I Get It

You know the old story where a Mom runs to the store to buy a gallon of milk and three months later they find her in California waiting tables at a Denny's?  Mom will say something to the effect of I just couldn't take it anymore and people who have never been there, or who have never had kids, or parents, or crazy jobs will shake their heads and wonder "How could she leave her kids?"

I get it.  I'm this far - from going to the store for milk and not coming home for a few days.

Last week was a little wild, luckily some things from the crazy schedule got dropped, which relieved some of the stress.  Other news trickled in that dug the depression / anxiety  hole even deeper.

Mom heard from Social Security and she was denied benefits.  This despite the fact that two different shrinks concluded she is unable to effectively hold a job.  Today we went to the attorney's office to sign papers for an appeal.   The attorney was optimistic she will eventually get benefits but we may be looking at another 8 months or so, especially if the appeal fails which is statistically likely.  The attorney gave me a rather large questionnaire to fill out on mom's abilities and I am going to have her former boss write a letter that states he could see her work abilities failing.  I doubt it will hurt anything, but I wish we'd done it in the first place.  Today marked her one year anniversary of living with us.  Yay, about 6 months too long.  If I had a sibling it would be his/her turn to take care of Mom for a while.  As it is I'm considering contacting her brother and buying her a plane ticket for a nice long visit.

Last Friday was the Blue & Gold banquet for the Cub Scouts.  I made a giant cake.

This was not my best work, in fact I was all for scraping the icing off and starting over if I'd had time.  Alas I did not. and took it to the banquet.  It was very well received with many pictures snapped but I can't say I was proud to have my name associated with it.  Associated with it though it was, I got a phone call on Monday morning from a local higher end grocery store asking me to come in for an interview as cake decorator.  Now, I had applied to this store in September of '10 and never gotten so much as thank you for your application, and a few weeks later saw a write up in the local paper that the store had hired some girl with pastry chef experience. I can't compete with that and never gave it another thought.  The day before the banquet I noticed the store was looking for a cake decorator and with life so nuts I'm not about to go looking for more trouble and just breezed over the ad.  I don't know if somebody from the store was at the banquet, or if they were mining their old files and found my name or what but I was called up.  I went to the interview on Monday afternoon and go back for a second "try-out" interview to test my skill this coming Monday.  If I manage to land the job it will be part time, and might be a God send for my sanity.  In the meantime I've been practicing my buttercream piping skills and plan to bake a cake and time myself decorating it grocery store style.  I figure if I can put a decent cake out in 20-30 minutes time I might land the job.  I do worry about smoothing the buttercream as that is an art that drives me to distraction.

Beyond that, Hubby and I spent Valentine's day alternately getting along nicely or at each other's throats concerning taking a vacation.  The vacation I so much wanted to plan for RIGHT NOW he proclaims must wait on the kids to be out of school for spring break since they have missed so much school this year.  (Sonny Boy missed most of last week with bronchitis)  Now it seems it won't happen on spring break either as the only place we have to plant the kid's is at his sister's or mother's and they are either out of town or overwhelmed with sports tournaments.  Now my vacation I wanted to take RIGHT NOW is held off until at least June, which gives it whole new set of requirements because I'm not going to go south and broil on some beach like a grilled lobster.  Mom doesn't get why we just don't leave the kids with her, but the fact she couldn't remember what time the attorney's appointment was, gets items on the calendar mixed up constantly, and gave a baby aspirin to Sonny Boy the other day as he was coming down with his bug (Hubby was home working in the garage) despite the fact that the bottle says "Do not give to children or teenagers".  I just don't trust her with the kids if I can't get back to them quickly with a phone call.  Not to mention they would live on frozen pizza, video games and questionable TV the entire time we were gone.

In other news Igor got a note home for wrestling another boy in the classroom during class and the two got marker all over each other.  Sonny Boy hasn't had anymore bad reports but we have a teacher conference next week so we'll see then.  I got a "new" haircut and color, nothing drastic just shorter and with some red highlights.  Sonny Boy has a wrestling tournament on Sunday which is likely to be some tough competition.  It's 1:00 am, I'm going to sleep now.