I haven't been in here for almost 7 months. When I changed jobs (to get away from a crazy, abusive boss) things got better for me. They still are. The work I do now is boring, and it's not what I want to do long term, but at least the pay is good and the people are pleasant. I have a long-term plan that I'm working on to start my own business in about 5 years, and so every day I remind myself of the big picture. I say to myself, "Keep your eye on the prize." That takes me past those situations where I want to scream or cry or both.

I've also learned to stomach my two teenage full-time skids. BM has been completely out of the picture for almost two years now, except when she shows up just long enough to piss us off before losing interest again. The adolescent drama has died down, and my husband has grown a small (although inadequate) bit of spine.

We've had pretty good times these last two months. I eventually just realized that I have to let my husband and his kids be most of my life now. Otherwise, I'll have to just leave and totally wreck my life--again (this is marriage no. 3). If I leave, I'll lose all the money and time I've invested in my marriage these last three years. And there are only three more years until they go to college, and we get our lives back. I can look on the bright side, most of the time nowdays.

Since today was Labor Day, I needed to go through and give the house a solid cleaning. As a working parent, I don't have enough time to do that all the time. The house stays pretty well picked up, but it only gets really clean about once a month. We have finally managed to make the skids keep their rooms somewhat liveable by tieing their allowance to maintaining minimal order, along with doing their own laundry. It does help keep things liveable.

So today, I went in Skid 2's room to vacuum. There was the same pile of trash lying behind her desk that has been offending my eye for months. I looked inside, and there were some fairly new art supplies I'd bought her 3 months back that were still in the bag. I was going to put them away, but then I smelled the bag, and it wreaked of urine. It didn't smell like cat pee--it smelled like human pee, but I'm choosing to believe the former. I had to throw the whole thing out. Also in the pile was a journal she started some months back. Against my better intelligence, I started reading. Her last entry was early June, so there was not much recent info.

As of May... apparently she was haboring a LOT of venom towards me. Okay, that was not like... a huge surprise. There hasn't been a great amount of mutual love going on these last two years. She's typically been a spoiled rotten monster who fights us over every small restriction. Thank god she does make good grades, which will be her ticket to places far away from my home in three years' time, Hallelujah!

On one page, she criticized me for asking their dad to confront her about an episode where she'd been incredibly rude and disrespectful to me in public. And this was 7 months (yes, 7 months) after it had happened. Apparently, she'd been stewing about it FOR MONTHS and had never let go. She acused me of being a coward.

Then within two paragraphs, she expressed disgust when I confronted her DIRECTLY and absolutely forbade her to talk to another teenager about his mother, a lady with whom I'd had some confrontations over some church-related activities. I don't know why on earth she even thought anything useful would come of that, but she really wanted to argue with me that it was okay to have this bizarre conversation with him that didn't have a fu*&^ thing to do with her at all. She was really angry with me for drawing a hard line there. She seemed to think it was all about my not understanding the teenage world--she never considered that she would be puting me in a potentially embarrassing and difficult situation by doing something so idiotic. She also seemed to not understand that not every teenager regards their parents as stupid and pathetic.

About 7 pages later, she was glowing about how I'd surprised her by bringing her and her sister home some nice clothes that were "actually cute" to wear out for their dad's birthday dinner. (What she didn't realize is that I was so worried that she would dresss like a slut and her sister would be decked out in her usual Martian attire that I opted for offense over defense. It definitely made for a more relaxing evening where I didn't have to endure raised eyebrows from patrons in a 4-star restaurant.)

She rambled at length about how cute the clothes were, but she never said, "That was a really nice thing for B____ to do. It must be really hard for her to be raising teenagers when she never wanted kids herself. I'm so grateful that, when our own mother was abusing us and drifting further into craziness, we had a place to go where our father and his wife would give us a beautiful home, incredible vacations, nice clothes, and a hot homemade meal 5 nights a week. They never yell at me, and as long as I live by some very simple rules, I get paid for being good. I have almost unlimited access to the Internet and cable TV, and I have a cell phone that B___ pays for. I am such an incredibly lucky girl. None of these things would have been possible without B___."

There were also distressing notes about online sex with boys. They (skids) haven't opted for the "major leagues" yet, and frankly, I don't really give a crap other than they not get pregnant so that I'll be stuck living not only with them but a little bastard offspring as well. All they gotta do is say the word, and I'll be driving them to the clinic to get on the pill so fast their heads will spin.

I know teenagers are horribly self-centered. And I know for years the skids lived with a basket case who was completely dysfunctional. But there is just something wrong with Skid 2. Skid 1 has some problems with ADHD, but at least she is honest, affectionate, and appreciative 94% of the time. Skid 2 is just so freakin' COLD COLD COLD. She has no friends except the ones her sister makes for them both, and I don't even know if she really loves her father, who is responsible for rescuing her from a terrible situation (with my help).

The last two months have felt better for me. I've had more long private talks with them, worked harder to let my guard down, expressed more pride and affection, and taken more responsibility for just laying down the law without getting angry.

Now, I get to live with knowledge of what went on in her sociopathic reptile brain earlier this summer. I don't know whether the information was helpful to me or hurtful. This is what one gets for snooping. But I may have just been choosing to surrender and stick my head in the sand than just acknowledging that the situation I'm in is ridiculous and not really all that liveable.

It's been more than a year, and my husband still barely has a clue about how thin the wire is that we walk because he is so CLUELESS and unwilling to see who they really are. They are getting ready to take driver's ed, and I think maybe that has sobered him up a little, but all he wants to do is indulge them as much as possible. He doesn't want to deal with the truth about a long of things concerning them, and if I try to make him, he gets angry at me. I just keep hoping they will do something so rotten that he'll finally see the light, but by that point, we'll all be in a position to suffer heavily.

The skids will always, always be in our lives, even after they leave home. And what if they want to come back (ugh, cold shudder!) They may eventually have a revelation where they realize the tremendous sacrifices we've made to create a good life for them both. My husband didn't even want to have kids at 40, but the crazy BM insisted that they go through fertility treatments, although they already had one kid, and she had one from a former marriage. (The girls were born when she was 46, which may explain a lot.)

I loved my husband so much at first, but now, all we ever talk about is his miserable brats. I can't respect him because he makes me do all the heavy lifting in the parenting process, and he doesn't really see either kid for who they really are. I guess that's something all bio parents have going for them--it's probably a necessary blindness. But the net result is that I don't love him like I once did, and the fact is, I'm just lonely without the fringe benefit of being alone.

I just want out so badly. I want to leave and go away where I'm not the least important person under my own roof. I want HIM to raise his own fu(&*G brats instead of asking me to give up years of time, money, and wasted effort that I really don't believe they will ever appreciate or even acknowledge. Yes, it's supposed to only be for three more years, but what kind of life will I have until then? And will I finally have had so much by then that I will still leave, and then I'll be 3 years older?

Oh well... I can't face all the expense, upheaval, and ugly emotions either. Been there done that.

It seems like my only hope is to hold on and live for the day when they leave for college and hope they stay gone. But then I will have to face them again every summer vacation, every holiday, every family occasion. I've done what I can to respect and love them, but I just DON'T. They are brats, pure and simple.

I hope every man or woman reading this who is thinking about putting their lives together with someone who has problematic ex-wives or kids will think VERY VERY carefully, and then run fast the other way. You can't begin to imagine how difficult it is or how much you will have to give up when you decide to be a "good person" and take on a blended family.

On the other hand, if your potential partner shows every indication that he/she is a realistic, informed parent who consistenly disciplines their kids while giving you the status you deserve, that's different. If he/she still has problems with their ex, but they are able to effectively co-parent in spite of that, you will probably be okay.

But don't be an idiot like me and think, "Love conquers all." It doesn't, always. There was a reason why my husband was talked into having two kids he never wanted, only to end up being their primary parent in 13 years' time. HE HAS NO SPINE! And I have NO BRAIN, or I wouldn't have walked into a disaster waiting to happen.