Another late night entry

I don’t FEEL like writing.  I don’t.  I just didn’t do it yesterday, and I hate to let a bunch of time pass nowadays between entries.  LOL… I SAY I write this for me…but I find myself always writing to my audience, and when I don’t get notes, I miss them like crazy.  I am EXHAUSTED.  Money still wasn’t here today, but we believe Jerry got it all straightened out.  However, we got a letter that said we’d used FIVE months of our 60 month limit for cash aid… Um.. No we didn’t.  This is the first month.  I figure we must have been approved the LAST time we applied, but we got denied in the end because we didn’t provide all the paperwork, and just let the whole thing go.  So now we have to chase that down, who knows if we’ll need that four months or not (Jan would make 5, and obviously, we ARE getting money in Jan.)  But if we let it go, then it’ll bite us in the butt later. 

Oh… I was not a good person today.  Shabree called Kristin and Sydni to ask if they would go to the park with her (safety in numbers, I really didn’t want to take her today), and she was hung up on… I THOUGHT by Kristin, so I left a fairly… nasty message about how I was going to make Sydni come home as punishment if she didn’t quit hanging up on Shabree.  Only to be told by Shabree as soon as I got off the phone that she’d been talking to SYD.  Oh, shit.  So I called back and apologized on the voice mail, but told her to tell Sydni SHE was in trouble.  When I finally got to talk to Syd, I was in the middle of chewing HER out, when she says good bye so quickly I didn’t even hear it and hangs up on ME.  Oh, I was FURIOUS.  I called her back, told her I hadn’t been finished and to COME HOME.  Then Sheila, Kristin’s mom called me, and I apologized to her (after apologizing to Kristin).  My mom has always used hanging up on someone as a power play, and I always hated it, and it hurt me.  It made me both angry and hurt.  So I can barely stand to see it done to MY kids, and Kristin has done it to both Syd and Shabree in the past.  It’s simply rude.  But I felt bad for being so mean on my message(s) to Kristin.  Anyway, I packed up the van with all the kids, and went to get Sydni.  We sat in our driveway talking for awhile, then Syd asked if we could go have some alone time at a food place, and I told her daddy couldn’t watch the others, but we could go someplace where they could play, and she and I could talk.  So we went to Burger King, and of course, we didn’t talk, she played.  ALTHOUGH… this woman came in with her 2 year old (who speaks so much better than Sammi… am I going to have ANOTHER speech therapy kid on my hands?  What’s UP with that?  Sigh.) and was talking about her two oldest kids who are now living with their dad because he used to take them to Disneyland, and had fun with them, and now they’re finding out that dad’s not so much fun, and they want to come live with mom again, and mom is saying no, they’re teenagers now, they need to live with their decisions. 

Well… this led me to find out that Jane has been "teasing" Syd about her coming to live with them.  She jokes with both of the girls… well, Becca KNOWS her mom’s flaws, and isn’t going anywhere.  She knows where she has it good.  But Syd has Jane on a freaking pedestal.  She worships the ground she walks on.  So the two reasons she wants to go live with Jane are 1) Becca’s mean to her (oh, and she IS… that’s putting it mildly), and 2) she wants to help her mommy.  She thinks her mom needs her to help take care of her sister and her brother.  So something Jane said in a half hearted jest (because she would like to have them live with her if it didn’t mean she had to take care of them!) became this obvious "thing" for Sydni, who it seems thinks she doesn’t have a good life with us.  I’m not mad at Jane.  I’m not mad at all.  Syd needs help.  I’ve GOT to find a counselor who can help us get Sydni into a better place emotionally.  Jane apologized a number of times for doing it, and she talked to Jerry as well as having a long conversation with me.  The thing is, Sydni was just there a week ago, and they sent her home 3 days early, because Syd was driving all of them crazy.  Jane says that when Steve said she should go home, she agreed with him.  Syd is overwhelmingly needy in terms of physical affection, so she’s clingy when she goes there.  Both Jerry and I ask her to give us some space, though if she needs a hug, then come get it.  But she is very much an attention hound, and I am so worried about her.  And I was trying to get her to see reality without saying "Your mom isn’t capable of taking care of you long term Syd."  Even Jane told her on the phone that she couldn’t take care of her.  I got bold and asked Jane if anything ever happend to Jerry, would she allow me to keep the girls?  And she didn’t know… but felt arrangements could be made so I could see them.  NOTHING can ever happen to Jerry.  I just can’t see how those girls would be okay in their care.  They barely pay attention to their own children, who Jane described to me today as "They’re like cats.  They come and get a little affection and then they leave."

Oh My God.  Did she just say they were like cats?  Yea, she did.  Ooookay.

So I suspect I woud have to fight for them, and I’d have her own family on my side, because we ALL know Jane can’t take care of her own kids!  And there’s no way she would ever be able to deal with Becca and her school issues, her snottiness, I mean tonight, Becca said something to Jerry that would have put ME in a fit of rage, but he was dealing with it, so I stayed out of it (for once.)  Steve…he’d be beating her.  Becca can be horribly disrespectful.  She’s testing every damn boundary she can, and she thinks she’s entitled to certain things, has been lying about the stupidest things, and Jerry told her that she needed to be up by 7 this morning, and since she wasn’t, he took her radio away, and she was mad and told him he couldn’t do it.  Well, he did.
Anyway… yea.  Jane could NOT deal with that.  *I* can barely deal with that, and I’ve been actively parenting her since she was, what 5?  I don’t know… because while I’ve been there since she was 4, in the beginning, I was more of a friend.  So perhaps it was later. 

I’m on a ramble now, lol… I doubt I would win, even if they have always lived with me, even if HER FAMILY wanted them in my more stable house (which, without Jerry, I actually question myself… I lean on him so much.  And I’m realizing, as I’m asking the kids, "Who’s in control of your temper, you, or your temper?" that I need to begin to take my OWN advice and get in better control of my temper!  It’s a work in progress…)  Eh, I don’t know… but I think me, on my own, would be a better home than Jane and Steve put together.  At the VERY VERY least, it’s a known quotient, you know?  Anyway, Jerry always says "I can’t die today, I have things to do tomorrow."  He plans to live to at least 100.  So do I… t

hough mine is not so much planned as, well, forseen.  I used to think, I wanted to die so much, that as punishment, I was going to live a very long time.  LOL… but now I just think that I have good genes, a pretty good will to live… and I’m not sure what else.  If my GRANDMOTHER could drink and take pills 3/4 of her life and still live to be 80, I’ve got a pretty good chance of living forever.

I just do not know what to do with/about Sydni.  I told Jane that I am thinking therapy could be helpful, and she said if we wanted her to be there, she would be. Okay… that’s a step in the right direction.  She also said she thinks her leaving probably gave Syd some abadonment issues.  Then Kim…

Ah hell… I’m dripping/leaking like a freaking sieve.  I gotta go.