Year: 2013

Five year ago this month we bought our current house. I’m hoping that we can continue to live here for years to come because we love our home. I have quite a few friends and family that are in the armed forces though that are not so lucky as to be able to stay in one place for such an extended time. This can be a good thing though! One of my best friend speaks so fondly of getting to live in far away places like Hawaii and Australia growing up because her dad was enlisted and they had to move every few years. Once she even lived on the same road my parents live on now in Oceanside, CA. Such a small world!

The stress and work that comes with moving so often though, especially when you have young kids involved, can be daunting. I know when we moved when Cassidy was in 4th grade she was really concerned about changing schools but I did some research on the school ratings in our area to make sure we got her into the best available schools in the area and she has really flourished and done so well.

I think one of the main things to think of with kids is to make the move into a big adventure. Do some research before hand on the area that you are moving into and show them all the cool new things to explore and discover in their new military town. My cousin and his family just moved across the country away from all their friends and family and I’ve been having so much fun watching them explore and discover all the new things to do around them.

Most of all, don’t forget to share you pictures and stories on your favorite social media outlet to keep in touch with friends and family no matter where you are!

I had a really awesome and fun filled weekend and I plan to blog about it later but first I wanted to tell my small story of how two people that love animals can change a life in less than 4 hours.

Meet Harley.

When my cousin Katie, her 3 year old daughter Kat and I were leaving her house around noon on Saturday to head to the fair he walked up to us, tail wagging, and climbed into her car along side Kat. We were both kind of shocked but got him out easily enough and I started right away to walk the street in the direction he’d come from to see if I could spot any open gates, garages or front doors. Since it was a Saturday, there were a lot of all three! Katie went and got some dog treats to keep him from wandering off till we could find his family.

After being told to try farther down the street three times, and one neighbor saying they’d seen him hanging around for “a few days”, including jumping into his father’s truck, we decided to lock him in Katie’s back yard and head over to a close by PetSmart where there were two local rescues holding an adoption event to see if we could get him a temporary home. I’d tried to call the ASPCA already but they were totally full. So BOTH rescues said they were full too and to try the shelter. Unfortunately, it’s a high kill shelter and neither Katie or I were willing to drop this SWEET, ADORABLE, GENTLE boy off at a kill shelter. Somebody had to love this dog!

By this time Kat was DONE WITH THIS DOG! She’d been pretty patient up till then so we decided to head to the fair and continue to make calls to see what we could do. I called two more shelters, used my phone to check Craigslist, local papers and Facebook groups and nobody had reported him lost or stolen that I could see.

I called Ben because I was getting concerned and he told me that if we could not find a safe place for the dog to bring him home and we’d see what we could do from here. Feeling a little better we decided while leaving the fair to head over to the shelter with the dog to see if he was chipped. I really thought that since he was not fixed, there was no way that he’d be chipped. BUT HE WAS! I teared up!

The shelter told us his name, called up his humans and soon they were on their way to pick him up! They said we could wait or turn the dog over to them but if they took they dog they’d have to “intake” him and the family would incur charges. We opted to wait for the family. Kat opted to look adorable while waiting.

As soon as Harley saw his humans he became excited for the first time in the 4 hours that we’d spent with him. He practically jumped into his dad’s arms! All 100 pounds of him! It was bitter sweet to tell him goodbye. My heart was already in love with this boy but it was also OVERJOYED to see how happy he was to be around his family.

PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! If you have a collar on your dogs (Harley had one on!) add tags to it! With an address or phone number we’d have had him home in MINUTES! Also, get them chipped just in case they get out of their collars. It’s so cheap and can mean all the difference in the world when it comes to helping a pet find it’s way back home

Cassidy is a sophomore now. Most days I can’t even wrap my head around that. A SOPHOMORE!

She was really hoping to get into band this year but because she was in San Diego with her Nana and Papa I had to go pick up her class schedule for her. I had all the required paperwork but because she was not there to have her picture taken to get her ID card, they would not give me her schedule! I was pretty upset because they told me she’d have to be there early the first day to get her schedule and she just needed to bring the exact same paperwork I had even though she wouldn’t be able to get her picture retaken till in September! WHY IS THAT ANY DIFFERENT!?

So she went in the first day early and the line to have a schedule changed was AROUND THE BUILDING. Then she went at brunch, was the next person in line when the bell rang and they made her go back to class. Then after school there were no spots left in zero period history or PE which she has to attend to keep Spanish and have band as a second elective.

She tried many times to have it changed. She was told she could drop PE but her counselor told her no. She’d check every few days to see if any spots had opened up but zero period classes were actually OVER enrolled. Through all this, she kept the band teacher in the loop and because she had shown so much effort and enthusiasm he agreed to let her be in the marching band even though she was not in one of his two band classes. She is the only student he let do that. So she went to marching band practice (it’s once a week between 6:00PM and 9:00PM# and she was bummed but still glad that she got to at least participate.

Then! Wednesday! She was talking to a friend #child of the zero period history teacher) and he told her that a few people had dropped zero period because they didn’t want to get up so early. Cassidy went into her counselor yesterday… AND GOT BAND! She was SO excited!

I’m pretty proud of her for not giving up on this. For fighting to get the class. For being okay with just partial participation and then STILL not giving up. It’s the first time I’ve seen her REALLY fight for something and get it and it’s just a really cool thing to see as a parent. I can’t wait to go to performances and to go watch her in marching band at the football games!

And I’m just slightly excited that she’ll now be more interested in going to the dances afterwards. I might POSSIBLE be looking at some of the seriously adorable homecoming and prom dresses on DressFirst already. 😉

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of DressFirst for PayPerPost. All opinions are 100% mine

I’m sure that unless you live under a rock, you’ve seen this letter to teenage “girls” pop up in your Facebook feed or twitter stream in the last week. I’ve held off writing about it for two reasons. One is that my initial reaction was WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK SERIOUSLY. The other was because I was wanting to see what the general thought was of those I follow online. Thankfully, every single reaction I’ve seen has been similar to mine.

So here you go.

Dear boys,

Don’t look at your female teenage peers as objects to be lusted over ONLY. One picture of a girl in her PJs in her room does not mean that she’s not worthy of your full respect and friendship. Because you know what happens when your parents teach you that she’s just a sexual object? An entire room of you look the other way as a girl gets raped. And guess who’s fault that is? It’s not her fault. It’s not your parent’s fault. It’s not Facebook’s fault. It’s YOUR FAULT. Because you know the difference between what your penis is telling you to do and what your brain is telling you to do.

Instead of turning your back on her, offer her your friendship. Let it be clear that you value her brain. And her humor. And her sportsmanship. And her creativity. And her kindness. BECAUSE YOU DO.

There is so much I’d like to say to this mother but after reading her various responses and the fact that she won’t even allow comments anymore, I’m sure she’ll never see it. But here are a few things anyway.

It is NEVER okay to shame a girl based on her social media pictures. It is NEVER okay to judge a girl based on her social media pictures. Instead of teaching your boys to SHUN this girl, use it as a way to start an open dialogue about sex. YES! Talk about sex with your kids! Because guess what?! There’s a 100% chance that if they’ve seen a girl today, they’ve thought about having sex. A girl with all her clothes on even! Because teenage boys think about sex. A LOT. They can sit in a room staring at a blank wall and they will think about sex. So here’s your chance to stop a culture of shame, and shaming “girls” into being at fault for junior’s thoughts, and instead teach them that sex is a normal part of life.

It is not this girl’s job to put on clothes to save your son’s soul. It’s YOUR job to teach him that he needs to control his urges in a healthy way.

But most of all…

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK SERIOUSLY?!

I love stories. Book, movies, TV shows… ALL THE STORIES! I also get irrationally attached to characters so the last chapter of the last book in a series: TEARS! The last episode of a TV show: TEARS! Then I have to mourn the loss for a few days or weeks or forever. So I get incredibly frustrated when shows end too early due to bad ratings. HELLO FIREFLY! Wait, moment of silence for there only being one season of Firefly…

…..

Okay.

I actually get equally annoyed when shows try and eek out one more season. The Office is a great example of this. The entire last season was difficult for me to watch. In all honestly, they should have jumped ship when Steve Carell left the show. It just felt like they were trying WAY too hard past that point but I specifically hated the entire Jim/Pam story line the last season. It was completely out of character, made me really hate a previously loved character and even with the last episode it was hard to get that out of my head.

SORRY! TANGENT!

My whole point here was that I was scared for awhile that The Newsroom was not going to get picked back up for a 3rd season. I don’t see a huge following online, only have one other friend that “likes” the page on Facebook and when I ask anybody about it they don’t even know it EXISTS, let alone watch it. So I’m asking all of you good internet people to GO WATCH THIS SHOW IT IS AMAZING. I let out a loud WOOHOO when Jeff Daniels tweeted yesterday that it was officially picked up for a 3rd season but I also realize that if more people don’t start watching this show, it’s going to end well before it’s time.

If you ever liked The West Wing (which is a great example of knowing the prefect way to wrap up a series) then you will love The Newsroom. Aaron Sorkin took everything that was perfect about The West Wing and made it BETTER. It’s smart, funny, honest, raw, fast, beautifully written, wonderfully acted and will make you laugh and cry and cheer and THINK. It’s just amazing.

And here, I’ll make it easy! Here are two clips. The 1st clip is the opening scene of the first episode. I watched this because it had been posted online and knew immediately that Ben and I HAD to watch this show. It’s 8 minute. Watch the whole thing. Jeff Daniels is brilliant.

The second clip is just a small taste of the humor that you get. It was honestly hard to pick one scene but I love it because this show has SMART, STRONG, INTELLIGENT, FUNNY and SUCCESSFUL women. These two are my favorite characters on the show and this is exactly why.

OH HAI I HAVEN’T BLOGGED IN FOREVER INSERT EXCUSES AND STUFF ABOUT HOW I PROMISE TO DO IT MORE HERE.

Moving on.

Those of you that follow me on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or Pinterest or IRL know that I’ve been making a really solid effort to get my body back into shape. It was rough going at first but I’m firmly back into the swing of things and I feel [Oprah]FAAAAABULOUUUUSSSS[/Oprah]! The funny part about this whole journey is that it didn’t start off at a way to get my body in shape physically but mentally.

I did a month of Insanity to start then felt my motivation starting to wane but was good about recognizing that so started to look for a way to give myself a kick in the ass. So on a whim one afternoon I signed up for our local 4th of July 5K fun run.

And then spent all night panicking.

I left myself just short of a month to train so started running about three days a week with some Insanity thrown in once or twice. About a week out I started to realize just how badly I’d underestimated how long I’d given myself to train and had spent about 24 hours once again FREAKING MYSELF OUT. Then with two days to go I just decided that I’m doing this. I’m just doing it. One step in front of the other till the end. That’s all it is.

I asked Ben to do it with me knowing that he’d have to run way slower than his normal pace but also knowing that it would be really encouraging to have somebody there to cheer me on and push me the whole way.

I was pretty nervous all morning right up till the second the race started. I was not quite ready for the stampede at the beginning and Ben had warned me at least twice to NOT let the pack set my pace, to set MY pace. I totally let the pack set my pace and had to start walking for the fist time right around the 3/4 mile mark.

But I kept going and Ben was the PERFECT amount of YOU GOT THIS, YOU ARE A BADASS and GET YOUR LEGS MOVING NOW RUUUUUUN! I really think I’d have been miserable without him there with me. It meant a lot that he did it just for me. Not to compete or run his fastest, but just to be there to support me.

When I got to the last 1/4 mile I wanted to walk SO BAD OMG MY LEGS HATE ME AND THEY HATE YOU AND THEY HATE THIS ROAD AND THE ARE DONE but I kept going and crossed the like right at 41 minutes. It the world of 5Ks that’s not a great number AT ALL. But to me, that number is FUCKING AWESOME. Because that number was me crossing the finish line which: FUCKING AWESOME.

I’ll take it and I’ll own it and I’ll love it. And next time, I’ll do better. Nothing better than competing with yourself to get motivated! I keep my number on my Insanity schedule now to keep me going. 🙂

Okay, so I get depressed. We’ve established that. And I can’t tell you how awesome it feels when I write something like that I get the kind of response I did. I feel like the internet has really opened up so many people to the realization that they have This Problem. That A LOT of people have This Problem. It helps to know that I’m not alone. That This Problem haunts a lot of people, in a lot of different ways.

So here’s my question.

How do you fight it?

Ben and I have had so many conversations about this. Medication, counseling, exercise, cognitive behavior therapy, writing, yelling… what do you do?

He ran into a friend the other day and she talked to him about her struggle with This Problem and she mentioned that she takes a medication that I’ve tried in the past and although I know he just wants to help, my initial reaction was CLOSE OFF DON’T LET FEELINGS HAPPEN, CHANGE THE SUBJECT, DON’T TALK YOU’LL SAY SOMETHING STUPID.

I hate the medicine. I’ve tried all different kinds. Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin and Lexapro to be exact. Out of them all Lexapro was the one I tolerated the best but even though the side effects were more minimal, I still hated them. It’s great that I’m able to mostly sleep at night and that I’m not scared that I’m going to die in my sleep but that’s mostly because I’m not scared of anything. I’m not ever REALLY happy about anything, nothing is ever REALLY that funny, nothing is ever REALLY… anything.

There is depressed numb and then there’s medicated numb and I’m not really sure which is worse but for me it seems silly to replace one with the other.

I do think that exercise helps me a lot. When I’m regularly working out I feel better, I sleep better, I eat better, I drink more water and Ben has commented several times that I seem happier. It’s really an internal struggle for me. Those of you that have The Problem know that sometimes just getting out of bed in the morning is a victory. Give me a medal, motherfuckers. I got dressed today. But I’m mostly what I’d call a “functioning depressed”. I go to work every day, I shower, I get the stuff done that NEEDS to be done.

But exercise doesn’t NEED to get done. If I don’t go run today the bills will still get paid, the power will stay on, the dogs won’t starve, Cassidy will still grow up. However, I probably won’t sleep that well. And then the next day I’ll be tired all day. Then when I come home instead of wanting to work out, I’ll still be tired and opt for a nap. Then it will be too late to cook dinner so we’ll have to go out to eat. Then we spend more money than we want. And I’ll probably eat like crap which will make me feel like crap. Then I’m in a bad mood and since I don’t feel good I won’t sleep well which means I’ll be tired the next day and won’t want to work out.

Rinse. Repeat.

Then it’s been two weeks since I’ve done anything and why even bother at this point!?

It’s started to sink in to me more and more lately that I need to make working out my medicine. I do NEED to do it because my happiness and therefore the happiness of this entire household depends on it. I need to make ME and my sanity as big a priority as paying the mortgage is. It’s what works for me.

The Bloggess could not have written this at a better time. It was just the kick in the ass I needed tonight.

I don’t talk about suffering from depression a lot. There are like 10,000 reasons for this but it’s mostly because people just don’t get it. If you suffer from it, or live with somebody who does, you probably get it. And no, you aren’t “so depressed” that the item you wanted wasn’t on sale. You had a reaction, you were sad, but you are most certainly not depressed.

Ben and I have been going to biweekly couples counseling sessions and one thing that keeps coming up is My Depression. It’s not something that ever fully goes away. Medicine can help, exercise can help, counseling can help, but when a bout of depression decides to creep into your head and completely take over your thoughts and feelings and daily life, all those things just can’t knock it the fuck out of there.

So when the counselor asks me how I cope, I tell her how I used to write. A lot. About funny things, about sad things, about life, about depression, about everything. But then after awhile I just kind of felt like I was echoing the same words that had already been said over and over and over. I used sarcastic humor a lot when I wrote about this stuff because it was natural and easy and a way to cope but it started to feel forced. I’d have to think of a way to make it seem funny that for three nights in a row I didn’t get any sleep at all because I was scared that I’d die in my sleep and the fear of not waking up the next day made my heart pound so hard I thought that’s what was going to kill me and holy shit it’s just a panic attack and the entire world is asleep and I want to stand outside in the middle of the street and scream fuck you all for not understanding how scared I am.

It’s hard to turn that into a joke. Because it’s not really that funny.

So one day I went to write and I sat there with my hands poised over the keyboard ready to type and… nothing happened. I’d try to force it, I’d try to just GET. WORDS. ON. THE PAGE and then I’d delete it because it’s bland and horrible and not funny at all and 90% of the people reading it would just think that I had legitimately lost my goddamn mind.

So the counselor tells me to write. And I just can’t express to her or Ben how much I wish that were possible. I WISH I could just sit down and write. I also wish that I could explain what it feels like to want to get all this shit out of my head and the very real physical pain it causes to sit there while nothing happens. The thought of sitting down to write and then nothing happening is frustrating and infuriating and PAINFUL. It hurts.

It took me almost a week to actually sit down and do it. This is it. I guess it’s going to take time. Like, I’m training to run a 5K on July 4th and realistically I didn’t give myself enough time but I was needing a kick in the ass to actually get out there and train. I’ve had to really push myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve been sore and tired and I’ve wanted to give up but my ridiculous stubborness to kick this 5K’s ass is the same thing I need to do with writing. It’s going to be uncomfortable, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to cause me pain, but the end result will hopefully be a better me than when I’m NOT doing it.