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goyta goyta goyta

My son says "goyta goyta goyta" all of the time. He has for months. He does it when he's playing with something, he will exclaim "goyta! goyta! goyta!" or have a conversation with a toy using the same babble-speak. I have no idea what this means to him, but it is apparently his favorite expression. I'm writing it down because in ten years, when he's fluent in regular English (as opposed to toddler English) I want to remember it. It's cute as hell.

I wish I could talk about The New Exciting Thing we're going to do but I can't. It's too new, but what I can talk about is how excited I am for our family. For my husband. It is going to be a wild and strange ride and neither one of us have any idea where it's going to go, but that's half the fun (who am I kidding, that's ALL the fun right there). It is what I thought about all night, and what I woke up thinking about this morning. There are so many exciting things about this, and I have zero anxiety about it. I have a healthy dose of excited fear, but that's it. This feels like the most right thing for us and even though some of it is going to be really hard and lots of hard work, it's going to be worth it.

 

Smoosh It Good

Mammogram day. Good times. I know that they won't actually be able to tell me anything today, since I'm just getting the screening done and then it goes to my doctor, but I am an instant gratification person and would like to know immediately if there is something amiss with the boob. But alas! They will not cater to my need for knowing RIGHT NOW. Even though I'm going to pay them a lot of money, they still won't tell me right then and there. Medical shit is so rude sometimes. If I'm going to give you my credit card and you're going to perform a service, the least you could do is tell me right then if there's something horribly wrong. Geez. General consensus is that it's nothing and I am over reacting and to just chill the fuck out. But that's really not my forte. I am a champion worrier and so you know, this thing is all up in my wheel house. (wheelhouse? one word? two? don't care!) I have moments where I talk to myself and give myself stern lectures about how worrying doesn't actually accomplish anything and that it's wasted energy and blah blah blah. I can tune myself out like a teenager tunes out her parents.

My husband is not worried. So I take his lack of worry as lack of care about me in general. Which I know is kinda dumb, but still. I want him to worry a little with me. But he refuses. Jerk. I actually told him last night that the fact that he's not worried even a little makes me feel like he doesn't care about me and he said nothing could be farther from the truth. He just didn't see any benefit in worrying about something that doesn't even actually exist and that if there is something wrong we will deal with it together. I think that's what I wanted to hear more than anything really. I know he cares, if he didn't care I wouldn't have married him. Dur.

 

Forty

Yesterday I turned forty. It is kinda tripping me out. Not because I'm getting old (because: duh), it's just weird to me that I'm forty. I remember when my parents turned forty and if memory serves, it's when they both lost their goddamn minds. So I'm looking forward to that. Heh. Actually, I lost my mind a long time ago so I am ahead of the game. I keep thinking that when my parents were this age they had teenagers and had been married for 20 years. WEIRD. I've been married 3 years and I have a 1 year old. And I'm about to buy a house for the first time. We sign the papers today at 1pm. I think once we leave with keys in hand my husband will finally be able to exhale. We have worked really hard the last two years to get to a place financially where we can buy a house. We spent time and money cleaning up our credit reports and my husband spent hours trolling real estate sites looking for the perfect home in the perfect neighborhood. The housing market is such that we got an unheard of interest rate, fixed, for 30 years. The home we'll own as of today needs love and attention, but it is by no means what I'd call a fixer upper. I was wary of buying something that would require loads of work, my husband likes to transform things and remodel things, and fix things up. I was worried he'd find something that would be so outside my comfort zone in terms of condition that it would cause tension between us. But I worried for nothing. We could move into that house today if we wanted to, nothing is so bad or needs so much work that it's unlivable. We won't move in right way, we still have to give notice where we live now and while the house is empty my husband wants to get the inside painted - so we'll take a few weeks to get that stuff done and then start the process of moving all of our stuff that is crammed into this house into a bigger space. I dread the moving and packing process, but I always do, so whatever. I'll get over it. I want to use this move as an opportunity to purge things in our home that we don't use, that we haven't unpacked since we moved here two years ago. In fact, I'm looking at a filing cabinet right now that will have 90% of its contents trashed. I never open those drawers and there are probably 10 things in there worth saving, everything else is just nonsense that I've not parted with because sometimes I am secretly a hoarder in training.

In baby news, I guess my kids not really a baby anymore. I think he qualifies as a toddler. So strange. When I look at him I still see a baby and I wonder if this is how my parents feel when they look at my sister and I. We're still babies, even though we are in our forties. (!) Being a parent is not easy work, at least it's not for me. I think maybe it's not easy for anyone. There are aspects of parenting that are second nature, but on the flip side, there are aspects that test my patience, that feel counter to how thought I would be, and that push me to an edge that I wasn't even aware was there in the first place. The things I thought would come naturally, do, but the things that trip me up, always surprise me. I always knew that being a mother was my thing and if I won the lotto tomorrow I would ditch the 8-5 job and do the stay at home mom thing. I'd probably have some other job too, but it would be secondary.

Speaking of jobs, oh my sweet LORD BABY JESUS. Things are spinning out and I am so tired, tired, tired of hearing that we will just have to figure out a way to mange the volume the best we can because no help is budgeted for 2012. Um, look, when everyone on the team has an average of 20 projects and my coworker and I have 65+ - there is  fucking problem. And I feel like a broken record saying it over and over again to my boss and her boss that we need additional resources. The load is such that when I look at it I feel over whelmed and don't know where to start and want to throw my hands up and say: I GIVE UP. But I can't. Because I need the job (see aforementioned house buying) and we need the benefits that my job provides. But I swear to you, if I didn't need this job, I would not stay. I know my coworker is going to double down on his efforts to find something else and that makes me feel all sweaty and nervous with panic. OMG I do not want him to leave. But I understand why he wants to. It is seriously fucked up.

Blech. No more of that. It's depressing.

Circling back to birthday talk. I am not one for parties in my honor. I don't like all the people looking at me. I don't like to be the center of attention in that way. So when my husband asked what I wanted to do and then stopped me and said "before you answer, just keep in mind that other people want to do things for your birthday and maybe you could consider them before you say anything." which was his way of saying we're going to do something and it will involve more than our small little three person family. Last year I told my husband on my 40th we could have a party. It was the only way I could guarantee that he would not throw me a surprise party, because that kind of shit is what my nightmares are made of. I do not want a surprise party. Ever. So I told him go ahead, plan a party. Except we started the whole house buying thing and he is a dude and can only do one thing at a time, so there was no big 40th birthday bash. HA. I win! But there was a dinner with my dad and step mom, my sister in law and brother in law, and my best friend and her troop of kids. All total there were 12 of us for dinner, and while it was fun, at one point I escaped to the bathroom to be alone. All of the noise and people and chaos got to me and I needed to GET AWAY. Events like that always leave me feeling like I didn't get to talk to anyone about anything. I have the toddler I'm trying to manage, I'm trying to make sure I hug and talk to everyone and in the end, I don't feel like I got to connect with anyone. I didn't get to visit with my dad and step mom very much, or my in laws, or ... anyone. But as long as everyone else had a great time, I guess that's what matters. Wow. I sound like a sad doormat. It's not like that. Really.

whatchu talkin' bout

Today is Veterans Day and even though it's no longer a paid holiday for me (the company that bought my company doesn't observe all federal holidays. Butt-holes.) I took a vacation day instead so I'm off. And my kid is in daycare today. I have guilt about that, but I am trying to solider through it. He likes daycare, he has fun and plays with toys and friends and they have story time and all kinds of fun stuff. But I have moments where I'm like: Awww I miss my baby, I'm going to go get him right now. Even though I can't actually do that because I have not showered and am generally not fit to be seen in public. Already this morning I have done a wee bit of work (I know, I know, I should not, but ... whatever. I'm responsible sometimes.), hit the treadmill and ran two miles, which sounds kinda lame, but it's what I could do in 30 min. I've run the vacuum and I've put some shit in the attic that has been sitting out for entirely too long. I also have a load of laundry in the dryer. So productive!

Tomorrow we are going to have Christmas card pictures taken. We say every year that we're going to mail Christmas cards and we never do, so this year, we are doing it GODDAMN IT. My husband is so funny sometimes about this stuff. I want us all to just wear jeans and a solid (possibly Christmas colored) t-shirts and be casual because that is who we are about 90% of the time. My husband thought we would all dress up because he is from the 1950's and has this weird idea about pictures and thinks you should dress up for them. We aren't dressing up though, because I said so. ha. Seriously. I do not want to wear a dress on a Saturday, nor do I have any dressy clothes for the kid, so it would mean going and buying something new that he would wear one time and that's it. Also, I would need to buy something new for myself and that's a big negative on that. If I'm going to buy clothes for myself, I want to buy jeans or something that can pull double duty for work and home. Not some stupid dress that I'm going to wear one time. Forget that. We'll find a compromise somewhere, or I will just impose my will because in this area, I call the shots. If it weren't for me, this shit wouldn't even be happening. He'll thank me for it later. Maybe. Hopefully.

Oy vey, I can't get all that Jerry Sandusky news out of my head. I wish I didn't know anything about it. It's so horrible. It makes me sick. What I am having the most trouble wrapping my brain around is the young man who witnessed the sexual assault of the young boy and instead of stepping in RIGHT THEN and calling the damn police, he reported the incident internally. WTF. Who does that? Who sees that and doesn't, at that moment, step in and stop the raping of a 10 year old boy? It is the part of the story that I can't get out of my head. What kind of people are these? Who doesn't want to step in and stop that kind of thing when they see it happening right in front of them? Who only reports it internally? I do not understand. And I guess there are things I'll never know, maybe there are more pieces here that I haven't read but honestly, on it's face, the dude who walked in, saw it happening and only reported it to his boss, is just as guilty. Ugh. I wish I'd never read any of this shit. It turns my stomach.

So I don't end on that disgusting note here's something else:

I am running a 5K with my sister next week and I'm totally not prepared. I've hit the treadmill TWICE. And to top things off, after the race, that evening, we are going to my brother in law's 50th birthday party. I am going to be the walking dead next Sunday. Good times!

One

So! We made it! The kid is one year old. We had a fantastic party at a local park and the weather was BRILLIANT and even though the whole party feels like a complete whirlwind and I left feeling like I didn't get to talk to anyone (too! much! to! do!) the feedback I got from everyone was that it was loads of fun. My sister and her family drove in from Houston, which was awesome, and watching my nephews with their cousin was so sweet I almost died right there on the spot. Those two boys of hers have turned into very sweet little men. I know she was proud and she should be. They only came in for the party, so they drove home that night, and let me tell you, that must have been a BEATING. The drive from Houston to Dallas isn't awful, but when you do it twice in one day like that? Oy vey. I so appreciated that. More than once during  the party I uttered the phrase "where is my kid?" because my son was always off with someone. His aunt or one of his grandparents or a cousin. It was so fabulous. And I think he had fun. I mean, he got to run around outside and eat grass and leaves and that is pretty much the definition of a bitchin' good time for him.  Although I will admit that my husband and I were STILL in recovery mode on Monday. For real. That party took it out of us. My husband had to work on Friday night, which really put a kink in things and we were later than we wanted to be in getting things going. In the end, no one cared that the decorations weren't up and we were unloading our stuff when they got there. People just started pitching in and helped us get set up. My crazy family is good like that.

I decided to make the cake - from a box mix because WTF I'm not Betty Crocker. But I did make the frosting from scratch. That was hard. Butter-cream frosting is kind of a bitch. And the only problem I had was ... well ... I ate some. And if you don't know, I don't eat sweets because they are my drug of choice and will lead me down a binge / purge / binge / purge path that is destructive. So if I were an alcoholic, I would call that a slip. And the frosting I ate the next day too? Another slip. I really don't know why I did it. It was like some part of my brain just overrode the part of my brain going "NONONONO DON'T DO IT" and I crammed some frosting in my not-supposed-to-eat-cake-hole. I could go on and on about it, but it's really just a reminder to myself that I can't really dabble in the sweets at all. I also understand enough about my own addiction to know that something else was going on. Maybe it was the emotion of my son turning one. I want him to grow up, really. But this business with kids is they are always turning into someone new, they are different every day and I am always saying goodbye to some part of him in order to make room for the new stuff that's happening. Maybe it was the stress of throwing a party, which I do not like in general, just on spec., and so I could get myself out of the way enough to throw my son a party, but the thing is, I still don't like doing it, I don't like the chaos of all the people and I don't like being the center of all that attention, because lets face it, even though the focus was my kid, he couldn't very well open gifts without me or eat his first birthday cake without me, so I have to be there to share the stage with him and that is not something I really enjoy doing. Also, that morning, my husband woke up PISSED OFF AT ME, so I had to suck that up and deal with that, because honestly, why he was mad wasn't really my fault, but in that moment, I was the closest one there and so it landed on me. Doesn't matter why he was mad, but I'm sure it didn't help with the cramming of the frosting in my face later that day. Emotions, they are tricky people!

Someday, I really will write about when he was born. FOR REAL.

numbers game

I have let the numbers on the scale dictate my day for as long as I can remember. If the number is down, I am up. If the number is up, I am down. That's just how it is. Last week they were down, this week, they are up. I'm totally blaming the 4 pieces of pizza I had earlier this week. I'm also going to blame Mother Nature and her nasty habit of cycling the hormones and giving me a period every month. I'm reluctant to blame my period, but honestly, sometimes there is no other explanation. Well, I guess the pizza is also to blame, but without the pre-period hormones I don't know if I would have eaten that pizza, so we cycle back to it's Mother Natures fault. Certainly not MY fault or my responsibility or as a direct result of my shove-pizza-in-my-piehole-actions. I really hope to see those numbers go down again, because if they don't... I will be pissed.

In other number related news. My son will be one in two days. It's really blowing my mind that a year ago I was huge and pregnant and miserable and wishing, wishing, wishing, every day that I would go into labor so I could get that kid OUT. After he was born I really thought that by the time I was back to work after maternity leave I would be back down to my pre-pregnancy weight. HAHAHAHAHA. I was stupid. It's taken a year. All those moms who told me breastfeeding would make the weight just burn right off were liars and I hated them a little bit when I got home from the hospital and I was the EXACT SAME WEIGHT I'd been the day I had the kid. Granted, I was pumped full of so much fluid it turned my body into something I didn't even recognize. Once I started peeing that fluid out, I dropped 30 pounds just like that (finger snap!) but the rest of the weight was so slow coming off that in my more vain moments I never want to have another baby ever again. How selfish is THAT? How short-sighted does that make me? I anticipated my weight bothering me during my pregnancy, but I didn't realize that the real blows to my ego and self esteem would come in the months following his birth. And my body isn't the same, nor will it ever be again. There is weight in places I didn't really carry extra weight before. There are areas of my body that when I see them, for a second, I think I'm looking at someone else. It has been a year of adjustments, for everyone, obviously, but I think the person who had to make the most adjustments was me. The old version of myself that I'd grown to love is gone, and in her place is someone new, that I'm just beginning to get to know, to understand and not resent for being here. The old me is gone, not completely, I'm still ME in the broad sense of the word, but I am not still ME in other ways. I'm different. And that's ok, but it has taken time for me to accept that.

Random Sandwich

So. Vacation. It went well. We had fun. We've decided that Hot Springs, AR is a place we'd like to go back to on a regular basis. The hotel my husband found was STELLAR. It was like a little apartment, with a kitchen and two bedrooms, one for the Wee One and one for the husband and I. It was perfect. Although, our kid has a bedtime of like 6:30pm so we crammed in as much fun as we could between naps and bedtime and then just hung out at the hotel in the evenings, which was ok. Although my husband said next time we should invite my Dad and Step Mom so that we have babysitters! They would totally do it too, I think.

After we got back from vacation our AC went out. In case you've been living in a cave, the temps here in Dallas have been the same as the temps on the surface of the sun. The night it went out (a Saturday of course) my smarty pants husband went out and bought a window unit and that thing saved our life. It kept the upstairs, where the bedrooms are, bearable and at one point, down right chilly. But still, having it out was a gigantic pain in the ass. It was fixed by that Monday - and all was well. Until last Friday (a mere FOUR DAYS later), when the AC went out AGAIN. We called the landlord first thing Saturday morning, hoping someone would come pretty quick and fix whatever the fuck was wrong with it. Except it didn't happen that way. It was 12 hours later before the AC guy showed up, only to tell us he couldn't fix it until the next day. I told my husband if he couldn't get it fixed on Sunday I was going to lose my effing mind. The heat just sucks the life out of you and you don't want to do anything and I had things I wanted to do, but could not muster the energy to do any of it. Everything was a whippin. Even with the window unit, which kept things bearable, that's all it did, was keep things bearable. And my poor kid, he was hot and uncomfortable and a crabby pain in the ass and that was actually pretty much how everyone felt, not just the kid. It's fixed (again) so fingers crossed we make it through the weekend without it going out again, because seriously, the weekend is the worst time to have that shit go out.

Work this last week was one of those weeks where you want to lay your head on your desk and cry. And seriously, I did actually cry about my job at my desk on Monday. I haven't done that in a LONG time. I was just frustrated and I hate that I'm again in a position where my teammate and I are underwater in terms of work volume and we've made this clear to our supervisor but the only way you get any help around there is to let shit fall on the floor and have things catch on fire and THEN people will pay attention. And so on Monday I had to explain to someone in another department that in fact, the thing that happened, it was my fault and that I dropped the ball. It sucked. And the suckage pretty much continued throughout the week and I was just happy when it finally got to Friday and I could get away from that place.

I'm trying to write here more, but damn, I have ADD or something, because I sit down to do it and then I'm off on an internet rabbit trail looking at random shit and before I know it, the time I'd given myself to write I've pissed away looking at nothing in particular. I really need to take an herbal supplement or something.

Depression Is Such An Asshole

Cover Girl,  why must your eye shadow be so crumbly? I like the colors, but I do not want them all over my face. Just my eyes will do. Thanks.

I really wish we would win the lotto. I know it’s a ridiculous thing to hope for, but I do. Every week. And every time we don’t win, I feel sad. Maybe I should stop playing. But you can’t win if you don’t play. VICIOUS CYCLE.

Apparently, what I thought was a cold was allergies. I’d been taking DayQuil for over a week and felt anger that it wasn’t working. Out of desperation I got some allergy meds and WHOA! That was the problem. I can breathe. And there is the bonus side effect to the allergy meds. It kills my appetite. Which I love more than anything. I am totally not hungry. And a little speedy. Maybe I will need allergy medicine every day.

I’m back in therapy. Just FYI. Postpartum depression sucks. At one point I was in my car, crying on the phone to the birthing center telling them I needed medication. Turns out midwives can’t prescribe antidepressants so she referred me to a psychiatrist. Which I did not go to. I said eff it and went to my awesome therapist.  Tomorrow we’ll figure out if I need meds. First he wanted me to do some other stuff. So, I’m trying. I’d prefer not to be medicated but I would also prefer not to feel the way I do for no apparent reason. Depression is such an asshole.

Daycare has been an adjustment. The wee one still doesn’t nap for shit there but I’m trying to learn how to just let that go. What I can tell from my obsessive watching of the live feed via my iPhone is that he plays, plays, plays all day long. I think he has fun. So if  shitty naps is what we have to deal with, fine. I have to repeat all of that to myself inside my head on a pretty regular basis. My sons sleep has become an outlet for my own anxiety. Therapy. One session. Breakthrough.

My husband asked me if I would be open to moving to another city. It happens to be the city my sister lives in so I said yes. Ever since he said that, I have weird fantasies about moving away. It’s like I have my little family, I seriously do not care where we live. Although, if he said Alaska, I would tell him to piss off because: NO! They have months were sunshine is limited. I cannot hang with darkness for that long. I will go bat-shit. 

The company I work for finally re-named itself. Now I work for what sounds like an erectile dysfuction drug. Fantastic. I'm sure some focus group and marketing firm came up with it. But honestly, it really sounds like a drug. Whatever. They pay me.

I have other random shit to say but my kid just woke up. Peace out.

crooked

Oh how I wish I could just speak freely about things here. Without consequences. Without the nagging fear that someone might find this and cause all kinds of trouble. It forces me to either not write about something that is bothering me or I have to figure out how to talk about it in a way that there are no identifying details. And that sometimes requires so much extra energy I say eff it. But right now I'm so mad and disgusted. Someone is a crook and I always sort of knew that they were shady, just from  my own experience, but it's been validated by a trustworthy third party. Like, there's no gray area, it's clear. They cheat people. On purpose. To line their own pocket.  The thing is, I always thought maybe this was one of those things I had a stick up my ass about, that I was all black and white, right and wrong, the end about it. I have that tendency. I like rules. I like people to follow them. Even though most of the time we all live in the gray area. Or, you know,  I thought maybe I just didn't really understand the inner workings of business. Like maybe they were all like that on the inside, behind the curtain, where no one was watching. Maybe that's just corporate America. And in some ways, I think that is actually true. There's always a thread of corruption somewhere. But still. That doesn't make it right. Ugh. I can't really say anything else, because I just can't. But I am so disgusted by the whole thing. The end.

censor

I never (ok, rarely) post and then remove. There was a time when I absolutely had zero boundaries with the internet and as I've done this more and gotten older I've given those things called boundaries a whirl. But you can still find all those boundary-less posts in the archives if you want to. When I decided to limit some of what I expose I didn't go backward and remove things. Mainly because I'm too lazy and well, sometimes you just have to leave things alone and if in 10 years some relative stumbles on this blog and discovers not nice things I've written about them, so be it. But the post I wrote the other day and subsequently removed had very little to do with other people and more to do with covering my own ass. Not that anyone actually noticed, but still. It all of a sudden felt weird to just post something else and not write about the fact that I wrote something and then took it down. It's like if someone walked into a room full of people, flashed their private parts and then walked out. Those people in the room are going to talk about what happened, they have to, because DUDE! someone just exposed themselves and left. So I felt like I had to say something, to a group of imaginary people.

Sometimes I wish I still wrote like that, with no boundaries. It was when this thing felt like a place to dump my head and not worry about the consequences. When I wrote in private in an old fashioned journal with a pen and everything I worried about the consequences. I worried about who would find those journals when I was dead and what they would think of me, the real me who was contained in those pages because a long time the girl in my journal was not the girl I showed the world.  One time, before a suicide attempt, I tore pages out of a journal and destroyed them. What I'd confessed was too embarrassing, (even though I was going to be dead) and I didn't want anyone to see what I'd written. Now I regret destroying any part of any journal I've ever kept. Mainly because now I use those journals to remind me of something I can taste on the tip of my tongue but can't quite bring into focus or they remind me of who I was, so I can see how far I've come. And the truth is that I've since confessed the secret that was in those destroyed journal pages to more than one person and guess what? We're still friends and they don't think I'm an awful person. Go figure. The secrets only make you sick when they stay secrets.