GIRLS

Last weekend I finally got around to watching Girls which debuted on HBO in April. From the promos it looked good and I’m open to any new shows at this time of year. The first 5 episodes were good, a little quirky with some funny moments. The last 2 episodes really had me laughing though and I left them on the DVR so I can watch them again. Just like Sex and the City before it, I think that everyone will be comparing themselves to one of the 4 main characters. Marnie the best friend and roommate of the main character Hannah is the one that I understand the most. She’s been in a relationship with someone for 4 years and although she still loves Charlie, she has fallen out of love with him. Been there, done that and it is such an awkward situation to be in. It’s comfortable to stay in the relationship but at the same time it’s like your uncle touching you and it becomes weird (her words not mine).

I have never lived in New York City and it was never my dream to live there. I am a suburban girl all the way and I will never give up my car for public transportation. It’s just not me. When I was in college I had no problems taking the bus, subway, Metro North or LIRR. I was young and loved going to New York to explore and have experiences that only NYC can offer. It was one of the main reasons I chose a college a half hour away, that and the fact that my brother moved to Manhattan 2 weeks before I left for college. I thought he was so brave and cool to live on his own in the city at 22 while going to college. That was almost 17 years ago and he never left. Now he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and 3-month old son in a building with an elevator in a nice neighborhood with plenty of parks and families around. Things have changed for him over the years but he has remained a city boy (although he would like a change sooner rather than later).

Last night I read some articles on Girls and people are making a big deal about the 4 main characters all being white women. At first I thought maybe people were right. In a city as diverse as New York you would think they would have one friend who is not white. Then I thought back to my college experience. I went to an all girl’s Catholic college (I know, what the hell was I thinking? I’m not Catholic and I like boys!) and I was a minority. I never thought about it until we were discussing race in one of my social work classes and I realized that my professor was Hispanic and out of the 11 people in the class I was the only white girl. Looking back I should have thought about it more since everyone called me Christina instead of Christine.

 Me and my college friends...okay so Jenna is a 1/4 black...sue me

So what’s my point? All of my friends from college that I still see on a regular basis are WHITE. How the hell did that happen when we were the minority? We had plenty of friends who weren’t white so what happened to them? I still see them on Facebook but honestly I was never as close to those friends as I was to my white friends and I do not think that says anything bad about me. It’s not like we went out of our way to cut out anyone who wasn’t white. It’s just what happened. Maybe that’s another reason I like Girls. I didn’t have the same experiences as these girls (especially Shoshanna the virgin – most girls lose it in high school so how did this girl finish college and never get laid?) but I can still relate to them on some level. It’s entertainment people. Get over yourselves.  

Sleepless Nights

We are still struggling to get Nate to sleep in his bed. I feel like a broken record but all I want is a solid week of uninterrupted sleep and maybe I can feel slightly normal again. I have become accustomed to this new lifestyle but I am not happy with it. The longer it goes on the older I feel and I fear that I will never have another child because we cannot fit another one in our too small Queen sized bed. Besides the obvious other road block of course ;) Then again Nate started sleeping through the night at 10 weeks and continued until right before his first birthday. No, I can’t even entertain the thought right now.

The nugget has been improving lately which makes me really happy. He would never even go to his bed and lay down to fall asleep. He always fell asleep in my bed which meant that either Love or myself had to stay in the living room if we didn’t all want to crowd into the bed. I would let him watch his 2 shows and then the TV would go off. During his 2 shows I would grab my headphones and watch my show on the iPad. Not exactly quality time with your kid but at least we were cuddling. Last week I decided to try a new tactic. I gave him my iPod and pulled up his show and told him that he could watch his shows in his bed. He has fallen asleep on his own almost every night since. It is wonderful and I hope it continues.

The next step will be to bring a twin bed over from my parent’s house. I think he will like a big boy bed but I want to hold off a little longer until he is sleeping better and he’s not coming into our bed on a regular basis. He did so well with potty training and he doesn’t have accidents at night so we ditched the Pull Ups before he was 3 ½. I think I thought this would be easy like that was but I have to remember that he needs to master one thing at a time and that was more important (cleaning up pee versus less sleep…hmmmm).

We also need to get used to Love’s new work schedule. It is stressing both of us out and we need to accept it and get ourselves on a schedule at home that works along with it. He is now working Sunday through Tuesday 7am to 7pm and every other Wednesday 7-7. This is only the second week but we both had to work Sunday and then he didn’t have off for the Monday holiday and it threw everything off. The bonus to the schedule is that today was the first day of 4 days off for him. The bonus for me is that he took Nate Upstate to visit his parents so I could have some quiet time since work is stressing me out. I think it’s great that Nate will get more Daddy Time because lately he is too attached to me.

The bottom line is we need to be more “glass half full” kinda folks if we are going to get through this. Marriage and parenting is stressful enough so we need to keep it together and not let it get to us. I need to start making lists and make sure the little things like Nate’s bath don’t fall through the cracks (Holy crap I am a horrible mommy! My kid is unclean!). Sometimes things need to be one minute at a time.

Memorial Day Madness

It is Friday of Memorial Day weekend and for anyone who watched Revenge this season (holy crap how incredible was the season finale? I laughed, I cried, I wanted more than one hour damnit!) you know that this weekend is the official “kick off” to summer in the Hamptons. Which is great for people who live and vacation here, but not so great for those of us who merely work here. This weekend should be 3-days of hanging with my family at the beach and barbecuing. Instead I will have to wade through ridiculous traffic to get out of here at 5pm, work Sunday night until Midnight at our “kick off” event at Westhampton Country Club and try and recover Monday while Love works. Who wants to be me for a weekend?!?! Crickets…damn.

This week at work has been exhausting and I am not in the middle of hell like a few other people in the office. This is one time that my job title is actually a plus because Special Events is not in there so I try and help out as much as possible while lying low at the same time. Just being in the office is stressful so I really enjoy going home at the end of the day…and drinking…a whole bottle of wine. Yup, I drank a whole bottle of wine last night and I don’t care who knows. It was my way of coping with a hard day and it helped me drift off to sleep and stay asleep instead of waking up and mentally making notes on what I needed to get done today. That is the worst and my summer will be filled with plenty of those nights so I was thrilled that last night was not one of them.

You would think that after almost 9 years in this job I would be used to giving up my summer to stress and exhaustion so people in the Hamptons can party. Drinking basically becomes a second job for those of us dealing with the rich and not so famous. I could write a book about how people treat us normal folk. I’d love to be a fly on their walls and see how they treat their hired help. Even other people who work here think we have nothing better to do than cater to them and their needs. If people did their jobs ours would be much easier. Enough bitching for today…I’ll be back Tuesday J

Spanx for Nothing

I, like most curvy women out there am a fan of Spanx. I have been wearing them for as long as I can remember, long before Spanx was even a company. I’m actually not a huge fan of the Spanx brand (except of course the crotch hole that magically opens when you sit to pee – magical!) because they always seem to go all the way up to my boobs which is not comfy. I prefer mine to just cover my belly and suck it and my butt in enough to stop the jiggling. I don’t think that is too much to ask.

I have worn them the last 2 days because it got hot and humid and I decided to wear dresses. I don’t remember the last time I wore a dress without some sort of undergarment. Mayhaps it was 6 years ago when I still weighed 145 pounds (oh, those were the good old days) but damned if I remember so lets move on. I feel better than I have in a long time about my body and I’m actually looking forward to dressing for summer this year. It’s nice to drop Nate off at daycare and have the ladies tell me how nice I look. The same thing happened at work this week but it is always a double edged sword. On the one hand I am being complimented for looking good which is fantastic and on the other it makes me realize that I must look like a slob the rest of the time. Everyone has assured me that I always look nice but have looked even better this week. I will push aside my worries and take it as a nod to my increased effort to get out of the house without looking like the mother of a young child.

 Even famous people wear Spanx...Lisa Lampanelli has a WHOLE drawer devoted to them!

Now that's a lot of Spanx!

 This is my new back yard garden which is still a work in progress as of today - the lily was supposed to be pink!!!

(sorry for the awkwardness of the photo, I was looking down off my deck)

This is my original back yard garden. Once everything blooms it will be really pretty :)

Done…and Almost Done!

I “ran” my first official 5K on Sunday…and I made it to the finish line! I made the mistake of choosing this particular 5K because it was local and early on Sunday morning so it was easy to drop Nate at my parents and swing back a couple of hours later to get him. When I arrived I realized that I should have probably looked into other races. I have only been to 2 other 5K’s and they were both fairly large, well attended events with both runners and walkers. This was about 40 teenage boys from the track club and some of us older folks…all of whom have clearly been running a lot longer than I have.

I didn’t let that get me down though. I psyched myself up and promised myself that I would keep to a comfortable pace for me and not be swayed by the rush of the crowd. Well that didn’t happen. I tried to keep up with the pack and ended up running faster than my normal pace and I was still dead last. Until the woman walking her Boxer ahead of me had to get out her bag to clean up after his mess. So I passed her…a woman with a dog…who was walking. It was not my proudest moment but I was happy to get ahead of someone and I was even happier a mile later to cross the finish line. It wasn’t easy but at least I did something that I never thought I would do. Scratch that off my bucket list!

I also finished my front and back gardens on Saturday…and then immediately proceeded to start a second back garden. I still have to finish cleaning out the area and add some top soil and the flowers and mulch…I can never be satisfied with what I have outside. Honestly though it is a small square that I had once planted stuff in and it all died off. Grass has never grown there and it is right next to my deck steps so I needed to make it more attractive. Now I need the rain to stop so I can finish my latest project. Then I will post pictures of my lovely flowers.

My Mother’s Day

It is Thursday and it has been a whirlwind of a week. Still busy at work (and will be until December), finally ran 5K, had an amazing massage yesterday and even took a bath last night. It has been rainy most of the week so I have been so achy and I could not wait for my massage yesterday. I saw a new therapist and she was amazing. I felt 90% better when she was done with me. I need to be back in shape to run my first official 5K on Sunday. My mother agreed to watch Nate so I can go it alone and zone out to my music instead of worrying about pushing a stroller with a 35 pound kid and having no music to push me through. I’ll let you know Monday how it went.

This weekend Love starts his new work schedule (Sunday through Wednesday 7am to 7pm) and I am not looking forward to less time with my husband and all day Sunday spent alone with Nate. We have become accustomed to tag teaming him so we can both get things accomplished around the house. Now I will be on my own and he will be tagging along for every load of laundry. Fun.

Last weekend however was a great one. Saturday morning Nate and I headed out to get my Mother’s Day presents…flowers for my gardens! I love gardening and it is another thing that relaxes me and gets me some fresh air. This year is the first time since we bought our house six years ago that my garden in the front yard didn’t need to be filled in with more plants. Everything is finally well established and I only added a few begonias in the front for some more color. I also decided to use more potted plants this year in the front yard. I always have one on either side of my deck but I decided to add a hanging basket and 3 pots to the deck. I love the way it looks.

My back yard is a whole different story. Unlike the front yard where the builder of the house put in the garden beds and I just added the flowers, in the back I had to dig out grass. Two years ago I took Mother’s Day weekend and dug out the grass in front of two sections of fence, put in a border and planted everything. Last year I ditched the vegetable garden and added more perennials. I love this garden because when I wash dishes I can look out the kitchen widow and enjoy the view.

Growing up with my Mother I guess I caught the green thumb and it is something I hope to pass on to my children. I wish I had taken a picture of Nate this weekend with his elephant watering can helping to water all of my new plants. He was so cute and proud of himself for being my helper. He was equally adorable Sunday morning when he woke me up with cards and flowers. Love was sweet enough to let me sleep in and even took care of Nate while I watched 3 episodes of Revenge and the last Once Upon a Time. It was a great weekend and I wish we could spend more time together this summer. Sometimes being a grown up sucks.

 Once my Lillies and Roses start blooming it will be so colorful out here!

 I love my $5 hanging basket...I got a yellow one for the back yard (pictures coming soon)

I love the snapdragon in the big pot because it is so different from everything else I have

Soon this bed will be filled with red, orange and more purple once everything blooms :)

I’m NOT Sporty!

I have always joked that the only way that I am going to run is if someone is chasing me. I run a lot in my dreams because I usually am being chased and my adrenaline never fails me. In reality I have always been a fast walker but never thought about running. I have a friend who is now a runner and 2 years ago when we would go for a walk in my neighborhood he would be begging me to slow down. Walking has always been a nice form of exercise for me because I love looking around and taking in the scenery and it doesn’t take any coordination. I am one of the clumsiest people you could ever meet. I have never played a sport, I can’t roller blade, ice skate, ski or snowboard and even tubing down a river is an adventure to me. I simply am not sporty.

I think that is why I am enjoying running so much. It doesn’t require any real skill and it makes me feel great. My mother constantly worries about my asthma and my bad back, but honestly I have not had an asthma attack since I started running in January and my back feels better on days I run. I am really happy to get out and get some exercise and running has a calming affect on me too. I get to clear my head and just let go for an hour. Plus I get some fresh air and I’m getting tan!

Last week I got back on track after 2 weeks off and I had a break through. I ran 2.9 miles (in a row!) on Friday. I was so excited when I realized how well I had done. I started jogging in January to prepare for a 5K next month and it has seemed like a pipe dream for the last couple of months. I have been able to run a mile straight but then I lose steam and have to walk for another half mile to mile before I can run again. Last week was different and I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. A year ago I walked a 5K and I was wiped out. I was 20 pounds heavier and I felt like I could never run a mile let alone 3.1 miles. Now I am going to run that same 5K this year with my friend Brooke who just lost 70 pounds (okay, she’s going to run while I jog) and I am planning on running one next weekend to prove to myself that I can do it. I think it's a thing that they have to have medics at all races so I'll be fine :)

Call me Charlie Sheen

If you know me well then you know that I lose my shit sometimes…okay a lot of the time. I have no patience and I can thank my Dad for that. I see it already in Nate and it kills me that my nugget is as stubborn and emotional as I am. I internalize everything and then eventually something small lights my fuse and it is only a matter of time before I explode. The last 3 weeks at work have been extra long, super stressful and just plain weird. I can’t get into details here but believe me when I say that you would never believe me if I told how bizarre my work environment is. We are all feeling it lately but this morning I lost it…snapped…and then I wanted to sit in my bathroom and cry for the next 5 hours (because I don’t want anyone to know I snapped silly).

Of course that is not a rational option so instead I went for a run in and came back feeling better. I was not ready to go all Charlie Sheen or whoever that Kony 2012 guy is (remember the guy who was running around naked a few months ago touching himself – yikes) but I wanted to scream and scream and scream some more. I hate this feeling and I hate that things get to me so much. Running really helped because I had a goal to run more than 2.5 miles and I ran 2.9. Getting so close to my goal of running 3.1 miles (5K) really made me happy and cleared my head.

It’s the weekend and I really need some time away from work. I’m not sure what this weekend will bring but hopefully some much needed rest on Mother’s Day J

Back on Track

The last 2 weeks have been so long…I didn’t think April would ever end even though I dreaded May beginning because now I will officially be swamped at work for the next 5 months. I think the never ending rain last week really washed out my spirits and I still feel down. My job has been very stressful recently and that is weighing heavily on me.

I make a bold decision Thursday night and took home the Magic Traveling Tracker from my Weight Watchers group. It makes you accountable for the week and you have to track everything you eat (which of course is the whole point of Weight Watchers) and be honest with yourself. I love tracking online because it is easy and I don’t have to keep track of a paper tracker. I can update it as I eat using the PC, iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch and it is great. The problem is that I am lazy. I have no other defense. The plain old truth is that my laziness has derailed my weight loss. I did hypnosis and started jogging and was steadily losing weight because I was on program. Then it all stopped. I started snacking at work and at night and the last 2 weeks I didn’t jog or even walk.

I decided last week that I had enough and I needed to stop throwing money down the drain. Weight Watchers only works if you track. I’m not going to be able to run the 5K in June if I don’t get back into my training. I am now on day 4 of tracking and I feel great. I made a promise to eat more fruits and veggies and drink lots of water. I also promised myself that today I would go for a jog at lunch and I did and got right back into it like I never stopped. Two weeks ago my back and leg were really hurting so I took the week off and then last week it rained every day. Days like today make me feel so much better and realize that I have it in me to keep going and hit my goal. I never thought a Monday would be a good day but there you go! One day at a time is the only way I am going to be able to lose the weight. I am going to fall down on this journey but I need to get right back up and keep going.

 Here she is!

I was very honest and my first day I used 10pts. of my Weekly Points Allowance :(

 I even weighed my wine! Wah!

My hero :-)

Pictures...Finally

I am in slow motion this week and I don't forsee it getting better anytime soon. I feel like I did at the beginning of my pregnancy with Nate. A little foggy at all times, forgetful and TIRED. I am NOT pregnant but I am in the midst of getting Nate to sleep in his own bed finally and we have 5 days behind us so far. The first 3 nights went very smoothly and nights 4 and 5 hit a rough patch. I think we're getting there since both of those nights he insisted on going back to his bed to fall back asleep (can you hear me screaming with joy?!?!). He is obsessing over the fact that he wants everyone to be proud of him (he is his mother's child afterall) especially Grammie. I will continue to let you know how that turns out.

 I began the weekend with a little Mad Housewife...I'm not a red wine fan but this was yummy

 My nephew Charlie is adorable and I miss him so much

 The boys :)

I bought them matching mats...Charlie will grow into his lol

 We tried to get a decent pic with the grandkids...

 This was a little better

 Nate loves the sharks at the aquarium

 My favorite boys

 Nate liked the coy fish because they have moustaches lol!

 The birds liked us

My favorite part of the aquarium is the butterflies and I was rushed out by Nate :(