To Make a Choice

When this year began, it held the promise of lots of growth and change. That promise has been fulfilled. Many ways being exactly what I expected and others, not even close. One of the changes, one that I should have seen coming, in some ways I knew was coming but didn’t want to see it, involves my oldest son.

I don’t typically talk about the specifics of my personal life on here, especially not my kids. I tend to be a very private person and I don’t think that you can get more personal that my children, so I tend to keep that to myself. This is such a huge issue for me, though, I feel that it needs to be shared.

My oldest son is from my first marriage. It wasn’t a great marriage, but the bad wasn’t something that you could really point out or that was obvious like physical abuse. We were just really incompatible. I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to last right around the same time that I found out I was pregnant.

During my pregnancy, I realized how bad of an idea it was to be bringing a child into that relationship, but I was terrified of raising it alone. I could see the signs that my husband would never be the kind of father that I thought a child needed, but I was already pregnant and not having a child wasn’t an option at that point. I finally got up the courage and determination not long after my son was born. He was only 4 months old when his father and I officially split.

My son is now 11. In all those years, his father has been around and had visitation. My ex would get him most of the time, but there were a lot of times he was scheduled for a visit that he canceled, often breaking some promise to my son about a planned activity for that visit. As time has gone on, he canceled more and more. It also depended on what was going on in his life at the time as to how regular he was in getting my son. If there was a stable girlfriend in the picture, the visits were more regular, but it seemed the girlfriend did more for my son than my ex did.

A couple of years ago, my ex was having a difficult time. He’d lost his job (again) and hadn’t been able to make regular child support payments. There were also a lot of missed weekends. At one point he suggested that my husband adopt my son. At the time, I thought that was a really bad idea and that he’d end up regretting it and that my son would end up blaming me for taking his dad away from him. I went to a lawyer and got my child support reduced to try and make things easier on him. I thought that it would be the best thing for my son to do everything I could to keep his dad in his life.

That lasted all of about 9 months. My ex lost another job and quit paying child support, even during the times he had a job. In the last year and a half or so, I haven’t gotten a dime from him. He has also missed more than half of his visits. For most of those, my son would at least get to go see his grandparents (the ex’s parents), but not always.

A few months ago, my former in-laws showed up to pick up my son for one of his father’s regular visits. I didn’t know they were getting him as I hadn’t heard from my ex. I found out when getting my son that Sunday that his dad had taken off. There was some issue with him being on a medication, that no one could tell me for what, and he’d quit taking it. Not having taken the meds brought about some sort of mental episode and he just left everything, including a new girlfriend and all of his possessions, and disappeared.

I found out bits and pieces from different people the week after that and it had me extremely concerned for my son’s safety. To me, my ex had had some sort of a mental breakdown. I was even more concerned about the fact that he’d been needing to take this medication for some time and I’d never even known.

No one bothered to call me and let me know what was going on with him. I didn’t care one bit for my sake, but my son was really worried and upset. We didn’t even know if his dad was alive. I had made the decision to keep him with me until we knew more. I wasn’t comfortable with him being at his grandparents knowing there was a possibility of my ex showing up.

I hadn’t heard a word about what was going on from anyone. By sheer luck and coincidence, I ran across him on Facebook through a mutual friend. He hadn’t been on before he’d disappeared(I’d checked right after joining because I didn’t want him to have access to my profile) and had been rather active in the last several weeks even though he hadn’t once tried to contact my son.

It came as a blow to find that out. My son had been worried and upset for the last several months because he didn’t know what was going on with his dad, didn’t even know if he was okay. I was left with a choice. Tell my son what I knew, or leave him in ignorance.

It wasn’t an easy choice at all. I felt that telling him about the FB thing would hurt him and that I may not be able to leave my personal feelings about his dad out of it. I also know that not knowing was even harder. On the advice of several wonderful friends, I chose to tell him. He took it really hard, but he understood that it meant his dad was making a choice not to see him. I wasn’t certain that he would.

Today, I got a call from my ex’s dad. They are wanting to see my son. Again, I am presented with another choice. I do believe that he is being genuine when he tells me that they are upset with my ex and that they also agree that my son shouldn’t be around him. I also believe him when he tells me that his son is no longer welcome in their home and that they support any decision I make concerning my son about child support and even custody. He did shed a bit more light on the situation with my ex as well. Apparently the medication was for bi-polar disorder, a diagnosis that really doesn’t come as a huge surprise to me.

All of this has presented me with yet another choice. I have to decide what it is I need to do legally with regards to custody. I want very much to go to court and have all custody removed from my ex. His abandoning his son speaks to his desire to be a father. His past actions only serve to reinforce that.

I have had to think about this for a very long time. It is an issue that seems to keep coming up. One of the things that gives me pause is whether or not it is the right decision. Not just for me, but for my son. Is it fair to him? I don’t think any of this is fair for him. Is it fair to my ex to permanently punish him? What if he were to get into the care of a doctor and got to the point where he cared and were responsible and wanted to see his son again?

That last one sticks to me. It is the reason we didn’t take my ex up on having my husband adopt my son a couple of years ago. I see it differently now. My ex is making a choice, whether or not he has the full mental capacity to make the correct one is really not the issue. He is making a choice. That choice is going to have consequences. There is no getting around that. You can’t make a choice when you are in a bad state of mind and expect it to be excused from all consequences. Just as I can’t expect my choice to be free from consequences.

There will be some point in my son’s life that my choice, no matter what it is, will be an issue for him. He may get very angry at me. He may blame me. That is something I’m going to have to live with. I will have made my choice understanding what those consequences could be.

New Family Member!

Yep!  We finally did it.  We found our new family member and adopted her yesterday.  She is a gorgeous 4 year old American Eskimo/Golden Retriever mix.  We have barely had her for 24 hours and she is already showing us how amazingly smart she is.

Izzy's first full day home - 2009

She is very quickly learning to mind while she is on her leash.  She is also being very good and learning to sit and wait when going outside or coming in.  We even had a moment just after getting her home yesterday when she got to meet our neighbor’s dog and was barely even phased by her.

Izzy - 2009

The shelter we got her from had her named Liza but she hadn’t taken to it.  We’ve opted for Izzy instead.  Bright girl that she is, she has already started to respond to it.  Not only is she being such a wonderful girl for me, but she just rolls on her back for a tummy rub whenever the kids come up to her.  She hasn’t even done much more than look at the cat.

I’m not sure how it is we managed to get so lucky with her, but I’m not complaining one little tiny bit.  I’m a very happy doggy mom.

Searching

I had an extremely rough morning today.  I’d found out after waiting the last couple of days that the shelter that was fostering the dog we wanted to adopt wasn’t willing to let her go to a family that had a cat even though I was told in my first conversation with them that she’d be fine with cats.

The hardest part for me was the fact that I had grown really attached to the idea of this dog.  It seems silly to say that it was the dog itself, because I never got the chance to even meet her (though we’d had a tentative meet set up for this evening before they emailed and decided against it), but I know it really was more than just the idea that I was attached to.  It was hard having the last several days be about continuing on with the process, filling out the paperwork and setting up a time to meet, all things filled with hope and promise to have it all halted abruptly and pulled away.

My first reaction was to want to say,” screw it!  I don’t want to do this if it is going to hurt this bad and be this disappointing”, but I’m not.  I won’t allow this one experience sour me on adopting a dog.  It is going to be very hard, though.  Between looking for dogs for my FIL and looking, now, for us, I have seen so many things that just make me sick.

We have a lot of different shelters and rescue groups in our area.  Many are true rescue groups that do what they can to rescue animals from the shelters that are willing to put down an animal just because it didn’t find a home fast enough, but there are too many of those kinds of shelters in the area and not enough people that are willing or able to care for the animals.

It makes it even harder when you have to find one to fit into a family with kids and a cat.  So far, we haven’t told the kids.  I’m really glad we decided on that route after this morning.  Once we have found one that we think is the one, then we will bring them in.  I don’t want to have them upset if it takes a while.

Most of the people I’ve talked to or exchanged emails with have been wonderful help and great about answering any questions.  There have been a couple though that make me wonder about their desire to actually help these animals find good homes, especially when that really is the ultimate goal.

Growing the Family?

Things have been quite interesting around here lately.  Last week a stray/runaway kitty found its way to our back door.  The poor thing was skin and bones, but had obviously been cared for at some point because it was wearing a flea collar.

We couldn’t bring her into the house because we didn’t know the state of her health and she was covered in ticks and fleas.  We already have an indoor cat and we weren’t willing to expose her to whatever the stray may have.

We put food and water out for her and even set up a little area for her that was protected from the rain.  After she was here for a couple of days, I managed to get her in a carrier and take her to the vet for a health evaluation.  The poor girl had multiple tics and burs pulled off of her and she got a flea/tick/ear mite treatment and a FIV test run which came back negative.  My vet also informed me that she’d had at least a couple of litters of kittens and wasn’t spayed.

That visit made me so angry.  How in the world could someone have a pet that they cared enough to put a collar on and not have it spayed or neutered and then just let it run, enough to where it ended up on my back patio half starved to death.  To make things worse, there had been another cat wanting to come near, but was too scared to actually come up to us as the other kitty had.  The second cat, I think is a male and related in some way to the first cat.  We can’t get close enough to him to know more or to get him to the vet.

The vet couldn’t do much more than what she did that day because they have a 7 day waiting period on any strays.  They insist on this to make certain that you have at least made an attempt to find the animal’s owner.  We couldn’t get this little kitty spayed.  Now that she is well fed and somewhat tick and flea free, she is feeling much better and has decided that she really doesn’t want to stick around.  We are going to see if we can manage to get a hold of her again and take her to be spayed.  I just can’t see letting her go free knowing that she has the potential to be having more kittens.

All of this brought about something of a chain of events for us.  When she first showed up, we thought that we would probably be able to get her healthy and bring her in.  She has shown that there will be no way to make her an indoor kitty and if we tried, she would not be happy.   The fact that we were considering bringing another animal into our home was a really big thing because both my hubby and I have been pretty set against it for a while.  This little kitty showed us that it was time to think about it again and that we actually were open to the idea.

When talking about the cat to my father-in-law, he mentioned that he was going to start looking for a dog.  This is something that both hubby and I are really excited about and are hugely supportive of because we feel that he could use the companionship.  Things have been really hard on him since my MIL passed.

We’d been scouring PetFinder in an attempt to help with the search, looking for dogs that we thought might be a good fit for my FIL.  In the process, we found a dog that WE would love to have.  We didn’t set out to find anything for ourselves, most especially not a dog.  Once we saw her, though, we were hooked.

She is a gorgeous 1 year old Border Collie and she is deaf.  There are so many challenges with her and I’m not certain I’d have been willing or able to take them on at any other time, but for some reason she has pulled at my heart and gotten it all tied up in knots.  I couldn’t sit back and see her go to anyone else.  I immediately contacted the place that had her listed and have started the processes of seeing if we can adopt her.

I spent a big chunk of my weekend doing research on raising a deaf dog and learning about what all that entails.  I’ve also done a bunch more research on the breed.  I want to be as ready as I can be if we do get approved.  I know she is going to be a lot of work.  Probably more work than I’ve ever put into anything outside of raising kids, but I’m really looking forward to it.

I am still at the waiting to hear back phase of all of this and it is beyond frustrating and nerve wracking, but one of the things I know I’m going to have to learn with this dog is patience.  I think she is already teaching me that.

Grandma Blankets

Since I spend a bulk of my time working on my Shades of Midnight shop site, I thought it might be a good idea to spend some time writing about it here.  Over the next several weeks, I’m going to try and put out a different highlight post each week.  Each post will focus on one of the major product lines.

I figured I would start with Grandma Blankets since I’m in the process of getting a few new ones listed.

Grandma Blankets are only one of two product lines currently listed that I do not personally make.  The idea behind these blankets originated with my grandmother when I was little.  She started making the full, adult size versions of these and giving them as gifts to all of her family.

They started out with the standard flannel on both sides and hand tied with yarn to hold the internal batting (sort of like a cushion that gives the blanket some thickness) and the two sides together.  Over time, she would occasionally put cotton on one side to compliment the flannel. Eventually, as her grandkids got older and started having kids of their own, the smaller baby blanket versions came about.

Farm Animals Grandma Blanket

The Grandma Blankets, as I came to call them but are also known as baby quilts or woobies, became a favorite among family and friends and were in much demand, especially the adorable baby blankets.  It is my grandma’s standard baby gift and is always much looked forward to by the new mom.

As the blankets gained popularity and demand, my mom took up the tradition and started making them on her own.  She has made several over the years for the kids and a few adult size ones for myself and my brothers as well as filled in for my grandma when she had too many to give and just couldn’t make them all.  My mom eventually got to the point where she was making more blankets than my grandma.

After starting up the Shades of Midnight site, I thought it was only natural to offer up the medium and my help to try and get these wonderful blankets available to others.  With all the hard work really being done by my mom.

I currently carry several varieties of Grandma Blankets.  You can find them in the standard flannel on flannel or in a cotton on flannel.  There are even a few that are made out of fleece.  They come in both the baby size which fits very nicely in a crib and the slightly larger size that fits a small toddler bed.  The toddler sizes are usually just big enough to fit over the top of a twin size bed.  No matter the size or the style, they all come in some wonderfully adorable prints and colors.

One of the amazing things about these baby blankets is how versatile they are.  Even though they were originally designed to be used for babies and small children, they are excellent for lap blankets or even pets.

I have just listed four new blankets and will have another 4 up by the end of the week.

Summer and Work

It seems as if I’ve dropped of the face of the Earth here.  Well, almost.  My kids are now on summer vacation and are home all day.  Between that, my middle son starting baseball again and trying to actually get some work done, I haven’t had time for much else lately.

Added into a mix that is already keeping me incredibly busy is what seems like an endless round of doctors visits and test.  It would be one thing if I were having to go through all of that for something even kind of serious, but it is for something that is more of an annoyance and inconvenience than anything.  All that and still no real solution yet.  I have more to look forward to.  I’m beginning to really dislike doctors as a whole.  Most have a pretty crappy bedside manner and some even seem to have a desire to do their jobs only because it is their job, not because it is what is the best thing.

At least baseball season this year isn’t a stressful one.  My son is actually getting to play with friends and is having a blast.  It makes it more fun for everyone.  I don’t have to go to games dreading the crazy competitiveness and attitudes that we were confronted with last year.  It is after all supposed to be fun.

I have been getting lots of work done lately.  I’m working on a couple of new little product lines to add to the shop as well as adding more to some of the already existing lines.  I have been pleasantly surprised by a brief glut of sales recently and have had the need to restock.  After the dry spell that was winter, it is nice to see that the slow down didn’t mean an end.  I am enjoying this way too much to be ready for it to be over with.

It is also been really nice to actually be able to enjoy the weather.  We have finally gotten some seasonally appropriate weather.  It may still be on the cool side for this time of year, but it is allowing me to keep my windows open and spend time outside.  Now that the kids are home, I’m sure there will be lots of that going on.

All in all, health issues not counting, life is good.  Life is very good.

Excitement and Fears

In a few short weeks, I will be confronting one of my biggest fears.  Flying.  I know it may seem a bit silly to some, but it really is something that freaks me out a bit.  Not only does the entire concept weird me out, but it makes me physically ill.  I get terrible motion sickness, something that has gotten worse the older I get.

So why, if I despise flying so much, would I voluntarily get on a plane?  What brand of insanity has taken over the basic functions of my brain?  I get the chance to spend the weekend with one of my best friends.  Funny how I can say that and know that I’ve never met her in person before, yet it still be so completely true.  My husband and I will be flying out for a short weekend visit.  It isn’t nearly as long of a visit as I’d like, but that is all the time we have available right now.

I am incredibly excited about this trip.  It is something I have wanted to do for a long time now, but I just haven’t been able to convince myself to actually do it.  It hasn’t helped that my husband, being the total shit that he is, tends to like to tease me about it with comments like “You know that if the plane crashes, our kids will lose both their parents at once, don’t you?”  I know he isn’t being mean and it is his way of trying to laugh off his own dislike for flying, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

This fear is something I no longer care to live with.  It prevents me from doing many of the things that I’d really enjoy.  Taking this trip is one step in overcoming that fear.  Plus, I get to meet a fantastic and amazing lady in person!  What is not to love about that?

The Love of Cake

Making cakes is one of my many creative passions.  The last several years, though, I haven’t had much desire to do anything that pushed my creative abilities.  This year is different.

I decided to go all out and try some new things when I made my daughter’s birthday cake.  I bought some gum paste and played for the first time.  I’ve done some work with fondant along the same lines, but after playing with the gum paste, I’ve decided that I like the versatility of the gum paste better.

The fondant work I have done has been more along the lines of sculpting and accessorizing an iced cake, never as the complete covering.  I decided to try that for the first time on this project as well.

I was a little intimidated by my grand ideas and the plan I had in mind, but I was still pretty excited about the challenge.  I have to say, even though I made a few mistakes and I can see the areas I need to work on, improve and do differently next time, I am extremely pleased by how this cake turned out.

This is the front of the cake.  I have a lot to learn on getting the fondant smooth, but I think I did pretty well considering this was my first attempt.

Hat Cake by FoxChild 2009

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This is a side view of the cake. I had an arrangement of gum paste flowers that was just off center of the front of the cake and another arrangement on the center back.

Hat Cake by FoxChild 2009

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Not only did I play with the sculpting of the gum paste, but I did a little painting as well. This is the detail of the back of the cake.

Gum Paste Flower Detail by FoxChild 2009

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This is a close up of a couple of the gum paste flowers that were in the front side arrangement. I loved how the calla lilies came together. The roses I’d done before in fondant, but you can get the petals much thinner and more realistic in the gum paste.

Gum Paste Flower Detail by FoxChild 2009

Grandma Blankets

I had mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was going to start listing the baby blankets that my mom makes on Shades of Midnight.  Well, I spent today getting them all photographed, added to my database and listed on the site and they are finally ready to go.

So, for those of you that are interested, please jump on over there and have a look.  My mom has said that she has a few more to finish up, so there will be more getting added soon.

**Edit** Also… Gift certificates are now available!

Experiencing the Turn

If you had asked me last year if I felt in tune with the turning of the wheel and the ever progressing, but continuing cycle of life, I would have had to say no.  If you were to ask me the same question today, it would be a very different answer.

This last year started with some rather ugly emotions and a rather tattered view of much that I had previously felt as very strong and solid.  I was forced to look at myself very differently and the ugly and tattered were quickly released to make room for a whirlwind of creativity, growth and a new found sense of confidence that I’d never had before.

I was able to ride that incredible wave beyond the new year and well into Spring and Summer when things started to fall into a lazy, relaxed routine that was so very comfortable.  I wasn’t pushed as much with the creative frenzy that I’d started the year out with, but it wasn’t gone altogether.

As fall began to show signs of setting in so did lots of other changes.  It seemed that not only were the leaves fading quickly from their brief burst of glory, but so was much of what had propelled me this far into the year.  I experienced a great loss with my mother-in-law.  Not long after beginning to feel as though I was gaining my feet after that, the mess with my nephew turned it all upside down again.

The last several months have been very much about a drawing into myself.  I haven’t been all that creative, even though I have many projects begging to be worked on.  To say I’ve been doing a bit of hibernating would kind of be an understatement.

I had been beginning to think that it was the combination of the stresses of family life and the bitter cold of winter that was forcing this desire to burrow.  That thinking has begun to change over the last several days.  Ever since Yule, to be precise.

It feels very much like I have turned a corner, right along with the sun.  The creative sap that has been thick and unmoving seems to be flowing a bit more freely, picking up speed with each day.  I have had more desire to get out and do things, to move, to feel.

Feeling the ideas flowing and the desire to get to work creating something is wonderful.  Actually, it feels very much like I did at the beginning of the year, without the tattered or the ugly still clinging to me.  Right now, I feel fresh and new, sort of like outside right after a quiet snowfall.