So.  Do I try for marriage counseling?  Or do I give up?  Can I ever trust a word that comes out of my husband's mouth again?  Can I ever feel secure enough to leave if I wanted to?

Will I ever stop saying the wrong thing to my friends?  Will I ever be able to stop letting my anger towards my husband's attitude interfere with my friendships?

Am I ever going to be able to trust my husband with my kids fully?  Am I ever going to be able to trust myself not to screw everything up just when I get it right?  Am I ever going to be able to be completely honest with why I'm so angry at my husband?

Why do I push people away?  Why do I need my children so much?  Why am I afraid to fail?  Am I so afraid to fail on my own that I'm afraid to even try?

Anybody got any ideas?

Mother in law. 

The very phrase is frightening.  It brings to mind horrible movies and bad examples.  Of course, supposedly somewhere out there is the perfect anti-thesis to those examples.  However, I have yet to meet one. 

Usually I get along with my mother-in-law.  I forgave her for the comments she made early in our marriage and I recognize that her son's faults aren't all her own.  However, when I needed help and asked for it she agreed.  Nice right.  She'll watch the kids once or twice a week for a couple hours while I go to class.  Such a nice woman.

Until I get home late that night after class only to have my bone weary body and mind that has been broken down for the last 9 hours by anatomy and physiology only to have my mother bitch at me because she had to deal with Adele (my mother-in-law) bitching at her about the fact that I didn't have diapers for the baby and the house wasn't spotless and she couldn't find the diaper cream.  A) yes, I ran out of diapers for Morgan that morning and I wasn't about to drag the kids out to the store when I'm trying to get ready for class when she fits her brother's diapers just fine.  B) no the house isn't spotless because I'm not OCD or ADD and dear god I have three children  and finally C) I don't keep the diaper cream out because the kids can get into it and the doctor said to use it only in extreme circumstances because it generally just aggravates her rash.

So after 10 hours at class with my mother-in-law only having to watch the kids for about 4 1/2 hours before my mom got home and took over I got to be bitched at for being bitched at because my mother-in-law is somehow trying to turn why my husband left into my fault.  He decided to be a whore because I didn't keep the house spotless like a good little wifey.  He decided to go because I didn't have dinner ready when he got home.  Or did he decide to go because I simply wasn't a perfectly biddable stay at home and do all the work while not asking where he was or why our money was mysteriously disappearing.  Oh wait we don't live in the early 1900s.

But if you can tell.  I'm Pissed.  With a capital P.  I work really hard in school to maintain my honors average.  And I come home and take care of my kids from sunup to sundown every day.  I'm the one that deals with their nightmares, their tantrums, their falls and trips.  I'm the one who has to tell them we can't go out to play because of the air quality. 

My husband takes the kids for two days, every two weeks.  So, let me think, who has it more difficult.  The guy who's kids are basically a novelty toy every other weekend or the person who is there day in and day out doing what needs to be done.  So she can think whatever she wants-I don't care.  I'm not sure I want to even try to save this marriage again.  As long as she's there trying to undermine everything why would I want to?

So due to $20 I am not able to qualify for CCMS unless I have a full-time job to go with my full-time school which is pretty damn near impossible.  I would have to work full time sat and sun every weekend along with half time all the rest of the week somewhere between 6am-6pm that isn't where my classes are.  In other words, I would never see my kids or have a chance to rest and forget about studying.  It just wouldn't work.

So now I'm looking into student loans to cover the kids daycare.  Which is 1200 a month or $14,400 a year for the three of them.  It would have gone down by about 375 a month if the school would have allowed Eden to start HeadStart this year (free preschool) but since she was born on Sept 20 and not Sept 1 they say she'll have to wait until next year.  It really sucks.

But anyways, so now I'm trying to work with the financial aid office to figure out if I'm even going to be able to go to school.  And I know that if I do get the loans I'm going to end up around $60,000 in debt by the time I finish my RN license.  But at least I'll have a job that will be able to take care of me and my kids without having to be on public assistance and pay back the loan, slowly but surely.

So I'm taking Medical Terminology online so it is completely up to me on how much I study and when as long as I get the tests done by a certain date.  At first I was thinking, GREAT!  I don't have to sit in a class and watch a teacher read straight from the textbook and I can get off of a bit of welfare and keep the kids home with me which means less state case workers but alas I'm already having trouble.

So I've taken the first two tests and I made As on both but I'm behind.  When I started I made up my own schedule for study and practice and drawing diagrams but I am so far behind.  I should have finished my third test and be halfway to my fourth by today but I'm only halfway to my third. 

And this fall I need to take a few classes also but I don't know how I'm going to be able to pay for them let alone attend them since the CCMS people are now telling me the opposite of what they told me before.  Apparently some new rules passed that say that in order to recieve CCMS you have to have a job of at least 30 hours per week but it used to be that you had to either have a job or be in school and have a certain income level.  So this fall I'll have no childcare while I try to attend class and I have no idea what that means for in the spring when I start (hopefully) my nursing classes which run from 8-5 pm monday through friday.

Oh well, I'll figure it out. 

P.S. did I mention my separated husband wants us to start marriage counseling?

UUUGGGHHH!!!  Finals are next week and I am running out of time.  Anatomy and Physiology has suddenly become a comprehensive final when it wasn't supposed to be and Human Growth and Development no matter what I do.  I will be exactly 3 points short of an A even if I get a 100.  I have to make below a 50 to get less than a B but still.  3 whole points that I can't have and I could have had an A....I'm so irritated with myself.  Anyways I have over 20 chapters of A&P to study not to mention reaquainting myself with the bones, muscles, organs, nerves, and regions of the body.  I have to go study.

I didn’t remember what came after Spring Break from back when I attended college before my marriage and kids however I am frightenly reminded as of this week.  You come back from a week of relaxation and extra hours on the job to get a slightly bigger paycheck only to find that you have a test or a lab practical or a research paper or a group project every single day until finals.

I chose a relatively new and unknown nervous system disease for my research paper for anatomy and physiology.  I wish I had chosen something simpler like hemophilia.  This disease is so new that only one book has ever mentioned it that I can find and all the articles I find are in the archives and at least four years old.  The best one is in a medical journal in London which means I will never be able to get my hands on the actual, physical journal.  But I believe I’ll do alright.  I’ve found at least seven case studies to support my theory and paper.  As long as my professor doesn’t mind that most of my resources are from journals and magazines online resources.

I’m guessing my soon to be ex-husband thinks I’m not bright.  His child support payments start to be taken out of his check and he asks me for money and doesn’t bother to pay his portion of our joint bills. 

He doesn’t bother visiting his kids or even calling them unless I prompt him to for months.  And when he does come over he falls asleep half the time so I can’t go anywhere without worrying about the kids even being supervised.  Then he recieves his papers in the mail regarding our joint child custody, child support and visitation order and suddenly he just shows up to pick up our older two for the weekend.

He tells me he’s taking them to his parents house for the weekend since they left him the key however when I call over to see when he’s bringing them home and whether or not he’ll feed them dinner before he brings them back, no one answers at his parents house.  So I call his cell, only I hit the wrong number and hit the home phone which the girl he’s living with answers and passes to him.  So, of course, as usual he’s lied to me about where my kids are and who they are with.  I can’t believe I started to consider joint custody.  There’s no way I’ll ever make that mistake again. 

So my husband and I were working it out.  Or at least that is what I assumed and was assured of by my husband.  No more lies he said.  Bull fucking shit.  

So he's in reality been living with a girl from work who is also married and they are in a relationship.  And I only found out because I dropped by unannounced to tell him that the kids were fine and home from the hospital because he didn't return any of my phone calls.  (He lost his phone)

So while I'm talking to him on the porch and he's coming clean she has the nerve to come out and tell me not to make a scene.  I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW SHE EXISTED OR LIVED THERE! Besides. I didn't want to make a scene I just wanted to know what the bloody hell he thought he was doing stringing me along telling me that we were going to get back together when in reality he never intended it.

Now he's upset with me because I've decided to go for full custody.  It's pathetic.  I mean really.  He honestly believes I am going to let him keep any of our three children in the one bedroom apartment that he's sharing with a woman who not only had the shitty morals to sleep with someone outside her own marriage but to do it with a married man.  As if. 

And what is so amusing is that all the things he lists as our differences are the same things he has with her.  Because she is almost an exact duplicate of me back when we met only she's thirty and I grew up.

For some reason that's what responsible people do when they have kids and become adults-THEY GROW UP.  But not him. no why him?