Family

Everyone has a different definition of family. Webster gives the ‘normal’ definition of family to us: a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not. Parents and children. I guess this is a basic way to define a family but we all know that things get more complicated than that due to marriages, divorce, remarriage, adoption, children out of wedlock and a variety of other situations. Family is what you make of it.

My family was far from typical growing up. I had my mother and my father and a stepfather and a stepmother and a bunch of half and step siblings. My parents created only me together and I have no memory of them ever being together. Yet growing up, I was pulled in several directions and I spent time with a father that I had very little memory of and a stepmother who seemed to hate me. I had a sister and two brothers that I learned about over summer breaks and didn’t talk to during the school years. It was enough to mess with anyone’s head. You get close to people and then you don’t see them for extended periods of time and this causes confusion. I was no different.

While I never felt unloved as a child, I never really had the same kind of family life as most of my peers. I never thought that it bothered me until recently looking back over my teenage years and seeing a pattern. When I was younger, I spent much of my time at the homes of my friends. I would go there for weeks at a time and come home only for a few days before I would head to another friends house. This suited me just fine as most of the time the parents of my friends were far more lenient with the house rules than my own parents. I credit my best friend's mother with giving me the freedom to become my own person in a way that didn’t lead me to rebel. However, I credit my own mother with giving me the real life tools to make smart decisions later in life. Without these two different child rearing styles coming to play in my upbringing, I believe I would have turned out to be a very different person.


As I got older, I made my own family. My family consisted of 3 people. E, J and myself. We were the best of friends. We finished each other’s sentences and could predict each others actions. In school we earned the nickname of ‘The Trouble Trio’ and we were inseparable. It was rare to see the three of us apart and even stranger to see one of us alone. We shared clothes, laughter, tears and anything else imaginable. We were together for that first big heart break, first jobs, family drama and everything in between. We were together for E’s mother’s kidney transplant and J’s mom’s brain surgery. We were together when my relationship with my father self-destructed and when my ill-advised much-to-young engagement failed miserably. These were the ladies I leaned on for support and my shoulders were wet with their tears as well.

In college our circle expanded. We began spending more time with B and in turn met his friend BK. Our circle had expanded before to include boyfriends and new friends but for some reason they had never quite stuck. Those people never made it in to the family. B was instantaneous and fit right in. BK was the surprise. He and I clicked immediately. We are the same person. BK is the male version of me in so many ways its unreal. He was a welcome addition to our family. The circle expanded and shrunk over my college years but it always came back to the five of us. Those people were my family.

Well college is over and my life is very different. The people that I use to call family have grown up as well and we are all growing apart. Gone are the days of snow days and board games. Gone are the late night parties and getting chased by Australians while barhopping. Gone are the 2am phone calls just because we knew the others were awake and probably as bored as we were. Gone are the weekly Grey’s Anatomy dates and coffee at the Waffle House. We are now faced with growing pains that only a family as close as ours can feel. The ladies have grown and two of us have married and started making our homes with our husbands. J has a two year old and another baby on the way. B is moving to New York to chase a life long dream of seeing his name in lights and BK has settled down with his partner and is learning and growing in love every day. I have purchased a house with my husband an hour away from the rest and while I was the first to set out on my own, B’s move will be the one that splits us apart.


Now there are fights and drama and hurtful words. It is easier to be angry with someone than it is to admit to yourself and to them that you miss them. It is easier to pick fights and make up excuses as to why you don’t see them and spend time with them. You’re mad and they have done something to provoke your anger. This is why the friendship is suffering. This is why things have fallen apart. It is easier to believe this than to believe your once impenetrable unbreakable family has grown apart. Not your family. Not the people that you knew. They would never let this happen. And yet the sad reality is that I haven’t seen J since E’s wedding two months ago. I haven’t seen E since her wedding two months ago but we talk almost every day. I had dinner with B last night and we talk at least once a week and I see BK every day as we have the pleasure of working together but we also had dinner Friday night and he’ll be joining me at the pool this afternoon.

Maybe friendship is just what you make of it. J and I were closer than anyone else for a very long time but our paths in life are different and our beliefs have always conflicted. No one can say who is right and who is wrong but there is undeniable evidence that shows how differently we chose to lead our lives. Lately I’ve been faced with the fact that our friendship is no longer what I’d like it to be and that this has happened due to our lives taking turns. I will always think of J as my sister. We have been through more in the last twenty years than some people deal with in a lifetime and we were together through it all. It’s hard but I’m learning to let go. My knuckles ache from grasping at what use to be and what we used to have. Things aren’t the same and they never will be again. It’s time to work on my new family, with my husband and eventual children. All the rest will just be icing on the cake. I’ve never been much for Webster’s definition but I appreciate the time I had with the family of my younger years. No matter how badly it hurts to let go.

Baby Bucketlist

Now that I've decided that hildren are in my future, I've been doing some serious thinking. Dh is slowly coming around and I know it won't be long before he's ready to start ttc. Discussions about planning and timing used to involve a lot of sentences starting with the words 'I want to *instert here* before we have a baby'. The first thing we wanted to do was get married. We'd lived together for 2 years, been dating for 3. So cross that one off the baby bucket list.
After we got married we turned our attention, and be we I mean I mostly, to finding the perfect home. I scoured real estate sites, I memorized the MLS and I had conversations with multiple relators. I saw the inside of almost every house that came on the market in our price range and our locational preferences. I was a women on a mission. We did eventually find our dream home in a perfect location. It was a steal and I had nothing to do with finding it. It just sort of fell into our laps. We renovated it and moved in right away and while it still needs work, and what house doesn't? it's home. Cross that off the baby bucket list.
Dh is now in the phase in which he wants to have a sizeable savings account before we start trying. God has blessed us and this is quickly becoming a reality.We are almost to our goal amount. We both understand that there will never be enough to cover all possible senarios. Afterall, we arn't Angelina and Brad. This doesn't stop us from trying like hell to make sure we're ready. It's coming along nicely.
I was reading a post from another blogger who introduced me to the term 'baby bucket list' and I thought it was a great idea. After I thought about it some more I realized that we had already been crossing things off the list. She's due any day now with her first spawnie and she didn't complete her list but she sure got close.
I don't think we'll every accomplish all of our goals but I think that we can sure put a dent into them before our spawnie's arrive. So I've decided to write my personal baby bucket list. I'll cross them off as I accomplish them.

Leave the country and go on vacation Done. We went to Jamaica on our honeymoon. LOVE LOVE JAMAICA
Visit NYC for Macy's Day Parade
Finish our basement
Go to Niagra Falls and ride on Maid of the Mist
Get my DH better aquainted with babies (Our friends are quite fertile so there is no shortage of babies for this project)
Lose weight Done but would like to lose more...we'll work on it
Enjoy late nights out drinking with my DH (we never did this together and most of our friends have kids so it's very difficult)

What's on your baby bucket list?

Learning to be me, again.

When you get married, everything changes. I was always the person saying that a piece of paper wasn't going to have that big of an impact. I argued with my elders that making it legal wouldn't change D or myself. It wouldn't be any different than it was before and in a lot of ways I was right. But in more ways than I care to admit, I was wrong.

When I was in college, I knew myself. I knew who I was and what I wanted and where I was going in life. I was headstrong party girl who was always up for anything. I was going to be a teacher and spend my summers by the pool with cocktail in hand with my girlfriends. I was going to touch students lives with my words and with hard work and dedication. I needed no one but myself and my friends and I could get through anything. I was fiercely independent and loyal to a fault. I would tell you to go fuck yourself if you disagreed with me and wouldn't think twice about it. I was wild and I did stupid things without thoughts to the consequences. That was my outward exterior.

My inward self was different. Quiet and curious. Studious and responsible. I was the type of student every teacher loved to have in class. I thirsted for knowledge and gobbled up all of the information given to me about my chosen major. I wanted nothing more than to be the best of the best and I would have settled for nothing less. I was a shoulder to lean on and an ear to listen to those who mattered to me and people often came to me for advice.

I like to think I was a good person. Flawed but good. I still think I'm a fairly good person. More flawed than before but working every day to lessen the impact of my flaws on others.

Something has changed within me, something is not the same. I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game.

Sorry. I often think in song and if you're going to read this blog, it's just something you will have to deal with.

Something HAS changed within me. I'm not sure when exactly it happened. Perhaps it was during my engagement to DH. Or maybe shortly after our marriage. A lot of people will tell you that I changed for DH. This is not the case. I am not the type of person who will ever change for a man. It's just not in me to mold myself for someone else. DH would like nothing more than for me to be more flexible in my stances but I'm still that head strong girl. That hasn't changed. I still can't pinpoint why.

Actually, that's not the case. I do know why. I've evolved. I've grown up. I'm not that 18 year old girl anymore. I'm a grown ass woman with thoughts and opinions and needs and desires. I'm starting to realize that a lot of my change has come BECAUSE OF my marriage. Not FOR it. I now have the freedom to have those thoughts without a group mentality leading them. I'm allowed to have desires and I'm able to voice them more freely as I now have the life experience to back them up. I'm not a part of that close knit pack anymore like I was in college. The pack has broken apart and created seperate tribes and don't get me wrong, while I love them all dearly, we've all changed. None of us are the same anymore.

I still know myself. I'm still that same girl in a lot of aspects. Loyal, independent, studious, curious, responsible. Now I face the toughest challange of all. I get to learn how to be me with a partner. I get to learn how to attend to the needs of someone else. Someone that is fully capable of attending to their own needs and sometimes, I just don't feel like it. Relationships are full of give and take. He tries a new recipe of mine and I sit through one of his many reality TV shows on DVR. We take turns picking the movie on NETFLIX. You sacrifice and compromise and change and grown and learn.

I'm learning who I am now with my husband. Sometimes its difficult to leave who I was behind but I'm eager to meet who I will be. As a wife. As a partner. As a mother someday. I'm excited to meet me.