Breakin up with My Dad

Not everyone has the pleasure of breaking up with their dad. I am one of the lucky few.


He has always had sociopathic tendencies. However, the average person (especially children) have very little knowledge of what to look for when it comes to psychotic or sociopathic behaviors. So for the first 15 years of my life I had no clue.

Don't get me wrong, my dad could be great, and he could also be a horridly terrifying person. To go through any amount of occurrences is unnecessarily time consuming. Just trust me, my childhood was less than idyllic.

So long story short, he's spending some time getting three hot and a cot, courtesy of the state of Tennessee. And during these stays, he tends to go through a cycle. We can follow the cycle thanks to my Granny and Nanny (his mom and grandmother).

The first stage is where he wants either or both of them to get in touch with whomever he was hooked up (and "in love")with at the time. The second stage he attempts to get in touch with my siblings and myself, and in contact with some other people he's been "talking" to while doing "business" in whatever state/town/city. Then there's a little depression and everyone would be so much better without him. Then, finally, when he had screwed everyone else over and they realized how much he'd screwed them for, and the only hope he could see was attempting to come back to our family. (Which he'd gladly left multiple times since I was around eleven.)

So currently we are at the very end of this cycle. His boy toy has left him, and he is lonely, and none of his business (or otherwise) partners are willing to help him, be released. So he's writing to my brother, sister and myself. I'm relatively sure my sister hasn't even looked at her letter. I know that my brother read his, and will probably write back something interesting and insightful for his fifteen year old self.

I've read my letter and drafted a reply. The first letter to him since I was pregnant with Cat (and he subsequently called her a mistake, which I didn't take kindly).

I think the final paragraph is a decent summary of my stand on this...

"You've messed with my life as much as you can, and you will no longer be in it. I wish you the best of luck in you relationship with God, however I am not interested in being a part of that either. And you will not be welcome to pictures of myself or my children, nor will you ever be welcome in my home. "

Dora = MommaResa Death

It’s true. Tonight I finally did it. I finally gave into Cat.  I fixed her a meal of her own.
I made salad and spaghetti for everyone.  While I was finishing the spaghetti I made her salad and let her get a head start on dinner. (And give me a break with the “heppin you tookt’)

I figured spaghetti to be a kid friendly meal, seeing as she usually likes anything with tomato sauce (that can smear and get EVERYWHERE). 

Well not tonight. Tonight she didn’t want any. She wanted to watch Dora (which really translates to Diego, because she likes boys).  And nothing else would do.

But I knew she was hungry, because Sar doesn’t feed her an afternoon snack. (No I don’t know why. But this will be rectified within the next week.)

So in order to get her to stop screaming, because my nerves just can NOT handle that ((I will be so glad when 32 months comes along (Cause ya know after two and a half it’s supposed to get easier.  Less tantrums is what I heard)))  I offered to make her some eggs, and a slice of cheese. And she “hepped” me “tookt” the scrambled eggs, and put a slice of cheese on them.

And I heard my control snap, audibly snap. I felt her breaking me.  It’s a sad sad day at the MR house.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. I have doubts, but maybe.

♥♥♥ Momma Resa


PS- She ate like 3 bites of the eggs (I give up)
PPS- She’s “heppin” me right now. With this very post
PPPS-She’s only “heppin” so she can watch Dora (aka Diego) when I finish posting.
PPPPS- Send out the troops to look for my control cause it’s still running loose in western Kentucky.

So a little D-word Post (Depression)

Today I feel like crap. And I don’t want to deal with anything.  In addition to the seasons changing and wreaking havoc on my sinuses, I’m having MAJOR tooth pains.  I know the common sense thing is to immediately go to the phone and make an appointment with a dentist.  And maybe I would, ya know.  If I had something silly like, oh health insurance.  But I don’t.  Because being a private sitter doesn’t include the niceties like health insurance.  And Lord knows I don’t have any extra do re mi to pay for an appointment out of pocket.  So I’ll be running to the store and getting tubes of oragel, and using sensitive toothpaste and hoping and praying that it will help my teeth.  Because I’m kind of a big weenie when it comes to pain.

But I’m much better with physical pain than I am emotional pain. Even though I’ve had a lot of experience with both.  Another part of the reason I feel so cruddy today is because I’m battling a bit of depression.  I purchased and read Nora Roberts’ latest book. The fourth part of her Bride Quartet, Happily Ever After.  And I loved the story.  But instead of feeling like I escaped to a place where my life didn’t really intrude.  I feel like my life just doesn’t measure up to where it should.  This is a constant issue for me, being a single mom, (twice!!), having a not successful job, and having absolutely NO ONE interested in me.

I slept in snatches last night. I snatched a couple of hours between ten and midnight, tossed and turned until 2 and then got online from 2:30 to 4.

I’ve started reading Single Dad Laughing, and he’s proposed this amazing idea, that I’d LOVE to be a part of.  I’d love to say that I am a DANOAH girl. But I just can’t be that yet.  I was that girl, when I was in high school, I was happy and felt beautiful, and never really gave much thought to my weight and size.  And somehow after graduating it’s become a much bigger issue for me.  I think that my struggle with my weight is a leading reason for my current depression.  And so here I am trying to muddle my way through, maybe waddle is a better word choice.

I was so impressed with Barefoot Foodie, when we she did a Vlog  with Andy, her man, about their sizes and the differences in them.  And how he didn’t care about her size and about the fact that she couldn’t fit his pants. (Which I personally think is wonderful, but I totally understand her issue with it.  Cat’s father had a 36 inch waist.  I don’t think I even have a 36 inch inseam. So I get it.  And I totally turned green with envy at her size 16 self.)

And apparently I just needed to vent, and maybe someone out there, who ends up reading this (instead of my weekly weigh in post) will have some clue, some insight, some inspiration, some sort of hope for me, in this sad little rain cloud I’m carrying around with me.

Memory Walk...

Because I always slack on the weekend, and just do a round up post at some point between Sunday night and Monday morning, here we go.

I  have almost no clue what I did on Friday night.

Saturday morning we did the Memory Walk in Evansville.  We do the Memory Walk, because my mom is specialized in Alzheimer’s and dementia care. And when I worked in the nursing home, I worked on the dementia unit.  And the whole disease is absolutely devastating.   Not to mention Maria Shriver has anew initiative about it.  The funniest part was watching Cat dance in the walk to the drummers.  She’d just start to drop it low.  It was hilarious, and of course we left the cameras in the van.. Cause we’re smart like that.

After hitting up Bob Evans and the mall, we came home, and putzed around.  I’m not a hundred percent sure what all we did. But I know some pumpkins got decorated and I made Ree’s Cinnamon Roll dough.

Sunday I made the mini monkey bread cupcake thingers, and they were delish.  And after church I made chili , using Lawry’s spice package, and it was delish.

I made some delish cornbread to go with it.  It was GREAT.  Just mix a can of whole kernel corn, and some cheese with 2 boxes of Jiffy Corn Muffin mix.  And it’s awesome.  Just try it, just once and let me know what you think, and how thankful you are. Because it’s AMAZING, and you will be thankful.

And on a whole different note.  One of my best friends is getting married. Oh and I’m in her line up. Oh and it’s in May, not the end of may either. The freaking beginning of May. The freaking 7th of May. And who still looks like an oompa loompa? Oh that’d be me.  So I’ve got to up my game for the next few months.

What does that mean, you ask? That means instead of doing Zumba once or twice a week starting Monday I will be doing Zumba Monday, Tuesday, some Wednesdays, Thursday and Saturday.   Will I be sore? Heck yes! Will I want to cry and want to give up? Of course! Buuuut I’m going to have to push through that, because I refuse to be the huge girl in green beside the bride.

Oh and on SparkPeople I start a new challenge on November 1st.  It’s the last loser standing, basically after you sign up, you send a picture of your scale to the moderator. And weekly you send a new picture, to keep from cheating, to the moderator.  And as long as you lose weight, you’re in for the next week.  Until, TADA, the last loser is standing.  I’m so juiced about this I can’t wait.

Oh I’ve also decided about dealing with my emotional eating monster I’ve got have one day where I just kinda let myself go.  And usually when I do that I won’t give in for the rest of the week, and don’t end up going too crazy on my cheat days. So for the next two months I’m doing that, and hopefully-cross your fingers- I’ll be able to give up the habit.

And now I’m going to go to bed, so I can get up in the morning.

Comin Round the Mountain....

I believe I mentioned before (probably along time before) that over the labor day weekend we took a short (VERY SHORT) trip to Florida. Lots of reasons for the visit and lots of stories.. So I’ll just be telling them one at a time, slowly but surely. There are some pictures so I’ll be posting those along with the stories. I’ll go ahead and apologize for photo quality, because we only have point and shoot cameras (working on resolving this) and at times (due to circumstances in the aforementioned stories) we didn’t have even those cameras some of the pictures were taken with my phone, and it sadly isn’t an Iphone. So I’m just letting you know in advance. J

We decided to leave late on Thursday, in hopes of being in Florida sometime Friday afternoon. That sure didn’t happen. We were making some pretty good time, until we started going up Monteagle. You gotta know that I’ve never really been on a mountain other than Monteagle or Thunder Mountain (At Disney World) so it seems pretty rough going for me anyway. But as we’re slowly going up this mountain in the Caravan, avoiding semis and other vehicles who are much, much, (MUCH) braver than my mom and myself, we realize we’re having even more trouble than we should. Our engine is starting to overheat. Now this might be just a small problem if it was oh, say three o’clock in the afternoon. Or if there is someone who is atleast slightly mechanically inclined traveling with you. Well we’re not that fortunate.. It was two in the morning, we were three women, a toddler, a newborn and a teenage boy. The teenage boy may seem like a small life line, but alas he’s one of the teenagers who would rather just read his book and wait on a tow truck, and definitely not even think about looking under the hood of a car. Now we used our bright minds and pulled over and threw some water into the overflow and tried to get the engine temperature down and continue on. Oh that worked the first time, and about five minutes later we had to pull over again.. And again.. And we finally got to the rest area near the top of Monteagle. We camped out there for a good half hour. We’d pour in water, and then check the temperature. Pour in a little more water, check the temperature again. Wait ten minutes and repeat. We got it down enough that the engine stopped doing the auto shut off, and we tried to get to the next exit and get a hotel, and wait for morning and see where we were.

After three hours of solid sleep in a hotel that will get it’s own travel post at some point we got going again. We started out pretty decent, and about ten minutes after we got back on the road the problem re-presented its self. It just wouldn’t let us get anywhere. So we took the next exit, and stopped-let-the-engine-cool-and-try-again-ed ourselves right to the nearest gas station. And then attempted to find the closest mechanic. So we stopped-let-the-engine-cool-and-try-again-ed our way over to the garage. They had great news, it was only a cracked radiator. GRRRRREAT! A cracked radiator. Wonderful. So can you fix it?? You can, GREAT! Getting it fixed, how long do you think it’d take?? A few hours, alright.. Ok, so we’ll just hang out.

So there we were, in South Pittsburg, Tennessee. We had a few hours to burn, with no car, and two kiddos, and a teenager and three women who were traveling on a budget and a prayer, and apparently a broken radiator. So we walked to the Lodge Cast Iron Outlet store, and walked through it. And waited for the phone call, on the price. As we rounded the last of the store for the second time, the call came. We quickly made our small, but gracious purchase and headed outside. There was news, it’d only cost a few hundred dollars, they had the exact radiator that we’d need in stock by some miracle. A different caravan in town had needed it, but they could get another delivered before afternoon and be able to use that one for the in town van and we could have this one. And we made a joyous noise. So we’d wait to hear from them when the van was wonderfully ready and we could resume our trip. So after the cast iron outlet store, we moved onto their Dollar General, because hello? Who doesn’t love a Dollar General, especially when you’ve got time to kill, it’s the end of their summer season and you’re heading to Florida. It means clearance summer items, yay!! So after spending more money that I really didn’t need to spend, but I’m all about quality of life, and my quality of life is soo much better when CAT is in a good mood. And a new baby was keeping her in a good mood even though it was nap time, so a new baby we bought.

Now I’ve told you all of that to tell you that we had lunch at the most interesting restaurant in South Pittsburg, Tennessee. It’s called Stevarino’s. It’s an Italian pub and eatery. Which amuses me, more so because they had little fighting Irishmen all over the place. But the food, very Italian. And I enjoyed. We had some breadsticks, lasagna, ravioli, baked pasta and then we had dessert. Yes dessert. Now I know, dessert isn’t healthy and shouldn’t we be trying to look nice to go to Florida? Well of course, but who gives two ninnies about looking nice when there’s Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake mentioned? Or when there are Cannolis. Take the cannolis leave the gun. Well I took the cannoli, and I took the cheesecake (actually we shared by mutual agreement, because my mom and that much sugar equal nap time). But here’s how the cheese cake came to me.. ..

And here’s what my own portion of dessert looked like.. ..

And ya know what was left? Nary a crumb could be found. The plate was hidden amongst a napkin to hide the evidence of me licking all the raspberry sauce off the plate. Cause it was DELICIOUS. And I liked it. Not everyone was a fan.. But I liked it, and Cat slept there. So mostly that takes precedence to anyone else’s opinions, especially when it’s concerning food.

And that’s really all I’m going to say about it right now, I mean you don’t really want to read anymore right now.. Oh and to complete it, radiator was replaced, the car dealership agreed to pay for half of it, and were financing all but $50 of it. So we had to pay $50 out of pocket at the time of service and we got to head right on our way to Florida. Yay!!