Happy New Year!

It hasn't been an awful year, but I'm still excited to move forward with that awesome fresh-slate feeling that New Years brings!

Gettin' Ready!

As I prepare my post-holidays shopping list, I'm sooooo excited to stop eating total fucking crap and start eating clean and healthy again. I'm seriously thinking about starting Weight Watchers again, although it'll have to be my own version of WW for two important reasons. Reason #1: I am broke as a joke, and can't even begin to afford the seventeen or whatever it is bucks a month to use the tools on their site. Besides, I have heard excellent things about LoseIt, My Fitness Pal, and SparkPeople. I'll just play around with the free shit.

Oh, and Reason #2, the IMPORTANT reason: Weight Watchers sucks now! I had SUCH good luck when it was plain ol' Weight Watchers with Flex Points and it was easy to figure out the points for any food item. When they changed things up a little over a year ago, making fruit free, and upping the points for everything else, I just could not get my head around it. I didn't have very good luck at all and I ended up just canceling my account after a couple of months. At first, I thought it was just ME, but damned near everyone I've talked to tells me a similar story. I'm sure lots and lots of folks are having amazing luck (I've seen the Jennifer Hudson commercials, thank you, especially the latest one where she's singing a duet with her former, fat self) but it just wasn't for me, sorry.

Whatever I end up choosing, I'm going to make sure I eat a lot of real, actual food. I've thought things over and I've decided that I'd rather have just a couple of BITES of something and enjoy it, rather than dive into a meal that tastes like ass. (Those horrific "green enchiladas" made with salsa verde and fat free cheese come to mind. ::shudder::) So, yeah. I can get behind eating ONE SLICE of actual bacon every now and then, if it means I never have to eat turkey bacon again. Go to hell, turkey bacon. Nobody likes you!
www.nataliedee.com

2nd Topic: Internal Struggles - Guilt vs. Anger!

I struggle with depression. It's something I've battled pretty much my whole life, and it's gotten to where I can begin to see the signs that I'm sort of taking a turn. For the past decade or so, my depression has sort of manifested itself in me as apathy. It's like my give-a-shit meter expires. The other way it manifests itself is in being completely overwhelmed by how to manage my life. These two things together create what is essentially a GIANT DOWNER. Duh. I mean, it's depression, not a Spongebob marathon. (Although, some would view THAT as a giant downer. Those people can suck it, because Spongebob is amazing.)

ANYWAY. Getting to my point. In recent years, I've been able to say to myself, "Self, it appears you're heading into a depression. I can tell by the way you've stopped shaving and started eating Snickers bars for lunch." Usually I can get things under control before I need a total intervention. THIS TIME, however, things are different. I'm still feeling a little apathetic, but I'm also feeling COMPLETE FUCKING RAGE a lot of the time, which, despite my many bitchy blog posts, is pretty foreign for me. I am a happy-go-lucky chick. I'm mellow, I let things go, and I don't freak out over the small stuff. So it's been hugely confusing for me to suddenly feel like punching people in the throat. That ain't me. Or at least, it wasn't me. It is now.

So here's where I'm at. I'm feeling...okay. Just okay. Not happy, not sad, just...there. OR, I'm feeling sad, guilty about not being a better wife/mother/homemaker/insert role here. OR, I'm feeling like TEARING THIS FUCKING PLACE APART. The other day, I had to literally will myself not to accelerate and rear-end the car in front of me taking too long to go when the light turned green.

That leaves me three emotions:

1. Numbness
2. Sadness and Guilt
3. Absolute fucking RAGE.

I'm familiar with the first two, we're tight like that. This third thing, though. It is throwing me for a loop and a HALF, man. I really don't know where to go from here.

First Topic: Uppity Bitches.

I am so over it, y'all. I never realized, being the mother of daughters, that I'd be dealing with so much drama. I mean, I expected drama FROM my daughters, because we all know how little girls are, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the women who are polluting my very LIFE. These women, who run the Girl Scout troops and the PTA, and the classroom parties. These moms, in their Ugg boots and their SUVs. The hardcore vegans who slug down wine all night. The ones who run the prayer chain, so they can hear all the inside gossip under the guise of "lifting people up." These moms, who smile and wave, and then talk shit about you before you're barely out of earshot. THESE MOMS, who are raising THESE GIRLS.

These girls, who walk around the playground in packs, shit-talking about all the other girls in the 3rd grade who aren't wearing the right kind of shoes. Am I SO old and antiquated, that it would seem foreign to me that THIRD GRADERS have abandoned the playground in favor of chillin' on the grassy knoll? These girls, who perfectly imitate their mothers through their words, gestures, and body language. These girls AND these moms who vilify anyone who isn't a cookie cutter carbon copy of every other suburban female, with a Bump-It in her ponytail.

I never thought it would be so damned difficult to raise up my children to be friendly and confident, and to value their own uniqueness as well as the differences that make each of us awesome and special. I see my kids becoming jaded because they've been picked on SO MUCH for petty things that shouldn't matter, and it's largely because these asshole mothers lead their girls by example, teaching them exactly how to be snotty, backstabbing bitches, starting in preschool.

And don't even get me started on the pussy husbands who put up with this behavior, sometimes even ENCOURAGING it. What? What is it? It's like I've stumbled into some strange, foreign tribe of dickbags, who don't practice the same social rules that normal people do. I'm normal, right? Right? It's normal to want to live your life without drama and bullshit...RIGHT?

Is there an app for that?

If I could only convey to you, dear internets, if I could only CONVEY TO YOU just how often I stand in my shower, sit behind the wheel, or lie in bed at night constructing blog posts that NEVER MAKE IT here. So often. So often that I feel like I'm finally just FULL, and about to spill over, if I don't open my mouth (or let my fingers fly, actually) and get some of this OUT of my head. Why can't I just bluetooth connect my brain and my iPhone and update my blog that way? Because that would make things easier, fo sho.

I hate people.

I. Just. Hate. People.

Maybe I don't. Maybe I just hate the people I seem to be surrounded by in this ridiculous neighborhood. I swear, it's just one thing after another in suburbia - the gossip, the bratty kids struggling to carry around their massive sense of entitlement, the fake smiles and waves, the fake nails and tans and tits and hair - it's all just getting on my last fucking nerve.

It's like people reach upper middle class, and they don't have any more struggles - not any real ones, anyway - so they have to invent things to be unhappy about. Any perceived slight against them is blown to ridiculous proportions. They talk endless shit about all their fake friends in the neighborhood - rest assured, as soon as you hug goodbye and leave the bunco party, those bitches are tearing you APART.

I'm learning that this is all a game you have to play - you smile and wave, you catch up in the aisle at the supermarket, and then you anonymously report one another to the HOA for leaving scooters on the side of the house or having too many weeds. You gossip to one another about things that are none of your business, under the guise of "keeping her in prayer." It's all just a massive, never-ending game, and I FUCKING HATE IT.

Good Friday

This is my first Good Friday (and Easter, I suppose) since becoming an official, card-carrying, learned-the-secret-handshake, CHRISTIAN. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do, but I am going to pop into church after I drop my kids at kindergarten and partake in some of the Jesus stuff they've got going on. I've been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to worship the Lord and feel a sense of community at my church. Say what you want to about the whole Hipster Christian Movement, but it's worlds apart from the churches I was dragged to as a child. The judgmental, snooty dickbags who left such a bad taste in my mouth for decades and who give Christianity a bad name are nowhere to be found. In fact, there's nothing but love - I've felt completely accepted, appreciated, and welcomed at my church - even as a mom of a noisy, misunderstood child whose special needs are often mistaken for chronic brattiness. It's a beautiful thing.

Why blog?

I blog. I'm a blogger. I've been a blogger for quite awhile now, and when I first started it, I loved it. Blogging was something I really got into. I love to write and share stories about my life and my kids. I love to read passionate blogs where people take the most mundane, boring stories and turn them into something special and magical. It's comforting to know that I can reach out and find another person going through the same stuff I am, and dealing with it in similar ways. I love knowing that we're all in it together. Most of all, I love it when I find someone who has a lot on their plate, and they talk about it with grace and humor. It's what inspires me.

Somewhere along the way, I shared the fact that I blog and I'm a blogger with a few too many of the wrong people. I used to write about everything on my mind, and my writing was truly an outlet for me. Crazy Life + Blog = Sane Mama. Now that I realize my audience includes people my husband works with, teachers who know my children, and lots of folks in my neighborhood, my blog is just a shadow of what it once was. I read through old entries and it frustrates me - I used to write so well. I wrote funny, touching stories. I talked about what my life was REALLY like, behind closed doors. Now, I post pictures of my children at the park. I feel so conspicuous - and, dare I say, judged - that I completely censor my writing now. It's unsatisfying. 

This is not the first time I've started a shiny new blog with the intention of finding my writing mojo. It is, however, the first time I've done it without telling anyone. We'll see how it goes for awhile.