Moving Day

It turns out that I am not all talk. (Or, perhaps more applicable to this platform all type.)

I put it off for long enough and today, my friends, I finally moved.

After blogging in this space for over 10 years, I have packed up shop: you can find me at somidwestern.com.

Don't let the sparkly new domain name confuse you. I will be writing the same convoluted nonsense that I have been polluting the internet with for the last decade.

So classy, so consistent, So Midwestern.

Reunion, part 2

Colin shook my hand.

COLIN SHOOK MY HAND.

That is how he greeted me last night. By shaking my hand. It was that awkward.

And fine. It was perfectly fine.

There wasn't time for conversation and I didn't go out of my way to make any before or after our game. That very may well have bothered him (it did post-implosion, anyway, that I wouldn't be all chummy and pretend that nothing had ever happened) but I don't care. He's not my friend. He will never be my friend. We don't need to catch up.

The only thing I regret is that I didn't play better.

And that I didn't take a secret picture of him to send to Lucy. (After a certain embarrassing incident last month, I'm a little shutter shy.)  

Reunion

This afternoon, I agreed to sub for my friend Brittany's soccer team.

Brittany is a teammate on my Sunday team and she recently moved into an adjacent subdivision and so we have carpooled to a few games and, while I have known her for years, it's been fun getting to know her off of the soccer field.

So, when she asked me to sub because her team would be short on female players, I readily agreed.

Then she told me the team I was substituting for.

It is Colin's team.

I AM PLAYING SOCCER ON COLIN'S TEAM.

I'm not going to bail on Brittany but I am not excited about this. At all.

I hope he's not there.

I hope his wife isn't on the team.

I hope I get a good story out of this, at least.

Of Course

For the past week, I have been researching pet insurance for Brady. If I'm going to do it, now is the time; he turns two this week and, as you would expect, it's less expensive to insure a younger dog. 

I'm pretty solidly on the fence about it because (obviously) it doesn't cover pre-existing conditions so it won't likely cover his anxiety meds, which could be a substantial expense, but it could really save my ass (and my credit) if he gets sick or injured.

But I have reservations investing in pet insurance because I feel like it will encourage me to go to extraordinary measures if he gets a rare cancer or something where, really, the more humane decision would probably be to treat his pain and make the end of his life comfortable.

Not exactly what I want to be thinking about but I guess it's responsible pet ownership.

I was researching before I went to bed last night, getting quotes from a few different companies and comparing coverage and still unable to make up my mind if I would even be buying coverage. Insurance is confusing, even for dogs. Making decisions is hard, at least is for me.

  

Then this morning, Brady wakes up with a goopy eye. It seems he picked up a little something at the dog park. I probably need to take him to the vet. 

So that's probably a subtle sign from the universe. 

The Fun Scale

I am giving raises today, which is fun.

I finally played a decent soccer game, which was fun.

My team got beat, like, really bad. That was not fun.

Anna's baby shower was about as fun as a baby shower can be.

It was really fun to see my cousin and my aunt who were in from Chicago.

It was less fun showing them exactly how bad things are with my grandparents. But important.

Meg and I sat in the sun and watched soccer and ate macaroni and cheese, which is always fun.

I was up for hours and hours in the middle of the night. Not fun. 

I read by Disclaimer by Renée Knight; if you enjoy the Gone Girl/Girl on a Train type of thriller, you'll think it's a fun read. 

Brady and I are going to Lucy's house for dinner with her and the boys tomorrow night; it should be great fun. 

I wore the wrong type of underwear today. I can barely concentrate I'm so annoyed with this choice. It is the complete opposite of fun.

I'm the worst daughter

I am a horrible person but, you guys, I am so over being a caregiver.

I am constantly on edge and, sometimes, I think that if she asks me to do one more thing, I am going to explode.

It's not even the actual care giving that I'm irritated about, to be honest (and she doesn't need much help anyway), it is all of the other extras that are on top of it that I'm doing because Mom is volunteering me and I don't have a choice and it's making me resentful. I haven't had much of a life since her surgery and I am just tired.

Mom is doing too much (taking care of my grandpa daily, throwing three parties over the course of three weekends, etc.) and feels awful because of it and then she's in a bad mood because she feels too bad to get everything done that she wants to get done and then she asks me to pitch in and that's okay but I just want to yell at her. SLOW DOWN, MOTHER. YOU'RE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF.

And her attitude sucks. I think that might actually be what's really driving me mad. I happen to believe that your attitude is pretty indicative of your outcome and, if that's the case, she should just stop going to physical therapy and getting out of bed every morning and die of an infected bed sore. That's how bad her attitude sucks.

I get it. I get that it is miserable. I know she's frustrated. But the things she says make me want to wring her neck. "I am going to be unemployed because I won't be able to work" and "this surgery is the worst decision I have ever made" and similar nonsense.

It's a pointless fight to have so I never say anything. Usually I just put Meg on her. Being that she's a physical therapist and more familiar with the whole process, she's very blunt. "When you got this surgery, you knew that recovery would be 3-6 months. It's been 6 weeks. Buck up."

Mom usually listens to Meg. She just needs frequent lectures.

Throughout this whole process, I've been pretty good about taking this all for what it is. It's the surgery, it's not my mom. She was just so frustrating yesterday. When I finally got home, I stewed until I went to bed and then I had anxiety dreams all night long.

She seems better today and we're on the cusp of another big family weekend (tomorrow is Anna's baby shower) so I just need to take a deep breath, finish blogging out all of this ugly and get over it.

Don't tell my mom how awful I am, you guys.

Quitter

It is a momentous day.

I quit my gym.

In my mail yesterday, I got a promotional post card for one of those super inexpensive chain gyms and it occurred to me (not for the first time) that I am an idiot and I needed to quit my gym posthaste.

I realize that this action seems somewhat counter intuitive for someone who is quite regularly blogging about her struggle to regain her fitness but hear me out.

I have been saying that I need to quit my gym for years now and the only thing that kept me from doing it was that I used it. I had a good thing going.

Until I didn't.

The gym I belonged to until a few hours ago was a big chain with all of the amenities: the steam room and classes and a pool and childcare and a cafe and towels and a hundred other amenities that I never used. What I did use regularly were the cardio machines and, this is a fact: nobody should pay upwards of $70/month to use a treadmill.

I've known for a while that I should cancel because I wasn't using enough to justify the price but just never got around to it. Then I injured my knee and any semblance of a gym routine crashed and burned, anyway. It went from bad to worse.

I will miss my swanky gym but I will not miss feeling guilty about it.

I felt guilty about how much it cost. I felt guilty about how much I was(n't) using it. I felt guilty about how I was using it.

I feel bad about enough things in my life. I am very much over my gym being one of them.