A Word in Edgewise

A large part of why I come off awkward when in group settings is my inability to insert myself into a conversation.  This happens for a variety of reasons:

1. I don't have anything to say.
2. I didn't think of what to say fast enough.
3. I waited too long for a break in conversation and now the topic has shifted.
4. I'm too nervous to say anything at all (for fear of looking like an ass).
5. I don't know the group of people well enough.
6. I'm having a good time just listening.

Some of these sort of blend together, but I thought I'd list them separately because I felt it was warranted.

The biggest reason I don't contribute has recently shifted from being too nervous to not thinking of what to say fast enough or waiting too long to speak up.  Some months ago the reason was that I just didn't know anyone well enough to feel comfortable saying anything.
It doesn't help that I hang out with awesome, cultured, smart people now.  I used to feel intimidated.
Since having the wee one and steering my diet choices in a direction that pleases me I have more in common with them, so it's easier to contribute to a conversation.  Sometimes I feel childish because my contribution was just relating my own experience to the conversation; I didn't have anything new and interesting to add.

I suppose the entire root of my hesitation is being worried about perception.  I worry a lot about how others perceive me, especially if it's someone I know will be in my life for a long time, or someone I admire and would like to keep in my life for a long time.
My in-laws fall into this category.  I made a conscious decision to just relax a while ago (and I'm sort of being successful with this) and that has helped me a lot with communicating with them.  For a while there I was pretty nervous around them.  A lot of that was because I didn't know them very well, but a good portion of it was also that they're awesome people.  They're also different than anyone else I know, which is sort of a dumb statement considering that everyone is different.  What I mean is that most of the people I know and knew before meeting hubby had very similar interests like video games and anime.  We didn't talk about much else really.  My in-laws are very down to earth people and they've been doing what I wanted to be doing with my life for a long time.
Meeting them convinced me further that hubby was the man I wanted to spend my life with.  I would have married him regardless of in-law awesomeness I think, but it helps that I felt like I wanted to raise our family in his family...if that made any sense.

I digress.
My point is, the more I feel is at stake with the people I'm conversing with, the less I tend to say.  Which is sort of shooting myself in the foot because it has happened before that those people took my quietness as aloofness.  I've been told that someone thought that I put myself above everyone else, which can't be farther from the truth.

[EDIT]
I don't mean to imply that my old friends are any less awesome than my new friends, because that's not true.  I meant to say that my interests (and myself) have changed a lot since I've been pregnant and I have more in common with those I've met recently, generally speaking.
[/EDIT]

End of Christmas Musings.

One of my major, major flaws is that I go and go and go until I just can't go anymore.  I drive until I break down.  Sometimes when I break down I'm a minor wreck, sometimes I'm a major catastrophe.
A beautiful example of this behavior in myself has been this holiday season - and, to some extent, getting the puppy.  We had company starting the 17th of December.  They left Christmas day and my parents arrived the 26th.  My parents only stayed a few days, then hubby went on night shift.  Then I got sick.  Now we're here.
During this time it seems like I had multiple "holy shit, I can't handle all of this" moments.  The biggest of these was this morning before mass.  This one was triggered by a specific innocent phrase hubby said to me before leaving for work last night, but I had been teetering on the edge for a bit while I was sick.

God bless my husband.  He deals with this particular fault very well, and I am enormously grateful for that.

I call this flaw/fault my boomerang flaw because it keeps coming back.

In my nature I am a doer.  I like to get things done efficiently, sometimes to a fault.  My ex roommate calls me the tetris master for how I load things into a car when moving (I've moved her two, maybe three times now); also for the way I load the dishwasher.  I'm weird about the dishwasher.  I hate to run it if there is any empty space, and I like to cram as many dirty dishes as physically possible into it before using the dish detergent.
Anywho.
Because I am a doer, I tend to be impatient about things not getting done.  This is unfortunate, because I do things faster than most other people and I tend to expect someone to respond promptly to something like a full trash can.  Other people just don't care as much about these things, and that's okay.
What I need to work on is being okay with it.

So I guess this fault is really two faults: going and going and going until I cannot possibly go any more mixed with being impatient.

When I was pregnant I was somehow able to turn this off in my head.  I was okay with a fairly messy kitchen, and clutter on the breakfast bar.
I wish I had been able to retain that.

So, back to work I go.  Hopefully I'll have some luck fixing this; I've tried so many times I've lost track.  Although, I think I'm better than I was even last year.


Another thing I've been thinking about is how incredibly blessed I am to have sort of stumbled into my current life.
I love the family I married into, I don't have any weirdness with my own parents, I married the man of my dreams, and we have a beautiful baby boy.
I have no idea what I did right, or if I did anything right, really.  It humbles me in an odd way to think about it.

I can say that I think my life is finally coming together, that I've finally figured out the right fork to take at the crossroads.  It took some learning and some scars, but I think I may have got it together now (aside from the aforementioned flaw).  Not to imply that I'm totally put together, because I'm not.  As a side note: anyone who says they are should be carefully observed for signs of mental instability (i.e. living in la-la-land).

That's another topic: the situations and manners in which my scars reveal themselves continue to surprise me.  That's maybe a story for another day.

~~~

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!
Also, merry Christmas (late), happy new year (late), and happy Epiphany! (late)

heh...better late than never?

Early Arrival!

Oliver Charles arrived two weeks early on August 21st at 11:30 p.m..  He was 7lbs 15oz.

Everything went pretty well.  Labor is intense; it was and wasn't what I was expecting.  I thought I had bad gas when I woke up at four that morning and I ended up calling into work thinking I'd be okay to go in the next day after some rest.  In a couple of hours I woke hubby up and asked him to run to Kings and grab some gas relief meds.  After taking those and waiting for an hour or two with no result I texted my sister-in-law asking if labor could resemble gas, then decided to call the midwife.  She thought maybe I was just rumbling, getting ready for the real thing so we decided to check back later.  My sister-in-law called me back an hour or so later and said the same thing so I just sat tight, riding the waves of contractions as best I could.
I spent a lot of time in the bath.  My water/gas bills might be up a bit this month from reheating bath water, lol.
Our midwife kept checking in every hour or two (depending on how I said I was doing) and since things were progressing pretty steadily her assistant (apprentice?  I dunno what to call her) came over to check on my progress; seeing if my water broke, how I was doing otherwise, etc.  My water hadn't broken yet but contractions were getting more intense.
Sometime around dinner time I stopped being able to have conversations with hubby.  I spent most of my time trying to relax, which is more difficult than the books make it sound.  They all say to breathe through contractions and that does help a little bit, but if you can't relax while you're breathing it's pretty useless.  Breathing slow and deep (belly breathing) is the best kind of breathing but it was hard for me because extending my abdominal muscles hurt if I breathed in low enough.
The fight or flight part of my brain was really not helpful with the whole relaxing thing.  At all.  I was tensing with the pain, which would make it worse (slightly) then somewhere in the back of my mind the words, "I can't" would get sent out in various forms.  It took a lot of concentration to say, "I can" but it helped a lot on my exhales to say what it was I wanted to do.  For instance I might say, "relaxing," or "opening," or "letting the baby out."  For a little bit I was visualizing a flower opening in the sun.  And then I had to choose between visualization and relaxation.  I did keep saying the things I wanted to do, sort of like a mantra and it helped most of the time.  Sometimes the pain freaked me out just enough that I'd need something like rescue remedy to help calm down.
When it got dark the contractions were pretty much right next to each other, but by then our midwife had come.  She came in the door and said, "you're a rock-star," to which I replied, "I don't feel like a rock-star!"  She just laughed a bit I think.
Somewhere between then and pushing I ended up back in the bathroom.  For maybe an hour - keeping track of time was not a thing for me at this point - our midwife rubbed something on my back (probably arnica oil) which felt amazing.  She gave instructions on how to stand; I had been leaning over the sink marching on the balls of my feet and when she saw me doing this she told me to plant my feet and bend my knees a little.  I never would have thought of doing that myself, but it helped a lot.
Somewhere between that and pushing I ended up on my hands and knees hugging the toilet.  I don't remember how I got there or why I did it, but I have never loved a toilet so much in my life.
I think I pushed like that - leaning back and down while I bore down - for an hour?  I'm not really sure how long it took.  All I'm sure of is by that time I was exhausted because I hadn't eaten enough, or slept enough throughout the day, and the toilet lid was cold and awesome support for between contractions/pushing.  It also made a good sort of bar for me to pull on for support while I was kind of kneeling during contractions.
I didn't like the pushing stage because I always thought I was farther along than I actually was.  I think a lot of that had to do with how tired I was; I was dozing a bit between pushes at that point.  It didn't seem like it lasted very long, though, before his head was out and then his body.  There is nothing in the world that is similar to that sensation and I'm not even going to try and describe it, because I'm pretty sure it's impossible.  There is no preparing someone for that through words.
Once he was out I had pretty much no strength left so hubby, our midwife, and her assistant guided me backwards to lean against hubby's legs and the tub to hold the baby.  Then it was up into the birthing chair to deliver the placenta.
Delivering the placenta freaked me out and I'm not sure why.  For whatever reason I was afraid to push it out, but everything went fine.
I got light-headed from the blood loss, so we employed an oxygen mask for a bit while I tried to recharge with cheese and goodbelly.
I did tear, but nothing major.

We nursed and did all the newborn stuff like weighing and Apgar scores and such.  Hubby got the first pee right on his shirt before Oliver was diapered and swaddled.
Our midwife and her assistant sang a wonderful song after giving a few instructions and then we went to bed.  I think that was around 4 a.m.  So twenty-four hours of sleeplessness later, we had ourselves a beautiful baby boy.

He sleeps a lot, so resting right now is easy, but I'm expecting that to change soon.

So that's my poorly written account of how birth was for me.  I don't bite, so please ask anything if you'd like.

So I just wanted to say - ooh Shiney!

I've been a total slacker the last few weeks with this blog.  Not only can I not think of what to write about, I usually place things like cleaning the kitchen or weeding the garden (slowly turning into harvesting the garden!) higher up on my priority list.  I seem to recall saying something about not having very much energy, and that's still true, so until I get the nesting burst you're supposed to get before baby, rationing my energy will have to continue.
I miss writing these to be honest.  It's sort of therapeutic in the same way cleaning the kitchen or weeding the garden is therapeutic for me.
Anyhow..

Because my mother-in-law rocks.

The baby shower was pretty awesome.  Awesome cake and awesome people.  A lot of people, I was surprised at how many people were there.
One of the games was to draw on a blank onesie with fabric markers and pictured is the one my mother-in-law did.  She's an amazing artist!  I took this one to work with me and showed it to the customers I actually have conversations with; everyone loved it and wanted to know where I got it so they could get one too.
I'm really excited for this onesie.
There were so many onesies, I maybe have too many...if that's possible.  We got some more from one of hubby's coworkers.  They are freaking adorable.  They're green and they all have cute little caterpillars on them.  The set came with a zip up hoodie that has caterpillar antennae and a smiley face on the hood, and a plush caterpillar rattling toy.  I think they might be my favorite set of store-bought onesies we got.  Probably because they're not yellow.  I do love yellow, but I tend to favor colors on the cooler end of the spectrum like gray and purple.

I feel very lucky to be a part of this family, and to be building my own family.  By some wild stroke of luck (or providence) I'm married to the man of my dreams, and we're having a baby soon!  I can be a stay at home mom (unless finances don't permit) and my parents are practically gifting us a wonderful house.
I'm not sure how all of this happened, but I am certainly grateful for it.  Thinking about it makes the days I'm having a hard time physically - and these are growing in number as of late - a little easier to manage.

I'm going through this phase now, and I'm going to place the blame entirely on being pregnant, where I don't want to do anything but be near hubby.  It doesn't even matter if we're doing something together, just being in the vicinity of him is all I really want.
I feel like a kid who needs her safety blanket with her at all times.

To jump to another totally unrelated topic:
I'm going to be writing about the birth of our baby.  I feel like there needs to be more positive stories out there about birth.  Granted, this is assuming nothing goes wrong, but even if something does I'll still write about it.  I want to help people understand that birth is not an illness; you don't need to be afraid of it.  There are a lot of alarmists out there, and plenty of stories of gloom and doom.  I'm hoping to be able to add to the stories that are positive and loving.
That's not to say I'm not scared.  Indeed, I'm scared shitless (right after I said you shouldn't be afraid) and I think that being scared is normal if the fear is not unhealthy.  But whatever you do, don't let people fearmonger you.  They'll try, some without even realizing what they're doing, but always remember that birth has been happening for ages and that it's a natural part of being a woman.  Chances are you won't need all the high-tech equipment, but it's nice to know it's there, just in case.

Also:
Do not read What to Expect When You're Expecting.  Just.  Don't.
I will explain why when I do my list of reviews of pregnancy books, which I plan on doing after the birth.

Lessons Twenty-four, Twenty-five, and Twenty-six

I'd like to share another bit from the same chapter of the book I shared with you yesterday:

It makes a rather good parable, don't you think, if one takes the room as representing the Church, and the glass as representing that curious thing for which we have no name-that sheath of simultaneous attraction and repulsion which surrounds the Church...How is it that you get two people, both attracted towards the Church, both as far as you can judge in thoroughly good dispositions, and yet one of them finds the way in and the other doesn't?...how do you account for those souls which seem to see their way, the whole Catholic idea is opening itself up to them, and yet at the last moment they seem to come up against a wall of glass?  I say "wall of glass" because it is something we can't account for, just as the moth which is trying to get into your room can't account for the mysterious inhibition which retards its progress.

The last bit about the moth made me giggle aloud when I read it.


Lesson Twenty-four
Baptism
315.  What is Baptism?  Baptism is the sacrament that gives our souls the new life of sanctifying grace by which we become children of God and heirs of heaven.
This chapter also covers baptism by blood, or desire.  By blood is achieved by martyrdom for the belief in Christ, and by desire is gained by loving God above all things.  They are "life lines" as the book puts it.

Lesson Twenty-five
Confirmation
330.  What is Confirmation?  Confirmation is the sacrament through which the holy spirit comes to us in a special way and enables us to profess our faith as strong and perfect Christians and soldiers of Jesus Christ.
334.  What is holy chrism?  Holy chrism is a mixture of olive oil and balm, blessed by the bishop on Holy Thursday.
This chapter explains our weapons, which are:

1. Suffering and Sacrifice
2. Prayer
3. Good Example
4. Encouragement

It also features rather entertaining pictures to illustrate things like number 330; the soldier in Christ.
Apparently the Bishop used to give people he confirmed a "slight blow on the cheek" to remind them that they will encounter suffering on this road.  Interesting.
The chapter also encourages you to continue study after confirmation.  I tend to agree with this; you cannot possibly have learned everything you need to know about the faith.  There is always more to read.

Lesson Twenty-six
The Holy Eucharist
343.  What is the Holy Eucharist?  The Holy Eucharist is a sacrament and a sacrifice.  In the Holy Eucharist, in the appearances of bread and wine, the Lord Christ is contained, offered, and received. 
The above link is a miracle that Father mentioned during this lesson.  There are also others, but I like the story of the first link better.
This chapter/lesson helped ease my mind about transubstantiation.  I had previously been uncomfortable with the idea that the Eucharist was real flesh and blood.  It is symbolically - and in the above cases literally - and the meaning behind the symbol is pretty fantastic (in the good way), if you ask me.
An acquaintance of mine that recently (ish) found me on facebook was telling me about going to a Lutheran - I think she said Lutheran - service.  I'm not sure what they call them.  Anyway, she went up to receive communion and asked the priest/reverend/preacher if he was going to "give her the damn wafer already, or just keep waving it around in front of her face?"  After relating this to me she laughed and said something to the effect of it being the 21st century; why couldn't they have something that actually tasted good, like a cracker or cookie or something?

Speaking of it being the 21st century, Father made a comment about the use of that argument.  He said (this is not verbatim) "so, the 21st century means tradition should end?"
Tradition is tradition for a reason, you know.  I prefer tradition to modern habits, but that's me.