Hiya, y'all. I haven't been around in a while at all. School has kept me insanely busy, but I love it as I've finally decided where I'm going with it, major-wise and maybe even career-wise. I'm not sure, but I think the last time I posted my husband and I were separated, but now we are back together, working through as best we can. Also, we now co-own a used bookstore together!

My drunk MIL just called me. My 17-year-old brother-in-law just got arrested for shoplifting chocolate syrup from the grocery store. She needs $1,000 to bail him out. We have $1,000, but that's it. I guess we have credit cards that we could put this on. My husband is out of town with friends. His mom has helped us out a lot financially, but she's fucking insane (we won't allow her alone with our son anymore because of how out of control her drinking is). Goddammit...I don't want to deal with this tonight.

When my brother was 19 he was in a terrible car accident. He was speeding, the lady ran the stop sign and didn't have her grandkids strapped into their carseats. Both toddlers died on impact. It was an absolutely AWFUL, TRAGIC accident for everyone involved. My brother was put on probation for 10 years for vehicular manslaughter. He maintained fairly well for a couple of years, but the trauma of the accident (among other things) eventually wore him down and he began stealing and shop lifting.

My husband and I are trying to save our marriage yet again...I'm sure you guys are supertired of hearing about all this bullshit, because I know I'm tired of dealing with it, so I won't go too far into it. He's started counseling (we'll go as a couple once he's worked through some of his personal issues first) and we've both stopped drinking and smoking and we're beginning to work on communicating...blah, blah, blah.

So, it's been a month since we did the screening. We had about 30-35 people show, about 10 of them being midwives or doulas. We had the head of the ICAN chapter for our region come as well (thanks to whomever suggested I look into that...she had loads of information on local doctors and their c-section rates). It was pretty low-key, but once I got the ball rolling with questions and answers, the discussion went on for over an hour and a half!

So...gas is ridiculous, especially in my city, where it is notorious for having some of the highest gas prices anyway. Right now we live in a phenomenal neighborhood that is honestly less than a ten-minute ride to almost everywhere we need to go on a weekly basis (groceries, garden center, restaurants, the list goes on). My son is four-and-a-half and getting much better at riding his training wheel bike around the neighborhood, but he's no where near being capable of riding on some of the busier streets that will get us to where we need to go.

We got way more than I expected on our tax returns, so most of our debt, etc. will be caught up, leaving me more options with this rebate. Not sure where I'll use it yet, but want to have my mind made up before it gets here so I don't blow it on bullshit.

What are your plans for your rebate money?

Ever since my husband and I have been together, my spirituality has slowly been dwindling (over 5 years now). When we first met when I was eighteen I was on a spiritual quest of sorts, but pregnancy kind of interrupted it and I haven't been able to bounce back on that wagon since then. Now that my husband and I are separated, I feel like a have more time for myself and maybe the energy to embark on another spiritual journey, so to speak. But it's been so long that I don't even know where to begin anymore. I want to kind of go back to basics, if it's possible.

My good friend is a nursing student with plans of eventually becoming a midwife. This semester her and her class have been discussing obstetrics and witnessing live hospital births. She herself was born at home and is a huge advocate for the cause. She's been butting heads with her professor over homebirth, natural birth, circumcision, and breastfeeding. She's been so fed up with what is being accepted as fact to the rest of the class that she wants to have a showing of "The Business of Being Born" at this hipster party hall type thing for her classmates and anyone else willing to come.

Thank you, thank you, thank you mamas for smacking me in the face with reality on my last post. Because of your input, long and tearful talks with my mother, and my husband drinking almost every night all night last week, I decided to separate from him for a while. I haven't quite reached the point where I'm saying I'm leaving him for good, I realize that I have my own addictions to him to take care of. But, I do realize now that I can't continue living in some sort of fantasy world and having him make me feel like I'm losing my mind.

Okay, so tell me if I'm being a petty, whiney, bitch. (I probably am.)

Not sure if anyone remembers me, as I've come and gone from this site so many times in the past two years. I think I was using a different screen name last time (probably a year ago)...but I'm back as SixTumble again. I've been lurking from time to time and began realizing that I really miss like-minded mamas these days, as my friends IRL have yet to go and get themselves preggers and are still livin' the single life. So, I'm back, AGAIN.

It's been over six months since I could even view this site, much less post or catch up on other mamas' goings on, and I'm not sure if anyone would remember me in the first place, but I thought I'd try and give this another go and --- viola!---somehow, magically, I was able to log on again (thanks to cable installation and a new web browser). And how excellent the new look of the site is!

We're moving this weekend, and I've been trying to pack up and be organized and cull out as much junk as possible, but we've got to be out by Sunday and I'm losin' it. Anyone have any moving tips or words of wisdom to help me along this last stretch of packing? (I'm so bad at moving...thus is one of the reasons why I don't do it often.)

Missing y'all like mad...I haven't even had a moment to lurk lately, but I thought I'd throw in some of the cheesy photos we've received of our wedding thus far (I swear the whole thing was really quite romantic...most of these are from later in the night).

The New (and legally recognized) Fam

SO is at the vet with Simon (the dog) right now. It happened about 1/2 an hour ago...SO said things weren't looking good when he first saw him. I've already told DS (who's almost 3) that Simon is hurt pretty bad from a car and that he might come home okay and he might not...I also explained briefly about death and that when someone dies their bodies go to sleep forever but the things that make them wonderful go someplace else to wait for us. Ugh...I wasn't ready to give the D-E-A-T-H talk yet. Cross your fingers that everything is okay.

Tomorrow at 11 a.m. I go into surgery for this kidney stone. They're going to put me to sleep, then go up through my urethra, into my left ureter and blast the stone into smaller pieces with a laser. I'll be back home that evening and be up to snuff (except for a crazy uncomfortable stent in my ureter) within 48 hours. It's a pretty common procedure with a high success rate. However, nothing has been going our way when it comes to much of anything lately...actually, everything has gone the opposite direction of our way and has been snowballing into one giant catastrophe for the past month. Needless to say, I'm somewhat pessimistic about the whole thing. We're having to pay for the procedure out-of-pocket, because every single place we've gone for some form of government help has denied us due to a loophole that we managed to squeeze through. We cannot afford any complications, as paying for this is wiping out most of our life savings and making our move to New York much more inaccessible. Emotionally, I can't stand to have anything else go wrong.

Stupid, stupid, stupid....fuck, fuck, fuck....I think I might have just broken a bone in my foot....would I know if I broke a bone in my foot? There's a big knot on the side of it and it hurts like crap. When I fell there was a really loud popping noise...maybe that was just my ankle popping? God, please tell me that this is just a minor thing. I can't fucking deal with any more medical bills/pain and douche bag fiance is out of town (like always). Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.

So...the break is pretty big with some displacement. I've just barely missed getting surgery, and am currently left to just wear a boot and not put any weight on it for 4 weeks.

So, I haven't had my hair cut/colored professionally in about a year due to a tight budget and lack of finding an awesome stylist (some of you may remember my shitty mommy mullet I accidentally got when I first joined hipmama). But, I'm finally going to invest in a do' that I love, but I'm not quite sure what I'm going to go with and need some ideas. I want something low-key and classic.

Here's what it looks like now:

Due to some recent movement of my kidney stone (the fucker still hasn't passed yet), I had to break down and take a couple of pain killers tonight, so I'm most likely making a mistake in writing anything at this moment, but, what the hell...
I received a letter in the mail today thanking me for attending a recent engagement party for SO's cousin. When I opened the card a couple of photos from the barbeque fell out: one of Li'l Bug and one of myself and a friend. When I saw myself I hardly recognized it initially. My face was not the face I saw in the mirror that morning. It was the face of....a fat girl. I had somehow convinced myself that I'm not the f-word, that I just had a few pounds to lose and a little firming up to do. I could label myself as vuluptuous, chubby, pudgy, plump, all those precious words I was using to soften the blow of a 30-40 lb. weight gain since I got pregnant and had a baby....but I never thought, "Geez, I've gotten FAT." But that picture slapped me in the double-chin today, and I'm horrified and hateful about every inch and ounce of this cushioning I'm in. Some days I think I can get to that point where I see my lumpy mama-belly, my boulder breasts, my fluffy arms as beautiful/womanly/sexy. But I just can't. I'm surrounded by women irl who magically lost all their baby weight in 6 weeks, and avoided stretchmarks, and wear belts and button-down shirts without safety pins. But, it's been over 2 and a half years since my baby came out, and I have lost only 20-25 lbs. of the 60 I gained during my pregnancy. Not a day has gone by when I didn't have some sort of battle with food, either bingeing or starving or thinking of bingeing or starving, and lusting after the body I used to have. I can attribute some of the weight gain to the depo shot, or the c-section, but most of it is me and my lack of willpower. And I beat myself up for being such a cave-er in-er and eat more to deal with the guilt, promising that I'll do well the next day, or the next week, or the next month. But there have been almost 3 years of tomorrows, and not a thing has changed, except for my hair color.

I took Li'l Bug and my mom to the movies this afternoon, and during the previews DS turns to me and says, "Mama, I need to peepee." What?!?!?! I was so excited I nearly wet my own self. I'm so proud of him! He's been so reluctant to pee when he's out in public or when he's having fun...both of which were occurring at that moment. Could it be? Are the days of wipes and diapers finally coming to an end?

...It's button-mania here on hipmama!

You can put any author's name on 4 buttons for $12 without any shipping and handling. I'm getting some for my fiance for his birthday, as it's the perfect thing for him.

http://pianoandscene.com/

So...I know many of the mamas here are vegetarian or vegan. Due to my recent development of kidney stones I know that cutting out meat would be beneficial for this specific problem, and not to mention a gazillion other problems that might pop up along the way. But, once you experience something personally, THEN you realize the error of your ways. Ah, well, better late than never.

Anyway, I'm a bit nervous about it. I'm probably still going to include the occasional fish dish, but I'm concerned about the best way to "break myself in". I've never "deprived" myself of any certain food group, and I live in Texas where meat is served morning, noon, and night and in very large quantities.

At this very moment, my son is "roughhousing" with my fiance's dog and the dog's favorite throw pillow. Thankfully, my son does not realize that the dog considers this more as foreplay rather than roughhousing. DS is laughing hysterically, running around with the corner of the pillow in his mouth while Simon (the dog) is chasing him with his thrusting pelvis and his creepy doggy erection (bleh). I know, I know...it's just a dog erection, perfectly natural, nothing creepy or sexual (in the human sense) about it. But, I hate this dog. I've tried so hard to love him and welcome him in the family as he's DS's favorite playmate, but I just can't make myself.

Watching Spike Lee's film about Katrina right now on HBO. I'm in tears. It's so good.