A Long Time......

Wow...I can't believe I've neglected my writing for so long. I've really been in quite the rut for a while now and it doesn't really seem to be getting better. Let me quickly update the last few months. On November 14th, 2008 I was laid off from my job at Albertsons. I really thought I was looking forward to it as I knew it was coming but in the end I have found that I'm having a much harder time with it. I am supposed to be working on my schooling for medical transcription but I'm really struggling with it because right now it's a lot of reading and trying to read when I'd really rather be in bed or a hole or doing something that makes me forget everything going on in my life right now (it's a wonder I haven't started drinking to get that). Anyway, most days I don't work on school because I just don't want to deal with it. Brian hasn't been working since around the end of September or first part of October. Christmas was very difficult because we literally had no money for any gifts. Thank god for my parents. They gave me $200 to spend on the children. Brian and I were not able to get each other anything and the kids were not able to go shopping for each other or for us. It was very difficult for me to tell the kids they would not be able to shop this year but at least they had presents under the tree. Mom and dad also gave us money to make the trip to Idaho Falls to spend time with family. This year Christmas was not my favorite holiday. Two weeks ago I had to put my beloved cocker spaniel Rooney to sleep because he was sick and the vet said the blood work showed liver disease. We put him down the day we left to go to Idaho Falls to visit Brian's ailing grandfather. We are now faced with losing our housing because we don't have the money to pay rent and all of the bills. We have been floating along on the small amount of savings we had and then loans from Brian's mom and my parents covering some items. We received student loan money but it will only pay rent for 2 months. Tax returns will be coming soon but even then Brian hasn't been able to pay his child support since we haven't been working and so we have to pay back child support for the past several months from that. At this point we are trying to get Brian and the kids through the school year. Which will probably require us moving in with his sister and her 3 kids for a few months.

After that the only option we have found is to move back to Idaho Falls and live with my parents until we are employed again. This is very bittersweet for me. I miss my parents and my extended family very much. Since we have lived in Meridian I have missed most of the family functions at grandma's house that I have become so accustomed to. I also miss my best friend a ton. The kids will be close to their dad and all of the grandparents by moving back. I am a very family oriented person and right now my sister is the only family here. The only real reasons we moved here in the first place was school and work. The schools here are much better than eastern Idaho both for the kids and for college for Brian. The job opportunities when we moved were much better also but these days that does not seem to be the case. We have a much nicer house than we had in Idaho Falls but other than that we really didn't gain anything living here. Housing is much more expensive so all of the extra money we have made went to our rent and the kids have not been able to participate in extra activities. Cheyenne would really like to dance again but those types of things are also much more expensive here. Right now as much as I love my house and all of the things we have I really want to be back at home, and I still call it that because it doesn't feel like home here. Some day I would like to own a home again and I really want another child but things are just not going our way right now and I am not going to have another child until things have leveled out and we can afford to pay for another child. I know it sounds crazy but I just don't feel like my family is complete yet.

Right now my hope is that we can somehow figure out a way to stay here so that Brian can finish school, we were hoping he could transfer to Stevens-Heneger college so he could finish sooner but if we have to move that will not be possible. School seems to be the only end to all of this for us. Once Brian has finished his degree he will be able to get a much better job and we can have a house of our own and the kids can do the things they want to do. At this rate the children will be at the end of their childhood before that happens. All of this is very frustrating. I am going to be 30 this year and I am no closer, in fact I think I'm farther away from being where I want to be. I have not had to live with my parents since I was 18 years old. I have had to ask them for help many times but I have not had to move back in with them and that terrifies me. It terrifies me because I don't want to be dependent on them for the rest of my life. They have already done so much more for me than I would have expected. I HATE having to ask them for help over and over again. I feel like the biggest failure. Don't get me wrong, I love my children and my husband but nothing has turned out the way I planned and I am certainly no where near where I want to be right now. I want to have a house of my own, be financially stable and have another child with my husband.

Ugh....ok well I'm going to try to update more often again.

Anger, hurt, saddness.......

I am completely dazed and confused right now. I feel like I've been run over by an elephant. The wind has been knocked out of me and I just can't seem to get it back. This was a blow that I was really not expecting. How can someone truly and wholely love you when they do not love your children. My children are a product of me, they have been raised by me and are half me. I do not know that a relationship can sustain a blow like that. To discover that all this time it was that it was because of my son? Children are a wonderful and beautiful gift. They are never perfect but that does not mean that they cannot be loved by someone other than their parents. You don't want a child with me because you're afraid I'll produce another monster? How can you say you love me when you think that? I am absolutely stunned that you do not seem to be the man I fell in love with and that I thought you were. Was I just dreaming that that person exsisted? I should have known that our fairytale wasn't real since fairytales aren't real. No one can have a real fairytale. I'm not sure I know that person who lies next to me in bed at night. Now I don't know if I really never knew him or if I just don't know the new him.

My head is spinning in circles and I'm afraid it's going to just snap off. I can't change your feelings about him and I think that's what really hurts the most. I feel like the person I fell in love with cared about the feelings of the people they loved. The person I see now has lost that. Has hardened his shell so that nothing can get through. The person I knew before would have seen the hurt on my face and would have shown me how that hurt him. I really don't believe that I made up the person I fell in love with in my head but I am very hurt that I can't seem to find him anymore.

I cannot pretend that this revelation isn't a huge blow to our relationship. Even as I sit here at work and try to concentrate I can't help but want to drive home and find a hole to curl up in and hide and run away from all the things that hurt me. But my children are everything to me and I cannot run away from everything else without running away from them and that I also cannot do. I would do anything for my children and I have been trying to balance my happiness with theirs and doing what is right for them. I'm not sure that can happen.

I am angry and I'm hurt. But I don't blame you. I blame myself for not seeing it sooner. I wanted someone to lean on and now I see that I leaned too far. I crushed the comfort that I was looking for. I have not leaned on myself near as much as I should have. You used to be that person that let me lean on them but always made me lean on myself too. I have destroyed some of the things I loved the most about you. I hope that you will forgive me for this and I hope that you can find those things again. I am so sorry that I pulled you down and that I have caused you enough pain that you had to shut down. I know you worked so hard to move past that. I will always remember how you used to love me. The years that I have know you have been some of the best and some of the worst. You were always there for me, but I fear it would have been better for you if we had only stayed friends. It's the wonderful thing about a blog. I go back and I see how you were before we started dating and how you were in the beginning. You were in such a better place then.

I don't know if this can be fixed. I cannot change your feelings toward my son. I can work on changing myself which I intend to do but I cannot fix what I have done to you.

I am so, so sorry.

I love you.

Again...

Is love really enough? Is this going to keep happening? 3 times in the 2 1/2 years we have been together is a lot. I don't know how to prevent this type of thing from happening again. I know I love him with all my heart. I know that it is true love. I know that I want to be married to him for the rest of my life, but is all of that enough? It scares me to think that one day it really will be over. It was bad enough to make him put a hold on our marriage license with the county clerks office. That's a pretty extreme step to take if you want to make it work. Is this the last time we will have a fight, I doubt it. I hope however that it will be the last time it goes to the extreme. I don't think I can handle it happening again. I don't want to go around in circles. Even though every time it has gone to the extreme it has been over something completely different than before I don't know that we are really making progress. I thought we had gone through this for the last time the last time it happened. Obviously I was wrong. I just want to know how to make it so this was the last time. I have this fear that we are going to come down to throwing out threats of breaking up until finally one of us just does it.


I DO love him with all of my heart. A new song by Rascal Flatts sums it up pretty well:


The Way

Think about the way the earth revolves around the sun.
Gravity holds it all in place
and keeps it all from coming undone.
That's the way, that's the way I feel about you.


Think about how a baby cries to feel his mother's touch
and how he finally wrestled peacefully
when she finally picked him up.
That's the way, that's the way I feel about you.


Oh they say the sky's the limit
but I say there's so much more
'cause your love takes me higher than I've ever been before.
Well the heaven's hold the stars
that's why they stay where they are.
I know why they shine the way they do.
That's the way, that's the way I feel about you.


Just like a soldier fights for what he knows is right
he'd gladly give his last breath for freedom
and he wouldn't even think twice.
That's the way, that's the way I feel about you.


Oh they say the sky's the limit
but I say there's so much more
'cause your love takes me higher than I've ever been before.
Well the heaven's hold the stars
that's why they stay where they are.
I know why they shine the way they do.
That's the way, that's the way I feel about you.


Well I may not be a wise man
but I know one thing is true
that the river's only reason
is to find the ocean blue.
That's the way, that's the way I feel about you.
That's the way, that's the way I feel about you.

I don't understand

I no longer know where I am. I thought I knew, I thought I knew where we were headed, at least a general direction anyway. I feel like I must be in some alternate universe somewhere. It can't be that I am in the same place I thought I was a week ago. I feel betrayed and hurt and sad. What happened? What went wrong? Was I wrong all along? What's wrong with me? Why can't I seem to get it right? I can't even think through my own thoughts and feelings right now. I am feeling so many things that I can't even describe right now. I never say things right. I have no words for the ache I feel in my heart.
If this was wrong God and it can't be fixed then I am done. I will pick up the pieces and help my children through this and I will not do it again.

In Response....

I'm sorry that you feel like I was irresponsible and that you are hurt because I didn't spend a lot of time with you this weekend. I don't want you to feel hurt but I will not allow you to make me feel bad because I was spending time with my mother who I don't see very often anymore. There is nothing wrong with that. You were more than welcome to come with us but you cannot expect me to always do what you want to do and then be mad at me because I didn't. I love being around you and the more things we do together the happier I am. That being said I don't want you to come if you don't want to and are just going to bitch and moan the whole time, that is much worse than not having you there at all. You make it out like I am being extremely selfish and I don't care about anyone else but that is not at all the case and I think you know it. I'm sorry I spent $25 to feed my family when I didn't absolutely have to but you did the exact same thing when we went to Merrit's when I was doing the budget. I let it go and took the money out of savings for it. You know damn well that I am not a big spender and that I am even more anal about keeping money in savings than you are. How do you think I managed to keep myself and my kids going for 3 years without you. I always had money in savings, I may not have had a full pantry but we had food on the table and the kids had a nice christmas and everything else. That was all me. It really frustrates me that you act like I'm so irresponsible, from the time you handed the budget over this semester you have been watching my back and hounding me and then telling me that I have to take care of it. Well I can if I have to. I don't like it because it is stressful for me. So yes, I would rather you take care of it because you do a pretty great job of it but don't you dare say that I am irresponsible and that you have the last say on the money. Since when has it ever been that way? We have always in the past both taken the stance that the money is a joint thing that we decide on together. Whenever possible we talk to each other about spending money on just about everything. I don't feel like this should have become this huge issue that you have made it out to be. I don't go out every day and spend money. In fact I very seldomly spend any money at all. I am a huge tightwad. In general I spend less money than you do so don't lecture me about being irrepsonsible. I don't think you are irresponsible because you spend more money than I do and obviously you don't think you are either so I don't understand where you get that I am irresponsible because I didn't tell you before hand or because I spent money on something you wouldn't have.

GETTING MARRIED!!!!

So it finally happened!!!! We got married on 10/7/07. I was beginning to wonder if this day would ever come. For those of you who may not be keeping up on my other half's blog, we, I should say I, won a wedding from one of the local radio stations. I decided to enter the contest after hearing the ad for it on the morning show like 2 days before the entry deadline. I'm not really sure what possessed me to enter because I don't normally do things like that but I just had this urge and before I knew it I had sent the email. I didn't even talk to Brian about it at all. I even had this fleeting thought that he might enter it too and that would be really funny but I knew he wouldn't because he wouldn't think he would win. Anyway, they called and left a message 2 days later and said that our story had won. I was so excited, I was bawling like crazy and when I called my sister she thought something was wrong because I was crying so much. LOL....yeah so that was really awesome. When I called Brian I said "So uhhhhh.....you wanna get married next Sunday?" he said "Not particularly." Crap! Now what I am gonna do? So I told him we won a wedding and it took him about 20 mins of saying "wow!" and "holy crap!" before he finally was like "well yeah!" "I gotta get off the phone, I have people to call!" He was totally caught off guard with it all. I think he almost called it off a couple of days into it because he was so freaked out about it not being what we had planned but it turned out wonderfully! We only had to pay for the marriage license and the reception. My parents paid for the decorations and such for the reception and Brian's dad and brother paid for all of the food stuff plus a little extra. We got some money for gifts which was very nice because along with the dress, Brian's tux, the rings, cake and floral arrangement we also got a cruise for the honeymoon. I'm so excited about that because we haven't ever done anything like that and it will be sooo awesome to have a week away alone together and now we have a little spending money too. The rings are gorgeous and I can't wait for the honeymoon. This has just been awesome and I haven't been able to thank all of the people enough for everything they did for us. Now all that's left for us is baby's before growing old together....LOL....that'll be a while I'm sure. Anyway, back to the grind.

The Water Pot

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.

At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water.

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.

But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream."I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.

"The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?"

"That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them."

"For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.

You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

SO, to all of my crackpot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path!