exhausted and okay.

My first art purchase. Just because it seemed
like good advice.

I think I said I'd write something happier in my next blog post. Here is my happier:

We are moved in, the apartment is a mess but beginning to feel more like "home." And there's a pool. Also, I haven't bounced any checks yet. 

Miss M has decided we need to call this place The Flat. Since that's what English people call apartments, and Harry Styles is from England. And so we call it "the flat." As in: "Our flat is the most lovely of all the flats here." We say it with a faux British accent, too. (Anglophiles are a UK person's version of a gnat, I bet. Kind of like going on a date with someone who's very nice but you feel no connection but they immediately want to sleep with you because you remind them of their first sexual conquest and you're all: Ew, NO! but they won't take the hint and then you have to roll your eyes a lot and avoid their phone calls. Kind of like that. Is what I'd imagine being a UK person dealing with an American anglophile is like.)

At any rate. I'm still on edge. Mostly because I'm exhausted, I think. Wiped out. Empty. I have ZERO patience for the following: incompetence, jackassery, dickheads, and the needy. God help you if you're a needy, incompetent dickhead spewing jackassery around me. I cannot and will not tolerate it. I simply don't have time for you--I still need to hang curtains and buy more spoons. Get over yourself.

I've met some very, very kind people along the way. And re-discovered how important it is to ask for help when you need it, and how really important it is to have a help network. Family means everything to me right now--I come from good people, who've married good people. Even though one of these people keeps trying to rearrange my living room furniture by moving one chair half a centimeter to the left because it "just FEELS better" until I scream "JESUS GOD MOM!!! Stop it!!!" (Hi, mom! I love you! Also: this is how Miss M talks to me, exactly how. Karma.)

I'm slightly worried about Miss M. I think what she's feeling is normal, but I monitor her closely, taking nervous temperature gauges but trying adeptly not to let her know that's what I'm doing. She varies between just fine and normal to very somber and sad. She misses her dad. But she's worried about missing me when she's with her dad. This is where the moments of "Did I do the right thing?" come in. And then I have moments when I feel like I did, because even though I'm tense right now, I can see this won't last forever and I'll get a handle on things and it'll be okay. Until there's another moment in a restaurant on Father's Day where I see her watching a family near us and I ask her if she's wondering why that man has an oxygen tank with him and she starts to cry and says, "No. I was thinking: why can't we be like that family? All together?" 

That's when I know there will always be a need for therapists in the world. 

I have a stomper above me. I knew this would happen--I would hear other people, and I would need to get used to it. But honestly, why is he stomping? I've been walking across my floor to see if it's just me being picky--maybe if I were up there, the mere act of walking in these apartments flats would make a stomping sound. But nope. I'm pretty sure there's no stomping with just normal walking. So I've been telling myself he wants to be Monty Python, and is up there inventing walks for the Ministry of Silly Walks. 

The man down the hall has left his dirty shoes outside his door for well over 72 hours. If they're out there more than a week, I'm either donating them to the Ministry of Silly Walks stomper above me or putting them in the trash compactor. There should be apartment hallway standards. 

There's a barky dog down the hall. We finally met her today: an angry, overprotective miniature dachsund. I knew it! I told M it was going to be one of those annoying little ones that sound bigger than they are but you can really take them down with just a good, nasty stare. We don't like the angry dachsund. We do, however, like the yellow striped cat next door who uses the pine straw as his personal litter box and stares at people from the one window, assessing all who pass by in a really "I seriously don't give a shit" kind of way. He's pretty friendly, and also now Miss M and I know: don't walk on that patch of grass and/or pine straw in bare feet. 

There are friendly children here at the pool...M can usually find someone to play with when we go there. But they're only visible at the pool--there's a small playground here, but no one plays on it. It's become apparent to me that Miss M actually would have made an excellent older (bossy) sibling. She's dying for someone to be a big sister to. If you have a small child who needs a bossy big foster sister, please let me know. We'll babysit them for free--take them swimming, introduce them to an angry miniature dachsund and have our upstairs neighbor teach them some silly walks. (Of course, you'll babysit Miss M for free, too, because that's pretty exhausting work, taking care of multiple children, and so I'll need some breaks myself. I know it's why I went into to teaching--who doesn't love taking care of multiple children by themselves? It's so awesome!) (Why are kids so frickin' exhausting? And LOUD. And messy. And bossy. And dysfunctionally needy?)

I am exhausted, is what I'm saying. Tapped out. Done for. I got nothing. So please don't come to me with your a-hole behavior because I will bite off your head. And please don't come to me with your needy behavior, because I will get really snippy with you because there IS no more money in this ATM, what do you not understand about that. But my last post apparently worried people about me, so I wanted to come here and say: I am okay. We are okay. Everything is both sad and exciting and happy and scary all at once. But I haven't bounced a check yet or forgotten a bill, and that's good. And so overall, we are all going to be okay. I think.

Here. This is what I've been doing:

Now I just need curtains. And a rich benefactor to pay off my credit card.