Evers' First Steps

Real quick post, guys. Evers had her first steps without our guiding hands. It happened on the 14th and this video was captured on the 15th. It's adorable and she's adorable and you can't see me, which is perfect because I didn't have a bra on, oh and also ignore the pile of stuff in front of the table. Evers went diaper-bag-diving.

Birthday Whine

Turned 23 today and I'm being totally pouty about it. I don't remember my birthday ever falling on Easter weekend before, though it's probably happened. So of course, my party won't be til next weekend and basically no one seems to give a crap that my birthday was today. Poor Erik works nights so he stayed up after work to get Evers up when she woke this morning and went to sleep in time for her first nap. Then she and I woke him up after only a couple hours (oops) and he never got to nap again, but was falling asleep a lot. And my birthday dinner was Chinese food because we didn't have anyone available to watch the baby so we could go out where I wanted to go. And now he's at work. Tomorrow morning we're going to an Easter egg hunt about an hour south and then Sunday is Easter so we'll have two houses to parade Everleigh around in.

And my mom didn't even remember or care enough about my birthday because she went and scheduled a sleepover with the church youth tonight at her house so I couldn't even come and have my birthday dinner like I have since I was a baby. And she didn't call, text, or even Facebook (she always calls) until 6:35pm when she finally sent a quick, "Happy birthday" to me (without punctuation or anything else). And I felt like a total afterthought this year.

On the bright side, I dressed Evers up in a beautiful T-shirt and red skirt that would have been for Valentine's Day except on Valentine's Day I forgot, and she loved the skirt because it had shiny hearts and was poofy. And I'm really excited about my party next Saturday. I'm going all-out nerd and it's Harry Potter themed and I was totally embarrassed, but Erik made me do it cause he knew I wanted it and none of my friends have teased me (except my kid brother, but he doesn't count) at all.

And I know there are a lot worse things going on for other people. Hell, there are worse things in my own life. It just was such a let down. I didn't even get a single present today.

That's enough whining, though. My alarm's going off at 8:30 for that egg hunt and it's already just past one. I really wish we hadn't said yes...

Fast Food Poisoning and Three Hundred Prompts

So, guys, it's been a while. I really appreciate the kind words I got on that last blog post as well as the words I got off the actual post. I let Erik read it and he was absolutely amazing. Have I pulled myself out of that rut? Well, no, not really, but I'm feeling a lot better most of the time. The house is in great shape and we're doing a good job keeping it that way, too. I applied again for Medicaid and I missed the appointment, but I called them and left a message so maybe I can get back on meds soon. Evers' coverage lapsed and I have to get her back on, so it's not something I can put off this time.

Oh, also, Ev has become more clingy toward me. She wants me now, instead of being a total Daddy's girl. Sometimes, this is not always a blessing after all... haha.

In other news, but slightly related because I mentioned food in that post, I recently got horribly, unbelievably sick after eating at our closest McDonald's and it ruined yet another St. Patrick's Day (two years ago, I was about two weeks shy still of my twenty-first birthday, and last year I was pregnant). Later, I learned that my dad was briefly ill, and I think maybe someone in Erik's family, too, so it probably wasn't the McDonald's, but I still feel a repulsion toward it and I'm super excited to say that for almost two weeks now (since the fifteenth) I haven't had one bite of fast food. I think I've only had soda once (the other day at Costco with my mom) I think, not including the gingerale we bought to settle my stomach and I only drank maybe a liter of that total. I have not craved fast food since and have no desire to return. You should all be super proud of me (and of Erik, especially). Of course, that means we had a lot of Hot Pockets, Pizza Rolls, and Eggo so far, but it's progress! Baby steps!

Moving on to something else. Some of you may know about NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month (November) and it's a huge international thing. I participate each year since 09, although I've never "won." Well, there's also sometimes a "Camp NaNo" in the spring or summer. Last year I think it was August it was June, this year it's April. I decided about an hour ago that I'm going to go for it. As I've never done it, I don't know all the details, but I know you sign up and get assigned a cabin if you want and can pick your own word count. I'm going for 25k. I'll up it to 30k depending on where I get through the month.

My plan is not to write a novel, but just to write. I will be using 300 writing prompts I once created while I did play-by-post RPGs. I will write short stories, scenes, and poetry, based off each one and how I interpret it. I will be posting them here, too, to help get motivation and keep myself accountable. Please, keep in mind that these will all be very rough first drafts, there will be typos, and I'm self-conscious. I will put that actual table in a separate post because of the amount of coding and the fact that I will probably need to tweak it because of the blog settings. Also to keep things looking clean.

I appreciate your support!

This Nest, A Cage I Built Myself

When I wake up in the morning, my day is foggy. My day feels so short, but so tedious. I wake up when my baby girl crows, having stayed up until God knows when the night before. I change her, feed her, plop her on the floor and turn on Netflix and open up my laptop. I smile and talk to her a little, scold her and smack her hand if she grabs at the computer, which she’s always fascinated by. On a good day, I sometimes get down on the floor a couple times.

At one, I wake Erik. He’ll play with her a little bit, catch up on emails or classwork. Usually she’ll need a nap now, but it’s possible that she already went down before I woke him. If not, I ask him to make the bottle and he does. He’ll take her up for her nap. Depending on the time, we may have a little time to spend together.

Between two-thirty and three, he leaves for his internship. I will stay on the computer, telling myself I’ll get [insert task-of-the-day here] started in a minute… after so-and-so signs off and we’re done talking… after this episode… at blank ‘o’clock… I have a million reasons and rationalizations. I say that the baby’s down now, so now’s my time for a minute to relax, as if I haven’t already been screwing around. Maybe I’m working on something job-search related or at least minutely more productive than refreshing Facebook for the umpteenth time. But that’s not work. Hell, I usually get my three job-search-related activities done on Friday or Saturday before I certify for my unemployment. Of course, I want a job so that we’ll be more financially stable, but really I want things to magically fall into place for Erik so I don’t have to.

Shit. It’s four. It’s five. It’s six and Erik will be done soon. Seven, he’s walking in the door. I never got dinner on. I never remembered to put the chicken in the fridge to defrost yesterday. “Baby, you wanna just pick something up this time? I’ll cook tomorrow. For real.” Twice a day. Every day.

Erik comes home from his internship. The baby woke up a while ago and is playing on the floor again. I don’t think she’s happy here, but I ignore it, mostly because I don’t know what to do for her. There’s no room to crawl around. She loves my mom’s new house. It’s big and open and there are doggies to chase and a hard floor with enough room for a walker.

She gets so excited for him. He walks through that door and she makes this little gasping excited noise and hops up. She rushes to where the ottoman is blocking her into the area, pulling herself up and bouncing, shouting at him. “Hi, baby girl!” he exclaims! Usually he has to empty his hands. Too often he needs to use the bathroom and she cries a moment after he disappears, protesting. I calm her down or wait it out, depending on my mood. It shames me to admit that I get annoyed at her when she’s like that, but it’s not her fault. She’s a baby. I think I’m jealous. I know I’m jealous. She does not get excited like that for me. When we pick her up after a weekend at Grammie’s, she smiles for me and sometimes reaches for me, but she usually lights up for her daddy and wants him almost right after. She almost never wants me, her mommy.

They cuddle. They may play a little. He asks what’s for dinner and ends up running for something on the days I don’t have a frozen pizza to pop in. I may have already texted him to get something. We may already be eating at this point. He’ll probably feed her her dinner, or else bring it to me to feed her.

Between eight and nine, the baby needs to go to bed. Erik usually makes her bottle, but sometimes I do. He takes her up and puts her down with it. If there’s time and we’re both amenable, we may have sex. During and after sex are two of the only times where I feel alive and good again. I feel like I might actually still have some beauty left in me. I can believe him a little when he tells me he wants me, that he loves me.

No, that’s not fair. I always know he loves me. But I rarely believe he should. I rarely understand why he does. Other than the baby. But every once in a while, while he gets ready for work and I cuddle up with a pillow watching him, still naked and half under the covers, I might wonder if we would be together like this without the baby. More often I’m just wondering if we’ll always make this work. We’re still three months from our second anniversary. If it weren’t for her, could we really think about forever? Maybe we could start now. We wouldn’t be so crazy to start thinking about it now.

He always kisses me goodbye and tells me he loves me. Every time. Even if he’s just running for food. Even when one of us is having a grumpy mood. Sometimes I’ll be difficult and make him work for it, just to postpone it those extra seconds. A few rare times we’ve been in a fight and I haven’t gotten that kiss. It breaks my heart.

I’m usually exhausted. All day, in fact. I fight my sleepiness. Occasionally I have a nap. Even when I don’t, I can’t sleep. I yawn and yawn, but I usually toss and turn if I go to bed. I might bring my computer, but it doesn’t change much when I don’t. I consider it getting to bed early when I sleep at midnight, yet I’m so tired when he walks out that door at nine-forty. Do you want to know what time it is right now? As I type these words? 3:15:22 a.m. I’m finally getting sleepy enough to sleep, but these words have to come out.

I go back downstairs now, or I’m already down there, and I play whatever show I feel like watching. I’ve been allowing myself to explore girlier shows, or dramas he wouldn’t like as much so that I won’t watch something we both like and get ahead of him. I grab the computer again and I’m on and off it all night. Too many nights, I curl up on the couch, exhausted, and fall asleep there. When he gets home from work, Erik’s noise tends to wake me and we go up to bed together…

Until the baby crows.

I feel like my day is full. I feel so overwhelmed when I try to do something. I stumble over whatever is cluttering up my floor. I trip into the kitchen, past my towering laundry pile. My dishes are ridiculous because Erik hasn’t been able to get to them yet. I know, though, that it should be my job. But I swear that if he does it once, all the way pristine, I will let him out of our ridiculously unfair deal and take over them. I’m at home now. I lost my job and now I’m at home and I should take care of my house and my family. I should clean and cook and still have a ton of time really to do nothing as my recipes are fairly straightforward and tend to involve a number of hours in the crockpot, and I always have to wait between the loads of laundry.

I just look at piles and piles all over and I feel overwhelmed. I crawl up onto the couch and push just enough stuff over to make my little nest, carving out a niche in the debris on my side table for a glass of water or whatever fast food cup Erik’s brought me now. I have to vacuum and carpet clean from a couple of spills, but I don’t know how to get my carpet clear.

And the baby. I don’t know how to play with her. She’s not like babies were supposed to be. She thinks peekaboo is stupid and doesn’t care when I make funny voices and talk through her toys. She’s not ticklish. She doesn’t like it every single time I swing her upside down or toss her in the air, but at least it works some of the time. I try reading to her, but it seems so weird. Even then, she just tries to eat the book, which I know is normal, but I can’t help but be disappointed by.

I was pregnant and I took my meds like a good girl. I don’t remember how often I forgot, but it was better than my usual track record. I swore to myself and my baby that she would never see me like this. She would never know mommy’s dark days, or whatever term she coins for it. Or really, I can coin it whatever I want, because she wouldn’t get to see them to coin them herself. That’s the point. I swore she would not know the days of me doing nothing on end on the couch and she would not know anything about me lying in bed. She wouldn’t know about my needless crying or moods or meanness or darkness. I would take my meds and I would be better for her. So she could never become me. Then I lost my Medicaid and I haven’t gotten it back.

Now I get bigger and sicker and it gets harder and harder to pull myself out of this. I spend whole days where I never move from that couch. I pee two or three times. I make a bottle or two for the baby, putting her down and getting her back up, if Erik isn’t home. The thought of leaving the house frightens me now. I rarely shower.

And no one understands how serious this has gotten…

Yearbook 2012

Guys! I Shutterfly'd again... I'm doing that Family Yearbook project that's been all over Pinterest. I started in September and finished the last tweaks a few weeks ago. After checking it all over today, I got to order it! So on top of just liking to share this crap, sharing gets you ten dollar codes. Of course, the one I had already expired on December 31st, so I didn't get to use it on this project after all, but I still got free shipping and 40% off, which totaled about fifty-nine dollars in discounts. Yeah. Love Shutterfly.

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Santa

So Erik and I finalized our discussion on Santa or no. I listed my cons (materialism, pulling away from the together aspect, not wanting an imaginary guy to get credit for what we scraped together, how difficult I must have been when I told my mom "Well, I'll ask Santa!", not wanting my kid to sit on some grown man's lap at Christmas, etc.) and then he listed his pros. He expressed how he wanted her to have that magic like he did. He said his mom would help out and "be" Santa on some of the gifts, so not all the pressure would be put on us. I remembered a printable on Pinterest I'd found once for a Christmas list to Santa to help keep kids from getting too greedy. I pulled it up.

The link went to a blog called Home by Heidi, but it took a lot of digging to find the right entry. It turns out she, too, found it on Pinterest, and it is an idea I've seen in various printable forms since. Erik loved it. He said his mom would be excited to buy her a book, and his Aunt Julie would be all over the clothes part. And his mom fills a stocking from Santa every year. So we wouldn't have the entire burden, and she also wouldn't get greedy. So you could say I caved, but I really think it was just a good compromise. Santa is on!

Nightmares

I've been gone a while. I've tried to write a post several times since, but every time I started, I couldn't get the wording right. I got busy for a while, too busy to blog, when I started a new job at St. Jude. Finally! I was out of retail! But it was a temp job and it fell through after two months, through no fault of my own. I was sworn he'd call us back as soon as possible. Hopefully, in a week! That was eight weeks and one day ago. I looked it up for ya'll. You're welcome.

So after about three weeks, my friend Katie (who I honestly don't know if I've talked about on here before) told me to apply at her JCPenney. So I did, and I got a phone call almost exactly ten minutes after I submitted my application online, before she could even tell her bosses, "Hey, I found your next star!" like she had promised. So I got hired and it's another temporary (seasonal) job, but I think this one actually will pan out. I've even almost gotten over how butthurt I felt when my supervisor at St. Jude consistently refused to call me back (he had told me to call after a certain day). I still have my locker key and he has my expensive tennis shoes locked up in there, but without my expired name badge, I can't even get onto the campus, and it's not worth the possible humiliation of someone there seeing me and recognizing me. I really miss some of the friendships that had been developing, though.

Anyway, now I'm dwelling again. I think I could really enjoy my time at JCP. We find out soon who stays and who goes, and I'm hoping to stay and move off the floor to the support team. If I go, we're fucked. We got our own place a few days before I lost the job at St. Jude, but went through with the move anyway. Luckily, we had a little bit of savings. When that ran out, we took out the ~three grand in Erik's old retirement fund from FedEx. That'll tide us over until he gets an extra couple grand from his student loan some time next month. Between those, we'll make it until he's done with school and can get a better job, hopefully as a decently-paid personal trainer, or maybe at a local high school. He'll be doing his internship this last semester there coaching the basketball team and there's a small-but-not-insignificant chance that it could turn into a job. I'm secretly rooting for personal trainer because I think it would pay better. However, coaching at a high school would be closer to his dream job (strength and conditioning coach for an NFL team), so I'd most rather he'd be happy.

So why did I title this post Nightmare? Because I woke up from one and retreated to my computer. Everyone has that one dream subject that really fucks with their mind. It makes you wake up and wish you didn't ever have to sleep again. Mine is zombies. It sounds laughable, but when you really think about what they are, and the terror that is suddenly being overrun by them and not having enough ammo or something, it's perfectly logical that a zombie dream would make you wake up, heart racing, all sweaty and terrified, and paranoid, and accidentally thinking the way that pile of laundry is sitting on the chair in your living room looks like a corpse sitting at rest waiting to wake at the sound of you. Oh, and also to make you terrified of your large glass patio doors, because that would be a very easy entry point. Point being, I am now sitting up at my computer because I will not go back to sleep. I have woken up a number of times and keep returning to the dream and I do not like it. I think I need to turn on something nice and sweet on Netflix, but that doesn't always work... I find myself really wishing I had my dog to snuggle...

Oh, that. We had to surrender Tucker to the animal shelter on Thursday. He has behavioral problems that came to a head. We could no longer ignore them or try to fix him. We were the wrong kind of family for him. For the sake of our daughter and our sanity, we had to give him up. Good news is, with the holidays upon us, the man at the shelter was very nice and optimistic about his chances of being adopted soon. He'd be perfectly for a family with a stay-at-home mom or something, especially with kids and maybe other dogs. He did better living with my parents, which made it so easy to ignore his problems. He had four dogs to follow and my mom was usually home. He responded to a shock collar and his only aggression was the occasional scuffle over food with the other big dog or if you spanked him he'd growl and if you got nasty, he might snap at you. A bad thing, I know. Not good around Everleigh, no matter how unbelievable he was with her. But something the right environment can work on.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about it. I didn't even plan on bringing it up. This post was originally going to be a quick sum up and then talking about the dilemma I have as a former Christian, especially around the holidays (religious songs that I still love, other ones that are more modern that I don't like that JCP plays and I accept in this public forum only because Jesus technically is the reason for the season, people tell me to have a "blessed day" and me awkwardly having to nod...). Really, I'm just always looking for quotes on Pinterest and there's plenty of good ones, but then they have "Psalms such and such" or something across it. And that's totally cool, but it's not like quoting other old texts. It has a current meaning and there are current followers. People will make assumptions about you, like if you post a lot of quotes from someone with a liberal stance. And while "Christian" is not the worst assumption for people to make (and the older black ladies I work(ed) with here or at St. Jude tend(ed) to assume so anyway), it's not me. Especially since it was me, I feel this urge to differentiate myself. Even when the quote is beautiful...

I'm not sure how to do Christmas without it. It's easy enough when you're just two of you, going between the homes of the extended family. But now I have Everleigh. Without the Christ of it, how do you make this something more than a holiday to celebrate materialism? Christmas means so much to me. It's a time for family and to express your love with gift giving and receiving. It's a time to make a mess with cookie baking and sharing and eating. It's not just consumerism to me. I actually feel the notion of "Santa" (be good only so you can receive more presents?) makes that harder to teach. I don't want to do Santa with her. My mom is all OMG YOU HAVE TO! and I think Erik wants to, too, so I'll probably cave...

Oh Lord, it's after two. I initially went to bed quite early because Evers went down too early. Then when I woke up, I wasn't even that sleepy anymore. Now is about when I'd go to sleep when I stay up late. Hell, my alarm still goes off exactly eight hours from now. But I'm going to sleep. In between taking too long to type this, I put on some beautiful Youtube covers and caught up with my oldest friend. It's been a good way to take my mind off... the thing I don't want to think about in case I have more dreams...

It's good to write again. I'll try to do it more often. I have some wonderful pictures from the town square with my daughter, my best friend, and her daughter. It's all lit up now. So beautiful. I also made sock snowmen that I found on Pinterest as a gift for my MIL. I'll share all these pictures soon. Night, guys.

Stationery card

Got ten free Holiday cards from Shutterfly in my email. Had to order by Tuesday. Picked a couple favorite pictures of our family and made one. It even took off the extra charge to have half of them come with pre-addressed envelopes because I hate addressing envelopes.

It makes me feel all ~special family~ and ~grown up~ to make a holiday card. I love Shutterfly. They ran a special for a 29.99 off (or free, if you get the same size I got last time) photobook a week or so ago that I caught on the last day. I gave my copy from before to Liza and so I ordered one for myself now.

I want Shutterfly gift cards...

Merry Everything Christmas Card

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Photo Book

So I got a free baby book offer from Shutterfly in the mail before Ever was born. I found it again yesterday and realized it was expiring on the 31st. So I decided to make a picture book of her first two months. Not only did I want to share it with you guys, but you also get a ten dollar certificate for embedding your projects. So, here it is! Tell me what you think.

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Organize My Life - Budgeting!

Yeah, I think my parents definitely decided to sell, they just have to decide what they want to buy first. It's so confusing.

I didn't get to that bin until yesterday. I suck. But what I did do is stay up til 5:30 yesterday morning working on budget spreadsheets in Excel. I made one for this month and plugged everything in, using a template provided for free even in my Starter version. I then made one for every month for the rest of 2012. I threw in thirty bucks for Ever's Halloween costume in October, if I feel like dressing her up. (It's a photo-op and I just can't resist those.) I budgeted in for Christmas in December, deciding how much we should spend on Ever and whether or not Erik and I will pay for our gifts to each other ourselves or if they can come out of the family budget. I allotted for a forty-a-month-each cash allowance for whatever the fuck we want. (We need that system.) And, even though December ended up negative, I managed to have us saving one hundred dollars a month - and that's without me getting a better job (I'm meeting with the guy from the Animal Research Center at St. Jude's next week Thursday, though) and with him leaving Best Buy after August.

Guys, I even budgeted in a box of my hair dye every month.

I wasn't done there. I went ahead and made a quarterly sheet for July through September and one for October through December. Then I made a yearly one, though it only calculates June through December. Then I went fancy and made those sheets (all in one file, a feature that makes me nerdgasm over Excel) calculate automatically.

Then I made 2013, January through December.

I was on a roll, guys.

I have a cold that hit hard Monday morning and basically wiped me out. I stayed up late with friends Sunday to celebrate Ever's baptism and then slept til after four in the afternoon, unable to make myself wake up. Then I napped all evening after dinner until I woke around ten or eleven. Then I couldn't sleep.

Do you want to see the beautiful fruits of my labor? (The answer is yes.)

You should totally look at it full-sized. It's awesome. Even though I forgot to turn "monthly" into "yearly" in the income sections. Oops...

I got to brag about it to Erik in the morning and then my mom. At first this will only be to find out how much we spend, where we can save, and eventually how much we can afford to live on when we move out. As it stand now, we're never getting the hell out of here. But if some things change around (if Erik gets a personal trainer job when he finishes classes, if I get a better job) we'll be able to work it out, and I'll e able to figure it out with the help of my handy-dandy spreadsheet.

I'm so excited, guys.

On a related note, I did get to the yellow bin last night. I had very little to throw away, but there were a lot of loose papers and folders just stacked in the bottom of the bin that I needed to file, plus a chunk of unused or barely used notebooks/journals that I need to rehome. I began to condense all Erik's school crap before needing to go to bed. (It was already a little after three.)

However, the only reason I wasn't able to do more was because in between I stopped and put away two big baskets full of Ever's laundry. There was so much folding and hanging! Then I went so far as to completely redo all her clothing storage. She has a new home for her socks, I got all her hats and bibs in their bin, and I relegated all pants, leggings, and skirts to a bin in the cubical shelves, even if they were the match to anything. My back was throbbing and burning by the time I'd finished. But hey, now I know where everything is. Erik doesn't, but I do. Haha.

There's so much that I want to do and so much going on. And I go back to work next week. Both excited and desperately not looking forward to it. I wanna get out of the house, but I don't wanna be on my feet that much. I hate retail. Hopefully it'll help give me the boost to lose all this weight, though. Anyone heard of the three day diet? I'm tempted to give it a shot while my dad's out of town. Problem is, I hate tuna. I don't think I like grapefruits, either, but I can give it a shot.

I've got more I want to do, but tonight is a break night, I think. I've got laundry going, a major multi-day project that's been building up and needing tackling. It counts. I need to be lazy, and maybe try to sleep at a decent hour tonight.

I leave you with my favorite picture from her exorcism baptism:

IT BURRRRRRRRNSSSSSSSS!!!!!

Organize My Life - Filing Away

My parents are probably going to sell their house. We've currently got all our crap stuffed in my old bedroom and - quite frankly - we have ten pounds of shit stuffed into a five pound can. They'll want to show the house, obviously, so we're going to have to fix this. This is a good-sized bedroom, but the way things are now, it doesn't look like it. I don't know what they're planning on us doing, but I'm trying right now to just condense and organize.

We have papers everywhere, boxes and bins of crap we don't need or even know about. The other night I was looking for a notebook of mine that I'd written Erik's bank account info in a while back because I wanted to be naughty and get something off etsy. I dug everywhere I could think of and never found my pink scribble book. I did, however, finally discover the location of my "missing" purple file bin. (I have a purple, green, blue, and yellow one. I thought I had a pink, but if I did, it's somewhere else now. I had managed to hide the purple one from myself in my closet.) I also found that the banker's box sitting on my closet shelf was not an organized box of anything. It was a dump site for a shit-ton of papers, mostly Erik's schoolwork.

That happens a lot, the random dumping of papers. We get a lot of things we need to file and a lot of random mail and it all ends up in one spot, just tossed there to be tended to later - and then it's not tended to. Ever.

I also had a ton of laundry all over that needed to be put away - especially Ever's laundry. So I enlisted Erik before he had to go to work tonight and we got that put away. Then after he left I pulled out the bins. There was a blue bin that was sorted but not filed - his schoolwork. Then there was the purple bin - existing files. I finally let go of sentimentality and threw away about half of it. There's still a yellow bin I haven't pulled out. I'll probably do it tomorrow or Friday. Tomorrow is Family Night and even though they're having it Saturday because Erik's grandma Joyce is in town for Everleigh's baptism (by the way, she's getting baptized Sunday), they want to do an early evening Thursday one. I think after that it'll be on the weekends because Erik's brother Ethan got a new job, too, so two of the brothers can't do it now. And I think Elliot will be able to do weekends. Not sure. It's all so confusing. I just show up where I'm told to be.

Anyway. Blue bin done. Purple bin done. Banker's box done. To do: Yellow bin. Pile on the printer. Crap on desk. Pile on cubicals (bookshelves). I think I have crap in the nightstand, too. But all these other piles are relatively small. The only big one left is the yellow bin, and that's already filed, I just need to condense it. It should be pretty easy.

This is me earlier, buried in papers and files on our bed:

Love my ratty old butterfly PJ pants.

See how messy the cubes are in the background? I will tame this room again.

I say again like we've ever been organized... When I first arrived at his house, all my crap was just dumped in his living room. I never fully unpacked even my clothes. And my mess made him messy because we were just all over each other - and not in the good way. (Well, also in the good way.) And then we moved very quickly into my old room, where we had even less room. But now I'm determined to fix this. I want to toss and shift and make it all good. I've never been organized in my life, but I want to get us our own place (even if it's a rental) and I want to start off fresh. I'm also working on a budget and figuring out how to live on our money. And we've vowed to eliminate fast food. And to work on an allowance each instead of free spending. I'm the worse one at that. And we're supposed to start saving. I wanna move out around the new year. If we take (big) baby steps, we might make that happen. His mom has already agreed to help us out with rent, at least until he's done with school and can get his personal trainer cert. They can make decent money right off the bat.

Anyway, I've hit my rambling point and I need to cut myself off. It's just shy of four in the morning. I couldn't help myself tonight. The baby is attempting to sleep through the night the last two nights, so she's let me work on this, and I had a burst of drive and energy. I actually committed to this one. Even with taking a break to watch this week's episode of Dallas on the DVR.

Right. Rambling.

This is my tired ass saying good night and signing off. Don't I look exhausted? I am. But also very pleased with myself.

Creature of the Night

First thing's first. VAMPIRE BEBEH!!!

When they wake up at 4:30 in the morning, you gotta do what you can to make light of the situation. For the record, the original picture is here. Isn't she adorable? My friend Dani told me she looks "derpy," though, and she kind of has a point lol. I love it. She can be totally ridiculous sometimes. I can't wait til she's older and can pose. Brooke (over at The Circle Married the Line) has a three year old and I love the sassy pictures she's got of her. I was a pretty cute kid, too, and my mom has some pictures that make me hope my kid's as adorable. XD That sounds really self-centered, but I don't mean it that way.

So while we're talking about me... I did not remember to weigh myself on time this week. However, I stole one of my mom's new cute shirts to go to a party Saturday night and it looked great. A little bit snug, but you couldn't really tell. My boobs looked fantastic. I actually got compliments. (My friends are not shy.) My mom's smaller than me right now, so I like being able to occasionally steal her cute clothes. I talked her into buying them anyway.

Hopefully I'll remember to weigh in next Thursday. Maybe I'll even post a photo. I think it'll have been a month, right? So nervous. I do not look any better.

Subject change entirely. The aforementioned Brooke and I have created a collaborative blog to craft and bake and be ridiculous in. We have named it Two Broke Women Doing Random Shit. The username "doingrandomshit" was actually available, so duh. We had to pick that one. There's a link in the tabs on the top of my blog. So far we haven't done anything but format it and write a test post, but when we finally get around to doing anything, I'll post about it. I want to try making Oreo Brownies with a mix I have in the pantry, and I also volunteered to help my mom make photo coasters based off these photo blocks as a super touching gift for her best friend's fiftieth birthday. She's the last of the four of them to turn fifty. My dad just did in June and she does in August. They're the babies. She and her husband got my dad a super sweet (and hilarious, and raunchy) Shutterfly book of pictures from their friendship together since we met them fourteen years ago.

Holy crap, I feel old. Just last night I realized I'd been friends with two of the people I was partying with (one being the host, my BFF Katie) since I was 13. I'm 22. Nine years. Nearly a decade I've known these bitches lol. I guess that's why I still put up with their crap. Glad I do, too, or I wouldn't have met Erik. He was into Katie when I met him and I was about to move to Colorado to be with my now ex-fiance. Crazy stuff, right?

Okay, she's been asleep an hour now and I think she actually really is going to sleep. I wonder if I should risk moving her to her bassinet. She doesn't like laying in it very much and I don't know why. But she's hogging the bed lol. She's, like, twelve pounds or something (I really have no idea right now) and yet manages to hog the king-sized bed. She's like my Shih Tzu Randi. Jeez...

Well, for one reason or another, I'm ending this post and going to try and get some sleep. OB appointment this afternoon. Night! And morning!

Six Weeks

This growth spurt thing is crap. It's five in the morning and I still haven't gone to sleep. Yesterday I woke my mom up at five because I was scared I was gonna lose it if she didn't take her, and then I cried myself to sleep. She used to actually have her nights down. She might stay up til three, but then she'd sleep at least six hours. Now she's out all day, but takes thirty minute power naps at night before waking up and bawling. She eats and eats and eats. I'm supposed to return to work soon and I don't know how in the world I'll do it... Erik works nights now. He can't stay up with her and let me get sleep anymore. He's not even home.

I hate this. I love her, but I hate this.

Andy

You know a particularly interesting thing about being in a committed, totally secure long-term relationship is? Making friends. Mainly, male friends. When I first started dating Erik, I was living in Colorado. His other friend from Memphis, also entwined in my group of friends but I'd never met him, had moved a couple months before me to Denver. His name is Andy. He's pretty much a totally awesome dude. He's 24 or 25, a gunsmith, prematurely balding, and a little taller than me, but not much. He's one of the most fun people to talk to ever and a total catch, especially since the balding thing isn't too noticeable yet and he's not that short, he just seems it next to Erik who is ginormous. He's sarcastic, and smart, and ridiculously funny. He's also incredibly generous, with his time and his financial means.

If I hadn't been dating Erik, I would have been looking at him through the eyes of a single woman looking for a mate. I looked at every man I met that way. It kept me from really making friends with any guy. But I never looked at Andy that way. I saw him as a cool, fun guy that shared a recently-acquired interest of mine (guns). Hell, the day I met him he gave Erik a brand new shotgun he'd built for his birthday, which was just four days away.

I wouldn't have gotten to meet him like this. Well, I might have met him since he was associated with some of our friends already, but I got to look at him as a person and not a penis. It's a much better view of the world. Now he's almost definitely going to Kuwait to make guns for anywhere from one to three years. He'll come back debt-free (he has to pay back gunsmithing school, which he just finished last summer) with 100 to 150k in the bank, ready to buy a house and start a life. How brilliant is that?

I'm nervous about him going to Kuwait, though. I know he'll probably be fine, he's not exactly a soldier, but it's still very dangerous. That's what sparked this post. I realized how much a love him, and it's purely a platonic thing. I'm protective of him like I am my brother or Erik's brothers when he goes back and forth with this destructive, needy girl I'm kind of friends with cause I have to be. I worry about him getting hurt. He's one of my best friends - and he's a guy, and straight. I have had this with two other guys. One was gay and I was still in love with him secretly (then again, I was a silly teenager). The other, the one who got me into guns, I still ended up half-naked with one night once. I am not good at separating things. Not every man is a penis. They may all have one (well most of them, but that's pretty off-topic), but not every man is one.

It's something I hope I can instill in my daughter. Make male friends. Worry about picking a mate from your pool of friends. Strangers to friends, friends to boyfriends. Don't skip that middle part. I want that for her.

I Want Cookies

It's almost 5:30 in the morning and I haven't gone to bed yet, so why not write an entry! That's the logic behind today's post.

I have to say, I cannot wait for cold weather. I want to bake and experiment and right now the A/C is on the fritz, at least downstairs in the kitchen, and even if it was working well down there, turning on the oven is just a bad idea. I live in Memphis and we live in a house with shitty, leaky, single-pane windows with rotting trim that make it 83 degrees when it's set to 75. It does not get any cooler during the day. Add on the 300% humidity and the last thing you want to do is bake cookies. However, I've spent far too much of my time on Pinterest finding recipes and crafts. Between the two, my head is swirling and buzzing and all I want is to do stuff, but I don't have the money for it.

My life. For reals.

And I also love Scrivener. I'm making a recipe book using the template they have for it. It's unbelievably awesome. I copy and paste recipes in and it's very simple to format it how I want if I paste it in with destination formatting (ctrl+shift+V instead of just ctrl+V). Since there's always an image, I paste that in until I'll be able to take and add my own pictures.

Last Christmas I tried a few new cookie recipes, a Nutella-swirled peanut butter cookie that everyone loved (my PB cookies are legendary and a huge hit in this house, plus Erik is a Nutella freak so it was obvious that I had to try this), a Rolo cake mix cookie (it's impossible to describe without the recipe and pictures) that went over pretty well as well, and a peanut butter-banana-honey-oat dog cookie. I got the boys to try the batter on the dog cookie and they admitted it wasn't that bad. I think the dog cookie may have been the biggest hit the way my dogs went nuts and the way even Erik's old dog at his parents' house, Bandit, loved them. I was told she never usually likes dog treats.

Anyway, all of this was done on the 23rd and 24th, very last minute. I wish I'd been smart and started baking sooner. This year, the moment it gets chilly I'm pulling up Pinterest, pulling up my Scrivener recipe book (I'm so sad because due to computer death I lost the other one I'd been working on, so I'll have to re-Google some recipes), and breaking out the cookie sheets. Making this recipe book just fuels my need.

There was honestly no point to this post. I'm just sleep-deprived because I don't think Ever's feeling too great, yet I can't sleep anyway. Erik took her out of the room for the last hour and I didn't even yawn. I think I'm becoming nocturnal, which sucks since I'll have to go back to work again soon... Oh well. We'll figure it out.

Thing is, though, she was a great sleeper at first. This only happened in the last two or so weeks...

For God's Sake...

Erik let me pass out when he got home from work last night, but now she's mine since five. She won't sleep... Why won't she sleep? She's been fed, burped, changed... I swaddled her, it made her mad. I unswaddled her, she's still mad. She's in her swing, rocking. She wants me to hold her, but she hasn't slept all night, and I honestly didn't sleep very well either. The light was on, I still had my bra on, and I kept listening for her.

I'm going to go insane...

UPDATE: (6:35am)

Omg, she might be falling asleep. Please God... PLEASE...

Weight, Writing, and Brains

Yesterday afternoon I weighed myself and I was 237.5, but this morning I was 235.5 so I'm not sure which it is. I'm just going with it. If I go with the lower one, I still keep gaining a pound a week. I don't know why. I'm not really trying hard or anything, but I'm not binging or anything either. I barely eat thanks to Ever. Maybe that's the problem. I need to try to eat better and get some sort of breakfast in. I found a pin for salad in a jar that doesn't go bad for a week. If I can convince my mom to buy a vacuum sealer (fat chance, but I'll give it a shot) I might be able to do it. I love salads. So does Erik and my dad, so that might help convince her.

New subject, I've started a blog for a series of posts for a story I've had in my head. I don't know if I'll keep up with it for very long, but I wanna try and update it once a week or so to keep the story going. It's called Project White Wing and the link is in the top tabs on this blog.

More random. My little chubs keeps wanting to eat and eat. I've gotten used to it now, but I keep having to make new bottles and then she tops herself off with a little more and so often I forget to refrigerate the leftovers. Ounces of formula at a time go to waste that way. My brain is completely crapped out. I need more sleep. And to get better at remembering to put the bottles in the fridge.

By the way, Erik's new job is the full time position. :D

Photobomb

Erik and I went out to celebrate his new job last night. We went and saw Ted. It was pretty funny. I liked it. It was one of those stupid comedies that wasn't completely awful. But maybe it's because Mila Kunis is damned sexy and awesome. And afterward, we went to The Fox and Hound, a pub near his parents' house. I got a couple of pictures. I can't put them on Facebook for a little bit because Erik played hookie from work last night, but I can put them on here.

This was called "Island Rum Berry Punch," I think. It was fantastically fruity. I also tried a vodka drink called "Fruit Loopy," and we each did a shot called "Apple Jack," Jack Daniels and some Sour Apple thing. It was delicious.

My cheeks are so flushed from the alcohol in those last two. Those were in his mom's bathroom while we picked up Everleigh. Speaking of which, she turned a month old on the 30th (she was born May 31st) and I got some pictures of her in her birthday outfit last night. She's adorable.

 We call this her grumpy old man face.

That's all. I'm getting really into Pinterest lately and I want to try crafting some things. Erik and I have to hit the stores anyway, so I might get a few supplies. My camera isn't the best (I wish I had my dad's, but he and my mom are in Idaho for a week visiting their best friends), but if I make anything, I'll try and take pictures and post them.

Happy Milestone

She smiled at me!!!!! She's smiled and even laughed in her sleep a few times, but that was her first conscious smile. Erik put her in my arms when she woke up and then disappeared and she turned her head and smiled at me. I don't know or care why, all I know is it happened. To me. Not him. Because she loves her mommy.

But then we gave her a bath and now she's mad again. lol

Oh, and I found my wallet. I'm an idiot.

I Need Sleep...

I woke up at 11:10 today and had a mini heart attack. Everleigh had a doctor's appointment at 11:00 today. I spent almost ten minutes trying to find my wallet with the business card from the office before finding the phone number on something else from the hospital. (I still have no idea where my wallet is...) I called and I'm pretty sure the same guy answered that made her very first appointment. Guess what? Her appointment was yesterday at eleven.

The guy was super sympathetic, but I could tell he was amused and was probably going to have a good laugh at my expense afterward. He got me to spell her name (it is a difficult name) and I think he called her a boy. I'm not sure how that spelling is a boy name. Everly doesn't even seem like a boy name, even though it's listed unisex on the only baby name site where I've ever found it. Anyway, he rescheduled me for next Monday and made it for 3:30. So I can get some sleep, apparently.

And that's been the adventure of the morning. I have spent the rest of the time on Pinterest, entertaining myself looking at things under the Kids category. I love Pinterest.