You ever bumble along and you know things are challenging and some people have a much more difficult time rolling with the punches than you do, so you try to absorb those punches for them because you are tough and you can take it…and then you find out they have been crumbling anyway? That is a really crappy and hopeless feeling.
Just really crappy…
Send prayers this way please…I promise not to waste any of them.
Peace out yo, Jil
Sorry to have abandoned you but I have been doing this…
This is Anna…she will be 2 on March 17th. She was born on St. Patrick’s Day. She has more personality in her pinky finger than most people I know as adults do. She is charming. She uses the phrase, “Happy Birthday”, like a threat (you have to wonder what she thinks it means). She wears me out. She has red hair…in case you somehow missed that. At the ripe old age of 1 1/2 she owns her red hair, this makes me sigh…a lot.
AND…
I also did this…
This is Kate. She was born on October 30th, the day before Halloween. She is almost 11 weeks old. She is tiny…like, shockingly small. She also furrows her brows a lot. She is young but apparently the world already disappoints her…A LOT. She is a Scorpio…I am a Scorpio…discuss amongst yourselves what that will mean for our mother/daughter battles when she enters her teen years. I cringe already at the thought. Her hair is dark…but it was pointed out to me recently that her hair appears to be turning a dark red shade…LORD HELP ME. That is all I have to say about that.
So there you have it.
I am not saying it’s a valid excuse for not posting, ANYTHING…AT ALL…for two years…but I have been a little busy. That’s all I am sayin’…
Also, Jason should graduate with his Associate of Science this fall. He got laid off two weeks before Kate was born and found a new job two weeks after. IT was scary but it was a blessing, for Jason and for our family at large. He is happier, he is respected, he is paid better, he has more opportunity to advance before him…it is good. I left the corporate world in July of 2011, Anna was 4 months old. I returned to the classroom. This is my second school year back in the classroom (I taught for 11 years before I went corporate). I am teaching 2 1/2 year olds turning 3. I love what I do. I am happy with what I do. I find it fulfilling, challenging, life affirming…AMAZING. I should turn that into a haiku, except I have two children under the age of 2 and I am too tired to do it…besides, I don’t have a brain anymore, it leaked out onto the table as I delivered my children. Too much info? Don’t care 🙂
This is my life. I am trying to find balance. I want to blog again. I loved doing it before. I have started to pick up where I left off here many times over the last two years…but I think it didn’t work because too much has changed. This will no longer be a weight-loss blog. It will be a blog by a girl who had weight loss surgery, who has succeeded in having a life which is the whole point of the surgery in the first place. Every now and then I am sure it will come up. RNY will always be part of who I am but it no longer defines me.
Sooo…This is me now.
I am still winning the weight-loss battle. I feel good most days. I would like to lose 16 lbs. I didn’t gain too terribly much with either of my pregnancies but they were close together so I had only lost half of my Anna weight before I added Kate weight. I am working on it. I had 2 C-Sections…so…well…I have some work to do. 16 lbs is not unattainable…and I fully plan to attain it 🙂 Just so you know.
Anywho…this felt good tonight…writing to you all out there…if anyone is still out there that is…if not…it felt good just for me…I have probably needed this for awhile…so here is to the new year, here is to health, happiness and ME! I have very specific plans to kick this years ass!
Peace Outside Yo,
JustJil
Three weeks to go…perhaps.
22.5 lbs gained. SO far…don’t know what the next couple of weeks will mean for me in that respect…I am okay with it in general. Still difficult at times but…well…with pregnancy there is weight gain. It’s a natural and necessary part of the process.
I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. It will be my final Ultrasound…at my last appointment they determined that the baby is head down and I was just under 1 cm dilated…which they assured me was good. So it has been two weeks and we will see what we see…I will be at 37 weeks on Thursday which they consider to be full term…so…any time after that is fine with me…I still hope to make it to near her actual due date which is March 17th. Hopefully they will also be able to estimate her size tomorrow…it would just be good to know. Anna’s room is ready and her car-seat is in the car…my bag is packed, her bag is packed, Jason’s bag is packed…they are all in the car so now it is just a waiting game. I find myself anxious, tired, overwhelmed with how tired I am and how often I pee…and how tired I am…and how tired I am…and how often I repeat myself because of how tired I am…and that I don’t realize that I am repeating myself…because of how tired I am. 🙂
In general everything is good. It’s a little hectic de casa de Jil and Jason because… drum-roll please…Jason got a new job…a land job…a job that requires NO travel whatsoever…but they are behind on a project so he is working 10 hour days 6 days a week and he does homework all day Sunday…and he goes to school right after work on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday…I am grateful that he is working…He is grateful to be working…but I would be remiss if I didn’t say, sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for 🙂 We are trying to get the insurance situation sorted out…as there have been some complications with his old job and we will have to do COBRA for a month or two and his former company has not been, exactly gracious about it…SO MUCH FUN…especially when you could be having a baby at any minute…lol
It will all work out…I KNOW this…but it still makes for some drama…
All in all…though life is jam packed right now…things are good…my health is good, Jason’s is good, the baby is good…My step-mom Becky is doing so much better with her radiation and chemo…she only has two and a half weeks left of radiation and she seems to be responding pretty well to it so far. The chemo is hard on her but getting better…and her hair has started to come back in so that is a plus…she still has chemo for another 10 months but hopefully she will continue to respond better and better to it! Your prayers as always are still welcome and appreciated 🙂
Anyway…I guess I will wind things up here…
All of my family and friends are very excited to meet the long anticipated Anna Paige…I am too…and Jason is about to come out of his skin…he is so tired of waiting…lol…of course he has no idea what he is in for 🙂 I am looking forward to seeing him as a dad…with his little girl…he is smitten already and she hasn’t even arrived yet…
Anywho…to all of you out there that have been a part of this blog…thanks for your support and continued prayers…I may update tomorrow or Thursday after the doctor’s appointment if there is anything new to report…if not…see you on the flip side of motherhood…
Love to you all…
JustJil
So…it’s been awhile…
Check, check…is this thing on?
Crickets Chirping…
I deserve that…lol…
So here is the thing.
I got married March 6th…2010…but then you already knew that. Jason started going to school in August…God Bless the GI Bill 🙂 So it has been nice having him home…consistently…
Let’s see…anything else? Hmmm…Oh yeah, I am pregnant! The whole doctor telling us that it was not going to happen thing…not so much…We are due in two months…two weeks before our first anniversary! We are thrilled, over the moon, so very excited…clearly God had different ideas about our lives than the doctor did. It was a surprising and amazing thing to find out, after having been told for 15+ years that I would not be able to have children on my own that I was indeed carrying a baby. The word “shock” cannot fully relay how I felt…
The pregnancy has been an adventure for sure…I feel pretty good. Of course we are coming down the home stretch now and I am tired and I don’t ever want to pee again…EVER! The first part of the pregnancy came off without a hitch…I had bad morning sickness…in fact it was so bad that it carried over from morning into noon and night for the first 6 1/2 months…lol…everyday, all day long…whew. Thankfully that passed a few weeks ago. Other than that all has been good. We are having a girl, her name is : Anna Paige…she is officially due on March 17th…St. Patrick’s Day 🙂 I have an appointment for an ultrasound this Friday and they will be able to tell us how big she is…she feels huge but I know most Gastric Patients have smaller babies so we will see.
Speaking of Gastric Bypass and pregnancy. That part of the journey has not come without it’s trials. As I said, March is our first wedding Anniversary…it will also be the third anniversary of my Gastric bypass and then of course Anna is due…March has become a big month for us…lol…although I am almost three years out at this point my stomach never did stretch…I can still only eat about 1/2 a cup to 3/4 of a cup of food at a time if it is a slider food. This of course has proved a challenge with a little one on the way. For the first several months I lost weight and then slowly began to put some on…all in all at 32 weeks pregnant I have gained 14 lbs… obviously not typical but I struggled physically and emotionally through every one of those pounds. I fought hard to gain them and died a little each time I succeeded. I know how important the nourishment is for the baby and I never tried to sabotage that or anything drastic…but the pregnancy has put me above the 200 mark. Granted it is 204 but over it is over it and I know I will probably gain 5 or more pounds before all is said and done…I can’t tell you the anguish that accompanied the morning that I hit 200…200 is such an ugly number to me…it was symbolic of hurt and pain and disillusion. I am trying to associate a new meaning to it…one of health and joy and a happy baby. That is a work in progress…It helps to know that once she has been born I am well equipped to take the weight off. I have the tools and I will succeed again.
I am blessed. So very blessed…at times it is easy to gloss over that and get lost in the comings and goings of the days and weeks and months but at the end of the day…once again God’s plans for me, and indeed my family have far exceeded any I had for myself.
Speaking of family. Becky, my step-mom has been fighting breast cancer now for almost a year…it has not been easy. She has had her mastectomy. She has gone through the initial 5 months of chemo, she is finishing up 5 weeks of radiation and she has begun a residual year of chemo… unfortunately the Cancer she has feeds off of estrogen and certain proteins which make it a complicated beast to beat. All in all she is doing a think as well as can be expected. She was approved for Gastric Bypass, the same day she found out she had cancer. It was not a good day as you might well imagine. She is still approved and once they can get her anemia under control they have said she can go through with the surgery. In fact it will probably help with her recovery. I do not envy her…but am so proud of her and blessed to have her as a “mom”…if you could say a prayer or a thousand for her and my dad, I would be much obliged.
Also if you could say one here and there for Jason and Anna and I…I wouldn’t turn my nose up at those either. We will have some tough decisions ahead of us soon…Jason needs to find a new job. As he can’t work offshore and go to school and of course he wants to be home with the baby and I as well…so big changes to come in the year ahead for the Jaeger’s…
Anywho…I don’t know when I will post again. It may be 2012…lol..I will try to not wait that long but I make no promises.
Prayers for you all out there in the blogging cosmos…whereas I may not show it as much as I once did…I value you all…thanks for being a part of my journey…you add depth and richness to my life’s journey.
xoxo…Jil
The husband has returned…bring on the giddiness and joy. It’s true…we are newlyweds after all…
We are newlyweds and yet…we aren’t new. In some ways I feel like we have been at this for a long time…not in the sense that we know each other in and out or that we have only shared experiences now…but more over because we have been playing the hello/goodbye game since the beginning…as much as a pain in the ass as planning the wedding was (and if you have read any previous posts, you will know exactly how whiny I was and how tedious I found the whole process) and how long it took to orchestrate it all…the wedding itself was essentially wedged in between…Jason heading out on his work hitches…he came home a week and a half before the wedding, we got married, we left for a 6 days for the honeymoon, we came home on a Friday night and he left that Sunday and was gone four weeks…came home for three weeks and was gone two months…basically…the wedding was a blip in the calendar of our life…I am glad we had one, I am glad we are legal, I am glad there were witnesses but it has not changed our day to day life. The ins and outs remain the same. I was not really expecting it to change things but at the same time it’s a little surprising that life really did just continue on it’s merry way…if there weren’t so many pictures capturing the day…it might not really exist at all…
I am not sure where all of this is headed, I am not unhappy or dissatisfied…I guess I am just in a state of musing. Jason has been home for almost a week now…I love when he is home…but I will be honest…as bad as it is and as much as I hate that it happens…the moment he steps foot back on land, for me the countdown til he leaves again begins…and it is not that I am looking forward to his leaving…I know some women would be and I understand that…but I am not one of them…yet….I say yet only because almost everyone I know, assures me that I someday will be but I have my doubts about that. To the contrary I hate that he is going to leave and it taints the time we do have together a little bit…he had only been home a couple of days, after having been gone almost 2 full months when his office called him and wanted to know when he would be ready to go back into the work rotation…he told them that he would not be willing to go back out until after July 4th…so I know that I have at least until then…unless the NAVY calls and wants to contract him again and then he basically has to go…you just don’t say “No” to the NAVY…at the end of the day, the point of this is that I have a difficult time trying to live fully in the moment. I am a planner by nature…for years I lived exclusively out of my organizer…I don’t really do that anymore but I am still a planner at heart…and as we gear up for him to head back out…I often check off my mental checklist how many things he is going to miss, birthdays, holidays, Mondays, Tuesdays, weekends…it is just very difficult for me not to have his departure at the back of my mind…
When he is home…I know that I am the heart of his world…I am at the center of every decision he makes, every meal he partakes of, errand that he runs, improvement that he makes to the house…when he is gone he tells me (when we are allowed communication) that I am on his mind every waking moment.
So why can’t I check it at the door and live for the moment while he is home? It bugs me that I always have that nagging voice in the back of my mind saying, it’s only temporary…I know it’s a defense mechanism…but it’s annoying all the same.
He plans to go to school this fall…I am looking forward to it…but even that will be temporary…he will take a leave of absence from work for the time he is in school, rotating semesters, school one semester and then returning to work for one semester and then school and then work and so on and so forth…until he is done…
I am looking forward to that time but there is also apprehension present…
On to other topics…My mom is an Assisted living program now…she went in last Wednesday…no drama so far…I pray with everything I have in me that it works out…I have two weeks to empty out her apartment…that is going to be a process…but it must be done…
My dad and Becky are coming home for the 4th of July weekend…and that will be great…her chemo seems to be going relatively well…she will have her 3rd round the day after they get back and then they will schedule her mastectomy…she has lost her hair and has bought a few wigs…she doesn’t want the grandkids to know she is sick…I can’t blame her but I think Sabrina (my brother Peter’s oldest daughter) is old enough to know…she will be 9 in a couple of months…but that is Becky’s decision…
Other than that, life goes on…
Daisy (our beagle) is good…Remy (our puppy) is an annoying little cuss…I am almost positive that she will grow out of it…almost…but she is awfully cute when you don’t want to wring her little neck…lol
Anyway…this post really is all about checking in…and making sure you guys know we are alive and relatively speaking, well!
Love ya all out there…
J
So… today is Jason’s birthday. He is 38. We have never gotten to celebrate his birthday together…we have never gotten to celebrate my birthday together either…we celebrated my birthday early one year…and his early this year…as in a whole month early but we have never actually been together on our birthdays. It kinda really totally sucks. So I wished my husband “Happy Birthday” on Facebook…wahoo…how screwed up is that? Everyone is trying to be super helpful by saying things like, “Don’t stress about it, you only care right now cause you just got married, in 15 years you won’t even care if he is not there in fact you will be glad if he is gone/out of town/on an ocean somewhere…””…umm…WTF? I mean I know they are just trying to be helpful…in their own special way…but the reality is that I have not been married for 15 years…I have been married for a whopping 15 minutes and it is okay for me to be a little down that on his birthday my husband is on a ship on his way to the frigid arctic circle and I am here, taking care of the house and walking the dogs and carrying forth with “our” life…
So there…Hmphhh…
Anywho…can you tell I am a bit down today?
I think I mentioned my stepmom Becky, was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of weeks ago right? Well she had her first round of chemo on Monday and I think she thought she was going to not be affected by it that badly because the day afterwards she felt decent. Then she called the day after that (yesterday) crying because she doesn’t feel good…I feel so horribly for her…she has my Dad there and a couple of friends…but all of our family is here (Houston, TX) and in Kansas City, KS…she is in Little Rock, AR…I wish I could be there for her…just to make her laugh and feel like she is not so isolated…but it is not to be…
I hate Medicaid and Social Security…this is unrelated to Becky and her cancer…this has everything to do with my biological mother and the fact that all SS and Medicaid do is jerk her chain and complicate my life…
I hate TxDOT too…but that is completely unrelated…
Wow…there is a whole lot of hate going on in this post…so i will try to change it up…
I LOVE wedge heels…love them…I have two pair now…one copper colored and one black and I love them…I also love my dutch oven and my KitchenAid Stand Mixer…
I love my patio garden and the fact that I am no longer a plant killer…and in fact seem to have some sort of a gift…I find joy in in my backyard…and I have some happy plants…proof that old dogs can learn new tricks…
Here are a few random things today…
Well…I guess that is all for now…
Love ya all out there in the blogging cosmos…
JustJil
Greetings and salutations…
As usual I have not been great about keeping this blog super-duper current…oops. I have been having a fairly tough go of things lately and sometimes when the going gets tough, the tough quit blogging…because the tough are actually wusses…
I am in the process of trying to get my mother into an Assisted Living program…I knew the process would suck…AND…it does….it’s a bunch of red-tape-bureaucratic-bullsh*t…but necessary…we will both be better for it…down the road when it is done and the transition has been made…
Jason is gone for awhile, he left 2 1/2 weeks ago and has been up Virginia…but now he is in England and then he heads off to an area which I cannot speak of…lol…he should be home around June 20th…so gone 8 weeks this time…this has been a tough time for me…I am good with him going, he has been gone before…many times over…but things are just so messy with my mom right now it would be good to be able to have some support…ah well…it is what it is…and hopefully by the time he gets home I will have it all sorted out…
I have been lining up some projects to do while he is gone…so I think I am going to paint our downstairs half bath this weekend…maybe…possibly…I was supposed to have a girls road-trip weekend but tragically the girl I was going with lost her husbands cousin to a suicide this weekend…they could use some prayers…they could really, really use some prayers…
Also, My stepmom was diagnosed with Breast cancer two weeks ago…it popped up very quickly and it is very aggressive. They said that it has roots and tendrils and she will have to have a mastectomy. She begins chemo today…more prayers please…I feel horrible for her…the day she found out she would have to have a mastectomy was ironically enough also the day that her approval letter for Gastric Bypass came in…she had been waiting anxiously for that letter…hoping that all would be approved and now, clearly it is on the back burner…I pray she regains enough of her health to beat the breast cancer and also be able to have the bypass…she is an insulin dependent diabetic and the gastric bypass would cure that…it would make an amazing difference in her life… pray that all goes well with the chemo and subsequent surgeries please…she could sure use them…
In all of this craziness I have had amazing support around me…helping me to cope with all of this and lifting me up…I don’t thank my friends nearly enough…but it is so very appreciated…especially with Jason being gone.
The puppies are good…having Remy around has truly turned Daisy to the good side…now if I could just get Remy trained…lol…her “puppiness” knows no limits…
I had a great weekend spent with friends, hit some fun stores for interesting groceries…bought a cute top, went to a BBQ (Thanks Laurie Lou)…saw some more friends, Michelle and Amber and their partners and met some new people as well…and capped it off by seeing Iron Man II…busy, busy, busy…but good!
My youngest cousin Brian’s birthday is Tuesday and so I am going to My other cousin Brett’s for dinner that evening and then maybe out to dinner sometime later in the week with friends again…Trying to keep busy…
That is it for now…for the most part…
Love to you all, blessings and prayers…JustJil
I leave you all with a photo from our honeymoon in Mexico…
Far away...
I hate lies.
and just in case anyone is wondering…omission of the truth is still a lie. Just because you know something and don’t say the opposite out loud doesn’t mean you aren’t being dishonest.
I hate disloyalty.
Do not claim you are someones friend if your actions are going to consistently say otherwise. Admit the friendship is not working and move on but do not claim a loyalty that is no longer there just out of habit or to save face.
I don’t like to have my time wasted by people that are pretending to be something they are not. If I am going to dedicate my time to you, to us, to our friendship then I want to know that what we have is real and valued…
That is all…Happy Friday.
J
My boy is coming home. Yay…I will be a wife soon…lol…Tomorrow we will have been married exactly a month…and he will get home shortly after midnight tonight…so he will be home on our one month anniversary :)…don’t worry, I won’t be announcing our anniversary every month…but this one is special…because…it will be the first one and because he has been gone all of it…lol…he left a week after we were married…so it will be the first time since we were married that we will both be home together…we were gone, blessedly, for the whole week after we got married so we haven’t been home together yet…and I will feel like we are really married…funny I know but true.
I hope all have had a wonderful Easter. Mine was…quiet. Which is not a bad thing. I went to church alone, joined some friends for lunch and then returned home to spend the afternoon in solitude…I had opportunities to go a few places but I needed to just be at my home…preparing for the arrival of the mister. I had set out some goals for myself when he left and I achieved almost none of them 🙂 I am a tried and true procrastinator…One thing that jacked up all of my wellintentioned plans was…drumroll please…
I got a new puppy sister for Daisy…her name is Remy…she is a dachshund/chihuahua mix…but she looks like a black lab with short legs…lol…she will be 10 weeks old tomorrow and she is a real hand-full…Daisy is quite taken with her…it is going far better than I had hoped…although it has been a long time since I house-trained a puppy this young…Oi…just oi…I will survive, I will survive…hey, hey…She has had her first trip to the vet, this past week and got a clean bill of health…she has had her first round of stuff and is due for her next round on the 23rd of this month.
Remy Jaeger
Remy and Daisyhill...
So there they are…
Also…I don’t have the official wedding pictures yet…but here are a few that my maid of honors husband took…
Just Jil...
Jil, Jason and the dudes...
Married...
So that is that…lol…when I get the real deals I will throw a couple on here…
I guess that is all for now…
Love to you all out there in the collective bloggong cosmos…
JustJil…
I am a wife…
It’s true…there were witnesses…lol
The wedding went off pretty well…no major drama, no real disasters…I actually felt like I looked like a bride and for once…I actually thought I looked quite pretty…I got to see some wonderful friends that I don’t see often and some that I see all the time and value to such a great extent as to say it would not have been as great a joy if they were not there…
We honeymooned in Playa del Carmen in Mexico and it was wonderful, we swam with the Dolphins, snorkeled, walked the ruins in Tulum and ate food that was so good I am still savouring each bite…we stayed at an amzing resort that was beautiful and so much fun, we saw shows, we shopped a bit, we swam, we sunned, we loved…it is a time I will never forget…but…
I was ready to return to real life…which is a mixed bag of sorts…lol…we arrived home late Friday and Jason left Sunday for work…he will get back the day after Easter…this was not a surprise, before we even left on our honeymoon we knew when he would be leaving…the issue is now this…The house is clean, gifts are unpacked and put away, the things we are not keeping (old stuff) has been gathered and placed in the garage for friends who want or need it, or a garage sale down the road…my planner that I have lived out of for the last 6 months is empty…literally…I am having dinner or coffee with a friend on Friday and that is all I have in my planner at all for the next three weeks…I don’t know what to do with myself…I don’t really want to watch TV much, Daisy chewed up my glasses so reading is out, I have a couple of craft/art projects that I want to do but really I have all of spring and summer to do them…I am completely without focus…As much of a pain in the ass as the wedding was, it also gave me things that needed accomplishing and deadlines…now…well…again my planner is empty…I am going to have to do some soul searching…I was expecting this really…just not so fast…lol
I am well and truly at a crossroads…I think a lot of us post WLSr’s reach this point, probably around now…I will be two years out on March 20th…so in essence I am two years out…I have maintained my current weight for almost a year…I am good with where I am, I wear a 12 or 14, I feel pretty good most days….I am and always will be grateful for this tool, the tool still works for me…but…it is no longer my life. I think that is healthy….the whole point of the surgery was to get my life back and I have that…so…where do I go from here? I will always be a WLS patient…but by and large…it is more a part of my foundation than my daily life…I have some new challenges on the horizon…and I want to embrace those things…I guess the point of all of this is that this will no longer be a WLS blog…if things come up regarding WLS I will always blog about it because I owe it to the WLS community and myself. I will never hide or forget where I came from however it will be more about a girl living life who had WLS once upon a time. I know I am not the first to change blog direction, several on my own blogroll have changed focus over the last year…it’s just how life goes…
So this is where I am today…I have started down a new path, I have to figure out what it means to be a good wife, a loving companion and part of a new family. It will be a challenge…I am for sure up to the task but it will be somewhat daunting at times…
I thank all of you for being such a great source of support and inspiration to me over the last two years…I have loved being a part of your journey’s and feel truly humbled to have had you all as part of mine…I hope you will stick around…because I am sure to do some stupid stuff and of course I will need witnesses…lol
Love to you all…
Mrs. Jaeger
Shut Your Piehole... 