Halloween.

I had planned on doing make-up time at work to leave early today to take the chicken trick or treating.  Once again, I failed.  If I had wanted time off today I would have had to have my request in by 2:00 Friday, which of course I remembered only when driving home Friday after work and immediately was so upset that I almost started crying.  I know it sounds stupid but all I can think about is if something happens to him these are the only times we will ever have and I'm too brain dead to remember to take time off of work to make them happen.  Even husband who never remembers ANYTHING I TELL HIM remembered to take time off work and leave early today.  I know the chicken won't care, he won't even remember, but I will and it breaks my heart.

I'm having a hard time thinking of stuff to write lately, and I don't want to post just fluff but I'm sort of at a loss.  I feel like I'm back at the crazy out of control time that I was when I first found out I was pregnant and I just don't know how to get out of this funk.  I can try to blame it on any number of stressful factors in my life but really I think it just comes down to ME and how I'm choosing to look at my life, and because of this I've been really trying to break through this cloud to view things differently.  It's hard.  I suppose self reflection is always hard, you just never think about it until you have to do it.

Back in 2008 my best friend and I decided to take a trip out to Oregon because we were thinking of moving there.  She was originally from there, I just needed a change after getting out of a relationship (with my now husband, long story) and had no qualms about moving cross-country because I CRAVE change.  To save money we were staying with one of my guy friends (or love interest, call it what you will) for free, he let both of us stay there no problem.  We took out a loan to pay for some repairs to my car (since she didn't have one and insisted that we drive there and back instead of taking a plane) and to have cash for the trip, it was a four year loan and ends in June of 2012 I believe.  I (apparently being stupid) though we were going to split it down the middle.  The trip was pure hell, and I mean that.  She turned into some crazy co-dependent type person, I couldn't go anywhere without her, and the couple of times that the guy and I got to spend time alone she freaked out on me and was PISSED because I dare leave her side for more time than it took to go to the bathroom.  Apparently this vacation wasn't a vacation, I wasn't allowed to just sit and relax and not have to GO somewhere and drive long distances to view the state because that doesn't qualify as vacation I guess.  In fact, that whole summer that I lived with her was like that.  I wasn't allowed to see a guy back in Minneapolis because years ago they had ALMOST slept together or something like that and she had issues about it, I wasn't allowed to go to friend's houses alone because then I was abandoning her and trying to get away from her (the latter is actually true), no alone time for me because that's just not okay in her book.  I started to go seriously crazy and it did pretty much kill our friendship even though she admitted she had some serious issues.  We've been friendly still and remained friends we just were never as close as we had been before, until recently.  I have to file bankruptcy.  I hate it, I put it off for as long as possible, but when the company husband worked for went under it just completely screwed us.  We scraped by for as long as we possibly could paying the most important things and letting other things slide by which we both hated since we are anal about paying bills on time.  So I told my friend that since I have already paid 2 plus years on the loan I would not be paying the rest (stupidly thinking it would not be an issue since I've paid over half).  She went bat-shit crazy.  This was a month ago and she's still texting me the nastiest things she can think of to say to me, telling everyone that I screwed her out of 1300.00, etc.  This is the text I received yeterday:  "Went to a party at jesse and mary's last night.  People asked about you.  Turns out fucking friends over for 1300 is universally considered mad cunty.  In other news your facebook spreads misery to all that read it.  Have a great sunday.  God bless."  The god bless is a dig at me since I'm christian and she most definitely is not.  But for her to go around and say lord knows what to our group of friends in the cities (whom I don't get to see that often since I live in Wisconsin with my baby and they all get together at night when I am exhausted) turn them away from me without me even being there to defend my actions is just crappy.  There isn't much I can do about it, I'm just trying not to let it get under my skin too much.  And I struggled with this decision for months, I knew she wanted me to pay for all of it and even though it wasn't really fair I was somehow convinced that it was and now I feel bad that I felt bad for even thinking about making her pay the rest.

I'm trying to not let this get to me, I'm trying to convince myself that I didn't do anything wrong and I'm completely failing at even that.  Maybe what I did IS wrong and that's where my guilt is coming in, I just don't know and it's consuming my life right now.

A Whole Lotta Nothin' (Triggers)

I haven't posted lately because to be honest, I really have nothing of interest to post.  So here's some things that have been on my mind lately:

The Toddler, baby Yua, in China who just died after being hit by not one but TWO vans with no one stopping to help.  It literally PAINS me to think of this poor little girl and what her family is now going through.  Just senseless and stupid.

It's coming up on baby Jacob's 1 year birthday.  His mom is doing a balloon release that day (he was born on Thanksgiving last year, but it's the day after this year, the 25th), and I spoke with Eli's daycare mama who also does cakes, and she's going to make a sheet cake for her for free.  My friend doesn't have a lot of money and is going through a very hard time and was going to try to save up the money.  Just goes to show that there are still people out there who care about perfect strangers.

A bunch of fellow bloggers/blm's are going through some very rough times right now, and it's completely unfair.  I wish I could just take all the pain and ball it up and throw it into the ocean.  I wish I could make things better and I know I say that all the time, but it's true.  The pain that these mamas are going through is just so stupid and unfixable, it breaks my heart.

Little baby B is still wiggling around inside me, I'll be 18 weeks on Monday.  It's hard to believe that I'm almost halfway done, my pregnancy with Eli went by so slowly I was pretty sure I would never get to meet him!  I am excited about having a snuggly good smelling newborn again, but I worry that Eli will feel like I don't love him any more.  I'm constantly trying to think of ways to keep him involved.  Do any of you mom's have any suggestions?  I'm also worried about the c-section recovery.  With only 1 baby it's relatively easy, but Eli's life isn't going to be on hold while I heal, and I'm just so nervous about how that will play out. 

Life has just been chugging along, it has it's ups and downs.  But mostly, more than anything, I'm just happy that I have my sweet little boy to rock and cuddle at night.  I am one lucky woman.

Never thought I would say:

"No, don't chop the cat in half with the spatula!"

Eli's new obsession is the cat.  Well, I think it may have always been, but for whatever reason the cat has become lazy and just lets Eli do whatever he wants.  I'm thinking this is not a good thing.

In addition to trying to spatula kitty to death he also tried to ride him.  Apparently in Eli world the kitty is a tiger, able to carry the 22 lbs of baby to whatever destination he pleases, while I say "run, kitty!".  I don't understand Leroy Brown's newfound tolerance of Mr. Baby but it makes me uneasy, I keep thinking that one of these times kitty is just going to give Eli hell (so in preparation I trimmed kitty's nails last night.)

The dog still runs away all the time, unless Eli has food.  Then, all bets are off.

It Was Only Temporary

There was about a week where I felt normal, and happy, and back to my old cheerful ways.  That time has passed and left me again with sadness, and fleeting feelings of despair and longing.  I don't know where these emotions come from but I hate it, I feel like I'm mourning, but I don't know what I'm supposed to be mourning.  So instead of mucking up the internets with all of my moping and feeling sorry for myself I'm going to post some pictures of the chicken playing in the Fall leaves.  And post a like to youtube for a video of him playing.

http://youtu.be/ztdks_wxTCQ -  Video (obviously)

This is the tree he was playing under:

I'm really happy fall is here, it's probably my favorite season (even though it leads to the ever so long winter.)