1. Getting kicked in the bladder. Seriously, kid. I’m sure it’s a fun, squishy, plaything for you, but it’s becoming a bit of a nuisance. I love you, don’t get me wrong, but suddenly getting sharp urges to pee isn’t at the top of list of favorite pasttimes.

2. Arranging to purchase an awesome car seat and stroller combo for a GREAT price from someone on craigslist, setting a time to pick it up, getting in the car to drive across town, then getting a call saying that she sold it to someone else this morning. What the hell, lady, what the hell? Just not right, and it left me in a grumpy mood for the rest of the afternoon.

3. In a similar fashion, getting an email from Eventful saying that Jill Sobule is playing a show in Dallas, shrieking at J because we ADORE Jill so very much (and she never ever plays shows down here), clicking to purchase tickets, and discovering that this “show in Dallas” is actually located in Los Angeles. NOT COOL. Also, I think Eventful needs to send their employees to geography class.

I can’t even count how many times in my life I’ve started a journal entry with, “I don’t know why I stopped writing just before the most [crazy/dramatic/confusing/exciting/etc.] time in my life!” and then go on to skip over the explanation of the craziness/drama/confusion/excitement and go on to the present situation. I kick myself for it, of course, when I’m reading my 14-year-old words and wondering what the hell the most dramatic time in my life was all about. So I’m not going to say that this time, although I almost certainly could.

My last post was on May 19, so I think that my old standard journal starter is entirely appropriate right now, because May 21 really was, without exaggeration, the day that my life has taken its most important turn to date.

May 21 is the day I first found out about Toaster.

This is Toaster. Toaster lives in my uterus. Toaster and I have been roommates for 11 weeks now, though I am officially 13 weeks pregnant. This fact hurts my logical brain, but at least I get to shave 2 weeks off the countdown.

On the morning of May 21 (and, okay, the mornings of May 16, 17, 18, and 19 as well), I woke up and peed in a cup. Unfortunately, after 4 negative tests in a row, I wasn’t quite as eager on this particular morning, and didn’t get up until after J left for work. Which means that I found out all by myself, while sitting on the toilet, no less. What a charming story to tell the baby someday.

At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Holy crap! That’s a second pink line!” I stumbled back into my room, fell on the bed, and smiled. But then, I really couldn’t believe my eyes. I had, after all, just woken up, and my eyes were still blurry, and the second line was very faint. I tried bringing the test closer to my eyes, and then moving it further away. I couldn’t tell whether it was really there or not. Then I got out my camera, thinking that if a second line showed up when I zoomed in really far on the preview screen, then it was definitely there. But it turns out that you can’t really focus very well on a tiny test strip. Eventually, I accepted the fact that, yes, there were two lines, and yes, I was pregnant. Pregnant!

I didn’t trust my voice to not give me away, so I sent J a text message, asking if we could have lunch. I even made myself wait until after 10 to send it, because I thought it would be suspicious if I sent it immediately after he left. He agreed, and I left the house a little before noon, my precious test strip stashed inside an empty pack of Orbit gum.

As it turns out, I would not be telling my husband about the baby during lunch, because just before we left his office, we got a phone call from his grandmother’s assisted living home. Grandma was on the way to the emergency room after complaining of chest pains. We’ve been through this time after time – she gets heartburn, assumes it’s a heart attack, and gets rushed to the hospital. Every time, she’s just fine when she gets there, and she gets sent home after a few days of observation. This time was no different. But it did make for bad timing for an exciting announcement, so I spent the afternoon hours sitting quietly next to my husband and father-in-law, with my inner voice screaming, “I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!”

And then it was time to go to school, and I had to try to concentrate on microbiology while my inner voice was screaming, “I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!” And when I called J after school, he was still at his friend’s house, so I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some things for dinner, with my inner voice screaming with every passing second, “I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!” It was a bit unending for the first several days, actually.

Eventually, we both made it home. I still hadn’t figured out how I was going to break the news to my beloved. He has a history of being outspokenly anti-procreation, and though he was a very active (and willing) participant in this little gamble of ours, I wasn’t certain of how he was going to take it. Hell, I still wasn’t certain how I was taking it.

I was kneeling on the edge of the bed when I asked him to come hug me. Then, at a complete loss for words, I reached into my nearby purse and pulled out my pack of Orbit. (Later, J would say, “I couldn’t figure out why the hell she called me over to give me gum.”) Hands shaking, I pulled out my little test strip and showed it to him.

“Okay…what am I looking at?”
“That’s two lines.”
“Okay…so what does that mean?”
“That second line? That’s Ebenezer.”
“What?”
“It’s positive. Two lines means positive.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yup. Positive.”

I, naturally, turned into an uncontrolable, sobbing mess, leading J to ask me if this was a good thing or a bad thing. “I don’t knoooow!” I cried into to his chest. He, however, was a bit more in control.

“I feel totally at peace right now. If it happens, it happens, and that’s fine.”
“Uh, sweetie? It’s already happened!”
“And I’m totally okay with that. It’s you and me. It’s part of my Chelle. And how could that ever be anything other than wonderful?”

I loved him so much right then. While I was struggling with my emotions, feeling both elated and scared out of my mind (in other words: pregnant), he managed to bring me back down to some sense of calm and normalcy. Yes, part of me was frustrated by his calmness. How could he be standing there like everything was perfectly fine, when I was struggling with how I had the right to be happy about this while mentally calculating our budget? Because he’s different than me, that’s all. Not better, not worse, just different. And it’s a damn good thing, too, because sometimes I really need his steadiness.

Tonight, my teacher was tellling us about Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who is often considered to be the father of microbiology for his observations of bacteria with his carefully designed magnifying lens setup. He described him as being, among other things (painter, germaphobe, eccentric, haberdasher), “basically the Hugh Hefner of his time.”

Now, Mr. van Leeuwenhoek certainly sounded like an interesting guy, but I got a little bit confused when my teacher told us about how ol’ Anton was very secretive with the lens design on his microscope, and would invite the Royal Society of London over to look at his things, but insisted that they come in single-file and keep their hands in their back pockets, “much like Hugh Hefner,” so that no one would steal his microscope to analyze.

Huh? Hugh Hefner makes people walk around with their hands in their pockets? So they don’t steal…what, pictures of women? Sooo confused. We move on to other men and women in the history of microbiology (Louis Pasteur is basically responsible for the wine industry in France. Yay, Louis!), finish lecture, go to lab, come home.

I start telling J about how I really like this teacher, and how he goes more in depth on these historical figures than the textbook does. I start telling him everything the teacher told us about Anton van Leeuwenhoek, and he was the Hugh Hefner of his time. We laughed at that. Then I admit my confusion about him making sure the Royal Society fellows didn’t steal his inventions, and start to ask what the Hugh Hefner connection is.

J interrupts me.

“He’s talking about Howard Hughes! Howard Hughes is the paranoid, eccentric, germaphobic billionaire, not Hugh Hefner!”

We both die laughing. I briefly wonder if it’s at all possible that I misheard or misinterpreted my teacher. Lucky for us, I record my lectures. I just pulled out my recorder and played the clip for J. Sure enough, the teacher was saying Hugh Hefner. The second he did, J says, “Oh my GOD, he’s talking about HOWARD HUGHES.”

So we’ve established that I was hearing him correctly. What is yet to be determined is whether or not I’ll ever be able to convince my husband that my new teacher is, in fact, pretty damn awesome.

I knew my life was chaotic, but I had no idea it had been so long since I’d found the time to write.

My hellish spring semester ended last Monday, and one of my goals for my offtime was to start writing again. Well, that plan was foiled by all the catching up on real life activities that had to be done. Well, not HAD to be done, as I suppose that my clothes were still technically in working order, though I really preferred them to be clean. And then J went to Las Vegas this weekend, and I’m always abnormal when he’s out of town. I went shopping with my best friend, and painted part of my kitchen. Yes, the same in-need-of-paint kitchen that I was bitching about over a year ago.

Which, if I may indulge in a small tangent, reminds me of the song Bitchin’ in the Kitchen, from Shock Treatment, the pseudosequal to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Bizzare, yet hilarious.

And, for the record, of course this song has never made me randomly start singing to inanimate kitchen appliances! That would be crazy!

Ahem.

Anyway, best laid plans of mice and men and all of that…long story short, I wrote nary a word on my break. And, as of 5:30 last night, I am back in school again. Not even a full week’s break. This time around, I’ve only got one class, Microbiology, but it meets four times a week for 3-1/2 hours a night. The good news is that if I get an A in this class, I’ll have a 4.0 GPA in my science classes, which is what the nursing program cares more about than the overall GPA. I’ll take Medical Terminology and CPR For Healthcare Providers in late summer, take my TEAS test, and then turn in my application for nursing school in September. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be starting nursing school in January!

I want more hours in the day. I want to be able to stay up late catching up on things. I want to get a full 8-10 hours of sleep. I want to be productive in the mornings and afternoons. I want to get my housework and my 12 pages of chemistry homework done before my husband comes home from work, because I want to give him my undivided attention. I want my freaking uterine lining to shed itself already. I want to be happy and cheery all the time, instead of so freaking BLAH. I want my face to clear up. I want a pony. Well, a horse. I’m a bit too big for a pony.

But you know what I would settle for? Pita chips, hummus, and a big bowl of fruit. Because I didn’t eat lunch until 4:15, and I just got viciously starving for dinner. But it’s too late for a proper dinner, isn’t it? So…baked pita chips, hummus, and fruit. Yum.

Why, oh why, oh WHY do I stay up late on Sunday nights? Not only do I have to wake up at 5:43, but I also don’t get home from school until nearly 10:00. And of course, in the hours between, I’ve got to keep up with the energy and demands of a rambunctious 4-year-old boy. I don’t usually write about Thomas on here, but it’s been one long day, and he’s the clearest thing in my head right now.

These days, for better or worse, I’m not alone at work. The bosses have sold their business, and they’re both currently at home a lot. This has led to a few super-easy days (Let’s All Go To Mommy’s Ultrasound And Great-Grandpa’s Urologist Day! Let’s Go Sit At The Doctor’s Office For Three Hours And Find Out That Thomas Has Strep Throat Day! Let’s Go To Karate/Gymnastics Class Day!), but it’s also led to a lot of fits and whining. If Thomas doesn’t like something, he goes running to the office to bother his parents. He doesn’t want me, he wants them. Again, there’s a good and a bad side to this. The good? I managed to not get strep throat from the kid, because he didn’t want to snuggle with me. The bad? He doesn’t understand that they’re actually doing business when they’re in the office, and he thinks that every day is a super happy funtime weekend.

Also? He’s four now, and he’s absolutely brilliant and terribly (yet hilariously) cheeky.

“I don’t want to sit down, Thomas.” Daddy leans against the kitchen counter. “I’m going to stand right here and wait for you to finish your strawberries”

“Okay, Daddy.” Thomas leans against the refrigerator. “I’m going to stand right here and watch you be patient.“

I took some photos of Thomas today while he was taking pictures with my old camera. It’s not really old at all, as I got it 2 months ago, but he’s taken more pictures with it than I have. Anyway, while I was reviewing the photos, I gasped at how OLD he looks now. There’s hardly a trace of the little munchkin I started watching 2 years ago. He’s a little boy now. He’s a kid. He’s growing up. My god, is he growing up.

He looks serious in the pictures I took, because he’s concentrating on his own photography. He works really hard at setting up the exact shot that he wants. It’s why I’ve pretty much given him free reign with the camera. I want to encourage this trait in him, because it reminds me of how I always was as a kid. I don’t want to hold him back if he’s got such meticulous interest in it. And, if I do say so myself, the kid has some talent. I wouldn’t dare let him touch MY! FANCY! NEW! CAMERA! but I’ll certainly let him play with the Kodak EasyShare (which I purchased at CVS for less than $30 out of pocket after clever use of coupons and ECBs BECAUSE I AM AWESOME!) to his little heart’s content.

My god, that feels weird. Also? Only 13 more weeks left in this semester! Hurrah! I’ve become a bit eh about school, a bit burned out. I think part of the problem is that, last semester, I focused entirely on it, and let everything else in my life fall into disrepair. Cleaning? No time, have to study! Cooking? But I’ve been out of the house all day! My marriage? You know I’ve got to get As to get into nursing school! Best friend? I can’t hang out, I’ve got a quiz tomorrow and a test on Wednesday!

And so on. And so on. And so on.

So, to paint a clearer picture of my life at the moment: my house is more of a wreck than it ever has been, my eating habits have returned to process crap, I’ve gained back all the weight that I lost last year, plus 7 pounds, my marriage hit the roughest patch ever (but we’re working on it, and are quite happy at the moment), and I rarely talk to my best female friend anymore.

And that 6-week break I had between semesters? I was so tired from last semester that I did…well, practically nothing. The entire time. It’s not something I’m proud of.

Anyway, I’m taking two classes this semester, and I’m trying to figure out a way to balance that and also get my life back in order, because, frankly, it can’t go on like this. And so, somehow, I’ve decided that I’m going to write on here every single day this month. Not because I’m a glutton for punishment, but because I really do feel better when I’m able to write. So…that’s the plan.

And with that, I think it’s time for me to shower and head to my parents’ house for a Super Bowl party. But just between you and me? I’m really only going so that I can watch the special episode of The Office on the more-gigantic-than-ever-would-be-necessary television that my father owns. Oh, and to cheer on whichever team no one else in the room is supporting. Which I think will be…the Steelers?

A friend recently moved to Vermont. I spoke to him yesterday, and he was telling me about how very strange all the locals were. “I hear they get something called ‘winter blues’ because of all the cold and snow,” he told me. “Yeah, I know that happens,” I tell him, “But I’m the opposite. I love winter. I love snow. I love cold. I’m happiest in the wintertime. I can’t imagine it making me sad.”

But then I started thinking about how down I’ve been this month, and all the problems J and I have been having, and I wondered if I had lied to my friend. Could I have the winter blues? Well, yes and no.

I didn’t lie to my friend. It’s absolutely true that cold, snowy winters make me happy. But the thing is, I live in TEXAS. We don’t have winter, we have…coldish temperatures with infrequent ice, overcast skies, and an occasional inch-deep dusting of snow. There’s no beautiful winter wonderland to behold. A gorgeous cold night with a clear star-strewn sky makes me incredibly happy, but it’s not the same thing, and I don’t even get that often. It’s like the atmosphere is constantly threatening winter, but it never follows through. And maybe it’s that never-ended torment, that giant tease, that has lead to my own variety of the winter blues.

Here, we can have clear and sunny 80 degree days (like last Friday) followed by windy and unbearable 30 degree days (like last Saturday). At the moment, it’s 28 outside, with crappy freezing rain. My Firefox weather thingy claims it’s snowing, but freezing rain is all I’ve seen. Oh, and I had to walk the dog in it just a little bit ago, even though J had taken her out an hour beforehand, because she was whining and crying at the door. And then she didn’t even poop. And I sorta hate her and think she’s an asshole. Da na na na…

Folks, it’s been one hell of a week, let me tell you. There was more fighting and screaming and hurt under my roof than there ever has been. I thought my marriage was over. But, somehow, we pulled through it, and now we’re actually better than we have been in a LONG time.

I’m not saying it’s easy, and I’m not saying it’s a miraculous recovery. We’re not ignoring what happened, and we’re not ignoring the issues that caused the blow-up in the first place.

Neither one of us realized how little we talk these days. I can’t blame it entirely on school, but I do think that that’s a big part of it. But even without school, we haven’t been talking much. He’s on his computer and I’m on mine, and we haven’t been doing much together. We desperately needed both hobbies and communication.

As fucked up as it sounds, I’m almost grateful that things got so bad on Tuesday. The little fights never did anything to change us, to encourage us to work harder. They were easy to ignore. This one was not. Not at all. The fact that it was bad enough that I actually started telling people about it blows my mind. Anyway, it seems to have been a huge wake-up call for both of us. No, our marriage is not instantly fixed. But you know what? Neither of us wants to lose what we have, and we’re both determined to get back to what we were. We both married our best friends. We’ve both said that we want our best friends back. So that’s what we’re working on.

The past few days have been incredible. He’s been so thoughtful, kind, and passionate. I’ve started telling him every detail of my life. We’ve both come up with new things for us to do together. We’re able to look back at our fight and talk about how we felt, and why we did the things we did. I can actually see and understand his side of it, and he can actually do the same for mine.

No, we’re not fixed. But we’re better than we’ve been in months, if not years. And to top it all off, we’re running around the house like newlyweds. Ahem. It’s good. It’s good to have that back. My god, I’ve missed him. And with that…I’ve got something that I suddenly need to go do.

Things have since been resolved, and we’re working harder than ever on making each other happy. Yet, I can’t bring myself to delete this, because it was very much true at the time, and deleting it would feel like I was trying to hide things. I don’t want to hide things anymore.

Today was a memorable day, a day that I won’t ever forget, even if I live a hundred more years. A day when something of such epic proportions played out right before my eyes that my life, my mind, and my entire being will never be the same.

Oh, and we got a new president. Hurrah!

But a bit closer to home, the news was not quite so cheer-inducing. My husband is leaving me. For reasons I can’t exactly explain here, he’s leaving. And I almost believe him this time. And yes, there have been other times.

Pretty much every September, J gets into a terrible way, we fight, and he either tells me he’s leaving or tries to kick me out. And every time, I stop him from leaving. Not only do I cry and beg, but I physically stand in his way until the anger subsides. Every year, multiple times a year, since we’ve been married. After the time this fall, I swore that I wasn’t going to do it anymore. You can’t force someone to stay with you, and I’m tired of guilting him into not leaving.

I broke my own pact in December, when I once again begged him to stay. Our problem, though, is that we get over it, but we never address the actual problems that caused it in the first place. It’s like we had a bamboo pole that started to split, so we wrapped it in duct tape. The duct tape only holds for so long, and then we have to add more, and suddenly the whole damn pole is wrapped up, looking very much not like itself at all. And one day, it finally snaps.

I think the pole snapped today. I don’t want my marriage to be over. I got married forever. Divorce was not an option, not even something I considered. But I can’t make him stay. We’ve both fucked up. I want to work on fixing it. I want my best friend back. He rejects every idea I have, will not even consider counseling. I don’t think it’s right to throw away nearly 8 years without even trying, but he says we’ve been trying for years.

I love him. I want him. I don’t want this. I’ve known. I’ve known for awhile that it wasn’t right. Probably since…umm, when did I stop posting regularly? Yeah. But I didn’t think it would come to this, and I certainly didn’t think it would go down like this. What can I do? He means so much to me, but he doesn’t want to hear it. I’m flat out exhausted from trying to keep him here. If he doesn’t want me, what else can I do?

Oh, and my semester starts tomorrow. Yippee! My mind will totally be focused on school. Christ.