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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

b&w

At least I have a view I suppose.



Even if it feels like black and white lately

Friday, February 19, 2010

Quote of the Week.

Because right now, this is a job. If I advance any higher, this would be my career. And if this were my career, I'd have to throw myself in front of a train. -Jim Halpert


Couldn't have said it better myself.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Repercussions.

I try very hard to stay positive. To remember how lucky I am in life.

No matter how many times I remind myself of this, I can't seem to regain the optimism I had before I left college. All I can do is look back and think of how naive and foolish it was.

When you fall short of what you've expected to achieve in life, of the goals you set up for yourself, knowing you could have done it, but for some reason you flaked, somedays its hard to get out of bed in the morning. I am my own worst critic, and disappointing her isn't much fun.
When Thursdays are just a night of decent television, instead of the beginning of weekend and when the day after day of working 8 to 5 drains the light from your eyes, its hard to remember was optimism is. Hell, its hard to remember what day of the week it is sometimes.

But I keep going...trying to figure out what I can do to change things. Sometimes that doesn't get me very far either.

I try and not think of these things often. I push them to the back of my mind, along with the massive amount of money I pay to bills each month, and how much my job is more of an annoyance I deal with so I can pay those bills than a career. I look at my husband and remember I'm not alone. I have things to be happy about. I shouldn't waste my time on all this negativity.

Days like yesterday tend to bring all that negativity back to the forefront, so I blog and vent and try and not be a complete beeotch to anyone who I come across until I talk myself out of it once again.

It's exhausting.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Letter.

Dear Great Lakes,

Thank you so much for adjusting my monthly payments since I could not afford the original $230 a month (due to other bills, including my additional private student loan payment I currently make of $155 a month, which will increase to $250 a month in March). It will be SO MUCH easier to pay you $107 a month until 2013 when it will jump to $311 a month, which is a TOTALLY reasonable amount of money to pay for SIX YEARS, again on top of my private loan payment which will be around $350 a month by then. Oh and thanks for telling me this is my only option, besides the $230 a month I can't afford right now. I liked hearing that so much that I burst into hysterical crying which resulted in hyperventilation. While at work.

I'm SO FUCKING GRATEFUL for my Bachelor's Degree your loans helped me get, and in turn the WONDERFUL, COMPLETELY FULFILLING job I presently have. It DEFINITELY makes it possible for me to not live paycheck to paycheck and really enjoy my life and not worry incessantly about my finances.


Best,
Another Jaded 20something.

p.s.- Understanding College Student Loans should be a mandatory class your senior year of high school, especially when neither of your parents went to college.

(note: all words in CAPS may possibly be heavily laden with sarcasm....and most other words too.)

Monday, February 15, 2010

Married life.


Growing up in the good Catholic family that was mine, my parents stayed together (although there were many times I feared they'd divorce, due to Dad liking the sauce a bit too much, but that's a whole other fish to fry). This created a vision of "married" in my little developing psyche that my grown up marriage doesn't coincide with at all.

A bit of history:
My parents had already been married 12 years when I was born and were 35 with a 10 year old and a 3 year old. They were tired. Dad worked long hours and Mom bounced from part-time jobs that included Midnights and weekends for years. They did what was expected. They got married (at an older than average age for their time period: married in 1972 when they were both 24) and started a family. Somehow they raised us right and there were no babies out of wedlock or major let downs: both my sister and I graduated college and my brother is a Sergeant in the U.S. Army.

Fast forward to now. Married for five and a half months. I don't want children and we have Husbands 7 year old (and estranged 3 1/2 year old) to make up a very different kind of family. I still don't feel how kid version of myself imagined things would feel, mostly because I don't think you can fathom what adulthood feels like in general. More so, because I'm living a different experience than I watched as a youngster.

We have good days and bad days, like any couple. To this day, whenever we have a disagreement/argument (whatever you want to call it), it is the only emotional situation where I feel like I could hurl (everything else almost always triggers emo-eating). When things are bad, it only makes me want to fix things, learn from it and move on. When things are good, they are really good, like, I almost want to slap myself because I wonder how I lucked out and found someone so made for me. It's slightly nauseating.

Step-parenting, at its worst, feels like attempting to walk on egg shells that have been strewn across a semi-frozen lake (to me at least) but most of the time it isn't like that. Most of the time its nice to be important to someone other than Husband on a regular basis and to take pride in her accomplishments. She is a great kid, and that makes things so easy. Whenever Little One comes back into the picture, who knows how things will ensue.

I still don't know about babies. I love them, and my sister is having one in May which I couldn't be more excited for, but I just don't know if I want to share my husband any more than I already do. Call me selfish and weird, but its the damn truth. Plus the whole shaping of an individual's psyche freaks me out. Add in the expectation of child-rearing once married (why? we aren't farmers and over-population is sort of a problem these days) and I just don't feel the need to procreate.

I never had a relationship that lasted more than 6 months before I met my husband. I feel like I could spend the rest of our lives enjoying that (along with our kitty and maybe a dog, if we ever get a house) and investing our time and energy in each other, and his kids he already has.

I know, I know, I can hear you saying, "you will just wake up one day and want a baby of your own" and maybe I will, but for now, I'm going to spoil my niece that is coming in May, focus on my marriage and help raise my step-kids, and I'm perfectly okay with that.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Letter.

(those of you just tuning in, Little One is my husband's estranged 3 1/2 year old)

Dear Little One's Mom,

I know accidents happen (even if Little One was completely planned on your part, in effort to keep my now husband in an unhappy relationship, you psycho...it worked so well, didn't it?) and unplanned children are born every day, but you do have some nerve to have done the ridiculous things you have in the past four years.

These include (but are not limited to):
1. Denying Husband's attempts to see Little One on a regular basis which eventually led to never returning phone calls when he tried to contact you in order to schedule a visit.

2. Calling him up on his birthday in 2008 telling him you were getting married and you wanted him to give up all his rights so this man you were marrying could adopt her and you all could play good Christian family together.

3. Posting pictures on various online social networking sites of Little One with this man with captions such as "_____ loves her Daddy!" (How honest and Christ-like of you!)

4. Moving back and forth from Tennessee (at least twice) once Husband told you he could not (and would not) give up his rights. He then tried to file the appropriate papers and retained a lawyer for $750.

5. Asking for an extension at the first court hearing so you could retain your own lawyer, then waiting until the day before the next court hearing to obtain said lawyer, so nothing could be actually accomplished at this hearing, because your lawyer didn't know crap about what was going on.

And now, since I hear you are getting divorced (big surprise) and living back in Ohio you have been in contact with my mother-in-law. How nice of you to finally decide to be a grown up about things and let Little One have a relationship with her father (and his amazing family) who honestly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for being a stand up guy and completely willing to be there for his kid. Shame on you for stealing the past two years from your daughter, who has an entire family she doesn't even know.

I really hope you have put on your big girl panties, because that would at least make everything that has happened in the past a bit more bearable. Plus, I really hope you realize who he has married. It's me and I'm not going anywhere, so if you decide to still be in love with him, or try to cause problems between us, I will not be biting my tongue like I used to.

I adored your child when I met her (the first time Husband kept her overnight two weeks after she was born) and I am so happy I get to be a part of her life again, but you better get your shit together. You are someone's mother and that little someone is much more important than you and your selfish motives.

Best Regards,
Little One's Step-Mom