Long overdue, and therefore long

Well I keep starting update posts and then don't have time to finish them, so I decided this morning to write one before I get started for the day. Sounds like a plan, right? I think I might need some breakfast before I start though, hold on ... :)

Okay, so things are going pretty good lately in the grand scheme of things. We closed on the house a couple weeks ago, and we've been painting ever since. My room is now light and dark taupe stripes (thanks to Shea and Debbie!), the kitchen, foyer and main wall of the living room is "Island Palm" green (sort of a dark gray/green that matches my countertops) and the other walls in the living room and dining room are a khaki color (Almond Toast, to be exact). The library/den is a dark red and Spencer's room is white, brown and blue stripes on the top and brown on the bottom. I still need chair rail in his room to separate the top and bottom, but April and Geoff are coming over on Saturday to help with that since they have a nail gun and a miter saw (woohoo for power tools!). The only places we haven't yet painted is the hallway and the bathrooms, and I figured I'll get to that after we officially move in, because we aren't putting any furniture there so we should be able to paint later. The only problem with that philosophy is that the second bathroom has that 1990s Celestial sun/moon border wallpaper and that's coming down! :) So painting will likely happen sooner rather than later.

We've been over the house every night this week. It's kind if awkward hanging out at our house, watching tv (Christen got a new Samsung to go over the fireplace) and eating dinner (my kitchen stuff is in the garage so I've been running loads of dishes in the dishwasher and last night I actually cooked) and then going back to the in-laws' house to sleep. I can't wait until Saturday when the rest of our stuff will be moved in and we can get to actually living at the new place. Then I can just go over to his parents' house to feed the animals while Ann and Don are in Alaska and I can sleep in my own bed at my own house. That's going to be so nice.

In Spencer news, he went to the doctor a couple weeks ago and it turns out that his lingering cold turned into a double ear infection. So he's now finishing up his prescription for Amoxicillin (which he loves, he sucks the syringe like a bottle trying to get every drop out) and they also gave me eye drops for his narrow and slightly infected tear duct and now his eyes are a lot better. He started eating rice cereal last week and now he's onto apples w/ rice cereal but we need to get a high chair because he hates not being at the table with us when we eat so we spend a lot of time eating with one hand while he sits on our laps. So at least with a high chair he can sit with us and play with his toys while we eat ... hopefully. He's almost sleeping through the night again, which is nice. When we get settled in we'll be able to put him on a better schedule so that he eats at the same time every night and goes to bed at the same time. I've started waking him up in the morning to get him ready instead of transferring him to his car seat in his sleep and it's so nice to see his smiling face before work. He still doesn't turn over, but he's trying. He gets tummy time almost every night for about 1/2 hour or 45 minutes and he usually enjoys it now, especially if he can see the tv from where he is, which is unfortunately one of his favorite things. He lays on his back and tries to get his feet in his mouth and he laughs so hard he gives himself hiccups (like father like son). He's getting to be so fun! Last night I was laying on the floor and he was sitting on my chest and he would slide himself forward so he was over my face and he evidently thought it was hilarious to be taller than me because he wouldn't stop laughing! But then he spit up on my cheek and got the hiccups so we decided he could be taller than daddy for a few minutes :)

But now that I've made this post unbearably long and you've probably even stopped reading before getting to the cute stuff about Spencer, I'm going to go. But I'll try to start posting more so that they aren't so crazy long, k? K k ... :) And an aside to my lovelies that might be reading this that are going through hard times, thinking about you and love you! Things have got to start looking up soon! I won't be one of those obnoxious people that says that everything happens for a reason, I'll just say that you're strong and I know you'll make things work and you'll make your own path.

Toxic

She emailed me yesterday. It was courteous. It was impersonal.

Just wanted to let you know that the baby is adorable. I think Richard said his name is Spencer? I don't get to talk to him much anymore so I'm not 100% sure on that but I think that is what he told me. At any rate he is a cutie. Congratulations.

I wanted to say so much. I wanted to say that I missed her, that I still want to be friends. That I forgive her.

I don’t forgive her though. I know it’s selfish and I’ve never felt this way about a past friendship before. I usually welcome all friends back with open arms. But with her … well, she hurt me more than anyone ever had before. Anyone I’ve ever trusted. I cried so much when she decided our friendship was disposable that I just don’t feel that I have that kind of emotion left. That break-up crushed me. I thought about her every day, cried every day.

I found that my friendships with other people are so much stronger than I thought previously. April, Stacy, Suzanne, Shea, Theresa, Joy, Autumn, Acie … you were all there for me when she wasn’t. You all proved to be real friends, true friends. And still I felt sorry for myself – I had lost my best friend. I’m almost 30. All my close friends already have best friends. And even though they say they can have more than one best friend, it doesn’t really happen that way. I’ll always be second best. With her, I thought I was first. The one she went to when she needed something, the one I went to when I needed to talk. I thought she’d understand that I’d be there for her no matter what she was going through, but when things got bad she decided to cut me out of her life.

For probably six months I thought about her every day. Then I started dreaming about her. We’d have conversations about the state of our friendship in random houses. Every time I’m out and I see a flash of red hair I think it’s her. I stopped people watching. Me, stopped people watching. I drive by the building she works at every day and wonder if she’s there. I was just saying to her ex-husband that I was glad to move and not have to see it every day.

I’ve finally started only thinking about her at a glance a couple times a week. I can live with that. I’m sick of my heart hurting the way it was. I don’t think I can go through that again. And if she wants to be friends again, she’s going to have to reach out better than that. She’s going to have to own up to her mistakes. I know she’s going through some heavy stuff right now, things that I would never air in this forum even though it would make me feel better. Before we can take baby steps toward some semblance of a friendship, I need to know I won’t be hurt like this again. And I can tell you, I don’t think the trust will ever be there again in order for me to be hurt again.

So I did write her back.

Thanks, he gets cuter everyday. I hope everything is well with you!

Because my heart wants her back even though my brain knows it’s not healthy. And I don’t think it’s time yet. If we are to be friends, it needs to be because she wants a level friendship with give and take, not because she needs someone. In that case anyone would do. I need more. I need to know that she’ll be there for me too. Otherwise I’ll stick with my true friends. I know they really care.

Upload time: three hours

I really wish Blogger would let you change your sign-in email address. It lets you change the address that comments forward to, but god forbid you want to change the actual log-in. The reason this is a problem is because I've only recently gotten a gmail account. I don't use it that much, and I've decided to start forwarding my bills to that email so that they are all in one place and don't get overlooked in the travesty that is my inbox these days. But since Blogger is now owned by Google and so is You Tube, if I log into one I log into them all. Except that my Blogger email is my yahoo email, so if I log into it that kicks me out of all the others.

Which really sucks when you're trying to upload videos of your child to YouTube and blog about posting videos of your child to YouTube. Then all that happens is that you rant about such things because YouTube kicked you out 5 minutes into trying to upload one lousy video (and I do mean lousy since I don't have a real video camera yet so I take video with my camera which looks like I have broadcast tv with crappy reception). Blah.

In other news, I'm uploading videos of Spencer tonight, and I'm getting a video camera this week so I can take better video in the near future. We've (read:I've) decided to go ahead and get this camera for now and we'll get the good stuff when he's running around playing soccer and starring in plays.