Redemption

Well I've started student teaching! It is everything I thought it would be, except for the fact that I find it extremely enjoyable! Mary (my host teacher) is really nice, and our personalities click very well together. She is quite constructive with me, which is exactly what I need/love, so it is a very good working relationship. I feel my ideas/concerns are very well accepted. The only thing that really sucks is that I'm paying about $11,000 this semester to be working full time! Other than that though, I've been extremely happy :)

I am not seeing my kiddies as much as I'd like to, so that kinda stinks. Even worse, I'm barely seeing Dan at all :( I miss my hubby. It's only been a few weeks, but it feels like an eternity. I can't wait until the summer so at least we will have more time together. Plus, he won't be so sleep deprived. I always feel so awful when he is tired because I know he's not sleeping enough due to my student teaching schedule. I must say though, I have noticed a difference with him. He hasn't been as grumpy as he used to be, and I really credit the job switch for that. He was stressing so much on the day shift because some of the kids were just rotten, but now that he's on overnights, he's getting paid the same amount to watch tv and play computer games... the schedule sucks, yes, but overall it's not a bad deal.

I started Jazzercise with my friend Becky this past week! We signed up during an offer that was only $20 per month! That isn't bad at all! We are going Mondays and Wednesdays for right now, and I think that is perfect. If I went more than that I would get sick of it/burn out faster. 2x a week is perfect for me to just get started. I've been watching what I eat, but I am not "dieting". That word is just terrible and only sets me up to gain more weight in the long run! I'm just trying to make healthier choices! Hopefully that will lead to weight loss!

I'm definitely getting closer to Becky lately. I don't have any friends who are in my situation really. Not only is she married, but she's also a parent. Most of my friends are either single moms or married with no kids. Plus, we enjoy a lot of the same things, so it's just nice....

... I guess you could say that 2010 is slowly redeeming itself :)

Hopeful

I refuse to be negative about anything this year. Just because in the first 14 days of January I have had a big fight with family, my son was in the hospital with a dislocated elbow, our only family car broke down, made the worst first impression on my host teacher that I could have ever made, I'm getting a bad sinus infection, AND my nephew is terribly sick and has us all worried to death doesn't mean this year will be bad (at least, that's what I keep telling myself). I am trying to give 2010 a 3 month probationary period to decide how this year is gonna go! I figure that sounds fair. It wouldn't be nice for someone to judge you by only knowing you 2 weeks, would it? However, if they were to judge you after knowing you 3 months they probably would have a good idea what you are like. Therefore, I am doing the same with 2010. After 3 months if this year still sucks, I'll know to prepare myself for the upcoming 9 months of suckiness!

Hmmm, let's think of a good thing that happened... Well, I met the woman I'll be student teaching with! I'm very excited! I've been placed in LeRoy teaching 4th grade as a push in teacher. I was talking to my host teacher (Mary) about everything when we met and I am really excited! She seems like a really nice lady so I'm looking forward to working with her. I'm soooo scared though! Obviously I'm nervous to have people watching and judging me all the time, but I'm more nervous about how I will handle everything while having 2 kiddies to take care of. Everyday when I get home from "teaching" Dan will go to sleep, so I have all this on top of taking care of the kids everyday. It will be a ton of work. However, I know I can do it. I'll just be playing on facebook much less (if at all) once it starts.

My host teacher thinks that I should write a journal about my experiences, so I decided I will be starting a blog about it. I'm sure nobody will read it (as I'm sure it will be quite boring) but it will be a good way for me to always have it and look back on it and write down questions I have about teaching. I'm pretty excited to start it actually!

Today I took Audrey shoe shopping with me. To my dismay she said "Ugh Mommy, I just don't like shopping". I couldn't believe my ears. How does a daughter of mine not enjoy shopping???? I could be a professional shopper if I had the money... I just don't understand what there is not to like! Anyways, we went to DSW (which by the way moved and never told me!- Yes, it is their responsibility to tell me personally that they moved even if I only shop there once every 3 years) and I bought myself 2 of the most comfy pair of shoes I have ever worn! (Freaking shoes cost me $100) I needed 2 because I needed black and brown shoes to go with all my pants (a whopping 3 pair). I'm hoping to buy more pants this weekend.

I'm really nervous about my wardrobe because I don't have much "dress up" stuff and I have to not only dress up but be comfortable and appropriate around the kiddies 5 days a week! Ugh! BUT, lucky for me I have a wonderful hubby who understands my concerns and is allowing me to get anything I think I need! I'm so lucky <3

I don't wanna lose my hubby to the overnights tomorrow night :( Usually we fall asleep cuddling, and although it never lasts long, I can't imagine not falling asleep with him next to me. We have both worked the overnights before, but I just thought we were over all of that *sigh*.

It's ok, I have a busy weekend to keep my mind off of things! I have my student teaching seminar at 10am on Friday, along with getting my test results from the test that I took last month which I am quite positive I failed :( Then, Audrey has a birthday party for a girl in her class on Friday night at Chuck E Cheese, so I'm taking Boo Bear with us so Dan can get some sleep. Saturday morning we have Alex's birthday party to go to, and then at 2:30 we are getting our family portraits taken. Then Saturday night more shopping for last minute things I need for student teaching! No exact plans for Sunday yet, but I'm sure that will change. Then Monday I have Tonja's bday dinner, and obviously on Tuesday I start student teaching! Yikes!

Checked out

I can honestly say that lately I have been mentally "checked out" since the new year began. With all the drama with my family (which has all been resolved), and then our only car that we have breaking down on Thursday on my way to meet my student teacher, I have just reached my mental capacity for "things going wrong" and therefore just stopped myself from caring. Is it bad that I did that? Or that I have the capacity for doing that?

I guess you can say I have a history of doing this. I did the same thing when we were under pressure to buy a 2nd car. We knew it needed to be done, and we had managed to save about $1,000 for this new car. It had to be something cheap and reliable. It was stressing me out to no end, trying to find this car. Therefore I put Dan in charge of searching. When he found and bought the car, and then when we found out the car was broken AFTER we signed the papers, I mentally checked out after a slight breakdown and call to my daddy (as usual). If that isn't proof enough, a few years back when we were trying like hell (and failing) to avoid bankruptcy, I had Dan take over all the paying of bills. I literally just stop doing what is stressing me out and pretend like the problem doesn't exist. I live in complete oblivion to whatever is around me, and that is the way it has to be or else I am the classic case of panic attacks/anxiety disorder (for which I happily take my pills).

I refuse to let myself think that this is the way that my 2010 will go. It has to be better than this slight glimpse that I have gotten into the new year. This is the year I graduate with my Masters. This is the year I become an Aunt for the second time. This is the year I should find (god willing) a teaching job. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE MY YEAR! How can it be, though, when I'm mentally checked out? How do I mentally check myself back in? I wish I knew.

With all that going on, I am left to feel one major thing that is really pulling at my heart... Dan (my best friend, my hubby, my Mr.) is moving to work the overnight shift at Crestwood. He'll be working 11pm-7am Wednesdays thru Sundays (for the most part). I am so sad. I hate being in the house during the day without him, so being in my bed without him is going to tear me apart. We will rarely see each other now, because when I will be coming home, he'll be going to sleep. It sucks. Period. I know that he is doing this for us, because financially it makes the most sense. It will save us a ton of money that we'd be spending on babysitting that we just don't have. But still... I'm just left to feel like a wife. A wife that loves her husband and would be content (if they won the lottery) to be with him 24/7 doing whatever we wanted. Now I have to see him when he's not sleeping. It sucks :( Looking on the bright side though, he's staying within the Hillside Family of Agencies, which is good because even though their health benefits cost an arm and a leg (when we could afford them and had health insurance, unlike now), they have really good vacation time. Plus, if he wants to go to school, he could go online and take classes while he's getting paid at work, so it would be highly beneficial if that is what he decides.



Yup, gonna focus on the positive. If I don't, I'll be taking more Lorazapam.....

Selfish/Grateful/NO CLUE

I guess the first thing I'd like to say is that I love my daddy. I am a 26 year old married mother of 2, and yet without my daddy I'd be lost. Whenever something goes wrong in my life, if I need someone, he is ALWAYS the first person I think of. A few years ago when I came out of surgery, the doctors told me the first thing I said was "Where is my daddy, I want my daddy". The doctors laughed, as did I when they told me that, because I have no recollection of it, but it doesn't surprise me in the least.

It is not because my father does so much for us that I think of him as my savior (although I'd be lying if I said that without him I don't know where I'd be). It's because he has just always been there for me. When I first got pregnant with Audrey and told him, instead of freaking out and screaming that I should have an abortion (like my mother did), he told me everything would be ok. When I was struggling with my work/school/parenting schedule, he helped me just by listening and helping babysit so I could get schoolwork done. Even this past summer when I was taking my Graduate Research class aka the hardest freaking class of my life, my dad watched the kids once per week so I could go to the library at school ALL day and study/write papers. It has been his ongoing support and confidence in me that has allowed me to continue my education. I will be graduating with my Masters in less that 5 months with a GPA of at least 3.94. I owe that to my dad.

I should also mention what a wonderful grandfather he is. He has come to numerous amounts of Audrey's soccer games and recitals, come to the hospital when Benjamin's arm was dislocated, came over Audrey's first day of school to watch her get off the bus, the trip to Vegas where he simply carried Audrey around Freemont Street because he was so excited to show her all the different things going on, playing Wii bowling with Audrey, letting Benjamin "help" with the yard work, playing outside with Benjamin, the 4 of us (dad, me, Audrey and Ben) practicing soccer moves and Benjamin suprising the helk out of us with how good he is... just everything. The other day, the kids called him and asked him if he would be coming over, and he hadn't planned on it, but he drove in the snow from Webster to come over and do a Scooby Doo puzzle with Audrey because she knew how much he likes Scooby, and then we all played UNO together. He had no reason to come over, but because the kids missed him he came. That is the kind of man my father is. Everyday he amazes me.

Recently, with things going on between my sister and my Aunt, my dad has simply lended an ear to me as I was upset. Whenever I tell him how much I appreciate what he has done for Dan and myself, he always shrugs it off like it is no big deal, but to me it is. It is the biggest deal. I feel guilty every time I hear him mention money because if it weren't for us, he would not have any financial problems at all. We try to tell him how much we appreciate him, and I know he knows it to be true, but telling him just doesn't seem to be enough. As if I don't feel guilty enough, today Kim was fired from her job.

I feel awful for her. Actually, awful doesn't begin to describe how I feel. I know that things will be financially worse for them than they already are, and I can't do a single thing to stop it. I already went searching for jobs at numerous websites and sent them to Kim today. I'm also going to be helping her with her resume this week, but it doesn't seem like enough. I want to do more. I want to ease their financial burden more than I want to ease my own. I cannot imagine the stress my dad will be under now. I truly just feel awful, and I feel like it's all my fault.

I'm starting to really regret some big decisions I have made in my life. I would never regret marrying Dan or having the kids, but part of me wonders what my future (and my dads future) would have held had I not gone to Fisher. My sister is making just about the same amount of money per year than Dan does right now, and she barely graduated highschool. That is not a slam against her in any way, but she really struggled, and I always admired how hard she worked at it, especially towards the end, considering I haven't had to work so hard at anything.

School has always come easy to me. I guess I take that for granted sometimes. I saw Dan struggle all throughout college to graduate with a 2.75GPA, and I never put in half the effort as him and my GPA was higher. Maybe that is why continuing my education has been so easy for me to consider, because I know that even though it is a lot of work, it comes easy to me and is easier than getting a job. Julie really likes what she does, makes the same amount of money as Dan who has a 4 year degree, and she doesn't have ANY student loans. I'm really jealous of her. Maybe if I didn't go to school, I would be financially better off and not be burdening my father. It really makes me wonder. I think I've been pretty selfish in that way. My dad is the one who co-signed all my loans, and when I graduate I am looking at almost $180,000 in loans. Can you imagine? I don't have a choice not to pay them or else the government would go after my dad. How bad does that suck for him? He is this amazing father who would do anything for his kids, including paying the mortgage, co-signing student loans, babysit so I could do homework, and much more that I haven't mentioned, and yet in the long run he is being screwed over by me. Obviously it wasn't intentional, but if you think about it, I have really fucked up his life.

My dad has been my biggest supporter, yet he's gonna get screwed by me in the long run... It just doesn't seem right. No wonder my family thinks so ill of me. I don't blame them. They have seen this all along. For what it's worth, I've appreciated everything he has done for me. Every. Single. Thing.

Somehow I have to make things right for him, I just don't know how.

If this is how my New Years is starting out, I'm screwed

So not only did I end 2009 being completely heartbroken by 2 of my family members, New Years Day poor Benjamin ended up in the emergency room :-( Audrey decided to play a game of "Tug of War" with Benjamin's arm as the rope.. needless to say, his elbow was dislocated in 3 places. He now has "Nurse Maids Elbow" which means that his elbow can pop out at any time from now until he's about 5 years old. We have to be very careful around him now, which is proving to be very hard. I keep forgetting and almost doing something I shouldn't.



At the hospital he was such a good boy. We immediately knew something was wrong at the house when he said he couldn't move his elbow. The poor thing was crying so we decided to take him in. Luckily Amy was here and watched Audrey so both Dan and I could take him. When he got into his room, the PA immediately tried popping it back into place. However, it took another doctor over an hour later to really make it work. My poor baby was screaming in agony as these doctors did this. He was such a trooper though. He did very well for the 2 sets of xrays and all the waiting in between doctor visits. I'm so proud of my baby for his braveness <3

Needless to say, Audrey is grounded (as much as a 5 year old can be grounded). She's going to bed at 7:30 for the rest of the week with no after-dinner snack (her normal bedtime is 8:30). We also let Benjamin take out 2 big toys out of her room that she is not allowed to play with for the week. We didn't know what else to do, so that is the extent of it, but she seems pretty upset by it. She really did/does feel very bad about hurting her brother, so it's hard to ground her, but we've warned her before about playing to rough with him, and this was our final straw.

You wouldn't know by looking at Benjamin and Audrey today that she hurt him yesterday. He has no cast, and he isn't mad at his sister in the least. He loves her so much and it's so sad to see the way she treats him sometimes. It makes me think back to when I was a little girl and hated having my sister around... no matter how mean I was to her she always would be around me. I guess that just says something about siblings though... can't live with them, can't live without them.

...Crap, I suppose I should really forgive Julie huh?????

Crushed

New Years sucked. I read a conversation on FB between my sister and my aunt that I shouldn't have, and it basically has me completely devastated.

Let me start by saying that my sister and I were texting and she asked me to go on her cafeworld and manage it for her while she was out. I said no problem, as I was just sitting at home. When I finished with her cafeworld, I saw she had a message in her inbox. I decided to check it because I had gotten 4 messages that day in my inbox that were links to certain websites which I thought were viruses. Luckily I checked it and it was the same sort of link, so I deleted it so she wouldn't have it on her FB. Anyways, after I checked that, I saw many convos that she had been having with our Aunt. The very first line of one of them was "Don't worry I won't tell Christine"... so against my better judgment I decided to read it. I really shouldn't have, because what I read over the next hour just completely broke my heart.

I saw things about my sister telling my aunt she doesn't like asking people to watch Anthony, and that she's not like Dan and I who ask people to watch our kids all the time. She also said that I "fake cried" to my mom about a car so that my mom would agree to cosign a loan for us. She said that we don't pay anything living at our house and how unfair it is to our dad. She said that Jeremy GAVE US his car (even though we bought it for $3,700 cash). She said Jeremy talks about how annoying I am, which I guess explains why Julie and Jeremy never come over to hang out. Funny how I am good enough for them to watch their son, but apparently it's ok to still talk crap about me behind my back.

I think the worst part was my aunt's response to everything though. My aunt said that Dan and I should move into an apartment and let Julie and Jeremy live at the house and how unfair it is. She said things about me and my weight, telling Julie that she'd never end up like me. She said that there is 1 difference between Julie and I... that Julie actually is motivated to do something whereas I am not. Clearly she has never had a weight problem. Nobody knows how frustrated I am with myself, so how dare them talk about my weight and motivation behind my back. Obviously I'm fat, thanks for talking about it. Apparently she sent Julie a birthday gift and told Julie "not to tell her nosey sister". She kept calling my sister "her favorite" and seriously complained about me in some of the messages. This is the aunt that I thought of as my personal favorite, and to see her talking about me behind my back was just awful. Clearly we don't have the relationship I thought we had for all these years.

I seriously don't think anyone understands how tight things are with Dan and I right now. Dan makes 25K per year, and that is it. We are a family of 4 living on his salary alone. While we don't pay for "rent", we pay for our RG&E, water, garbage, telephone, cable, and internet. Then obviously we have some credit cards that weren't taken care of in our bankruptcy, car insurance, gas, babysitting when we need it, and groceries. That doesn't leave us with much. If you think about it, Julie and Jeremy actually make more money than us. Julie makes about 22K or so, if not more, and then Jeremy has his own salary which is at least 20K. I don't understand why everyone thinks that we make money when they know I'm not working.

I really thought that Julie and I were becoming closer. As she is a mother now, I thought she and I were bonding more. Obviously we weren't. My sister doesn't pay rent either, nor does she pay for anything else other than her own bills. I used to "lecture" her about it, because my mom did a lot for them, but I stopped and haven't said a word about it to her or behind her back. I have had no reason to say anything about her or Jer, because I thought we were all getting better. It's just very clear now that no matter how much I do for some people they will still talk about me. As far as my aunt is concerned, I'm just disgusted. When I called my dad about it he said that maybe she was just going along with Julie. However, sometimes she would be the one to say something negative about me first. For instance, she mentioned to Julie "Christine failed to mention that the stuff the kids wanted for Christmas weighed a ton". Why say that? Just don't buy for them, you don't buy for me, so just stop buying for them. Whatever. I'm so upset.