Blessed but Forgetful

Day 13

2011-03-17T21:22:00.002-05:00

Sorry I haven't updated this week. It's been a hectic week that I would love to whine...er...blog about, but let's get to the weight loss results.

Today is day 13 of this torture. I'm down 12.2 lbs since day one, which I know is incredible, but dang this is a damn struggle almost all day long.

The good news is that today was the first day that I stood in front of the mirror and could actually see the weight loss. I can see it in my face, neck and chest the most and all of my pants aren't loose, but they aren't digging into my skin anymore and leaving itchy red marks.

I've learned that if you put tilapia in a pan with the juice of 1 lemon and coat it with lemon pepper and cook it on high, the lemon pepper and lemon juice with slightly burn/crisp and it tastes very close to blackened. Blackened anything is my favorite so this discovery was fabulous.

I've learned that there is no way that I can cook shrimp without butter or oil that is tasty and I'm giving up on the shrimp as soon as I finish what I have.

I've learned that dried onion flakes are lean ground beef's best good friend and make the meat taste sinful.

I've learned that eating nothing unhealthy or preserved makes your poop smell like grass...seriously.

That's about it for today. I'm trudging along day by day and just trying not to falter one day at a time. The weekend starts tomorrow which means an almost constant struggle. Work days are way easier. I'm 160.8 today and only 15.2 lbs away from goal which could possibly be only 2 weeks away if I stay strong.

Oh, before I go, I've also learned that Shelby wants to eat ANYTHING that mommy eats so she's been getting her fill of all of this good food also. She LOVES cauliflower and apples and tilapia and almost everything else I've cooked. She eats her dinner, then sits with me and picks at my dinner...which may be why I'm doing so well because I'm not even eating my full amounts of dinner because of her.

Peace out - I'll update measurements on Saturday.

Week 1 Results

2011-03-12T08:10:00.001-06:00

Weight - 165.8 (a 7.2 loss for the week)
Bust - 1 full inch
True Waist - 1/2 inch
Gut - 0
Hips - 1/2 inch
Thigh - 1/2 inch

7.2 pouunds and 2 and 1/2 inches lost in 1 full week.

WOOT!

Almost done with week one!

2011-03-11T15:12:00.003-06:00

My feelings today are very mixed on how things are going.

The Good:
The numbers on the scale are AWESOME! I am already down to 167.2 which is a very impressive loss for the week and right on target with the diet's claims and promises if you are faithful. That has me elated and excited and feeling very proud of myself. The numbers are also motivating me through some of the bad parts. My clothes don't feel yet like I've lost all these pounds though, so I'm very anxious to do the weekly measurements tomorrow morning and see if I've lost any inches yet.

The Bad:
I am hungry...well, no, I take that back. I'm actually not hungry. I feel a hunger pain maybe once a day if ever. I feel no actual physical hunger symptoms. I am literally mourning food though. I feel despair over the thought of a whole weekend without a single sinful bite or cheat moment. When I lost the weight last year, I would diet all week and have a weekly cheat day. This kept me sane. It also took 4 months to lose the 20lbs, but it kept me sane. I have no cheat days...no cheat bites...no cheat anything until April 1st. This is horrendous to really accept and think about.

It's my husband's birthday weekend and it saddens me that I can't take him out for giant plates of fried happiness for his birthday. I do know that a skinnier me is a great gift for him...more so than fried shrimp, but it doesn't make me mourn any less. My husband loves me the way that I am, but I become a different person when I'm at a healthy weight and that person that I become is more active in the bedroom and happier and confident and for those reasons, this is a better gift to him.

As for food, my options have been ok. I've learned to make a delicious Tilapia filet. I've had a ground meat (93% lean) twice this week and that little 100grams of red meat has felt scandelously wonderful. I'm getting a bit tired of apples so I plan to buy a different flavor apple tomorrow. I've had Gala apples all week, so I'll maybe get crazy and get some Granny Smith's tomorrow.

The diet is working, I am having no physical discomfort and really the only distress that I feel at any time is the mental and emotional connection to food that I'm missing.

I'll post my measurements tomorrow! Have a great weekend and drink a Coke for me!

WOOT!

2011-03-09T07:38:00.002-06:00

This morning 169.4! WOOT!

VLCD, Day 2

2011-03-08T20:22:00.002-06:00

Today was an ok day. The headache returned after lunch and thankfully it was Mardi Gras and I was off of work so I was able to put the baby down for a nap and nap myself for 2 hours. That helped tremendously.

I've lost 1 pound which is exactly on track. I was 173 on day 1, and 177.2 on Monday after my gorge days. This morning I was 172. So I am definitely right where I need to be at this point and the 1 pound loss was definitely motivating.

There were a few times today where I either almost messed up unintentionaly, or I struggled badly. I struggled almost all afternoon from lunch until dinner. It's like I could taste food in my mouth and I felt this emptiness in my mouth that I needed to fill. It was mad hard, no lie. I unintentionally put a little of Shelby's whole milk in my mouth by holding her cup with my mouth while doing something else with my hands. I also unintentionally started using a fork that was being used for a fattier purpose. Cooking dinner for the family was also quite a test.

I had tilapia for lunch and 93% ground beef for dinner. The ground beef was by far the most filling and satisfying thing I've eaten thus far...but I can't have it often and that sucks.

I'm very excited to see what the scale says tomorrow and I realized tonight that this is probably the longest that I've ever gone in my entire life without eating a single processed food...and it's only been 2 days! That's really sad and I can't imagine what is going on inside my body as it partially flips out searching desperately for corn syrup and canola oil.

Wish me luck because today was definitely harder than day 1.

VLCD Day 1, Part 2

2011-03-07T19:24:00.002-06:00

Massive headache. Massive. Major caffeine withdrawel or something. Today has really fricking sucked. While EVERY website and blog that I read prepared me to know that the first 1 - 7 days would suck, I guess I was stupid to think that it wouldn't suck for me. Between the constant nausea and headache, I'm beginning to wonder if being fat would be the wiser choice. As soon as these kids are in bed, I'm out for the night.
Happy Mardi Gras!

VLCD Day 1

2011-03-07T10:25:00.002-06:00

Oh dear lord, I'm nauseated. I woke up with horrible indegestion 5 times last night and I'm still belching up the McDonald's that I ate to finish off my gorge day at 8:00pm last night. How am I still belching that up?

I sipped some hot green tea infused with orange for breakfast and I am still horribly nauseated and have terrible indigestion. I'll be taking my drops at 11:30 and eating at 12:00 and I may really have to force myself to even eat lunch at this rate.

I just feel awful and want to go home and sleep until this wears off. I also made the error of taking a Tylenol PM last night which always makes me groggy in the morning so that on top of the nausea is making me whiney and ready to have a big pity party.

Gorge Day 2

2011-03-06T11:06:00.002-06:00

Well, it's only day 2 and I already forgot to weigh in. Crappers! But it's gorge day, so who really cares, right?

Yesterday I weighed out my veggies and meats for a full week. I was pleasantly surprised by how many shrimp I can eat, but saddened by how little ground meat I can eat. Week one will consist of shrimp, tilapia and lean organic grass fed ground beef. The veggies will be broccoli, cauliflower and cucumber and my fruits are oranges and apples.

I found Melba toast and the bread sticks at the store, which thrilled me because for some reason I had no idea if regular ole Winn Dixie would sell these items and bam, they were right there.

Gorge day one was rough going. I had very little appetite at all so I had to constantly remind myself to eat. By the evening, I kicked it up a notch and devoured half of a Brooklyn Pizza and followed it with a whole pint of chocolate ice cream.

So far for Gorge Day 2 I've had biscuits and butter, powdered mini donuts (YUM) and I'm "snacking" on Cadbury mini eggs.

I am so excited and so ready for tomorrow. I've read everywhere that preparation is the difference between failure and success and I'm really pleased with how much I've done to prepare for this. I have Ziggy's full support and I know that will be vital especially on Mardi Gras day and on his birthday next weekend. Maybe this wasn't the best week to start, but is there ever a good week to start? Eventually you just have to jump in.

Wish me luck!

Day 1 - Gorge

2011-03-05T07:32:00.002-06:00

Today is day 1 - first gorge day. Here are the official measurements:

173 lbs
Bust 46 inches
True waist 40 inches
Gut 41 and 1/2 inches
Hips 40 inches
Thigh 21 and 1/2 inches

My measurements, other than being depressing, have confirmed the fact that if I didn't have giant knockers, I would have a comlete box shape of a man. FUN! (NOT!)

The husband is on his way back from IHOP with a ginormous fat filled breakfast for me and I've taken my first dose of drops. I'm a bit concerned about the amount of drops that I need to take. "10 drops under the tongue" is a bit hard to measure in a mirror and I wish that the drops came with a better measurement method to ensure that I'm using the correct amount.

I've purchased my food weight scale and that was fun! My husband came home and asked if we were going into the cocaine sale business and surprised me by knowing how to calibrate a scale without seeing the directions...ex drug addicts are handy sometimes.

The baby is up, so it's time to go! Wish me luck and see you soon!

Preparation

2011-03-02T21:13:00.002-06:00

I've begun the preparation stage for the Hcg diet. I've begun researching food options and recipes, and today I went and got everything on my checklist of approved toiletry items.

This is the part that I'm most afraid of. It's odd that I'm less concerned about learning how to perfectly steam white fish into something edible as I am about giving up my precious Lanolin saturated toiletry items!

So here's the run down. While I won't be starting the drops until Saturday (if my god damn package arrives in time!) I still went ahead and tested out my products tonight. because what girl can stand to have a bag of new toiletry items and wait to use them?! I understand that there are many other options than the ones below, but since I'm short on time to hit the Whole Foods or order things online, I had to make do with the Wal-Mart accessible list of supplies for the first go round. Here's my review:

Secret gel deodorant - no problem, used it for years anyway.

Tom's of Maine Toothpaste - now this one was a bit odd. While my teeth are clean and my breath is sparkly fresh using toothpaste void of chemicals will take a bit to get used to. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that I definitely felt a little hippie-esque while using this product.

Herbal Essence Drama Clean shampoo - this may be the most difficult area to get used to as I have EXTREMELY thick unruly frizzy hair. It smells fabulous and I even had fun moaning like they used to in the old commercials from the 90's. However, I foresee many clips and pony tails this summer because this shampoo isn't going to help my frizz situation at all. I put "google Hcg diet/frizzy hair" on my list for tomorrow to see if there are any tested and approved solutions out there for this.

Neutrogena Foaming Cleanser and Oil Free Face Moisturizer - the cleanser was fabulous and I loved it. The moisturizer left much to be desired. I've been slathering on thick creams and serums for years in my effort to battle wrinkles so this very lightweight moisturizer may take some time to fall in like with.

Ivory soap - no biggie. I've used this for decades because I have a history of UTI's and kidney infections. I've used this unhappily but faithfully since I was 4 years old per doctor's orders.

Last but not least comes the product that I was most concerned about and the most pleasantly surprised over. Johnson's Baby Oil - plain baby oil. This worried me. I've never used baby oil on myself or on my babies and all I could imagine is that I'd become a walking greasy mess or a shriveled prune from giving up on moisturizing altogether.

But this is SO not so. I must confess, I am completely in love with plain ole baby oil. First of all, used sparingly and well rubbed it, it leaves NO greasy feeling. Surprisingly, it leaves your skin so incredibly soft that even my husband couldn't stop rubbing my skin. The scent is a "baby" scent, but it's actually very feminine and reminds me of being 12 years old and spraying Love's Baby Soft all over before heading to the mall. The scent also wears off quickly so by time it's time for boom boom, you won't have to worry about smelling like a daycare. I love this stuff and at $1.99 for a giant bottle, I can't believe I have never tried this before.

So that is my product review. I plan to research a few other shampoos and remedies for dry face skin and frizzy hair, but over all this was pleasantly exciting and fun to try all of these new products that I may have never tried if I weren't doing this.

I also need to look into other issues, such as shaving gels (if I can even use them) and one that's a bit embarrassing, but necessary...um...personal lubricant. It is a MUST for me so I need to find out if anything is available to me for that issue.

I've been eating whatever I want all this week and my 2 gorge days will hopefully be Saturday and Sunday if the god damn drops arrive in time. I'm incredibly excited and was thrilled to find that many cajun spices are Hcg diet approved! WOOT! I might have to eat shit tons of Tilapia, but at least it'll be well seasoned.

The last thing on my list to google tomorrow is "on the go food options" for the Hcg diet. In other words, if I am not in a situation where I have an oven or a microwave, what in the hell will I eat? I'm particularly concerned about Mardi Gras day and can't imagine having to whip out a cold chicken breast on the parade route. I'll do it if I have to, but that has to be something that can be done here.

I probably won't update again until it's time to start so hopefully I'll report in on Saturday with my beginning weight and measurements and my review of gorge day # 1.

The Road to Skinny

2011-03-01T15:47:00.003-06:00

I will be beginning the HCG diet this weekend on Saturday. I don't really care about your opinion on the diet, no offense. I understand that tons of people are against it or think that it is a fad diet that will never work. I've researched every pro and con that there is over several months now and I plan to do it. I'm going to really really attempt to log my journey here. My reason for trying it is that I've tried EVERYTHING else short of surgery that I'm not "fat enough" to have.

I've been the chubby girl since 4th grade. I have never ever been at a normal weight range for longer than 1 full year at a time. The only times that I've achieved a normal weight range have been through incredibly difficult diets that I could never maintain. I've obsessed over my weight for decades now. I have never been fat. I've just always been chubby. I have very small bones and a small frame so being chubby is very unattractive on me. I'm not supposed to be chubby and no other woman in my family is chubby - they are all built like me...but thin.

So here goes. My HCG is on it's way. I have my menu for week 1 plotted out. I have my shopping list for approved personal care items - I am ready!

If this doesn't work, it'll just be another attempt to throw in with all of the other failed attempts. Nothing major will be lost. But what if? What if it works? What if it works long term? What if? That what if is important enough for me to try it.

And for those who say that if I just ate right and exercised I'd be thin...those people can suck me because pshaw, I've tried that. Jesus I've tried it all.

I came to this place very unwillingly. Last Spring I very healthfully lost 25lbs and came within 5 lbs of being in that holy grail "normal" range. October came and 1 small tragedy after another happened and then winter with it's illnesses and blah-ness and here I am - I've gained back almost all 25 of the pounds that I lost.

I am a yo yo dieter. I am faithful to a diet plan and very self controlled and yet it still happens every time where the damn weight comes right back. Accept that my body wants to be 180lbs? NEVER. I will never accept that.

I need to get this under control before Shelby is old enough to catch on to her mother's psychosis on weight.

So anywho - sorry for the rant. I'm going fast because I'm at work on a break so that's probably why my thoughts seem jumbled and raving mad. I'll update on Saturday morning with a start weight and do my best to welcome you along on this journey.

I'm Drug Free, So Put the Crack Up

2010-10-18T13:32:00.001-05:00

I’m 10 days off of the juice now. The “juice” being my post partum Rx for Wellbutrin. I’m handling it ok thus far. I haven’t physically harmed anyone or myself. I’m horribly tired and sluggish and I lack a will to get up and move much, but it’s not as bad as I was expecting it would be. I’ve also gained 4 lbs from the sluggishness and the amount of cokes and coffees that I’ve convinced myself that I deserve to help get me through this.

I actually had 3 months left on the Rx and at my visit for my UTI on Thursday last week, my doctor offered to refill the Wellbutrin script if I felt that I needed it, but I figured that now is as good of a time as any.

Since I grew up with a bipolar dad and my husband is bipolar and I have a vagina, I can get a Wellbutrin script easy so I figured that if I needed it, I could easily get it. In fact, my husband’s psychiatrist once told me that being the caretaker of a mentally ill spouse qualifies me for access to all kinds of fabulous mind altering drugs if I wanted them.

But really? I’m sure that the lowest dose of Wellbutrin available was doing little more for me other than acting as a placebo. If it didn’t come with all the nasty side effects, what I’d really like again is some hard core Paxil. Now that stuff doesn’t play around. My life was like running through fields of daisies in a while flouncy gown when I was on that stuff. But I also didn’t have an orgasm for the entire 2 years I was on Paxil…not that I cared at the time, because I didn’t care about anything! I remember attempting orgasm several times and after trying for 15 minutes getting nowhere just being like, “meh, who needs it anyway”.

Wellbutrin did little more than just take the edge off and it did help tremendously with those “oh my god what have I done please someone come and take this baby away because it’s ruined my life” type of feelings that come in the first few post partum weeks.

Other than my Nuvaring, I’m drug free. Woot Woot! Well, no, I lied. I do still have some Ambien in a bottle and I take one of those every other week or so. But for the most part, I’m all natural right now…which is nice and fun and exciting, but scary too. If my husband goes missing…

Pee Hole

2010-10-15T13:58:00.001-05:00

When I was 3 going on 4, I had something major wrong with my bladder. To this day I’m not sure what the name of the condition was or what it all involved, but my very first real memories of my life begin with the pain of whatever this condition was.

To the best of my knowledge it involved me having constant Urinary Tract Infections one after the other and not being able to be potty trained because something was wrong with the muscles of my bladder. My mother lived through this without the assistance of Dr. Google, so even interviewing her doesn’t supply much more information. Whatever the issue was, it culminated with me having a Bladder Augmentation wherein my bladder size was manually increased in some kind of way that no one has ever been able to fully explain to me and is probably the reason that in adulthood I can drink all day long and only pee once or twice.

When this was all said and done I was left with a 30% loss of my kidney function. I still wet the bed throughout my childhood and even wet it once while sleeping at a friend’s house. I had to wear absorbent underwear and bring spare underwear with me to school through the 3rd grade. I once peed all over myself on the school bus in what I think was Kindergarten because an 8th grader tickled me.

The purpose of me writing this down is because I wanted to write down the very first memory that I have in my life. I can’t recall anything ever happening in my life before this moment. The memory is of me on the operating table. I was four years old. The sedation began wearing off just a few minutes earlier than what my doctor would have preferred and I was laying face down on the table while my catheters were being taped to my back (I was notorious for ripping out my catheters, so the tubes always had to be hidden from me). And I remember crying for my mom. Not screaming, but just crying softly for my mom and my Urologist telling me that it was almost over and that he would take me to my mom.

After that memory I can see cousins coming to see me in the hospital and a few other things but that one moment is the first memory of this life.

Sometimes I wonder what Luke’s first memory is or will be. I look at Shelby and wonder what hers will be and when it will happen and will I be a part of it. Something tells me that what was wrong with my bladder was more serious than my mother ever let me be aware of.

I got a Urinary Tract Infection this week. It was the first one that I’ve had in years and years and it hurt like a bitch and the physical feelings brought back all of these memories. My Urologist has moved far away, but I plan to contact him and see about getting copies of my medical records so that I can finally know the actual name of whatever was wrong with me back then.

I know this is a random blog entry so just go with it and humor me.

FML

2010-09-24T16:36:00.001-05:00

I have some friends all around me who are going through some extremely tough trials in their lives. Their trials are either life threatening or marriage threatening. In comparison, my life is a god damned walk in the park.

Whining makes me feel horribly guilty. It’s worse than the kind of guilt that you feel while jamming a double cheeseburger down your throat and feeding your kids’ chicken nuggets while a Feed the Children commercial is on television.

Thankfully, God has spared me the kind of trials that these friends are facing. For that, I am immensely grateful and blessed. But let me tell you what God is not sparing me from. He’s throwing 16,000 small trials my way – one after the other – occasionally several at a time. None are threatening my life, marriage or livelihood. None are going to kill anyone in my family.

But each one is just large enough to be really fucking annoying and difficult and time consuming and exhausting. Right now I have about 4 at one time and I’m about to start ripping my hair out of my head. I won’t whine or complain or wah wah, but I’d really just like a flipping break.

Easy Breezy Beautiful

2010-09-22T12:54:00.001-05:00

I’ve noticed after catching my reflection in mirrors under certain lighting that my makeup was the wrong color for my skin and no matter how long I spend blending, I still have a noticeable orange makeup line on my neck. I don’t use cheap makeup so I went to the department store to have my foundation color checked out.

According to the “specialist” in the little lab coat, my makeup is a perfect match and I suck and would suck less only if I purchase this and that and this and that. So me and my barely breathing self esteem shuffled off. Seeing that I do spend quite a bit on my makeup already, I didn’t want to spend even more, but I did.

I upgraded to the next most expensive makeup at the department store. Fast forward a few months and I’m still having the same issues. My face is oily, I have noticeable makeup lines and by the end of the day my face just always feels dirty and leaves orange marks on my daughter’s clothes when I hug her.

I’ve tried the powders that you have to sit and scrub into your face for an hour with that kubuki brush that leave my face feeling more sandblasted than fresh and free. I don’t like those. I’ve tried it all. From $20 foundations to $100 foundations – I’ve tried them.

Defeated and feeling like I was destined to a life of orange greasiness, I happened upon a commercial on TV where a gorgeous and young and fresh faced Drew Barrymore says that if I go online to this super cheap makeup’s website, they’ll match me to their makeup using my department store brand’s shades. This makeup is what I wore when I was 11 years old because it’s super cheap. But now only Walmartians and 11 year olds still wear that makeup, right?

I ignore the commercial, but I keep seeing it over and over and over. This past weekend, I gave in and went online. I matched my shade to the department store one that the lab coat chic said was my perfect match, grabbed the baby and my purse and headed out to buy the cheap stuff.

Oh. My. God. My whole life has changed. This cheap ass makeup is my dream come true, no lie. I can’t believe it. I am just stunned at how this stuff feels and works and looks. Why did I give this stuff up at some point in my teen years? My face feels clean all day. Not a drop of oil or grease beyond a natural glow. It matches my skin so perfectly that I can’t see it on my neck anywhere or in any lighting. It never rubs off and when it does, it’s barely noticeable. Totally awesome! Plus it’s so cheap! SO CHEAP! SCORE!

Moral of the story – the pricier something is, doesn’t always guarantee its value.

My Morning

2010-09-20T09:05:00.000-05:00

This morning Shelby was sitting in the living room very busy busy stirring her toy kitchen pot with her toy spoon. Busy Busy. I walked by and went to make the bed. Then I walked back in and she had food all over her face. And I said, "Luke, what did you feed her?". Luke said, "Nothing, why?"

Then I looked in her pot.

Shelby had somehow sat on her pot...and poo'd. Shelby. Was. Eating. Her. Poo.

It was all over her face.

But, at least she was dainty and used a spoon.

That's Just a Sock in My Pants

2010-09-09T14:02:00.001-05:00

When I was a pre-teen I used to wish that I was a boy. I mean that I wished for it INTENSELY and even went so far as to go out into the garage (which was my land of imagination) and pretend speaking like, walking like and acting like a boy. I would stand up to pee. I would stuff a sock down my pants. My desire to be a boy was rather consuming.

I’m not sure if my mother ever noticed this or anything related to it. I’m not sure if she was ever worried or if she was on the phone discussing this with her girlfriends. She’s never mentioned it in all these years so I assume that my secret is safe…until now that I’m sharing it with the Internets, that is.

I’m not a lesbian or transgender or whatever the word would be for a woman who wants to be a man. I don’t wish to be male as an adult. I kissed a girl once and found it to be gross – way too soft and blah. While I do enjoy staring at a nice set of boobs, I seemed to outgrow my desire to actually be a man.

I get all embarrassed when I sit and think of that time now that I’m an adult. What was wrong with me? Was it some kind of obsession of missing having a father in my life? I’ve never asked anyone if it was normal or what the cause could have been or why it didn’t progress into me becoming something different as an adult.

It’s on my mind today for 2 reasons. First, my son will turn 10 next month and the age of 10 is exactly when all of this occurred in my life. I realize now that he is now old enough to be in his room living a life that I know nothing about. It’s not that I think he’s in his room pretending to be a girl. Of course, if he was, I would accept it totally and love him still and take him shoe shopping. It’s that he is hitting an age where I don’t know his every thought or feeling anymore. He’s having curiosities and lessons and fantasies about things that I probably couldn’t imagine nor would I even probably want to imagine.

That is a scary and exciting thought to me. My baby boy is now more of a person and a human being than just my son. When I think on my childhood, 10 years old is really a pivotal age where I go from remembering tidbits of my childhood to really remembering day to day life and events and feelings. So as a parent, if I fuck up now, I can’t just shrug it off and say, “oh he won’t even remember me doing this to him”. He WILL remember it now. This realization has brought a deep sense of responsibility in me on how I speak to him, how I speak to others, my actions and my reactions.

Heavy.

The other reason I’m thinking of my pre-teen male tendencies? My husband has a cold. This naturally means that he may as well have god damn stage 4 lung cancer with how he’s acting and carrying on as if he’s dying. And as he is lying in bed at home right now at 1:58pm on a Thursday actually getting to use a whole sick day for himself because HE is actually ill, I just really hate him for it and I’m jealous and pissed of how cushy most men with wives have it and I really wish for this moment that I was a man.

Almost There

2010-07-19T11:41:00.003-05:00

There is a photograph of me in my photo album from my 30th birthday “party”. My birthday was a Thursday that year and I spent the day at work and the evening at my 8 year old son’s football game. My husband left early from the game to set up my obvious surprise party. The party attendants were (including me) only my husband, my mother and my son.

The girl in that photograph is horribly intensely sad and depressed. It’s an embarrassing photo and I’m ashamed of how I looked in that photo. I can’t believe that is what I offered to the world. I can’t believe that was who I’d become.

I had just begun my 6th cycle of Clomid, a low grade fertility drug whose side effects are nothing “low grade”. I had just hit 180 pounds. And I had no idea that I was only 3 months away from finally acheiving conception of my daughter. I felt hopeless and defeated.

The largest side effect that Clomid had on me was weight gain. My normal comfortable weight is about 140/145. That comfortable weight is where I’ve spent about 75% of my adult life with the other 25% accounting for pregnancies, break ups, new relationship gains, savage hurricanes and general out of hand tom foolery moments.

So here I was at 180. In the photo, I’m wearing a frumpy dumpy sweatshirt (because nothing fit me), my face is bloated beyond belief and despite the balloons, candles, presents and happy child sitting on my knee, I’m about 1 nutshell shy of getting full blown suicidal. My eyes are glistening because I was doing everything in my power to not cry and go insane. I had been trying to conceive for 14 months unsuccessfully.

Trying to conceive my daughter is by far the hardest trial I have ever lived through as an adult. Katrina? That was a breeze compared to 8 cycles of Clomid and 5 additional cycles of temping and peeing on thousands upon thousands of sticks including an additional 4 months crammed into those cycles where my body just didn’t cycle at all.

I am so incredibly sad for that girl in that picture and also for the scared husband who tried so hard that year to make my birthday and fabulous event to get my mind off of failing as a woman at the one thing that I’m biologically supposed to do with my life.

Here I am, close to 3 years later. When I turn 33 in 3 months, I will have a 10 year old son, a 13 month old daughter and I WILL be 140lbs again in those photos (I’m down to 150 now). I will see a different girl in my pictures this year. She’s a happier girl and despite this daughter almost bankrupting us, she has *almost* everything she’s ever asked for in her life.

Now I need to learn to maintain, be grateful and enjoy and not constantly think of everything that I do not have because the majority of those things just don’t matter compared to what I have.

Sleep Training

2010-03-01T21:17:00.002-06:00

The official "sleep training" for my beast of a daughter began tonight. Luke and I secretly call her "The Beast" when she wails...it's our little private joke that we'll tell her about in front of her 1st boyfriend when she's 15.

I've taken the best advice from a handful of friends who've been there done that and a few ideas from some articles books and we've developed our own sleep training schedule.

Will it work? Hell if I know. It's only 9:19pm. The fun doesn't normally begin until 2am when Shelby decides that she needs to have loud conversations with her feet.

She's like that crazy drunk friend in college who just doesn't shut the hell up while you're trying to sleep. She talks to herself all night long. I've gotten to the point where I'm wearing ear plugs and have the monitor on the lowest setting to drown out her babbling.

And so a very tired and quickly aging Ziggy and I (mostly I, because he likes to wait and see if it works before he joins in) started sleep training.

Sleeping through the night (meaning myself) would absolutely change my life! I haven't slept througha night in over 7 months if you consider that I had the RLS in my last trimester and never slept.

And my God I love my daughter, but this is yet another time where I look at my sweet wonderful 9 year old self sufficient little man and realize how many wonderful, frustrating and scary years I have ahead of me before I can collapse next to a 9 year old Shelby on the sofa and just exhale for a little while in that glorious age where they aren't needy babies anymore, but they aren't horrible evil tweens yet either.

I hearby declare that 9 is the greatest age of childhood. Here's to Luke!

Wish us luck and a good night's sleep.

Sniff Sniff

2010-02-24T21:53:00.001-06:00

I'm sad. Ziggy and I are angry with each other. Very angry with each other. But I really could use a hug, or being held or even just a kind word and I'm not going to get it.

Oh Shut Up Already

2010-02-20T14:43:00.003-06:00

This is going to be a rant that some of you may be offended by. If you are offended, I apologize. This rant pertains to SAHM's (Stay At Home Moms). Not all SAHM's are pathetic and whiney. Many are extremely productive, grateful and amazing humans.

I unfortunately am encountering a lot of the opposite though. What is the deal with this new breed of whiney, pathetic, princess pussy SAHM's? I can barely take them and since I have so many of them "friended" lately on Twitter and Facebook, I have to reserve my rant for here.

I work 40 - 45 hours a week. I do homework with my boy. Truck him around to whatever sport he's involved in at the time. Feed the family. Clean the house. Do the laundry. Wash the dishes. Make lunches. Love on the baby. Play board games with the boy. Sex up the husband. And on and on and on and on. I do not think that I am extraordinary in any way. I'm just a working mother and the shit needs to get done. So I do it.

Now, yes, my husband will help out, but he's no model of perfection. In fact, most SAHM's that I know actually have their husbands better trained than I do. My husband will clean the litter, fold some clothes or feed the baby...IF I ask him to. To me, he's a typical male and while I'm interested in one of these pussy men who wait on their women hand and foot, the more I think about it, the more I think that I'd rather have a man for a husband. Yes, he could help out more...but these women who are home all day and then bitch and moan ad nauseum about how their husbands don't help around the house are making it hard for me to choke down the vomit.

I've had 3 women, THREE SAHM's this week whine and yine on Facebook or Twitter about how "they aren't the maid" or "why do I have to do all of the cooking/cleaning" or "wah wah wah wah the laundry is cutting in to my sofa time".

Oh fucking PUHLEEZE! I've had the good fortune to be a SAHM for 16 weeks of my life. Both of those were during my maternity leaves. My children were cared for, my house was spotless, dinner was cooked every night and I STILL had time to watch 2 hours of Desperate Housewives EVERY SINGLE DAY. So really? You aren't fooling me. Nope. Not at all.

So please, stop the fucking whining. You are a HOUSEWIFE. You're JOB is to care for the children and the home. DO YOUR JOB and stop whining. And stop dumping on
your husbands. Like me, your husbands work 40 - 45 hours a week. When we get home, we are tired. If my husband stayed home all day, I would fully expect...nay, I would fully DEMAND that I come home to a clean house, cared for children and dinner on the table.

This is such a blessing that these women have. There isn't a single working mother on earth who wouldn't sacrifice her left boob to be given the opportunity that SAHM's have. And yet, in my experience, you don't hear working mothers whining half as much as SAHM's...maybe because we're too busy?

For once I'd like to hear SAHM's get real and talk about how blessed they are and stop complaining about having to mop a floor.

And I guess maybe the grass is always greener, and again I have many a SAHM that I truly adore and respect because they do work their ass off, recognize their blessings and take care of their responsibilities. But for the rest of them...I'm just so done with hearing the bitching. Get a job AND do everything you are doing and THEN I'll entertain the whining.

Big Ass Photo

2010-02-17T19:31:00.002-06:00

Oops! Sorry for the big ass photo below. My bad. I posted it directly from photobucket. If you want to see it smaller and in full, just click on it and it'll take you to Photobucket. I'm still half dumb ass when it comes to computers.

2010-02-17T08:20:00.001-06:00

Hell Froze Over

2010-02-13T19:23:00.007-06:00

Growing up in New Orleans automatically makes you special. In fact, I'll go ahead and throw this out there - New Orleans IS THE MOST special city in the country...and dare I say...the world? There is no denying it. People who have grown up here can enjoy another city for a few days, but eventually the bland food and dry air will make them stare longingly out the window and dream of arriving home.

People who have lived here at one time and have moved on will take the city with them through the rest of their lives. No matter where they live or where they call home, they will speak of and write of and dream of New Orleans and miss "home". What other city can be destroyed over and over again...from the same type of natural disaster and the same people, the same families rebuild it over and over again and never once consider leaving it?

There is no other city in the world that sparks as much interest in strangers as saying you are from New Orleans. Stand in a room of 100 people, all from different cities in the world and inevitably when the 100 find out that you are from New Orleans, you will immediately become the topic of conversation.

New Orleans is so much more than stupid poor people standing on roof tops waiting to be saved. It is so much more than Mardi Gras. So much more.

The exaggerated notion you've learned of New Orleans from movies and television is hilarious. Only tourists show their boobs. This is fact. There aren't swamps around every corner and the picture of cypress trees that inevitably starts off any story about New Orleans is untrue...although...I DO have a cypress tree in my backyard.

To be a Saints fan has always meant that you are a loser. You have very low expectations as a Saints fan. You don't hope for much. A win here and there is all we've ever asked for. As losers, the Saints have the most ridiculously faithful fanbase in the nation. The Saints have never earned our devotion. They've never deserved our time or our money. But yet we are eternally devoted and even during the Mike Ditka days (oh the horror), the Saints sold an unusually high number of season tickets for such a suck ass team and sold an unusually high amount of merchandise.

Saints fans are intense. My bipolar father was actually banned from watching the Saints for 5 years by his therapist due the extreme amount of stress/disappointment/depression that it caused being a Saints fan.

How many other teams have fans so dedicated that there are volumes of music created for and created about their football team. If you took every song ever written for and about the Saints, you would need at least 3 full length CD's. What other team has fans like that?

I was in the Dome on September 25th, 2006 when the Superdome reopened and the Saints hosted their first home game since Hurricane Katrina against the Atlanta Falcons. I get the chills just thinking of it. We cried. We screamed. We hugged strangers in that game. We stood in a dome that no regular citizen had seen since the horrifying images on TV of dead bodies lying on the ground, water raining in, murders occurring over crackers. It was remarkable.

There are men like my father who have been faithful to the Saints for the full 43 years. Myself? I can only claim 32 of those. I was born at 4:51pm on a Sunday in 1977. A football Sunday in October. The Saints played while my dad waited in the waiting room for me to be born. And of course...the Saints? They lost.

And so when in the 4th quarter Porter intercepted that ball and ran over 70 yards to gain a 14 point lead over the Colts, Ziggy and I stared at each other in absolute and total disbelief and I said, "Ziggy, did the Saint just win the mother fucking superbowl?" And we stared at the TV for about 60 very long seconds until it sunk in.

THE SAINTS WON THE MOTHER FUCKING SUPERBOWL!

We threw a jacket on the baby and set off fireworks in the street along with thousands of other people. Cops threw on their sirens. People screamed. Car alarms were purposely set off. Strangers screamed cheers at each other. Unknown neighbors became friends.

It will, hands down, go down as one of the most memorable days of my life. And in the words of my father, in a cracked shaky voice, he said, "Baby girl, it looks like I can die right this second and die a happy man."

Congrats to the New Orleans Saints and to all of her fans - the faithful, the loyal, the steadfast, the believers...this one is for us. Our moment. Our time. It may never happen again and that is fine by us because even at the age of 80, my 9 year old son WILL remember the night that his Saints won the Super Bowl.

RSV? Yeah, You Know Me.

2010-01-10T19:03:00.002-06:00

We survived! We survived RSV. Ziggy now has this air of confidence about him. He CAN do this. We CAN do this. Shelby is alive and we did it.

The snot of last week quickly progressed into RSV by Tuesday of this week. A doctor visit, an ER visit and several sleepless nights and we made it.

Shelby is staying home from daycare for another day or two because she still has a cough and isn't back to her full eating schedule, but she's well. I owe her wellness to several things.

First, I cannot sing enough accolades to Graco for inventing the battery operated nasal aspirator. Oh. My. God. GET ONE! GO! NOW! GET ONE! You need this thing. You can't live without it. We spent frustrated hours hurting Shelby with bulb nose aspirators getting nowhere fast. The Graco battery operated one is a godsend. Every baby shower that I go to from now until I die, the woman WILL get one of these from me.

Second, I have to applaud Ziggy. His meticulous OCD nature really helped get me through this. He gave our daughter exceptional care and not once skipped a dose of meds or a nose suck or an attempt at feeding. He took night shifts equally with me as he saw me quickly decline into a state of madness from sleep deprivation and worry. He. Was. Awesome. I'm so proud of him. And he's earned his "badge" now for surviving his first infant illness and you can almost see that he is more confident now with her.

Third, I have to applaud Luke. He stepped up BIG TIME. He emptied dryers. Folded towels. Went without attention. He held my hand while I had a mini nervous breakdown on Wednesday night when we couldn't get her fever down and couldn't get her to stop screaming. He slept through screaming and nervous parents pacing past his door. He ate pizza rolls and Cane's for a week since there was no time to cook. He endured the scent of Lysol for days as his paranoid mother sprayed every inch of the house daily. He was such a trooper.

Lastly, and I can't believe I'm doing this, but I have to applaud my MIL who stepped in and provided us with hours and hours of help so that we could work or get away for a bit to run errands. My mother also stepped in and helped hugely, but that's a given...she always does that.

So, she isn't 100%, but she's close. The light at the end of the RSV tunnel is in sight.

Please Say It'snot Snot!

2010-01-04T19:56:00.002-06:00

Baby girl is sounding more and more congested and I'm beginning to worry that my healthy baby luck is running out with this insane weather and dirty people always touching all over her. She's been in day care for 6 weeks and other than the thrush, we've lucked out...I fear my luck is running out. I hear that slight congestion building and worsening and I'm envisioning green snot having to be sucked out, wailing, no sleep, ER running, antibiotic giving HELL.

And it's moments like those where I think, WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE!?!?! I made it through all this crap with Luke already. Who in their right mind would CHOOSE to do this again? Luke is at an age where you throw Triaminic down his throat and send him off to school with a pack of Kleenex. I did this already. Am I on crack rock for willingly choosing to do it again?

And then it all hits me in waves again. The regret. Yes, friends. Regret. And then after the regret is the guilt, the soul bashing heart wrenching guilt over even thinking about the regret. But that's the truth and it is what it is. I've upped my anti depressant Rx and it still is what it is, so I am guessing that these feelings I'm having could possibly be normal and something that I just need to endure and sort through and deal with.

Being the baby of the family, it makes me wonder...did my mom go through this regret over me? Then the guilt? Then the regret? Then the guilt? Maybe I should ask her. Although with her level of perfection, I seriously doubt she ever felt/thought such things.

When baby girl is on the floor giggling and kicking and cooing and when we're snuggling and she falls asleep on my chest, there is NO regret. None. I did this on purpose and I love it. But no matter how incredibly those moments are, the regret still manages to rear it's ugly head.

Especially for Lan, to Entertain Her in Her Recovery

2010-01-03T20:16:00.003-06:00

Perhaps my New Year's Resolution should be to blog more often? God knows I've been horrible at it. I see these women who manage to keep up with their blogs daily, have children, husbands and jobs and I wonder HOW? What do they sacrifice in order to be able to keep up? Sleep? Sex? Food?

I haven't figured it out, but I vow to try.

So much has happened. There are so many blogs that I've written in my head. There was the "Why does Aunt Martha seem to have a giant cold sore EVERY Christmas" blog in which I regaled you with tales of family and in laws that would make your own families seem more normal for you as my Christmas gift to you.

There was the "Did you just set a flare off in my backyard and goose me?" blog in which I spoke of the drunk/fighting couple that we invited to our house for New Years who made my own marriage and my bipolar husband seem like an episode of Leave it to Beaver...and who also allowed me to view jealousy in my very un-jealous type husband for the first time, which was kind of cool to be honest.

And who can forget the "Mom, what is an orgasm?" blog where I wrung my hands with worry over my son's recent growth spurt of sexual questioning.

Ah yes, you've missed so much. From Thanksgiving through New Years, there has been one recurring theme to all of my family gatherings and it is this: There are two certifiably nuts men in my life. Both my father and my husband are bipolar; bipolar enough to be able to legally claim it as a disability and yet, those two men are the most sane people in my family. It's them that I go to in order to discuss all of the nuts and wackos.

So you've missed a lot and yet, it's much of the same. I love my son, my daughter and my husband. The majority of the rest of my family, including the in laws can suck me. My job pays the bills and thank gawd for it, but I wish the building would go up in flames. My friends are gems and here we are, pretty much right where we started except that now there is a little pink ball of fluff to share the joy with.

Last year at midnight on 1/1/09, I kissed my husband and desperately wished for a baby. This year at midnight on 1/1/10, I kissed my son and thanked God that we made it through 09 and just desperately wished to make it through the next year. (Side note: I didn't kiss the husband at midnight, because he was busy trying to keep flare guy from setting our house on fire.)

My resolutions are many this year. Whereas last year ALL I resolved to do was get knocked up, this year is tremendously different. I've resolved to be more selfish (which if you know me, is actually going to be unusually hard). I've resolved to be kinder to myself. I've resolved to have more sex with the husband (it's free and it's fun and it brings us closer together, so we should do it more, right?) And I've resolved to spend less money and get a grip on some debt.

So that's that. Sorry I've been away so long. I probably have zero readers left. Oh well, a new year, new topics, new friends to be found.

Happy New Year to you!

Maternity Leave

2009-11-11T14:22:00.002-06:00

My maternity leave officially ends in 2 more days. I am sad, excited, nervous, wrought with fear, anxious and jumping out of my skin all at the same time.

This maternity leave has meant so much to me. Not only did I give birth and nurture an amazingly gorgeous little girl for 8 weeks, but I also got to be so much more of a mom to Luke. I got to bring him to school every morning...with no need for before care. I got to pick him up from school everyday at regular pick up time, do homework with him, study with him and basically spend 3 - 4 hours a day with him more than what I normally ever was able to spend since I was on maternity leave for his birth.

I was able to get to know my son on a deeper level. Share more jokes. Relax more with him. Be the mom to him that all of us working moms dream that we can be even though we accept that we never can and never will.

It was exhausting. Maternity leave for Luke was filled with getting out of our 1 bedroom apartment and going for walks, shopping, meeting up with people for lunch. Maternity leave for Shelby actually revolved much less around Shelby. We got out of the house for brother's football games and practices but now with a 2000 square ft house to keep clean, the husband and the son - my days really revolved around chores, chores and more chores.

In fact, I've learned to do chores so slowly and lackadaisically now, that I fear the first few weeks of returning to work, my house will begin to house rats and other kinds of vermin. I have no idea how to rush, hurry, bust ass anymore like I used to and I'm a bit worried about that since that is the personality trait that I admire most in myself.

So this time next week, I'll be at work, making money and rushing home with kids in tow after it's already dark outside. Eating pizza rolls and folding laundry while carrying Shelby in a Baby Bjorn to multi task. I'm just ready to get there...this waiting for next week to finally happen kind of sucks. I want to just jump in and get a schedule and prove myself to myself again...and get that so desperately needed paycheck.

So thank you, Shelby. Thank you for the privelage and the honor to just be your mother. But thank you also for giving me the privelage and the honor to have more time with your brother. I love you both so very much, but mommy has to go kick some ass at work so that you can grow up knowing that you can be whatever it is in this world that you want to be, and so that brother will choose a woman who gets off her ass and doesn't expect hand outs.

Love

2009-10-19T11:37:00.002-05:00

The only thing missing from this photo is Luke. If Luke were in it, then you would see the 3 things that I live for. Meet Ziggy, the best daddy and husband I've ever known.

Cover your Boobs!

2009-10-12T11:42:00.003-05:00

I am very confident in my relationship with Ziggy. He is very well loved and very well taken care of physically, emotionally and sexually. I never worry over him straying or cheating and I know that even though we are technically "newlyweds", we've been together for over 5 years now, married for 2, and I don't foresee myself needing to worry in the future.

We're best friends and are both pretty confident that if such a thing as soul mates exists, then we are each other's.

However, do you have to sling your boobs in my husband's face every time you are near him? My ample size D's are plenty enough for him, but having yours in his face every time he sees you is starting to piss me off.

Also, please buy a bra that fits. Size D chics should NEVER wear demi cups outside of the bedroom. Demi cups on a D chic cause nasty over spillage that while sexy in the bedroom, it makes you look like you have a butt crack in between your boobs when they spill out of your demi cups under an incredibly tight white t-shirt.

Size D chics (and DD chics trying to fool everyone into thinking they are D chics) need full coverage bras outside of the bedroom. We need hefty straps and full support in order to look smooth and presentable. My husband is fully aware that I'll wear whatever he wants me to wear in our bedroom, but when I leave the house, he prefers that I give the appearance of being a lady...with children and a husband who can cover her shit up and not show it all to the world. He finds it more sexy that I reserve that display ONLY for him and that I'm not showing it off to every man I see.

My boobs belong to Ziggy and Ziggy alone and I wish yours would belong only to your husband as well. So while I'm not concerned that Ziggy notices or even cares about your display of boobage, I would still appreciate it if you cover your shit up, show yourself some respect and show your friends some respect. There are children around and I don't want my son seeing over 60% of what you have under there just by coming to you to ask you for a god damn Capri Sun.

Thanks.

Cheating

2009-10-03T18:12:00.002-05:00

I have LOTS to say, but I'm going to cheat with a photo of each of my babies and I'll try to post more on Monday.

All by Myself

2009-09-28T13:16:00.002-05:00

Today is my first day all alone with Shelby. Ziggy returned to work. Luke went to school. Just me...and her.

I planned tons of chores and projects and all kinds of things to keep me busy so I wouldn't get too sad being alone and so far so good. I have only 2 hours left before it's time to go get Luke from school and I'm almost amazed at how fast the day flew by.

I'm 10 days post partum. My incision is looking good. I'm down to about 1 percocet a day and 1 600mg Motrin. Nnot too shabby. I even took my first stab at post partum exercise today with a light walk in the neighborhood. I was really crampy after the walk, and I had a lot more blood than I've had in the past couple days...so that worries me a smidge, but I'm just going to chill for the next 2 hours and rest up.

Let's talk about weight...to hold myself accountable, I will try to post my weight at least once a week. I was 145 when I got married. In the 18 months of trying to conceive, I gained 30 pounds (thank you for that, Clomid!). I was 175 when I got my BFP and I was 180 at my first pre natal appointment.

At my pre op appointment the day before delivery, I was 199. This morning, I am 174. So I'm guessing that since I'm almost 2 weeks post partum, 170ish will be where I'll be starting from. That's about 20 - 25 pounds away from "happy weight"....my sexy playah weight.

Let's go!

Here she is!

2009-09-24T11:55:00.003-05:00

And Then She Was Here

2009-09-20T17:53:00.002-05:00

Shelby Renee was born at 9:02am on 9/18/09 weighing in at 8lbs 3oz and 19 and 1/2 inches long.

She is gorgeous and wonderful and all things fabulous.

I always hated it when people post ridiculously long birth stories, because really, who cares? But now that I've experienced another "birth story", I DO plan to write it out and now I feel like a goober for thinking birth stories are dumb.

I just took 15mg of Percocet, so if I made errors, don't judge me.

I came in at 6:00am on 9/18/09 for my scheduled c-section. I got my IV, I got some anti nausea drugs and I was monitored with the belly heart/contraction monitors for a while.

At 8:00am, they wheeled me into the operating room. When you're having a scheduled c-sec, they do your anesthesia right there in the frickin operating room, so while you're waiting for your anesthesiologist, you get to sit there and read/stare at every sign/tool/machine and basically scare the shit out of yourself.

The anesthesiologist came in and game me my spinal. While I'd rather never have a spinal again for the rest of my life, it wasn't all that bad. It felt similar to the epidural I had for Luke 9 years ago and took a ridiculously long time (to me, anyway) to take affect.

They laid me down and started with all their "doctor speak". I asked for my husband 10 times and I started freaking out. They had made the first cut without my husband in the room!!! A nurse ran out to get him. Ziggy said that when he walked in, the doctors already had bloody gloves and there were blood drops on the floor.

I wasn't hurting, but I could literally FEEL everything they were doing. It felt like rubber bands snapping in me. Between that and finally having Ziggy sitting next to me with a terrified look in his eyes, I had a full blown panic attack. They strapped down my arms and immediately shot me up with a drug that I would later learn was Ketamine.

Now here is finally the benefit of having an ex-addict husband. He can explain drugs to me better than any pharmacist can. Ketamine's "street name" is Special K. When abused, it is used as a hallucinigenic and yes, my dear husband has experienced it many times.

Let's just say that the next five minutes were the strangest and best 5 minutes of my life. I was high as a kite and I could have cared less if they killed me or not. Fabulous shit, that Ketamine is, and if you ever have the chance to experience it, by all means, go for it!

I remember seeing Shelby naked and being carried through the room. I remember them calling Ziggy over to see her. He cut her cord, which he swore he wouldn't do, but he did it. I remember him looking at me like he knew what I was experiencing with the Ketamine and he was so sorry and so scared to leave me. He kissed me and whispered "don't worry, it's a short high, I promise" and he left with Shelby.

I was left alone then with 2 doctors who were sewing me up and having coffee talk with me...kind of strange to talk to your doctor about her weekend plans when you know that she's stitching up your innards while she speaks. I got more shots of god knows what and was wheeled to recovery.

Once in recovery, I was shot up with Dilaudin, another lovely drug that my husband later explained to me and called it "pretty good shit". Again, so great to have a husband who once abused almost everything I was being given.

Shelby was taken for hours. And hours. And hours. Erick was being given all of the info - no one was talking to me...I guess so that I would relax? Who knows, but it took 7 and 1/2 hours for me to actually get to hold my daughter. True to his word though, Ziggy made sure that I was the one who held her first.

She had swallowed amniotic fluid on her way out and had fluid in her lungs and she was breathing too fast so she had to be monitored in the nursery for a while. It was torture waiting for her, but once we finally got her...she was ours.

The best part of this whole experience? Watching Ziggy become a father. I've never been more impressed with a man in all my life. When I say that he stepped up, I truly mean that she is 2 days old and I already feel like I could go out of town for a week and Ziggy would be just fine alone with his daughter. He's jumped right in and it's a beautiful sight to see.

So that's my birth story. I'm in the hospital until tomorrow so I need to get my butt back in bed. I was diagnosed with bronchitis Friday night after my doctor realized that even with all the drugs, I was coughing through my whole surgery(fabulous, right?). So I'm on about 9 million extra drugs for that, plus I have to do breathing treatments all day long. This was actually the really shortened version of the birth story, but no need to bother you with pages of details that are probably only important to me.

Smooches and hugs. I promise to post a photo when we get home.

Saying goodbye to say hello

2009-09-16T17:42:00.002-05:00

Today was my last official day at work until November 16th. It was a truly bittersweet goodbye. I bitch and gripe about the people at work...A LOT. But in all honesty, I absolutely LOVE my job and for the most part, I genuinely care for the company that I work for...it's just those idiot people that I can't stand.

The older folk call me an old soul at work, because I'm one of the few in the younger generation who is a company person...I work for the company, take pride in the company and my job for the company really matters to me. The majority of Generation X'ers are only there for the paycheck and absolutely NOTHING more. They are there for their 40 hours and the second you need them to stay one minute late they are screaming, "PAY ME!" They're never happy - ever. Nothing is good enough, and no amount of pay or benefits ever makes them happy. The only thing that makes them happy is 5:00pm.

I'm the type who thinks of work and brainstorms ideas on weekends, checks my emails when I'm out sick even though I'm not paid to and feels real guilt when I've missed tons of work for personal reasons. I feel a personal need to find the money when the company is struggling despite the knowledge that our President drives a Porche AND a Mercedes and probably just got a $100,000 bonus. Many call that stupid, but just a generation ago that's how most people were. Most people worked in the same place for 30+ years and felt a part of their company. Not so much anymore.

So why do I feel this way about a company that when most people leave it, they absolutely hate it and bad talk it for life? Well, it's complicated. While I see, and for the most part agree with most of their grievances, I'm also of the sort of people who thinks - It's WORK people, shut the fuck up, quit your whining and work. Work is not there for your entertainment or to please you. We've become a country of pansy sissies who do nothing but whine and think that we deserve handsome compensations just for showing up.

Yes, my company is still a "good ole boy" company and that royally pisses me off. Sure they make me fib on tax returns, don't give me reviews when they should and they take me for granted. I watch every day as 10 men pile into giant SUV's for company paid 2 hour lunches while the women take less than an hour so that the company will keep running.

But and here's the big but - they also put food on my table, put my kid through private school, pay for the clothes on my back and afford me every luxury that I look around myself and see.

Not only that, but for the past 10 years, through marriages and a divorce, through hurricanes and disasters and personal tragedies and traumas, the one, the absolute one and only constant that I've had in my life is this very company. They've taken a college dropout and put her in charge of a $18 million dollar Accounts Receivable department. In return, I give them the best that I have to give them and I believe that for being a woman, under 35 without my official "degree", that I am paid pretty fairly although I sure would like about $10k more!

They sent me salesmen to demo my flooded house after Katrina before the mold had a chance to grow and the owner handed me a $5000 personal check under the table just to convince me to keep working when I could have just relied on FEMA and the government to take care of me while I sat in my house watching TV. They put my family in a gorgeous hotel for Hurricane Gustav and it's things like this that remind me that the grass is not always greener on the other side and that occasionally loyalty pays off.

So that's my soap box for today. Yes there are better companies out there. Shoot - there are better men out there, but I chose my husband, right? I choose this company and I'm faithful to it and honestly, it's hard for me to walk away for 8 - 10 weeks without a tear in my eye and a feeling of...so what do I do now?

Also - you may never ever hear me talk so kindly about my job ever again...it's half hormones here probably! But for the most part, it holds true - most of the people can take a flying leap off a bridge, but I would still be loyal to the company.

Crazy Bitch

2009-09-03T20:36:00.002-05:00

I don't even remember when this all began. All I remember is that it was well over a year and a half ago...probably even longer since she was pregnant at the time and her daughter is 17 months old - probably around my first few months of Clomid.

In a two part blurry haze, my whole work world was turned inside out. Incident # 1 occurred on the day that Harry Lee's death was announced. Harry Lee was the long running Sheriff of the town I live in. He was loved or hated by many. As for me, I neither loved or hated him...I honestly gave 2 shits about him, but many people were passionate in their love/hate.

It was a WELL known fact that our Security Director HATED him. As a former police officer who worked under this Sheriff, he said on many occasions that he would piss on his grave and dance around it after he died. He had a photo of him upside down in his office. It was a deep down kind of hatred. When I heard the death notice on the radio, said Security Director was at the copy machine outside my office. I hollered out, "Hey Henry, did you hear about Harry Lee?" And Henry replied something that went along the lines of that it was a very happy day for him. We both laughed and went our separate ways. That is incident #1.

Incident # 2 occurred shortly then after. I had an employee with A LOT of drama going on in her life. In a matter of weeks, she miscarried, got pregnant again, had a mother in a coma and a grandmother dying. She would come and talk to me often about the suffering that her grandmother was enduring and how she wished that they would just pull the plug and allow her grandmother to rest. She spoke about her desire to see her grandmother at peace to me at least 5 times.

Her grandmother died and she left a voicemail on my cell phone. Thinking that I was being a good "boss", I called her back to offer my condolences. I got her voicemail. I left a message to the effect of, "I'm so sorry to hear about your grandmother and I'm happy to know that she's finally at peace and no longer in pain." That ends incident # 2.

I'm not sure of the timeline here, but shortly thenafter, perhaps even in the same week, I am informed by Human Resources that my employee has filed a formal complaint against me. The basis of her complaint? Oh it was as vast and as broad and the Mississippi River. I was mean/rude/insensitive/unprofessional blah blah blah.

Two things specifically mentioned in her complaint were that I had "celebrated the death" of a political figure...I think she even complained about me expressing my political views at work because of my celebration of the death of the Sheriff. The other specific complaint that I remember is that in my voicemail to her after her grandmother's death, she twisted my words and claims that I had said that I was happy that her grandmother had died. She even played the voicemail so that it is now recorded and probably sitting in my file for life.

Weeks of hell followed. Though my boss supported me to my face, he sat next to me in total silence while I was YELLED at by our President for not handling this employee better. She spread her sob story across the building and I could feel the glare of 50 people every day wishing for my demise. In the end, neither of us was punished per say, but I was forced to be kind to her and manage her and be her BFF to make her feel all warm and cozy inside. Gag. But...I did it. And since then, we have had not a single problem. We don't like each other, but we work well together and can even chat together without issue.

Fast forward. Things have been quiet. It's been about 6 months since she had a family tragedy...which is a really long time for her since EVERYTHING is always a tragedy and tragedy seems to seek her. Her work product began failing and we all started noticing her on the phone with personal calls all the time. She came to me to let me know...her father was dying.

FUCK!

In the past 6 months her father has been on the brink of death every second. Also for 6 months, the WHOLE building has heard of her hatred for him. A hatred so deep that her plans for his memory was that she was shipping his body off to a University for medical research against his will after he died so that she wouldn't have to pay for a burial. There was no obit in the paper when he finally died either. She would laugh and talk about shipping his ashes via UPS to some brother that he had and "letting him deal with the asshole".

She needed to leave work for half days CONSTANTLY to rush to her dying father's side and handle his affairs and then about 80% of her work time was spent gaining sympathy from everyone she came in contact with - customers, salesmen, janitors - everyone over her poor dying father.

Last Saturday morning, my phone began ringing at 6:00am. My phone rang or tweeted for text messages 10 times in 3 hours from 6:00am - 9:00am. It was her. Her father died and of course the ENTIRE world just HAS to know about it regardless of the time. My husband, who throws newspapers as a second job on Friday nights and had just gotten in bed for the night was so livid with the calls that I had to talk him out of answering and cursing her out.

I chose not to answer. I chose not to return her calls. First, I was exhausted and trying to get some sleep seeing that I am 9 months pregnant here. Second, once I did wake up, I didn't stop until that night since SIL's shower was at my house that day. Third, I was afraid to call her because I KNEW she would let it go to voicemail and then use whatever I said against me later. Fourth, I was fucking pissed off at her rudeness and disrespect of my personal time.

I called her on Monday when I got to work to verify that there were no funeral arrangements (because we send flowers if there are) and she sounded fine and everything was well.

She returned to work Wednesday and has now spend the past 2 days drumming up support for her next formal complaint. According to her, I am insensitive and evil and a horrible human for not calling her to console her this weekend over the death of her father. I've already been told by two Human Resources employees and the head Security whateverthefuckheis guy that not calling her was indeed insensitive of me.

And I know that you may be saying "who gives a fuck"...but well...I have a lot on my mind. First, I will only be at work for 7 more business days and I have shit tons of work to complete and I don't have time for hours of investigations and interrogating and being yelled at. Second, I will be out for 8 weeks, which gives her 2 months to build up her support and convince the world of how victimized she's been by me. Third, annual increases just so happen to be decided AND implemented while I'll be on maternity leave and I'm scared of this issue being first and foremost on my bosses minds and not how I've worked like their bitch for the past nine months to prepare for me being out. Fourth, I'm fucking 9 months pregnant and I'm in so much physical pain that I'm liable to throw a phone at her head. And finally, fifth, I'm already worried about my job and finances and money - I don't think that any woman goes on maternity leave feeling 100% secure with her job and money and all that.

So this is what is consuming my mind. I can't get past it, even though I know I should. Her and I are both off of work until Tuesday, so I know I should at least just let it go until then...but I just can't. I'm freaking worried out of my mind.

No formal complaint has occurred yet, but I just know...I really just know that this isn't over yet and that she will take it as far as she can take it.

We Are Ready...I think...

2009-08-10T19:16:00.002-05:00

Well, the shower is done. Every "need" item for the first 4 months is located somewhere in this house. So to outside eyes, we are totally ready for our daughter's arrival.

So why do I feel so unprepared? Maybe it's just my inner demons reminding me of EVERY error that I made with Luke? Maybe it's my MIL's constant chatter that makes me want to remind her that though I may not have raised 3 babies, I have raised 1 baby, so maybe she shouldn't feel the need to speak to me as if I'm a retard, and that she can save that for her other son's wife who not only couldn't pronounce the word "colander" at her wedding shower, but had to ask what it was used for? Maybe it's my fear of how all these coming changes will affect my son, my marriage, my job, my sanity, my husband's sanity, my finances?

I don't know, but I just feel like the most prepared unprepared mother on earth.

I've begun having dreams where I can actually feel every second of Luke's c-section...over and over and over again. And yes, I know, women have babies every day...I'm not a jack ass, I'm just having some pre baby jitters is all so shut up and let me have them.

I planned to write much more, but I have to cook the noodles for the meatballs and I have clothes galore to fold and beds to make. I'll return sooner than later.

Screwing with your head

2009-08-06T20:28:00.003-05:00

Someone asked me today when my due date is. I told them, "today". So now in 4/5 weeks when I'm still around, they'll be confused and scratch their heads. Since I get this question at least 5 times a day at work, my new answer will always be, "today" now that I saw how fun it was to say it as my answer once today.

I'm so sick of answering the endless stream of questions. It's never ending. Why are people so ridiculously nosey about a pregnant woman? I walked into the lunchroom quietly and unspoken to 1000 times last year. This year, I hear Mission Impossible music as I try to make it from my desk to the bathroom and to the ice machine on the way back before I'm felt up or questioned to death by 3 people.

I'm sick of people pointing out that I'm waddling. Don't you think I fucking know that I'm waddling? What, you think that I'm walking like this for your entertainment? Do you think that pointing it out to me and laughing is serving any purpose other than to elevate you from douche bag to value size douche bag?

I'm sick of people asking me if I'm planning to breast feed...while staring at my rack while they speak the question. Why are you asking me that? Are you hungry? Do you need a visual for when you jerk off? Did your mommy not love you when you were a child?

I'm sick of people asking me if I'm delivering vaginally or by c-section. WHAT THE FUCK? Do you really need to know that? Can I ask you if your husband's dick is circumcised or not? Jesus Christ, people!

I'm sick of people asking me how I'm holding up in this heat. Well. It's hot. I'm 200 pounds now or damn close to it. I've got a 4 pound transverse watermelon hitching a ride on my pelvis. How the fuck do you think I'm holding up? Now get out of my way so I can get into the air conditioning.

I'm sick of people sticking their fingers into my stomach while I walk down a hallway and then laughing in a Butthead type fashion while telling me they can't believe how hard my stomach is. OK, now can I reach down your husband's pants uninvited and let you know that I can't believe how hard HE is?

I'm sick of people watching every bite I take and making comments in baby talk about my food. "Oh baby wants banana does she?" Um, no you fucking moron. Baby just wants amniotic fluid these days. Her mother wants a banana and why do you have to have a running commentary on every morsel I put into my mouth? I enter the lunch room every day and 5 heads immediately turn to see what I'm eating and then comment on how the baby must be hungry today.

I'm taking a week of vacation next week to spend a solid week with my son before he isn't just my only child anymore and before he starts school. I can't tell you how badly I am in need of a week away from these idiots that I work with.

People suck.

Time. It flies.

2009-07-29T20:36:00.002-05:00

Wow. 60 days left. I can't believe it. So where the hell have I been? Well, I know I suck, trust me I do. We had all sorts of things happening. We finished up renovations, I was diagnosed with low amniotic fluid and spent 2 weeks on partial bed rest (in bed right after work and all weekend), I got sick, Luke got sick, Ziggy had tooth issues, Luke got braces and I hit a slump of 3rd trimester depression, which is probably the primary reason for my absence.

I'm so huge and so uncomfortable and in so much pain CONSTANTLY between my tail bone and my pubic bone and my feet and my everything and rather than whine over it all, I just chose to hide for a while.

I guess the biggest news of the past few weeks is Luke's braces. Wow, what a trauma this has been. He's only about to turn 9, so he has braces SUPER early and because of that he lacks some of the maturity that braces require - to understand pain and that it won't last forever. He lays on the floor for literally HOURS at a time and just wails over the pain. I'm pretty sure that it's half drama and half pain since a game of Clue or a swim in the pool will suddenly take his mind off of everything and he becomes fine.

He got them so young because he plays football and he had a serious permanant buck tooth that was sticking out so far that one solid hit in a football game could sentence him to a lifetime of a falsie. Plus, he was made fun of a few times in school this past year over his tooth and that was reason enough to get the braces on and get him past this as quick as possible.

It's got me thinking a lot about my own childhood and how different Luke's is. Luke has never experienced severe emotional or physical pain yet. Yes, his parents are divorced, but we divorced when he was 6 months old and he's never seen us argue and he has pretty great (for the most part) step parents. It's a far cry from having to call 911 when you're 8 because daddy is beating the shit out of mommy...which was a regular occurance in my fabulous childhood.

For the most part, Luke is living the childhood that I always wished I'd had. His parents are involved in his life and see him as important enough to spend our time at ballparks for hours on end to cheer him on and buy into his dreams. He never has to worry about bills not getting paid (my mother REGULARLY dumped her financial woes onto her children). He has a house and a backyard and his own room and his dad doesn't get drunk and accidentally mistake his bed for the toilet.

It's a fairly charmed life. So when he's wailing on the floor, while most of me pains inside with him and just wants to sit and stroke his hair...there's another part of me that thinks, yep son, this is life, this is pain, I'm sorry you had to meet pain, but here it is, might as well get acquainted with it.

Does that sound horrible? What I'm trying to say is that while his life is charmed, I don't want him to grow to adulthood totally oblivious to difficulties in life and I wonder if maybe I'm partially guilty of overcompensating for my own suck ass childhood by making his life too easy...too cozy...too painfree.

I mean, which life is better? The suck ass life that chews you up and spits you out as an overly independant and responsible adult. Or the charmed life that leaves you naive and vulnerable and brings pain when the perfect world collapses around you.

I don't really want Luke to have either of those lives. I'd like him to fall somewhere in the middle. So while he wails, I do the dishes. I do an appropriate amount of hair stroking and catering and Motrin pushing and ice cream scooping, and then I leave him to figure this all out on his own.

I'm not sure if that's the right decision and I guess I'll find that out if/when he ever requires therapy in adulthood, but for now, it seems right so I'll just go with that instinct for now.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone

2009-07-03T21:09:00.003-05:00

I know that my last post was a bit depressing. Sorry about that. I shouldn't blog right smack in the midst of financial demise. Things are better. Long story, but we liquidated some assets, put in a call to a father and had a stroke of luck with an a/c repairman and all is ok, well, not ok, but livable.

Luke is having a sleepover tonight. His little friend is also an "only" child - I say that because a 28 week old fetus does not yet make Luke less of an only child at home. I thought it would be great for Luke to have a buddy to hang out with for the night (read: not leach onto mommy ALL night for all of his entertainment needs). So I set up the sleepver with another only child from his football team.

So what happens when an only boy child who loves his mommy has another only boy child over to sleep who loves his mommy? Well, you get TWO 8 year old boys following your every move, demanding every second of your attention and needing you to entertain them. They want to watch TV with me even if it's "What Not to Wear" - the Mayim Balik episode no less that I've been dying to see since I was a HUGE Blossom fan. (Speaking of which, when the hell will Blossom reruns ever start?)

On top of that, they are VERY different children. Luke gets his fill of TV, he really does. I've failed at not allowing the TV to babysit my kid on occasion. However, he LOVES to be active also. He plays basketball, swims, plays games - he does...well...stuff. If you give Luke the choice between playing Monopoly or watching the newest Disney Pixar movie in 3D, he will ALWAYS choose the board game or other activity other than TV or movies.

This boy on the other hand doesn't want to do ANYTHING other than watch TV. Hours upon HOURS of TV. He wants constant food supply (he's a bit portly) and a TV.

So I'm sitting here typing this to try and stay awake a bit longer since I guess that being the mom of the sleepover, I should technically stay awake until they go to sleep? Not too sure on that one, but I feel like I should at least.

And I feel bad for Luke. He keeps asking the kid to do stuff and all the kid wants to do is lay on my living room floor, stare at the TV and stuff Cheez Its down his throat. Oh and stick his dirty feet all over my furniture. We aren't snooty "no feet on the table" type folk - but if the bottoms of your socks are BLACK because your mother keeps a dirty house, then I'd prefer if you don't put your feet on my television screen when this is the first time that you are at my house...or ever for that matter.

So I'm trying to think of fun google searches to keep me occupied. I am so tired. I hope his parents come for him early. He's already put in his breakfast order. Ugh.

Money

2009-06-30T18:17:00.003-05:00

March started off fabulous. Our tax return gave us enough money to pay down a good chunk of credit card debt, put a little in our savings, pay 6 months of car insurance in advance, pay off Luke's tuition and summer camp bills for 08/09 and we still had $1000 that we specifically decided to use to start renovating our 1980's house.

Fast forward to June. One credit card is totally maxed. Another one is close. Our saving's balance is about to be totally depleted and I'm debating selling my husband's semen.

How did this happen? We're used to highs and lows, but man, this is the lowest that we've come. How did we let this happen?

Well, there was $1000 for the pool (that I don't regret since we use it TONS and it keeps us from spending more money out entertaining ourselves), there was new tires for both cars, a new windshield for me, baby furniture, a renovation that had a $1000 budget and ended up close to $5000 (renovating one room led us to renovating 3 rooms and a hallway), we decided that yes we COULD afford to pay Luke's tuition for 09/10 in 4 interest free installments instead of 12 payments like we normally do, Luke needs braces, Ziggy lost a lot of income and the finale was the a/c breaking.

For Ziggy's income questions - he's delivered the newspaper on Friday/Saturday/Sunday nights for the entire time he's been sober (part of his ammends to pay off his debts that turned into a luxury monthly paycheck for us to blow that we didn't want to give up that then turned into a necessity). Well, the paper scaled him back to one day a week due to general cut backs (less people buying the paper) and bam, there goes $400 a month that we were used to having.

Anyway, I'm just throwing myself a little pity party. I know it will be ok. My dad had offered last year to help me if ever Luke needed braces, so I plan to swallow my pride and call daddy. That will help a big bit. Ziggy and I have some other ways to get cash that aren't illegal, although Uncle Sam will penalize us a bit. So it's not like I'm asking you all to send me canned goods...yet.

So that's life right now. It's all I can think about and I just want to get out of this black hole soon. I'm not sure if it's earned bad Karma, or just my turn for a shit pile to be thrown on me, but enough already. Please?

The End

2009-06-21T19:50:00.003-05:00

Hopefully I can get through the rest of this mess of a story tonight. This part of the story is honestly SO busy and so complicated that I still have no idea how to even verbalize it properly.

So we all evacuated for Katrina. Luke went to Natchitoches, LA with his dad and his dad's family. I went to Lafayette, LA with my dog, and the rest of my family went to Baton Rouge, LA. Ziggy went to Houston, TX with his family. We were friends at this point, but not together yet and my family would have preferred that he drop dead at this point, so much of our friendship was kept quiet so that I wouldn't get regular lectures and eye rollings from family.

We expected it to be a 2 - 3 day evacuation, like normal, which is why I sent Luke with his dad - since it was his dad's weekend time with him anyway. (I say that because people often don't understand how I could "send my kid away" for such a tragedy - we had NO idea that it would be a tragedy, and a weekend with his dad in Natchitoches was actually a normal event for him).

I got regular texts from Ziggy. The phone lines were so jammed and so many towers were knocked down that if you didn't know how to text, you learned fast because it was the only way to communicate. My mother had stayed at home and didn't evacuate.

Once the horrors on the TV began, all of us 20 and 30 something year olds who had never in our life dealt with tragedy all began to grow up and start making real life decisions - if my home is destroyed, what will I do, where will I live, where will I work, how do I pay my bills if I'm not working, do I go home or just sit in this hotel, is my mom alive, how do I get FEMA help, where is the Red Cross station?

Once the damage of the area was assessed and we all knew how bad or good it was, I came home to get to work. At a time like this, your job is absolutely essential, if you still have one, and if my job had asked me to fly to the moon, I probably would have. I got started rebuilding my company and rebuilding my home (I had a little over a foot of water in my house, so everything under 4ft had to be ripped out and rebuilt). All of this Katrina mess is a blog novel in and of itself, so let's skip it and get back to Ziggy.

His job transferred him to a hotel in Dallas, TX where he worked from an office there. He quickly ran out of suboxone. The desired course of suboxone therapy is at least 6 months to 3 years, depending on the level of addiction. He had only been on it a month at most. He couldn't find a doctor in the Dallas area and suddenly his texts stopped and I lost him.

We were a state apart and I had major issues of my own. I had a destroyed home, homeless friends and family members, I was working 60+ hours a week to help keep my company from dying and I was trying desperately to get my house safe and livable for Luke to come home. His father and I shuttled him all over the state in those weeks/months to stay with family while we rebuilt homes for him - he couldn't come home until basic services were up and running and our homes had power and water and were mold free - and that took a painfully long time. My mother's job went under, my dad was totally homeless and it was just - my own personal hell. While Ziggy was important, there was enough severe trauma going on for me that took my mind off of him. He was away from anyone on earth who loved him, and before he found a suboxone certified doctor, he found a dealer.

I was shuttling to Natchitoches every weekend to see Luke (a 5 hour drive each way) and to this day, I have no idea how I made it through that 3 - 4 month period of my life - it was torture on all of us.

Once I finally got Ziggy talking to me again, I knew it. I knew he was "gone" and pulling him back when he was 14 hours away and I had so much to deal with was impossible. By time I got home from work, worked on my own house and got into bed to talk to him, I barely had enough energy to even feel the pain of hearing his slurred words and his nonsense. I began to pull away from him out of necessity - I had my own shit going on and if he wanted to kill himself, well, sorry buddy, but I can't help you right now.

By early October, I had walls again and the townhouse was disinfected enough for Luke to come home. He got back to school shortly after and our lives were full of work/school and coming home to work on the house. We did his homework on a concrete floor and I learned how to cook meals in the microwave since the kitchen was the last room finished. We watched TV on kitchen chairs and our TV was on the concrete floow. Sounds awful, but we were actually better off and more "recovered" than the majority of the houses around us. (Neighbors made fun of me for fixing the mexicans coffee every morning and offering water bottles to them at mid day, but it was my house that was done before theirs and we had the same mexicans working for us!) We finally got a sofa and a TV in November. By Thanksgiving my house would be rebuilt and normal again.

Before that, Ziggy finally hit his official bottom. An addict's bottom usually involves near death experiences or jail time or both. Ziggy's bottom was a night full of hallucinations culminating with getting his parents involved, because I just couldn't take it anymore.

It was shortly before Luke came home, though I don't remember the exact date. I still had 3 - 4 people from work living with me reguarly since my house was better off than theirs and I had lights/water back before them. A phone call came in from Ziggy.

He was in his truck and said that he was on the highway and that the FBI was after him. Don't laugh - yes this part is extraordinary, but in his mind, the FBI WAS after him. He said that he had just picked up an 8 ball of cocaine (google it if you don't know what that is) and when he noticed the FBI was after him, he had swallowed the entire 8 ball and washed it down with the only liquid in his car - a bottle of windex. He was screaming and crying and freaking the fuck out.

The call lasted over an hour. Somehow, I got him to find his hotel and his hotel room and when I hung up, he was begging for me to call his mother and said that he was laying by the door to block the FBI from getting in. To this day, none of us have any clue how Ziggy managed to keep his job except that perhaps his boss contributed some of his bizarre behavior as emotional effects of Katrina. No idea, but amazingly, he did keep his job.

To me, that was his bottom. It has much much more details to it, but for Ziggy's sake, I don't think they all need to be shared with the world. So I gave you the basics and that's that.

Within a week, we had him home and back with his parents, who now knew what was going on. He still used for a while when he got home. Bottom doesn't always equal sobriety to come next. He showed up at my house for my birthday and when he walked in and saw my house - he claims that THIS was his bottom.

I say his bottom was the FBI incident, he says it was my house. Whatever - it doesn't matter as long as it happened.

When he walked in and saw my concrete floors and my bare drywall and my doorless rooms and a "home" that he once knew in the midst of being fixed, he says that it all hit him. He hadn't been there. He had "abandoned" Luke and I for the sake of a drug. He fell to his knees on the concrete and wept like a baby. He just couldn't believe, though he had heard, what I had faced/fought/rebuilt without him. The guilt that he felt for not being the one to walk into that house with me and rip up that carpet with me and and throw away half of my life with me was more than he could bear. His parent's house hadn't been damaged and since my home was his nearest concept of home, he lost it and just freaked out over not being there to help me negotiate with contractors and haggle over tile and fight with Mexicans leaving cigarette butts on the floor. What I had been doing for the past two months hit him all at once like a ton of bricks.

He told me that he would be back very soon and that he swore that he would get better. It took a little while - first of all for him to find a doctor again, and second of all for him to save up to see that doctor. He came over often - he bought me window blinds and came and installed them. He had his doctor's appointment set, so he wasn't clean yet, but he was only doing enough opiates to keep him out of withdrawels and my god, he was making a hell of an effort to try to help me and make up for whatever it was that he was trying to make up for. And I let him. Partially because I needed my house done and partially because I knew that every hour that he spent at my house fixing my floors/walls/tiles was another hour that he wasn't getting high. He was safe at my house and so I wanted him there as much as possible.

On December 11th, 2005, Ziggy took his first suboxone and went to his first Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

I watched him get his 24 hour chip. I watched him get his 1 month chip. I watched him lead his first meeting. I watched him get his 6 month chip. I drove his parents to see him speak at his first meeting. I was there when he met his sponsor and I was there - I was there - for all of it.

I almost gave up and ran away a million times. Running would have been easier. I had met a great guy after the hurricane who adored me and fawned all over me and I could have easily changed my number and let Ziggy be and just - run. But I chose to stay and since I chose to stay, I also had to choose to learn how to deal with all that hurt and still look at him without spitting on him or punching him daily.

It was actually my recovering father, who is over 20 years sober, who gave me this advice...he said, "Sandy, if it's going to work, then you HAVE to forgive him before he begins to make ammends to you, you just have to."

FORGIVE HIM???????? Are you fucking kidding me? Forgive him BEFORE he made ammends? Are you shitting me? I was waiting for the "ammends" step like a fat kid waits for cake! I deserved it. He owed MEEEEE! I deserved a parade and a trophy and a round of applause and a song named after me and my own goddamned statue for christ's sake...right? RIGHT???

Nope. Wrong. This was Ziggy's disease. It was his triumph. Not mine, and as much as that sucks and it took me awhile to grasp, I finally did. Through a 12 step program for the loved ones of addicts, and through my own therapist and through ALOT of reading and crying and hair pulling, I finally "got it".

I forgave him. I let it all go. I NEVER forgot, but I forgave - and forgiving him actually had so little to do with HIM that it's almost funny. By March, I felt safe enough to let him back into my life and Luke's life on a romantic level. We struggled and had a lot of issues. I checked his phone religiously (and I still do when he acts weird sometimes), I dug through his car and I searched for every sign on earth. But Ziggy allowed it. Part of his eventual ammends was to be transparent. I could and can dig through whatever I want and it's ok and tolerated and accepted. I can random drug test him anytime and he can't and he won't get upset. And as the years passed, I relaxed.

Last December, he took his last suboxone. He did the full 3-year therapy that is reserved for severe addicts. I'm glad he did. There were times when I resented the suboxone. It's not covered by insurance and cost us about $350 a month! But I'm glad he did it because the point is for the addict to learn how to live and deal with life without needing drugs to cope. I'm so glad that we bore the expense of giving Ziggy the full 3 years of it because studies are now showing that 3 years is the most effective and long lasting course of action.

When he got clean, he re-entered the world with over $23,000 in credit card debt (he paid for his addiction with cash advances from cards after his paycheck was gone). I resented him for the debt that "we" were in. But eventually, we paid it off and the debt we now have is our own and not drug related in any way.

We don't talk about the bad times often. I ask him every few months or so if he's been struggling or thinking about drugs or craving anything. 99% of the time he tells me "no". Recently, he once answered that he had thought about it, but he thought about it just as a memory and not as something he wanted. He has the life that he wanted - it's not perfect, but what he wakes up to now is what he wanted - the house, the yard, the wife, the kids, the normality. And honestly, if you ask him, he will honestly tell you that if he went out and got high ever again now, he would have to shoot himself right after, because everything that he would lose would be worse than death for him.

He regrets the end and how awful it was. While I sometimes think that I am the reason that he got so bad so fast, since I was the reason for the unhealthy attempts at quitting and since I was such an instigator in his life, constantly pushing his buttons and driving him to get high, he sees it very differently. On the night that he proposed to me, he told me that he believed that I saved his life. I told him that I wasn't even there for him at the end of it all since I was so busy with the recovery of my own life, and he always says, "precisely, Sandy". He says that it was when he lost me and I was too busy for him that he finally fought his way to get back to me.

His parents have told me stories of the actual final withdrawal - the one that happened under doctor supervision - the one that I wasn't there for. I witnessed, unknowingly at the time, at least 100 withdrawals, or the beginnings of withdrawals, in my own home, but the final one - that very last one was with his parents. According to them and according to his sister, he spent about 12 hours writhing in sweat and painful agony and screaming out one word. The word was "Sandy".

And that, my friends, is our love story. Conventional? No. Romantic? Not particularly. Insane? Most definitely. We fight and we argue and he's an asshole and we even sleep in separate beds occasionally, so we aren't two star crossed lovers living in bliss. That's almost hilarious. We're just normal people with normal crap going on all the time who happened to have a wild beginning.

Chapter Three...Maybe

2009-06-19T20:28:00.002-05:00

Before I get into Chapter 3, I wanted to answer a few reader questions posed to me today. Also, Luke is home for the weekend from his dad's so I may not have the hour and a half that it normally takes me to post this serious of a topic - so Chapter 3 may go on hold...I'll see what I can crank out before The Clone Wars and Yugio cards get too boring for him.

How did you get found out? Well, we began getting too sure of ourselves and too sloppy. My townhouse was on a fairly major road in my town. Ziggy began using his own car to come over or spend the night and a salesman who was supposed to be our friend began telling people at work how often Ziggy's car was at my house. As the rumors began, he began job hunting. He was still in control of his addiction - it wasn't out of hand yet, and he easily found another job making more money elsewhere.

Before he found another job, our boss asked him flat out about our relationship and he did come clean. We were able to spend about 2 months "out of the closet" at work and the consensus was a general happy one for us with a whole lot of "it's about times". Ziggy was offered a management position in another department that had just opened up, but he declined it and thought it better for us to make a fresh start.

It was hard for us to be apart at first. We were genuinely a team at work, both of us needing the other to bring out the best (so we thought at first), and we both struggled. However, his leaving finally opened doors for me. I was finally noticed for my own brains, and instead of being in his shadow, I finally was able to shine.

Where was Luke when things got bad? Well, Luke was there. He was protected from the horrors - I'm not some triflin ho that you see on reality TV. When Ziggy's moods became extreme at the end, Luke was shielded properly. Luke was told that Ziggy was sick or that Ziggy had gone on a fishing trip - or other white lies to keep life normal for him. He wasn't exposed to the horrors and to this day he does know that Ziggy had an addiction, but he has no horrible memories and he genuinely loves Ziggy. When the hell ended, Luke had just turned 4, so he's already lost a great majority of his memory of this time.

So there's the answers. Back to the story.

Chapter 3:

The break up was harder on me than any break up I'd ever had. Later Ziggy would say that it was because we were soulmates being ripped apart - I'm not sure about the whole soulmate notion, but it makes for a good thing for him to say to get laid nowadays.

Not knowing yet what was wrong, I struggled with guilt that it was a physical or mental illness that I should stick it out for. My mother had abandoned my father when he came clean and gained his health. She couldn't handle how hard it was to go through the hell, so I guess maybe subconsciously, somehow I knew deep down and I didn't want to do what she had done? I don't know, but that was one therapist's theories.

I tried my best to move on. He called ALOT - to cry - to yell - to be crazy. My friends begged me to change my cell phone number, but I couldn't. Was I too weak, or too strong? That's up to you to decide. At this point, it was probably weakness. Later, it would become strength.

I began hearing bizarre stories through the grapevine - people seeing Ziggy acting crazy and sweating like a nutcase at a wedding - people seeing him walking down Bourbon Street alone and confused - people seeing him wearing the same clothes to work 2 days in a row. The stories were outrageous...and yet they were true.

The behind the scenes story was that Ziggy knew that his addiction to opiates was killing him, so in his sick and twisted mind, he tried to switch to cocaine. He truly believed that he could never be addicted to cocaine like he was to opiates and that the cocaine would help him get through the withdrawals so that he could kick it all and get better. Crazy right? Sure. Hell yeah, but to him it was his only answer.

So the sweating, the weight loss, the general craziness was a body addicted to opiates adjusting to massive amounts of cocaine. For those lacking knowledge of drugs, the two substances act on your body totally differently and he was swapping a numbing/sleepy type drug for a speed/adrenaline type drug.

He was literally killing himself. The same loud mouth salesman may actually be responsible for partially saving his life, because it was him who finally blew another secret and helped me "get to" Ziggy.

Now before I go on, please please don't in any way think that I am actually so vain as to believe that I saved Ziggy's life. Not the case. A handful of people saved his life, including God and himself. I however, only get the credit for being the first one to reach out the hand and go a little further to put the boots on and walk through the shit to get him. It's not much compared to what he had to face and what others did for him.

So it was this salesman who came to me and told me the story of Ziggy acting nuts at a bachelor party and he asked me, "Sandy, do you think it's drugs again?" And I was like...AGAIN??? WTF? You gossipping piece of shit, what do you mean? This salesman knew Ziggy in highschool and knew Ziggy to be a bit of a pot head and hang with the "druggie" crowd. Total news to me. I was in shock and in about 5 minutes it all came together in my head.

I thought about my move very carefully. Very nervously, I sent Ziggy a text message that simply said, "I know". That was it...just that I knew. Later that night my phone rang and through tears he said that he would tell me, but not tonight. He would stop by the next night when I didn't have Luke. He didn't call the next night and I thought again and sent the text, "I'm telling your parents". Within seconds the phone rang.

For over an hour he came clean...well, he didn't get clean, but he came clean. He told me everything - what he did, how he did it, how he got it, how much he spent on it, how bad off it was, where he hid it - everything.

He didn't ask for help. He didn't say he was quitting. He just said that he was sorry and that he could do nothing more this night than tell me. Being the selfish human I am, I attempted to yell at him for what he did to MEEEEEEEEEE MEEEEEE WAH WAH WAH and I was boldly stopped. He very calmly said, "Sandy, I've been clean for 12 hours now and I have no idea how long that can last. I know what I've done and I'm begging you to please just not make me face that right now, please."

And so I didn't.

The options for opiate addicts are small. You can detox in your sleep at a clinic (they literally put you to sleep for up to a week and you wake up detoxed) and while that sounds ideal, that would mean coming clean to his parents and possibly losing his job. You can go to rehab, which has a very low success rate for opiate addicts. You can quit cold turkey, which we know doesn't work, or the worst, you can go on methadone. Methadone is what heroin addicts take to get clean and methadone is now known to be just as addictive as any other opiate. Ziggy had dozens of "friends" addicted to methadone and he refused it.

At this point, he couldn't even achieve "high" anymore. He was so deep into it that all he was doing was enough to maintain a level in his body that avoided withdrawals. He was spending almost $1000 a week, if not more and he couldn't even physically get high anymore - withdrawal was just that painful and that scary.

Enter George W. Bush. Now a hell of a lot of people hate that man. Ziggy and I however, love him, because he gets a small portion of the credit for saving Ziggy's life. There was a drug being used in Europe for years called suboxone. It is specifically for opiate addicts and about 90% less potentially addictive than methadone. It was George W. Bush who got the drug to America and in the blink of an eye, millions of opiate addicts actually had hope and possibility of a life without being addicted to methadone.

The drug is hard to find and you have to be specially trained to distribute it at this point in time - it's very new in America. In 2005 you may have only been able to find one doctor in a major city who was certified to distribute it. I won't bore you with details of the drug, however, if you have an opiate addict that needs help, research this drug, please, and find a doctor in your area that distributes it.

We got Ziggy an appointment and he began taking the pills. I agreed to be his friend and walk with him through this as much as I could handle. I can't explain how hard it is to take the hand of the monster who destroyed your life and your heart and your dreams and help them get up and walk again without being able to even begin to express to them the hurt and the pain and the trauma that they caused and were still causing. There's a saying in 12 step programs that goes along the lines of "I stayed sober today and for today, that's the best I can do". And while that sounds like a cop out - at this point, it was true. I couldn't mumble a peep about MY pain and MY hurt and MY MY MY - if I was going to do this, I had to keep that all in and save it for later. This was no shit life or death for Ziggy at this point and so I shut my mouth the best I could (I'm wasn't perfect with it though).

The first time I saw him again after the night from hell where Chapter 2 ended, we met at a Subway near our jobs and I can't even describe how close to death he had come. He had gone from a healthy 36/38 waist to a 29 waist. His skin was pale and clammy, his movements were slow and strained. It was heart breaking just to look at him. But I put on my happy face, hugged him and bought him a friggin footlong and forced him to eat the whole thing. As we walked out, he looked at me, almost crying and said, "My God, I can't believe what I've done to you - I will make this up to you, I swear it."

This is where Chapter 3 must end before Luke kills me for the computer. However, I will leave you with this...this is not hell yet. Hell was about to begin. That lunch at Subway was in the beginning of August 2005. On August 26th, the entire southeastern portion of Louisiana began to evacuate for a bitch in the Gulf named Katrina. Katrina pushed Ziggy into a hell that we hadn't yet known. It threw him a state away from his doctor and into a world where even now, almost 4 years later, he will begin to shake and fight back tears at the very thought of. On August 29th, 2005, Katrina would change all of us and a hell began for us both that was bad enough to deserve its own fucking sound track.

And I promise that we'll get through the hell and begin to see some light...next Chapter.

Chapter Two

2009-06-18T20:08:00.004-05:00

This is where I have to choose words wisely, and cautiously decide what to divulge and what to refrain from spilling. There is a delicate balance between seeing Ziggy as a monster and therefore seeing me as a pathetic co-dependant wuss, and seeing Ziggy as someone with a help-less disease and me as someone strong enough to trust/love/forgive. I don't want either of us to come off as self righteous heroic super humans or wastes of the human space either.

And so, here we return:
When Ziggy called that Saturday morning, I was excited, but I honestly had NO idea whether or not this was a date, or just a friend from work trying to cheer me up with a night out. I was still in my one bedroom apartment at this time. I slept on a futon in the living room and the bedroom belonged to Luke. Even though he was only about to turn 2, I wanted him to have everything normal that he could possibly have, so the room was his except for my dresser. I was saving up and had my eyes on a townhouse down the street that I would buy just 6 months later with the gift of a down payment from my dad.

So I was embarrassed for Ziggy to pick me up - I stupidly placed him on a pedestal from day one and that is where I wind up being partially to blame for part of his need to hide his dark side. When someone has you up on a pedestal, the last thing you want to do is disappoint them by having to step down in front of them. A year later, I would learn that I had no reason for the embarrassment, but having no idea what neighborhood he came from or how he lived yet, I thought that he would find my dwelling to be shocking and pathetic - as if I was looking for a superman to save Luke and I, when the reality was that I was doing better than he was and just didn't know it yet.

I went to Target and bought a brand new outfit that I can still remember to this day. We ate at Roadhouse Grill and then saw Bruce Almighty afterwards. We struggled through conversation at dinner. We'd known each other and worked together for so long and amazingly were both shy and awkward. In the middle of the movie, it happened. His hand grazed my knee and just as I thought it was accidental, his hand found mine. Oh. My. God. HE LIKED ME! In the car he explained that while he knew it wasn't the best timing, that he saw the window open and he knew he needed to jump in fast since I didn't tend to stay single very long. That still goes down as one of the nicest things he's ever said to me. He actually saw me as this unattainable person with a line of suitors a mile long.

After that we had several other small dates. Nothing progressed really, and I soon learned that Ziggy was very green in the relationship department. Though he had lost his virginity in high school on the floor of a Subway bathroom (no friggin lie, he was a sandwich artist and lost his virginity to an older co-worker at work), he had actually never been in a relationship. Being painfully aware of his physical features, he was often called Alf or Dr. Evil by friends, due to a small resemblance, or what they thought was a resemblance to both characters. In fact, his own real nickname given to him by friends in high school, Ziggy, came from the size of the cartoon character's nose. Personally, I found his prominent nose and cleft chin to be painfully sexy and he reminded me of my life long crush, John Travolta.

A few months later, the young work crew was pulled into a meeting and literally yelled at for our cavorting and friendships and we were warned that we all needed to grow up and realize that this was work and not 90210 - there was a whole lotta messin going on other than Ziggy and I. That night Ziggy did not call. I was crushed. My thought was that the meeting was about the triflin ho's and had nothing to do with the budding relationship that we had hidden so well. We only went out in his parents' car, and we would go 50 miles out if we chose to be in public - it wasn't us that had been caught.

The next day was Valentine's Day and I didn't hear from him. A few months later he called and told me that he had pulled away from me specifically because he knew that I needed my job way more than he did, and that he was afraid of jeopardizing it, because after the meeting, he was pulled in one on one with our bosses and told something that would keep us apart for a long time...he was being promoted and would become my official boss in less than a month.

I was devastated over a good thing ending so suddenly. I was devastated about him getting promoted and not me. But time passed and we got back into our work groove. I began dating again and we went our separate ways outside of work.

I would hear from him on the phone every now and then. He normally called late at night when he was sad. Amazingly, we would have some of the deepest conversations on those nights discussing everything from religion to death to love and childhoods. These were the nights when I learned how desperately he wanted to have a relationship, and more specifically, one with me, but he loved his job and he knew I loved mine and it was almost as if we were just stuck. We hung up at 6:00am just to shower and head in to work on many a morning, our cell phones scalding hot and slimy from sweat from six to eight hours of continuous use.

About a year later, we decided to throw caution to the wind. We began dating again - very cautiously. We only went out in his parents' car. We went as far as Slidell and Baton Rouge for dates. We decided to allow the relationship to finally just happen and if we found ourselves serious at any point, then we would discuss options for work. At work, we were absolutely amazing. Being my boss, he wound up being harder on me than anyone and we pulled the wool over every one's eyes. We still got comments about how great we would be together, but no one actually suspected us together. Later on, we would get sloppier about it and a loud mouth salesman would bust our cover, but for now, everything was going great.

He was so funny and so sweet and so innocent. Though he had been laid before, he had never been loved and never had the opportunity to love in return so everything was new to him. It was precious. He appreciated the tiniest of things - simple kissing, hanging out and being close. He secretly let me always keep one of his toe nails painted pink for months, just so that he could be reminded that he actually had a girl in his life. We had secret codes at work. Secret "work" words that meant "I Love You". We took weekend trips to anywhere we could go where we could be outside and a normal couple without worrying about being caught.

A few months into the relationship, I noticed strange behavior. I won't string you along or foreshadow, I'll just lay it on the line. Ziggy had experimented with every drug on earth. You name it, and he's tried it with the exception of heroin and crack, that is. Of course I had no idea. I've never in my life (honest to God) even tried pot, so I just figured he was like me and if he had ever experimented, I never imagined it was more than pot. I wasn't a goody goody, I was just raised with an addict father and an addict sister and the stuff just scared the shit out of me, so I didn't touch it. Towards the end of college, a friend handed him a Vicoden and that's when his love affair with opiates began.

Sure he was moody, but you did hear me mention my family, right? Moodiness = normality for me. Nothing seemed askew.

By the time we were dating seriously and "in love", he was crushing and snorting oxycontins about 2 - 3 times a week. Now enters his side of the story for a moment here, as it was once told to me by his own sponsor on a night when I almost threw in the towel and gave up on him. When we began dating, he wanted desperately to have that relationship and to be clean and just start a new life. Have you ever been fat and tried to diet unhealthily? Have you ever tried to quit smoking cold turkey? What happens? For the majority of us, we attempt to quit with no help/support/assistance and a day or a week later we are failures stuffing twinkies down our throats or smoking pack after pack like a chimney. Now take that experience and multiply by the strength of an opiate. Every attempt to quit was doing nothing more than increasing his addiction and he became absolutely powerless against it.

And so that was his life. His growing addiction was hidden from family, work and even his best friends. He was embarrassed and ashamed and desperate to be sober. He would quit cold turkey, hit the withdrawals (opiate withdrawals are as difficult, if not worse than heroin withdrawals) and then the next day he was using twice as much as before. The cycle continued for over a year and this is now where we are in the story.

He's sick all the time. He's constantly either sweating, or puking or having leg cramps. I'm constantly begging him to see a doctor, thinking that he must be dying from some kind of stomach cancer. He's spending so much time with friends instead of me that I'm convinced that either I'm fat and ugly or he is gay. (I would later learn that all that hanging out with buddies was really just him going to dealer's houses - his friends even had no clue what he was really doing...in fact they all hated me for taking him away from them, or so they thought).

He's almost 100% impotent at this point (opiates are notorious for this fun side effect), which increases my worries of either his homosexuality or my fat/ugliness ten fold. He's constantly broke. I made about $30,000 by this time and he was at $40,000. I was raising a kid and owned a townhouse. He lived with his mother and was always broke. I began thinking that he was gambling or a million other things that I just couldn't bust him on. I'm waking up at night to find him balled up in corners crying his eyes out and begging God for help...I'm scared shitless. This perfectly great guy is turning into a maniac right in front of my eyes. I'm afraid of him and yet I feel so bad for whatever "illness" this is that he's battling, that I can't just walk away from him.

I. Never. Considered. Drugs. Ever.

Ziggy was too immaculate, too clean, too polished and shiny to be a drug addict. I began checking his phone, digging through his over night bag when he slept over, rifling through his car while he slept looking for any clue on earth that would tell me why this wonderful friend and lover was turning into this monster. But he was a master at hiding it all...and skilled in turning it all around and blaming it all on me - a skill that most addicts are capable of.

And then it happened - the end. In a final attempt to get him to just TELL ME WHAT WAS WRONG WITH MEEEEEEE, I forbade him to leave the house. With one fell swoop, he took me by the head and threw me across the room and stormed out of the house.

The next day, I got a prescription for Prozac, I began seeing a therapist and I very slowly began life without him, determined that whether he was gay, a compulsive gambler, addicted to prostitutes or whatever it was, that it had to be HIM and couldn't be ME and that I would get myself out of this situation and find my health and my sanity again.

And this my friends is where Ziggy's hell truly begins.

To be continued.....

As promised...

2009-06-17T20:38:00.002-05:00

As promised, I wanted to do a little something to honor Ziggy's 3 and 1/2 year sobriety anniversary. With our 2 year wedding anniversary only a week away, I guess it's also fitting to maybe type out the story of us, per say.

I'm thinking this won't all fit in one post so I was thinking the hook up may be first, then the decent into hell and then finally the rising above the ashes. We'll see how it goes though.

The Beginning:
In August of 2000, I was 8 months pregnant, married to a man who was really only ever just my friend, making $8.50 an hour, living in a 1 bdrm apt and scared shitless about what was happening to me. But damn it to hell, I was determined to make it all work somehow.

I had been at my current job for a full year and I was about to turn 23. I began as a "utility clerk" which was what my boss, Mrs. Anal, titled me. In that first year, I had clawed my way into being noticed by the Accounting Department. They would give me odd jobs to do and I would amaze them with my shy manner of correcting the errors of those who were paid much better than I was in a way that made me needed rather than a threat. In time, I had my own daily set of Accounting tasks on top of being Mrs. Anal's filing, coffee making, plant watering bitch.

In walks Ziggy. He was hired as a favor to a big boss and he was unwelcomed in the Accounting Department. A department filled with non-degree carrying, hard working mothers didn't take kindly to this degree toting prissy boy. I would later come to respect his own fight for respect in that crowd, but at the time, he was nothing more than a threat to me and to all of us. I was to give HIM all of my Accounting duties to handle while on maternity leave and I laid awake at night sure that all of my hard work to get somewhere in this company was being stolen by him.

Needless to say, I loathed him. He asked a million questions and was a perfectionist to the nth degree. He was absolutely nothing more than a nuisance and I literally prayed for his demise, because I knew that he would hamper my rise to the top - I just knew it. If you had told me that I would one day carry this boy's child, I would have laughed my ass off for a week.

By time I returned from maternity leave, he was beginning to gain mild respect for his brains and his uncanny ability to take a task and completely dismantle it and then return it reassembled in a much more streamlined manner. While the women still feared him, they began to accept him for his sense of humor and they even began to mother him as their own little boy of the group. Nauseating!

It wasn't long before we became a team - him constantly the thinker and me constantly the one who brought his ideas into fruition and made them work in the day to day work that he had no concept of.

We spent a year as almost a brother/sister team. His penis and his degree helped him rise faster - this was still a good ole boys company (it still is in many ways, but it's come a far way in 10 years). He was able to stay late and be noticed as the only person in Accounting left in the building after dark. I had an infant to rush home to. He could go to lunch with the big boys because he made $30,000 a year and lived with mommy. I was on a budget and in constant fear of not being able to pay the bills and I packed bologna sandwiches.

I'll grant him that he was brilliant and did take that department from 1970 to at least 1990 in a matter of his first year, but I don't admit that to his face. To his face, I remind him that if I had a penis, a degree and was not a new mother going through a divorce, that I would have risen beyond him easily.

Years later, our boss and mutual mentor told us that she believed us to be the perfect brains/brawn team and that it was a shame that I was always labeled as the brawn when I had my own brains to show off. God, I loved that woman. Hats off to you, Ms. Carolyn.

The Accounting Department had morphed in the year that had passed. I had been officially stolen from Mrs. Anal and placed full time in Accounting (HALLELUJAH!) and the department went from an average age of about 45 to an average age of 21 in that year. I was 24/25 at the time, and Ziggy was 7 months younger than me. We were the two oldest in the group and we found ourselves with young chics beneath us to actually teach and groom. They all looked up to us and commented regularly on "what a great team" we were and how we "would make the perfect couple" - all comments that we shrugged off. I had begun a new relationship with a Born Again Christian Cuban since my divorce and I was in lurve. He was flirting with ironically, the Cuban chic in Customer Service.

As young people often do in these situations, we found ourselves at a local bar almost every Friday night. Friday night was mamma's night off from Luke, so I was free to be young and go out and drive home dangerously tipsy and dance and be nuts.

It was on one of these nights where Ziggy actually graced us with his prescence. He was obnoxiously cautious about his job and he always acted too good for us, as if he already had WAY too many friends to be bothered with the likes of us. It was on this night that I saw Ziggy let loose a little, I heard him laugh a real laugh for the first time and I noticed that his eyes were blue. Having squinty eyes and never seeing him out of the office, I had never noticed how blue his eyes were. He isn't sure of the exact date, but I know that this was the night he first noticed me as more than his teammate from work. Long after the bar closed, we remained in the parking lot, just talking, for hours.

From that night on, there would be moments when I absolutely hated him, wished him dead and hoped that he drove off a cliff - but I never, not once, ever stopped loving him.

A few months later, I broke up with the Cuban for reasons that had nothing to do with Ziggy. Our moment was not forgotten, but booze wears off and you get back to normal life on Mondays. I cried in his office the morning after the break up, which was strange behavior for me. He had no idea what to say and I could tell that he was really uncomfortable with it. However, very early the next morning (a Saturday), my phone rang and for the first time, it was Ziggy's voice that I heard. He nervously pretended to be calling to ask something absurd about work and then finally in a stuttering and stammering way, he asked me to go to dinner and a movie that night. It was the summer of 2002.

To be continued...

Vagina

2009-06-15T20:19:00.002-05:00

Well, it's official folks, we have a vagina. Well, "we" meaning me and the fetus. You may or may not have a vagina, so I don't want to assume anything.

She finally raised her ass above the placenta for us today and showed us her girlie bits. We were happy and shocked and just so god damned relieved to know what it is. Since ultrasounds are so good these days, you would be shocked if you went to a baby store and actually tried to purchase one full gender neutral outfit - it's nearly impossible.

Her name is Shelby and that is her real name. I share it with you since I love you. I don't know why I worry over this anonymity online thing since Shelby and Luke are real names - Ziggy is not - that's a nickname, but oh well.

I had planned to post tonight about my husband's 3 and 1/2 year sobriety anniversary. And I still will try to do that tomorrow night, because there was a lot of healing things I needed to get out - more for me than for you, but you know - it is MY blog after all.

The vagina thing blew all other news and stories out the water. So how are we doing with the news? Well, we're almost in awe.

My parents had 3 girls between them. Between us 3 girls, there are 5 grandSONS. No one has had a girl in this family in 31 years. So this girl is anxiously anticipated. Sister # 1 (the one closest in age to me with the twins) expressed sincere excitement and happiness for me and for us and for the family in general. While she may long for a girl, we both know that at 35 and with twins, her baby making days are probably over and she's ok with that and just happy at the chance to have a baby girl around either way.

Sister # 2 (the eldest who lives in Miami with 2 sons) didn't seem too jazzed. If anything, I almost detected a bit of jealousy in her - as if her have two boys is any more my fault than me about to have a girl. She's the girliest of us all and would probably be the best at raising a girl, whereas I will most definitely be the worst!

Mom and dad were both thrilled. Dad seemed a bit nervous and has decided not to meet her until her Christening (he lives states away), but dad is dad and I'm fine with that. Mom is crossing her t's and dotting her i's and probably sending out shower invites as we speak, god bless her.

Auntie M was by far THE MOST excited of us all. She has no kids and so she dotes on our kids as much as she doted on us and I swear she's been saying daily novenas for one last chance to buy dresses and tap shoes.

Ziggy's sister, the godmother, seemed honestly excited. All I got from his mother was an emailed "yahoo". Just like that. Not even in caps or with an exclamation point. Fuck her - that's a whole other blog to talk about her nonsense lately. Long story short though - apparently middle child syndrome carries on to the middle child grandbabies even though they are the first grandbabies.

And then there is Ziggy. He spent the walk to the car and the drive back to work kind of in a daze. I was worried that he was upset, so I kept talking about how much daughters love their daddies and blah blah blah. He wasn't upset at all. It turns out that despite my growing belly, despite the furniture, despite the ultrasounds, none of it had become real until that moment when he learned that he had a daughter. He was just in shock of it all.

After work Ziggy and I went to Babies R Us to scan pink and purple items that were left off the registry thus far - towels, burp cloths, blankets, bibs, etc. We picked out a couple of sleepers and onesies - the basic staples that you need regardless of how many you're blessed with at a shower. Then we made our way to the little sundresses section. We picked out 2 sundresses that we both loved and then we came home and just sat in awe for a little while at what we'd done.

It's as if I have no other child and the wonder of it all is on us like scared 20 year olds. I'm seasoned. I know all this junk and yet, I'm scared shitless. Being a basic tomboy most of my life, femininity was something I always had to work VERY hard on - it never came natural and it still doesn't. I can't style my own hair let alone a toddler's. It's so scary, and while my god, I am so blessed to be able to raise one of each gender, this gender in particular has me petrified.

So that's the news. Sorry this post isn't funny or poetic - just informational is all. I'll be back sooner than later - promise.

Ball Hairs and General Updates

2009-06-11T19:07:00.002-05:00

It's official, Luke has nut hair. As horrifying as that sounds, experiencing it is even worse.

We've noticed him "fiddling" ALOT more with his man parts. And when I say ALOT, I mean that if he doesn't have pants on and is in his boxers, then his hand is on his weiner. We've begun discussing appropriate behaviors and how some intimate fondling should be reserved to our bedrooms. We've also installed a TV in his room so that some of his rest time/fondling time can be done in private.

Last month he announced that when his "bird gets bigger, there's a big blue vein in it." Then he announced to me in the car a couple weeks ago that he has nut hairs. Just a random, oh by the way, type of notification on both occasions. I was half proud that I've obviously done well thus far at raising him to feel comfortable telling me ANYTHING, and half mortified that he chose me to share this with. He asked me to look at it for him, and although I admit that I was SOOOO curious, I left this one to his father. (And shut up, because you'd be curious too!)

Via text message on Sunday night, I got the confirmation from ex that our son's once silky smooth sac, is indeed, now covered in peach fuzz that is of a thicker nature than leg hair. He says it's blonde and slight, but definitely there and a noticeable difference than the sac of 6 months ago.

So I frantically consulted Dr. Google. (Side note, if the FBI ever confiscates my computer, I will probably be incarcerated now due to my vulgar Dr. Google searches.) See, my little boy is only about to turn 9. This is not supposed to happen yet, right? RIGHT??

Nope. It's totally normal. According to Dr. Google, the average age for boys to begin having wet dreams is now as early as 10, with 9 being considered normal also and 11 being the median. Girls are beginning to menstruate (I said, menstruate...haha) as early as 10 also with some spotting beginning at 9. GAH!!! Are you fucking kidding me? A chat with a pediatric nurse I know of confirmed it all for me also.

While I'm comforted to know that my son is not some abnormally maturing freak, I'm still appalled that we are here in this place ALREADY. So this is what prompted us into trying to encourage him to seek out a little privacy. We are asking him to start closing the door when he uses the bathroom and I'm not sitting and chatting with him during his baths anymore (he takes showers now anyway, sniff sniff - and he even asked for man shampoo this week, and I almost cried while buying him a bottle of Erick's brand instead of his normal Johnson's kids' foam wash).

While I miss our openness and feeling of joy while prancing around naked all over the house, I know that it's healthier and better for him to not be stroking his pecker in the living room next to me while we watch Spongebob, even if he still doesn't know the meaning of it all yet - it's not cute boy fiddling anymore - it could lead to a goal VERY soon, if you know what I mean and his mother should NOT be next to him if/when he figures out the goal.

So other than my son's nuts, lots is happening. The baby's room is DONE! Ziggy finished all of the furniture tonight and it's all set up and we catch ourselves just walking in there to stare at it all. Ziggy never had a baby, and I lived in a one bedroom apartment when I had Luke, so the actual nursery is new for the both of us.

We made a big decision to save $300 on a ridiculous crib bedding set that the baby never uses anyway and we're using Luke's that I meticulously packed away, so it looks like new anyway. I chose his theme before I knew his gender, so while we both feel that the theme is maybe a bit masculine for a possible girl, for the sake of not wasting $300 and also making Luke feel special over his stuff being used for the baby, we've opted for the hand me down since everything else thus far is brand new. Many of my new mom friends don't "get" this concept. My seasoned mom friends normally shout an "amen, sistah" at me when asked about the bedding choice.

I bought a bottle of Dreft to wash Luke's set tonight so I could put them on and take pics, even though I know after sitting for 12 - 15 weeks, they'll need another washing prior to the baby actually using them. Let me tell you, when I opened the bottle of Dreft and took that first sniff, it was like...oh my god...it was like I was transported 8 years back and Luke as an infant was in the next room. The scent of that stuff is powerful. I don't recommend sniffing it unless you are really prepared for the emotions that come with it...seriously. A year ago, I may have slit my wrists from the scent and the fertility issues and the longings and all that jazz.

So that's the happenings of the moment. Lots else going on with in law drama and work drama and renovations drama - but I'll get to that later.

23 weeks? Are you shitting me?

2009-06-01T20:44:00.002-05:00

It hit me today, hard - I'M 23 weeks! HOLY SHIT! That's like 3 weeks away from viability...not that I want/plan to have a 26 week old baby, but still - if it did happen to fall out for some reason, in only 3 weeks, it would probably survive. That's freaking amazing.

I also noticed that I'm more than half way finished in the boxes above - that's weird and freaky too, expecially since it felt like FOREVER just to get out of the first box.

So what's been happening? Well, the 1/2 house renovations are almost done. Our house is a great shell of a house, but it SCREAMS 1980. We could only afford to start renovating half of the house right now, so we chose the guest room (future baby room), Luke's room, the living room and the hallway...well that's really about a 1/3 of the house, but by time this baby is in high school, we should be done!

So I demanded that Luke's room be the first done so that he wouldn't be displaced long, so his room is finally done. The baby's room is about 90% done. Ziggy just needs to caulk/spackle/paint the baseboards. Then the living room and hallway are last. It's been really hard having furniture all over and nothing in it's place - especially for someone like me, but I'm dealing.

All of the baby's furniture is in and is just awaiting being unboxed and put together. Things are moving along...SLOWLY, but surely.

Ziggy is doing much better, thank God. My theory of the early onset of his normal June depression seems to be true and we've entered June almost in the clear, so May just sucked the way that June normally does. He's returned to his normal bubbly, joking, dancing around the house obnoxious self and we are so happy to have him back. I've been trying my best to applaud his return as the experts say I should and let go of the anger of his departure - that is also coming along...SLOWLY, but surely.

Alterior placenta be damned, this baby has become a kicker. I'm not sure if the placenta is migrating, as the doctor hoped it would, or if he/she is just strong enough to now be felt through it, but good gawd I'm feeling some kicking.

Sometimes I sit and just gaze at Luke - his fingers, his toes, his nose and I think, I MADE THAT - I made every cell in his body and here I am, blessed enough to get to do it one more time. And when I say, "one more time", that is exactly what I mean. This is it for us. I have no desire to have a litter. I want as many as I can afford and be comfortable and love adequately while hanging on to my career and I know in my soul that this is it for us and I'm ok with that. We've decided against getting "fixed" until we are 35...just in case we win the lottery or have a major change of heart, but in our minds, we know we are done.

So that's a generic update of life in general. So much else is going on...growing twin nephews that are HILARIOUS, Luke being with his dad for the weeks during the summer, stress and anxiety over our growing debt and worries over Ziggy's physical health lately (we are suspecting possible diabetes), my crazy mother being crazy again and me being scared about being out of work for 8 weeks - but we'll catch up on all that jazz later, I promise.

Call on the saints?

2009-05-24T11:15:00.004-05:00

I have a problem. It may seem silly, it sure does to Ziggy, but it's a real problem to me. Here it is:

I am deathly afraid of the baby's room.

No kidding. Since the day we moved into this house, I have been afraid of that room. I hate going in it alone. I hate walking away from it with my back turned against it. I hate walking down the hallway with the lights out - I HAVE to be able to see the doorway of that room.

I can't nap in that room (It's been our guest room for almost 2 years, so there is a bed in there). I can't go in there AT ALL when I am home alone.

I have no idea what the reason is. Nothing bad ever happened in there. The family before us lived here over 20 years and raised 2 daughters in that room. Nothing evil ever occurred in the room. I'm not normally one to believe in haunts or spirits. I have NO IDEA what my problem is.

No one else gets these feelings in this room. No one. Ziggy naps/sleeps in there all the time when he gets kicked out of the bed for his snoring.

So what is this? A sixth sense? An intuition? I have no idea. How do I get rid of it though? I keep thinking that the more it transforms into the baby's room, the less I'll feel like this, but it's actually getting worse. Last night I had a thought of having to go into that room at 3:00am to change diapers and soothe a baby and it freaked the hell out of me.

What is my problem? I've thought of maybe doing some kind of prayer in there or hanging a crucifix or something. But I'm not even sure if that would help or not.

Any suggestions?

Just a few words...

2009-05-17T19:43:00.001-05:00

My son called me this afternoon to tell me that he was bored at his father's house and that his dad couldn't bring him home until 7:00pm, so would I please come and get him because he wanted to come home.

Do you know how fast I got there?

Exactly.

It was a good day.

Nuff said.

Why are you here?

2009-05-16T15:41:00.002-05:00

My mother did something this afternoon that is in the top ten most offensive things that you can possibly do to me.

Being an intensely introverted person with probable borderline social anxiety, I like to be alone. Nay, I LOOOOOVE to be alone. Alone time for me is better than sex or chocolate cake or massages. A day of quiet aloneness is a treasure to me.

My husband had just gotten in his truck and pulled out of the driveway for a two hour trip to run various errands, and I walked back into the house in anticipation of 2 full hours of quiet alone time. It was a glorious feeling and I was giddy to find something on TV that had no cartoon characters or detective story plot to it.

While peeing, I heard my door quietly open and shut. It kind of scared me because there was no reason for my husband to be coming back so soon. I picked up my cell phone and called him really quickly rather than calling out in the house to ask who was there, because I honestly was scared and had a weird feeling about it.

He answered and I whispered, "are you here?" When he said no, I dropped the phone and felt panic. I got the baseball bat that I keep under my bed for this very purpose and I began slinking down the hall.

It was my own god damn MOTHER! She had come over to my house 100% totally and completely unannounced and had not knocked or rang the bell or anything - just let herself right in.

This is so intensely offensive to me. Unnanounced guests are of the devil to people like me, much less guests with keys to my house who just let themselves in.

My old neighbor, Kevin, would very often come knocking on our door completely unannounced rather than calling first - during dinner - during baths - during whatever, and I actually taught my kid that when a door knocks and you aren't expecting anyone, you go into another room and sit very very quietly until the knocking stops. Seriously, I find unannounced visits so offensive that I will rarely even humor you by answering the door if you do it. Kevin did it so often, that it is ingrained in Luke's brain to look at me for direction on what to do whenever a door bell rings.

What if I was naked? What if I had been using adult toys in the living room? (I'm just saying is all.) I mean, just waltzing into someone's home completely unannounced is so brazen and ballsy and really just rude.

Her story is that she came to help around the house since I was sick...which is nice and all...but any good will that could have come of it was flushed out the door by her method of entry.

She said, "well, I talked to Ziggy earlier." Um, yeah, you called while I was asleep and told Ziggy that you would CALL after you finished cooking your pot of beans to see if I wanted any help around the house. Is that what happened? No, I didn't think so, since I have no missed calls on my phone.

So then, in her usual martyrdom way, she immediately shifted into abused child mode of no one loves her and no one appreciates her and why does she even exist.

I told her NINE times that I was just really still sick and really dopey on meds and that I just wasn't in the mood for company or cleaning today. She then followed me around the house for a half hour explaining to me whatever it was and almost begging for love and approval.

I hate this shit. I didn't ask for her help. I may have wanted her help if I had a little time to prepare myself for it (it takes at least 10 minutes of mental preparation for a visit from my mother). So now, I feel like shit for being ungrateful, and I feel like shit for making her feel bad, and now I'm stuck with her here for at least two hours alone while my husband is out running those errands that I purposely orchestrated that he go out and run specifically so that I could be ALONE and now by time she leaves, he'll be returning and UGH!

Ziggy is a whole other issue - he walks around like a lost puppy when I'm sick and wakes me up 9 million times just to see if I'm feeling better yet and it's like he paces around until I finally get up and am normal for him again. He freaks out when I am out of commission.

Anyway, so that's my day. Now with the whirring of the vacuum in the background, I have to get up and go fold the laundry that my mother insisted that I let her wash - because I'd prefer for her NOT to fold Ziggy's underwear or my granny panties.

Fabulous. Good times.

I can see clearly now

2009-05-15T21:25:00.002-05:00

After 2 Claritin D's (doctor approved) a little Tylenol and my first 2 pill dose on a Z-pak, I can finally lift my head long enough to say hello.

I was slammed with a sinus infection this week, the likes of which I have never experienced in my life. My concern for the baby's well being as far as avoiding OTC or other drugs flew out of the window this morning when I literally sat in my car with my son sitting next to me and just bawled my eyes out over the sickness and misery of it.

I haven't experienced illness like this in probably a decade. It was absolutely unbearable. While I know that the Z-pak hasn't worked that quickly, I'm pretty sure that it's the Claritin D that is allowing me a short reprieve from drowning in my own snot.

I've lost a total of 4 pounds so far from just not being able to taste or stomach hardly anything. My stomach has remained full and satiated on my own dripping mucus and I still keep having to force myself to remember, oh shit, I'm pregnant, perhaps I should eat something.

And of course it happens in the week that the house is being painted, the a/c went on the fritz and my husband is working until 9:00pm every night for his company's end of fiscal year...of course, I mean, why not, right?

So it was a shit week to say the least. I've vowed to obey doctor's orders and remain in bed, or in the vicinity of bed for the entire weekend so that hopefully I can return to normal by Monday. Luke is a bit tired of Lunchables and pizza rolls here.

Good health to you, sorry I've been negative nelly lately and hopefully next week will bring better things to write about.

Dear Former Self

2009-05-12T20:35:00.002-05:00

Dear Former Self,

What the FUCK was I thinking with all this I want a baby wah wah wah woe is me garbage?

Mind you, I am grateful, nay, elated, to be given the opportunity to mother another child, but perhaps I was more built for and suited for adoption?

Pregnancy is an evil evil thing that I have done to you, former self, and I am so sorry. I thought you were fat. PSHAW! You were a smokin hot temptress compared to what you have become. I thought you were lazy PSHAW! You were a bundle of energy and vivacity. I thought your house was dirty. Whatev, your house was immaculate, man.

I thought you had let yourself go, but now I see that you had your shit together more than anyone on earth.

I'm so sorry for this. I'm sorry for the wild dreams and the peeing 9 times at night and running into walls and the spending 30 minutes every morning de-mucusing yourself and getting molested by creepy coworkers and going to bed at 9:30 because you can't stay awake another second and ramming whoppers down your throat because amazingly you get heartburn and the shits from salad but whoppers (the burger king ones, not the malted milk ones) are one of the only things you can stomach.

And former breasts, oh god, you have it the worst. Oh how I under appreciated you. With your cute little pink nips and your perfect overflowing handful size. You've been replaced by something so grotesque that I won't take my bra off to show my own husband.

And teeth, dear God, teeth. You are so dirty and I am so sorry. I've stopped showing my teeth when I smile because I know how neglected you are, but I can only brush my teeth for a max of 20 seconds before the gagging commences and so unless you want more vomit acid covering you and being washed away with Sprite, you must endur the funk for now.

Again, to the Gods of motherhood, I truly am eternally grateful for the life within, but did you have to make the process so intensely grotesque and miserable? I am so hot. People walk into my office and shiver and make fun of how hot I am. My arm pits are soaked by 11:00am. I am sleeping as naked as I can get with an 8 year old in the house. I am so hot.

My face is a greasy nasty nastiness. Probably from the whoppers, but what can I do? I wear makeup and it gets greasier and nastier. I take off the makeup and I suddenly have what I'm almost positive is rosacea.

My husband gropes for me in the night and I beg to just be left alone. I'm HIDEOUS. Nothing about this pregnancy is cute, or glowing - it's just nasty and I want out of this deal.

I love you child, but my lord, I am so freaking miserable and I have FOUR whole months and some change left to go.

So thanks for letting me whine. I have no where else to do it without someone reminding me how badly I wanted this.

Sincerely,
The Ogre

Summer Depression

2009-05-06T19:55:00.003-05:00

As most of you know, my loving husband is bipolar. On the day that I said, "I Do", I fully understood the world of marrying a bipolar man because my father is also bipolar. I know the good and the bad and the down right ugly. I know the uncertainty and the constant fluctuations. I know all of this. And yet, when a bad time finds itself on my doorstep, I am always shocked and saddened and in disbelief that THIS IS HAPPENING TO ME ME ME ME ME. WAHHHHHHHHH!

June is quickly approaching. Though my husband is your classic rapid cycler (meaning his moods can fluctuate in hours or days and are not always predictable with seasons or such), June is always a bad month.

It is his most depressed month of the year. With my husband's disease, his mania is always a grand time. We love Ziggy manic. Things get done, projects are finished, we laugh, we dance in the kitchen, we laugh more and we enjoy life. When the depressed Ziggy shows his face, that's when we all want to run and hide.

Like I said, it normally hits in June and whether it be the baby on the way or the renovations in the house, it has arrived early. (Bipolar, or at least my husband's is extremely affected by changes in routine, so that is why I am stating these possible reasons for the early arrival.)

I must give TREMENDOUS props and Thankgiving for the blessing of the book, "Depression Fallout" by Anne Sheffield. Without this book, my husband would either have been kicked out to live with his mother or 6 feet under with the bloody knife caught in my hand.

This book has saved our marriage/relationship June after June after June. While the book focuses on Depression, it does go into Bipolar and since the Depression is our main problem point in our marriage, it is extremely appropriate.

Depression Fallout is the side effect disease that the "healthy" spouse can and will develop is he/she allows the sick spouses behavior to infiltrate their own core.

I start out EVERY June making the same mistakes over and over and over again. I plead. I beg. I cry. I yell. I make him sleep in the other room. Nothing ever works until I pull out this book, kick myself in the ass and move on with life.

The depressed spouse will VERY rarely admit to their depression or to their faults. Ziggy now knows this book. He's read parts of it himself. I've highlighted it and read parts to him in healthier times. We've discussed it. When he sees me reach for this book in exasperation, this is usually when he finally realizes, "oh shit, it's that bad and I better start working o n finding that damn light."

See the main part of the book's point is this - WALK AWAY. Don't leave them. But do NOT give in. Never let them see you sweat. You give them their meds, keep the house clean, take care of the kids, kindly tell them you hope they feel better as they go to sleep at 6:00pm every night and then do everything in your power to go on with life without them, and have total normality for you and your kids.

Within two weeks of doing this, it's like magic. I suddenly feel better. The house is happier. Life has moved on and eventually if Ziggy keeps his doctor appointments and I communicate with the doctor and his meds are adjusted, eventually he comes out of the darkness and rejoins life.

Now you may ask - why the free ride? Why does he get to behave so poorly and then just be forgiven and allowed back in? Well, my friends, this is where you can separate the newbie bipolar spouse from the seasoned one. My father helped "season" me for Ziggy probably a decade sooner than I would have, but here is the bottom line:

BIPOLAR AND DEPRESSION ARE DISEASES.

If Ziggy had cancer and was feeling ill from chemo for a month, I wouldn't yell and cry at him and leave him or walk away from him, right? Bingo. When you separate the person from the disease (which the book teaches you), you are able to love from afar without building up resentment and "you owe me's". Ziggy's depression is putting him in bed at 6:00pm and making him a cranky unruly beast - not Ziggy himself. He has a doctor appointment on Monday and we will get there - sooner or later, we'll crawl out.

He takes his meds and keeps his appointments and for that I am grateful - you have no idea how lucky I am just for him doing that. When he seems open and ready to talk, I open up and communicate with him about how his actions are affecting me. When he is beastly, I just keep my mouth shut and move on. It's not eggshells, trust me. It's just respect. He's sick right now and when he is open to a little truth, I give it to him KINDLY but honestly. When I can tell that he is shut off, I go about my own business.

And when he comes out of the fog, there is no parade for me. I don't get flowers or a trophy. Life just returns to a happy normal. Him coming out and being normal for me is all the thanks I need. It's like a cancer patient going into remission. A cancer patient doesn't go into remission and come out and throw a parade for their caretaker - normally it's the other way around.

During this bad time, Ziggy will be cheered and smiled at and loved upon for glimpses of good behavior. When he's sunken into his disease, life will go on around him and after 4 years of this (this is our 4th June together since his diagnosis), I know that him sitting in the dark hearing our lives go on without him hurts him tremendously even if he barks and yells at us while it's happening.

Tonight he was open to a bit of discussion and it was good. For ten minutes, I got to see and be reminded that Ziggy is in there and he will be coming back soon. I got to tell him how alone I was feeling. I didn't get a hug yet, but I'm close. Usually when the hugs begin, that's when I know he's really fighting to come back.

Until then, I read and re-read my used up and tattered copy of this book and all it's highlighted parts and I get the strength to grab my kid and do the hokey pokey and go to the park and make good meals and just...live.

Another genital post

2009-05-05T20:38:00.002-05:00

Since my posts of late all seem to center around genitalia for some unknown reason, how about another penis story?

HOORAY!!!

Here goes. In our family, the penis is called your "bird". All of the men in my family have birds and if you marry into this family, you must dispose of your prior name and adopt the name, bird.

My son loves his bird, as most men do. As he's nearing 9, I've become a bit uncomfortable with his open affection for his bird. His bird has grown significantly in this past year and I try not to see it anymore, if I can help it.

However, when I do happen to see it...it is always...ALWAYS erect and he is always...ALWAYS fiddling with it. It's a sport that he truly gets into. He sits on the sofa in the morning in his boxers with his morning woody and just really gets into fiddling with it.

We've begun telling him to stop and that he should only do that in his room. We've begun catching him all over. Dr. Google as well as his pediatrician (whom I questioned yesterday about while Luke was in the bathroom) all say that this is super normal and super age appropriate.

But good Lord son, can you play with anything else lately?

So this morning, I caught him mid fiddle. Now mind you, there is no jerking off motions at this age. It's merely a pulling and prodding and swirling. Also, as a side note and a totally other blog topic for the future, my son is not circumcised so this gives the fiddling dimensions of fiddle that circumcised little boys could not understand.

Back to the story. I caught him mid fiddle this morning and so did Ziggy. We were frantically finishing moving living room odds and ends into the garage for the painter to finish the room when we both turned and saw Luke with his bird hanging out, totally up at attention in mid fiddle.

I told him to stop that right away, the living room is not where we do that. Here is the entire point to this story. Upon hearing my fussing, here is his reply verbatim:

"But mom, I'm just celebrating."

"Celebrating what, son?"

"Celebrating that we have mass today so I get to have my 2nd Communion." (His first communion was Saturday.)

"Oh, well, I'm not sure if God would like you to celebrate in the living room like that, ok?"

"OK, mom."

The fiddling stopped until I walked out the door and BAM, the bird comes out again and gets a fiddling.

So next time you feel like fiddling with your genitalia, or catch someone else doing the same, just remember, it's just a celebration! Ziggy and I laughed at this all day.

Itchy Twat

2009-05-04T20:12:00.004-05:00

I was commenting this story briefly on another blog and I guessed it was blog worthy enough...plus I have a spare minute to type so here we go.

My twinkie itches.

No, I mean, it ITCHES. If I were able to, I would totally de-pants and sit and just scratch every inch of the outer and inter labia until I bled - that's how bad it itches. It's the worst itch of my life.

The doctor has now checked it twice - no yeast infection and no vaginitis. Nothing to be found. She's looked and poked and pulled and tested - nothing. Her theory? I have a form of diaper rash - probably from so much peeing. Fabulous.

See, when I was young I was inflicted with horrible massive bladder infections. When I was four I had surgery on my bladder and I've had a urologist who has known me for almost 30 years. My file is like A - F of the Encyclopedias, it's that big.

My uroligist saw me more up until I was 20 than the dentist and the pediatrician combined. He most recently saw me for my kidney stones that have come and gone 4 FUN times since I was pregnant with Luke.

So a long time ago I learned to drip dry. My urologist felt that women wiping after urinating was counter productive as it forces bad things back where they were trying to escape (that's how it was explained to me at age 4). So I'm a notorious drip dryer.

Well, at night, since I'm getting up to pee 4 - 6 times a night and I'm half asleep while doing it, I'm not drip drying properly and I'm pulling back up Ziggy's boxers and heading into bed with damp twinkie and then getting under covers until the next pee.

So, it's like a diaper rash from not drying enough and then heading to bed over and over again all night. Now you may say, "why not just wipe?" Well, let's see, I'm 31 and I learned to drip dry at 4 and it's between 11:00pm and 5:00am in the morning. Can you unlearn a 27 year old habit at that time of morning? I didn't think so.

I got some glorious cream and voila - the twinkie is soothed and pleasantly resting. I also got a no sex coupon good for two whole weeks which is bonus because the second trimester desires came and went...QUICKLY.

SCORE!

This weekend I was babysitting the twins with my mom and after their bath while dressing them, I reached for their prescription diaper rash cream and lo and behold - it's the same dang cream...Nystatin. Woo Hoo! Nanny and the twins have the same diaper rash cream - we're cool and you drool.

Wait a minute...I guess that's not so cool, right?

Oh and YES I've read the common uses for Nystatin and I don't have ringworm so screw off. It's diaper rash and there's no shame in that and as long as I'm not contemplating a brillo pad down there to ease the itch, I'm happy whatever the cream is.

On a total side note, this makes me wonder - does diaper rash actually itch a poor baby more than it actually burns? I wonder.

Dreams

2009-04-29T20:36:00.002-05:00

I've spent much time analyzing my dreams from day one of this pregnancy due to their psychic abilities with my pregnancy with Luke.

I wrote down ALL of my dreams during Luke's pregnancy in a pregnancy dream journal that my eccentric astrology loving sister gave me (notice the difference in free time between a new mom and a mom of one already). Yes, I had time for all that bananas and journaling...I even did it with a pen instead of a computer!! Egads!

A recurring theme in almost ALL of those dreams was the color blue. There would be black and white dreams about everything under the sun, but with a startling blue car or blue shirt or blue hair. Blue was everywhere and it stood out in every dream.

For this baby, the colors are totally telling me zilch. Of all of my pregnancy dreams thus far, there is only one common theme and it's an intensely odd theme...ex lovers.

I call them ex lovers only because that sounds more exotic and makes me sound like an experienced lady of the night...which is so far from the truth. I've loved almost everyone I've ever banged except for that one dude, Jeremy, who had a fantasy of screwing to monk chanting music...we did it once and I never went back for seconds.

So back to the dreams. They are all about ex boyfriends or ex crushes or ex lovahs. Every single one of them...men that I haven't thought of in years...decades even. Men that I may not recognize if I passed them on the street.

But one by one, every single one of them is popping back up in my own little night dramas. What does this mean? I'm perplexed by it since my dreams for Luke were so amazingly telling.

Last night was the Iraq soldier from my church who I communicated with online for his entire Iraq stint, professed my love and adoration to, and was crushed when he returned to just think of me as a friend.

Monday night was the grade school crush that I had flings with off and on over the years. He broke my heart at least 3 times and I in turn broke his at least 3 times. But for almost 15 years we passed in and out of each other's lives in intense passion and love (don't laugh...I mean that...of course he is also the guy that I'm almost positive that I got the common and popular little STD from which I will not name)

And YES, I had an STD - it was very common and I caught it early and had it taken care of so shut up, I've probably still been less of a hussy than you...I just got a bum deal from my limited hussiness.

Sunday night was my ex husband, and the dream was uneventful, sort of like the marriage itself.

Saturday night was the guy with the hugest schlong I ever encountered that I dated for almost a year - a weenie so huge that oral sex was near impossible, but I so loved him anyway because he was a redneck who called me "darlin". Oddly enough, he was really small and short...the weenie was a total shock on that guy.

Last week was the total opposite...the little Cuban dude with the teensy tinsy weenie that I actually almost married and who would fuss at me not to hold his weenie between my index and thumb fingers because it made it look smaller. BWAHAHAHAHA - as if my fingers were needed to accentuate its smallness.

None of the dreams are sexual though, mind you, I just seem to catagorize my men by the size and shape of their birds, I suppose. Never really thought about that until I realized that I described almost every guy by his penis.

Usually the dreams are just about me being single again and trying to win their hearts or us being in a relationship again. Or just the day to day life of what it was to be with them.

Very strange. I'm almost excited to go to sleep and see which old beau I will bump into tonight.

I've searched for the color pink or blue - nothing. Just a steady stream of ex boyfriends all lining up and waiting for their turn to capture my memories and remind me of their existence.

So what do you think? I'm crazy? I need to mount my husband to rid myself of obvious sexual frustration (um, no, I'm not in the mood AT ALL)?

And don't think that I love my husband less. I'm madly in love with Ziggy even though he's a jackass on most days. I wouldn't trade him for anyone that I've passed in my dreams.

I just don't get it.

No news

2009-04-28T21:10:00.002-05:00

The ultrasound was a bust. Other than seeing a gorgeously growing and healthy fetus - we saw no gender. So naturaly and selfishly the ultrasound was declared a bust.

I wish I had more time to write. Between work and home lately I feel like I am going a million miles a minute. I have about 10 posts backed up in my brain that I need to let out.

I'm so sorry. I suck. It's 9:00, I need to pee, bathe, spend a smidge of time with my kid, check the pool water level and fold a load of clothes and hopefully crash by 10:00. AHHHH!!!

I need a break from this schedule I've had lately.

Fuck that

2009-04-23T19:46:00.001-05:00

Hold up!

Quick a 2nd post in one day!!

Fuck that. Walmart's registry website is even more complicated and slow loading than Babies R Us was - if that is even possible. We stick with Babies R Us. Check out the registry if you know me and let me know if I forget anything or chose anything shitty.

Registered

2009-04-23T19:39:00.002-05:00

So I registered. That was painful. If you know my last name you are welcome to check it out at Babies R Us and tell me all about how much I suck or sucked at picking things out. I'm cool with that.

For Luke, I had few options. Option A was "whatever is cheapest in that particular item" or Option B which was "whatever I got free from people". Having an unexpected pregnancy out of wedlock does that to you.

Now I have all these options and I'm flipped out over it. I'm by NO stretch of the imagination, wealthy, but I also don't make $8.00 an hour anymore like I did for poor Luke.

So I registered and it took me HOURS and then friggin Walmart sends me a registry book and I'm all like - shit - I should have registered at Walmart. So now I'm going to see if registering at Walmart is easier and more pleasant than registering at Babies R Us and if it is, well, Babies R Us can suck it, because registering with them gave me an ulcer.

Sorry this post sucks - I have chores to do.

Fro Fro

2009-04-18T22:18:00.005-05:00

WARNING - much longer post than usual, so grab a snack before you start!

As mentioned before, I grew up on the lake, in a camp on top of water with an oyster shell driveway. Seriously, no joke. You had to walk up 20 steps to get to my front door. It was a totally awesome environment to grow up in, but that's not what this is about.

When I was born, I had a Winnie the Pooh baby pillow. It was a perfect square and super soft and I can close my eyes and still see clearly every memory I am about to share. I became attached to one corner of the pillow which I would fiddle with between my right thumb and forefinger while sucking on my index finger of my left hand. The comfort and ectasy I got from performing those two actions at the same time is something I rarely feel in adulthood.

During a wild winter storm in December (wind and rain, no snow, this is the south people), I was standing on the side porch over the water of our house while my parents were securing our outside belongings from the wind and it happened...my pillow, my beloved fro fro, blew into the water. Lake Pontchartrain took my fro fro.

Noone knows why I named it fro fro except that maybe it was my earliest form of saying the word pillow. Fro fro blew into the water and the storm and the wind and the cold were more than my father was willing to jump in the lake for to retrieve my precious belonging despite my screaming and pleading.

I must have been about 4 or so. I wailed for weeks over it. My mother tried substitutions. Finally, and I remember this VERY clearly, she found a little stuffed blue elephant in Winn Dixie and asked me if I wanted it. I fiddled with his floppy ears with my thumb and index finger and declared him FRO FRO.

Since then, there have been numerous fro fro's. I have no recollection of what happened to fro fro, the blue elephant, but most of the others I remember very clearly. Somehow he evolved into the corner of my Star Wars pillow case (we LOVED Star Wars - probably because my father tried at every turn to make us boys).

See, on most all pillow cases, on the closed side, there is one corner that is super pointy and one corner that is fairly rounded. If you twiddle the slightly rounded corner enough, it will soften and round out into an ideal Fro Fro.

I remember in the 4th grade, I took scissors and cut off the corner of the Star Wars fro fro so that I could fit it in my school uniform pocket and never be without fro fro when I needed him. I would secretly take him out and fiddle with him at my desk all day in grade school until my whore sister told my mother about it and my mom made me stop.

I was able to give up the finger sucking by second grade, but fro fro never went away.

There were two more most notable fro fro's. In high school my sister and I got matching black and white checkered bed sets. Actually, if you look at Adam Sandler's bed sheets in The Wedding Singer they are IDENTICAL to those. That fro fro lasted a LONG time - all through high school and half way through college. On a flight home from Hawaii, I left that fro fro on the plane and never saw him again.

Bonding to a new fro fro is a long and tedious task. It takes months of finger fiddling to become accustomed to a new one and I haven't had to do it in years. However, with every new bed sheet set, I find myself subconsciously checking each pillow case end to find which ones would possibly be fro fro material in the event that a tragic loss happened again.

After the checkered one was lost, it became a mint green pillowcase with white flowers on it. That was in the end of college and that, my friends, is the fro fro that is still on my bed today, over ten years later. I am loyal if nothing else.

This fro fro has been to Florida, Chicago, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Nevada, Alabama, Georgia, California and the Bahamas - it has lived in two apartments and two houses. It has been on two honeymoons and in the hospital for the birth of my first child. If I am going to be anywhere overnight, my fro fro comes with me.

Once during a weekend trip to Biloxi, MS, my fro fro was taken accidentally by the housekeepers of the hotel. It took my current husband, who was just my boyfriend at the time, about 3 hours and $20 under the table to salvage it from the laundry room.

This may all seem psychotic to you, but if you knew my childhood story and you knew some of my even fairly recent adult story then you would concede to just let this woman have her damn fro fro. If a child chooses to cling to a pillow case while her parents beat the shit out of each other, then dammit, just let her have it.

My crutch on the corner of a certain pillow case that I fiddle with to put me to sleep or while I'm relaxing is not something that I am proud of. My entire family makes fun of it including my parents and my own child.

Luke and Ziggy have played jokes and hid it from me. They are assholes when they do that. I don't share fro fro with the general population because I KNOW that it is strange and immature, but when I tell you that I cannot sleep without him, I swear to you that I CANNOT sleep without him.

This current fro fro has particular meaning to me. It is the first "blanket" that I swaddled my son in at the hospital. It is what I wrapped up my dear sweet dog, Lola, in to bring her to the vet on her last day of life. It is the same pillow case that I used to smuggle sweet Lola into the Super 8 motel when we evacuated for Hurricane Katrina. It seriously is that much a part of my life. I've dried millions of tears with it - millions - springing from the eyes of myself, my son, my husband - because it's usually close at hand during those kinds of moments. (I keep it loose and not on an actual pillow so it's just more like a little blanket than a pillow case.)

My closest boyfriends in life knew and understood the seriousness of fro fro. On the night that I lost my virginity, I was shaking like a leaf afterwards and crying and Patrick immediately got up, yanked off the condom and handed me fro fro and then curled up behind me. When I'm on the sofa resting or sick, Ziggy and occasionally even Luke will bring me my fro fro as easily as if they were bringing me a glass of water. Seriously. It's as much a part of my life as air and Ziggy knows that if I die I want to be buried in pajamas with socks on (I loathe being barefoot at night with no socks) with fro fro in my hand.

I've noticed the wear and tear on current fro fro. When you hold the corner up to the light, it is so worn down that you can see the individual threads through it. I've tried to use him less so I can hang on to him longer, but then the hole appeared. The part that was see-through became an actual hole.

So I tried to twiddle around the hole. Then last night, I was laying in bed watching TV and a small part of the threaded guts in that inner part of a pillow case oozed out of the hole like a cooked ramen noodle. I screamed and Ziggy came running thinking I was hurt.

Naturally he laughed his ass off when he saw the reason for my distress. He mended fro fro the best he could and then he sat and talked to me seriously about giving it up. GIVE IT UP? WTF, man? Seriously? Does he not realize that he is merely one of 100 people who have tried to convince me to give it up? Is he psychotic?

So fro fro is partially mended right now, but it's obvious that his days are numbered and I am faced with a huge decision. Do I seriously try to give up my fro fro need forever and cold turkey say goodbye to my most trusted and oldest ally, or do I begin to court a new pillow case corner to take his place?

If you are laughing then go ahead. Who cares? This is serious for me. You can tell me I need therapy and guess what? I have had it. I've had four serious therapists in my life (hell between my parents and my husband, you should be shocked that it is so few and not many more). NONE of my therapists have ever seen a problem with fro fro, and actually 2 of the 4 told me that they found fro fro to be a healthy outlet for personal comfort. So, na nee na nee boo boo on you.

So that is the story of fro fro. Laugh. Make fun. You won't be the first and you won't be the last. In the meantime I am saying goodbye to a very old friend and possibly having to replace him and it sucks and I hate it and I'm really sad over it.

Talons

2009-04-16T20:31:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted for a really silly reason. I got my nails did, girl. Seriously, I was feeling fat and ugly and just blah and I made a spur of the moment decision to get some acrylic nails.

They make my hands look totally lurvely and Ziggy loves them (anything you do to make yourself look like a hooker is a turn on for him...no I'm really serious about that.) However, my normal ridiculously fast typing speed with zero errors is now reduced to a chick pecking on corn and missing over and over again and it's really just pissing me off.

So now I'm torn. Do I keep my fabulously gorgeous nails and suffer drastically in typing and working and picking my nose? Or do I pop the bitches off and return to my nubbiness of speed and precision.

Decisions. Decisions.

Plus sized bitch

2009-04-10T21:41:00.003-05:00

I went on a dreadful mission tonight. I hate clothes shopping on a normal size 6 kind of day. I always have. Having to go buy an outfit is always a horrific gut wrenching experience and I'm not just being a drama queen - I really hate it.

Tack on a few rolls and a 2nd trimester belly and my trip to Motherhood required the support of my husband this evening. I found out this morning that my future SIL's wedding shower is a dressy affair. SHIT! I only have maternity pants and jeans and capris so far. Definitely no skirts or dresses.

So the emergency trip to Motherhood began. After 5 trips into the dressing room and a very uncomfortable husband who had no idea that nursing bras existed, but was fascinated by their engineering - I finally settled on a decent enough skirt/blouse combo to take me through whatever showers and tea and crumpet affairs I may have in the next few months.

While waiting at the register, I saw the most fabulous underwear on earth. I wanted them. I needed them. They were so soft and stretchy. I looked at the size and absent mindedly said, "oooh one size fits all" out loud.

The skinny bitch at the register then said VERY loudly so the whole store could hear, "oh mam, the plus size ones are in that back section there."

AHEM.

I SAID AHEM!!

Are you fucking kidding me? Plus size? No, really?

Look you skinny twig whom I could crack over my apparant ham hock thighs, let me clue you in on something hun. I may not be a "cute" pregnant gal. I may already be in an XL shirt because of my normally bulging D's that are already busting out of DD cups. I may be swollen already and look about 6 - 8 weeks more pregnant than I should at this point, but my flat ass and my non existent thighs are still wearing size 6 underwear so you can suck my husband's nuts.

No I didn't say that. I didn't even think it. What I did say was nothing. What I did do is slowly put the package back and crumble inwardly in self loathing and embarrassment and was actually even embarrassed in front of my own husband...the man that I just farted LOUDLY at in the car.

So a slice of Sbarro's and a new pair of shoes later and I'm feeling fine, but dang, I still want to smack the ho.

Lock up your mothers

2009-04-09T21:21:00.002-05:00

I apologize for being MIA. My father is in town and he is VERY demanding of your time...or perhaps I am very needy of his love and approval...not sure which one, you decide.

Today was my 16 week check up (yes, I know I'm 4 days early, but that's how the ball bounces folks). The heart beat was 155 and he/she is still sitting right under my belly button smack in the center (Luke always favored the left side in the first 20 weeks). We discussed my never ending shits and my itchy hooha and all is well.

I dropped down to 1000mg of Metformin to hopefully help the poops and I'm supposed to use lurvely Vagisil until my next appointment and if the itch ain't gone, then we take some pills.

It's hard to explain an itchy hooha to a husband who is begging for loving and you're still trying to remain 1% sexy during pregnancy. Thank goodness he has a bad cold and he's out like a light by 8:00 every night this week, so I haven't had to explain yet. WOO HOO for me!

So like I said, Barry, the lady killer dad is in the house so I don't have much time, but I just wanted to drop in, say hello and promise to be back soon.

Oh a quick shout out to my TTC soul sister, Rissa, who will be induced in less than 12 hours - I can't wait to meet Mr. PB&J and don't worry, you will do AWESOME!

Updates

2009-04-04T17:45:00.002-05:00

I have an update on the Friend from the Past post of earlier this week. Well, after a couple of calls back and forth and a few texts, it appears to have fizzled out. At first I was relieved and then I noticed that Ziggy seemed really sad about it.

When I first met him, his friends were his whole life - the good, the bad and the ugly - they were his life. He had probably 60 guy friends in his phone that he regularly talked to and hung out with.

Since getting clean, I think he gets lonely. He's made a couple of acquaintance type buddies along the way, but he still hasn't made that type of friend that comes over to help you put in the new cabinets or would be there for you as your baby's god father.

So I felt guilty. The more I thought of Scott, the more I realized how safe he was. He was always a really great guy who just drank ALOT and enjoyed an occasional fattie. But he was decent and a hard worker and a great friend who was almost as betrayed by Ziggy as I once was. And here is is reaching out from the past.

Ziggy never had a drinking problem. He truly dislikes alcohol and can have a beer or two a year and never want any more than that. Since alcohol is this guy's primary vice and I doubt that he would light up a fattie around Ziggy knowing his history, I found myself in the car today on the way to Wal-Mart almost trying to convince Ziggy to invite him over one night to show him our house and just hang out.

I couldn't believe I was doing it, but my rationality kicked in and I realized that Scott could actually be safer than a few of the acquaintance friends we've made in the past couple years.

So that's that. That's where we are now. I have more updates on life and pregnancy and I'll try to post again tomorrow.

Blast from the Past

2009-03-31T18:24:00.002-05:00

There's so much that I haven't shared about my husband. Why would I? I normally have enough shit going on in the present to avoid talking about painful past horrors. But something has come up that has taken my brain and my heart and hurled it into the past and the emotions/memories/thoughts welling up are beyond my control.

When I met my husband, he was just a super catch. He was a college graduate, driving an Acura, dressed to the 9's, was so un-womanizing that one would almost think he was gay and was majorly serious about his job. What more could a single mother ask for?

Weirdness ensured early on in our relationship. His constant need for his friends didn't help me with the whole thoughts of him possibly being gay thing, nor did it help that he struggled with a constant impotence problem. Yeah, I said it. He did.

Skip over 2 dramatic years of highs and lows and I'll protect you from all the drama. Turns out that Mr. Perfect had an oxycontin addiction.

I found out much later that before dating me, he was a weekend dabbler with pain prescriptions. He had no pain, he was just a punk who liked a Vicoden at the club. This is how the story goes and after being trained in how to detect lies from my husband, I believe this to be truth.

He was so smitten with Luke and I that once we began dating seriously, he decided to totally kick the dabbling. I was his first serious relationship and he planned to kick the pills and dive head on into what he always wanted - a family of his own. However, the more he tried to quit without help or support, the further into his own personal hell he drifted.

The lies became out of control and I later found out that about 90% of that time that he was "hanging with Scott" whom I assumed to possibly be his gay crush or even lover, that he was actually hanging at his mother's house waiting for his "dealer" to call him and let him know he could go pick his stuff up. Oh and I guess you've figured out by now where the impotence was coming from...if not then google side affects of opiate addictions.

He was so embarrassed by his addiction that even his closest friends had no idea that he had fallen off the deep end.

By the end, when I finally gave up on his unidentified weirdness, he was a full blown addict with a $100 to a $300 a day addiction.

How could I be so stupid? Well, I won't defend myself except to say that until the last few months, when we were together he was my absolute best friend and was amazingly adept at hiding his addiction...until the end when I put it all together and had the AHA moment.

So of course we break up, he hits bottom, he climbs out from bottom, regains his health and we reconcile and he's been clean/sober for over 3 years now (we've been married for almost 2 years).

I rarely think of those times. In his sobriety he has embraced being a husband and a father and other than being a typical manhole every so often, everything is good. We never underestimate the power of the disease and we still work hard at staying humble and on the sober path.

A friend found him today. A friend from the past called him. A friend he hasn't talked to in years. Now, of all of those friends, this guy is probably the safest. He was also duped as much as I was by Ziggy's addiction and while this guy was a drunk and a pot head, he had no idea of the low that Ziggy had hit.

Ziggy did the model thing. He called me right away, before even talking to the guy to tell me that he had called and that he wanted to be sure that I was ok with calling him back and that he has no intention of even being around him except just to shoot the shit and catch up a bit as old friends.

That's when the panic set in. While I have honestly gone through so many steps to forgive him, a well of almost hatred boiled up in me as every memory came rushing back in as if yes, the forgiveness IS there, but I realized that forgetting will never be possible.

Anyway, that's where I am right now. I wonder at times why I even put myself through this. Why didn't I just change my cell phone number as EVERYONE advised me to do when he was at his bottom? And then I look down and see my belly and I remember how far we've come and how much we've grown and changed. We've seen the fires of hell together and we managed to walk away from it, and that is something that can cement a relationship more than most people can imagine.

I honestly believe that I sleep a wonderful man every night, but damn I sure do wish that this guy had never found him so that I could just be pissed about the dirty clothes on the floor again.

I have no happy ending yet. Ziggy is a little upset with my reaction and is being a little jerkish right now, which after some down time I know he'll have his own AHA moment. I can't really talk it out because it's not Luke's bed time yet - so I have no idea how this will play out.

Starting Over

2009-03-29T19:14:00.003-05:00

The thought of starting over has been hitting me a lot lately. I look at my 8 and 1/2 year old and I see an almost grown adult. He can pour his own cereal, run his own bath water, totally dress himself, wipe his own ass with minimal skid marks left behind and do his own homework most of the time.

The 8 and 1/2 years that it took me to get here were filled with joys and horrors, pain and pleasure. He's such a mature 8 year old that though I would never do it at this age, I honestly think that I could leave him alone at home during the day and I would come home and he would be totally cared for and fine. That, my friends, was a lot of hard work on my part and on the part of my mom at times. (I give little to no credit to the father on this one, sorry, but I can't.)

So now I've been getting anxiety over the starting over. Luke can not only now play Monopoly with zero reading or counting help, but he knows the rules to almost every popular game out there in this world - do you know how hard it is to explain Monopoly or Clue to a child? It's not all that fun to do, and then once they finally "get it" you totally forget and take for granted the pain of getting this little brain to grasp and master such a complex task.

Everything. All. Over. Again. Potty/holding a spoon/reading/tying shoes - all of it - all over again.

I'm certainly not whining or bitching about it. Trust me, I'm not. I'm just afraid of it. A child going on 9 is both sad and joyous. Sad because they rarely snuggle and hug and kiss and love you like mad like they did a couple years ago. Joyous because a certain new freedom returns to your life again where you no longer have a child dependant on you for their...well...their EVERYTHING.

It's that joyous feeling inside that is bringing on the fear of starting all over again. Perhaps this is why normal humans usually have their children closer together than 9 years apart?

Hello Libido

2009-03-27T14:20:00.002-05:00

All of a sudden today, I WANTED my husband. Like really WANTED him badly enough to ponder taking care of business on my own if you know what I mean. I guess the second trimester libido is beginning which will be a welcome sight for my poor deprived and desperate husband.

Monday officially begins the second trimester, and while I am totally thrilled, I still have the nagging feeling of doom. I had some worrying this week with a lot of cramping. The doctor says it's round ligament pain from my stretching uterus and that I need to sit/stand a bit slower to ease the pain. Whatever - but she said I need to get more rest. So I took off work today and I'm pondering taking off of school tomorrow too and doing a mani/pedi and some shopping.

I have so much more to say, I really do. I've neglected you guys all week long this week and I'm so sorry for that. Between a trip to Chicago for work and the worry over the cramping, I've been a total douche to you. I did however catch up on all of your blogs today while at home.

Luke has a friend over right now and they are chasing the cats with Nerf guns and I can't focus on what I was going to write. So I'm going to get them to cease fire and I'll come back to post more soon!

Husband for Rent

2009-03-22T18:00:00.002-05:00

I have a husband for rent if anyone wants him. My husband normally delivers the newspapers for the Times Picayune 2 or 3 nights a week. This gives us a really good cash flow each month and is always a back up for his spending issues. It basically allows us to still live comfortably even during tougher times and has allowed him the opportunity of pursuing his dream with a friend of buying rental properties - since we couldn't afford that dream without the newspaper money.

Of course it's screwed up our weekends for the past 2 years. I've become used to attending daytime weekend events without him and being sad about that, and having enough alone quiet time to drive me to drink with him sleeping until 4:00 to catch up on being up all night and Luke being at his dad's house.

Well, God has decided to bless us with a little higher salaries than we are used to along with a few other financial blessings. With that and the new baby coming and the list of incomplete household projects unfinished, my husband and I decided to drop the newspaper delivery down to one night a week.

Add that fact to a new medicine regime from his psychiatrist that is working remarkably well and has him more normal than I've ever known him to be, and well, I am exhausted.

He's so full of energy on the weekends now and is often up out of bed before me just tapping his toes waiting for me to get up. This is VERY new for us. Gone are my mornings of silence. Gone are my lunches of silence. They are now filled with trips to Lowe's to give my opinions on the next project he is tackling.

While this has been wonderful in many ways, I'm just so freaking exhausted. I've spent 2 years having my weekends during the school year almost 80% to myself and now I'm having maybe an hour or two to myself with the sound of a saw or a drill in the background anyway.

Last month he replaced all of our exterior light fixtures. This month he is replacing all of our 6 ceiling fans from the 1980's and has plans to completely overhaul the bushes in the front yard that I loathe and create the garden I've dreamed about. He's got pictures and plans and cost estimates and he wants to talk and bond and spend time together.

Just 6 months ago I would have literally killed for this man to become like this and now I'm contemplating a weekend in the hotel down the street and lying and saying that I had to go out of town for work just so that I can have some quiet again.

While it is wonderful to see our dilapidating house finally get some very needed attention and it is fabulous to actually get to know my baby's father again...I'm thinking of renting him out for a day during the weekend.

Just a reminder to always be conscious of what you're wishing for. My house is loving it and for the most part, so am I...but come on...please let me take a nap!

Grandparents

2009-03-18T20:13:00.002-05:00

My mother in law, Ralph is at her craziness again. She has taken up an obsession over what my child will call her and her husband (when I say obsession, that is an understatement). I find this hilarious when new grandparents do this...because the vast majority have no choice in what they wind up being called.

My dad wanted to be Papa. My eldest nephew called him Pop. Thirteen years and 3 grandkids later, he is still Pop. My mother wanted to be called Granny. My son called her Nee Nee (which we spell NeNe at her request). Eight years and 3 grandkids later, she is still NeNe. (Don't ask why my parents both have 3 grandkids and yet not the same grandkids in case you were smart enough to catch that...it's a long story).

So my MIL is searching the Internets for the most perfectest grandparents names on earth, even going so far as to try on the Ukrainian names for grandparents. While I guess that I can understand her excitement, I still find it hilarious because the child will wind up calling her whatever he/she chooses and that will be that.

My father in law's request? "Call me Joe. All my kids just call me Joe, so this one can call me Joe too." Now Joe is a nutcase...but in this moment, he seems most sane. Why do grandparents, grandmothers in particular, seem to obsess over what their grandkids will call them?

I'm not saying that I will be perfect and not do this at all when my time arrives - but at this moment, I couldn't give two shits what my grandkids call me as long as it's not something like "Fatty" or something equally horrifying.

And to explain very quickly the number of grandkids thing above - here is a 30 second flowchart description.

Barry marries Laurie and produces Brenda
Susie marries Henry and produces Heather
All parties divorce
Barry marries Susie and produces Sandy
Barry and Susie divorce
Brenda gets married and has 2 sons
Sandy gets knocked up and has 1 son
Heather gets married and has twin sons
In that order
Hencetheretofore - both of my parents have 3 grandsons, though not the same grandsons since neither acknowledge the divorced step child's children as their grandchildren. I have 2 sisters whom I share blood with, but each of my two sisters only has one sister with whom they share blood with. Good times. I have 4 nephews and they each only have 1 nephew.

Got it?

Yep, I know, my family is whack. Now let me bring in gay Uncle Lee and crazy Auntie M and I can really shake you up!

Good night ya'll!

Gun Show

2009-03-15T19:31:00.002-05:00

First I need to ask you all to keep lovely Kristen in your prayers tonight - http://kristenwiley.blogspot.com/. God Bless, Kristen.

For Ziggy's birthday, I promised him two things - the sex and the gun show. Ugh, what was I thinking? The sex wasn't bad - I put on the maternity babydoll nightie that he had bought me for Valentine's Day and I gave him about 15 minutes of birthday boy happiness. The gun show on the other hand....

I mean seriously. Both types of people who attend the gun shows are the types that you are taught as a woman to fear and avoid and lock your car doors if you see one. There is the total redneck type who like their women thick and their cigarettes hand rolled and are all plotting on their takeover of the American government. Then there are the thugs with diamond teeth and hands holding up their ridiculously baggy pants.

And then it occurred to me - these two genres of humans are so immensely similar to one another nowhere else in this world except here at this gun show. On the street they hate eachother. They speak horribly of one another and would definitely not shed a tear over the loss of one of the other kind.

But here in this gunshow, they are the same - they are all staunch supporters of the second ammendment and would pick up a gun and defend that ammendment together, side by side, if it came down to that.

Kind of odd to think of it like that, but here in the South, whether you own a piece of farmland, or you live in a housing project, you probably own a firearm of some kind and the nasty ass gun show is the only place on earth where you will see these two separate breeds come together in a true sense of friendship and understanding.

Just big blobs of fat

2009-03-10T21:13:00.005-05:00

Interesting things seen or heard today:

First - most interesting thing seen award goes to....the poo thumb print on the roll of toilet paper in Luke's bathroom. While I KNOW that the poo thumbprint belonged to my 8 year old, I am praying that the act of pooing actually occurred immediately before his bath and not at any other time of day.

Second - most interesting thing heard today award goes to....again to Luke with a fabulous tie. I just love this commercial on TV lately where a bunch of 10 to 13 year olds tell their parents to talk to them about sex. The commercial is ALL over the TV and no channel is safe from it. I've seen it with Luke in the room at least 10 times this month.

Today, I asked Luke, "Well, do you want to go ahead and talk about sex since this commercial keeps saying that we should?"

Luke's reply was, "No, why would we. I mean, you've never had sex, and I never plan on having sex, so why would we talk about it."

And that friends, is the first funniest thing I heard all day.

I said, "Well, son, remember how we talked about eggs and seeds and how moms and dads need to hug and kiss to get the eggs and seeds to meet eachother." (WHAT? It was a book that came HIGHLY recommended when his stepmother got pregnant by his own pediatrician! Don't judge me, I was trying.)

Luke said, "I guess so."

I said, "Well Luke, all that hugging and kissing? Well, that IS sex - that's what it is. You got any questions?"

Luke said, "Nah, I just don't understand why grown up men like boobies so much...I mean, all they are is a big blob of fat - who wants to grab all over blobs of fat?"

Momentary silence.

"OH MY GOD MOMMY, YOU HAD SEX WITH ZIGGY TO MAKE THAT BABY?"

And that, friends, is the second funniest thing I heard all day.

I should have posted the funniest thing heard yesterday which was Luke learning at the dinner table that Ozzie talks and acts so weird from years of too many drugs. Luke thought that it was all of the loud music and cursing that made him like that.

Hey now, I just realized that I talked to my son about sex and drugs - both of them - in one week. Ah, I feel like I need a pat on the back from the creators of totally inappropriate commercials everywhere. Thank god he wasn't paying attention during that Tampax commercial earlier!

Hand That Rocks the Cradle

2009-03-08T20:27:00.003-05:00

Today was the Twin's Christening in Baton Rouge. I am a godmother along with my BIL's sister and then there was one godfather. While I was looking forward to seeing my two little men, the thought of the family and gathering made me prefer a fiery death over the afternoon to come.

My sister invited 75 of her "closest" family menbers and friends to the church and to her house after. So not only did I barely get to see her or my godsons, but it was just miserable. EVERYONE knew at this point that I am pregnant and if I got asked one more time how I was feeling, I was going to begin clawing my skin off.

I'm not a social person by nature. I've even had a doctor officially label it as social anxiety once in my life. I loathe social events where more than 5 to 10 people are there. I just freak out and I can't handle it and I'll find any excuse on earth to escape.

Today's escape was for chicken nuggets. Thank god that my sister is a hoity toity snob who had absolutely NO food for a normal 8 year old child. So I volunteered to make the chicken nugget run for the 10 kids that were ravenous after the 2 hour long high mass (great thinking sis...but I guess you'll learn how to party plan around children soon).

Which brings me to the nanny. I got to meet her nanny today. Yes, my sister is such a snob that her boys are too good for normal daycare like the rest of us pathetic folk. She has an in house nanny - $9.50 an hour - comes to about $500 a week.

The nanny is obviously not mentally stable. Why she was even there at all, I haven't figured out yet. Perhaps sis felt the need to include her? There sure wasn't a shortage of old ladies willing to care for the boys, so the nanny was NOT needed. However, she was there.

She totally took over the boys. She would pull them out of family members arms. She would wander off and disappear with them. She was 100% no exaggerating - acting like the mother of the boys. She talked about them like she was their mother and I even overheard her telling someone that the boys now cry when she leaves the house everyday and that she is the ONLY woman that they will smile for. My mother was feeding one and she told my mother how she was doing it wrong. I got the boys confused at one point (they ARE twins) and she went around telling everyone how even their own godmother can't tell them apart but SHE can.

OK, is my sister stupid? Fire the bitch. Seriously. She's weird. She's creepy. She has unhealthy boundaries with your boys. She snatched them out of the arms of poor Aunty M who hasn't seen them since Christmas. Come on now. She's a freak.

That being said, look how handsome my man looked today:

Condoms and cups

2009-03-06T19:43:00.002-06:00

There are 4 items sitting on a top shelf of the hutch of my desk. They are a sterile condom, a sterile cup, a pack of birth control pills and a Rx for an antibiotic.

This is THE month. This is the month that we had decided to go full force into fertility testing and treatments. The cup and condom are for Ziggy's sperm analysis and the pills and Rx are for my HSG. Then we planned to do an IUI and injectible cycle in April.

I can't believe I am in that month - the month that we were looking forward to with fear and excitement and stress over money and I JUST remembered that the month is now here.

I went to the items on the desk and fiddled with them. I read the labels on the cup and the condom, looked for the expiration date on the pills. I put them all in my hand to throw them away. But I can't. I'll be 11 weeks on Monday and I just can't. Not yet. I feel sure that the second they hit the bottom of the trash can, that the blood will flow.

I was struck by such a severe sense of humility. We are here. We made it. And it hit me in the hugest flood of emotion - I am not "trying" anymore - I AM now. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to grasp this and how amazing it feels to finally have it?

I don't need these things and yet, I just can't throw them away yet. I told myself at 4 weeks that I would throw them away when we saw the heartbeat. Now I'm saying the 2nd trimester which is so close I can smell it. Once that arrives, I may just box these things up and keep them forever...as a reminder of where we were and how hard we tried and how far we were willing to go so that I will never take this experience for granted.

Men suck

2009-03-04T20:15:00.003-06:00

I encountered suck ass men all day today.

My boss saundered into work at 10:45, left for lunch at about 11:45, got back from lunch after 1:00 and then busied himself gossiping with other men at work all day...while the women float the boat as usual. He sucks ass.

My employee is not very bright. I had to train him on something today and I swear to goodness that it was seriously like trying to train a brick wall. Sometimes I want to bang on his head just to see if he's still alive. He sucks ass.

My husband has gone to sleep every night this week at least 1 hour before me, has done nothing to help me around the house this week at all and wakes up an hour after me and doesn't have our taxes done yet. I'm pissed at him today. He sucks ass.

A guy at work stared at my belly for about 10 minutes while we chatted about computers like he was sizing up a Thanksgiving turkey. It made me feel weird and gross. He sucks ass.

Then the evening closed with my son scoring his very first goal in his soccer game. He saw me carrying the load of clean towels and offered to fold them for me. He said "thank you" when I gave him the glass of milk that he asked for... and then, only then I thought that maybe, just maybe there could be a man in my life that doesn't suck ass?

So when do sweet little boys start to suck ass? Or is it possible that the one that I am raising may be a rare one that doesn't suck ass? Nah - child is now screaming for me to wash his hair...he sucks ass too...just not as big of a one.

Come on, you know I love him.

Cheese and crackers, I hope so.

Uhhhh

2009-03-03T17:45:00.002-06:00

I received Baby's first gifts/clothes today from my mother in law. She bought me two gener neutral T-shirts and 2 pairs of gender neutral socks. I walked into the baby's room (AKA, the guest room for the past year and a half) and hung them in his/her closet.

Very surreal. (mental note to thank her for them since she gave them to Ziggy and I couldn't thank her in person)

I spent the entire day on my feet at my company's annual Expo and I am so tired and sore from lack of movement in the past month for fear that I may damage the baby, that I could just cry from the pain. I also have an absolute shit load of cervical mucus...which scared me at first until Dr. Google assured me that a lot of movement can elevate cervical mucus and god knows I moved ALOT more today than usual.

Now I have to do homework, dinner, dishes, bath, clothes, bedtime...and then hopefully crash...very soon.

I'm so happy to be a woman today though. All of the men in the company have to spend the entire evening getting drunk, entertaining customers and taking them to titty bars and I'll get to be asleep before the first dollar is placed in a G-string.

10 weeks

2009-03-02T18:53:00.001-06:00

Can I get a What What?

10 freaking weeks!

Oh gawd almighty, I'm in the double digits.

Humbly, I thank you, God.

Babies R Expensive

2009-03-01T10:16:00.003-06:00

***EDITED TO CORRECT RETARDED MISSPELLING IN TITLE***

Ziggy and I were bored last night so I took him for his first ever visit in his life to Babies R Us.

Hilariousness ensued as Ziggy sat in awe as aisle after aisle he was bombarded with the expense of having a baby. He was totally stunned at the cost of strollers and sheets and all the things that you "need" when you have a baby.

It was a good time. When we walked out of the store, we laughed together over how we BOTH only seemed to focus on girl things. We didn't spend two seconds looking at boy bed sets or boy clothes or boy anything. We spent over an hour looking at everything pretty and pink and frilly. Was this instinctive? I have no idea, but we both decided that we will be shocked if the wee one has a penis.

In fact, we are already 100% positive on our girl name and haven't even begun to partially agree on boy names.

Very strange indeed. Please God, if it is a girl, please give her my nose!!! LOL!

Waiting sucks and crazy husbands

2009-02-27T21:21:00.003-06:00

I can't believe that I have TWO! MORE! WEEKS! to wait before seeing the doctor again...well, 13 days, but who's counting?

Helloooo little one? You ok in there?

I broke down and weighed today and I was pleasantly surprised. While I can't button ANY of my pants AT ALL anymore and my boobs are now officially DD's, I've only gained 1.5 pounds in the 5 and 1/2 weeks that I've known I was pregnant.

That's rather astonishing - I thought that it would be about 10 from the fit of my pants. However, I am still in all of my normal shirts, just can't button me pants, so I guess that whole belly popping out faster for the second kid is no lie.

Ziggy saw Dr. Awesomeness again today (he's gotten a "ness" added to his name for the most recent awesomeness he displayed). This is Ziggy's bipolar cocktail:

In the morning he takes 60mg of Cymbalta, 450mg of Lithium, 70mg of Vyvanse, a GNC Mega Man multi vitamin and a triple strength fish oil capsule that is about as huge as my thumb (new studies show major promise with fish oil and bipolar).

Then in the pm he takes another 450mg of Lithium, 300mg of Lithium, a 5mg of Abilify and another multi vitamin (it's a two pill dose, so I break it up).

Yes, so this is EVERY DAY of his life. His meds alone after insurance cost us $220 a month. However, I've known my husband for almost 10 years now and this is absolutely the MOST mentally healthy and stable that I have ever seen him and for that I am so grateful. He is alert and active and participating in life and family. He isn't yelling at everyone and everything, he isn't yelling at news anchors on TV (as much). It's just as close to the word "normal" as we've ever been.

So Hooray for Dr. Awesomeness.

He's still a crazy ass nut though - he actually just walked in the office a minute ago and reminded me that "We really need to start buying guns and gold, baby, guns and gold. The South WILL rise again and we need to be prepared." This was said in his best redneck voice while standing in his underwear. Yes, he's hot, he's medicated, he's nuts and he's all mine.

Lan

2009-02-26T18:08:00.003-06:00

Dear Lan,

I've felt compelled to write this all day long today. Blame pregnancy hormones. Blame the season changing here in New Orleans and memories flooding in. Blame jackturd boss who is too busy for me lately and Forman for deserting me for a fancy office at the movie studio. Blame what you will, but I'm feeling weepy and nostalgic this evening.

I can't imagine the things that you are facing and battling and nothing that I can say can make it better or ease the worry and fears. I KNOW that it will get better sooner than later, but it's shitty for me to even suggest that when the silver lining seems so far away.

I miss you terribly, dear woman. Terribly. I hate to see you in such a sad place where you feel that you would be a burden to me. PASHAW! No such thing.

Anyway, here is the meat and potatoes. There is a song that makes me think of you and ALWAYS has since I first met you. It's totally corny but for some reason whenever I hear this song, I think of no one but you. Perhaps it is because of how fabulous you look in this color. Perhaps it is the brightness that you added to my life in the time that you were here. I've thought of sharing this with you for ages and was always too embarrassed to do it.

Well no more. Here it is. This is your song in my eyes and if I could sing better than a Croaker on a fishing hook, I would sing it for you.

Yellow - Cold Play

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah they were all yellow,

I came along
I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called yellow

So then I took my turn
Oh all the things I've done
And it was all yellow

Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D'you know you know I love you so
You know I love you so

I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh all the things you do
Cause you were all yellow

I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all yellow

Your skin
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D'you know for you i bleed myself dry
For you i bleed myself dry

Its true look how they shine for you
look how they shine for you
look how they shine for you
look how they shine for you
look how they shine for you
look how they shine
look at the stars look how they shine for you

So I had to do that, and when my hormones shift in an hour, I may totally feel like a wierd creepy stalker and wish that I had never been such a pansy, but for now I feel that you'll know my intentions and hopefully feel all warm and cozy inside.

Feel better, Lan. Feel some hope. You will come out on top!

I'm going blind

2009-02-25T21:58:00.003-06:00

Bear with me folks if you encounter any typos or misspellings in this post. You see, dear friends, I am currently going blind. I remember once reading that blurred vision can be a symptom of pregnancy and it appears to have hit me in full force...with one exception...mine only occurs after 9:00pm.

So strangley enough, I go all day being able to see normally and then BAM, 9:00pm hits and I can't see a damn thing. At first I thought it could be my contacts as I have a bad habit of wearing my two weeks disposables for like 20 weeks because I forget when I put them in.

Nope, that wasn't it. My eyes are still horribly creamy and blurry as soon as 9:00pm hits. I've begged Dr. Google for answers and the Internet Search Gods seem to agree that what I am experiencing is a very valid pregnancy symptom, albeit a rare one particularly this early on.

After 9:00pm I can't do anything really except sleep because the blurriness just begins to totally piss me the hell off to a point where I'd rather just go to sleep than deal with it.

Boo on blindness - so whatever I am typing by looking at the keyboard is exactly what is getting posted because I can only make out fuzz on the monitor.

What else is going on? Well, Luke is sleeping out at his BFF's house tonight which is so cool and neato that he has hit this age where real friendships that he'll treasure all his life can possibly be beginning and I get to witness that and even help foster it with hopefully the right friends.

Ziggy is totally turned on by pregnancy to a point where I am having to hide my body parts from him lest he attack me and squash me with his own 7 month pregnant belly. I love the man but give me a break already...it's like he's 16 all of a sudden. While I'm utterly flattered by his new interest in me, I'm so tired and gross feeling most of the time that it's so hard to give in and do it - but I'm being a good wifey and trying as much as possible for him.

Octomom disgusts me and I'm so proud of my little Bobby Jindal! Bobby, I didn't vote for you, but I'm so proud of you anyway. Who would have ever thought that the up and rising Republican hero could possibly come from Louisiana...and there you have my first hint at my political affiliations...I won't go any further into that but to say that I'm so proud of our Bobby, because I don't believe in forcefeeding my political beliefs on friends until they gag....like some of my other friends do. I'm just saying is all.

Scared

2009-02-18T20:55:00.002-06:00

Disclaimer - if you reply to this post with the words "relax" or any combination of that type of tom foolery then you can just suck me.

Now then, where was I? I'm scared to death lately that the baby is dead. After weeks of blood tests almost every 48 hours and ultrasounds every two weeks, this 4 week wait between OB appointments is murder.

There is no way on earth for me to know that the baby is alive and well and growing. I can't listen to a heart beat, I can't feel a movement, there's no chance of watching a pee stick darkening progression anymore and since I hit week 8, many of my symptoms are chillaxing and I am freaking out.

I know that my chances after hearing the heartbeat lay in the 3% - 5% range, but what about those poor tiny percenters - obviously they DO exist and I could be one of them.

YES I am trying to think positive and I'm able to accomplish it most of the time - but then - usually at night, I start getting really sad and scared that the baby has died and is just lying around in a fruitless void waiting for a doctor to figure it out and remove it.

There is not much comfort to be found especially not in my dreams where I seem to encounter bleeding and loss at least twice a week.

So that's where I am. Dearest tiny soul, please, you are SOOOO loved, my God, you are so loved. Please be strong and growing for us - especially for your daddy because he loves you so much that it brings tears to my eyes to imagine his life without you.

Things you will never hear...

2009-02-16T21:03:00.002-06:00

Things you will never hear during this pregnancy:

1.) "I'm so sick that I can't even eat anything". (I can fight nausea for pizza rolls like a champion.)

2.) "I LOST weight in my first trimester". (I gained 60 pounds for Luke and I enjoyed every french fry that created him. I've chosen from appointment # 1 to not even look at the scale and I haven't yet. Pregnancy weight numbers only stress you out and make you worry...if something is askew, I feel confident that my doctor will bring it up and I don't need to know the rest.)

3.) "Check out my belly pic". (Sorry, I don't do em and though I hoorah for those who do that I truly love and respect as friends/family...I really don't particularly like seeing them either. I took one belly pic at the very end for Luke and I never regretted not taking them more often, or sharing them with friends and family.)

4.) "I love being pregnant". (While I am THRILLED to be here and humble and a million times grateful, it doesn't mean that I enjoy it. The best part is that special time when you feel the baby move...the rest is not so fun and I'm already getting anxious to "get back in shape" and get back on the pill which will help my PCOS ass in so many ways that I haven't experienced in almost 2 years that I can pee my pants just imagining it.)

5.) "Let me tell you my birth plan." (God laughs at plans and I've known this all my life...my first delivery was so far from my actual birth plan that now I just plan to go in expecting a baby at the end and not caring about how that end result comes about at all.)

6.) "The baby is moving, come touch my belly." (The ONLY people who will ever hear that is Ziggy, Luke, my mother and Lan. I am intensely private with my bod and while I respect people's fascination with pregnancy, I'm considering a t-shirt that says BACK OFF.)

Now don't get me wrong - I'm totally in love with this person growing inside of me - totally in love. And I am so thrilled of the gift that it will bring to my entire family. I'm just me.

Welcome to the world

2009-02-12T19:37:00.003-06:00

My ex-husband and his wife are bringing Luke's baby sister into the world, right now, as we speak, in a hospital right down the street.

It's funny how having my own growing embryo has finally helped me to not only accept that SHE is birthing Luke's sibling first, but has actually made me happy and excited for the both of them and for Luke.

I remember the day that Luke called me to tell me that Ms. Jennifer was pregnant. I was paying bills at the kitchen table on a Saturday when he called from his dad's house. I kept my composure until we hung up and choked back the tears and then cried hysterically for almost an hour on Ziggy's arm. It was supposed to be ME that gave Luke his first sibling, and I felt as though she was personally robbing me of my rights as Luke's mom.

I know that it sounds silly now that I felt that strongly, but when you've tried to conceive for over a year and your ex-husband's wife can create life in only 3 cycles - you get a little nuts. OK?

I actually think that I made ammends with it before I actually got my own embryo - but maybe I didn't and it's just easy to say that now. I'm not too sure.

Anyway, as we speak, she is coming into this world and I am completely honest when I say that I am happy and I feel blessed that our family, in a weird definition of the word "family", is expanding.

Date Change

2009-02-12T12:00:00.001-06:00

Well...I got to up my ticker by 3 whole days! In today's ultrasound, I measured 7 weeks and 3 days. I was able to see the baby's heart beat and even hear it!

I'm at work, so I have to run - but I just had to put this info in here!

Economy

2009-02-10T18:50:00.002-06:00

I'm really freaking out about the economy. Ziggy and I's 401k's are dwindling down to nothing and I don't know what to do about that to make it stop. Everyone says hang in there - but watching us lose almost triple what we are putting in is so painful.

I worry about my job. I worry about his job. I worry about our rental properties and our credit card debt. I'm trying to figure out if all this worry is just hormonal - or if it's justified panic starting.

I don't know who has the right stimulus plan. I disagree with both and I agree with both - parts of each. I just want to know that it will all be ok and I won't be foreclosed and homeless a year from now.

Other than that - I'm just tired and nauseated about 90% of every day and though I love it so much because I know the reason for it, I'm just blah.

Last night I had a nightmare that my doctor came to find me at Luke's school to tell me that the baby had died. It was a super REAL nightmare and it kept me up for the rest of the night. I'm scared of my appointment on Thursday.

Sick Day

2009-02-08T16:41:00.002-06:00

Wow, it's been a hella weekend. Saturday was my first day in class. I'm taking a non credit course to prepare for the Notary exam in June and it's a 8 hour class ALL day on Saturday. I wrote so many notes, that my hand is still cramping.

For those non-Louisiana folk, Louisiana follows Civil Law while the rest of the states have Common Law. In other states, all a Notary can do is sign and seal. In Louisiana, a notary can perform many functions that are reserved for only attorneys in other states such as drafting contracts, taking oaths, wills, etc. So in Louisiana, to become a Notary it's almost like taking mini law school classes. our teacher said that in his past 3 semesters, he's only had 7 people pass the test. Fabulous.

Then Saturday night sister and the twins slept over so I got off of school and went straight into baby heaven. They are 5 months now and about the size of an average 3 month old. SOOOO much fun! I was up half the night helping her with them while their daddy played poker till 4:00am with friends (I won't even go there).

Then today was Luke's parade. He rode in the Krewe of Little Rascals which is an all children parade. I was supposed to walk along with float, but in my condition I had to beg ex-husband to do it in my place and remarkably, he did. I think it was his protective cop side that came out.

Since 9:00am this morning, I've been in the BLAZING sun. It was almost 80 degrees today and nothing but sun. We got him on the float, then sat and waited for the parade and then watched him and then jetted to the end to sit and wait for it to finish.

Needless to say, I think that the term "overdoing it" is an understatement for this weekend. I am so exhausted and yet I still have a million things to do that I neglected all weekend like laundry and bills.

So in between spraying aloe on my sunburn, I'll be getting chores done and hopefully wrapping it up soon. I'm contemplating a sick day for tomorrow in a HUGE way.

Dinner

2009-02-04T22:01:00.002-06:00

Tonight we all went to dinner after Luke's First Reconciliation. Me, my husband, Luke's father, Luke's stepmom, a couple of grandparents and one god father. It was a rare event that we try to do for Luke every now and then.

Ex husband's wife proclaimed at dinner that she was SOOOO sick through her pregnancy that she has only gained 7 pounds total. She is now 2 weeks away from her due date.

She said this as I was stuffing a giant bite of Copeland Burger into my mouth while picking up fries with the other hand.

She was eating grilled chicken and fresh vegetables.

While I try to like her, and she really is a nice person, I just can't and moments like tonight validate my thoughts on it.

Reconciled

2009-02-04T07:03:00.002-06:00

Tonight is Luke's First Reconciliation. If you have no knowledge of the Catholic Church, this is a Sacrament where we confess our sins formally to a preist for the first time.

I'm so excited for him, because I remember what a rite of passage all of this is for second graders...plus, he has to wear a wee little suit which makes my heart jump with glee.

My goal for tonight - to not have the shits or the pukes in church! My purse will be stocked and ready to go for any bodily function emergency.

Pissed off

2009-02-03T19:25:00.002-06:00

Since I am on fake progesterone, I get the complete right to be in a pissy bitchy mood even though I am currently experiencing something that I've prayed for daily for 17 months, right? RIGHT?

List of things pissing me off at this moment:

1.) I haven't gained a pound, but none of my pants are buttoning because I'm so bloated.

2.) I am pissing out of my ass. I've had water shits for days and I'm now praying for that pregnancy constipation that I've heard so much about.

3.) People who wear velvet pants to work and think that they pass as dress pants.

4.) The 10 people in my family who are twice my age, but act like less than half my age.

5.) My husband isn't home and I'm dizzy from the pm progesterone pill and I have laundry to fold and lunches to make and clothes to iron and Luke's homework to finish and I am NOT a person who can ever just put those things to the side to rest. I literally can't rest until it's all done.

6.) The government. I won't embellish, but they are just pissing me off.

7.) My hair - I'm about 6 weeks past the desperate need for coloring and my roots are so gray that I look about 45 and I should have gotten off my lazy ass and colored my hair weeks ago so I wouldn't be stuck with these roots for 6 more weeks.

8.) I'm too tired and dizzy every night to shave and I am turning into a french maid, but not the sexy kind, just the fat hairy kind.

Anyway, YES, I am so grateful and thrilled to be where I am and I would cut off toes to stay where I am - but this progesterone can mess with your mind, man. Seriously.

I could have gone on with my bitch fest, but I don't want to seem whiney.

Superbowl

2009-02-01T17:46:00.002-06:00

In honor of Superbowl Sunday, I am watching Twins and eating a superbowl of icecream!

My son is staying at his father's house tonight to do that manly superbowl father son bonding bit, and while Ziggy is a bit depressed about that, he's really tired anyway. He and Luke have a fantasy football team together, so he's upset about Luke not being here to fret over points with, but he's eying my belly longingly for the day when we will have our own that never has to leave our house...and so am I.

So, tomorrow is the big day - the magic stick day where we will hopefully see something growing happily in my uterus. I'm going alone and I'm totally ok with that. Ziggy has an appointment with Dr. Awesome that he can't miss because the dosage on one of his new meds is too high and he literally has not slept in almost a week. He moved from Adderall to the new and very fancy Vyvanse, which is really working SOOOO much better, but he can't sleep. At all. He's handling it really well but bipolar plus zero sleep is a dangerous combo, so he needs to get to the doctor.

So that leaves me on my own. Sure I could have gotten my mom to come and I'm postive that Ralph would have jumped at the chance, but the thought of getting to see this first photo, to get to have this first glimpse, this first meeting, all to my self seems so decadent. It's almost like I get to selfishly indulge in that moment all by myself and I'm looking so forward to it.

Well, Ziggy is forcing me to put on the Superbowl now, so I have to go - go Arizona!

Mother In Law

2009-01-30T17:28:00.002-06:00

My mother in law was first nicknamed Ralph Furley by Lan at my wedding shower. Think back to the goofy, polyester wearing, extreme facial expression making, Raph Furley from the old television show, Three's Company.

When Lan first called her this, I nearly split my side from laughter as this nickname is by far one of the most fitting nicknames for a human being on earth. My mother in law IS Ralph Furley, only she normally wears jeans and her hair is a little longer.

Ralph is definitely sweet, and would literally kill herself for your happiness and comfort. She is a classic door mat. I've heard stories that she was once a working woman who was busy and made her children do chores, but I never met that woman. The woman I met was already retired and was delivering my future husband's meals to him on TV trays in his bedroom and then cleaning out his bedroom trash can.

Ralph to me, as I know her, does nothing but live to serve her over indulged selfish husband and children...which is probably why marriage is the only reason that her children ever move out of her house. She delivers all of their meals to them on trays, washes all of their clothes - everything! Even for the 33 year old sister still living at home.

The birth (please God) of this baby will happen to coincide within a month of her baby boy getting married and moving out. This frightens me. This scares me to death actually, because what will she do with her time? She does NOTHING - I mean NOTHING other than cook, clean and do laundry for her family or do crossword puzzles. That's it. She has no hobbies. She has no friends. She doesn't volunteer or go anywhere - nothing. And for this son in particular, she spends 30% of her day preparing his special Atkins meals.

My fear is that the birth of this child will give her unhealthy reasons to cling and latch on and spend her days - every day - HERE! AAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Being a person who loves solitude more than the average bear, this gives me panic attacks already. I'm one of those rare people who crave alone time and actually need it in order to thrive. Hurricane evacuations are a sure way to see me go nuts, as are large family gatherings of any kind that last more than 2 hours.

So now I possibly have 8 months left to get this woman something to do other than need me to take care of to make her life complete...a hobby, maybe a part time job, volunteer work?

Long time, no post

2009-01-29T18:19:00.002-06:00

So, my ticker says I'm 5 weeks today. WOO HOO! My doctor believes that I'm a little closer to 6 than to 5 weeks given my Hcg readings, but we'll see what the vaginal ultrasound shows on Monday.

My hcg from Monday's blood test was 371.

The nausea is beginning. I haven't puked, but I've now gagged twice this week and felt a general nausea a few times. I'm shitting up a storm and the farts...oh god the farts! I must fart about a million times a day and I cannot keep it in. I've been keeping a fan on in my office to dissipate the scent.

My house is a disarray. I was on that cleaning binge and now since I'm technically a "high risk" pregnancy due to my severe PCOS, I've been banned from much of the cleaning until I get past 8 to 10 weeks. Thank god for mom who has been helping me alot, but the house is still a mess.

Which brings me to what's really on my mind today. My house. Ziggy and I believe in the future. We live a little more humbly today so that we can live better later. We make a good chunk of change and we have a very nice home compared to anything that our parents ever had.

However, compared to my sisters, my house is a borderline...dump. Both of my sisters have gorgeous homes that are new and wonderful. My home, though I'm very proud of it, is older and needs a lot of updating...ALOT of updating (can you say pink flowered wallpaper in the bathrooms and panneling in the kitchen?)

So, we have two upcoming events where one of my sisters will be spending the night at my house with her twins and her husband. One of the days in next weekend. This has thrown me into a tailspin of fret.

I can't get the house ready for them...physically...I can't right now. And yet, I can't explain to her why yet, because I'm not ready for her to know. So, god bless my mom who will be coming over this weekend to help me spruce up a bit, but I still fret.

Why do I care so much? I have no idea. Screw em...right? But I can't ever seem to get to a point where I really can believe that.

Lots of posts!

2009-01-24T10:57:00.001-06:00

Two posts below today - one is just a photo post that you've been asking me for and the other is a long post about cats...in case you are bored today and have nothing else to read!

Here you go...

2009-01-24T10:53:00.003-06:00

Boo boo kitties.

2009-01-24T09:56:00.004-06:00

OK, so we are the "cat people" in case I haven't shared that yet. After my precious baby dog, Lola, died from cancer, we weren't emotionally ready for another dog, so we went to the SPCA and picked out Cayenne. Our intention was to have ONE cat.

She was the most pathetic looking animal on earth and we scooped her up and loved her intensely. Lola died in June and this was September.

In October, I had taken Luke to Chuck E Cheese's one day after school as a reward for good grades. As we were leaving, we saw this tiny little shivering kitten sitting in a puddle in the middle of the street. Naturally, we couldn't leave him there, so we took him home. The vet confirmed the next day that it was a boy and only 3 weeks old. We named him Tank. After weeks of nursing him (and finding out it was a girl!), we decided that we had to keep Tank who was a gorgeous long hair beauty that we fell in love with. Her name is now Tay Tay.

There. Done. Two cats. Perfect.

Then the following March, someone sent us a photo of a Russian Blue who was scheduled to be "put down". Ziggy got the email and suddenly felt a ridiculous kinship (he's Russian) and then sent it to me and despite my protests, we went at lunch to meet Mr. Blue.

Mr. Blue was already being taken later that afternoon, but they placed his little sister into my husband's arms (sneaky bastards...they could sense which one of us was the animal lover) and that was it. My husband could not leave it behind and Baby Ju Ju came to live with us (her name is Jules, but we call her Baby Ju Ju because she is still the tiniest of them all).

So fine, now we have three. We have a fairly large house and there are 3 humans, so it actually worked out well. Being a dog owner all my life, I can honestly say that 3 cats were still easier than one dog.

A week later, the shelter called my husband and told him that Mr. Blue's new parents didn't want him.

When Ziggy came to me wanting Mr. Blue, I said absolutely not. I mean, FOUR cats? We would instantly become one of those weird people with a house full of cats, right? He talked me into it only by proving to me that Ju Ju was getting beat up on by the two older cats and since Mr. Blue was her litter mate, he might protect her.

Enter Mr. Blue.

Thankfully I can say that we DID stop there and other than adding a simple Beta Fish, we are done. We've had people try to push cats on us and even a dog or two, but we've been able to say no. We've also stopped hanging around with so many animal activists - if we didn't, then our house would look like Ace Ventura's by now.

So that is my cat story. I have a cat pregnancy story to post next time, but I wanted to give you the cat background first and posting both the background and the story would be too long of a post.

I can still say honestly that 4 cats is still easier than one large dog. They are super clean and loving and never need to be walked - we love our boo boo kitties, though it is a little hard to come out the closet and admit to having four of them! And trust me, sneaking 4 cats into a 5 star hotel when you evacuate for hurricanes is NO easy task as we learned for Gustav this year!

Our cats are loved immensely and they are as much a part of the family as any of the humans are.

Results

2009-01-22T18:52:00.002-06:00

Well, my hcg went from 14 on Monday to 46 on Wednesday. Promising? God I hope so. My progesterone level was not available yet (I have no idea why), so she went ahead and put me on progesterone just in case.

She said that it can't hurt - god I hope not!

Waiting on husband to get home with that Rx because it wasn't ready on my way home.

I had pizza with my bud and after I make his lunch, that's it - I'm done for the night. Mom promised to come help me clean this weekend - so I get to relax.

Thank you SO much for you prayers and your support and please continue the praying. We've got a long road ahead to get this little life in my arms!

Waiting

2009-01-21T19:30:00.002-06:00

My boobs feel like giant melons with lead weights and I get weird crampy feelings every so often, and I'm bloated like a blimp in my waist all of a sudden, but other than that, I'm just normal and waiting on my blood results from this morning.

The waiting hasn't actually been so bad yet. Of course tomorrow morning may be nerve wracking, but my test this morning was darker than ever and I'm trying to have 100% faith in this baby.

Ziggy saw a new wonderful bipolar doctor today who warmed our hearts with hope and good feelings. We haven't had that in a while. Ziggy maintains his disease very well. However, on the inside, he is constantly hurting or in turmoil or battling to do or not to do something.

We've had a hunch that it could be better, so much better for a while now if we just found the right doctor. And now, it looks like we could possibly be right. Of course at $300 per appointment, he better damn well be Dr. Awesome. He's not on our insurance either...but at least it'll whittle down our deductible in case God plans for me to have that c-section at the end of September that I'm so having faith will happen.

I'll write more soon. I'm supposed to be "resting". Yeah. Right. Whatever.

Irony

2009-01-20T20:21:00.002-06:00

When I found out that I was pregnant with Luke, I would be totally lying if I told you that I never not once hoped to miscarry. Judge me how you will, but I think that is a very raw honest thought of many a woman faced with an unplanned pregnancy.

I was 21, living in an efficiency apartment, making $8.25 an hour and the guy that I created this life with was just my buddy.

So yes, the thought crossed my mind - that life would be so much easier and so less petrifying if this whole thing just ended. Since I am empahtically pro life, that was my only choice.

Then, a few weeks later, I started bleeding when I peed. Ex Husband drove me to the hospital while I shook uncontrollably like a leaf and could do nothing but chant over and over again, "Please God No, Please God NO".

When faced with the blood, my instincts kicked in and fighting for this tiny life was all I wanted to do.

Turns out it was kidney stones causing the bleeding and that is another story for another day. Here he is, 8 years old, and a total shit most days - but I love him, God I love him.

My blood test results were delivered to me today by the doctor herself, which is never a good sign I've learned. Happy news comes from Vivian, the nurse. Bad news comes from the doctor herself.

The bad news is the my beta was only 14 and my progesterone was only 13.3. She feared miscarriage or "chemical pregnancy" as they call it when it is this early. And so, off I go tomorrow to have a second beta and see where my numbers have gotten me.

I've felt every emotion today on earth from joy at hearing that YES YES YES I AM PREGNANT and a medical professional actually confirmed it, to fear and frustration to panic and peace. What a mess.

Of course I will let you know the results. She said that I should hear from her by 10:00am on Thursday with the results. Please God! PLEASE!

All I can do now is rest and pray. The rest is up to God.

Oh god!

2009-01-19T07:13:00.001-06:00

Oh my holy Jesus - I am FUCKING PREGNANT!

I got my two lines this morning. OH GOD PLEASE PRAY THAT IT STICKS! I will post the photos and the story VERY soon - typing this fast before Ziggy catches me.

PLEASE PRAY FOR THIS BABY TO STAY!