Lyk, omg. Facebook suxxorz

I'm so tired of Facebook. I'm obviously addicted to it (because, who isn't?), but damn, I wish I could quit it. Before this past Presidential election, it was a barrage of "OBAMA'S TAKIN' OUR JORBS! DOWN WITH OBAMACARE! DID YA'LL KNOW HE'S ONE A DEM MUZLIMS?" Then everyone settled down for a minute. Now it's "OBAMA'S TAKIN OUR GUNS! ERMAHGERD!"

It's either relentless political crap that most of the people posting are too stupid to get right, or "look at my sick kid", "look at my kid taking a shit on a toilet", "look at my kid sticking jelly beans in his nose", "look at my kid's first mugshot". Seriously? No one cares. Build a handy blog like this one, so if I want to read about your kid pooping, I have to go searching for posts related to that, versus it being front and center every time I open my newsfeed.

Now I will proceed to tell you about my own little terror. He's getting a cold, which is making him a little mentally slow, and attitudinally (made-up words FTW) belligerent. He shit in his big boy panties tonight after I spent 5 solid minutes begging him to not do that. Then he lost his mind when I put him in the bathtub. Then he bargained with me to get out of bedtime, "mommy, I watch ONE more Bubble Guppies, den it's time for bedtime." And I caved, because letting him watch that 23 minute cartoon made him tired enough to not fight me when it was finally bedtime for reals. He made me read 3 books, then sing 2 songs before I could leave his room.

And now I'm writing this, avoiding Facebook, surfing Reddit, and feeling like a terrible person because I should be in my living room Wii Zumba-ing my fat ass off.

(Oh, also... we got a house in a suburb of Cleveland! My last day at the Pharm is Feb 2, and we'll be loading up all of our stuff on Feb 9. Hooray!)

Cleveland Rocks!

So um... we're moving to Cleveland. Basically, Dan had to move on from the company he was working for in Bryan. Nine days later, he got a job offer at a company in Bedford Heights, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland.  Defiance is about 3 hours from there, so we're moving. YAY! .... sort of.

I'm getting excited for the whole, finding a new house/daycare/starting a new job thing, but I also hate all of that stuff. Packing up all of our crap again may put me over the edge, into crazy-town. And I've talked to so many daycare centers, I had to make a spreadsheet to keep them all figured out.

We keep finding houses/condos via Craigslist. Some of them have been beautiful, some have been dumps. Some have been $1100/month, super old, "meh" houses in beautiful neighborhoods. Some have been 2-bedroom townhomes with a NO CATS policy. Some have been gorgeous 3-bedroom townhomes with a cats-are-welcome policy, finished basement, pool on the premises, posted on a Friday morning, discovered Friday night, sniped out from under us Saturday morning. But I'm not bitter.  We're just so used to having no problem getting into a place we want because we have awesome credit and live in tiny towns where practically no one rents but us.

As of 11:20am, there have been 214 rental apartments or houses posted to the Cleveland Craigslist page today. That's kind of a lot. Hopefully we can find something soon and get this show on the road.

Times, they are a-changin'

I'm on this uncharacteristic slope of change right now. The biggest being that I joined a gym. Me. The girl who almost failed her one required semester of gym in high school for lack of participation. I loathe physical activity. But I'm tired of being fat. I have too much skin that rubs together and too many hangy/dangly bits. Why someone has yet to invent a way for me to sit on my ass all day and not get clogged arteries and cellulite is beyond me.

If I got a tan, this would basically be me.

But when I'm at the gym, I feel awesome.  When we first moved to Perrysburg, there was a little gym on site at our apartment complex. I walked the treadmill once. On top of hating physical activity, I also used to hate the fear of being judged. Now that I'm pushing 30, I just really don't care about that anymore. Mostly, I know there are people at the gym who look more gross than me, who smell worse than I do, and who grunt more disgustingly. So I'm good on the self-esteem front.

Then there's the Mirena. I got the thing for a couple of reasons. The biggest being that I don't want to get accidentally knocked up right now. That's a topic we've agreed to discuss in a couple of years. And the Mirena is more effective than those stupid pills because I can't forget the Mirena once in a while. And theoretically, with less fear of babies, there might be more...... uhhh....

...as they say.

And we're also discussing my need for a dental bridge. I've had a "flipper" - a partial denture with 2 false teeth - for like, 15 years. Basically, I was never going to have adult teeth come down in the 7 & 10 positions. And now my dentist is noticing some irritation under the plastic in my mouth. His big suggestion was getting the permanent implants. Which sounds AWESOME. Except for the $8000+ price tag. Yeah, that's not happening. So we're looking at a bridge, eventually, which will be closer to $2500 if we still have our current insurance at the time. But it still might be a year or 2 in the future. Unless the dental office staff successfully peer pressures me before then.

Going to the gym + expensive dental work = this

Then there's my new support system. I've become really good friends with a few of the chicks in M&M. They're amazing. I was having a poopy day today, for reasons we won't go into, and I was talking to them via Facebook chat on my Kindle at work (instead of counting pills like a good little pharm tech). A little while later, this showed up at work:

I seriously teared up. At first I thought it was from my husband because he's mainly why I was having a poopy day. Then I realized it was from a friend. And it was awesome. Like, what did I do to deserve such beautiful people in my life? Whatever it is, I'm glad it's happening.

I'm also listening to a lot more gangsta rap. So there's that.

Jack is almost 29 months old and I'm hoping my new life stuff will benefit him as much as it will me.

Mirena Diaries #2

It's now been 4 days since I got the Mirena IUD. I feel fine. Little to no spotting, no more cramping. The antibiotics I'm on have made me a little nauseated, but only because I'm not supposed to eat with them.

So my uterus is great, but now I have a super fun, head full of snot, scratchy throat, phlegmy cough, let-me-stay-in-bed-all-day cold. Waahhhh!

The OB said to wait 4 days before any sort of .... extracurricular downstairs activity. That'd be today. But I'm pretty sure I'd fall asleep before it was over. Dang.

Mirena Diaries #1

I've tried various birth control pills. The first one I ever took was OrthoTriCyclen. It turned me into a super bitch. I was so moody and weird. So then I tried OrthoTriCyclen Lo (the "Lo" meaning lower hormone levels). I didn't have a boyfriend long enough to give that one a solid chance.

Several years passed and then I got married and had Jack. After I gave birth, I was on a progestin-only pill called Micronor. Progestin-only was important because it has less effect on breast milk production. But it also has a high failure rate. And I started it while I was still bleeding from childbirth and it made it so I didn't STOP bleeding for 90 full days. And I think I only stopped bleeding because I had a meltdown and threw the pills out the window.

Then I started one called Sprintec. It has 3 weeks of active pills that are all the same hormone-releasing type of pill, so there's no weird changes or fluctuations of levels during the month. I stayed on that one for more than a year. I loved it. Except that the main reason birth control pills fail is human error. You basically have to take the things at the same time every day. Like, if you're off by more than 3 hours, it can effect the ability of the pill to prevent pregnancy.

So I decided to be done with pills. I had a Mirena implanted yesterday. The theory being that with no chance  of human error, it will have a better success rate than the pills. I'm going to blog about my experience with Mirena for my own memory's sake, so I can relay to my doctor what all has happened, and so maybe someone else trying to make a decision will stumble upon this blog.

I went in at 1:00pm yesterday, November 20, 2012 to have the thing put in. After all the prerequisite paperwork and counseling, we got down to business. With a speculum displaying my internal organs, the doctor first swabbed my cervix with betadine to sterilize the area. Then he shot some numbing spray up there there stung like ice. Then he says, "okay, you'll feel a little pinch". OHMYGODOWWWWWHATTHEHELL! I don't know if he gave me an actual shot of some kind of numbing medication, or if that was my cervix dilating, but it hurt like hell.

"Now you'll feel some cramping". Before he even got the sentence out, I wanted to curl up and die. This was like, "high school level, I need to stay home and try not to puke", period cramping. It was awful. The nurse that was helping the doc saw my discomfort and tried talking to me about Thanksgiving. I was like, "yeah yeah, I'm making green bean casserole OOOOWWWW WAAHHHH!" I appreciated the effort, but it was not working.

So then he got the device up into my uterus, which I couldn't feel. Then it took him a few minutes to get the strings in the right place and to have everything sitting where it was supposed to, meanwhile I feel like I'm about to poop from all the cramping.

It took a total of about 10-15 minutes before he was doing something to stop the cramping. He got my cervix to clamp back up and the cramping started to dissipate. So I got all cleaned up and put my clothes back on and he sent me on my way with a prescription for some "just in case" antibiotics.

I had some mild cramping for the rest of the day, but I popped a bunch of ibuprofen, so it wasn't terrible. This morning, I woke up with cramping again, but it feels like first-day-of-a-period cramping. So, while not totally comfortable, it's manageable. I'll take some more ibuprofen throughout today, and it should be fine.

I went to the appointment yesterday 4 days into my period (because IUDs are more easily inserted during menses apparently). And I'm still spotting but it's not bad. Hopefully that will subside in a few days and I'll feel normal again.

Basically, after braving the grocery store on the day before Thanksgiving (because I'm an idiot), I plan to come home and lay on the couch with a heating pad and Netflix.

Mo'Bama 2012!

It's November 7, 2012. I woke up at 2am after tossing and turning for what seemed like an eternity, and checked my phone to find out that Barack Obama will be our President for another 4 years. I have been absolutely worried to my core for the last several months about this election. It was so close.

The other guy stood behind basically abolishing women's reproductive rights. And a constitutional ban on gay marriage. And cutting Medicaid for the underprivileged and Medicare for the elderly. And raising taxes on the middle class instead of the elite. Unfortunately, these issues are more or less what kept the nation's attention for the last year (as opposed to say, foreign policy and the national deficit), but they're also what has kept my attention.

There was a Romney Rally here in my town a few weeks ago and some 10,000 people showed up for it. I was not one of them. Republicans were in my ear about how "this is such a monumental moment for our town", and "even if you don't support him, this is history in the making", and "what a thing for our kids to get to see!" Here's the thing... I have less than zero respect for Mitt Romney. This is a man who flip-flopped on the issues regularly and routinely, probably with the sole intention of only saying the opposite of Mr Obama.  He never laid out a plan for his potential Presidency, even when asked directly, he would avoid the question. He was riding the wave of 49% of the country being anti-Obama, not pro-Romney.

I wish I was a more intelligent person and could adequately and more eloquently relay my relief. And I wish I could do it somewhere like Facebook with the intention of having a civilized conversation with fellow left-leaners. But there's so much Republican butthurt flowing right now, I'd lose more familial relationships than I already have this election season.

I'm so grateful to be a part of this amazing country. We have so many freedoms not felt elsewhere in the world. Yesterday, I took advantage of my freedom as a free-thinking woman and cast my vote for a man who will work for 4 more years to ensure that my family is taken care of and that my rights as a woman are not set back 60 years. Thank you, Mr. Obama and congratulations.

Mothers & More!

As of this past Tuesday, September 4, 2012, I am one of two new co-leaders for Mothers & More Defiance Chapter 259.

Click for our FB page!

Our mission statement reads:

"Reconnect with yourself. Connect with other Mothers. Connect with the world around you! We focus on you - as a mother AND a woman in all the different stages of your life."

This is exactly what I have needed in my life for the last 2 years. I was diagnosed with Postpartum Depression sometime around when Jack was 6 or 9 months old. Which means I went that long without help for what was going on in my brain. And that is a HUGE problem. I was going through what I think a lot of new moms do, where I was having these thoughts and emotions and I thought it was just part of the process. Or like maybe it meant I wasn't a good mom because I didn't know how to BE a mother. It was terrible. But I finally reached a point where I sought medical attention for it. I got to cry to a stranger who prescribed me some drugs and some ways of dealing with things. I'm absolutely better now.

A lot of that has to do with Jack being older and my being a more "experienced" mom. But a lot of it has to do with Mothers & More. Ever since I moved from Maryland right after high school, I had sort of prided myself on my loner status. I didn't need friends to get by. And for a long time, that was really true. When Dan came along, he was just enough of a friend. I didn't need anything else.

Then Jack was born. And sure, I had an awesome partner helping with the parenting stuff. But he could not relate to what was happening to my body and my mind. He didn't understand my middle-of-the-night emotional breakdowns because I couldn't get Jack to stop crying. I needed mom friends my own age. Then one day in November 2011, a girl named Lisa came into my pharmacy and convinced me to go to an M&M meeting. I did, and it was so much fun. It was a couple of hours away from my child and into a room full of women who had been where I was.

M&M has been a huge savior for me in the last 10 months. It's about getting out of the house and being myself.... and not just my mom-self. I'm figuring out that there's a difference.

================================================================

Alright, enough bearing my soul and all that...

Technically, I don't officially take over until October, but it's already crazy.

We're organizing an event called Touch-A-Truck that's going to happen the 30th of this month.  Basically, it's a fundraiser for the chapter where for a fee you can bring your kids out to the Defiance County Airport to see a bunch of different vehicles. The kids can... wait for it... Touch A Truck. Eh, see what I did there?

We have airplanes, a helicopter, school buses, fire trucks, limos... all kinds of vehicles.

I was kind of inadvertently tossed into the planning committee for the event, and then the Board election came around, so now I'm feeling double pressure.

I haven't slept very well in the last few days and my TMJD was acting up today from harder-than-usual teeth grinding in my sleep last night, which equated to an all-day headache. Who knew I was such an anxious/stressed person? I definitely didn't used to be. Stupid adulthood. Time to step back and relax a little. The world does not hinge on Touch A Truck! Every time I wake up in the middle of the night until the 30th, that will be my mantra. Ha!

Hopefully the event is a huge success and we learn from our mistakes and this can become an annual event. It has great potential, so hopefully we can pull it out!

I feel like I'm supposed to....

So, about that "sticking to commitments" thing I said the last time I posted... FOUR MONTHS AGO! Oops. But here's a long one to bore you into never coming here again.

I had this idea for a blog post, and the fact that I haven't posted since March plays into it pretty well.

I'm 27 now. That means I'm almost 30. Which means I'm just about past my prime. And what I mean by that is that there are a lot of things I feel like I am supposed to be doing or have done by now.

BABIES!

 Everywhere I turn, people are having second babies. Girls in my Mom group, my sister, my sister-in-law, other moms at Jack's daycare. When I was growing up, I never gave much thought to marriage and babies, other than "I'm totally gonna have like, a thousand of Johnny Depp's babies! OMG!" I wasn't one of those girls who had her wedding planned out, and all of her future childrens' names picked by the time I turned 15. It just wasn't something I was terribly worried about.

 Then I met Dan. Once we started talking marriage, he started talking babies. He's always had this goal of being an awesome dad, and wanted to get that ball rolling quickly. When we got married, he was 26, so he was feeling the "pushing 30" pressure. I was only 24, so I wasn't so much. But we were married in September and I got that positive pregnancy test in November. Okay, I guess we're really doing this.

 The first year of Jack's existence SUCKED. I always say no one told me how genuinely hard it is to be a parent. Dealing with a baby is seriously the most difficult thing I've ever had to do. If anyone reading this is pregnant and wants to know what you're in for, or if you just like scary stories that will likely give you nightmares, let me know. I'll tell you all the gory details no one was kind enough to tell me ahead of time.

 But now that he's 2 years old, and talking, and he's able to convey to me what he wants and needs, it's awesome. This morning he ran over to me, said "GICKLE MON-TA!" (translation: "tickle monster"), and tickled my foot. He is so silly and so smart, and I can't believe I get the privilege of molding this amazing little person. 

 So I feel like I'm supposed to want another baby. But I don't know if I do. I've never really second-guessed myself on much of anything, but this one haunts my dreams. I'm scared that once Jack turns 5 and goes to kindergarten full time and isn't wearing diapers anymore, and can fully dress himself, that I'll regret not having another little person to take care of.

 But damn, babies are hard. And I really just want to focus everything I have on this one little person and make sure he turns out okay. I just don't know.

COLLEGE!

 When I graduated high school, I hadn't applied to any colleges. I never sought help laying out my future from my guidance counselors. I figured my super sweet job at Blockbuster Video would be good enough, and I knew my parents would never kick me out, so... "I'll think about college tomorrow".

 Yeah, that turned out well. I did one semester at a community college in Indiana after we moved from Maryland. Then I did about a year's worth at another community college in Ohio after we moved from Indiana. I hated every last second of it. I didn't know anyone here, I still lived at home, the classes were wicked boring (a lot of introductory computer classes, which I was well beyond at that point), and this time, I didn't know I was supposed to seek help from a counselor, so I chose a stupid major.

 I dropped out because I had lost focus and I'd already gone through 13 years of school, why would I need another 2 or 4 or even 6? Yuck.

 Through several strokes of luck, I now have a good job, without the college education. The pay could be better, but I'm making more than minimum wage, and as long as my awesome programmer of a husband sticks around, our bills are getting paid.

 I've been a pharmacy technician for 3 years. It's fun, and interesting, and I learn more about various medications every day. And now that I've been doing this for a while, I find myself saying, "damn, I could have been a pharmacist". Then I would make 6 figures a year and aside from piles of student loans, we would live very comfortably.

 But it's my understanding that the market for pharmacists is over saturated right now. It WASN'T, oh, 2 years ago when I would have been graduating from Pharmacy School, had I gone directly out of high school. Nine years ago, I had never even considered working in a pharmacy, so going to pharm school was never even a thought. Plus, I was bad at chemistry, so maybe it wouldn't have been a good fit.

 So now I'm considering going back to school (because I feel like I was always supposed to) when Jack starts kindergarten. Something in the medical field. Maybe medical coding & billing, or more pharm tech classes to get hospital certified. Just something else to put on my resume.

 Which brings me back to babies. If I have another baby before then, that will push back my theoretical educational goals. ::sigh::

BLOGGING!

 Also, I feel like I'm supposed to blog more. I'm part of the Millennial Generation. I'm supposed to be an avid blogger. I mean, I have a tablet and a smart phone and a desktop computer. What's stopping me? Oh yeah, my "fun and interesting" job and my super awesome 2-year old.

 This is my life.

Must stick to commitments!

It's been almost 3 weeks since my last post. I will not succumb to the laziness that is my nature and stop writing here.  Must. Stay. Focused. Let's begin.

We've been keeping track of Jack's vocabulary.  We made a list of the words he knows.  Typically, when a kid is 2 years old, pediatricians like to make sure they know some stuff, to make sure that the kid's not dim and that we're not in need of an investigation by CPS.  Generally, I think they're supposed to know 50 words by 2 years old. I've got 45 on the list.  And that was just like, 15 minutes of trying to remember all the things he knows.  I'm sure we're beyond 50, but I'm not worried about it anymore.

And he's really starting to figure stuff out.  He can answer yes or no questions with pretty solid accuracy.  He can help us decipher his wants and needs.  He can point to his "pee-pee".  Yep, he's basically a genius.

Also, we're finally in the market for a house. Like, a not-for-rent, we're-going-into-debt-for-30-years, HOME.  It's pretty great.  We've looked at a handful so far, and there's one in particular that we're in love with.  It's not too big, but not so small that we'll be on top of each other like we are currently.  Hopefully we'll be putting an offer in on it in the next couple of weeks.  I'm stoked.

GIS for "stoked".  Hyperbole & a Half gets me.

Jack is 20 months, 2 weeks old, and will soon be in his own room. FREEEDOOOMMM! 

I'm not old, I'm 27!

So, today is my birthday. Fun.

I bought myself a Kindle Fire, which is pretty cool so far.  However, $280 (for the device and some accessories) seems a bit steep for a gizmo that does everything my phone does, minus make calls or take pictures. Thus, I'm having a bit of buyer's remorse, but that happens every time I spend money on anything that isn't food.

And full disclosure, $250 of that was in the form of Amazon gift cards from my parents between Christmas and my birthday. So really, I'm sad over only spending $30 of my own money on a pretty sweet new electronic thingy.

I also got to take Jack to see his ENT today.  SEVENTY minutes roundtrip, TWENTY minutes in the waiting room, TWO minutes for the doc to say, "looks good, call me if he has any troubles." Cool. Thanks. I made the appointment to follow up on some grody ear blood from 3 weeks ago (yeah, 3 weeks was the soonest they could get me in for blood coming out of a hole it's not supposed to come out of).  Doc said it was probably just the tube in that ear dislodging. Gross. Now we get to keep our fingers crossed that the kid can go ear infection-less for a while so he won't have to have tubes put in again.

Then Jack and I stopped at an epic playground for a little while.

And that was the highlight of my day.