Author Archives: admin

Jinxed

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Remember how I had been talking about how nice it was that I had been sleeping through the night thus far with little issue, you know, aside from occasionally having to flip over and get up to pee? You know, I had been talking about how last time at the beginning of the 3rd trimester it was next to impossible to get anything close to a full night’s sleep because of comfort issues. It appeared that, so far, it wasn’t going to be an issue this time around.

Well, so much for opening my big, fat mouth and sharing the parts of pregnancy I could get used to.

Over the last few nights it had been building: I can only lay on my sides, and inevitably, one of my hips would start aching and the only way to alleviate it was to flip over. You know, like a steak or a fish fillet in a skillet. Last night I was laying on my RIGHT side and my left hip started aching. And flipping onto that side only made the aching worse. And nothing I did, whether it was flipping over, or sitting up, walking around, stretching, ANYTHING relieved the pain. In fact, attempting to lay on the opposite side tended to make the other hip hurt as well. What. The. Fuck.

Flipping over in the third trimester, mind you, is NO EASY FEAT.

On top of that, I had major stomach issues that were keeping me from staying in my bed for longer than 20 minutes at a time.

So, I had to get up and try and relax my mind and attempt to give my hips a break, or at least another surface to rest on. I ended up in the living room on the couch watching A&E on my laptop. The night was shot; it was 4 am, and I had to get up at 6:30 and get Deven off to school. In my mind, thinking of the safety of both of my children and myself, I knew that even if I did get a couple of hours of sleep, it was probably not the best idea for me to attempt to drive anywhere. So, I thought I would get Deven up for school, and get Vance to drive him.

I took some Tylenol, and was finally able to fall asleep by 5 am.

Vance and I had come to this agreement a while ago: there were going to be days when he would have to get up a little bit earlier and drive Deven to school because I was going to be too sleep deprived to do it myself. He understood this, it appeared, and agreed to it. Despite this, he still acted as though I was just being “dramatic” and trying to “bullshit” him because the school was “only a couple of blocks away” (you know, after you cross two large major roads and some active train tracks.)And apparently, since I wasn’t drooling and lying in a puddle of my own urine, I was fine enough to drive! I just DIDN’T WANT TO!

YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!

I just figured I would put the safety of my family before anything else, including the comfort level of my jackass husband who insists that I am a terrible driver and shouldn’t be trusted behind the wheel of a car in certain situations, unless, of course, he is in ANY WAY inconvenienced.

The last thing that I needed after the shit that I had been through that night was to be accused of being a manipulative liar.

Fucker.

Today, instead of vegging out on the couch and reading or watching a movie, I slept until about a half an hour before it was time to get Deven from school. And then when we got home, Deven went straight to his room to play with his flags. Every time I would open the door to check on him, or give him apple juice , he would demand that I close the door and let him play by himself. Fine. Whatever.

And then at 1:00 Deven and I laid down for our nap and didn’t emerge until 5.

Not how I imagined spending my day.

So here is to a (hopefully) better night’s rest.

Here are some words for day 2

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Today was a day. I cleaned while Deven was at school. The maintenance guy still has not shown up to fix our garbage disposal or deliver our filters. I am guessing that it’s probably because we haven’t been home when he’s come by. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and call them again tomorrow. See? I’m a nice person.

I talked to my therapist about feeling stressed because of the nesting, and she rather brilliantly recommended that, instead of cleaning and acting on my anxieties, I do nothing for a day. She recommended I take the morning to veg out on the couch, read a book, watch a movie, try to ignore the clutter and the smell coming from the garbage disposal. Even better, she told me I should leave the house and maybe read my Kindle in a coffee shop, or check out children’s consignment shops for a morning while Deven is at school. Get away from all of the stresses at home, just indulge myself by thinking about something other than only having 80-or-so days before the arrival of another baby.

I don’t know if I can keep myself from thinking about how I would wasting precious time by not going insane at home and nagging my husband to clean (totally against his nature, if you haven’t guessed.)

Tonight, after therapy, we ate dinner at Jackie’s house, like we do on Wednesdays. She made this delicious southwestern casserole or lasagna with ground beef, cheese, corn, tortillas, and cumin. I know it’s cumin, because when I burp, that is all I taste. Vance joined us to meet their new pet ferret. They let the little thing run around the living room while the kids squealed and giggled with delight. Deven couldn’t stop jumping. We kept telling him to stop, but I seriously don’t think he realizes he jumps when he is excited. Their downstairs neighbors must HATE Wednesdays.

The ferret is cute, but seeing how much excitement it ignites in small children makes me never ever want one. I know, I’m an ogre. But a nice ogre.

Tomorrow I am going to follow my therapist’s advice and chill out for the morning, and possibly the rest of the day. I’m not going to do laundry, or clean things, I am going to lay on the couch and find a good movie on Netflix.

So there.

Project

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Oh, back so soon?

I have an announcement to make:

The Secret Life of the American Teenager is God Awful.

That’s not by any means an announcement. Pretty much everyone knows this for a fact.

Okay, the announcement is actually that I have decided to take on a project. I, Janette, am going to attempt to blog every. single. day for the next year. Big surprise, huh? As it stands, I blog like every other month. How could I possibly attempt this feat?

Writing and I have a long-standing, albeit tumultuous relationship. I used to do it every day in the form of journaling and blogging back in my crazy-teenager-going-through-a-depression phase. I have been told in the past that I am kind of good at it despite my limited formal training. As I grew older and my life grew more stable, writing became more of a chore than as a form of expression. I became really critical of my own ability, which made me want to do it less and less. I never ran out of things to say, I just ran out of the desire to over-over-think and beat myself down over it.

We all remember my experiences with my English I class, right?

I’m not talking about sitting down everyday and writing out these elaborate 3-page pieces, I really just mean writing for the sake of writing. Even if I don’t feel like I have much to say, at the very least I can write about what I did with my day, or I can even write about how I don’t have anything to say. The point is: I write WORDS.

WORDS

Writing was in the past an excellent form of therapy for me. Even though I am going through therapy right now, my therapist can’t see me every single day. I need a best friend that I can talk to every day that I can pretend understands the ridiculous scatological ramblings that go through my head and won’t judge me for anything, especially my obsession with scat. The internet seems like the appropriate place for that.

Also, I know what else you must be thinking: GIRL, YOU CRAZY! YOU’RE HAVING A BABY IN LIKE 85 DAYS! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO WRITE WHEN YOU STOP SLEEPING?

I can do it. Believe me, I can do this.

So, I write ever day for the next 365 days starting today, Jan 18, 2011, and ending on the same date in 2012.

So, here it goes:

Nesting.

My nerves are unbelievably bare this evening. The house is so cluttered and disgusting, and I am desperately fighting the urge to clean everything out of the house. I would like to either organize everything in giant plastic totes, or put it in a pile in the backyard and SET IT ON FIRE.

While Deven played in the bath, I wiped down the entire bathroom.

The dishes need to be done and the kitchen needs to be cleaned. Vance is supposed to be the one who does the dishes around here. It amazes me that he can let a mess sit for as long as he can. Maybe it’s my altered state of mind, but I swear I think he is lying to me about his childhood, and he was actually raised in a barn. I can picture it: he ate slop out of a trough, slept in a bed of hay, and bathed in mud.

He needs to help me before I  start piling stuff up in the backyard.

But seriously, nesting has done some good: I have never been this caught up on laundry in my entire life.

I need to just chill out and relax. All of this stuff can wait until tomorrow. It’s not going to do me any good to stress and send myself into early labor.