And now something a bit lighter

We had friends over for dinner and I was pouring prosecco for me and sparkling cider for my daughter. I hand her the cup and she takes a sip and says, "Momma this tastes like alcohol." Nooo, I insist, it's just fizzy like champagne, I poured you sparkling cider. Would I give you prosecco? No, I would not! "But momma," she insisted, "it really does taste like alcohol." I look at the cider bottle and it's completely full. I look at the prosecco bottle and it's definitely not short only 1 glass. So I taste from my daughter's cup and sure enough it's prosecco, not cider. Slipping from mediocre momma to something a bit lower...

2009 Part III

All the rest of the shit.

I still have a job, albeit one I am not sure I really want anymore. My boss is a very strange person and his trust issues are really much worse than mine, so that says something. There is always the possibility that I could get let go- not a real or tangible possibility, just that intangible, the unspoken threat. Everyone feels it, so it's not just my paranoia. And it makes for a shit place to work. But the economy being what it is, no one will leave. I don't feel challenged, but it's really quite on me to challenge myself. And with the anemia, I don't want to be challenged. OK, so I'm a whiner, there are loads of people who would love to be in my position and I should be grateful. Sorry- no disrespect intended, but I'm really not happy in my job.

I think, if I were to sum it up, I would say 2009 sucked for the most part and was Ok for the rest of it. I would like a happier 2010 but don't see where anything is going to change, so don't know how that will come about. Wish me luck!

2009 Part II

My health in 2009 was rather rocky. I battled, and lost at every turn, to my anemia, which is causing my hair to fall out, depression, insomnia, crankiness, you name it, I can blame it on anemia. On the bright side I had an endometrial ablation done to hopefully stop my periods (yeah, surgery to clean out my uterus is the "bright side" sad I know). Oh and they found some suspicious cells on my cervix so chopped some of that away too. When I mentioned this to my aunt she said that my grandmother had cervical cancer and survived, but they did a total hysterectomy on her to manage it.

I had a double root canal performed and a bridge installed. The double root canal was interesting since they were unable to numb one of the teeth and I almost lost my shit when the drilling started.

And my foray to weight watchers resulted in a total of about 15 lbs over 5 months and a complete stall in November at which point the scale started going up again. So I will continue to do this in 2010 to hopefully resume the losing portion of the game. And with a renewed sense of commitment to my health will track every bite that goes into my greedy mouth. And take the month of January off the wine train. Seems like that must have something to do with my inability to get my shit together, so will, in remembrance of my dad's words, "Kiddo, your bar tab and mine are the same" attempt yet again to stop drinking.

My blood pressure continues to rise, much like my weight, although not necessarily in relation to each other. When I had my surgery and was coming out of anesthesia my BP was great. So I contend that my BP is ALL mental and I just need to be anesthetized in order to manage it. The nurse thought that was a bad idea and stated that she wasn't going to make another Michael Jackson!!

My vision continues to deteriorate and I need to find a new eye doctor as I just cannot deal with the blind-in-the-dark and fine print madness that I suffer.

And that is the history of my health.

2009 Part I

I don't do resolutions but think it is important to reflect back over the year. I haven't had much desire to write lately, but woke this morning knowing that it was the last day of break and not knowing when I'd have the chance again and NEEDED to write. So I thought I'd break it up into several posts, something along the lines of: relationship, health, professional, financial. I'll start with relationships.

This year I fell completely out of love with my partner. We were already on precipitous ground, with the foundation chipped away by his ADD, or rather my inability to cope with his ADD, parenthood (which put such an immense strain on ours, don't know about everyone else, but DAMN that was a tough one!), his mother. On my birthday I was given several gifts, if you want to call them that. The first was the realization that he had lied about where he'd spent Valentine's day afternoon, which as it turned out, was with his mother. The second was a trip to several doctors offices with my daughter who had gotten hit with a toy at school & had a terrible shiner. The third was that he was out of town- oblivious to the fact that it was my birthday.

Late in 2008 I caught him in a lie about something to do with his mother and told him that if he lied to me again it was over. I would not tolerate him lying to me. So this seemingly innocent lie was, on the surface, not such a big deal, but when examined against the backdrop of our relationship it was the straw that broke this ol' camel's back.

I tried to maintain some semblance of calm, but it's really not in my nature to just blow shit off. I need to vent. So when I did it was a big blow up. He justified his actions by saying that he knew he would have gotten shit from me about spending the time with his mother, so chose to lie about it, you know, for my own good, to keep me from being upset. Ironically my stance on him spending time with his mother is that she lies to him and says terrible things about me, so why would he want to spend time with someone like that? If it was anyone but his mother he'd have ended the relationship long ago. So I don't begrudge him the time, have in the past encouraged him to do things with her, but after all the crap she's pulled in the last 2 years I just don't get the attraction.

Next I discovered that he had met some woman on a plane and really "connected" with her. This through snooping in his e-mails where I discovered his correspondence with her had been deleted from the To and Send bins, which he's really not usually organized enough to do, so he was obviously trying to hide this from me. But he didn't empty the Deleted bin and so that's where I found the evidence. It was a high-tech flashback to a day when I was married to my junkie, abusive husband and looking through the garbage and got stuck by a needle that had been tossed in the trash. Similar motivation on my part- just need to know the truth- and similar results- I get punished. So one evening we were having a discussion about how he was making such a big effort to tell the truth (who knew it was so fucking hard?). In fact he was trying to convince me that he should be believed and in response I was citing all the lies that I knew about, which if you've ever lived with a liar know these to be only the surface of a whole lot of bullshit. He stated that he knew I looked at his e-mails and he was the model of "complete transparency" at which point I confronted him on the deleted e-mails. His reaction was to smile and go "Oh yeah, those. Thought I'd gotten rid of that. Guess I'm busted." Not an ounce of remorse, just a funny moment for him.

So in 2010 we are sleeping in separate bedrooms. I have repeatedly asked that he not touch me, or try to kiss me or make comments about my body, which he has repeatedly ignored and continues to molest me and make comments. It makes me want to vomit.

I don't think there is much hope here and know that some resolution must be found or I am going to go out of my mind.

I have continued to maintain the stance that I will not be around his mother and have requested that my daughter be similarly constrained. In retaliation his sister has stated that her family will not participate in anything his mother isn't invited to and has made it impossible for my partner to see his nephew and nieces. Lovely. I've caused WWIII with my personal decision to keep away from crazy. But it's good to know that I will likely not have to be around his family AT ALL, if this is the way it's going to go. I had a momentary thought of burying the hatchet and making amends (because I'm the one who has shit all over his family, right?) and then thought about it some more. His sister has really never put anything into the equation- she's not supportive, she's kind of a whack job, she espouses values of lying and deceit, greed and consumerism and her kids are about as fucked up as they come, so why do I want a relationship with these people? I don't. And I don't want my child to be influenced by their crap either. I decided that there is no need to worry about whether they participate or not. Not is better.

Tracking?

I decided to give WW 6 months. I'm at the halfway point and have lost (more-or-less) 10 lbs. The same 10 lbs I've been losing & gaining for the last 5 years. It's incredibly frustrating because I know what I'm doing wrong and seem to be powerless to stop myself from the negative behavior. My brain is stuck somewhere and I need to kick it back into gear. So with a renewed sense of optimism- this does work and it's workable- I will charge through the next 3 months, hoping to make up for lost time, but if not that, then just to continue to make steady progress in the right direction. WW has begun this campaign "lose for good" in which you are encouraged to donate 1 lb of food for each lb you lose and the company will donate $1/lb lost up to $1million to 2 organizations that feed people. So the immediate reaction I had was that as a child I was told to finish everything on my placte cuz there were kids starving in China and now I'm being told that I should not clean my plate to help the starving children. It's a bit of a mindshift. But my second reaction I had was that this was my private journey, one that I didn't want to share with anyone, nor did I feel it appropriate to tie some external driver to my accomplishments. It's mine, dammit and I don't want to go public with it. I'm not sure what to make of the second reaction.

Therapy

I made the appointment for us both to go. When I spoke to her she said it's better to start off as a couple versus starting as an individual and then trying to fold the other into the mix. Too much potential for bias. The main question that I need to answer is do I stay or do I go? And within that there are so many permutations... How did it come to this? It all started after the baby came and I had the disturbing realization that this was not going to be a 50/50 partnership. The domestic stuff, typically left to the one with the vagina, was going to be my stuff and that was the full gamut of housewifery, on top of a FT job. The ADD didn't help for when I expressed my needs, requested help, voiced observations, it was impossible for him to retain. Every day is a brand new day and it seemed that he was unable to learn. Eventually the frustration and anger settled into my bones and I began to wonder if maybe it wasn't really ADD, but passive agressive behavior. He was able to retain things for sailing and work, but not for me? Huh! And just because there wasn't enough for us to deal with add in his mother and her insanity. We tried therapy before. I agreed to it if he agreed to medicate for ADD. We had an agreement. He decided, unbeknownst to me, that the drugs were making him feel like shit, and stopped taking them. There was no discussion about it, no follow-up with any professionals, just done. We continued therapy for a few sessions, until I discovered he'd stopped taking the meds. So I quit. Pointless exercise. And one day in the heat of an argument he disclosed that he'd never shared his true feelings in therapy, that he thought he would let me do all the sharing and he could somehow passively "participate." And the realization that I really could not trust him started to set in. And then I caught him in more lies, and made a declaration that if he lied to me again it was over. And he did, so I have completely shut down.

The ADD makse communication pointless. He won't retain what I've said so why bother. It's quite daunting.

life on a tuesday

I decided to go back to weight watchers. Actually I've been thinking about it for a while. I just can't do this on my own and am tired of being the fattest girl I know. So I had a work-from-home day today & I just went. The leader was nice and the reminders are great. I plan to go to as many meetings as I need to stay on track. I know the whole diet industry is anti-feminist and the psychobabble about not meeting societal expectations is patriarchal control, but I hate the way I look, and that is mine. I hate being so out of control and that is mine. I hate feeling this way and that, too, is mine. I am trying to do something for me, so this is one step. The other is calling a therapist. I've fallen into a hole of indecision and blackness and really want out!!!

I used to be the fun girl. The one everyone called to go out and laugh with. I used to be happy & funny and witty. I always thought that when I died they'd say, "Well she really knew how to live." I've lost that. I know she existed cuz I've checked with people who have known me for many years. They concur. No one says I'm a drag now, filled with negativity, sarcasm and cynicism, anger and bleakness. No one confronts my obvious lack of enthusiasm for this life. No one calls me on my shit. I call bullshit. I call bleakness. I call negativity. And I banish them. Go away now, be gone with you. I'm ready to live again.