Random Outlaw

Crazy Days

Things have been trucking along around here.  I joined Summer's Lenten Challenge which means I have to T-Tapp on a regular basis and give up one food for 7 weeks, starting last Wednesday.  I chose to give up sodas, a major factor in my weight gain AND my insomnia (due to caffeine).  I made it through a 4 day Boot Camp, and now I'm doing every other day rotating several T-Tapp workouts.  I feel great and I've already lost 4 inches.

My main concern is now to keep this up.  I tend to go in cycles with these things: I'll do great for a while, then all of a sudden I lose my willpower and go back to my slovenly ways.  I really need to try and figure out why I do that, and stop it!

I attribute my success in giving up sodas to my discovery of fruit flavored teas.  I have tried several kinds, and I like all of them.  I especially like:

• Celestial Seasonings True Blueberry
• Celestial Seasonings Country Peach Passion
• Bigelow Tasty Tangerine Herb Tea
• Bigelow Pomegranate Pizzazz Herb Tea
• Celestial Seasonings Tangerine Orange Zinger

I have a few others that I haven't tried yet, but overall my impression of fruit flavored teas is, "Where have they been all my life?"  They are sweet, light and tasty, but need no sweeteners and taste really good iced.  I am in heaven!

My only current challenge with the T-Tapp (besides the ongoing battle to get stronger and maintain correct form) is getting the Moosh off my back while I exercise.  T-Tapp requires rapt attention, and the Moosh hates it when I am 100% focused on something other than him.  He says he wants to exercise, too, so I'll move over and give him room, but really what he wants is my attention.   I think he really does want to exercise, so I ordered a kids' yoga DVD that I can do with him before I do my exercise.  That way he won't feel left out and hopefully I can get my T-Tapp done.

I got my yearly bonus from work, so for once I am flush with cash.  I'm planning to overhaul the landscaping in the front yard.  I've already ordered a bunch of seeds from the Park Seed company.  Growing the flowers from seed takes a little longer but is so much cheaper than buying already cultivated plants, I just had to go that route.

The family is going to be my landscaping crew during their spring break.  Suckers!

R is currently not speaking to me because I didn't drive him to the airport on Monday.  He was being an asshole, it was 4:30 in the morning, and I had just about had it with his crap.  So I told him he could find his own ride to the airport.  I don't usually call him on his BS, so I'm actually pretty proud of myself for standing up to him, and him not talking to me is honestly not that much of a loss.

Exit Plan

Well after all the screeching that occurred on Valentine's Day, things have calmed down considerably.  We were all pretty much over our snit by the next day and everyone realized that in the grand context of things, $700 wasn't that big of a deal.

I had a chance to talk to R about future plans yesterday and what he said lightened my mood considerably.  He still wants to try and sell the business, but he does not intend to hold onto it forever.  He says that he would like to continue working there until the end of the year or for as long as possible (due to financial constraints) and then if he hasn't sold it by then we will declare bankruptcy. 

It's a little longer than I had hoped to go, but all in all, a few more months after all we've been through is not that big of a deal.  My only reservation was that if we haven't had a someone with a serious interest in purchasing the store by mid to late summer, we need to start preparing to declare bankruptcy at that point, even if we end up going a few more months before we file, we'll be ready and won't have to sweat as many of the little things.   R agreed with me that this seemed like a good plan, so yay for rational conversations.

Honestly pushing the bankruptcy out makes things a lot easier.  The hardest thing about doing it at the end of March would be that we just didn't have enough time to plan and get our affairs in order.  Now we can operate under the assumption that we will be filing bankruptcy in 7-9 months.  If we don't end up filing, it will be no big deal and we can move on with our lives.  If we do file we'll be 100% ready and won't have to do everything at the last minute.  The only bad thing is that we'll have this stuff hanging over our heads for a few more months.

The only negative thing is not really all that negative... we'll have to spend my bonuses, but we will probably end up paying off our second mortgage, which will put $200 back into the budget every month.  So it's not all bad.

I think it is important in R's grief process that he be allowed to set the "death date" of the store.  I think if he had gone through with it next month it would have been because I was pushing him and he would indubitably end up blaming me for it when he hits his anger phase.  The fact that he's even willing to admit that we are filing bankruptcy is a huge step in the right direction.

How To Ruin Valentine's Day

1. Have your husband call you first thing in the morning to tell you that the bank has renegotiated the loan, and he will be keeping the soul-sucking business.

2. Have him be happy about it.

3. Spend most of the day on the verge of tears.

4. Have a crappy day at work.

5. Come home to a grouchy kid and husband.

6. Find a steaming pile of crap* on the table masquerading as a "Valentines day gift."

7. Have your husband inform you that we owe $700 on our tax return.

8. Have your husband insinuate that owing $700 is your fault.

9. Get in a money related argument.

10. Cry.

11. Lash out at child in a fit of sideways anger.

12. Cry more.

13. Apologize to child.

14. Fight about money some more.

15. Continue crying.

16. Inform husband that he has ruined your life, while sobbing.

17. Happy Valentine's Day!

*AKA a bouquet of storebought flowers.  The largest cop-out of a gift EVER.  I am very specific about gifts - they have to be personal and special.  Tailored specifically to the recipent, and chosen with care.  Not some last minute bullshit guilt gift that is purchased out of a sense of obligation.  To make it worse, R KNOWS that I hate cut flowers, and that I prefer real plants.  Or at least he used to 7 years ago. Clearly he has forgotten and that makes me even sadder and even angrier about the stupid flowers.  Yes, I am an ingrate, but also I would have preferred to get nothing rather than cut flowers.

It's Not All Bad

I've been significantly calmer over the last week or so.  I think a lot of my crushing anxiety of January was hormonal, which is good because I thought I was losing my ever-loving mind. 

Anyway I've come to the realization that I can't control what R does, and, more importantly, that the timing on the bankruptcy is not as critical as I thought it was.  There are fairly significant risks in filing bankruptcy on a short timeline as we are trying to do, and those issues could be remedied if we waited until late summer or early autumn to file.  I just don't want to wait.  I don't like the limbo, and we've got a lot of weird stuff going on, but in the long run, there's not much difference between filing next month and filing in September.  Neither will kill me, and both will take care of the debts.  It's a wash, really.  I just hate the wait-and-see bullshit we have going on right now.  I would feel better with a plan in place.

The Moosh has become super fun lately.  We've been spending a good chunk of our time reading, doing jigsaw puzzles, and playing board games.  I find all of these endeavors much more edifying than running around the living room or being used as a jungle gym, so I really look forward to spending time with him these days. 

He's gotten more talkative recently, especially when he's on the phone.  He called my mom yesterday and had the most hilarious conversation with her, most of which she couldn't understand.  He drew pictures for her and was narrating the drawing as he did it.  He also jumped his "biggest jump" for her.  On the phone.  I nearly died, it was so funny.

I got a spam email from babycenter.com the other day, and one of the linked topics was "7 ways your child loves you."  I assumed they would have something profound to share, but instead it was pap like "Your newborn stares into your eyes" or "Your three-year-old asks you to watch him on the jungle gym."  I vastly prefer the Moosh's way of telling me he loves me - he wakes me up in the morning with a bone crushing hug, shouting, "I wuvvvvvvvvv you, Mama."  Maybe it's a co-sleeping thing.

I am rather desperate to commune with other people who use attachment parenting as their chilldren get older.  Most of the APers I know only have babies or very young children.  I'd love to meet some people who are still making this work past preschool. There is an informational API meeting tomorrow in my town, mostly with other people that I know in the area.  They are trying to get a formal group together for the suburbs north of Dallas, and I am so very interested in doing so.  I really want to volunteer my time, but I have so little time to give!  However, this is so important to me, I may just have to buckle down and do it.

Taking Sides

R has a persecution complex.  Everyone is against him, no one is on his side.  If anyone is against him, he frantically searches for other people to agree with him so that he can ignore the person who is against him.  Anyone care to guess who is the person who is against R the most?  Yep, yours truly.

The thing is, R is... well, the first word that jumps to my mind is "stupid" but really that's not the case.  He is idealistic to a fault, he has a one track mind, and he is extremely stubborn.  These attributes in concert lead him to make very bad decisions.  Because I am usually at the forefront watching him make these decisions, I am the one who is opposed to him most often. 

Thing is, all the other fuck ups have been minor and didn't really affect me.  But this fuck up does affect me.  It's my money that he is pissing away (as well has his own), and so help me, if I could just walk out the door and free myself of this whole debacle I would do it in a freaking heartbeat.

Thing is, I can't just walk away.  I am in it just as deep as he is.  I signed paperwork, as an individual, that makes me legally responsible for the business debt.  I signed those papers of my own free will.  I did it because he asked me to, and I did it because I could see that being against him on the business thing simply was not going to work.  It was a mistake.   I should never have signed those papers.   Other "I should nevers..." (I should never have married him, I should never have had a child with him) don't have answers that are as clear as this one.  I should NEVER have signed those loan papers.  Yes, not doing so probably would have ended our marriage, but the difference (and this is a key difference) is that he would have been the one walking away.  And he would have had a way to support himself. 

Now we are facing bankruptcy.  R is still on the fence about the bankruptcy, but he had a wake up moment the other day when he realized how much it would cost to advertize the store.  A four line, non-descript ad costs around $1200 a month, and of course that tiny ad wouldn't sell the store, and he knows it.  Every time we go to put the ad in the paper, he backs out at the last second, saying he wants to call the ad office to see if they will give him a cut rate (they won't). 

He has a hearing to reset the amount of the property for the county tax roll tomorrow.  He is trying to get them to lower the value of the property so that he won't have to pay as much in property taxes (we owe $14,000 for 2006).  We recieved the evidence that the tax appraisers will be presenting about a week ago, and after reading it, I don't think he has a chance in hell of getting the amount reduced... in fact, the county is pushing to have the value raised to $250,000 MORE than it is now.  I think that will be the final straw.  There is no way we can afford to pay more taxes on top of everything else. 

So once again I am against him, although he doesn't know it.  I am paying homage to my personal deity (the Invisible Pink Unicorn) in hopes that they will raise the tax value.  I am also doing dances around my living room on a daily basis to ensure that the bank will stop fucking giving him "chances" and just forclose already.  Anything to save him from himself.

I think he thinks that it is a lost cause.  He's already sold one of our 2 extra cars (neither is worth more than $2000, so don't get all jealous) which is a very good sign.

So yeah, I am rooting for him to lose.  I hate taking sides.