The grumpy list

It's been a bit of an off week for us. Nate's students have been insane and also compulsively lying to him (I swear I turned in every single one of those assignments that has a zero! I mean, I um, lost all of them, Why won't you give me credit for work I didn't turn in?) , the kids have both had their 3rd GI ailment since mid-October, and I've been in a lot more pain and discomfort. So I made chocolate peanut butter fudge. But still, it's that time of year that's a bit of a mixed bag, especially since 2011, and being here hasn't helped make it any better, so I have decided to make a list of things that are currently making me grumpy at this point because it's cathartic. Also, I might mention pee, blood, and my uterus:

-CHRISTMAS ADS: I like Christmas- music (traditional songs, not the really annoying modern ones that are uber-obnoxious), but it's also unpleasant being punched in the face with "BUY, BUY, BUY" as soon as Halloween is over. Virtually everything that showed up in the massive amounts of black friday ads looked like garbage. The expectation for the size of gifts has gotten so out of control, I am just glad that my kids are still too young for me to worry about them demanding iPads, video games consoles, cell phones, and automobiles. And they will never get them even if they do, unless they want an old atari found at a thrift store or hot wheels. Personally, I think the best gifts involve either something edible, something handmade, or an event, like going out for ice cream or to a lucha libre. Or offering to take your kids for the night so that your husband can stay the night with you in the hospital after you have a baby so that you don't have to take care of an hours old newborn by yourself right after having your insides ripped out while also having psychotically painful contractions as your uterus shrinks.Which brings me to:

-BEING PREGNANT: I do not like being pregnant, but I keep doing it because I'm rather fond of the end result. It hurts really bad. I have really bad pelvic pain that gets increasingly worse with each pregnancy, and I am desperately hoping this is the last time I am pregnant because I am not sure that I can handle the pain getting any worse. I am also to the point where I have pretty much constant acid reflux, whether I'm lying down, siting, or standing, because I think my stomach has migrated into my ribcage. Or possibly to the top of my sternum. So far, this baby doesn't seem to be sitting on my sciatic nerve like Ian did, but I've still got 10 weeks to go. The leg cramps are unpleasant and back pain are unpleasant., and bending over to pick something else is an ordeal. I look at my belly and think, wow, it still has a lot bigger to go- I think all of my clothes are going to rip apart by the end of this. I got one of those back/belly support velcro bands, and that's hit or miss. It also puts more pressure on my bladder, but sometimes I wear it just to keep my pants up. I also miss my brain- I swear I can feel my brain cells taking off. About this time of the pregnancy, I also have unexplained issues, which takes us to:

-PEEING BLOOD: With every pregnancy I've had, I always have unexplained bleeding at the beginning of the third trimester. With Madelynn, the cause was never determined, but an ultrasound did reveal that I was having pre-term labor, so I was put on bed rest and medication to stop contractions. I still ended up being induced when I was full term because the doctor was worried about me going past my due date with the issues I had been having. With Ian, I had bleeding and contractions and had to stay the night in the hospital, but then they stopped and cause of bleeding was never determined. I was also induced 5 days after my due date with him (that was at my request, though, because I was desperate for my Dad to meet his first grandson before he died.) I thought I might escape it this time, but nope, last Friday I randomly started bleeding- not enough to warrant rushing to the ER, but enough to be concerning. Since we are only 10 minutes from the hospital and this seems to be a common occurrence, I insisted on driving myself to labor and delivery to get checked out so the kids wouldn't have to get dragged along and be traumatized. After tons of tests, I was told I had been peeing blood and had a UTI, and was sent home with a prescription for an antibiotic. But then was told a few days later after lab results came in that I didn't actually have a UTI either and they had no idea why I was peeing blood. So glad I get to pay a butt load of $$$ (and that's WITH insurance) to be poked and prodded and told that no one has any idea why I was bleeding.

-THIS IS THE PLACE- If you are from here: I had somewhat of an idea of what to expect when we moved here, since I had lived in this state for a few years when I was younger. I was hoping that the culture of being very insular and wary of outsiders had changed since then, or maybe it was just a Cache Valley thing. Yeah, no. If you're not from here, you are an outsider and most people are so involved in their own lives that they really don't give a rip about you. This is partially due to the fact that we chose the wrong area to live- the majority of the people near us are from here, have their entire families here, and why get out of your comfort zone when everything is already peachy? Madelynn has had 1 playdate since we've been here. I've tried to set up a couple others, but there hasn't been any follow through on the other end. Ian was the only kid in his preschool that didn't have a huge family gathering to go to, because our family is either dead or living in another state. We did get invited to dinner once, though- by one of Nate's old friends from high school that also happens to live here, which means that they were outsiders, too. People are perfectly nice here, but only associate with you within the context that they know you from. If they know you from church, they will talk to you at church, but you do not exist outside of Sunday between the hours of 9 and 12. It's kind of like the little kid that thinks his teacher lives at school. There also is a bit of a doomsday mentality here- I constantly here about how the world is terrifying, getting worse all the time, the end is near, so stay inside and stock up on your food storage and keep your children away from the evil influences of the world. And maybe home school them. I have heard multiple people refer to anything outside of Utah as "the mission field" WTF? To that I say- there has always been plenty of evil in the world, so go out and be the good influence. We are trying to find an area that is more receptive to "outsiders" (yeah, you wouldn't think a Mormon would be considered an outsider in Utah, would you). I am terrified of anything major happening to us here, because I don't know if anyone would help us out. I'm just glad this pregnancy hasn't had any complications, because I absolutely cannot go on bed rest here with two young kids, and I'm going to start freezing a bunch of meals at the beginning of February so we have something decent to eat.

-HOW MUCH IT COST TO GET HERE: We had paid off both of our credit cards. And then we realized we were moving to Utah, and had to spend a few thousand dollars to get here. Moving is expensive. It's not so bad when you move someplace that you are excited to move to, because then you can say it was worth it. I am still waiting for that feeling, right now I feel more like I spent a bunch of money so someone could give me a bad case of diarrhea. With what it cost to get here, we're not going to be packing up anytime soon, and are trying to make the best of things. Okay, it's not completely horrible here, but it's not home. And it's not green. And we're not 1 hour from the ocean. And I can't go out to my backyard for a snack when I get hungry; I don't even have a backyard to go out to. Taking a pay cut to move somewhere where cost of living isn't actually any different than where we came from wasn't so fun, either, but at least I am fairly fond of my job and it's significantly less stressful than my last one, so it's okay. We pretty much knew we were going to have to leave Oregon for one place or another thanks to something called the Spanish Orela, but that doesn't mean we had to be excited about it!

-TINY CHAIRS: Adult chairs do not exist where I work. The only people who get comfortable adult-size chairs are administrations and people that work at the district office. Teachers get whatever happens to be the size of the chair their students sit in, unless you teach really little kids, then you get an extra 1-2 chairs that fit 9 year olds in your room for your "big person" chair. You must bring your own chair (and then hope it doesn't disappear). I am going to start bringing a camping chair with me to work because I'm getting so big that it's incredibly painful for me to sit in the chairs built for preschoolers. I am usually given the option of sitting in the "big" chairs, but those are still too small and also painful to sit in.

-NON-EXISTENT MATERNITY LEAVE: Utah is a right to work state, which basically gives employers the right to screw you over. Utah was also ranked as the number 1 worst state for women due to discrepancy in pay, not enough childcare providers, and lack of women in high-ranking positions, to name a few. My district has no maternity leave policy- there's a big sign that says so in the workroom where my mailbox is. I am only protected to use up to 10 days of sick leave (of which I have already had to take from sick kids and being sick myself), have the option of using my personal leave, and can request and additional 15 days of unpaid leave. I am not protected under FMLA because I don't work full-time and I haven't been employed with the district for a year. (I picked the wrong country to have babies in). That means that basically I can take a little over a month off and still have my job protected. But I do not recover that quickly and am planning on taking a full 12-week leave. I could get fired if my boss felt like it, but fortunately she's also a mom and is understanding of people having babies and is supportive of me taking whatever time off I need, even though she doesn't have to be. Granted, in my field, even if I was cut from my position, I could easily find another one or do teletherapy.

-APARTMENTS: We really really really wanted to rent a house, or at least a townhouse, when we moved here. But alas, none of the rental companies would either answer there phone, return calls or show us houses because we weren't moving here for a month when we came to look at places. I have found that the not answering phones thing is a fairly common and irritating habit of many here. So, that meant we were pretty much stuck with getting an apartment, and drove around just hoping to find something decent. And of course, none of the communities had any available townhouses, so we were stuck with a flat. And those really obnoxious vertical blinds in front of the sliding glass doors and a carpeted dining room. It's super fun picking out cereal that has become encrusted in the fibers. We also seem to have managed to end up in the building where everyone around us smokes, which means that during warm weather, we can't enjoy sitting on our porch without inhaling turd air, and the laundry room vent picks up the smoke from the outside and sucks it into our laundry room. The neighbors above us also apparently have pet dinosaurs and are believers in the cry it out method with their baby, which is not very considerate at 3 am. And have some sort of piece of furniture that is constantly getting rolled across the floor, I have no idea what in the world they do up there, other than I know their children are fond of jumping off the furniture, but maybe they don't know because they're always outside sending us cancer clouds. I know that part of the issue is that the soundproofing between the our ceiling and their floor just sucks because it's a large apartment community and developers like to cut corners to save a buck or two, but there is no reason that it should constantly sound like a herd of dinosaurs stomping on our heads.

Well, I feel a little bit better. Sometimes I think I am a total ass for feeling upset and not particularly cheerful, but it's okay that I feel that way. We all have our struggles, and there will always be someone who has it worse off than you, but that doesn't mean that your feelings aren't legitimate. I think it's important that we recognize and accept how we feel instead of feeling guilty for feeling a certain way, and also recognize and accept how other people feel as well.