5/9/08

I’m having a baby shower! Please visit:

http://www.webbabyshower.com/mullen/

It’s been a good day… a LONG day, but  a good day.  I went for my 3 hour test, which went fine, met with the nutritionist (for lack of a better term.  I think she is more than that, but I’m not sure.)  I forgot to ask her what it will mean if I fail the 3 hour test.  She said I’d be sent over to the hospital to do something called "Sweet Success"  and this is a program for women w/ gestational diabetes.  Okay… I’m THREE weeks away from giving birth.  This will be too little, too late, as with everything else in this pregnancy.  She seemed impressed/happy I’d not gained a bunch of weight.  So that’s good.  I kind of keep expecting everyone NOT to be happy about that, but truthfully, from what I’ve read, it’s fine if an overweight woman doesn’t gain weight during pregnancy… and in fact, women over a certain BMI can LOSE and still be fine.  Since I didn’t know for sure what my BMI was, and wasn’t under a doctor’s care, I wasn’t going there.  But I wasn’t going to gain a bunch, either. 
I’m awfully dehydrated, and I can’t seem to "catch up" on it… though I’m trying darn it, I’m trying.
We decided to go to Hometown Buffet for dinner… with the kids being 2.00, it feels doable.  Instead of paying 40-50 dollars for dinner, it’s around 30.  NOT bad.  Not for a nicer dinner anyway.  The food is better than Burger King or McDonalds!  I just LOVE the clam chowder at HT.  Yum.  Oh, and they had pizza out, and it was SOOO good.  I was pleasantly surprised.
I got a nap in today, that felt good.  It usually does though, lol.  Actually, I find a nap necessary to my sanity and well being.  I think I said that before… perhaps a few times.  I DO tend to repeat myself without really realizing it.

Oh… someone finally sent me a bible, and I have NO clue who it was.  It might have been the woman who promised it to me like months ago?  I couldn’t really tell who it was.  Unfortunately, it’s one that’s filled with old-fashioned language.  I let it fall to a place and started reading, but it didn’t accomplish what I thought it would.  Well, I have to admit, I don’t know WHAT I’m looking for anymore.  So perhaps I wasn’t clear in my mind when I tried that exercise.  I must also admit to a bit of frustration with getting what I THINK is a clear thought or understanding of something, only to discuss it with someone else and have it rather torn to shreds (and not their fault, mind you… just perhaps my reasoning…)  I do not know what is truth or fiction anymore.  I do not know what to make of the world around me anymore.  Not truly.  I can’t say I’ve lost my center, but I just HAVE to deeply question Christianity.  And perhaps even, Religion.  I’m deeply spiritual.  Deeply.  I can feel my connection to God the most, to the Earth a TAD less (due to being in my head too much, I tend to lack "grounding" and always have.  My children ground me the most, truthfully… them AND DH.)  I am not one to love being in Nature.  I love it when I’m in it, but I don’t seek it out.  Perhaps that’s a better explanation.  Mom was/is an intellectual, Dad the one who would go hunting and more nature-loving… but I was raised by mom, so tend to be more like her.  I am perhaps a tad too materialistic.  BUT, that’s because of a need for security, not a need for "things"  When faced with foreclosure, I knew I could walk away if needed (though WHAT do do with ALL my scrapbooking stuff and nonsense?  I mean, the books themselves contain YEARS of memories and personal creations, and I realize I’ve got an overload of "stuff" to create that with.)  I’m VERY glad we didn’t lose the house though!   But I could have walked away.  I am sentimental, I must admit.  I have my baby blanket that I received as an infant.  I have my scrapbooks with about 8 years of family history now.  I LOVE my computer, it contains much of my life on it.  But, put it on CD or DVD and it becomes pretty mobile .  One of these days I’m going to need a new computer anyway… haven’t had a new computer in 5, 6 years?  That’s a long time in computer years, lol… my computer is like a grandpa computer.  I tried to install something on it yesterday, and it’s so old, I couldn’t, boo hoo.
Still… I could walk away.  I MIGHT be forced to bring my laptop though, lol ;).
What I WOULD take with me is my family.  For sure.  Because without them… the scrapbooks wouldn’t have a reason for being….well, that’s NOT entirely true either, because there are plenty of women out there w/ no family who scrapbook about their friends, their pets, and their lives.  STILL… my family is important.  THAT’S what the point is.  What it boils down to is… my priorities ARE straight.  If I complain about the kids and their driving me nuts… well, if I didn’t CARE, they couldn’t get under my skin like that.  I love them.  I make a point to try and be the best mom I can, even to, or perhaps especially to, the older two.  Growing up, with a mom who gave BIRTH to me, for heaven’s sake, I always felt like she could have done without me.  Like she would have just been happier if she hadn’t had to deal with me.  And I read so many stories, and HEARD so many stories about step moms and step grandmas who always treated the biological kids better, it was really obvious that they preferred the biological kids.  And I resolved NEVER to be like that.  So I’m an equal opportunity yeller ;).  LOL… just kidding (not really though… they ALL get yelled at when I’m at my breaking point…even Sammi at this point)  I love them.  I really do.  My life would be less without them in it, it truly would.  And I’m excited at the prospect of having another girl… even though at this point, she remains unnamed, and Jerry seems to HATE the name I love.  Sigh.  I’m probably still not going to get my Stephanie… even though other than Shabree, it was a name I dreamed of.  And yesterday when he was getting irritated about trying to nail down a name, I was right, it wasn’t because he was in the middle of an email, it was because any naming decisions were being taken out of his hands.  I think… I think I’m just going to tell him to name her.  Leave me out of it completely, PLEASE.  Because he’s right, I named Shabree, and Sammi was a family decision, so her name he got in on, but didn’t really decide… but then, he was fine with that.  We all picked it out together.  I just can’t claim to be in love with Jacqueline Diane as a name.  It does NOT feel right for a child of mine.  It’s too… I don’t know… girly.  I’m NOT a girly girl.  I have always been rather… lacking in those qualities.  Well, maybe when I was a LITTLE girl, because I REMEMBER loving to wear dresses.  You knowwhat made me hate them?  Eczema.  Sigh.  I had it on the backs of my knees starting at age ten, and I quit wearing dresses.  Plus, my classmates at Catholic school, NONE of them wore dresses, they ALL wore jeans.  So I wore jeans to fit in, and I don’t believe I ever looked back.  I never did care for wearing dresses after that.  Plus, I have a toe that sticks up, so any dressy shoes always hurt my feet terribly, and so I could never stand to be dressed up for any length of time.   My mom discouraged my wearing make up, so I gave up on it entirely… as I was apt to do with anything she didn’t really "approve" of.  Part of my depression, too, I suspect.  To try and make myself beautiful when I hated everything about me and my life…
Some days I’m amazed I EVER made it to adulthood, and not only that, but made it with a sense of being ok.  There were so many days when all I ever wanted to do was die.  But a spark of hope for the future always burned… the feeling like if I could just get THROUGH all of it, I’d be ok… and I was.  But therein again… I felt connected to God.  I felt like there was SOME unseen force that loved me and comforted me and would tell me it was going to be ALL RIGHT, one day… just hang on for today.  Get through today.  Tomorrow would be another day.  Some day, I’d grow up,  MAYBE get married, but definitely I would have kids that I could love and enjoy.  Never any question that someday I’d have kids… even if I had to take matters into my own hands there.  I WOULD have children.  I loved kids so much.  I loved playing with them, I loved being around them, I loved taking care of them.  And perhaps I loved who *I* was when I was around kids.  And dogs, lol…  always my two favorite creatures in the world, kids and dogs.  I dreamed of saving the world, one kid at a time.  I dreamed of how great a mom I would be… better to my kids than my mom was to me.  Truthfully… with some human-ness, and a husband who keeps me from going overboard, I think I can say I accomplished THAT goal, so far.  I try.  I have my days when I regret what I’ve done, but I have more good days than bad with them.  They don’t seem to have the eternal air of sadness I always carried around with me.  I think I frustrated my mom more than anything with that.  She couldn’t get through to me… but I could never tell her SHE was the reason I was so sad… her and my brother.  That she just had a way of putting things that always made me feel less than.  That she had names for me that hurt me to the core.  That I never felt like I could do anything (other than sing maybe) to please her.  And when she said I love you… there was always a "but" …  and that but meant she didn’t REALLY love me.  I got to this place where I would just mentally beat myself up.  My pain was so deep, but somehow it gave me pleasure to know if she could hurt me, I could do it to myself so much worse.  Any name she could call me, I could call myself a worse name.  I could think of half a dozen ways to kill myself, easily.  I played with fire, I was self destructive, I got lousy grades, I was lazy, I never wanted to try (why try when you’re just going to fail?), and there wasn’t anything my mom said that I really didn’t take as a personal attack. 
But there still remained some voice of reason within me that whispered constantly… you’re ALL right… you’ll BE all right.  Hang on Sarah.  Hang on.  I desperately wanted to be positive, I KNEW I was always negative, but I knew positive people existed, and I wanted to be one of them.  I wanted to love myself so that others would love me.  My life was just about getting from one day to another, it was survival, and figuring out how I could "fix" myself some day when I was able.  I was broken, and I knew it.  I felt doomed to be a person who never grew up wandering through life, aimless, forever.  It was a fight that raged constantly.  I wanted to be a person who KNEW what she wanted to do, had the self confidence or whatever it took to get it.  I always QUIT.  I hated myself for that.  It took years before I could accept many of my flaws.  I didn’t necessarily want perfection from myself… just better.  It just seemed like it took everything I had to get up, shower, go to school, deal with people, deal with my mother and my brother.  I rarely did homework, barely passed certain classes.  But then I would do things that I didn’t HAVE to do, just because I thought I SHOULD, like I took Algebra, when all I’d had to take was Pre Algebra.  It made no sense, I hated math.  But someone told me it would help me in college, and I wanted to leave my avenues open.  I decided when I was 13 I would never do drugs, because my dad told me that if I ever went into the military, they could tell if you’d ever done them, and I didn’t know if that was something I wanted to do or not, but I didn’t want to close it off to myself, the possibility.  I admired my dad’s military service, so perhaps that was something I’d want to do.  It ended up really NOT being ANYTHING I wanted to do, but at the age of 13, I just wanted to have all my options open to me.  In some ways, I was just wise beyond my years, and in others, I was a Peter Pan… and I knew it. 

Well, I’ve got to quit rambling…and Shabree REALLY wants me to come watch The Kid with the family, so I guess I’ll stop the sad trip down memory lane, and go do that.  I don’t know what I’m trying to figure out for myself…  hopefully it’ll come to me, because I really don’t need to be re-hashing some of this… it’s counter productive, I think.