At least, they seem to be. But not according to what I've been hearing.
There was a parent-teach meeting a couple nights ago and Connor (Anne-Marie's 10-year-old son) teacher Mrs. Wilson basically reamed me out for 20 minutes because she thinks the kid has an unstable home environment. No shit he does! His parents hardly speak to each other and his mom doesn't seem too interested in helping to build up fundamentals while dad is off all day earning the money. Well sorry if I'm not around to explain to the Adkisson kids about the birds and bees or help with math homework. I just wanted to grab her by that stupid beaded necklace and choke her. "You think I like this??"
But no. There's nobody who understands. Even Bry, who has become kinda reclusive at school, sinking deeper and more weirdly into Ellie's life... isn't exactly in a place to understand the pressures of having to raise someone else's kids. I do my best, honestly, and I don't like the accusation that there's something I could be doing that I'm not.
I mean maybe there is... the kid isn't getting his homework done, and it's not like I really force him to do it. I would feel hypocritical to nag him about that because I was the same at his age. He's ten for crap's sakes, let him play. I turned out fine.
So I called up Julia... Anne-Marie... whoever she is, which I'm not supposed to do. And I told her what the teacher said. And you know what she does? She starts crying! Yeah, she starts crying because she misses her kids so much, and since Thanksgiving it's really been eating away at her and blah blah blah. I probably shouldn't have been so harsh with her, it's not her fault at all, but... I needed to lash out at someone and I couldn't get on the computer at the time. Plus it's probably a bad idea to write on this thing when you're mad.
So all her crying was giving me a headache, so I just sighed and told her that the time to book a room at the Inn was coming up, and we had to get such-and-such a room at such-and-such a time period... first the person in my body, then me, then her. And she tells me, ugh, she goes on this tangent about "Well I don't know, Julia's not really in good financial shape, and it might look really suspicious if I go on vacation the week after you do because I'm Hal's receptionist now and he knows us both..." and I'm just thinking... "Woman are you making excuses not to get your body back?" I didn't say it, but I had just about reached the end of my rope that day. But I did get a little more aggressive - hell, bitchy - when I told her that like it or not, I'm getting out of her body, and either she can take it back, or have another stranger living with her husband and next time, she might not be so lucky with who it is.
I hung up angrily, leaving her something to think about. Then I just sat there, face hot with rage. I looked around at all the stuff that wasn't mine and I just muttered, "I've gotta get out of here."
-Todd
PS. Sometime later, Anne-Marie suggested that I should ask Hal to take the lead on the homework project. I'm somewhat dreading that conversation, because our last exchange on "how to raise the kids" came after he found out I basically wasn't enforcing bedtime anymore and letting the kids stay up as late as they wanted, and he was, um, not pleased.
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