Blogmas Vol. 15

Tales From The Annual Sick Ward

Apparently it's that time of year my friends. Wherein we start stocking up on the cough drops and tissues and cough syrup. And we look like we've been hit by a mac truck and we just.can't.stop.coughing. The best is that my cough drops have fun "encouraging" slogans on them like "Be resilient" and "Dust off and get up." Guess what cough drop maker - you can take your slogans and shove em you know where!

And thus begins the annual whining about being sick as well :(

What is the deal with this wintertime plague that always seems to come around? The end of the year exhaustion? The exposure to many other sick people (hazard of the job)? And let me tell you what I know it isn't being helped by the fact that I am now exposed to a myriad of daycare germs. Baby snot is NO joke! And those kids love to share their snot with one another - like take it out of their nose and stick it in another kids face! (Luckily our daycare has a no touching each others faces/heads rule - which at first seemed silly and now seems GENIUS. This is where you trust the woman who has been doing this for 27years!)

The cruddy thing is I have a lot of things I'd rather be doing like say...addressing my holiday cards or making cookies!  But instead I'm munching on cough drops and post-nasal drip and laying on the couch hacking up my insides.

But at the end of the day I know I need to shut it. Because this sickness will pass. One day soon, I won't be coughing all the time and I won't be snotty and glossy and drained. And I'm very well aware that there are many many people out there who WISH they just had a little cold. So I'll take this obnoxious virus and I'll be grateful for it. 

But I'm definitely going to look like crap doing it...

 Merry Blogmas!

Blogmas Vol. 13

Image Credit

Can we all just be honest for a minute?

Sometimes adulting is hard!

Today involved baby poop, dog throw up that looked like poop, and gutters that were full of something that also looked like poop! There was also a lot of snot...a LOT! And just for the record, the dog ate and threw up what was in the gutter...so yeah.

It was just that kind of day.  And the thing is, sometimes, especially online - we just show everything being happy sunshine rainbows all the time. And really sometimes it's just not true.

I love my life and I love my kid (and most of the time my dog) and I have nothing to worry about - but today I definitely understood how sometimes people run away. My adorable smiling kid was in everything today. And I was so tired of wiping snotty noses. 

And the true truth is - I don't sleep much. And anybody who knows me knows I never really have. The thing is, when I was just an adult it was more manageable - I was less needed. I could fall asleep on the couch. I could leave the laundry for another day. But now I'm a couple and a mom and the occasional nap has been taken over by dishes and the laundry never ever ever ends.

Don't get me wrong - my wife is off the chain amazing. And she put on her cape today and just went to to town cleaning things and taking care of things as she watched me melt down in front of her eyes (not my finest moment). But even with all of that - sometimes it's all.just.a.lot.

So that's where I am today. And that's ok. 

Because tomorrow - new day! (hopefully poop puke free! - Dare to dream I know) And 10 days until we migrate south!

Merry Blogmas my friends! Take care of you!

How To Make Yourself Desperate For Babies

Some easy steps to get yourself to a threat level red on the "I need babies" meter:

1) think about babies all the time

2) track cycles and medications and doctors appointments on not 1 but 2 calendars (maybe even 3 or 4 if you really want to take it up a notch)

3) hang around with people who have babies or who are actively trying to have babies

4) make sure ALL of your friends and coworkers are pregnant at the same time

5) make sure you are definitely not pregnant

6) look at how much you've already spent trying to prep yourself to be pregnant

7) still don't get pregnant

8) make sure some more of your friends get pregnant

9) feel sorry for yourself

10) try to pretend your dog is a baby.  feel bad when she won't stay swaddled to save your life.

I jest, but I am feeling pretty sad about not having any babies right now.  I'm trying to focus on how great my life is (it really is great, I'm LOVING my new job and SP is feeling pretty great about the company she joined as well, we've taken some cool trips, life is good) but it's hard not to let that lonely part of my heart wander to the baby-less hole that is taking up so much space inside me.  I know, I know, just wait until I have a newborn and I haven't slept in 8 weeks I will look back on this "free" time and be grateful that I had it.  But right now, when there is no hindsight, its feeling pretty lonely in my baby parts.

And I know this sounds pretty self pitying and like i'm hating on my friends who are pregnant but only the first part is true (I'm throwing myself a pretty great pity party at the moment)  I'm LOVING my friends who are pregnant right now.  Of course I'm sad its not me yet, but I'm glad there are all these little loves waiting to come into the world.  Hopefully they will love their Aunty Sarah just as much as I plan to love them!

So here's to all you baby-less people out there.  And here's to hoping our little ones in heaven find their way down here soon...  If they don't, my dog is in really big trouble ;)

Summer, you heart breaker, you!

I've got the after-vacation blues something wicked!  It's been a pretty crazy transition out of two jobs, and then a week long vacation in beautiful San Diego with a super fun marriage celebration to boot.  Normal life is feeling...well...a little blah to be honest.  I know that I should revel in this whole relaxed, routine, I only work one job nonsense but it's feeling sort of let-downy right now.  Although I know it won't last long as we have our one year anniversary coming up (from the first REAL wedding!) and then another wedding - this time in Utah (road trip-oy!)

But man looking back on that last week of vacation, I can't help but yearn for the salty air, the beautiful sunsets, the leisure of no email.  Oh Summer, why you gotta break a girl's heart?!

 This is my clone, aka the one from whence I got ALL my DNA.  And gelato - yums!

Backyard summer dinner with my favorite parents :)

Spent an afternoon at the Botanical Garden, marveling at the things I cannot grow - BLACK THUMB!

Giant breakfast with my sister from another mister!

My mom grew this - I helped it fulfill it's destiny to become zucchini bread

 Gorgeous day at the gorgeous San Diego Mission

Italian beach babe!

SP breaks free of work and joins the party - Beach again!

Family minus one baby brother

 Danced our feet off at a beautiful Celebration of Marriage!

Sunset at the beach, lovely!

And this one kills me every time, why did I move away again?!

A true, proper, Sarah rambling is on it's way.  I know this blog has sort of derailed as of late, but my normal schedule (boo) should finally allow some more time for me to get all of my crazy out here on the internet on a regular basis.  And I have about a week to finish the honeymoon chronicles before it's our anniversary - Roma baby Roma!  More to come for sure!

Goodbye sweet summer, bring on Fall, my boots are a'waitin!

Dear Mr. Sandman...Seriously?!

A terrifying yet accurate portrayal of how I feel right now

I've never really been a great sleeper, its true.  Even when I was younger I was always an early riser.  The sleep overs of my teen years found my friends sleeping until noon and me in the other room reading an entire book.  Or me and my one other early riser friend making ourselves breakfast, reading an entire book, taking a walk, doing a little dance, and our other friends still not being awake.

It got a little better towards the end of high school.  My terrifying nightmares stopped (thanks crazy brain) and I was exercising a freakish amount (thanks water polo) and doing so many extracurriculars that I was so insanely physically exhausted I could always sleep.  I even took naps after school.  Oh Naps.  I wish I had that capability these days.

In college I learned to sleep like the dead.  I spent a good 6 years of my life living in residence halls and let me tell you what - when you live with anywhere from 150 - 500 18year olds who have just recently discovered their new found "freedom" you learn how to sleep.  Like sleep through a tsunami/hurricane simultaneous earthquake sleep.  

But my old age is setting in apparently.  And ever since moving out of the residence halls and learning to love the life outside (I LOVE IT!) and enjoying peace and quiet and a relatively normal schedule - I can't sleep.  A full, good night's sleep is really a rare commodity these days.  Yeah I probably get 5 hours of unadulterated sleep on a regular basis (which I know is really good for some people)  But 7 or 8 hours?  Of really deep good I feel rested in the morning sleep...almost never.  And on some nights, like this current one per say, I get about 0 hours of sleep.  Like I've been looking at the clock since 1:45am.  No joke.  And as I write this it is 4am.  And there has been no sleeping.  NO SLEEPING.

I don't know what to do.  Because I am tired.  Oh trust.  I'm tired.  And I exercise.  And I don't drink caffeine at night (and really rarely in general these days), and I try not to get to hyped up before bed, or read in bed or do anything you're not supposed to do to mess up your sleep cycle...and yet, I'm awake.  Again.

So, anybody got any suggestions.  I'm pretty game for anything these days short of needles in my eyeballs (wait...I might even try that)  Animal, vegetable, mineral.  I'm in.  Give me the goods people or find me a Sandman stat!

Yawn.

The Day the Cable Died

Oh hello friends.  It’s been a while.  Thanks for indulging me while I wallowed in a little bit of the winter blues and some self-indulgent sadness.   I don’t even want to tell you what the middle of January looked like at our house.  Mostly a tornado of crap around the apartment and me in my sweatpants and a lot of the food network.  It was going to a bad place real fast.

And so the truth must come out.

We killed the cable.

Something had to be done to get me off the couch and catapult me back into real life.  And to be honest, that sh*ts EXPENSIVE.  While looking over our bills for the 900^th millionth time I thought to myself, self, why are we paying so much for the tv?  This is ridiculous.

And so the great cable debate began.  SP was pro cutting it for a long time now.  She never had tv pre me.  But I love the tv.  Like love love.  But the love was becoming the toxic kind.  The Stockholm syndrome was setting in deep.  You know like you love your abuser.  And my TV was abusing me.  Causing me to spend way way too much time on my hind quarters.  Vegging is a good thing.  But becoming catatonic, not so much.  And the money.  Do you know how many mani/pedis I can get now ;)  Just kidding.  But it will definitely help pad the future baby diaper fund, that’s for sure. 

And so on Monday, I said goodbye to my good friends on the food network.  And it’s been almost a week without any live TV (there’s still the internet…please…I’m not Amish) and I can’t believe I’m saying this…but I don’t mind.  It might be because I still have Netflix and have indulged in plenty of old episodes of 24 and Bones.  And it might be because now I am reading my book more.  And because SP and I eat dinner at the table now.  I always thought I liked background noise.  But the lack of constant TV chatter is soothing actually.  I find myself enjoying the quiet.  And the sound of my own voice singing me through my tasks.  I mean really…I love my own voice, for shizzle.

I don’t know we’ll see how it goes of course.  I’m sure (?) that this isn’t a forever change.  Probably some day I will get the food network back (I mean really, I love the food network, I really do) but right now, so far, its workin. 

So Adios Cable!  And helloooo Sunshine!

Sunshine.  And can we talk about how long my crazy hair is getting?

 

Also I joined the Gym.  But that’s another horrible story for another day ;)

BESOS!

Funk a Dunk

The last couple of days I've been a grouch.  It happens.  I know you're shocked.  Because really I'm a happy rainbows kind of girl.  But I definitely have down days.  And I think that the internet in particular paints an always happy picture.  Which is great.  Its good to focus on the positive and recognize what great things you have in your life.  Its important to be grateful and to highlight all the good.  It makes life better.  It makes the little things big and glorious and full of happiness.  But I think all this goodness - it makes us compare ourselves to others.  It makes us think that everybody has the perfect life.  And we wonder, why don't I have the perfect life?  Why don't I have a baby and a house and perfectly manicured pictures?  Why don't I have time to  craft and bake and take pictures of lady bugs?

But I have the perfect life for me.  Sans lady bugs and perfect picture taking skills.  

And sometimes my perfect life includes a little sadness and a little funk.  I know that some of it comes from the whole weather changing nonsense.  And I know that some people would tell me that since we generally don't get snow here where I live that I don't technically experience weather, but my freezing hands, and dark evenings say otherwise my friends. And 27 years of suddenly feeling blue when it starts to get colder and darker has led me to a self diagnosis of seasonal affective disorder.  Sure I've never been "really" diagnosed but my intense desire to stick my head directly into light fixtures come the winter months...I'm just saying, I think I have it. 
 
And the problem is that once you get down in the mire.  Its easy to stay down there.  Its really easy to be a grump.  There are so many sad and hurtful things in this life and when you are grumps you can find them ALL.  And you are the best at it. The valedictorian of finding everything horrible and everything to be mad at.  The people drive too fast, they drive too slow, there is no food in the house (when there is in fact a ton), the dog smells, all my clothes itch or look like crap or both etc etc etc.  I could go on forever. 

...And this is when the discipline has to kick in.  The gratefulness training.  This is when I have to force myself to remember the good things I have.  And some days it take a lot more work than others.  Some days I have to physically make a list of reminders or everything can very very quickly go to sh*t.  Some days its easier.  It's a hug from the one I love, a good book, a cup of coffee or a delicious treat.  Like Mini chocolate chocolate chip pumpkin loaves.  (Recipe will be on the other blog soon!) 

But on top of all of that making myself feel good, I remember that sometimes we get sad in this life and that's just ok.  God gave me some tear ducts and I plan to use them as much as I need to.  Sometimes letting the sadness roll over you is just what you need.  You let the hurts sit on your heart, you let the tears roll down your cheeks.

And then the next day (or the next week, there's no time line in personal sadness) you take flight because the sad has had its time and your heart finds its wings again.

Some yums that make me smile

I found my mom's old glasses at COSTCO.  I think they look pretty good on me too ;)

 My baby dog snuggle buddy and some veggie cookin!