things that suck

Let me share with you all the horror and annoyance of the last week or so in the world of Bluemoon. Be warned, this post speaks of lady health to some degree.

Got symptoms of my first UTI last week.  Went to my Dr., got prescribed Cipro.  Took Cipro for 3 days as instructed, didn't get better.  Got worse once RX was gone.  Went back into Dr. Monday morning.  Saw useless stand in for my own Dr. b/c mine was booked.  Left having been told "I don't know" basically, as the urine culture ended up coming up as negative for UTI.  Gave me a referral for a urogynecologist.  Called.  Couldn't get in, as they were booking for MARCH.

Asked last urogyn. office what I was supposed to do since by this point I COULD NOT PEE.  They recommended the ER.  Went to ER.  Bloodwork to check on organ function, urine culture again, and CT scan to check for kidney stones and other undesirables.  Other things happened I don't want to specifically identify, but you can guess based on the fact that I couldn't pee and they needed a sample. Got fluids via IV, all bloodwork checked out, CT scan checked out.  Came up as positive for UTI in their tests and ER doc said theirs are more reliable, anyway. Bottom line conclusion was that I had a special UTI that was resistant to the Cipro, so they gave me another antibiotic, Macrobid.

Started on that Monday afternoon.  As the week progressed, noticed I was feeling some weird tingly sensations and odd numbness in my feet and lower body.  Attributed it to my body just being tired and depleted.  Got worse yesterday, and finally today looked at the RX warnings for this antibiotic. No bueno.  Called pharmacy and Dr., have to stop this antibiotic because of my reaction to it, which apparently happens a fair amount and requires cessation of the drug.

Currently waiting on Drs. office to call back with decision about if I'm going to get pulled from antibiotics in general or get a short course of a third antibiotic to round out what would have been the full course of the second one.

The bitch of it all?  FINALLY started seeing real improvement with the UTI today.  On the verge of being pissed if they tell me no on third antibiotic b/c I don't want to lose the progress I've made.  I dream of peeing with wild abandon like all the other girls do.  No, I do not WANT to be on antibiotics, but if I need to do 4-5 more days to kick this out for good, I will.  I'm taking my acidophilus, my vitamins, drinking a ton of water, blah blah blah.  And I've been told to go ahead and fill the precautionary Diflucan RX and take it at the end of the antibiotics course just b/c I will have been on them so long and I don't want to wait for a problem to happen.

Seriously, though.  Is it so much to want to pee while NOT having intermittent numbness and tingling in your legs while you're doing it?

This is just all compounded by the fact that I had the flu in December and STILL have a residual periodic cough from it.  My body needs to get its shit together!  :-)

Cheers!

Dialing it back a notch

So I was a low maintenance kind of a girl growing up.  I've been obsessed with lip products for as long as I can remember, but until at least college, that was all I wore in terms of makeup.  I also got through pretty much the entirety of high school carrying only a little woven change purse instead of an actual purse.  It held my money, my lip gloss and that was about it.

During college I started occasionally wearing a little makeup, but that mostly entailed concealer/powder and eyeliner to add to my lipstick/gloss.  As the years wore on, blush got added in as well as eyeshadow, and in just the last year or so I've started to wear mascara on a consistent basis. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm still pretty low maintenance in terms of how long it takes me to get ready, esp. when it comes to makeup.  My makeup routine takes five minutes tops.

Recently on weekends, I've been trying to dial it back with makeup.  If I have something to do, I'll keep it on the normal usage, but for a Sunday lazing around with BF and his daughter?  I'm working to pare it down.  Right now I just make an attempt to ditch the mascara at the very least, and sometimes the eyeshadow.  Liner and lip products, as well as probably concealer, will likely not be taken out of rotation unless I'm too sick to bother!  I feel like the eyeliner makes my eyes look awake and the lip product makes me look healthy.  I am working to shift away from lipstick on those days to tinted balms, and when I'm feeling REALLY crazy, just a clear balm.  My favorite is the EOS vanilla mint balm.  So good!

I also got into blowing my hair straight with some regularity (ie 1-2 times a week) this past fall. Problem is that it requires getting up earlier (boo) and is just overall more work than I'm really interested in for my hair.  So I've tried to dial that back as well, not only for ease, but for the health of my hair.  I blow dried my hair straight last Friday morning and that was the first time I'd done it in probably at least a month, if not longer.  I'm trying to re-embrace my curls, and I think I've done a good job.  I cheat occasionally and touch up some face-framing pieces with the curling iron, but mostly it just is what it is.  Do I get compliments on it like I do when it's blown out?  Not nearly as much.  But oh well.  I still manage to make it through my work day without the praise and adoration of my coworkers.  ;-)  Instead I get compliments on earrings, or my nail polish color.  That works!

My last effort at dialing it back has been the most recent, and that's with regards to my shoe choices. I love cute shoes.  I've never been someone who pines for or indulges in insanely uncomfortable shoes for a good look, but I have plenty of pairs that are fairly uncomfortable, but I love, anyway. Again proving my status as a late bloomer, I never really wore heels until I was beyond age 30.  Angry Ex got me into them and for awhile I really relished them.  Heels made me feel sexy and powerful, even when they made my feet hurt!  I liked how they made my legs look, too.  But for me, they are NOT comfortable.  I know some women wear them enough that they are as comfortable as a regular shoe, though I can't fathom that.  But for me, not the case.

I started trying to be smart by wearing one pair of shoes for my commute and changing into another at work.  I walk a block to the bus stop every morning, then 4-5 blocks from Metro to my office, plus any walking I do over lunch, and then the same 4-5 blocks to Metro and block from bus stop to my apartment after work.  It's a good amount of walking!  I've almost never tried that commute in real heels, though I've done it in wedges and chunky heeled sandals, as well as cute flat sandals and cute flats.  THEY ALL HURT.

Lately I'd been wearing one pair of black booties a lot, and I realized recently that they were turning out to be murder on my feet.  They were that middling kind of shoe where they weren't horrifically uncomfortable to commute in, so I'd get lazy and just wear them for everything.  Ouch.  I paid for that laziness with horribly sore feet lately.  It legit hurt to walk on them at all!

So this past weekend I went to DSW and found a (GASP!!) sensible pair of black shoes that can be worn for both commuting and the office.  No, they are not going to elicit compliments.  Ever. But they are not horrific, and they are comfortable.  For the time being I'm aiming for comfort all the time, wearing good shoes at work and out of it.  Running/athletic shoes on the weekend when I don't have much going on.  I can already feel improvement after less than a week of this effort.  Eventually I will surely transition some cute shoes back in, though they may be fleshed out with some nice gel inserts to soften their impact.  But right  now....I'm dialing it back with the shoes, too.

Maybe this all just means I'm getting old, I don't know.  The shoe thing definitely does and I'm okay with that.  I worked out with my trainer last night and I left feeling strong and capable (and totally exhausted) and that matters more to me than getting a compliment on some cute shoes that are making my soul cry.

I guess I just am at a point in my life where I want to look in the mirror and feel beautiful with or without a full makeup effort, with or without a salon blowout, with or without an awesome pair of heels.  I want to recognize that I have pretty eyes, or a nice smile, and that sometimes my curly hair is really lovely.

I've taken a couple of selfies in the last month or so where I've had little to no makeup on, and I was pleasantly surprised.  I still looked pretty!  I may not catch the eyes of strangers in a crowd, but I was happy enough, anyway.  I'm a selfie person, btw.  Sure, it can seem self-indulgent or silly or juvenile. But I choose to view it the same way some others have described it....selfies allow me to capture myself in the way I feel beautiful.  They show anyone who sees them the version of me that I feel is most beautiful.  They are personal and can be like little diaries of a certain moment.  It's rare that someone else can take a picture of me that I like better than a picture I could take of myself.  And lately, I've managed to find those beautiful moments in myself when there's no lipstick to be found, no perfectly coiffed hair, no mascara-rimmed eyelashes.

Anyway, I know this is a random post, but it's just something I've been thinking about.  I like that I'm getting more comfortable with going low key appearance wise these days, and that I can still bring it to the table when I want to look really nice.  I like that as a general rule, no one is going to be shocked if they see me without makeup and tell me that I look like a totally different person.  When I wear makeup I'm just trying to accentuate the me that's already there, not camouflage myself into another person.

When I was growing up I never felt pretty.  I hated my freckles, my unruly curls, my ears, my paleness.  I felt like at best I had moments of cuteness.  My hair was awkward through high school and even into college.  I never really felt put together, even on my wedding day.  I swear, I never started to really feel beautiful until I separated from my husband.  I know that sounds really weird, but it's true.  I think I always felt like a shadow, an afterthought.  I'd never tested myself in any real way, or forged my own path.

Separation and divorce forced me to grow, and forced me back into the world.  I had to re-discover who I was evolving into, and somewhere in that discovery I started to feel pretty.  Confident.  And when I started dating M, my first relationship after my separation, I felt sexy for the first time in my life.  It was empowering.  And when I dated Angry Ex, even though he made me horribly insecure in many ways, I will credit him for getting me to try new things, like heels, and dresses and other fashion choices I wouldn't have tried without him.  Those things further empowered me, and once I broke away from him and grabbed my self-esteem back, I had those in my pocket as well.

After those relationships ended and I went into my 3+ year stint of singlehood, I really came into my own in terms of confidence.  I vamped it up on occasion, wearing heels and skirts and the like. I've now mellowed back out from those high points of self-discovery, and am finding the happy in between.  :-)

I'm learning that I can look quite lovely in certain makeup free, crazy haired moments.  But I'll also never forget that I can do a full tilt makeup effort (still mild compared to the masses, ha), get a rock star blowout and put on a pair of skinny jeans, heels and a cute fitted top and feel like I'm the hottest thing around.  To me, that is winning.  :-)

co(habit)

So the idea of cohabitation has been thrown into our universe as a couple.  As you surely know if you've read along, the logistics aren't ideal since I live right outside DC and he lives an hour away from it.  I work in DC, so my commute is a big factor in anyplace I decide to live.  

We seriously started talking about it around our anniversary.  We want to live together, but the trouble is the reality of it all.  So after a lot of discussion, we decided upon the following plan of action:

Over the course of the next month or two, I will stay out at BF's place randomly on work nights to check out the various commuting options.  Subsequently, I will spend an upcoming month living exclusively with BF at his house.  The commute will suck.  No denial there.  But we are both cautious, and we both have things to lose, so we want to be sure.  We want to see how living together for a full month goes. We expect it will be fine, but we both agree we'll feel better if we have a trial under our belts.  

BF has a house that he owns to deal with.  I have less in terms of material things to lose, but I love my apartment and I do NOT want to give it up like I did with my condo before when I moved in with Angry Ex, and it was a huge failure.

I do realize that obviously a month isn't a full picture.  Honestly, though-we could do this for six months or even a year and not encounter every unknown.  We just want a real block of time, with work days and commuting and household chores and downtime that's not spent together to see how we fare.  If it goes well, as we expect, then it's onward and upward.

At that point we'll start really looking into finding a rental place to live in.  We don't want to automatically buy right away because we're not 100% positive where we want to be, and again, I want more stability before I take that step, as does he.  The goal would be to hopefully have his house situation resolved (sold or rented) by the fall or thereabouts, with us living together somewhere in the middle of our two areas at that time.

Yes, it's inconvenient, and more to me than him (the trial period).  But realistically, it's our only option.  I have a one bedroom, one bath apartment.  He has his daughter most weekends, plus a houseful of furniture and we have two cats between us.  My place isn't a real option for this step.  So I'll suck it up and deal with the crappy commute for a month, with the bigger picture in mind.  

Luckily BF has been fantastic about it, knowing it's going to be harder for me.  He's offered various things, including changing his work hours so our commutes match up better, taking me and picking me up from park & ride, etc.  He is open to anything and I 100% believe that he'll do his best to make the time period as easy as he can.  

Moreover, I'm excited about this.  :-) I know it isn't ideal and it's not how I would have chosen to do this, and it's going to take a lot of time to get where we want to be...but it's a step.  And it's a step that's in our universe now, and it's something we talk about routinely, and the idea of seeing him first thing every morning and last thing every night...love it.

So that's the update on that!  I'm sure I'll talk about it a lot more in coming months, but I wanted to lay out the initial information first.  :-)

Update: You Be the Judge

I wanted to post an update regarding my recent post about BF's ex who keeps popping up.

We talked more about it this weekend and I got more information.  This included the following:

At some point in recent months, I'm not sure exactly when, BF removed Ex from his close/friends and family group on FB and put her in the periphery group, meaning that she can basically see nothing on his wall and hasn't been able to for months.  She has tagged him in things a couple of times in recent months and he's not acknowledged it by liking it or replying.

Ex sent daughter a Halloween card with a giftcard in it in the fall.  Daughter was not interested.  They didn't acknowledge the gift in any fashion, so a few weeks later Ex texted BF to ask if they got it in light of the gift card.  He never replied.

When BF picked daughter up on Friday, he told her about the gift and the details of it (being dropped off with no notice, no knock when we were home).  She also thought it was weird.  She legit left on Saturday evening and never even touched it.  The gift bag remained by the front door, the card unopened, the gifts untouched.  Ha!

I asked BF if he was going to make her send a Thank you note or anything and he said no, they were just going to ignore it.

So...it's not a direct way of dealing with it.  He hasn't formally booted her on FB or told her to stop or talked to her about boundaries.  He's just gradually unraveled her from his life a little more each time she does something weird or creepy or out of line.  She pops up less often, but hasn't given up the ghost entirely.  I imagine there will be another text at some point asking if daughter got the gift (cake baking materials, something she's not been into for a long time), but I imagine that will also go unanswered.  Eventually, she'll figure it out, or she'll keep being ignored.

I don't feel bad for her because she is legitimately creepy.  He said she lives almost an hour away. WTF???  It's weird and desperate and sad, and hopefully she takes the hint.  I think that for a long time she was so glad to be BF's stand in gf even though they were broken up, and I'm betting that she carried a torch at least a little bit the whole time.  He is the one who ended it because he didn't see a future with her.  Anyway, she did this to herself, and she crossed lines and boundaries and gradually forced his hand...she forced him to see her as the nutter she was acting like.

I am perfectly fine with this method of dealing with the situation for the record.  Some people behave in such a way that they don't merit the effort of trying to explain why they're out of line, and I think this is one of those cases.  I don't think that even if he called her up and had this discussion with her that it would even register.  Sometimes silence speaks louder and more clearly than any words do. He tried with her for the first few months, but she simply couldn't and wouldn't respect that he was in a relationship, and luckily for me BF wouldn't tolerate that.

Thank you so much for all the thoughts and insight.  I know some would like it handled differently, but this is how he's handling it at this point, and hopefully it will work.  If she keeps pushing, maybe time for a real conversation will be appropriate, but right now this is the plan of action.  Every time she pops up, the little evil part of me thinks of this ecard I saw one time:

I know, I'm terrible, but COME ON.  ;-) Take a hint already!  I can't get over the fact that they dated nearly 8 years ago and she's still holding on this hard.  The important thing,though, is that BF recognized this was not cool and took (passive) actions accordingly.  So refreshing to be with someone who can put aside the fact that this is an ego booster and realize that respecting his current relationship is more important than having some ex still worship you and go to creepy levels to show her adoration.  ;-)

You be the judge

I have a situation I want to lay out for you all, and I want your thoughts.

As background:

I may have discussed it before, but BF dated a girl about 7 years ago for a little over a year.  His daughter was young at the time and so she grew fairly close to the GF when they dated, especially since she was around their house so much.  BF broke up with her because he couldn't see a future with her in a romantic sense.  They remained very close friends in the following years.  Much like Ex-H and I did during my solidly single years, they became each other's BF/GF stand-ins.  They went to weddings together, they did holidays together on occasion, they spent birthdays together.  They did a lot of things with his daughter, too.  This continued all the way up to right before we started dating. They had done a gingerbread decorating expo as a threesome for Christmas and he'd gone to an event at Verizon Center with her in the first couple weeks we were dating.

When we started dating more seriously, we had a discussion wherein we both outlined that we were good friends with exes, and that as long as we were open about it and we were now re-allocating certain activities to one another as opposed to the ex (ie, birthdays spent with each other instead of with the exes), we wouldn't have any issues.

At some point within our first couple months of dating, his (long ago) Ex sent me a FB friend request out of the blue.  I've never met her.  It was weird.  I told him about it, and he was pretty weirded out. She withdrew the request within a couple of hours, but it was already in the universe.

Later in the spring BF's cat got really sick.  He contacted her for help since she had experience with what his cat was going through.  She offered to help and ended up heavily involved for the next few days.  She stayed over one night (his daughter was there as well) and they all stayed up all night trying to get the cat to eat, drink, giving her meds, etc.  I wasn't thrilled, and it caused some tension, but I understood why he involved her ultimately.  My main issue came on the day that he had to let the cat go.  The three of them went to the vet and afterwards got some dinner.  She offered to stay the night again, and he declined.  I thought that was inappropriate of her to even suggest, but again....he told her no, so it was fine.

The next day she posted a HUGE Facebook status update about everything that had happened with the cat.  She wrote about how much she loved BF and his daughter, how strong they were, how she had done everything she could to help.  She posted pictures of herself hugging his daughter while she held the cat for the last time.  The post resulted in all of her friends commenting to tell her how amazing she was to be there for them, how lovely it was that she cared so much.  Her replies to the comments were huge long posts basically patting herself on the back.  It reeked of desperation, but I let it go.  BF had nothing to do with it, didn't ask for it, didn't reply to it.

He was further weirded out by it, I think, and subsequently didn't talk to her for months.  Hasn't talked to her since then.  At that time she asked for his daughter's phone number to text her about things, and he checked with her and she said she didn't want him to give her the number.  So he ignored the request and Ex let it go.

Jump to yesterday.  I spent NY's Eve and NY's day at BF's house.  We had to run to the grocery store at 5pm for an ingredient for our turkey burgers, and got back about 5:30.  I left for the night about 8pm.  We headed out  the door, him carrying my bag, and found a huge tote bag full of stuff on the porch.  It had a card on top and was addressed to BF's daughter using a nickname he and his family have used for her since childhood.

I knew immediately who it was from and said, "Well, I have my guess as to who this is from."  He said, "I'm sure you're right."  Picked it up, put it inside the door.  I was already going down to the car, but said, "That's really weird.  So she came all the way out here and then didn't even knock?"  Note that it was NOT there when we got back from the store.

He said, "I guess so!"  I said, "I'm sure she saw my car in the driveway and that's why."  He agreed.  I asked if he'd talked to her recently and he said he hadn't spoken to her in months.  I voiced my opinion that it was really weird, and asked why she continues to think she is daughter's mom or family.  He said he didn't know.  We got to my car and said our regular goodbyes and I left.

Key points:

She lives 40-45 minutes away.  She drove out uninvited, without asking him, in the dark on a cold winter night.  Upon arrival, she didn't even knock or ring the doorbell, instead leaving the Christmas gift on the porch by the door.

Found out later she'd also tagged BF in a post on FB for the first time in MONTHS.  Something totally innocuous about a brewery opening nearby and how excited he surely was about it, but still. A post on her wall, tagging him, when they haven't talked in months.

Now that I've laid it all out for you....what do you think???

ETA:  BF told me previously that his daughter has always been more weirded out than anything by Ex's attempts to be her mom/BFF.  She tolerated the efforts more than appreciated them, at least in recent years as she's gotten older.  So I'm not worried that his daughter is in any way attached to Ex, in fact, I think she'll view this gift thing as really odd.  And for the record, I know BF finds the whole thing, and how it came about, to be quite odd, too!