Tag Archives: life

No place like home.

I was thinking tonight about the fact that I have lived in Noah’s house for a while. If I add up all the individual stays with Auntie in both of her houses then I probably lived with her for five and a half-ish years. But that’s between two houses and never more than a two years consecutively. I lived in the house I was born in for just shy of four years. I lived with Tom for a bit over three years. I’ve now been in Noah’s house for almost three and a half years. So I passed up how long I was in Tom’s house. I’ve passed up the longest consecutive time I lived in Auntie’s house. I’m closing in on how long I lived in the first house.

Wow. It’s almost like this is a permanent decision. Weird.

Just life

Leave a reply

Getting ready for a party this weekend is more stressful than I thought it would be. My house is in a weird state of flux because of the garage project. There is a ton of stuff in the house that is normally out in the garage and finding spots for everything is a nuisance. It doesn’t help that I have weird/stupid compulsions about having my house look neat and orderly when people I don’t know come over. If I could manage to not care this would all be much easier. 🙂 [Just so people don’t think I am not inviting you to a party–it’s a going away party for a friend and the invitees are her friends, not mine. So I’m hosting, but it’s not my party. Kind of weird.]

Shanna’s development is no longer as dramatically quick. Her progress is still rapid, but it’s slightly less startling if that makes sense. Now it is on a more predictable trajectory. She is more and more kid-like by the day. Her speaking is amazing to me. She picks up signs as quick as I teach them to her which means I should focus on more signs that are relevant to her. I gave her crackers for the first time this week and she’s in love. I wasn’t withholding them for any particular reason, I’m just not a cracker person so I don’t have them around. I can’t stand stuff that is crispy like that in my mouth. I guess she won’t have my texture fuss. This will make her life easier. 🙂 I really should post pictures of her.

Using our not perfectly accurate scale it looks like Shanna has gained almost three pounds in the past two and a half months. That makes sense. She is eating like it is going out of style. I’m starting to feel slightly frustrated with her wanting food all day long because it is hard for me to work on projects when I have to stop and help her with food. She can feed herself but if I let her go at it alone the mess is prodigious.

We took her to her first Gaskell Ball this weekend. She had a great time playing with the other little girls at the event. One of the things that is hard for me about living in Fremont is I am far away from my friends and all events. I would really love to be able to host baby dance parties during events like that and have all the folks I know drop their kids off. I think that is even more fun than going to Gaskells but it’s not going to work out. No one wants to drive down here for that sort of thing.

I find it pretty funny that at this point I have far more stuff for organizing than I have stuff to organize. 🙂 I have a lot of empty space in my house. This pleases me immensely.

I’m starting to feel a mixture of excitement and trepidation about painting the garage. I have really cool ideas, but I’m not particularly artistic. I will have a hard time if I put in a lot of effort and it looks really bad. I’m not sure what is the best way to try and get something vaguely pretty given my level of (zero) art skill. I’m great at doing basic house painting. Well, by great I mean that I am neat–I don’t like doing it much. 🙂 But I really like the results so I do it.

I asked my bio-family if it would be ok for me to host Christmas this year because I like to share the load and not put everything on my aunt. But my cousins won’t come off the mountain and I don’t want to alienate them so it won’t be happening. So my 70-something year old aunt will be doing all the work for everyone again. I think my family sucks.

I haven’t heard from my mom in months. Not since she grudgingly sent me some money towards paying back what she borrowed from me. I’m feeling unfortunately justified in my not so awesome opinions of her. Thanks for using me then ditching me again mom. I appreciate the reminder of how much you care about me.

I’m still having to struggle with my upset at feeling used by people in general. I know that no one means anything bad. It doesn’t matter if people mean to be treating me like shit or not if they are it hurts. But I’m the only one responsible for my feelings. I can point at a bunch of different things making this harder right now but it doesn’t matter what excuses I have. I need to deal with this because I’m making myself miserable and the only one who notices is me. It would be nice to be happier. I’m trying.

Oh, and I cut my hair. A wonderful friend got a great picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9522728@N08/4043845455/in/set-72157622662085684/ That was after a long day of me running my fingers through it and putting it up then taking it down then messing with it then shaking my head to resettle it. Isn’t it a great haircut?! I’m pretty excited. I think it may be one of the best haircuts I’ve ever received.

Still looking for balance

9 Replies

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.

1 Reply

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

11 Replies

-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

36 Replies

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

1 Reply

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!

1 Reply

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

5 Replies

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. 🙂

Projects

12 Replies

Right now I am working on/need to work on:
-finish cleaning out the garage. Noah helped me make HUGE progress this weekend. Yay Noah!
–~~label~~/send out pictures of Shanna. I never got around to doing the 9 month pictures and now I have 13 month pictures (I procrastinated and missed 12 months–whoops) sitting here. I’ll be shocked if they are done before she is 15 months old. Thank god our family tradition is to not do pictures again until 18 months.
-make jam for the first time!
-put together the storage stuff for the kitchen.
-put together the night stand.
-return the broken night stand to Ikea. (long stupid story here)
~~-figure out more decluttering/getting rid of stuff. I want us to fit comfortably in this house, damnit.~~
~~-deal with the meat in the fridge.~~
~~-go to laundry mat to wash the frickin comforter.~~
-upload pictures from the camera to picasa.
~~-do more laundry.~~
~~-take all the lovely poisonous chemicals in the garage to the recycling center.~~
~~-find a frickin electronics recycling place.~~

I hope that is it for this week. Oy. There is no way I will finish this all this week with my sweet, wonderful little helper. 🙂

so much to do and so little time

Leave a reply

Today I made dinner. It took pretty much all day. I made pasta, pasta sauce, strawberry mash, and shortcake–all from scratch. That kind of preparation is a pain in the butt. All of the fresh ingredients came from the CSA box, the farmers market, or my back yard. 🙂 I’m tired. I don’t know how people used to cook from scratch every day. This is a pain in the butt.

Yesterday I finished my tattoo. I want to do a full post about that very soon with pictures.

Shanna continues to astound me with her development. I’m thrilled that I have a willing sleeper. When she realized she wasn’t going to get me to go lay down with her “nigh-nigh” “I can’t right now Shanna” she more or less asked to be put on my back and she took her nap there. I’m extremely sore but she’s in a great mood thanks to sleeping and I got my chores done. w00t.

Tomorrow we are going to Friday Night Waltz! I hope to see many people there. 🙂

I should ping because I keep thinking about her. I’m obviously awesome at initiating contact though. Oy.

I’m at day 42 of my cycle. The stupid sticks I’m peeing on still say I’m not pregnant though. This is making me fret for a variety of reasons.

I’ve been ordered PT for my knee and a hearing test to get more of a baseline on my disintegration a la (insert accent mark) Meniere’s. I really like my Kaiser doctor. She said despite my eyes, ears, and knee I am in excellent health. She didn’t even blink hard in the direction of my weight and she told me that I should have a bunch more kids because obviously I’m a great mother. 😀 She thinks I have a great attitude about the Menier’s and I think there is no point in having a poopy attitude. 😀

My house is a mess and I have dinner guests showing up sometime in the next half hour. I should probably get off livejournal. 🙂 I get to see my Sarah! I’m excited. It’s been so long. 🙂

Things I’m thinking about today/er yesterday

13 Replies

I uhhh babbled a lot. Continue reading →

Bits and pieces to get them out of my head

6 Replies

Looks like trying to have more of a relationship with my family was a bad idea. 🙁 It’s time to withdraw from that again. Noah gave me some really good advice on how to do it without exploding a drama bomb.

I got into a really bad place for a while there where I was doing the martyr thing full time. That doesn’t help anyone least of all me. I need to knock that crap off. Noah can take care of his own happiness.

Shanna now, quite delightfully, says “owwwww sigh”. For those of you without children this means outside. It’s awesome. She loves her swing so much. I’m thrilled that I got the idea from and and I bought one. 🙂

I’m shifting things around in the house a lot more trying to figure out what arrangements will make me happiest long term because the long term is how long we are here. I really really want to make a cool playroom for the kidlet so I’m looking into that. I have a bunch of cool links that I might post later.

I’m feeling frustrated by the fact that people very very rarely initiate social interaction with me. Why is it that I have to do all of it?

My last tattoo appointment is on August 3rd. We’ll be stopping birth control after that. That means I’m taking advantage of the ability to drink. 🙂

Noah and I had a wonderful date on Monday where we had breathtakingly good food. Being married to a foodie is the best thing ever.

I’m not being good about exercise just lately. This is another thing I need to work on.

Urf and arf. Time to start walking towards the bus stop. I bet Shanna is going to love the trip on BART again. 🙂

Real life is really annoying.

2 Replies

I fixed my Quicken problem today. I did it all by myself. Go me! This resulted in me being able to load the last couple of months into Quicken. I almost wish I hadn’t.

The sad truth is that we need to not buy Christmas presents, not go on any more trips, and seriously cut back on what we are spending on food. That spiffy new roof has more lasting effects than my comfort. Money kind of sucks. But if we are really really good then we might be able to go on a trip next year. *cross fingers*

(Icon just because I’m posting naked. :P)

Haven’t I done this before?

10 Replies

I was given therapy homework. She asked for a timeline.
Continue reading →

Not writing

5 Replies

I have all this stuff I want to talk about. Moving. Houses. Writing. Evolution of sexuality.

But I don’t seem to have any energy to write about any of it. Even when I have uninterrupted time to sit down with the keyboard (or paper) I just… can’t do it. But I’m thinking about a lot of things. I’m thinking all the time. I just… can’t write.

+/-

Leave a reply

+ Getting to go visit friends yesterday. It was a great day.
+ Having a friend who is going to help me make my yard look better.
+ Shanna is starting to walk longer distances!
+ Having a husband who is willing to listen to criticism and look for the bits of truth instead of ignoring me because of course things aren’t that bad.
– Multiple internet outages in the past few days.
– Feeling stupid pressure about money. It’s all my fault and I need to get over it. erf.
– Lots of weird/awkward/bad/uncomfortable emotions lately in general. The past few days have been a roller coaster and I’d like off, thanks.

Looks like the +s outnumber the -s but the -s feel stronger. I need to do something about my attitude. I’m not sure will help me feel less angsty.

Six things

1 Reply

First: I am a good wife. I told Noah to go game because he hasn’t been able to much and he’s really stressed out and overburdened at work.

Second: I still haven’t heard about the comp exam. I took the test 25 days ago. I have been patient. Now I’m starting to freak out.

Third: I bought a nasal irrigation thingy. Hopefully this will allow me to resume my normal course of breathing.

Fourth: New diapers arrived! I am nerdy enough to find this very exciting.

Fifth: Family support today over the fact that both my sister and mother are over-the-top crazy. I appreciate the validation there.

Sixth: In other family news, looks like my sister is dealing again. But of course it would be my fault if she went to jail.

Strangely exciting, and a video

7 Replies

Noah says that one of us should post this video today and I’m up earlier:

~~There isn’t a great video, it’s about the song.~~ Thanks tsgeisel!

And the strangely exciting is: I’m selling diapers. It amazes me that I have gotten all the use out of these diapers and now someone is paying me for them. Ok, technically a bunch of someones are paying me for them. I’m going to buy a few more one size diapers with some of the proceeds. And then with the next kid we will have only all-in-ones and one size diapers so we won’t have to deal with diapers and covers ever again. It’s kind of cool. Snaps. Snaps are the way to go. Velcro wears out.

Uhm yeah. 🙂

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Tag Archives: life

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

Projects

so much to do and so little time

Things I’m thinking about today/er yesterday

Bits and pieces to get them out of my head

Real life is really annoying.

Haven’t I done this before?

Not writing

+/-

Six things

Strangely exciting, and a video