2008: A Year I'll Never Forget

I've been offline since my grandmother's passing last month, and a lot has happened in the interim. As this has already turned out to be a banner year for me, I'm going to give you (read: the one or two people who might still read this) a breakdown of what's going on.

This is the year I am turning 30, meaning that I will have to change all of my blogs to stop saying that I'm in my late 20s, but it also means that I've got to hit my watershed year with style.

So far:
- My grandmother died unexpectedly on January 6th within hours of being admitted to the hospital.
- I found out that I was pregnant six days later. My grandmother really wanted to be a great-grandmother, so I had some mixed feelings about the pregnancy.
- I was informed by my professor that I was accepted into the Comparative Studies program for graduate school. I'm "auditing" the class and he told me "congratulations" as I entered the room. I said, with the dumbest look on my face, "for what?" and almost fell over in the middle of the room when I found out the good news. I'm still waiting to hear from the English department, but since I got into my first choice department, I'm very happy.
- I'm also in a mini-feud with some of the members of my family [In particular, my father, my step-mother, and two of my half-siblings] because my father stole my older brother's money over the course of two years and then moved to a new apartment which resulted in my brother being put out into the street. My "sister" allowed my brother to stay with her in her two-bedroom condo, but only for one night with her and her little brother "lecturing" him on how he should've saved his money to be able to afford his own place. My step-mother got into my father's head and convinced him that my brother was not being a real man even though he works very hard, pays child support for his son [something my father never did for me] and only brought home $300 bi-weekly, which my father would take for himself. Needless to say, my internet readers are finding out about my good news before they will.

See how my life is always interesting?

It makes me think of something that happened when I was a kid: There was a summer when I had absolutely nothing to do. My grandmother wasn't able to bring home a PC for the summer because the computers had gotten too old, so I ran around saying I was bored all summer. She promised me that I would never be bored again and made sure that I was signed up in programs and kept busy all the way through high school. I feel that the way things have turned out that her promise is still holding true.

But, to quote my 5-year-old cousin, "Heaven's had her long enough, I want her back."

I'm hoping to do more blogging as the quarter winds down. I'm writing the grant proposal for my group as we are trying to get a grant for The Dowd Center, a place for homeless children and families that does excellent work in helping students in all aspects of life, so that's going to keep me occupied until Wednesday. I'm also (most likely) writing our paper for the final project, so I've got a lot of work to do this weekend. My pregnancy keeps me under the weather; I don't get morning sickness (due to genetics and emetophobia) but I catch everything else and stay sick for a week at a time. I almost missed my Valentine's Day dinner because I couldn't eat solid foods for the better part of a week. And I have work that I need to get done, but still suffer from an inability to focus for more than 2 minutes on any one task.

It may seem like a lot, but I wanted to get some things off my chest before I log off. My baby is supposedly due August 28th, and I would start grad school a month after that.

Oh yeah, I'm still going to go to school. I'm not going to be stopped; I just have to adapt.

I hope my reader(s) fill clued in, and I hope to continue at some point.

Stay safe and warm, everyone.

Maybe she's been reading "Lacerations For the Soul"

I had an utterly demoralizing conversation with my grandmother on Sunday, which amounted to her saying that children are "blessings" and that "if you do good things, God will bestow blessings on you"; implying that I'll have children if I do good things.

She essentially said that I've not had children because I'm a bad person. Well, what she said was that I needed to do good things to be rewarded with children, but it still feels as if she was saying that there's something wrong with me.

My husband told one of his friends what she said, and the friend asked if she was being mean on purpose, or if she was unaware of what she was doing. She knew what she was saying, and I know this because she said it twice. The first time she mentioned "blessings", she didn't come out and say that she meant children, but I fugured that that was what she was talking about. She made it painfully clear when she started by telling me that I need to have children before I turn 30, and telling me that I didn't want to be like Nancy Grace, who is having twins at 46 [Okay, so I may not like Ms. Grace (and she may have driven one interviewee to suicide), but to compare me to her? That hurts]. And then she defined "blessings", and left me holding a phone that I wanted to throw through the glass doors of our new t.v. stand.

I called my husband, who called me back an hour later where I was more coherent but not any less upset than I was when I first called. No wonder I got sick the next day.

I know that children are a blessing. I've never disputed that. I also know that I have been trying to conceive for more than two years, so I don't like having these conversations where I feel she thinks I'm doing this on purpose. Do you really think I would intentionally not have children and then proceed to tell her that I am trying? Do I look like a pain slut? [Answer: no (I know some S&M people, so I do not mean to offend)]

Maybe I'm being too sensitive. I don't know what to think anymore.

I do know this: One's spirit can feel wounds, and I can almost feel the blood flowing from my lacerations. This is not something I need right now.