Breaking Up is Hard to Do...Especially when you have to dump your doctor

Dear Secret Blogiary,

A month ago, I stopped taking my rat poison Coumadin which keeps my blood from its over active clotting action. A month ago after a year of talking with my doctor every month about alternatives to Coumadin and six months after I got tired of my doctor telling me “no, you will be on Coumadin for the rest of your life,” I stopped taking my “life saving” Coumadin.

I spent six months reading lab research, published medical articles and researching for myself the effects of Coumadin and the alternatives to taking a drug that was originally created to kill rats. I looked at natural supplements, dietary changes and other factors that might make and effect on my thick blood.

I told my doctor about the information I found and he continued to insist upon handing over a prescription telling me it was by far the “safest” route to take.

Safe means safe. Right?

Maybe not so much if you read the side effects that are often times worse than the original problem. Clearly in other medical cases, medicine created in a laboratory is needed, but in my case? I can manage my issue with a daily regiment of vitamins and minerals.

So for a month now every morning and evening I have been taking a handful of natural supplements that do the same job as Coumadin with the additional benefit of not destroying my liver.

And every morning The Girls make a big show about making sure I take my pills: garlic, 2 Cod liver oil, 2 vitamin E, 1 low dose aspirin and a flax seed oil. In the evening I take another Cod liver and flax seed.

Clearly changing medicines is something that should be done under supervision, so after breaking up with my doctor, I am back on the "doctor market" looking for a doctor who will support my desire to maintain my health in a natural way.

One month ago, I made a decision to change my life. I was very nervous the first week, a little less so now. Every twinge in my back makes me wonder, every ache in my leg gives my heart a little flutter. But I am still alive and still good to go. I am happy with the change and although I am taking more pills, I feel it is a better life style choice for me.

Twisting the Plan Up in Bunches or How My Family Keeps Throwing Me for a Loop

Dear Secret Blogiary,

Is it a reprieve from angst and worry? Or is it a trap cunningly disguised as salvation?

I have written many times about my current position regarding the pit of hell I am living in my house. Just to be clear: we are upside down on the mortgage, live in a neighbor that is unfriendly and reside in a city that is a drug-runners haven. We want out and after speaking to a lawyer made the ultimate decision to walk away from the house and rent for a while.

Eventually the goal would have me at home writing, possibly home schooling Big Sis and Little Sis, and living on Mister W’s salary.

This was the plan. We agreed upon it and took steps to start it.

Now? Oh Boy!

My father, after two long years in litigation regarding my grandmother’s will, is reaching a settlement that will free up his finances. The will was contested and it looks that the judgment will be in my father’s favor.

Well, after hinting and hemming and hawing for the past two years about “wishing” he could “help” us it finally came out that Dad wants to buy a home down here and will be able to plunk a $50,000 dollar down payment on one. Peachy. How does that involve me? Apparently, he wants to buy a 4 or 5 bedroom house and have Mister W and I live there and make the mortgage payment as he has no real income aside from social security. And he would have his own room.

Currently, he travels a lot. But the house would be his and when the time came, he would relocate here permanently and the unspoken arrangement would be that I would become primary caretaker in his elder years.

I love my Dad. I do. But he is very hard to deal with. So I made a pro-con list:

PRO:

1. house troubles = fixed
2. Mister W loves his job and wants to stay in the state
3. With such a large down payment, the mortgage will be less and I’ll be able to be a stay at home mom as I have been longing to do
          a. If I am stay-at-home then I can leave-the-home at will to go camping and kayaking
                  i. Not that I have a kayak yet…but I really want one
                 ii. And going camping during the week? How cool and less crowded would that be?
4. A single family home means that I can let the Psycho Dog outside and get chickens

CON:
1. Dad is a hoarder and as much as I love to stockpile Jell-O and craft supplies, I am not willing to live with a true should-be-on-Hoarders hoarder
2. I do not really want to be a caretaker, especially for my Dad...that just seems skeevy.
3. I would never feel like the house was my home...we might pay the mortgage, but we'd only be able to do so because Dad dropped that much money on it
4. Dad took care of my grandmother for over 15 years (she lived until 96)
5. I had the girls on the young side and by the time I am 45, they will both be out of the house…do I really want to be tied to house taking care of my Dad
          a. Oh Geez! How selfish is that?!?! It’s like I only think about myself!
6. I do not want to live in Florida for the rest of my life - seriously, I told them I was moving back up north and what do they do? They all follow me down here!
7. I hate being obligated to people – even family

I am not sure that this covers everything that I have been thinking about since my Dad offered this as an option…except that it wasn’t really phrased as an option; it was more like an expectation. Like when the finances cleared up, Dad would put the money down and Mister W and I would pay the mortgage.

Mister W is all for it. And by "all for it" I mean that he is willing to go with this "plan" because it solves a great many problems. The biggest one on his list? He doesn’t want to leave Florida. He likes it here amazing as that is. He doesn’t want to leave his job. He loves it and is quite good at it. I can respect that especially considering that in Florida we can live comfortably on his salary alone.

And if I don’t take up this offer, how do I tell Dad? “Sorry Pops, can’t be bothered with thinking about you in your old age, I am just going to put you into a nursing home?”

Ouch. I can’t do that. But I also have to be able to live with my choice. So how do I choose between a sharp pointy rock and a bigger jagged blood-stained boulder?

A Man Can Plan

Dear Secret Blogiary,

So the word is in and it is not in my favor. Not that everything has to be about me (though it is nice when it is) and not that I expect to win get my way all the time (although, really, I still don’t understand why I don’t).

Mister W and I had a deep standing-in-the-kitchen conversation about plans for the future tonight. This was probably not the best time to converse about the subject, but as I had finally forced my way through the massive number of secretaries and voice mails and actually managed to speak to the real live lawyer*, I was able to get some basic real estate advice. And the crazy thing was, after I explained what was going one with Mister W’s dad, the house and everything, his legal advice was explicitly simple in design:

Walk Away.

It. Isn’t. Worth. It.

This from a LAWYER!!

Wow.

He laughed and commented that I sounded like I had been raised by “proper” middle class parents who instilled in me a set of rigid morals that kept me on the straight and narrow.

And I certainly was. You pay your debts, pay your taxes and follow the rules. I was good with this system. I like it. It works for me. Everything is structured and symmetrical; which is odd, considering how chaotic and spontaneous I tend to be. I have never understood myself!

In any case, Mister W and I talked and we developed a three year plan. One that unfortunately does not involve me moving to Maine and becoming a lobsterwoman, never mind the fact that looking at waves gets me seasick! The plan then is this:

We walk away from the house, bankroll my paycheck, I keep working at least until the school year is over, and then we pick up an apartment closer to Mister’s work and I can work or not (probably will so as to keep the extra money coming in for the next two years and then Mister W will entertain the possibility of moving back up north. Maybe.

This is something that I have just got to accept. I knew way back when, that Mister W did not want to leave Florida. He likes it here, likes his job and really invested in it. But me? I’ve never been thrilled with Florida. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it since I came here. I hate it for nine months of the year when the blistering sun bakes the very gray matter in my brain. And Florida loves to torture me with the blistering heat.

There are way more reasons than this, but far too many to go into any great detail. Let’s just say that I came with the understanding that I would remain no more than four years. It has now been ten years and I am more than ready to exit stage right!

The biggest problem I have with this plan is that it puts Big Sis as a junior in high school when the plan magically comes to fruition. And I would feel bad ripping her from school (assuming she didn’t graduate early and head to MIT or Yale because that is how bad-ass her brain is). I hate that I have been unable to provide for her the kind of physical environment I had growing up. I hate that for most of her life she had lived in a city and a crappy one at that! Obviously, I can’t change the fact, I can only do what I can to ease my mind about it (because really, I don’t think she has ever once complained about it except once she mentioned she wanted to live in the country and raise chickens).

Little Sis is, quite honestly, happy wherever. She wants a horse and to live on a farm, but then so did I and that never happened and I turned out mostly sane. I still want to live on a farm though, except, I’d rather have llamas than a horse. And a large concrete wall but that’s a story for another day.

Little Sis seems to have the mindset that home is where Mommy and Daddy are and if we don’t have a horse, chickens or llamas, that’s okay because it is. She is so wise sometimes and makes connections that I just don’t remember making at her age.

I guess what it boils down to is that Mister W needs a plan and I think plans take too long. I’d go tomorrow if Mister W said, “Hey, let’s jam!” I’ll go his way, though, if for no other reason than that while I hate my job, Mister W loves his and he is really good at it. His biggest fear about the “let’s just go” plan is that we’d go and end up in a worse situation where he is in a job that he hates and I can’t find a job I love.

Also, he seems very concerned about food.

Geeze. As if I wouldn’t pack a few granola bars to tide us over.

*Coolest thing about being part of a union, I totally have free access to a lawyer…and of course, by free I mean I make regularly monthly payments to be able to have access to a lawyer.

A Negative Times a Negative Equals a Positive. I can't explain it, but I think it has something to do with Fairy Dust, Santa and a Four-Leaf Clover.

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I’ve been looking back over the past few posts and realized that not only are they negative but I sound pretty miserable! Unfortunately, that is the mood I have been in lately, but that it not who I am!

I am not by nature a negative person, I worry a bit, in fact Mister W seems to think I have got worrying down to a science and should try to publish a “worry-wart” manual! But negative? I don’t do that too often.

It would be easy to claim that everyone goes through depressed times and it would be such a nice crutch to lean on to say that the current economical and societal influences have gotten me down. But I like to take responsibility for myself. And besides which, not everything is the economy’s fault.

It is ironic that at work, I am that person everyone goes to for advice. You know the one that offers the friendly smile and always has some positive spin on a bad situation.

Lately though, I have been obviously quieter, withdrawn and moody. I am sure that it is a passing phase, but I think that eventually, working with and in the system takes a toll and I have reached a critical point.

Which leads me back to being negative.

Over the next few weeks I am going to make every effort to find the positive. I am going to be like Pollyanna on crack! I’ll play that silly “Glad Game” and rediscover the positive in my world.

The Easy Button Doesn't Work All Of The Time

Dear Secret Blogiary,

Today, I once again came home from work with my eyes red and poofy from crying.

It was a rough day.

Not only are the students having to adjust to a new schedule because we had to rearrange classes to meet class size amendment, but with block scheduling “B – Day” is my worst day. I have three 90 minute classes of hell with no break except for lunch. Each class is overloaded, still out of compliance with class size I might add, and all three of the classes are over two thirds ESE (also against the law).

Now having ESE students would be fine IF the students had learning disabilities. I can deal with that, but with the labeling the schools have, anyone with a “behavior” problem is also labeled ESE even though what they really need are parents at home doling out discipline with a large stick! Needless to say, it is hard to actually teach when I spend 70 minutes dealing with behavior problems.

Well, when Mister W saw me walk through the door, he took one look at my face and offered to “take care of” whoever was giving me grief. He was trying to get me to smile a little, but all I managed to do was burst into more tears. Mister W did not like that one bit. In fact, it kind-of turned him into a raging lunatic for a brief moment or two (he is so adorable when he gets all He-Man protective of me).

“Just quit.” Mister W makes it sound so simple and easy.

“I can’t just quit!” I garbled into his shoulder.

“Why?”

“...the house, the food you like to eat, the clothes the girls keep growing out of, the new car we have been trying to save up for…should I continue?”

“We can survive on my salary.”

“Survive?” I said, “I’m not sure I want to just “survive.”

“You know what I mean. We downsize, move into an apartment, you can get a part-time job somewhere…or better yet, stay home, write your damn book and home-school the girls.”

“…” Of course this is totally what I want, but I almost feel guilty for wanting it so I say nothing.

“Oh and have dinner for me every night when I get home from work.”

“And a cocktail too I suppose.” I finally crack a tiny smile.

“Yup. Just quit. Works for me.” He smirks.

The awesome thing is, he is serious. Call him a throwback, but his mindset is that of the 1940s where the men worked and the women stayed home. So when he says this to me, I know that if tomorrow, I hand Mr. MoHOLU a resignation letter, Mister W will be fine with it. Hell, he’d probably take me out drinking to celebrate.

Then why am I so scared to do so? Why do I continually torture myself with a job that makes me cry? Sure, I am terrified of being poor. But we have lived on Mister W’s salary alone in the past.

I think what holds me back is my die hard determination to avoid quitting out of defeat. I’ve quit jobs because I’ve moved or have gotten a better offer, but I’ve never quit because I lost, because I was defeated and beaten down.

Right now, I am beaten. And with Mister W prodding me to make a change, I feel like I could almost take that plunge.

Almost.