37 Things You Didn't Know About Me

May 20, 2013

Getting to Know You – 37 Things You (probably) Didn’t Know About Me (or care to know, whatever)

 

I read on another mommy-blog an idea to do a ‘100 Things You Didn’t Know About Me’ post on the one year anniversary of your blog. It doesn’t seem like the anniversary of this blog since I put it down for the better part of the year…but it is a cute idea and will hopefully put me back on track for some happier posts. So here goes (apologies ahead of time that none of these are going to be super exciting):

1.       I have a Master’s Degree in Forensic Science. Don’t get too impressed, I work in an office right now, no degree required.

2.       I have one son who turns 2 in August.

3.       I have one husband who turns 40 in August.

4.       I was not born in August.

5.       I have two dogs – a Labrador and a Corgi. The shedding at my house is endless. Lucy, my Corgi, thinks that hell has crashed down upon her in the form of my toddler, who loves to hug and squeeze and sit on her.  Sam, our Lab, thinks that heaven has visited our house in the form of my toddler who loves to feed him Cheerios, goldfish, and half of everything else he eats.

6.       I live in Florida, but happiness for me is found in the mountains, I can’t live in this flat humid swamp forever.

7.       Spiders should all die. I logically know they serve a purpose in our ecosystem, circle of life, etc., but I hate them! Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web is the notable exception here, and she was not real.

8.       Despite my girly hatred of spiders, I find a lot of insects very fascinating. I am pretty nerdy sometimes, hopefully this will be a benefit when P gets older and also likes insects (please, please not spiders though). Technically spiders aren’t insects anyway.

9.       I have been involved with horses and ridden hunters/jumpers almost my whole life.  However, I am decently at peace with selling my horse and just taking lessons occasionally. There isn’t enough time in my world to be passionate about parenting and horses, they are both a major time and money suck if you want to do them properly (in my opinion).

10.   I did gymnastics for about 5 years in my early teens.  I had a love/hate relationship with the sport. I knew it was time to leave when I was contemplating the many ways I could get hurt when I was learning new skills.

11.   I was hyper-competitive as a child. My poor parents. Thankfully I have learned to be a fun-having participant and a good sport as I have gotten older. Holy moly though, I hope I can find a balance with P between wanting him to have that drive to be the best and succeed, but also enjoy the activity FOR the activity and be happy for the accomplishments of others too.

12.   I enjoyed indoor rock-climbing when I was in college.  There was a great gym near campus and it was a relatively inexpensive way to stay fit. Ironically, outdoor rock climbing does not appeal to me as much. Go figure.

13.   I HATE working out at a traditional gym. Gym memberships are wasted on me.  I like staying fit through activities, but doing 10 sets of whatever and running on a treadmill are the equivalent of torture by boredom to me.

14.   When I was 16 I spent ten days backpacking on the Appalachian Trail with a group from my high school. I cried about grape juice, ate instant oatmeal dry and went to the bathroom in the woods. It was awesome.

15.   I wish I knew how to cook! I want my family to eat healthier food and I know that home cooked meals would go a long way towards that goal, but I am not a natural ‘throw ingredients together’ person in the kitchen.

16.   I wish I had more mommy friends. Making mommy friends is a lot like dating, and I wasn’t particularly good at that either.

17.   I definitely have an introverted personality.  I am not totally socially dysfunctional, but I do hope P gets some of his daddy’s more outgoing social skills.

18.   If I could be a professional student I would!  I love learning.

19.   I often feel disconnected from ‘popular culture’ and I don’t understand the reality TV craze of celebrating people who act like awful human beings or who contribute nothing useful to society.  It is alarming as a parent that these are some of the societal hurdles we will have to navigate around as P gets older. When is it too soon to teach them ‘smart is sexy’?

20.   I was born in Ohio and I lived about an hour away from Chicago when I was kid.  I have a child’s memory of living where it snows, but I miss it sometimes.

21.   I love gummy bears. I want to eat better and cut out high-fructose everything and scary artificial colors….but every once in a while I NEED gummy bears!

22.   I can touch the tip of my nose with my tongue. My mom used to tease me when I was little by doing it (but remember I was ultra-competitive) until I spent an entire week practicing so I could do it too. Then it became our random mother-daughter talent. Be jealous.

23.   When I was a little girl I wanted to be a veterinarian (original, I know). I discovered I have not the strongest of stomachs when it comes to gory-type stuff….so now when I grow up (whenever that happens, I'll let you know) I want to work in a microbiology lab. Someday.

24.   I love sleep, but I also love staying up late (more that I can’t fall asleep then a ‘love’ of being up late). I actually had a small mourning period when I finished college and realized I would never again have regularly scheduled vacation/sleep time like when I was in school…then parenthood happened and I realized that I was being a total wuss about sleep and free time up to this point in my life!

25.    I played the flute in middle school and part of high school.  Nothing happened at band camp.

26.   I was Valedictorian of my high school class. In hind sight, I would have preferred to have graduated third. No speech to give, but probably the same scholarships.

27.   I still have my pony that I got when I was 8 years old.  She is a very opinionated old lady. 

28.   J and I honeymooned in Quebec. Sort of random, but it was an awesome vacation (and the origination of the term ‘MoFoo’). We did not like the poutine.

29.   My favorite color is probably blue, but my favorite color palette is autumn/fall colors.

30.   I wish I was more knowledgeable about make-up. I am pretty clueless about anything aside from the light-cover natural look. It would be nice if I could attend a wedding or other formal event and not have to pay to have my make-up done (and roll the dice on looking like a hooker). The same goes for hair…and fashion (I suck at being a pretty girl, sorry J).

31.   I dream of being debt-free. J dreams of all the expensive toys he wants to acquire over his lifetime….and I dream of not having payments, ever, on any toys. I will probably never have my dream.

32.   My ‘bucket-list’ vacation is a cruise to Alaska. There are a lot of places I want to go, but that one is a must.

33.   I enjoy parenthood much more than I originally thought I would. I also love seeing P’s personality grow. I thought I would love the ‘baby’ stage and not love the ‘little kid’ stage, but I am pleasantly surprised to find that I am enjoying different parts of all his stages so far.

34.   I wish I had prettier handwriting. I could never be a teacher.

35.   If I could have one superpower, it would be mindreading. A little creepy, I know, but people so rarely say what they mean, and I prefer to just know the facts and not have to dig through the subterfuge.

36.   Margaritas on the rocks with salt are my favorite drink, but I don’t drink very often.

37.   I am pretty sure this list is going to be 37 things, not 100….100 is a lot!

 

Breaking the Antibiotic Seal and Mother's Day

May 9, 2013

Breaking the Antibiotic Seal and Mother’s Day

 

Well, we made it 21 months without any medications.  This is good.  P has had a runny nose and deep cough that has not gone away for the past two weeks…we were just not moving past this toddler cold.  It doesn’t slow him down, but I know he doesn’t feel 100% either. So we went to the pediatrician today and he said P has a bit of a sinus infection, which is a bacterial issue, not a viral one. Bummer.  Two weeks of antibiotics and we should be good to go.  I know that antibiotics have a good and useful place in our world, I have just become so anti-overusing them that I have to remind myself that this is a good and valid reason TO use them!  We are fortunate to have a pediatrician that is well-versed on the immune system and does not jump to prescribing unnecessary medications.  We have had several discussions on letting fevers and viruses run their course and what warning signs to look for and when medication is necessary. This time it is necessary.

Hopefully by the weekend P will be a little less snotty too.  It is totally true that toddlers always have a runny nose…and it is gross. So gross.  P and I are going to visit my mom’s best friend and her daughter on Sunday for Mother’s Day. J and I talked about it and I wanted to be somewhere where I felt close to my mom, and seeing her best friend immediately was my answer.  I think J and I are doing something Saturday to celebrate and he also got new wheels for my car (don’t give me the side-eye….my poor Civic was looking pretty rough with the one missing wheel cover….we went cheap when purchasing this car and real rims and tires are an awesome aesthetic upgrade!). Hopefully J will go see his mom on Sunday and participate in whatever overpriced brunch his sister sets up for them.  I just couldn’t.  J understands I miss my mom, but he doesn’t ‘get it’. I don’t plan on spending every Mother’s Day away from my husband, but L & A (mom’s BFF and daughter) are family too…you have lots of ‘adopted family’ when you are an only child and all of your aunts, uncles and cousins live in the Midwest…so this is what I needed this year. We are going to have a late lunch at an Italian restaurant that we went to with my mom when A was a baby and then go walk the riverside park near where they live. It will be good, and sad, but hopefully mostly good.

On a closing note: Last weekend J and I had THE conversation….again. It was very bipolar….again. However, we did decide to pull the goalie (no more BC pills) for the rest of 2013.  It should be noted that it took over a year to produce a BFP with P, so this conversation will probably be happening again in January, but for now that is the plan.  At least there is a sort-of plan.  It is sort-of exciting.

The Great Sibling Debate

April 29, 2013

The Great Sibling Debate

 

So I am older-ish. For a new parent, at least, maybe older than average (33, I was 31 when I had P). J is older too, he turns the big 4-0 this year (shhh). So we are not spring chickens…at least not in baby making land.  Despite all this age stuff, we seem to keep coming back to the ‘should we have another child’ conversation. A lot lately.

I was an only child, on purpose. My mom had a tubal ligation when I was 2. I feel like I missed out on the true story somewhere….because that just seems like a drastic step to take at 22 years old…but anytime it was discussed, I always got the same explanation. Which was that my parents were very happy and content with me and they could not imagine loving another child as much as they loved me. My parents were young when they had me, money was tight and we had some rocky times as a family, so it was probably a smart decision, but it still seemed like a crazy thing for my mom to do at 22 (there is a cheesy reference to a Taylor Swift song in there somewhere, but it is escaping me right now). However, adult decisions aside, I liked being an only child. For completely selfish reasons, of course, but I was kid, so what can you expect. I went through a phase when I was around 6 where I wanted a sibling (and when I remembered it as an adult I felt like an ass because my mom must have felt so bad when I went on and on about wanting a brother or sister), but other than that I was somewhat aware that life as an only child definitely had its advantages.

J is the oldest of three. He has two younger sisters (he technically had an older brother that was stillborn). He gets along with his sisters, but they are not particularly close. At times, his family is a train wreck. Train wrecks are not pretty. Money was very tight in his family too.  I have asked him a few times what he thought would have been different about his life if he was an only child, obviously it is a moot point, he only knows a childhood that includes his sisters and I only know a childhood that includes friends that go home and just me.

In my mind, when I thought about myself as a parent, I assumed I would also only have one child. I am a perfect example of that person who desperately wants to control the outcome of their life choices, but then ends up tripping over herself trying to make it all perfect only to end up someplace totally different. I still have days with P where I have this perfect clarity of thought and I think ‘I am totally nuts if I change my mind and have another child, our family unit is perfect the way it is’. But more and more I am wanting another baby. I am wanting P to have a sibling, to have more family. I think J has always wanted another baby….but when I throw my anti-baby logic at him (which mostly involves our finances, which, if you looked at them, you would probably question why we had any children at all) he sighs, agrees with me, and puts the conversation down for a while, but I think he senses I am considering changing my opinion on the topic.

When my mom died (she will come up a lot, so just bear with me) I sort of assumed that any small desire I had for another child died too….I could not fathom having a child that would not know her. Like it was somehow unfair to my mom to have another baby after her death (no logic, just how I felt, and still feel quite honestly). But lately I have been contemplating the family that P has left, and I am now starting to feel that if something happens to J and I, we have unfairly left him with very little family (functional family at least).  Does a sibling change that? Maybe. I don’t know. I know that aside from when I was six, I have never wished to have a sibling more than I do now. Just someone who understood losing my mom and understood me (my best friend is a pretty great stand in for a sibling, and she was very close to my mom too….but she has lost both her parents, so something inside me has a hard time lamenting to her and wondering if she cries too when her child learns something new and my mom is not there to share it, because I know it is not the same for her). So while finances, personal experience and some grief are my driving forces for my uterus being ‘one and done’…enjoying being a parent, wanting to provide my child another family member, and also some grief are becoming my driving forces for wanting another baby. I will keep you posted.

Rambling Thoughts on a Life Unfinished

April 26, 2013

Rambling Thoughts on a Life Unfinished

 

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, this one might not be very pretty….my thoughts on my mom passing away are still all over the place and often lost in translation. I wanted to send her best friend an email a few months ago trying to explain my thoughts and feelings and I ended up deleting it because it didn’t make any sense when I reread it. So this probably won’t make sense either.

I won’t try to be too existentialist about this, but when I see human tragedy….the Sandy Hook shooting, Boston, the car accident that I had to detour around on my way to work…I feel it differently now.  Similar to how I saw all other children from a new perspective after P was born, but in a more raw/sad sort of way. Being a parent and losing a parent is a hard combo…one that a lot of the world goes through in a lifetime, it is the natural progression to become a parent and to hopefully outlive your own parents (and hope that your children outlive you), but I just was not ready. At all. We were supposed to be 62 and 82…silly old women who had figured life all out….my mom was supposed to get a chance to take a deep breath and relax a little. Not 52 and 32, I wasn’t ready.

I can’t just write a few sentences and explain the person my mom was…or how backwards it is in my head that just when the chess pieces were lining up again for her, it was all gone. 

My mom did not have an easy childhood, or adulthood for that matter. Her mom (my maternal grandmother) was killed in a car accident when she was 12.  She was one of six children in a farming household in Indiana.  There was not much money and her father (my maternal grandfather) was overwhelmed raising a house full of children on his own. My mom met my father in high school. He is, I suppose, the love of her life, but he is also a soul draining person…that a life of being married to him resulted in a fatal heart attack should not have been a surprise.  She was pregnant with me at 19 years old and had me when she was 20.  I remember turning 20 and telling my mom how mind blowing it was that when she was this age, she was a mom….and a really, really good one too. One of my humanities classes in college covered early childhood development and psychology. I was so amazed that techniques in my college textbooks for nurturing children were the exact things I remember doing with my mom as child…she was so natural at loving children. I had such a good mom.  My father struggles at being a human being, his moral compass is skewed. He did not deserve the effort that my mom poured into his life…she did not deserve the stress and heartache that he poured onto hers. 

My mom was The Giving Tree…and some days I look back and I want to kick myself for being the selfish child that took and took without realizing the tree was dying, and some days I know that my mom probably would not have had it any other way.  She was my horse show mom, birthing room masseuse (the epidural made my legs cold and tingly), best friend, sounding board, logical counterpart (at times I was hers), and the person who would follow me down a rabbit hole of a tangent that only we could understand (she was at my house last summer watching the Olympics with me and we had an extensive conversation about what Olympic sports we could still participate in…somehow, don’t ask how, we settled on synchronized swimming…it only made sense to us).  We spoke on the phone several times a week…I am not generally a phone person, but we could just talk…I don’t have anyone else in my life like that, I am often stuck inside my head these days. (ßSee? There I go again being selfish)

And she loved P…like as deeply as I loved him, she loved him, and he loved her. He lit up when she was around. The Sunday before she died, she came to the house to watch P so J and I could have a date night for his birthday.  She came in the early evening, P was in his high chair in the kitchen and she walked through the garage which opened into the laundry room and he could see her from his chair…he smiled the biggest smile and just bounced with happiness to see her at such an unexpected time. Like the greatest thing that could happen to him is to have her walk through the door. It physically hurts when I think that enough time has passed now that he probably doesn’t remember her and that he is missing out on such a wonderful person in his life.  When the topic of having another child gets brought up, I struggle with the thought of having a child that will never meet my mom, I struggle with the thought that the perfect delivery day scenario of my mom staying home with P and making him feel incredibly special and presenting the idea of meeting his new sibling in such a perfect way, and helping with the transition….will never happen. I feel like I want to tell P “Sorry kid, you are just stuck with us now” and J and I’s nurturing skills combined don’t hold a candle to how my mom was with kids.

So…the day my mom died she had a job interview with a company that was subcontractor in big construction. It was an accounting position.  She was so excited, she was incredibly qualified for the position, she had been out of work and looking for so long that she was feeling very defeated and like she had ‘aged out’ of being a competitive in the job market. I learned after she passed that her finances were in dire straits.  I knew things were very tight, but it was worse that she had let me know and this job came at just the right moment. Also, the previous week she had also been paid back a loan by a friend of hers from several years ago, money my mom never expected to get back…out of nowhere she paid my mom back.  So it kind of just ‘felt’ like things were going to be okay, like it was all starting to come together. Just before 11am on Tuesday, August 14^th 2012, I received a call from the company my mom was interviewing with…my mom had me saved as ‘my beautiful daughter’ in her phone…to say she had collapsed during her interview and was taken to the hospital but was non-responsive when she left. I remember so many details from that day. I remember songs that played on the radio during the hour and a half drive to the hospital, I remember the way she looked, I remember her hands, I remember the brief moment when J walked into the room holding P and I could see the spark of recognition in his eyes when he saw my mom and telling J to take him away.  I also remember my stupid logical brain running itself ragged trying to find the ‘reset’ button.  There had to be a way to undo this, there had to be.

Over 8 months later and my brain still does that. How can this person who loved life and children and me and my son not be here to see him grow up? How is it that I remember how she felt, what she looked like, what she smelled like, but all I have left of her are ashes and pictures? I want to turn back time and give her the shoulder massages she was always asking me for, or hold her hand in the car more often, hug her just a little longer, and listen with my intuition and know that she needed more help than she was asking for. I hate…like it makes me physically ill…that I know that her heart gave out because of stress, and even though I was not a direct cause, I could have been helping, I could have been more in tune with what was going on. I hate it.

Looking back, I wish we had had children sooner. I know anyone can examine their life and go ‘if I had known where I would be now, I would have done things so much differently’….but I definitely feel that way. If I had known that I would not be pursuing a scientific career right now, that I would be working in an office with a friend from college, then I would have gotten the ‘I must control the schedule of my life’ stick out of my ass when J brought up children years ago, if only to give my mom more time to be with them. P is so different now…he is a toddler now, he runs, his personality changes every day….and my mom would have loved seeing him growing up so very much. She would have called me just to discuss the latest cute thing he did and happily would have let him babble in toddler speak to her on the phone (one of his favorite things to do – but most people, including me sometimes, don’t have the patience to have fake conversations with an incoherent toddler on the phone).

My best friend is the talker in our relationship and I am the listener. My mom’s best friend was the talker in their relationship and my mom was the listener. I think (hope) that my mom felt like I was a listener for her as well as her for me….but when I try to look at it in reality, she was probably also my listener too, so I could have a relationship where I was the talker (which makes me sad because I don’t want to think that my mom was always the listener….everyone needs a person where they can be the talker). My husband thinks he is a listener, but he is not. He is a guy. He wants the Cliff’s Notes version of all things, not the 20 pros and cons of what the hell to do with my horse. So while I know I can call my best friend, or my mom’s best friend, or talk to my husband….it is just awkward, and not natural, and it feels like I need a lot of set up to make them understand what the hell I am talking about. It sucks. This sucks.

How is that for rambling and being sad? I think I am going to set this aside for right now. I could keep starting new paragraphs with snippets of memories or why my mind just won’t accept that she is gone, that she won’t walk through the door one evening while P is in his highchair and life will just give us another chance….but it cannot be good reading and it is emotionally exhausting. So for now I need to post this and revisit the individual thoughts and stories as we go along…..life unfinished.

 

 

Almost an Entire Trip Around the Sun

April 25, 2013

Almost an Entire Trip Around the Sun

So remember when I warned you that I might do this blogging thing in fits and spurts? Yeah.

I will try to give you the Cliff’s Notes version of the events between last summer and now, but even the summary is bound to get verbose, so hang in there.

 My last post was about my breastmilk supply fading. That continued.  P nursed until about 13-14 months, but not full-time anymore.  We supplemented with formula and it was fine, of course. Ultimately P’s laid-back personality was a wonderful benefit as his transition from breastmilk to formula supplementation to whole milk was smooth and for all intents and purposes he self-weaned, which is what I truly wanted (I think he would have happily nursed longer if my body would have played ball and hung in there better….but as you are about to see, life kicked me in the gut a bit during this time and I shut down some….producing milk was not my body’s top priority).

 

In July we went on a family vacation to Blue Ridge, GA.  This is a favorite, inexpensive destination for us as we have friends with a beautiful cabin there and it is a 10 hour drive, so no flying required!

We had a wonderful time, but I will say as a general statement, that vacationing with a child is WAY different than vacationing as a childless couple.  Definitely more sober and less restful.

 

August. I have A LOT of emotions tied up in August of 2012 and I am sure I will have to revisit that particular month again later with a more introspective post, but we have ground to cover, so I will keep it brief for now. 

So on August 4^th was P’s Very Hungry Caterpillar 1^st Birthday party. It was wonderful. August 7^th was his actual birthday.  On the 12^th, a Sunday, my mom came to town in the evening to stay with P so J and I could have a ‘date-night’ for his birthday, which was the next day, the 13^th.

On Tuesday, August 14^th, my mom had a job interview for an accounting job that she was very excited about.  She had been out of work since being laid off when the economy collapsed (she worked in big construction and that was not the place to be when companies stop building). During her interview she collapsed. She had an aortic aneurysm and she died. She was 52.

I could write and write (and write) about her and it would not do justice to our relationship, or the bond she had with P, or how much I hate it, every day that she is gone.

So, for the rest of my life, in the period between August 7^th and August 14^th, I will celebrate my son’s life, my husband’s life and mourn my mother’s death.  She would hate it. I hate it.  She would just hate to know how it all happened and how close it is to P’s birthday.  I get irrationally upset when I think about how sad it would make my mom to know about the details of her own death….how’s that for morbid circular logic?

 

I have to go back to that later or I will just stay there for this whole post and we will all be stuck in August 2012.

 

From there, we kind of sprint forward to now. 

In December, instead of spending Christmas at home, J insisted we go to Blue Ridge…mostly to get me somewhere mentally neutral since not having my mom around was going to be rough, and it was. My best friend and her son and husband came too; it was as good as it could have been all things considered.

 

In the last 4 months: I turned 33; one of my best friends had her first baby, a daughter; my cousin in Indiana (the one who we visited for her wedding when my mom and I went to Indy last May) had her first baby, also a daughter; we went to visit my Aunt in Ohio (my mom’s sister); and J and I put an offer in on what will hopefully be the first home we own.

 

Some general catch up: I DID sell my pony to a wonderful home in south Florida!  Now I am trying to sell my personal horse, Reese…time and finances and parenthood do not lend very well to horse ownership.  It is sad, but the responsible thing to do (being an adult really sucks sometimes!).  I still work for the citrus company and I still get frustrated sometimes and check the job boards for microbiologist positions that are open, but overall I am comfortable with my job decision for now.  J and I keep debating the second child possibility.  His age and finances are the big considerations for NO (and the fact that until 8 months ago when my mom died, I was very happy being an only child).  However, the fact that P does not have a lot of living family and the fact that I think that deep down J really wants another baby are pulling me towards the YES side of the argument more and more.  We’ll see.

 

I think, in a nutshell, that is as good as it gets for right now.  Hopefully I can bring us all some clarity on the details in some future posts.  Sorry for the lack of funny or witty in this one, it was a kind of necessary to just plow through the timeline and the sad stuff to get back up to date.

 

Tatas

June 19, 2012

Tatas…mourning the beginning of the end of my breastfeeding journey (I think).

So when I found out I was pregnant, I was like “I am going to try and be a good parent (props for an obvious goal there?) and raise a healthy child to the best of my means and ability”.

Then….I started reading, and obsessing, and I got into the slow period of work last summer (when everyone left me the F alone and I actually had a relaxing summer) and I was like “I am totally breastfeeding, at least until 6 months!”   I had always planned to try and breastfeed, but the more I read, the more I wanted to try and sustain this goal. The ‘at least 6 months’ part meant I would have to pump at work (since I only had the first 3 months at home). Luckily my BFF had purchased the mac daddy of the breast pumps and then was not able to breastfeed for more than 6 weeks, so she told me I was welcome to use it (score!). (BTW I do NOT need any input on the use of a breast pump by more than one user…got it, I read the disclaimer)

So listen, I KNOW that breastfeeding is hard for many, impossible for some, and I applaud all who try it.  Don’t hate, but overall it was easy for me.  Looking back there are some mistakes I made (not building a freezer stash when I had oversupply is now a big one I am kicking myself in the ass for), but overall the major hurdles we took in stride.  P had a good latch from the start; I only had a clogged duct once and while painful for 24 hours, it went away rather uneventfully; pumping sucks (no pun intended) but I am making it work…..until the last two weeks.

P is right at 10 ½ months old and has only had breast milk (and a little goats milk in his cereal), so I know I more than exceeded my 6 month goal…but my 6 month goal quickly became a 12 month goal, which has become “I’ll wean when he is ready to wean” goal. But the last few weeks my supply has just been tanking.  It is making me depressed and in turn that depression is making my supply worse.  The BIG question that I cannot quite figure out is WHY??  I am sad to admit that I truly believe this bull $h!t being babysat at HR work schedule is mostly to blame.

This is not just me bellyaching (it is mostly me truly aching). I truly think this is the reason for the downfall of my ’12 months on only breast milk’ goal.  My body was on a sweet routine for a while. I was waking up with P and nursing, going to work, pumping a decent amount to get him through the middle of the next day and then storing what was left over on Fridays.  I was even pumping enough extra in the evenings on the weekends to almost be set for Mondays.  No more.

I am tired all. the. time. Now that I get up too early to see P in the morning, I have to pump super early.  Also I am pumping in someone’s office at work and I can’t get on the computer in that room and I can’t get my mind to just shut off and relax. So for the last week I have been getting ONE session where I actually get a decent amount (decent now = 4oz…that used to be a sucky amountL) and if I am running late in the morning or I am just particularly unhappy to be awake, I have been struggling in the mornings as well (plus throw in some random middle of the night wake ups by P and I am toast).

As of Monday my freezer supply is gone. This made me cry.  Writing this post makes me cry.  Using the formula samples in my pantry that have been mocking me the past few weeks when I realized I was not keeping up….makes me cry.

I am completely aware that in the big picture, this is far from being a tragedy.  P can still nurse, we just have to supplement until 12 months when we can start incorporating cow’s milk.  Also, the success I have had to this point is an accomplishment, especially with pumping and working.  It does not change that I feel like my body is letting me down and that I was not prepared to NOT do this on P’s terms, not because I couldn’t keep up.  It also does not change the (possibly irrational) anger I feel towards my job right now.  That is a whole other post for another day, but getting up at 5:30am to sit at a completely unfulfilling job until 4pm and not get home to see P until 5pm is starting to wear thin, fast.  Anxiety and almost tears three times a day when I am again disappointed by a pathetic pumping session definitely does not help.

I am done. This too shall pass. Vacation is in two weeks.

Jury Duty

June 4, 2012

Jury Duty

SO on the way to the airport with my mom and P to go to Indianapolis the other week, J (husband) hands me a piece of mail and says ‘Oh yeah, I almost threw this away, I’m so sorry’.  It was a jury summons for 8am on Monday morning, the day after I returned home.

Now, I have to be honest, aside from the timing being a little rushed; I was sort of excited about my jury summons.  I have never been called for jury duty and I was curious about the process and to see why everyone dreaded it so much. Plus, work is SO slow right now, so it was at least something interesting to occupy my time for a day or two. My only major concern was how I was going to pump (I am still breastfeeding), but I had some milk in the freezer, so it was not the end of the world.

Monday was a cattle call for all intents and purposes. I wish I had brought a book because it was so very boring.  We checked in and sat in an auditorium where eventually we were separated into ‘pools’ and shown a video on how great jury service was and that our civic duty was part of our freedoms as Americans (blah, blah, blah…..not that I disagree, but it was just so corny).  When we took a break, one of the people organizing this step of the process was able to provide a private area for me to pump, score!

After many unnecessary breaks and explanations, my group was brought to the floor of the courtroom where we would be evaluated for a potential case.  This case was to run for one day, the next day, and was a criminal case between the state and a young man charged with driving with no license and providing a counterfeit license.  Pretty straight up, right?  I was thinking that there had to be some interesting ‘L&O’ twist that would possess this guy to plead not guilty AND for his attorney to be like ‘Sure, we’ll fight this, no prob!’

I could write a dissertation on all the things that surprised me and made me shake my head.  The waiting was not surprising, and in fact, was probably about as efficient as it COULD be done, it just sucked.  The seriousness with which people expressed their flimsy get-out-of-jury-duty excuses was entertaining.  Many times I was like ‘Really, REALLY? You’re going to run with that one as your reason you can’t be partial?’

I, of course, was selected to be a juror.  At first I was a little bummed, until I realized that I was free to eat lunch and go home and the poor bastards that came up with lame excuses to get out of being selected had to come back in the afternoon to see if they were eligible to be selected for a different case.  Plus, like I said before, part of me was more curious than displeased (aside from all the waiting).

Tuesday morning things were totally official (I felt like a dork wearing my ‘Juror #567890’ sticker on my shirt, but whatev).  Still lots of waiting, but now we got to hear all the juicy details about the Spanish kid and the fake ID (that he plead not guilty to).

So here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:

-          Kid (we’ll call him a kid, he was like, 22) gets pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt.  (**The defense acts like she is going to challenge the original encounter with the cop, but fizzles and goes nowhere with it…it was frustrating and confusing**).  The kid does not produce an ID right away and he gives the cop a different name than the cop gets when he runs the plates on the car.

-          When the arresting officer questions the kid’s identity, the kid then pulls out an ID from Honduras to prove he is who he says he is.

-          The cop questions the validity of this ID and scans the ID for confirmation from another cop (who specializes in counterfeit IDs) and with confirmation it is in fact fake and arrests the kid.

So, seriously, that is it. No $h!t.

Some background info:

-          The state’s attorney provides us with the actual license to look at, a blown up version of the ID (**but NO picture of a valid Honduras DL**), the testimony from the arresting officer, the testimony from the officer that confirmed the ID was invalid, and a school official that stated that the kid was in school the date the DL was supposedly issued IN HONDURAS (**However, the school official did not actually work at the school on this date, she just printed out the attendance records…..BUT the defense never questioned whether the attendance record and her client were one in the same person, so we assume that record is legit**)

-          The defense questions the arresting officer and when she has her client testify (**big mistake**) she asks him questions that point out some discrepancies in the story of the arrest, but she never straight out says that she is trying to get the arrest itself thrown out, we are never directed to consider that, so it all mostly seems in vain.

-          It is almost painfully obvious this ID is fake. What possessed this kid to present it as real is beyond me.  I know we don’t all have common law knowledge at our fingertips and in a panic people do stupid things. However, if he just did not present an ID at all, it would have been a misdemeanor charge of driving with no license.  Slap on the wrist, learn English, try to become a citizen and stop wasting tax payer money.  Instead, the kid not only produces a terrible fake ID, HE TESTIFIES in court the outrageous story of how his uncle got it for him, how he used a PEN on his thumb to apply the thumbprint on the back, USED CORRECTION FLUID to fix it, and signed his own name to it AFTER it was brought to the US for him.  HIS attorney was asking the questions, it was a disaster.

-          SO….the closing arguments consisted of the state basically saying use your brain and the defense trying to argue that the kid genuinely thought the ID was real (**she had all but given up on the lesser charge at this point**)

So, we deliberated for maybe 15-20 minutes.  I was selected the foreman, and we agreed the kid was guilty (no duh).  I can see you are as impressed as I was (mostly that I was selected to be foreman, woo hoo!).