Last dance with Mary Jane

October 29, 2012 2 Comments

Picked up step-daughter and went out to visit oldest girl-child and grand-baby.  It was our first chance to spend time together since she’s moved and my first chance to see her apartment.

I’ve got to say, I wasn’t really expecting much because the street she lives on is pretty much where you live when you have no money or are into “stuff” but my heart kind of sank when I saw the place.  It was filthy and pretty much trashed.  There’s holes in the walls and crap everywhere.  I doubt there was a clean dish in the house since the kitchen was littered with dirty dishes and bits of dried up food stuff.

And then I saw her bedroom and there were bongs everywhere and the place reeked of pot.

Step-daughter had quit smoking dope before she moved in and now she’s back to smoking up everyday.

It really struck me the differences between the two girls.  They have different life experiences but pretty much were in the same place when they both moved in and now they’re so far apart, they’re not even on the same planet.  Buddy-child is pretty much on the typically teenager path of getting her license, applying for post-secondary school, hanging with her boyfriend and going to the occasional party.  Step-daughter works nights, smokes up when she gets home from work, smokes up when she gets up and pretty much has checked back out of life again.

The good news is that step-daughter and I had a good two hours to talk about what was happening with her life and the choices she was making versus where she wanted to be.  It was a good chunk of time to talk.

A while back, I suggested to step-daughter that she start reading the blog I want a dumpster baby since the author had a lot of posts that were like snippets into the mind of step-daughter.  Much to my surprise she’s been actually reading (yay!!).  This gave us a chance to get into some really serious conversations about what she was doing and where it was leading her.  One of the great things about her reading that blog is that she was able to talk about how she is coming to learn that she needs to do it herself and do the work herself.  Sometimes the messages need to come from someone else because the kids just get so used to hearing us tell them all the time.  By the time we returned to town she was committed and excited to give up the drugs again and get back on track.  She’s still in therapy and not ready to give up yet.

We’ll see what she does.  She has done it once so I know she can do it again but whether she has the motivation to work that hard or not – I guess we’ll see.  I wish her luck because she still has so far to go.

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The more things change

October 25, 2012 2 Comments

So, buddy-child and I are driving to the grocery store this week and I say to her “I posted the picture of boy-child sleeping in class on my blog”.

She turns and looks at me and says “you have a blog?”

Okay, so I’ve been telling her about blog posts for a year.  Literally, it will be one year next week.

So I say, “remember? I told you and step-daughter I was starting a blog last year”.

Her response was “yeah, but we didn’t think you had actually started it.  We thought you were just talking about starting one”.

So then I proceed to tell her about all the blog posts involving her and that a crowd favourite was the zompiepocalypse, especially the fact that they had no idea what a can opener would be good for after the zombie attack.

At first she’s laughing, until I start telling her about the drug smoking posts.

Laughter turns to “OH. MY. GOD.” pretty fast at this point.

This leads to a discussion about whether or not people are actually reading my blog.

“You have FOLLOWERS ?!?!!”

Finally I say, “What on earth do you think I’ve been talking about for the past year?”

And, wait for it…  she responds “I don’t know”.

Some things never change.

 

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Give me a Z

October 22, 2012 4 Comments

Tonight was University open house, recruitment drive night.  They come around once a year and each of the local high schools take turns hosting.  All the graduating high school students are welcome to attend and you basically walk from table to table asking questions and getting brochures and booklets and free pens.

Buddy-child had a friend with her for moral support and hit up the school she was convinced she wanted to go to first.  The recruiter didn’t really have much information to tell her but gave her a brochure and told her to email with more specific questions.  I met the girls there just as she was finishing up with the first table.

Number one on buddy’s priority list is small school since she doesn’t think her anxiety can handle a large university.  Second is somewhere far enough from home to make it too hard to run home every weekend.  With that in mind I dragged her off to three other university tables that had good reputations amongst the parental set for being small, well-run universities.  Poor thing is more confused than before but at least now she has lots of options.

This process is really nerve wracking for kids.  Even if they think they’re ready to leave home, it’s still scary trying to make plans to move far away by yourself and change everything about your life.  I don’t know too many adults that can do that without having a meltdown.  Imagine how hard it is when you have no idea what you’re doing!  I have no doubt that buddy will do well in the end since she is working hard to get there to start.

I don’t normally post photos of anyone in my life (kids, me, dogs whatever) but since we are on the topic of studious children, this photo was emailed to me so that I could get a good look at my brilliant, soon to be doctor boy-child hard at work.

boy-child at his finest

Seriously, how his he even breathing sleeping like that?  Thank god he’s a smart one.

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