5 Reasons Why I Hate My Husband's Ex-Wife

This week has been out of control. I repeat, out of control. The cause is from several things going wrong all at once, one of which includes the nefarious activities of my husband's ex-wife E.So let me give you a very small glimpse into the heinousness that is this woman and illustrate that I'm not always such a big fan of my own gender (sorry ladies).

1. She is dating a man who physically abused my step kids and who is also a drug addict.

Yup. Let that one go ahead and sink in. M and I didn't find out about the abuse til 5-6 months after the event happened because his oldest son (they are all in elementary school) mentioned talking to the police at school and when my husband called he was referred to Child Protective Services. That was the first time we heard anything. E didn't tell us about the abuse because she wanted the boyfriend back living in the house because that's how needy she is. She also only recently told me about the drug abuse because she was trying to make an argument that judging others isn't right. The irony is that she openly judges M, his family, and myself in front of the kids and naturally spreads lies about us to other people. Fortunately, because she's crazy she has made it so that she has estranged a lot of people and now they are beginning to realize her instability.

2. She had kids to avoid working.

I'm not a feminist, but that disgusts me. My mom was a SAHM and she was a working mom when my brothers and I were little. My dad eventually asked her to stay at home, which she begrudgingly did, until we were in high school and she went back to work. E has spent her whole life avoiding having to work. M adopted my oldest step-son because E got accidentally knocked up in her first year of college by some guy and dropped out. She met M and since M is a sucker for kids and loves the idea of family they were married quickly after meeting and despite M's request for her to continue working since he couldn't afford 3 people on his salary she ignored it and quit her factory job. Oh, and then got pregnant shortly after to seal his fate. She was also in the National Guard and was called up to deploy and didn't want to go. Their 3rd child is alive only because she intentionally got pregnant to not serve the country she volunteered to serve for. She has a CNA and one other type of nursing associate's degree. That field is brimming with job opportunities, but has she ever gotten a job in any of them? Nope. Out of ALL of her classmates and friends who have the exact same certificates and who have all found jobs and have kids of their own she's the only one who says she can't seem to find a job. We've sent her newspaper clippings of job ads, texted her with signs we've seen for help wanted, and even signed her up for an email service that sends ads for jobs in those fields within a certain distance of her home. Has she ever even filled out an application. Nope.

3. She is always a damsel in distress.

She doesn't have the ability to take responsibility for anything and she can't function without a man in her life to fix it for her. Everything is always everyone else's fault. I have spoken with her on the phone before (and her own family member, which she doesn't realize) and when something wrong is happening in her life it's always "No one will help me", "I'm always so stressed out", "This is not fair, I've never done anything wrong". Inevitably though her family says they offer her assistance, they try to help her out and she just pushes them away to be with that scumbag guy. He was removed from the home bu CPS and instructed not to talk to her or the kids but she openly admits that because "no one was helping" her she "had to jump through hoops" to get him back in her and the kids' lives. She often claims that people are out to hurt her and "her babies" (which is dark because she's using it metaphorically when she is living with a man who has actually done just that to the kids).

I have to admit, I'm really confused why my grandmother and great-grandmother's generation fought so hard for gender equality only to have women come to this. I still believe in SAHM but I know very strong, confident, and independent SAHM's who understand that they still have to take responsibility for things and can be really innovative and involved in the community and social projects. That sort of mindset and situation in what women fought for in addition to going to work. They wanted to have freedom of choice to work or stay home and if they stayed home, have the ability to still be active in the community. Today, some women have taken advantage of this. E sits at home and watches tv all day and shops on QVC when she has no money. 

4. She's as dishonest as they come.

She has never spoken about anything truthfully in the 4 years that I've been with my husband. Not once. Everything is a fabricated lie and if what someone else recalls about an incident makes her look bad and doesn't coincide with her story--you're a total, evil, shitbag in her book. She is truly that sick. She is all about a good image of herself, which is typically a red flag that the person is rotten and prefers to look squeaky-clean because of her obvious shortcomings. Nothing is her fault, everyone has done everything to her, she never has money, she's not living with the abusive guy anymore and how dare we assume she is...etc. The list of her lies is too long to recite. My nickname for her is Colon because she's so full of shit.

5. She psychologically, physically, and financially can't support the kids but won't give them up to their father because they are her meal ticket.

We don't live in a state even near the kids. She took the kids back to her home state and got the divorce so that the kids were in that state's jurisdiction to make it harder for M to get his kids back in the state he was living in. Since M is the only one working and because E has been the primary care-giver because of that, the kids were kept with her. Even now, because my husband works and despite us taking her to court for a number of different infractions to their divorce agreement and the instability in their lives with this guy in their life, they are with her.

Maybe husband pays a hefty child support amount. When E left the destructive boyfriend for a few short months and used my husband's child support money to get tattoo's, go out and drink often with her friends, take trips, buy several new animals, and go shopping on QVC and go to Thirty-One bag parties. The heat at the house was shut off (in addition to child support my husband had to pay half of the mortgage on the house she was living in but she never paid the half she needed to so he was paying the whole amount so the house wouldn't go into foreclosure because with his job they would have fired him), she didn't pay her part of the mortgage, debt collectors were calling M and I and his parents, her car almost got repo'd twice (which still had M's name on it even though the court told her to take his name off four years ago), and countless other things.

She coaches the kids on what to say around people and they are so upset and confused because his parents will ask them random things about their life just to talk to them and they will say "Our mom says we can't tell you that." They are confused about right and wrong and the oldest has said he doesn't want to be around the boyfriend and when M told E that she ignored him and said that he wasn't around. So, naturally, the kids have had to adjust to being around someone who is unsafe and dealing with it all at very young ages.

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It's sick. The whole thing is sick. What I have found out from this whole experience is that women really do have all the rights and men have very little. We talk about equality and then we push the men down and steal their rights like it's a completely different situation. It's not. It's all gender inequality and the people who get hurt are the children. If you choose to intentionally have kids, or end up accidentally having them, you still choose to have them and the individual that you had them with is there whether you like it or not.

I'm putting this out there because I'm really confused at my gender. I've even Google'd stuff like this to see whether I'm alone or not and I have found an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest that there are a number of women everywhere who are having this problem with their husband's ex-wife. Like many other cases, E had tried to break up my husband and I because of our long-distance relationship at the moment. She asks him if he ever misses them being a family and has even told me on the phone that she wishes she had stayed with him for his money.

This has to stop. I would really encourage anyone reading this to advocate for women to be better than this terrible example and if they know anyone who act similarly to this, to get them to stop. Don't encourage this. E's family did for years and now that they know about the drugs and abuse it was an unfortunate eye-opener to them. And because they had encouraged her craziness for years their sudden dislike of her choices made it so that she pushed them away and the kids aren't even allowed to see the extended family members living only a few short blocks away from them. Those kids are completely isolated now. In my opinion, awareness to this needs to be raised and people need to start advocating for better behavior, even from mother's.

Why I Quit Facebook

I've been feeling a bit BLAH lately--just about any old thing. Where I am right now, what I'm doing, have I accomplished my goals? These things have been buzzing around my head for quite awhile and, to be honest, Facebook browsing never helped.

Theodore Roosevelt once said "Comparison is the thief of joy." Boy, did you ever get that one right Teddy.

I mean, at this point in my life what is Facebook anyway? I'm 30 and tipping into the +30 range (I feel a physical quiver just typing that) and all anyone's posts are just wedding pictures, baby pictures, funny meme's, or bitch sessions about something that I'm not around to experience. When I joined in 2005 I was just out of college and it still felt relevant, like, "Hey do you want to meet up tomorrow night?" or, "Here's a picture of the family reunion in case you missed it!". It was the transition from instant messaging (God, how old am I?) to a broader base of people that you may have moved a few hours away from. You know, back when text messaging still cost you money per character.

Over the years I've moved to different states and now I'm entire plane rides away from people that I used to hang out and socialize with. I had been toying with getting rid of the addictive FB but I didn't want to risk saying goodbye to people I might not otherwise talk to.

I'm 100% that everyone else feels the same way because, like everyone else, you've probably kept your Facebook for the same reason. "But I want to see so-and-so's new baby!" and "That skank in college who my boyfriend cheated on me with got super fat!" Admit it, not outwardly of course, but admit it to yourself. That's the exact reason "Facebook stalker" has become a household name. I'm guilty as charged.

Did you wrong me back in 2000 and now you have 3 kids and live in a trailer? I found you on Facebook and smiled. Did you just meet your boyfriend yesterday, get married, and found out you were pregnant 15 minutes ago when I've been dealing with infertility? I found you and I will stare daggers at you now.

I've been a FB member since 2005 and I've never had one of those crazy, tell-all break downs that I so often hear about. The ones where you throw all your dirty laundry on the internet so that everyone knows but get pissed when someone judges you? Or passively-aggressively mention something that happened to you that only one person on your friends list knows because they are the one that did it to you and then the teeth and nails come out? Nope. Never happened.

Until 2 days ago.

Ok, in my defense, I'm medicated right now. I know. It's sad. But it's legit and I'm sticking to it. I called someone out-of-the-blue who I have never even spoken to over the phone EVER and the reaction was "Are you calling me to tell me your pregnant?!?!"

Ok. What-the-fuck-sauce.

The post that I later wrote wasn't aimed towards her, and I'm sure she knows that, but it was more of........errrrmmmm.....a notification that kids aren't happening so don't ask me so "I can avoid feeling like I've been hit in the chest by a train."

A wave of comments came. And I hardly ever get comments since most of my posts are meme-based. So I kiiiiiiiiiinda felt mortified. Also, I had been going through my browser history to find a specific website I had gone to that I needed to reuse again. TWO WEEKS worth of searching and all I saw were blue logos everywhere saying that I had been on Facebook this many times and I had searched 100 times the profiles of these people.

I sat at my computer, drugged up of course, confused and upset. So THIS is how I spend my time??? My precious, valuable time?! I could have been approved as an astronaut in flight hours with as many hours as I had spent on Facebook!

So I Google'd where to locate the deactivate button (since I never assumed that I would require that knowledge). And click it was gone.

In the few days since I left I haven't felt all that bad, really. I'm curious sometimes. Like someone who has a mild addiction to something stupid like a video game and you miss the memory of it. But overall, I've felt happier. I  don't have baby pictures shoved in my face. I don't have bad tendencies to dig up old grudges and relish in their dismay or feel like crap if I find that they are more well-off than I am.

I'm ok with being a little more old-fashioned. If they've kept my number and really care about how I'm doing, they can feel free to give me a call. Send me picture messages. Meet up with me and let's go to the movies. Otherwise, I wasn't really friends enough with them in the first place to need to know how their life is going.

Can I Be 20 Again? Pretty Please?

Confession: In college, when my roommate was most assuredly in class, I used to shut the blinds and dance. And not just dance, but clamor about the room like my limbs weren't attached to anything.

Back then we had cd's (and the biggest, blockiest initial prototypes of IPods-- but not alot of people had them yet) I would throw some cd's in the disc player and jam out in the quirkiest ways possible. I mean it. It could probably be seen as interpretive dance if anyone had ever caught of glimpse of it. It made me feel happy, free, and on days when I didn't feel like working out it helped calm my fear of being a lazy ass because I definitely broke out into a sweat.

I ran to the gym today but didn't get to stay long because everyone seems to have an internal messenger that tells them to give me bad news while I'm at the gym. I never get to stay long enough to do anything I want because I'm always called to go deal with some potential catastrophe. So I came home, dealt with it, then I went to YouTube. Pharrel's "Happy" song has been speaking to me lately so I played it and kind of jiggled about in my chair. All 80's-like with my shoulder moves.

Then I did it. Shut my blinds and went crazy in my room. Yup, it's juvenile. And, nope, I don't care. I heard joints cracking like a 30 year old will, but whatever. It felt pretty good not to give a damn for once.

Ways of the World

That newspaper would make me the happiest person in the world. For my job I have to be aware of current events going on in the world--foreign, domestic, scientific, blahblahblah. It makes me a little jaded about life sometimes. I mean, how many times do you go through a news site or newspaper a day? I go through 3 different news sites every morning, and usually at least 1 at night to see what new discovery or travesty is happening.

A week or so ago I read one really awful story about 2 parents living down south in the US who were selling their 3 daughters to people for slave acts with adults (they are minors, btw, and at least 1 was still in elementary school) to help pay for their addiction to bath salts. That did it for me.

Since then, except for what I have to read for work, I only read about new medical advancements and scientific discoveries. Like the fact that the oldest living animal (507 years old born in 1499) was found in the ocean off of Iceland and was accidentally killed by scientists who were trying to determine its age. Don't shed a tear, it was a clam, but despite the fact that it died as a direct result of scientists making an OOPS I call that story a win compared with the story of bath salt junkies.

At one point I became so upset with the state of the world due to my news resources that when a friend of mine saw the little illustration above I became super excited. Finally, something not horribly devastating!

I see those meme's that have people doing great things that at the end say "faith in humanity restored" and I wish the news was more like that. Terrible news creates higher ratings I guess, although I don't know a single person who enjoys reading of watching the news. So how is it possible that they get such great attention in the first place? Is it old people watching that are watching the news? I know the elderly tend to like the newspaper still. Who knows.

I had a good week, I kept my intake of disturbing news feed to an all-time low, and it's the freakin' weekend! Go enjoy yourselves!

Sweet Nothing

This is so relate-able because this is the exact type of thing that I do. Say what you will, but it's hard for me not to expand situations in my mind a little bit more into the future to try to anticipate what will happen. M says that I stress too much, which is pretty accurate. I wasn't like this before {by that I mean my stressing out wasn't this BAD before} but now it has gotten a bit out of control. 

There's a lot on my plate right now and I'm feeling really uneasy about turning 30 next month. The fact that I'm turning 30 has consumed me and made me feel miserable. No other birthday has made me feel this way and the whole lack-of-baby thing has me feeling pretty upset for turning 30.

Things I Wanted Done Before My 30th Birthday:
-Pay off student loans- check
-Run a marathon- check
-Learn another language- check
-Start a retirement fund- check
-Start a family- unfulfilled

I have accomplished a lot! That one thing still weighs on me so much. Also, I found my first gray hairs this year, my wrinkles are becoming more prominent, I'd swear all my hair is falling out {the ones that aren't turning gray}, and work is incredibly overwhelming. Because of all of the above I found, on Pinterest of course, this:

Comparing, worrying, and blame are the ones that I have the most difficulty with. Competing is up there, though. I really need to get this under control because I have been in a funk and I have not been a fun person for M to talk to. Are there any other good ways to control the stress or the fixation that you get on things?

I Want To See The Signs

Sometimes, I feel like God is forgetting that I'm here. I know that's not possible but I feel like it.

I'm really stressed out and things in my life are going in a completely different direction than what I thought. What's worse is that I kind of had this coming. I wanted my life to be a little shaken up but I never imagined it would be this different. I wish I could have had the wisdom to know that the way I imagine things being is never actually how my life turns out. 

I usually daydream about my life and come up with these really great scenarios about trying out different things and achieving different goals and that things will work out. It always starts out so great in the beginning {and in previous posts I mention my love for planning} and I think "How could this not turn out well?" and then the very straight point A to point B scenario swerves into K, taking a turn to P which hiccups into points X, Y, and Z. Adventure is great and builds character and all...but I have plenty of both of those things and I feel more lost than anything.

And I feel bad for my husband too. M only ever wants me to be happy. He wants me to be fulfilled and successful and happy with my life. I feel really bad.

I pray about this. I'm always very clear with God when I ask for help. I say what's troubling me and I ask for guidance and it usually goes into a variation of this phrase: "You know me, God. You know I get confused easy and that when you tell me things I misinterpret them so I need you to give me very CLEAR signals as to what you want me to do." I'm not an expert in prayer or anything but I'm ether not getting any signs, or I'm missing them completely. I can't tell if God wants me to take the wheel and just keep spinning about like I am or if God wants me to let go completely and take the wheel for me for awhile.

I can't really tell what's going on.

I'm going to keep praying and all, I know God is hearing me, I am only afraid that things aren't going to work out. I have done a lot of things that I have wondered about and wish I had done differently but there are a lot of important things coming up soon that I really need God's attention on. All I can do is pray, right?

What REAL "Unfair"-ness Looks Like

I'm feeling emotional today so I can already tell you the tone this post will have: emotional, erratic, stressed...and other words that my brain is too foggy to try to think up.

I work hard and I've have been working hard for as long as I can remember. My first job was when I was 15. I worked at a farm/orchard in an area that had a large barn with a bakery inside. Pies and pastries and all kinds of things were made here and this was the section of the orchard that I worked in. I hated that job but I did it anyway.

It has been 15 years since I had my first job and I have had sooooo many different jobs and so many different experiences it's hard to remember them all. Some of these jobs I worked for a short period of time (my shortest being a month on 2 separate jobs...they were god-awful) and others I worked for several years. I have also had two separate times in my life when I worked 3 jobs, simultaneously. I'm not crazy, but one thing I can really thank my Dad for is work ethic (although he will stay at a job he hates until the day he dies, whereas I will at least quit and find other work that makes me happy, no matter how many jobs I need to take on until I find the right one).

The reason I mention all of this is because working hard seemed like the right thing to do growing up. I figured that everyone else felt this way too. I mean, what is there not to understand about this concept? I work hard and I feel a sense of self-respect in that. I make an income. It may not be much, but I worked for that and it gets me where I need to go and I don't have to rely on others. My hard work contributes to the betterment of society because I help the "business" that I am with, which has value to those that I serve by my contribution in that entity. I honestly view my place in the working world as an honored place where I work for the sake of humanity.

Here's what  I don't understand:

Why is it that the people who don't have these values seem to have the things that I want? Moreover, why is it that these people get coddled and told that their uselessness is OK because society will take care of them?

Before you get steamed up, I'm not talking about the physically or mentally handicapped. I'm not talking about the elderly. I'm not talking about females on maternity leave. I'm talking about the average American who makes up excuses for why they can't get a job, can't pay the bills, and spends the evening buying things off of QVC. This isn't even an isolated incident, I know HANDFULS of people that are involved in this same situation. What's worse? They have jobs that they can go to in order to make minimum wage but those jobs are somehow "beneath them" therefore they choose to have no employment at all to wait for "the right job". While waiting for these"perfect jobs" they collect unemployment and write Facebook posts about sitting at home all day playing videos games or watching Lifetime movies.

I have known people, personally, who lived in shacks, worked at a low-wage job in a turkey plant slaughtering birds, who had less education but more dignity than those of the above-mentioned paragraph. There are single parents out in the world working to the bone to provide for their children without even so much as child support check, who honestly feel ashamed at having to ask for government assistance and pull themselves up out of the poverty line tooth and nail and who succeed. But for every one of those people there are several more who just sit and wait to get money from someone else.

"I deserve this."

Let me tell you something. You were born into the world just like everyone else. You are not more special than anyone else here. I don't owe you anything. Infact, I think it's just the opposite. You owe ME and everyone else like me the gratitude associated with what people like me do. I only have 15 years of continuous work underneath me, which pales in comparison to a lot of other people. I have also had the opportunity to work in great places because I worked hard to get my education (for which I worked DAMN hard to pay off) and a large number of people don't even get to say that much. But just like me, they get up EVERY DAY to whatever caliber of job they have and do their job. And if they lose their job, they immediately get another one. And if doesn't pay enough? Well, imagine that, they go get another 1...or 2...or however many it takes to do what they need to do. Why? Because it's the right damn thing to do. These people, no matter what they do, are the best humanity has to offer. Are YOU on that list?

Happy Wife, Happy Life

I have had a FANTASTIC weekend.

Last week was a bit rough for me, by that I mean emotional stuff mostly. Things were off and it affected how I dealt with others things during the week. I couldn't focus a lot, I kept drifting in daydreams...it really did a number on me.

So I flew my husband in. Last minute.

That's right :-) I did something spontaneous and while my wallet is a little tighter my heart and mind feel so much better. It's amazing how much stuff like that can affect you and become a positive influence. I have been ridiculously happy for a few days now, and even though he left this morning I have been productive today. No sulking. No whining. No laying around feeling heartbroken.

I feel so much better. M always knows just what do to when I'm in my funk (granted, I may not always like what he does to do it, but it always works) and his presence is always so calming.

For one, he got us a hotel with a garden tub. YES YES YES. We spent every evening in that tub watching episodes of Big Bang Theory on his computer propped up on the toilet. That's a win right there. He took me to some of the places that we like to eat and, like we always manage to do, he found us an aquarium to go to. We ate a little more ice cream than I'd like to admit but we were staying at a place with a (teeny tiny) gym so we did get our sweat-on.

I realized 2 things on this trip:
1. It may seem boring to do the same stuff or eat at the same places every time we see eachother, but I realized that I connect that with us picking up where we left off the last time we saw eachother. It's us pretending like nothing has changed. When people live together they get into a routine, something that's comfortable, and that's what we do even though we don't get to see one another. I find comfort in that. We do go to different places, but we do have to get our staple places in when he's here. It makes it seem like we still live together.

2. I hate the airport. It has now become a symbol of our time apart. It also is the place that brings us together, but I spend so little time in the airport waiting for him to come in than when I do when he leaves. When he leaves we stand there waiting closer to the time when he has to pass through the gates to get on his flight because those minutes are so precious that we don't want to end it earlier than we have to so the heartbreak feels like an eternity. And while we are standing there we never see anyone else in the same predicament as us. It's always families hand-in-hand going on a vacation or heading back to their place of origin as a big, happy unit. It just an ugly reminder of an unpleasant subject and I never like going there after we have had such an amazing time together.

But despite the horrible airport, so worth it :-)

On to some updates:

1. I didn't get a subpeona. Woot!
2. I moved into a new living arrangement 2 weeks ago and everything has been going smoothly. Needless to say, I keep to myself now. No getting involved with roomates. What. So. Ever.
3. This week is another short week at work!

Good things. All good things :-)

Pre-Monday

Sunday's always have me terrified. I can't ever fully appreciate Sunday's because I know which day of the week comes after it. I saw this on Pinterest and can empathize:

Don't you know that I hate you, Sunday?

Although as far as my whole life has been concerned, I am amazingly productive on Sunday's. Friday's I swear I will do things I need to get done but then I become lethargic as soon as I turn the latch to enter the house. My feet feel heavy, I'm overcome with hunger, my brain yells for a nap, and my computer teases me with Pinterest. Goodbye Friday. NOTHING gets done on Saturday's. I go grocery shopping. That's it. I don't even know what I do the rest of the day. I can't recall a single hour on any given Saturday where I can say I have done any more than lay around, go for a run, and make sure I am fed. Sunday's I wake up, shoot out of bed and my brain starts spinning with 6,000 things and I am suddenly Wonder Woman and 10 different things just got accomplished in 30 minutes.

Good God I have a lot of stuff going on this week. I don't even know if I can retain it all. All I know is, I get my flu shot on Tuesday and it's safe to say I will definitely be getting the flu....hooray.

Here's to another week of continuous Monday's!

A Hole in My Heart That is Years Long

The title and picture say it all. I have wanted to start a family for years now and it has never worked out for me.

It's a rough topic, really. I don't get misty-eyed often, but this is definitely a sore spot that makes my heart feel soft and weak.

It started a long time ago.....I was in another marriage, it was unstable and volatile and it wasn't until the end of the marriage when I started feeling like I was ready to have them. No matter how bad I wanted to have children, it was toxic and I just couldn't do it. Going through the divorce process was terrible and I felt crushed because although I knew I didn't want to have children with that particular man, the lost opportunity upset me.

Then I found "M" {yes, we are both "M's"}. He was amazing and sweet and very good at his job. And he had 3 kids with his ex-wife. Now, I don't want to sound cliche when I say I'm not the jealous type, but it's true. I have no reason to be. If you don't want to be with me, don't be with me. Period. But I felt jealous (and still do, actually). The person that I'm crazy about had 3 children with a woman who is completely ungrateful of the fact that she got to have those children with this amazing person. It makes me feel bitter.

I'm sure someone could intervene here and say "But you're a step-mom now, love on the children as if they were your own." And that's true. To a point.

With my job I don't get to see the kids, and neither does my husband, unfortunately. We can't just go and see them. Heck, we can't even get to see one another. There's also the point that the mother moved her and the children away to another state far away a long time ago, so they aren't even in weekend-visitation-range. I know them but I don't really know them. And neither does my husband, as heartbreaking as that is.

We talked about kids, M and I, and he really wants to have one with me but we never get to see each other. My Facebook is lit up with newborn and pregnancy pictures and I scheme about how I could make this all work, but it couldn't. I couldn't do what I do and have a baby alone. Heck, with my job I might get sent away without being allowed to bring the baby with me and have him/her sent to a relatives house.

And as I try to plan out a time when having a family might be good, the years pass by and all I can see is the number of my age going up. I have already been on birth control for 12 years, how many more years until my body decides that birth control has made my uterus into a steel fortress where "None shall pass"? Has it already?

I'm also sure that step-mom-dom has amazing qualities, but I'm also sure that mothers who have given birth to their own flesh and blood can attest to the fact that there is no other experience like it on earth. To watch the transition happen to you over 9 months, to experience birth, to have that very first moment of holding the person that you have made and getting to meet him/her for the first time.

I want that, too. But I get really scared.

I get scared that I can't have the same experience that most mothers have. That I won't get to be with my husband during all the excitement. That we won't get to nest together. That he won't be there for the birth. That I can't have kids after all these years on medication. That we won't have time to have kids because we are never together.

I never had an opportunity to have kids and he never had the opportunity to really know his kids. And now we don't have the opportunity to be even a family for just the two of us.

It all really weighs heavily on my heart. What he and I do is important, but sometimes it feels like we give up so much. Too much, infact. 

When I sit here and see the sheer happiness and love that people have by creating a family I go to work hoping that my husband and I will get to do the same. That like all the rest of you, we will get to have our own pride-and-joy. Because that pair of shoes, like the ones on the top of this page, will be filled with with our little bundle of happiness, just like everyone else's.

Jumping Back On The Wagon

My eating ebbs and flows. One moment I will be eating relatively healthy and I can stay away from all the junk food, and the next minute I'm wolfing down brownies and cookies and ice cream.

My problem has never been weight {don't roll your eyes}. I have yet to have a child so I haven't had the experience of trying to bounce back from a birth, I haven't had severe weight issues growing up, and yes, I do have overweight family members. I don't feel "lucky" in not having this kind of issue because I have worked really hard over the years to be in shape. I run. Alot. Plain and simple. However, the issue that I DO have is how food makes me feel. Especially bad food.

I have been really lethargic lately. I don't have a lot of time to cook and I always feel less motivated to cook for just one person. The last 2 weeks have been incredibly hectic for me and I have slipped into that unforgiving pattern of relying heavily on junk food just to get sustenance. On Sunday's I usually cook a lot of food at once and have it in a container for the rest of the week, but being on a budget, I get the same food....every...week. Eventually boredom kicks in. So I usually go one whole month of eating well before the crash eventually comes. And when the crash comes--it's like my body hurts and gets sore and I'm tired and unmotivated. Then the headaches come.

I know this happens. Everytime I do this it happens and at the time I think "But this tastes sooooo good!!!" Like that makes me exempt from all the other times that those horrible symptoms kick in.

What is it about food that does this?

I keep looking around for Paleo recipes because I have tried some of those recipes and they are great but I never made the full commitment. I'm a dairy and carbs girl all the way and I have recently started phasing out the milk, but it becomes difficult when you have a mild frozen yogurt addiction. Carbs???? I love anything pasta and bread related. If I died, my idea of heaven is an Italian restaurant. I have also recently heard of "clean-eating". Now, I'm not really sure what that is...and it kind of sounds expensive....but I'm curious as to how people have fared on that kind of eating.

Any and all ideas, recipes, experience, etc. would be great to hear about. I know I'm not the only one that gets affected this way by food but then falls right back into those bad habits. Feel free to share!

What's In An Age?

A portion of today's post is brought to you by the maker's of me: My Family.

I play the "age game" all the time. It feels organized to me and I always think that keeping my age in mind somehow makes it to where I will be more successful by checking things off of my "To-Do List" by a certain age. To a certain extent, it does, while other times it makes me feel horrible. For example:

My student loans and starting a retirement plan.

I wanted to get my loans paid off and some kind of retirement plan happening before the age of 30. BOOM. Done. They both happened this year {with me being 29}. But guess what? They are done. Those are both long-term things that needed attention and I feel great knowing that I set a goal for myself so that I could accomplish them and not have the hassle later on in life. Yay me!

The difficulty that I run into is that my age game doesn't stop there. I do it to a lot of other things.

In college I felt like I needed to ensure that I had a steady relationship by a certain age. Crazy, but a true story (I would love to write a letter to college women discouraging them for this kind of thinking). During my first marriage I wanted to be 27 to first start having kids...the irony being that I was 27 when we were divorced. And even now, even with me turning 30 soon I feel this all-consuming need to have certain things squared away because of my age.

It's maddening.

The worst is that I KNOW it's maddening, but there are so many other variables of my life that I can't control that attempting to get the checklist of my life done at certain times seems like a way to balance that out. Am I sick? {that question actually made me laugh a little}.

Does anyone else feel this way? And more importantly, has it ever worked out for you? That's what I'm most curious about. 

I'm curious to know if your job aspirations hinged on what age you wanted to accomplish them by, or if you are a few years past, say, wanting to start a family. What do you do to help ease that concern?

On one hand the people that I know still have overwhelming school debt and on the other I watch them post adorable baby pictures of their newborns. Sure, I feel a little irked. I'm like anybody else, I want the things I want when I want them. What's so wrong with wanting a family a little early AND not drowning in debt? But then I remember that I'm not rich and I have to work hard to take care of one thing to then successfully move on to the other.

My train of thought for this post started because of my family's request for grandkids. Sore subject. Already being older than what I would have preferred didn't really bother me until recently. 

More specifically, because out of both sides of the family my parents are the only ones without grandkids, and I happen to be one of the oldest female cousins and I am the only one to not have given birth. So, the guilt trip of "I bought out the Dr. Suess books from when Border's Book Store went out of business and I would like to have someone to read them to before I die," occurred recently.

Sure. I will get right on that.

It also doesn't help that the person with whom I would create a family with lives a plane ride away and it's always uncertain as to when we would get to see one another. And at that point, I would become a single parent for the next couple of years.

Circling around to my original point: when I make age-related goals sometimes they are a tremendous success! And other times....not so much.

I need a foam-rubber stress ball. Christmas gift anyone?

The Curious Case of M

I've chosen to remain anonymous for a few reasons:

1) Having possible family members and co-workers stumbling onto my private thoughts is super creepy. I know one family member in particular who Google's my name (DAD) to see what I have been up to and will follow me and later text me asking if what I wrote is appropriate. I'm about to turn 30, I'm pretty comfortable with what I put out onto the internet at this point.

2) Anonymity makes me feel a little freer. Like I can't be judged because in the end you have no idea who I am but you still know enough to relate.

3) There are always things that I would rather keep private. I have slowly become more introverted over the past couple of years and I'm attempting to stop further recession. Baby steps.

I apologize in advance for what will most likely be scarce pictures, and if there are some, then they will be obscured and hard to identify as me and my family. No one wants to just read a blog with no pictures. Face it, even if I don't know you I can even admit I like to see your pictures--so I believe SOME pictures are necessary.

My purpose in this blog is simple: I need an outlet.

My lifestyle is different and a lot of people don't understand, and by all means this isn't a place for me to whine and complain, but finding others who can relate is difficult. So here goes.

I have not lived with my husband and our pets for a year now. My husband and I have different jobs, but in the same field and we have been separated because we don't have the opportunity to be placed together. Unfortunately, our kind of job is not the kind that you can simply up and quit. You just can't. 

We don't even live on the same coast, infact. And it has been explained to us that we may not live near each other for possibly another 2 years...which was hard to swallow....

Over the last year we have gotten to see each other on 2 occasions for a few days {which were bliss} but organizing the next time we get to meet is never certain. It's always like a big pause in our life. A big question mark.

My close friend tried to relate once about her significant other by saying "I know about the long distance thing. He and I live 45 minutes apart and we only get to see each other a few times a week and it's really hard on us."

I didn't have much to say. I know she was trying, and it came out of love and care, but no. It's not the same. It's not even in the same galaxy. I didn't get to hear my husband's voice for a few months at one point and when I finally heard it I couldn't remember what he sounded like. He answered and I said his name like a question because I didn't believe the person on the other end of the phone was him. We have had times like this before, but the duration of that time was so long that his voice became unfamiliar to me.

So here I am. Out here in the abyss of the internet asking "Can anyone hear me?!?!"

Things aren't bad. Things can always be so much worse. So if you feel comfy with the notion of my curious life, feel free to join in.