Monthly Archive

This Christmas season has been a bit chaotic. It’s been a flurry of buying and cleaning. It’s also been seeing Grandma in the hospital and worrying. Working and stressing. Spending what time I can with my husband.

Things are starting to settle down a bit.  I have a mountain of wrapping to do, but everything’s been bought. Grandma’s home, at least for now. I’m off of work. I have some time to take a deep breath, look around, and realize that… before I knew it… it’s Christmas Eve!

I wrote this last year on Christmas Eve, and it basically says exactly what I wanted to say this year. I’m still struggling with what I really believe, but Linus and what he said still resonates with me.

Have a wonderful Christmas. Or Chanukah, or Kwanzaa. Or Chrismakkuh. I hope you spend time with family, and get what you really hoped for.

A blogger I love, who is an adoptive mom who adopted through foster care, wrote a post about adoption.

It’s a wee bit presumptious of me to try and say more. It’s very good. Go on and read it. Then come back here and laugh at how I try to say more. No, really.

Khalil and I, yeah, we’ve been trying. And it’s not been going well. I have always known that I want to do foster care. The grand plan is to have a few of our own kids, then when they’re a little older to do foster care. I like that plan on many levels. For one, it involves at least one biological child. Which is turning out to be more important than I thought it would be. Another reason I like this plan is that I would like our biological children to be old enough and mature enough to handle adding to our family through foster care and adoption. This is not always an easy task. Lastly, it gives us time to grow as a couple and as parents in order to be ready to parent a foster child. But last night Khalil and I had a talk about what we would do if. What would we do if we couldn’t have our own. Just you know… if.

I already know. I know I would adopt through foster care. There are soo many ways to adopt- international, domestic, foster care, infant, toddler, older child… and combinations of those. I’d love to adopt or foster some babies, I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll see. One step at a time. I know where my heart lies though. I’ve worked in international adoption, and I have just always felt that for me- for me, foster care through our country is what I want to do. Through foster care. I just… have to. I don’t disagree with Angelina, who looks at the world as one and feels that all children everywhere deserve families. And they do. But I look into the faces of children almost every day who at some point in their life have been desperate for families. And I cannot turn my back on this need.

All that to say. To say what? To say- there are so many myths about foster care and adoption. And I LOVE the way Baggage addresses them. The biggest being- if I do foster care, I will have to give the babies back. I get it- most people, many people- that’s a huge job. It’s not something everyone can do. When you foster, you get attached. You spend a lot of time fixing the broken, picking up the pieces and attempting to glue them back together. You finally get them somewhat glued, the glue is drying, and then the children go back to their parents. When you see the child again, the pieces have fallen apart again. It’s not easy. It’s not. But it’s not the only way to foster.

Again. I’m going to refer you back to Baggage here. She explains the differences in foster care well. If I try to do it I’ll try to explain all of the differences in foster care and there are alot of subtle differences. These also vary state to state and in some states, county to county. I will get overly detailed and confusing, trust me. So go see her.

I don’t know what we will do, altogether. Given my job, I know some of the things we won’t do. I know some of the things I will look for, and some of the things I would like to do. I’m also not the only one making these decisions, and so Khalil has say as well. These are decisions we have to make together. They aren’t easy. Regardless of whether my grand plan works, the decisions will need to be made at some point.

I know what warms my heart though. Hearing a foster mother I know has struggled with infertility, almost lost her marriage through it, say something like this, “This is my calling. It’s what I was meant to do.” She was talking about foster care. And adoption. She has adopted four of our foster children. She is in the process of fostering and likely adopting another. She cares for her niece. If we’d let her, she’d take more. (We can’t. There’s a six child limit. We try to stick to it.) Hearing that- knowing that, despite the pain of infertility, she has found a way to be at peace and do such an amazing job with those children- it reminds me that no matter what or how, Khalil and I will have children. And we will love them and raise them well.

I haven’t disappeared.

If you look closely, you can find me. I’m under the pile of working 9-10 hour days, seeing a sick Grandma, Christmas presents, wrapping, and decorations. I’m a little to the left of a clean apartment and time with my husband, but a little behind Christmas cards. There’s a smattering of junk food wrappers all around me, they’re disguising me as well. I’m also under a couple of new pounds. It’s hard to recognize me because I am sleeping and if not sleeping, in a coma of feeling overwhelmed.

So there I am. I will emerge unscathed I imagine, and at that point write a few real posts, answer all my e-mails, and respond in kind to a post-exchange.

See you on the other side! I hope!

Last week exercising sucked. This week? My two workouts have been awesome, and today? I found myself daydreaming about which video I was going to do, if I like it, if it was going to be fun… I was looking forward to exercising.

Feel free to sit down. I need to. I know- I hate exercise. But… not so much. I love the way it makes me feel. I think I needed the break, though. It was almost like I was burning out, and now I’m looking forward to it again. Go me.

*****

I know I’m PMSing when everything makes me cry. Commercials, TV shows. Bloggers closing their blogs down, writing about cats dying, and about their grandpas with Alzheimers. Other ridiculous stuff too, but that’s only been the last thirty minutes. I hate this part.

*****

My friend? Who I’m very close to? Is in the middle of losing her friend. Been there, done that. Her friend is being vicious and cruel, and it makes me so sad. And makes me feel so protective. It’s so painful to me- I don’t have many, so I realize how precious friends and friendship are. We treat it so callously, as though it’s not a rare and valuable gift. I understand, I really do, that sometimes it’s time for friendships to end. But if they do need to end, I wish they could end in a way that somehow respects the time spent as friends. I think that it’s often too painful to do this, but it would be… nice.

*****

I signed up today for Short-term disability through work. (STD in online baby-making communities, which cracks me up to no end.) If I was not PMSing I would think this would guarantee a pregnancy this month, as that seems to be the way my luck rolls. Sign up for STD? Can’t use it for a pregnancy for ~11 months? If you got pregnant this month, you’d have the baby right when Khalil starts teaching and his Masters? What more perfect timing could there be??

*****

I’m sorry it’s random and a bit of a downer. This perfectly expresses how I feel. I wish I could write like her, one of my favorite bloggers, whose format I copied. But she ties everything together at the end, and I can’t do that.

This being out of control? The fun is kind of really only in theory.

 I’m not controlling my eating in the way I should be. I’m not yet at hot-chocolate-bagel-with-butter-two-donuts from Dunkin Donuts just yet. But I’m not at spark people-exchanges-no-thank-you either. I’m somewhere in between.

I went grocery shopping with Khalil tonight. I was picking out some crap. I was apologizing to him (!?!?), “I’m getting back on track after the New Year. This isn’t going to last”.* I continued with… I feel like I have to justify myself. Not just to you, but to everyone who sees me eating crap. Everyone. The three people who saw me eat the jelly donut at work. A supervisor. My husband. Anyone. Khalil said, “You do have to justify yourself”. I gave him a quizzical look- wasn’t he supposed to be telling me I don’t have to justify how I eat? He continued, “Not to me. To yourself.” And he’s right.

When I’m eating poorly, I find myself wanting to snap, “Back off!” to anyone around. To those who are telling me I should be making better choices, put down the brownie/donut/french fries. Then I look around. There’s no one tellin gme that. Everyone around me is aware that I’m an adult, I know what I should be doing, and I make my own choices. There’s only me.

I do have to justify myself to me. I haven’t given myself permission to let go, nor do I plan to. Maybe I should, but I’m not going to. I’m scared then that I will completely let go. If I just keep hanging on- keep reminding myself that after the New Year, I’ll be back on track- then I will. Then I will not completely slip off the edge.

This being out of control thing. It’s hard. I wish I could be one way or the other- I wish I could let go completely and do this guilt-free, or get back on track. I know though that right now I’m not in the place for either. 

* I really don’t need to apologize to Khalil. He’s never been the guy who cared. Thank God for me.  

Overeating? So not worth it.

Seriously.

The way I feel this morning. So not worth it.

Seriously.

Know thy limits, woman.

Seriously.

I’m twenty-seven today, yo.

I have actually alot of feelings about my birthday. I have always loved my birthday. I don’t know- some people hate it, some people are indifferent. I LOVE it. I love the day. I love people calling and singing me Happy Birthday, I love Khalil whispering it in my ear first thing in the morning. I love the cute messages and text messages I get. Love the e-mail cards. Love the presents. I just… I love it. This year feels a little different, though.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still loving my day. I’m having a very good day, thank goodness. But leading up to my birthday I was leaning more toward the indifferent side on my birthday. It felt- less exciting, less thrilling. Maybe after you have twenty-seven of them the excitement starts to wear off a bit? (Ok, probably for most people it starts to wear off at about twelve of them. But if we haven’t learned that I am not most people, what have we learned?)

I also feel old. I feel… last year I felt like I was on the other side of twenty-five. That meant I was closer to thirty than I was to twenty. And Lordy, did that feel… older. Now I’m practically closer to thirty than I am to twenty-five (almost) and that just feels scary. I don’t feel quite grown-up enough to be thirty. So I guess it’s good I’m not quite thirty, huh?

I also feel a little sentimental today. Last year I had a very close friend that I lost this year. Today I am feeling a little sad about losing her. We also went out as couples for our birthdays. I loved it. It was just… something we always did. I missed her birthday dinner this year, and thought of it. But I’m missing her presence on my birthday. Last year her daughter, four at the time, left me the cutest voicemail on my birthday. “Hi Auntie Paige. (she’s not answering mommy! It’s a voicemail, Jewel!) Auntie Paige? Happy Birthday Auntie Paige. (She’s still not there mommy! Just leave the message Jewel!) I love you Auntie Paige. (Mommy! She’s not answering! Why won’t she talk to me?!).” Click. It was precious. Don’t get me wrong- this morning my niece and nephew called and sang me happy birthday. It was beautiful music and brought tears to my eyes. I talked to both of them and got Happy Birthdays from them. I just have been thinking about my friend and her family and missing them today.

Bittersweet, I suppose. I still love my birthday. I love the day to celebrate me, as selfish as that sounds. But I am also thinking about the things I am losing and have lost. I will focus on the positives and the many blessings I have. But as I get older, birthdays stay bittersweet, I think.

So here’s the thing.

Monday, I was all set to write a post because I was very excited. You see, Monday I exercised again. And I decided to start eating healthy again. All very good things. I spent about two weeks out of the saddle, off the wagon, sidetracked, backtracked, etc. Monday I did well.

Tuesday I was going to write a post. This one was going to be short- I was very excited about the fact that I did not have to write Monday’s post at 11pm because I am no longer contractually obligated (Ha!) to write every day.

Then today came. And I have to tell you guys something. Two weeks of being out of the loop, off track, and sidetracked does a girl in. I was doing so well with everything. My body felt stronger. I had increased weights when I exercised etc etc. I am now struggling to get through an entire video. It feels pathetic.

I know that I need to keep my focus. I need to do what I can and get through as much as I can. Hopefully my body will bounce back and in a few weeks I’ll be back to what I was able to do before. But this week I’m finding myself out of breath, my legs and chest in pain, and wanting to curl up on the floor and absorb the exercise by TV-osmosis. (Which does not work.)

It’s frustrating.

However, it is a good reminder to me of how important it is to try and stay on the ball. And even if I drop the ball a little (hello, handful of M&Ms today), to not give up entirely. To keep doing what I can do and let go of the mistakes I make. Try to do better next time.

I’m not really going to keep doing that, I promise.

I went to Starbucks this morning. Forever, I went to Starbucks every Friday morning. I mean, for years. I did it the first time I lost weight- Friday morning was like my treat. As I was walking out of Starbucks with my Peppermint Mocha and chocolate-glazed donut, I had a pang of missing this. Missing my Friday morning Starbucks ritual. It may be a silly ritual but I still miss it.

I also miss something I did yesterday. I miss being able to choose from whatever “restaurant” I want, be it fast-food or a real restaurant. I miss saying, “hhmmm. I’m really craving Taco Bell right now. I think I’ll go.” And once I get to said whatever-restaurant-I-want, I miss ordering whatever I want. Caramel apple empanada, please.

I miss the meals I used to have. Half a bag of peanut butter oreos with a tall glass of milk for breakfast. A bag of tortilla chips, half a block of cream cheese, and salsa for lunch. A bagel, two donuts, and a hot chocolate for snack. (yes, there’s clearly no need to wonder how I got fat.) A box of macaroni and cheese for dinner, followed by a huge bowl of full-fat ice cream.

Lime tortilla chips, Starbucks, cream cheese and salsa. In and Out (that’s actually part of a whole different post about California), Taco Bell, Wendy’s, KFC. The desserts and bagels at Panera. Pizza. Oh GOD, pizza. Brownie batter. Hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts. The freedom to do whatever I want. The freedom to walk into Target and get a Snickers and huge bag of Cheetos on the way out just cuz I feel like it.

The sleep. The sleep I have lost as part of exercising. Not having the ugly Firm box cluttering up my living room. The space next to my cable box and DVD player where all my Firm videos are.

Sometimes I want to wallow in the things I miss. There are things that I have going right now, while I am somewhat out of control, that I don’t miss. I don’t miss this feeling of always-being-tired. I don’t miss feeling completely out of control. I don’t miss the guilt. I don’t miss the draginess my body is feeling because it’s not being well cared for. I don’t miss the on and off nausea. I don’t miss the anxiety.

I have alot more reasons to be healthy than I do to not. The reasons I have to not are stupid. They all last about five minutes and the consequences of them last alot longer. ALOT longer. Not only the stuff I listed above and the reasons I don’t want to get fat. But also? The increased risk of diabetes. The difficulties getting pregnant. The consequences of diabetes once I do get it- my grandmother the last few years has experienced a whole host of health problems directly related to her diabetes that I would much prefer to avoid, thankyouverymuch.

I’m getting there. I can feel it. Getting myself back to a place that is out of the out-of-control spiral I’ve been in. I’m on my way back. Bear with me while I get there. And I’ll try to bear with myself while I get back there.