Advice. I often/usually hate getting it. I love giving it. I think most people have some advice they would like to give to someone. Maybe to a family member, maybe to a friend, maybe to yourself. I think it would be neat to provide this opportunity to give advice. You can leave the advice here or post it in your own journal. You can comment anonymously or leave your name. The advice can be for me or for anyone else. You can give context or not as you see fit. 🙂
-I went up and saw my family yesterday. It was extremely low stress. My aunt is kind of afraid of me in weird ways. I’m never sure how to handle it.
-I restated for my niece and nephew that I will pay for college. I think my nephew will take me up on it. I’m glad.
-I also apologized to my nephew for being such a shitty aunt. I need to try harder in both of their directions.
-Shanna doesn’t seem to like anyone else holding her. She cries pretty quickly. This isn’t awesome.
-Other people reread my archives so I started looking too. This December I will have known Ms. Pandora for five years. I think that will deserve some recognition.
-We do a lot of laundry.
-I’m noticing more and more how happy I am that I get to stay with Shanna.
-People on MDC (the mothering website I’ve been reading–you people don’t post enough) are really fucking weird.
-If we want to try for the spacing of kidlets we are talking about I have some work to do. Oy. It’s going to be extra challenging with the munchkin.
Ten things I am grateful for:
1. The BABY swing that was lent to us. Shanna is currently napping in it and I got all the vegetable chopping done way faster than anticipated as a result. 😀
2. Butterscotch scotch ice cream topping. We finished the bottle last night. It is frighteningly good.
3. Five hours of consecutive sleep.
4. Today, and every day, Noah. That he exists. Specifically lately cause he has been making me awesome breakfasts for weeks now. 🙂
5. Improving communications with my family. There is a lot of healing going on there.
6. That I have gotten to spend so much one on one time lately with really awesome people. For all of my fuss, I have some incredible friends.
7. That I am happy and healthy. I understand that these things are not to be taken for granted.
8. Air conditioning.
9. Being on-the-ball enough to menu plan for this whole week in advance and actually get around to cooking everything planned so far. 🙂
10. That my walls are such rockin’ colors. A few people have expressed surprise that I would paint them such deep dark colors but they make me happy every day. I’m so glad I did!
11. *cough* Oh yeah… my daughter. 🙂 Her smiles are making my life better and better.
So I keep sending out notices of new pictures to family members who aren’t subjected to lj. It seems polite. I’m even sending them to Noah’s parents despite our less than cordial relationship. In this last one I specifically asked them to tell me which pictures they would like to be sent and I asked for the snail mail addresses of relatives that might like to receive pictures. I think I am being bloody good.
I can’t help but wonder if they will bother to acknowledge my questions. I feel so cynical on this topic. His dad might be cool, but I don’t know that his mom will. I guess I’ll find out…
We went and got pictures taken last weekend. Here are the proofs for those who are interested.
More pics here: http://pics.livejournal.com/rightkindofme/gallery/0000c4gt?page=2
We managed to make love today. Yay for the swing! We were able to spend more time on it than we have been able to the other few times we have tried. The extra time helped a lot. I was actually ‘ready’ this time which is awesome. Something I found really interesting was how important it was to me to not use a condom. I needed the skin contact in a very primal way. Yes, it’s a risk because I’m not ready to get pregnant again. I needed it. I needed to feel like that bond wasn’t actually changed/reduced/made more painful. It was wonderful. The other times I was trying mostly because Noah has been pretty patient and sex is an important piece of our relationship. This time it was for me.
I feel more like me now. I feel more satisfied. I didn’t know how much I needed that.
I’ve been up since 4. Why you might ask (if you care that is) well, that would be because Shanna has a bitch of a time latching in the middle of the night. This is because apparently I over produce at night and things get so full she can’t get a hold of it in her mellow relaxed state. So I have to get up and pump. This is fucking annoying.
When I was a kid I used to tease my mom as she got dressed. I always called it “stuffing the sausage” when she put on pantyhose. Today I bought two girdles because without them I can’t wear a dress. I’m tired of rashes and pain as I walk. As I tried them on and watched myself wiggle trying to get the fat properly placed I had to laugh.
I am so not telling my mother.
I’ve been blogging for five years (on lj, I was on g-blog before that). I have posted 1,794 times. I have posted 8,185 comments and received 13,489. Wow. I guess I am more popular than I thought.
It’s been an interesting five years. Most people currently reading my journal have been doing so for quite a while. Thank you. It’s interesting that so many people (150 mutual friends and 61 others) have bothered to friend this journal. I’m sure there are some people who are stalking the public entries without having a journal (there is Debbie for example). Even as I’m struggling with finding out how I fit into old social groups no one has unfriended me out of disdain for my writing and only a couple of people have blatantly said they don’t want to hear about the baby. I can only presume that they skim those entries. 🙂
LJ has been good to me overall. I’m happy it exists.
This one isn’t fair. I can’t pick right now. I do pay attention to the fact that I will spend a lot longer with Noah so I may have to lean in his direction.
Brittney asked me if I was posting privately because she wasn’t seeing as many posts (she’s one of those lurkers). Naw, instead I’m playing with the baby.
Here she is not enjoying her Gir-ificness.
But best of all, is when she smiles.
Such a lovely daughter I have.
I have always gravitated towards computer geeks. Back in high school I used to sit in the background while they coded and I fell asleep at the MST3K showings. I wanted to be around them, but I’ve never shared their passions and interests. It’s always been hard to find things to talk about. This has only compounded as I’ve gotten older. I don’t share interests with most of my friends so I sometimes wonder what exactly makes us friends.
For quite some time I’ve been aware that my interests: psychology, literature, my students when I was teaching, and now Shanna are not shared by most of my social network. As a result most socializing consists of me trying gamely for the first 10-30 minutes then slinking off to a corner while Noah talks to people. I should specify that this is group socializing. One-on-one people usually demonstrate an interest in hearing about my life but then again the number of people who want to have one-on-one time with me is quite small. I’m not particularly sad that there aren’t more people, quality over quantity and all that. I am sad that they have busy lives and I don’t see them much.
I’m fairly tired of feeling like my interests are boring. It isn’t that my interests are boring it is that I am hanging out with mostly adamantly child-free people who only want to talk about technology. I am starting to feel hostile about the degree to which many of my “friends” are dismissive of the things that interest me. Maybe it’s time to start pulling back from social groups. This is a pretty easy transitional time. I want group interactions but unless they are about sex I don’t know what to talk about. *sigh* Time to find some new people I guess.
I think you are handling this all wrong. You can’t fix this problem with money. This will blow up in your face sooner or later. I hope that you don’t end up hated for what you are doing.
Until you take some responsibility everything will continue to fail for you. Stop being obsessed with fun. Fun is good and all, but you do have to do the more serious parts of life too.
I don’t understand how you can keep your mouth shut. No really–how do you live with yourself?
If you change the locks while he isn’t home then you don’t have to keep asking him to move out. I’m sure you can get some help in packing all of his belongings in a day.
I have itunes on random and I found myself singing along to “Pretty Fly for a Rabbi” by Weird Al then “You Decorated My Life” by Kenny Rogers and now we have “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister.
I’m not sure which of the three is more embarrassing for me to know all the words to…
