How to juggle

Well, I waited until DH was acting like my "regular" husband, with no "That Guy" in sight. He was confiding in me, talking about his hopes and dreams, and not feeling sorry for himself. So I showed him my budget. I'd say he was shocked. He looked at it for a long long time, checking every bill to make sure I wasn't adding in anything frivolous (I did add in his cigs and pop, because that seems to be a new regular expense.) He commented on a couple of bills that were lower than he expected, like the satellite bill. The last time he was aware of the bill, it was $63.00 a month. Now it's 29.99 a month. He said, "How'd you get the satellite bill down to 29.99? That's really cheap!" I thought back to the day when I cut out all the non-basic channels, and how upset he was, and DD too. No more History Channel, or Animal Planet....just CNN, and a few others. (I would've cut that bill out completely, but when 9/11 happened, we didn't have TV at all, and I really regret not being able to watch news that day...) I can't believe that he either didn't remember me doing that, or didn't remember the reason I gave him...

Anyhow, he's been less demanding about money. (I know it wasn't realistic to expect that he would stop asking for money). The last few times he's asked me for money, he hasn't given me that "ok, I know you don't love me" attitude, like he does so often when I don't have money for his "needs". I guess that's progress, right?

And DD. Since she is special needs, and has a very long history of not being truthful, I monitor her email (without her knowing). Before DD lived with us, I used to think that there could never be any reason to monitor a child/teen's email account surreptitiously. But since she has done some things and talked to some people in real life that aren't safe, I knew it was something I was going to have to do. So I set up her email account, and her password. She (as of yet anyhow) does not have the interest/ability to change her password, so I'm lucky that way. The first week she had the email account, I learned that she had signed up for match.com and also another dating site, telling prospective "dates" that she was 18. Since we don't have internet at home, I knew she was doing that at home, so I told her the school called and told me about that. She claimed it was to find a boyfriend for her bio mom, but once we knew about it, she stopped.

Now, I have learned she has a MySpace account. I believe she set it up while she was visiting her bio mom and they had gone to a neighbor's house. It's relatively innocent so far. I looked into how parents react when they find out their teen has a MySpace account that they didn't know about, and I have opted to pretend that I don't know what's on there and that I don't mind her having it, because I would rather be able to look and know, than have her go behind my back and have it be so much worse. And if I see anything untoward, I can always have the "school" call again, although she might not believe it so easily this time, as I am sure many of her friends have MySpace accounts. This whole privacy issue is one that really pains me. I hate the thought that I am "checking up" on her, but she so much wants to be "like everyone else" and she is likely to do very unwise things in the process, so I feel like I really have to right now. Her disabilities make her very vulnerable to suggestions, and very impulsive. I hope I am making the right decisions. I'll keep you posted.

Sometimes I just feel like my life is filled with people who don't think right. That's why I named the blog the way I did. Between DH, DD, and my mom who has dementia, sometimes I can really do a mind job on myself....it's hard to make so many decisions for so many people and not feel like no matter what you do, you're going to mess up.