Pride In Success

i told you jammer has been learning to read. he's doing so well. every report he brings home is marked with exceptional on it. his teacher says he's doing work above his grade. report cards are being sent home next week & he's in the 'fab four' club for his distinguished work. doesn't that just tickle you? he's so proud & puffed that i think he's gonna bust sometimes. he called his great grandpa to let him know how well he's doing. he thanked him for the birthday card with the $6.00 he sent him. he explained how hard he was trying to learn to read & telling him how to spell some of the harder words he knows. he held his own in the conversation. the last thing i heard him say was 'i love you very much'. my dad told him how much he loved him back. i think he's bucking for more money out of this deal.

Leaving The Dark Side

we celebrated lucky's best friend passing her exam for broker's license today. She's been so stressed over homework for the last 5 weeks that even talking to her on the phone was wearing me out. apparently they chose her out of a class of 30 to get license. they gave her the books & 5 weeks to prepare. by herself. no teacher to watch, nobody to discuss it with, nothing but the books & her own determination to learn. she's a smart kid & wants to make something of herself. i'm impressed that she doesn't just want to sit around & do drugs like a lot of the kids these days. she got an 86 on it which i thought was pretty damn good. i invited her & lucky for dinner & told them i'd make their favorite: chili. i didn't mention i got her a brownie cake, balloon, ice cream & a few gifts like a bank to save her money in, a tote bag to haul her books in & a lunch bag to carry instead of brown paper bags. she was so tickled & it was all quite a surprise. we pulled it all off with her not being any wiser until we walked in singing 'for she's a jolly good sister'.
we've almost finished remodeling the bedroom so pretty soon i should be around a little more. painting the room with most of the furniture still in it has been slow. not only that the walls suck that paint in like a sponge. its taken 4 coats to get it the color i want it. serves me right for wanting a light color for a change. it was so dark in there you couldn't see anything even with the lights on. back when i decorated it, like 20 years ago, i was on night shift & spent my days catching up on sleep. i needed it dark then but for the last 10 years i've been on day shift & getting in bed at 10 pm instead of going to work meant the bedroom could be alot more vibrant. so i took down the darkening shades & actually opened the windows. when i did that you could see the cob webs under the bed & in the corners. yuck! you could also tell how dark the walls had turned from years of neglect. even my pictures hanging on the walls looked dark. it was ugly. now its a nice bright peach color & we're putting down white carpet! white, people! honestly, i never thought i'd be putting white carpet on my floor. over the years i've been given so many animal figures that i've stuffed in every corner i could find. now i'm thinking i can spread them out on shelves in the bedroom so they can actually be seen. when i'm done its gonna look like a mini zoo. very fitting for me. i found some really pretty giraffe print material that i'm gonna do a martha stewart button shades kind of thing. next i'll have hubby in a tarzan 'loin cloth' beating his chest & calling me jane. i've been watching painting shows on pbs & i'm thinking of adding a few vines & flowers. some of it looks pretty easy & really makes pretty decorations. we'll see.
oh, i almost forgot. in the middle of all this redecorating my friend shellbell brought me a laptop that was fried, so she thought, & asked me to see what i could do for it. its the first time i've ever worked on a laptop but i got it running in about 2 hours for her. i was so impressed with me that i did a giggle dance all around the house.
ok, i've filled you with enough bs for tonight. gotta finish my jungle room.
later.

Working Is A Way Of Life

sonny has been to see his lawyer. turns out he was overpaid in his child support. he now has grounds for a lawsuit against the state for his incarceration. and mojo is in for some pretty enlightening lessons on conniving & basically trying to fuck people over. i can't go into alot of details here but i sure wish i could be a bug on the wall at her place real soon. this lawyer is awesome & i don't say that often. the lawsuit against the state will probably turn out to be a class action cos there are so many men out there that have been railroaded. i'm not saying every man doesn't deserve what they get. having kids that you don't want to take care of is easy enough to avoid. use rubbers, duh! but i commend dads that try to be part of their kids life & abide by the laws. its just the laws out there need to be rewritten to take into consideration the differences that may apply to individual situations. its just not a 'one size fits all' kinda world out there anymore. this woman had a man raising her kids, paying their way while she sat home on her ass, enjoying the 'stay at home' mommy life & didn't think twice to make sonny aware that he even had 2 daughters he didn't know until she found herself divorced & needing to make an income. even then she took money from that man & let him go on thinking he was supporting his kids until he decided they should go through the courts before he got screwed in that process. to top that off she still didn't ever take it upon herself to get a job. she went to welfare & child support for more of a free ride. i don't understand how she can look herself in the mirror & not feel bad about the way she's manipulated all of their lives. those babies tried to explain to me how they had 2 daddies because they were twins but they didn't know daddy sonny until they were older cos their other daddy didn't know about him. poor mixed up kids. i sure do miss those girls & i'll be glad when its all settled. and you know, i contacted the state department to find out what rights i had to see the twins & they told me 'grandparents rights' didn't really apply anymore. they changed that law several years ago & there wasn't much i could do to even be considered in any kind of visitation unless i could prove that not seeing them was duress for the girls. thats just plain wrong! i know it's heartbreaking for me & i know the girls miss us too but how do you go about proving something like that?
you know, when i was a kid my mom got $25.00 a week for my sister & myself. that was $12.50 a piece. my step mom did her part of putting it to my mom when she started paying by the month cos she would make a check out for $100.00 a month not accounting for the 5th week at least 3 times a year. my mother was a single woman raising us & she needed every penny she got her hands on. but my mom never turned to welfare. she worked her ass off to make ends meet.
when sonny's dad died social security helped tremendously but i still worked!
its just not right the way this woman has taken advantage of every life she touches. i can't wait to see her get her just deserts!
later