My Crazy Life.. Part 3: Dating disasters, Therapy, Etc.

So I've had my share of dating disasters in the period of time I was on and off with Ethan's dad.

After the divorce I dated a guy in Arkansas who I thought I was totally in love with.. he was 21, already had a DUI, lived with his mom, and had no education. (Not even a GED) He wanted me to move BACK to arkansas to spend a happy redneck life making trailor park redneck babies and drinking budlight until I was old and happily living in a trailor in the woods somewhere. Glad that didn't happen.

I had a guy I was seeing for a few weeks until he broke up with me because he thought he was going to be moving to California. After he found out he wasn't going to be moving again he decided he desperately wanted me back too late. I had already started seeing E's dad again and we were going to a counselor. He became very stalker-esque. Calling me and leaving messages about how he knows where I am, he knows I'm with "him", etc. etc. He got really scary. I finally had to threaten him with a magistrates order if he didn't stop. I can honestly say that he had me scared for my life there for a long time. It still makes me shudder.

Another fun and exciting adventure was the guy who ended up being the ex-husband of a girl I worked with and was a total freak. Total whore.. tried to take me back to the house he and his wife still lived together in. UHM??! He also shaved his arms and legs and all body hair and it was very disconcerting to feel arm stubble. Gross.

I dated a guy last year who turned out to be a 32 year old pothead with no goals or aspirations and who spent every last penny on drinking and eating burger king 5 days a week. He lived in a house that his mother owned and only had to pay the $1000 tax bill every three months but somehow still always had creditors calling. I just couldn't take it anymore and broke up with him. The final straw was when at 8am before the big OV parade he was hitting the bong at home alone before we left then proceeded to pack it into his little backpack that he was taking to the parade. At one point a buddy of his was snorting coke in his car sitting just inches from me.. I really like my nursing license. I am not putting myself in that kinda crowd. Just not worth it... especially for a loser.

I have great taste don't I?

This past summer I ended up in a very happy relationship with someone who had been one of my closest friends. We hung out at least weekly from January until April as friends and I started realizing I had feelings for him that were more than just the friendship I was trying to convince myslef it was. When we finally made it officially a real relationship it was immediately a very intense relationship. Not in a bad way or anything.. just trying to say we kinda skipped the whole dating thing and went straight into full on boyfriend/girlfriend falling in love from day 1.

I started seeing a counselor in November about all the craziness from the Ex-hubby and the baby daddy issues. I got crazy confused with all the emotions that the counselor was digging up and I ended up breaking up with him for no real good reason. I regret that.. but such is life. At this point we talk as friends but I don't believe he will ever want to return to where we were. I hurt him badly and he's had a lot of bad deals handed to him by past girls so I think theres really not going to be any recovery.

So that's the extent of my dating drama.

Next subject..
Counseling..

Counseling was hard for me to come to terms with needing. I'd gone 8 years or more since the divorce and had never dealt with the emotional issues that the marriage had left me. I had never really told anyone the details (not even James) before this summer. I talked to my now ex boyfriend in depth about the whole situation many times.. even before we were a couple. I came to the decision late-summer that I needed to go ahead and start seeing someone to talk about all of it and when I finally started he and I took a few week break because I told him I needed it to get this all started right. I spent 2 days a week an hour at a time talking with her about things that happened to me.. both with the exhusband and my sons dad. It was really hard for me because talking to her about all of it brought up alot of emotions and made me start to question every decision I have ever made.

It's funny how hard it is.. I wish I had known a little bit of what to expect. I guess I just didn't expect to be left so emotional and confused by the stirred feelings. She made me question everything from whether my past history was basically responsible for E's dad not wanting to marry me (I guess I just started to wonder if I had somehow pushed him away the whole time because I was afraid of the past being repeated) and talking about it all made me start to question whether I should be in a relationship at all. I looked at my life and saw failed relationships and marriages, and I saw how many bad decisions I'd made because of my emotional scars or whatnot.. I guess it all kinda freaked me out and made me feel like I owed it to the current boyfriend to spare him from the inevitable (which in my mind was me fucking everything up royally.) So in the end I threw that very great relationship away that made me really happy for the first time in my life. Se La Vie...

There should be a warning or a release. Something. The whole process is very overwhelming and scary and for me made me more confused and scared than I have ever been in my life. If any women happen to come across this blog who are going through this I have some advice.

1) Be prepared for a storm of emotions. I began to actually see an increase in my panic attacks and an increase in the night terrors and insomnia. I began to question everything I'd ever done in my life including decisions I had made and previously come to terms with. I pushed away the man I truly loved and wanted to make a life with because of the emotional rollercoaster I was on. I can't suggest enough that you turn TO the person in your life and not AWAY from them.

2) Don't expect to be able to go in there and deal with everything in a single visit or two. It's hard. It takes alot of time. It gets worse before it gets better. I spent alot of nights crying, thinking about things, etc.

3) Insomnia gets worse before it gets better in this case. The things you will be experiencing and feeling will most likely keep you awake thinking entirely too much. Don't be afraid to take meds if your doc prescribes them. I avoided my sleeping pills for weeks because I didn't want to get hooked, etc etc. She finally talked me into taking it every night for 2 weeks. By doing so I finally caught up on the past 6 months worth of insomnia and I actually found that I handled the emotions better (too bad I waited to do this until after bad decisions were made.)

4) Just remember that in the end.. you are doing this to better yourself. I feel like a whole person for the first time in a long time. I can look in the mirror and know who I am. I know what I want. I know that I can get through anything.

Ok that's enough from me. I've been working on this one for over a week. Hope it was somehow worth it to someone.

~Jen

My Crazy Life.. Part 2: Along came a baby boy..

So after I moved home from Arkansas I had a short stint as a cocktail waitress at the beach and then went to work at a Car Dealership as the secretary in the sales department. There I met my sons father.

We started dating a few days after the Independence day in 2001. I was still waiting on the finalization of the papers for the divorce at that time and had already found out about the upcoming baby of the Ex's. We had a really good relationship in the beginning but around December we almost broke up.. He had quit calling me, never answered when I called him, etc etc. We ended up going ahead and trying to work on things.. Then in January I found out I was pregnant and due in October.

He asked me to move in right away and things started to fall apart from there. He became a total workaholic and I was unable to work anymore after I almost lost my son in March. I had been selling real estate and when I tried to go out and find a job doing anything else (banking, cashier, secretary) no one wanted to hire me because I was already very obviously pregnant. During the time until the baby he supported me financially with all my bills and he helped get me into LPN school. I started the pre-req A&P class in September and Ethan was born October 7, 2002.

I remember many times when I was pregnant and when Ethan was a tiny baby, me crying talking to him explaining to him that even though daddy didn't love me.. he would always love him. I was already feeling alone. We lived as roomates from the beginning practically. Sex was rare, and when it happened I would roll over in bed crying because of the previously stated feelings of guilt, shame, and now add to it the feeling that I was sleeping with someone who really truly didn't love me the way I loved him.

I spent much of my time off work driving into my moms house (we lived 45 mins away) because it was too lonely to stay home. It never really was my home. He had gotten rid of all of my animals, he only let me move in my couch and a few of my lighthouse pictures, and for the most part I just felt like it wasn't home. He never included me in any decisions about the house.. anything from ceiling fans to building a new garage.. I never knew about any of the plans until they were started. I came home one winter day to find that someone had come out and sprayed the power/phone lines on the ground and found out that he had a 10k garage package being dropped off to the house from 84 Lumber the next day and that he and his dad had been planning this new garage for 10 months. TEN MONTHS and he never mentioned any of it to me.

Money he spent was always acceptable. He could go to the dealership and bring home a $500 new harley jacket or parts/accessories.. He even skipped work one day and came home with a new Harley. I didn't even know he was planning it, and he didn't bother telling me he was taking the day off work. I had to find out when I tried to call him to ask him a question at his shop and the girl told me he wasn't in today.

One summer when Ethan was 3 I had a car accident, which was the third in that vehicle since I'd owned it.. two of them being pretty bad. I decided that I felt safer trading it in for a new car than putting my son back into that car. I tried to discuss this with him and got a flat no, with no explanation, no discussion. After a week of thinking it over I went to the dealership to look and invited him to come with me. He adamently refused and when I came home with my new car he wasn't home. He didn't come home until midnight, he had gone out on a ride and not so much as left me a note.

After I bought the car he didn't speak to me for many months. He wouldn't even look at me. He slept on the couch, wouldn't eat the dinner I made them, left for work without speaking to me.. the whole deal. FOR TWO MONTHS AT LEAST! One day he came home with a white truck.. I thought nothing of it since as a mechanic he drove test vehicles home alot.. but after it had been around for several days I asked him if he had bought it. Yes. He had. Ok.. so my problem with this was that he once again treated me like shit about something I did even though he was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He now has 3 trucks and 4 motorcycles.. but if I so much as bought a few new tops or jeans, or bought Ethan a toy or clothes.. I was given hell about it and given the silent treatment.

That was his way of dealing with problems. There was no discussing them, there wasn't even fighting. It was just "you're wrong, i'm right, and i'm not speaking to you anymore."

I spent the entire four years we lived together trying to change everything about me to make him happy, to make him love me, to make him want to marry me and make us a family. I would spent the entire day cleaning the entire house to the point of being able to eat off the bathroom floor and he would come home and not even recognize it, or say a word. I never went out with any of my friends and I completely isolated myself around him because he never liked any of my friends and I still don't feel that he ever cared for my family. He would never go to family dinners wih us and even showed up hours late to Christmas dinner at my sisters house the first time she ever threw it. We would go months at a time without having sex and even when we did he wouldn't even kiss me.

I felt alone, depressed, worthless. I honestly don't think he's a bad person but he obviously never really did love me and just couldn't tell me for whatever reason. We broke up in march of 2006. I moved out and into my familys house after telling him I felt we needed counseling or to just end it.. he chose to end it. He said counseling was pointless.

I started dating a little here and there and once I was in a dating relationship for a few weeks he came back around, wanted to go to counseling, and even set up a few appt's. I went with him but after the second one I felt like he was only doing this because I was seeing someone else. I quit going. In august we went to a concert with Ethan and we started seeing eachother again. I stayed living with my folks and we dated for another year and a half. In that time we were actually pretty happy for the most part but I still felt something was wrong.

In october I had to have a medical procedure and was scared. I asked him to stay with me that night before and he said he probably would. That night was halloween.. he came and took E trick or treating and when he brought him home, he said goodbye, got in his car, and drove off. Never so much as telling me "I'm sorry but I just can't/don't want to stay." I was really hurt because I had really needed him to be there for me. In November I fell down a flight of stairs and trashed my back. I couldn't move, walk, work, go out, do anything for weeks. I was bedridden. In that time he didn't show up to the ER the night I called him from there, he didn't come by the next days, he only ever called to check on me and talk briefly and even that was rare. As I got better I got more and more irate at the situation and finally felt that if he really truly loved me he would have been there for me. I broke up with him. I couldn't take the loneliness anymore.

I dated someone for a few months and became good friends with someone I later began to have feelings for.. I broke up with the guy I had dated but the friend was still very close to me. James and I tried dating again for about 3 weeks before I realized that I was totally in love with said friend. When I came home from my big nursing exam weekend I finally came to terms with the feelings I had for the other person and moved on them. I told James I wasn't going to do this again. I couldn't be unhappy anymore and everytime we'd tried to work things out I always ended up unhappy.

I still have problems with the fact that I always feel inadequate in relationships. I fear that everything will just end up hurting me in the end. I will explain that more in another blog.. what I mean by that.. but for now I will just leave it with I have alot of commitment fears and difficulty not looking at things like they are going to end badly.

I will say that he is the most wonderful father I could ever ask for. He loves Ethan unconditionally and he is absolutely wonderful to him. I would never ever say a harsh word about how he is with my son. He just never loved me like that.. and I can't be unhappy for the rest of my life. I deserve to be happy.

Next chapter.. finally going to counseling, crazy dating history.

My crazy life.. Part 1: The first husband.

So forever ago my therapist told me to start writing a journal.. And seeing that I'm a child who grew up in the age of computers, bbs's, the all new and exciting "world wide web", etc.. The process of actually handwriting stuff baffles me and I choose to avoid it at all possible turns.

The point of all of that is that I figure since no one reads this anyway I will use it as a chance to vent some personal stuff. If you don't care.. don't fucking read it.

I will start with my ex-husband.

When I was stupid and 17 I got engaged to my highschool sweetheart. I talked him into joining the AirForce so that we would have the opportunity to move away to start our life, and because he was barely a high school grad with no real opportunities for supporting a wife and starting a life. He left for basic training a year before we were getting married. I spoke to him very little in that time, of course, since he was in training.

We saw eachother for a week in November before we were married to go to a weekend Catholic pre-marriage weekend thing. In that weekend he tried numerous times to get me to give in to doing "not so catholic approved" things when my female roomate wasn't around. They had us rooming with same-sex members of other couples who were there for the weekend as well. I didn't really think anything of it at the time.. but looking back now it was the beginning of what was to come.

He came back a week before the wedding and immediately I realized he was a completely different person than he had been before. I remember vividly a fight in the parking lot of the hotel that one of his groomsman was staying at about 3 days before the wedding.. It was the first time he ever called me a "stupid cunt" or a "bitch." I also remember very stongly the honeymoon. We fought the whole time.. and not normal couples kind of fighting.. knock down-drag out locked out of the hotel room fighting. I think I cried most of the week in Bermuda. It was the worst honeymoon ever.

We came home from the honeymoon and packed up our U-haul truck to drive out to Little Rock AFB, AR. When we left my mom took it really hard and actually almost didn't say good-bye. I remember her getting really upset and screaming and yelling at me about how I don't love her and I was leaving her to hurt her. After much drama she finally came and hugged us goodbye and we headed out. That night sometime around Nashville my dad called and asked how much longer we were planning on driving. I told him we were going to try to make it to about Memphis. Barely 30 minutes down the road my mom called screaming and cussing at me that I needed to pull over, find a hotel, and call her RIGHT NOW. So we did.. He was a total fucking asshole about it. I listened to him screaming at me the whole way to the hotel about how "fucked up" my mother was "in the head" and how I "better not end up like her." That's the most memorable thing I have from the trip. My mom was having a really hard time with me leaving and rather than trying to understand or calm me down (I was pretty hysterically crying) he chose to demean my family and threaten me with divorce if "that shit ever happens" to me.

After settling into the new house he got put working swing shifts. In the real world that means 3-11. I found a job as a bank teller at a local bank but we were barely making ends meet. I ended up quitting that job after some major issues with the shifts they were working me and the never ending girl-drama that accompanied working with 15 women who all thought they were somehow better than everyone else. I remember telling him I wanted to get a job as a waitress so that we'd have cash coming in daily, and because I remembered a girl coming in daily with up to $100-$200 in cash from her shifts the day before. This was a big point of contingency with him. He stated on many occasions that "all waitresses are fucking whores" and that I was going to end up "flirting like a whore with every customer I could get my hands on" just to make money. After I'd been unemployed for a few weeks I finally just went out and got the job as a waitress without his consent.

Funny how he didn't want me to do it until I started bringing home the cash. Within a month of me working for the restaraunt he quickly began to immediately confiscate every dollar I brought home. I used to have to beg him for enough money to go to the grocery store on my day off. After I had been there a few months I decided I really wanted to start going to the local community college. Again.. big problem for him. He adamently refused to allow me to go to school because it was "his job" to be the educated one. I wasn't allowed. I went against his orders and signed up for a full-time schedule of classes that semester anyway. I used our bank account and when he found out I honestly thought he was going to hurt me.

Over the next year there was more financial stuff.. he continued to take every dollar I made, refused to let me buy new clothes even though I had lost ALOT of weight and everything I owned was falling off of me, bought beer, soda, and playboys but never groceries. I was working double shifts and bringing home $100 a day on the weekdays and up to $200 on weekends.. yet somehow I never really saw any of it except what I spent on school and books (which I only went for 2 semesters) He however.. spend 500 bucks on a shitty old rusted out '79 trans am and within that year put 5grand into it of my money. Needless to say our financial situation wasn't good. He racked up credit card bills, owed his parents a huge chunk of money, and yet he blew every penny I brought home on that fucking car.

The entire time we were married our house was beyond dirty. It was disgusting. He never did anything around the house to help me, It was my job.. my duty as his wife. I was working double shifts AND going to school so I was barely ever home to do alot around the house. I would spend my days off doing dishes that he hadn't touched and because of my schedule I hadn't been able to get to. The kitchen always ALWAYS had moldy, rotten, disgusting dishes piled in the sink and laying all around it.. even left with food on the stove or counters. I will never ever be able to eat hamburger helper again because the smell of rotten, moldy hamburger helper in the sink will always and forever make me nauseated to my stomach to the point of wanting to throw up. My parents came to visit once and I will never forget how horribly embarrased I was at my house.

During the entire marriage there was this overruling theme of "it's your job as the wife" and that carried into my sex life. This is the hardest thing for me to talk about but I will try to explain.. since this situation has rolled over into my entire adult life and has caused me alot of hurt and bad choices. He was very forceful with me sexually. I remember way too many nights laying in the bed begging him to please stop already, please can we be done.. he would go for hours.. to the point I would be dry, bleeding, crying, in pain.. the list goes on. I still don't know how he could honestly go at it like that for sometimes up to 2 hours without ever finishing his business but I remember him telling me many times if I would just "be better" or "stop fucking crying.. act like you like it" he would be able to get off. He forced me on many occasions to give him oral as a punishment for losing arguments over stupid shit. I remember us jokingly arguing about whether my paycheck from work was 16 bux or 30. He was right in the end and when we got home he yanked the check out, waved it in my face to show me he was right, sat down on the couch pulled out his dick and told me to "suck it bitch. you lost." To this day I can't bring myself to do that. He bought a polaroid at one time and took pictures of me in some ridiculously skanky outfit. He made me pose for the pictures going down on him, and he took pictures while he had his way with me that night. To this day I don't know what happened to them. I pray that he was decent enough to dispose of them but I never really saw them again after that night.

In our marriage I would have to say that over 50% of our sex life was on his terms, when I didn't want it, and very hurtful to me emotionally. In my life now I find it almost impossible to be the person in my relationships to initiate any kind of sex and I find myself feeling guilty or ashamed of myself if it gets playful.

He never phsically hit me until late summer early fall of 2000. We were driving home from a night out to dinner where he drank entirely too much and I was behind the wheel. I went to turn into a parking lot and he screamed at me about my driving (this was a normal thing) and I slammed on my brakes in an empty parking lot to yell back. He backhanded me across my jaw so hard I could hardly eat the next day. When we were pulling up to the gate on base he told me I better not say a fucking word to the guard... I didn't. When I got home I immediately went to my closet and started throwing clothes into a suitcase. He began sobbing and crying uncontrollably and somehow managed to make me come out of that feeling like it was all my fault. This was normal.. he did it alot. It was my fault that he had to scream and call me a bitch and a cunt and a whore.. it was my fault that the house was always disgusting.. it was my fault that sex was so bad that he had to make me bleed just to get off... it was always my fault.

The next day he grabbed my left wrist during an argument and twisted it around until I was on my knees in a submissive postion crying, begging him to stop. He shoved me backwards with my twisted wrist and slammed me hard into a heavy wooden door. I remember I had to work that night, and as a waitress I used my left hand to hold my trays. I had to beg a coworker to go buy me a wrist brace so that I could work.

That night my manager pulled me aside and asked me if my husband had done it to me. He was a 28 year old married man who I quickly turned to as a friend. He and I started to have a flirtacious relationship and I ended up having an affair with him. My husband found out by reading my emails (another thing he did.. emails, phone logs, text messages, followed me sometimes to and from work to make sure I was going) and he called me at work to tell me how he had always known I was a whore. He also called my parents (MY PARENTS!) and told them I was a fucking whore and that I was cheating on him.

To this day I feel horrible about the fact that I had an affair, it's not the kind of person I am.. but I feel that honestly.. it was the best thing that could have happened to me. He was so disgusted with knowing what I had done that I was finally able to leave. I spent a month living at a coworkers apartment and had a rebound fling with her neighbor but I finally came home. My dad flew in, helped pack up my stuff, and drove home to virginia with me. I will never forget that trip with my dad. I had two cats in one cage, two ferrets in another, and a Beta fish named PunkAss in a cup in the truck cabs cupholder. It was probably the most uninterrupted time I've ever really spent with him and I'm glad he came.

After moving home I filed for a separation but in Virginia they require a 6 month separation before divorce can be filed. I paid 300 bux to some guy to write up the papers and sent them out to the husband. I got a phone call a few days later stating that he had filed for divorce there in Arkansas and because he was there we wouldn't have to wait. I flew in to sign the papers because I had wanted to go back to visit friends anyway. Papers got signed, flew home, and got a phone call from some girl randomly one night. She was apparently his new girlfriend and they were pregnant. She had been under the false impression that we were already divorced and wanted to know why we were calling back and forth to eachother still (it was about the paper signing.. that was it) I have never felt so duped in my whole life. I left him my Cougar, he kept his shitty as trans am, I got a 10 ft truck of furniture, and half of all of his debts. Had I known that he had a child on the way I wouldn't have agreed to screwing myself so badly... oh well.. it's all done now.

To my knowledge he's still married to this girl and they have several kids of their own in addition to the three she already had. I found his page on myspace one night and I still to this day want to write the meanest letter ever..... He's apparently a "servant of God.." and a total religious freak now. His #1 friend was Jesus.. he had bible quotes everywhere and blog posts about religion and God speaking to him through this and that.. I can't tell you how angry it makes me to think that this man who did so many horrible things to me is somehow in good with God? God may be able to forgive him.. but I never will. I was young, and he ruined me.

So theres part 1. If I can muster the strength to work on it again tomorrow I will start with part 2. :)

If you read this far.. holy crap. If you didn't.. it's ok. I did this for me.. not you.

Jen got drunk dialed...

Haha.. I got a 1 am phone call from the lovely Tricia. She was HILARIOUSLY plastered. So the outcome of the entertaining phone call was a probably trip to Charlotte again this weekend. She's offered to cover the gas just to sucker me down there.. Apparently I'm that effing cool. Just sayin..

Spent a good day with Mary yesterday.. Tea and lunch followed by getting to see her amazing condo and drinking wine on the deck. Afterwards I came home, changed, let the puppies out and went to see friends at Cogans for beer and cheese fries. Some awkwardness still but it shall pass. It does entertain me how completely freaked out everyone else is over the situation.. they aren't even a part of it.. Shouldn't I be the one uncomfortable and awkward?? Lol.

I'm trying to get the house where I want it. I still find it hard to hang pictures in a house I am only renting.. but I suppose hanging them is better than the giant stack of pictures I currently have laying on the fireplace footing. I need a motivation pill.. mostly for the act of folding clothes. I am great at getting them washed.. then they pile up on a chair, or the couch.. until I carry them upstairs fully unfolded and continue to iron them daily as I wear them. How retarded is that?

I'm currently taking a break from my cleaning this morning. I've been fairly productive. Yay for productivity~!

On another note. The sun hates redheads. You know it's summer finally when the redhead turns red. I went to E's soccer game saturday morning and I'm currently many shades of deep pink and light red. Argh. One would think that after 28 years of sunburn I would learn the benefits of SPF 60. I forget EVERYTIME to put it on.

I start working out again tomorrow (possibly today if I get the energy after all this cleaning.) I am finally almost fully recovered from the back injury a few weeks ago. I find my overall pain level is decreased significantly when I work out regularly. I'm also down 17lbs since September.. though it should be more like 50 if you count the 10 lbs I gained and lost about 3 times in that period of time.. haha. I am fially seeing SOME of my clothes fitting better. Mostly my shirts, not so much my jeans. I wore a shirt out last night I haven't worn since this time last year when I first bought it. YAY. (AND I think it actually looked ok.)

Ok.. back to the housework. Yay for me.

~Jen

Blah

So here I go again.. I had a moment and deleted all my blogs..



I have had an interesting couple of months. I think spending this time alone has really helped me become a better person. I'm working on a lot of stuff right now including the possibility of starting on my BSN pretty soon. School is scary.. but must be done.



I have made alot of mistakes this last year.. Many that cannot be fixed. I am, however, working very hard to fix what I can. I am trying desperately to get myself in a better place emotionally, financially, in general. I went to counseling to finally deal with the scars that I have from my piece of shit ex-husband. I have been working really hard to lose weight and am down 15 lbs since Sept. I have been working out as much as possible and trying to strengthen my back.

I want to be a better mom to Ethan.. Not that I am not a good mom, persay.. but I want to feel like I am somehow being the mom I always dreamed about being. As is I still get very frustrated with him when he's trying to play transformers OVER AND OVER again with me.. and I get overwhelmed when we are home alone for long periods of time. I'm still adjusting to us living alone. I have been doing silly projects with him like cutting up construction paper and creating stuff and we've been playing a lot of silly games. Again.. I find it hard not to get frustrated sometimes when he wants to play them OVER AND OVER and over again.. but I am working on my patience. I'm a work in progress.. guess I always will be.