining room.

This is directly across from the front door; that's our dining room table, piled high with god-knows-what. We generally just ate all our meals on my bed, in front of the TV.


Now, a peaceful oasis! The file cabinet will not be living there permanently; I just happened to acquire it from a friend moments before these pictures were taken. Its new home isn't quite ready for it yet. Also, I need to pretty it up a little bit.


I couldn't get the exact angle at my computer desk corner because there was too much stuff in the way.


Now, it's like my own little office in the corner! All of the boxes / bags to the right are where the file cabinet is living now; they were full of paper. Now the file cabinet is full of paper! It still needs to be sorted through and organized but I kind of need more therapy for that. I have a real big problem with paper.


Facing the front door. I didn't take a before shot UP the wall because there was no real reason to; the focus was the floor. All that laundry! You might think I sorted it all out there to make it look worse, but in actuality I had sorted it out there a week or so prior, and the dogs went tearing through and mixed it all up, and feeling defeated, I just... left it there. For a week or so.


But it's gone now! Sorted in the basement and DONE, even. In its place is that great entryway organizer from IKEA. We'll be bringing it a little lower on the wall; it's a bit awkward in its current placement. Eventually the cedar chest will be going where the kids' desk is, but that won't be until we finish the basement, allowing us to move down there and give the kids their own bedrooms (they currently share one now).


More of Mount Laundry. All of those boxes, they're mostly empty in that picture; they were full of things I had packed when I thought my husband and I were getting divorced and I was going to move out (that kind of throws a big wrench into life plans and 'getting things done' too, let me tell you). They ended up turning into 'purging and garage sale' boxes. The cedar chest, which you can barely see there, is where it actually BELONGS, but we moved it to the other wall temporarily to make space for the kids' desk.


The currently-finished area with the kids' desk and art supply box. Yes, it's the first thing you see when you walk in the door, but it's a heck of a lot better than Laundry Hill and Box Mountain! It will eventually live in one of the kids' rooms, once we're able to GIVE them separate bedrooms, but for now I can live with this arrangement.


It can be really hard to get a feel for a room based on pictures. What I love most about this current arrangement is that it feels like the room is divided into sections. We have a small two-bedroom ranch house with four people, two dogs and a cat; we really need every room to be efficient and, often, multipurpose. This way, it feels like the room has a separate entryway, a dining area, and a small office / social area. (My desk cabinet can easily be closed to look like a nice piece of furniture, and the chair turned to make this area a small seating nook when friends visit.) It's clean, it's attractive, it's welcoming and it's PEACEFUL.

It gives me hope for the rest of my house.

When Dreams Die

I've been avoiding writing here a lot lately because, frankly, I don't know what to say. I have a sort of diarrhea of the mouth, you see; I open it, and things come out that I never intended. This is true in my writing too (what is that, diarrhea of the fingers?). Due to the somewhat delicate nature of things in my life right now, I've been trying to avoid saying anything at all.

But writing is my life. Avoiding it feels unnatural to me. Moreover, I feel STIFLED when I don't write; things feel more and more wrong, until one day I'm crawling out of my skin for lack of expressing myself.

Writing is also a form of therapy for me. It helps me work things out, work out feelings and thoughts so I can move on with my life. Blogging helps me feel less alone. And I've not felt this alone in quite a long time. I'm at a loss. I've written five mostly-private entries in my livejournal in the last 24 hours, and yet this feeling still grows. I think my small group of friends there is largely at a loss as to what to say to me anymore. So I write here, in the hopes that maybe someone out there will understand, and maybe have some words of comfort. Or maybe in days or weeks or months to come, my words will touch one of you who is going through this, and you will feel less alone. No one should have to feel this way.

This is a blog about my life, and more than anything, a blog about my dreams. I've been married for six years; I'd always wanted to find a partner and fall in love and get married. A large number of my dreams have been built around the belief that I would have a partner in life; many of them were built after I met my husband, with a vision of us doing these things together.

When you're a dreamer, one thing you inevitably have to come to terms with is the knowledge that not all of your dreams come true. Sometimes they fall by the wayside in lieu of other, bigger, better dreams. Sometimes your priorities in life change. Sometimes they aren't as timely as they once were. And sometimes, sometimes they die in a fiery, burning, painful crash, and you are left to pick up the pieces of your life and start all over again.

My husband and I are going through a rough patch in our lives together right now. We're separating. I don't know much beyond that at this point. I can't do much but deal with the day to day right now, or it feels like I'm going insane. As this is a public forum, I don't really want to get into the details here; it's not fair to either of us, and it's not likely to be helpful. Though most of the people in our lives already know it, admitting it in public is still painful. But I'm reaching a point where NOT talking about it feels worse, and I don't want to go on avoiding my blogs, my writing, my lifelines anymore.

I am, possibly understandably, having a lot of trouble sleeping lately. I toss and I turn, I'm plagued by nightmares. I feel like I'm sleepwalking a lot while I'm awake. We're still living in the same house, just sleeping apart; we're trying to get the house packed up and fixed up to rent so we can get separate apartments in the city. I am praying this all works out, that this house will rent and rent for the amount we need, because we can't afford to sell it and neither of us can afford to stay here either. Furthermore, I WANT to get into the city, where I have a good support network and feel like I have a much better chance of moving on with my life. I try to focus on the work I need to do, and tuck the emotions away, and just tackle one task at a time.

I'm having trouble with that today. It's Mother's Day, and it's killing me this year. For a number of reasons. He asked me earlier this week if he could take me out somewhere. "You're still the mother of my children, no matter what happens between us, and I'd like that very much," he told me. I said it was OK. The closer it comes, the more I am dreading it. I know he has something planned, I have no idea what it is. He and the kids are both excited about it. I'm not. I want to spend my day with my children. I want to have a husband who wants to treat me like I'm special on Mother's Day. It's never happened before, really. We've had some 'ok' Mother's Days, and we've had some downright shitty ones. We've never had a really GOOD one. I don't know what he's planning this year, and I just feel like it's all overshadowed by the pain of the past. The more he tries right now, the more it hurts me, because none of these things seemed important to him before, back when it mattered to me. Now it just brings me pain. Mother's Day feels terrible to me this year. Worse than it ever has, possibly even worse than our first one together, which was AWFUL, though I won't get into that here. It feels terrible because being a mother means you are also a partner; also a wife. To me, Mother's Day and Father's Day are days to celebrate your PARTNER, the person you picked to be the other parent of your children, because they are special and beautiful and wonderful to you, because you can't imagine anyone else raising your children. Since our first year of marriage, I've never really and truly felt like he looked at me that way, exactly. For a few years I was certain he didn't. The last couple of years have been a bit better, but I've never fully regained my confidence in that arena.
And this year, well, I'll be with him... but really, I'm alone. I have no partner. I have no hope for being a mother AGAIN, to more children. Which brings me to the other reason this day is particularly hard for me this year:

I am mourning the loss of my next baby. Or babies. I had gotten to a point where I had decided that yes, I did indeed want to have a third baby. I was back to thinking that maybe, if health and money allowed, I wouldn't even mind trying for a fourth or a fifth again some day. That maybe five kids WAS what I wanted, just like I used to back in The Day. (You know those days, The Days before you ever had kids and you dreamt about what your ideal family would be like? And then reality hit and you realized you were fucking nuts? Yeah, Those Days.)

Maybe four or five was out of the question, but three had come to seem like a definite possibility. In a year or so. When the IUD was ready to come out, when I had my diabetes under better control, when we had a bigger house and hopefully a slightly better income. I have been dreaming about being able to have a much better pregnancy experience this time around, one where I am not a slave to someone else (an employer, I mean) and one where my husband is much more supportive and kind and loving, and I could get excited for the baby and maybe, MAYBE, even plan a REAL nursery. One where I could stay home with the baby afterwards and wouldn't have to stress about breastfeeding and having only six weeks to DO it before having to go back to an office for TWELVE HOURS A DAY, where I could take all the knowledge I've gained from having two babies already and apply it to baby number three for a much happier, crunchier, babywearing experience. (I don't say 'natural' because HELLO EPIDURAL YOU ARE STILL MY BEST FRIEND.) I was doing that thing I do so well... dreaming. I was allowing myself to indulge, privately, in a dream that was growing to epic proportions. Oh, I know I've made some noises here and there about considering wanting a third baby, in time, but I really haven't let on to ANYONE, not even my husband, exactly how large I'd let those dreams grow. How out of hand they'd gotten. I thought that as the circumstances towards the goal improved, I'd open up slowly with them. No sense in sharing TOO much when it's not a possibility right now, is there. But in my heart of hearts, this desire firmly took root and I began making plans. Lots and lots of plans. I began to dream. More than that, I began to HOPE. I began to hope that everything that was difficult the first two times around might be different this time. I EVEN began to hope that maybe, just MAYBE, this third time, maybe my mother would finally tell me "CONGRATULATIONS!" when I shared the news, instead of "OH NO!" (or other general sounds of dismay). That maybe THIS time we'd have enough money and a big enough house and the right, well, everything to make her finally just be HAPPY for me. And maybe that last little bit of the dream was too much to ask for, because I doubt she'll ever be the kind of person who DOESN'T find SOMETHING to worry about immediately, but I had even grown foolish enough to hope and dream for a loving reaction from my mother too.

And it's all a moot point now because I can't even fathom how any of this could possibly be now. My marriage is falling apart. My LIFE is falling apart. When things started to go south, so many weeks ago, this dream rolled around and around in my head for a while. When I was first thinking about whether or not we should stay together and whether or not it was right, I gave a lot of thought to finding some other man to love me, to raise my children, to have more children with. It's a thought that was difficult to fathom. I couldn't even COMPREHEND having children with another man. I don't WANT my children to have half-siblings and step-siblings. Not because it's BAD, but because I married my husband out of love, out of a desire to have children with him and only him. Because we MEANT forever when we made our vows. Because we made such beautiful, wonderful, smart, crazy-special-unique-wonderful little people already. I couldn't imagine making children like this with anyone else. My children were one of the things, early on, that gave me the strongest sense of hope for my marriage. We couldn't have made children like this together if we didn't have something good going on.

Things have obviously disintegrated over time. Some truly terrible shit has happened between us. I'm facing, now, a terrible feeling that I will never be able to trust and love this man like I did, like I wanted to, like I MEANT to. With that knowledge, and the knowledge of things that have passed between us, I am faced with a terrible grief; I can't imagine having more children with this man. I can't imagine ever getting to a point where I trust him enough to believe he will give me what I need to feel safe sharing a pregnancy with him, sharing another child with him. This feeling brings a terrible grief, more than perhaps anything else in this process has so far.

Likewise, I cannot imagine being with someone else and having children with them. My own self esteem problems prevent me from believing that I will ever find a man who really wants to be with me again; I worry that I won't be interested in the ones that might be interested in me, and I am certain that the ones I become interested in WON'T be interested in me. I literally can't fathom it, and it's largely a looks-based issue. I've let myself go terribly, and I hope that I do regain confidence as I regain a thinner, healthier body. But right now, I can't imagine being with someone else in an intimate fashion. It will take at least a year to get myself back into something resembling decent shape. Which is probably at least as long as it will take to separate and divorce, if we go that route. This is assuming I am able to keep up an exercise and healthy eating schedule on top of the stress of getting divorced and being a single mother and working who knows how many jobs to support my family.
Assuming we scale THOSE hurdles, then I have to deal with the daunting idea that not only does a future man have to be perfect for ME, he also has to be perfect for my kids. He has to be good to them and love them as a father and be a good fit for our family. I can't even... I just can't imagine this happening. I know it DOES happen, to other people, but I can't imagine it happening to us. And I won't sacrifice on this point. Anyone I date with anything resembling serious overtones MUST be an excellent fit for my children, or it isn't even a possibility in my mind.
And THEN there's the time factor... meeting someone that is a good fit for me, and THEN a good fit for my children, and dating them long enough to be sure, and getting married, and then BEING married for a while before children are even a thought, because LAST time I was pregnant before I was even married and I saw how much damage THAT did to my relationship, I am NOT doing that again; it will be years before we are anywhere near a place to have children. YEARS.

I know there is no telling what will happen in the future, and worrying about something like this might sound stupid, but it's something I am mourning nonetheless. Right now it feels like I am setting myself out on a course to grow old and die alone. I am mostly OK with that part of it, it's not what I wanted certainly, but I DO have family and friends that love me, and I DO have two beautiful children who bring me immense happiness every day. I DO have dreams that I can pursue on my own and that will bring me great fulfillment. I may never have a loving partner to truly share my life with, and that makes me sad, but I can deal with that. I AM dealing with that.

But having to give up my dream of the large family, or even the 'slightly larger' family? The dream that was slowly growing within me, every day? I am mourning that loss heavily. It's hitting me really, REALLY hard.

It feels like so many of my dreams are crumbling to dust around me, and I'm having to sift through the detritus, pull out the ones that are salvageable, and tend to them all alone.

This day is so much harder for me than I ever imagined it would be. I feel a bit like I've been sucker-punched.

happy anniversary

I just updated my profile to reflect that OJ and I have been married for five years as of...today. Five years. There have been times I didn't think we'd make it this long. Then again, there have been times where I've envisioned our whole lives together stretching out before us, and five years seems like nothing. It's all a matter of perspective.

It's been a rough five years; one thing I do not recommend to new couples just starting out is to have children immediately. On the one hand, I am thrilled that we had children relatively young and am really looking forward to spending my 'mature' years with grown children. On the other hand, having children changes the dynamic of your relationship, and so much of your daily life, so drastically that I think it's really advisable to spend some time enjoying each other before taking that step, if possible. We didn't do that; I can't say I regret our choices because there has been so much joy in my life in the last five years. But I can say I had no idea, really, what I was getting myself into. I can also say that I think my relationship with my husband is much different than it would have been if we had waited to have children. In many ways, I think it would have been easier. OJ likens marriage to a rock tumbler; we are the rocks, and when we come together at first we scrape each other quite a bit with our sharp edges. Over time, we smooth things out and create grooves for each other and we come to fit together perfectly. Having kids added a couple extra rocks to the tumbler; there were definitely a number of sharp edges and scrapes for a while.

Nowadays? Well, I happen to think OJ and I both started as a couple of really spiny rocks. A lot of those edges are worn smooth, but we still scrape each other occasionally. We've really gotten into the rhythm of the rock tumbler though, and I have really come to appreciate our grooves. And those two little rocks we added so early? Are really beautiful gems.

I've never done things the easy way. I don't know why I would expect my marriage to be any different. But while I can look back and see how it might have BEEN easier...I wouldn't have it any other way. I am really looking forward to what the next five years will bring.