Improvements

Things are improving. Matt and I are both making a concious effort to improve our relationship. Most of the time. I'll explain that later though.

I have decided that while we are improving our relationship, I also need to work on improving me too. I need to lose the weight that I have been saying I wanted to lose for a few years now. *blush* Yeah, it's really been that long. Longer actually. 5 or 6 years..... somewhere in there. I keep putting it off thinking that I might be pregnant. Now that I know there is no way I can possibly be pregnant (because I'm on birth control) It's time to get serious and lose this weight. I need to be healthier. On a plus side, maybe it will help me when it comes time to try to get pregnant again in a few years.

I've ordered a few Jillian Michaels DVD's which I will have tomorrow. Those paired with some DVD's that I already have will cover my workouts. The other part of this is eating healthier. I said about a week ago that I was going to start eating better. Matt has ordered pizza, baked muffins, made greasy meals that are increadibly unhealthy and brings me lots of junk food! This is so frustrating. He just came in with a dozen apple cinnamon muffins straight from the oven (the only thing I like more is banana nut) and sat right beside me while he and the kids ate them all!

I did stick with it and not eat the muffins, so that is a great thing. It was tough though. I just wish that Matt would be a little more supportive with this. He really needs to eat healthier too, but instead....each time I try to do this it feels like he is working against me!

Hopefully I can stick with this and actually lose some weight this time. I have to be honest here. I need to lose around 50 pounds. I am going to get up and weigh myself and do measurements tomorrow morning before I eat anything. My family isn't going to like it much but I am not buying alot of snacks and such anymore. They can learn to eat healthier too. It's not going to hurt any of us. I'll update on my progress weekly when I do my weigh-in/measurements. It's not going to be easy. Working nearly full time, going to school full time and trying to take care of the family too.... I know it's going to be rough. I really want to stick with it though.

A glimmer of hope

So maybe there is hope for my marriage after all. I saw a glimmer of it anyway. Last night Matt and I had to run to the store and I started crying on the way and told him I didn't know what was happening to us and that I didn't know how to get back to where we started but that my heart was breaking and I couldn't keep going the way that we were.  He apologized and said that he was just having a rough time and that he felt bad for taking it out on me and that he was really trying to change that.

I told him that at times I felt like he hated me and that he always seemed uphappy and that I didn't know how to fix it. He said that there is nothing I can do to fix it or to help him. He just needs time. He hasn't really had to deal with this while we have been together. Then he said he didn't want to lose me and he looked really sad and asked "I haven't lost you already, have I?" I pointed out that I was still there, and told him I didn't want to lose him either but told him we both really needed to work on some things, and that we had to do it NOW before it was too late.

It was a small step, but it's more than I have seen in a while. It has given me hope that my marriage might recover. As much as I hate to say this, I really think the birth control has been a good thing to. I have been able to relax more this week than I have in a long time. It's almost a relief to know that there isn't even a possibility that I am pregnant. It's been so stressful on me the past few years. Now I know that I can just relax and focus on school and my family. Maybe by some miracle when we do decide to start trying again we will get pregnant with no problem and finally have a healthy baby! A girl can dream anyway.

Not sure where to turn

I don't know where to turn to next. I had hoped that maybe the kids coming home would easy some of the tension here. I thought that maybe the stress of them being gone and worrying about them was making things worse. The got home on Saturday and unfortunately things just see to be getting progressively worse. Matt doesn't seem at all happy with our life anymore. He doesn't seem to understand that I want to try to better our situation for our family. He seems perfectly satisfied with just having enough to eat even if that means that we have to spend the rest of our lives working night and day and never being able to enjoy life.

I guess that really shouldn't surprise me much. I am beginning to realize that he wants much different things out of life than what I want. He is content sitting at home doing nothing, going nowhere, just watching life pass us by. I feel like we are in our 90's or something. I don't enjoy this. I want to travel. I want to see and do things. I am not satisfied with spending the rest of my life in this sleepy little town. I could settle for that if I could be a stay at home mom. If I could just spend my days raising my family and taking care of my house. I would love to stay home and have babies and raise a garden do all that. I know that. He doesn't want me to stay at home though. He wants me to work too, and I am not happy in some minimum wage job where I get no respect whatsoever.

My job makes me miserable. I seriously get no respect from anyone. I have been passed over for a promotion to assistant manager twice. I've just applied for that again, but I don't expect anything different. The high school kids think it is hilarious that I am 30 and most of them are making more than I am. The customers treat me like I am something they would scrape off of the bottom of their shoe. No one stops to ask what the circumstances were that brought me to this point. They just see a 30 year old working nights for minimum wage, and they assume that I am lazy or a failure.

We are like two rams, butting heads and neither of us giving an inch. The kids have noticed the tension too. They haven't said anything, but I know they can feel it. Each day it seems worse than the one before. I don't have anyone to talk to. I can't talk to my mom. While we are doing better than we have in years, our relationship is a fragile one and I don't want to damage it beyond repair. The only people I know here are either his friends or family or people that I work with. They are mostly high school kids who wouldn't even begin to understand.

I think if I had even one adult friend who I could trust in this area it would make things much easier, but I don't have anyone. I really have no idea what to do or where to turn at this point.

Worried.

I am really pretty worried right now. I'm worried about my marriage. I knew that four years of trying to conceive had taken it's toll, but I really didn't realize just how much. We had a real big arguement the other day (I think I mentioned it here) and things have been pretty intense ever since. We both said things that we had been thinking or feeling but not saying. Because they can out in a moment of anger though, they were not sugar coated or gently worded. Instead they came out harse and hateful. The came out with more force than neccesary and full of venom. I'm not sure how to move past this. Matt seems fine now. He said what was on his mind, he heard what was on mine and he's over it. I don't know how to get to that point though. The things that he said, while he now says he didn't mean quite that way, cut me to the core. I don't know if I can heal.

I love my husband. I really do, but I don't know how to live with realizing that he feels the way he does about some of the things that ...........ugh. I know I am being very vague, but I don't want to put it all out there and then regret it in the future. The worst part of all of this is that I have tried to tell him how upset I am, but he thinks it's unreasonable that I am upset at all! Maybe it's partially about the differences in the way that men and women process and think and feel and whatnot. I also think part of it is just that he doesn't realize how bad he has hurt me. Even though I try to tell him, I don't think he realizes.

I hope that we are able to move on from this. I really want us to be okay again. I just don't know how to "fix" this or move on from it.

Two steps forward, one step back.

I had another decent day food wise. I had a bagel for breakfast. For lunch we had baked pork chops, sour kraut and baked beans. I had another tv dinner tonight, but I also had some muffins for a snack today. Just two little ones, but I kind of felt bad about eating them. I didn't drink anywhere as much water today either. While it doesn't make any sense, I am finding that I stay better hydrated when I am at work or on the go than I do when I am sitting at home. I need to work on that and I am even looking into buying a water cooler similar to the one we have at work to see if that helps.

I did get a lot of work done around the house today. Not as much as I had hoped to get done, but still quite a bit. I am hoping that maybe Matt will do some while I am working in the morning. I plan on doing a few other small things on Thursday, but Friday is a completely jam-packed day!

Now, you know from the title that I had a bit of a setback today. That setback was with Matt. We had  a pretty bad arguement today. I wish he would see the things that I am trying to tell him. I don't know how to get through to him though. He completely blocks me out when I try to tell him how I feel. He even said at one point today "I've had my say, now it's over." Well, yeah, he'd had his say, but he hadn't listened to anything I had to say. Truth is, he didn't at any point today, but I just let it go because it was obvious that I wasn't going to get through to him. I was trying to tell him that I know I haven't been easy to live with, and I know I am depressed and that it's affecting us. I tried to tell him that I don't know how to get back from this and that I need his help. All he wanted to do was yell at me and tell me how ridiculous I am for being depressed and how I "have no right" to be depressed.

He's upset with me because I am thinking of taking a promotion at work. Well, applying for it anyway. The boss asked me to put my name in for it. He has asked me to do this twice before though and then passed over me so I kind of expect the same thing. I've been complaining about wanting to quit for a while (mostly because of being passed over for the promotion twice and because of my low pay rate) and he just put in a bid for a transfer at his company so that I could quit. I honestly found out about these two things the same day....the same hour even. My boss asked me to apply for the promotion and then 20 minutes or so later Matt came in and said he was switching departments.

While I do want to quit my job..... I think that this promotion could be an awesome thing for us too. For one thing, I could delegate most of the crap jobs instead of having to do them myself. There really isn't that much more that I would have to learn or do for the job. I have to count the registers at the beginning and end of the shift, but I've done that before. I'll have to learn which switches control which lights in the store and parking lot (LOL) and I will have to  be responsible for locking the door at the end of the night. There are a couple other small things.... customer service things.... money orders and hunting licensing... that I don't do yet, but I have watched them do them, and it really isn't complicated. It is basically the same job I do now but with an extra $1.50 or so an hour for doing it. One of my best friends has the same position right now and they started her at $9. I am at $7.45 as a cashier. It's not a ton more, but every little bit helps, right?

Matt thinks I want to stay at the job and take the promotion because I enjoy being miserable. The reality is that I am just scared. I am afraid that if I give up my job now that something will go wrong and in a month or two I will be in school and having to do a job search around school and end up back in fast food. I don't want that to happen. I'm also scared to trust and depend on Matt 100%. I know that sounds bad, but every time that I have put myself in that position in the past, I have ended up getting burned, so it does scare me.

For now though...... it's hot, it's late and I need some sleep. Time to call it a night.

Big hurdles...small steps.

I overcame a big hurdle yesterday and today, and I did it by taking one small step. It's just one day. But it's the first day of many to come. Last night while I was playing around on the computer I started getting the urge again. The urge to snack. I do great with my food during meals. I really do. It's the snacking that does me in. Most days I snack in the mornings when I get out of bed instead of having breakfast. I have a late lunch and then snack after that. I snack at work while on break. I come home from work and have dinner at 9 or 10 pm and then around midnight I snack again. the past few days I have been doing alot of thinking about that and decided yesterday that enough was enough. It's time to change. It's time to break old habits and form new ones.

Last night when I started feeling like snacking, I turned of the computer and went to bed. It's just a tiny step and as much as that one commercial annoys me, it really is true. One good choice leads to another. This morning I was RUDELY awoken by a horrible storm this morning. It was so bad that the storm blew a branch out of the tree in my front yard and it got stuck on the power line. The power was arcing because of it and I could here it sizzling and popping. I called the power company as I dressed. They recommended that I switch of my main breaker (which I had already done because the power was surging and flashing on and off. I didn't want it to ruin any electronics) and leave the house. I let her know that it was still storming and I had no where to go (the entire family was camping over the weekend and not coming home until this afternoon so no one was home!) and asked how soon someone would be in the area. She told me it was being marked as a priority and sent right out. The guy had to come from a town normally 30 minutes away. He was pulling in 15 minutes after the call went out. Ended up the small stick knocked out power for 8 MILES! Once they cleared me to turn the main back on and they reset power for the area I decided I was awake, I may as well stay up. I was kind of hungry, but instead of snacking on chips or soda or the junk that I normally would have...... I had BREAKFAST!  I had a bagel with honey on one half and peanut butter on the other and a bottle of water.

The changes continued throughout the day. I had lunch before heading to work. I ate a tv dinner. I know that processed foods aren't great and I do want to get away from them, but with nursing school and still working as much as possible AND a possible promotion (more about that in another post) I just don't know how soon I can feasibly get rid of processed foods. That is in the works though! Normally I would drink 2 sodas with lunch, and probably have a bunch of chips too. Maybe some candy or something after. Top all that off with a bowl of ice cream before heading out the door. Today I didn't do that. I had my tv dinner and a 16.9 ounce bottle of water and that was the end. On my way out the door for work instead of having ice cream, I grabbed another bottle of water! I think I ended up drinking 5 of them today. Definitely 4... likely 5. Which is GREAT! My goal is to get to a point where I am drinking 80 - 100 ounces of water daily. Today I got somewhere 67 - 84!

For dinner I had another tv dinner with two slices of bread and butter and another bottle of water. I have made it through an entire 24 hour period with no snacking! WHOO HOO! I know it's small, but it is just the first step. The first day with many more days to come! For now... it's time to get some sleep. First because I am starting to feel like snacking again, and I don't want to do that. Second, because tomorrow is my last day off before the kids come home from their dad's. They have been gone since June 2nd. They come home on Saturday and I have ALOT that I need to do before they get home. I have to get upstairs and sort their toys and get rid of old worn out stuff. I have to set up their new beds, dust their bedrooms and tv room. Put their new TV upstairs (the old one from my bedroom) and get it hooked up and vaccum. The upstairs is their "world" I don't go up there when they are gone (have no reason to) and so it hasn't been cleaned that whole time. For now.... time for bed. Morning will come early and while it might be a day off... there is ALOT to do tomorrow!

My life

Tonight, I am sitting here in silence, reflecting on my life. I am thinking about good times and bad ones. Mostly though, I am focusing on the things that I have to be thankful for. My family for one. I am so luck to have an amazing husband. As cheesy as it sounds, Matt really is my best friend. He is my soul mate. I thank God for him each and every day. I really can't ask for a better man. He goes above and beyond to take care of me and the kids. There aren't many men like him out there. I am very thankful to have found him.

Matt and I met on a dating site. I didn't believe you could really meet someone online, but a friend was joining the site and didn't want to be the only person from our area on there, so she asked me to join. I did, making jokes about it the whole time, and shortly after that, I met Matt. We did the long distance dating thing for a while, and in March of 2006 we moved in together and decided to leave the size of our family up to God.  I have two other children from my first marriage. My daughter was conceived while trying to prevent a pregnancy and my son was conceived while we weren't trying, but weren't preventing either. Because of that, I suspected we would be adding to our family very quickly. Nothing could prepare me for what was to come.

In the past (nearly) four and a half years I have been pregnant 8 times. I've had a total of 10 pregnancies in my lifetime and I have two living children. Matt and I have not had any trouble getting pregnant. The longest we've ever gone between pregnancies is 10 months. Other times only 2-3 months. On average, I am able to get pregnant every 7 or 8 months.  Our problem comes to staying pregnant. So far I haven't been so good at that.  Our most recent loss was one week ago. It has been heartbreaking to say the least.  Because of all of these problems, and because I am getting ready to return to school to become a nurse, we have decided to prevent a pregnancy from occuring. Tonight I took my first birth control pill. Over the next couple of years I will be in school full time and working part time. I will work on losing the 70 pounds or so that I have put on since high school. We are going to have some testing done to see if we can find out why we keep losing babies, and we are going to save up money. Maybe we just need an asprin a day to stay pregnant or maybe we need invitro fertilization. Only time will tell, but before we start trying to conceive again, we will be financially prepared for ANY outcome. If nothing else, we will adopt. Matt and I will expand our family one day. Until then, come along for the ride as we go through our daily life. The lives of an average family living in the midst of America's heartland.