Monday, July 07, 2008

Man Plans and God Laughs

I do not think I have used this title before in my blog… if I have, please forgive me; it applies to my holiday weekend. It is an old Jewish saying. When things go wrong, I try to remember it so I do not go mad.
I do not know if I have ever mentioned my dislike for the 4th of July. It is not politically based or due to a dislike of my country. Quite the opposite, I love the US of A. It is a great country. My dislike has to do with fireworks… which piss off my dog and lead to days of non stop barking. And expectations… everyone should be at a lake or fireworks or picnics etc. And of course the heat and the bugs. I prefer winter holidays. And holidays where I get to give presents. Plus, it seems that bad things tend to happen over the 4th of July weekend and this one was extraordinarily dramatic.
When I arrived home on Thursday night, The Girl came rushing up to me and said we had to go to Target. I was tired and had a headache and was going to make an excuse not to go when she said it had to do with her period. I asked what about it and she said it was 10 days late. She did two pregnancy tests. It seems she is going to have a baby. Today she is going to get an official test to make sure, but apparently those home tests are really reliable. On Friday we bought a book on pregnancy, which from henceforth will be referred to as The Manual in homage to Raising Arizona. It does have some good info and The Girl is determined to read the whole thing. She has decided to keep the baby, hence the title of this entry. Obviously, we are going to be pushing back the date of when we will be able to afford to move to a farm. To her credit, The Girl is taking this very seriously. She has quit smoking; she is determined to eat right. She is forcing herself to eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, she is giving up bacon (The Manual said no smoked or cured meats), she is trying to get a job, and she told the father that he will have to help support the baby or give up his rights to it. She has also said she is going to take parenting classes and anger management classes. The anger classes are a huge deal, because a
The Manual says not to tell anyone about the pregnancy until the 2nd trimester because of the chance of miscarriage, so we are keeping it a secret right now. Of course, none of my relatives read my blog, so I should be okay. I just have to get it off my chest. It is killing me inside. This is just hard because, well, we had discussed it. She was using protection and the condom broke. I know that this is not going to be easy for anyone and I am worried about the baby more than anything else.
I told The Girl that she is going to have to tell her grandparents because it is her choice to keep it and she needs to start taking responsibility for her decision.
I have been reading up on teen pregnancy and it seems that we are lucky she told us right away so she can start seeing the doctor etc. A lot of teens have problems because they do not get the medical care they need. And they do not eat properly or take care of themselves. She said she thought about not saying anything until she started to get fat, but then she figured we would kill her if she waited. We are as lucky as we can be in the situation.
But wait, there’s more. I know you are thinking, surely, that would be enough drama for the weekend, but NO, there is more.
On Saturday night, The Girl’s boyfriend came over so they could discuss the whole baby thing and he spent the night. At about 1:15 in the morning, the dogs started to bark like the apocalypse had just occurred. We could hear The Girl yelling at them to shut up and then we heard the door going outside open and close. I sent my husband down to see what was going on. He said she was out in the front yard yelling at someone on the phone. I asked what was going on with that and he said he did not know. Well, about 30 seconds later, The Girl came up to tell us that her boyfriend had just had the snot beaten out of him our front yard. He went outside to have a smoke and some of The Girl’s other friends came over and had mistaken him for a member of a rival gang and proceeded to pound on him. Why they thought this, I still do not understand. And why The Girl is friends with gang members is still confusing. They broke his nose and possibly other body parts as well. She wanted to know what to do. We told her to call the police and my husband went down to help the kid out. The police showed up and got their statements and basically said that nothing would probably go to court since it would just be his word that these guys beat him up. It does not make me feel very secure in our justice system when someone can get beaten up and then nothing will happen because it was not filmed or something. And the police told the boyfriend that he was in curfew violation since he was outside of the house without an adult.
By Sunday morning I was ready to go back to work. That was how bad my weekend was… I wanted to go back to work so I could get a little rest.

Of course, on top of all this, we have been trying to get ready for our trip. I went to Target Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I am sick of Target. However, we do have everything we need for the trip. Now, we just need to get it all packed up…

We also went to the movies on Friday. We went and saw “Hancock”. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It is funny, it has a nice little twist and it was good entertainment. It is a good summer movie. I know it has been slammed by the critics and I really can not think of why. It is deep and meaningful? Not really, it is a summer blockbuster, by definition they aren’t. Did it make me forget my problems for an hour and a half? Yes it did. So in my opinion, it did the job a summer movie should. I am giving it 3 knitting needles out of 4, just for helping me escape my woes. Thank you, Will Smith you are a god among men!

I think that is enough for one blog posting. I will try to blog before I go on vacation. Later.

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