Reloading my life

     Tonight I am reloading my life to my laptop for what I am hoping is the last time for at least the next three years…
     I bought HP Pavilion Entertainment PC at Best Buy in Jan 2010, it was supposed to be the best I could get the top of the line. So I began to load my life to it, everything important went on it. After 4 months the power supply burned out, so I went to Best Buy expecting them to do something for me, turns out all they could do was order one. When I asked what I was supposed to do while waiting for it their solution purchase one to use till I get the new one. Then I got the new one and it didn't work, they had to order another. It was almost a month total to get one that worked. Then at 5 months I began to have problems with the key board and had intermittent internet problems. So I deleted my life from it and took it to Best Buy so they could send it off to replace the key board and update the bios. I got it back and once again loaded my life back on to it.
     Then at 9 nine months trouble hit again, the screen began to freeze up and I had to hard restart it. I did ever fix I could think of, then every fix the HP website suggested. Then I let the school techs work on it. The fixes seemed to work for a while but then it got worse. At 11 months I was restarting upwards of 20 times a day. So again I deleted my life and took it to Best Buy, I told them I needed it back ASAP, their response was to keep it for a week in house and then send it out. They were kind enough to recommend that I purchase a laptop to use while they worked on mine and then return it when I got mine back. Basically they replaced everything inside to fix the problem.
     To add insult to injury while they had my good laptop the power supply for my old laptop burned out and I had given the spare to my ex to use while we were dating. So because I didn’t have the heart to ask him to give it back when we broke up I ended up having to buy a new one.
     When I finally got my laptop back I was leery about reloading my life, I found myself hesitating. Turns out it was with good cause. At 12 months the replacement charger I purchased (and kept) burned out, then a piece of the trim splintered off. At 13 months I took it back to Best Buy again because the power jack was loose and in needed to be repaired so they told me they could send it off to be fixed but I need my laptop for school...they just didn't get the fact that I am in Law School and my laptop is my life.
     Again they gave me the same stupid suggestion...purchase one to use then return it when I got mine back. Well if any of the moron's at Best Buy would like to tell me where to get the money to do that considering I live off of student loans I would have been happy to do so...but I sure wouldn’t be purchasing another from Best Buy. They also didn't see any problem with the fact that 2 power supplies associated with the laptop had burned out. When I pointed out that I couldn't put personal information on it because I was always waiting to hand it over to them a stupid comment about just backing up was made as if it would solve the inconvenience of having to remove personal info before giving it to them. So I left the store extremely mad with my laptop. The next day I decided to call the manager and complain to him before calling corporate. I was surprised to find him sympathetic and understanding of my frustration. He agreed to trade the laptop in fulfillment of the warranty. So now I have a new ASUS laptop and I am in the process of loading my life to it!

Bored...Bored...Bored...

I am sitting in class bored out of my mind, wishing I was anywhere but where I am at. I must work on maintaining my attention span and controlling my urge to entertain myself...I made a comment on my ex's blog one day while bored, the comment was relevant and true, I didn't say anything mean so I am all good there. But the problem was why I made the comment...I did it to get a rise out of him, to sort of niggle him, the anger filled tone of the blog combined with the fact it was a rant about not appreciating how someone was doing something outside that made noise early in the morning just sort of egged me on. I try to be better than some of my impulse urges, I try not to pick on or pick at other people but I am human and I fail. Right now I am trying not to find his response to my comments so darn funny...it's wrong to take pleasure or find amusement in a situation where you were probably in the wrong to start with...isn't it? I did repent my misdeed in a response to his blog responding to my comments, which hasn't shown up in the comments section yet. [Guessing that means he didn't really mean it when he said to feel free to make your point below. :shrugh:] I admitted it was wrong of me to poke....but I didn't recant any of my previous comments.


Lesson to be learn resist impulse urges to occasionally be juvenile and poke at someone to get a rise out of them because that rise might be funny. Even if the results are as amusing as you thought they would be.
Sometimes being a grown up and being nice isn't very fun...booooo ;)


Live and Learn ;-)




Did I mention I am seriously bored out of my mind.

My Best Friend

I can honestly say that I am not sure if circumstances were different that I would be best friends with my best friend. In our younger years our interests and personalities were so different that a friendship just didn’t make sense. We spent a lot of time fighting and not particularly liking each other. Yet when it mattered we stuck together; no one could come between us for very long.

Over time we have developed some similar interest is things like TV and books but for the most part our interest are still pretty different. We are both mommies and so that gives us something to bond over. As with our interest there are facets to our personalities that have grown to be quite similar, there are times where we think so alike it is almost as if we share a brain. But then there are things we think so differently about that it leaves us wondering about the others sanity/common sense/etc. We still have times where we fight and don’t like each other. We still stick together; no one can come between us for very long.

So I bet your wondering why we are friends. Well it’s because we didn’t choose to be friends it was determined by our birth. She is my sister; neither of us chose to be playmates or friends but we were forced to by circumstance of being born to the same parents. Personally I think I was lucky because if we weren’t sisters I would have missed out on a pretty fabulous best friend.

I will learn not to let it bother me

     So I recently found out that my ex has a blog and curiosity got the better of me...I read some of his postings. It didn't take long for me to realize that this was a bad idea. You see when we broke up he de-friended me and proceeded to trash/make fun of me on Facebook. He also called me a name (rhyme's with witch) on a posting that another friend was linked on. He accused me of doing the same but I never did. I try not to say things about people or make fun of them, I have had to much experience being on the receiving end of that sort of behavior. Apparently time has not made him rethink this tactic. At Christmas time he sent me a nice message wishing me and my family a Merry Christmas, unfortunately it was right before my hardest final, I was already on edge and it just sent me over. I told him that I wasn't ready to extend the olive branch, acknowledged his message was nice but that the timing was not good for me. Then wished him and his family a Merry Christmas. Another time  I received a piece of mail for him and wrote to ask the forwarding address. I also took the opportunity to tell him I mentioned him in my blog and invited him to provide input if he found it out of line. So imagine my surprise when I read this:

     This morning, there was a message in my inbox from my most recent ex. She had blogged about a fight we had months ago, and her struggle with compromise. It was not vitriolic, it didn't set me off or even upset me. What DID upset me was that the last time I had reached out to this particular ex, a short note to wish her and her family a merry Christmas, I was harshly rebuffed for adding undue stress to her while she was preparing for finals. I shrugged, muttered something about a horse she rode in on, and went on with my life.

     It really makes it seem like I contacted him just to tell him about the blog and that I was rude in my response to him at Christmas time. Which I don't think I was, I took great pains not to be. Also he completely missed the point of the blog I wrote which was about communication difficulties not a struggle with compromise. So my question is why does it bother me? Why should I care what he makes me out to be? Or whether he calls me names and makes fun of me? Why do I still care? I can't answer these questions, maybe I am overly sensitive from years of being made fun of and being picked on growing up. Whatever the answer is doesn't matter, what matters is that I am determined to stop letting it bother me.

[I will not provide a link to his blog or his name. This is not about trashing him. It is about a life lesson I need to learn.]

UPDATE: Because it was bothering me, I was up at 2:30am, and I just couldn't leave it alone...

ME: Given that every other comment has been removed [there were 9 other comments all removed, 4 of which were by him] I expect this one to be as well. But I thought I would set the record straight.

1. I wrote you the note because I received mail for you at my house. I took the opportunity to tell you about the blog and invite you to provide feedback if you felt I was unjust to you.

2. The blog was about communication problems not my struggle with compromise...something you seemed to understand in your private response to me.

3. I acknowledged your message at Christmas time was nice but that the timing was not good for me. That I was not ready. I also wished you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. It came just before what was probably the hardest exam I have had yet in Law School. An exam that would decide my grade in the class, I was stressed. [Given all that was said and done between us, I think I had the right to not be ready to act like it was nothing.]

HIM: The other comments have been removed by the authors of the comments, not the author of the blog.

1. True, and I wasn't offended at all. You weren't unjust to me in any way shape, or form.

2. True, I misspoke.

3. Fair enough.

The only reason any of it was mentioned here at all is that it got me into the conversation that led to this post. I didn't mean to misrepresent things or shed a bad light on you.


ME: Okay...not even going to ask how our relationship has anything to do with the battle of the sexes. Like I said just wanted to set the record straight. 


Personally I feel like, even if it was simply a matter of being careless in relating the details it is still a bit hurtful because I take great pains to insure I am providing a fair and accurate picture.

My stress is her stress...

     The other day I found myself in a car driving around lost, I was trying to get somewhere I had never been before and my GPS was a bit unclear in its instructions (at least as far as I was concerned). I was stressed and it didn’t help that I had fussy toddler in the backseat crying and yelling at me. When it all got to be too much I snapped at her to just stop it and be quiet. Her response surprised me, though still fussing she told me “You need to calm down mommy, I need to calm down.” Talk about a wakeup call, my stress levels over being unable to find my destination and her fussing was actually causing her to fuss even more. So I calmed down and from the back seat her little voice rang out “I did it, mommy, I dried my tears, I calmed down.”

     Apparently this lesson didn’t stick with me very long as I found myself frustrated the very next morning trying to get her dressed for daycare. The more frustrated and harder I tried to get her up and dressed the more obstinate and willful she became. I finally took a deep breath sat back and started asking her what she wanted instead of trying to just get her dressed. After that things just began to fall into place, she choose a dress, then to have her hair in “tigtails”, and then to put her tights on. The calmer I stayed the easier it was to get her ready. I also notice that dropping her off at daycare was less of a struggle when we were both calm. It is really an easy lesson…my stress and emotions feed into my child’s stress and emotions…she gives instant feedback of the emotions she is getting from me.

     At two she is learning to be stressed, anxious, and a bit high strung from me and that’s not how I want her to approach life and unfamiliar situations. So now I have to teach myself to calm down and approach situations that cause me anxiety and stress with at least an outward appearance of calm. As her mommy it is my job to provide a stable and loving base for her to come back to as she explores her world and asserts her independence. Having a child has made me start thinking about what I think about myself and my self-esteem, what example am I setting for her. How can I expect to help her grow a good self-esteem and confidence in herself if I don’t set those examples? I never realized that raising a child was so complicated.

It's not a compromise if the other side doesn't know it's a compromise.

     I was talking with someone very near and dear to me, my older sister, about relationships and my current lack there of. She pointed out to me what she believes to be one of my biggest faults...my seeming inability to compromise. Now I am well aware of the fact that I am set in my ways and I like to have things to be a certain way but I also know I am capable of compromise even if my family doesn't think so. So I took this topic up with my counselor and the conclusion I have come to is that my problem is not an inability to compromise, rather it is the fact that I make the compromises without ever making the other party aware that for me it is a compromise.
     Normally I try to avoid talking about my ex's but it really is the best way for me to illustrate my problem in particular my most recent relationship. I was moving into a new house and my ex was supposed to move in with me, I wanted him to feel like it was his home too and so I asked his opinion on paint colors. Now truth be told I didn't really want his opinion and didn't really expect him to give one. I was just asking to be nice, but it backfired and he actually offered up his opinion. When we started to choose the color for the master bedroom he was quick to tell me that he liked the idea of blue, which was nowhere near what I had in mind but wanting to make things work I made the compromise that it would be a shade of blue without ever telling him that I didn't want or really like blue at all. I selected a darker shade of blue-gray and presented it to him. He didn't like it, he felt it was to dark, and he wanted a shade of light blue. We went around and around this issue, I remember thinking how annoying and unfair it was that he expected me to paint the room a light shade of blue when it's really not a color I like very much. He accused me of being uncompromising and I am sure that from his point of view I was.

     Our problem stemmed from the fact that I hadn't told him my feelings about the color or that I would compromise by going with a darker shade of blue-gray. I was actually hurt by the fact he thought I was so uncompromising. After a while he became reluctant to even express his opinion because as he said I wasn't going to agree anyways so what was the point. We had a communication problem or rather I had a communication problem. My failure to express my feelings about the color was causing fights. It was during one of these fights that he was finally informed my choice of blue-gray was my compromise after which he asked me what color I really wanted. I wanted a darker purple-gray color, sort of amethyst , so we settled on that color. 

     And the battle began again, the shade I wanted was to dark for him, again I was accused of being uncompromising. By this point there was much animosity, as well as hurt feelings, brewing on both sides and he actually made an ultimatum that he would not live in a room painted as dark as I wanted. It was at that moment I made perhaps one of the biggest compromises ever in our relationship without him even realizing it. Under 99% of circumstance I absolutely do not accept ultimatums but in this case I did and I compromised. I agreed to a color that was still not as light as he wanted but half-way between what he wanted and I wanted. For me this was huge and yet still he found me uncompromising. I continued to fail to communicate my opinions and feelings about many little issues and so when I wouldn't compromise went against what he wanted I came across as uncompromising. In spite of the many little compromises I made along the way.
     The lesson I have learned from all of this…communication is key…and while you may be making compromises you can expect another person to view your choices as compromise if you don't properly communicate that while you want X you will do Y because that’s what they want.

The Medication War

     I have know that I have ADHD since I was five years old and that I have Bipolar Disorder since I was thirteen, growing up I took medication for the ADHD. I rarely missed a dose and I never went off of it at least until the doctor took me off when I was about fourteen. Of course back then I had my mother to remind me to take it. I didn't start taking medication for my Bipolar until I was nineteen, I took it faithfully for about four years. Then like many people who have this disorder I began to skip doses or just go off my medication for months at a time. The medications keep me level, almost complacent, I don't feel the extreme lows or highs when I am on it. Over time I begin to miss feeling something more than the complacency or I begin feel to like I don't need the medication because I am doing good. Yes I know, logically, that the medication is why I am doing good but still I stop taking it. It is a hard thing accepting you will have to take medication everyday for the rest of your life just to strive to be normal.
     Invariably something happens that cause me to start taking it again. I have multiple physical health problems and have had surgery, I find that I tend to handle the pain better when I am on my medication. So I start taking them again to ward off the depression caused by the pain which makes the pain worse. Or I just get depressed or stressed so I start them again. I have also had people notice I wasn't taking them and this too has caused me to start taking them.
     For the last three or four years my problem has not so much been a conscious desire to stop the pills I just seem to forget and after a few days just don't start up again. The side effects make it difficult when constantly stopping and starting because I have to get used to them all over again. I have tried all sorts of things to help me remember; pill boxes, setting an alarm on my phone or an alarm clock, setting them right by my bed or on the kitchen counter. It helps for a while but then I just forget again. I get busy or can't remember if I took them and don't want to take another dose and be sick. It is frustrating, I know I need them to do my best in school. What's more, I know I need them to be the best mommy I can be. I feel guilty and even ashamed when I forget and go off them. I usually hide it; there is a certain amount of fear that I will be judged poorly because I can't seem to stay on them.
     I am I am not sure what the answer to my problem is but to keep trying and to go back on them every time I quit. I currently find myself starting them again, I have been trying since New Years to start them and stay on them consistently. A lot of things have changed in my life recently and I know I need them now more than ever. Yet I find that coping with the side effects while coping with the changes and extra stress contributes to my failure. :( I have lost many battles in this war but I am determined not to give up on the war.