Category: Daily

I just spent about 15 minutes typing writing up an entry on my PDA and when I pressed “publish” the piece of crap got a 410 error, which is like a 404 Not Found. Argh!! I was testing it, since I probably won’t have a laptop by the time I’m ready to have Alaethia and I’d love to have updates while I’m in the hospital, but it sucks with WordPress. It worked perfectly with Greymatter. You’re letting me down WP :(.

I seriously thought I was going to be updating from the hospital yesterday. A while after I posted my last entry I started feeling really crappy. My stomach was cramping; I had no idea whether it was contractions or an upset stomach. I went searching on Google for ‘signs of labor’ and I checked off every single symptom except for my water breaking. I was freaking out, especially since I’m only 33 1/2 weeks along! It ended up being some kind of half-day stomach bug, though, which made me feel miserable anyway but I was thankful that it wasn’t labor.

Since I felt sick, I didn’t get to wrap many presents but I at least got the kids’ gift-exchange ones done and packed to take with us today. I ended up eating strawberry oatmeal for dinner at around 10:30pm since that’s when my stomach settled a little and I stopped feeling nauseous. Mario and I cuddled and I had a better night’s sleep than I though I would, thank goodness.

I woke up feeling pretty good, and so far, I’m fine. I’ve been spending my free time uploading old pictures (’03-’04ish) to my Flickr account. So far, I’ve got Jaylen’s Baptism, Janaury 2004 (still adding to that one though), Christmas 2004 (which has 150-some pictures!), and I’m slowly adding to my 80s Set. Makes me miss my collections terribly *wipes tear*.

So, I’ll leave you with those. Enjoy! But be warned, again, my camera at the time (Samsung Digimax 101) was crappy and really blurry :(.

First, I’d like to thank you all for the comments on my previous entry. Mario switched days off with a co-worker (per his co-worker’s request) and will have Monday off next week, so that’s when we plan to go through our closet and storage unit and find things for the family :).

Now for a much lighter entry. Mario was snappy last night, we made me get snappy. I took a shower, did laundry, and went to bed to read without saying a word to him at all. I was in bed reading for about 20 minutes when he jumps on the bed and puts his arm around my belly, chin on my shoulder and just lays there. Scared me half to death. That’s his way of saying “Sorry, let’s not argue anymore.”

I set the alarm for 12:30am, which I did not want to do, but I had to turn off the slow cooker (made ribs) and put laundry to dry. Add two more wake-up calls from the bladder; I couldn’t wake up this morning. I had every intention of crawling back into bed once John, the boys and Mario were out of the house, but I had some caffeinated coffee with Mario along with breakfast and now I’m completely awake. I’m going to regret this around 2pm. *eye twitches*

Remember what I said on my December 9th entry? That I had to go shopping and I just know one of the kids was going to act up? I was totally right. They were both good at the beginning. First stop was Gramma’s and they behaved pretty well. Next stop was Target. Something possessed Jaylen (a little demon I suspect) and he started throwing a fit as soon as we walked into the store and grabbed a cart. The carts were all wet since it’d been raining and he insisted on getting in one. After hearing a minute straight of his ear-piercing screams (and being started at my other customers) I told John to just put in in a cart, wet or not. He continued to scream over Heaven-knows-what and I started to feel really overwhelmed. John got what he went for (a hoodie sweatshirt) and he paid and I stormed to the front of the store as fast as I could. Eenan was being really good. He saw how stressed I was and just walked quietly beside me the whole time.

Jaylen, on the other hand, continued to scream all the way to the truck. Everyone got in the car and I calmly told him he was grounded, which set him off again. I lost it and yelled, “SHUT UP!!!” and started bawling my eyes out. I surprised Mom and John and the kids. Shoot, I surprised myself! Talk about hormones gone wild. I sat there, silently sobbing for a little while with my hands cupped over my eyes until I could get myself to calm down. I hate crying in front of people. And, hello? I don’t want people to know my kids can get to me that way. First thing I told mom and John was, “No one will know about this.”

And Jaylen? He didn’t even stay awake long enough to feel guilty for making his emotionally unstable mother cry. The boy fell asleep as soon as he heard my first sob.

I still had two stops to make, Kmart and Wal-Mart, but opted to go only to Kmart since the thing I needed to buy there was on sale and since it was Saturday, it wouldn’t be on sale the next day. There was no way I was going to Wal-Mart.

Mom stayed in the car with the boys. Jaylen was still sleeping and Eenan was being extremely good. I wiped my eyes one more time and John and I went into the store.

(Babe, you better NOT be reading this! Close the window right now!)

We went straight into the sporting goods department, because that’s where the knife Mario wanted was. We found it very quickly: A white and red ticket was taped to the display that said $17.99 on it, just like Mario described. We waited for a cashier and waited, and waited. Finally, after 10 minutes, I saw an employee pass by and I flagged him down. He sent the girl from that department over.

I tell her which one I want and she says. “Oh…” I feel my heart sink, shoot a look at John and ask her, “What happened?” She says, “This price is for an old Ad. It’s actually $31.99….”

She trails off and starts ripping off stickers from other items that are old and turns to me and says, “But, we have to give it to you for that price since the sticker was there.”

I felt so relieved and wanted to hug her. When we were walking to electronics, where we were going to pay, I whisper to John, “I’m so glad they’re giving it to me for that price. Otherwise, this would have been the–”

“–worst day of your life?”

“No, not the worst, but close. Top 10. No, top 5, at least.”

We browsed around a little after I paid and then we went to the truck. Jaylen was still sleeping and for a second I considered going to Wal-Mart but quickly snapped out of it after remembering just how horrible his mood is when he’s abruptly awaken.

I don’t know if it was pure coincidence, or if the dramatics with Jaylen set it off, but I started feeling really tired and breathless the next couple of days. If I did normal things, like walking around the house putting laundry away or sweeping or standing for long periods of time washing dishes, I’d get short of breath, my palpitations would start up and I’d feel light-headed. I was attentive to everything I was feeling though, and kept feeling for Alaethia’s movements, which were frequent, just in case.

Went to eat at Jesse’s on Sunday afternoon. Poor Mario had wanted to go there since his birthday and we finally had a chance. Mary went along with us. We ordered a delicious Seafood Platter and there was plenty of fish, shrimp, fried oysters (ew), stuffed crabs and frog legs (double ew) to go around. Mario specifically got that platter because he wanted to try the frog legs. He kept offering me some but I passed.

After lunch, we had two stops to make, the first of which I can’t remember for the life of me and the other to Wal-Mart. Mary offered to stay in the car with the boys since she was reading the newspaper so we were grateful for that. They’d been pretty good, but we didn’t want to risk it. I’m hoping this is just a phase Jaylen’s going through because it would really suck to have to leave them behind everytime I had errands to run :(.

As soon as we went into the store, I started feeling really sweaty and lightheaded. It was weird since I’d just eaten, so I knew it wasn’t that my sugar was low. We got everything we needed quickly and went home.

We got home and Mary took off again to buy a Christmas tree at H-E-B. Yadira, Tommy, and the kids came over to help decorate the tree. I’m usually up there, dizzy with Noelia after wrapping lights around the tree a few times, but I still felt too weak to help this year. Instead I took many pictures :).

We went to Elda’s after the tree-decorating to check out the chairs she upholstered. They looked so nice. Which reminds me, I need to upholster my hideous kitchen chairs, too. We’ve only had our table and chairs for a year (this Christmas) and the boys already destroyed the fabric. I’m going to upholster them with nice fabric covered in clear plastic. Hopefully they won’t end up stabbing the plastic, though.

Mario made burgers on the George Foreman that night, so I was plenty grateful for that. My feet wouldn’t have been able to take standing in front of the darn stove.

Mario and I had a talk on Monday or Tuesday after he got home from work. I don’t even know how it came up, I think it was something we saw on TV where a girl started crying or something and he asked, “Why are women like that? I mean, I don’t get it. How can you all just cry like that?” I laugh and say, “Hey, in my case it’s my hormones, darnit. I can’t help it at all. Trust me, I’d love it if I didn’t have to bawl all the time.” And the conversation went on from there.

We talked about the baby, our lives together, the boys, what we want in the future, and other stuff I can’t remember. I told him how I really wanted to help out with the bills and how I also wanted a house in at least a year, badly, and he told me not to rush. He said he found it strange how I kept saying I was “only spending a few months with the baby”. I felt like I had to rush. He never says anything about me not working, but I want to work. I cried a little when I told him I was going to miss a lot of her milestones when I started working, and he said, “You don’t have to miss anything, nobody told you you had to work!” Still, I’d love to work, but if I find it to hard to leave her I’m listening to Mario and staying home a little longer. The best of both worlds would be to work from home, but there aren’t very many opportunities like that where I live.

I’ll change the subject now. Thinking of all that stuff stresses me out, and she’s not even born yet!

Wow, my back hurts. My feet are feeling pretty good, but only because I constantly have them propped up when I get a chance to sit down. They’re not swollen or anything, which is weird, but they hurt so bad. Maybe it’s because I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been right now and my body’s not used to it? I wake up 3-4 times a night to pee and when I step down off the bed I get a stabbing pain in my feet. I finally stopped procrastinating and bought some soft flip-flop style slippers yesterday. My feet felt much better last night (I usually walk around barefoot, which hurts my feet even more). And speaking of night time, turning from one side to the other is the worst pain I’ve felt so far. I’ve heard a crack a few times when I’m slowly trying to turn.

The kids had a dentist appointment yesterday. I got Eenan out of school early, which I wasn’t too happy about since they have Benchmark tests and 6 Weeks tests going on. He should be alright though. Both of them did really good, although Eenan was hyper as always. Eenan got a filling re-done with minimal screaming. He just needed to hold my hand while Dr. Canales drilled. Jaylen loved his teeth cleaning and has absolutely no cavities :).

OMG, and did anyone watch the Biggest Loser yesterday?! Can you believe how thin the final four (and even some of the ones kicked off early and the ones excersizing at home) got? I would love to know what exercises they do. I need to find episodes on Youtube or something and save them so I can get inspired when I’m ready to work off this baby weight!

It occured to me that I’ve got a month and a week or so to go and I still have tons of stuff that need to be done around the house. I’ve already made a to-do list on Word and I’m praying we’ll get every single last thing crossed off that list!

My computer’s slowly dying. We’ve had it for 3 years already. I say ‘already’ because the last one we had gave out in 3 years also. It shuts down when making DVDs or when the kids are playing games on the Disney or Cartoon Network sites. I thought it was a virus or something at first, but Norton and all the other programs we have don’t alert us to anything. A while back, the computer diagnosed itself with either bad RAM, power supply, fan or harddrive. NICE. That’ll be easy to figure out *sarcasm*.

Before the computer dies, I need to back everything up (let’s see HOW I can do it since I can’t exactly burn much) and get all my old entries on WordPress. Thankfully, most of my important files are on my external harddrive. I need to go through my old pictures, which are on CDs, and add them (even though my camera from 2003–a Samsung Digimax 101–was crappy but at the time I thought it was amazing LOL) to Flickr. I also want to scan some old pics, like my baby pictures and pictures of Gramma, and add them, too.

I’ve also go to start wrapping presents. I’m the type of person that waits till Christmas Eve and stays up making cookies and wrapping presents till 1 or 2am because I’ve procrastinated all month. Not everything that’s in my closet is mine (Mary’s stashed some stuff in there, too) and I’ve got stuff at Mary’s and Mom’s:

Oh yeah, and I have to clean up the living room and kitchen. I don’t like that part.

After having breakfast I picked up the newspaper from this past Sunday that Mario abandoned on the floor out of all places. A story on the front page called “Just One Wish” caught my eye.

I figured I’d read the article and then take a nap. I was so sleepy this morning I actually turned off the alarm and went right back to sleep, leaving the boys and I with only 40 minutes to get ready instead of the usual hour and 15. After reading this article though, there’s no way I can sleep. I’ll just lay there thinking about what we can possibly do for this family.

The Garcia family — Martina, 42; Juvencio, 41; Juvencio Jr., 16; Andres, 13; and Marcos, 1 1/2 years old — live in a church bus that was converted into a home near FM 1925 in Edcouch.

Martina has liver cancer, which spread from her colon, and undergoes chemotherapy that leaves her sick and feeling weak. (Source/full story: Themontior.com)

This story hit me like a ton of bricks. I bawled so hard my head began to hurt. Shame on me for silently complaining about not having new window treatments, or new slippers, or a new bolster pillow when there’s people out there who are sick and actually need clothes and food. For the second time in less than a month I feel humbled and just lucky to have the life that I do, no matter how “bad” it may seem sometimes.

They live off of Ramen noodles and beans almost every night. Martina couldn’t even enjoy the first, most special months of her new baby’s life because when he turned 6 months old, she was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to her liver. Her husband, Juvencio, doesn’t have much work because he looks after the children when Martina’s feeling too ill after her chemo treatments. The floods that invaded their part of the valley during summer ruined some of the few things they owned, including an adjacent building Juvencio built 5 years ago.

The two eldest boys, the 16- and 13-year-olds, were shy during the interview and didn’t want to say much. I can’t even imagine what this is like for them.

I can relate to them, though. I don’t mention it much, and it’s going to take a lot to put this into writing, but when I was growing up we were dirt poor. We got by on my Gramma’s SSI check and welfare. At the end of most months, when funds were low after paying bills and buying food, we’d live off of bread and baloney sandwiches and city water. We spent days at a time sometimes without water and/or electricity since my dad would conveniently disappear when he was supposed to send money for the bills. My mom couldn’t work because she didn’t have an education and the GED classes she would have liked to attend weren’t offered in our area. Besides, even if they did have classes available, we had no form of transportation and Mom never learned how to drive. But still, even through all that, John and I remember having a mostly-happy childhood. Once we were in middle and high school though, it became a little embarrassing to tell our friends where we lived and even worse when they would go over and they found out we didn’t have indoor plumbing. We didn’t live in a shack by any means, but it was a small, 50-year-old house at the time that needed many repairs we didn’t have money for. That’s where I can relate to the Garcia boys. I know how tough it is being a teenager to begin with, but to have to deal with everything that’s been put on their plate makes their lives even tougher.

The fact that this may be the Garcias’ last Christmas together is just devastating. Although we may not be able to do a lot for them, I’d at least like to donate clothes and toys for the kids. Mario and I were just talking about how much stuff we have in the storage unit that we need to get rid of in a garage sale, but I’d feel so much better giving whatever I can to this family. My boys have plenty of toddler toys they don’t use and toddler clothes they grew out of that can be given to little 1 1/2 year-old Marcos. Both teenage boys wear Medium, and Mario bagged up tons of Medium sized shirts. And although it may not be much that we can give, I’d like to donate money, too.

If you live in the McAllen area or anywhere in the Rio Grande Valley and would like to donate, Themonitor.com states that donations are being accepted from now until December 21st at the building on the corner of 12th Street and Chicago Avenue, just west of the Chase Motor Bank buidling at 200 S. 10th Street in McAllen. You can call (956) 279-9047 or (956)-279-9048 with questions or to make monetary donations. It says that all donations are accepted, including, but not limited to: gently used clothing and toys, food, furniture and money.