Tag Archives: goals

A Lenten/New Year’s Renewal… With a Little More Room for Grace

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Nearly every New Year, since I started this blog in 2012, I’ve opened with a New Year’s post, because I love New Year’s!

I know, I know. No one loves New Year’s; New Year’s Eve, maybe, but New Year’s Day is, for most, the beginning of a lot of annoying gym, exercise equipment, and weight loss service ads. For me, however, this is a time of reflection and renewal. I get to look back on how my life changed in the previous year and look ahead with excitement and optimism about what’s to come. This year, however… well, reflection and goal setting have taken a backseat to creating another human and keeping the ones I’m already charged with alive and well.

I started with good intentions. I really did. My New Year’s resolutions were as follows:

  • Swear less
  • Control my emotions better
    • Eat healthy until this baby arrives and then starve myself until normal
    • Attend Mass regularly
    • Listen to Father Mike’s Bible in a Year and Catechism in a Year podcasts every day
    • Actively engage with my children more, instead of doing chores or running errands
    • Catch up on my family albums and have them printed
    • Catch up on my home video editing
    • Spend less time on my phone

I tried, y’all. I really did, but getting ready for this new baby, by making sure I do everything for him that I did for the others…. chasing my twin toddlers and their suddenly very mobile baby brother around the house… potty training, coping with family-wide RSV and Jake’s vasectomy recovery… and now transitioning from cribs to toddler beds… has meant that a good day is one where Mama isn’t crying. I’ll be honest. Those are pretty rare lately.

I don’t know what it is about this pregnancy, but it has been hands down the roughest of my three in the last four to five years. I’m sure my three under three are a contributing factor, but I’m also just so tired of being pregnant and scrambling to get ready for a new baby. About a year ago, I told Jake that I wanted to do an embryo transfer as soon as possible, before I changed my mind. I am nothing if not self aware. There is zero chance we’d be having this baby had we waited six more months… and I’m thrilled we’re so fortunate as to get our two girls and two boys. I’m just ready for this to be over, so I can move forward and feel like myself again. I want to stop crying and feeling like I can’t keep all the balls in the air. I want to get out of a chair on the first try. I want to look at myself in the mirror and like what I see.

Regardless of my current mental state, I firmly believe there’s always time for self-improvement. I tried for a Lenten reset, after I heard my Violet say “bag of dicks” from the backseat during a frustrating traffic moment and vowed to give up swearing entirely. I’m sure I failed by the end of the day. So, here I am, tomorrow being March 1st, pressing reset once again… with perhaps a little less ambition.

  • Don’t swear in front of the kids… even while driving
  • Eat healthy enough not to feel sick during this pregnancy and then starve myself until normal
  • Attend Mass when no one’s hurt/sick/just had an ugly-crying mental breakdown over the Christmas ornaments the girls strung all over their play yard
  • Control my emotions in front of the kids as much as possible and take comfort in the fact that they will not remember this
  • Spend more time with the kids, even if it’s just looking at and naming animals on Instagram, while snuggling in the recliner
  • Reallocate scrolling time to things I enjoy more, like working on family albums and videos and just listening to an audiobook
  • That’s it. Pregnant with my fourth, with three under three, is just not the time to clean up my language when the children are out of earshot. This is, apparently, my largest baby yet, so I’m going to eat what I want, within reason. If I just can’t make it to church, for mental or physical reasons, then I just can’t. Breakdowns are officially allowed. I’ll try my best to limit them to nap time. As much as the girls enjoy trips to the park and being chased around the yard, it’ll have to wait until Daddy can do it or Mama has recovered from her C-section. It is okay to count the low-key moments as quality time. If my mind is fried and scrolling is all I want to do, so be it. Cuz, that’s all I’ve got in me until 2025.

Staring Down the Barrel of 30… at 27?

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Me: “He’s 29 years old, lives with his mother, and plays video games all day. He is staring down the barrel of 30 and has nothing to show for it.”
Gail: “Wooooow. That is a really unhealthy way to think about your 30’s.”

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My 27th birthday is just a couple of weeks away. I’m big on birthdays. Every year, I exhaust Gail with birthday hoopla and insistence that we celebrate not just mine, but also hers a few weeks later. Not only is it a holiday that’s all yours, it’s also a time for reflection. Reflection is sort of like a self-imposed grading system and there’s nothing I like more than grades, y’all.

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So birthdays, for me, are a time to judge my accomplishments thus far and set new goals for the next year. Most people have a list of things to accomplish by 30. I have a list of things to accomplish by 27 and a half. For now, however, I think I’m just going to start with the things that I should probably stop doing before everyone in town releases their fire lit lantern into the sky on the eve of my 30th birthday.

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Gaily, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that, in addition to bridal and baby showers, coordination of the Synchronized 30th Birthday Disney Lantern Release, also falls to you.

… using the phrase “superraped” to describe a dangerous situation. i.e. “I am so going to get superraped.”

… ironically answering the phone with “Whaddup gangsta?”

… using Xenon’s “zetus lapetus” as a swear word.

… excitedly exclaiming “Oh em jingles!”

… typing out “bee tea double ewe” in text messages.

… watching (and reciting) Hocus Pocus more than 20 times per year.

… arguing with people about Titanic.

… marathoning CW teen dramas and declaring myself a team member. C’mon, Elena. TEAM DAMON!

… engaging people in the Superman vs. Batman debate, only to angrily shout that Superman wins “… BECAUSE HE’S SUPERMAN!”

… deciding a man is just not right for me, because he clearly hasn’t researched the above Superman vs. Batman topic enough for an educated discussion.
* I’m sorry, but he used the phrase “brain beats brawn.” Duuuuuude. No. Superman absorbed all of the knowledge of Krypton, a far more advanced civilization, which included Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Jor El programmed it into his ship, so he knew those things by age three. I don’t care which private school Bruce Wayne went to, he’s not beating that.

… calling everyone dude for emphasis. i.e. “Duuuuuude. No.”

… referring to sketchy scenes as “a wee bit rapey.”

… blurting “That’s what she said!” to the wrong audience. “No, Gramma. It’s a joke. You see, you don’t mean it sexually, but it can be taken that way… never mind.”

… shouting “Emotions belong with the last fucking Horcrux!” when things get dramatic.

… reading fiction that almost exclusively costs 99 cents on Amazon, because it’s about an alien race that saved the people of earth for the low, low cost of our ladies.

… only getting 2 hours of sleep, because I’m almost done yarn bombing the living room, while whispering “… just one more episode.”

… hoarding original packaging and warranty information for everything. Was I really planning to return the kitchen knives I got for Christmas three years ago?

… going to the grocery store just for the free samples and leaving with a bag of cheese cubes and dried okra.

… driving 20 miles to the mall to get assorted bags of candy.

… somehow offending people in sex shops.

… addressing problems with the phrase “I tried to make it better. That wasn’t working, so I figured I might as well make it worse.”

… picking fights with Jane about Disney.

… provoking strangers in sports bars, when they cheer for free throws and field goals, by drunkenly ranting about the Trophy Generation.

… using the phrases “sucks balls” and “go suck a bag of dicks.”

… trying to talk unwitting people into watching Human Centipede, by insisting it’s “a tale of surgical exploration and sensual teamwork.”

That, folks, is how I am going to become one classy lady… in three years.