Part-time parenting.

This is a subject that really chaps my ass. And unlucky me gets to deal with this on a very regular basis. I have an ex you see, who is one of those parents who only bothers to even see the kids because he has to pay support for them.

Nothing is ever done on his part that doesn't coincide with his schedule, or what he wants to do. The kids go with him every Wednesday night, and every other weekend. And by weekend I mean a 30 hour stretch. Saturdays at 1 until Sundays at 7. Hardly a weekend, especially for someone who sat in court and argued for 30 minutes that he wanted the kids 50/50.

Now before you get all, well see he obviously WANTS to parent/see his kids on me, understand this....the ONLY reason he made that argument is because if he could get that type of visitation he wouldn't have had to pay support. We'd been down this road before you see, he gets some crazy schedule close to that, then doesn't pick them up, and I'm stuck.

So that idea or request of 50/50 gets shot down in court, much to his dismay. The judge tells him that it isn't going to happen but he can have them every other weekend and one day a week. So then the part timer chimes in that he works every other Saturday, until 12. Um ok?, you still have one weekend where you don't work at all, so what's wrong with that weekend? God forbid you lose half of every other Saturday to work, and the other to your kids....that would be just awful huh? Hence more arguing from the part timer, that isn't enough time for me, how would the judge feel if someone was telling him he could only see his kids that often? So the judge tells him that he can have them from Friday evenings to Sunday evening. No thank you says the part timer. Say wha?? Even the judge looked at him like he was a total douchecanoe.

It's now several years since this was implemented...and lets take a look shall we? Every Wednesday he picks the kids up from daycare, and promptly drops them off at his aunts house. She feeds them, often bathes them when they actually get bathed on wednesdays, packs snacks when needed, then the part timer picks them up and puts them in bed. Same thing on the weekends, unless some of his friends with kids are doing something, and then he'll show up with the Princess and Honeybadger and try to look like father of the year.

If anyone ever nominates him for that award I hope they consult with me before he gets it. Honeybadger has a book-it form in his daily folder, to read books, and if he reads 20 a month he gets a free pizza. The part-time parent apparently likes to fill this in, but not actually read to the Honeybadger. I guess this is a step up for him, because he never even bothered with that when the Princess had reading logs. The princess has been involved in cheer, basketball, and baseball for well over a year now, and the Honeybadger in soccer so far this year. Let me tell you how many games of either he's been to. Zero. He did take the Princess to one basketball practice last year, made a big point to ask the coach for a schedule, and still didnt' show up to any. The kids dread having any sort of practices or events on Wednesdays, or even "his" saturdays because they know he won't take them.

I don't understand at all how one can be so uninvolved. How a parent can just not care about what their kids are doing. How what they have going on is never important enough to show up, or to postpone whatever you just "have" to do. I promise nothing is that important, every single week. I don't know how these part-time parents have some people fooled into thinking they're actual good parents, and how the feel good about themselves. I don't know how one says they want their kids as often as they can get them, but never ask for more time with them, and routinely cancel the times they're scheduled to have them. Never to make it up. It blows my mind, and routinely pisses me off.

Things I hate...

I've sucked at this lately, and it's been almost 2 weeks since my last post....let's see if I can get my head out of my ass and get back on this wagon...

Things I hate:

1)Bicyclists. I'm all for saving the planet, being green, hugging trees, saving fuel...whatever. I however, work in a college town, and these fuckers can't decide if they want to be treated like cars or pedestrians. They are everywhere, sidewalks, parking lots, roads, bike lanes, everywhere. Some of them act like cars, go with the cars when the lights change, stay in their little lane when appropriate, all that jazz. Others however, act like pedestrians and go with that flow, cut across the parking lot in a mad tizzy with no defined direction, and act like a cat on crack just darting all over in front of whatever. Can we get some uniformity? All of you either do one thing or the other, preferably the first?

2)Mopagans. You know these guys. Sometimes they come in pairs, sometimes clans of 3 or more. Riding around on their VIP scooters, all up in the way of real cars going down the road, refusing to pull the eff over and let you by. And what makes anyone think 250+ pounds on a scooter that's lucky to go 35mph on a good day is a good idea? And why do these guys usually have their plus size girlfriends clinging onto the back of the thing? Get a real car and your drivers license back, go the speed limit, or get the eff over when you're holding up a line of traffic 20 cars long, or get the hell off the road.

3)Sucky youth sports coaches. My son got stuck with one of these this year, and lucky for me we get to do an evaluation. I hope this lady never gets to coach again. She spent the majority of the kids practices not practicing soccer, or the actual point of soccer (to move the ball downfield and get it in the goal) but playing red light/green light, and just kicking for the hell of it. These kids didn't know what the hell was going on when they got to their first game, and lost every game but one. They scored one goal ALL season, and I'm fairly certain the stars had aligned just right at that moment. They spent their last game playing a game of 3 on 10 because the other coach had every single kid on their team, other than the goalie playing offense, while our coach was yelling at our offensive players to stay up field when they had the ball on our side, and all of our defensive players to stay back when we had it. It dawned on her at the beginning of the 4th quarter to let all of our kids play offense as well but we were already down 8-0 and they rightly didn't give a damn by that point.

4)Fast food workers. I know it's so hard to listen to that headset and punch in my order, when your cell phone is beeping, and your BFF Janie is having a crisis, not to mention, Jake that works there is just so damn dreamy with his greasy clothes, and pimped out Chevette in the parking lot. You might only make minimum wage, but you signed up for it, and I don't care that it's not Burger King I still want this shit my way, and all there, in the bag with some ketchup, the first damn time. I said I wanted a Coke 3 times, just for you to ask me at the window what my drink was again. Focus here. I know it's hard for you, but if you can't keep up go work at the goodwill sorting clothes or something, at least then you're not fucking up someone's food, and providing piss poor customer service.

5)Listserv's. A million pointless, irrelevant to me emails I have to delete. Ugh.

6)Winter time. It's coming, and it's totally on my shit list. No matter how many pairs of socks I wear, no matter how many layers of clothes I put on, I'm still going to be cold. I'm going to want the heat cranked in the car 95% of the time, and C is going to want it off, with the window cracked. My feet are cold just thinking about it and I think it's like 72 degrees outside today. Give me sunshine and hottness any day over some cold, dreary winter time.

I think I could continue my list but that's probably enough ranting for one day. Hopefully I'll have something more to write about tomorrow....or the next day...since I'm so good at keeping up with this

Dentists, cleanings and fillings OH MY

The kids have a dentist appointment today, and I'm not sure who is dreading it more. Thankfully it's just a cleaning appointment today, but the Princess needs work done, and that makes me dread ALL of the appointments.

Their last set of cleanings went well. No tears, no fuss, just in and out. Princess though needs several fillings and two caps, and at the time needed two baby teeth pulled. The first follow up appointment wasn't bad at all. Numbed, tooth out (only one because she was blessed enough to lose the other prior to going back), on our way. The next visit not so much. The Princess freaks out about EVERYTHING. She is emotional and dramatic about things that aren't even important. Ask her why a paper isn't where it should be in her school folder, and she'll cry. It's just how she is. So she was already freaking about her second appointment. C goes back with her, and they get her all ready. Nitrous hooked up, though obviously not cranked high enough, and on her nose. Napkin around her neck, numbing gel on her gums. Tears already in her eyes.

I was in the waiting room, playing on my phone, when the nurse comes out to get me. Hello, panic mode. I thought for sure something was terribly wrong, and I was wondering where the hell Cricket was. The nurse tells me that, Princess was very upset, that they couldn't get her numbed with the needle because she freaked out on them. Then she asked me if they could restrain her, and she explained that once they started they'd have to finish. I know the Princess, and putting a weighted vest on her that straps her to the chair with her arms by her sides was NOT a good idea. She was already crying so I couldn't see it going anywhere good if I let them do this to her, regardless of how OK we'd tell her she was.

I hope somehow though I can find a way to get her to make peace with her stresses. To not stress about when she has to do things like this, things that have to be done one way or the other. It pains me to see her hurt about things that are really so small in the grand scheme of things, things that won't kill her, even if they hurt a little at the moment. I especially don't want her hating the dentist forever. She inherited my awful permanent teeth, and is definitely going to need braces, and most likely a permanent tooth or two pulled to get them straight. So the dentist and the orthodontist are something that are in her future a lot in the coming years. The last thing I want is to have to actually restrain her to get work done, talk about breaking my heart :(

It's Still A Mans' World - Updated

I hate people, men in particular who think women know nothing, who think certain things are only a mans' work, and who will not take suggestions or listen to what women say. I can't do everything, but let me tell you I CAN do a lot. I know things about a lot of stuff. I've done a lot of stuff, I've seen a lot of stuff, and I will be the first person to admit when I don't know something. I will also take suggestions from people regardless of gender.

I can not say the same for the lazy jackass UPS Freight driver who came to our office yesterday. This guy is a piece of work. I've been at my current job since May, and he's been here a handful of times. We have a loading dock outside, visible from my boss's desk, and trucks back in there numerous times a day. Big trucks, tractor trailers, from all of the various shipping companies, all with full size trailers and truck cabs.

The first time I encountered this particular driver he was delivering a pallet to us that had a some expensive lab equipment on it. He came upstairs and told us that he couldn't get to our dock, his trailer is 54' and it's IMPOSSIBLE to get in there (now our building has a building next door, but no other freight carrier has a problem getting in our loading dock. Our maintenance guy was nowhere to be found, so we were left (an office of 3 women) to deal with this jackass on our own. He says he can get the pallet off with his lift gate and sit it out front, but it won't come through the door and we'll have to deal with that. We asked him numerous times to just back up to the dock, and he tells us he can't, and even if he could his truck sits 3 feet higher than our dock and we still won't be able to get the pallet off. "This stuff weighs 800 lbs" he says. So rather than continue to argue with this man, who I know is wrong, who can back up to our dock, and we can lay the dock thing down on his trailer and wheel the equipment right off, we let him unload it in the parking lot and park the pallet at our front door. We then have to get facilities to come take out the door separator so we can get this pallet through the door. Once we get it inside, we realize that this pallet that he says is 800lbs, is obviously not, because we slid it around in the hallway with very minimal effort between two of us women. Whatever right? So we grumble a bit about his stupidity and go about our business.

Fast forward a few weeks and we see this driver outside, backed up to our dock, with his truck, delivering something for another department. I took pictures, to have as evidence the next time he showed up, claiming it was "impossible".

Fast forward another week or so, and we get a phone call from UPS Freight. We have a delivery on the way, and the driver says he can't get to our dock, can we have a fork lift ready. I asked the guy on the phone, why he couldn't get to it, when we'd just saw him a week or so before back into said dock. Oh, he got a new trailer, this one is longer. Hmmm, so he had a new trailer the last time too, as opposed to the one he was driving for the first delivery? This one also conveniently doesn't have a lift gate, so this time he can't even drop it in the parking lot for us, and guess how much it weighs? 800lbs. Really? Everything these guys deliver must weigh 800 pounds. So we run around the building to find the maintenance guy and ask him to go find the fork lift so we can unload this shipment. I've never in my life known a freight company to not be able to unload in some way (via lift gate and pallet jack) what they have on their truck. So we get that delivery dealt with, grumble some more and go about our business.

Now we're at yesterday. I'm sitting in my office and my coworker comes in with UPS Freight driver behind her. She asks me to look up the shipment, I do and then I call the guy it's for to meet him downstairs. The driver then asks us where we want the shipment. On the dock. Where we always want them. I can't get to your dock he says, yes you can I say, every other truck can back in there. "My trailer is 54' and my truck sits too high" he says, EVERY other delivery can get in there we tell him, and we can LAY THE DOCK PLATE ON YOUR TRAILER!!! "But I'll block traffic" he says. WE DON'T CARE about traffic. They can go around the other side of the parking lot. "I'll get a ticket" he says....UM, NO. You won't. Not in a parking lot. On campus. Making a delivery to a department. "Well I'm not going to hurt myself getting it off" he says. At this point my coworker looks at him and asks if he see's us, that we're not going to hurt ourselves either, and it's not like we're asking you to pick this thing up by hand. Jackass. He's still standing here giving us lines of total bullshit that he can't get back to our dock, when our maintenance man walks into our copy room. We yell for him, and he comes over. Tells the UPS man exactly what I had just told him, about being able to get to the dock, and get the stuff off, and what does he do? He walks right outside, backs his 54' trailer up to our dock, and unloads our shipment.

Apparently he just needed to hear it from a man. You know, us women have NO idea what we're talking about when it comes to trucks and stuff like that. I was quite aggravated at this point because he'd given us so much shit with prior shipments and then did exactly what he'd told us he couldn't as soon as a man told him the same things. I commented that I was going to email his boss, I'm much calmer and reasonable by email than I am on the phone, and my boss said she'd do one better and call. She can hold her cool when people are idiots and on the phone I struggle there. So she calls his boss.

She tells him everything the driver always tells us. Then boss man asks her if she's ever driven one of these trucks before. This is where I wished I had called, I would have told him that YES, actually I have. Overseas, fighting a war, defending your freedom and right to act like a jackass to me right now. My boss had to tell him that no she hasn't, but she watches EVERY. Single. Other. Freight Company. Back up trucks the same length to our dock day in and day out, and none of them give us problems, except this driver of theirs. She tells him that we asked him to try numerous times and he told us no, but as soon as a man asked him he did it. After telling us it was impossible. His boss man then tells her that he's driven our route before, he knows exactly where we are and that it is impossible. It's impossible to get a 48' trailer in there, and that he didn't have a 54' trailer. Ok, so you're telling us you both flat out lied to us about it? Because he JUST backed in there. In his fictional 54' trailer. And unloaded our shipment, so why all the flack everytime he's here about not being able too? Where the hell is their customer service? If a man was in our office every day telling him this stuff would he just do it then? No lip, no excuses? His boss continued to be hateful and rude to my boss, and she told him that maybe we'd find another shipper. He told her to go ahead. Really? You don't need our business? Do you realize our sales reps arrange shipping for this entire campus? Hmmm. She tells him that she'll do that and then asks to speak to HIS boss.

Bigger boss man gets on the phone and tells us he doesn't realize what our problem even is if we got our shipment delivered and unloaded. No, I'm sorry. No, we'll talk to the driver and get this straightened out. No caring or worrying at all about their customer relations or service. Baffling. I've working in some form of customer service my entire working life, and regardless of what you think or how ridiculous you think the customer is being, if they aren't yelling obscenities at you and are expressing some sort of concern over your services or products you at least try to appease them. Even if it's all smoke and mirrors. You try to keep their business. Who just readily says to take your business elsewhere, especially in today's economy? We have other options. We see other companies daily. Those companies never give us shit about our deliveries, they do their job and they do it well. I don't know if these 3 menin-particular just have issues with women or what. The first two jackasses (driver and first supervisor) especially, with their we aren't doing anything you ask attitudes, and we're going to tell you that you're wrong regardless attitudes. I'd like to show them both that women (this one right here and I'm sure many, many more) can do their job, do it well, and do it better than they ever dreamed of.

This was yesterday, all backed in, fine and dandy. This man better not dare walk in here again and tell us he can't do this. I might lose my shit on him, and so will my boss, and my coworker. UGH.

End Friday's rant. Have a good day peeps! And may your Friday and weekend be blessed with zero encounters with idiots and jackasses!

Update: The UPS man gave us another visit today. Told us that he wanted to apologize for being harsh and difficult, they didn't tell him to, but he wanted to on his own. (uhhuh...sure) That he's been doing this for 15 years and they preach safety, and not to do anything they don't feel is safe. Apparently backing into our dock isn't safe, but to me if you've been driving a road tractor for 15 years it shouldn't be a problem given there is plenty of room. Anyways: he brought us this to say he was sorry...a tiny pallet of sticky notes :)

STMMDT

This weeks STMMDT : slept away the majority of my childhood.

I'm all for a good nights sleep, you know, the recommended 8 hours and all that. My mom however apparently needs/needed way more than that. This woman can sleep more than anyone I know, and not because of any medical reason, she's been checked. She's just lazy, and sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps some more.

She's worked the same 1st shift schedule for most of my life, 6:20am to 2:40pm. I remember being little and rushed around at the ass crack of dawn to get ready, because she was "running late". She's one of those people who likes to hit the snooze button a hundred times and then yell that they're late and have to be in such a hurry. It didn't help that we lived an hour from where she worked. So rush rush rush, and off we go. In the evenings she'd pick us up at daycare or my grandma's and go home. Then the first thing she'd do when she got home was nap. Not a 20 minute power nap, we're talking an hours on end nap.

So we're home by 3:45 or so and then she'd sleep until 7, 7:30, 8, sometimes later. Sometimes my dad was home and he'd deal with the dinner stuff, sometimes he wasn't and we'd just have to wait on her to fix something. Or when we got older we'd just fend for ourselves. It didn't matter how much we tried to wake her up, she just wouldn't have it, and bothering her would just cause her to lay on the couch longer. At some point she'd finally get up, throw something together to eat, get some coffee and then back to the couch, this time watching tv or reading a magazine. By 9:30 or 10 she was ready for bed, go to sleep for the night and then repeat the next day. In the cases where one of us had a practice she'd somehow manage to get us there most of the time, but then just napped in the car, and resumed the rest of the sleep cycles once we got back home.

While there were days that she'd stay awake in the afternoons to cook dinner at a decent time, they were few and far between, and usually only occurred when my dad was home. She's still like this as far as sleep patterns go to this day. Though on some level it catches up to her. She works, naps, and then bitches that she can't sleep at night. Well hello, I wonder why? It's not like she just exerts herself to no end at work, she works in a factory, when I was little she worked at a seated job inspecting bearings, now she works driving a fork truck most of the day and cleaning trays. She's not just SOOO exhausted that she cant' stay up, she just doesn't want too. She spends all of her days off sleeping the day away and then complains she can't get anything done. It just baffles me.

It also baffles me that she has the nerve to say some of the things she does to me. This past Tuesday the Honeybadger had a soccer game, at which she graced us with her presence. His game was at 630, and the Princess had dance at 515pm. C always picks the kids up, gets them ready, does drop off at dance and then I meet them at home, or the field. Most days we don't have time for dinner before all the events are done for the day. The kids get snacks in the afternoon at daycare, and usually again at home before activities or between things to do, when it's all said and done we grab some dinner, either out somewhere or at home. It's just life. So the Princess is yelling she's "starving" as soon as she gets to the soccer field. Honeybadger asked my mom if they'd like to go eat with us, to which she tells him that she'd already eaten, she "can't wait that late to eat" and "I can't believe your mother doesn't feed you before all this stuff". Excuse me? Their mother works until 5pm. They get lunch at school and then at least one snack in the afternoon, how the hell am I supposed to work dinner into their schedule BEFORE all of their shit happens? At least I'm not home asleep on the couch! They're not starving, and they don't have to wait until 8pm to eat every day of the week. And who the hell are you to judge what time I feed my kids dinner, especially when there were many days as a child I didn't eat until that late, even with nothing going on! C had intervened and said the majority of that in a much nicer fashion than was running through my head but I have no idea where she gets her nerve. Sometimes I think she's delusional about how she acted when I was a child. I'm fairly certain she has this fairy tale version in her head about how life was then and how she was, or wishes she was, and that's just what she chooses to believe.