Bonds of Matrimony

Hello again.

J and M got married! Hooray!
They picked the date, like, a week and a half ago, and they said their vows and did their thing yesterday. It was cute. J's parents brought her a bouquet and wrote "just married" on her car windows. The minister doing the ceremony was this tiny old guy that rambled for forty-five minutes, I swear. Which got to be hilarious, 'cos J started getting impatient and dancing in place. And I laughed, because I already have a special place reserved in Hell, I might as well earn it with a little more specific blasphemy.
Of course, the clothes were simple and casual, but appropriate. The little room we were in was set up real cute, real simple. No arch, but a carpet on the floor. They held the flowers between them, and the rings on each others' fingers, and M's stomach made a loud grumbly noise right at the beginning.
Overall, simple, beautiful, and adorable. The only problem now is that if it doesn't work out, I'm going to be the one to help hide the body. Or if it's J's body, I'll have to do it myself. (M is a necrophobe.)

The baby is three months old, now, and is hitting all his milestones perfectly. He watches us enter and leave the room, he gets distressed when he can't see anyone, he can get his hands to his mouth and suck on then with reasonable skill.... He curls on his side, and can scoot on his stomach across the crib, etc..

K has learned to take his diaper off. And does so with a frequency. But still doesn't tell us when he's pooped, and prefers to sit in a poopy diaper rather than let us change it. And, in fact, at one point, he pooped in the floor, because apparently, this is what toddlers do. I know this because when I looked it up, the first entry on helping getting poop out of the carpet wasn't, in fact, a pet site like I expected, but was the blog of a woman whose daughter had done the same thing. (The answer is hydrogen peroxide, by the way.)

I keep wondering how on earth parents without three adults around do it. I am always impressed by single parents, but I used to think that two would be enough, but even with two kids, it's just so handy to have six hands. From having someone to drop the one off to so that you can go handle the other one, to being able to stomp away and glare at the wall in the next room while someone else handles stuff, to when someone is screaming and you've still got to untwist the damn seatbelt because shit happens and that's how it goes.... Like, last night, we were trying to pile everyone into the car, and the baby was screaming for god knows why, and K was being annoying about getting into his seat, and J was getting mad 'cos the seatbelt strap had twisted into the seatbelt, and I couldn't get to the seatbelt buckle in addition to being unable to shut the baby up (because for some reason, all of us start losing our minds a little bit when the baby is crying. It's like the sims-- everyone in the general vicinity suddenly has a twenty point detractor from their mood bars when the baby is screaming. And because of that, we all get a little crankier than we were, and we're trying to get something done, and we just want everything to get quiet and still so we can finish.

And yet there are always still problems with the relationship itself, of course. You'd think with more people to fight, there'd be more fighting. I've been a referee once, because in the heat of the moment, a lot of things get lost in translation, and they start getting loud and angry without really understanding what's going on. That, and J's got rage issues, and I tend to duck out of the room when I detect them coming to the surface, because I know how I get when someone around me is angry, and I do not make anything any better.

Poor J, though. She's a very emotional person, in general, and they tend to manifest first as anger, and then as sadness. Even happiness, though I imagine that yesterday it was her nerves in general, and excitement and so forth, that eventually manifested and was why she got upset. 'cos, see, we were gonna have sushi (I spelled that as "suchy" first, because my hands hate me...) as a celebratory dinner, but almost no one wanted to come. Or, if they did want to come, they couldn't, etc., and it upset J rather a lot. I wound up cuddling her on the couch before she passed out. (we were also gonna do a celebratory drinks and game sorta thing, too, but she fell asleep way too early for that. Long morning, long day, with a lot of excitement and running around, I don't blame her. I passed out early-ish, too, but that's my tradition on Monday.) The day was good, but she kept trying to plan, and the plans kept getting harpooned, and it upset her. She does that.
And last week, when she was on her way out the door for work, the door started making a funny noise, and she still swears it was someone trying to get in, and she's requested being walked to her car every morning since then, with M's nightstick.
I'm not entirely sure how to handle the emotionality. I'm never sure if my cuddling her is enough of a sense of security, or if I should get M to do it while I go take M's spot in whatever task he has at hand (except when he's cleaning, because that's precisely what I do, 'cos I am sure that I'm better at housekeeping than I am at comforting an upset woman, and he's better at comforting his upset woman than cleaning.). A lot of the things when I express confusion, I get the same answer, which is "do what comes naturally". Still sucking at this. Out loud.

But I finally did get M to watch some Doctor Who with me. Old ass episodes, from like the seventies and stuff. He's being slowly won over to my British television, though J has remained steadfastly hooked to her Teen Dramas and stuff.

One thing that did happen a lot about the wedding was that when I told people at work, they asked me what was going to happen to me in our relationship. I think the clearest I could get on the matter was telling one girl that I couldn't very well marry them, I'd only been with them for four months (or five, or something.) and we'd get there when we got there. As things stand, I am still their girlfriend, we are all still in the same relationship, but now those two share a legal bond as well as an emotional and spiritual one. I can't seem to make it clear that legal marriage isn't my ultimate goal, and that their bond getting legal doesn't make our emotional one any lesser.

M did suggest "marrying" me in a year, but I don't want to share their anniversary (and possibly cheapen it somehow) and I'm not sure how I feel about marrying them even non-legal-like. It took me four years to get to that point with my ex, and having had my sense and reason forced back upon me, no thank you. We'll have to see.

Parenting by proxy. Whee. Infant needing attention, now. Wish my partners luck! They'll need it!

So Fast, It'll Make Your Head Spin.

Hello!
It's been a minute (gee, how's that for an old blog starter?), but there is a good reason for that.
First, you see, a week and a halfish ago, L was born. He took his time, rather forcing us to hang out in the hospital for the better part of... Thirteen hours? J had to go twenty-six hours without eating because of it, having messed up some scheduling for the timing of his induction, and then confusing things a little later, and then L taking his sweet time to leave her poor uterus.
J's recovering well enough, for someone who was having her nutrition robbed of her and almost no sleep. She's also determined that the breastfeeding (already) has to stop because she suffers a desire to beat the small one on occasion due to the pain he causes her when he eats, and while she knows that this is not his fault, she has no desire to tolerate this anymore. I don't blame her. I'm about to go get my tubes tied because of this getting-to-witness childbirth business and the breastfeeding and the pregnancy and... Yeah, no. Never. If I ever get to where I'd be comfortable having a child, I'm sure that adoption would be an option.

Because J's vagina exploded. I'm barely kidding. Oh my god. The fluids, the shifting, the mess, the baby, the doctors, the blood, oh my gods. Oh gods. Never ever ever having kids. Like. Ew. And hers was a fairly normal, simple birth. Just spit the baby out with an alternative mouth, and then the gushing and the blood...
We read that chapter in her EMT book, today. If you bleed more than half a liter, then you worry. Half a liter of blood is fine, though.

We've been taking childcare in shifts. Mj has been over once since then, and seems to be alright with the baby, and K is downright delighted to have a baby brother (this will undoubtedly change), and the household seems to be adjusting to his presence pretty well.

The only hiccup we have, is that while M and I try to be around with J, K, and L, we have each gotten a new job, and the hours have tiny conflicts. We deliberately took different shifts with where we got the jobs, so that one of us would be home at basically all times, at least one at night or early morning or something-- except that M has worked there before, and they've already offered him his old position back. He'll be making ridiculously good money relatively soon. Things are still tight, but we've got a bit of wiggle room, at least enough to breathe, which is more than I can say about some previous situations.

Speaking of, this is my first full-time job. Yay. I put together parts for the assembly line factory I work with. Which is fine, really, I have no complaints, except that I know that I'm a bloody genius (despite misspelling that word three times) and I can do better, but the skills I have are useless because of the time and location of my happenstance. Oh well, I can screw bits on and attempt to murder myself with airpressure gun wrenches. (I did totally try to wound myself with one, but it was my own fault, and now I know to drop the damn tool.)
I am getting to end my time at my previous job with a chance for rehire, too. Yippee. If I should ever need it. I hope it doesn't come back to that.

M and I have been talking about our little dysfunction as our relationship, and we have no ideas whatsoever what to do about them. We don't know what they're founded upon at all. I do have rather strange issues with sex, being that I don't know how to approach the subject when I want to have it, and having a semi-low sex drive of my own accord anyway....
We've also been talking about approaches to parenting. Mostly 'cos I completely disagree with a good portion of the things he does in his attempt to parent, but in the end, that's a completely different thing to think about, because that one is one of those questions without a right answer that no one could really tell you.

At new work when we were getting training, one of the girls in our little group asked me with surprise if M was my boyfriend, and when I asked why the surprise, she dodged the question, and then I asked if she thought I was gay, and she said yeah. Haha.

I have mentioned, rather in passing, that I have both, to one person. I met him at lunch, and we chatted for a bit, and for a moment, it was about the Twilight movies.
Because J went to see them with friends of M and J's and people I'm working on getting to know, and M didn't go. And complained about people giving him shit about it. At which point, I agreed with M, and declared that I would much rather take shit for not going to go see Twilight with my girlfriend than go see Twilight with my girlfriend.
But the way I said it was "my boyfriend" and "our girlfriend". I didn't want to look like I was checking his reaction, but the second I did, he looked very much like a speechless fish. I do not know what speechless fish look like, but I'm going to take a stab at a guess and go with the face that the man was making.

I'm feeding the baby as I type, so if there are typos, bite me.

The poor man at work later was telling me how to do foot massages, and he said to tell my boyfriend-- or girlfriend-- or whatever it is that I've got (he didn't ask, I didn't tell, but I would have if he had), how to do whatever it was he told me. (Drive thumb up into arch of foot. It's not my arch that hurts, it's actually the balls of my feet, just below my toes, but yeah. Standing for twelve hours sucks like that.)

I've got night duty, tonight, in case it wasn't obvious. I have no idea what I'm doing to my sleepclock, or even what I want to do with my sleepclock. I hope it works, whatever it is.

So, the kids, right? Mj and K, yeah? They've been doing normal two and three year old stuff, right?
Like taking the mixture of zinc cream and lotion that M concocted for a weird bump on Mj, and smearing it on the TV in their room, on the floor and walls all along the hallway, in the bathroom, and in the pack-n-play we are using for a crib until we're comfortable leaving L on his own for a night, when he sleeps the whole night long.

He's been kind of going weird on his feeding. He doesn't eat in increments of two. One ounce, three ounces, he'll cry once an hour and eat an ounce and eat the other ounce the next hour, he'll eat three ounces and be hungry again in two hours, he'll eat two ounces and cry again after four hours....
I'm wondering about whether he's doing growth spurts on that short notice. I know how kids do with the eating-- they're not like grown-ups. They need the food, they eat the food, they don't need the food, they don't eat the food. They'll eat food they normally wouldn't, they'll refuse food they normally wouldn't, etc.. They get fat, they sprout three inches. As they get older, the time it takes between spurts grows, but generally, they're pretty good at demanding when they need, up until they get trained to clean their plate or eat when they're bored, etc..
He's finally started burping when he's supposed to. He was holding out and just getting hiccups.

K is also experimenting with 'no'. I think he's testing reactions. I did discuss briefly with J, today, about how she's going to handle his lying-- because she was convinced that the only reason he would ever start would be because Mj does. Like Mj was taught to lie-- and that's not how lying works. In fact, you're regarded as smarter, the earlier you start lying. It's a survival mechanism. You use it as needed. You do it to avoid getting in trouble, to stay away from negative consequences.

I've said it before, a long time ago, but the way kids are depends almost entirely on who they were from t he beginning. How they react to what they react to. There is nothing that is PURELY nurture. Nor nature, as much as I'd like to think so.

I haven't told him this, but the way he treats his child is a good part of why I wouldn't even want to have M's children. I don't approve of his parenting. I mean, you know, to each their own, and while I don't like the way he treats his kid, that's up to him. It's not mine, I don't get a say. Same with J and K. L, I'm still trying to sense out where I land with that one. It feels a lot like it did with my baby brother. Basically my only concern is that I don't want to become a favorite. I don't want to take that away from the biologicals. I will happily be the cool god-mom/auntie/step-momish figure, but I do not want to be Mom to Jen's Momma. I wouldn't mind being a mother, I don't think, but not now, and not with someone I'm still trying to feel out my place with.
Though, M and J have done nothing to make me feel distant. Quite the contrary, they've been trying to include me in every aspect, and we very certainly have a very real relationship going-- I'm uneasy. I'm not even used to having family laundry anymore. It's been twelve years since I've mixed my laundry in with anyone else's on purpose. (Mostly 'cos if I ever got my laundry in with someone else's, that was the last time I ever saw that item of clothing. My mother and sister had this nasty case of black holes,  being randomly disappearing items that simply vanished because some scattering dust particles that came from the pair landed on the item that disappeared. It was like the Fae followed my family around and waited for them to touch stuff. Sorry. Rambling. It's two AM, at this point.)
The kids, even, have gotten used to me being rather a fixture. I'm even sure they might be sad if they discovered me missing, one day.

I think I might have finally run myself dry on rambling. I was going to talk more about the kids trouble, but really, it's just normal kid stuff. Like, K's attempt to break the Blu-ray player, this morning. He put in two discs at once, and tried to close it, and one was upside down, and I rescued everything, but, you know. Mj lies a lot, K bounces on the couch too close to the baby/person holding baby, etc.. It's normal stuff.

Eh. Now I'm tired. I'm gonna have to get back up and start doing stuff, 'cos the kid's gonna be hungry again in an hour...
Alright. Rest well, non-parents. Lovely babbling at you.

New House!

So, we’re all moved in. Yay!

And my transfer went smoothly, so I’ve been working for the last couple of days at my new department store, though I still have every plan in the world of going somewhere else. The money thing isn’t going too swell, but we’re working on it. I think it’s taking J and M a little more getting used to than me, ‘cos J still gets on craigslist to do random shopping, and they both get a little titchy when they see something they want and the money thing comes up. I don’t think they either of them notice. (Will now that I’ve written that. Or will when I post it.)

Tomorrow, the internet gets turned on, hopefully. J has an appointment to check on L, and his arrival. Which is imminent. Yay! And I work. And then I have to go to my mom’s house and collect shit, and need to get a hold of my aunt’s ex boyfriend thingie and get the dish strainer, and my pillows and… Stuff. Maybe the giant hamper-thingie in the back of Mom’s house. Everything in here is so crowded already, I might skip out on furniture.

We got the washer, today, too. Yay!

We’ve been watching a lot of TV, lately. It’s okay, I suppose. A bunch of movies that are fairly ancient that I haven’t seen, so that’s fun. Yippee.

So, M called me gorgeous the other day, and I contested this, because it annoyed me that he would bother calling me that. And so I said I wasn’t, but then he mentioned later an exercise he heard about, listing reasons one thinks one is attractive. And I had to explain that it wasn’t about that I think I’m ugly. It’s that I think my looks are the least important element of my attractiveness. I have nothing to do with my looks. I don’t put any work into it. With the occasional diet. But anyway, I don’t like the focus on the physical. The question occurred to me, though, the automatic compliment for a girl is about her looks. I mean, I guess you can’t get too much more of an impression, but hell, just wait for me to open my mouth, you’ll get a new one to go with.

But my point was, it’s like, “Hey, great tits.”
“Yes, they are great tits. Can I help you?”
“You have beautiful lips.”
“Yes. Ask me about the scar in them, that’s a good story.”
“I didn’t even notice.” Because it would be assumed that the scar is a bad thing, and as such should be dismissed. You know, like the event that caused it should be dismissed, too, I guess? I don’t know, I like scars. Although, some do have some stupid stories. Cat scratches, a trampoline spring in my case, fell down some stairs, but most of them are pretty good.

But my appearance is one element of a million that makes me attractive, and it’s the least important one to me, because… mostly because I don’t really get to look at me all that much. I think. I don’t know. Just not my favorite thing about me. I’m witty, intelligent, knowledgeable (These are all three different ways to be smart.), literate, thoughtful, a natural handiwoman, physically and mentally powerful, and I can engage in philosophical conversation, and even (especially) drunk, I’m pretty happy, if a little edgy, but that’s just paranoia and there’s nothing for that.

Anyway. K is pretty much used to our new place. J seems to be pretty miserable with the whole L thing, and we’re eagerly awaiting him. K has been a little too hyperactive, lately, because he can’t go outside due to weather suckage. Bloody rain, bloody hot, bloody humid. Two of three. So he’s been hopping and running and jumping and such, and just been so cute and annoying. Right now he’s standing on the end of the couch and falling onto his butt enthusiastically.

I’m going back to former home on Thursday, I suppose, Going to see family friend and grab stuff. J’s appointment and internet tomorrow, and stuff.

Slowly Making Our Way

Hello!
So, massive changes within the last.... since I updated.
First and most massively, we have gotten our prefab family dwelling! We've been moving our stuff into it (I'm trying to help, but my current home-thingie needs me around), and we're slowly developing somewhere to be in it, and we're working on it.
Second, the job situation (for MB, me, specifically) has gotten incredibly complicated because of some beaurocratic BS that I should have known or at least figured, and is in the f*cking way. (Due to my glee in using swear words, but my intentions of making this a 'family oriented' blog, I am editing my words. Sort of. Adults still know, kids will only know if they've heard it before.)

So, story of moving into the prefab trailer first, right?
'cos last week, we were supposed to move in. Last weekend, to be specific, we were supposed to get the keys Friday to one of two places, and we were supposed to be making steady progress with shuffling stuff over.
Now, M has the week off, so really, we were supposed to be done by now.
Unfortunately, one of the places has something wrong with it (we're not sure what) and that would prevent it from being rented for the next month, and I'm not sure what was up with the other one, either. There was a third that came up, and that one was supposed to have been being painted, except that the person that was supposed to be painting it was d*cking around and not getting it done, for whatever reason.
We got sick of waiting, and so M went in and told the people from whom we were to be renting, and said, "PLEASE? J is due any day, now, and we would really like to be established before that happens." And then they asked us if we could cope with previous renter's damage, and we looked, and we can, so now we have the place, and we've already got most of J's and my stuff in (I do have a few items left), but with J being as massively pregnant as she is, she can't move stuff (we won't let her.) and M is pretty much on his own on that matter, because my effin' job crap is being awful.

Okay, that was the first bit of that story.
The second bit is that, while we were viewing the house, we noticed that there isn't a turn-off valve on the toilet.
M mentioned wanting a water-saver.
I decided to install the water-saver, despite the sentence that comes before the fact that M  wanted a water-saver.
I had a moment, there. I did. Just. Brain took a vacation. Or maybe I thought I could handle it. I'm not sure. Either way, it was stupid, I am an idiot.

First, I broke the thingie I was supposed to be replacing.
Then I was trying to figure out how to replace the thingie I broke.
And I was failing horribly. And guessing. And that was bad.
And then we figured, since it's broken, and we can't find the shut-off, we might as fscking well, right?
And then forty days and forty nights of rain broke loose, right?
I flooded the bathroom, the hallway, the entry to the kids' room, and was making way to the living room, before we managed to screw the thing on effing crooked, right?
And so I got it to where at least it was a slow trickle, rather than an attempt to drown everyone (I ruined two phones, neither of which were mine.)  and M and a friend of his/ours helping us move went to find the valve.
Which, by the way, is about fifty feet from our unit.

So, we got it fixed. After.... Eh. Two hours of uncontrolled water flow, maybe three, maybe even four, it felt like days....

It was horrible.
And I have learned my lesson.

Anyway. We have a place, now. Yay! I have sworn not to break the other toilet.
We took our first shower in there, and that wasn't bad at all, and the cuddling was rather wonderful, and I liked sleeping there, except that I was in the middle of an asthma attack that I did not know about until after both of my mates complained that I had disturbed them in their moments of wakefulness (which reminds me, totally need another treatment, wtf.), and I liked the place. I am trying to transition to calling it home. I am mostly succeeding.

K didn't seem to mind at all that that's where we live, now. He did seem to have a problem wrapping his brain around it, but there are so many things I can think of that indicate trouble, and he displayed none of them. He did ask to go home, but he seemed pretty okay with the place being his new home.

Reminds me-- I wasn't with my mates, weekend before last, and the kids asked where I was. That's such a warm fuzzy feeling. "Where [MB]?"

So. We made it through what I thought of as a major distaster caused directly by my actions caused directly by neglect to attention (as I called it a while back), and I've been forgiven (Yay for exhaustion-induced delirium?), and I'm still welcome there. This is heartwarming and reassuring and a bunch of other warm fuzzy words.

I don't get to live there until next Wednesday, though. I was supposed to give at least a week's written notice to work to use them as a reference, and I failed to do so. Because I figured the rumor to want to transfer was enough. I was wrong. In fact, I thought that since I was transferring, it wouldn't count as quitting.

I'm still trying to decide if I want to call out on Friday.

Thanks for reading!
-MB

First Steps

Confirmed location to move. It's feeling like that moment at the top of the big hill to start off the roller coaster. Hanging onto my seat and lungs filled to scream, now.
And closet empty and I need to figure out how to get all my gigantic amounts of crap into my tiny car and try not to hyperventilate.
And change my address. I already called to transfer the job place thing. And explained to baby brother. And stuff.
Oh boy.