Sticks and Stars

I haven’t mentioned the guy I’ve been dating for quite a while. You recall the one? Single dad, attractive, artistic, etc.? Well indeed, I’ve been dating him ever since I first blogged about him. It hasn’t been as smooth as one might hope, and there’ve been times when it seemed like we were no longer dating at all since I hadn’t talked to him in weeks and weeks, but eventually we’d get back in touch and reconnect and things would be relatively good.

But I think that tonight things officially became “over.”

We went out for sushi and then we decided to go to a tattoo shop to browse and to get him a piercing he’s been wanting and while we were waiting for his shit to be sterilized we got into an argument about whether or not tattoos of naked, big breasted women are part of a system that keeps women subservient to men. I didn’t mean for us to have this argument. I’d already had plenty of other warning bells about his absolute lack of any sort of critique of our dominant culture, capitalism, power structures, institutionalize oppression, etc., so I knew it wasn’t going to go well, and indeed it didn’t. He got pierced, we drove home in absolute silence, I tucked in my five year old who had waited up for me, and he left. Him staying late is pretty much the trademark of our dates. In fact, there’ve been times I’ve worried that our dates were merely the small talk he endured in order to get the real conversation, the one that happened on my narrow, uncomfortable couch after my children were asleep. So the fact that he left without even trying to see if I’d still be willing to let him stay tells me a lot.

But it’s fine with me. Early into our dating I knew he was not going to be “the one,” primarily for this very reason. I just can’t get serious about someone who doesn’t share my sociopolitical outlook, at least to some extent. Or who, at the very least, doesn’t have some kind of interesting, thoughtful, thought-provoking insight of her/his own. And this guy did not. He’s pretty much your typical American male and man, I am really not your typical American female.

I liked having him around though because I liked hanging out with another grownup, getting to go do fun stuff without my kids, getting to do fun stuff with my kids (and him and his kid), just having that companionship. And here I just wrote a post about how I don’t need a relationship, I just need community and friends, blah, blah, blah, yet all the while I’m dating someone who I’d be unlikely to even bother befriending if I wasn’t lonely. Clearly getting one’s priorities straight is not just a one time decision that can proceed flawlessly from that point forward.

Clearly I’m feeling lonelier than I realize.

Today I have the day off as my daycare provider needed the day off and as a result I had no place to stash my two year old. I initially planned to take my five year old to preschool as usual but at the last minute I remembered how much I hate to make his lunch for preschool happy he would be to get to stay home and so I decided we could all have one big happy stay-at-home day together.

It was drizzly and cool this morning so I expected that we’d stay in and I provided excitement in the form of chocolate no-bake cookies (my five year old was in charge of pouring). But then it cleared up and grew warm and breezy so we ventured to the library, returned our due materials and played for a while at the adjoining park. My five year old encountered one of his preschool colleagues and together they played many games of assorted princess varieties while her mother and I chatted.

She was very nice and funny, the mother, and she made me miss having mama friends, especially funny down-to-earth ones. She lamented knowing not where her daughter found her love of princesses and now I feel tempted to research books on empowered princesses and then casually leave a note in her daughter’s cubby casually mentioning stumbling across the books and then casually providing my email address in case she, I don’t know, has questions or something. Or want to be my best friend forever.

I miss grownups who I can talk to in real life.

My five year old and I just finished gluing gems to his rain boots. Earlier today during our usual Sunday grocery store trip he brought me a pair of hideous pink camouflage rain boots and begged me to buy them, claiming that the kids at his school tell him that his current rain boots are “stupid and old.” Because I was fairly certain that kids at my son’s preschool have a good ten or so years before they start making fun of each other’s footwear, I paid attention to the underlying message and asked him whether he felt that his boots were “stupid and old” (”stupid and old” being his favorite complaint about things that are boring or no longer new and exciting), to which he answered affirmatively and again insisted on the new boots. Pink camouflage boots are wrong on so very many levels, not to mention the fact that he has a perfectly serviceable pair of purple (thrift store) rain boots and that it’s almost summer, so there was no way in hell I was going to buy him new boots, but with a flash of motherly inspiration I remembered both my glue gun and bag full of sparkly plastic gems and suggested to him that instead of buying something new, we make his purple boots new and fancy by adding gems. He was thrilled with this idea and indeed, once we were done adding a band of gems around the top of each boot (I did the gluing, he did the color selection and pressing), he walked around them commenting happily that those were “some fancy boots!”

Now he is “hatching” out of a laundry basket every time I (at his instruction) announce that, “Today is St. Hatch Day!”

Sunny skies mean another gardening day at my house, another set of before and after photos for you to admire, and another tired and achy evening for me. I had grand ambitions this morning, thinking I’d get all the remaining beds in my yard taken care of, but once again my limit held fast at lawn moving, weeding one bed and then the related planting. I was sorely, sorely tempted to go to a nursery after ballet dance class this morning but I remembered the rule I had wanted to make for myself, that I could not purchase any plants until after the appropriate beds were prepared, and so I decided it couldn’t hurt to try that out. And indeed, by the time I was done weeding and mowing and planting the plants my landlord brought over a couple weeks ago, I was ready for a nap, so it was good that I didn’t have to feel guilty and burdened by plants desperately crying out for dirt on my porch.

Before…

And after! About two thirds of the bed above are my container garden from last year, sans annuals (and soon remedied). I also plan to add annuals to the sparse areas in the front of the bed. Perhaps if the weather is nice next weekend I really will make that trip to the nursery, although if current weather patterns hold, it’ll be snowing next weekend…

Yesterday morning I was talking to a coworker who lives in an intentional community. I always have a million questions for her because I have long been fascinated by intentional communities and have secret (and not so secret) dreams of joining one (I can’t recall whether I blogged about my boys’ dad and I actually starting the process toward membership at a rural intentional community in the south). I was telling her about how I once posted to this (annoying) single moms email list that I belong to, telling about my dream to rent an apartment building and form an intentional community of other single moms, and how my post garnered a big response of, “Don’t be ridiculous,” and “That would never work,” and, “Women just can’t live together!”

As I was telling the story and she was telling me about a friend of hers who’s also a single mom who has dreams similar to mine, I started thinking about that term, “single mom,” and I realized that I really don’t care for it anymore.

I used to like the term. Or maybe like is too strong a word, but I felt comfortable nestling inside it, I felt like it fit. It was a term that suggested suffering and strife and stress and strain and damnit, I wanted people to know about my suffering and strife and stress and strain! I felt like I could call myself a single mom with a small sigh and eyes cast downward and people would tsk accordingly and feel sorry for me and the unfair burdens piled on my frail, frail shoulders. A tear comes to my eye just thinking about that tragic, tragic picture of me standing strong against so much adversity.

God I was noble.

These days the term makes me cringe a little, perhaps for the same reasons. I feel quite happy with this life I find myself living and I feel quite proud of the work I’ve done to get here, and I feel excited about what the future will bring. When I look at myself and my life I feel big and strong and I hate the thought of people thinking of me as “just” a single mom and squelching me down into that little pitiable box.

Of course, I’m a mother. Mothering is a big part of my life, maybe the biggest part because it kind of shapes all the other parts, but it’s still just a part. And of course, I’m also single, but is that so bizarre that it needs its own label? Do people otherwise go about tagging their relationship status to their various identifiers? Must we always be partnered or striving to be to the extent that those of us who are unpartnered must advertise ourselves thus?

The longer I stay single, the more I like it, and surprisingly (or maybe not), the more whole I feel as a person. When my boys’ dad and I first broke up I definitely felt like a big piece of my life had been torn away and there was this huge, raw hole. His mom warned me that I should find someone new soon so that I didn’t become too independent and I certainly can see that risk (ha ha). These days I feel very disinclined to get myself into a relationship. I want to make friends and I want to be a part of a community, but I’m much more cautious about dating and romantic involvement. The more I spend time growing my whole self, the more I “heal,” the less I feel the need for some all encompassing relationship. And that’s good. I have a long history of placing my relationship at the center of my life and trying to make it fill all the empty spots in me. Hell, I feel like most of us do that. But the longer I spend alone, the more I find ways to fill those empty spots all by myself and I feel more complete as a result.

There are definitely times when I feel lonely and feel like I want a relationship, any relationship. But then I think about concrete people with whom I could involve myself and I realize that I don’t want “any” relationship, I don’t really want a relationship at all, I just don’t want to be lonely. And there are better cures for loneliness than shackling myself to someone else.

So yeah. I’m a mother. I happen to be single. But I don’t really feel like a Single Mother anymore. I just feel like an independent woman accompanied by two small children, who’s learning and growing and making her way in the world and helping her children to do the same. We aren’t beleaguered, we aren’t downtrodden, we shouldn’t be pitied. We are doing pretty well.

Barbara and selzach, I really appreciate your comments on my Slogging Forth post. You guys made me feel better. I constantly hear from my ex that I’m unreasonable and ridiculous and idiotic and psychotic and whatnot and sometimes it’s hard not to let doubt slip in. Hearing this stupid parenting plan evaluator essentially brush off the concerns that feel the very most reasonable and important and sane made me feel much worse. But the more I think about it, the angrier I get.

As I said, I just really think she didn’t get it. She had preconceived notions that she couldn’t get around. His dad refuses to spend time with him? Well, you know how men don’t like babies! You say you have concerns about how your son will be treated in his care? Oh come on now, let’s stop playing the bitter overprotective mother and give the poor guy a chance!

I really, really tried to be reasonable with this woman. I was doing my best to be open to anything she suggested because I wanted to leave the appointment with the very best parenting plan possible. I was determined to not let my hatred for their dad get in the way of whatever would be best for them, even if it wasn’t what I wanted, even if it wasn’t something I felt comfortable with. But I feel like I can’t even trust what she offered.

If nothing else though, I’ll be better prepared if and when we do go for mediation though. I was sort of expecting that any person working with me/us, anyone who was a professional in this field would recognize the importance of my concerns. Now I understand that I might need to continually advocate for those concerns, that their importance won’t necessarily be assumed. And I also feel that going through the process of mediation is all the more important. We need to face each other, we need to be real people both to each other and to this third party. Our concerns need to bump into the reality of each other so that we can explain, justify, defend, whatever. Me working with someone in this one-sided manner is never going to be enough, it’s never going to truly resolve anything. But I cling to the hope that mediation might.

Now if I could just get him to agree to it.

This morning my boys went to the grocery store and I finally acquired some of those reusable shopping bags. I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time but never really had a good enough excuse to overcome the inertia of not doing it until today, when the combination of seeing the bags on sale for $.99 and the recollection of much overheard discussion of our city council’s impending vote to implement a $.20 per bag tax on disposable bags inspired me to make the switch. I like them already. Instead of 10-20 plastic bags cutting into my fingers as I try to carry them into my house in as few trips as possible, I had four (admittedly, very heavy…but well contained) bags to carry. And I liked peering into their depths to see loaves of bread and piles of brightly colored produce. Somehow that felt very satisfying, like evidence of all the wholesome ingredients I planned to feed my family over the upcoming week, instead of everything being obscured by a jungle of plastic.

Plus, in light of this weekend’s bizarre weather, my five year old and I had been discussing pollution and the climate change and what we could do to stop making it worse (I’ve been thinking about this a lot on my own too), and one thing we discussed was not supporting the production of more plastics and so it was good to be able to show a concrete example.

Later today I took the boys to our city’s well known open air public market. I had visited the market with a co-worker last week on our lunch break and as I was walking past all the glorious produce I lamented not having my boys with me so that they could admire the enormous strawberries, “big ass” grapes (that’s what the sign said and indeed, an apt description), and tiny yellow pear tomatoes, so I figured today would be an excellent day to rectify that situation.

It was a good trip, although expensive. Markets like that should be added to the list of places where I am weak, weak, weak (the current list includes book stores, art supply stores, farmer’s markets, independent toy stores, and any sort of animal shelter) although with the exception of the $8 parking (sheesh), everything was semi-practical…or at least provided a really good dinner: black cod steaks, mashed potatoes, slices of Pink Lady apples and fresh raspberry muffins for dessert. And despite the fact that the majority of our trip consisted of walking through the market, when we got back to the car my five year old sighed with contentment and commented that it had been a really good trip. And to top it off, we stopped at the car wash on the way home, which was enough to make the day in an of itself.

It’s been a good weekend with lots of fun activities and lots of playing. Even during the times when we weren’t doing specifically fun activities, we were building train tracks or having ticklefests or all working together to make dinner. Weekends like this leave me with a smile on my face and a good feeling about the kind of mom I just might be.

I am now the mildly annoyed (and mildly stimulated!) possessor of a coffee addiction. I know it’s an addiction because on days when I don’t have coffee I get a terrible headache two or three hours after my body was expecting its caffeine infusion.

On the one hand, I really prefer not to be addicted to things, but on the other hand I really appreciate that little rush of alertness (not to mention a milky sweet treat every morning), particularly on days when my two year old takes forever to fall asleep (thus requiring me to stay up extra late if I wish to have any time to myself) and then also decides to wake up at 5am. Luckily, this doesn’t happen every day…oh, except it does.

While my brain occupies itself with the philosophical issues related to substance addiction, my hands have been otherwise occupied, first acquiring a coffee maker (a second Aeropress to match the one I have at work — I really love my Aeropress), then acquiring some coffee, then acquiring some cups from which to drink said coffee (when my brain is not involved my hands take much longer to get things accomplished) and this morning I awoke to find that all necessary pieces of the puzzle had finally been assembled and that I could finally enjoy a cup of coffee at home instead of finding an excuse to venture from the house in order to purchase (much less satisfying and much more expensive) coffee out about town.

Of course, it’s not quite as easy to make my coffee at home as it is at work, because at home I have to contend with dirty dishes, the lack of a water cooler with a hot water spout, two leg-entangling children, and cups that, despite claiming to hold 12 ounces (which should be more than enough for the 8 ounces and milk and 3 ounces of water I use to make my coffee), actually only hold 12 ounces if you fill them so full that the liquid is bulging over the top, prevented from spilling only by tenuous surface tension. But eventually I prevailed and sweet milky coffee was enjoyed by all (my children insisted on a sip as well).

Tonight the boys and I are having a movie party. Last weekend my five year old was fixated on the idea of going to see a movie at a movie theater and without thinking it through, I agreed that it sounded like a fun idea. It wasn’t until I really started thinking about the logistics that I realized there’s no way in hell my two year old would sit still for an hour and a half to two hours and that the whole movie going experience would likely end in much angry hissing on my part and much disappointed crying on my children’s part as I dragged them from the theater. So as an alternative I came up with the idea to have a movie party, which consists of renting a couple kid movies, making a lot of popcorn, and then snuggling into blankets on the floor to watch and snack. I’m thinking homemade kettle corn* (an excellent solution for times when you’re craving salty and sweet and crunchy) and this recipe, which I haven’t tried but certainly sounds promising.

*Kettle Corn: 1/2 cup popcorn kernels, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup oil (not olive). Toss into large pot, cover, and heat over medium high to high heat while shaking constantly until popping more or less stops. Dump into big bowl and salt while mixing to ensure even distribution. Oh, and you can add a few drops of food coloring to the pot in the beginning if you want to be fancy like that (I almost always want to be fancy like that).

It is pouring snow at my house right now. A week ago the temperature hit 80 degrees and now it’s snowing. In case you are unfamiliar with the climate in my region of the world, let me assure you, neither condition is typical for mid-April.

The photo is from about an hour ago when I could still see my doomed little plants. I brushed away warnings to wait to plant until after May 1 to be sure the last frost had passed but nobody said anything about snow.

I met with a parenting plan evaluator the other day and paid $240 for the privilege of clenching my jaw for two hours while I tried not to let her irritate me to death. The idea was that I wanted to have someone help me come up with a parenting plan that would address the complexities of our situation while keeping in mind what was developmentally and emotionally best for my boys. I know what I’d like but I can’t even remotely pretend that I am unbiased in this situation, not to mention the fact that I am hardly an expert in child psychology, so I really wanted an outsider’s more knowledgeable perspective.

Unfortunately this woman pretty much brushed away the boys’ emotional health with a casual, “Eh, they’ll recover” and proceeded to focus our two hour session on how I could offer my boys’ dad the most visitation possible. Every time she’d suggest something that I’d counter with, “Do you think that’s going to cause problems for [my two year old]?” she’d pause, think for a minute, and then respond with a wave of her hand, “Eh, he’ll recover,” and, “Do you want their dad to visit or not?”

I would, of course, respond that yes, I absolutely do want their dad to visit, that I want him to visit them as much as he is able, but there are other issues that need to be addressed too, to which she’d respond with a sigh, “this is so complicated!” And then she’d offer some bizarre custody arrangement that would be entirely useless to their dad, living across the country as he does (no, he’s probably not going to visit them every other weekend) and when I’d point that out she’d tell me that at least this would show the court that I was trying to offer him lots of access.

She seemed to vacillate between writing up a parenting plan that would please the court (even if it would make it entirely impossible for their dad to have any real contact with them — this seemed to be the plan she thought I’d prefer) and writing a parenting plan that would give him everything he wants with no regard to my concerns. When we were going down that route she kept telling me that I “have to have trust,” that I have to give him a chance to be a good parent, that I have to show that I support him in that. I felt completely invalidated. I feel like I’m the only one who gives a shit about my two year old, I’m the only one who’s looking out for him and making sure he doesn’t get hurt and she’s telling me that I have to just give that up, that I have to just “trust” that his dad, who offered me reassurance about his intention to be a presence in my two year old’s life “because he has no choice,” is suddenly going to step up and be SuperDad? My two year old is so quiet and shy and reserved, especially in comparison to his bubbly, gregarious brother. Considering that they clearly don’t want him around in the first place, how are his dad and his dad’s stupid girlfriend going to treat him? It makes me sick to think of them fawning over my five year old while my two year old stands awkwardly in the background, no one paying attention to him at all. I just want to know that he’ll be safe and I have absolutely no reassurance of that and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect some. When I’d say as much, she’d agree but would then shrug her shoulders and remind me that if I put up barriers to him visiting, then he wouldn’t. I certainly appreciate that and I am trying to be reasonable about the barriers, I am trying to scrape down to the bare minimum of reassurance I need with regard to my two year old’s safety and security, but there still is a minimum.

I didn’t exactly feel like she was siding against me (in fact, I definitely felt like she was trying to be supportive) but she just seemed so stupid, like she couldn’t fully wrap her mind around our situation. She had this idea of how Moms are and how Dads are and she couldn’t fit out situation into that. Over and over she sighed and remarked on how complicated it was.

I did leave the consultation with a parenting plan (despite her frequent urgings, when we came to various impasses, that I go home and think about things for a while — what the fuck does she think I’ve been doing for the past two years? It’s not like I just woke up last week and said, “Hmm, a parenting plan! Now there’s an idea!”). I can’t say that I’m thrilled with it because it deals too lightly with the important issues (namely how we are going to transition both boys to an equitable visitation arrangement with their dad) and too heavily with things that are stupid (who cares who gets them for Spring Break, it’s just a random week as far as I’m concerned) but it’s a reasonable starting place and one that I hope we can discuss further in mediation. I’ve been trying to get him to meet with me and a neutral third party for months and months and months and while he doesn’t necessarily seem any more willing than he ever has been, he also seems less vehemently opposed to it than usual. Or at least in the last email he sent me he was no longer blaming me for the inevitable failure of the mediation process we hadn’t even started. Really, it’s this or court, and while he’s certainly happy to threaten me with all the ways he’s going to prove I’m an unfit mother, I keep hoping that if I just repeat myself enough he’ll eventually see reason, because if nothing else, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to spend $1,500 on mediation than $15,000 to go to court.