Dallas, Pennsylvania.
Who knew.
Anyway.. see that green star? That’s where the Baby Mama’s is currently residing in a half way house.
See that red dot where Philadelphia is? That’s where I live. Well, just a little further then a smidge south-west of the city.
Still.. we’re talking 100+ miles.
Pennsylvania is a big state. Not as big as Texas.. but big, none the less.
So just to give you a little ketchup .. ( ha! Ketchup = catch up!! I amaze myself sometimes with my silliness!).. Baby Mama was in jail when she gave birth on June 13th. She wasn’t released from jail until January something. I think the 4th or 7th or something. In the month prior to her release she called practically every night. I have nothing really to talk to the girl about. I don’t even KNOW the girl sober for crying out loud. But she was calling about her kid and at the time, it was a hell of alot more then Weed was doing.. and he was OUT of jail. So she would call and I would half pay attention to the 30 minute allotted phone call. And when it was time for her to be released, I took the day off from work and me and Chief drove up to the prison with the baby to pick her up.
THAT was a whole event in itself that’s for another post because.. O! M! G! .. who knew that the security guards treated the people picking up offenders like THEY were offenders themselves? Considering who is shipped to this prison, maybe they are.. but still.
Anyway..
I had kept the tree up.. had bought her Christmas gifts from the baby.. and not because I had any emotional attachment to this girl. BUT, she is the Baby Mama and (as I told her).. you only get one chance to fuck up. I’m all about second chances but don’t ever take my kindness for my weakness. Big no-no.
So she gets out and it’s awkward because I don’t know what to say to her.. she don’t know what to say to us.. we have her kid.. she doesn’t know who her son is as a little person after all these months.. etc. etc. etc. But, she knows that she can’t do anything to benefit his life and as long as she was walking the straight and narrow, we would have an open door policy for her to see him.
Now, that may sound very generous but remember, she’s a junkie and couldn’t wait to run across the open fields of heather with the breeze blowing through her buzzed hair into the arms of Weed. Weed was still using at this time.. was staying with Chief’s brother Sarge until he stole a bottle of Oxy’s from him (Sarge has a legal prescription from a back surgery gone wrong) and had been holing up with his crack-whore mother because he gave her half the bottle. Nice, right?) so I may not be the best at math but I do know what 2+2 equals.
She would come by to see the baby. Maybe twice a week.. maybe more.. maybe less.. can’t remember. But it wasn’t everyday and it wasn’t for long periods of time. And then by the second week of February, nothing. No phone calls, no emails, no text messages .. just dropped off the face of the earth.
We found out about a week and a half later that she had tested hot at her last PO visit and was sent back to jail.
NOTE: For those of you who don’t have to deal with junkie step kids and their jail records, “testing hot” means failing the mandatory drug tests that comes with probation. Just stick with me, you’ll learn the lingo quick enough. I did!
From jail she went to rehab and from rehab she was court ordered to a half way house.
We found all this out after the fact.
We had been receiving phone calls from a 570 area code but I’m not one that answers unfamiliar numbers and a voice mail was never left so I just figured my cell number was on some kind of list. It wasn’t until I got an email from her basically accusing us of changing our phone number because we didn’t want anything to do with her.
Like I said… drama.
So I emailed her back.. told her what I just told you. That’s how I found out her details and where the half way house was.
She started bugging us around May to take the baby to visit her. Bugging may not be the right word but she kept on asking. And I kept on telling her that it all hinged on my finances.
Could I have made the trip up and back in one day and a tank and a half of gas? Yes.
Could I do that with a baby who’s mobile and hates being in the car seat? Hell-freakin-NO!
So we would have to stay over.. which meant a hotel.. which meant food.. which meant a whole lot of things that isn’t in my normal budget. Anybody with any brain cells could comprehend.. but she’s a junkie, remember?
So the more I couldn’t take the baby to see her the more her warped mind went into fantasy-land. Her fantasy-land when it concerns the baby is a dangerous place to travel. Not that any court.. regardless of how much they want to (cough) keep the family intact (cough) .. would award her custody but it’s just the fact that I would have to go through the bullshit. And since she would have to hire an attorney .. I would have to hire an attorney and quite frankly, I would prefer to pay my electric bill then a lawyer.
So fine. You want to spend the afternoon with a 12 month old who wants what he wants when he wants it and all be damned if he can’t run across a room of broken glass barefooted? You want to spend it with a child who is just learning to use a spoon and therefore refused to be fed unless he can feed himself which means you’ll have more yogurt or cereal in your hair then he does? Don’t forget the flesh pinching (he thinks he’s tickling you).. hair, earring, necklace pulling..? Screeching.. pooping.. wailing… ?? You go right ahead.
Now, please don’t be mistaken. If it was solely up to me, I would have given her a not-so-polite PISS OFF. But in order to get the fantasy of having her son full time out of her head, she needed to spend sometime with him.
NOTE: I was less then thrilled with leaving him with her but Chief did a good job of explaining that he would be safe because it was a controlled environment. She isn’t allowed to be alone with him.. there were medical personal on duty at all time and other women who had raised children. I deferred. Reluctantly. Actually, kicking and screaming but (shrug).
So we decide to drive up on a Friday. Chief felt it would be better for the baby. I think he just wanted to have an extra-night’s sleep without dogs hogging the bed. We check into a Days Inn.. which was, you know, a Days Inn in Wilkes Barre, PA (where EVERYONE looks like a Walmart greeter).
Timbo loved being in a hotel room. He spent the next FOUR hours running from one end of the room to the other with his little arms up in the air making his “Deet Deet Deet” happy noises. Me? Not so excited. I didn’t want to be there. Was exhausted from not only the drive but from working a full day before we left. Did I mention I didn’t want to be there?
He finally fell out exhausted around 11:00 and since he was going to be sleeping on a bed, I laid on one side of him not getting any sleep at all because I was afraid he’d wake up in the middle of the night.. climb out of bed.. and make his way down to the truck stop and take candy from a guy with three names in a white panel van.
Hey listen.. everyone has irrational fears when it comes to their kids. Leave me alone!
So no sleep and a baby that woke up at 5am just as excited as the night before! Lovely.
Finally Baby Mama calls us right before we’re about to leave to see her and tells us that the address she gave us in the email? Yea, not the right one. That’s the address their mail goes to, but the actual place she’s staying is like 30 miles north of where we the hotel was.
30 miles. NOT a typo.
When asked for an address for the GPS, she comes up with some cockamayme address that it doesn’t recognize. Basically, she had no fucking clue and the search was on to find someone inside the half way house who DID know where the fuck they where.
Way long story short.. we finally get there and Chief was treated to the sight of skanky junkies sunbathing along the side of the road. He’s scarred for life.
But we did what we had to do.. met who we had to meet.. made sure the boy was going to be in good hands and reluctantly made our way back to the hotel to sleep for at least an hour before we had to go pick him up. Which we did and promptly took him back to the hotel to scrub the skank off of him.
We stayed another night at the hotel and left on Sunday morning. We took the back roads home because, you know, this was going to be the only “vacation” WE would have and at least wanted to SEE something other then skank junkies sunbathing to make the whole trip worthwhile. That took 4.5 hours because stupid us didn’t realize that that was POCONO DOWNS weekend and every race car enthusiast from as far away as Mars was in the area trying to get into the Pocono Raceway on a two lane road.
Anybody forget that there was a baby in a car seat that he doesn’t like being in?
By the grace of God we made it home safe and about 600.00 poorer. Like I said in another post, we live paycheck to paycheck and this is going to put a dent in our budget. Going up there meant I had to pay half on the utilities (the other half this coming paycheck).. reduce the food bill.. all that creative budgeting stuff.
And here’s the kicker. But first let me offer apologizes if my head explodes (again) while I type this…
When we went to pick up Timbo up, Baby Mama tells us that her stint in Dallas is over on July 22nd and that she’s trying to find a sober house closer to us in one of the other two counties (one of those counties currently has Weed as a resident).
Like, really?
REALLY?
So I just spent a hell of a lot of money to drive all the way up to Bum-fuck, Pennsyl-tucky and you’ll be moving within an hour from us in some direction on JULY 22ND????????
TWO WEEKS???
EXCUSE ME, MS. FEEL-SORRY-FOR-ME-BECAUSE-IM-A-JUNKIE-THAT-HAD-MY-BABY-IN-JAIL-THAT-THE-STATE-TOOK-AWAY-SO-IM-A-VICTIM.
NO.. you’re NOT a victim. You still do whatever it is you do and the only person who lost ANYTHING was me. I lost my ability to sleep when I want.. buy what I want.. go where I want.. do what I want. I’m the one paying the consequences for your mistakes.
And I unleashed all the pent up anger and frustration and everything else that was pent up because of this whole situation right on Rt 309N and next to the skanky junkie sunbathers.
Don’t get me wrong.. my grandson is the center of my universe. Everything I do, I do for him. He is the light in my life and a blessing each and every day I wake up.
I think you know where I’m coming from, though, right? Can you stop being selfish for one nano second and think of the people who are raising your kid.. and doing all with any assistance for anybody or any government agency?
Sorry.. I think I have to clean up the rest of my brains that exploded on the ceiling again!
LIVING ME 101 