I know, without a doubt, that I have periods (sometimes pretty large ones) of time where I am lazy, unproductive and slack at everything.

I am so aware of my shortcomings that it makes coming out of those ruts even more difficult, compounded with a daily reminder of what I don’t do. I really wish it would stop.

For example, I go and grab towels because I notice that we are out of clean towels. This is a rare occurrence, as I am very particular in making sure sheets and towels are clean. Okay, so yeah, we have major slack happening and I know it. Anyway, as I am grabbing up the towels my husband says, “oh, so you are finally going to wash some towels, huh?”

It sounds to me like we have a case of me getting taken for granted! As if the man can’t get up and wash a load of towels on his own. Right?

Giving up my home 3 years ago in our bankruptcy was the hardest thing I have had to do in a very, very long time. It was also probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make in my entire life.

After living my whole life in a permanent state of instability and chaos, I had finally found “home” and was very happy where we were. We had a beautiful home on a half-acre, my oldest son had many friends, and things were pretty good. The decision to give that up and become “renters” nearly killed me.

Leaving “home” was when I started declining. It was a combination of things: a new baby, 4 kids, losing our business, the bankruptcy, then losing my home and cars. It was so tough on me that I struggled for a very long time. I played the blame game and had a very long pity party. I took the brunt of the blame, and it took a while to come out of it.

Last Friday, we signed a contract on a brand new home. This coming August we will be homeowners again. It was a very scary decision to make but once we found our dream house for the perfect price all that anxiety and fear went out the window.

It felt – incredible.

We have just about every gadget imaginable in our house. Three laptops, two xbox consoles, a PS3, 2 nintendo DS’s, an iPad, an iTouch, an iPod, two smart phones, and a wii.

I am starting to see a little divide here, and it isn’t feeling very good. I think we need a time out from technology and more time for the wonderful little things life has to offer.

Before all these gadgets there were family game nights, tree climbing, bike riding, pillow fights, chases and all sorts of fun stuff. I think we’ve fallen into a rut. We do have time together as a family frequently with cuddling, movies, chatting, etc. We eat dinner together at night as a family, and we are still all very close.

I don’t think it is quite enough though. The kids spend a lot of time playing with their friends, and things flow pretty smooth. The problem here is in our house we don’t know or tolerate boredom well, so we all tend to lean on the electronics we have for amusement.

I’ve had enough!

By the time a child is seven or eight years old, I strongly believe they should actively know and practice manners and respect. Not only with their parents, but their siblings, friends, teachers and pretty much everyone in their life.

I also believe it is a long and hard process teaching children these critical and important expectations. With that said, my 15-year-old and 7-year-old sons are both are expected to use their manners and show respect. We don’t sway from those expectations, and punishments are handed out in line with the offense.

Moving on to my 5-year-old daughter. She is an emotional little creature.  Of course, she’s a girl! She gets extremely grumpy when she is hungry too, which makes dealing with her and teaching her manners and respect when she’s in the middle of an emotional meltdown very difficult. Frequently I wait until the situation diffuses and explain to her how to handle it differently next time. It has been hard to recognize how to handle boys and girls differently, but slowly I have figured it out.

Now, we have this problem in the house where the older kids demand and expect please, thank you and respect from their siblings. My 15-year-old will refuse to do anything for my 7-year-old without a “please,” knowing that is what is expected. My 7-year-old now does the same with my 5-year-old daughter.

The problem with this is my 7-year-old doesn’t use his manners as he should, and then gets nasty with my daughter when she doesn’t. It’s creating this huge unorganized chaotic mess. Oy!

My husband and I have had a rough time lately. There has been so much miscommunication, arguing and frustration.

I finally snapped.

I pretty much told him everything that was bothering me and I am not so sure I was very nice about it. I let out a lot of built-up emotions and resentment, and pretty much tore him to pieces.

It is not a moment I am proud of.

The biggest issue with my husband is after something painful happens, he likes to move on and pretend as if nothing has happened and everything is perfectly okay. The problem is it’s not okay, I am not okay. So rather than walk around with all this crap weighing me down, I just let him have it.

He argued like always with his comments of “oh, I am such a bad husband,” which set me off even more. I frequently tell him that this isn’t about “him” as a “husband,” it’s about us and about our issues, and about me and the things that are happening with me. He still continues with his defense: “you just make me feel like a horrible person.” It infuriates me.

My marriage has been plagued with problems from the day we said I do, and who knows, maybe even before then. I’ve talked a little about it and while I don’t particularly enjoy airing my dirty laundry, I am hurting emotionally, so I think it’s time to write about it.

Ever since our wedding day we have had problems. He was a “wanderer” so to speak. Every 6 months or so he would get a wandering eye. He swears up and down that he did not cheat, but he had many emotional affairs of the heart, said some unthinkable and very painful things about me to those he was talking to and had a serious porn addiction. He would also meet with girls for lunch or dinner without telling me. I could continue, and probably go on blogging for days about it, but I will stop with that.

For the better part of 7 years I always had to stay on my toes waiting for the next blow. The question was never, “will it happen?”  It was always,”when will it happen?”

I could chart it pretty much to the month. I spent hours on the phone with my mother, my best friend and my brother in tears trying to understand what was so wrong with me that I could not keep my husband’s attention. He was famous for his screw-ups during my pregnancies as well. That made it hurt even more.

I’ve been fighting to get SSDI for over 2 years. Everyone who has ever had any experience with the process knows how impossible it is. It is very hard, challenging both mentally and emotionally, and very stressful.

I had to apply under the terms of my long term disability plan, so I was going to go all the way no matter what. I knew I had to. I don’t like attorneys (not even by a stretch of the imagination) and really wanted to avoid them, so I did not retain an attorney until about 6 weeks prior to the hearing. I had been denied twice by the disability determination services and did basically everything on my own. I had no problem with it because I am a bit of a control nut.

I had talked to countless law firms about my case and no one wanted to help me. That was really frustrating too. Here I was with 2 solid years of medical history and two assessments outlining my very severe issues, yet I couldn’t find an attorney who would help me. I felt I was sure to lose. When an attorney accepted I was thrilled, and ended up hating him.

Anyway, enough rambling. I already blogged about what an a*hole my attorney is (pardon me, but I hate him) and vented about that, so now we have my hearing:

Well, our vacation started off a little crappy, but we did our best to make it better. Everything was going pretty smooth once we got over the $80 lost and all other crankiness previously griped about.

My husband was having a very hard time with the stress. I was a little taken back knowing I was the one who was being calm and collected, keeping things in order the best I could. When I finally explained to him that there was nothing we could do to change the things that had already happened he started to settle down some.

We bought tickets on Craigslist for Medieval Times and planned to go Sunday night. We were all very excited, we had gotten a great deal on the tickets. We took the kids to the little strip with shops and such and they got little henna tattoos, and then my husband bought me a cute dress and we went out for a date night later that night. It was nice, I really enjoyed it.

The most fun was watching how many people were totally drunk beyond drunk. I was laughing more at that than anything else! Then leaving, I got a chuckle out of the “cab lines” set up for those drunk people to safely get home. It was a pretty cool system, clearly showing they have a problem with people getting completely wasted there!