New Business and Old Business

New Business

I've been benched.  Kinda. 

On Friday R and I helped chaperone A&M's valentine's day dance. Somewhere during that time (or just a little before or a little after) someone gave me a virus. Now I have hand foot and mouth disease. I am trying really hard not to blame AMorN for this lovely little experience. It is most likely not their fault, but there is still a strong chance I got it from them.

My hands and feet are covered with little red dots, large red dots, small red blisters, and large red blisters. They itch like CRAZY and it hurts to walk because my feet contain many of the "large" dots and blisters. Because it is a virus, there is no medication that will help. So I'm forced to figure out ways to stop the itch before it drives me out of my mind. Currently that is consistent applications of hydrocortisone cream and anti-hystamines, and lots of hand washing. Because I'm contagious, I'm forced to work from home.

R works from home on a daily basis. I am relatively disciplined (pintrest and facebook aside.) But the problem is when R gets involved.  When I'm home he likes for us to go out and do things. As though it is a free day off. I, however, need to get work done. It's hard. I want to be with him too. I want to go do fun stuff. But I have things that need to get accomplished, just like him.  So I end up disappointing him more often than not when I do work from home. *sigh* Not good on Valentine's day.

Old Business

We've had some interesting stuff going on around the house lately that I have not had time to blog about. A few weeks ago we had the kids for about 6 days. The night before all that was to start, A had her first orchestra concert. We went to dinner before the concert and N would not put his phone down. He texted throughout dinner. His inability to follow simple rules is not a new thing. But he was being especially obstinate that night.

As I was standing up to get a refill I again asked him, "Nathan, would you put your phone away?" The tone was an exasperated one with a "look."  To which he responded "I'm not afraid of you." I was surprised by his response and said, "I would hope not. I'm not that scary."  And he said, "I'm only afraid of my mom."

I took this as my first “You’re not my mom” but even at 17 he is too inarticulate to say it. I walked away, filled my pop cup, and came back to the table. I told R that I was done. That I gave up. Everyone else had given up on him, and now I was too. I was tired of being treated like crap and I was done with N. R stated that was ok he had given up a long time ago.

N, A & M all heard this. And I’m ok with it. Fast forward to the next day and we now have the kids all day for a week because their mom is in Mexico. N and I didn’t speak. We did not interact in any way. I ignored him the whole time. I’m ok with this. He spent most of the time in his room. It was one of the best times I’ve had with the kids. It was hard, and still is hard, but I’m standing by my decision. When he can treat me with respect then we can start rebuilding.

The positive side of all this self-induced drama is that things are getting better. (Now that I’ve said that I’ve jinxed it for tonight though. ;) ) N does not text during dinner any more. He seems to have gotten it through his massively thick skull that this is inappropriate. I’m happy about that. But we’ll see where we get with the respect angle. Some days are always better than others.