Married Life 101

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No one ever tells you what you need to do when you get married. Or how things change. And the compromises you will have to  make. Or what it really means to be actually married to someone.

Without all the glitz and glam of getting married, were you really ever prepared for what happened once that all ended?

I have been the single girl who did what she wanted and was rude and mean to whoever I wanted to and got away with it because my mind set was I didn't need them as much as they thought they needed me. Clearly I have been hurt before and that was the aftermath! But it worked out well for me for so long, that it took a while (and if you asked my husband) the transformation is still happening.

I must admit, there are times when I can go into being very rude and don't mean to but these pregnancy hormones are worse then normal. And it tends to be harder for me to apologize or take constructive criticism well. But then again, I am female. And pregnant. And hormonal. And psycho Jen comes out more often then not.

There are so many things that you wouldn't think normally that you need to start thinking about once you get married.

For instance, do I change my taxes to married instead of single? Yes.  And how? Well, I am still in the process of doing this, since I am newly married and just learned about these things recently!

How do I change my name and when and where and with who!? All questions I have and still haven't really had answered so it still has yet to be done.

Get a joint bank account? We did, but for savings and bills purposes. We both have our own as well as a joint. It works out well for now. Except around Christmas... because noisy preggo lady over here wants to know where he is shopping and now can't find out.

Do you get to wear a wedding ring if you haven't had an actual wedding yet but you are married? That is really your call. My husband wears one, and I wear the engagement ring; for now.

How long is too long after you are engaged/married/pregnant to have a wedding? Well since I never do anything in the right order as anyone who knows me can adhere to that, we still have not had a wedding yet. People ask me why bother? Or why wait until the baby is born? Or why not do it right after the baby is born? Well... ask yourself the same question but in real life terms: Do you want to still be fat when you have to wear a wedding dress and look at these pictures for the rest of your life?
Answer: I think not! Do you want to be able to drink at your wedding and enjoy it and not have everyone feeling bad for you because you are 7 months pregnant and can't stand up straight? Answer: No thanks.

So my initial thought is wait until June 2015. The baby will be 1 years old and can be the flower girl and I will look just as nice as I did before the pregnancy. And I can drink.  Three favorable things for me. AND then we can leave said daughter with her grandparents and say SEE YA! and off to our honeymoon we go.

You can't do or have any of that with a 2 month old!

Who does the laundry? Who cooks? Who cleans? Who leaves clothes all over the house? Who picks it up? The answer is usually me. Except he does most of the laundry and he leaves clothes all over the house. If you asked me this last year, I would not have said me to any of it. I didn't cook before we moved in together and got married. That was a huge NO for me. And here I am, cooking almost every night. Who thought it could be so easy?

Married life is hard. The glitz and glam is the nice pretty part. The rest is the tough dirty hard work. But it is worth every minute of it for me. I learn something new about him and myself every day.

And compromise. What I am not good at. Compromise and pick your battles. I am not quite there yet but I am focusing on both of those aspects.

More about crazy preggo Jen to come.

2013: The Year of Transformation

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It has been quite awhile since I have sat near a computer and actually wrote anything meaningful besides writing lesson plans for work. I have definitely neglected a talent and hobby of mine that I was incredibly in love with over the past four years. But life got in the way and caused me to have to find different ways to make money, which was bartending while trying to finish my master's as fast as possible. So, if you have ever bartended before, you can imagine the hours that I was working in order to make the most amount of money as possible.
And I honestly wouldn't change it for the world. It was an amazing experience and I met and worked with so many people and learned a lot of management skills and forced myself to multi-task going to school to finish my master's, working at many different schools being a substitute, and bartending as many nights of the week as possible to pay my rent, and inevitably trying to have a social life! So, my hobby of writing, really got pushed to the very very end of my list of important things in my life.

As I enter 2014, my life is 100% different from how I started off 2013. If I were to have told myself in 2013 that in 2014 my life would be like this, I would have laughed in my face! But it has been the worst, best, hardest, most incredible experience ever in my life and I would literally change nothing or want it to be any different.

I can never just change one thing about my life. It usually has to be like if I change one, then everything else needs to change as well. Every year I think has been the hardest year of my life and I have accomplished one great thing and so forth, but 2013, this year has been the BIG year for me.

2013:
Graduated, received my master's and got 3 New York State Teaching Certificates
Went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Met the love of my life
Rented a shore house
Went on vacation to Europe: Austria, Germany, Italy
Got engaged
Found out I was having a baby girl
Got Married
Moved into a house with my husband
Got my first 5th grade teacher job in the Bronx

See what I mean, I don't do anything just half assed. I make sure its all the way!
My life has went from being the single girl who lived with her friends and was just making it by from bartending and working at shitty preschool or substitute jobs to being a grown up.

My life that lays ahead of me is so exciting, I wish this baby would get here now. Collecting girls clothes and getting ready for June 2014 is like the countdown of a lifetime.

I also never thought I would find the man I would love, marry, and have a child with, ever in my life. I literally couldn't have ever been so lucky. I actually still can't believe I got so lucky. After all of these years of having such shit luck, it finally changed.

And here's to the transformation that is about to happen in life.

And as for transformation, I will be focusing on my new life: Army Wife, Teacher, Mom to Be, House maker, life.   Ahhhhhhhh who would have ever thought!!!!!!

Stay tuned.

And a Happy Weekend to you...

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Although the weekend this week is not my favorite because I am working every night at the bar, i hope everyone else gets to enjoy their weekend.

sorry i have been MIA, the summer and life has taken over and i havent had time to write about anything, and i havent been home much.

between my ex now not really ex but more so the present but not dating (whatever the hell that means), work and my other work, and starting to look for apartments for october, lifes been busy. All i want to do is go back to the beach and just lay out haha

looks like come end of october i will be getting a 1 bedroom apartment.. unless i can find someone to live with, but i really am not going to just settle for someone. and i COULD live at home... but my choices are the cat room or the basement...... and its far from my job(s), friends and school. ehhhhhh.

have a good weekend xo

A Life Quote

“the best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. no apologies or excuses. no one to lean on, rely on, or blame. the gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. this is the day your life really begins.”

bob moawad

interesting quote. sometimes i forget that it's my life and to do things for me and experience them for me. i let other people control my life and what i do. i wish i could change that. i think i need to start with having a job first so that i can have some sort of way to my actual OWN life. right now, i feel like so stuck and it doesnt help that it is snowing out and i am literally stuck inside my house! do you ever feel this way? like you're living your life for other people? and they just dont consider anything about you at all?

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Black Disease that Never goes Away

this is such a great picture to describe my ex T and how he is always lingering somewhere in my life and just will not go away.

i have not spoken to him in over a year. we have not seen each other in the same amount of time. yet every now and then i hear something about him that makes me so incredibly angry --a little nagging bug that just wont leave my life.

i don't stress about him anymore, i stress about the fact that he still has one connection to me in my life and i really wish he would just disappear. i don't understand why anyone thinks that he is that great that they need him in their life.

when my fish died last november, i felt like that was the day when anything between us was really severed. and a year later i have to find out it's not. it's just like, go the fuck away already. and it's not him trying to be dragged back into a part of me, it's others.

i was actually just recapping the past couple years with M (current boyfriend) last night about what i went through and talking about it really made me see how insanely STUPID i looked for staying with him! like, what the FUCK was i thinking?!

i was so miserable -- how did i just sit there and deal with not being spoken to, not being touched, not being slept in the same bed with when we lived in the same house, being ignored, hating my friends, not enjoying anything about me, hating me when he was drunk.

How did i deal with that?

and more importantly, WHY did I deal with that?

I honestly have no answer for that and it's disgusting. he wasn't a TERRIBLE person, but he doesn't know how to treat someone as a girlfriend. he may have loved me, but showed it in very strange ways and i believe he actually hated me more then loved me and that definitely showed throughout our relationship.

i'm in a better place then i have been in a really long time and i have learned many, many things from that whole experience. and it has made me who i am today, and for people who don't APPRECIATE you for you, you're better off without them.

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:(

I miss my blog :(

I havent written about anything in a long time. I barely have time to write. And any time that I have at home, I want to go to sleep because I get home so late. This summer has been a summer of doing many, many things. And at the same time as it being awesome, I wish I could just relax, read a book, write in my blog, lay in the sun..... but it doesnt happen that way.

So I have to catch up on everyone's blogs and write in my blog at the same time and see everyone! ahhh so little time. does anyone else find it hard to keep up in their blog?

how is life?

i am in search for another job/career.  Sales is not my place to be at anymore. I want to have a CAREER. A REAL job. I have no clue what to do... I heard they are in need of nurses... but I dont know if i would like that.  Is anyone a nurse??  Do you have any advice?

What I would really like to do would be work for a magazine or in a PR office or something along those lines.... but how the hell do you get those jobs?

Ugh!

I do miss everyone so forgive me :(
xox

A Quote to Remember

"I must learn to love the fool in me--the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool." -- Theodore I. Rubin, MD

quote found here

The Real Me Isn't Quite..

.. ____________________ (fill in the blank).

trying to hold myself back from doing things that i want to do is really obnoxious and hard. but i know i have to do it.

i don't know how to hold back when I am supposed to. I am not good at this single thing. I am not sure how I am supposed to act and how I am not. I try to play it day by day but apparently I can't handle it and I end up taking over a situation and turning it in a direction it shouldn't go in.

And here i am. I know i am being vague but I don't want to/can't get into details. sorry about that.

i am just frustrated.

and this is why i can't become un-frustrated, because even though I am leaving out some details in here, there are so many details i am missing, and can only use my imagination to fill in the blanks, and when i do that, i am for the most part, always always wrong.

Not Being Able to Help Sucks

Lately there are a lot of my friends who have been down and depressed, each for their own reasons and they are all completely different.

I am trying really hard to be the good friend and telling them what they need to hear and being there for them and doing as best as possible to help them so they dont have to be in pain anymore.

And the worst part is, nothing I say actually matters. I'm not saying they don't appreciate it, they just don't listen. But then again, I probably wouldn't listen either. And I am sure it's frustrating to my friends as it is to me when they can't help me.

And then sometimes I get too involved and feel like I might be going overboard with what I say. So then I end up feeling like the asshole and that I was being mean.

But somethings people need to hear what they don't want to hear right? I am supposed to be the one to tell them the things that are ugly and brutal and suck really bad and just want to forget. I am supposed to remind them so they don't forget why they shouldnt go back. Right? Is that not what I am supposed to do?

Sometimes I am not sure... I know I am glad now that I had people to tell me when something was really messed up and that I had to remember what it was REALLY like... because I was so blinded by sadness that I just didn't want to be sad anymore.

Does that happen to you? Being blinded by sadness that you would do anything, ANYTHING to make it go away? Even if it was to go to something that was completely wrong for you?

I think everyone has.

It sucks to have to sit back and watch people torture themselves and not be able to help.

I am beginning to accept that some people just need to fall hard before they can get back up. I know that is what I did and I know that is exactly what people need but it is SO hard to sit there and just watch it happen. It's almost like I want to be like... WAKE THE FUCK UP!

But I can't... because the only way to walk away is to learn. And learning lessons like these, really hurt.

it's so frustrating :(

for you.

"whatever life takes away from you, let it go. when you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment. letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now"--dmr

A Rainy Quote Day

"Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning."

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."

Cherry this is for you:

"Love... We think about it, sing about it, dream about it, lose sleep worrying about it. When we don't have it, we search for it; when we discover it, we don't know what to do with it; when we have it, we fear losing it. It is the constant source of pleasure and pain. But we can't predict which it will be from one moment to the next. It is a short word, easy to spell, difficult to define, impossible to live without."

life is full of..

"Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams."

Oh Monday, how I hate you.

I do. Im not gonna lie... probably the worst day of the week. Although today is quite boring since there is ABSOLUTELY no one else in the office right now since everyone is in training. So its pretty quiet, but bad quiet. The phones haven't rang ONCE. And I want to go get lunch.. but I can't. Because no one is here!
On the brighter side, it was gorgeous out all weekend and I tried to spend as much time outside as possible, although I did not go to the beach or the pool and layout, which is what I really wanted to do.. so that kind of sucked. But other than that it was beautiful.

T and I went to the park yesterday and walked around the river and stuff and sunbathed a little bit on the top of the cliff. It was really nice. As soon as I get my NEW PHONE!!!!! (which i just ordered about 5 minutes ago and SHOULD have it tomorrow BIG CHEESE) I can actually take pictures and upload them from my phone because I will have a CAMERA! Who would have thought not having a camera on my blackberry would have taken a toll on my instant blogging LOL.
Unfortunately, as soon as we are done enjoying our nice outing, we go out to dinner and get into a fight. Of course right? Way to ruin a nice day. It was obnoxious and basically, he really needs to stop taking out his anger from other people on me. Ridiculous. It made me so sad. We have only been back together for not even a week and we're fighting. WTF. I am just sad, it makes me really unhappy that we fought like that our some bullshit that he takes the wrong way and sees it in a completely different light than I do. I just dont get it. No matter HOW I act in a situation, he will still find some way that I am actually wrong and should have done it another way.

Ugh.

All during this fight I am thinking about how I really need to make moves in my life. I need something to happen. I feel stuck and stranded in a shitty position in my ever boring life. I have had the same job for 3 years, same boyfriend for 3 years, same but different apartments, same boring life with added vacations, same clothes, same hairstyle. Same EVERYTHING.

I am sick and fucking tired of it. And I need something to change. I don't know what to do. I mean i was about to make a change in my life and then I stopped it so i am fully responsbile for that and am sort of regretting it. But I feel like the bigger picture behind what I did was revolving around another person and I didn't want it to be becuase of that, so that is why I went back so I could make this about me.

I mean, I am learning NOTHING in my job now. NOTHING. I do the same shit for the same people who still dont give a crap about me whatsoever. I deal with asshole clients who have no money and we have to force them to advertise with us and then get blamed because the economy is shitty. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO! Then I have to rely on other peoples motivation to work in order for me to make any bonus. It's just such crap, its unbelieveable. So I have basically given up and stopped working for the most part because I dont care anymore. And that makes me sad because I am a hard worker and like to do work!

I was considering quitting my job and going back to school full time to bang out my teaching degree by next summer. But I still dont really know if I want to be a teacher. I do and I dont. There are so many pros that it outweighs my reason of not doing it because I want to stay in the media field and I feel like I would be sort of "settling" if I just went and became a teacher.

I guess I just feel like I am not in control of my life anymore and it is making me feel sad and depressed and I need something to happen for me to get out.

I need an exit plan.