Lying, Cheating Bastards (and the floozies they flooze with)

So, as it turns out, I do need to find another means by which to support myself.  And I will.  Because I am a strong woman and I can do it.  I haven’t felt that way in quite some time, but for the benefit of myself, my integrity, and my kids, I have to find it again.

I discovered a couple of days ago that my husband was cheating all along.  With the floozy that I suspected him of cheating with, which he vehemently denied and called me silly and paranoid.  That’s not the worst though.  I could understand cheating.  Really I could.  I was reading through their facebook love messages to each other, and they are more or less waiting for me to hurry up and die so that she can come pick up my boys and take her boys and my boys all together to live in Greece for happily ever after.  THAT threw me for a loop and I’m still reeling from the shock of it.  Does he not realize that he could just as easily DIVORCE me?  I mean, I keep going back and thinking I must have read it wrong, but the conversation goes something like:
Her: Isn’t her disease terminal?

Him: Supposedly

Her:  How long do people live with it?

Him: Usually like 5 years they told her, and it’s been two and a half so it can’t be long.

Yes, really.  I printed and screen capped and saved everything, but damn.  I keep remembering little things, like when I was in the ICU fighting to breathe following my open lung biopsy, guess who was watching my kids?  You guessed it.  She has pictures of MY kids on her facebook.  Which I’m going to kindly ask her to remove after I call her out tomorrow morning.

Right now the plan is that tomorrow morning I”m going to call them both out publicly on my facebook because I don’t want either of them lying to our mutual friends about what a bitch I am.  Our mutual friends should know exactly why I’m being such a bitch.  Then I’ll sit back and wait for the phone call, and I’ll remind him that he promised to pay 800 euros/monthly in child support so that the kids and I could live in this house.  If he doesn’t want to pay then I’ll be forced to move somewhere cheaper, and I probably won’t be inclined to share with him my forwarding address.  I think he’ll be cooperatve, because his green card expires in Jan. and if we’re not married and he has no job here there is no basis upon which to renew said green card.

Still, I have to pull myself together and quit relying upon him for my financial well-being.  There’s no security there any more, and I’ll go crazy worrying about this stuff every night.  If I drop the cell phones (that he insisted on having) then I’m only $500/month short.  Surely I can find SOMETHING that I can do which will pay that piddly amount.  There has to be something out there for me.

 

Changes and Stuckness

I really need to change the banner picture on this blog, as it’s a picture of the WV house and it mostly serves to remind me that I miss it muchly.  In a few weeks I have to go to court with the owners of said house to try to recover financially some of the stuff they lovingly deposited in the dump which belonged to me.  I hope it goes well.  I don’t see how it can not, it’s not a question really of whether or not they were in the wrong and owe me compensation for my stuff, but rather how much was my stuff worth and can I prove it?

I hate the stupid time changes.  I woke up at 4:30 this morning.  5:30 is ridiculous, but acceptable; at least I have a chance of making it through the day.  4:30 is just too much.  But I do enjoy the early morning hours, before the TV gets turned on, before the boys start demanding milk and food and mommy time.  It’s my time I guess, although I’d rather have it at night.  I guess I’ll have to accept that I’m an early riser rather than a late-nighter these days.

In other news, hubby is such a jerkface that if I never had to deal with him again, ever, it would be too soon.  Every time I talk to him it gets me more riled up.  He is living in a fucking fantasy world and it is maddening to try to talk to him.  We got into a fight the other day, via skype, because he got mad when I said it would be at least several years before I would entertain the notion of moving to Greece.  Silence.  Mad face.  “OH, it’s SEVERAL YEARS NOW???!  I love how things keep changing!”  Dude.  Nothing has changed, other than me being very, very sick, which in my opinion should have been enough to make you change your precious plans and stay by my side.  However, I’ve always said that I couldn’t entertain a move until my older kids were grown, and the youngest of them is now 9.  How has anything changed?  Oh that’s right, it hasn’t except in your fucking fantasy world that you live in.

Then he got all belligerent about how I wouldn’t be away from my kids but it’s okay for ME to keep HIM away from his kids.  WTF dude.  You’ll notice that I’m not the one who moved half a world away from said kids.  I really think he is seriously mentally ill or something.  He believes this shit.  He thinks he is wronged, and he’s going around telling his family and friends that I changed the rules and said I would come and now I’m refusing.  It’s stupid, it’s childish, and it’s pissing me off.  I wish I had the ability to just not answer his stupid skypes (which come almost daily and he gets pissed if he does not know my whereabouts for the day) and could just stop.  It’s tiring, and I’m done.  I’m trying to live my life and enjoy my kids and whatever time I have left, and I don’t have the energy to deal with his bullshit.

Someone send me a lotto ticket.  Being financially dependent upon someone else’s bullshit sucks.  There’s really no other way though, I don’t know how people make it on just disability.  My (bare bones) bills are roughly $1200/month – I don’t have a car payment and have few credit cards which I don’t normally carry a balance on.  My disability is not quite $700/month.  I don’t know what I could cut to make it work.  I couldn’t.  Being stuck sucks.

BUD Visit, October Edition

I went for a visit to Ohio State Thursday, and was really nervous because I’m still recovering from this H1N1 and not back up to my baseline.  I didn’t know how he would interpret that, and whether or not he’d be pushing for surgery again or changing meds, or if he’d just let it be since I’m obviously still recovering.  As expected, my pulmonary function test results were lower than previous tests’.  However, they weren’t that much lower, and in fact weren’t really even statistically significant in their difference.  Just a smidgen.  So, BUD thinks that had I not gotten sick we would have seen a pretty good increase instead, and I get to hold the course until my next follow up at the beginning of February.

He said I should consider myself very lucky, as he had a whole ICU full of people with my same disease and H1N1 who would not recover at all, and for those who did recover it would be with significant further damage and fibrosis to their lungs.  Now I just rest and do as much as I can and wait for my lungs to heal and then reevaluate to see how much if any permanent damage was done.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to my previous level of activity, as I was feeling pretty good and able to do a lot with the kidlets and such.  Right now I’m really not and it really sucks.

Two days ago I finally started walking the dog again, first time I’ve been able to do more than throw a ball in the yard with her since getting sick.  Yesterday we went again, despite the crappy weather, and the kids were excited to cross the newly opened bridge on the bike path.

On the Bike Bridge

We’ve been walking down there daily, and the kids have been anxiously awaiting the opening of this bridge.  It has made our neighborhood much busier, as it connects this end of town with a much busier section of town but I suspect that will slow down as the weather worsens and the bridge novelty wears off.  The path is beautiful right now though:

Fall Path

That’s the path leading up to the bridge, and it’s beautiful with the leaves all different colors and falling everywhere.  It’s motivation for me to get these kids and dog out of the house for a little while and at least get a little exercise in myself.  It’s too easy to sit here in front of the computer and be depressed and not do much of anything, which only adds to the depression and general feelings of malaise.  I hate winter, but I’m trying to convince myself that it’s good to go out of the house daily, even in the cold.  We’ll see how long that lasts once the real cold weather hits.

Added bonus to my BUD trip, I got to meet an online friend for the first time in real life, and she’s just as lovely in person as she is online!  We had lunch at my favorite Greek place and it was yummy and she was awesome, and she’s only an hour from me so not bad at all!  I now have something to look forward to next time I have to go to see BUD, and hopefully that will alleviate some of the tension and trepidation I feel when I know I have to head north.  Friends are a good thing indeed.

In other news, and maybe this should be a separate post but I’ll mention it here for later discussion – my ex-husband has been hanging around a lot since moving, mostly helping out here and there and talking about kids and what not… nothing suspicious and nothing I’d raise an eyebrow at.  However, he stopped by without kids the other night and hung out for a while, and then yesterday he asked me out (via text message) to dinner, sans kidlets.  Interesting.  Not sure how I feel about that, so I’ll leave it at that for now.  I do know that I’m not ready to “be” with anyone right now, but beyond that I’m not sure.

Our Health Care System Sucks

AKA I no longer have a primary care physician.

Today, I drove to my doctor appointment in WV.  It’s a two hour drive for me, but I asked her last time I visited (just before my move) if she’d still be my PCP after I moved to Ohio.  I really, really like her, and that’s hard to come by in a doctor and I really didn’t want to look for someone new.  Not to mention the one day I tried to call for someone in this area it was a total disaster.  I figured I could deal with the drive once every few months.

Well, I got there today and they asked if I now have Ohio medicaid.  I said yes, and the registration woman kindly told me that they couldn’ t see me.  I said I would pay for my visit if they wouldn’t accept my medicaid, because I’d rather pay $75 for an office visit after driving 2 hours than come home without having seen her and without my meds for however long it takes me to find a replacement.  The girl said, “You don’t understand, we can’t see you.  I’m not allowed to take money from you, it’s illegal as a medicaid recipient.  You have to go where your card is accepted, and that’s not here.  Someone should have told you when you made the appointment.”

I of course melted into a panic attack because I will be out of meds in about 10 days and now apparently have no PCP.  However, my doc (or former doc I guess) is frikking awesome, as they left her a message with my predicament and she wrote me 3 months’ worth of scripts so at least I have a little time to doctor shop now.

Still, how much does it suck that I can’t go where I want to go, even if I’m willing to pay for services.  The doctor who is listed on my insurance card as my PCP is not taking new patients, which cracks me up.

Ah well, I go tomorrow to Ohio State for new pulmonary function testing.  I don’t expect it to be good since I don’t feel fully recovered from my brush with H1N1.  I stopped in the lab today and my oxygen levels were 93%.  Not that bad, but not that great either.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings, maybe he can recommend a PCP for me.  If not I guess I’ll hit the yellow pages.  Sucks that I have to switch though, and doesn’t make for great continuity of care.

Bummed.

I’m part of a couple of differnt online fora (forums?), mostly for moms but one in particular for people with interstitial lung disease.  It’s kind of a slow board, but there are lots of people there with the same disease as me (IPF) as well as many other similar diseases which share many of the same treatments.  Some of the people there use the same doctor as me at Ohio State, and it’s nice to commiserate with others who are going through the same thing.

At any rate, I’d been absent from there for a little while with the move and the hospital and all that, but I went back yesterday and discovered that one of the members there passed away.  Now, this is nothing terribly unusual; there are a lot of people there awaiting lung transplants and in various stages of health/disease.  What made this particular case so striking was that she was only 33, and a single mama to 3 little girls.  She hadn’t been diagnosed for very long, and apparently she just got sick and went downhill fast and in a hurry.  It was shocking and heartbreaking, thinking of her daughters and wondering if their dad is an active part of their lives and what will become of them.  I didn’t know her all that well, but I will miss her presence all the same.

It just serves as a reminder that we’re on borrowed time here.  I guess in the end it forces me to be thankful that I’ve done some things for my kids that I wouldn’t have done without this disease to force me to think about mortality.  I’ve left them letters and videos and journals, and links to this blog and message boards that I participate in, so that someday, if they really want to know, they can search these things out and know who I really was and what they meant to me (EVERYTHING!)  How many parents leave their babies far too young without the chance to say everything they wanted to say?

Still, I feel cheated and like I can’t really enjoy myself sometimes because there is this dark cloud of doom hanging over everything.  I don’t want to let my daughter know that I get out of breath doing laundry.  I know that she worries more than anyone, and understands more than she lets on.  I know that she spent the whole day crying when she found out I was in ICU.  I know losing me will be really hard on her, but I know she has strength (she got that from me!) and she will make it through.  I hope I’ve done everything I can to make it as easy as possible.

Well, that’s too much to think about on this fine Saturday morning so I’ll stop for now.  I hope I live to be 100 and no kids of mine ever have to read this to know what I’m really like because they’re sick of putting up with me.

Home!

I guess my big October plans will need some fine-tuning on the wake of my latest hospital stay.  In good news, I have a new (local) pulmo who I like very much.  He sprung me from the ICU and took on the infectious disease doc for me, and I really enjoyed his sarcasm and wit.  Nevermind the fact that he took the time to get my previous tests and ct scans from Ohio State and compare them so he’d know what to do for my current situation, rather than just throwing steroids at me and hoping for the best.  According to him (and what I’ve read agrees), this is what this disease does.  You go along just fine for a while, maintaining, and then BOOM!  One day you’re not fine any more.  A flu, or cold, or something sets you off and it’s out of control.  I was really bad when I got to the hospital, and feel lucky that it was only a 6 day stay.  The new guy recommended that I go ahead and be evaluated for a lung transplant, because at some point in the future I’m going to be “not fine” again and at that point it will be too late for an evaluation.  Not to be listed, mind you, just to have all the legwork in place just in case.  I guess options are good, but I didn’t want to think about that.

The kids are coming home today, and I’m excited about that!  I’ve missed them terribly, especially since coming home two days ago.  The house is empty and quiet with no little boys running around.  Funny, because I think a couple of weeks ago I was wishing for just a few minutes (hours) of peace and quiet, and it was impossible to come by.  Now I’ve had my share of peacefulness for a while, and I will embrace and enjoy the chaos of little boys for the time being.  My mom tells me my youngest kept saying, “Mommy’s sleeping” – he’s never been away from home this long so I’m glad he handled it okay.

That’s about enough update for now.  So many things wrong with that stupid hospital and oh how I wish I had the energy to be someone who worked on changing those things.  But right now I only have the energy to worry about me and my immediate surroundings, so it’ll have to slide.  It’s good to be home.

Fall is here

I am challenging myself to enjoy the beauty of the season, which is really difficult for some reason.  I think it’s because for me, the changing of the weather and the changing of the leaves means that winter is on its way.  And we all know how much I love winter, right?  Do I need to remind anyone?  Well, just in case, and because I know it will be a recurring theme over the coming months, let me just go ahead and say it – I hate winter.  This fall, however, I’m working on living in the moment which means enjoying  the colors and sensations of autumn for their own virtue and not looking ahead to the impending coldness that is sure to follow.

For that reason, I have scheduled a lot of fall activities for myself and the kids, and hope that getting out and about and appreciating the awesomeness of the season will help with the living-for-today.  This week, we’re vising the Renaissance Festival close to Dayton (www.renfestival.com) which I’m sure the boys will love!  Castles and jousting and a pirate ship invasion and such, oh my!  Hopefully the weather will be nice and the mommy will be feeling good.

Then, we have the Bob Evans Farm Festival at the original Bob Evans farm in Rio Grande, only an hour or so from us and a great time last year.  The youngest 2 especially enjoy this sort of thing, and we might go just the three of us.  Lots of apple cider and down home cooking and horse rides and hay rides and things of that nature.

We’re going here:

http://www.sweetapplefarm.com/

later in the month.  Check that link out and go to the corn mazes, they are unbelievable!  I don’t think we’ll be able to make it all the way through the maze, as it says they are up to 5 miles long, but I think we’ll be able to enjoy a lot of it anyway.  My 5yo loves mazes and he is sooooooo excited about this outing!  It’s hard to find a corn maze that’s not a Haunted Halloweeen maze, which he’s not interested in because of the scary factor but this?  This is perfect and when he looked at the pictures of previous mazes he got SO EXCITED!

We also went for our first geocaching in the new area just the other day, and logged two in the rain!

That’s our first one.  Taken here, at Seip Mound:

Hopefully these activities will remind me that fall is perfectly enjoyable, and today is a beautiful day.  I’ll try to get some pictures from our walk here in a few minutes of the bike trail where we walk with our doggie every day.  It really is quite beautiful.

Again with the woe is me?

I’m sick of myself.  I don’t know what my problem is.  I give myself the pep talk and suck it up and go on about life and I’m okay for a day or two and then the smallest little thing can happen and I break down in tears and can’t stop and can’t function and it feels like I just can’t do this.  It sucks.

Today, I worked up the nerve, finally (took a couple of weeks lol) to call a local doctor and see about an appointment.  I’d like to have my general practitioner close if possible, so that if I get sick or need a med adjustment I have someone closeby that I can go to for advice.  I called someone from the yellow pages, who advertised that they treated a whole gamut of things and explained my situation to them, and had the guy tell me that I didn’t sound depressed, and really, how much pain could you be in from a LUNG DISEASE?  Millions of people walk around with asthma and COPD every day and they’re doing just fine?

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I lost it and started bawling and couldn’t even get my name out to the jerk so I hung up and had a good cry.  Then I got really angry, because what if I had been a little more mentally unstable?  Someone working in a doctor’s office really should know better than to make such diagnoses over the phone.  It wasn’t the doctor, although to be honest I’m unclear whether the dude was a receptionist or a nurse or what.  I felt really stupid for seeking out a doctor, clearly not what I was aiming for.

My 5yo was getting really upset because of my crying, so in the end I called my old doctor in WV and asked for a med change because apparently the lexapro isn’t working today.  Or maybe life just sucks that much right now.

I can’t talk to hubby.  I mean, I can, and I do, but it pisses me off and I wind up crying and he gets pissy if it’s not every fucking morning.  Oh how I wish I had the ability to be financially independent right now because I’d love nothing more than to not answer to him ever again.  I can’t stand it, I really can’t.  Every morning it’s the same bullshit, every morning he’s busy trying to make himself feel better by blaming everyone else for his ineptitude.  It sucks, and I can’t tell him to go suck a donkey cock because he’s due to send child support this week and he won’t if I tell him what I really think.  And besides, I really don’t want my kids to hear me saying such things about their dad.  They’ll realize it on their own in their own time, they don’t need me to point out what a dick he is.

At any rate, today it’s all my mom’s fault because she’s not here to help me.  I did gently point out that she is helping me more than he is, and she is not the one who vowed to be there forever and always, in sickness and in health.  She is not the one who turned my world upside down and left me here to deal with a pile of shit she created.  She’s not the one telling me what a paradise she’s living in while I’m here dealing with her responsibilities and committments.  Nope, that’s all you dude.  It’s much, much better for me when I don’t have to deal with it on a daily basis, and really I’m going to have to figure out how to “gently” make that happen.  What was the point in him leaving if he’s going to be all up in my shit every day?
YOU CANNOT HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO ASSHOLE.

There.  I’m done now.  I feel better.  Now hurry up doc and call me in some better drugs.

Two wheels, Mom!

My 5yo learned how to ride without training wheels today.  There’s no stopping him now!  I knew he could do it but he didn’t have the confidence until today.  I don’t know what changed his mind, but he came home from “the triangle” where he usually rides on his training wheels and told me he could now ride without them.  And promptly proceeded to take right off on 2 wheels once he was free of the training wheels, go baby go!

He’s growing up so fast.  In the past month, since hubby has left, he’s learned to read, ride a 2-wheeler, AND he can make his own pb&j sandwich now.  Today he even made one for his little brother.  What more could a proud mama ask for?

You hear that hubby?  You’re missing out.  You’ll never get this back.  There’ll never be another first pb&j sandwich, another “Aha!” moment when the phonics just click and he starts reading all of a sudden, never another, “MOM LOOK I’M DOING IT!” as he proudly takes off on two wheels.  He’s going to be just fine, and so am I and so is the little guy, but you?  You screwed up.

Yesterday was fucking hard.  I was sick and the kids weren’t cooperating and I just wanted to crawl in a hole and come out in spring.  But I cried a little and put on my big girl panties and dealt with it because there are little people counting on me and that’s all I can do.  Days like that I don’t think I”ll make it.  I promised myself that today would be better, and hot damn it was.  Today was freaking awesome, my kids are spec-fucking-tacular, and I’m feeling much better.

You, hubby, were here for neither.  You were too busy sitting on your paradise of a Greek island living your fantasy, your notion for today of what perfection is.  You’re grasping at straws trying to hang on to or perhaps regain the youth that is slowly leaving your body, as is inevitable in the course of things.  In the meantime, you’ve forgotten what’s really important and who’s going to be there when the last hint of youth is gone from those old bones.  In case you’re wondering, it won’t be me.

Anna’s Homecoming

We decided to name her Anna, although in retrospect I think maybe “Yellow Dog” (as in the dog from Funny Farm w/Chevy Chase) might be more fitting.  I could seriously not have picked a more docile, calm, unexcited dog.  She hopped right up in the van from the pound and got right up in the seat like she’s been riding in cars all her life.  Brought her home and put her on her leash and walked her around the yard, and she’s leashed trained and doesn’t tug or pull or get ahead at all.  She just walks right beside me and stops when I stop.  When we came in the house, she made herself at home right behind my usual chair, and that’s where she has laid except when I go to another part of the house.  Then she follows me.

She seems to be potty trained already – she asks to go out to pee at least.  And she’s bath-trained.  She hopped right up in the tub and let me bathe her.  GOod thing, because I never would have gotten her in there on my own and we would have smelled of stinky pound dog forever.

Anyway, she’s very sweet and I think a wonderful choice.  Things are looking good so far.