It's okay to try again.

When I was a kid I was scared of the dark. Okay, I am still scared of the dark. But when I was a kid that meant sleeping with my parents. I slept with my parents much, much longer than is appropriate for any child; my mom would try and come and sleep with me in my room, but I would wake up in the night alone and go crawl into bed with her. They had a queen size bed and it could be a tight squeeze with my dad, my mom, and myself. I'm sure it was super for their marriage, having a huge wiggling nine-year-old desperate to sleep with them all the time. I remember at some point telling them that it sure was crowded, and when I got married they were really going to have to buy a bigger bed- true story. HA HA HA.

Eventually my parents divorced, and it was much more comfortable in that bed with just my mom and me in it. Now with the foreclosure and all of our financial problems we are moving into my mom's house, that same house that I grew up in. As it turns out, my mom is going to take a different bedroom and Jason and I are moving into the master bedroom. It just feels funny that I will be once again sleeping in that same room, the room where I felt safest for all those childhood years. I sure hope that I feel as safe there now.

Yesterday we met with our lawyer and then had a celebratory, take-a-deep-breath-and-stop-worrying lunch at the local Mexican restaurant. We are still trying to get things straightened out with Kane and Jude's mom. Jason made the decision that the kids could move back in with her and we'd go back to the original custody agreement, which is what she asked for. She rewarded us by threatening to sue for backed child support for the years when the kids lived with us, the years when we were doing homework and sending lunch money and field trip money and attending parent-teacher conferences. The saddest part is that I predicted this years ago, and here it is. Thanks for being predictable. It will be so satisfying for me to revel in my rightness while living in my cardboard box.

I still don't know what's happening with the house- if the foreclosure if definite or if there are options. There has been so much going on over the past few weeks that I haven't been very good at staying on top of things, at following through. So I just don't know.

Reed is just amazing. He woke up this morning and told me that he dreamed about going to the beach, going to the ocean. He wakes up smiling almost every day, and even though the day goes on to present fits and fights and disagreements and floor-writhing, that moment when I first peer into his crib and he looks up at me and smiles is magic. He told me yesterday in the car, "I love Kane and Jude. Jude always talks to me. But they at they mommy's house." I almost cried.

These days have been marathons, racing to get to the end of the day without bursting into tears. Some days I win, and some days I lose. I have been listening to this song a lot, because it makes me feel better.

Hot potato, hot potato.

Man, oh man. I don't think my fingers could even manage to type all the stuff that has been going on today. Let's just say, Courtroom, here we come. We're being harassed now via text message by Jason's ex-wife, and she's slinging around transparent threats and expecting us to start giving her tons of money for absolutely no reason. I can't really think of much to say besides something I said here about two weeks ago: When you figure out how to squeeze blood from a turnip, please let me in on your technique. I'm nearly certain that she reads this- everyone wave hi!

Job-hunting, jewelry-making, photography-planning, blog-writing, child-rearing. That about sums it up. I'm going to try very hard to have some interesting things to say here; right now I'm absolutely void of anything to type besides bad words.

The scariest thing I've ever seen:

From this Mental Floss article. You really should read it and check out the videos. I'm going to go hide in the closet with a bottle of gin and a shovel.

Thanks, Lindsey.

To do:

- Deposit our stimulus check which was as slow as Christmas getting here, but will probably be gone by the end of the week.

- Laundry, housework, etc.

- Decide what to wear for an interview tomorrow for a job that is literally about four minutes away from where I live.

- Start picking out my scooter for when I have said job and can drive a scooter to work. Also choose matching helmet.

- Start brainstorming a good gang name for when Jason and I both have scooters and ride them around. Shop for leather jackets to have gang name embroidered on.

I wave my arms, and swing my baton.

This last week, these last seven days, have been the hardest of my life. I do not exaggerate; I have never persevered so much rage, doubt, humiliation, self-hatred, sadness, impotence, and fear emanating from my own body in the entire 29 years of my existence as in this past week.

Now that this week is behind me I am ready to move on. Jason and I have all kinds of exciting ideas about vacations and jobs and loving each other. We are enjoying each other in ways that we have neglected for a long time (get your minds out of the gutter, kids), and I think if we can just focus on how important we are to each other, all the other bad stuff in our lives will seem less important by comparison.

My jewelry is officially for sale at Soca in downtown Homewood, and I'm working with Happi and hope to have my things for sale there as well. We're barreling towards August, when my jewelry will be featured in Lipstick Magazine, along with a nice article that I wrote about the fourth annual Birmingham Chicks Rockfest. Good things are happening, people.

Finally, an addendum to my prayer that I posted here a few weeks ago:

Please God, help me to be tactful, graceful, to remember who I am. Help me to hear Gordy Ramey saying it when I get lost. Help me to refrain from choking any bitches to within an inch of their lives. Help me to remember why it would be a bad idea to go to them with pictures of my children and ask them how much they enjoy toying with their happiness. Help me to be a lady, a sane lady, something with which I have absolutely no experience. Help me to take an awful situation and find and make the best use of all the good things that can come from it. Please God, help me to let it go like so much water off a duck's back. Help me to be sure, to stop questioning, to move forward hard and fast. Help me to start writing again at a time when all I can think to write about are things that I refuse to write about.

And God, please help my husband to remember that I am a crazy person, have always been a crazy person, was a crazy person when he met me. Help him to remember that I've never stopped loving him, even when I am at my most intolerable. What I'm saying is YOU'VE BOUGHT THE COW. NOW YOU HAVE TO LIE DOWN WITH IT IN YOUR MADE BED. What? Yes, that's what I mean.