Waiting...

That is really how I feel like I am living my life right now. Just waiting. For the most part I am waiting for the bottom to fall out. I seem to be keeping my shit together rather well and I can only imagine it is just a matter of time. After all, my husband is locked in a psych ward awaiting transfer to a treatment facility, my 11 week old son is recovering from bronchitis and tends to start coughing after a feeding and throw up his whole bottle requiring a re-feeding of another bottle, and to top it all off it is F***ing tax season.

Who the hell did I piss off?

I was e-mailing with a friend yesterday discussing how things were going and I mentioned to her the philosophy of how I was living my life right now. I just take each day as one step forward and I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just have to wait and see where this path leads us.

To her that sounded like a foreign concept, but seriously people, if I try to look at the big picture right now I'm pretty sure I will end up in the psych ward along side of Jake. What I try to focus on are the little things I've accomplished. I will worry about the big picture later, like in five years or so when I look back and say how the hell did I do that?

For now, it is one day at a time. Little baby steps.

I have canceled Jake's general liability insurance (after all he has no job so he obviously doesn't need this)

I have canceled his car insurance (he won't be needing it for a few months)

I have bumped down our Directv to the basic package

I will be canceling his cell phone on Monday

I will be bumping our home phone down to basic on Monday (no I can't cancel it, I have this fear that I will fall down the stairs and will only be able to dial 911 and then will pass out and how will they find me if they can't track my address?)

I signed papers on a re-finance of my car loan last night (saving me $115 a month)

I have sold Jake's boat to offset some of the loss on the 4 wheeler

And finally, I have sold the 4 wheeler. Well, one way or another it is sold. If I don't sell it in the next week a friend of a friend offered to pay me $1,000 per month for three months.

So.. we are making progress people. One day at a time...

Update

Today is a good day. I just got off the phone with a counselor from a long-term residential treatment program that may be a good fit for Jake. Up until this point I have not been able to find a program that was 3 - 6 months. Everyone I have talked to before is a 30 day program. For some reason that seems to be the norm in this state.

So... that means that we are having some success or at least progress in that area. Jake got word that he will be transferred to his first treatment program on the 13th. So, we had a few dark days this week as he grappled with the fact that he will be in the psych ward for another two weeks. However, once he got over his anger and moved into acceptance his attitude has gotten much better.

I took Zack to see him last night and he seemed to be in a really good mood. He has quit smoking and is working out now. He said he walks two miles with some of the other addicts and then is doing push ups and sit ups in his room before bed.

I spent most of yesterday in a dark place as well but I am starting to claw my way out. The visit with Jake helped. Seeing him positive about his treatment again gives me a lot more hope than I had earlier this week when I thought maybe we were all wasting our time. No matter how many people told me that he would go through a very angry stage I'm not sure I was really prepared for how ugly it was.

The other thing that is going well is that Zack is starting to feel much better. For the last three nights he has slept from 10 or 11 until 4 or 5. So that is GREAT for the both of us. He wakes up in a good mood and so do I. We are also starting to get the hang of getting ready in the mornings. For all of Jake's faults, he is PHENOMENAL with his son and was a huge help to me when he was there.

He would hold him and feed him and change him so having him to pass Zack to so I could shower or get the bottles washed or whatever saved me a lot of time. When my friend used to tell me how long it took her to get ready in the morning I used to laugh but now I understand. The first day it was like 2 1/2 hours. We now have it down to about an hour and a half or so depending on how many times I look around and think oh wait I need to do that....

DHS

The DHS visit was a joke. I'm not sure how much I can divulge here because I don't want someone stumbling upon here and me causing more problems for myself. So let's just suffice it to say that I am not being investigated. I do not have to drop a UA, Zack does not have to go to the doctor, and she didn't even look at any aspects of my house except to walk in and sit on the couch.

She was 15 minutes late, asked me one question about the circumstances involving Jake leaving the home and told me that she would have to check with her supervisor to see what the next step is since he won't be coming back right away.

Short, sweet, and to the point. All that worrying for nothing.

Winds of Change

"It's okay that mommy has to sell all of my stuff. I don't need it anyway. All I need is you and mommy. Besides when I get out we will just get new stuff. Bigger and better stuff because daddy is going to get a really good job because he won't have to worry about taking a drug test."

Fan F**king-tabulous....

You know, I am not usually one to cuss. In fact if you look back in this blog I have probably only used cuss words a handful of times. But people... this is one of those times!!

Today has been LONG!! Long and FULL of disappointments!! Let's start at the beginning, the very beginning, like oh say two o'clock this morning when my son woke up coughing. I tried to feed him thinking he was hungry but he just kept spitting the milk out. I knew that he had not eaten since 7:00 last night and I could hear his stomach rumbling but he would try to suck and he would just cough and then spit out the milk.

I tried three different bottles and three different flow nipples trying to find something that would allow him to get some nourishment into his little body. Nothing worked. Finally I took a baby syringe and was dripping milk into his mouth. I managed to get a half and ounce or so into him but he was still coughing and spitting and I finally decided enough was enough.

At three thirty I put him in his car seat and called my mom to tell her I was taking him to blank. It was about that time that he started to cough and everything that I had gotten him to swallow came back up.

So off to the emergency room we went. The verdict, Zack has bronchitis. They gave him a nebulizer treatment and we got him to eat about four ounces there and so they sent us home with a nebulizer. We got in the car a little before six and we were about 5 minutes from the hospital when I heard him choking. I pulled over real quick and saw that he had thrown up all four ounces down his front.

Okay... no luck there. So off we go to find a 24 hour pharmacy to get his medicine. I tried the ones in our town but had no luck so I had to go into Des Moines to find a Walgreens. We got out of Walgreens at 7:00 and I had to get Zack to daycare and be at Jake's court hearing by 8:30.

So I rushed home and changed and made it to the daycare at about 8:00. I basically threw him at the teachers and gave them a brief play by play of the nebulizer and such and off I went. I arrived at court right before 8:30.

Court was supposed to begin at 9:00 and they had told us to be there early so Molly and I sat in the waiting room and waited. And then we waited... oh yes and then we waited some more.

TEN THIRTY they came and got us. TEN THIRTY people!! I rushed around for NOTHING!! When we got into the court room we were talking with the lawyers and found out that the treatment center in Mt. Pleasant where we wanted Jake to go won't take him because he's on medicine. SO, now he gets to go to MECCA which is not as great.

Strike one.

And he may have to go to the MECCA in Des Moines, which is not as great as the one in Iowa City.

Strike two.

And the state will only commit him for 7 - 30 days even though his doctor said he needs 3 to six months. As the lawyers told us it is either this or nothing which would you prefer.

Strike three.

FAN F*CKING-TABULOUS!!!

So now I have to find a place that we can transfer him to once he gets out. AND I will have to figure out how we are going to pay for this place that we transfer him to. However, like I told Jake there is no point in him just doing the 30 days and then coming out and relapsing. That would just be a waste of everyone's time, effort and money. If we are going to do this, we need to make sure that we do it right.

So, about 11:30 I finally make it to work on my two hours of sleep. I got in and had JUST sat down at my computer when I noticed the server was beeping and our e-mail wasn't working right. So I went over to see what was wrong and noticed the e-mail system had crashed. So I tried to fix it with no luck and ended up having to reboot the entire server.

As soon as I finished that I decided I needed some lunch. I went to lunch with a co-worker and as soon as I got back I got a message that Zack had a fever and that they had only gotten two ounces in him all day (it was almost one by this point) and so my mom had gone and picked him up.

I called the doctor and they told me that I needed to take him back to the hospital so off I went to meet my mom in the ER once again. As I was walking out the door someone stopped me and said the e-mail was not working again. I caught one of the other tech guys and asked him to look at it as I bolted for the elevator.

When my mom pulled up to the ER I immediately noticed that all two ounces Zack had taken this morning were down his front so I was glad we were there. They gave him some anti-nausea medicine and then took some blood and gave him another nebulizer treatment.

After all of that we were able to get about three ounces in him and thought we were doing good until the nurse came back and told us that his potassium levels were high. SO... they had to take blood again and this time they were going to put and IV in so that if his levels came back still high they didn't have to poke him a third time.

It was at this point that I lost it. He cried and I cried as two nurses held him down to place the IV. They got the blood they needed but ended up bending the IV and had to remove it. Then it was more waiting.

Finally about 45 minutes later they came back and said that his levels were okay and they were discharging us.

At this point all I wanted to do was fall into bed. BUT NO... the DHS lady is coming tomorrow and so my mom and aunt thought that I should probably clean up my house before she got there so about 6:30 they showed up to help and they didn't leave until 9:30. At which time things had been picked up... but not really cleaned. (YES... my house was THAT bad!!)

When they left both back seats of my mom's tahoe were full of clothes. Katie and Jess are coming tomorrow to do the actual cleaning while I am at work. Someone just shoot me now!!

Why I love my job....

So... at 3:00 this afternoon my boss pulled me into his office and closed the door. All I could think of was oh shit my job performance has been slipping and he's going to talk to me about it.

After he sat down he said I want to talk to you about what's been going on. I want you to know that if you need anything don't be afraid to ask. Do you need money? If you need to take time off don't feel like you can't because you don't have any personal time left. We will still pay you and this will not affect your raise, etc.

Holy hell!! I have no idea who tipped him off. I'm guessing either someone from my work reads my blog or they picked up on it from one of my 10,000 phone conversations this week. I can only imagine what my cell phone bill will be!!

So... needless to say I will NOT be looking for anything different any time soon. I have always told everyone that I had a great job and I have never looked for anything different because I like where I'm at but this REALLY solidifies that.

Any job that is willing to put the well being of their employees ahead of their own bottom line is the job that I want to be at!!

Angry

That's where I am at today. They say there are different stages to processing any crisis situation. The stage I have now made it to is anger. Anger and frustration.

Last night I got home and there was a card in my door from DHS. They are investigating my home because of DH. I don't have to be drug tested and it's not a formal investigation or anything it's just that any time meth is involved they have to go to the home and make sure the children are ok.

So... now I have to take him to a doctor to make sure they approve of the fact that he is fine and then I have to deal with being scrutinized. It makes me very angry that I have to fight to keep my son.

Last night I also went and visited DH with his sister. I know that it is still early in the process and I know that it is going to take awhile but he asked about his four wheeler. That makes me angry. Of all the things he is fighting to keep you would think that a four wheeler would be VERY far down the list. Yet he asked if I was going to sell it.

It makes me very angry that I am on the outside fighting to keep my family together and fighting to keep my head above water with all the debt I have been left with and he is worried about a god damn four wheeler.

Speaking of debt... over the past couple of months our debt has gone from $9,000 at the beginning of December to $23,500 now. Why you ask? Well he wrecked a jeep, and then he wrecked another jeep and then he stole from me and then he didn't work and we had to borrow money. OH... and then he decided he needed to go out and buy a four wheeler!!

It makes me very angry that I am here swimming in debt because he couldn't get his SHIT together and he is there, watching TV and sleeping all day.

You get mad you get strong
Wipe your hands shake it off
Then you Stand

One day at a time... I can do this.