System Status: April 2016

I had this entire post written out and ready to go two days ago and then my site was hacked (completely due to my own stupidity) and now it’s all gone. This is frustrating on many levels, but more so because I actually managed to write an entire post that I now have to try and re-create.

First world problems, right?

Anyway… remember that house I mentioned in my last system status post? Well….we ended up buying it. I’m actually typing this out (again) from my desk in the loft area (which is a lot nicer than the closet).

It’s still a little surreal waking up in a new place after having lived in another place for ten years, which is more than twice as long as I’ve lived anywhere (second place was four years in the little town I consider my “home town”). And despite the fact that we wished and hoped and dreamed for this place for so long, it was a difficult adjustment to make. I still struggle at times, which is something I didn’t expect. I knew that it would be hard to a certain extent as so many things had happened in that house, but the level of “homesickness” I’ve been feeling was an unexpected surprise.

I’m such a home body. This has become so much more evident during this last move. So when “home” is redefined, it leaves me feeling a little lost and a little out of sorts for a while. It’s definitely getting better, especially as we went from having no yard to now having just over a third of an acre and the kids play outside almost every single day. But there’s still a part of me that longs for the comfortableness of the old house. I know we’ll get there….I just need to give it time.

We also still own the old house and E has been spending time getting it fixed up the last few weeks…repairing holes in walls and having it painted and re-carpeted and things like that. We still haven’t decided if we want to sell it or rent it out, and I have to admit there’s a large part of me that wants to keep it. I like the idea of being able to visit between tenants and stand in the spot where I watched Bob Ross while laboring with B, or where my water broke with C, or where both babies took their first steps and said their first words, or where Muse died, or where we walked in, for the first time, to our very own home. It’s hard to left that stuff go, for me, anyway.

What can I say? I’m a sentimental girl.

In the end of April I’m into….

Books.

In March, which was an overwhelmingly stressful month, I finished the Lunar Chronicles series (Scarlet, Cress, and Winter). I don’t think I would’ve stuck it out as I lost interest as it went on, but it was kind of perfect, mindless stuff to listen to while we were in the process of bidding on the house, applying for a mortgage, waiting for closing, and finally moving. I don’t know that I’d recommend them, but they were at least entertaining.

I followed those up with A Man Called Ove which I thought was going to be absolutely hilarious based on reviews I had read. It was funny, but also sad. I did like this one and would recommend it.

I’m currently reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ourselves by Charlotte Mason.

If you’d like to follow along with my book reading adventures, you can find me on Goodreads or check out my Pinterest book board.

TV.

We finished off You, Me, and the Apocalypse and I hated the ending. Hated hated. They hinted at a possibility of a second season, but then it was canceled, which means that’s the ending everyone is stuck with. And I’m not the only one who didn’t like it.

We also finished this season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and we’re still keeping up with The Goldbergs, The Middle (I really liked the Rush episode, but I don’t like how they’ve been changing Sue), and The Last Man on Earth (which is trippy at times). I started Call the Midwife back up and I don’t think I’ve ever watched such an emotionally tolling tv show.

Movies.

The first movie we watched in our new house was, fittingly, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The fact that we didn’t see it in the theater and I somehow managed to not hear about the thing that happens to Han Solo, speaks volumes about where we are in our life right now. Aside from Episode 1 of the prequels, which came out while I was in Paris so I missed the premiere (E saw it, though), we’ve seen all of the prequels at the midnight showing, getting tickets as early as we possible could. We actually flew out to Atlanta for Episode 3 to see it with other Star Wars friends who I met….on the internet…..in a Star Wars chatroom. To say that Star Wars used to be a big part of my life is an understatement.

Admittedly, I didn’t want to know anything about this movie. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see it, which was sad for E because he wanted to be excited but I didn’t want to hear about it. The prequels were such a HUGE disappointment for me, especially for something I was so passionate about in high school and college (again…first world problems) that I think I assumed this one would be the same (I didn’t calculate in my adult jadedness). I was a Star Wars purist and nothing but the originals were good enough in my mind. But I was very much surprised with this one and I liked it a lot. I’m glad I can actually look forward to the other ones now (E probably is too 🙂 ).

We also watched The Avengers: Age of Ultron (eh) and Ant-man (also eh). I think we’re all caught up on our Marvel universe movies now.

Internets.

2 Questions that will Transform Your Relationships. “I’ll bet each of us knows someone who is so busy talking that they never pause to listen to what you have to say. It’s so frustrating. And I find that I dread conversations with those people because I feel… superfluous. I’ve vowed to not be “that person,” who is only interested in their own opinion, but to be a good listener instead.

Because listening makes people feel valued. Validated. Less lonely. These are good things, people. These are things I want the people around me to feel. Me talking and talking does not make this happen. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m working on it.”

The Hardest Mile. “She was homeless, you see, living somewhere rural outside of the city. Since she hadn’t known she was pregnant, she didn’t realize she was going into labor until the event was well underway. So she gave birth outside, alone, in the middle of the night, underneath a tree. The next day, she walked a mile to the nearest road, hitchhiked to the hospital, and asked the nurses to make sure her baby boy grew up in a family that could care for him and love him in a way that she didn’t feel equipped to. And then she left, alone.”

At Least You Got A Healthy Baby. “Stop minimising the pain of mothers. If a woman tells you she is grieving over her birth tell her that you are sorry she was traumatised. Make her a cup of tea and a sandwich. Healthy babies are really important, but healthy babies need healthy mothers. They are an inseparable dyad, one is not more important than the other and it’s time that society recognised the importance of healthy, content mothers.”

Why I Ditched Social Media For Lent. “I’m not actually living life when I come to think and believe that the interactions and the pictures and the witty comments are life. Because they’re not. They’re actually jealousy and they’re competition. They’re feelings of being the only one who wasn’t invited to the party, and they’re the evil lies every woman struggles with, the lies that we are too much of this and not enough of that.”

Fighting Scarcity, One Compliment at a Time. “That single awkward moment on the ferry was the most spiritual part of my whole week. It wasn’t grand or dramatic. It didn’t bring anyone to Jesus. And maybe the shampoo commercial Venezuelan woman didn’t ever think about it again. But for me it was a beacon—a reminder to see people.”

The Dishes Can Wait, and Other Lies. “These platitudes feel like cheap words said to deal with your discomfort about our distress. You are dismissing our reality in the pursuit of sounding wise. It is, in short, patronizing. Our kids are growing up, and sometimes we miss out. We don’t need better time management; we need more time. And without the presence of a Timelord willing to cross his own time stream, that is unlikely to happen.

So I will continue to do things less than perfectly, with my attention sometimes focused elsewhere. Sometimes I will play dress-up and sometimes I will cry about the dishes.”

Says Who? “I didn’t text when my three year-old tumbled off the brick ledge outside, scraping his leg and wrist, and thoroughly covering his lower half in old rain water and mud.

I didn’t text when hours later I tumbled into a tower of Amazon Prime boxes stacked in our garage, twisting my ankle and quite nearly offing myself.

I didn’t even text when our baby refused to nap but gladly ate all manner of mysterious findings she snatched from under the couch, eventually choking herself on a chip leftover from a party we threw at least six months ago.

But, when three members of this house pooped in the worse possible place (son, daughter, dog) and three members of this house started crying (son, daughter, me) I finally broke down.

What time do you think you’ll be home?

I sat the phone down with my pinkies, the only two fingers not contaminated by the aforementioned Poopageddon, and left to wash the rest of my hands. The response binged while I scrubbed. I willed it to say soon or 5:30 or the unicorn, already on my way.”

Loving.

YOLO Colorhouse Paint. Every single wall in this house is some shade of yellow. Yellow makes babies cry. Yellow causes mama to lose her ever-loving mind. In the old house, we had one wall in B’s room that was a very dark blue color (we used to have white shelves on it when it was our office and I loved it) and one wall in our room that was a soft shade of blue-green. I have missed those walls so much since moving into this house. Fortunately, we were able to find two shades from Colorhouse that fit almost identically, as well as a very pretty lavender shade for C’s room, and I plan to paint everything as soon as I can.

Sheet Pan Fajitas. I found this on Pinterest back in March and it has quickly become a family favorite. I serve it with a big salad, making it a perfect “easy” supper.

On the Blog.

EMDR and Birth Trauma. “There isn’t much on the internet, at least not in searches I’ve done, about the use of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for birth trauma, so I thought I’d relate my experience and how this method of therapy, essentially, changed my life. Literally. I don’t use that phrase lightly. It made a significant difference not only in my overall outlook and mental health in general, but also in my ability to have another child.”

Simple Swiss Steak. “What’s more comforting than meat cooked slowly with a bunch of vegetables and seasonings, served over a giant mound of mashed potatoes? Not much, in my mind (aside from chocolate, maybe :)). I love Swiss steak because the ingredients are simple, I usually have them on hand, and it’s pretty brainless to make. Meaning that even in my sleep-deprived state, I can still manage to get it on the table in an edible state.”

Bird Sightings.

I was a little worried that we wouldn’t get any birds in the new house, or at least not a good variety, because there aren’t any bodies of water or many trees nearby. But the birds have proven me wrong and we’ve actually gotten a bigger variety here than we did in the old house. So far, in our yard and at our feeders we’ve seen house finches (which I’d like to think followed us from the other house), robins, mountain chickadees, chipping sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, magpies (which are fun to watch trying to perch on our little feeder), grackles, cowbirds (which are mean birds and we’re going to try to discourage from coming by switching to safflower, thistle, and peanuts), red-wing blackbirds, juncos, starlings, collared-doves, a single broad-tailed hummingbird (considering the amount of snow we’ve gotten in the last three weeks, I’m not surprised we haven’t seen more), scrub-jays, and spotted towhees.

Favorite Instagram.

And there you have the state of the Reb. 🙂

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