Life and Other Calamities

Long time no post, huh?

Well a few things have happened that I don't think I've stated explicitly here, though I have said things on Twitter.

I am five months pregnant today. Looks like we're having a boy in late October.

We bought a house and moved in late May.

I am in the busiest time of year at work.

We've had to deal with several unexpected and unpleasant situations regarding both our old rental house and our new house (we seem to have horrible home karma).

I am tired and cranky.

We had an unexpected guest.

We are dog sitting an anxious dog who is used to eight acres in the country and not a suburban house/yard.

I had a bit of a breakdown this past weekend.

There have been some good things, too, and maybe I will get to those later. I have gone from an incredible high over my birthday weekend to an incredible low exactly one week later. I could blame hormones, and that might even be partially true. But much of it is simply that we have been hit with a series of tough situations. One by one they are each manageable, but all together in one week...well, I can't drink, I can't run, so instead I felt physically sick, freaked out because I am pregnant, and then I ate ice cream and cried. And decided that I really need to start saying no to some things.

For the most part Nate and I want to help people when they ask us. It is not a burden; it is something we like to do. However, these are unusual circumstances and I've realized I'm simply at my limit. When you are pregnant, you gradually realize there are some things you can't do anymore. It sneaks up on you. You used to run three miles every day, say, and now your belly is so big that the bouncing up and down becomes uncomfortable. You wonder why you can't do it anymore, but it is simply a shift, and a temporary one at that.

Both times I've carried a baby I've been a little slow recognizing the physical limitations of being pregnant. And it seems I'm slow at recognizing the emotional and psychological ones as well. I let myself get stressed out to the point of feeling physically ill, and that's not a good thing when you are pregnant. That is when I had my mini-breakdown and ate too much ice cream. But I do have to cut myself a break there. All of my normal coping mechanisms are temporarily unavailable to me.

So. I am taking a step back, and trying to let some of these things go.

I will give you an example. We got hit with a double whammy by both our landlord when we were moving out and by the sellers when we moved into our new house. In one case the behavior was unethical. In the other it was probably illegal. And lots of well-meaning people have given us advice about how it isn't fair and how we should do this or that. Here is the thing. We've been through similar situations before; we sued the landlord in one of those situations, and tried to recover money from insurance in the other from someone who was at fault, and in both cases this is what we learned. People can be shitty. They don't do what is right. They don't do what is fair. They lie. And sometimes they get away with it all on a technicality, or because businesses are too busy and it isn't worth it financially for them to keep pursuing the matter. In other words, in both cases we got screwed. It wasn't fair, but we had pursued all the avenues we could and there it was. Not fair; deal with it. People do every day. And we realized the amounts of money involved were not, in the end, worth the stress in the first place. But back then we kept thinking we should fight for what was fair.

So those experiences have altered our perspectives a bit. We look at things more analytically, as in, is the effort this takes worth the outcome we want? Fairness is almost irrelevant in the equation.

Now that we find ourselves in similar situations, one dealing with an ethically shady landlord and the other with an insurance situation where we may end up paying a deductible for damage someone else is at fault for...well, in the end the only way to get "what is fair" is to sue. And considering the money involved and the fact that I am pregnant, I don't think either of us thinks it's worth it. Especially when one of the players is a lawyer and it ain't either of us.

Fair? No. But I'd rather put it behind us instead of continue to let it stress me out at this particular point in time. Because right now the priority is the baby I am carrying and not what other people are doing (or not doing). All I can do is control what I do and how I react, say no when I can and ask for help when I can't. So if you ask me something over the next few weeks the answer is likely to be "no" or "help." Or possibly "ask again later" if I've already hit the ice cream.

Reading List 2010

A list of books I've read recently.


All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, Larry McMurtry
I read this back in college, or just after, and really liked it. Liked it the second time, too. Reminds me in some ways of Strange Peaches. SP is about Dallas with more drugs and violence, and Friends is about Austin and a little more innocent, but in both cases you have these male narrators stumbling around with women, having adventures, traversing the country, and getting into trouble. And, of course, they both end up in Mexico at one point or another.

The next three were all books while I was traveling. I prefer mind candy when flying.
Visions in Death, J.D. Robb
Big Jack, J.D. Robb
Holiday in Death, J.D. Robb

I saw the movie Coco and read this after.
Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets, Marcel Haedrich

Found this on my book shelf and had no idea how it got there. Decided to read it and then sent it to Goodwill.
Running Scared, Elizabeth Lowell

I love me some Ursula LeGuin and really enjoyed both of these books.
The Beginning Place, Ursula LeGuin
City of Illusions, Ursula LeGuin