Sorry its been awhile. Its been a crazy week. Andrew’s birthday was great! We did his annual big birthday breakfast and just hung out at the house all weekend. He ended up grounded because he wanted to throw a tantrum over the TV show we were watching. His school week wasn’t horrible. No bad phone calls from the school. Today is his bio moms birthday so she is spending the weekend with us. Yesterday we surprised him by pulling him out of school early and took him to the County Fair and Carnival! He had a blast!!! He won lots of prizes and this year he was brave enough to go on some bigger rides! The was one scary moment where our hearts dropped into our stomach. We were on the Octopus ride and Andrew was in another seat with his friend that we brought with us. Unfortunately Andrew was tall enough to go on the ride but he is so little that when the ride started spinning, he slipped out of the seat. As our son was clinging for dear life with my mom watching from the ground we were simultaneously screaming for him to hold on tight while yelling at the guy running the ride to stop the ride. His response? “Calm down lady.” Who the hell says that when a child is falling out of a ride??? Luckily J and I have this unique ability to not both freak out at the same time. While she was screaming and crying I was able to keep a cool head until we got off the ride. As she calmed down, I started to panic. Thank god my mom was there or I don’t know what I would’ve done. Watching your child have a near death experience is terrifying. After we all calmed down, everything went back to normal. We went on a ton of rides and ate a crap ton of junk food. By the time we got home Andrew was passed out and we followed suit. Today I have to go work a 10 hour shift and the baby sitter gets a day off because J will be here to pick the kid up from the bus and be home with him after school. They don’t get to spend a lot of 1 on 1 time together so I’m glad she was able to get the time off to be here this weekend. Andrew really needs it. Tonight I am making dinner for the family, J is a Gourmet Chef but its her birthday so I insisted that I am cooking tonight 🙂 It should be a great weekend!

Well the crazy weekend is finally over. To sum it up, the party went well. Only about half of the kids showed up but Andrew had a blast! The family played nice, that was worrisome but it worked out. Today Andrew was a bit of an asshole. He spent most of the day in his room due to hitting me in the face and then proceeding to scream at me when I put him in timeout. Made 2 hour drive to take my friend back up to the hospital where her baby has been in the NICU for over a month. I have now made it home and put the kiddo to bed. I am beyond ready to pass out.

So the last couple of days have been days from hell. Yesterday at work went totally fine. It was just really REALLY slow. I had plans last night to have the babysitter stay late, I was going out with a guy I’ve been seeing to meet up with some friends and go do Karaoke. When I pulled into my driveway things started to go wrong. My babysitter texted me telling me that my son had thrown up all over his room. I walked in the house and was elbows deep in cleaning up vomit and getting my son cleaned up. I felt so bad for the kid. He had the shivers and his tummy was not doing so great.

In the middle of me cleaning up the puke all over my sons floor, my date showed up. In all the panic I forgot to call and inform him of the situation at hand. I got my son all tucked in with a blanket, a bucket, and some cartoons in his child size recliner. When I went to tell my date what was going on the babysitter offered to stay so I could still go out. I had a gut feeling that I should stay home but he was already doing so much better and was sleeping on the couch. If he had had a fever or something I probably would’ve stayed home. I wish I had. I went out and had fun with my friends. But when I got home, I found my son asleep on the couch and a pile of vomit on the living room floor. I went to wake up the babysitter to pay her and send her home. At this point Andrew woke up. I checked his temp again and it was normal. He apologized for puking on the floor “I tried to make it to the trash can but the puke was to fast”. I had to explain to him that he was never going to be in trouble for getting sick. It happens and there is nothing you can do about it. I got him resettled in for the night and put on more cartoons for him to fall asleep to. This repeated every hour and a half for the rest of the night. This morning he felt just fine and was happy go lucky off to school! His teacher even called me today to tell me what an amazing day he had!!!

My day was spent organizing the freezer at work and putting away our truck while listening to my driver bitch about all of the other drivers that worked yesterday. Then the headache kicked in, then the stomach ache, added into my lack of sleep did not make for a great day at work. My work day finally ended. I had to go to the store and order the birthday cake for the party this weekend. I called Andrews Bio mom to fill her in on last nights events and party plans. And then I came home to a house that smelled like vomit. I spent the next hour scrubbing floors and praying that I didn’t puke because of the smell. I need a nap. The smell is gone, Andrew will be home from school soon. But I am beyond ready for a nap.

So the title of my blog is “My Life as a Single, Working Mom”. Well we’ve covered some mom stuff, now lets talk some work stuff. Tonight I dropped my son off with his grandparents for his 3 day weekend from school. As I am on my way home I get a call from my assistant manager. One of my employees is sending suicidal goodbye texts to the manager on duty. I tell them to call the cops and get them involved sooner rather than later (turned out to be a good thing they did). Meanwhile I call MY boss because I have no clue what the fuck I’m supposed to do in this situation. As I’m on the phone with my boss I pull up to my store to calm down the employees working. I walked in just like I had walked into my own house as a teenager many times before. I walked in, examined the situation and began the process of calming people down. My manager on duty is a wreck, the cops walk through the door, and my assistant manager is on the phone. I explain the situation to the cops and they went on their way to track down the employee in question. I start calming down my Manager on Duty who is close friends with the employee sending the texts. And then we waited. All I could think about while we waited was me sitting with my mom while the cops did the same thing with my dad. Talk him of the ledge. Tonight brought back a lot of memories that I hope to god my son never has to go through. But tonight has taught me two things: 1) I am grateful for the things I went through in my childhood that made me as strong as I am, because tonight it helped me get others through it too. 2) I am so grateful for the people in my life that care about me and love me just the way I am. Sometimes I get scared that I will end up like my dad. But in all reality to not be like him in that way has been what has kept me going. I will never give in to the darkness that I know is in my head. and my son is the primary reason that I will never let that happen. Yes I know I am strong, but I want him to be strong because it is who he is, not because he has to be. I don’t want him to become strong the way I did. No child should ever have to endure that and I’ll be damned if I put him through that.

I doubt anyone is actually reading this, but if you are, Thanks. Its nice to feel like someone is listening.

So today has been spent making plans. My dumb ass forgot that there is no school tomorrow so now we have been scrambling to figure out daycare for tomorrow since my usual babysitter is scheduled to work at her other job. Taking him down to spend an extra day with his other mom to save the day. I’m so glad we were able to work it out so he can spend the extra time with her. Now the headache part of my day is trying to plan his upcoming birthday party. We had everything all planned out. We made sure his grandparents would both be able to make it. Well apparently there was a miscommunication on their part. Grandpa forgot to check with Grandma before giving us a time. Grandma has to work at our planned time. I finally got a time from them that would work for both of them today. Now I have spent all afternoon trying to get the party location on the phone to reschedule. I am losing my mind. After the events of the other day I really should just cancel the party Lucky for my turd of a child, I already put down the non-refundable deposit. This next week is going to be stressful. Wish me luck.

To start off here is a summary of how my last couple of days have gone. Last night I pulled a 12 hour shift at work, had to drive 30 minuets to another town to deal with the fact that my son’s Aunt is pregnant. I got home at 1AM to let the babysitter leave. Andrew got up at 5 this morning. Needless to say I didn’t get a lot of sleep. Lucky for me, today was my half day at work so I got off at 2 instead of 7. I walked in the door, set my purse down, and my phone went off. On the caller ID? Andrew’s school. Turns out that today my son decided to 1) Headbutt his student teacher in the face and 2) Use a pair of scissors to cut another student. Needless to say, I had to go pick him up. He then decided to spend the next hour and a half lying to me, refusing to tell me the truth about his day at school. Eventually he fessed up. So now, he has lost his TV, and his Four-Wheeler. He is spending the rest of the day in his room going through his toys and anything still on the floor when its time for dinner is going in the trash. I called his other Mom and filled her in and we are both at a loss. He is in therapy trying to work out some issues. Not surprising considering how his first few years of life went. In a nutshell, he bounced around from my house, his grandparents house, and his other moms. I finally got my paperwork that I needed to keep him with me about a year and a half ago. He turns 6 this month. Some days I just really don’t know what to do. Here’s to hoping tomorrow will be better…

I guess I should start by saying why I made this blog. To sum it up? I am almost 24 years old, raising my best friends kid, working 50 hours a week. I have to deal with the craziness that is the child in question, we’ll call him Andrew. I have to deal with his biological family who, with the exception of his mother, drive me bat shit crazy. I manage a restaurant which requires me to work 50+ hours a week. My life is a little crazy. I don’t really have anyone to talk to about any of this. So, this is my blog. Hopefully it will save my sanity to just get it out of my head and into words. Wish me luck.