Tag Archives: life

Exhaustion

I am so tired I can barely move. Doing manual labor from 9:30 am yesterday till about 6 pm was really really hard on my body. But! I’m thrilled with the progress. I took (mostly) before pictures and I’m taking pictures today and I will take more pictures as I go of the Great Gardening Project of 2010. My cousin’s boyfriend laughed at me when I told him this project has been like 4 years in the making and we just haven’t gotten it done. He’s not the sort to ‘not get to’ projects. Which is why I like that I can pay him to come to my house and work. 😀 I will post pictures at some point.

A friend was supposed to bring me seeds this morning but she woke up not feeling well and canceled. Not so secretly I’m kind of glad I don’t have a complete full day of work. I woke up way too early (5:30) but started cat napping at 7:30 and really fell asleep by about 8:30 and didn’t wake up till 10. This is why my house is thoroughly toddler-proof so Shanna can’t get in too much trouble. 😛

My cousin and her boyfriend will be here around 1:30 and I have this ridiculously massive guilt complex about having them here working and not working myself so that is the end of my slack time today. I’m starting to feel slightly nervous about the semi-busy weekend we have planned. I think I will not stir from the couch on Friday in complete exhaustion. The cousin/boyfriend will be here today and tomorrow. Then my wonderful Taylor will be here Thursday and I will be getting a massage. I am going to need it so much. But Taylor likes to keep busy and do stuff around the house so I will probably save like one or two projects for him so he can feel all useful. I’ll see if there is anything that needs a tall person. 😛

I’m really really feeling the excitement and joy that comes from productivity this week. I receive such a strong boost of self confidence when I am productive. It’s kind of funny.

My life fucking rocks.

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Let me count the reasons to be grateful towards the universe right now:

-Mo is coming to visit me today and she is going to help me do work! The only yardwork I will request of her is helping me get those @#%^#@ white rocks up. Then we will come inside and she will help me give the house the scrub down it has needed for months. She loves me *that* much. <3 -My cousin and her boyfriend are coming over on Tuesday. Her boyfriend is one of the most hard working people I have ever met in my life. He's going to help me get the rest of the yard work stuff done. I am so excited about this I could float off into the universe. I think that, unexpectedly, I am actually going to get my yard to a place where I am happy with it for the first time since I’ve lived here. That is so cool I can barely stand it.
-Taylor is coming over on Thursday and he will give me a massage. I’m going to be a happy pile of goo after that. And he will help me put the gate up in the side yard to keep Shanna out of the compost. 😀
-I am pretty sure I will have ALL of my projects done by Thursday and I can’t express how happy that makes me. I feel constantly unsettled and anxiety around projects not being done. It really affects my day to day happiness in negative ways. But I will get caught up! Dude! SO EXCITED!!!
-We have a babysitter for 10 hours on Saturday and we get to party hop! This will be thrilling.
-Good stuff with my aunt. It’s nice to have someone in my family sit down and listen to me. I needed that so much. My soul feels lighter.
-I have this wonderful, amazing, fabulous husband and hanging out with him is so awesome. 🙂
-Shanna continues to grow more individualistically person-like daily. It is so much fun to spend time with her. I really love watching her charm the pants off everyone she spends time around. 🙂 She is such a poster-child for reproduction that I giggle when avowed ‘not into kids’ people are all over her like white on rice. 😀
-I’m really excited about the upcoming camping/wedding/festivity in May. I think it will be super fun and really great.
-I’ve been getting out and being more energetic and it feels really nice. I’m less slug-like. 🙂 I’m even doing better about doing cooking and eating slightly better. I’m being good to my body and the tiny baby and I’m glad I can do that more now.
-For today I feel like the burdens in my life are all in perfect balance and thus there is the lightness of a feather upon my back. I don’t get here often but I really cherish it when I do. Thank whoever is watching for reprieves from hard. 🙂

ETA: and I totally forgot to mention that Alex volunteered to make a play kitchen for Shanna for her birthday. Maybe I should be less down on my chosen family. They are totally rocking lately. 😀

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+ Someone should be arriving in about half an hour for a play date
+ Great dinner with friends last night. Shanna was an angel.
+ Lots and lots of productivity this morning. I’m impressed with myself.
+ Feeling energetic and social. It’s nice.

– My laptop screen is dead. It fell off a very high shelf. Not sure if we can replace it ourselves and can’t really afford sending it in for repairs. Fuck.
– Shanna destroys stuff almost as fast as I can clean. It’s hard to find my zen with this.
– Even when I’m very productive there is still more to do and more and more and more and… it gets overwhelming.

Good stuff

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Last night I spent some time with the California Mindfucker. I have some really awesome friends. 🙂 I really really appreciate that I can call up my friend the Master NLP practitioner and he’s happy to go hang out with me for a while and help me deal with some of my big painful mental issues and help me get my head on straight. That is just so rad.

To follow up on that: I’m really not so freaked out about the upcoming birth. There is still work for me to do there to get properly excited and to work on getting back in my body (I’ve been incredibly disassociated for a long time) but that’s not something he can do for me. He did a great job of taking the anxiety away and he was only mildly smug about it. 😀

It was probably also very useful for him to beat me over the head with the idea that if I was in trouble there would be droves of people who would show up to help me. On one hand I feel like I want to tell him it wouldn’t happen–people wouldn’t bother. But he’s right, people would show up. It’s kind of hard to wrap my head around the fact that even though people don’t have the time to spend with me all the time they would absolutely be there in an emergency. It’s kind of a weird sort of security. He pointed out that I am really good about showing up when other people have an emergency and that karma really does come back to you. Believing in that takes a kind of faith I struggle with but I’m trying.

And then I came home and talked to Noah about it and explained some of where the anxiety is coming from and he committed to being home for six weeks. It was looking like he was going to be home for a lot less time for this birth and I was really feeling upset about that and not being good about communicating my fears/needs/wants around this birth and when I got around to really saying what was going on for me he is absolutely willing to do what I need.

It’s been really hard lately expressing my needs. I have too many of them. I feel really bad for having so many needs. I feel like I am asking too much of Noah. I am avoiding talking to other people because I would rather sit home just not getting my needs met than risk asking and being told no. That hurts too much. I’m not sure what to do about the fact that there is a tremendous amount of stuff that is just not getting done because I can’t do it and I feel ashamed of asking for help. Pregnancy is the most humbled I have felt in my life. I don’t want to impose on anyone. It seems as though bad stuff is crashing down on just about everyone I know. Everyone is suffering right now and I just can’t add to that for anyone. So I just do without help. Noah and I are muddling through the absolute essentials, but there is a big gap between the absolute mandatory essentials and all the stuff that really should get done. It’s really hard when I think about the fact that much of it will have to literally wait for a year. That’s such a long time.

But! I made progress on one of my biggest points of anxiety. That’s important.

Wants vs Reality

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I want to travel! I want to go on a long train ride to somewhere I have never been. I think that would be wonderful.
Reality? If I were to travel it would be to drive back to Arizona to help Sarah unpack. But that’s not a financially good decision right now. (Noah will be taking unpaid time for the next birth so we have to be more frugal than usual.)

I want to clean and organize my whole house! I want to go to the nursery and pick out a bunch of plants for the yard! I want to figure out more nifty decorating stuff for the living room!
Reality? Once again I hit that wall of money. Damnit. I also have this little problem of if I am too physically energetic I feel shitty for days and I am at the start of a long week with Shanna. It would be foolish to kill of my energy reserves early.

I want cute clothes!
Reality? Maternity clothes are f’in expensive and mostly ugly. So yeah, not a lot of point there.

I want to go to parties! I want to have sex! I want to be social!
Reality? Babysitting is in short supply. Most of the parties we are invited to are not kid-friendly. Sex just… doesn’t work the way I want it to. Being social requires that I have more people in my life who are less flaky.

Fuss! 🙂 And thus I whine on the internet.

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+ BEST DINNER EVER- I need to find some way of sucking up massively to the wonderful woman who came over and cooked us fantastic Indian food last night. As I overate some of the leftovers for lunch (with that fucking fantastic pickle relish) I sat here almost crying from joy at how wonderful it was to have such amazing food. I really need to learn how to cook better. 🙂
+ Two nights in a row of getting to talk with smart, awesome, fabulous women. I win!
+ Flirtations (not even mine)
+ Awesome conversation going with a hippie/freak mama on okcupid. Hopefully that will work out into a playdate soon.
+ Best Husband Ever
+ Doing something about my fears

– Flakiness. Man am I sick of it.
– Being cold all the time. Why isn’t this pregnancy making me feel warmer!
– I’ve felt physically out of sorts for the last couple of days. Not sick, just off.
– mmmm temper tantrums
– People totally don’t post enough on livejournal. I’m looking at you!

Where I am today

It’s a goal

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Between now and Christmas I am going to try and avoid negativity. I am going to refrain from complaining about anything. I am going to try to find something positive in each situation. If I can’t find anything positive to think about a situation I will walk away from it. I will notice the really really good things in my life.

Starting with:
I have less than 30 minutes of work left in the garage before I can move furniture out there. It looks like our dinner plans tonight are not going to materialize so I will use that time to finish the cleaning and start moving furniture. Yay! I’m really excited about this. [For those following at home, the garage is not done but I am not going to finish it for a couple of months to give myself some time to regain sanity.]

Shanna and I have had a wonderful day today. While I was working out in the garage she napped on my back. We went on a long, fun walk today. She would lag behind then declare “Chase Mommy! Fast Shanna!” It was so awesome.

Wow. Not the week I feared.

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This week has been remarkably stable and upbeat. I had the brief manic phase last week as kind of a ‘end of depression festivity’ and since then… very calm. I have been doing stuff to relax many of the evenings, but not every evening and not at all during the day. I feel better. I feel like I am not going to freak out if something is less than perfect. I haven’t had self harming ideation at all this week.

I hired my nephew to come do a lot of the work in the garage. That was a wise choice. He has worked out there probably ~16 hours over the past week and he has made amazing progress. He has about two more hours of mudding left to do. I am, of course, extremely grateful to Paula for coming over and telling us how to do this more efficiently. 🙂 Not to mention the work she did in general. 🙂 Yayyyyyy Paula! The mudding will be finished tomorrow and he will be coming over next week to start the painting. The garage won’t be ‘done’ by Christmas but it will be usable which was by goal. It’s kind of funny, but I am proud of myself for realizing that I wouldn’t be able to get it done by myself and asking for help. That’s a big deal for me. And I’m grateful that Denny was willing to come do so much work. And I’m super super super grateful to T and L for all the enormous work they have done so far. I’m feeling very humbled by the good people in my life. I may not have people who are available to ‘hang out’ much, but when I need help it appears. That is something I need to spend more time being aware of.

We haven’t finished making Christmas presents and we haven’t mailed anything. Oops. 🙂 Stuff may be late this year. And you know what? That’s ok too.

This is why I believe in the roller coaster model of life. Everything that is up must come down and everything that is down must come up. Thank goodness for upswings.

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+ Hanging out with the blacksheep all day plus brief appearances with her Frogling and husband
+ Pastrami sandwich the size of my head
+ Seeing Mr. and Mrs. HotPockets 🙂
+ Totally awesome shopping at the Hanna Andersson store
+ Totally enjoyed the toy store
+ Shanna has behaved super well despite very minimal napping and being in and out of the car
+ Fantastic Mongolian BBQ at some grocery store
+ Can’t beat heated seats
+ Good bonding time with Dad
+ Awesome hand-me-downs

– Still haven’t heard from C 🙁
– Miss Noah
– Still sad
– Bleeding sucks

Overall it’s been a great day.

hard

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The drive yesterday was nightmareish. The GPS took me the most assbackwards way possible. It took almost 12 fucking hours to get to Eureka. *sigh* It was not a pleasant trip at all. Shanna and I are both out of sorts. Now we are hanging out with DA and boy is his house not childproofed. 🙂 I’m debating if I am going to try and drive to Eugene today. I may stop at a hotel part way if I am just done with Shanna being in the car. And my back hurts. It’s like I’m expelling something from my uterus or something. 🙁

No place like home.

Just life

Still looking for balance

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I have this little problem. I have a hard time being bad at things. This is a problem because there are a lot of things I really want to do/be able to do and I have enormous psychological issues getting past the ‘beginner’ stage. I would rather madly love to be able to sew and be crafty. When I run into small issues I more or less stomp my feet and declare that I just can’t do it and I go cry. Very mature and all that. But I don’t exactly want Shanna to be like this because there is a whole world of things she currently can’t do. So I need to start working on this. It’s hard for me.

I also have this problem of feeling like if I take downtime then obviously I am a lazy git and I just suck. This isn’t true, but guilt overwhelms me a lot of the time. This is even worse because I project this onto Noah and treat him like he is a lazy git for wanting down time. It’s not very nice of me. In my defense I have done a lot of work on that and I am way better towards him than I used to be. I can still improve quite a bit though.

Some days I feel overwhelmed by the long list of ways in which I am a deeply flawed human being. There are so many things “I need to work on” that I feel like there isn’t much of a point and I should just quit. I obviously suck. Why bother working on anything? ARGH!

I finally got the Google Reader set up today. This pleases me. Now I can actually keep up with the myriad of neat parenting and homeschooling blogs I like. See, I did something new to me. I realize it wasn’t rocket science or anything but that little hurtle is a big one for me.

We finished doing the insulation! By “we” of course I mean Taylor. I think I owe Taylor something like five years of favors for this project. I do help…a little… but mostly he has been doing the work. Of course I feel a lot of guilt for this. This project has given me some interesting stuff to chew on. I really admire guys who are handy and into household projects. I think that is just fricken awesome. Of course then I married a guy who isn’t like that. It means that I have a hard time appreciating it sufficiently when Noah does stuff because I treat him like he still isn’t doing enough–that’s not exactly incentive for him to try, now is it? Let me be clear here: Noah does a lot of stuff around the house. He just doesn’t do house projects for fun. They are different categories of stuff. Noah’s idea of a fun project is something involving a computer and several hours of me and Shanna leaving him alone. 🙂 It’s different. So if I want house project stuff done I should work on getting better at doing it myself. I am more grateful to Taylor than I can adequately express in this space because fiberglass insulation by myself with Shanna would be an f’in nightmare. Thank God I didn’t have to do that. It would have taken me a year. But I need to stop getting myself into situations where I expect a man to come rescue me. I need to get better at doing stuff myself or not starting at all. Erf.

I’m having a hard time finding balance between social time and time at home. I feel super super busy lately and I’m falling behind on house chores. But if I stay home much more I start feeling depressed and lonely. I don’t know where the ‘just right’ balance is here and it’s hard. Maybe part of the problem is that I spend too much time out of the house being social and almost zero time in my house being social. Hm.

It’s going to be a great day.

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Noah and I stayed up far far too late talking about all kinds of deep personal scary stuff. I didn’t know we had so much of that left. It was really nice to feel close like that.

And now Shanna is big enough to wear the ubercute clothes she got last Christmas! She’s wearing one of the awesome one-piece outfits she got from her Uncle Ben. 🙂 I should take pictures. 🙂

I should post pictures. Oy. I’ll do it someday.

And then we got a call from our mortgage broker! Whoo hoo! Rates dropped! I’m terribly excited about this.

Shanna is now saying please with very little prompting! She will even cut the whining to say please. Whoo hoo!

And we have a date night tonight! We so win!

Brain dump

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-I got some plants from essaying in I think January (maybe early February) and planted them pretty randomly in my yard. They are still alive and thriving with inconsistent watering using only gray water from washing dishes. I think that is pretty rad. Of course my yard still looks like shit but that’s because of all the huge expanses of bare dirt between the small pockets of healthy thriving plants. 🙂 I need to plant more stuff out there.

-By contrast my food plants in the back yard aren’t doing so hot. I water them using fresh water because I have concerns about dumping that much soap on food plants. I don’t water them very consistently. oops. I did get a lot of tomatoes and they are all still alive so I feel like that was an ok first growing season of my life. 🙂

-Noah and I had a “conversation” *cough* this morning about how we each need to take responsibility for own happiness. Mostly this consisted of me being very upset about how hard I have tried to make him happy but my efforts have failed. So forget that noise. That strategy is obviously not working and it is time to try a new one. My wonderful husband managed to stay calm and collected and not bent out of shape when my tone of voice sucked. I’m so lucky to have him.

-Shanna went out back and played in her sand box for over half an hour this morning with no prompting from me. This getting bigger business is awesome.

-I keep thinking that I should track my emotions over a few months and see how it coincides with my cycle. I have been pretty upbeat and cheerful and energetic today and far more willing to put out energy in a social way than I was a few days ago when I whined about how no one loves me. I think that a complete lack of menstrual cycle was a lot of why I was in such a good mood for the whole first year of Shanna’s life. I stepped off the roller coaster and it was so nice.

-I think that the reason I feel so alienated in mom groups is because I am not there because we have much in common other than spawning. I feel like it is the worst parts of going to public school all over again. You are together with people you may or may not like for an arbitrary reason. Wow does that not work for me. I wish more of my friends would spawn. And then have the energy to be at least a little social. 😛

And now Shanna needs a nap. So I run off. 🙂

Two things

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Noah’s parents sent us a box of stuff for Shanna. She loves the duck. The book is a bit over her head so it will go on the shelf for later reading. The clothes are all very adorable. There is something funny about the clothes though. They sent a mix of sizes. As in: 6/9 month, 12 month, and size 5. She wears 18 month and is rapidly heading towards 24 month. I find this kind of funny. 🙂 The too small stuff will go into the baby clothes box and Little TBD might wear it. Luckily we have a box of WAY too big stuff (started with that excellent juggling shirt from Andrew) so we can store stuff for later. 🙂 At least his parents send clothes I like unlike my mother. 🙂

I think I need to give up on having friends. My life is pretty lonely and I need to figure out how to come to terms with it because fighting against it is making me really miserable. Very few people are willing to make any effort to see me and even those people are too busy to do it often. I’m tired of being the one to put in 100% of the effort in relationships. I’m tired of trying to make new friends and having it go pretty badly. Like driving 30 minutes to south San Jose for a play date only to find that the mom I am meeting brought a friend and they sit there talking to each other…in Russian. I feel like going through a list of the things I try to do is a comedy of errors but it’s gone on long enough that I’m not laughing anymore. Scene people have dropped me completely. Shanna goes to sleep at 8/8:30 so dancing just isn’t an option. This is my life. People don’t want to visit me. I need to stop fighting it and just accept it so that maybe I can stop crying.

Mrs. Brightside

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As I was unloading the dishwasher earlier I was struck by how clear and pretty one of the containers was. It’s just a piece of plastic–normally I don’t think I actually even look at it. But it struck me suddenly as being quite beautiful.

Home Depot didn’t deliver the insulation and drywall until almost 4. This totally shot my plans of working in the garage today. Instead I got to spend almost six hours hanging out with Taylor and I got a massage. I think that is a wonderful trade. I feel so much better.

My plans for this evening are canceled due to my friend having a migraine. I’m sorry that she is feeling poorly but I’m kind of glad that Shanna and I get to hang out at home without any other distractions. She can use some mommy-time.

I guess the glass is half full today.

It was a good weekend! Yay!

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Noah and I had a fun time out on Friday and then we drove down to Santa Barbara early on Saturday. We were very mellow. We had good food and visited the zoo and very briefly went to the beach and let Shanna play in the water. We didn’t spend much time at the beach because we all sunburn like nobodies business. 🙂 A little bit was perfect. 🙂

I really enjoyed spending the time with Noah. He’s awesome to talk to. I think the hardest part of the weekend was how difficult it is for Shanna to spend that much time in the car. Oh and the massive disgusting poop explosion on the drive home. Dear god in heaven that was foul. But we cleaned it up fairly well and there was little stressing. w00t.

I think that the next weekend get-away should be a bit closer to home so we have to drive less. 🙂

(Oh: the gelato in Santa Barbara is nowhere near as good as the gelato in New Zealand. It was sad, really.)

busybusybusybusy

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I have been very industrious this week. I have been working from when I get up till late in the evening. I’m exhausted. Of course there is more to do. Every so often I get into these cycles of freaking out about the fact that there is Always More To Do!!! Then I decide I don’t care and I ignore ~~all~~most of it for a while. I wish I could get to that part already but I can’t. The big thing left to do in the garage is dismantle the shelves that are attached to the walls and I’m afraid that is going to be difficult work because pieces of it are very heavy. Taylor is coming on Tuesday (!!!) so we can get started on figuring out the garage stuff. I’m terribly excited. Yes, I’m aware it will take multiple days. 🙂 But Taylor unlike certain other people I could name but won’t isn’t a flake and will actually follow through when he says he will do a project with me so I’m not stressing. 🙂

We’re going to have a playroom! And I’ve started a fund for a play kitchen. 😀 I think that the play kitchen money should come out of my personal entertainment/fun money because I want it so bad. 🙂 Shanna really doesn’t care at this point.

I went to the ~~orthopedic~~ orthopedic? maxillofacial? surgeon today to discuss getting an implant. This is going to be expensive. 🙁 I briefly read the propaganda they had on the subject but I left it at the office cause it pissed me off. No, this will not magically make my life better. I am, however, quite interested in the procedure because it can help prevent bone loss/decay issues later. So yeah. And once I get the procedure done it is like three months until the next step. So I guess it’s a good thing we decided to wait like six months before trying to get pregnant. oy.

And I went to a physical therapy thing today for my knee. Shanna was remarkably good. She sat on the chair and drew on a piece of paper and played with my sweater for an hour. Ok… probably 45 minutes and then she wanted to nurse. 🙂 I’m once again impressed with my wonderful baby.

Boy howdy is she getting willful. I thought the ‘nononono’ didn’t start till more like two. Oy. When she’s not in the mood for something she is really not in the mood. It’s interesting. Of course I override sometimes when it is a safety issue. I try really hard not to override just because “I’m the mom”. I find myself having to fight my temper more now and that’s difficult for both of us. Like when I’m cleaning up the Cheerios she flung all over the floor. It’s ok that she made the mess but when I’m cleaning it up, don’t come in the middle and throw stuff again! Dude! So rude! I find myself talking about manners, rudeness, politeness, and consideration constantly. I’m sure there are a good many parenting gurus who would describe my system as awful. I’m very very judgmental of her behavior. It seems to me that if I’m not she won’t learn how to evaluate behavior. I never ever tell her she is bad. I do tell her constantly that she is good and sweet and generous. I tell her, “It is rude to yell inside because it hurts peoples ears.” I know she doesn’t ‘get it’ yet but I figure starting young will help ingrain these lessons. She does seem to understand, “Please stop” and respects it more often than I would expect at this age.

Maybe that’s enough babbling for now. 🙂

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Tag Archives: life

Exhaustion

My life fucking rocks.

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Good stuff

Wants vs Reality

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Where I am today

It’s a goal

Wow. Not the week I feared.

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hard

No place like home.

Just life

Still looking for balance

It’s going to be a great day.

Two things

Mrs. Brightside

It was a good weekend! Yay!

busybusybusybusy