Zack's 9 Month Pictures

For those of you who have already e-mailed me for the user name and password you should be getting an e-mail about Zack's 9 month pictures. For anyone else, I wanted to let you know that they are up on his site and if you would like the user name and password to view them just e-mail me.

Krista from One Day at a Time... it bounced your e-mail. Perhaps I have an old one??

Real Solutions

Well I read through all of your comments. Thank you all for your input. After thinking about it for awhile I agree with those of you who said the passive aggressive approach probably wasn't going to work. If I don't do it, at least at this stage, Jake is not going to notice it's not getting done and that is just going to make me angrier.

So last night we sat down and very calmly discussed how I felt and how it made me feel to be continually doing everything around the house while he did nothing. I agreed with the friend who brought up that it made me feel like he didn't respect me and that he was being lazy and selfish. However, knowing Jake as I do I knew saying those things to him would just make him get defensive.

So, I approached them from the angle of if he was doing all of the cleaning and I was just sitting around how would it make him feel. He acted like he was getting it but I suppose only time will tell.

For now the cleaning lady is a permanent fixture. While I don't like the reasons we had to hire her I do like the job she does and the free time it gives me to not have to worry about doing the deep cleaning so for now she's staying.

As for the rest of the stuff Jake and I agreed to split kitchen work and laundry. I will do the laundry and he will make sure that the kitchen counters and the table are cleaned off every day before he leaves for work. At this point that is a start and true to his word he did clean up this morning and start the dishwasher. So, perhaps this is the beginning to wonderful things?? :-)

Real Problems Require Real Solutions

As some of you may or may not have noticed from the comments on some of my recent blogs my sister is in medical school. As such she has developed sort of a "pill popping" mentality. Most recently she has been trying to get me to take anti-anxiety medicine for my "issues" with our house and it's less than cleanly nature.

Here is my problem with this. The fact that my house is not clean is not in my head. I could see if one little piece of cat hair was causing a mental breakdown where perhaps I might need medication. But that is not the problem of which I am speaking.

And in all actuality, it's not even the cleanliness of the house that is giving me fits. It is more of the manner in which the house gets into that state that I am having problems with. See my husband, he likes to clean NOTHING!! I do the laundry, I do the dishes, I was doing the cleaning before we had the cleaning lady start coming, you get the point.

He is full of excuses. He comes home from work and he's tired so he wants to watch TV. Then he has to go to meetings at night. He gets up in the morning and he's tired so he needs to sit and drink coffee to wake up. On the weekends he is forever volunteering himself for one project or another. This last weekend he volunteered to help his dad mow the pasture and cut down some trees. So, he was gone all weekend.

This morning I wanted him to help me pick up a few things but he was too busy "spending time" with Zack because he had a meeting last night so he didn't really get to see him. In the mean time I don't ever get to see him and so I get more and more frustrated with the status of our household.

Here is our typical day in a nutshell:

I get up at 6:00 I shower and get Jake up at 6:20-6:30
I shuffle around putting laundry away, emptying the dishwasher, getting Zack's bag packed, etc.
Zack gets up, Jake plays with him while I continue to do things around the house
I take Zack to daycare around 7:15
I go to work
I get done with work at 5:00 and head to get Zack
Jake gets home around 5:15 and proceeds to eat something and watch TV
I get home at 5:45 and have to set Zack in with Jake so I can try to find some dinner to feed him
If Jake is home he might feed Zack dinner but most of the time he has meetings so he leaves at 6:20
I finish feeding Zack, give him a bath and by the time we're done with all of that he's tired and cranky and ready for bed
It is only at 7:00-8:00 when I finally get to eat and then possibly throw in a load of laundry or start the dishwasher
Jake gets home from his meetings anywhere between 8:30 & 9:30 and promptly goes to bed because he is tired

Here is what I have tried that is NOT working. I have tried asking him to do things. I have tried making lists. Both of these make me feel like his mother not his wife. He's a grown man, he should be able to look around the house and see what needs done and do it himself. He doesn't.

He has a duffel bag that he brought back from treatment. He got back at the end of August. Until yesterday morning that duffel bag sat on the floor of our bedroom. I have asked him no less than 5 times to empty it out. He has ignored me all of those 5 times. Yesterday it caused a war when I asked him yet again and he told me that he hadn't gotten to it and he would get to it when he felt like it and the cleaning lady could just move it. It is now in the disaster area we call an office.

I have asked him to wait until Zack and I get home to eat. He does not. He is apparently too starving and in too big of a hurry to wait for us. So the other night I asked him to start some food. Something simple like Hamburger Helper or Spaghetti. When I got home he had cooked the hamburger and it was sitting in a strainer. It appeared as if he had half assed it because there were huge chunks of hamburger instead of it being finely chopped. You know the way it needs to be for a nine month old baby with no teeth to be able to eat it!! As for actually preparing anything besides the hamburger. He was tired and he had a headache.

I have tried asking him to run the vacuum on various occasions. Instead of taking the five or ten minutes to do the job right he will choose to turn on the Roomba. The Roomba works fine on the hardwood but it does not get the cat hair out of the rugs. He knows this, I've told him a million times. But apparently it has not sunk in because he continues to do it the "easy" way.

And please, don't give me the lecture about how if I ask him to do something I can't get mad if it isn't done "my" way. I get that. I don't get upset if he runs the Roomba, I'm just glad he does something. However when I specifically say can you run the regular vacuum on the rugs and he ignores me it is a little frustrating.

One of my friends mentioned to me last night that perhaps a lot of this has to do with what they told us in treatment. When you start doing drugs heavily your development stops. So part of his development is stuck at 16 or 17 years old. He certainly does ACT like a teenager some times.

So now that we know this... what the hell do we do about it? Seriously, I'm pulling my hair out here. I'm TIRED of being the only one who knows how to clean up our house. I resent beyond belief the fact that we had to hire a cleaning lady to do what he and I should be perfectly capable of doing if he would pitch in a little bit.

I have also tried the approach of not doing things for him. He appears content to just wallow in his own filth at that point. He would just NEVER vacuum but I can't let that happen because Zack is on the floor and it is all well and good that we have animals but I don't need him to be wearing enough fur to classify him AS an animal when I pick him up!!

So please, ANY suggestions that you have would be much appreciated. Should I continue to make lists? Should I continue to nag in the hopes that he gets it? What have you done at your house that has worked for you??

I really can't stand any more fighting over stupid things like housework but at the same time I can't do it all myself. It drives me over the edge.

**Please do not use the comment section as your own personal space to bash my husband or me. I'm not looking for criticism I'm just looking for suggestions. We're aware that it's broken we want to know how to fix it!!**

Counting My Blessings

I had intended to post today about some things that are going on with me and Jake. I'm frustrated beyond belief with the way the household chores are getting divided up, or lack of division. However, in light of some new information I have just gotten about a family friend I think I will leave all of my complaining for another day.

I received a phone call this morning telling me that a family friend of ours has gone back to treatment. He got out around the first of July and last week he left his wife and their three kids and did not come home for four days. When he did make it home he had lost his truck. I'm still not sure if he has found it.

This makes my heart hurt for his wife more than you can imagine. There is a part of me that is upset that she didn't call me, knowing that I would understand. However, there is another part of me that fully understands why she didn't. I can only imagine how she feels but if it were me I would be sad and embarrassed. Embarrassed that I had taken him back and he had failed yet again.

I suppose it is at this point that her and I part ways in terms of how we think about things. I am under the understanding that it was her husband's family that has been helping her in his absence where as when Jake was gone it was my family. Perhaps she is scared that if she leaves him they will cut her off.

I was lucky. All of Jake's family supported me. I knew, and still do know, that if he fails they will not fault me for taking Zack and making sure he is safe. Last time this woman's husband fell of the wagon (so to speak) she came home and he had taken numerous items out of their house and disappeared with her two boys. Her children were missing, dragged along with their father, while he took them to pawn shops and drug houses to sell the items from their house to get money for drugs.

Every day that I am frustrated with how things are going or not going as quickly as I would like I need to stop and remember how lucky I truly am. I have wonderful friends and family that will swoop in and take me away even if I am not strong enough to do it myself. They will help me to help myself.

I hope like hell that I will never have to use them for this but it is a support system that I wasn't sure I had until Jake left and it became obviously clear that it was there all along. So today, instead of complaining about my frustrations (I have the whole rest of the week for that) I just want to once again say thank you to all of those people in my life who have, and continue to be, there for me.

I will be spending the rest of my day praying for strength for this woman and her family. I have offered her a babysitter for tomorrow night so that she might attend an Al-anon meeting with me. I'm not sure that she will attend but I have extended the hand. It is up to her to grab a hold before she continues to fall. Also, if you could, please say your own little prayer for this woman I'm sure she would appreciate any kind thoughts you could funnel her way.

ZZZZZ.....zzzzzzz....

Hello?? Is anyone still out there??

I'm alive. I promise. I've just been really busy lately. First I had a tax deadline and then I had another tax deadline and now... FINALLY... they are over.

So now I'm busy with...

Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Do you really think you need to do that?
Is that completely necessary?
I'm not fighting with you about this?

.
.
.
.
.

And that's just Zack!! :-)

That boy is in to EVERYTHING lately!! Now that he can army crawl the world is his playground. Of course none of the 20,000 toys that he has are good enough for him. No, he wants to play in the kitty fountain, yank on the vacuum cleaner, swing the phone cord around, bang the dog toys on the floor... you get my point.

We have attempted to block his access to some items but that boy is smart. We put a gate between the living room and the kitchen hoping that would stop him from splashing in the cat water. It worked for one day. He has now figured out that it might take him awhile longer but he can go from the living room to the dinning room to the kitchen and get to the water. So that's what he does.

On top of that, if you take something away he screams. I'm not talking about a little whimper. This is a scream that could melt the flesh off of your face. It's a good thing DHS is not coming anymore because if they ever pulled up and heard that scream they would think for sure I was abusing him.

Last night I set him on the rug next to the bathtub and started running the water. The next thing I know he is leaning forward and grabbing the tub. He then pulled himself up to a standing position to look into the bathtub.

People... I am SOO in over my head here.

It was so much easier when I placed him on a blanket and he just quietly played with his toys. Take one away... no big deal, he'd just look for something else. But now... now he has these opinions on the way the world should work and if anyone stands in the way of that he will let you know about it.

His new thing now is feeding himself. Last night I got lazy and was just going to feed him baby food. That lasted all of one jar and then the waterworks started. So I put the tray on the highchair and slapped down a few crackers and he was happy as a clam.

His favorites right now are cheerios, goldfish crackers, and pasta. (A man of my own heart.)

As for Jake and I, this week has been good. The week before, not so much. We spent an entire week at each other's throats. To the point where we honestly considered whether this was ever going to work. Then I went to some meetings and I talked to some people and he talked to some people and then his dad had a heart attack and it all sort of fell into place.

We sort of realized that some things were not worth fighting about and perhaps we could approach how we discuss things with each other a little differently. I am now more inclined to ask him if he can do things instead of just being mad that they aren't done. And in turn, he is willing to do more things now that he knows I want them done.

Also, his grandma had graciously offered to help us with a cleaning lady. At least the first time. She came last week and it is amazing to me how much calmer I am with a sparkling clean bathtub. Right now it is all I can do to keep the laundry done (Jake goes through two outfits a day and Zack is anywhere from two to six) and the dishes washed. Let alone picking up once and awhile.

It is amazing to me that for so long I lived with things as dirty as they were. I think a part of me just must have blocked it out. But now if there is cat hair on the floor my stress level starts to ratchet up. Before this woman came I was so stressed worrying about scrubbing the tub and the counters and dusting and it was NEVER getting done.

Now she came and she cleaned and dusted everything. She Murphy oil soaped my water bed and my dressers people!! She brings her own cleaning supplies and vacuum and she also brings garbage bags. The money that I save on those things will partially pay her fee as far as I'm concerned. Those cleaning supplies can get expensive. Plus I can spend my Saturday playing with my son instead of scrubbing the toilet. You just can't put a price on that!!

On top of all of that Jake and I are just communicating so much better. When I have a problem that I'm unsure how to handle I start thinking about what I've learned so far in Al-anon or I go there and I talk to people. They have helped me to find solutions to so many things and that has helped us tremendously.

This has been a really good week and so now that all of my deadlines are gone I'm hoping to get back to blogging about my life and possibly something else too. I don't know what. Pick a topic. What would you like to hear about??

Reviving Gift of Gab

Our gossip/current events website sort of took a tank last month so we have been slowly trying to revive it this month. I have put a topic on there about the state system and when children should be taken away for good.

I think all of you have great opinions and I would love it if you would join in the discussion over there. You can get there by clicking here or by going to www.gabbinggirls.blogspot.com

Hope to see you all over there!!

Uh-oh

As most of you know, on Friday my son will be nine months old. Over the last nine months there have been times when I have seriously questioned his development. He didn't roll over until he was 5 or 6 months old and he didn't crawl until just last week. (Not really even a real crawl, and army crawl.)

He has instead preferred to work on his fine motor skills. He will sit and stare at the wheel on the bottom of his Winnie the Pooh toy as he spins it with his finger. He will stare at his toys with the concentration of a scientist examining cells under a microscope. He can grab Cheerios like a pro and knows exactly where those go. (Take that Miss he might be delayed nurse!!)

So, for nine months I have been telling myself that perhaps he will be the intelligent type. The guy who examines all the options before he picks one. Then this morning he crawls over to the hardwood floor, grabs his plastic telephone and begins banging it against the hardwood in an effort to make as much noise as possible. (Ok... so maybe he's the strong silent type??)

As he's banging out of his mouth pops Uh-oh. Jake looks at me... I look at him. Did he just say something? Something that really means something? So we ask him. Zack can you say Uh-oh?

Uh-oh.

Can you say Da Da?

Blank Stare.

Can you say Ma Ma?

Blank Stare

Can you say Uh-oh?

Uh-oh.

So there you have it. For nine months I have waited on the edge of my seat certain that my brilliant child is just waiting to surprise me with something like super-cala-fragil-istic-expialidocious and instead I get uh-oh.

Perhaps tonight we shall work on uh-oh that algorithm that I have been working at so diligently doesn't seem to be working the way I planned.

Perhaps I need to wait for 12 months for that one.

Boring...

Someone informed me that leaving my last post just hanging around was sort of depressing and that they would really like some new content. So sorry to disappoint the masses but right now my life is pretty boring and when it's not boring I'm far to busy to sit down and blog about it.

So, here are some of the highlights:

There is a tax deadline on October 15th. I have no less than 5 returns (some of which are very large) that I still have to prepare and get reviewed and out the door by next Monday.

On Monday Zack was diagnosed with double ear infection. He had a fever all weekend and then had to miss Monday from daycare so I had to take a half a day off to deal with that. He screamed at us for two hours on Monday night but the medicine appeared to be kicking in and on Tuesday night he only screamed for 30 minutes! :-)

Mr. Zackary has also decided to begin army crawling. Well really, it's more of a dragging himself along with his arms but it gets him where he wants to go. This has wreaked havoc on my household. I'm now obsessed with cleaning the floors and picking up everything. It takes a lot of time to be that clean, I don't like it at all.

Since he is on the floor EVERYWHERE now, I am also more conscious of the bug population. Extra fiber aside, I think I might just have a heart attack if he picks up a spider or a cricket or something equally creepy crawly and sticks it in his mouth. So, since the spiders have once again decided that my basement is a prime place to live, which wouldn't bother me so much if they would just STAY there, I had to take an afternoon off on Wednesday to have the exterminator come and once again make my home mostly bug free.

While he was there he felt it necessary to tell me that when he sprayed the outside he chased a lot wolf spiders. Big ugly suckers that don't build webs but instead prefer to just jump on their pray when it goes past. Then when he left he told me to avoid the basement for about 10-15 minutes because he had done A LOT of spraying and probably got a lot of spiders/bugs killed. I promptly packed up and left the house for an hour or so. I don't DO spiders!!

On top of all of this, with any free time I do have in the evenings I am still scanning. I have scanned, and scanned, and scanned and I'm still looking at LOTS of pictures to get done. I was hoping to give my cousins the CD's for Christmas. I need to scan MUCH faster to make that happen.

So there you have it. You have not missed much. Hopefully this weekend will be much calmer and I can get some things done around the house and get caught up. Now I must get to work so that I can try to muddle through some of my last minute taxpayers!!

Have a good weekend everyone!!

On Food and Addiction...

First of all I want to thank all of you for the amazing conversation on the last post. You have all remained respectful of others opinions and I really appreciate that. Jess is one of my bestest friends and we do not always see eye to eye. That e-mail did not JUST go to her and Shane, it went to everyone. It probably did not need to ever go out but I guess I was more upset by her reaction to it than anything because it caught me completely off guard and it really hurt my feelings.

However, I greatly appreciate that you can all carry on a debate without attacking her personally. She is a wonderful friend and has done TONS of stuff for me and I would never want to make her feel bad, intentionally or unintentionally, simply because she had a difference of opinion from me. That's one of the things I like best about our friendship is that we can disagree, and do it often. When she sees bullshit she calls it and I appreciate that. As one of our regular commenters has said so often, everyone needs a Jess!! :-)

So, with those good manners in mind I would like to open up another subject that was brought up in the previous post but I think needs a post of it's own. This was brought up by Jess but was also mentioned by a few other commenters.

Comparing dieting to Addiction.

This burns me in more ways than you can even imagine. There is NOTHING similar about someone being on a diet and someone not drinking/using because they are an addict. No... don't try to tell me there is... there is NOT!!

The only way you can even come CLOSE to comparing the two is if you have Prader-Willi Syndrome. Those people have a compulsion to eat and would in fact eat themselves into an early grave if left to their own devices. That is NOT the same as someone who just likes to eat.

Addiction is a compulsion. Something that you can not control. It is a disease. People who are addicts will spend their paycheck on drugs. They will steal to support their habit. They will use even though they know it makes them sick and they will hurt people that they love just to get their high.

When was the last time you ate until you were sick and then kept eating until you threw up? An addict will drink or do drugs until they are sick and then continue doing it until they are even more sick.

Do you steal to buy junk food? Would you spend your paycheck on junk food instead of buying gas for your vehicle or paying your utilities? Would you not bathe for three days because you were on a junk food binge and couldn't go home to shower because you were afraid you might not be able to get right back to the junk food?

Are you about to loose your job because you don't show up because you are too busy eating junk food? Does eating junk food make you not function to where you have to sleep for days after you get done eating and so you are completely non-productive?

Need I continue? Addiction is a compulsion to do something that jeopardizes someones family, friends, and possibly freedom. (Even alcoholics do things like this on binges.) Unless you can say the same thing about eating junk food I don't think the two can even be classified in the same category.

Outside Opinion Needed

Ok... I need all of you to put down your lurker hats and put on your commenter hats because I need your opinion.

I wanted to do something nice for Jake to celebrate his one year of sobriety. I mentioned it to a friend of mine and she suggested that we go away for a weekend. I thought that was a great idea so she suggested a weekend in AR fishing. Wonderful!!

So, I sent out an e-mail asking several of our couple friends to join us for the weekend. We will be driving, to save on money and also only staying two nights, to save on money. The idea is to rent a house or a cabin and to all share it which will also cut down on costs. However, in the end Jake and I are not millionaires so we can not afford to pay for every one's trip. SO... the other couples will be spending approximately $500-$750 of their own money if they choose to go with us.

This morning I sent an e-mail to these couples respectfully requesting that they refrain from drinking if they choose to attend this weekend with us since it is a weekend to celebrate Jake's one year sobriety.

The response I got back from a friend of mine was less than positive and I was just floored. I immediately burst into tears. I really wanted this weekend to be a fun weekend for Jake to show him that you can have fun without drinking. We are supposed to be celebrating his one year sobriety and so all I can think is what a crappy way to celebrate his sobriety by drinking in front of him.

The following are the e-mails that followed:

It came to my attention last night that I may not have mentioned this to all of you so I thought I would very quickly. This weekend in AR is supposed to be to celebrate Jake's one year of sobriety. SO... I think it kind of goes without saying that we would appreciate it if there was no drinking. (Or drugs... Jessica leave that baggie at home!!)

This will be his first vacation since he got sober and I would like to show Jake that it is possible to have a great time without drinking and partying.

Knowing you all as I do, I don't anticipate that this will change your decision to go or not to go but I thought it was only fair to mention it up front. I just don't think it's fair to Jake to celebrate his sobriety by waving alcohol in front of him.

Response from Friend:

I don't know if it will change our decision to go..but I don't think husband will be that receptive to me telling him he can't drink. Now I think he will be considerate of Jake as he has been in the past but I can't promise you he WON'T drink.

Response from Me:

Don't you think it would be a little crappy to say hey... congratulations on not drinking for a year, Here let me have a drink in front of you?? I don't think having a drink if we are in a restaurant or whatever will be a big deal but if they are sitting around playing cards or pool and all the guys are drinking except Jake I think that will be a pretty crappy way for him to celebrate his one year of sobriety.

I guess I could see where I can not ask people not to drink if it is just any weekend get away. I mean if we plan a couples weekend just for fun than hell no I can't ask everyone not to drink just because Jake doesn't. But we are going on this trip FOR Jake, BECAUSE he has been sober for one year. Doesn't that make a little bit of a difference??

Her Response:

I think we have all been supportive of Jake but it is getting a little annoying to me that EVERYTHING is surrounded around Jake and his recovery. I want to help him celebrate but if I am going to spend $1500 on a vacation I am not going to tell husband he can’t drink or I can’t have a glass of wine (god-for-bid – I would want one). This may sound harsh but it’s honest….husband is not the one with the addiction (thus should not be punished). So far I have been very impressed at his lack of alcohol use around Jake.

Let’s put it like this….I am going to be on a hard core diet by then trying to lose weight for my class reunion so I would appreciate it if no one ate junk food, or treats or fried food around me that weekend because it would be too hard. Food is my addiction and as we can see I haven’t done that great at staying clean.

I honestly think that Husband #2 and Husband #3 won’t go if you put this sort of pressure on everyone. I don’t know I can’t speak for them but that’s just a hunch. You can only control yourself and your family….to plan a trip that everyone is paying for and try to control that I just don’t know that it will happen.

We are helping you celebrate but this vacation is just as much for us. YOU and JAKE are going on a vacation to celebrate his sobriety. I just don’t see it like you do.

Now if you were having a party at the lodge where you were paying for everything and furnishing all the beverages then I could see asking everyone not to drink….but you are not paying for my trip and I just don’t think I can ask husband not to drink at all. A-he will be annoyed that I am telling him what he can and can’t do and B-it would probably be better if I let him be considerate of this on his own as he has in the past.

It was at this point that we decided to turn it over to you guys... I don't want to know who is right or wrong. I don't care. I just want to know if I'm being unreasonable to ask people to be respectful of Jake. I have a tendency to control situations or try to control them and I don't want to be doing that. We have good friends, I assume that they can make this decision without me reminding them. However, at the same time I don't want Jake to be put in an uncomfortable situation when I was trying to do something nice for him.

Anger, Resentment.... Acceptance

So I have a post that I have been meaning to write for awhile but I just haven't seemed to make the time. Remember last week when I promised you a post... yeah... still in my head. Then today as I was typing a letter to a family friend about how I'm doing I realized that everything I had just written was pretty much what I wanted to write here. So... here it is: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

Before Jake went to treatment and even after he left I convinced myself that everything would be wonderful if he would just stop using. After all, he was the one with the problem, and that problem was the drugs and the alcohol. Obviously if those things were taken out of the equation life would be all sunshine and roses. How could it be anything but?

Then Jake came back and I woke up from my lovely dream to realize that just because he had changed everything wasn't suddenly perfect. I was faced with a flood of emotions about the way things used to be and also the way I was afraid everything was going to be again. For me, this fear quickly turned to anger. LOTS of anger.

I was angry with him for what he had done but I was also angry with him for things I thought he should be doing and also things I was afraid he was going to be doing. On top of that I was angry at myself for not seeking treatment for myself sooner. I convinced myself for so long that I didn't need a support system and I didn't need to change anything about me that when I finally did decide to go and get help it seemed like it was too late. I had just started to attend Al-anon meetings and then the next week he was home.

I found myself very resentful of him and of the fact that he was there in the first place. I felt like I was just learning who I was and what I liked to do and then he came back and I felt like that was all taken away from me. Like I didn't have the time I needed to heal myself.

So as a result, I would blow up at him about the dishes or the laundry when really that wasn't what I was mad about. Last Thursday I ended up talking to Jess for about 45 minutes (totally missed the first episode of Survivor... THANKS Jess!! :-) and she mentioned to me that sometimes people fight about the topics but not the issues. So she told me that I needed to start focusing on the issues (i.e the reasons I was upset in the first place) and not the topics (i.e. the dirty bowl that didn't make it into the dishwasher).

This seemed to make a lot of sense to me but I still wasn't sure how to begin. So I went to my meeting on Friday and I talked to some people about it. They had some really good suggestions for me. I started pausing before I blew up about something and deciding, number one if that was what I was really mad about, and number two if it was worth fighting about.

Then at my meeting last night we talked about personal freedom which is basically being free to live your own life and be your own person. This topic is HUGE for me because I have spent 11 years doing what Jake likes or basing what I can go out and do on whether he wants to go or if I'm scared that he will get drunk and make and ass out of himself!! :-)

I've spent so much time watching him and taking care of him that somewhere in all of that I lost myself and I lost my ability to just be me. So now, I think I've turned a corner. Jake and I are talking about our, or mostly my at the moment, issues instead of fighting about them. And I am working on finding myself. Right now, I still catch myself doubting whether I should make plans or do certain things but I'm getting better.

On Sunday I'm going to my aunt's house and I didn't feel for one moment like I had to clear it with Jake or make sure he had something to do too so he wouldn't be getting into trouble. I just decided I wanted to do something and I made plans to do it. And for me... that is HUGE.

So, I think I'm finally moving forward in my own recovery. I'm getting to a place where I'm accepting that Jake is NOT my responsibility. I am my responsibility and Zack is my responsibility.

As we say in Al-anon. One day at a Time....

Memories

I spent this weekend going through my grandpa's old pictures and newspaper articles. I'm going to scan everything in and make CD's for my family members so that none of these memories are ever lost.

This weekend I'm going to go to my aunt's house to go through my grandma's old pictures to do the same thing for that side of the family. If you ever have the opportunity to do this I HIGHLY recomend it!! It has been great to go through all of the old pictures. All of these memories I never want to loose and I'm SO greatful to get the opportunity to see and record images like these:

My grandpa - Age 2

My Grandma - Age 3

My Grandparents - Just Married

My Dad - Age 3

6 Months

I have a post all written up in my head but I thought this was more important. So I'll leave this up for awhile and maybe put my post up later today or this weekend.

Today is Jake's six month AA and NA birthday!! (For those of you not in the program that means that he has been sober for 6 months.)

YEAH for Jake!! I'm so proud of him for making it this far. Things are going well for him and if he continues down this path I have no doubts that we will soon be celebrating his one year birthday and many more after that.

CONGRATULATIONS Jake!! We love you!!

4 years

Today is my mom's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!

Today is also Jake and my 4 year anniversary. To celebrate I woke him up at 1:30 this morning by screaming about a giant spider on the wall. It wasn't until I had the lights turned on that I realized that I was dreaming and that I had carried that dream over into real life.

So, happy anniversary to the man who would have killed the imaginary spider for me at 1:30 in the morning!! (Even if it was just to get me to calm down and go back to sleep!!)

I love you lots!!

Quick Update

I'm just going to post something REALLY quickly because I'm busy, busy, busy at work.....

- For all of you out there who play on line gambling games, YES you have to report your winnings and losses from on-line games on your tax return.

-Yes really...even though you don't get any tax forms. Keep track of this and report it on your return. It will save you having to pay someone like me LOTS and LOTS of money to recreate it and it will also save someone like me valuable hairs on their head.....

- Jake has a sponsor now. He asked this man to be his sponsor on the 7th. This has helped him immensely.

- Jake now attends one meeting per day as his sponsor has recommended. He has only missed one day which was Saturday because we were out running errands. His sponsor said this was fine because it is important for him to spend time with us too. (For the record I offered to drop him off and wait in the parking lot when I realized what time it was but he decided not to go.)

-Jake and I attend meetings together (I go to Al-anon and he goes to AA) on Tuesdays and Fridays. It is a nice time for us to talk about our recovery and to spend some couple time together

-Jake really likes his new job. He has a lot of responsibility but he has really stepped up to the plate and seems to be handling it well.

-More than his new job Jake likes that his new job is located less than two miles from my parents house and so he gets to go there every day for lunch and eat whatever it is my mom has cooked for the workers and my dad. (I'm jealous...)

-Zack is doing fine and growing like a weed.

-Yes I know his website is outdated. I can't upload pictures and home and I have been SOOO busy at work I haven't had time to mess with it.

-Yes... really... I know Zack's website is out of date. I promise you, he is fine and growing and spoiled you can stop reminding me.

-I am doing well with the adjustment. There are things Jake and I need to work on, like talking to each other better, but these are now normal couple things as opposed to what they were before. Normal couple things I can handle.

-Some time this week I may dig myself out and then I will try ever so hard to post something with a little more content.

Job

YIPPEE!!


WOO HOO!!


HURRAH!!!


Happy dance all around!!

He got a job!! He will be doing maintenance at a trailer park. Mowing, weed eating, snow removal, fixing things that are broken, changing water meters, all that good stuff. It is a full time position so I assume they must have enough stuff to keep him busy.

He got this job all on his own which has just made him over the moon with excitement. AND... while he didn't flat out tell him he was in treatment, he didn't lie either. He told him he was in recovery and active in AA.

YIPPEE!!

Jake was gitty as a school girl last night. Although he admits it is not what he wants to do for the rest of his life it is a job that pays money and that's what he needs right now. Something to build up his confidence and get his foot in the door.

So, join me in the happy dance will you?? (Ok, I know you're at work... but you're dancing on the inside right??)

Discouraged

So the job hunting is going no where. This telling the truth thing is NOT getting Jake very far. Even the people that he has told half truths too seem to be frightened away. It is like he mentions the word recovery and people automatically write "NOT IN THIS LIFETIME" in big bold letters across the top of his application.

Last week he had an interview with T@rget to be a stock boy. This is not a hard job. High school kids get this job. Jake, however, did not. He called me today to tell me that they had sent him something in the mail. They wouldn't tell him what it is. I'm SURE it's a rejection letter. If they wanted to offer him a job they would have called him on the phone. Sending something in the mail is how companies inform you that you did not get a position.

So today he had another interview and he is also filling out some more applications. I am trying oh so hard to stay positive for him. I keep telling him all he needs to do is keep filing out applications but I imagine that if it is discouraging for me it must be discouraging for him.

After all, he's not dumb. He is well aware of the fact that most people can just walk into T@rget, half ass fill out an application and get a job. Yet for him, even though he didn't tell them he was in treatment just that he was now in recovery, seemed to blow the whole thing.

Cross your fingers with me will you that SOMEONE... ANYONE will give him a chance. All he needs is to get his foot in the door but right now even that is a difficult task.

**Update, he drove all the way home from his grandma's house before going to fill out more applications just to get the Target letter just in case I was wrong. I wasn't... but oh how I wish I was.....**

Job Hunting

Wow!! Where have all of you been? I had people leave comments on that last post that I didn't even know read and people who I knew read but had never left a comment before. For the record I told Jake to tell the truth, our friend Jess was over and told him to tell the truth so I think he gets it.

He will know this week about the two jobs he interviewed for last week and he has another interview tomorrow. When he interviewed last Thursday he did tell the person that he was in recovery and active in AA so I think he's also getting the message that honesty is the best policy.

Also, for those of you who asked, yes we are very aware that he will not be able to get the pick of the litter for jobs. For the last 10 years or so he has been in the construction industry. He knows that there are a lot of people who use in that industry and for that reason even though I have suggested construction jobs he has not called them. He's very leery of that right now and so I'm just letting him do his own thing.

Quite frankly I don't care where he works as long as he feels comfortable there. He has sent away for a study guide to take the US Postal exam. I don't know if his past will haunt him if he gets an interview there but he wants to try and so I'm just keeping my mouth shut and hoping that with a little job history under his belt by the time he takes the exam maybe that missing five months won't even be an issue.

In the mean time what he's applied for are jobs that pay $8-$10 per hour. When he left the job market he was working in jobs that paid $12-$15 per hour. We both know that these are probably not jobs he will do forever. But they get his foot in the door and right now any job is better than no job at all.

To Tell or Not To Tell??

Jake has been interviewing for jobs this week and he has run into a problem. Does he tell them where he has been and risk them not hiring him because of it or lie to them and risk them finding out he lied and getting fired over it??

I go both ways on this. Yesterday he told the guy he interviewed with where he had been. He said that it didn't seem to phase him and that the guy told him that he can respect the fact that Jake had taken the time to make sure he got better. Still I wonder if the guy didn't just say that for the sake of being polite only to write NO WAY on the top of his application as soon as he left.

This morning he has an interview and when he filled out the original application he put that he has been working for his dad for the last five months. So, now he doesn't want to change that and tell them the truth. So he told me that if they ask he will just tell them that he is leaving the construction industry because he has a son and needs to get away from that environment. Sort of a half truth.

So which way does he go? What would you do? If you were an interviewer and someone told you that they had been in treatment for five months would you still consider them for a job or would that automatically turn you off??

Maybe the sort of position makes a difference. He has thus far interviewed for a grill cook position and a shelf stocker/truck unloader type position. So it's nothing where he would be handling large sums of money or anything like that. Does that change your answer?

Adjustment

Things are going along rather well at our house, considering the circumstances that is. Last Friday Jake stayed home and cut down some trees and did some yard work. It was LONG overdue and it was nice to have him home to do it.

Then Friday night we went to a meeting. He went to an AA meeting and I went to an Al-anon meeting. I was much more comfortable at this meeting and I'm not sure if it's because I knew what to expect or if I just liked this meeting better. Either way, Jake liked his meeting too so our plan now is to attend every Friday.

We also have a meeting scheduled for this evening so I will be interested to see if we like this one also. If we both like our meetings we may fall into a Tuesday, Friday meeting schedule with additional ones as needed. I really like being able to go to the same place but attend our different meetings. We are doing something together, but yet still getting our own thing out of it.

Then on Saturday we went and visited his grandma and had breakfast with her. Then in the afternoon we went to visit his mom. She was camping for the weekend and so we got to ride horses (which neither one of us has done in QUITE a while) and then we cooked our dinner over the fire. It was nice to visit with them and definitely something we would like to do ourselves once Zack gets a little older and we have a little more money.

Sunday found us a church with a very tired, very wriggly child. Note to self, do not skip morning nap hoping he will sleep through church. He will NOT sleep, he will just piss and moan and wriggle and drive you insane.

After church we put Zack down for a much needed nap and Jake and I headed out to begin cleaning the garage. I wanted to be able to get some things moved to the shed and some things organized so we could possibly fit the lawn mower and one if not both vehicles. Well, we got some things moved, but not much went into the garbage pile.

After about two hours we decided to call it a day and go to Lowe's to try to find some shelving and a cabinet for Jake's hunting stuff. We found what we were looking for but the prices on those things are NOT cheap.

After all the running around we decided to take it easy yesterday. Jake went fishing with a friend until about noon and then in the afternoon we took Zack in the wadding pool we borrowed from our friends.

For all of the running around and doing things Jake and I managed, for the most part, to not have any major battles. Unfortunately the manner in which he was returned to our home left a lot to be desired in the adjustment area. We still have a lot of baggage leftover that doesn't just go away because he's clean.

We both have to learn how to talk to each other and how to ask for what we need from the other person. These may seem like small things but for us they seem to be large hurdles that we are going to have to break down bit by bit.

Today he went for his outpatient evaluation and they only want him to come one night a week since he is attending meetings regularly. So now comes the process of him trying to find a job and us having to get his jeep cleaned out so he can drive it and we can get it insured again. The thought of him driving around again scares me to death but it is necessary. I can't continue to act as his mother. I have to let him "sink or swim" so to speak and this is the first step in allowing him to become the "man" of the house again.