New Year . . . New Me? Ha! Very funny.

Happy Friday the 13th everyone!

I know popular culture suggests we all make resolutions this time of year to change who we are for the better, but this year I'm not resolving to change who I am but rather figure out who I was in the first place. 

Every year I vow to change this or that, to be a better mom, wife, teacher, Christian, person, etc. I work at all of these things for about a week, a month if things go well, then life happens and reality sets in and I get flustered with my failures and give up. It donned on me this year that I've been going about things all wrong. I'm trying to change to fit a certain mold that I most certainly am not meant to fit. Like my voluptuous rear end and cute jeans . . . . some things are just not meant to be.

It's common knowledge that we're supposed to spend our 20's "finding ourselves." We're supposed to change majors, jobs, cities and significant relationships till we find what we love, then spend our 30's "settling down" into our new, lovely lives. My stark reality is that I was married and had two kids by the time my 20's started. I certainly don't regret any of it and couldn't be more happier with the way my life has turned out, but when contemplating my resolutions for this year, I realized that every other year was spent focusing on who I was expected to be and not improving who I actually was. Because I don't know who I am.
But I do know who I am not. So that's where I'm going to start. Who knows, maybe by the end of the year, I will have figured life out and while others spend their 30's getting their real adult lives started, I'll be coasting on pure bliss : )

My List of Things I am NOT:
1) School Teacher - I have been mad at myself for the past year because I still feel like I haven't figured out the whole home schooling thing and as a consequence, I am failing my children. I know very few home school moms, but the ones I do know are fantastic. They're also college educated school teachers. They sit down in August and make lesson plans for the whole year. They spend their evenings grading papers and going over the next day's subject matter. I'm lucky if I grade my kids papers at all. Not because I don't care, but because I am sitting right next to them while they do it and correct as they go. I also plan as I go. I find out what's on the page at the same time as my kids. Yes, this has gotten me in a jam with big projects I didn't know were right around the corner, but the joy of home schooling is that if you're not prepared, put it off till you are. It's not going to kill anyone to get a day or two behind in Botany because you didn't have an empty coke bottle and two tons of potting soil on hand. While I have learned that I'm not a structured school teacher type, I've also learned that I'm not the awesome un-schooling type either. I'm pretty convinced the great un-schooling moms I know are from another planet. I can't fit an entire days worth or curriculum into a baking project or a walk to the park. Maybe it's my lack of higher education or just that I have a hard time making my brain work on their level all day long. I know it's not lack of creativity, just maybe lack of wanting my entire existence to revolve around making sure I can put a history lesson in sandwich making. Also, I like books. Books give me guidance because I know I would probably forget to teach my kids how to conjugate verbs and then they'd come at me with fire in their eyes when they get lower than fantastic SAT scores. Also, I like the 15 minutes I get to screw around on Pinterest while they work on their sentence structure. So, I'm not a school-at-home-er and I'm not an un-school-er. I'm in the middle somewhere and now all I need to do is figure out where and what that is.
2) Maid - One blogger I follow is a perfectly nice individual who usually posts craft ideas, recipes and fun things to do with your kids on rainy days. When you read through her posts she seems like super mom meets Martha Stewart meets Mother Theresa. But if you scroll down, you'll see a little headline that reads "People I Want to Punch in the Throat." Priceless.
I have the same list, though I don't post it on line and instead keep it in my head where no one can see it. I am going to post one, and that is the over enthusiastic house cleaners. The ones that claim they LOVE cleaning house. I have determined three things about these women:
        a) They're liars. No one LOVES to clean, especially moms. Moms clean, then two minutes later everything that they've done has been undone. They have husbands who leave their dirty socks under the coffee table, sons who pee on the toilet seat, daughters that get nail polish on counters, dogs that shed mounds of hair, the list goes on. Liar, liar, pants on fire.
        b) They're on something. And I want some.
        c) They really do love to clean, and they spend all day doing it. If not, it's because their kids aren't allowed to bring toys or crayons out of their rooms which turns them into hermits, their husbands are afraid of what might happen if they leave their coat on the back of the chair instead of hanging it in the closet, and their guests feel like they can't touch or breath near anything for fear of smudging the shiny polished oak. Nope, not me at all.
Not only do I not love cleaning, I actually LOATHE it. Keeping a house clean with a husband, three kids and a dog is the definition of insanity. Every year I make a cleaning schedule for myself and every year it lasts a week or two. I can never get caught up and when I spend an entire day cleaning I feel guilty for ignoring my kids (who consequently have destroyed whatever room I've locked them in). So, I hate cleaning but I also hate a messy house. My cleaning resolution is to spend the half hour before my husband gets home cleaning up whatever mess we've made during that day, making the kids learn how to clean their own bathrooms and do their own laundry, and hiring a real maid to come in once or twice a month and do all the time-sucking stuff that makes me want to take up drinking.

3) Athlete - Yes, I pretended to be one in high school, but I never really liked sports. I liked volleyball, but mainly because it was the one thing I was better at than most the other girls. I hated running, hated lifting, hated that if I didn't run or lift I'd look like the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man by the end of the month. I'm short, I have zero metabolism and hips that are perfect for delivering babies but terrible for losing weight. Thankfully my husband likes curves. Unfortunately, my curves are starting to get curves of their own and while I have the utmost respect for women who are proud of their bodies no matter what they look like, I am not. So here's my delimma. I can pretend that I love to work out, get a gym membership and quit because I don't have any kid free time to speak of while also pretending that I can live off of three celery sticks a day and quit because chips and salsa are just that good, or I can find a happy medium. I need to lose 30 lbs, but I'm not going to set a deadline. I'm just going to resolve to work at it, and when it happens it happens, as long as there's progress. I already eat a mostly vegan diet, so eating healthy isn't much of a change, I just need to eat more and eat earlier. I live off of four cups of coffee, an afternoon snack and a decent sized dinner. It's not good even if it is only 700 calories. I'm also getting an elliptical. I can do it while I watch the news in the morning and it won't kill me like a treadmill so I may actually stick to it. Here's hoping.
4) SAHM/HSM/WaM- If you follow family-related blogs, you'll interpret these to mean "stay at home mom", "home school mom" and "wife and mother". While I know technically I am all of these, I have a really hard time defining myself as any of them. I do envy those women who wear their SAHM title like a badge of honor. Their lives are filled with cupcakes, play dates and Starbucks. They drive mini vans and wear yoga pants . . . every day. They have routines and their kids and husbands are generally happy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of it. Except that it's not me. I have tried and tried to be these things, but no matter how fulfilled someone else might be, I am not. Though I know the world would fall apart if anything were to happen to me, I still feel like I'm not contributing or living up to my potential. So this year, instead of trying to be an acronym, I'm going to figure out what I really need to do to feel fulfilled. Not happy, because I really am truly happy, but instead not feeling like there's something missing. I'm going to finish my children's book, start a novel, make things, hopefully sell them, get involved in our new community, dabble in politics and do my best to give more.

So that's it in a nut shell. I'm hoping that spending ten years finding out who I am not will make quick work of figuring out who I really am. So buckle up, because this could get interesting : )

The C Word (or Why I Have Rule #1)

So not long after I started my little blog, I began realizing that I should set some rules for my self. Of course, this realization only came after saying a few things I wished I hadn't, but hindsight is 20/20. While my rules are few, number one is certainly the most important: Don't write about a problem until after you've solved it. Some of you may disagree, explaining that sharing your current predicament with the world would give others the opportunity to provide an unbiased perspective on the situation. While this is true, I can't agree that it's helpful. Just because something works for someone else doesn't mean that it would work for me. And while I could say that I wouldn't let others opinions influence my choices, I'd be fibbing. Once you read something, especially when it relates to you on some level, it's stuck in the back of your head and will be recalled whether you intend to or not.
That being said, now on to why I've been on hiatus. It wasn't a problem, per say. More like a situation. One that I was having a little trouble dealing with.
Right after I had Bonnie, I went in for my post-baby removal (she was removed, not spit out) and had the normal girly tests done, only the results didn't come back so normal. So they did biopsies and discovered that I was in the early stages of cervical cancer. Since this is a military facility, they are very vague and not helpful when it comes to offering up explanations of findings and such. So naturally, I went home and googled the heck out of it. At the stage I was at, it was very easy to get rid of with something called a L.E.E.P. procedure (I'll spare y'all the details). Chris and I had already remedied the hyper-fertility problem, so since we didn't plan on having more little imps running around, there should be no reason to not do it, right? WRONG. Before I could even get a call back from my doctor after leaving several messages, I got a letter from the OB/GYN department saying they decided on a course of action . . . or lack there of . . . and that they'd see me in a year to see if I'd progressed. I finally reached my PCM (primary care manager for those of you who are lucky enough to not have government-run insurance) and she said that TriCare (government-run health insurance) won't allow any procedures until you've reached Stage 1 and are sent to oncology. The girly doctor department is so backed up with post-deployment pregnancies that being seen once a year is about as good as they can do. So can I get a referral to go off post? Nope. Can I get a second opinion? Nope. Can I pay for an off post doctor to do a second opinion myself? Well sure! If you have the money (which I didn't) and if you're prepared to get the door slammed in your face when you come back to Madigan. Apparently, Madigan (or maybe this is all military medical facilities) doesn't take too kindly to us not liking their diagnosis and going elsewhere on our own dime. They absolutely WILL NOT consider any and all anything from an outside physician. Period. So I waited my one year. I went back in, had another biopsy and guess what . . . I got worse. Not bad enough to warrant treatment of course, but bad enough to need to be seen in six months rather than twelve. Yay. So helpful. So I waited again, got yet another biopsy (considering the location I'm sure you all can assume how NOT FUN these appointments were), then got the same news again. Getting worse, but not bad enough for treatment and not fast enough to need to be seen anytime soon. At this point I'm begging them to please just take all the girly parts out. They're all messed up anyways and I don't need them anymore. Of course they would absolutely not even consider this. Because after all, I'm only 29 . . . with three kids . . . and a messed up cervix . . . and I may change my mind and want to have even MORE kids. So dumb.
(Side note: Why in the world is the military not encouraging sterilization? They won't allow anyone under 26 to be "fixed" no matter how many kids they have. They won't allow anyone under 30 to be "fixed" if they only have one kid and are content with that. They won't allow single parents to be "fixed" and they will pay for you to get a boob job to attract a mate, they'll pay for you to get in vitro fertilization if your mate can't do the job, and they'll pay for you to get gastric bypass and psychotherapy when said mate bails on you for gaining too much baby weight . . . . but they won't pay for preventive medicine . . . so stupid. Ok, off my soap box)
So anyways, somewhere in the middle of all this, my PCM had prescribed something to fix my other girly problems (told you they were all messed up) and come to find out, one of the side effects of that particular medicine is that it can accelerate the growth rate of cancerous cells. Genius. I'm sure you're all jumping off your chairs to go sign up for Obama-care.
Long story short, the last time I went in for yet another biopsy, the doctor's tone made me realize that it finally had gotten bad enough. When the lab results came back, she called me to confirm the assumption and to let me know that oncology would be handling my appointments from now on. And that I'd finally be getting that procedure I'd been asking for. I think she was a little put-off by my not upset-ness. After all, I'm supposed to want to NOT have cancer . . . and to continue with the uncomfortable biopsies every three to six months for ever and ever. No thank you.
Get worse to get better, that's what I'd been telling myself for some time now. But I wasn't better. I was actually much, much worse. I woke up the next morning with horrible stomach and chest pains, aching in all my joints and my hands were shaking like I hadn't eaten in a week. Poor Chris didn't know what to do with me. I didn't feel sick, so I didn't want to go to the ER (since with government care you can't get a same-day with your PCM). I just felt like the whole world was collapsing down on top of me. Apparently, there's something called Sudden Onset Hyperactive Stress Disorder. It's what happens when a person copes well under constant high levels of stress but experiences a "trigger event" (my cancer call) that causes a break. Like a normal person's panic/anxiety attack times 1,000. Come to find out, constantly needing to control the chaos is actually a bad thing. My new life motto needs to be "Let it be."
I got over my ordeal in a couple days, constantly repeating in my head that I had to get worse to get better. But I still had to tell my mom, among other things. Then the "Welcome!" letter came from the oncology department. That was so weird. Like they have to be friendly but serious. I deal much better with sarcasm and inappropriate jokes. So anywho, that's where I've been and what I've been doing. Making the day to day more important than what's going on inside. Going on field trips with the kids, putting together Annabelle's bridging ceremony for Girl Scouts, going to my favorite little beach, Solo Point, with the whole family, taking lots of pictures. I know what I have is not near as bad as most I'll see when I go up to oncology in a couple weeks, but it's still a big deal to me. My procedure is July 14th. The kids will be in Texas with Mom and Dad suffering from heat exhaustion, Chris used me as an excuse to get off work so he'll be bringing me fresh fruit and keeping Bonnie busy. I plan on milking it for as long as I can : )

Get worse to get better . . . . and get better, I will.

My best friend and biggest supporter : )