New Year, New Me

Well, it's a new year, resolutions have been made, life goes on, or tries to. A few updates...

My laptop is fried thanks to a bit of aggressive play from the girls, I'm hoping to hear from the repair shop soon and hope that I can at least recover the hard drive and information if the hardware is irrecoverable.

Love life... what love life? I finally got the ex-gf to abandon hope (and attempts) to get back together with me, dropping off her cat this weekend (she does rescue and I had agreed to foster the cat temporarily until she could find someone to adopt it). So my allergies should be clearing up. New girlfriend, she's got 4 kids, ranging from 10, 6, 5, and 3. They're sweet mostly, but undisciplined, and very violent towards each other except the oldest who seems cowed out of standing up for herself (granted she's much bigger and so fighting back the same way is vastly disproportionate, but as a result, the younger ones tend to push against her more often). I really like the new GF, but I'm not sure I can handle more than doubling the size of the family. They visited for a week, and we went down for the last weekend, and it was pretty chaotic, pretty unmanageable. I come from a family with 8 kids, so I'm not really intimidated by the size, but my girls are pretty well trained, and while active and playful, know fairly well where the limits are.

For instance, one night last week, we went out to eat. Her kids fought, screamed, yelled, and were generally rotten, making me realize I'd become "one of those parents" who takes kids out when they aren't capable of sitting down and behaving for a meal. My own girls, are awesome in comparison (this dinner was with her kids while mine were with my exwife for the evening), and while I may complain about how they behave and be reticent about taking them out, they're angels in comparison, and I don't have to yell, threaten, or beat them to get them to behave, a simple raised eyebrow, and "are you sure you should be doing that?" asked before they start to get out of hand usually fixes things.

I don't know, Maybe I'm looking for unhappiness. I'm comfortable with my life as it is, everything is settled into a regular pattern, I'm broke but happy and here is an opportunity to have more, but... I find myself shying away.

There's some legal stuff I need to take care of in reference to the divorce at any rate, but I felt sure at first, and now... not so much. Confusion has overtaken the place of surety.

The girls... I've been getting a lot of calls from the school nurse, and I'm thinking I might have to let the babysitter go... Although that's been coming for a while, and this is just the latest in a string of things... Her boyfriend is a heroin addict (he's doesn't spend time around the kids), her son told my youngest that to watch a movie she had to "kiss his peepee" (he's since been spoken to about it and is seeing a counselor, it was reiterated to my girls that if they ever hear anything like that again they are to tell a grownup immediately) , and last week she was very rude to my gf, very disrespectful about me, and the girls... After next week, I'm going to be looking into new help.

Speaking of next week, I'm going to Orlando for 4 days for a winter web workshop where the company will be discussing the direction we're headed for the new year and reviewing things that were developed over the past year. Plus there's a temple in Orlando and DisneyWorld is there too, SCHWEET!! I'm trying to figure out what new flight rules I'll need to obey, regarding carryon luggage and the like thanks to the pantybomber on Christmas. rat bastard.