#19 Birthdays

The number 19 will always make me think of my birthday, since that is my special date. Thus, the 19th edition of these "30 to celebrate 30" posts is simply just a celebration of birthdays!

I have been blessed so far in my life to have celebrated 30 birthdays, which I am well aware is many more than some ever get to & far fewer than others have gotten to & I am hoping that I still have many, many more left to celebrate.

No matter how hard the thought of getting older may seem at times, the thought of birthday cake never does get "old"! ;)

#18 Marriage

As of today, I have been married for 7 1/2 years! That is just a bit shy of 1/3 of my life at this point & already I can tell how it has morphed from the early days. It'll be interesting to see how much more it changes as I enter my next 30 years!

In the earliest days/years, I was often left wondering why people ever said "marriage is hard" & "marriage takes work" because those first few years were "easy" for the most part. I also scoffed at all of those people who said that "the first year of marriage is the hardest!" because ours was a "breeze."

In the middle years, I started realizing what "hard" felt like as we traveled the path of infertility & watched those around us whom we loved dearly getting that one thing that we were always left dreaming of/crying about the loss of. These were also the years where we really had to pull together as well because we could just have easily let it all fall apart and each gone our own way!

In these latest years, parenting has entered the mix & as the old cliche goes "children change everything." We don't go out as much as we used to...we think twice about doing something that will make us have to stay out late (because of an early wake up caller-unless he is spending the night somewhere!)...personally, I HATE having to be the one to line up a babysitter all of the time & am constantly left wishing that Scott would take on this task more often...I'm sure that he is not so happy about the fact that he can't & I can sleep through just about anything (yes, this means when Luke wakes up at night) because he is constantly left with this responsibility & probably wishes that I would wake up & take on this responsibility more often [for all of the "I just hear everything at night now that I am a mother & my husband sleeps like a log" mothers out there who might scoff at this, in my defense-I did hear everything when he was an infant/baby, but that changed for some reason around the 1-1 1/2 year mark!] Parenting=a million different little and major stressors & decisions that one has to endure 24 hours a day for many, many years probably the rest of one's lifetime. Add that into the mix with marriage & it can cause quite a bit of stress in a marriage, especially if anything gets "tough" in one or both of these areas at the same time. Lucky for us, even when we have become the most irritated with each other or when "tough" things have happened through the course of these past few years, we still know that there is no one else we would rather be irritated at or with than each other :)

No, there may not be as much of the ooey, gooey, mushy love/romance stuff anymore like the early days, but I wouldn't trade what our marriage has "grown" into for anything & I can't wait to see where it "grows" over the next 30 years! [I'll probably be left thinking just how naive I was at this time-just like I think now about the 'early' years ;) hehe]

#17 College

Some people yearn for/talk about/wish (at times) they could go back to their high school days. NOT ME!!!

Some people despise/choose not to talk about/are glad that they never have to go back to their high school days (including reunions).

Once again, NOT ME!!!

High School was okay-I had lots of good memories & there were a few not so good. Basically, I remember a lot of homework & activities/sports, friends being the center of my world (but me not really going out all that much) & A LOT of obsessing over various things and people. I enjoyed it, but feel much better that that part of my life is over with, at least until a reunion pops up again once every 5 years. And, YES, I have enjoyed my class reunions very much-it's fun to catch up with everyone & see how we've all changed (and not in that "oooo I can't wait to get revenge/see so&so fat" sort of way!)

For me, the part of my life that I could go back to in a heartbeat is college (just as long as I could drag some of my friends along with me ;) Again, there were a few speedbumps along the way, but boy was it A LOT of fun too!

*Living out on my own (with many wonderful roommates along the way! I was very lucky in this respect-I had great roommates, for the most part, all throughout my college days.)

*Lots of fun was had both by going out & by staying in (& yes, many times there may have been a bit of liquor involved & sometimes it was just plain old nuttiness/probably stupidity on me and my friends' parts :)

*Classes that I loved & made me feel challenged. What can I say, I'm a "school" girl. I like it & I kind of always liked homework too-NERD ALERT, I know!

*My last 2 years were probably the best of them all because I had friends I could depend on/have fun with, Scott had entered my life at this point & I finally felt like I was headed in the "right" direction with life in general. The only people missing from my life at this point were the "little people" aka Luke & anyone else who has been born over the past 7+ years as well as a few other friends that I have made in that timeframe too :)

*Infertility had yet to turn my world upside down & inside out-completely changing the way I view almost everything in life.

Last, but definitely not least, was being an "adult" & being viewed as an "adult" without truly having to completely be the adult!!! :)

Awww, college, thanks for all of the memories, but no matter how much fun it would probably be to go back-I'll take where I am in life right now instead & continue hoping that 30 more years of memories will be just as fun to reflect on too!

Sugar Sprinkles

I thought that title sounded more fun than "tidbits" or "updates" or whatever other regular/kinda dull title I usually come up with :) plus 'tis the season for sugar cookies & of course sugar sprinkles so it works! ;)

*WHOOPS!!! Dec 1st came & I thought "this date seems important somehow, but why?" Alas, it was a Wednesday though (which is my busiest of the week usually) & between going to work, staying an hour later to tutor, picking up Luke then immediately dropping him off at Gram & Gramp's so that I could eat supper/prepare my lesson/then head up to church to teach PSR, then picking Luke back up since Scott (who usually does this on these nights) had chosen to work late on this particular evening, putting Luke to bed & finally just putting my own feet up for a bit & heading off to bed-(I'm going to pause here just to admire this super great run-on sentence that isn't quite done yet ;)-& then vaguely acknowledging Scott as he came home/to bed somewhere around 10:30, somehow just due to life, basically, I managed to forget that this was an important date! Sometime during a shopping day/date together this past Friday (the 3rd), my brain finally caught up with the rest of me & I remembered that Dec 1st is the anniversary of when Scott & I had our very first date...10 YEARS AGO! A whole decade. Longer than some marriages. Crazy. I can't believe it's been this long already (I know, how cliche, right?) We have had our share of many,many good times & of course, bad times too, but here's hoping that the next 10 years will bring plenty more good times than bad & that we're still smiling on the other end of it ;) hehe

*We have been celebrating Advent here by doing a little "Christmas" each day. Thus far it's mostly been decorating something each day with just a bit of baking tossed in recently. It's been nice not having to do it all at once. Next up...Christmas cards, baking & making candy, holiday parties, reading more of our Christmas books, etc.

*A batch of sugar cookies was made this past weekend. I had picked Luke up his own little rolling pin & he did such a good job rolling out his little ball of dough & then using the cookie cutters to cut out the cookies. He is one smart "cookie" though & quickly realized that one could eat the dough at the edges of what was rolled out without messing up his cookies.

*He ate so much dough-I kept thinking...this is going to be bad if we have to take him to an E-room ;) (He also reported that the dough tasted sooo much better than the actual cookies once they were all made!)

*There are only 9 more days of school until Christmas break begins! Usually this is means for rejoicing, but somehow this year it seems like it is going to be difficult to "fit" everything in before vacation arrives.

*Happy "Immaculate Conception" Day to all of my fellow Catholics out there! I'm not even sure if that is appropriate to say, but there it is. We went to church last night & Luke was really excited to be going to "Aunt Janet's" (not our regular parish) church. Luckily, she was there to say hello to afterwards & my apologies to all sitting within a 100 yard radius of us after the 'Sign of Peace'-if you were there, you know why :)

*Speaking of church, Luke does not like to wear his shoes in church. They are the first thing that comes off & yes, I am that mother. I have chosen my battle & this is not it...I just let him leave them off until church is done. I could force the issue, but I figure that I am happier knowing that he actually "pays attention" (even though it may not look like it to bystanders) & knows what is going on during the Mass. He loves watching Father & watching "what happens next" so I don't fight him on the shoes. Maybe if he is 8 & still not wearing them-then I'll pick this battle, but he's 3 & I'm not.

*Our priest is convinced that Luke will either be a wine presser or a Franciscan because neither of these jobs requires shoes. Either one sounds good to me-extra wine or extra prayers-both are needed to make it through life at times, right?! ;)

Hope you have enjoyed these "sugar sprinkles" & there should be several more posts coming up in the near future between Christmasish posts & finally wrapping up my "30" themed posts!

Reasons it's great to be me (well at least for today anyway! :)

1) I woke up & stepped on the scale where I was finally rewarded with seeing the number that means I have lost 10lbs!!! (since I first started 'trying' again in October)
This felt really good, especially since I wasn't quite expecting it to be this morning & because I had been hanging around the same pound or two for the last 2 weeks. The combination of calorie counting & running are finally starting to show their results-Thank Goodness! :)

2) I can easily say too that I'm confident that the changes I have been making are for good this time around & I have developed a phenomenal 'will power' as a result. Yes, that was me last week at the ALL DAY meeting (with the donut holes, M&M's, some sort of delicious looking homemade Mississippi Mud Cake brownie things, & other candies sitting on our tables the entire time) who didn't even have one little nibble of any of these things-ALL DAY LONG.

3) I was reading & discussing a book about the Pilgrims' First Thanksgiving with a group of 2nd graders today. The book mentioned how the Pilgrim children did not "go to school" during their first year in Plymouth, but that the children did learn things like manners. These manners included standing at the table to eat, wearing their hats while eating & not speaking unless an adult had spoken to them first. As one can imagine, my students found all of these quite preposterous ;) I singled out the one who I know has the hardest time "not speaking" & asked him if he would have liked being a Pilgrim child...he said "No, I don't think I would handle that very well. I like to talk!" then he proceeds to say..."But I would like to adopt a child someday so that I could teach it to be a Pilgrim child!" ;)

4) I was walking a kindergartener (who had gotten in trouble during lunch recess) inside to the cafeteria & on our walk (which he wasn't very happy about as you may gather) we had the following conversation...
Me: "Was yelling at the other kid a good choice?"
Kndgter: "No! I'm going to get some fertilizer and spread it all over you!"
Me (thinking how I had never yet been threatened with fertilizer): "Fertilizer, huh? Well what good would that do-fertilizer wouldn't help me any."
Kndgter: "I'm going to get some fertilizer and spread it all over you. You won't like it and it will be bad!"
Me: "Well, I just don't see what good that would do. I don't need any fertilizer & doing that won't help you out any...so that just doesn't seem like a very good idea now does it! Maybe we can come up with a better idea."
-Not sure that he cared about any different/new ideas, but at least he made it into lunch & I was still clean as a whistle! ;)

#16 Best Friends

I have had several "best friends" through the years. All of these friends were (& still are) good people. Some of them I still see somewhat on a regular basis & others I see hardly at all or have lost almost complete contact with them. Only one of these friendships ended on a 'sour' note, but even then God decided to teach me a lesson in irony when this friend ended up marrying one of my cousins several years later. Being family (in my mind anyway) means being friends or at the very least being friendly, so although that friendship is definitely not to the degree it once was-it has at least become a friendly friendship once again (which I can say does make me glad :) The other "best" friendships changed in status to more regular friendships or just mere aquaintances mostly due to growing apart/different circumstances in life or for the most part because I have finally realized as an adult (hindsight is such a good teacher, I definitely did not learn these lessons at the times the friendships were "changing") that, for the most part, these friends were always way more important to me than I was to them. Now don't get me wrong, they definitely viewed me as their "friend" and would even agree with me at the times of those "best" friendships on the opinion that we were "best friends", but it was never completely a two-way street.

How do I know this now you might be asking yourself?

In all of these friendships, I was the one doing most of the work to "keep in touch" with the other person...probably an 80/20 (meaning I made 80% of the contact/phone calls/arrangements for hanging out, etc). This is not completely all their fault-I now realize that I also tended to be a "needier" friend than they were too. I needed to be in contact more...I needed to hang out together more...I needed to have a "best friend" like I'd always seen in the movies/TV/read about in books (you know the ones-we've known each other most of our lives, we know each other better than anyone else knows us, friends are more important than any guy!) Which leads me to my next point...

Once a guy (or even a "better" person to hang out with in the moment) came into the picture, it was "Sayanora" for me-at least, until that guy or "better" person was out of the picture again. This was always very frustrating for me because I always held the friendship in such high regard & yet this was never quite reciprocated towards me. Inevitabley, this would be the factor that lead to the decline in all of these friendships. I would realize that I would never quite be a priority to them unless I wanted to exert 100% of the effort to keep in touch with them. And once I stopped trying so hard, you guessed it? The friendships pretty well came to standstills.

Looking back on the first 20+ years of my life & some of these friendships always makes me a little bit sad, but I am still, oh so grateful, for the many fun times/memories I have had with these folks. I am also grateful for the lessons I have learned from all of these friendships & the appreciation that I do have now for the two "best friends" I do have.

I have learned from them how wonderful it is to have friendships that aren't "one-way streets" & always enjoy when the phone rings & it's one of their names on the caller ID (even if it is just a phone call to bitch or moan about something ;) I love my 2 sisters dearly & wouldn't trade them for anything in the world, but I'm pretty sure that my current "best friends" are just "sisters" who had been misplaced for years & I'm so glad to have finally 'found' them! ;)

The Key to Running is...

knowing that you are just about going to die when you start each time...

and will never make it through to your goal for the day...

and that you will need to stop at any moment or you will fall down to die...

and then realizing that you've already put in this much effort...

and that you are so close to your goal that you will be utterly disappointed in yourself if you don't finish...

and then realizing at the end of the run that you have reached that goal so now you can start walking again...

and then being filled with one of the best senses of accomplishment you could ever have imagined because YOU DID IT!

This has been a big part of my life for the last month and I am very proud to say that I am now running 2 MILES at a time!!! :) (It's a slow 2 miles, but still it's 2 miles!!!)

My ultimate goal is 3 miles & with the plan I've been following, that means about 3 more weeks of training! My only setback has been the past week with the lack of evening daylight hours, but as always my brain is always strategizing for different ways to fit in some 'training' time so I have no doubt that I'll get it figured out soon I'm also not too big of a fan of trying to run while pushing a stroller uphill with a 35+lb kid in it, but can manage when it's necessary, luckily for me though that hasn't happened super often yet, but I guess it does make for a better workout! ;)