This Is For Me

Downs

1. AC breaking at the new house

2. The wall not being finished at the new house

3. Hailstorm from hell, which totaled my paid-off car. 

4. STILL WITH THE NAUSEA! 

5. Brother and sister in law still not talking to us, nor telling us the sex of the baby - even when they told everyone else

6. My OBGYN telling us BY MAIL that they are switching to a different hospital that does not take our insurance - effectively making us find a new doctor 4 months into this pregnancy

7. My preceptee making a HUGE med error the ONE time I've left the floor while he was doing med pass (2 days before he was finished with orientation!)

8. Brent and I fighting a TON over unpacking the house. 

All of these things have happened so fast together that I'm really not sure, like I said, how I'm still emotionally stable. It's HARD dealing with so many things going wrong at the same time.. I didn't even list all the fun little joys of homeownership, like our refrigerator leaking water all night so we woke up with a lake in our kitchen. Those things seem insignificant when I'm talking about things on this much larger scale. I'm at my wits end. Things need to start looking up ASAP. I guess I do have some good things to list though!

Ups

1. I'm in the second trimester now!

2. We are getting much more than I thought we would for totaling my car, so maybe we can buy one outright?

3. I finished cleaning the duplex today, so we are done with renting. 

4. We find out the sex of the baby next month!

5. We have a home warranty, so the ad only cost us $60

6. At least I know how to combat the nausea?! 

It's not easy. All this is really hard and I'm trying to figure it out by myself. Marriage is hard. Pregnancy is hard. Buying a new house is hard, and so is dealing with the unexpected. I cannot tell you how much all of this happening together is stressing me out. Is stressing my marriage out. I'm exhausted because it all is happening at once, and I didn't realize just how much it was worrying me. I need to take a few steps back and examine how lucky I am. I need to see how much we have accomplished. All of these things that are my downs I have to take in stride. They can all be managed and fixed, it just takes time. Killing myself over doing everything at once will not help me. Or Brent. We need to calmly face them one by one and tackle this as a team. That's the only way it will get done period. And the less stress the better. 

So for now, I'll just go try to organize my life and the things making it hard right now. I will cry, and think, and make plans. I will make my goals become realities and turn my Downs into Ups. Or at least I'll try. 

Nat

Monday will be a very busy day!! I also have completed my application to graduate school and hopefully will be starting in the fall! Bren is getting a little time off from job searching due to us having to move and me not being able to help move the heavy stuff... So I preferred that we got settled into the new house before he starts trying, that way it'll be a little less stressful! 

It's going to be such a great year for us! Oh yeah! Estimated due date is December 19, 2014!! :) Our precious little baby!! :D Ahhhhh!!! 

Love always

Anyways. That's THE change! And it's a great one!

Love, Natalie 

Now, I have never had a great relationship with him, nor have anyone in my immediate family since he remarried. His new wife preferred to keep her own children and grandchildren separate from his own. So we rarely met, and barely knew one another. Today, and the few days leading up the burial, made that all the more painfully awkward. See, to my step cousins Papa Ray was a father figure and a man to lean on in times of need. He had the strength and selflessness they needed. But to me and my family all he ever was was Absent. It has been painful realizing how little my father has seen his own father since he remarried. My father was shaped by this man to be the same selfless, strong, caring, and gentle man he is... And he was forcibly estranged by him due to his father remarrying and acquiring a new wife , children, and grandchildren. So today, sitting in the funeral listening to all the traits that were spoken of and revered, all I heard were reasons why they couldn't visit, why they had to see other family, why they were not available.. And all I could think about was my personal resentment of the new wife and how much I missed out on seeing my Papa Ray. That and anger. Then I glanced up and saw my father crying. I mean sobbing. And my mother comforting him. I broke down. Not for my absentee grandfather, but for my father's absentee father. When he remarried two years after my grandmother passed from cancer, I can only imagine the hurt my father felt. But then to see his father move away from the life he made for himself, not to mention his deceased wife and two sons, to take care of a new family, must have broke his heart. So today at the funeral I wept and wept hard. For the family that could have been. For my precious father. For him and his precious father he had lost over 20 years ago. I don't think anything can hurt as feeling unloved by your own family. 

My work is busy, exciting, and altogether what I expected AND what I did not. Marriage is the same! As far as working goes though, I am fully confident and capable in myself. I am even applying to go back to school to be a nurse practitioner! I cannot wait! It'll be good for our future, and I think that's what my calling has always been, but we'll see. For now though, Neurology is my home and I love it, no matter how crazy the crazies get! 

Brent graduates this May with his bachelors and then he'll start working as well. We are entering the most fun time in our lives! On top of that we have decided to start trying to make our own family! This will come at a perfect time, as our two sister in laws on Brent's side are already expecting! How much fun will that be growing up with cousins all the same ages? We  are both excited and nervous at the same time (as probably anyone in our place would be). We are also saving for a house, possibly making this town our home for quite a while. If all goes according to plan, in two years I will graduate with my masters in family nurse practitioner and I will also be free of my four year contract with the hospital that is paying off my bachelors loans! Then it will be a new start with only my masters degree loans to pay off! It's a very exciting time indeed! 

:) Natalie

I have been married for almost 10 months. In those ten months I have learned a lot about my husband. I have also learned a lot about myself.

I have never been one to do well on less than 8 hours of sleep, nor without some alone time each day. I have learned I get really cranky when I don't get those things. I also don't do well on a budget. Or with farts and other stinky things. I hate that the dishes are never done, and that clothes are thrown BY the hamper instead of in it. I have learned that the one person I love the most is also the person that frustrates me the most.

In all ways I believe that my dear, sweet, artistic husband is right for me. I just sometimes question the smartness of it. I love him with all my heart, but at least once a week I want to punch him in the throat. Sometimes more than that! It's something that scares me. We are newlyweds! We are supposed to have sex a million times each day and be so mushy gushy with love and stuff. We can be. We are more often than not completely happy and sweet to one another. But man, those other times. I jokingly asked him if he was googling "abusive relationships" earlier after we had a fight. We both laughed. But honestly I think that for 2% of our week it is abusive. We know each other well enough now that we know how to cut to the bone. We know how dirty we can fight. We always skirt the really bad things. But after it's all said and done I think how awful we are to one another and can't seem to imagine us 10 years from now. I can't help but think how he always brings up that i think he's stupid. I don't know why he thinks that, but he does. It must be something that I've made him think though... That bothers me. I cherish my husband. And I know he is intelligent and witty and confident and amazing. I can't help but think I'm the problem when he says things like that.

I love my husband. Maybe I need to pray for a smaller temper; less of a loose tongue, too. I think he know where his faults are after this first ten months just as surely as I know mine.