Saying Goodbye

Life changes. nothing can be done sometimes. I believe life is all about learning to adjust to change. whenever we get comfortable, something changes. Changes are not always bad, some are amazing and other traumatizing.
My life change, that i have fought with for about a year now is letting go of Mike. I love him, just not enough. I wanted with all my heart to be happy with him but i could not make that happy. he wanted the same, but we both just ended up miserable. I lived the last 6 months...maybe more, questioning every minute i was with whether i wanted to spend my life like that. Sometimes even when i wasnt with him, i would get lost in trying to find the right answer. People say if you are not happy, your kids will not be happy. my kids are happy, but what if they could be happier. what if they didnt see me cry every now and then? what if they were happier and i was happier, would life feel a little better? Would my stomach hurt less, would my medicine bills go down, would i be less depressed? Then on the other hand what if everything just gets worse? Well now i have no choice, mike is done, he "checked out months ago". that hurts, life changes and now i find my daughters and i a new home. huge change when home is all we know. you would probably think why do i have to leave? mike bought the house in his name, he is just going to let it foreclose. so sad :( sweet lilac lane. we loved that house but now its a bad memory. This is will also be goodbye to this blog. I am no longer the woman that started it. My dream is the same but parts of the dream are going to be different. I can do different, I may feel a ton better, different. The new blog will be written by a strong single mom, not a sad, dumped failure.
I hate saying goodbye....i hate it. whenever my brother goes out of the state for work, we dont even make plans to see each other or talk on the phone. i hate goodbyes. so instead of goodbye, i will see you later.

giving up?

How do you know when its time to give up? I have been fighting with this for some time now. I believe that it has to come to point in my relationship with Mike where i need to move on. I do not feel good about it, we have built a family and a home together. We have a picture perfect life but on the inside we are both hurting. I live everyday feeling like mike hates me and i learned yesterday that he feels the same way. He thinks that i hate him. I somewhat think that maybe knowing this information we would be able to accept that and move forward. I just dont see it happening. Mike is a very quiet person, he does not know how to show feelings and basically just doesnt try because he says it feels forced. i am the complete opposite. I wear my feelings on my shoulder and i say everything thing i feel. Strangely enough when we meet we got along great. I thought from day one that he was the one. Shortly after we found out i was pregnant and i decided that i would be the one to show this man love and he would fall in love w me. everything was good, then the girls were born and it just didnt come natural anymore. All the time and love i was putting into this man went to the girls. I loved mike but the girls were more important. nothing but the best was good enough for them. we played the back and forth game for 3 years. i wanted, still want it to work but there is always this doubt, this thinking that all i have put him thru he must hate me. To add to that, he never showed love. Never touched me, never told me and it just came to the point where i feared i was loving someone that did not and would not love me back. I have done this before and was not gonna do it again.
So here i am trying to decide if i should rent an apartment, try to buy a house, where at, what i will need, when will it happen. it sucks knowing that leaving is something i can do but thinking about packing all my things out of my home and taking them to a strange place and try to make it home...it scares me. i had a hard time moving in with mike, harder time moving from the apartment to our house. i cant imagine how hard it will be moving away from all the work i put into this house to make our home. this is trivial but i cant help to think about driving by here in a few years and seeing a new family in my home. Will they take care of my flowers and shrubs that i planted? will they cut down the rose bush i put up in memory of my grandma? Will their kids play in the fenced in yard that my kids played in?
Then i think about how will Christmas feel without Mike. sharing the girls for the holidays...he has no family, will he do anything special for the years, will he get a Christmas tree? who will buy him presents and make him breakfast? it just breaks my heart to think he will spend his holidays alone, sleeping in, eating fast food.
If i only knew what it was that i am doing that is so wrong that makes him despise me? does he despise me or is that something i made up in my head? did he really want to marry me?
God, please guide me heart and life. i know you have a plan for me, the girls and mike. you want all of us to be happy. together or not Lord, i pray that we can get through this with as little pain as possible.

Old beginnings

Everyday lately has been a new challenge. I started seeing a new doctor and she wants to make some tweaks to my depression meds. She added Pamelor to the meds i am already taking. I was very excited about this. Even though the meds i am on now do keep me feeling ok, my goal is to feel good. I do not want to wake in the morning and feel like i have lost my best friend. I took the new meds for a total of 6 days. By the 6th day i found myself planning details of a suicide. when the reality of this hit me i called the doctor. they told me to stop the meds and come back to see the dr. I started feeling better within 24 hours of stopping the meds and now a week later i feel like i am back to my previous self. while on this medication i decided that i needed to make changes to my work schedule to find my time for myself. this pissed mike right off, my "supportive" significant other turn into a huge ass and told me i am selfish and lazy and need to go back to work full time instead of part time. this is something i could go on about for hours but i am not wasting time being angry. he said many horrible things to me and i don't know that i can forget them. i don't know what i am going to about my relationship with mike. i wish it worked but i cant make him be different. i believe he has bad feelings towards to me deep down but he will not admit it. this is all in Gods hands and i can not think about it. sometimes i just need to vent and i don't always have someone to vent to...so here i am.
this blog may sometimes sound crazy and not make sense but this is me trying to figure this whole thing out. let me just note, my daughter is rolling on the floor next to me crying that it is her turn! ugh! Cant i get a f-ning break!!????!!

Get to know me

1. what was the first thing on your mind today when you woke up? what day it was
2. when was the last time you cried? about 30 mins ago cuz life is not what i thought it would be
3. what do you do for a living? Telephone Service Rep
4. do you have a blog? obviously
5. what is/are your favorite blog/s to read? ones from moms with strength
6. what's one personal product you couldn't do without? this is hard for me cuz i dont use products everyday but when i do im a product junky, probably would be mascara
7. what's your favorite cereal? changes everyday, today is reese's puffs
8. if you could go anywhere in the world right now where would you go? an exotic beach somewhere far away
9. what's your biggest fear? not being accepted
10. do you have any questions for me?

Lake Michigan

Greener Grass

Sometimes the grass does look greener on the other side. Sometimes i can get a little carried away throwing my emotions on the web for the world to see but sometimes i just cant help it.
Mike and I have been together for four years and starting planning a wedding for June 2011. We have a very different relationship than most but it seems to have worked for the both of us up until now. On Mothers day i was very upset that mike did not plan on letting me sleep in, i had to ask but then took a five hour nap after I got up. he took me to get food and a gift the night before. no happy wishes, no card, no special treatment. I was torn, i had to tell him this was not ok. He put up a wall and told me i was being ridiculous and that no matter what he can not make me happy. he also earlier in the day made a comment about having the girls make me mothers day cards but 'they probably got thrown away'. this crushed me. i love cards, cards are perfect for those of us who aren't good with words or showing our feelings. cards are a perfect out for mike. i always am most excited on all occasions for the card. nothing. no big deal this i can live with. so i expressed my feelings and he didn't take it well. he mentioned how he was ready if i was gonna leave he had excepted that he wouldn't be around his kids all the time and that he would love everything....where is this coming from?...I am not leaving, that's not what people do.
Is mike perfect? no. is he whom I dreamed of all my life? no. His toilet humor annoys me and he is very to himself. This is mike, this is who i learned to live a different life around. he tells me he cares for me but does not have deep feelings for me. This confuses me to no end. My feelings for mike are only deep, I care for him because of all the things the two of us have fought so hard for. I love mike because he is the father and a good father to my daughters. I see the way my children smile when their daddy makes them laugh and this makes me love. I watch him go to work and work hard to give us all everything we need and more. This is not a fairy tale love. When I was pregnant, he is a man i found attractive, respectful, smart and fun. Then the girls came and they became first, we got set in our ways and comfortable with each other.
So now I am venting because in two hours I am going to dinner with him to discuss our future. Some tell me that i should leave him and find someone who is going to give me what i need. I don't even know what that is. My sister always reminds me that whatever i chose, I am the one who has to live with it. One thing i know for sure is i just want whoever I am with to just accept me for who i am. I'm not perfect nor will i ever be. I will want one thing today and something different tomorrow, but to know that the person I am with doesn't care. go with the flow.
I have been praying today about it and about how I want God to just give me the strength to do whatever it is he wants me to do. I'm going in and letting God do the talking through me.
wish me luck cuz things are going to change.

Right Decision

I don't take amazing pictures, I don't have a traumatic story to share and I certainly don't live in a city filled with excitement. I am just another woman trying to make it from day to day. We all have a story, a dream, an experience, something to motivates or demotivates our every move. Mine is simple, but to me it is everything.

I screwed up, i made the wrong choice once and it changed my life forever. I was a silly, energetic and independent girl. I was in my late 20's and the thoughts of finding a purpose were steady in my head. I knew that I had the world in my hands to do whatever I wanted and go wherever i wanted. I had a car that i had paid for with my own money, still leaving with the parents :/ and just started a new job with health insurance, 401k. I was a single woman that had nothing to hold me back. I was just waiting for my fairy tale to begin. I was really learning who was as an individual woman. I felt like i was ready for a new relationship, a fresh start. Some might even think I was partying a little too much. I was drinking on the weekends but had learned from my past to draw the line there. I was just enjoying having good clean "intoxicated" fun.
I meet a few different guys all around the same time, one was Mike Beard. He was silly, fun, smart and seemed to have everything together. He seemed to fit into my equation and he smelled amazing. later i would learn he showered once or twice a day and wore expensive cologne. the first day i meet him i thought i might lose all control because of his scent. I wanted to ask mike out but i knew that i had to not be aggressive and let the men come to me. thank you tracy, my bff. he finally asked me out and that was it, we were both happily addicted. we both liked the same things and we could stay up late hours of the night just talking. One month later my life changed in less than a minute when two lines showed on a pregnancy test. now this was fine, this i could handle or at least get use to. what i couldn't handle, was the bomb that was dropped just a mere two days after finding out the biggest shock of my life. Mike sat me down and told me he had gotten another girl we work with pregnant and she was about 6 months along. also he said he wanted nothing to do with her baby. i was shocked, speechless. I felt used, betrayed, like i was part of a huge joke. i couldn't believe this had happened to me. for the first time in my life i considered abortion. i didn't want to be part of it. mikes mess, baby mama drama, i just wanted out and fast. that night i ran. i ran out of his door and got into my car and just drove.
things slowly just came together. i decided i made the choices i had made and now i have to learn from them. if mike wanted to be on board i was all for it.
now there is a reason people date, then get married and then have kids. we did this all backwards. now i guess we are still in the dating stage since our children, because i have twin girls, are becoming more self sufficient. the problem is we have gone through, custody and child support battles over his other child. it took me a long time to forget the fact that if he would have told me from jump, everything would be different. love my kids more than anything but this is not the life i wanted to give them.

picture my house, little on the corner of lilac and lake ridge drive, my kitchen window overlooking a lake. a white picket fence wrapped around the back yard. Inside is a man and a woman raising two little girls. the man works extra hours so mom can stay home and spend time with the kids. the woman decorates for every holiday and sends thank you notes for every gift. it is all picture perfect. it really is, i can show you pictures. what we don't know is what is behind these people. are they happy? do they really try for the right reasons? would things would of been better some other way?

these are questions that haunt me everyday of my life.

Time Flies

Spare Tire

I'm chubby. i love to eat, don't love to exercise. I gain just enough weight each winter so that my clothes are way too tight. Every year come January I find myself fighting with the scale. and food. and exercise. and waking from my afternoon nap with that urge to shove something, anything in my mouth, preferably sweet. this year i brought out the old, like 25 years old, treadmill and Jillian Michael's 30 day shred video for my ipod. Because the treadmill is almost as old as me, it works about as hard as i do. it keeps up for the first 30 mins then its slows done. GREAT! all done! not enough of a challenge but its something. yesterday for a change up i did the 30 day shred. It goes quickly with many different moves for 20 mins. SWEET! 20 mins and i am done, this i can do. then i get up today do my regular Thursday routine of packing the troop in the car, picking up my grandma and going to the grocery store. This should be some sort of workout, count for something. after 3 hours of this quality bonding time, i get home fight the kids down for a nap and sit on the couch to realize every muscle in my body hurts. I am shred for sure. I feel like i took my body apart and piece by piece placed it in a cheese shredder.
life does go on though and i must get off the couch somehow, put on decent looking clothes, no sweats, and go to work. like the robot that i am, i do it, some days i do it well. other days i just don't. get me in and get your four hours out of me and let me be. i do it. i do it each day knowing that it all has a purpose. i work and lose a few pounds, realize being skinny really doesn't change anything in my life except how well my clothes fit, and i do it all over again. What truly isnt fair about all of it is, i chase, literally, chase my girls around the house all day and i still gain like im doing nothing but sit on the couch. oh well, wish me luck cuz i am going to get in a treadmill night tonight. if i dont fall into shreds and get stuck in the wheels of the treadmill.

Christmas Eve

Santa was here!

bunch of mid day ramblings

WOW, Christmas eve? are you serious? how did i get here? my babies are no longer babies, our new house is completely broken in, i cant keep up on laundry.... oh and lets not forget my mother just turned 60 and my grandma refuses to take care of herself. So I'm dealing with my mom who thinks she is ugly and her life is over??? then my gma who needs me to do for her all the things I have to do for my 3 year olds. i am not complaining, just a little venting.
Santa is coming tonight and bringing two new bikes and a bunch of princess stuff. hopefully santa is bringing me an engagement ring and a new coffee maker :)
speaking of engagement ring...so i have been thinking (that cant be good). Why do I have to get married? I love mike but i dont feel like a wedding is right for us. i always dreamed of it being very romantic but mike and i are like the couple that have been together for 70 years and barely talk. it is also a little scary that it will make us legally tied to one another. i just dont want to do it because it is what we are suppose to do, i want to do it because i want to. so far, i just dont want to :( it makes everything financially 100% different for us and i have always just like having my own money. so many changes, one that i really want is the last name. i dont like having a different last name from my children. I thought about this before i ever got prego that if i had a child it would have my last name. things didnt happen that way though. tradition says that the babes get the fathers last name and in the long run i thought it would make things easier. it has been fine so far but when the girls start school it will be a little different. i just don't know. i do prefer my children have all the same father, if we are married when i have another child we will have to pay a ton of hospital bills. if we are not married then the state will take care of it.....what a world?!
mike, bless his heart, wants us to be financial set for our retirement and i agree. this means that everything we pay for, we pay in cash. our wedding, cars, vacations, etc. we need a million things for our home and we both have different ideas for what is a priority. I want new bedroom furniture and he wants new lazy boys. he is such a man, we need new living room furniture and he wants to get everything in black because it would match the tv???? he needs to step back and let me decorate....hmmm better get back to getting ready for xmas :)

A great start to the Holiday Season

The kids conquered this hay maze, the loved it. I had to get in and drag them out.

Vanna


Maddie

Ivan

Vanna and Maddie

Vanna, Ivan and Maddie

I had a real busy weekend. Straight from work on Friday I joined mike at champions to hang out with some of his old friends. I did get a talk from one of his closest friends that mike is really planning for a wedding in our near future....Do I want to be married to him? Can we live the life of eternal bliss no matter what comes our way? more on that at a later date. Saturday morning woke up to a very sick mike and two needy two year old. Thank God that I have them. I went into the salon at noon and got a short hair cut. I have not had short hair in about 6 years and I hated it then. love it now, it gives me a hip mom look and its super easy to do. Then I went from that to watching my nephews while my sister emptied her house for new carpet. four kids can really make you wanna go crazy, plus my help is sick in bed. No sleep on Saturday night cuz the baby didn't feel well. stressful but quality filled day will all four kids. no sleep last night cuz both sister and nephew slept with me. a sacrifice I am always happy to make :)

I woke up this morning to my annoying alarm clock and rolled to see my sweet nephew sleeping right next to me. I got up and got ready for work. Gave my sleeping sister a huge sisterly love hug, kissed my nephews and started to work. Half way to work I realized I forgot my phone. I went back and got it but was happy to see while sitting at a red light a little rainbow. A small reminder from God that there is always hope.

My sister and I did take the kids to the Pumpkin Farm last night. They had a blast!

Trying to Keep Up

It's hard to keep up. I do everything I am suppose to on the outside but the crazy girl on the inside is dying to get out. I have such a wonderful life but I take it for granted.

This past week at church I realized that God has a plan for me and it is up to me to trust him and follow him or do it my own way. So far I have done it my own way. Things didn't work out the way I planned. I wanted to fall in love, get married, have tons of babies and just have the fairy tale. I thought all I had to do was just waste time until this all fell in my lap. I wasted time by partying and being young and crazy. I got drunk, had unprotected sex and now everything in my life revolves around those mistakes that I made. I love my children and Mike but this was not my fairy tale and because I did not trust God, I am paying for my mistakes. Things are good, but we do have to work a little harder for them. Mike and I don't have the love story I always dreamed of, but we are learning to love one another. I don't get a second chance to go back and change things but I can trust God and follow him so that my future is in his hands. Believe that its not too late for happily ever after.

I deal with the crazy girl inside. She doesn't want to work and just wants to play. She doesn't care if the house is a mess or if the kids had a bath. She is just holding on for the next beer or next cigarette to get me through. I just need to remember when I need comfort I don't have to turn to things, I can just turn to God. That is funny because its so easy but yet it feels much harder. I would honestly feel more comfortable just drinking her away. Unforunately that only shuts her up for a little while.

I will be fine. I am going to marry Mike, he has promised me more kids and I am going to be happy. I think I am going to go my see my doctor about changing my depression meds tho. :\

Potty Time

So we are potty training or least trying. my daughters will not use the potty for me. They go for daddy, grandma, the babysitter, everyone but me. We have a reward system where they get a sticker to put on their potty chart. Today when the girls woke up I asked them if they wanted to earn a sticker and go potty and they both yelled "no" at me. 3 minutes later Maddie sits on the potty for mike. they follow me into the bathroom and when they hear me pee they say, "good girl, momma" "you get a sticker" "your a big girl". yet they refuse to go potty for me. I feel like I am failing at this part of motherhood. they are with me more than anyone but they wont go. I don't want to force them because I don't want going to be a bad thing or something they don't like to do. what do i do?

wordless wednesday

Friday was a good day!

other life changing events

I just finished the book "love the one you are with".  It basically is about a woman in a content marriage meets up with an old boyfriend with whom she had a very passionate relationship with.  All in all she thinks that she shouldn't be married to her husband because their relationship isn't filled with passion.  This hit me very close to home.  At the end I read this paragraph that has answered a lot of questions I have had....

"Sometimes there are no happy endings.  No matter what, I'll be losing something, someone.

But maybe that's what it all comes down to.  Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way.  And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make it all."

This is huge for me and I even opened up to mike and shared it with him.

Nope, try again.

What's this familiar feeling?

So a few weeks ago I went in for the U/S for my IUD and got the call earlier this week that everything is just fine. Great, great!
Saturday, I go to meijers with my mom and get so dizzy that I have to call Mike and have him come pick me up. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I can not get enough sleep to save my life. I am still exhausted today but am able to deal with it and just go to bed early. Then, as always with a period, I crave CARBS. pasta, breadsticks, pizza anything I can get my hands on. The strange thing that bothers me is (forgive me is this is TMI) my nipples hurt, bad. This was the trigger for me to take a pregnancy test with the girls.
When I was at the doctor a few weeks ago they did a pregnancy test and it was negative. Is it possible, could it be? Should I take another PT?

old pictures i found