In the Company of Men

I'm wearing a pair of men's socks today. Which man's socks? I don't actually know because none of the men in my house will claim them. Hubby says they're not his. My brother says they're not his. They're certainly not mine and I don't know any other man who would've left them behind, so this mystery remains.

Growing up, whenever I entertained the idea of having children, I always wanted sons. What I don't think I really thought about was the implication of being an outnumbered female in my own home. Here's the breakdown in my home:

Males: the hubby, Nate, my brother, and Buster

Females: me and Oreo

I have to count the dogs because otherwise I'm simply the sole female at home. What I've come to realize is that, in my home at least, the number of males is directly proportionate to the amount of noise.

Me at home: usually watching TV, surfing the web, or cooking in the kitchen. Quiet.

Oreo at home: curled up sleeping somewhere comfortable (these days under the Christmas tree)

Compare that to what I generally overhear when my male family members are home:

"Auuuugghhh!" (Hubby just got killed in a computer game.)

"Auuuughhhh!" (Something happened during the football game my brother is watching.)

"Aaaiieeee! Hahahahahaha! Oh noooooo! " (Nate, wreaking general havoc.)

"RUH RUH RUH RUH RUH!" (Buster, barking at some imagined threat.)

The thing is, I know little girls are chatty. (Hell, many women are chatty and it's a given cliche that men often want their wives to stop talking.) So I suppose it could be quieter but more constant, although Nate's level of noise is pretty constant, just kind of... bombastic.

When the noise erupts, I still check on it. "Hi, just making sure you didn't impale yourself on something and aren't bleeding out, unable to crawl for help. No? Okay, then I'm going back to watching America's Next Top Model."

(ANTM being a perfect example of why I wouldn't actually prefer to live with women. Okay, it's an edited-for-drama reality show... but still. I'll take sports-and-gaming yelling over catty arguments any day.)

I spent years living in quiet. My parents' house is generally quiet. My apartment in grad school was tremendously quiet... and I liked it that way. This has been an adjustment, but I think I'm pretty used to it now. I jump at the noise less frequently than I used to.

And I got a pair of socks out of the deal.

Detoxing from hormones

"Love as distinct from 'being in love' is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will."
~C.S. Lewis
(as tweeted by Alton Brown)

The hubby and I recently made the somewhat large decision that I would go off hormonal birth control.

No, breathe, we are NOT trying for another baby. Quite the opposite, in fact - we do not want to have a second child at this time. Financially, it would doom us. I would, though, like to have a second child at some point so any permanent birth control options are off the table right now.

This decision wasn't easy and took months to make - well, months and a year, really, if we look at it a certain way. And while it solves some problems, it opens others. But for us, the quality of the problems this decision is solving far outweighs the new problems it presents.

What it comes down to is this: I cannot find a hormonal birth control option that works for me. Due to my gastric bypass, I do not trust taking the pill. I've read the results of several studies that indicated that the pill isn't metabolized in a consistent way in patients who had gastric bypass and I'd rather not play that game of roulette, thinking I'm covered when I'm not. I don't want to do injections or an IUD (hormonal or not).

I was on the Nuvaring, which worked well for years, but something changed in the past few years and especially since I had Nate. Basically, it was making me crazy. I'm actually not even really ready to fully disclose just how bad I was feeling, but I will share some.

The most ironic part of the Nuvaring is that its purpose is to prevent pregnancy, but the hormones from the birth control made me not want to have anything to do with my husband. I was cranky. Not just moody, because that implies up AND down. No, I was mostly just down. I would wake up and be fuming angry within minutes and nothing would help that. If you have emotional PMS, imagine the cranky/angry part of that, but all month long - and THEN, during PMS? It was that times ten. I just felt rage coursing through my veins. It took serious, exhausting effort not to snap at some comments and requests - and some times, I didn't succeed. And the person who got the worst of it, continually? The hubby. It is truly, solely to his credit that I even still have a husband after how awful it was sometimes.

So, yeah - the birth control really worked two ways over. It prevented ovulation and it prevented me really wanting to even... you know, spend time with my husband.

When I went off the birth control right before I got pregnant, I felt amazing. I remember thinking at the time that I never wanted to go back on hormonal birth control again. But after Nate was born, I did anyway because we really, really didn't want to take any chances.

And I remember having more emotional PMS on birth control before (as in, throughout my 20s) but it's been different since Nate was born, which I can imagine makes sense considering the hormonal flux a woman's body goes through during and after pregnancy. It makes sense to me that my body may react to things differently now, especially hormones.

It simply became unbearable, though - for both me and the hubby. And I really believe that our marriage was on the fast track to disintegration because of it. The change between how things were two months ago and how they are now is palpable. The whole household feels lighter. There are more smiles, much more laughing, much more together time, much more talking. Much more of all that is good and worthwhile and healthy to a marriage and a family.

So we are, of course, still "being safe" as the ever-present instruction goes and that takes more concerted effort than hormonal birth control requires. But our marriage is taking significantly less effort. In fact, it's really feeling like no effort at all at this point. And the effort required, as all marriages do require work, is enjoyable now and worth far more than the energy required. I've been feeling like I did when we first started dating, something I haven't felt in a long time. And it's wonderful.

Squeaking by

Yesterday was a long day. I'm surprised I'm sitting up straight today.

I worked 9 1/2 hours (I know, many people work longer days but I usually max out at 8 hours, plus I'm up with Nate for four hours before work).

I felt crabby and just yucky all day. Ever have one of those days you just want to crawl out of your own skin and get out of town?

Then I found out someone I've been friends with half my life is getting divorced. I'm 35 and this is now my third divorced friend. I feel too young to have that many divorced friends, even though I know other people have many more (or are divorced themselves). To make it worse, I can't imagine why this couple is divorcing. I don't see them often, so I don't know what was going on, but I literally cannot imagine what it could be. I'm stumped. And bummed. Majorly bummed.

So last night, after watching Project Runway (Manopause!), I was reading some of my current book (loving it) when the hubby goes into the bathroom. About 20 seconds later I hear, "AUGH!!" and some shuffling and then he comes out.

"There's a mouse in the bathroom."

Ugh. Of course there is. Grrrfreaking*&$paininthe*#&W mouse.

Sigh.

We live near a highway undergoing massive construction and I'm pretty sure this little guy (or gal?) was driven from his very comfy underground home by all the diggers we hear all night long. It's not like I don't have sympathy for the little fuzzster's plight... but that doesn't mean I want to be his BFF roomie.

The hubby tried to catch him (to release him outside) but he scooted into the heater and we didn't see him again. But we both lay awake for a long time and then woke up on and off throughout the night. I just kept thinking about the mouse coming up through the heater in Nate's room and crawling into the crib, even though the hubby promised me that's not possible. (I have to admit I don't fully believe him.)

So we're tired today and I know I will not be able to be home without thinking about that mouse and keeping an eye out for him. And that book is due back at the library tomorrow or it's fine time. I'm on page 133 of 328 - I can do it if Mickey doesn't show up and wreak havoc on my time.

Have a great (fuzzster-free) weekend!

Monday Five Countdown

Can you believe it's May?? It's my little man's birthday month and I really can't believe it.

Five Things I'm Grateful For

1. Having lots of time with Nate this weekend. It makes leaving for work on Monday morning even that much harder, but I love our weekend time.

2. I had to return the rental car this morning but I'm glad we were able to afford it for the week that we needed it.

3. I might have Friday off this week. *fingers crossed*

4. The hubby took Nate to a party yesterday afternoon while I stayed home to do homework. Before doing any homework, I was able to do a lot of cleaning and errands, though.

5. We hung up FOUR pictures yesterday!  Yay! I love the painting we bought to go over the new sofa in our living room and am so happy it's finally up (and we finally hung up wedding pictures, for the first time - and we've been married 2 1/2 years, lol).

Four Things I Can't Stop Thinking About

1. Bin Laden. A friend who had someone die on 9/11 said she feels like her family finally has some peace. I'm glad that they do.

2. Hoping my boss approves my comp day on Friday. *fingers still crossed*

3. Nate's birthday is a week from tomorrow!! Which means his party is less than two weeks away. Lots of planning and work to do for it still.

4. Schoolwork. Nate's birthday is also my last day of the semester and I have tons of work to do. Lovely timing.

Three Things I Want To Accomplish This Week

1. More picture hanging!

2. Make a menu/cooking plan for Nate's party.

3. Scope out party supplies.

Two Things I Am Working To Be Positive About

1. My car. The insurance inspector is supposed to come look at my car today or tomorrow. I'm really, REALLY hoping they total it out so we can just go get a new car.

2. How hard it is to be married with a baby. I've done a lot of things in my life - surgeries, a graduate degree, a dozen moves, traveling abroad alone - but nothing in my life has been harder than being married the past year. I used to think all that "marriage is hard work" talk was hooey. I get it now.

One Random Thing

1. If I counted correctly, The Pioneer Woman's cookbook has 62 recipes in it (main, not including variations) and I've completed 30 of them, so I'm almost halfway through. I thought I was much farther along than that, oops!

Do you do the Monday Five Countdown?  Link up!

Monday Five Countdown

Happy Monday! (Now that's an oxymoron if I ever saw one...)

"You're an ox AND a moron!" 10 points to you if you know what movie that's from.

And, moving along now...

Five Things I'm Grateful For

1. It's the first day of tutoring for this quarter (I supervise the tutoring center at the school I work at) and we already have three appointments scheduled today. This is GREAT great great because we are under a lot of pressure to get more students in for tutoring.

2. I joined the "Biggest Winner" competition at work. I'm pretty sure I'll be sorry I did this, but I thought a little external motivation to drop some pounds and generally be a bit healthier would be good. This morning was the initial weigh-in and I weighed two pounds less than I did at home yesterday (even with the fluffernutter sandwich I ate at 11:30pm last night).

3. Yesterday was my nephew TJ's 3rd birthday party at a local bouncy-house place and Nate had a good time. He's too little to do any of the bouncing and seemed overwhelmed by all the big structures and the 8,472 screaming kids running around, but he did really well considering all of that. He played with some smaller stuff and had fun in his own little way. (And everyone always says he's so cute, which I will never, ever get tired of hearing.)

4. We took Nate to see the Easter bunny on Saturday and he was SO good. We got a nice smiley picture that we'll be sending out on an Easter card later this week. I'm always so grateful that he's so happy and smiley and generally content.

5. The hubby and I had a really good weekend, for us. There's so much going on lately that our fuses - okay, my fuse - is short and I'm just kind of constantly overwhelmed. But this weekend we had some fun as a family and some good couple time.

Four Things I Can't Stop Thinking About

1. Nate's birthday party. One month from this Thursday!

2. Over the weekend, we went to a local outlet center and I saw a black trench at GAP for $42. I need a new trench because my current one could fit two of me in it and my older GAP trench is too small for me. I hate this in-between size thing.

3. Dinner tonight: pork chops, yum!

4. All the stuff we have to get done in the house. SO. MUCH. TO. DO. (Cleaning, organizing, rearranging, etc.)

Three Things I Want To Accomplish This Week

1. Significant amounts of work on the two research projects I'm supposed to be working on for school.  See, that good family and couple time this weekend? It came at the expense of my homework. Something always has to give.

2. Tasks at work that I wanted to complete last week.

3. Keep up the positive mood I'm in today.

Two Things I Am Working To Be Positive About

1. The hubby's job prospects. We really need him to find something soon.

2. Bills/expenses. (See #1.)

One Random Thing

1. This Saturday we have plans to go out to dinner with a bunch of friends. We have a babysitter lined up and everything. I always have mixed feelings about this because I know it's good for us, but I hate leaving Nate. But it's just dinner, not a nine hour night on the town, so I think we'll all be good. :)

Do you do the Monday Five Countdown?  Link up below!  I want to read them :-)