Buying Used

This past weekend was the semi-annual consignment sale run by one of the local MOPS groups.  It is a very well-run event and always has a great selection of items.  I had factored into the budget that this month would be a bigger month for spending on the kids because they both needed a lot of new things for fall/winter.  It’s a cash-only sale so I stopped by the ATM and took out $140 to spend there.  I had some specific clothing needs in mind and also figured I would check out the toys to see if there were any good deals for Christmas gifts.

I ended up spending $125 ($1 of which was the admission charge) and walked out with 67 articles of clothing.  That included a Christmas dress for Allison, pajamas, jeans, sweaters, long-sleeve shirts, a few skirts/jumpers for Allison and shoes for each of them to wear with their Halloween costumes.  The toys didn’t really thrill me but I felt really good about my clothing purchases. 

And the best part – if you look over their wardrobes you would think I spent thousands of dollars.  I am blessed to live in a reasonably affluent area and the things that are given away as hand-me-downs are usually top quality, name brand items.  And everything is in excellent condition.

At this age children grow out of things before they wear them out.  So buying gently used makes excellent sense for us.  And we sell our gently used things too.  It’s a nice circle actually.

What about you?  Are you open to bargain hunting for used children’s clothing?

 

Nesting

It’s cold today.  Cold and drizzly and bordering on snow.  And I am itching to be anywhere but where I am.  Well, mostly I’m itching to be home with fall candles burning sending their warm delicious smell throughout the house. I’d put on my favorite super soft gray long-sleeve tee and some extra fuzzy socks.  Maybe I’d even have the fire on (gas fire place so I wouldn’t actually “start” a fire so much as “turn it on”) assuming the kids weren’t home.  But I think I’d like the kids to be home too.  We could do something indoors like baking cookies (against the advice of my doctor on the sugars!) or making construction paper jack-o-lanterns.  Or we could bundle up and venture outside to collect leaves and pinecones and other vestiges of fall and then return inside for some cocoa while we glue those little treasures onto some cardboard to make art.

What is it about a glum-looking day that makes me want to nest?

More About Me

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a health update about myself here and it’s probably about time.

As you know if you’ve been reading along for awhile, I’ve been sick since last September.  I’ve been to several doctors (ENT, GI, my primary care, OB/GYN) and have recently added a new component to my health care team.  I’ve been seeing a chiropractor who also specializes in alternative medicine and this week I had my first appointment with an acupuncturist. 

Some of the treatments have been a bit, well, wacky, but the truth is I’m feeling better than I’ve felt in more than a year.  The symptoms are not gone.  But they are less frequent and I am learning to manage them a bit better.  I’m working hard to reduce my sugar intake (so please, don’t offer me any cookies – I just can’t resist) and that seems to be helping. 

There is still no official diagnosis but all of the doctors seem to agree that it appears to be a problem with my hormone levels.  They test fine but clearly something is out of balance.  I’m waiting on the results of a saliva hormones test and hoping that will shed some additional insight.

To anyone who has suffered a chronic illness, I want to offer you my deepest sympathies.  I never before realized just how difficult and draining it is – even when it doesn’t seem to be “that bad” or you “get used to it”.  The truth is, it may become part of your life and your routine, but you never really get used to how deeply it affects your life. 

And if you are part of the support system for someone living with chronic illness – thank you.  That’s a hard job – possibly even harder than being the one who is sick.  I can only imagine how helpless you feel when seeing your loved one suffer. 

Let me end this entry by saying that being sick changes who you are as a person.  Sometimes I barely recognize myself anymore and I can hardly remember what it felt like to feel normal.  But I’m working really hard to get back there. 

Becoming The Browns - Part 6

To satisfy Mrs.Sully and speed this process up you're getting two installments today. I honestly didn't know it would take so long but as I started to write it all out I realized there were several critical pieces in bringing me to Mr. Brown and him to me. Telling the story without those parts would not be doing it justice.

So where were we... ah, yes... Sparty.

I thought Sparty and I wanted the same things in life. And on the face of it, we really did. We both wanted a family and kids and a house with a picket fence. You know - the American Dream. What I didn't know was that in his American Dream Mrs. Sparty would be some slightly less glamorous version of a super model.

If you know me you know that I am many things, caring, kind, witty (or so I like to think), smart, even possibly cute or pretty. But supermodel I am not. Size 2 has never hung in my closest, nor will it probably.

It's ironic because while dating him I really started to get serious about getting and staying healthy. I dropped about 20 lbs. But despite my progress I never felt good about myself. Because he never let me. I don't know whether it was intentional or subconscious manifestations but I always knew that I wasn't slim enough for Sparty.

And in the 8 months or so that we dated he never made me feel good about myself. I always felt like I was waiting for more... more attention and affection and support. And while his words were the right ones his actions (mostly indifference) made me question myself - something I'm not prone to doing. I later asked my best friend why she never told me what a bad relationship it was. She told me that even if she had I wouldn't have listened - I needed to figure it out for myself - and she was 100% right.

It was in February 2001 - while Sparty and I were still dating - that I ran into Mr Brown in the cafeteria at work. He asked me to get together sometime. I made it very clear I was dating someone and he didn't mind - it was just friends. So we had our first "date" - except that we didn't call it a date - one Friday night while Sparty was too busy to be bothered calling me back (a real winner, see).

Mr. Brown and I met at Baker's Square for pie and coffee and then hit up the bowling alley for some cosmic bowl. I almost dropped a 10 lb bowling ball on my foot but that was just a good laugh for us. It was a great time. Mr. Brown never once made me feel like he wanted to be anywhere but exactly where he was at that moment with me. Now that can make a girl feel special.

Over the next month Mr. Brown and I hung out a few more times - very casually. Sparty even knew about it but didn't seem to care. So who was I to turn down time with a cute guy who actually wanted to spend time with me.

March 15, 2001 - Sparty and I decide we need to take "a break". Actually, he decided it. I cried and asked him to reconsider. We agreed that we'd talk again in one month (at Easter) and see how we were feeling about things. This was a low point for me. I didn't want a break. I just wanted to work on things and move forward. And for the first two weeks I was miserable. But slowly I started to get used to life without him and I didn't really miss him so much. By Easter I was ready to call it quits for good. He apparently had had a change of heart. His 4 weeks were opposite of mine - the first 2 he was glad to be without me but then he started to really miss me and wanted to try again.

So we did. Very, very, very slowly. We went on occasional dates. Always preplanned - never assumed like I was his girlfriend. But the more often we did it, the less often I wanted to. And things with Mr. Brown were going well. We spent tons of time together and just like that first night he always made me feel like the most important woman in the room and that there was no where else he would rather be.

Finally in mid-May everything came to a head. Sparty and I went out to dinner after an especially bad day at work for me. And he didn't understand. Not only did he not understand, he didn't want to understand. I got out of his car that night and never called him again. He never called me either. It was the last time we spoke. I suppose there was nothing more to say. The only time I saw him after that was once when I was driving near his apartment and he was crossing the street. He didn't see me.

The very next weekend Mr. Brown and I had plans. It was spring and I was itching for a trip to Notre Dame. So we drove down there for the day, had a wonderful time walking around campus, and when we got back he told me he "just didn't think things were going to work out between us." In fact - he'd specifically shown up late for our day trip that day in hopes that it would annoy me enough to call things off. But I was so used to being treated with utter indifference by Sparty that I never once noticed Mr. Browns attempts to avoid being the "dumper."

That weekend was sad for me. I'd gone from casually dating two guys to being alone again. It was going to be a long summer.

Becoming The Browns - Part 5

You have all waited so patiently for the next part of the story.  And I appreciate that.  I really do.  It turns out that BEING the Browns has been a lot more important in the last few months than describing how we BECAME the Browns.

So, without further ado…

 

The phone call from the ex-roommate’s ex-boyfriend, I’ll call him Sparty since he’s an Michigan State alumnus.  It was so unexpected and odd.  I knew this guy relatively well – he’d visited her while we were still in college and spent plenty of time at our old apartment.  But he and I were never friends.  I don’t think we’d ever had any interaction outside of things involving my friend.  And in retrospect, I’m not even sure how he had my number.  But he did, and he called.

 

That conversation changed a whole lot of things in the course of my life.  But I’ll get there.  For now you need to know that we talked for hours that night about anything and everything.  And I learned that we had a lot in common – politics and goals in life and family background.  I was amazed that I had never known how similar we were.  I think he was surprised too.  I’ve often asked myself why he called that day.  I suspect he was just lonely.  Sparty and my friend had broken up about 5 months before and it wasn’t exactly an amicable split.  And he didn’t have roommates and most of his college friends were living in Michigan so I think his circle of friends in the Windy City was small.  On top of that, while I will defend my friend to the end, I wasn’t always happy with her choices during the breaking up with Sparty.  So I think he thought I might be a sympathetic ear and a friendly voice.

 

We made plans at the end of that conversation to get together.  It wasn’t a date exactly – I was certain he had no romantic intentions toward me but the setting seemed date-like.  Drinks and dinner at a local restaurant.  But on a weeknight after work.  We had a nice time and so we kept getting together on a semi-regular basis.  Probably every other week or so.

 

One specific memory I have is that we had plans on a weekend and I drove to his place but instead of finding him home, his dad was there.  He said Sparty was actually at the car dealership purchasing a car but wanted me to wait for him.  So his dad actually drove me over to the dealership and I got to be the first to ride in his brand new car.  (a Mitsubishi Eclipse, for curious minds.  Even more curious, Mr. Brown thinks the Eclipse is strictly a girl’s car.)  The next thing I knew it was the 4^th of July and we went together to his parent’s house in western Michigan.  We had a great time, watching fireworks, going to town festivals and just generally hanging out.  At that point we still weren’t really dating.  But you wouldn’t know it to look at us.  It was on that trip that I started to think that maybe I should stay in Chicago.

 

Ah – here is where I should mention that before Sparty and I started getting chummy I had been researching the options for going back to grad school at Georgia Tech.  In fact, I’d actually had my original admission deferred to Fall 2000 and had been apartment hunting in Atlanta.  I may have even made a deposit on a place (I know I had one picked out).

But spending time with Sparty made me think that I couldn’t leave Chicago.  I loved Chicago.  I had so many friends there and while I really disliked my job I did adore being in the city.  So I made another monumental decision.  Some might say monumentally stupid but I have to remind myself that if it weren’t for Sparty I never would have become Mrs. Brown.  

 

The decision – instead of moving to Atlanta I would stay in Chicago.  I still enrolled at Georgia Tech through their distance learning program (the precursor to today’s online learning – I watched videos of lectures, faxed in homework and took exams by proxy) and started working on my Master’s degree.  And I moved from the city to the suburbs – just a few miles away from Sparty’s apartment.

 

This was the honeymoon phase of my relationship with Sparty.  We loved spending time together and seemed to be headed in the same direction in life.

 

And what about Mr. Brown during this period?  He was still doing his dating juggling act – not very successfully, I might add.

Where Has My Baby Gone?

It happened over the weekend.  Peter is no longer a baby.  I swear that time flies faster with the 2^nd child.  With Allison we (well, mostly I) were waiting for every milestone – rolling, crawling, walking, talking.  But with Peter, no matter what changes he goes through I still think of him as my tiny baby who needs help with everything.  But over the weekend he sure proved me wrong.

 

It started on Thursday night with a clear declaration for his milk.  No mincing of words.  He knew what he wanted and said it clear as day.  His vocabulary is rapidly expanding and becoming clearer daily.  On Saturday he got himself out of house to the car – that’s down the steps and then walking to the car.  Of course he still can’t get in by himself but he can get out of the house and walk to the car!  Finally, on Saturday night he toddles up to me with a diaper in hand, hands it over and then promptly lays down on the floor to be changed.  Sure enough – he was poopy.  Granted it was a swim diaper so I had to run upstairs for a regular diaper but still – he knew what needed to be done. 

 

I seriously cannot believe how independent he is getting. 

I have not been ignoring you...

I promise. But life has been nuts the past two months. Over the summer I have been developing training at work for our system conversion from a really old (circa 1989) heritage system to SAP. That has taken almost all of my energy. And over the last 3 weeks we've finally been conducting the training. That has been een more exhausting because I spend every day, all day in front of a group of people that aren't sure they really even want a new system but they are getting it anyway.

On top of that, at home, Allison has transitioned out of the crib into the toddler bed. Great for potty training but she seems to think it's a game to get out of bed about 100 times each night before finally going to sleep. This has severly cut into our downtime in the evenings.

And the icing on the cake... blogger is now blocked at work as a "social networking" site. So no daytime updates (not that I've had spare time at work lately).

SAP goes live on Monday so I promise to be back to more regular posting soon.