Will I ever sleep again?

So this is night number two.  It's 2:30 a.m. and I can't sleep.  I couldn't sleep last night either.  Yet, oddly enough, I keep hoping to wake up any minute now.  Standing at the kitchen sink making a bottle earlier I even squeezed my eyes shut for a second and thought to myself... when I open them I'll be in bed and things will be back to normal.  It didn't work.  And if I lay down to go to sleep it only forces me to accept that this really IS happening.  It's not a nightmare.  I won't wake up.  

I went to mediation on Friday with Mike.  He's taking me back to court for custody, visitation, and child support amendments to what's been court ordered for 3 1/2 years now - 100% legal and physical custody to me with supervised visitation for him.  Ever since Mike beat me up in front of the kids at the beginning of October we hadn't heard a word from him, not even from his family... not even for Thanksgiving.  I was relieved.  Things were going well.  The kids had adjusted quickly, as this is about the 6th time Mike has practically dropped off the face of the Earth, and were okay with his absence.  Needless to say they had wondered what he was up to and why he hadn't called, but they are smart enough kids to know that the way Mike had been acting was not something they wanted to be around.  

For a Thanksgiving project Lacey was supposed to write down seven things she was thankful for.  The first one read, "I am thankful for my family. (NOT my dad)".  Yep.  She was suppose to write a family book describing the things she was thankful about for each member of the family, she opted to leave Mike out.  My brother, Tony, took Lacey and Savannah to their very first Father/Daughter dance.  Dion asked me last month if I had a photo of her dad for her to look at because she couldn't remember what he looked like.  I already blogged previously of Savannah's request for a dad for Christmas.  Shane's torn between being angry and hurt and and being Mike's most loyal offspring, which is to be expected.  He's the only boy.  He's stuck in a home with four unreasonable, more often than not emotional, girly girls.  Even our dog is a girl he's points out.  

I don't doubt that Mike loves and misses his kids.  And despite the kids having been through this enough times that they've stopped asking when will they see him next - I know they love and miss him as well.  It's an amazing thing called unconditional love that most children possess for their parents (at least until their teenage years so I hear).  I have always hoped and prayed that Mike would be capable of getting his life together and being involved with his kids.  They deserve a dad.  However, if he were capable of it I highly doubt we'd even been in this position, so at minimal I think I'm allowed to be skeptical of the prospect of him being there for the kids on a healthy level consistently.  So when I got served the court papers I was floored to say the least.  This man who hadn't even bothered to pick up the phone in over three months had it in him to get an attorney and drag this into court.  And it's not even because I wouldn't let him see the kids... he'd HAVE TO ASK OR MAKE AN EFFORT to see the kids in order for me to tell him no even if I wanted to.  

Anyway, I digress...  here's where I start crying uncontrollably.  Beginning on Tuesday, January 6th, Mike will get the kids the first three weekends of every month and every Tuesday night.  So Friday night he picks them up from my house at 6:00 p.m. and I pick them up from his house Sunday at 6:00 p.m. and then every Tuesday he picks them up from school and keeps them overnight and drops them back off at school on Wednesday.  So I will be going from having my kids 24/7 to having them only for a few hours Sunday night, Monday after school, then not till Wednesday after school, Thursday night, and then a couple hours Friday.  Is this not ludicrous!?!??!  Am I the only one baffled by this arrangement?  How can he go from NOTHING to ALL of this time??  We left the court house and I told the kids, just briefly, the schedule and Lacey started crying.  She told me to take her back to the court house so she could tell the mediator that she doesn't want to go with him that much.  I am... my kids.  I am 'mom'.  I don't date.  Most of my friends have kids and we do stuff with them.  I plan my schooling around the kids so I am away from them as minimally as possible.  So although you may be sitting there wondering why I seem to be making a mountain out of a mole hill... I'm not.  This is more than a mountain.  

I know people do this everyday.  But we're not them, we're us.  And whether or not I survive this remains to be seen.  I do know one thing, if I survive this loneliness and fear for the well being of my kids.. it will be only be by the grace of God and His strength that I do so.  Cause I want to retreat under my rock at just the thought of this arrangement, let alone once it begins.

And I thought that it was the end of my world when I started working last year.

Pray for us.

~me

Oh my gosh cheating is hereditary!!

But thankfully so is a great sense of humour!  :)

Shane and I sat down to play a game of "Three" at the table the other night.  You use Scrabble letter pieces and place them face down on the table.  Each of the players draw three letters and you attempt to make words out of the three letters you draw.  The first to form a word from their letters hollers, "THREE!" and all the players draw three more letters.  If noone can form a word you each agree to draw again.  Each word has to attach to the previous like on a crossword puzzle.  You can switch letters around as you get them to form longer words and use all of the letters.  At any rate, that was all extremely useless information as the details pertain minimally to my story but now you know a new game to play!! :)  (Thanks Grandma Lengtat for teaching Shane and I on Christmas, lol.)  So Shane and I draw three.  No words.  Draw three more.  Well I'm over diligently working with my six letters trying to beat him to forming a word, and I hear him chuckle to himself.  I glanced up... and then quickly returned to my letters.  Shane says, "Do you wanna hear something funny, Mom?"  I said, "But of course."  Afterall, who in their right mind turns down a reason to laugh?  He proceeded to explain to me that in the second set of three letters he got, one of them was a 'u'.  He didn't want a 'u'.  "So I flipped it back over and slide it into the middle and got a new one," he continued with a smirk.  "And guess what it was?" he asked rhetorically.  "ahhh 'u'!!" he exclaimed.  "I think it was God saying, 'Nope, no cheating Shane.'"  lol.  I died laughing.  He was quite matter of fact about it and figured he'd share the lesson... and the laugh.

So then tonight my brother, Tony, and his fiance, Stacy, came over.  They were at the table playing Uno with Lacey and Savannah and Dion and who do I spy trying to lay down two cards stacked ontop of each other at one time???  TONY BOLOGNE!!!  Uncle Noni!!!  My brother tried to cheat!!  AT UNO!!!  Against his 4, 6, and 8-year-old neices!!  lol.  

But I don't cheat.  No need to when you're as good as I am at everything.  :P

Did you know I'm awesome?

Dion found a can of fruit in the fridge earlier.  Although I'm pretty sure she went to fetch a water bottle, she must've found the lone cherry on the label on the canned fruit cocktail too irresistable to pass up.  I was rocking Macy in the living room when she shouts to me, "Mom!!  Tan I hab this fruit?"  It took me a second to think about what she may have found... well, alright, longer than a second - cause she then yells, "Welllll!!!????!!!  Taannnnn I??".  I said, "Uhh, yeah... sure."  I hear some rustling in the utensils drawer as she looked for the can opener, which in all actuality was more like the noise that came from the chimney sweeeper guy on Mary Poppins when he plays that all-in-one instrument on the streets.  I can hear her dragging the stool across the kitchen floor and I say, in a helpful yet coverted attempt to avoid her dripping sticky fruit juice on the floor, "Dion, if you bring the can to me I'll open it for you."  She replied quickly, and a bit offended I could tell by her tone, "No thanks.  I tan do it by myself."  So I wait... silently counting in my head how long it would take her till she needed me.  She's quite determined if you didn't know her... cause I finally stopped counting.  She was definitely giving it her all as I could hear the can sliding around the counter and then the can opener slipping off the top of the tin can and slamming onto the counter.  Forget the sticky floors, I started to wonder if the counter was going to come out atleast repairable.  I smiled as I visualized her little frustrated face concentrating on getting to that lone cherry half out of that impossible can.  The smile turned into a chuckle that I tried to keep silent as I listened to her huff.... and puff... and even growl once.  lol.  Finally, it happened, "MOM!!!!!!!!  I need you!  Do you know how to use this can opener??"  Alas!!  "Hmmmmm, I think so, Dion..." I replied, "... coming."  I laid Macy down and sauntered into the kitchen, all the while listening to her still wrestling with this disobedient can opener that had become her worst enemy.  I walked around the corner and into the kitchen only to see her with the can opener barely hanging off the tiny lip on the top of the can... sideways.  "Alright, lemme see here..." I said, slipping my hands inplace of hers.  She stood there, still, a foot to my right, on her stool, clasping her surely sore hands together, watching... watching me, the can opener, and the can.  I turned the can opener right-side up, slide it onto the lip on the can, and started twisting.  She tilted her head and leaned toward me so she could see around my hand to the sharp blade that sliced into the lid.  "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that's how you do it!!  How do you know everything???" she gasped through her ear to ear grin.  I opened the cupboard door  by my head, pulled out a bowl, drained the dreaded sticky juice syrup down the drain, and dumped the prized contents of the can into the bowl.  Dion jumped down off the stool, retrieved a spoon from the silverware drawer, and came back for her fruit... and the cherry half, which there were three of, which made this whole feat even more rewarding.  I handed her the bowl.  She turned and walked away toward the table and without even looking back, still hearing the grin on her face, she announced quite proudly, "My mom is sooo awesome!!"

So... there you have it.  I may not know how to cure cancer, or be a nurse in a third-world country (yet)... but!!  I know how to use a can opener.  And that makes me pretty awesome!  Just ask Dion.