How do You disappoint a 10 yr Old?

Help me with this. I want to know. My son is very upset with the prospect of his dad and I getting a divorce. We had gone to see my uncle yesterday. We were talking about this and that, and apparently my uncle caught on.
"Is your Dad living with his parents?" my uncle asked my son. My son replied", For now. But I feel pretty sure that he will be moving back into the house soon."

Now its understandable that he would think this. My husband is always at the house....on the weekends. Practically the whole weekend. To be honest, its as if he isn't gone. When my husband physically lived at the house, we really only saw him on the weekends. He worked the 3rd shift and would be asleep during a good portion of the rest of the day. As the kids were in school, it could be that the kids only saw him during the week as he was leaving to go to work. That was also the only time I really saw him. Oh, they would see him briefly when he came home and they were headed off to school. But basically, I would guess that the total time spent with the kids during the week was maybe 4 hours. 4 hours out of 120. Ok. But he probably made up for it on the weekends right?
No, Dave would sleep in, and then get up to do the things that he wanted to do. Like go running, or exercise. Or buy himself something. He would be pissy anytime that there we a task to be done, cause damn it! The weekend was his time! Seriously. I would leave rather than listen to him bitch and moan about doing something around the house. Like, patch a hole in the wall. The hole is there because Dave punched it. It has been there for 3 years. It was totally my fault. I was probably nagging him about something, probably another thing he needed to do, and he hit the wall rather than take his frustration out on me. I'm just a bitch, frankly.
So since we have been separated he has come ove around 9:00 every Saturday to see his family. Last Saturday, my youngest son asked Dave, when he arrived, if he was going to take them to see Daves parents. Dave threw his keys yelled at my son to stop harassing him about it, and stomped out into the garage. A few minutes later, he was back, yelling at the oldest boy, because he had used a tool and hadn't put it back proper. What the F@ck! How hard is it to put sh*t away? You know, he spent a lot of F@cking money on this mother f@cking tools. That boy had better get his head out of his a$$, or f@ck it! Dave would just throw the mother f@ckers away! You know, Dave doesn't have f@cking time to put this sh*t away, he's got other mother f@cking things to do, the f@cking little a$$hole!
Oh yeah, gimme more of that!
But this was our life. The 10 year old wasn't yelled at, so even though Dave bitched like this, he didn't bitch at him, so what is the problem? He loves his dad. He wants him home. Why is that so hard? Just as I let it go for 16 years, I let it permeate my children. I'm not above reproach! I got mad too. I cussed too. But I didn't call them f@cknig little a$$holes, and get angry because they need some of my time. I said this over and over again to Dave. I didn't want the kids to think that this is what married life was. But I let it go, because I was too tired to care. It my fault. I should have ended it sooner. But how do you tell that to a 10 year old. That Mommy is sorry, but I can't do it anymore?

Grass Seed and Mini Vans

Last week, I was drinking. Not a lot but enough, and I wanted to talk so I called a friend of mine who I know is nocturnal, and we started talking. As I have said before, my husband and I have separated. This is not something that is easy to tell others. You don't walk in one day and say "hey everybody! Guess what?....". Even though it is something I wanted, its still not easy to talk about as there is so much emotion involved, its still pretty new, and you never know; I could decide that the demons I know vs the demons I don't, so I don't really want to talk about it. But apparently, last week I didn't have a problem talking about it.

So my friend ask me what was it? What was the thing that let you know, that this was it. The fight that ended with me asking my husband to move out was over...ahem...grass seed. I know, I know! How can that end a marriage? It was an absurd reason. I want grass seed put down. I buy it. He puts it down. Then doesn't water the lawn. Why did we buy grass seed then? There really was no reason to as he didn't even use the seed I bought. He used the seed from a year ago.

That is hard for people to understand. Grass seed! So let me tell you another story. I had cancer. Cervical. So if you've watched any television lately, you know that a virus, A SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED VIRUS, causes that type of cancer. But I didn't have that type, I had plan ole' cancer. Doesn't matter really except that I feel like people are judging me. I was a tramp somewhere along the line I got what I deserved! Can't change that perception. Just like everyone who gets lung cancer, everyone says, "Oh! I didn't know you smoked!"

The biggest, most upsetting thing was that I was losing something that made me female. I was being hollowed out. In my mind, my value had been diminished, because I could no longer have children. I hadn't planned on having anymore, because, I had already reached maximum capacity in my 3 bedroom, one bathroom house. That didn't mean I didn't want anymore.

So I have to have a hysterectomy. I was having it at the hospital that I work for, because, in order to get the maximum benefit from my insurance, I had to. Because I am an employee, I have to have a sticker on my car that identifies me as such. If I part in the parking lot for patients of the hospital with that sticker, I get a ticket. The only way to avoid the ticket, is to call ahead and let the hospital security know that I will be there as a patient. So I did. I told them that I would be there in the brown van. Told my husband this too.

The day of the surgery, my husband goes out to start the van, and has it all ready to go. When I walk out, on a cold morning, I see that he has the black van all ready to go. I say"I told them we would be in the brown van!" My husband says "so!" I say", I'll get a ticket, and it will go in my permanent record!"
"So? Who cares?"
"I care! It's my record! They'll tow the van! I told you we were using the brown van!"
He stomps off, gets the keys, slams the door to the black van, starts the brown van, snarls "get in then!", and goes tearing off toward the hospital. He's showing me.
We get to the hospital, he parks far away from the door, hops out of the van, stomps off, I check in, the staff goes to take me back, he says "ok, bye..." turns around and walks out of the hospital! My escort says "Is that a friend of yours?" I said yes, because I was too ashamed to say it was my husband.

That is why we ended our marriage over grass seed. As you can see, I have a history of being unreasonable.

No, don't tell me that he was upset too. He was just acting out. No. I had cancer. I shouldn't have to accommodate him. It was happening to me. Now was not the time for me to be forgiving and understanding. This was not a martyr moment.

When he and I talk about this later, and I ask him how come he left me, he says "Well you were upset, so I figured you didn't want me there...." How very passive/aggressive of him. It was my fault. I was irrationally upset, and he was just taking his cues from me.

There are 16 years of moments like that. But, there you go. Grass seed.

Freedom Of Speech

You know, I'm like everyone else. I read other blogs, then I read the comments from others and I read their blogs, and then the comments on what they've written, and so on. I have come across some great post, and even though I don't always agree with what they have to say, I like to hear other points of view. Sometimes they can make me see things differently.

I have been reading a blog by a man who does not believe in God. That's fine. I do believe. Every time he post about people who do horrible things (kill their children, for instance) because they say that God told them to, well, lets just say the comments that go back and forth on those posts are rather spirited. (no pun intended). He and others who believe as he does, have some good arguments for their point of view. Some comments there really isn't a reply to. They have us. To which I reply that faith is the belief in things not seen or that can't be proven. That's what faith is. He won't change my mind nor will I or anybody else change his.

Then yesterday, on 6/6/06, he got a little ugly. His tone was not mocking, it was mean. While I was convinced that nothing was going to happen yesterday, other than a bunch of pregnant women would be hoping that they would not deliver TODAY, we all know that the numbers 666 is associated with the devil. Its to me, more a superstition than a sign, and mostly I don't think anything of it. They are just numbers. But they are associated with something dark, so I do notice the numbers. Its the same with 9/11. We never look at those numbers as we did before the terrorist attacks.

This guy posted some things that were, I felt, a bit much for the occasion. He has the right to say, believe and post what he wants. I'm sure that there were others that applauded him. I didn't care for the turn, so I deleted him from my favorites. Extreme, I know, kind of like his remarks. I just felt that when one drops to that level, saying that believers are polluting the gene pool, your arguments somehow lose their punch. Its too bad too, because I did like reading his stuff. He observed some very interesting examples of our narrow views in this country. Not that it will matter to him, I'm just some believer from the cornfields of Nebraska, what does he care?