Saturday Morning Frustrations

Ever have those days where no one listens, and everything frustrates you? Me too, that my morning. Yep, and it’s too early to feel like this. This is not how I wanted to start my weekend. Saturday morning frustrations!

A little background leading up to my Saturday morning frustrations…

Work:

I work in the building materials industry. As we all know, the price of building materials is at an all-time high. Despite the ridiculous prices, the industry is not slowing down at all. In fact, this is one of the busiest winter seasons I have ever had. Probably my largest product supplier had a huge price increase that went into effect yesterday at 3pm. Despite me talking about the increase for weeks, an unreasonable amount of my contractors waited until the last possible moment to get their orders in.

This of course, that not how I wanted to end my work week. But I did expect this to happen because it always happens hours before a major price increase. No one ever listens to my weeks’ worth of warnings to get their orders in. It was a rough work week leading up to the price change, but I survived. I managed to not have to spend my entire Friday night in the office.

Co-Parenting:

Backing up a bit more. Getting divorced was probably the best decision I have ever made. Dealing with the ex when kids are involved raises my blood pressure. My kids have a dad who has a 2nd family now. This makes his involvement in their lives sporadic at best. I have done what I could through the years to make them feel loved by everyone, but they are old enough now to see and what is going on. Sadly, they have excepted it.

We never had set schedule for custody with the kids that was ever followed. It had become a phone call schedule very early on, nearly 13 years ago. My ex used to live one town over from where we live. The last-minute plans were not that big of a deal since we lived so close in proximity. About a year ago, he moved almost 2 hours away. This complicates the “schedule” to say the least.

Now that their father lives near a major city with a lot of high-end shopping, my oldest wanted to visit her father this weekend. Her junior prom is in late April, and we haven’t been able to find a dress near us. She wants to be able to try it on and not order online. She asked if he could pick the kids up yesterday after school and spend the night. My oldest wanted to go shopping last night and come home this afternoon. She asked to be home by 2pm today since she works at 4.

Co-Parenting During Bad Weather:

As Friday was approaching and they were calling for bad weather, I asked to reschedule for next weekend. My ex tells me it will be fine, he will have the kids back no later than 2pm. He proceeds to tell me that there is no way we will get enough snow to be concerned about. I reminded him that he drives a Mustang, and he avoids driving in the snow as much as possible. Their dad insists there will not be enough snow for it to be an issue.

Just because they often overestimate the snow in the forecast doesn’t mean we won’t get that much or more. But he continues to tell me if they are calling for 1-3″ by him and 3-5″ by me, we will probably get nothing more than a dusting. That is when I started mentally preparing to have to drive 2 hours in the snow on not so nice roads to get the kids today.

On a side note, he never took the kids shopping so my oldest still does not have a prom dress. This was the main reason for this trip to visit him. He is still insisting that is will not snow and they will go this morning.

Playing Landlord:

Backing up again, I had a rental property. I found myself tenant free as they moved out the end of February. With the “value” of houses as high as they are right now, this is a great time to sell. I decided listing the house for sale would be more profitable than finding a new tenant.

Visting the rental every month to change out the heating/cooling filter and collect the rent was my norm. I had tenants that always paid on time and during my monthly visits, seemed to take good care of the property. To my surprise, furniture and area rugs hide a lot. Not only was there a lot of damage to the walls and flooring, but the tenants also moved out leaving a lot of junk behind. Broken couches, box springs, several disassembled computers, and much more large items along with random trash.

After hiring a junk removal company, the place was finally ready to start cleaning and making repairs. It is amazing to me how dirty and careless people can live. Since I do work a 50+ hour a week full time job, weekends are the only time I have to work on the property. My original goal was to have the home listed by mid-March. Needless to say, that will not be happening.

Juggling Work and Playing Landlord:

After what amounted to a really stressful work week, ending on a very frustrating Friday, I went right from the office to the rental. Not only did I get there later than I had hoped, but I was all gung hoe about getting started on the painting, I forgot about dinner. Now that the spackle had set, I cleaned up the dust and began to start taping to prepare for paint.

I began on the 3rd floor around the windows. As I’m taping off, I notice that the sills are rotting and the trim falling off. Apparently, the windows that were replaced less than 6 years ago had been left open often during rain causing even more hidden damage. There goes my Friday night plan and yet another setback in getting this place on the market.

Now I am walking around the house, inspecting in more detail. I spent most of last night making a new material list and running back to The Home Depot for more supplies. This is turning into what I fear is a larger project than I can handle myself. I am not debating if I need to hire someone to make repairs or anticipate reducing my original planned sale price to sell it as it. Finally, I decide that I’m going to give this another go myself. With materials on site, I hoped my ex was right about the snow and that I could spend all day Saturday and Sunday at the rental working.

The Weather Channel Wrong Again:

4:30am and I’m awake. My plan was to leave by 6am to head over to the rental and start working early. This way, if I had to run for the kids, I could get some work done before hand. I turn on the weather channel with high hopes that little to nothing was coming my way. Yep, I should have known better. The forecast had changed, but not the change I was hoping for.

They upped the forecast to 8-12″. I have been trying to get ahold of my ex or either of the kids since 7am. Of course, none of them are morning people and haven’t answered the phone. I am half tempted to drive there and start banging on the door. It is now 9:15 and I was hoping to have the kids in route home by now whether by him or me, I didn’t care at this point. There is over 2″ on the ground already and it is going to keep getting worse over the next few hours.

An Angering Phone call:

It’s 9:30 and I ran to my ringing phone hoping it was my ex or my kids. Nope, it was my boyfriend who I have been complaining to all morning. It turns out he was a sweetheart and went to the rental property this morning to help with some of the work. With as frustrated as I have been for the last 24 hours, that was a wonderful surprise. It made my mood a little bit better, for a few minutes anyway.

It turns out he wasn’t calling just to let me know how awesome he is, he was calling to let me know how bad the roads are and to suggest I do not go to get the kids. He tells me about the hard time he had getting home from the rental and that he was happy he left when he did. He said the road conditions are much worse that they look. His opinion is that if the snow keeps up like they are now predicting, I should let them spend another night with their dad.

Since they are expecting the temperatures to drop into the teens after what could be a foot of snow, the roads will not be in decent shape for such a long drive. Many miles of backroads would need to be taken to get to any of the highways that would get me to my kids. Not just back roads, but the hilly, rural, farmland type backroads.

Even Angrier:

Now I am fuming. If my kids stay another night, my oldest will not only miss work tonight, but she will most likely miss her Sunday shift. This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid would happen. I put so much effort into teaching my kids responsibility and it is beyond frustrating when they get themselves into situations that show their irresponsibility. Learning responsibility is why my daughter has a job. I want her to learn that you have to work for what you have and want. She should learn to make commitments and follow through with them.

My oldest is a hostess at a restaurant. She works Sunday mornings starting at 6am. This restaurant has a large, older clientele. Sunday mornings are her busiest days. Her attendance and requests to have off have not been so great lately. There is so much going on at school and sports that have rolled into the weekends. Her boss is already not happy with her availability. I am not happy with how so many things that I also feel are important to her and her experiences are affecting her availability to work. When I was a kid, I do not remember school functions rolling into the weekends like this.

Saturday Morning Frustrations May be Continued:

Now that I am thoroughly annoyed, I will end this rant. I do have a feeling there may be a Saturday Afternoon Frustrations post coming soon, but who knows, maybe my day will get better. I just really wish people would listen to me when I talk. Am I always right? Of course not, but I do try to use common sense when making decisions. Other people should try that more regularly. Maybe if they did, I wouldn’t be so frustrated on this Saturday morning.

I know I don’t have to ask the question; I know this was just crazy babble. But I also feel that my thought process yesterday was a solid voice of reason.