Tag Archives: update

Just life

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I made steal cut oats for breakfast. We had strawberries, walnuts, whole milk, and a little bit of brown sugar mixed in. It was fabulous.

Today was a cooking day. We have tri-tip prepared as well as chicken cooked with orange and pineapple and a little bit of rum. I boiled the rutabagas and potatoes and smashed them up together with a lot of butter and milk. I haven’t figured out what I am doing with the chard yet this week. hm. We still have asparagus and artichoke to cook but I figure those can wait a day or so.

Between cooking and cleaning house I don’t seem to find/make time to sew. This is very annoying. It doesn’t help that I feel like I really ought to be studying for the comp exam. Twelve more days.

Have I mentioned that I feel growing anxiety about this test? This is my last shot. If I fuck this up I’m just done. That’s kind of stressful.

I want to have an affair with my husband. I miss having that sort of intense interaction with him.

My daughter is getting more and more kid-like every day. I find her endlessly fascinating. And exasperating. Definitely exasperating. 🙂 She is sleeping for shit these days and that’s feeling really hard.

I need to get off my ass and plan the birthday party. *sigh*

I managed to get off the acceptance letter to the roofer and the information for the estate lawyer. I met with someone (ironically–he’s my sister’s ex-boyfriend. the only boyfriend of hers that I have ever liked) today about putting solar panels on our roof. It’s looking very likely. That’s productivity. We are still waiting to hear back from the accountant. By this time next month we may well be many tens of thousands of dollars poorer.

My back hurts and I’m not getting enough exercise. There is simply not enough time in the day.

Any feminist who questions the worth of what I do with my time can kiss my lily-white-ass. Those of you who are working moms–how do you manage to sleep?! I don’t have enough time for all of my stuff and you all have to do what I do and work. Y’all must be crazy.

More erf

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I woke up at six and can’t get back to sleep. Too much going on in my brain. Physically I’m kind of off and I can’t figure out exactly what is wrong. I’m obsessing about all the deaths that have happened in the last year and some. I feel very anxious about life. The comp exam is in 18 days. I should probably review poetry. *sigh*

I can’t get driving directions online to the place we are going in Oklahoma. All the mapping software basically knows that the road exists but that’s it. Awesome. I have to wait until a more sane hour then call them. I’m sure there are tiny little motels in the town we are going to, but there is zero online presence for any hotel there. I lived in this town for a little while as a kid. I remember feeling very superior because I was from the big city. Now I find it almost charming in a severely inconvenient sort of way.

I still haven’t decided if I am going to deal with dragging the carseat around in the airports and gate checking it or if I am ok with actually checking it. I’ve heard some horror stories about baggage handlers destroying carseats. They are somewhat delicate and if you throw them too hard they are no longer useful in a crash. And they are so fucking expensive. But I’m not going to have much in the way of help. *sigh*

They don’t sell good travel potties that fit over elongated toilet bowls. Fuckers. You’d think that this would be a reasonable thing to have given that almost all public toilets are elongated. Shanna does not appreciate sitting precariously on a grown up toilet while being held up. It makes the whole pottying experience much more stressful. I think I’m going to bring her potty and disposable anti-bacterial wipes for cleaning it out. Not my first choice, but better than not being able to potty her. At this point I’m only having a couple of misses a day and I don’t really want to back slide a lot. I think it is funny that by volume more than half of what I am bringing on this trip is diapers. People still ask me when I am going to switch to disposables (not for traveling–just in general) because “Aren’t you sick of washing diapers?” The washing really doesn’t phase me in the slightest. However I was really really really tempted to not deal with lugging the volume on this trip.

You people don’t post on lj enough. I tell you all about my life, where is the reciprocal reading material? 😛 (Essaying–you do well. 😀 And I have no complaints about Rbus.)

My house isn’t clean and I’m trying very hard not to care. It’s a struggle though. I will never again buy black furniture. Being able to see dust 15 minutes after dusting makes me feel like I am the worst, most terrible housekeeper ever in the history of the world. I really don’t need that guilt.

I had a good time at the museum on Sunday. It was nice to see people and play with kidlets. 🙂 Shanna is still not quite to the interacting large scale stage. It’s all about her. 🙂 It’s very cute.

It’s hard balancing things with Noah right now. His job is sucking the life out of him. I am trying as much as I can to be supportive and not demand much of him. I was doing ok for a while. Then I hit an emotional wall and started feeling really upset and crummmy and needing a lot more from him. I’m largely still not pestering him with those needs. He doesn’t have much extra right now. So I’m spending a lot of time crying. It’s interesting how I know this isn’t depression–it doesn’t feel that way. I’m grieving. I’m sad. It feels pretty lonely to feel like this and spend so much time alone. Shanna doesn’t count as a person in this way because she is pretty much a bottomless pit of need with not much to give. I’m ok with that–that is what she is supposed to be. But I’m having a hard time. I’m pretty sure my grieving isn’t impacting her negatively. She seems to be still very healthy and happy and delighted by life.

Oh, and she’s teething again. The diaper rash appeared instantly and is fierce. I don’t entirely understand how she can get diaper rash like that when she is barely wetting diapers at all and she never sits in pee. Babies are a mystery. Good thing they are a cute mystery. She has been asleep for more than 11 hours. This is very very good because it is going to be a long day of traveling and her naps are going to be disrupted. I’m nervous about traveling with her by myself but I’ll manage.

Wow that’s a lot of whining. And she slept through me writing it. w00t.

Catch up

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My brain still feels like cotton so I’m not ready to write about the trip. However, I thought I should let ya’ll know that I may or may not fully catch up on lj. If I missed anything that you think I should see, please leave a comment. 🙂

Good little housewife

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I like the icon. It expresses to me how deep and thoughtful most posts are.

That said: man I’ve been a good housewife today. Because I am exactly this dorky, here is my list of accomplishments…

-I figured out Quicken. It was a major pain in the ass, but I did it. I used to keep track of our budget stuff using Excel, but it took forever and I am just not willing to put in that many hours of labor anymore. Hopefully this’ll work out.
-Called home inspector for an appointment.
-Put up the craigslist ad to get rid of the table. This involved going out and taking pictures of it so I’m happy I got it done.
-Did two loads of laundry.
-Did the dishes and otherwise tidied up the kitchen.
-Finished the last touches on cleaning up the garage. It is once again able to accept the car. w00t
-Changed three dirty diapers and caught one pee. I’ve been distracted.
-Did all the necessary steps to get the property tax check in the mail. Sometimes I suck at this.
-Put up more pictures of Shanna: http://picasaweb.google.com/somethingdifferent/Shanna
-Ate lunch
-I’ve cycled the Brita pitcher 6 times refreshing my water storage in the refrigerator. This is a big deal because it means I am more likely to actually drink water in the next few days. (I only drink it cold.)
-I went and had some cookies. (I haven’t used this euphemism in a while. ha.)

Hmmmm. What should I do next? Shanna is flirting heavily and seems to be leaning towards playing with her. Maybe that’s all the day needs to be perfect. 🙂

{milestones} self-mobile (and other catching up)

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Shanna is not quite crawling yet, but she is self-mobile. She is getting across the room to try and eat my Christmas presents. 🙂 After being able to roll for three months and being unimpressed with it she has now decided that rolling is awesome. She rolls over and over so she can go get things.

She is also pushing up into a bridge shape on her hands and feet. I think she’ll be crawling any day now. I told her it would be a great present for mommy if she crawls by Christmas. 🙂 She looks like she is thinking about it.

She is trying really hard to get back to sitting once she falls over. She isn’t all that close to doing it but she wants to so bad.

Her playing with toys has noticeably changed. Her attitude and behavior is different. She is going for the stuffed animals as much or more than the rattles now. She holds them up and “talks” to them. Sometimes she will talk to them and then move them around. It’s really cute to watch. She loves books and she’s trying to open them on her own.

I haven’t weighed her recently. I’m starting to not care that much how much she weighs. She’s big, happy, healthy, and active. That’s good enough for me. She wears size 18 month clothes but they are a bit big. We went up to 18 because in her last super chub out stage she couldn’t squeeze into the 12’s very well but then she slimmed down. I’m willing to bet she could wear 12’s at this point but I shipped them to Texas already. Oh well. I think she would still need to be in 18 pants and I roll the sleeves on shirts once. That works. 🙂

She is “talking” to us more and more. Signing isn’t happening with any sort of consistency partially because Noah doesn’t try to do it at all so I’m giving up. I was doing it with her well for a while. *shrug*

She was sleeping through the night with only one nursing for a while but she has been rather a booby-monster in the last week or so. I really want to go back to one nursing so that my shoulders stop hurting so much.

Anyone who says that breast milk shouldn’t be all *that* influenced by what I eat is full of shit. I’ve eaten uhm more than a few cookies in the past couple of days and all of a sudden I am engorged again. It has to be the fat. I have had more fat from cookies than I have had from anything else since I started WW. It’s incredible how strongly it affects my milk. Shanna seems *thrilled*.

She has started being obsessed with Puff, which is really cute. Puff doesn’t seem so thrilled about this, but Puff is nosing around a little closer just lately. I’m watching their interactions pretty closely because I’m a trifle worried about Shanna being too rough and Puff defending herself. Neither of them will be doing anything wrong under those circumstances, I just want to intervene and prevent injury in either direction.

She still isn’t all that into eating solid food. She still likes her banana when we give it to her, but otherwise she isn’t that interested. And she only takes two or three bites when we do give it to her so it’s not a large nutrient source.

She’s becoming more and more like a kid all the time. It’s fascinating to watch. She’s going to be seven months old on Wednesday. 🙂 I’m still thrilled that I have the privilege of getting to stay home with her.

Balance

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A long-time friend unfriended me recently so I wondered what I had posted that was so awful. After reviewing my recent entries I have come to the conclusion that it probably had nothing to do with what I am posting.

I did notice that I post about negative stuff a lot. That’s lame because I am generally in a good mood and my life is good. I’m not sure why it is easier to bitch and whine.

I spend a lot of my time reading (books I want to read- yay!), putzing around doing chores and errands, and caring for Shanna. I am finding that because most of my life is just so nifty that I feel extra frustrated when I feel frustrated at all. That seems odd to me.

I’m really enjoying being a homebody. I get out to socialize one or two times a week and I run errands usually one day a week. I double up on socializing and errands sometimes when Miss Laura wants to see me. 🙂

Next week I have finals for Spanish. I am going to start baking on Thursday. I’m pretty excited. 🙂

bits and pieces

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-I’m tired. I’m always tired. But it’s nap time now and instead of curling up for my (almost) daily nap I have to go get in the (rental) car and drive to school. Does anyone else see why this is bad? I’m in class until 9:45 tonight. Then I get to drive home. No really. Does anyone else see why this is bad? Considering that I am driving a rental car cause I rear ended someone while falling asleep? Awesome.

-For some reason LJ isn’t showing me icons. Not mine, not anyone else’s and I don’t know why.

-The continued evolution of sex during pregnancy is confusing and difficult and complicated by a few very specific things right now. I really wish I could feel more secure right now.

-I messed up giving Puff her medicine this morning. 🙁 I was overzealous and I managed to push the medicine out harder and faster than is good and I think I sent it “down the wrong pipe.” She struggled to get away after that and was pretty miserable as she kind of coughed/sneezed for a while. I feel bad.

-I’m overall not feeling very intellectually with-it right now. Although, I have to say, despite feeling like I am walking in a foggy haze I like Derrida. He’s a snotty French Deconstructionist. Now I have a name for the pedantic over-analyzing that I like to do! Yay! You can’t take things at face value because language is inherently flawed. This rocks my socks off.

-Including today I have six days of class left. That’s it. Period. That’s the end of my classes for my degree. That’s pretty intense. Of course, I still need to pass the comp exam and the language test. I’ll worry about that later.

-Still feeling kind of sad and withdrawn. I’m sorry I don’t have more to give anyone.

-My therapist should be calling in the next day or two to schedule an appointment. Have I mentioned that I’ve missed her?

-Freaked out about selling the house now. I don’t know how I really feel about the possibility of not moving any year soon because we missed the housing market bubble. It isn’t worth it to sell our house at a really low price. It will mean staying for a while, maybe quite a while. I was really adjusted to the idea of leaving so now I don’t know how to reconcile staying. There are good things about staying, but in my head I was already half gone…

+/-

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+ Listening to Barack Obama’s speech. He’s a fucking amazing speaker.
– Getting back my short paper with an embarrassing number of grammar mistakes. I don’t know where my head is.
+ Being more generally cheerful about the Lizard hatching.
– Why do I always manage to have a couple of people in each class who detest me and make it obvious? Am I really *that* obnoxious?
+ Yay Spring Break!
– Boo having to write my term papers in the next four weeks. Ew.
+ I’m amused by how often questions have come up in different forums about playing while pregnant. I don’t remember seeing this question much over the years and now I’ve seen it in I think seven different places.
+ Friends who are making an effort to see me. Thank you!
+ Lots of neato comments/conversation lately on lj. Yay!
+ Noah. Cause you know… just awesome. He’s like that.
+ For finally taking the risk of buying bras online. I may have to send them back for sizing, but damnit… I finally did it.
– I’m rapidly expanding out of my pants. Can it hurry up and get warm and stay warm already? (Neiner to you out of state people. We’ve had a lot of high 60’s lately. 🙂
– The house is not sold. No offers. No real interest in even looking. 🙁
+ The shirt and underwear (and rope) showed up from Monk. I’m thinking pictures will be very amusing. 🙂
+ Talking to Tom a bit more. I’m really excited that we are more to a place where I will actually use the word “friend” to describe our relationship. And I get to be excited about the good things happening in his life. It’s nice when awesome people find a partner who matches them and makes them happy. And dude is doing yoga!! I’m so tweaked by this. 🙂 Yay for making life improvements.
– Need to stop reading blogs that irritate me. My life is really good–why am I looking for reasons to be annoyed?
+ Apologizing to Mo for being a twat. I feel better when I get to say I’m sorry. Good thing she still loves me.
– People I haven’t called lately. I should try harder. Miss them.

Drowning

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I will be flying to Portland tomorrow evening. I will be staying with a friend. I’m willing to bet I will not be terribly easy to get a hold of. All sorts of things (I’m looking at you Jon) will just have to wait.

Let’s look at the next few weeks, shall we? Tomorrow I need to continue to frantically get my classroom closer to being ready for a sub on Friday and get the kids through another day of finals prep. In the evening I get on a plane and go rent a car by myself for the first time in my life. Kind of spooky. I will most likely go straight to Dad’s house and goodness knows how much sleep I will end up getting. I also need to arrange getting a key for the place where I am crashing somehow. Friday and Saturday will be spent with Dad in some capacity. Sunday morning will likely be spent either with Dad or with the friend I am staying with.

While I am gone Noah needs to finish packing up all of the stuff in the house that is over carpet. Most of it is packed already, at this point we mostly need to get boxes to storage and get furniture out of here. Looks like it is he and I trying to move it with most of it falling on him. 🙁 Whatever I don’t help him with tonight and tomorrow he has to do on his own. The carpet is being replaced on Saturday. I get back on Sunday to help put things back and finish up the last baby steps of touching up paint (there are about a dozen specific spots that need to be touched up). I should also continue packing stuff in the kitchen/bathroom because we want most things out of sight for the showing. The house is being “staged” on Tuesday which means that some pushy-ass woman is coming over and insulting the hell out of my/our taste and telling us how we can make our house look less crappy. I’m looking forward to it.

I need to completely clean out my classroom and get all of my stuff packed and off the walls within nine days, preferably sooner so the next teacher can start moving in. I also need to finish grading all the late work that is still pouring in. I need to continue typing up the questions the kids are submitting for the finals. I need to create the finals. I need to grade the finals. This probably represents about 40 hours of work I need to do sometime in the next nine days while out of town for several of them. I have a mandatory IEP meeting next week where I get to go deal with a horrible parent and her horrible child. Luckily her case manager is pretty cool and is backing me up. Thank goodness for small favors. I have a hysterical family who keeps breathing down my neck about how I am persecuting their child by giving him a bad grade despite the fact that his grade in my class is higher than his grade in any other class. Cheers.

And after getting the house on the market next week we get to go to Pittsburgh from the 25-28th so I can see how I feel about the cold. I think this is the most traveling I have done in this short of a time period in my life. (I will be out of town for like 15 days out of a five week period. And this is on three separate trips.)

And I have an ever increasing flow of email traffic from con stuff, most of it extremely demanding and resulting in someone getting pissy if they aren’t responded to RIGHT NOW.

So, if I don’t get back to you or if I have a fairly short temper or I’m not cheerful, by all means feel free to take it personally.

Squeeeeeeeeee

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Heartbeat! Discernable heartbeat! The Lizard has a heartbeat of 160 bpm. Apparently there is a wives tale that says this means kiddo is a girl. The funny thing is–I don’t want to find out for certain, but thinking of the Lizard as a girl makes me giddy. I’m pretty sure I would feel the same way about a boy. Have I mentioned that I really want this child? I’m ‘measuring’ at 21 cm which is pretty much perfect considering that I am at 20 weeks 4 days. (From the 20th week usually you can measure the belly and the centimeters will match the week you are in.) Lizard was hanging out in the very lower right hand part of my uterus. I think that is so neat. It makes sense because so much of the kicking is really low. 🙂 Baby! I’m having a baby!!!!

Ok, I’ll stop now. 🙂

*bounce*

Home!

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Been home for not quite 12 hours so far. Laundry is going. I dumped the contents of the two (enormously overstuffed) suitcases on the floor and now I need to deal with actually putting stuff away.

Disney World was… interesting. Loved Epcot and Animal Kingdom seemed neat (we didn’t actually do much there because of sleep needs). I wasn’t that impressed with MGM Studios and Magic Kingdom was noticeably inferior to Disney Land. It was pretty neat being in this All Disney All The Time world for a little while. I started to have a little bit of a hard time with the eternally plucky staff at times. Amusingly, I didn’t like the waiter who acted like we were impositions much more so I guess there is just no pleasing me. Luckily I had more good-body days than bad-body days. I think I need to invest in serious black out curtains because both of the rooms we had on the trip could be completely pitch black during the day and we slept 9-12 hours each day. I suspect that we might both be more-sleep-is-good people.

Andrew–we went to the slavery museum in Nassau and it was just as interesting as you said it would be. Thanks for the recommendation. 🙂 The visit to the warm was nice, but I’m really glad I don’t live there. If it is this warm in the winter I would die in the summer. I got my hair braided on Nassau–just shy of 100 braids and it looks neat. I was probably overcharged, but I think that given how much money I make and how much money the braiders need to live on… I’m ok with that.

Noah had maybe two hours of cumulative grump on the whole trip and I probably clocked in four or five hours of cumulative grump on the whole trip. All things considered that is bloody amazing. Spending time with him continues to be the most wonderful way to spend time I have ever experienced. He is freakin awesome to travel with. I love my easy-going baby. I scored big time on my Christmas presents to him. I got jammies this year. 🙂 And a trip to Disney World and a cruise. So I can’t really complain. Dude we shopped. Went more than a little nuts. I’m surprised we got it all home… The funny part is: a lot of it is just getting put directly into boxes for storage for the next 8-9 months. I’ll get to feel like Christmas is coming early next year when I unpack. 🙂

Speaking of which: I need to get off the computer and start packing. The folks are coming to measure for carpeting in a bit. We need to get a bunch more stuff packed before the kids come over to finish up the painting touch-ups later this week. (I love my aides. I love them. I love them. The kids who painted this summer are coming back because they love me so much. 🙂 We have about two weeks to finish emptying the house out for the staging. I’m trying to get a bunch of the stuff packed and in storage so I won’t have to worry about it for moving. I also need to respond to a bunch of TNG emails today. I am going to wait until after the carpet people come because I need to get stuff off the floor…

I doubt we will make it out to any of the NYE festivities tonight. Love you all, but my body is terribly confused right now as to what time it is. We are going to have apple cider around 9 and call it a Disney World New Years. 🙂

Maybe more later. Maybe not. 🙂

Life or something like it.

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This whole moving thing requires that I somehow find the energy to pack. Have I mentioned lately that I hate packing? Does anyone have boxes?

Christmas is looming in that way that it does. I think we are actually mostly done with the shopping we want to do. With luck the remaining things can be found online so I can shun that evil place… the mall… Here’s hoping.

Con stuff is not going so well as I would hope. Between the people who moved away, the people who flaked (love that one of them was telling his girlfriend he was still involved–mad slick that move), and the people who are just not fucking responding to email despite the fact that we need their fucking piece of work to move on… I just want to scream. That said, once I get responses from the last round of emails I am pretty sure I am done with programs. Now to create the class matrix and send out confirmations and pertinent information to people. With luck that will be done in the next week. (I say luck, really it depends on me feeling human for multiple days in a row.) Although one thing this con has done is reminded me just how much Jon, Erik, and Sarah rock. I wasn’t ever really doubting, but right now I am fucking thrilled with them. (Look at the website! www.tngcon.org Erik did that! He rocks!) See, one should always remain friends with one’s ex’s. 😉

I am still only barely hanging in there with teaching. Everyone wishes I was nicer and my only response is, yeah and I wish I didn’t feel like shit 24/7. And I want a fucking Oompa Loompa. We don’t get what we want in life. 🙁 I’m trying really hard to be nice. It just isn’t going so well as normal. I’ve been looking around my classroom and thinking about the fact that in the next month I need to take things down from the walls. It will be sad. I seriously moved in to this room. I’m going to miss these memories.

Noah is riding the waves of hormonal freak outs spectacularly well. A couple of bumps were very unpleasant all the way around, but I think that being on the other side of those bumps is better in every way so it’s ok. Having the best boy in the world is a really nice feeling.

I miss being social, but I don’t see how more of it can possibly happen seeing as my window for social on most days is about two hours long. That will probably improve come January when I am not working anymore. Holy cow the kids suck energy like mad.

We are looking at flying out to Pittsburgh in January. Noah figures that exposing me to the freaking cold during the coldest month of the year is fair warning. We are also going to try and figure out a little bit more about where things are located and what parts of the city we actually want to live in. Brrrrrr.

This weekend we get to drive up to Napa and pick up Noah’s wedding ring. We decided that after a year of marriage it was time to get around to getting him the ring we had been talking about getting. We found a really neat jewelery up there on accident and it has been in process for a while. Maybe I will get around to posting pictures of my ring as well when we get his and we can show how perty and cute and matching like they are. 🙂

Dying.

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My job is always extremely demanding. Teaching an honors class has made that worse.
I’m also the technology “mentor” at this point because my coworkers are fucking morons and can’t figure out how to work basic websites. This means a bunch of people pestering me constantly.
Academic detention is driving me batty. I’m feeling quite tempted to just ignore the Fs for the rest of the year. If you come in and want to make up your grade, fine. But I can’t keep pushing people to do the work. It makes my life suck.
I can’t be the repository of all the problems of all the kids right now. I’m too tired and worn out. I have nothing left to give them.
I’m dropping all involvement with clubs. I need to spend my lunches staring off into space, not going to meetings.
I am going to drop some of the essays I had planned to give the honors class. I simply cannot spend 10 hours grading essays every three weeks. I can’t do it. Not on top of all the rest of the grading and prep.
I am not helping much with the TNG con. I feel horrible for dumping it on Jon, but I can’t do more than I am doing. 🙁
I’m supposed to be doing research on getting the house remodeled. Right now I am kicking myself for not getting this done last summer.
I’m not seeing my friends much. I’m doing a little bit of it because I feel like I *should* but I find myself feeling resentful of the energy output even as I am glad to see people. I am tired of having to leave by 8:30 because I feel like shit. It’s not like I can say, “Hey–let’s hang out during the weekend day” either because I’m always fucking working.
Hormones are kicking in and I want to cry a lot of the time. I feel so overwhelmed that I want to just give up. Why am I doing all this shit again?
I can’t have sex like I want to because I feel shitty all the time and I know that must be having a negative effect on my overall attitude and emotional state.

I don’t know what is going to give, but something has to.

Out of sorts.

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The Noah and I were not local last weekend. It was an experience. I would love to sit here and catch up on lj and emails and… but alas, that is not to be. I have a unit plan to polish (seeing as I had to start out this morning not knowing what I am doing for the next 5-6 weeks as the unit plan I was planning on using isn’t possible for the next few weeks. fucking technology). I have grading. I have to pretend I give a shit about being evaluated by the state this year.

Con shit is picking up too. That is going to start sucking an increasing amount of my brain.

I’m tired in a very odd bone weary sort of way. I’m tired of being a pariah. I’m tired of having people look at me as if there is something wrong with me. I feel like I should just give up on meeting people. I won’t though. I guess it’s cause I am a masochist. Or maybe because I am stupid.

Reflecting.

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The last year has been remarkable. I have been married for a year and 9 days. I have begun my third year of teaching. I painted my house so that I could work on banishing the ghosts from the building. I have made friends. I have unfortunately hurt people. I have faced down demons. I have discovered new trauma. I have learned to trust Noah in ways I never thought I would. I have gained 20 lbs. I have purchased furniture. I have gotten rid of furniture. I have a new kitten. I have gone off birth control. I took Noah to Disneyland for the first time as well as Portland and Seattle. I went to Las Vegas for my first trip and went to a bunch of Cirque shows.

It’s been quite a year. 25 was good to me. Let’s see how 26 goes. 🙂

+/-

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– Having to express boundaries in a way that is hard for me to say and hard for others to hear.
+ Expressing anxiety and concern and being heard and supported in totally unexpected ways.
– Allowing anxiety to turn my stomach into an acid pit for weeks.
+ Talking about anxieties with wonderful fabulous people who will support me no matter what.
+ Reading many fabulous books this summer.
+ Painting my house and making it feel more like my home allowing me to banish many of the ghosts that have been here for me.
+ Banishing the ghosts from the past making it more comfortable for other people to be here too.
– Playing phone tag with amazing people and not getting to really connect.
– Missing some of the people I love so much I feel like I drown in it.
+ Being social and getting to see wonderful people.
+ Having a friend buy me a corset!!! (I swear! Pictures soon!!)
+ More work done on my tattoo. Most of it wasn’t so bad. Then we moved to an area that wasn’t numb. That sucked ass through a straw.
– Finding out that my tattoo artist wants to move out of state in February so my tattoo has to be finished before I get pregnant. So uhm, I’m going again before this even has a chance to heal because we have to finish, damnit.
+ Good conversations with people about how size plays into perception of beauty. I really am fascinated by how people perceive size and beauty and how they are related and not. I love that my friends trust me enough to talk to me about this very touchy subject.
+ Plans coming up with people I rarely get to see. There are people in my life I think of as ‘watchers.’ They aren’t really close friends because I hardly ever see them and we do very little with one another in ways that seriously overlap our lives. Yet, I love them and trust them for no obvious reason. Once or twice a year we get together and catch up on all the small and big and good and bad and I feel truly seen. I really appreciate these people and the perspective they give my life. I’m seeing one of them tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to it. I also get to see some people in the next few weeks whom I think of as friends but who aren’t close, yet.
+ Running into my sophomore English teacher at Avenue Q and having him ask me to get together to work on curriculum. That is so incredibly validating! Yay! He is one of the teachers I liked the most through the years.
+ Almost done with all the books I need to read for 2A. This is pretty neat. I still am not sure how I want to put it all together though. One more week!
– Not sleeping well or much. This needs to change pronto.
+ Found some really cute wrap skirts on the Haight. They don’t care if I am chunky or thin. 🙂 Yay for versatility!
+ My back hurts less in the aftermath of tattooing than it used to. I’m a little stiff and sore, but really not bad.
+ Still have the best husband ever. Understanding, compassionate, fun, supportive, and totally sexy.

Mostly though, I know I’ve been whining and vague and depressed and upset and … blah for a bit now. Thank you to the people who have reached out. I notice. Thank you for the support and love. I see it and I’m grateful.

Short explanation of trip.

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Because I realize that a long explanation isn’t going to happen. I had (mostly) an exceptionally good time. I loved getting to see people I haven’t seen in a long while. I had some really intense personal conversations with some of the most inspirational and fabulous women I have ever met. I enjoyed most of the drive through pretty country, eventually I did get bored though. I got to show Noah around Portland and Seattle a little which was really neat because I have always thought of them as Tom-places and now I realize that they are me-places too. That was a nice feeling. That was partially nice because it helped me step back a bit from a bit of my baggage around Noah sharing things with me he has shared with other people and that is persepctive I really need.

It was a good trip north. The only thing that was consistently a little hard was that from when Noah arrived we never had a good night’s sleep. Various things were a problem every night and that was totally suckful. Which means that by the time we got to the camping/backpacking part of the trip we were already very sore and sleep deprived. I need good, consistent, quality sleep or I am just not really a good person to be around. I know this about myself and I try very hard to ensure this need is met. I’m quite sad that it became a problem on this trip. So we hiked out about two miles (a very solid uphill the first mile then down hill the second mile) in the heat when we were already sore and uncomfortable in general. We were actually having fun talking about how each of us is the other’s favorite person to hate backpacking with ever. We camped next to a very pretty lake that night and had fun playing at camping stuff before the sun went down. But the next morning he noticed that my attitude had taken a turn for the worse mainly because my entire body hurt. We decided to just go home so we could sleep in our comfortable bed. Oh my god is this bed awesome.

And so, we came home and have been doing house work and spending lots of good quality mellow time together. Last night we went out for a ridiculously decadent evening with some of our very favorite people. It’s been a lovely little vacation.

Maybe someday I will get around to telling ya’ll about the white trash Mondavi commercial, but then again… maybe not. 🙂

Oregon rocks

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Cause they have wifi at the rest stops. This so rocks. 🙂

I got to see a wonderful, gorgeous woman last night and talk to her for hours. I have lots of appreciation for such rare visits. Tonight I get to see *another* wonderful, gorgeous woman. My life–it does not suck. 🙂

Much missing of my Noah. Much thinking and smiling and enjoying the beautiful road. I am taking 101 all the way north instead of cutting over to 5 early on cause it’s prettier. There are still a bunch of Portland and Seattle folks I haven’t heard from so it looks like a bunch of this trip may consist of hanging out in random public places in Portland showing Noah around. I hope my memory is up to the task…