Visit with the kids and other stuff

Yesterday I had a visit with my 6 yr old, and it was very nice! He asked for chocolate chip ice cream, cherries, which he figured out he didn't like after chomping into a pit! He seemed so confused that cherries had pits! it was quite funny, I asked him if he'd ever eaten a cherry, and he said no. Of course he has had cherries before, but I usually pitted them before hand. He also asked for chicken tenders and sweet potato fries. Unfortunately I got the wrong sweet potato fries, they were overwhelmingly spicy and even I couldn't eat them. The ice cream was the Breyers waffle cone ice cream, which was amazing, I must say. Never had it before, but I almost didn't stop eating it. Bad news considering how much I currently weigh (which is as much as I did when I was pregnant with my oldest child. ACK!)
The visit with the girls this morning was really nice too, except that one had the runs, neither would eat their breakfast, but Z got on the potty and actually went! Oh, it was so thrilling, we were all excited (including the visit facilitator and their therapist), clapping, cheering, and she was just eating it up!
I got a cleaning contract today, which is fantastic. After doing up the budget, we realized that we don't make enough now that I'm paying off the last collection from the house-fire. Until September, we will be short $200/mo. Anyway, the new cleaning client is going to provide an extra 100 per month, so we are a little closer to our goal.
Today I have the final evaluation after my mental assessment. I am not looking forward to it, but it has to be done. I did a full work up, meaning comprehension, IQ, etc. It would be nice to figure out whether I've improved since the concussion 11 years ago. I guess they are really swinging the pendulum far the other way and think it's really important to have 'brain rest' for almost a year after a concussion, where you can't use electronic devices, read, strain your eyes, watch tv, and anything that might make you think too hard. Who knows, it could kill you to think. Interesting.

Small Update on the case & children

Yesterday we had a treatment team meeting. It was an interesting one!
CPS has an independent evaluator come in and determine if all services are being utilized and if the case is going in a fair direction. Everything seemed to be fine, but my mother complained about having so much on her plate with 'so many' children and 'so many appointments.' I understand her lamenting as I experienced the same concerns before. I inserted that I want to see the boys in sports, and I thought it would be a bad idea for them to go to the pool on free day, what with the 2 year olds need for supervision that my mother is incapable of providing.
My husband spent the entire meeting 'trying to keep my quiet' by complaining loudly and making an embarrassment of himself. He didn't want me to say anything incriminating, so he kept talking over me, interrupting me, and not letting me say anything. I asked how my boys were, and that was all he would allow. My mother played the victim like an expert violinist plays a Stradivarius. She almost cried when my husband brought up the letter she wrote (explaining in unbridled hatred how terrible a person I am) as an example of the negative attitudes held in her household that effect the children. I am not sure how she is the victim, but she sure acted the part. It just made it so clear how much it's all about her.
My boys are not doing well. The oldest is having a very hard time and won't see me. He is completely shut off emotionally and just shuts down whenever he has to confront anything. He goes from -0- to crying or hatefully furious in no time. He is doing well in school, my mom complained that they are behind in school and insinuated that it's my fault. I occasionally inserted historical evidence to defend my children, things such as 'we worked with him on math facts for 2 years, but he just didn't seem to get it. We switched strategies and started with calculus and geometry, with the intention of helping him understand why he needed the basics so we could make more strides in that department.' The younger is having problems with frustration as well. He doesn't know what's going on and is upset about it. He told my mother that my husband wrote a letter saying he loved him, which isn't allowed. That didn't happen, the visit coordinator corroborated. He then told me that my mom tells him that I lie about everything. My mother of course denies that but has no supporting witnesses except the case worker who just defends everything she says.
The girls are making great strides. My mother intimated that it's because they were removed from my home. The girls' speech therapist mentioned twice that the girls have reached a window of opportunity in their development consistent with their age, and they are impressed with their strides. An expert in the field would attribute their willingness and ability to learn to a good home before hand. If they were abused, as is suggested by my mom, they would not be able to learn like this.
Nothing major really happened, but we were told that we might be able to progress to level 2 by the next court date, which is June 8. Level 2 means that we get to have our visitation in the community instead of locked in the little room. I am nervous about that because it will cost money that we don't have, and it will be harder to keep them entertained if we only have 1.5 hours to eat and conduct activities for them.

My apartment.

So we got an apartment. it's in a kind-of nice area. We have been living there for just over a month now, and I like having modern amenities. I am really hoping the management company comes through and fixes the swamp cooler, because the apartment is a southern-exposure upper floor, which means it is quite hot in the afternoon. The apartment is 2 bedrooms with a little eat in kitchen and an average sized living room. It has several closets which my husband won't allow me to fill because he doesn't know what he wants in them. I get really frustrated by that. We can't fit any furniture into our vehicle, so we only have the small items that he managed to get lifted over by friends. I am hoping desperately for a dresser in the near future. Right now, I have shoe cubbies that hang in the closet acting as my drawers to hold my drawers. haha.
The apartment is centrally located near the boys' schools just in case, near social services if we need to show up at a moment's notice, near walmart so we can walk there, etc. It's a decent location. The neighbor below has a male cat that bellows all night long, however, and i find that frustrating. I never knew that a tomcat could sound so much like an angry child, yelling at the top of their lungs.
The thing I love about the place is that I can bake. I have baked bread, cookies, lasagna, roasts, and more cookies and bread. I know, unhealthy... but if I can't clean to feel relieved from stress, I tend to eat.
What better thing is there to eat than cookies and bread?

I dreamt I ate my husband

Ok, so the dream was pretty strange. First he was talking incessantly, which is something he does often. He likes to keep me up way past late to talk, hoping i will come to some real epiphany of some point he's trying to make, which is nearly impossible for me when I'm tired. So i typically fake it hoping he'll shut up.  That's cruel, and I know it. However, he knows I can't think when I'm tired and he does it anyway because he lacks self-control (yes, he is the guy who will eat 6 boxes of cookies because they are there. Nobody put them out of his reach, so he ate them all). Anyway, the dream. So he's talking. And talking. And then I stab him, in passing (and this is also strange, because there was no malicious intent. it was just to see what would happen.)  over & over with a plastic butter knife to discover that he's made of cake. Then we eat him. He is included. He eats himself and says all the while how he isn't a fan of cake. His skin was frosting, he had a layer of red-velvet and chocolate on the inside. Granted this followed a dinner which was followed by chocolate cake. I'm pretty sure it's the strangest dream I've ever had, next to the one where I dreamt about being in a hotel with a bride undergoing female circumcision, then getting a phone call from my x-husband and telling him to come pick up his eyes, which I had in a box in my pocket; then we (my son and I) were going up to the ground level from the top floor of a hotel in an elevator that was brass and green, where we emerged on the beach to find penguins laying eggs and dolphins & whales beaching themselves to talk to us. The interpretation of that one makes sense. Just ask if you're interested and I'll let you know what it all meant. The crazy part is that the interpretation came true. I wonder if this one will come true either literally or interpretatively. Either way it's pretty weird.
  Lately I have been hoping for a lot of death. This sounds morbid, and it is, but I can see so many outcomes improving if someone dies. Not always the same person in my fantasy, but it will usually be in some fantastic or horribly boring way. Never the same way twice, and it's a lot like the show '1000 ways to die' with bad acting and silly props. One fantasy, the least fulfilling, included a meteor and a hot dog. That one was my mother. She was eating a hot dog, which is against everything she lives for, then a meteor struck her and only her in a crowd of people. Right through the heart, which didn't bleed. The fantasy got weird, and maybe it was actually a dream, but the hole soldered itself from the heat and she went on like nothing ever happened. I think these strange thoughts are a result of combined stress and lack of sufficient sleep. I have been working a lot of long hours and have been very angry with my husband irrationally. The poor guy has to get surgery on his good foot now. The other was blown up and rebuilt in the military. Ya, he has a bionic foot. It's made of metal on the inside and looks like a normal foot on the outside. I wonder if that's where the cake dream came from... The other foot has been compensating and is full of arthritis and fluid now. He is afraid they are going to remove one foot and he doesn't know which one. This is a terrible prospect and he's been pretty depressed about it. He is the most emotional person I have ever met. He still goes about cooking constantly and randomly unproductively cleaning, and randomly cleaning up the property so we can sell it, but as untidy as he is, I find myself furious a lot. You know why? My therapy is to clean. I feel better if I clean the house. Since I don't have time, I expect him to find my therapeutic methods therapeutic also and am irrationally angry that he doesn't. How 'bout them apples! I feel like I might just be crazy after all.

Recently, in a court hearing, my mother submitted her testimonial time line of my life. This, of course, just outlines every mistake I've ever made in the past 20 years, not anything before my formative teen years. Every thing that embarrassed her. Her first statement was that 'there is something wrong with Jennifer,' which then evolves into her qualified clinical diagnostic that I am a sociopath and have a social disorder. Mind you, mom never graduated college, and her course of study while there was not anything to do with the sciences of human nature. After this strange diagnostic, she outlines, with many mistakes and presumptions, everything I have ever done that she considers a blemish to her pride, which primarily includes the relationships, pregnancies and deliveries of my children. She then accuses me of being a criminal mastermind and gracefully orchestrating the secret abuse of my children. She makes it known with pride that she has always been the one behind every investigation conducted against me over the past 17 years. She outlines several things that either never happened or were benign until she twisted them in her head. It was a horrid display that a daughter should never have to endure from her mother. Strike that, no human with any decency or honor should ever utter these things in such a tone even under breath. I should like very much to relate the entire document, however the last 20 years worth of my mistakes are lengthy indeed, numbering 5 pages. At one point about a month ago, she also documented how devious my extended family is and how little she could trust them with the care of children, then turned around in this document to say just the opposite.
I am encouraging anyone who has ever known me to reach out and make written statements as to the treatment my mother offered throughout my upbringing, and the treatment that I have offered my own children. If you, or anyone you know, has ever known me to be a sociopath or a criminal mastermind, please let me know. If you know of any incident where my mother's mothering skills were less than stellar, please make it known to me in an email. I didn't realize that fighting for my children would include slander and mud slinging, but since it is now, I have 4 weeks to mount a response to this terribly disgusting display of impropriety.
With fondness, I recall the time in the park where my mother threw herself on the ground kicking and screaming to feign an example of what a tantrum looks like. This was directed at a toddler who had no idea what she was doing and thus screamed all the more. I wish I had taken a video of the ordeal. With no regular discipline in her daily routine, my mother confused the toddler, who has turned out quite spoiled and fussy. He is the epitome of the frail child who needs constant minding, which, in her testimonial, is because I was a meth addict. Please understand I have never used or even tried meth. However, with my mother's extensive psychology study under her belt, I'm sure her diagnosis is accurate.