Moved!
I’ve moved over to http://leighish.wordpress.com !
Eventually I will archive these entries and this space will be empty! Please change your bookmarks!
worst blogger ever.
Alright, I admit it. I’ve been kind of avoiding you.
I’m often baffled at how some people find the time to update daily when I barely have the stamina to update weekly.
The wedding went well. Very well. I had a great time and I know the bride did too. I met a lot of really great people and I’m going to miss them all.
I’m exhausted tonight, so I’m not going to weigh you down with photos from the wedding. But here is one of my favorites.
When Robert and I got engaged, we always planned on having a traditional church wedding and the reception. When it became clear to us that immigration was a bigger issue than we realized, we decided to get married in the courthouse and have the church wedding/reception at some point in the future. Thus, we never got to have our “first dance” as a married couple. My dear friend offered to dedicate a song to us and when she asked if I had any ideas, there was only one song in my mind.
That song, is Rock Lobster.
Thankfully, they didn’t play the 8 minute version of the song. I would’ve dropped dead about 6 minutes in. Robert had no idea that we planned this. I’m so glad he danced with me and didn’t abandon me on the dance floor.
Now that I’m completely finished with Caitlin’s wedding, I can move on to preparing for our upcoming trip to Canada. I’m so excited!
Here is the link to some of the photos from the wedding.
Goodnight everybody.
I now pronounce you…
This friday is Caity’s wedding. On wednesday morning Rob and I are catching a very early flight to La Guardia . The next week is really going to be a blur.
Monday: work 9-5. finish printing Bachelorette party game sheets. Pack.
Tuesday: work 9-5 get James all set to spend 5 days with Mamo and Papo. Go to bed early.
Wednesday: On the way to the airport by 4:00am for our 6:00am flight. Arrive in NYC at 11:00ish. Do some last minute shopping for the bachelorette party. Bachelorette party starts at 7:00pm and lasts until…?
Thursday: rehearsal and rehearsal dinner
Friday: Hair and makeup, photos, wedding, reception.
Saturday: spending the day in NYC
Sunday: fly back to Houston.
Monday: Back to work.
The good news is I went shopping a few days ago and picked myself up a really nice black pencil skirt from NY&CO that I should be able to wear both wednesday AND thursday so it’ll take less space in my suitcase. We splurged on a non-stop flight so we want to avoid having to check baggage but it wouldn’t be the worst thing if we checked one bag.
I’m thinking of taking caity to go get some massages on thursday before the rehearsal. We both are just so AHHHHHHHHHHH right now that I think it would be good to get some of the tension out.
Today was Father’s Day and we had a pretty good day once I got out of work. Work was awful today. I hurt my lower back and jammed up my pinkie. I sliced my finger open and crushed my hand between some baking racks. My nails still look good though. I got a set of basic acrylic nails put on the other day just so my hands wouldn’t look so terrible in the wedding photos. I wanted to get a pedicure but I get nervous about people touching my feet so I just bought some french manicure tip nail polish and did it myself. I did a good job, too!
James got some immunizations about 10 days ago and all of the sudden the injection site is big and puffy so we need to call the Dr tomorrow. We also had to make him an appointment to see a dermatologist at the Texas Children’s Hospital because he has a cyst growing on the knuckle of his index finger. He will probably need to have it removed and I’ll wibble and cry for my baby even though it’s probably an outpatient procedure. I love that boy so much. ♥ My mom bought him an Elmo doll when he was a newborn. When you hug it, it sings a song and giggles and the eyes light up. He was terrified of it when he was younger. But now he loves it. Which is nice. I’m glad he likes it.
I lost my train of thought. Happens all the time.
a warning sign
I’m going to share with you a moment that to this day sends chills down my spine. You may be interested to know that this entry contains some very personal information that I’ll probably have doubts about posting, but here goes.
It was the heat of the moment, when Rob decided not to use a condom. I was puzzled as I was no longer on the pill and he hadn’t expressed any wish to start trying for kids. When I questioned him on it he blurted out something he probably didn’t even think twice about. “Well honey, with the way your system works, you’re not going to be pregnant any time soon.”
*shudder*
I’m not trying to vilify my husband. He stuck his foot in his mouth and apologized for it. 5 months later I would have a positive pregnancy test that proved to both of us that I could in fact get pregnant relatively soon. But for a time there, I was really not sure I would ever see those double pink lines without some serious intervention.
The reason I am sharing all of this, is because I am currently on Nor Q D. A mini-pill variety of birth control. It contains no estrogen because estrogen makes uterine fibroids grow larger. I don’t need my tumors to be any bigger, thank you. It was our original plan for me to have a mirena iuc implanted but after the revelation that my intervention-free childbearing days are numbered, we decided to opt for the mini-pill instead. The mini pill does not induce a menstrual cycle the same way estrogen HBC pills do. Irregular cycles are pretty normal. I know this. I also know that it’s still up to my body when I cycle. So I admit that I find the fact I have not had a period since January 6th of this year just a little unsettling.
Robert tells me I need to schedule my annual tune-up with the Dr. just a little early this year if I’m so concerned. I agree. I want to know if something is up. But at the same time, I don’t want to know. I’m so afraid. It’s my worst fear. What if the fibroids (which were only discovered when my labor failed to progress and I had to be rushed into an emergency C-section) are just the tip of the iceberg? What if it’s gotten worse? What if nothing is wrong at all? What if there is no medical reason why I can’t have another child, but somehow, I can’t?
I’d like to pause right here and note that I am 100% for adopting a child and even plan to do so in the future. I would rather take the money it would cost for endless treatments and put it toward the cost of adopting a child that needs a loving home.
It’s the feeling like a dud that bothers me, I admit. Most of my life I’ve felt like a dud. I have endless amounts of things wrong with my body on the outside and now apparently on the inside. Both physically and emotionally. Robert doesn’t make me feel like a dud. James doesn’t make me feel like a dud. But it’s hard to escape the feeling when you’re surrounded by it in your own head. Last week Robert and I went to see Up. There is a scene in the first 10 minutes of the movie when Ellie (Carl’s wife) learns she can’t bear children. There is no dialogue. It’s a montage scene of their married life. They sit in the doctor’s office, she holds her head in her hands. She sits on a chair in the backyard and stares. The wind blowing through her hair. It knocked the wind out of me.
I’m young. I’m 24 years old. Plenty of people my age have no definitive plans to have children in the next 10 years. Plenty of 20 something girls have never had to talk about whether or not they will need a hysterectomy with their doctor. (Note to self, I think I need a new doctor.) On that note, I would hate to go through the song and dance of setting up a rapport with another doctor. I trust the doctor I have now. But she doesn’t talk to me. She has so many patients parading in and out of her office that she hardly says hello to you before she says “see you next year”. I want to sit down with her and discuss what’s going on with my body. I want to know exactly and definitively what my chances are and what the reality and depth of the situation is. I had hoped that at my annual (which is due in november) I would be able to talk to her about going off Nor Q D and perhaps how I should go about planning another pregnancy. I don’t know if I can wait that long.
This entry is pretty heavy, I admit. And for that I apologize. But it’s nice to get some of the weight off of my heart.
For a second there, I thought you disappeared
Work has been positively insane this last week. The weekend we all dread for months finally arrived and is on it’s way out without MUCH of an uproar. Don’t get me wrong, we ALL had overtime, NO ONE took a break, all of us were firing on all cylinders non-stop. I am so sick of the color blue. The word Congratulations is very long and intimidating to write on a cake in one single motion. Whatever. Between friday, saturday, and sunday, we had over 200 cake orders. Yes sirree! This doesn’t include all the cakes we had to make to keep our cases full in addition to all the orders. My hands hurt. You probably don’t want to hear about cakes anymore. I have a point.
I got called in to work early this morning because the head cake decorator had called in sick. GREAT. So the rest of us get to work early and we are trying to get our ducks in a row and figure out who is going to do what when the lead shows up anyway. She looks awful. Just AWFUL. But she felt like she couldn’t leave us stranded so she would just do what she can to help. Thank God! I’m honestly not sure how we would have fared without her. And I realized that I’m going to miss her a lot come september when she retires. I’m not just going to miss her as a colleague, but also as a friend. She’s 66 years old, healthy as an ox (except when she eats bad potato salad) and very wise. She is leaving town. Moving closer to her mother. Her mother is a great great grandmother. That’s amazing. But I am going to miss her. I don’t know if the sentiment is mutual but I’m quite fond of her. Sometimes I kind of want to call her gran. My grandmother was a tremendous lady. She was wise and brilliant and hysterical. She was soft spoken, fiercely loyal and she would do anything for her family. I aspire to be like her. It was today I realized just how attached I am to Marion. Instead of going to work this morning, I wanted to drive over to her house and make sure she was going to be okay. I think I need to start preparing myself for when she leaves. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to take it. I don’t want her job at all, for the record. I’m too sensitive. If a customer gets remotely upset, my knees start to wobble. I confide in her, I treat her exactly like she actually were my grandmother.
I’ve done a lot of complaining about how I don’t connect with people outside of work, and how I don’t feel like I should connect with my coworkers the way I would with people in the world at large I would consider friends. I came home to a sleeping toddler and a husband who was not home (my mother in law was babysitting) and James stayed asleep for hours. Rob was gone for hours. I sat in the house by myself and since nobody was tweeting or lurking facebook, I had nobody to talk to. The Mommy Tsunami made a blog post that perfectly summed up the jumble of thoughts in my head. It was like reading a more eloquent and thought out version of what I’ve been trying to say for months. It both relieved me to know that I’m not the only one that feels this way, and filled me with a sense of dread..what if the situation doesn’t get any better?
I owe a lot to the internet. Without the internet I would never have started a LiveJournal account more than 8 years ago. I never would have met those wonderful people with whom I’ve forged long lasting and meaningful friendships with. In three weeks, I am to be the Maid of Honor in the wedding of a girl I met on LiveJournal. Too bad she lives 2000 miles away. The LJ friends became facebook friends, and the facebook friends became twitter followers. In April, a friend from all three websites tweeted a link to Matt and Maddy’s blog. I read the story and was an inconsolable wreck all afternoon. I couldn’t wrap my head around that kind of circumstance. It seemed so unfair. It seemed like the kind of thing that would shake a person’s faith to the core. That was April 6th. The next day I would learn of another event that would shake and shatter me all over again. The internet has changed my life forever. I met Rob on the internet. I met Caitlin on the internet. Chances are, I met YOU on the internet. I can’t look at anything purple without thinking of Maddie. I am eternally grateful for all of you. Don’t ever forget it.
PSA
Hey everybody! Just your friendly neighborhood grocery store bakery cake decorator here! Boy, that was a mouthful. Anyway, I just wanted to say that if you spend your evenings with your mouth agape in amazement while watching TV shows about cake decorating and think “Why not me? I want a cake like that!!!” Please do not seek a cake like this out at a grocery store bakery. It’s not that we probably couldn’t do it if given the time, but chances are strong that not only do we not have the time to do cakes like those (Duff and Company spend days on those cakes) but we don’t have the resources. We are employed as cake decorators because we make passable commercial cakes. We are paid less than we should be paid and expected to turn out as many cakes as possible in a small amount of time. Therefore, quality tends to suffer. There is a whole website dedicated to the suffering of cake quality which you can find here http://www.cakewrecks.com. As someone who is normally not responsible for the special order cakes, I do the very best I can with the resources I am given. I am not always happy with the cakes I make either. To summarize, There is nothing wrong with getting your cake at the grocery store bakery, but just remember, when you are dreaming of topsy turvy layers and beautiful ornate detailing…. that you are getting your cake at the grocery store bakery.
Thank you.
PS: I’m sorry we can’t make a zillion cakes before noon on a saturday. That’s just the way it goes.
—————-
Really I didn’t do that bad. 11/12 of my cake orders looked awesome. There was one I wasn’t completely happy with and wouldn’t you know it? the lady wasn’t happy with it either. Course, when I asked her if she liked it, she said Yes but came back after I left to ask for a discount cause my writing wasn’t evenly spaced. She literally wanted 36 names written on this cake. Whatever. I made another cake that was picked up after that where the lady beamed with excitement over the way her cake turned out. Now THAT is the kind of reaction that keeps me in this gig. All the local highschools have their graduations this weekend. So this is basically like Hell Week for the cake decorators. Can I get sick please?
A couple of things.
One, I’m finally breaking some ground on planning Caitlin’s bachelorette party. Lucky for her, I’m not going to have any room in my suitcase for anything with a penis on it OR shaped like a penis. Yay! I’m probably more relieved than Caity is about this. The jury is out on the reason for this.
Two, Today at work I started daydreaming about saying to my boss “You know what? This is my 2 week notice right now. I’m going to go home and be a SAHM” But that would never happen. A) We can’t afford it B) I would get a little stir crazy, honestly.
Three, Today was my niece’s actual first birthday so there was a bbq. I didn’t want to bake another cake so I just baked 3 dozen heart shaped sugar cookies and iced them with cookie icing and threw on some sprinkles. The cookies and the icing were both from scratch. My sister-in-law’s friends began to obsess over how good they were. One girl said “She knew I had to be the one that made them, because I just *look* like that kind of person. Like a home maker.” I’m not insulted in any way, I just want to know what the heck?! What makes me look like a home maker? My first thought is that it’s my hair. I have a very “mom” haircut
The next thing I thought of was that it’s because I’m chubby this week.
Rob insists it’s because I wasn’t dressed like a skank.
Four. Rob is officially done with work (well, tomorrow) which means that the mother in law babysitting service can be put on hiatus for a couple of months. Thank God. I love her to death but I think some time apart will do James some good.
I’m really tired. I think I’m going to take a hot bubble bath and go to bed.
I’m thinking of joining BlogHer. It might help me network and meet more women I have things in common with. Thoughts?
Also, I want to rename my blog. Any suggestions? I’m not very creative.
Mommy’s Birthday!
There are probably going to be way too many photos in this entry, but what the heck, right?
Last thursday, My very best friend Stacy and her mother came to visit me aaaaaall the way from Saskatoon for my birthday!
Here is a photo from the last time Stacy came to visit. I was about to turn 21.
We met fall of 1995 in the fifth grade. Two of the schools in our hometown ran an advanced class (Honors, so to speak) from the 5th-8th grade and they picked their students from various other schools across town. Stacy and I were both apparently pretty smart cookies. On our first day of class, we were all seated alphabetically. One girl asked to trade seats with me because she wanted to sit next to a friend from her old school. We were given the go-ahead and I wound up sitting next to Stacy. The rest, as they say, is history.
I was a little bummed out because I was unable to get the weekend off at work because of the holiday. I mean, I understood, but still. We had a good time regardless. On Saturday afternoon we all went to the beach. I took James back into the surf. Once he realized the water was no longer cold, we had a great time.
(clearly, I’ve changed quite a bit since the last time Stacy came to visit)
That night, we drove into Houston (James with my mother in law) and we went to Cafe Adobe for dinner. It wasn’t that great. El Toro is better if you ask me ;) Then we went to Dave & Buster’s and I learned a very valuable lesson. If you have not played Dance Dance Revolution in years, and you have had a couple of margaritas, Now is not the time to challenge your bff to a throwdown. However, we did manage to make it to the third round so we did better than most people that climb up to that machine.
I did get pretty spoiled for my birthday. Gloria and Stacy swept me off my feet and got me a Nikon D40. Rob got me a camera bag and accessories… And a purple ipod nano (The first thing I thought of, was Maddie…) My brother in law and his girlfriend got me a gift set of bath products from Victoria’s Secret which was exciting based on the sole fact that it meant that some thought was put into the gift instead of the usual target gift card. Everybody else got me Visa gift cards or cash, which is great! I need clothes SOOOO bad! So Katy (who didn’t show up to either party) and I are going shopping tomorrow. Possibly.
Here are some random birthday party photos…
Everything was purple. I guess I’ve been thinking of Maddie a lot more than I realize.
Adults.
Older, maybe a little wiser. Probably not.
Her visit was too short. Sweet, but short.
I have the next two days off of work. No plans other than tentative shopping. My house is clean. Nobody is coming over. I don’t have to do anything except be mommy. Yay!! Maybe I’ll even squeeze in another update.
Taste Test
James seemed to be in the mood to try something new today. I put sliced hot dog into his mac and cheese. He very quickly alerted me that he did not care for it (re: spitting out the dog while managing NOT to spit out the mac). Fair enough. So then I decided to try him on something a little more attractive.
Beechnut Let’s Grow! Banana flavored cookies!
Yay! Aren’t you excited James?
Alright, here we go.
James began to examine the physical properties of the cookie.
We determined that the ‘Naner shape is accurate.
And that while regular bananas don’t normally smile, it was quite pleasing on this cookie.
Then it came time for the taste test…I was biting my fingernails the entire time.
If James could speak perfect english, I’m sure this is what he would have said. “Banana flavor is subtle. Nice crunchy texture, dissolves pretty quickly in my mouth.” Instead he said “mmmmmm” Which I’m pretty sure means the same thing.
And the moment of truth…
James approves!!!
So there you have it. Beechnut, congratulations on making one more thing my son will eat.
~~~~
My birthday is this coming up Sunday. My best friend from Saskatoon (and her mother) are coming to visit and they arrive tomorrow. I’m pretty stoked about this.
Lots of things have changed since the last time she was here.
I now have a house, a toddler son, a job, and a completely different lifestyle.
Also, I have a much smaller dress size. Many more photos will be taken this time.
