Rambling Post Alert

Yesterday when I picked the kids up at after care, they both asked if we were moving. 'I don't know,' I said. 'I need to figure that out.'

'But we don't want to move,' they both said and then began crying.

'If we do move, you'll be fine,' I said.

'But we won't have any friends,' they continued crying.

'You'll make new friends and Mommy will too,' I replied, trying not to cry myself. 'If we move closer to Grandma and Grandpa, won't that be fun?'

'No! Why can't we just find a house here?', the kids asked.

'Because houses are very expensive here and the ones that aren't are too old and run down,' I answered.

'Why can't we just stay in our house?', they cried.

'Because I might not have enough money to pay for it. I don't know. You don't have to worry about it. Your job is to be kids and my job is to do the worrying and figure it out,' I replied, trying not to get upset.

'No, your job is to love us and our job is to worry too,' my daughter said. <tug at the heartstrings>

Then my son said with vehemence, 'I'm not moving. I'm leaving my bed here and when you move, I won't have a place to sleep so I'll just have to be left here.' (Is he staying that because he doesn't have a bed at my husband's apartment??) My daughter chimed in with her own thoughts about how she can sabotage the move and they both got angrier and angrier until I distracted them with 'Let's go out to eat tonight!'

It makes me so angry that my kids are going through this. I know it's a first world problem, we won't be homeless or starving but it's not the life I envisioned for any of us.

On the way home from supper, my daughter asked how many houses are for sale in our town. Only twelve, I said. She asked if she could see some of them. I had just looked at two houses this weekend with my best friend. A dilapidated old red one, no possibility there. As we walked around it, I could almost see the dollar signs floating in the air, bouncing and bumping into each other. When I stepped in one spot in the entryway and the floor gave way and I felt like I was going to plummet to the basement, I mentally scratched it off the list. The other house we saw was an old yellow farmhouse, slightly renovated but still with obvious issues and LOTS more to do. It's completely different from our current house but kind of charming in its own way. I drove my daughter by the red one first. 'EW!', she yelled. 'I wouldn't want to live there.' Then we drove by the second one, the yellow one. 'This one is cute,' she said excitedly.

'It is cute,' I said, 'but it needs a lot of work.'

'And it's too close to the road,' my practical daughter said. (Yup, I had thought the same thing.)

'Why can't we just stay in our house?', she asked again. <sigh>

This is going to be exhausting until we get things figured out. I'm trying to keep my resentment for my husband under wraps but it's hard when I get the constant questions from the kids and I don't have the answers. I was complaining to a coworker today and she said I need to go back to counseling because I still have a lot of anger. I don't think any amount of therapy is going to help my anger issue at this point. No, not until the housing situation is figured out and I know where my children will be living.

I emailed my husband yesterday morning and told him that I'm going to need an idea soon of how much he's going to pay in child support and is he willing to keep his name on the mortgage for a specific amount of time? My next step is to contact my lawyer and have her start working on at least having him sign an acknowledgment about what he's going to pay. I need some type of information here, I can't make an important decision in a vacuum, a black hole of the unknown.

I think I might try putting our house on the market, for sale by owner. See what that brings for interest. In an ideal world, we would get a great offer and that would mean that I would have money for a down payment on another house. In a realistic world, we might break even and I'd get nothing other than a paid off mortgage. I'm preparing myself for the questions, whispers and gossip in my small town. Luckily I'm getting out of Dodge. In an effort to save money, I'm only sending the kids to two weeks of summer camp. The rest of the time the kids will be attending Granny camp. We will be spending most of the summer at my parents' house. I'll be commuting to work and the kids and our dog will be staying there full-time. 

Swallowing the shit sandwich is hard when you're faced with the possibility of having to move in with your parents once the house is sold. I haven't lived there since I was 18. I left for college and never went back other than for visits. Now at the age of 39, I'm poised to crawl back to my parents' house with my two kids in tow. I am thankful that I have that for an option but I'm bitter that it might become my reality.