A place to hang the dishes.

I have been looking at a house.

We went twice this weekend.

Daughter loves said house. Has declared it the "NEW MOMMY HOUSE" despite the fact that it is not "lellow" like the last Mommy House.

There is enough room for all four of us (Daughter, Boyfriend, and Boyfriend's Son should he choose to spend any amount of time with us which we are all hoping that he will choose to do.)

Its pretty 80's which isn't a major complement in this town. It needs some work, but some of the big upgrades have been done...the kitchen is very stainless and steely.

Dear, sweet, compassionate Boyfriend who has never in his life bought so much as a decent car, has pretty much signed on to buying this place having only seen a steady stream of photos in an effort to keep me moderately sane. Things have not been going very well in the Current Living Situation/Sanity Department. Not very well at all.

In September, Daughter and I relocated back here. Since that time I have been staying at my parents' house and she has been splitting her time between her Dad's House and here. I think (hope?) that it is challenging for people who have a positive, well-boundaried relationship with their children's grandparents to reside in the same place. We do not have such a relationship and it is more or less hell. Mostly for me. Daughter likes it here, but even she has been asking more and more and more and more about When! there will be! a New. Mommy. House?

There was an incident this past week that really put the last nail in the coffin (pulled the last nail out of the coffin?) of my ability to stay here. It involved my sister and her husband and a bunch of people hiding from me the fact that they were coming for a ten day long visit. Which was difficult. My relationship with those two people was more or less sacrificed on the alter of my divorce and I'm ok with that. We don't like each other. We don't see the world even REMOTELY similarly and we can not find a common, civil ground, but so long as I am staying in this house with my child I feel that I have a right to know who else will be here so that I can judge whether or not I need to make alternative plans for my child and I to maximize our time together and to minimize emotion! and stress! that she may be subjected to if there are people in the house who refuse to look at/speak to/acknowledge the presence of her mother in a room (just for example).

I feel like I was intentionally deceived and that I have no reason to trust my parents. Period. For the last time. So, despite the fact that Boyfriend isn't here yet (will be at the end of April) and that shopping for a house would be a new, interesting thing for him, we have decided that we need to get out of this environment and into something else as quickly as possible.

Hence the house hunting. Please send good karma our way. We really need a break in the weather and a light at the end of the tunnel. At least I do. I need something in my life to tell me that I can hold my shit together. That my long, three year adventure of living in boxes while attempting to raise a well adjusted child will soon be coming to an end. That at long last we can look at each other and say that we are moved into a life with a set course and a real path to follow. (And also a place to hang all my beautiful pots and pans that have been wasting away in storage for months and months and months and months and months and months and months...

so, i finally broke down and went to the gym

So, I finally broke down and went to the gym. I have been waiting (in vein) for my running motivation to return as the temperature steadily drops. I blamed the stress of the election, which will not conclude here until this week. I blamed the goddamned cold and the snow and the ice and the dark and the goddamned cold. I blamed well my own laziness and not wanting to be apart from Daughter for a whole hour and readjusting to living in the same house as my Boyfriend and well then I decided that this was happening a few days ago (Update: It is SO. NOT. Whew! Curious concern: What's up with the plethora of symptoms? Huh? Huh, body, don't start screwing with me now...)

I have had a gym membership for just about exactly two years now. Daughter and I use it to go to the pool. I mostly use it for tanning. On Election Day I went straight to the steam room after two hours of subzero sign waving. I Love The Steam Room.

I have been a very lousy gym member since I discovered that I actually enjoy running out of doors. Treadmills are kind of a bore after that. Also, the gym nearest my parents' house, the one with the pool that Daughter and I use, is my least favorite for anything but swimming. The room with the cardio stuff is not as well ventilated as it could be and is hot and has three rows of televisions which means that I always wind up running underneath a television which make me uneasy. Also, its full of housewives. Southside housewives. Who are kind of, in my opinion, the Stripmallville variety of The Housewives of Orange County. Really obnoxious oil company exec spouses who can kind of bite me. They also sort of stink eye me. I think they think I'm a trophy wife. Since I am about 15 years younger than they are and there with a young kid and really no one my age who has a kid lives in this part of town because it is damned expensive, etc. etc. etc. Anyway, according to my theory, the fact that CLEARLY I have stolen someones husband makes me their natural enemy so they get all clique-e and don't talk to me or my kid and they can bite my divorced and living with my parents single mother ass...(which, thanks to all the running is way hotter than theirs. So there.)

The gym I like is on the other side of town. It is conveniently located close to Daughter's school. So today, I got off my ass and after I dropped Boyfriend at the airport went to the good gym with the friendly, educated, less obnoxious and way more athletic people. Where, at 10:45 is filled primarily with retirees and a couple of housewives who are only five-ten years older than me. It only has one row of televisions all located at the front of the well ventilated treadmill room and the treadmills are much better as all the good runners in town work out there.

I did 45 minutes on the treadmill. I really don't like treadmill running. I used to. I'm better at pacing myself now and according to the treadmill I run a lot slower than I think that I do on trails. Which sort of bums me out, but I'm trying to work through it. I even did some crunches on a ball and some pilates push ups on a mat after I ran. And I took a glorious, glorious steam. So, I am resigning myself to get back into the gym routine. I am flirting with the idea of adding a twice weekly Pilates class and a couple of spin classes into my routine for the winter because, seriously, I can only do so much treadmill running before I ache more than I should. We are adding Boyfriend onto my membership after the new year and I think that spin would be good for him too. Although he hates group exercise and is reluctant to even run in public. Which I think is weird.

I also am going to force FORCE myself to run outside once a week through the winter. But only when it is above 20 degrees. Below twenty is freaking crazy stupid and painful.

Ok. So there it is. I went to the gym. I ran for the first time in two weeks. (Oh? Did I forget to mention I have been LAME?). I did not freeze my lungs. I did not fall on ice and break my bones. These are nice things. I DID fantasize about being in Seattle for four days and getting to run at Greenlake in 50 degree weather. I really can't wait for that.

file this under things that will break your heart and make you cry uncle

When Daughter and I returned to Stripmallville from where we had been living she jumped headfirst into an entirely new family. Her Dad and his Girlfriend have two little boys. Her son is going to be two this weekend and they had a baby together in September about a week before we arrived.

On the whole, Daughter has been handling the whole thing like a superstar. No big fits. No big DRAMA! No open resentment towards her Baby Brother or her Little Brother. The two toddlers have had a little give and take and adjustments to living together in a house that she used to share solely with her father.

She has had two tell tale signs of early big sisterhood though. Number one, she has almost completely stopped using the potty. Even at my house. Which is annoying to me since we spent SO. MUCH. TIME. THIS. SUMMER. Doing the whole potty training thing.

Number two is the bottle. She wants to have a bottle all the time instead of sippy cups or big cups. We still have a bottle laying around that has, for months and months, been reserved for EMERGENCY COMFORT PURPOSES ONLY.

Today, she was bargaining for the bottle. Promising to use the potty for the rest of the day if she could have her soy milk in a bottle. And she's tired. And I'm a pretty easy pushover. And, so, I agreed.

And after I handed her the bottle she tucked it under her arm and lifted her arm up to me and said "Up Mommy. Pick me up." Which I did and then she instructed me "Now we sit in Papa's rocker. Now I get MY snuggle time just like Baby Brother." And she nuzzled in like a nursing baby and laid there in my lap while I rocked us back and forth for three straight bottles.

And my heart swelled and broke for her.

But I enjoyed the snuggle.

Radio Interference

I am living in the town where I grew up. Well, where I finished elementary school, survived junior high, made it out of high school more or less in one piece, went to college, got married, had a baby, got divorced, fell to pieces.

For the moment, I am staying with my parents. In my high school bedroom. Driving my kid around town in my Dad's giant suburban.

There is a lot that is seriously cracked about this situation. And I think things will ease up a bit after Boyfriend relocates and we get a real house of our own and into a daily routine that does not involve me asking my parents permission to go places.

I'm sure this is the case, however, I still don't know what to do about the radio.

It seems that no one in the radio industry here has discovered that the nineties are over. Every other damn son is some ballad that debuted sometime between 1995 and 1998. I swear.

I think this is adding to my anxiety. It is making me seriously angsty. And, well, more or less pissed off whenever I am in the car. Even music that I LIKE is making me nutty, because it just drives home that this is a place that I don't like filled with memories and people that I am not supposed to have to face everyday as a grown up. As someone's mother.

To make matters even more 'fun', I can't seem to go ANYWHERE without running into people that I know, or recognize, or vaguely dislike. Yesterday, I went to Nordstroms to by some eye creme because there is no humidity here and I'm starting to look old and the girl behind the counter was from my 9th grade French Class. I don't think she recognized me. She kept referring to me as Ma'am. Wha? Seriously? I got "Ma'am-d" by someone MY OWN AGE? That's hawt.

This morning, Daughter and I stopped for coffee on the way to pre-school and the girl behind us in line and I had shared a locker in 9th grade. Ugh. The girl behind the counter is good friends with a good friend of mine and used to date (or who knows is presently dating) the son of the former Lt. Governor who was the first campaign (for Governor) that I ever worked on.

My best friend in the whole world is back in town too. We are spending a significant amount of time watching videos on my parents' couch, driving around in our parents' vehicles, and trying to figure out our next moves.

I am feeling like a teenage mother. An angsty, angry, tired teenage mother who is living with her parents and still has to follow the rules, even as she is enforcing rules (that OH! Do her own parents break) for her own child.

No wonder the sales girl from french class was pushing the anti-aging serums. Ouch.