Monday, March 7, 2011
Posting from the library.
My computer which is my lifeline as that is the main source of social interaction for me (yes, I know, it's pathetic) is dead. While I was at the store on Friday, John went online on Internet Explorer (I usually use Fire Fox), clicked on a page, and my poor computer was hit. While it still turns on and goes to my desktop fine, I get hit with error message upon error message saying I have a virus and I'm unable to go online or even open a word document. So I'm at the library, catching up on things but only get an hour to use it. SO frustrating. I hate this and I was FURIOUS with John for going online without even asking me. He doesn't feel needs to and it's one more issue we have, his complete lack of respect towards my things. So, I will be taking the computer in tomorrow where I bought it over a year ago and hopefully it can be fixed. If not, I'll be in the market for a new computer. *sigh*
Monday, February 28, 2011
Updates on Isabelle.
It's been a pretty busy month for Isabelle. Along with rolling, she's been scooting around now and getting into all kinds of things. She may not be crawling but it's amazing just how quickly she gets herself around pulling herself with her arms. She was having some trouble rolling back to her tummy from her back but has recently mastered that which means that she is no longer safe to set down just anywhere. You turn your back on her and she WILL be gone!
This is the fun age though and I enjoy it very much. She's happy, she's active, and she's just fun to be around. She's making all kinds of noises and gives very sweet and sloppy kisses. Hard to believe she was such an unhappy baby only a few months ago. Her personality has really bloomed since her colic stage ended and she's an absolute delight to be with.
She's not sleeping the greatest at night all the time but doesn't wake up more than once a night. If I could get Natalie to bed earlier, it probably wouldn't be a big deal but oftentimes, she's not asleep until after midnight which makes it harder for me to deal with any 4 am feeding times that may crop up.
This is the fun age though and I enjoy it very much. She's happy, she's active, and she's just fun to be around. She's making all kinds of noises and gives very sweet and sloppy kisses. Hard to believe she was such an unhappy baby only a few months ago. Her personality has really bloomed since her colic stage ended and she's an absolute delight to be with.
She's not sleeping the greatest at night all the time but doesn't wake up more than once a night. If I could get Natalie to bed earlier, it probably wouldn't be a big deal but oftentimes, she's not asleep until after midnight which makes it harder for me to deal with any 4 am feeding times that may crop up.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
I'm just tired of it all.
I'm tired of all the sadness, all the greed, all the bad things in life. So much has been on my mind lately and it's really wearing me down. I'm getting SO tired of life being like this, that sense of things never really getting any better, just struggling and struggling and never getting anywhere. I'm getting tired of feeling detached from people, of feeling like I'm on the outside looking in, having nothing to really look forward to, of old wounds reopening again. I'm tired and my mind is sad and I feel such a loss of control of everything, a sense that nothing has been right in the last 8 years and I wonder if it ever will be.
I know I have two beautiful, healthy daughters and I know I should be very grateful for them. It's not that I'm not it's just that everything else is so overwhelming. And I don't know who to reach out to or who I can talk to. I feel SO alone and that feeling almost never changes and hasn't really.
I've had my share of death I've dealt with. I was with my husband at his mother's funeral after she died following complications from gallbladder surgery. I witnessed the murder of my one brother-in-law. I was there when my younger sister gave birth to a stillborn baby. So far, these deaths have all been rather sudden and unexpected. I had never really dealt with a long term illness. I have very vague memories of my grandfather and his series of illnesses following a stroke. I was three though and very out of touch with what was going on. My grandmother's illness and death from liver cancer happened when I was even younger so watching and waiting for someone to die has not been an experience I had ever gone through...until now. And I will say this, I prefer the sudden death over this.
The father of the brother-in-law of mine who was murdered took us all on as his "adopted" kids very shortly after the murder happened and my parents were incarcerated. He has become more of a father to me than my father (who was very emotionally distant and prone to being at the very least, emotionally abusive) ever was. He was there for my wedding and has helped me out a number of times. He came to the hospital after my first daughter was born and would visit and spend time with us whenever he could.
About a year ago, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He had been a smoker so the diagnosis was not a total surprise. He was told that without treatment, he would have only a couple of months and with treatment, up to two years. So he went with treatment. We had been preparing ourselves for his death since then but even with that, I was totally unprepared for how quickly he would get worse. Even with the cancer spreading, he still kept his spirit and did as much as he possibly could. There were setbacks here and there but again, he still had some spirit left in him. A couple of weeks ago, he got worse and went to the hospital. The cancer had spread even more and he had reached a point where he couldn't eat without getting sick. He was told to start getting his affairs in order because at this point, there was nothing more than could be done and he had maybe a month to a month and a half left. I saw him on Thursday and I don't think he has that long. He came home Friday and now we're just waiting. I try to call him but he can barely talk that long. His spirit seems to already be gone; this is not the person I had come to know these last eight years.
I know I have two beautiful, healthy daughters and I know I should be very grateful for them. It's not that I'm not it's just that everything else is so overwhelming. And I don't know who to reach out to or who I can talk to. I feel SO alone and that feeling almost never changes and hasn't really.
I've had my share of death I've dealt with. I was with my husband at his mother's funeral after she died following complications from gallbladder surgery. I witnessed the murder of my one brother-in-law. I was there when my younger sister gave birth to a stillborn baby. So far, these deaths have all been rather sudden and unexpected. I had never really dealt with a long term illness. I have very vague memories of my grandfather and his series of illnesses following a stroke. I was three though and very out of touch with what was going on. My grandmother's illness and death from liver cancer happened when I was even younger so watching and waiting for someone to die has not been an experience I had ever gone through...until now. And I will say this, I prefer the sudden death over this.
The father of the brother-in-law of mine who was murdered took us all on as his "adopted" kids very shortly after the murder happened and my parents were incarcerated. He has become more of a father to me than my father (who was very emotionally distant and prone to being at the very least, emotionally abusive) ever was. He was there for my wedding and has helped me out a number of times. He came to the hospital after my first daughter was born and would visit and spend time with us whenever he could.
About a year ago, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He had been a smoker so the diagnosis was not a total surprise. He was told that without treatment, he would have only a couple of months and with treatment, up to two years. So he went with treatment. We had been preparing ourselves for his death since then but even with that, I was totally unprepared for how quickly he would get worse. Even with the cancer spreading, he still kept his spirit and did as much as he possibly could. There were setbacks here and there but again, he still had some spirit left in him. A couple of weeks ago, he got worse and went to the hospital. The cancer had spread even more and he had reached a point where he couldn't eat without getting sick. He was told to start getting his affairs in order because at this point, there was nothing more than could be done and he had maybe a month to a month and a half left. I saw him on Thursday and I don't think he has that long. He came home Friday and now we're just waiting. I try to call him but he can barely talk that long. His spirit seems to already be gone; this is not the person I had come to know these last eight years.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
This no car thing is getting REALLY old.
Back in September, I made the mistake of getting a place with my younger sister. I knew it was a bad idea. We've had problems in the past living together and I knew at anytime, my husband and daughter would come home and then there would be even more problems. My sister and husband do not get along. But, the friend I was living with was getting ready to sell her house and needed to get the room I was staying in ready for that. Isabelle was starting to have issues with colic and I really didn't know when John and Natalie would be returning to the US. My sister had two weeks to find a new place to live because where she was living, the landlord would not let her stay so she had to go. She has three kids and had such a bad rental history that it was next to impossible for her to find place. We found a 3 bedroom apartment that was right next door to members of my sister's first husband's family. The landlord was not overly concerned with rental references, and it was a three bedroom apartment which we were going to need for the six people who were going to be living there. We got the place and moved in. She needed some help with babysitting because she was both working and going to school full time. One of the things I had expected was some help with transportation (I mean, I was footing most of the bill for the apartment as I paid about 90% of the rent and security deposit and I was babysitting for free). Things did not exactly work out that way. And when John and Natalie returned, there were some huge problems and my sister moved out less than two months into the lease (she was able to get taken off the lease though).
This left us with no car. And while we live right on the bus line, the bus system itself is horribly inconvenient. It runs every half an hour until about 6 pm and then once an hour until 10:40. That's during the week. During the weekends, it's once an hour. Some areas have even less coverage, once an hour until almost 6 Monday through Friday. One area in particular even lost coverage, from 10:25 am to 1:25 pm, there are no bus runs. Problem with this route is that the two big grocery stores on that side of town (and also one of the cheapest grocery stores in town) is along it. These are the two stores we go to the most. The rest of the stores are more expensive with items up to $1 or more than what you would pay at the cheaper store.
John works until 3:30 during the week. He's off on Fridays. Other than Fridays, he can't go to the cheaper store. Then there's the fact that we try to shop only once a week. When we lived in Korea, we didn't have a car. We were shopping almost every single day in order to replenish supplies because when you don't have a car, you're limited in how much you can buy because you have to carry it home. So there's the time thing there too. It's incredibly time consuming to take the bus to the store several times a week because you can't carry home a week's worth of groceries.
I'm just beyond frustrated right now. We've gotten by using the neighbor's car because my sister's first husband's dad sort of adopted us kids so he has always helped us out and has said we can use the car whenever it is available. It used to be available quite often and so we didn't have any problems getting out to shop but now they've had some car problems and the car isn't available as often and now we're finding ourselves without a way to get groceries. I HATE asking people to take me to the store. I don't know a lot of people who are willing to do this. My sister couldn't even be bothered to take me to the store when she lived here and I was babysitting for her. Forget asking her now. My one friend probably would but she has done SO much for me, I hate asking her for anymore help. My brother probably would but then I'm having to kick in about $20 or more in groceries for him and I can't afford it. So I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know if we're going to get anything back on our taxes because John only worked a month and a half before the end of the year. Cars are not cheap. Getting a car licensed and insured and gassed up is not cheap. Keeping a car running is definitely not cheap. But we really do not have any other options.
I hate how politicians go on and on about all the things we need to be doing to reduce global warming and stuff like that but when it comes down to it, they really don't do anything to SUPPORT making earth friendly life style choices other than to sign into law things that take away our FREEDOM to make choices about what we buy. A ton of money went into building this bus station downtown and the bus routes were all changed to include it making the whole thing a huge deal and yet the bus routes and times are SO inconvenient that only people who absolutely do not have a car are going to use the bus. Anyone else isn't going to waste their time. Why take the bus (even if it does cost a lot less to use than a car each month) if it takes about two hours to get from one end of town to the other when it takes only 30 minutes at the most to do it by car! They could make riding the bus FREE and it still wouldn't get many people riding it (and they do make it free too, once a month). John has the choice of catching the bus right outside of our apartment and taking it downtown and catching another bus in order to get to work or walking seven blocks to catch the bus that will take him to work. He usually makes the walk which isn't a problem most days of the week but it's winter in Wisconsin and he's done this on mornings where the temps have been as low as -12 or more degrees (and that's before the windchill). It's just really frustrating and I'm especially frustrated by the fact that instead of my sister giving me her car when she got her new one (since the car was given to her), she sold it instead. And instead of paying me back the money she owed me for rent when she moved out, she took her entire tax return (that she had to call and brag to me about when we've been struggling for the last three months to pay our rent in time) and spent it on a car. Sometimes, it's really hard not to hate her.
I'm just getting to where I'm going to post an ad on Craig's list offering $30/month to someone who can drive me to the store once a week to get groceries because this is getting absolutely absurd.
This left us with no car. And while we live right on the bus line, the bus system itself is horribly inconvenient. It runs every half an hour until about 6 pm and then once an hour until 10:40. That's during the week. During the weekends, it's once an hour. Some areas have even less coverage, once an hour until almost 6 Monday through Friday. One area in particular even lost coverage, from 10:25 am to 1:25 pm, there are no bus runs. Problem with this route is that the two big grocery stores on that side of town (and also one of the cheapest grocery stores in town) is along it. These are the two stores we go to the most. The rest of the stores are more expensive with items up to $1 or more than what you would pay at the cheaper store.
John works until 3:30 during the week. He's off on Fridays. Other than Fridays, he can't go to the cheaper store. Then there's the fact that we try to shop only once a week. When we lived in Korea, we didn't have a car. We were shopping almost every single day in order to replenish supplies because when you don't have a car, you're limited in how much you can buy because you have to carry it home. So there's the time thing there too. It's incredibly time consuming to take the bus to the store several times a week because you can't carry home a week's worth of groceries.
I'm just beyond frustrated right now. We've gotten by using the neighbor's car because my sister's first husband's dad sort of adopted us kids so he has always helped us out and has said we can use the car whenever it is available. It used to be available quite often and so we didn't have any problems getting out to shop but now they've had some car problems and the car isn't available as often and now we're finding ourselves without a way to get groceries. I HATE asking people to take me to the store. I don't know a lot of people who are willing to do this. My sister couldn't even be bothered to take me to the store when she lived here and I was babysitting for her. Forget asking her now. My one friend probably would but she has done SO much for me, I hate asking her for anymore help. My brother probably would but then I'm having to kick in about $20 or more in groceries for him and I can't afford it. So I don't know what we're going to do. I don't know if we're going to get anything back on our taxes because John only worked a month and a half before the end of the year. Cars are not cheap. Getting a car licensed and insured and gassed up is not cheap. Keeping a car running is definitely not cheap. But we really do not have any other options.
I hate how politicians go on and on about all the things we need to be doing to reduce global warming and stuff like that but when it comes down to it, they really don't do anything to SUPPORT making earth friendly life style choices other than to sign into law things that take away our FREEDOM to make choices about what we buy. A ton of money went into building this bus station downtown and the bus routes were all changed to include it making the whole thing a huge deal and yet the bus routes and times are SO inconvenient that only people who absolutely do not have a car are going to use the bus. Anyone else isn't going to waste their time. Why take the bus (even if it does cost a lot less to use than a car each month) if it takes about two hours to get from one end of town to the other when it takes only 30 minutes at the most to do it by car! They could make riding the bus FREE and it still wouldn't get many people riding it (and they do make it free too, once a month). John has the choice of catching the bus right outside of our apartment and taking it downtown and catching another bus in order to get to work or walking seven blocks to catch the bus that will take him to work. He usually makes the walk which isn't a problem most days of the week but it's winter in Wisconsin and he's done this on mornings where the temps have been as low as -12 or more degrees (and that's before the windchill). It's just really frustrating and I'm especially frustrated by the fact that instead of my sister giving me her car when she got her new one (since the car was given to her), she sold it instead. And instead of paying me back the money she owed me for rent when she moved out, she took her entire tax return (that she had to call and brag to me about when we've been struggling for the last three months to pay our rent in time) and spent it on a car. Sometimes, it's really hard not to hate her.
I'm just getting to where I'm going to post an ad on Craig's list offering $30/month to someone who can drive me to the store once a week to get groceries because this is getting absolutely absurd.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Isabelle's six month update.
Took Isabelle in for her 6 month check up ten days ago. Other than whatever caused her rash the day before, she's healthy and gaining weight. She currently weighs 12 lbs, 11 oz and is 25 1/4 inches tall. To compare, Natalie at FOUR months weighed 14 lbs and was 25 1/4 inches tall.
A few days before she turned 6 months, Isabelle decided she was tired of watching everyone else eat and stole a slice of apple from her sister. She gnawed on it for while and seemed to enjoy it greatly.
A few days later, she got a really bad rash everywhere. I had no idea what it was and since she also seemed puffy and swollen, I decided to take her in to the emergency room to make sure nothing was wrong with her. No idea what caused the rash but the doctor gave me a prescription for an antihistamine and the rash was gone almost as quickly as it came. Pretty scary though!
Struggling...cont.
I HATE that there is such a taboo out there about hating being a parent. I wasn't even sure I wanted to have kids when I met John. At first, we both decided we didn't want kids. Both of us struggled with less than ideal childhoods (John's in some ways was even more messed up than mine; he wasn't even raised by his bio parents but by his half sister from his dad's first marriage). Eventually that changed after we married and I started trying to figure out my life purpose. Looking back, sometimes I think I should have just not have had kids. It's not that I don't like my kids because I do and I love them and they're the best part about being a parent, it's not the kids thing at all. It's the isolation, the constant mommy wars that divide mothers and makes it next to impossible to have ANY friends. It's the LONELINESS. It's the feeling like a failure when you can't do everything possible for your kids because there's only one income but feeling guilty too for even thinking of going back to work and not being with your kids all day. It's the damned if you do, damned if you don't feeling that constantly follows you around and that feeling that no matter what you do, you're going to completely and totally screw up your kids. It's the feeling that what you do is NEVER enough. I hate it. I hate feeling that way. I hate feeling like a complete and total failure. I hate spending most of my time alone even with two kids and a husband at home. I'm a dishrag, a sponge, or a mop. I'm used when needed and used all the time but not always asked how I'm doing or how I'm feeling or how my day was.
No doubt, people will read this and say I need to stop playing the victim, get up and get out there and do something. It's amazing how people who know little to nothing about me at all will take something I say in a post and just think they can give me simplistic advice to follow and that following their advice will solve all of my problems. And if I don't follow their advice, well then again, I'm just playing the victim.
There are times I honestly do not know what to do. I don't have a mother I can call and talk to for advice. I don't have a family that is supportive that I can go to when I'm having a hard time. I'm basically faking it, trying to do it all with little support and a TON of conflicting advice. And seriously, there are days when drinking myself to oblivion starts to look real darn good.
I had my older daughter which was a clusterpuck and a half (cesarean birth that totally traumatized me and triggered the post traumatic stress issues I already had). My marriage dang near disintegrated when my husband decided to go all cult-follower on me. I moved in with my sister. We patched things up. We found our own place in another city. Two years after that, my husband goes to Korea, we follow him four months later, and less than a year after we get there, I'm pregnant again. I return to the US, have the baby (which thank goodness was the empowering VBAC I needed), my husband and daughter return three months later, and again, I'm dealing with power struggles between us as my husband goes all zealous on me. This time, I don't know if I can take it anymore. I don't know how much more I can give. Add to that family issues that just keep getting worse and worse, and I just want to run away and go hide in a cave.
It's not just I feel I'm failing at being a parent. I feel I'm failing at life. I'm not getting anything out of it and I really wonder if this is it, if this is as good as it's going to get which really isn't all that good. I'm still trying to figure out the purpose of even being alive. And that's been a struggle in and of itself for the last eight years having severe survivor's guilt from my brother-in-law's murder. I still sometimes feel I never should have survived that day and because of that, I feel stuck, I feel that no matter what I do I'm stuck because really, I never should have been here. And that feeling gets worse all the time and nothing helps. I see everything falling into place for other people and I wonder if it will ever be that way for me or if there will always be this sense of failing that I constantly carry. I don't know. I just don't know anymore. I don't know what to do. I don't know who to trust or what to believe or what higher power to look up to. I feel stuck and not able to grow up, yet growing older every day. And I have no control over anything, just dragged along for the ride, completely and totally helpless.
No doubt, people will read this and say I need to stop playing the victim, get up and get out there and do something. It's amazing how people who know little to nothing about me at all will take something I say in a post and just think they can give me simplistic advice to follow and that following their advice will solve all of my problems. And if I don't follow their advice, well then again, I'm just playing the victim.
There are times I honestly do not know what to do. I don't have a mother I can call and talk to for advice. I don't have a family that is supportive that I can go to when I'm having a hard time. I'm basically faking it, trying to do it all with little support and a TON of conflicting advice. And seriously, there are days when drinking myself to oblivion starts to look real darn good.
I had my older daughter which was a clusterpuck and a half (cesarean birth that totally traumatized me and triggered the post traumatic stress issues I already had). My marriage dang near disintegrated when my husband decided to go all cult-follower on me. I moved in with my sister. We patched things up. We found our own place in another city. Two years after that, my husband goes to Korea, we follow him four months later, and less than a year after we get there, I'm pregnant again. I return to the US, have the baby (which thank goodness was the empowering VBAC I needed), my husband and daughter return three months later, and again, I'm dealing with power struggles between us as my husband goes all zealous on me. This time, I don't know if I can take it anymore. I don't know how much more I can give. Add to that family issues that just keep getting worse and worse, and I just want to run away and go hide in a cave.
It's not just I feel I'm failing at being a parent. I feel I'm failing at life. I'm not getting anything out of it and I really wonder if this is it, if this is as good as it's going to get which really isn't all that good. I'm still trying to figure out the purpose of even being alive. And that's been a struggle in and of itself for the last eight years having severe survivor's guilt from my brother-in-law's murder. I still sometimes feel I never should have survived that day and because of that, I feel stuck, I feel that no matter what I do I'm stuck because really, I never should have been here. And that feeling gets worse all the time and nothing helps. I see everything falling into place for other people and I wonder if it will ever be that way for me or if there will always be this sense of failing that I constantly carry. I don't know. I just don't know anymore. I don't know what to do. I don't know who to trust or what to believe or what higher power to look up to. I feel stuck and not able to grow up, yet growing older every day. And I have no control over anything, just dragged along for the ride, completely and totally helpless.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Struggling...
It's hard to feel that parenting is a good enough purpose when I feel like such a failure at it. I'm not the "fun" parent. I'm definitely not the "calm" parent. To be honest, that I survived my childhood is nothing short of a miracle. A therapist who had worked with my mom and dad for over a decade even asked me how I got through it all. I lived in a very dysfunctional household where I was, at best, merely emotionally neglected and at worse, verbally and physically abused. I did not even feel safe enough to go to my own mother if I had been hurt and would try to hide even when I had gotten BURNED. So how can I even begin to teach my children anything about love and treating others with kindness when I wasn't raised that way myself?
Since my husband has his idea as to how our children should be parented, I feel like there is little I can even do. I'm out of touch with my five year old, having been away from her as long as I was and I'm still trying to figure this new baby out, a baby that until very recently, had colic and, since that ended, has struggled to keep weight on and gain weight.
So actually, to be honest, right now, parenting seems to only point out to me my many failures. And so, more and more, I seek to find SOMETHING I'm good at again. It's not so much I'm looking for a career or anything that would take me away from them but something I can accomplish and succeed at. I'm 30 years old and I can't even DRIVE! So there's this feeling not so much that I'm missing out on life but that something is missing in my life. And maybe the solution is nothing more than to seek out a new craft or find a church. I don't know but I have to find SOMETHING because this can't be it. I don't know very many mothers who do ONLY the parenting thing. There is SOMETHING else they are doing whether they are involved with their church or have a hobby or sell something online or write articles, SOMETHING. They are not just mothers.
Since my husband has his idea as to how our children should be parented, I feel like there is little I can even do. I'm out of touch with my five year old, having been away from her as long as I was and I'm still trying to figure this new baby out, a baby that until very recently, had colic and, since that ended, has struggled to keep weight on and gain weight.
So actually, to be honest, right now, parenting seems to only point out to me my many failures. And so, more and more, I seek to find SOMETHING I'm good at again. It's not so much I'm looking for a career or anything that would take me away from them but something I can accomplish and succeed at. I'm 30 years old and I can't even DRIVE! So there's this feeling not so much that I'm missing out on life but that something is missing in my life. And maybe the solution is nothing more than to seek out a new craft or find a church. I don't know but I have to find SOMETHING because this can't be it. I don't know very many mothers who do ONLY the parenting thing. There is SOMETHING else they are doing whether they are involved with their church or have a hobby or sell something online or write articles, SOMETHING. They are not just mothers.
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