Holidays

Holidays are great. Great if you have a big rambuctious family. Great if you have a great time and get together with your many friends and family. But what if you have some family who doesnt want to get together with family? I always pictured me with my kids and there many cousins and uncles and aunts all under one roof for holidays like Thanksgiving. But not this year. My daughter came up to me the other day and asked if she would see her cousins on thanksgiving. I wasnt willing to lie to her. I said "no hunny you wont" she asked why.. " because there parents arent talking to anyone" i said to her. She left it alone. But all day while I watched her interact with her grandparents and her sister I could see the confusion in her little blue eyes. Her cousins have always been a part of the family get togethers that we have. This broke my heart as much as hers. These are my nephews and niece that i dont get to see nearly enough. But to not see them on this very important day in our family was heartbreaking to say the least. I cried internally all the way home last night. with a few tears shed on my face in the darkness. It will probably be the same way at christmas. I always pictured my kids having a ton of cousins and our family would grow every year. But this year it grew but not in the way id like. It grew apart. My husbands family isnt close. To me that is unimaginable. I dont get how familys dont talk to eachother on a regular basis. It kills me to not talk to my brother. But its what he wants. I remember thanksgivings almost always being at our house. gramma would come and all 5 of her sisters at one time came. It was CRAZY! but i wouldnt have it any other way. Next year Im determined to host thanksgiving dinner. DETERMINED! Everyone we know will be invited. If they can or want to make it they are more than welcome. We will eat till our pants are to tight and we will play games and laugh till we hurt. It will be CRAZY. we will probably have mishaps with the turkey, or pies... or anything else that could possibly go wrong will. Because thats how I remember thanksgivings at our home. I have so many memories of when gramma would come to stay on thanksgiving. Or even when she didnt. One year my mom made pies. LOTS of pies... We had a shed and she put them out there over night because well here in Nebraska its like a freezer around thanksgiving time. Well there were also mice in that shed that we didnt know about... They had an awesome thanksgiving dinner. or should i say desert? Then another year my gramma and all of her sisters came up at once. They are women from arkansas. Big arkansas women who LOVE to cook. during the cooking in our extremely tiny kitchen a pipe under the sink got knocked loose. Water was gushing into the basement from the kitchen sink that was running nonstop. Then the toilet... who doesnt have a toilet story? well we had one on the basement bathroom.. non working... one of the aunts went to the bathroom on that pot... off the hole... yea that was funny.... GREAT memories. I want my kids to have great memories of there familys getting together once a year. twice is great but once is perfect. I hope that we get to create great memories for my kids.

Struggling... again

Today is the day of cold wet rainy weather we usually have starting sometime in october.... But we have managed to make to almost mid November with no snow or rain in site... Boy does it effect your mood. As it is Im already having a rough month. My birthday is mere weeks away. I always get alittle emotional because its my birthday.. It means another year has passed and Im getting older. It also means that Ive wasted another year. I have nothing to show for this past year. Except some weight and a health condition that has ravaged my person. Ravaged. I feel taken over by this health condition that is suppose to be relativly easy to manage... Boy was I misled. The pain I feel in my heart is unberable. Ive lost myself. My husband feels like a stranger. I have no idea where to begin on finding what im here for. But it hurts. I know that much. It hurts to look in the mirror and want to fix "this" or "that". I remember when i use to get up every day and get ready for a job that paid a mere 2 dollars an hour. 2 bucks. I got up every day willing to go to that job and do my best to make that 2 bucks multiply to 6 or 8 an hour. Id shower and put on make up and do my hair. I took pride in how I felt and looked. I miss that. I miss having a reason to get up and look presentable every day. I miss working. Crazy i know but i miss it. I want to work. I want to have a job that I have a passion for. But Ive lost myself somewhere and have no idea what my passions are. I admire passionate people. But they also make me feel like crying.

A Pebble In A Shoe

I read something someone wrote about there life with a invisible chronic condition... It touched me in ways that I didnt even realize. The analogy of having a pebble in your shoe and you try to walk differant or shift your foot to avoid stepping on it spoke volumes. Living with hypothyroidism is just that. Its invisible, most people wouldnt even know you have it unless it came up in conversation. You dont vomit or look sick. You dont lose enough of your hair to go bald. And yes its like that pebble in your shoe that you try to just deal with the best that you can. If you hurt you take tylenol or motrin, but the pain doesnt usually respond. If your tired you take a nap, but you still wake up tired. Your hair falls out and gets coarse, you change shampoos and condition with some of the best conditioners to make it vibrant again. You gain weight, you try to count your calories and cut where you can in order to lose it but it just doesnt come off. You try to control your moods but well thats just hard. You try to enjoy the love making that your relatinship much needs but its like a chore and you get very little pleasure from it. Then there is the depression that you just cant kick. You want to be happy and enjoy the lives of those around you. But your just so blah. You try to live with these pebbles the ones that no one knows are there. They tell you to count your calories if you want to lose weight. Drink coffee to keep up your energy. But they just dont see the pain and the agony you deal with just to stay active. Life with hypothyroidism isnt what I thought it was gonna be. When i was first diagnosed I was determined that it wasnt going to be an "illness" but it is. I cant accept it. Im to young to be "ill". My kids are to young for there mom to be "ill". I just cant accept that if i take my kids to the zoo today we will probably only stay an hour because my legs and feet with fill with unbearable pain and tomarrow I will barely be able to walk.. My kids deserve more. This is definatly not the way I envisioned my stay at home mom days.... My poor kids pretty much accustomed to mommy needing a mid day nap.. What am I gonna do when my youngest no longer naps? I depend on her to nap I really do. If she naps it means Im able to. I envisioned days of running to gymnastics and soccer and dance and swimming and whatever else we could fit into our days.. But it just isnt like that..

Struggling

I need girl friends... I was always the one that said "I dont need girl friends.. Ill never need girl friends, making friends is to hard so I just wont do it" I still dont really honestly think that i NEED girl friends... I cry to my husband because I dont have anyone to hang out with for girl time. I only fully trust a few of my friends enough to really enjoy the girl time. I wish some of my friends were closer.. we would have a blast! It would be nice to have some girls I can get together with couple times a month and have drinks and tacos or chinese or whatever.. I have one that i get together with MAYBE every couple of months if im lucky and our schedules, paydays allow it. Shes getting ready to have her first baby. While im extatic for her, Im frustrated that Im just starting to get alittle bit of my life back with Kaytlyn going onto school and then my best friend of 15 years is having her first and I probably wont see her that much and well the baby stage just isnt my favorite...Im awkward with babies. Sure they are cute and all but they puke, they cry, they poop sometimes very explosively. My baby days are over. I have a toddler and a kindergartener with no future plans for any more. It will be a year before that baby can do anything with my toddler.. and by then she will be in preschool...We didnt plan this baby plan very well did we? I really want to be there for her because i KNOW from first hand experience that you lose friends when you have a baby and those first few months can be very very isolating. Especially if she stays home with the baby as she plans.. Im talking about going back to work and shes talking about staying home. .. and who is gonna be a stay at home mom with her.. um no one stayed home with me? Ive had 3 years purely of my kids. Few phone calls to my mom with the occasional play date with a ADULT and there child of course... then there is my online play where i talk to people just to feel connected and grown up.. but that is very rapidly becoming not enough. Im not much for people. In fact i really dislike people in general. I like to work though. I love to work. I like it even better the fewer people I have to interact with. Dont ask how i made waiting tables a job i kept for years cuz i have no idea how i did it and was good at it. But my spirit is broken with that profession. I dont see me ever being able to do it again. One person destroyed me. One. And id endured years of the abuse but one person destroyed it. I wont ever be able to mentally take that abuse. Staying home just doesnt seem to be working for me anymore. Ive always liked to work and worked as soon as i was legally able. Then i started a family and it all changed. So im struggling. Yet again. With who I am and who I want to be. Sure Im a mom and a wife and a daughter and a sister... But what else is there. Id absolutely love to jump at the opportunity to go to school. But i have no idea what for. I have lots of dreams but nothing im passionate about. Except working. Im at a point in my life thought that I am very picky on the type of work Im willing to do. It has to be worth it to me. I have to completely if not mostly LOVE it. It has to be worth my time away from my kids. But no job will ever be worth that. Time with my kids has no monetary value. It has alot of potential to be an awesome experience. I want my kids to enjoy being a kid. Kaytlyn regularly tells me she wants to be a grown up because being a kid isnt fun... What am i doing wrong? Not enough extra curriculars? they are expensive. We cant afford them both to be in something and I dont think its fair to put one in something and tell the other she cant because we cant afford it. So they both go without. While I think of a way to make it doable. My 5 year old should be enjoying life as a kid she shouldnt be wishing her childhood away. these are my current struggles. Struggles of the heart.

Hug Your Children

As I follow a blog of a little girl that is struggling with a bowel transplant rejection I look at my beautiful perfectly healthy little active girls and I thank God. It really puts things into perspective when the little things are just annoyances and it could be so much worse. The little girl is about to turn 5 and she gets to spend it heavily medicated to keep her out of pain. And probably in the hospital. Her family is from texas but they are here in Omaha recieving the best possible care for her. It breaks my heart to read the daily hardships her and her family are facing. Please pray for Ashley Adams. And hug your children you never know when God is going to take them home with him.

Happy Mothers Day

So its mothers day weekend again.. Over the years getting a card for my mom has always been challenging. Im sure alot of daughters feel this way. But this year I truely found the perfect card. I was over joyed. I couldnt wait to get it in the mail :-). Ive always loved cards. I always try to find the perfect card for the occasion. Sometimes I fail miserably. Alot of times i cry during this process.. I even have a challenging time with getting my husband cards.. But he always gets the sweetest gooest make ya wanna puke type of cards :-). Im looking forward to the years to come with my girls as they get older and go to school and make things for me. This year and last year were great. Memories i will cherish forever. Happy Mothers Day

Old wounds..

So i was talking with a friend the other day.. We started talking about our childhoods. To say the least neither was all rays of sunshine. We are grown women and of course we have dealt with those things as we have grown but what about the wounds that that conversation opened up? I was never close with my mom as a kid and even more so as a teenager. We had a tattered relationship during my teen years. I never really talked about it to anyone till the other day.. The day my mom left was the worst day of my life. Id never felt so alone. I was left to care for my little brothers and my dad. I was a young tender age of 11 years old. My youngest brother was to little to remember and of course i was the most affected. I didnt realize how much till the other day. For a very very long time I held this lack of judgement against my mom and very strongly disliked her.. Hated her actually. I dont remember when it happend im sure it was along the time of having my first baby and needing her but the hate went away. I still talked to her tried to rebuild the relationship but during my teen years i wanted nothing to do with her. I never felt close to her and even more so after this. Im a grown woman now and have my own two little girls that i love to the bottom of the earth and back but what if someday a lack in judgement on my part makes one of them hate me? Have i passed on the feeling of not being able to trust anyone and the feeling of regret when they are older? Its to this day very hard for me to trust anyone. I often find myself becoming attached to "motherly" figures. Bosses older friends etc. Is this all because my mom basically abandoned me? The way that time in my life shaped my life i may never know but i do know that the conversation i had with my friend really opened up some wounds, brought some questions to my mind and made me feel incredibly lost. I know life, love, parenting is all hard. I know that. But when you dont know who you are it makes it alot harder. My friend brought up "what kind of message" was placed in me when that happend. Honestly i have no idea. The only thing I do know is that I will never do that to my kids. There are times yes that i want to just run away from it all and be free and rich and not be attached at the heart to someone else. But I could never do it. Dont get me wrong I love my husband to pieces I couldnt imagine my life without him. But what if? What if i hadnt met him and i went on with my life in the way that was in my plan of being single and kidless and become this work aholic that lives in a stuido apartment in the city? How would my relationship with my mother be now? Its def differant now that im an adult and have my own kids. I love her now. I love to go visit her and I love that its not a struggle to try to build a relationship. I love that we are more like friends. Which is ok. That is 100 percent times better than having a relationship that is at the very least fake. A struggle to make work. Questionable. I never question the love my mom has for me and my family. I dont struggle to pick up the phone to call her just to tell her something one of the kids did that day that was cute or funny or something only she would appreciate. Until the other day I really thought I had dealt with this. But have I really if I hadnt ever talked to anyone about it?

Starting to get my life back

Wow what a differance a week makes! Last week I was to exhausted to even consider going for a walk with my kids or goin to the park. Today I went on 2 walks! thats right TWO! AND we went to the playground! Being hypothyroid has changed my life and not in a way that i want to remember. I want to look ahead and the possibilities of what can happen now that I may possibly be on the right dosage of meds. Ive been on a new dose for 5 days now. thats right 5 days! and I tell you i havent felt as good as i feel right now (at almost bedtime i might ad) for a very long time! Last week had i walked as much as I did today i wouldnt be moving right now id be hurting so bad lol. I havent woke up exhausted the past couple of days. Ive gottin a normal 8 hours a night of sleep and have felt great! Im hoping to be able to start staying up alittle later and doing great! Or at the least getting up alittle earlier for my own quiet time. I played with my kids today at the playground that felt soo good! I cant even express how my quality of life has changed in a matter of DAYS! Im overly estatic and i hope it keeps on going and keeps on improving! heres to all those hypothyroids out there! it gets better! it really does! and if it doesnt talk to your dr!

when your closest friends get on your last nerve

What do you do when your closest friends get on your last nerve? Not just once but on a regular basis? Does that mean the friendship is doomed to end eventually? Possibly soon? I have a friend. She is one of my closest "mom" friends. We have girls the close in age and we enjoy the company of eachother.. Or at least I use to. We have been butting heads alot lately and I always feel like what i think doesnt matter. Isnt it suppose to be a 2 way street? Its ok to have differances but at what point do u just stand up and say its not wrong to think diffrantly than you? At what point do you stand up and say your racist comments really offend me? Me being white and her being black she says alot of things like "white people do this or that" not only am i white but her husband is too and her kids are half white! If i said "black people do this or that" id be labeled as racist wouldnt I? At what point is that suppose to be not tolerated? Ive always looked beyond the color of her skin never been bothered by it never refered to her as " a black". shes my friend thats all. I dont care about her skin color and im trying to teach this to my children. But im really offended when she makes comments about things that are totally unfair to me as a white person. Like movies for example. She turns it into a "black and white issue". DRIVES me batty! Anyway we have been just disagreeing alot lately.. Mostly her disagreeing with me for silly things. Then if i disagree then im wrong. Like for example she was telling me today how she is totally gonna take her dog outside in the summer and give it a bath with the hose.. this is not something i agreed with but i didnt tell her she was wrong or get upset. I simply said i wouldnt personally do it and its her dog she could do what she wanted.. that water is freezing! I wouldnt MAKE my dog (if i had one) go outside and hold it under a freezing stream of water! She compared it to kids playing in a kiddie pool or running thru a sprinkler.. totally not the same! Kids in a kiddie pool do it willingly. Kids in a sprinkler do it willingly. And if they dont want to be in it they dont have to be. that dog is being held against its will in the water for a bath.. Just not something I would do. Thats the current disagreement and im suppose to just sit back and let it blow over.. I cant do that anymore! Im just so over it! Issues that deal with the well beings of our familys are very important to us and I always feel like what im doing isnt what she thinks is right. Im gonna end up snapping. Im not sure i can continue the friendship. It use to be fun and we would have meaningful conversation. Now we just debate everything. Im not sure id be out much not having her as a friend.. I feel emotionally drained trying to keep her head up.. wheres my support? She even disagreed with me getting a check up and finding out that I have an underactive thyroid that needs treatment.. didnt agree with the treatment.. Im always listening to her gripe or whine or vent about her "tasks" as a stay at home mom/wife.. ugh.. this is such a vent.. i really needed to vent!