This is pretty all over the place, but here goes....

Last week my brother Tom offered to take Isaac to the car show with him. I had been couped up in the house due to snow for almost 24 hours so I jumped at the chance for Isaac to do something fun. I took advantage of his four hour absence by meeting up with my friend for dinner. We ended up gossiping getting caught up about mutual friends. One of our friends is embarking on a relationship that feels very deja vu. Lots of the same elements of her previous one. Of course, it's always easy to look at someone else and say, "Well gosh, here's the problem. Why can't they see it?" My friend made that very observation and we laughed about how her pattern until she met her current husband was dating guys that later came out of the closet. Then of course the conversation turned to me. I shared with her how I have been talking a lot to old college boyfriend and how I think I am just swept up in the nostalgia of old times. My friend pointed out that she has a hard time keeping him straight because like PDH and summer dating guy, he is also in a weird transition point in his life, and not looking for a relationship. She gets them all mixed up. Clearly this is my pattern. I find guys who for various reasons are unable or unwilling to be in a relationship. And then I can't let them go. Why am I so stuck on picking at the past and rehashing it? Why do I stay in touch with people who clearly need to go? Why do I keep revisiting these relationships just to reaffirm that it is still a square peg I'm trying to jam in a round hole?

It's taken me about 37 days, but I finally decided what I want my word of the year to be for 2011:

forward

For the longest time time I had a goal I was working toward, moving my life towards. After I had Isaac, it was finishing school. I had to push on until I got that master's degree, that teaching credential, to move past the stopping point in my career where I found myself hopelessly stuck. Then it was kindergarten. Keep on saving money and living with my parents till Isaac got to kindergarten. Even once I ended up getting my own place, kindergarten still seemed to be the big milestone I was working towards. Keep shuttling him back and forth from my parents to the daycare center till he got to kindergarten. Now I feel a bit aimless. I know what I want next in my life, but it feels out of my control.

I need to really look at my life and re-examine my goals. I need stop sitting at home in a pile of self pity googling my exs, and reading e-mails that are years old. I need something to work towards. I need something to keep pushing on for. I just feel like right now I am stuck in the past. Stuck in the same ruts. Ignoring the same issues.

In really thinking about this I have concluded that maybe I can't go forward on my own. I've been seriously considering going back to a therapist again. I saw a therapist the whole time I was pregnant. For those of you who have no experience to draw on of therapy, let me tell you, it's not what you might picture from what you've gleaned from TV. You're not lying an a couch staring into a swirling black and white circle while an old white man chewing on a pipe says "Tell me about your feelings".

**

My experience was this: she was a hippy dippy kind of lady who I called by her first name. Her office was in the back of a yoga studio in a big barn. The doorway across from her was a room where people got massages. She would put on a white noise machine while we talked. She had crystals hanging from the ceiling. We would sit in arm chairs across from one another and we would talk about stress and drama of my pregnancy. At the time, it seemed everyone in my life had a personal stake in what was happening, and she was this totally objective person who would say "I don't think you are a bad person."

Anyways, I've recognized a few mild signs of depression and especially anxiety over the past year or so and thought that maybe it might be time to go back. I've been resistant though. Not because of a perceived stigma. I could care less about that. I subscribe to the theory that everyone in the whole world can benefit from therapy. I've been hesitant mostly because really committing yourself to therapy means forcing yourself to do real work. To dig up things that you've buried. To process and work through things you would rather avoid. To confront things that are scary. To ask yourself questions that are hard. To have someone challenge beliefs and ideas about yourself that you have always had. To commit to making changes. It's not generally a quick process or really an easy one.

Anyways, I still believe that I can have it all (my slogan from last year). But maybe it's time to accept the fact that I might not be on course to have it all if I stay stuck in the ruts I've been in.

It's scary.

But I feel like it's necessary.

I'm looking forward.

So there you go.

**I also feel like there is a big stigma within the LDS culture about going to therapy. There is a belief that it is something you should power through with prayer and scripture study or have a few discussions with the Bishop. The Bishop may be well meaning, but he is not equipped to help you deal with depression or anxiety. Also, some people believe that you should only see an LDS therapist or someone through LDSFS. Unless you live in the west, it will be nearly impossible to find an LDS therapist. As for LDSFS, I don't recommend them for anything, ever. However, I don't think LDS people should be afraid to talk to a non-LDS therapist. My experience was a very positive one. She was extremely respectful of my values and beliefs, even as they continuously played into our discussions. She never pushed me to question what I believed. Just sayin'

Worse than SADFAB

From this month's Glamour (p. 302) "I learned I had 'social infertility,' the diagnosis they give single women and lesbians who want children."

50 random thoughts on a Saturday Morning

1. I'm laying in bed eating a bowl of peanut butter cup ice cream for breakfast.
2. I can practically feel it settling around my thighs.
3. This breakfast totally cancels out my run last night.
4. I made it to 2 miles!
5. With some hills!
6. My friend Jami (who runs marathons) is trying to get me to sign up for the Broad Street run.
7. Let's not go crazy.
8. I'm obsessed with Lisa Leonard jewelry. It would love to own one of her pieces someday...
9. The weather has been extremely icy here lately.
10. When I said "No more snow!" this isn't what I meant.
11. Ice is so much more dangerous.
12. Will we ever see sun/spring again???
13. We have book group this week. I'm pretty excited.
14. Although I really should join one that has people I don't know.
15. This one is with my coworkers.
16. Who are all fabulous people.
17. But I feel like I need to make some new connections.
18. And push out of my comfort zone a little more.
19. I didn't mean to offend anyone in one of my prior blog posts.
20. I don't think 30 is over the hill by any means!
21. Or even "old".
22. But it is a milestone birthday, that (in my opinion) marks a new chapter of adulthood.
23. I have been wearing my blue infinity scarf like crazy.
24. I had to order a new bra and so I got the scarf for FREE.
25. Who doesn't love FREE?
26. Isaac's school is starting a kid's Zumba club after school.
27. He is ridiculously excited to join.
28. He knows I love Zumba, but I'm not sure he knows it is essentially dancing.
29. We had an in service day yesterday at work. The presenter asked our (totally non-responsive) group if anyone enjoyed writing or did it for fun. I raised my hand and she totally called on me.
30. I was like "Uh... I have a blog I write in...".
31. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy.
32. And one person was like "What's a blog?"
33. I managed to pull out of the recesses of my brain that "blog" was short for "weblog".
34. Which didn't seem to clarify anything for them.
35. All righty then...
36. If the roads aren't insane I'm venturing out this afternoon to get my hair touched up.
37. Although my current color is much closer to my natural hair color than the blond I was rockin all summer, I have visible 2 inch long roots.
38. My friend in Pittsburgh told me that the schools there are having a 2 hour delay Monday morning, in anticipation of people being hungover from the Superbowl.
39. Kind of ridiculous.
40. I was going to go to New York this weekend.
41. To visit my friend, the fabulous Nicole Newcomer.
42. But I decided to cancel my trip and go some other time when the weather is nicer.
43. For those keeping track, this is Isaac's weekend with his dad.
44. We still had the usual drama before the drop off.
45. We will see if pick up goes any better.
46. Well I should probably get out of bed and actually do something today.
47. I have a huge pile of mail to sort through.
48. Laundry to be done.
49. The car needs cleaned out.
50. Have a great weekend everyone!

More from the E-Harmony reject pile

It's a free communication month, so I hopped by over to the site...

like a month to a flame.

So here's some more lovely people e-harmony thinks I am terribly compatible with.... enjoy.

Last book I read and enjoyed: 'Twilight', It was very intriging how a man and a woman so different love one another so much. It was their differences that made them love each other so much.

Maybe I'm too picky... but I don't want to date any guy who read/enjoyed Twilight. Good grief. That being said, at least he filled in the question. I despise when someone says "I hate reading" or "Not so into books". At least say something lame like "Training manual for my work" or "I only have time to read stuff for school". Saying you hate reading is an instant rejection. It automatically gives the impression that you are a couch potato and unintelligent. Ridiculous spelling mistakes are also grounds for immediate deletion. Sure, we all make occasional errors or typos but words like "sense", "friends" "Jesus" and "Philadelphia"(!!!!!!) should be spelled correctly. Also axed a guy who had on flannel shirts in all of his pictures. Probably petty, but yikes.

Which, let's talk about pictures. Don't put pictures of yourself with your arm around some girl who has been awkwardly cut out of the picture. Get a friend to snap a decent picture of you. Come on.

And for heaven's sake, do NOT put a picture of yourself next to a guy dressed as Pikachu.

And this guy... I don't even know where to begin.... You pay a significant amount of money to have an active online profile on the site, and you choose to make the old Washington Monument penis joke for your profile picture? Good luck finding your soulmate, jackass. (Although, at least the last book he claims to have read was 1984... small redemption)

Free communication week goes on until Valentine's Day and I have over 300 matches to slog through, so there is plenty more where these came from...

I'm a big cliche

Firstly, I've been reflecting a lot on motherhood lately and started pounding out a huge manuscript on the topic. After some reflection, I have decided to break it up into different posts. Saturday I watched FoodInc, a really insightful documentary on issues in the food industry. After that, Netflix realized I like documentaries and it recommended more in spades. It seems NEtlfix knows me better than I thought. One recommendation was a documentary called "Babies". Here is the trailer: It follows four babies from different parts of the world (Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, and the USA). It was very charming and cute although I found myself tearing up/crying all through it. This is the theme in my life lately I see. Dads in the mall wearing baby Bjorns make me teary. I see a smiling pregnant woman in the grocery store and I feel physical pangs of jealousy. And yes, I am well aware that this makes me sound psychotic but I guess it is safe to say as I creep closer and closer to thirty my biological clock is pounding in my ears. I think I feel more anxious to find "the one" less from a desire to not be alone, but because my desire to have another baby before it's too late. The average 30 year old only has 12% of her eggs left. I am terrified that I won't ever meet someone who wants to have kids, or that by the time I do, I won't be able to anymore. And I'm not the only one apparently. There's even an acronym for people who feel this way: SADFABs (single and desperate for a baby). Which, isn't that the most depressing label ever? My pregnancy with Isaac was unexpected and a time of high stress, shame, and anxiety. It was not something I savored, it was something I detached myself from and endured. I was hit with a barrage of messages that I would have to sacrifice all my dreams and goals, that I would end up collecting welfare, that my kid would be maladjusted, When Isaac came, he became the light of my life. For all of the turmoil of the pregnancy, I can state with absolute certainty that Isaac is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Although a major theme of my blogging over the years has been my regret and guilt at how quickly his infancy passed in a the delurium of working full time, grad school, field experiences, student teaching, etc. Now all of a sudden he is this grown little boy with no traces of babyhood left. Selfishly, I want to do it all again when I can really delight in the experience of it. Also, I feel a lot of sorrow that Isaac will not have the experience of having a sibling close to him in age. My siblings are all two years apart and I am very close with each of them. Anyways, I certainly do not want to a rush a relationship forward toward love and marriage as a result of these overpowering maternal feelings. Seriously. But it is sort of hard when you imagine things in your life unfolding a certain way and all of a sudden you are almost 30 and nothing is the way you envisioned it. Stayed tuned for more thoughts on motherhood including recent conversations on dating a single mom, and the annoying tendency of childless people to compare having children to having a pet.

A few new things

I actually took this down yesterday. It's very cute (made it myself!) but I have had enough snow. Perhaps something Valentine's related will go up in it's place.

This cute pear bowl found when I was thrifting with my mom...

Also, I finally got some curtains for the living room (although every picture I tried to take of them was too dark or too light).

Sarah's Key

The story is set in Paris and has two interweaving stories revolving around the French roundup of Jews in World War II. One is told from the point of view of a 10 year old Jewish girl Sarah. She is awoken one morning by French police and taken with her parents. Thinking she will be back in a few hours, she locks her four year old brother in a closet. She is taken to an internment camp in a sports arena for several days and then to a work camp and the reader wonders if she will be able to escape and what will become of her brother. You can probably imagine the awful gut-wrenching places her story goes. The other story is set in the present and is narrated by a (two dimensional) American woman, Julia, who lives in Paris in an unhappy marriage. She is writing a newspaper article on the events detailed above and becomes (oddly) obsessed with Sarah's story. Unfortuneatly, about halfway through the novel, the author reveals the brother's fate and fades Sarah away. Julia is a less engaging narrator and the second half of the novel felt a little bit like a letdown. Although the plot at some points really makes no sense, it was a page turner. I had a snow day and knocked it out in 24 hours. I was definitely ignorant of the specific events that took place in France. A major theme of the novel is remembering horrific events, not simply sweeping away past history. It's a compelling story, even if the writing is a little weak.