So Wednesday night I was in a car accident and my truck was totaled. Both the other driver and myself are uninjured, but because of that I wasn't able to write a post Wednesday or yesterday. I'm working on getting everything sorted out with the insurance companies and looking at new vehicles which is taking a lot of time so I will be on a hiatus for a little while. Hopefully it won't be very long and I'll be able to get everything resolved quickly and get back to my story so I can finally get into the real meat and potatoes of what I want this blog to be. I'll talk to you guys soon and have a great Thanksgiving with your families!
For a while we were sustaining things the way they were, but then I completely forgot about a test in one of my classes (for whatever reason, none of the tests for that class took place during the scheduled lecture hours, we had to take a test in a separate building on our own time). This was a pretty big deal because I needed to get an A in all of my classes that semester in order to continue attending that school and transition to a full-time student the next semester. I'll tell you why that was the case in a later post. I was also very far behind on a paper I needed to write, so I decided to just withdraw from the semester and focus on work, maybe get some overtime, and try to find a new job with day hours. I applied to several, but they either paid less than I was already making or the position was filled between getting a call and my interview. I found one that seemed ideal, flexible hours so I could help with the kids, but during the day so I wouldn't be killing myself, and enough money to be worth making the switch. I went to the first week of training while still working my security job, and had a week of practice after that. It was an in home sales job, and my practice week went incredibly well, I actually made more money from one sale (a couple of hours) than I did in an entire paycheck working security. I thought I was golden. Thought.
The first month was a trial run to make sure we didn't all drive each other crazy and we could handle sharing responsibilities. I kept my apartment and most of my things, especially furniture, stayed there, but unless I needed something specific and unusual I didn't go back there. It was an interesting transition that was stranger than just moving is because I had two places I could go depending on how I was feeling, and it gave us an easier out in case things didn't work. While we had some hiccups, things went smoothly enough for me to move out of my place and most of my furniture to storage. Shortly after that was when we did start having problems. I was finally put on a set schedule at work, but it was the graveyard shift Friday through Sunday and Tuesday, that combined with school left me with very little time at home, and since (I really need to come up with a nom de plume for my wife, let's call her) Hazel worked traditional hours, I rarely got to spend waking time with her, kind of defeating the purpose of moving in. The only plus side was I did get a lot of good bonding time picking up the boys from school and daycare and taking care of them until Hazel got home. I'll tell you about that tomorrow.
Around that time, I got lucky with my scheduling and was consistently getting weekends off, so I started spending more time with them all during the day. I finally took the woman who would become my wife on a real date after convincing her we should. At the beginning she would say "we don't date." We didn't do the standard dinner and movie because that's boring and doesn't really allow for any sort of real connection or conversation. I took her to Dave and Buster's, and we had a ticket competition. We took turns picking games that we would each take a turn on, and whoever has the most tickets at the end got the other's to use for a prize. I don't think it needs saying, but I won, and I picked a stuffed Rigby from Regular Show who now lives in our youngest's room. A few weeks after that we were exclusively dating. I started spending a majority of my free time there, and my dog was pretty much living there. So, while most people would think it's too fast, about a month later I moved in.
So over the course of the next few months we kept doing our own things. Keeping in regular contact, but only seeing each other at most once a week. I didn't meet her boys until a month and a half into our arrangement, and they were great. We got along, had a ton of fun, and they just saw me as a cool guy. The next time I saw them, the youngest had given me a new name, one that I still bear in love with pride today: Fun.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet turned out to be the most important detail. Sometime between the otter pops and the cab ride, she told me her son was with his grandma and would be back in the morning. This was certainly a surprise as she didn't look or act like she had kids, but it was more surprising that I wasn't bothered by it. I had never entertained the idea of dating a single mom because it wasn't appealing to me. All of the single mothers in my age range I had previously met were either looking to get a father figure for their child(ren) as quickly as possible which tends to lead to poor relationships that end badly or so obsessed with their child(ren) that they don't have their own personality anymore. This woman wasn't like that at all, and she had thrown in the towel on relationships.
There wasn't a post on Friday because I had a three day drill, so I wasn't flooded with a ton of free time.
When we left off, I had just hopped in a cab with a beautiful, fun, spontaneous woman and two of her friends. One was dropped off at his house without any incident and the other lived out of town and was staying in the guest room of the woman's house, where I had been invited to hang out for the rest of the night. Not to dash anyone's expectations, but nothing risque happened that night. We both had rules that we didn't break and they were mutually respected. However, we had decided that once the rules had been satisfied, we weren't going to be anything serious. Just a casual, friends with benefits type situation, which I was completely okay with for obvious reasons.