long long ago ...

I blogged on a regular basis. I also smoked on a regular basis. Then I quit smoking and never made time to blog. Now I have anxiety. Coincidence?


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support this guy!

saw a post from a friend I worked with at target corp. -- he mentioned a blog by a copywriter there who is going through chemotherapy and has set up a blog. it's a worthwhile blog to follow and, if you can, toss some support his way for his Livestrong goal!


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I'm beginning a list!

here is a list I've been thinking about.

THINGS THAT HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE AS GOOD AS THEY ARE

- coca cola
- feta cheese
- chicken in a biskit crackers
- actor jon hamm (don draper)

(feel free to add suggestions)

a brief thought

the phrase "I know, right?" is cause to cane someone.

as you were.

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blog post 1801

that's crazy. 1801 times i've put something out there for anyone to find. odd, this crazy internet.

i'm always meaning to do more blogging/writing, but i never get around to it. those days are over. i've noticed a direct correlation between my urge to smoke a gajillion cigarettes and the amount of stress i've been dealing with, and, as i've always known, writing makes me feel better.

technology, while amazing and fun and zany (seriously? a site of cats in sweaters? FUCK YEAH!),  is creating a whole shit-storm that parents have to weather. we've come across a situation in which we need to do more monitoring of the teenager's activities online. sure, we could just go amish on her and remove her from all technology, but these days kids only communicate with each other via email, texting and online chatting, so i've just completed about 67 steps that will make accessing certain networking sites from our home computers virtually (ha! get it? virtually?) impossible.
hey, mark zuckerberg, here's a tip: MAKE IT HARDER TO GET A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT. make the age 18 and require a NOTARIZED FUCKING FORM & a PHOTO ID to prove the age. i'm all for parental involvement but anyone can go to the public library and open a facebook account. i cannot possibly stand over my kid's shoulder every single time she is online.

i've spent much of today changing passwords, blocking sites, creating user accounts and modifying the settings of user accounts, changing wireless passwords and so on and so forth.

and does anyone know how to disable the wi-fi on an ipod touch? this is a mystery to me.

hey. whaddya know -- i feel a bit better. like i just purged a little bit of this crappy, bile feeling that's been rumbling in my stomach today. but without the actual horrific act of purging. thanks, blogger.

"we may be through with the past ..."

"... but the past ain't through with us." ~ bergen evans

i've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, how things that happened last week, last month, last year, last decade — basically all the way back to our first grand entry into the world — shapes us and affects us. how all those things, no matter how big or small, all those things have brought us to where we are right now.

a few days ago i was reminded of something that happened just a few years back, and i was surprised by how much it bothered me all over again. i was pissed at first. REALLY pissed. then i just kind of avoided thinking about it, hoping it would just kind of go away on it's own.

("it" being "the hurt i felt over something that a normal person would have gotten past but i'm overly sensitive.")

but instead it just came back a day or two later and disguised itself as generic irritability. now that i've realized that i'm feeling very shitty and short-tempered (which doesn't help when dealing with a toddler) because of this thing, i'm at a loss of how to deal with it.

i guess i thought i was through with this part of my past, but it's not quite through with me.

(i'm now eating a funfetti cupcake with funfetti frosting.)



i like to think that i'm somehow "better" than to be upset by things from the past. but i don't think it has anything to do with self-worth. there's a skill in dbt called "radical acceptance," which, easily translated, means to just accept something. it doesn't mean you have to like it or that you want it. you just have to accept it.

well i accept that i get pissed about stuff that that happened a while ago, and sometimes it comes back to haunt me a little bit. i accept that it's how i'm wired. i accept that i'm not always going to be cheery, i'm not always going to be able to handle stress or anxiety without some form of panic racing through my body at a neck-breaking speed. i accept that my family and friends know this about me and, somehow, accept and love me.

bloggy typos

I always forget that my blog is set up to be emailed to some specific people -- and that if I hit "post" before proofreading, iPhone may have autocorrections ("sonny" should be "wonky") and "I need to" was going to be the phrase "I need to blog more." and its now fixed bc I'm, well, a lil neurotic.






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Panic and stuff

I need to. my
need mmmmmm brain gets wonky sometimes (wha? since when?) and it can chew me up and spit me out if I don't tend to it. and I need to tend to it more often.

I was talking to my dad this morning and I kinda realized that I'm not so good at remembering to tend to myself - or my brain. i do the basic stuff but it's tough when caring for 2 young kids and a teen, bc it exhausts every ounce of energy and patience you have. and I love my kids more than life itself but I need to do things like REMEMBERING TO EAT.

I've been having some panic/anxiety stuff happening & it's no goddamn picnic. (mostly bc there's no potato salad.) yesterday's brought with it hot flashes - felt like my arms were on fire. awful. scary. so now I'm reading online ways to combat it, to keep it away, to deal with it when it happens. also looking into anxiety meds cause, you know, I don't take enough pills already.

I know, I'm whining. and my iPhone knows it bc there's only 6% of my battery left, so that's my cue for to knock it off.

here's to another day tomorrow that will have very few moments of fear. I'm pretty fucking tired of feeling afraid bc I might feel afraid tmrw.


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warning: nesting has begun ...

baby/oskar room becoming a room again, as opposed to the storage room it once was. i just browned pork chops and put them into the crockpot, along with some stuffing and cream of mushroom soup. we'll see how that goes.

if i move a twin mattress from one room to another, will my water break? if so, I'M SO ON IT.

side note: how do dogs ALWAYS know the expensive shoes to chew on? did she HAVE to go after oskar's stride rites AGAIN? for fuck's sake.

one week from tmrw I'll be getting ready to check into the hospital -- I go in at nighttime have some pre-induction stuff going on, then the magic happens the next day, oct. 27. totally nuts. it's also weird bc I've never stayed a night away from oskar. he'll be snuggled with dustin and then at daycare the next day.

eek! baby time approaches!

now I think I'm going to dust. that's right, I'm going to dust shelves and whatever else I see. NESTING!

tub time ...

a day filled with contractions of a sharp, eye-watering nature, so it's in the tub with me to see if they'll stick around. since both my previous kids were induced, I have no way to measure how long my labors would normally be if they came without my eviction notice. makes knowing when to go in a little tricky.

we shall see what the wee hours bring ...


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another night ...

another blog from the tub. more contractions, doing the warm bath test to see if they are the kind to stick around or not. the way this feels, it's hard to believe that she will wait another three weeks to come out. yowza.

and I really really wish I had a huge bathtub, bc it's not like I'm not already too lengthy for this thing, but there's not a lot of elbow room at this point in my pregnancy. a huge tub that's deeper than the average tub would be super awesome.

the worst part about the end weeks of the pregnancy is how I'm so hyper-aware of my aches and pains. constantly questioning every twinge, every odd sensation, secretly worries that my water will break in public (knowing full well that only 10% of women actually have the water break prior to birth), or that I'll wait too long to get to the hospital for fear of going in unnecessarily that I give birth in my car.

anxiety, anxiety, anxiety.

water getting cold, eyes getting tired. will update later.

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post bath update

prob not the real thing -- contractions have all but disappeared and they were real labor ones, they'd still be going.

plenty of time left for her to finish cookin' ... l


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bloggin' from a bathtub ...

as advised by the midwife on call at the hospital this evening, I've just had many glasses of water and now soaking in a warm tub.

why?

I started having somewhat regular and fairly painful contractions about an hour or more ago. the theory is that if u drink a bunch of water and soak in a warm tub and they go away, it's not real labor. if after this is done and after I'm in bed awhile and it's still happening, I'll prob have to go in to get checked out.

which sucks, bc you can't just stop in and quickly get checked out, they full-on admit you to the hospital before they start checking anything.

do I think I'm in labor? i dunno. but I tossed some clothes into a suitcase, you know, just in case.

however the best way to ensure that it is real labor is to be completely unpacked and unprepared. just like the best way to stop contractions is to go to the hospital to have them checked out.

so here I sit, iPhone in hand (but out of tub range bc I'm clumsy), waiting for whatever comes next.

I'll keep you posted ...

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stormy night ...

... and for as terrified of storms I used to be, it's astonishing to me that I now love the sound.

I remember watching clouds roll into Minot from the west, dreading the dark ones bc it meant once the temp dropped and it cooled slightly that the storms would start and down into the basement we'd go.

I would do weird little OCD type things to try to stave off any potential storms --- bc a 4th grader has that much control, right? bc god knows if i tore off a piece of paper towel and there was a little piece that hadn't come off where the perforation was, clearly I was at fault and a tornado would suck up my house as punishment.

I recall being so scared that I throw up in our basement when the sirens were going off. (keep in mind that unlike MN, sirens only went off in Minot when there was an actual tornado warning, not just a severe thunderstorm with tornadic potential.)

I even talked to my therapist about it (yes, a therapist at age 12, don't judge me) and I expected she would say something wise and insightful that would magically cure me. nope. not a bit.

around the end of 7th grade I slept over at my best friend amy's house, and that night was the night of several rounds of sirens.
her mom made some awesome pasta salad with imitation crab in it and for that was the first year I wasn't scared out of my mind.

in fact, that was the first night where I began waking up a minute or two before sirens began. like my brain was giving me a head start or something.

now here I am, being lulled to sleep by the thunder outside. I've come a long way. (now I'd like some pasta/crab salad.)

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night of bad dreams

one involved someone getting in the house (prompting me to have Dustin check the door was locked), one involved a friend dying, ... not a good night's rest in my head. blargh.


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no good at updating ...

still. no good.

but it's a girl, folks! so far all is looking good, for the exception of the dark circles under my eyes, indicative of my need for sleep increasing again. I'll miss you, second trimester of energy and fewer mood swings.

Lucy and Zelda top the list for baby names.

tired. so tired. sleep will now happen for me.


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giving it a try, mobile style!

testing, testing ... is this thing on???





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12 week ultrasound

names and stuff

so we've heard the heartbeat a couple of times now, so we're comfortable in actually discussing names for the halloween baby. i also find that i'll hate a name for little or no reason quite easily.

names i like:
dexter
(but the "er" at the end sounds similar to the "ar" sound at the end of oskar, so that might be a dealbreaker.)
malcolm
beckett

for girls my top favorites are (and i didn't mean to make a theme of flower types):
iris
violet

since i will be 35 in a month and some change, that puts me into the magical "high risk" category (because apparently baby-making parts go bad?), however that icky stigma also adds in a couple of extra routine ultrasounds, so i'll see the lil' shaver on april 21 and then again six weeks after that (that one will be the gender display), and then again at 34 weeks. so that's okay by me.

right now oskar and i are eating dinner and watching "how the grinch stole christmas," because good fun knows no season. for dinner, you ask? why, it's some delightfully white trash fishsticks! the kid loves 'em and they're easy to make.

i can't wait to have something resembling energy again. just a few weeks to go (i hope).

currently still feel as though i've been hit by a truck, but the nausea accompanying that "hit by truck" feeling has waned off. but i still can't stand (read: gag horribly) when i smell dish soap on my hands. regular soap=fine. dishsoap=gaggy. let's just say i'm making everything dishwasher safe in this house. (and if our pets don't watch it, they're next.)