Six months. Wow.
Ready for this? I'm watching a show on RVs on cable TV.
Cable? Me? Who would've guessed? Not the only thing I didn't see coming. Cell phones for the kids, a new "smart phone" for me, a new car, a Wii, golf clubs, teen pregnancy, teen depression, teen court dates... my mother has some kind of leukemia, my sister asked me to co-sign for a loan for her schooling. I've joined a book club and an Artist's Way group, trying to give myself some regularly scheduled events that put doing things I like to do on my priority list.
Quite frankly, I'm enjoying seeing the things people have done to their RVs. It looks fun and free and like a way to meet a lot of really interesting people. I hope my future holds some of that. If I ended up alone, a little teardrop would work, but with a crowd, the fire-engine base looks promising.
Parenting
Probably the hardest part has been watching the kids struggle to get along in a new place, dealing with new limits and a new lack of privacy. The older kids have flown the coop, not really ready to be adults but not willing to be children in an unfamiliar place - they have returned to their old haunting grounds and they don't want our guidance. We hope they have learned enough to keep out of more trouble until they gain some maturity. The younger ones want to be little adults as well, but we are trying hard to insert parenting into their world, to teach them the things they need to know, trying hard to not push them away with too many rules at once. When they are getting F's you can't expect A's right away, so we are asking for C's and they seem to be okay with that. They are all capable of more than that. They are interesting and creative and crude and bold. Their friends tell them parents don't care and we have to keep telling them that we care, that we love them, that they are important. We have to teach them that they need to learn from their mistakes, that it doesn't make them unlovable or unworthy. My heart aches for them.
Wishing
Their mom still talks about taking them away to some other state. This makes part of me afraid to get close to them, because it will tear me apart if they go... I'm getting closer anyway, because they need as much love and understanding as they can get. I hope they stay.
Money
I go between feeling okay and feeling desperate about the money things. I know we're not going to starve anytime soon, but having the kids around and wanting things to be convenient takes more money than I plan on spending. I'm still surprised at how much we spend every month, but I can't really say that anything was a horrible waste of money. It's hard to get in there and make sure that something gets moved into savings from time to time. His car has been one of the worst money-suckers, making me so afraid of getting a bad used car that I went ahead and got a new car, something I had claimed I would never do. Aaargh!! He doesn't feel the anxiety of knowing that our savings won't take us longer than about a month and a half if we both lose our jobs. Okay, so maybe it won't happen, but last year it wasn't so remote a possibility - both of our companies were making drastic cuts, and I'm not ready to say it won't happen again. Yes, the cell phones are an expense, but they do two things we couldn't do without them: it gives the kids something of their own that they can be in control of and feel some freedom at the same time, and it gives us something to use for making pretty clear rules about grades and behavior. If it works, it will be priceless.
Formatting
Someone broke the formatting. Thanks for making me edit the HTML.
