1. I am currently addicted to Lucky Charms. While there are better and worse things I could be eating as a dessert, I don’t really care right now.
2. My current app obsession is W.E.L.D.E.R. I’ve managed to turn Morgan and my mom onto it as well.
3. Right as I was leaving to get my kids last night, I heard a huge noise in my basement. In the end what happened was the hot water pipe to my hot water heater exploded. No, I really mean exploded. It shot holes through my wall. My ex husband managed to temporarily replace the pipe (with some kind of metal tube deal) so I had water last night and this morning. I have a plumber coming in a bit to actually fix it. I had to call my insurance because there is just tons of damage. There is a company coming in to do something to my carpet. Pull it up? Dry it? Not sure. Something. Let’s just say yesterday was a pretty bad day.
4. Last night I gave myself my first shot. I cried. But I did it.
5. This week has kicked my ass from here to next week. I am super freaking stressed out right now. I’m not sure I can handle anything else in the next few days.
I don’t remember where I saw that line, or if I heard it somewhere. It’s stuck in my mind for months and months. It may have been said to me, it may have been on the side of a bus. I think of it often.
It takes courage to feel.
Truer words have never been spoken. It does take courage. Maybe not the courage one thinks of, because we tend to think of the word in larger ways. People who run into burning buildings to save little old people. Kids fighting cancer. Anyone who stands up to a bully. Courage means all of that and more. That’s the joy of words, they tend to mean many things.
Can I tell you what else feeling your feelings does? It makes you very, very tired. I feel kinda foggy this week, if that makes sense. Which it may not. I’m not depressed. I’ve had no trouble getting up. Darkness at 5pm no longer makes me weepy. This week, so far, has been pretty decent. Yet, I feel like I’m walking around in a fog. Everything takes more energy than I have.
Last week was emotionally exhausting for me. Dealing with things that I tend to ignore, is hard. I don’t like being that person, the person who gets triggered by things in the news. I have to be honest and say, I am that person. Being triggered all week, was tiring. I am proud that I didn’t give into the depression. But it wasn’t easy.
Saying what I said the other day, wasn’t easy. I hate opening that closet and sharing what’s inside. I’d like to close that closet door and throw away the key, but I know that’s not healthy either. Tried that for years. It worked until it didn’t. I can’t do that again.
For now, I’ve re-closed that door. It means I can’t respond to your lovely, kind, supportive emails and comments. I’ve tried. Oh how I’ve tried. Just know, I appreciate every single one of you.
This week, I’m trying to be kind to myself. Last night I opened up the bag that was hiding the chocolates I bought for Christmas. My first Christmas purchase. Whatever. I will buy more. Sometimes you just need some Harry and David Treats. This week, I’ll recover from last week. Hopefully by next week, I’ll feel back to normal.
In other news, I just want to say a HUGE congratulations to my amazing friend Christy on the birth of her new baby boy yesterday.
It makes it so much more fun.
WARNING: This is a post full of TMI. If you are at all squeamish, please pass and come back on Monday.
This was my night last night. To say I am exhausted, is an understatement. I was already exhausted by an insane work week. But this took it to a whole new level. Has anyone invented the coffee IV drip yet?
Here we go -
8pm: Get all kids in bed. Harrison had puked oh five times throughout the day. (Starting at Daycare at 2ish.) Bailey wasn’t feeling good. Morgan felt GREAT MOM!
8:30pm: Contemplate Lysoling myself. Decide instead to just Lysol all bathrooms, all light fixtures, door handles and ALL the air.
9pm: Decide I should go to bed to, you know, hopefully get some sleep.
10pm: Get up and realize I started my period. Well that explains some things. Also? YAY my body for doing things early for once!
11:12pm – 11:42pm: wake up to a puking screeching Harrison. He apparently freaked himself out puking in bed…although puking doesn’t normally make him scream. Change boy. Change sheets. Put out more towels and bucket. Take his Temp, decide it’s not high enough to give Motrin. Go back to bed.
1:33am: Wake up to a puking Bailey. Thankfully she managed to make it into the bathroom. Sadly puking makes her weepy. Bring her into bed with me.
2:12 – 4am. The girl literally puked every 20 minutes. We at some point stopped going back to the bed. I pulled the rocking chair out of Harrison”s room and we sat in the hallway, right outside the bathroom.
4:10am – Give feverish Bailey Motrin, go to bed.
4:56am – Wake up to feverish Harrison climbing into bed with me. Give more Motrin, pray for no puke.
6:35am – Alarm goes off. Curse at alarm. Both Harrison and Bailey have fevers. No more puke.
7:25am – Morgan swears to me she is perfectly fine and MUST GO TO SCHOOL. Only eats two bites of cereal.
8:10am – Rolling my eyes the entire way, I drive to the school.
8:15am – Morgan starts sobbing about how I can’t leave her because she now doesn’t feel good. I can’t get her to stop sobbing until I try Stacey’s hand holding trick, which works wonders.
9:00am – Decide to write post about puke. Because well this is a parenting blog right?
9:08am – Jump twelve feet in the air when my cell phone rings. Realize that less than 3 hours sleep is going to make this a very, very long day. As it stands now, Morgan is whimpering on the couch. The little two are laying on the other couch. There has been no more puke…but I know it’s coming.
Today’s post brought to you by exhausted me, Despicable Me on Blu-Ray and Motrin. All of which I purchased myself.
I have an entire post in my head. A post about my amazing experience at BlogHer; about old friends and new friends; about taking a little boy to the beach and the experience of sitting on a couch for the first time ever with my three best friends. This will all be said. Just not today.
Today I’d like to talk about how I managed to get to BlogHer this year. Or rather how you may want to think about how you can get there next year.
The conference location for next year was announced before I’d even left my hotel room Friday morning. What can I say, I’m slow to get ready. The tweets started immediately. People pissed at where it was. People thrilled at where it was. People wondering why it wasn’t in their city. No offense to anyone, but Kentucky, Nevada or Texas are not places I want to go in August. I was a bit annoyed in the moment by people, but I decided to shut down Twitter and move on with my day. BlogHer does the best they can with it. The location will never make everyone happy. They need places near good airports. They need huge convention centers near multiple hotels and tons of restaurants. They look for cities that people will enjoy. Mostly? They have to find some place that will take us. This is just a guess, but bloggers aren’t known for being nice. Social media has made us all big complainers every time we dislike anything. If you were a big hotel/convention center, are you sure you’d want us there?
That all said and done, the real thing I’d like to talk about is the reality of cost in going to BH. I think people make it out to be much more than it really is. I’ve heard people claim you need $3000 to attend. If that were true? I’d never of gone. I think going to BlogHer is possible for most people. Not all. I won’t claim that anyone can save the money for it. I do know though that if you want to go next year? Why not start trying to save now? It’s easier than just complaining about how horrible expensive it is on Twitter during the entire conference. (And the entire month prior.) It’s easier that admitting defeat the second the next years location is announced.
I want to try and break it down for you, if I can. I want to take a bit of the mystery out of it. Maybe then, you can come next year. Or the following year at least. Maybe then you won’t be that person on Twitter complaining about the #BlogHer11 tweets, while never bothering to mute the hashtag. We all know curiosity and jealousy and sadness some how all get jumbled up together. However, when you say you can’t go the second the following year is announced, most of us do not feel bad for you.
Sorry. I know I’m being harsh. I’ve also been doing this blogging thing for six years. That’s six conferences. I’ve only been to three of them. I get what it’s like to sit home and wish you were there. I do. But I’d made the choice to not go those years so I had to just let it go.
Anyway….here’s what I know:
Plane tickets are generally cheapest if you buy them on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Two months out is best. Mine cost me $156. I had a lovely friend who was stalking all airline websites for us to find tickets. Now, please note that I flew out at 7am on Thursday morning. That meant getting up at 4am, yet I did it for a cheap flight. Last year my flight to NYC cost me $256. That’s pretty dam good for NYC. I also got up super early that year.
A full BlogHer conference pass costs $160 if bought today. It will go up to $200 around February. You can also look into volunteering for them, which means working about 6-8 hours over two days and they’ll give you a full pass for free. There are student rates if you are in school. There are also Party/Expo only passes which I believe are pretty cheap. Under $70 I believe. I’m considering doing that next year.
BlogHer always get a certain number of rooms at a discounted rate. They filled up about two month prior to the conference. They are $199 a night. Sounds horrible, I know….however Hilton/Marriott/Sheraton are the hotels they pick and to stay there is always higher than that. My hotel room this year cost $340. That was three nights and I didn’t share my bed. We only had two to a room. Next year, I will likely do 4 to a room, which would be $170. That’s the cheapest way to do it and it’s always like a big slumber party. Pick your roommates wisely and it will be the best three nights of your year.
I saved money to eat out at nice restaurants. You don’t have too. I know someone who only spent $7 on food this year. She’s like the BH food wizard or something. She ate the meals the conference provided. She drank the coffee they provided. She made her dinner out of the appetizers served at parties and snacked at the Expo and in the hallways of the convention center. There was always food out somewhere this year.
It’s doable people. It’s possible if you want it enough.
To go this year, I gave up going to Starbucks every day. I took up making coffee at home. I took a hundred dollars a month and put it aside. Please know that I went to California for a week, so I needed to save more money. That included me renting a car and driving to LA to spend three more nights with best friends. That included me eating out at phenomenal and somewhat pricey restaurants.
I probably spent around a thousand dollars total. Which is insanely expensive. I understand that. However? I lived big. I took tons of spending money. You don’t have too. You can still go and do it small. Hell, I still have money in my wallet to replace my car battery which is completely dead.
If you want to go next year or even the following year, start saving now. Put $50 aside at the beginning of each month. You don’t have to put $100 aside. Stop going to Starbucks or using RedBox. Downgrade your cable one tiny step or turn off Netflix. Put down the shoes that you don’t need a few times. Eat in one more time a month. Eat cereal or grilled cheese that one night instead of ordering pizza. Each time you do that, take that money and put it in a jar. You’d be surprised how quick it adds up. Don’t use your change when you use cash. I put all change in a large Pepsi tin. All year, I put any change in there. That was how I had spending money for this trip.
If you want this, you can make it happen. If not? If you’re not willing to at least try, then you feel free to complain about each tweet next summer too. But at least be willing to try, if it’s something you want to do.
Yesterday I posted that I needed a break. That I was burned out on the Internet. It’s still in a way correct. However at some point yesterday I realized why I said it. Because of her. Because four years my happy (as I saw it then) life changed forever. Four years ago, I lost my Piper. I can lie to you and say that I knew this when I wrote that post yesterday, but I didn’t. I just knew that I had nothing to say. Turns out, I was lying to myself as well.
Losing her changed me in more ways than I can even begin to tell you. I have written about it before. At times I may continue to write about it. I may be a different person now than I was six months ago, or a year or two years ago. However I’ll never again be the woman I was before losing her. I don’t know that anyone can get back that kind of innocence once it’s lost. All I can do now is keep working on me.
I have a lot to say. Yesterday, I thought I had nothing to say. Turns out, I’m a bit afraid of my words. I’m maybe also afraid of myself right now. I’ve had a really great say week and a half and I’m afraid to change that. Isn’t that silly? A few good weeks and I’m afraid of going back to the way things were. I’m scared that one slip up, one small thing that sets me off will send me into a deep depression. Getting off of my meds made me realize that I never want to do that again. I never want to have those withdrawals again. However, I also can’t live my life avoiding all emotions because I’m scared of them.
I’m scared that sad will always equal depression for me. This may be something that I have to battle for awhile. Anyway, this is what’s really going on. I’m terrified to feel. I thought by closing off, I’d feel better. It actually made it worse. So….I guess pretend I said nothing yesterday. I’m sorry to you all that I’m like this. But I am. I act first at times and think later. Not as often as I used too, but at times it may always happen.
Piper. My baby. The baby girl I never got to see or hold, will always be in my heart. I will always love her, even though I only had her for a short period of time. 14 weeks isn’t long. Yet, it was our only time together. I try not to think about what she’d be like now. I try not to imagine a three year old bouncy little girl. If I had her, I wouldn’t have the bouncy two year old boy who has my whole heart. Doesn’t make me miss her any less though.
Today is her day. Today is the day I remember. Her name was Piper Isabelle.
Complete darkness is all around me. (Black out blinds, best investment ever.) My bed is comfy. Soft sheets, even softer blankets. My air conditioner is set at the perfect temperature. I have no reason for being awake. I just am. I wonder to myself for the seventh time that night what time it may be. I reach for the iPhone on my side table and stop myself before I pick it up. I have a strict don’t look rule when I am like this. It’s worse to know what time it is. If I don’t know, I can tell myself it’s only midnight. If it’s midnight I have tons of time to sleep enough to feel human. I know I’m lying to myself. It’s still better than knowing that it’s 4:22am. Or 3:46am. Or whatever time it happens to literally be in the moment. When I know, I figure out how many minutes it is until my alarm goes off. That is a guaranteed way for me to not sleep. I toss and turn the rest of the night anyway.
I haven’t slept well in a week. The only night I slept all of the way through, I took two Benadryl. I’m contemplating doing that again. My kids come home tomorrow after a week on vacation with their grandparents. I need to sleep.
My head pounds all day long. It’s a pre-migraine headache. It hasn’t turned into a migraine, yet I can’t get rid of it either. No matter how much water I drink or Advil I take, it won’t leave.
I went through a few days of being slightly nauseous. Now, I’m eating everything in sight. I believe that last part is PMS, but really I’m guessing.
I am irritable. At everything. At nothing. I get on and off of Twitter. Mostly because you all breath. Literally. I’d like to give a real reason, but I don’t have any. Everything annoys me. Which is odd, because I can ignore most things online. When things annoy me, I hit that pretty red X. Yet, right now, everything annoys me. I’m finding myself grouchy non-stop.
I just yelled at my dog. Because I tripped on her bone. Yeah, she was asleep across the room. I am thankful my kids haven’t been here for a week. I’m sure pissy, yelly mom wouldn’t have been fun for them. I’m hoping I can keep myself from being like that when they come home tomorrow.
I send emails and after a week of no response I wonder what I did wrong. Sigh. This is the part I hate. The over thinking. The believing it’s always about me. It’s not me. I am sure of it. But I have trouble not jumping to that first.
I’m half the time so spacey I can’t remember why I got up and the other half the time there are so many details in my head, I can’t write them down fast enough.
I’ve been off my anti-depressant a week and a day. Awesome side effects huh?
The weird thing, is that the irritability is what bothers me the most. I hate being that person that is grouchy at everyone and everything all of the time. I hate watching every word I say, just to make sure I don’t spew my irritation at others. The rest I can handle, but this annoys me. Ha. I’m annoyed that I’m annoyed. Fun times.
It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, the side effects of withdrawal. I feared the anxiety and so far, I’ve been mostly okay. It’s not pleasant, that is for sure. Yet, so far? I can do this. I have not gotten depressed. I have not had a panic attack. I think I can deal with the rest of it. I need to keep myself in check at times. But because I’m aware of how I am, I’ve so far managed to do this. I’m being hyper vigilant right now.
Anyway, I wanted to share. Because you all have been here with me for years and you deserve real. What I posted yesterday? Total crap. I know this. It was my need to not feel like I was over burdening anyone. Yesterday was a bad day. Today will hopefully be better.
I keep telling everyone I’m okay. And I am. Not great, not bad, just okay. I’ll take it right now.
This, by the way, is my theme song right now. Not sure why, but it just seems to sit well with me. I thought I’d share.
Maybe a month ago, I saw a post that Chris did on her out of context text messages. Sometimes the best part of my day is reading back the texts that my best friends and I sent each other that day. I thought I’d share some. These are all randomly picked from the past month.
****************************
Yep. She’s an itty bitty.
PSA: Nyquil is strong. One shouldn’t take it and then not go to bed. Unless one likes walking into door jams.
Ice cream requires no cooking or cleaning.
That is called attitude diva four. Welcome to my life
I just mopped my kitchen. Mostly because bubs peed everywhere. I just said, uh bud, you have to tell me before you pee, not after. He goes: otay mama, i do dat next time. Snort.
McD’s and DQ. I win at dinner.
No joke a monkey just got hit, fell, bounced on one of those little life rafts and ended back up where he was before.
I just made hot dogs on the grill. Heh. I’m awesome. I’m impressed I could turn the dam thing on.
The Dollar Store is a strange and terrifying place.
I fought a bed frame and the bed frame won.
Yes. But a very nice guy pushed the car into the gas station. I mean, I got dam close.
Am going to plant now. Wish me no child killing luck.
Yes. You need those bad boys sharpened.
Kittens are bad for motivation.
So it’s Holy Crabs??
Nachos. Want. The end.
I am a very wise woman. Knowledgeable. All that.
I may be a wee bit drunk.
I’m at Walmart. And I’m dressed like I belong here. I am ashamed.
Oh mad chillin for days.
He’s a handful. Like triplets.
You iz special.
On the: Issa’s trip to Lu’s floor of LA tour?
FYI: I have tiny fingers.
I’m super excited to get my sparkle back.
All four of us together? Epic.
H: Mama, I bery sad. Me: Why my bud? H: My poly-poly dies. Me: Oh yeah. How’d that happen. H: I step on him.
I’ve been asking A what she wants to eat for dinner. Her response at least 3 times now? I want to eat Dora. Either I’m raising a cannibal or a lesbian.
Girl still needs Etsy Anonymous.
Dude. I want to marry my artichoke dip. I wonder what our babies would look like?
You may be the least hate-able person in the entire world.
For some reason these children still expect me to do things like feed them. Water them. Somerthing.
Delivery Preschool. That’d rock.
But everyone needs a large pink blow up shark, right??
This last one was an email from my mother: “Melissa Annie, what are the exact numbers when one says they require a “butt shit-load” of photographs. This is not a number either P or I are familiar with. Please advise. Love, mama”
When I’m sick, I go to Walgreen’s clinic. I don’t call my primary care doctor, even when I claim I do. Sure, I go to them if I’ve broken something. When sick, I don’t.Yesterday my mom asked me why I do that. Why I go to a walk-in clinic instead of a doctor who may know me. I had to think about it.
I go because my doctor does not know me. I changed insurance two months ago and my doctor has no clue who I am. However, I did this long before changing insurance and having a new doctor.
Here’s the real reason: I go because the nurse practitioners at Walgreen’s are nice. They are kind. They deal with what I’ve come in for only. They do not judge me.
I am 31 years old. I am tired of being judged every single time I walk into a doctors office. I am sick to death of being told that I broke my thumb or screwed up my knee because I am fat. I am sick to death of going to a doctor for a sinus infection and them telling me that I wouldn’t get sick if I wasn’t fat. Would I like them to tell me how to not be fat?
Here I am sick or broken in some way and this is what I get to hear. Every. Single. Time.
One time I was really sick on a weekend. It was probably two years ago. I’d waited weeks and weeks past when I should have gone in because I emotionally couldn’t deal with my doctor. So…I went to an Urgent Care facility. They were so very kind. They were helpful. I walked out feeling heard for once. I went home with three prescriptions and I felt better. Just having gone there, I felt better. From then on, I went to Urgent Care when sick.
Then Walgreen’s opened their clinics. It was closer and my co-pay was cheaper, so I tried it out. Same thing. They treated me like a person. A sick person. Not like a fat cow who doesn’t know how to be thin.
Here’s the truth: I am me. I have tried every diet in the book. I lose the same 10 pounds and then over time I gain it back. Even when pregnant, I lost weight in the beginning and gained it back in the end. When all was said and done? I ended up the exact same weight. Yep. I’ve weighed the same amount since I was about 18 years old. It’s genes. I am sure of it. Trust me when I tell you that on my dad’s side of the family, I am considered small. I’ve long since come to terms with who I am. I have long ago stopped trying to pretend to be anything but me.
Doctors though? They make me feel horrible. Not because they reminded me that I’m fat. No, I’m quite aware of that. It’s that they don’t treat me as a person who is sick in that moment. They can’t just treat the fact that I have a sinus infection, an inner ear infection and junky lungs. No, they have to treat me like vermin. Like I got sick on purpose. Like I’m a bother to them.
Me, with perfect blood pressure, no cholesterol problems and no diabetes, is vermin. Because I happen to have gotten sick. Hi, I have three children. I’m going to sometimes get sick. Just like they probably do too.
So I don’t go to my doctor unless absolutly necessary. I go to Walgreen’s Clinic instead. I came home yesterday with three prescriptions and the knowledge that to that woman, for the 25 minutes that I saw her? I was a person.
UPDATE: Sigh. I guess I need to update this. Guys? I go to my doc for a physical every two years as recommended. I get my blood work done when they ask. I see my OB just as often. (Specialists tend to be different. I’m about to go to an Endocrinologist next week for the PCOS.) But when I’m sick? I don’t like feeling worse when I leave than when I walked in. So this is my compromise.
***I swear I am not getting paid a cent for this. These are just my opinions.
PS. There is still time to join the book club and help choose some book ideas. On Monday, I will post some way to vote and I’ll email everyone who wanted to be a part of it. I’d do it sooner, but guys? I’m sick. So please be patient.
This week, as most of you likely know (because I’m a Twitter complainer), I was hacked. Hacked at the server level by a evil blog eating clown. It destroyed my entire blog and corrupted the server database. This was what I found when alerted that my blog was gone on Tuesday:
I hear there was creepy music as well, but since I keep my computer speakers off, I never heard it. That was what was left in the place of my blog.
Gone. In an instant, three years of my life was gone. Every word. Every photo. Every comment. Luckily, most have now been restored. The rest are gone for good. Photos in any post are forever lost. Some comments as well. There is no way to get them back.
After waiting for three days for my old blog host to cough over my corrupted server, my best friend Jenna has managed to resurrect my blog. She is a hero. My own personal savior. I owe her big time. I offered her my first born, but a bossy nine year old with stinky feet didn’t seem to be something she wanted.
It’s not just my words that I lost this week. It was my heart and soul. I pour both into my posts and they felt stolen. I have felt very violated this week. I still do, even though I now have a place to call my home again. It felt like someone came and hacked off my leg. I needed that leg. I need that leg. This has been emotionally and mentally exhausting.
I readily admit to being dumb. I used the same password for years and years and years. It was the same for my blog, multiple email accounts, Facebook and Twitter. I am not kidding when I say years. I’ve used the same password for six years. Now of course all of them have been changed. I’ll start changing them on the first of every month.
However, I didn’t hack myself. Some evil clown did. Just because he felt bored, most likely. I thought my host would protect me. They didn’t. In fact, they hold themselves 100% not responsible. They blame WP. They blame me. They accept none of the blame. Needless to say, I have now switched hosts.
Friends, I want you to learn from my mistakes. Back up your blog. Send a good back-up to your email once a week and keep it. Don’t trash them like I did. Keep them. If you don’t know how and trust me, I don’t either, then please go see this great post by Schmutzie.
Change your passwords every month. This was possibly my downfall. Use something odd. Don’t use your kids names. I thought I was safe by using my kids real names and not their blog names. Yeah. I wasn’t thinking.
In the end, it’s not possible to not be hacked. They, whoever they may be, are extremely good at this. It’s not personal to them, it’s random. I thought I was safe. I thought I was too small a blogger to ever be noticed, much less hacked. I was wrong. So very wrong.
You never know how important something is to you, until it’s gone. I now know without a doubt how very important this site is to me. I’ve been lost without it the past few days. I am so very thankful to have it back.
Please learn from me friends. Please. Protect yourself. Protect your words. Try and protect your heart from what I’ve been through.
**Thank you, thank you times a zillion to the amazing, talented Jenna.
1. There is a schizophrenic moth in my living room. I’ve tried killing him about 15 times so far. But he’s too fast for me. He’s making me kinda crazy. Right now I wish I had a crazy kitten to chase him, instead of a sleeping dog who looked at me like I was nuts when I asked her to get the bug.
2. I’m sitting here watching my phone. Have you ever tried to will a phone to ring? I am hoping for good job news. It could be a very long day.
3. According to my ex-husband, potty training didn’t go so great this weekend. As in, it barely went at all. Basically the boy is pretty unaware of his need to use the bathroom. He also seemingly finds it funny when he needs to be changed, say on an airplane. Ahem. (Is it wrong that I laughed and though, thank god it wasn’t me?) We were going to give it another month, but at this point it’s looking like a week. Then we’ll go back into diapers for a while, although we’ll keep working on it. But all underwear all the time, isn’t working out so well.
Grab My Button!
I’m a joiner
