life happenings

The past week, but mostly weekend

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I want to start off by saying thank you to everyone who expressed support and sent positivity my way after reading my posts about what I was going through emotionally recently. That was not my intention, to make people feel they need to compliment me, but it was very much appreciated. I really just wanted to put it out there for both myself, and for anyone else who might feel that way and just needs to know they aren’t alone. If I can help just one person, that makes me happy. I originally set out to do a blog just to have a place to write for myself, to have a record of not just mundane life, but about Lukas as he grows, about mine and Bobby’s adventures together and with Lukas, and about the hobbies that I’m into. When I started writing those first posts, though, I decided to share them since not only had they gone in a direction I wasn’t really planning on, but I felt like maybe, hopefully, someone else could benefit from something I have to say. I really struggled with whether or not to share those things, and as soon as I shared it, I immediately felt self-conscious about assuming that anyone could benefit from things that I say. However, I received nothing but support. I have almost a constant confidence battle with most things. Anyway, if you’re here reading, thank you. Onward to new things!

There was not a whole lot of eventfulness during the week last week, aside from FINALLY watching the end of the last season of Doctor Who. Just business as usual, working on websites, coming home to my beautiful family in the evening and doing a wide array of things before it’s time to put little man to bed and having a couple hours with Bobby before it’s time for us to go to bed. Although, Wednesday was apparently party day for me. We celebrated Jeff’s birthday at work by leaving the office early and going to Royal Oak Brewery. Then, Bobby and I picked Lukas up from daycare/school, went to Bobby’s parents’ house for dinner, and then left for Oxford to have a couple of beers with our friend Mike for his birthday. My belly was not happy with me the next morning, but I had a wonderful time at both celebrations.

Friday after work was pretty great. We took Lukas down to play with another little boy who lives in the neighborhood and hopefully we made new friends. We have quite a bit in common, at least initially, with our neighbors, and even though Lukas is a year older, the boys played swimmingly aside from the typical toddler spats. Lukas impressed me with how polite he was and how well he played with someone younger than he is. My favorite thing, and also a little heartbreaking because the other boy didn’t hear him, was when Lukas said ‘Please, can I have another piece?’ (asking for another block). It was so sweet. The boys got into a little spat caused by Lukas, Lukas took off down the yard upset, and as Bobby was walking back with him asking him what he thinks would make the other little boy feel better, the other boy ran up to him and hugged him and Lukas said he was sorry. I think we’re teaching him pretty well. After he went to bed, we had our Friday Pathfinder gaming session. August was an insanely busy month for everyone, so this was the first time in over a month that we were able to play our campaign. It was a lot of fun, very story driven, which I like. I may post a recap of the gaming session from my character’s point of view sometime soon.

Saturday morning was pretty productive, I went for my first morning run in quite a long time and it was great, we worked on cleaning the house and Lukas played outside for a while. He actually napped for so long after playing that we had to wake him up to go to Ian’s Rib-Off celebration. When I put him down for his nap, I told him that if he wanted to have fun at a party with a bounce house, he needed to sleep. It worked! While he took a nap, though, I kind of fell apart. After a week of the awful feelings I was having being gone, they returned with a vengeance. Thankfully, I had Bobby to myself to help me through it while Lukas was sleeping. I felt okay enough afterward to go to the party, but in the middle of the party, I started to feel really self-conscious and awkward, and not at all like I wanted to be around people I didn’t know very well. I managed okay, anyway, I think. Bobby got to judge ribs, so he was in heaven. Lukas charmed everyone, as usual. It sounds funny, but watching him eat ribs was awesome, he just tears in, that little guy definitely loves barbecue. I’ll hopefully be getting pictures that someone took of him. I followed Lukas around and played with him while Bobby was judging ribs. We came home from the party, put Lukas to bed and pretty much went right to bed ourselves because I was still feeling a little emotionally rough and it was late enough that I felt okay with going to bed.

Sunday, as is our weekend tradition, we went out for breakfast. We typically go to Clawson Grill, but we decided to treat ourselves this weekend and go to our favorite breakfast place, Frittata. That was a fantastic decision, as we knew it would be. I’m so glad they didn’t stay closed for long. After breakfast, we went to the bike shop so I could finally get some bike shorts, and I needed to replace my broken helmet and torn up gloves. I don’t know how, but the adjuster on my helmet snapped recently, so before I could ride again, I needed to replace it. All of that new stuff went to great use almost immediately when we decided to go for a nice ride. We didn’t know where we were going, but found ourselves heading for Ferndale. Bobby texted his boss to meet up since he lives in Ferndale, we stopped at b. nektar for a few minutes, bought some mead, and we had lunch and beers with Bobby’s boss and his wife at the WAB. They were really awesome to chat with and they were great with Lukas, always a plus. We rode back and went to our friend’s party for a bit before calling it a night and getting home to get Lukas to bed. We watched last year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special, a couple episodes of Bojack and then went to bed.

Today was pretty much all productivity. We got up, had breakfast, went to Lowe’s to get another house plant and some light switches, and then came home to do some cleaning. Bobby’s mom came and took care of Lukas for us while we went to the gym, we had a great workout, came home and hung out with his mom for a bit before dinner. I did some more cleaning while Bobby took Lukas to the park, I gave Lukas a shower and took care of his bedtime routine so that Bobby could rest a bit, and now we’re just settling in for the last bit of our evening. I know, mundane, but it was a nice day, albeit super duper hot and humid. We wanted to go for another bike ride, but decided it was way too hot.

I was still feeling a tiny bit emotionally rough yesterday and today, but I think I pushed a lot of it out on Saturday. Saturday evening before we went to sleep, Bobby helped me with a bit of guided meditation. I think between him helping me get it all out earlier that day and that meditation, I went to sleep feeling a lot better. I’m still struggling a bit, and it probably doesn’t help that I’m a bit tired, but it’s getting better again. Nothing like a couple weeks ago when it was just one full week of feeling awful. I’m trying to pinpoint what I think it is, and I’m not sure. I put a lot of pressure on myself constantly about everything, and I think sometimes that just really wears on me and the pressure bursts into a thousand emotions.

Only sort of related, I haven’t knit much lately, and I need to remedy that. I can deal with a lot of stress with two needles and some string. Plus, I have a ton of things in my list that I want to knit. I need to finish my chevron scarf, make Bobby’s lobster claw mitts, myself a cardigan, and I promised Lukas a scarf, among a ton of other things.

I’m starting to think I may need to post more often so that my posts aren’t so massive. Especially when I get to wanting to write things that aren’t just daily life. We’ll see how this goes.

On Difficult Emotional Times

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I keep going back and forth about what I really want to write in this post. I don’t know how much I want to share, but maybe it’ll help push it all out if I just write about all of the super personal inner workings of my brain. I’ve been struggling a lot worse than in the past lately, for what seems like no apparent reason. Maybe the only purpose for this post will be to let anyone who is feeling the same way know that they are not alone. I promise, I’m not always this way.

So, lately, my brain gremlin has made its way out of its cave in the recesses of my mind to make me feel terrible about every aspect of who I am. Referring to this horrible, unseen creature as a gremlin is not my original idea. In fact, it came from this book that Bobby bought me probably close to 10 years ago. It is a great book and helped me quite a lot. Apparently, though, I need to go back and read it again to get refreshers on how to banish this awful thing back to where its been hiding. I’d love to think I can just get rid of it altogether, but I’m not sure that’s possible. There are a lot of complicated ingredients that go into making me into the person that I am, both bad and good. More on all of that at a later time. Some of it has left me scarred, and sometimes I feel a little broken because my emotions can get really overwhelming, even positive ones. I used to have a very low opinion of myself, and I’m still not fully on the confidence train most of the time, but I get by. I had been feeling a little bit down for maybe the past week or so. Earlier this week, though, and on and off since, I was just full on feeling horrible about my abilities at my job, at home as a partner, as a mom, as a friend, really as a person. It kind of came out of nowhere and blindsided me. I had one day where I just felt terrible and nothing was really making it go away. A nice run in the evening at least helped. This recent bout of whatever this is has reminded me of how far I’ve come, but also how far I still have to go. I now have the ability to feel like I’m good at things that I enjoy and work hard at, and I can frequently accept compliments without coming back with something negative, or even something as lame as ‘yeah, right’. That’s not the case all the time, though. Especially recently. I’ve become terrible at accepting any compliments again because I just can’t allow myself to believe they’re genuine. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this badly, but it’s been ebbing and waning. A lot of times, some physical activity, or some socialization, or even talking about it with Bobby, helps push it off a little. I know that I’m really hard on myself, and that I need to let up, but that’s easier said than done. I don’t really have much advice on how to deal with stuff like this, distracting myself helps, activity and little victories definitely help. I’m still re-figuring out how to not just be completely, ridiculously hard on myself.

I used to be much, much worse. On top of having no confidence in myself, I was also very shy and introverted. This is after high school that I’m talking about, too. I struggled with low self image in high school, but that seems pretty common. Even after finding an awesome boyfriend (who I eventually married), I still struggled with it all. He really helped me overcome it when it was really bad. He helped give me ways to come out of my shell and just be able to say hi to strangers as I walked past them, and he also helped me find ways to feel good about myself and feel confident. I’m still a work in progress, and a lot of times I brush off what he says as him just saying things because he loves me, but I’m a lot more receptive to hearing positive things about myself than I used to be. It’s not a fun thing to experience, hearing positive things about myself and just brushing them off as a knee-jerk reaction because I just can’t let myself believe they’re genuine since they’re coming from someone who cares about me. That’s kind of dumb, and I know that, but it’s not so easy to overcome that.

There has been a lot of good this week, though. Monday was our first time working with a personal trainer and getting back in the gym to do some weight training, and we managed to go a few times this week with a short workout plan he gave us. Lukas is both super awesome and insanely difficult at the same time, but such is life as a 3 year old. He’s so funny, smart, and loving. He is also very independent and opinionated. We’ve had some delicious dinners and spent some time with good people. We went and spent some time with old friends on Tuesday night, always a good time with Ben, Missy and the Ullmann family. Lukas and I had a mom and kid date with Meghann and Ben. Yesterday, Bobby and I spent a good portion of the day at Plex letting Lukas run around and play while we tried to write and traded writing pieces with Christian to get feedback from each other. Last night, we got another big chunk of our new 3d printer done, connecting most of the cables. Today, we went shopping, got an oil change for my car, and took turns working out. Running after a pretty intense workout is hard, and I was a bit down on myself for not having a very great run. Bobby had to remind me that I’m not used to weight training and then running, and that it’s good that I ran at all. Later on, we went to a family birthday party for my cousin’s little girl, who is absolutely adorable. After he warmed up a bit, Lukas was his energetic, daredevil self, and people loved him for it. My papa had him cracking up, I love his deep belly laugh so much. I had a nice time catching up with my family. After this post, I’ll snuggle up with my love and chill out before we head to bed to get ready for another week.

I really do have a great life, and I am surrounded by awesome people. I think maybe that is potentially the key to getting through this rough patch, realizing how great things really are. It’s sometimes hard to see it with that terrible gremlin constantly tossing negative things around my mind. I just have to re-learn how to send it back to where it came from. I’ve started drawing what I think it looks like. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the drawing yet, if anything. Maybe just drawing it will help get the negativity out that I’m feeling. That might sound a little bit odd, but it could potentially help. Who knows. Bobby and I are taking a 4 day vacation up to Bellaire for our anniversary in a couple of weeks, and we’re taking a full week off of work to get stuff done around the house, I think that break will help reset me.