Really? Are you kidding me?

I'm not sure my year could get much worse at this point. First my husband leaves, then my grandfather dies, then my grandmother's favorite cousin dies, my divorce is final, I spend my first Thanksgiving with no family in my whole life, and then last night as I was leaving Algebra class my brother called to tell me my father is dead. What's next? Really? I know they say God doesn't give you anymore than you can handle, but seriously. I don't know just how much more I can take.

First turkey day without my family

This one promises to be a tough day. XH has the girls today, even though he isn't doing anything with them except maybe eating dinner at Denny's. I've been invited to a friend's house for dinner, just the two of us. Her xh also has her children and her new boyfriend is out of the country with his family. We are getting a turkey dinner from the market, adding our own sides and I am making a chocolate pecan pie and bringing a couple bottles of wine and some movies. We are going to eat and watch movies and enjoy the day together. I am sad that I will not be with my girls for Thanksgiving for the first time in their entire lives, feeling a little bitchy that HE gets them the first big holiday after our divorce, but that's the way the cookie crumbles at this point. I will have them with me for Christmas Eve and morning, and then they'll go to his house at around noon or 1pm so it's sort of fair.

Despite my sadness at not being with family for the first Thanksgiving in my entire 38 years of life, I do have a lot to be thankful for. I have a good job, beautiful, healthy children, I'm healthy and getting healthier, a very painful and toxic relationship is over and I get to move on and make a new start, I have good friends who love, understand and support me, I am making new friends all the time, I am able to go to school to help get a better job in the future, I have a beautiful house which I am slowly turning into MY home, I have a car, my bills are paid on time and for the first time in my life, I get to rely on me to take care of myself. Hard as that last one is, I am actually thankful for the opportunity to show myself what I am capable of. I am looking forward to the next year, and all the years to come in my life - really, really looking forward to them for the first time. I realized yesterday while looking at some different jobs on the SHRM website that once T graduates high school and I start looking for a new job, I can actually look for a job anywhere in the country. I will be ready to make a fresh start, and I may just choose to find the right job and follow where it takes me. That is really exciting to me!

I can't believe how slack I have been with blogging!

I guess my main excuse is that I am really busy! Working full time, going to school full time, trying to be a good mom and good friend are all taking their toll on me. I still love my job and it is going really well. School is going good, I have a LOT of homework to get done, so housework often takes a backseat which I know XH likes to throw in my face. But I am managing to get mostly A's with like one or two B's so I am pretty proud of me. And it's not like the house is disgusting or anything. Just very cluttered and lived-in looking. The funny thing is he has been trying to make it sound like he is doing such a better job of parenting than I am - complaining about the amount of fast food trash I was taking out one day when he was here. Well, the truth of the matter is that most of that food trash was mine - the girls have been eating fairly ok when they're here with me. And this all came to a head the other day when I called to find out they were eating at Chili's - again. Really? Chili's is suddenly all that healthy? I must have missed that memo. Granted, I'm not doing a whole lot better with food, but I expect that to get better after this semester is over and I'm home more at night to cook. My plan is next semester to again take 5 classes - 2 in person and 3 online again. Only next term, the two in person will be on the weekends so they won't take quite as much time. The Saturday class is from 8am - 12pm and the girls aren't even usually awake before noon on Saturdays anyway! And Sunday will be from 1-4pm so that shouldn't hurt too much either.

In any event, I really only need to worry about being home for T because K has decided to live with her dad full time and only visit with me. And let me tell you, that hurts like hell. I understand that going back and forth each week was hard on her, but I was surprised and hurt when she decided to live with D instead of me. I think she is trying to make things 'fair' since T lives mostly with me, but it doesn't feel fair. I guess this is one area where I really want to be selfish, especially since K is going to be graduating in 2 years. So now the arrangement is that T lives with me, sees D every M-W nights while I'm at school, and then spends 2 weekends a month with him. And K lives with D, sees me Thursday nights and spends the last week of each month with me. It sucks hard, but since we agreed that the girls would choose their own custody arrangements, I can't really say anything.

Other than that, we are getting along pretty good. He moved into his new townhouse this weekend, and came by here to get our extra fridge and the formal dining room table which I offered to him because I wanted to get a new one. He is also slowly getting all his and K's boxes of stuff out of my garage. The thing that sucks for him is that his apartment complex rented his apartment already and asked him to move out about two weeks earlier than he had planned. And in his nice guy way he agreed, and put himself in a bind because now he's had to move in before he got all the work he was doing on the townhouse done. So K will actually be with me for the next week or so at least while he gets her room finished with paint, new carpet and her furniture. Believe you me, I am not complaining. I miss K alot, and any time I can have her stay here with me I'm happy about it. I'm getting ready to do a lot of re-painting of rooms around my house in an attempt to make it 'mine' instead of 'ours'. A good friend made this suggestion, and I'm going with it. It's hard to get started though, because that means admitting to myself that it really, truly is 100% over. And that is still a tough thing for me to do. Even though it is all for the best, and I really do feel that way, it still hurts. I feel like a failure for not making my marriage work. Especially when I was married to someone who loved me so very much at one point, and if I had put forth some effort during the time I needed to, this thing might have been salvageable. Sigh.