Holy crap!! I'm 38!?!

I woke up super early this morning and I have to admit it may have been because today is MY DAY to get pages full of birthday wishes on The Facebook and I couldn't wait to sit and watch them roll in and feel all special and loved and the center of cyber-attention, which is way more fun than actually being the center of attention in like real life or something like that.

I also had the opportunity to spend 52* glorious minutes alone with my coffee and my thoughts and my 2 cats and the dog and ponder the meaning of life and bemusedly watch as the dog and the cats struggled with the concept of the Screen Door and how they can't seem to see it or understand that they can't walk through it. Heh.

Anyway, I digress...when left alone with my thoughts this morning, I got to thinking...HOLY CRAP...I AM 38!?  I don't know why 38 sounds so much older than 37, but it does. I also know that I don't FEEL anymore 38 than I felt 37. I feel about 26 or so. Some days, I feel 16 or 12 or maybe about 9. I most certainly do not feel old enough to have a husband and a step kid. People and animals who rely on me. A house. A car. Real responsibilities. My own bank account. When did all this happen? And when does one begin to FEEL like an adult? Or is it just me?

I read an article yesterday in Self Magazine about birthdays. One woman related each birthday to a percentage of awesomeness...as in yesterday I was 37% awesome and today I am 38% awesome. I like this. Even though that is like barely 1/3 awesome...it means that well a) I'm awesome, b) I get awesome-er every year and c) there is plenty of room left for growing awesomeness. Yessss.

Awesomeness seems to be my word lately. I checked out the Urban Dictionary definition and it says "An unmeasurable amount of awesomenimity something can produce." I also really like the word "awesomenimity". Nice. Urban Dictionary also provides 2 quotes from Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother fame:


1) Job Interviewer: "What´s your best quality?"

    Barney: "Awesomeness!!"

(I wonder how this would go over in a real life interview?)

2) "When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story."

Anyway...today's my birthday and a start of a new year. I better stop blabbing and go be awesome!! Later all!!

* at 52 minutes my solitude was interrupted by a hungry talkative 7 year-old. Sigh.

This is Not a Pretty Post

I am PMS-ing today. Moody, emotional, sensitive. But the truth is I almost always feel like this. I am sure there are plenty of things I could blame it on: the stress of moving, being unemployed, being a new stepmom. But, I blame it on prednisone. Prednisone is the bane of my existence.

According to the Mayo Clinic, high-dose prednisone use can cause elevated blood pressure (check), fatigue (check), mood swings (check), fluid retention (check), weight gain with fat deposits in your abdomen, face (moonface) and the back of your neck (camel hump) (check, check, and check), increased appetite (check), thin skin, easy bruising, deep purple stretch marks (check, check, check). Oh...and the sweat. I sweat like a marathoner...only I'm not running. I'm walking from the first floor to the second floor and my clothing and hair are drenched. On top of this, I am tapering off the drug (for the ump-teenth time) and with that comes its own set of "fun" side effects including: severe fatigue, weakness, body aches, nausea and vomiting. Good times. Add this to the above-mentioned life stressors and we have a recipe for one very depressed, weepy, (did I mention sweaty), and not-so-fun-to-be-around girl. 

Since starting prednisone in May of 2010, I have gained approximately 30 pounds. Some days I feel like this is mostly in my face, but my clothing size tells me that he rest of my body has also been very affected. I went from being a slightly overweight, but active fit girl, to being an obese girl who can barely manage the stairs. I am miserable, hate to look in the mirror and grapple with self-acceptance on a daily basis. Fatigue, sweating and heightened blood pressure/heart rate make it difficult to stick with much of a workout routine, though I try to do some mild form of exercise each day when I can muster it.

With exception of my husband, family and a few very close (and majorly patient and loving) friends, I suffer mostly in silence. I often feel the need to "warn" people who haven't seen me in a long time about the physical changes. I feel like I have to explain why I look like this. I don't recognize myself in the mirror. I am surely my own worst enemy. Though it certainly doesn't help when acquaintances walk up to me and say "Why your face so fat?" or ask me if I am "expecting".  I take it with a grain of salt. I know that deep down, most people mean well. My stepdaughter told me recently, "I see that your face is bigger, but I just pretend it isn't. You should do that too." She makes a good point. 

I am writing this today really just to get it all out of my system. I know, realistically, that whining and complaining and feeling sorry for myself won't change the fact that this is happening. It simply is what it is and really in the grand scheme of things I am still pretty damned lucky. Those who love me have loved me through this. Thank God. I am often amazed that my husband (of less than a year) hasn't thrown in the towel or kicked me to the curb for being so crabby, insecure and self-deprecating. Hopefully, I haven't pushed away any good friends for being so whiny and "me-oriented" this past year and a half.   

Tomorrow is my birthday. I really want tomorrow to be about hope. I write this today as a farewell to feeling sorry for myself. Tomorrow, I will look in the mirror and try to see only awesomeness. I will try to love myself through this the way so many of my family and friends have. This is temporary and fleeting in the grand scheme of life.

Here is a pictorial timeline of what prednisone has done to me on the outside. (For some reason I can't figure out how to post them in any other fashion.) I hope that I can see past this reflection of myself and remember that the true me lies beneath and is really a force to be reckoned with. Sayonara self-pity.

September 2009--Before prednisone entered my life

My wedding day Aug 2010--4 months into prednisone

March 2011--11 months  into prednisone

 June 2011--13 months into prednisone

TP: An Artist is Born

I have been catching up on my blog reading a bit, which has given me some blog-spiration to do some blog writing again. Phew. I know I took a longer break from it than I was actually blogging this time and well...that is just so un-bloggeress of me. So sorry. I suck.

BTW, I am particularly enjoying catching up on Mommy Wants Vodka. She is hysterical. Though she does have a potty mouth, so if you are sensitive to that kind of thing, do not click on her link above. Also on my latest and greatest list of blogs to read when I don't feel like doing what I should be doing is The Blogess. Brilliant. Potty mouth as well but notasmuch. So funny.

Anyway...I have been on a "break" from stepmomhood whilst my hubs and I move into a home in our new little community (which by the way is totally awesome and friendly and pretty and it has sidewalks and a playground and a park and trails and a lake....love it.)

While my stepdaughter is with her mom down south, we have been Skyping with her nightly, which is decidely loads of fun (for my stepdaughter and I anyway...hubs seems to think we may be a bit childish. Sheesh.) ANYWAY, my stepdaughter is something of an artist. Seriously, this kid blows my mind with the things she creates. Amazing-ness. And, last night, while on The Skype, she asked her father and I to help her name some of her latest drawings, which were created on post-its. (She uses whatever she has available when the mood strikes her).

Drawing # 1 was of a boy, but when she held him up the webcam he had no head because she had run out of room on her post-it. Tee hee. We named in "Justin Beiber". Why not? He's everywhere anyway. She also had a drawing of a baby koala, which we named "George" and some thunder/lightning/raindrop that we named "Stormy". Eh. Pay attention though...cause seriously...these sketches might end up in a museum someday.

So somewhere down the line of these presented drawings, we struggled with naming her sketch of the Pyramid Egyptian Warrior, so I suggested (I am so beyond brilliant) that we call it "PEW". You know for Pyramid.Egyptian.Warrior. Acronyms rock.

After that she decided to name her next and last drawing "TP" for Toilet Poo. That's right. True story. My stepdaughter drew a picture of a toilet with poo in it. I love this kid. I love her whimsy. I love that while pondering what to draw she must have thought to her little 7 year-old self "I think I will draw a toilet with some fresh poo in it". And so, an artist is born.

The New Zoo Revue

Anybody else remember the New Zoo Revue from the '70s? Sigh.


Anyway...my husband, stepdaughter and I took a trip to the National Zoo this past weekend...along with about 1.5 million other people. Seriously. 


Some things we learned at the Zoo: 

• Cheetahs only eat prey 90 pounds or less...i.e. children vs. adults. No wonder so many adults bring their kids to the zoo. 
• Maned Wolves have really really smelly pee. I think that there may also be a Maned Wolf living behind the dumpster at the movie theater across the street from our apartment because I smelled a similar odor on my walk the other day. 
• Orangutans like to eat soap bubbles and then spit them out and then re-eat them over and over...similar to what many children do in the bathtub. The louder people gasp and "eww" the more fun the orangutan has with this activity.
• Golden Lion Tamarins are really really adorable and I want one for a pet. So bad.
• People will stand for hours in large groups in hopes of glimpsing a Giant Panda. The Giant Panda will hide for hours and hours and laugh mockingly at the humans.
• You can take a child to the National Zoo where they will see a variety of exotic and unusual animals, but they will be most enchanted by the local chipmunk running amok in the park's landscaping. 
• When a stranger's child points at a donkey and says "Daddy"...it is not ok to laugh out loud and say "Meh, same difference". The stranger's child's parents (and your own husband) will not find this amusing. 

Why I Am Not Allowed to Touch Anything

For the past 2 weeks, the 3 of us have been living in a furnished one-bedroom high-rise apartment. I'd like to emphasize the one-bedroom part here because this was not/is not my ideal living situation. But, to my husband's credit, it IS temporary, it IS much cheaper and it really hasn't been as bad as I imagined it would be. 

(*Sidenote: I have had the sliding glass door to our apartment unit balcony open all day to let in the pleasant fresh breeze...and once every hour or so, I get a waft of marijuana smoke through the door. Ah apartment living. I wonder what apartment its coming from? I bet they have a good stock of snacks...)

Anyway, I digress...the reason I started typing today's blog is because I got bored with my previous task. You see...I have spent the last 20 minutes or so (give our take an hour) attempting unsuccessfully to open the bedroom window. At first it was about the fresh air (and no, not the Mary Jane wafting in), but then it just became a task of will. A fight between myself and The Window. I fear I have been defeated. The Window has won.  And given my previous history of breaking things in this apartment, I decided it would be best for me to take a break from this endeavor and accept my defeat before I did some serious damage. What have I broken in the apartment, you ask? Umm...pretty much EVERYTHING.I.TOUCH. To the point where my stepdaughter informed me that I am not allowed to touch things. We will have to wait for daddy to come home and do it. 

Here's the list:

1. Door handle to the sliding glass door (Popped right off while I tried to open the balcony door about 10 minutes after arriving). Cracked me up, but no one else found it funny. Hmph.
2. Thingy you turn to open the venetian blinds and slide said blinds to left to allow light into the apartment (just detached itself right into the palm of my hand and despite multiple tries, I could not re-attach). My husband re-attached it in about 4 seconds flat and I haven't touched it since.
3. The vacuum cleaner. (Vacuuming away and the rubber belt thingamajig popped right off). To MY credit this time, I fixed it myself and I do believe that said vacuum is working even better than before). Also to my credit, I vacuumed.
4. A glass. Ok, my husband doesn't know about this and he would never have noticed if I didn't mention it here on this blog because he is infamously unobservant (sorry, honey) so I have no clue why I am outting myself. But, I learned that you should not stack glass glasses (or perhaps the specific kind of glasses that came with the apartment because when you try to unstack them, they will stick and when you force them apart, a shard of glass from the top of the inner glass with propel from the glasses and try to stab you. (Also...to my husband...if you are reading...before you judge, let me remind you of the $10 wine glass you broke in NC and never told me about until I realized that one had "gone missing"). Love you.

Today, I almost ALMOST washed the remote control. It seemed to have somehow gotten wrapped up in the sheets of our bed and wound up in the washing machine. I suspect my husband, who loves the remote control so much he panics if he can't see it, may have cuddled with it last night while sleeping. Luckily, I made a great save because if something happened to the remote...that would have been the end of me. Seriously.

Two nights ago, I spilled not only a full glass of water but also a half glass of red wine (I spilled the water while making a save for the wine glass) all over the table and the game of Life and the floor and the chair. Huge disaster. I am actually pretty amazed at how calm everyone stayed. We all pitched in to clean it up and then continued with our game. My new family must be getting used to my way of adding excitement to their lives. :o)

I Can't Imagine Why You're So Exhausted

A good friend of mine (thanks for the blog fodder!), after viewing my new blog, stated that she too wished she had been keeping a blog, but simply couldn't find the energy. My immediate thought to this statement was "well, duh...you have 3 kids"! Just thinking about that makes me feel exhausted!

Since becoming a stepmom, I have been left alone with my stepdaughter only a handful of times. Some of these moments have been pleasant and fun (fooling me into thinking that parenting or step-parenting must be a piece of cake) and other moments have been straight out of a comedic sitcom where I am left uncertain with which one of us has suffered the biggest meltdown. (*Some of my friends might recall the Saturday morning when my husband stepped out for short spell and within 5 minutes, the dog ran away, significant amounts of red juice were spilled on our cream-colored carpet and on my stepdaughter's beloved fuzzy blanket, and I sprayed an equally significant amount of aerosol carpet cleaner in my eyebawl...resulting in 2 people [myself and my stepdaughter] running around in tears and panic).

To be sure...if I didn't already have a great amount of respect for all who wear the title of  "Parent"...I certainly do now. Its no joke. And, as we have learned in the game of Life, once you open your life to offspring, you can't simply "give them back". As a stepparent, I suppose I have a little more leeway here (and I can't count the number of times in the last year that I have thought to myself "what did I do?"), but I love my husband and my stepdaughter too much to walk away from this...I married them both..."in good times and in bad." I have to remind myself that even biological parents don't know what they are doing sometimes and that after 10 months of being a stepparent...I really shouldn't expect myself to be great at this "parenting" stuff yet either.

So, as it happened, last week I was tasked with the responsibility of taking care of my stepdaughter on my own while my husband was at work. For 5 days. Yes...you full-time parents...laugh as you will. A mere 5 days. Yet this was one of the longest weeks of my life. Not because it was wholly unpleasant, because it wasn't. But, because well....its exhausting. You can't just "check out" and God forbid if you try to, you will be quickly reminded that you are not alone and that 5 minutes of one activity is plenty and so its time to find something new to do. Now now now. In fact, just as soon as I got comfortable with one endeavor, my stepdaughter was ready to move on to the next. And, if say...you were content reading quietly by the pool, your child will definitely want you to come watch what they can do in the water a minimum of 4 times every minute. And so it goes. 

If there was ever any doubt in my mind that stay-at-home parents have their work cut out for them...I know for sure now that they work harder everyday than I ever did in any corporate job. No breaks. No quiet commute time. No after-work happy hour drinks. Just back-to-back meetings with little humans, negotiating incentives and consequences; planning feeding times and play times; convincing them that your ideas are worth a try; and hoping, just hoping, that they will remember Boss Appreciation day this year.

I am glad that my stepdaughter and I have a bond. Especially since I know that it likely won't always be that way. I am also glad that I got to experience stay-at-home parenthood because now I know for sure it is not for me. I am too selfish and don't have the energy for it. And you know what, I am ok with that.

The Game of Life

The last several evenings, we have been playing the boardgame Life before bedtime. I am a sucker for life's metaphors and this family pasttime provides many. Some things I have learned from the game of Life:

• Life is a gamble...a mixture of both luck and good decision-making.
• While a college degree is the way to go in life...it doesn't guarantee you success and wealth. You still have to walk the same path as anyone else.
  
• Its a good idea to buy insurance and to pay back your debts early in life.
• Once you have kids, you can't give them back. (My 7 year-old stepdaughter posed this question).
  
• Everything you have can be taken from you in a matter of seconds, so don't get too cocky or comfortable with your fortune.
• Sometimes you actually have more than you realize you have, so don't waste too much time beating yourself up about being "behind".
  
• Along the same lines, you should never assume that someone has more than you just by looking at what they have or seeing a certain confidence in their expression.
• In the end, we all pretty much end up in the same place.