Hi all! I've been on here lurking (and I've made a couple posts) for about 2 1/2 years now. I've been meaning to start my blog but since I'm usually at work when I'm reading and they monitor everything we do I thought better of it. Yay for vacation.

Where do I start? This life is a mess and I hate feeling like I made a mistake in continuing to date my husband after some the red flags were all out there. Of couse, I didn't know some of them were so significant until I started reading some of your blogs and was already 2 years into the relationship.

I met DH 4 years ago on a dating website. I had actually given up on men at that point and had been planning on taking a little dating sanity break and was just letting my membership expire when he contacted me. He was charming enough and a little broken and usually those things fizzle out after a month or two so I went out with him. And I kept going out with him. At the time his kids were ss6 and sd9. Mine was dd14 - they are now 10, 13, and 18. We were on warp speed while dating - talking about moving in together after just a few weeks. He told me he loved me after less than a month. I should have known right then. Lol! I let my daughter meet him fairly quickly - I've always had full custody of her. When she met him she said "mom, you've got to marry him". Silly girl. I had always been a single mom and this was the first time she'd had that reaction (don't get me wrong, I was not bringing home a new man every couple weeks!). After about a month or so I met his kids and introduced my daughter to them (at the same time). During the dinner his son would hardly look at me, wouldn't talk to me and his daughter was acting like the boy's mom the entire time. Cause "he's shy". I was assured in time he'd warm up to me. 4 years later and I bet you can guess where we are with that! My husband at the time had his kids half time and it was split mid-week. So for half of the week things would be great and the other half I'd be invisible. Yet I still moved in with him, mostly because we thought if I were in the home all the time they'd warm up more and come around. Augh. Too bad I hadn't found this site yet.

Oh, before I get to far away from this here's probably the most fucked up part that I will be dealing with for as long as I'm with my husband. His ex wife is technically his step sister. Yes, you read that right. His mom and her dad are married. The parents met first but the kids married first. I don't know exactly how old they were - early 20's? I don't really care to know. As long as they didn't have some yucky teenagers who lived as brother and sister at one point nastiness I don't see any point in having a bunch of details. They were married for 18 years. He is a person who would rather be miserable than alone I think sometimes. During one email exchange when BM was trying to point out how she was right and everyone else is wrong about everything she actually said she was technically his step-sister. I almost threw up.

So, what I have going on here
- a husband I like most of the time
- an 18year old daughter who's actually pretty awesome - she graduated HS last year and is now working retail and going to college both full time and living at home (I really love that she still lives at home, as does DH)
- a 13 yo sd who thinks she's an adult and talks to her dad like one. She also steals my daughter's clothes and has the biggest sense of entitlement I have ever witnessed.
- a 10 yo ss who actually is starting to come around. We have noticed in the past few months that as long as SD isn't around he will look at me (so he doesn't really think I'm Medusa) and will respond to things I say to him. He doesn't start communication with me (to the point that when it does happen I'm shocked and thrilled for days).
- a stressful full time job that has me working overnight - I have the stable income in the family, DH is a self-employeed contractor so we can't count on his income (believe me, I have tried and tried and tried to get this to change - I'l love to get out of my field).
- Oh, and I'm on a 3 week "vacation" - ie, recovering from surgery during my vacation time because I didn't want management at my job in the details of why I needed the time off.

So I think that's it. I'm glad to be here.