Confession Time

I've been really depressed the past 6 weeks or so, like seriously depressed. Some days I don't get dressed, I don't put on make up or do my hair, sometimes I even go several days between showers. I park my ass in front of the TV and just watch whatever is on, I haven't been cooking, my kids have been eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and mac and cheese. I've pretty much turned into a shitty mom and a shitty wife. I don't want to do anything or go anywhere, I just want to sit and wallow in my own misery.

My husband is a big fan of tough love and he's been working on me getting out of my slump for awhile now, trying to get me to go to the doctor, meet some new friends, join a yoga class, anything but I wouldn't bite. I've been too depressed to show any kind of initiative.

The truth of it is that I am miserable here, there is nothing to do, I have no friends and I just want to move back to Texas...or anywhere that is not here. The problem is that we are stuck here for at least another year, maybe longer because Luis has a profile from the cancer. I can't be like this for another year, my kids and my husband deserve better than that so I guess I finally decided to get out of my slump.

Yesterday I applied to the university here in town and I finally feel excited about something. I thought back to January of 2007 when J and I applied to go to college at Fort Hood and I felt like it was going to take me forever to get my degree, I thought it would take me 10 years to get my bachelors degree but here I am, two years later, and halfway there. They have an art program at this school and besides one class, all I have left is art classes. I can spend the next 2 years doing art, something I really love, AND I can get my degree, I am beyond excited.

When I dropped out of college and got married when I was 20 I know my parents probably gave up on me ever graduating from college but I will be so proud of myself when I get my degree and I know they will be ecstatic too. I'm just happy that going to school still makes me happy.

Another Snow Day...Again.

This morning I attempted to go sledding with my kids.

We have no sleds so this took a little imagination.

We started out with the top to a rubbermaid storage bin, that didn't work.

Then, we tried a flat piece of cardboard, that didn't work either.

Luckily some kids from down the street showed up with a boogie board and it was kick ass...you know, for a tiny little hill...well, it was more like a ditch.


So, apparently 3 snow days isn't enough for us, we get another one tomorrow. I guess we have a bunch of morons here that can't drive on 3 day old snow. I am happy though, all this time at home has made me finally get off my ass and clean my freakin' house. Now that I have cleaned though, I have nothing more to do tomorrow so I'm thinking of bathing all the dogs...or maybe I'll blog something worthwhile...don't hold your breath.

Allison and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Today is a craptastic day. Not only am I sick but so is my husband and Nicholas. Nicholas was up all night unable to sleep and so he did what any 5 year old would do instead, he brushed his teeth. I'm not kidding, I found his toothbrush on his pillow when I finally told him to get into my bed. My kid is a total weirdo!

Today sucks for various other reasons as well.

Last week a pipe busted and flooded Sophia's room, we had to quickly remove EVERYTHING from her room (most of which is now in the living room, hallway and our safe room, God please no tornadoes right now), the pipe has been fixed but we've been waiting on the carpet guys to come out. They finally made it out today, a week later, and it's still going to be a few days till they can get it done.

As if that isn't bad enough, Sophia's doctor still hasn't scheduled her VCUG and so I've been on the phone all morning trying to figure out when the hell they are going to torture my daughter. The only good news that goes with that is if she does have kidney reflux (I'm pretty sure that is what they called it) like they think, there is a doctor in Oklahoma City that can do the procedure without making any incisions to her abdomen, so yay for that.

Oh yeah, the best news of all: my mom is coming to visit again in February...for Valentine's Day!

Don't you wish you were as lucky as me?

I've won the UK lottery like 10 times, 3 times today alone.

Don't worry, I won't forget the little people.

Get off your high horse.

I had a conversation with my mother this morning and we started talking about me when I was younger. One of my aunts is having problems with her daughter doing drugs and such and my mom has decided to give her advice because she seems to think she is a fountain of knowledge.

My aunt apparently told my mother that I used to get high everyday in high school, this is a complete lie. So, my mother called me asking if it was true, of course I told her it was not. I did however make sure she knew I got high all the time (never daily) in college.

My mother very smugly said, "I told her you didn't smoke weed in high school." When she does things like that it makes me want to knock her down a few notches. Just so she didn't think that she was this perfect mother (which she often does) I made sure to mention that I did have sex with several guys in high school. Am I cruel?

I just can't stand it when she tries to give advice to my aunt and says that she doesn't know what to tell her because her kids were so good. It really pisses me off because it is so not true, we were just smart and never got caught. When I was young my mom used to tell me that "it is the good kids that always get caught," I think this was her way of trying to deter me from being bad. It ended up just making me cautious and confirming that I was not a "good kid."

Hope

I'm so excited to be an American right now, I'm so proud of our country and our citizens, I was skeptical, I didn't think enough people would set aside their prejudices, or maybe it was that I thought more people out there were prejudice? Either way, I was wrong and I was so happy that I was.

I'm so happy that Dr. Martin Luther King's dream has finally been realized and for that I feel like this day has more meaning, this year it is extra special. Tomorrow our first ever black president will be sworn in and I have never been so excited about the future of our nation.

These are scary times right now and with this new chapter beginning I truly feel hope. I feel like we, as a country, will again start to live up to our reputation. I don't want to criticize the past but use it as a tool and look to the future...a very bright future.

Facebook, schmacebook.

Over the holidays my cousin Meredith, the most wonderful cousin in the whole wide world (that should keep her from leaving comments about how I don't love her), got me to make a facebook page.

I used to have a myspace page but I got tired of it and deleted it around the same time I deleted my blog, myspace was useless and the one person that I really wanted to find on there could not be found. I got several invites to join facebook from my family (including my mother, weird!) but I never did anything about it until Meredith made me because she was bored one night.

Well, I'm really glad I did because today I finally found who I was looking for and the funny thing is I wasn't even looking for her when I found her. I was looking at a friend from high school's album and saw a picture of my best friend and me and she had commented on the picture. She's married (which I figured since I couldn't locate her with the last name I knew) and she lives in Houston and next time I go down there I'm going to see her.

We haven't talked in a long time, we got into a fight in the middle of senior year and ended up going our separate ways and never talking again. It was sad because we were inseparable up until senior year, we had gone to school together since 2nd grade and became very close when we both ended up at Bellaire High School. We spent the night almost every weekend together, hell, she went on vacation with my family to Costa Rica. I've missed her a lot and I regretted the way things ended with us and it was nice to hear from her today and know she feels the same way.

So, maybe facebook isn't as bad as I thought it was.

"Mountain" Climbing

We have this really funny thing here called "The Wichita Mountains" the funny thing about them is that they are the tiniest "mountains" I've ever seen.

We wake up every morning and see them, we drive right past them on the way to Nicholas' school but be careful, if there is a building in the way you could totally miss them. However, they are a welcome reprieve from all the "flatness" here.

Yesterday we decided that after living here for 6 months we should go hiking at the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge and you know what? It was so much fun.

The kids had a blast climbing up rocks and sliding down them, dodging poo and cactus and finding the perfect walking stick. Nicholas asked to go back today after school he loved it so much. I'm thinking this might become a weekly thing we do since there is nothing else to do in this godforsaken place, and the coolest thing of all is that it's only 20 minutes from our house.

Why I Love Google Reader

I was a little late getting on the Google Reader bandwagon, I've had a blog and been reading blogs for over 2 years now and in December I finally tried the reader. J has been using Google Reader for a looooong time and her biggest problem has always been that once you start using the reader you will stop commenting as much. I can definitely see how that could be possible so I didn't ever want to try it. I pride myself on my comments, I love getting comments and so I like to leave comments because if I like them then I'm sure you do too. Seems like sound logic.

So, I was hesitant to get it for several years but then I changed my email to gmail and there was this nifty little button I could get on my homepage and it said "Google Reader" and I thought it would look nice next to my nifty little Twitter button so I decided to try it out.

Sweet mother of God, I love Google Reader! I actually get everyone's blogs read in a decent amount of time, I also don't lose blogs because I didn't have time to check them out before you talkative little people decided to write another post. Before I was struggling to get everyone's blogs read and now that I've added my other blog I have a lot of new running blogs to read too, I was a little overwhelmed with it all. Now that I finally got with the times I can feasibly add probably 20 more blogs and still keep up. Maybe I comment less now but I read more so I think it all evens out in the end.

So, thanks, Google Reader, for allowing me to read more blogs and put off all the things I should be doing, you're a champ!

Happy New Year to you too.

Well, I'm back home, I got here on Friday after spending almost a week in Houston and few days in Fort Hood visiting J and family. All in all I had a really nice Christmas, Luis and I both got to see our best friends and Nicholas and Sophia got to see Princess. Houston was nice too, I got to go out to dinner with Kenny and Trish and I rang in the new year with my brothers and friends.

My mom ended up coming back to Fort Sill with us to spend the week so I'll probably still be scarce for awhile. I'm also going to be working on rearranging some things here at the house, the new year always makes me want to change things up.

Speaking of the new year, I wanted to share my resolution with you all: this year I want to be more active. I've been feeling super lazy and if I could just move around more I know it would help. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow and hopefully I will get the okay to start working out. I haven't lost anymore weight but they say that it is fairly normal to not lose weight until I get my first fill, which is still 4 weeks away (unless my doctor changes his mind tomorrow). So, basically I could really use the workouts until I get filled so I can start losing weight again. I'm shooting for working out 3 days a week and then I'd like to move up to 5 days a week and my long term goal is to be running by 2010.

Wish me luck!