Everything Eileen (almost...)

Bleh...

nobody@vox.com(Eileen) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:24:10 -0400

I'm feeling rather blah today, and I'm not entirely certain why.

When I woke up this morning, I thought of my laptop and of all the work I needed to do this morning, and I wanted to cry. Not that crying would have done any good, but I was just that frustrated.

The Boy was very easy this morning, thankfully. He didn't fuss too much during his diaper change, he ate breakfast like a champ, and even enjoyed walking from the car to his classroom this morning. (He also helped himself to a pancake when we got to school, too. Hey - the other kids were still eating, and it would have been rude to turn down all that food. I just hope the teachers heeded my warning about over-feeding him, but as I haven't received a call from either husband or school, I think we're in the clear.) We saw some cranes in the bushes in the parking lot, and he stopped to watch them, completely engrossed. It wasn't until they moved out of sight that he was willing to continue.

I jumped into work this morning and pushed out the things that needed to go out immediately... Now I'm in the "wait" part of "hurry up and wait".

My laptop is downstairs with my buddy J (who promised not to rename it Donkey Kong but a more fitting name instead, like Princess Peach), and he said he'll get it working again. If anyone can do it, he can.

Maybe seeing my laptop working again will cheer me. Cuz I'm just feeling bummed right now.

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Potpourri

nobody@vox.com(Eileen) — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:24:03 -0400

The Boy got sent home from school yesterday. Well, he would have been sent home, except that I accidentally left my phone off, and, for some odd reason, they didn't call my husband at work.

Anyway, he's at home today with his daddy, and he has a doctor's appointment at 2:45. After all, Dr W told me to call and/or bring him in if he still had a fever on Thursday, and, well, it's Thursday and he still has a fever. And a bad cough. And if he has the same cold I have, a sore throat, too. But I think my sore throat partially came from the constant vomiting, so there's really no telling. His appetite has also decreased considerably (he didn't even finish his banana this morning for breakfast, and he only had a little more than half a cup of his favorite macaroni and cheese for dinner last night), he has a bad cough, and he's not sleeping well. Oh, but his breathing isn't labored and he's still in (mostly) good spirits, so that's the bright side of things.

My poor little baby.

He woke up around 3AM and didn't want to go back to bed right away. I nursed him, let him drink some milk from his sippy cup (because, sadly, I'm only making so much milk now - but with both of us fighting the same cold, a little bit is better than nothing), gave him some Tylenol, nursed him some more, changed his diaper, and held him as I tried to coax him back to sleep. I thought I had him, but as soon as I crawled back into my own bed, he announced he wasn't ready for bed. So I brought him into the family room, reclined onto the couch, and tried to get him to sleep again. He was restless, so I let him walk around a bit before bringing him back into his room to go to sleep. It's impossible to be upset with a little boy who is just so excited to be alive, even at 4 in the morning. Finally, around 4:30, he fell asleep and (mostly) stayed asleep. He was still out when I left just after 7 this morning.

Needless to say, I'm feeling a bit tired.

I've taken myself off of Weight Watchers this week. After all, how do you count points when you aren't keeping most of what you've eaten in your stomach? When I'm better, I'll go back on it. It's not terrible, after all; it just requires keeping a list. And I love to keep lists.

There's a brushfire somewhere near my house (though not close enough for any danger), and probably a few more on the way to work. The air quality outside is terrible. As soon as I reached the Disney area on the freeway, the smoke was unbearable. And now all I can smell is smoke. It's awful. For this reason, I'm so thankful The Boy is staying home today. I really don't want him outside exposed to this if it can be helped at all.

The Boy enjoys watching Chris play Mario Kart on the Wii. I think he likes the pretty colors and the graphics. It works well, I think; Chris can play and The Boy will (mostly) watch. Last night they were watching something on G4 together, which was pretty cute. Chris was sitting on the floor, and The Boy was in front of him, drinking from his sippy cup, both of them engrossed in whatever was on the screen. If I thought I had time to take a picture of them together, I would have. It was completely priceless.

I'm a little annoyed today at work. See, a big part of what I do is provide reporting on a weekly basis on product performance. Twice a year, there's a group in my department that asks for information on specific items, which normally isn't a big deal - except that (1) they wait until the very last moment to ask for the information with every expectation of having it immediately, (2) they're asking for a lot of information that's already in the reports (with commentary) that I send out each week, and (3) 30% of the items on which they want information either don't exist, have not been delivered, or have less than a month's sales data. And, sadly, my crystal ball isn't working right now, so I can't tell you how these items will perform this year. If I could do that, I'd let my friends know the winning lottery numbers, too, and, well, as none of my friends have won the lottery, clearly I can't do it.

[sigh]

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Going bananas (and other random musings from this week)

nobody@vox.com(Eileen) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:26:20 -0500

I'm getting tired of bananas. They're one of Baby C's favorite foods, so they're a staple around the house, but I'm starting to grow weary of them. I may need to cut back on them this week, just to give myself a reprieve.

Did you know that bananas naturally separate into thirds lengthwise? I didn't realize this, but I quickly discovered it as I've been feeding the baby bananas each morning. I found it very interesting. I also noticed that there's a string that runs from one end to the other in the very center of the banana. It appears all the seeds come from this stem (for lack of a better word). Also, the older your banana is, the darker this string will be. Interesting, isn't it?

I used a shopping bag the other day that I brought back from the Philippines. It was my mom's. I discovered a tag with a barcode on the handle, and saw that the grocery store she frequented gave the user points for using the bag. Isn't that ingenious? Lots of stores already have cards that you present to get special discounting; wouldn't it make sense, then, to award points for using a recyclable bag, too? Even if it's just a penny that goes into a Upromise account, that would be much more cost-effective than continuously needing to restock plastic bags.

I realized last week that I have a tendency to talk about my sister as if she's somebody that everyone knows. I think this dates back to elementary school, but I just noticed it the other day. It's weird. I was talking to someone on the phone, and I said something like, "Well, my sister, Ethylene X, blah blah blah," in an almost bragging tone, kind of like my sister is someone I expect you to know. And she is. After all, she's Ethylene. (As if that needs any explanation.)

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Struggling (A Cornucopia of Random Thoughts)

nobody@vox.com(Eileen) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:16:14 -0500

This has been an awful year. Just terrible. By far the worst year ever.

This month has been the absolute worst. I honestly don't think it can possibly get worse than this.

I'm going back into therapy on Thursday. I'm really looking forward to it. I haven't been to a therapist in about seven or eight years, and I really shouldn't have stopped going when I did. If I kept going back then and learned how to deal with my grandmother's death (she died in '82 or '83), I probably would be in a better emotional state now.

Or maybe not. I don't know.

I'm not sleeping at night. Lord knows I'm tired enough (I keep wanting to fall asleep at my desk at work), but for some reason, my brain doesn't shut off at night until after midnight. Nights, in general, are the worst. After Baby C is down for the night, after Chris has gone off to bed, after the dishes are washed and the toys are put away, that's the worst time. That was my normal time to call Mom and check in with her. Last night, I called Ethylene to chat with her. It wasn't the same, but it filled a little of the void.

And then once I'm asleep, I don't sleep very deeply. Not at night.

I'm just really struggling right now.

I have a meeting with my boss tomorrow to go over my annual review. Blech. I hate review season. I communicate enough with my boss to know where my strengths and weaknesses lie, but it still doesn't make me like review season. Especially right now.

I'm an emotional time bomb. The slightest thing sets me off, and I'm not entirely sure why. Little annoyances that I was willing to "deal with" (read: overlook) a couple of weeks ago now are major triggers for me. I have Mom's general disposition, and I know it, so it's better if I let people know what's on my mind rather than keeping it bottled. Contrary to popular belief, I actually do keep quite a bit bottled. Just because I'm extremely verbose, that doesn't mean that I don't keep things close to the chest. I keep quite a bit close to the chest, just like Mom did. And I refuse to let my blood pressure become a major problem, so I have to let it out.

The problem, of course, is that "letting it out" does not translate to "let go". There are a lot of things that I just will not completely release. Maybe this therapist can work with me on that, too.

Breastfeeding isn't going as well as it was in January. The six days I spent away from the baby were particularly difficult for my body. No matter how much I tried to express, I knew it wasn't enough to keep up with Baby C's needs, and that was another element of disappointment for me. On the plus side, he's doing okay with a formula/breastmilk mixture, so it's not a complete disaster. Besides, he turned 10 months old today, and he'll be able to start regular milk in another 60 days. But he'll need to ease into cow milk gradually, too. In the meantime, I need to stop beating myself up that I can barely produce five of the eight ounces he needs each day. (I was producing 12 before I left the country.)

I'm feeling very angry. The 5 Stages of Grief are Shock/Denial, Inward Anger, Outward Anger, Depression, and Acceptance. I'm done with shock and beyond denial; now I'm very angry. I'm angry about a lot of things. Some of it is related to Mom; some of it is completely off-topic. And I'm really angry at a lot of different people, too.

My mother-in-law came down last week to help Chris take care of the baby. I'm so very grateful for her help. Honestly. She said that when she arrived Sunday afternoon, she felt like she should have come the day before because it looked like Chris was struggling.

She left on Saturday. Before she left, she hugged me very tightly and said, "Be angry. It's okay to feel that way. You need to let yourself be angry and work through it." Then she told me to take care of Baby C and of Chris. I wanted so desperately to ask, "Who's going to take care of me?" I feel like half of my spine has been removed from my body; I find myself going through the motions every day, going over mental checklists so that I remember to do basic daily functions (basic hygiene, eating, getting dressed, remembering my shoes, getting out of bed). If not for the baby, I would probably sink into a very deep depression. As it is, I know he needs me, and that's the primary reason I vault out of bed in the mornings.

My baby blues were a lot like this, only much milder. And I could call my Mom, and she would tell me to get dressed, to eat something, to take care of myself so that I could care for the baby. I could call my sister and selfishly have a little freak-out moment without needing to worry about her emotional state. There were also dozens of articles that I could access to help me deal.

I'm sad.

I'm angry.

I'm tired.

I want a do-over.

Did I mention that I'm looking forward to going back to therapy on Thursday?

Weird.

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I'm so clumsy (and other musings)

nobody@vox.com(Eileen) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:38:06 -0500

It's like my hands don't want to work and I'm dropping everything. Normally, it wouldn't be a big deal except that bending down to pick something up is such an ordeal.

I discovered something today, though now that I think about it, it's not that novel of an idea. To keep the baby from sleeping during the day (and keeping me up all night), I put one of my ear buds in my waistband so he can hear the music, and the other goes into my ear. It seems to be working. It sounds like a science fair project.

My father-in-law is visiting this week and I'm very excited. I wish I was able to stay home this week and spend some time with him; he's very good at telling stories (my son will appreciate this, I'm sure), and it's fun to hear about my husband's childhood. It makes me wonder what kind of a little boy my own son will be. My own family is coming to visit next week, and it will be really nice to see everyone.Sadly, all my time off is reserved for the baby's pending arrival, so I'll have to work in my visits with them before and after work.

I'm a little annoyed with Disney Dining. Absolutely nothing is available for next week, and it's irritating for someone like me who lives about 10 minutes from Disney World. Granted, most people plan their vacations months in advance, and the reservations people try to get guests to sign up at different restaurants throughout their stay, but really, is it too much to ask to have some availability for the restaurants I want? [sigh]

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