Sleep

When I was in high school, I could easily wake up at 6:30pm, catch the bus to school, work after school, do play practice, come home, do homework, fuck around till between 11pm – 2am, finally go to sleep and then wake up and do it all again.  In college I wasn’t too far off, but I did implement naps when I could on those night’s that I stayed up way past the 2am mark.

My first job out of college had me out the door by 7am the latest, but home by 5pm the latest so if I needed a little nap because I stayed up past midnight, then it wasn’t that big of a deal.  My second job, at the precinct, was great in the sense that I worked wacky hours so my body naturally conformed to the weird sleeping schedule with ease.  Even my current job wasn’t initially that much of an issue, in the beginning.  I work Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm.  Not bad at all, very typical.  But I have noticed that as the years have gone on, I’m getting tired so much earlier than my body had been so accustomed to.  5 years ago staying up till midnight wouldn’t have been an issue at all for me.  Now, I’m 29 years old and I’m exhausted and ready to relax in my Sleep by Number bed by 10:30pm.

And by the way, how is it that my nearly 37 year old husband has no problems staying up that late on a consistent basis?!?!  Very annoying.  damn young soul.

What is up with me?  Sometimes I think it’s my body’s reaction to me almost turning 30.  But then my husband is on his way to turning 40 and he’s during circles around me on in the energy department.  I have more responsibilities now then I did 5 years ago, but even that doesn’t quite explain it because I find it all very enjoyable.

I think I need to find my middle ground.  Any suggestions?

What is a family?

Growing up I learned early on that family is not necessarily limited to those who you are blood related to.  I have two good friends that I grew up calling “cousin” and their mother’s “aunt”, but no blood relation to be had.  That was my first introduction to an alternative concept of family.  The older I got, I started to realize that those who were actually blood related to me weren’t necessarily good people.  Infidelity, child endangerment, drug abuse, alcoholism, being simply nasty people, ect, are many of the reasons why they are simply not good people to associate with.  Not exactly the traits in a family to be boasting about.  In order to cope with my lack of a good support system at home, I started to rely more emotionally on my friends and their families.  Before I knew it I was almost apart of their families.  And I liked it.  I also learned that there is no such thing as the “ideal, perfect family”, but with lots of love and support even the most down and out family can be a “good family” and have a “good home”.

Now that I’m married and have my own little family, the concept of family hasn’t changed all that much for me.  My friends back in the day who really helped me and showed me the love and support that I needed are still very much apart of my life.  My family who wasn’t exactly there for me when I needed them, well, they still aren’t.  But you know what, I think it’s all for the best.  I do believe that things happen for a reason and while it may really stink during the journey to get there, the end result is the way it was meant to be.

Ending – A family truly is what you want it to be.  A family is not just biological.  A family grows in your heart and is always there when you need them to be.  It’s that special feeling inside your heart and gut that tells you that no matter what, to those people you allow in your life, they will love you just as much as you love them.  That’s a good feeling, beyond biology.

Une Autre Année

So I’m perusing through this blog and this quote struck me as something that should be repeated.  It’s regarding life lessons that he’s learning while living in France.

The pace of life here feels as if the intensity has been turned down. People seem to rush less, savor life a little bit more.

How wonderful is that?  I agree, life should be a bit less intense, less of a rush and life should be savored a bit more.  Well, a lot more.  I love to travel.  Really LOVE to travel.  I wish I (a) had the disposable time and (b) had the disposable income needed to afford to travel more.  I also wish I could cook and bake more.  It’s hard baking at home when we have the kids.  They often want to help, which really translates into hinder for me.  The job gets done but I feel rushed, or if Mike keeps the kid out of my hair I end up feeling guilty that I wasn’t spending time with them when I was cooking.  I also would like to cook more.  Since I met Mike I have experimented more with cooking and I know that I’ve expanded my culinary repertoire 100 times over, but I feel like I should be trying more.  I don’t like to experiment with cooking for a large group of people, however if I do cook for Mike and I we are left with an abundance of leftovers, some of which we may not eat before it gets spoiled, which seems like a waste.

The great thing about the internet is the endless amount of people out there who not only want to share there thoughts, but also they’re kick ass recipes too.  I love food blogs.  I especially love how people post picture of their culinary creations next to the step by step instructions.  Very helpful.  That has always been my biggest gripe about cook books, a vast majority of the recipes in the book don’t have a picture of what it’s supposed to look like.  I like to know what I’m getting into before I dive right in.  Food blogs are the answers to my prayers.  I heart them.

Ok, enough about food and blogging.  On to what I want to accomplish this year.  I don’t tend to make New Years resolutions, mostly because I usually fail to keep to my resolution.  So, I figured I’ll make “conscious efforts” this year instead.  Those would be:

• To blog more, the past 3 years of blog posts have been pitiful to say the least
• To not be so about the technology in front of the kids.  Already it’s proving to be hard with my cell phone, but it’s something that I do feel is necessary, and I’m pretty confident the world won’t stop revolving if I don’t respond to a text message within 30 seconds of receiving it.
• Explore.  Traveling is hard in this economy.  Oh sure you can get some great deals on quick getaways or vacations, but if you don’t have the disposable income to throw into going somewhere, guess traveling abroad is out of the question for me at the moment.  But, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t check out what’s to be seen on Long Island, New York State, New England, ect.  When we go see friends in New England, we don’t have to confined to just being at their home.  Nothing stopping us from taking in the views from Mansfield Hollow in Connecticut while heading up to Boston.
• Learn French.  Or at least take it more seriously this year.  Last year I made a big deal to my mom that I wanted Rosetta Stone in French, it’s expensive as all hell and it’s been sitting on a shelf since last March.  **Shakes head**

So, I have a bit to work on.  I should get to it.

 

I’m Married!!! And farewell 2011!

December 3, 2011

It’s official.  I’m a married woman.  See, got the photo to prove it.  No longer just the girlfriend, lover, fiance… now I’m the wife and mother.  Kinda cool.  I’ll take it.  2011 is coming to a close.  What a crazy year.  It is true what they say, you go through so much stress and preparation for the “big day” and it flies by at the blink of an eye.  I loved my wedding and I believe everyone had a good time.  I love my husband and absolutely love and adore my step-son’s.  They rock.  Since Mike and I first started dating I really haven’t blogged very much.  That has to change.  I like blogging.  I can actually be interesting at times.  Even funny and witty.  At the peak of my blogging I know I had a bunch of followers checking daily.  I still get lots of hits on certain posts years later.  So, my New Years Resolution for 2012 is to blog more.  And, maybe even try to get Mike to join in on the fun.  Happy New Year and here’s to a happy and healthy 2012.  <3 Tara

Death becomes her…

Long time, no posts.  I know, I suck.  Life has been distracting from posting to say the least.  Since I last posted… let’s see… Mike and I got engaged (yay!), some family drama on his end but nothing we can’t handle, some drama at work, but again nothing I can’t handle, talking more to my family which I know is a good thing and now my grandmother is dying.  And it’s not my grandmother that resides in Vermont (the cool one originally from France), oh no, it’s can’t be that one, it’s the evil one from Puerto Rico that’s in the nursing home in West Islip.  Yeah, that one.  The same evil granny that tried to stab me with a butchers knife back in 2004.  And you want to hear the most fucked up part about it… next to my mother, I’ve been at the hospital the most.  Yeah, a bit screwed up.  Truth be told, I’m only really going to the hospital to see evil granny dying because I want to be supportive for my mom.  I’m not a heartless bitch, I do feel like she is suffering and I don’t want to see anyone go through that, even if she did try to stab me to death, but I’m there more-so for my mom.

I’m sorry that it takes a major life altering event to compell me to post again.  I know I need to do it more often.  I think that this is a turning point and I will start it up again.  I hope.

Oh deal Lord, this is a difficult time.  I feel compationate towards my mother, it’s a difficult position to be on for her.  She is a good person, and a great, loving daughter, to a person that kind of doesn’t deserve it.  Honestly, she is a better person than I am in the sense that I couldn’t’ be so loving and devoted towards a person that tried to kill my child.  But she is.  She is taking the death, or impending death of her mother, very hard.

(Ok, back story… back in April 2004 my grandmother attempted to stab me with a butcher’s knife.  Luckily I wasn’t in my bedroom when she busted through the door with said knife… Long story short I had her arrested (because it’s beyond fucked up that you’re so mentally ill that you’re going to try to stab your own granddaughter for no good reason expect she told you to fuck off when you were being an irrational bitch towards her) and got an OOP for her to stay the hell away from me for a year… then in August of 2007 she had a stroke which paralyzed her voice box and the entire right side of her body so she had to go live in a nursing home.  Yeah… karma much?…)

Alas, my grandmother is taking her time with dying.  And I can’t imagine that it’s peaceful.  It all started on Sunday, 4/10.  I got a call from my mother that my grandmother was spiking a 105F fever and had to be rushed to the hospital from her nursing home.  They stared to talk to my mother about DNR paperwork… not good.  A week later… she has been moved to palliative care, officially diagnosed with a kidney stone that they can’t remove due to the actual procure to remove it would be deadly to my grandmother, is in renal failure, starting in respiratory failure and is clearly dying.

My uncle Johnny, who lives in Massapequa and is only 10 mins drive away, has been there a grand total of 3 times, all less than an hour or so.  I’ve been there nearly every day.  My uncle Joey, who’s in NC, refuses to come up unless she is dead.  And, he respectfully asks that we hold off on a funeral until next week, since he doesn’t want to disrupt his vacation.  Yeah… good times!

I have a weird family.

Mike is awesome.  He really is.  I love him.  This has been an emotioanl time for me as well.  I offically forgave my evil granny for trying to kill me.  Honestly, I wouldn’t have done it if she wasn’t literally dying.

She is taking a long time to die.  Why?  Who knows…. On the compassionate end I want her to die to end her suffering, because it’s clear from her facial expressions that she’s dying.  On the empathetic side, I want her to die so that my mother isn’t suffering any longer as I can only imagine how she feel’s now.  On the selfish side I want her to die so I can use my bereavement time.  I know, fucked up thinking… but hello?  She did try to kill me.  And I want it all to end sooner than later so as to not disrupt too much of my aunt and uncle’s vacation.

Death is a strange, hurtful, confusing, thing, isn’t it?

Why is this bothering me so much?

So my boyfriends secretary at work, beyond inapproperate with my boyfriend. When Mike was going this his divorce she told him about all the affairs that she’s had wiu married men. At happy hours she kept trying to get him wasted and then would try to convice him to let her take him home – unsucessfully of course. When Mike and I started to date she would call Mike “just to say hi” at night when I was wih him. Then, when we had officially been dating for like 6 months, she pulled him by his belt at work. He told her to knock it off and she did, for a while. Then he inapproperateness started up again, she told him that she caught chlamitia from her married boyfriend and asked him if he had caught anything before. Then she started to insist that he let her drive him during team outings (which he did only if other people were in the car too). Now, her damn birthday comes about and she invites a bunch of office people to go out with her, including both of us. We has existing plans that weekend to be in NJ, clearly we couldn’t do both. Mike explains this to her, but she still lays it on thick how much she wants him to be there. We don’t go, of course, sorry chickie but my best friend and his family will always trump hanging out with her. Then she take a picture of mike and puts it on her facebook wall. Ok, weird, why? Just him in his cubical at work. Mike sees this, said it’s weird too and asks her nicely to take it down because it makes him feel uncomfortable. Her response – doesn’t talk to him for the better par of two weeks and counting, is blaintly rude to me at work for no reason and she keeps his picture up online to this day. I get it, she like my boyfriend and I’m sure is jealious that despite her best efforts he never wanted her and she couldn’t break us up. I believe that my invite to her bday was one of those things “… keep your enimenys closer…” but seriously, why the f’ing drama? This chick is 30 years old, we all work together and we have mutural friends. Sorry that she can’t handle the rejection but, I don’t know, I just don’t get it. And I think that’s what’s bugging me the most, I want to like hear what she is thinking. Is that weird? That this is bugging me? She is a nobody to me and I could care less if she lived or died but maybe it’s the fact that she’s not only being rude and unprofessional to me but also to mike is the reason the situation is bothering me? Now I have no actual reason to say anything to her. Mike requested off of his team partly for just wanting a change and partly to get away from her. Should I confront her or just let it be? What about when were in social situations with mutual friends? I don’t want to make it aquward for anyone else, ya know? I’m at a loss. I don’t like her nor have respect for her, for obvious reasons, but I dot need her f’ing drama in my life either. This is kind of random and unexpected and also a bit concerned at what psycho secretary also has up her sleeves…

Long time coming…

It has been a really long time since my last post. Almost a whole year actually. I’m going to try and update more in 2010. Stuff I am most likely to post about are my boyfriend, our house, his two sons, my annoying family, and my insane job.

Lonely

I feel really lonely right now. My boyfriend is giving me the cold shoulder and went to bed I guess mad or annoyed at me because I disagreed with him.  I feel that I have every right to be upset or annoyed at him, for reasons that I’m not going to get into on this blog, but I was trying to be the bigger person (as always) and push my feelings aside and try to just skate over the issue, but he apparently wouldn’t have any of it, he just gave me the cold shoulder.  So right now I’m really sad.  i wish that he would just get his ass out of bed adn tell me that he loves me and wants me to be in bed with him.  I know that right now he won’t because he’s drunk and stupid.  I’m sad.

Looking back

It’s funny how feelings and emotions change over the years.  People change, it’s a fact of life, it’s just a strange sensation thinking about to what I thought I wanted so much back then and then realize now that things really did work out for the best.  Things have been going really well between Mike and I.  He’s definitely a guy that I can see wanting to spend the rest of my life with.  The last time I felt anything close to how I feel about Mike was when I was with Jamie.  Though I must admit, I never felt as strongly about Jamie as I do for Mike.  For the first time in quite a while I really looked at Jamie’s Facebook page.  I looked at his engagement pictures and you know what?  I don’t have that “bomp bomp” feeling.  Not even a fleeting feeling for someone that you once loved.  Maybe that’s because he wasn’t right for me.  Maybe it’s because I didn’t love him as much as I thought that I did.  At the time that we were together I had never loved anyone as much as I loved him, but now I know that I can love someone so much more.  So much to the point that it’s hard to imagine a time when I didn’t feel this way about someone.  I’m happy for Jamie.  I wish him the best.  And I’m happy with the man that I have and can’t imagine being with anyone else.

sorry for the delay

Sorry for the extreme delay in my postings.  So much has happened.  I had originally wrote out this long post trying to say everything that had been going on in my life since my last post in November.  But the reality is, I’d need hours and a book deal to get it all out.  The thing that matters the most to me is that in my last post I said that I was going on a date with my co-worker, well, we’re officially dating.  Stared so the end of last year.  He’s a wonderful man, a great father and a really good boyfriend.

I’ll try to remember to update this thing more in 2009.