My Mug

Hiiiiiii ;)
In a rare move, I thought I'd show my face on here. You know, just to prove that I do exist in human form. So here's me and my kiddos. Aren't they cute? ;)


Our weekend was most certainly interesting- I can definitely say that I've never had to attend a funeral and a wedding in the same day, less than 8 hours apart. Each was beautiful in their own respect, though obviously the funeral was a terribly, terribly sad event that we would rather not have happened.

This past week has brought a lot of things into the light for me. I don't think that I've ever felt so affected by the death of someone that I didn't know very well. I can see myself in that position- not literally- but they are just like us in several aspects. Young, and he was the worker, she stays home with the kids. Their kids are just like ours- an older girl and a younger boy, and they are about the same age as our kids too. I sympathize for his wife, but I truly sympathize for the whole situation- the adjustment of having to become a working mom, a single mom, and now kids who will never have their daddy back. I know that I need to either figure out how to get my license back into active status, or have something else to fall back on in case of anything such as this (God forbid).

With that being said, I've hit another hump in what I like to think of as my 20's induced life crisis. Yes, I still have NO idea what I want to be when I grow up, and in just 3 short years I will be 30. So I'm currently researching other things that I may want to do with myself, besides the nursing career that I never even started (I did graduate and hold a license for the record- then had kid #2 and never went to work). Don't get me wrong, nursing is a wonderful profession and I know that I have the heart for it, and I am a caring person. But.....well, just but. I don't know what I want to do. For now that's ok. I at least will keep myself busy with researching options in the mean time ;)

July is just around the corner..literally. Where has this year gone? We have a busy month coming up, and I have to say I'm looking forward to it, BUT dreading the cleanup afterwards. We'll be leaving mid-month for vacation, then back on the 19th. Then the kiddos and I will be taking off for a weekend Bahamas trip. Once I get back from there, daughter will head to WV to visit for two weeks and I will hopefully spend a couple of nights at Disney visiting an old high school friend. All of the sudden it will be August, and I am sure to find myself back here wondering WHERE has the summer gone! But! Fear not my friends, not August, nor September, signal the end of summer here in Florida. It only means that we go from sweltering heat and near fainting, to tolerable heat and still large sums of humidity. ;)

With that my friends, I turn in for the evening. I lack anything exciting to report, but I can definitely assure you that I have had a terribly busy weekend, and for once I am ready to start a new week, bring on a Monday!

In Memory Of...

We've had one of those weekends around here where the sad news just keeps coming. A good childhood friend of mine lost his grandma, my dad lost a dear friend, and our neighbor died in a car wreck.

I think that of all of these, I'm really affected by our neighbor. He had two small children that are the same ages as our kids. They are all just good, good people. He was so helpful and nice, we never saw him look mad or angry, always had a smile on his face.

I can't imagine being his wife. She was out of state visiting family, and they had to track her down and let her know what happened. Can you imagine taking a 4 hour flight to know what you're coming home to? Going in your empty house with all of those reminders of what had been, just not so long ago? I can't imagine having to break that kind of news to my kids and tell them what has happened. What would you do when they ask for daddy, I can't imagine the sadness this would bring. I had dreams about them all night last night, waking up in between with overwhelming sadness at the thought of how drastically changed their lives now are.

Tomorrow is no guarantee, nor is the rest of today. Sometimes the people that we lose have only been in our lives for a short period before they are quickly taken away. We should cherish those that we have with us, and value that time that we have. It can be gone just as fast as it came.

Sliding Doors

Ever seen the movie? It's been awhile since I've seen it, but basically it's the story showing what would happen to the same girl, if she had taken a path different than the one that she had taken.

Typically I stick to the usual ramblings in this blog. I don't like to make it too personal, and sometimes personal can equal boring. There's been a lot going on around here, and sometimes I just need to get it all out. And well, this IS my blog, and I guess I should take advantage of that.

My own life is like the movie, Sliding Doors. Not necessarily the movie itself, but the plot in general. I am one side of that story, one part of the "what if". Only I don't get to watch for another 45 minutes and see how the other side would have turned out, I just wonder. Almost daily.

I was always sort of a rebel child. A preachers kid who just wanted to break out of her shell. I experimented in my teenage years, I did things I shouldn't have. Somewhere along the way, I dated a few guys that were ok, no one that ever really stuck out.

After I graduated high school, I met a guy. In a bar. Sounds simple enough, right? I was 18, he was (at least 18). No? What?

Ok, so I dated this guy that was 2 years younger than me- I found out several weeks after we had been together, and we were already developing really strong feelings for each other. Age is just a number, right?

To spare you all of the seriously messed up details, it was a totally destructive relationship. At one point I moved to North Carolina with him and his dad, before something snapped in me 3 months later. I came back to WV, and never looked back.

I won't "knock" that part of my life- it was who I was at the time. I was blind to my stupidity at the time, and embarrassed by my actions now. I hurt my family, I alienated my friends. I gained so much knowledge experience from it, and I grew so much after it. I became a different, better person.

When I came back from NC, I moved back in with my parents, got a job, and started over. Life was really good. I had my own car, I had my family and I had my friends back.

I could tell you so many stories about how I met the love of my life. We knew each other in high school, and several times in life, fate has brought us back together in ways that you only see in a really good movie. Once I came back from NC, we started dating again. One night after dinner, we'd only been together a few days when he told me he loved me. It wasn't the first time, but it freaked me out that it was so sudden. We hadn't seen each other in years, we were different people giving it another go.

And I ran.

I literally cut ties with him, I for once in my life had TRUE love and I let it go. I freaked out, and I lost it.

That same night that he told me that he loved me, was the night that I met my now husband. We were out at a bar, the boyfriend has been drinking and was acting goofy, a a drunk tends to do. I had had a long day at work and all I really wanted to do was shoot some pool, which I was damn good at back in my day I must say ;) My now husband was there with a friend and so I played them in pool. The boyfriend was on the stool acting ridiculous, and the future husband was confident. He was self assured and seemed to be having a good time. He asked me for my number and I gave it to him, and we went on our first date that next weekend.

I don't know why I went out that night. I'd had a bad day at work and I just wanted to relax. And more importantly I don't know why I gave the now husband my number that night. I was with a guy that loved me more than anything, and I gave it up because for once in my life, I was scared of love. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and I ran through the wrong "sliding door".

I say all of this to say that rarely does a day go by that I don't realize that I married the wrong person. I didn't fall in love with my husband, I fell in love with what he could give me. I had come out of a terrible relationship with (literally) a teenage boy, and met a guy who was nice, who took me on trips, who was fun loving and respectful. And who was fake. He won me over, and then the curtains closed and the real guy came out. his attitude makes him ugly, and the fact that I could still love my ex boyfriend from forever ago helps nothing in our situation. I truly have lived the movie Sliding Doors because I know how it feels to wonder what if. I know that the love of my life is out there, engaged to someone else now (this is fact) and probably getting married soon. I know that if I STILL think of him and love him NO less than I did 7 years ago, then it is true. I know that you cannot possibly have a schoolgirl crush on someone for 11 years. This is how long I have known him.

I married my husband because I got pregnant with daughter. I know now that it was not the right thing to do, but as I've said in a previous post, many eyes were on me and my family and I felt like I had to do it. I know better now. I know that I would have had the best support system in the world as a single mom, and I know that my husband does not make me a good mom. I am a wonderful one without him, and sometimes in spite of him. It was the one thing that I didn't doubt when I became a statistic of teenage pregnancy. I never once doubted my abilities to be a good mother.

When we first got married, divorce was imminent. We fought non-stop, it was nothing but stress. I kept in touch with my ex, certain that I would end up back with him. At one point it was so bad that I took my then 7mo old daughter, and drove 6 1/2 hours to the beach. He lived an hour from there and we met up. my husband later found out about this, and I can honestly say I still don't feel bad about it. Call me a bitch if you must. We ran into each other a few times over the course of the next couple of years, and each time was just like we'd seen each other the day before. Literally nothing changed each and every time.

It finally ended shortly there after. And by "it", I mean communication. We did not have sex, there was nothing like that going on. He was begging me to leave my husband and move in with him, offering to pay for me to go to school and everything. I look back now and I wonder, why didn't I do things like this? I've always been a daring person, I've always gone against the grain. So why didn't I go with my heart instead of worrying so much about what other people would think of me? Why didn't I care about myself for once? I married while I was 8 months pregnant because I was so worried about what people would think, why didn't I take my chance to get out of the situation that I got myself into?

Don't get me wrong. From the outside looking in, we have a great life. We have a wonderful home, two beautiful healthy children that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world, husband has a great job. It's the little things that matter to me- the rudeness, the lack of respect, the things that TRULY count to me.

We moved to Florida, and I truly hoped for a fresh start. The guy that I was not with, ironically moved back to WV from SC, and said that he did it for me. Things didn't work out like they were planned obviously. I had hoped that moving here would give me a fresh start, mentally. But nearly daily, I wake up and at some point during the day, I think about what could have been. It's not the way I should be, but it's the way I am. There are things that I smell, places and things that I see that remind me of the past. Songs that I hear remind me of nights that we drove around with my head on his shoulder listening to him sing, and being nothing but content.

Something this past weekend at Disney reminded me of how things used to be. I can't remember what it even was now. It's been over 3 years since I've talked to my ex, and that last communication was a friendly one- he, telling me about his fiance, and I, telling him about how we were expecting our second child. So imagine my surprise tonight when I log into my messenger and I see that I have a request from him for me to add him to my chat list. I don't know why, there was no message attached to it or anything at all. Just there he was, reminding me that he does exist somewhere other than in my mind.

Why do I say all of this? For starters I haven't said enough. I could tell story upon story that has a fairy tale feeling. If you've never been in love, I can tell you what it feels like, and sometimes I'm afraid that I won't remember before too much longer. If you want to know whether to take that leap of faith, I can say with certainty, DO IT, because you may just spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened it you had.

On The Road Again

Those of us who have kids, know that traveling with kids is no easy task. The saying "It Takes A Village", oh, it totally does. To raise them, to travel with them, all of that. I truly believe that in order to effectively raise a child and ever get anything else done, one must be an octopus. There's no other way to function fully, and I often find myself wishing for 8 arms in some weird, circus-freakish way.

But traveling is one of my loves in life, and so the show must go on. Now and then I get brave and plan a trip out of town for us to take for no particular reason. So tomorrow we're headed to Disney. :)

I'm really excited, because we're trying out Typhoon Lagoon (water park) and Animal Kingdom- 2 parks that we have yet to visit. I'm a total freak for the Magic Kingdom, so normally it takes up one day of our trip. I'm definitely sad that we won't be going there this time, but, I suppose I'll live. ;) We're leaving really early tomorrow morning and heading into Typhoon, and then Sunday doing Animal Kingdom before we come home. Did I put "Close proximity to Disney" on my list of things that I like about FL? I should have. With such a short drive, it takes a lot of the pressure off of us, we don't feel like we have to cram everything in like you do when you vacation there. We operate at the kids pace, and if we don't get to it, we'll see it next time. On days that we go to Magic Kingdom, we normally don't even go into the park until 5 or 6. Not so with either of these parks, since they operate on daytime hours (10-6 and 9-5).

Anyhow, I planned all of this last weekend, to give us a chance to get a hotel and so that I knew how to budget the paycheck and leave us extra money to go down on. I ALSO planned this when I thought that lovely time of the month was coming right away. But, as usual, mother nature laughs in my face and AF shows up 4 days late. So now I'm headed to a water park. On the heaviest days. Isn't that fab? Ugh. On top of that, I think my whole body is literally swollen. Like BLOWN UP. This has never happened to me to my knowledge, and trust me, I think I would have noticed if something like this had happened before. I literally can NOT get my wedding rings off. They've been stuck for several days, and I'm just hoping that once this month's dose of womanly hell passes, that the stinkin rings come off. It's uncharted territory for sure. What the hell has happened to my body??

So anyway, that's my upcoming weekend in a nutshell. I'm headed to a water park, hopefully coming out on the other side of it with no embarrassing moments. Just look for me in the wave pool, I'll most likely be the one that doubles as my own inner tube :/

Yesterday was daughters program for kindergarten. I have to say that I am beyond shocked that I will soon have a first grader (school is out Wednesday). Where does the time go? It seems like she was just a little baby, my little tag along that went everywhere with me. Now she's 6, and I truly don't know how it happened. I'm looking forward to a nice family weekend, NOT answering the cell phone (my mom is really good about calling 5000000x when she knows we're out of town), and hopefully good weather- so far the forecast is rain. This will be a nice little break before husband leaves Wednesday for a trip to see his best friend (insert many comments laced with curse words and hatefulness from me here), and then 4 more days from there for work. I won't even get into that whole ordeal, it's too close to bed for me to get all stirred up. Plus I'm too excited at a chance to be a kid for two days to be bitter ;)

Hope everyone has a nice weekend!!

Recovery from Houseguests

Well, we survived the weekend and came out relatively unscathed. Of course any time you have 5 extra houseguests, it can be loud and chaotic, but the worst part is the disruption to son's sleep schedule. Hopefully he's back on track today.

My dad jumped out of the plane, and floated back to the ground safely. I was a nervous wreck just thinking about it, so whether I ever end up doing this myself remains to be seen ;)

Daughter's recital went well, and I must say I have NEVER been so glad to put those styling products back into the cabinet. By day #5 of hair and makeup on a 6 year old, we were both totally over it. The show went well, but was far below the standards of the dance school that she went to in WV, so we'd like to keep her on track. At any rate, she did great and her pictures turned out wonderful :)

I think that I have so much to talk about at this point, that I don't have anything to say if that makes any sense ;) Husband leaves next week for 10 days. Not that that's a long time, because I've been home alone a lot longer than that by myself, it was just the manner in which it all went down that resulted in a huge fight and lots of bitterness- mostly on my part. Men sometimes. Seriously, what is wrong with them?? Anyhow, in an effort for a little fresh air and a break of sorts, I think we're headed to Disney for the weekend. I have been craving a water park for awhile now ;)