It's so hard sitting and waiting for you to come home, only to know that you'll be leaving again in 3 days. It must be equally hard for you, I don't know how you do it.

I'm torn: part of me understands and agrees that you can't let yourself miss me as much as you do: because it might distract you and make it harder for you to be away. And part of me just wants to hear you cry how much it hears to be apart so long. That's my emotional part: the one that wants so badly to talk to you for hours on end when you call, even though I know that's not possible. Did you know I take the phone with me everywhere I go; even to get the mail, just in case you call? It's really hard to remind myself sometimes that you can't always be available to talk if I call. Or that sometimes you need to be quick to get off the phone.  I guess I'm just scared that you feel you "have better things to do" than talk to me, which I know (mostly) is silly. I don't blame you for not being physically here for me when I "need a hug" or need someone to talk to. This is your career, and it's going to be a hard life to get used to, but we gotta do what we gotta do. I married you because I love you with all my heart, no matter ow many miles away you are. I'm willing to take, and work through whatever comes our way during our marriage.

At times like this, where I just had a paranoid "he's avoiding me" episode, I sit afterward and feel so stupid and bad that I tried to call you on it. I don't know how you put  up with me sometimes, being so needy, you must love me alot!

I don't mean to be so hard on you sometimes, I know you're busy. I'm sorry. Just give me time, I'll get used to it. While it may not always be easy for me (or you), I'm sure it'll get easier.

You are the love of my life, and I promise to try my hardest to be the best wife to you I could possible be.

I love you.

Mr. M  got a job with a trucking company in February. They're based out in New Brunswick but have a terminal here in Winnipeg. The first 12 weeks is apparently training weeks, and therefore have the shittiest pay possible. He's only been home every 2nd or 3rd weekend for 3-4 days at a time.

Some days, it seems easy. Some days I feel like screaming, I hate this life, I hate his career choice,  I hate him being gone. Most days I ping-pong between the two. I definitely didn't prepare myself for him being gone. It's not so much not having him physically here, it's more not being able to connect with him anymore. Not being able to tell him about my day, or hearing about his. Phone calls are always short (and not always so sweet). It don't know why I didn't see it coming, seeing as I'm more emotional and needy, but I should've known that he wouldn't be giving me all of the sap that I want to give him. He doesn't tell me he misses me. His "I love you"'s are generic and not so genuine sounding. He doesn't tell me things like he can't wait to be home to see me, hold me, kiss me, snuggle me. All these things I want him to say so bad, and yet I have to remember, he's just not like that. Sure, maybe for the first year we were together, but I remind myself that all long term relationships are like that in the beginning.  Alright, I'm making him sound bad, but I'm really not meaning to. I don't doubt he loves me, I don't doubt he misses me. I just want the sappy romance stuff that chic flicks are made of. It's hard not to take the quick phone calls, the bitchiness (because he hasn't slept properly in 2 weeks), and the lack of sweet nothings personally. If he were here, I know he'd be giving me too much affection, that I'd be rolling my eyes and pushing him away. And I think of that now, and wonder, "how could I do that?" I'd give anything for that right now! I guess because he's not here, I expect him to feel the way I do. And maybe he does, but he just doesn't show it. 

It must be equally hard for him, in different ways, to be on the road for so long. I sit and wait for him to come home, and he's probably yearning just as hard for a good sleep in his own bed. I mean, it's not like he's distant to me when he does come home, so what the fuck am I worrying about? This is his career now. Get the fuck used to it. 

 Alot has changed since this bitter young mom sat behind this screen and typed these attempted interesting posts. I'm no longer a stay at home mom. Nope, I've projected myself out into the working world and I love it.... mostly.
I love being able to talk with adults about other real world stuff, and not just parenting. And when I DO talk about my kids, I'm telling them stories of their cuter moments and milestones achieved. It gives me a whole new feeling of joy when I walk in the door and have them running to me screaming "Mommy mommy!" because they're happy to see me. It gives me a chance to miss them throughout the day and really look forward to and enjoy the time I spend with them at home. Although, I must admit, I may be one of the few people in the world that sometimes looks forward to Monday morning.

 I finally am at a job that I feel I could keep as a career. I am working at the city's main branch of a major bank, processing loans, mortgages, lines of credit, and basically all other areas of  account maintenance. The pace is fast, always busy and usually challenging. At least my mind is kept busy and I don't have time to sulk and be bitter about any shitty areas of my life. Having been there for only 6 months, I am already part of a committee to look for ways to improve the working environment of the bank. (there is only 1 person from each department chosen to be on this committee, along with the branch manager). You watch, in a few years, I'll be moving up lol.

And now, Mr. M is working toward his career too.  He just passed his testing for a Class 1 license and will be driving truck pretty soon! *sigh* a truckers wife. The money is good, but I'm not looking forward to playing the single mom role when he's on the road. Although it's alot better than him being in the military, which he backed out of  at the last minute a few years ago.

So, things in my life still continue to change. I have yet to reach the sense of stability and normalcy of the family with the white picket fence, 2.5 kids and the dog named Spot. Instead, I have 2 kids, 2 cats, one which is sick, and a sink full of dirty dishes.

She called me on Friday, the night before my wedding, but with the wedding going on, and then going away for our honeymoon, I didn't have time to post about it. But today, I went to sign all of the papers and make it official (pending satisfactory reference checks and criminal record check). I'm a little nervous about my references... my job history is shaky, I can't seem to hold a job down for too long, especially when it's full time, and the job that I did manage to keep for just over 2 years, ended on a bad note, so really, I don't have very many good references. I'm hoping that when she calls my most recent employer, she'll put two and two together, so that when he says how my absenteeism became a little excessive, she'll remember that I was also pregnant at the time. Oh, and the job before that? I had to prepare her that she might not get a good reference for that one, seeing as they fired me after only a month for a ridiculous reason.

I admitted to her that I thought my interview was terrible, and that I was surprisingly more nervous that I thought I'd be, and I was surprised that she even called me back. She assured me that nervousness is a good thing, and that it was my experience, enthusiasm and computer knowledge that sold her.

I start work June 11th. I get my own desk. I get my own phone. I get my own computer. Wow. Do I ever feel elite now, working in the back offices of the bank, your accounts at my fingertips. *evil cackle*.  Well I'm serious about everything except the last part. I am really excited and DO feel somewhat prestigeous. One thing I'm nervous about: I start at 8:30 am. I live on the other side of the city, which means I have to be out the door by 7am, which means I have to be up at 6am. I'm notorious for hitting the snooze button and waking up thinking that I actually forgot to even set the alarm, and I'm a little bit apprehensive about screwing this up all because I can't get up on time. But I must. I think I can I think I can.

Wage is a little higher than I expected, which is always a good thing, especially seeing as half of my paycheques will be going to childcare. I'm nervous about leaving Little Miss. She's very selective of who can watch her. Mini M I'm not worried about, he's been in daycares before and easily adapts as long as there's toys to play with and room to run around.  

I hope this works out for me.  

And no, I'm not complaining about the regular chores and cleaning that I normally bitch about...

It's that I've seem to tricked myself into believing I suddenly have time to take up a bunch of hobbies all at once.

1. Miss Ann Thorpe has rekindled my love of The Sims, and so I've been obsessively downloading and decorating houses, creating relationships and hateships, and so on and so forth...
2. I've discovered Vexels. I'm now determined to learn how to create them, which means that I have to teach myself how to use Adobe Photoshop for tasks other than re-sizing images.
3. My outing via the bus to a Dr.'s appointment the other day allowed me to start reading (an actual book not geared toward parenting) again. Savage Girl  by Alex Shakar is actually turning out to be a great book about a young woman driven mad by schizophrenia, while her sister gets thrown into a different world trying to understand it.
   
4. We just purchased a (used) 52inch HDTV. I suddenly now have the urge to catch up on all the movies I've been wanting to watch, and all of the x-box games I've been wanting to play.
5. I'd like to change the layout and style of this blog, and am meticulously searching for the "perfect theme". Particularly a graphic for a new banner that reflects the title of the blog. If you have any suggestions, or are skilled in the art of banner making and graphic finding, please, help me out!
   
6. I'd also like to change the style of "Real Moms", and try to get it back to life again.
   
7. Okay, this is more of a necessity than a hobby, but I need to create a major playlist for my wedding. (why hire a DJ when you can do it yourself get a family member to do it for you?)
8. Sleep has always been a very enjoyable hobby of mine, and I've been neglecting it... although not by choice

What's a girl to do? 

So to shamelessly use them as inspiration, I have my own thoughts on the matter (which I must admit, closely resemble their own)

 Her Bad Mother posed the question:

Are you as good or as bad or as in-between in real life as you portray yourself on your blog? How much of your 'self' IS portrayed - revealed? exposed? - on your blog? Do you lay it all bare, and if not - what aren't you telling us?

and to answer, I'd have to say that yes, I'm as "bad" of a mom as I portray myself to be (briefly touched upon with Good Mommy/Bad Mommy). However, I don't consider myself a bad mom.  Anyone who knows me in real life will tell you that I'm a great mom. I usually put my children's interests before mine, I speak and explain before I begin to yell, I own numerous parenting books, I even have a subscription to Today's Parent for crying out loud (for those times when I want to step out of reality and be part of the "ideal family" crowd). I do try very hard to ensure I raise my kids properly, with morals and values, respect and dignity. But I am not a fake mom. I do not parade around with my nose in the air boasting about how great my children are. Yes, they are great, and while I can't say much about my daughters behaviour and temperament (hell, she's only 10 months old), I can bitch and whine all I want about my son's lack of understanding of what it means to be a "good kid".  I am able to swallow my pride and be open about the fact that I've spanked. That I've screamed. That I've swore at him and sent him into his room for a possibly unreasonable amount of time.  I may be bad, but I'm real.

How much of my self is revealed and/or hidden? Well, I don't have a huge amount of posts to really stand out in the blog world yet. I'm not sure I've created much of an identity for myself out in the blogsphere, but I can comfortably say that I do reveal most of myself. Yes, my real name is Lisa, but I've not given up the names of my children or other half in a slack attempt at keeping my life somewhat anonymous. I hide what I think may overly portray my boringness, but that's about it.

I love reading other blogs that put "bad parenting" in a comical light. It's like a bad car accident; shitty it happened, but fascinating to watch. The truth is, we all have moments that make us second guess our parenting ability, and reading about other people having them, what they were, and how they reacted, well, that just makes the rest of us feel normal. Well, me at least. Things like GingaJoy's "here, eat some cheetos off the floor" (paraphrased), add some comic relief and an "I've been there" type of feel to the post. Seriously, what is more amusing: a) "When we left the store, Jimmy was crying because he couldn't have some candy." (sounds innocent enough, right?) or b) "I turned heads when I  sighed loudly and had to drag Jimmy out of the store kicking and screaming because I had already given in to his sugar addiction twice today and was not about to buy him some candy" 

Obviously b would be the clear choice because:  

1.  it turns the attention to mom right off the hop
2. Jimmy left "kicking and screaming" (as said before, initiating an "I've been through that before" type of feeling)
3. it points out that mom had already fed her kid sugar filled snacks, as opposed to a healthy alternative that any other "Good mom" would've chosen.
4. Most of us can relate

Does a sentence like that really reveal our inability to parent? No, it just shows that we choose to descriptively share our shittier moments with you instead of the apparently mundane, day to day smiles we share with our children.

Now onto the interview follow up:

It was a cold, rainy day, but that didn't bother me. I was confident as hell. I had "studied" the night before; memorized my resume and past employment history, went over my kick ass answers to questions like "Tell me about yourself" and "Why do you want to work for us?" and "Why should we hire you?". I was sure I was going to get the job, or at least impress them enogh to seriously consider hiring me.

I get there and am waiting for my interviewer. She comes and greets me. A nice woman, middle aged, warm voice, bright smile. I give it all right back to her. "It's a pleasure to meet you!" She brings me to the back office, where there's a man with salt and pepper hair, in a hunter green suit, standing at the doorway waiting for me. He extends his hand and introduces himself as the branch manager and that he'll be doing the interview with us today. My stomach dropped. My confidence faded. I'm not sure why I suddenly became so intimidated. Maybe it was because he was tougher and colder than this warm, loving, bring you chicken soup when you're sick, type of lady who had first shaken my hand. Maybe it was just because he was the Big
Dick of the bank and I knew it was all up to him. Either way, I suddenly became nervous.

We sat down, and began by going over my employment history, which I might mention, has been shaky. I've taken 6 months or more at a time off to stay home with the kids. I've been on maternity leave. And many of my positions were short lived, term positions, or ones that I just hated and quit after a month. I had formated my resume in a way that highlighted all of my skills rather than employment, but he skipped right over that and wanted to know the details about my last 3 jobs. This is how it laid out, and my first big fuck up of the interview.

 So, the interview was screwed right there. I wasn't told that I was being interviewed for a different position until AFTER I had basically just said that I hated doing phone work, which is exactly what I was being interviewed for.

So, if I didn't ruin it then, then I ruined it with the rest of the interview. 

All of the questions I prepared myself for, were not asked. Instead, they were mainly "Explain a time to me when...." or "Give me an example of when..." I know those types of questions are becoming more common, and so I did try to prepare myself for some of the common scenarios (problem with a co-worker, customer conflict, customer appreciation, etc) but instead, he asked ones that I really didn't have much background with, like: "Give me an example of a time when you had to get a new idea across to other employees and how did you implement that?"

Me: *blank stare*

It took me a minute to think of an example, and all I could come up with was when I worked with disabled people and I changed around one woman's bed time routine and my old biddy co-worker didn't like it. Yippee.

Over half of the interview was those types of questions.  I stumbled with my words, I was talking with my hands (something I don't usually do), and all of the bad habit phrases that I have like "I mean .... ", "Like, .... " and "You know?" came out.

The woman who had first greeted me was there writing everything down... she would nod every now and then as she wrote, implying that she agreed with me. But the man was hard to read. He'd sit back in his chair, flip his tie, staring at me. He left long pauses after I was done answering, making me think that he was waiting for more or that my answer wasn't complete.

 After what seemed like forever, the interview was over. He stood up, shook my hand and thanked me for coming in. I smilied my great smile and thanked him for meeting with me. He gave me his card and told me to call him if I had any questions. The nice lady led me out of the room and told me to wait a minute, she was going to go get her card as well. She came back, smiled, handed it to me and said "Talk to you soon." 

If I got the job, I'll find out sometime next week. But my hopes are no longer that high. I'd be very surprised if they hired me. So I'm on the hunt again. I've got a promising job lead; a chiropractic office needing an insurance claims person wanted to hire me just as I found out I was pregnant. I turned the job down because I had a different job offer elsewhere, and really wish I hadn't. I called their yesterday and explained who I was, and lucky for me, she remembered me, and wouldn't you know it, they're hiring again. So I faxed her my resume and now just have to play the waiting game.

 Good luck to me.

I'm stupidly excited over this. The interview is with a major bank. So I'd be starting out as a bank teller; that's okay because I've never worked in a bank before, and I fully expect to have to work my way up from the bottom. So what if this bank is across town; because after working there for a year or so, I can always put in for a transfer closer to home. So what if daycare will cost me $1000 a month (wihich I'm assuming will be my entire paycheque). It's a short term loss for long term gain. It'll be like I'm working for free, until I can move up and get a raise. Either way, I'm pumped. I've gone through "the interview" in my head a dozen times, coming up with the perfect responses to those generic questions like "Why do you want to work with us?", "Why should we hire you?" and "What are your strengths/weaknesses?" etc... This is definitely a company I can move up in. It's voted one of Canada's top 50 employers, they do tons of career training, in which they pay tuition and fees for, and they completely encourage your success.

I told the soon to be MIL about the  interview, her response was not very enthusiastic and "Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for you and good luck, but don't set yourself up for failure with all these obstacles already in your way."  Form your own opinions on that comment.

So, I have a request for you. Because I want this job so badly, and I want to impress them with my best answers, I want to be prepared with some of the potential questions that I might not have thought of... If that didn't make sense: pretend you're interviewing me, think of some questions that you've been asked that you weren't really prepared for. Throw me some curve balls. Get me practicing! Please?

I guess now that the weather is warm and we don't have to worry about skidding on a patch of ice into the car in front of us, or fishtailing while changing lanes, that gives some people the right to drive like complete assholes. Really, I've gotten in more "close ones" in this summer type weather, than I have all winter. So, here's my min-crash course on driving for all you shitty drivers (yes, I might be talking about you):

• Green light means go
• Red light means stop
• Amber means prepare to stop
  

Now onto the "not-so-complicated-but-obviously-complicated-to-the-simple-minded" stuff:

• Every vehicle is equipped with a little plastic stick attached to the left of your steering wheel that moves up and down. These are your turning signals. Learn to love them, you'll be using them alot. Up signals right, down signals left. Not too hard to remember. Repeat after me. Up, right. Down, left.
  
•  When turning onto a busy street from a side street or a parking lot, don't stick your nose into the first lane, making others slow down or go around you.
• Same scenario as above: Make sure you actually have enough time to turn in front of me, jackass.
•  If you have to stop in the meridian while turning left, don't let your ass end of the car stick out and block more than one lane, and don't let your nose stick out and block the other lane of on coming traffic. In fact, if you don't know how to do this, avoid left turns at meridians completely.
• When stopping at a four way stop sign, and other cars are around, the person who has made a complete stop first gets the right of way.
• if you and another vehicle approach a four way stop at the same time and have STOPPED at the sametime, the person to the right of you has right of way.
• when merging lanes from a yield, keep up your speed with the oncoming traffic. Don't go into my lane and drive slow, causing me and everyone else behind me to brake.
• in rush hour, or areas of construction, if a car wants to change lanes, don't be a dick. let them in. one car in front of you isn't going to make a difference in how fast you get to where you want to be. This applies to letting buses in too.
• don't weave in and out of heavy traffic. It makes you look like an asshole.
• if you're in a rush to get somewhere, leave earlier. don't expect traffic to vanish (especially during rush hour) just for you.
• When an emergency vehicle is coming up behind you with its siren on and its lights flashing, pull over to the right side of the road and stop or at least slow waaaayyy down.
• This should be a no-brainer, but obviously some people don't get it. Don't drink and drive No respect.
• If I can hear your music playing even though my windows are rolled up, it's too loud. Most people who do this have a shitty taste in music.

And for the pedistrians:

•  I don't drive on the sidewalk, so don't walk on the road
• If you're crossing a busy street, and there's a crosswalk 15 feet or less away from you, don't be so Goddamn lazy. Walk the extra bit and cross properly.
• When using a crosswalk, don't just push the button then walk out onto the street. Assume that all drivers are idiots and give them a second to remember what those yellow flashing lights mean.

Thank you. I'm done.