stepping up

Being a step-mom is complicated.  Not even being a step-mom is even more complicated.  My relationship with the kids is many things -- exasperating, rewarding, loving, fraught.  And much, much more than that.  It isn't now, and will never be, simple.

 

It's the knife-edge I walk between parent and friend that makes it complicated for them.  I live in their house, but they can see I need more personal space than mom.  At the same time, there are some things that the girls, at least, being older, are more comfortable discussing with me than with Kathy.  But all with the lingering awareness throughout the discussion that I am in some ways a proxy for Kathy.

It's the knife-edge I walk between parent and not-my-kid that makes it complicated for me.  It has taken me until now to train myself not to defer to Kathy on every question that does not involve an established rule and trust my parenting judgment.  My heart swelled when B addressed her letter for the parent-teacher conferences to "Mom and Mom."  But I would be lying if I said there was never a time where I thought, "If I have to go to one more [insert child rec league sport] game, I am going to scream."  Sometimes, I think that I lack the patience required to raise children entirely.  Sometimes, I admit, I just want everyone to GO AWAY and stop asking me questions.  Then I wake up the next day to big brown eyes blinking at me from an inch away, and short, fat arms thrown around my neck.  And I'm really, really glad they didn't go away.

sick day(s)

I've been sick all week long.  I thought yesterday that I was finally feeling better, but when I tried to go to work for the afternoon I was so exhausted and felt like such crap, I turned around and came home after a few hours.  I have a meeting with my pro bono client this afternoon, so I have to go in, but for now I am taking advantage of the silence of my house and doing my work in bed, with coffee and my cat, in my pajamas.  So I can nap intermittently if I want to.  I'm just going to say, I am NOT a person who enjoys being sick.  I cannot run.  I don't like being tired.  I like to do things myself, thank you, and I can't stand looking around at chores that need to be done when I don't have the ability to do them (hello, sink full of dishes).

(Breakfast in bed is one of the few perks of being sick.

Yes, the mug says blogging queen; isn't Kathy cute?

She got it for me shortly after I started this blog.

Note the novel and bottle of Advil just peeking into the frame.)

But this week has been the best sick week I have ever had.  I developed more of the plan I hinted at yesterday.  I'm super-slow at work, so (until today) I could actually take sick time off which is something I haven't been able to do in three years.  Not working from home, off.  And next week, we are going on a family vacation.  Which is, I suspect, when being sick will stop being quite so much fun.