Joys of Single Motherhood

Kid 2 is flunking three subjects right now. He has a 57 in Social Studies, a 47 in Language Arts and a 55 in French. He also has a new desktop computer. It's a "gaming rig", at least that's what they tell me. I say it's a server but Dad says it's a "workstation". It has at least three processors and three TB of memory, with a huge HD screen, a keyboard with its own LED screen and a mouse that has lights that appear like lava when you move it. The CPU weighs about 50 lbs and is the size of a server. I'm pretty sure he could run our city of 14,000 with it. At least it's not water-cooled. Whatever you call it, it is a giant distraction for the boy. The screen resolution of the games he plays is astounding. Leaves on trees move in the wind or as soldiers pass and water looks real. And he is immersed the minute he slaps those headphones on. I fear he's addicted but his Dad says 'no, he's not'. What he bases this on I have no

Today is as foggy and bleak outside as I feel inside. I woke up this morning and realized that I am still sleeping on the far left side of the bed. My bed. Maybe you know you're really over a relationship when you automatically sleep in the middle of the bed? I found this on Pinterest and it fits these days. No attribution. Missing someone isn't about how long since you've seen them or the amount of time since you've talked. It's about that very moment when you're doing something and wishing they were right there with you.  I was reading one of those dopey star magazines the other day or perhaps I was reading Daily Beast--the Utter Trash section. Something about sitting around at the end of a relationship saying to yourself "just wait until he comes crawling back". I never say that to myself. I'm definitely too old for this. 

I covered Tuesday night's school board meeting as usual but I could have been at a volunteer rescue squad gathering there was no much talk of "emergency management". Last Friday there was a gun scare at a school in the next town over.  The story is that an armed security guard just off the night shift stopped in at his kid's school to see if he could find his lost jacket in the lost and found. (Only parents consider the lost and found box an option when a kid loses something. They should have known right there and then that this dad wasn't dangerous, just beleaguered by some wailing kid shouting "WHERE is my North Face?? I CAN'T find it.") The front desk person did not let the armed father in and the schools throughout the town went into "lock-down mode". That was on Thursday. On Friday, all of our schools were put into lock-down. I asked Kid 1 what this really meant. "Oh, it means you can't go outside," she explained.

Kid 1 asked me the other day if the economy in this country had ever been good--or healthy. She asked in a sort of tentative way with a skeptical expression as if there was no way the answer could possibly be 'yes'. "Yes, of course, why do you ask?" "I just wondered 'cause it seems like it has always been bad...", she replied. Then I did the math, something I genuinely hate to do--always. She was born in 1997 and the Internet Crash happened in the spring of 2001. It is now 2013 and she really hasn't known a time when the economy wasn't lousy, when people weren't often unemployed. She sees it first hand in her ne'er do well parents who scrape along with 1099 income and no safety nets. I had to badger her father into even getting life insurance. I imagine that his current wife badgered him as well and get him to do it. Apparently, when he doesn't do what she says, she jumps on his head until he gets back in line. Smart woman. Kid