{"id":4377,"date":"2015-01-05T22:42:36","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T05:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=4377"},"modified":"2025-11-02T09:46:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T16:46:51","slug":"its-the-end-of-the-year-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=4377","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s the End of the Year 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I feel like I should do a yearly wrap-up or some such thing, but honestly that would probably take more time than I have these days.\u00a0 So instead I&#8217;ll list a few current December monthly interesting stuff and see if I can write more detail once I&#8217;m let go by Costco.<\/p>\n<p>So let&#8217;s start there.\u00a0 I flat out adore working at Costco and the idea they won&#8217;t keep me after January makes me get a bit teary-eyed.\u00a0 There are hundreds of reasons but bottom line I love the people, the pace and the work and I&#8217;m going to miss it A LOT when its taken away from me.\u00a0\u00a0 I&#8217;ve made two friend I hope to keep out of the deal and have every intention of constantly checking the Costco website for employment forever.\u00a0 Even if its just seasonal work every year.<\/p>\n<p>Sex God and I are going strong.\u00a0 I realized the other day that we make each other laugh and that is a large part of why we work.\u00a0 So you combine perfect sex, the eye candy that we see in each other and the fact hanging out is a joy and you have a perfect relationship.\u00a0 Helps that we communicate VERY well about who we are, where we stand and what we feel or want; AND we&#8217;re on the same road in our life journey.<\/p>\n<p>Bear came back from working out of state of the holidays and I got a brief visit, and then he bailed on going with me to a Swinger&#8217;s Party.\u00a0 His reasons are good (impromptu time with his daughter) but this is the VERY thing I have difficulty with in ANYone, the discourtesy of changing plans.\u00a0 Luckily Sex God rose to the occasion, well, partly.\u00a0 It was his first group party and he over drank to steady his nerves and that ruined his ability to perform.\u00a0 Even being the hottest guy there couldn&#8217;t take away his nerves.\u00a0\u00a0 Bear comes back to town in a month and I will have to discuss with him how we can get back on the same page visa-vie no cancelling or I shall have to seriously re-think seeing him anymore.<\/p>\n<p>The other day Luke seemed to have a defining moment and turned a corner on his high anxiety.\u00a0 He took me out of the mix.\u00a0 In a discussion of adulthood; adult responsibilities (not just to job\/career, but also to personal exercise to manage body, personal tidiness to manage an apartment, etc.) and where he needs to improve; Luke reacted like a real teenager and NOT one with high anxiety.\u00a0 He got pissed and decided he was going to &#8220;not let me emasculate him anymore&#8221;.\u00a0\u00a0 I was thrilled!\u00a0 Because honestly emasculating him wasn&#8217;t what I was trying to do (or doing for the record) but get him to see his actions as having consequences he has to deal with.\u00a0 For a good 6 months he&#8217;s been living for my approval (no matter how much I try to tell him not to) of his grades, of his words, or his actions and yesterday he decided he would stop doing that and live just for him.\u00a0 He announced he&#8217;d obey my rules while living in his house but no longer take my approval.\u00a0 He was subconsciously saying, &#8220;I&#8217;m mad and punishing you by taking away my love.&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0 I saw it all and shoved down my own sadness, pride and worry and just said, &#8220;I support anything you decide if you feel you need to do this for yourself.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Within a few hours he backed down from the stance of &#8220;I&#8217;m taking away my love&#8221; and actually apologized to me for calling me &#8220;your mother&#8221; to his brother.\u00a0\u00a0 But the best part is his over-obsession with pleasing me and being the perfect son for me seems to be gone!!\u00a0 I cannot tell you how thrilled I am he&#8217;s made this transition!\u00a0 And so far, a lot of that has held up daily.<\/p>\n<p>On another note&#8230; the Ex actually picked up the boys for his allotted Christmas Day per the divorce agreement, albeit with changes.\u00a0 The agreement states he picks them up at noon and drops them off at noon the next day, and usually he does that and gets Evan and Conor and Luke gets left and handed a present by his brothers from his father.\u00a0 THIS time he picked them up by 5 (when I was starting to worry they wouldn&#8217;t get dinner!) and he came to where Luke and I were and got Luke also, including him!\u00a0 I was thrilled for Luke (who panicked a bit at this unexpected change of plans) to be included, particularly since he&#8217;d not been over to his father&#8217;s girlfriends house in 3 years to the day.<\/p>\n<p>According to the boys it went well, but the Ex dropped ALL the kids off a few hours later instead of keeping them overnight per the agreement, an action he&#8217;d never done before.\u00a0 He&#8217;d always kept the two youngest.\u00a0 He also, didn&#8217;t indicate he&#8217;d be doing this in his emails.\u00a0 I could only surmise he was working the next day and his girlfriend has a &#8220;no your kids without you to deal with them&#8221; policy still in force in her household.\u00a0 I find that VERY amusing since the Ex wants more custody of the youngest claiming its not to try and get out of paying very much child support, yet doesn&#8217;t really think how this action will impact the kids with the limitations of his living arrangements, now that he has a job.<\/p>\n<p>My mother&#8217;s business, Geddes, did REALLY poorly in 2014, sales dropping lower and lower despite my cost cutting attempts, marketing attempts &amp; new product strategies.\u00a0\u00a0 So I&#8217;ve\u00a0 had to take a cut in hours\/pay and perhaps look for more part time work to keep food on the table.\u00a0 It makes the future look very &#8220;interesting&#8221; to say the least.\u00a0 I&#8217;m so glad I&#8217;ve already paid for my 2015 vacation, and I&#8217;m so glad Coachella has a layaway plan, in case I can afford it for 2016.<\/p>\n<p>My Ex still writes &#8220;temporary loan&#8221; instead of child support on the child support checks but at least he&#8217;s not putting them in happy cards and crossing off all the &#8220;happy&#8221; he can off the card.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a lovely lesson of passive\/aggressive that doesn&#8217;t affect me at all, &amp; will end when the final judgement is in and I attach his paychecks.\u00a0 But he does take the time to tell the kids how I&#8217;m costing him his ability to save for his retirement.\u00a0 Which I laugh at&#8230; cuz I&#8217;ve been soooo busy raising his kids without his help for the last three years the idea of investing in MY retirement has been a fantasy!!<\/p>\n<p>As for my writing&#8230; well, you can tell by how often I blog, just\u00a0 how little I&#8217;ve been getting done.\u00a0 I say I&#8217;m going to change, every year.. that THIS is the year I&#8217;ll write more, but honestly, my problem is I need blocks of time to focus and in 2014 I didn&#8217;t have it.\u00a0 Particularly with working 2 part time jobs (Geddes and Costco) and raising 3 teenage boys alone.\u00a0 I did get about 6 pages written of a lovely little erotic novelette&#8230; but it&#8217;s stalled.\u00a0 Maybe I&#8217;ll get a chance to do more writing next year, but I swear that seems to fall into the same category as &#8220;This year I&#8217;ll lose 15 lbs before Coachella!&#8221;\u00a0 then Girl Scout Cookie season hits and I&#8217;m doomed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I feel like I should do a yearly wrap-up or some such thing, but honestly that would probably take more time than I have these days.\u00a0 So instead I&#8217;ll list a few current December monthly interesting stuff and see if &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=4377\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4377"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4380,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377\/revisions\/4380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}