I used to think that people who say that Christmas isn’t about the presents were people that had money to buy them, haha. Well, this year Sean and I aren’t exchanging presents. And Elena is only getting a few if that. We can’t afford to go all out this year. And I am SOOO excited about Christmas this year. More this year than any year. Sure Elena doesn’t know what Christmas is yet, but just having her for the holidays is magical itself.

You know what our family is getting for xmas this year? A roof over our heads, food in our fridge and heat for the house and cars to get us to our jobs. Some people don’t even have those things. And then I understand them being down of course.

Instead of buying ourselves shit we don’t need, we are hosting a little gathering for our family christmas eve, decorated our tree, baking come cookies and sending out our christmas cards. Thats what I love about Christmas. Seeing friends and family, listening to christmas music, watching the classics like How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the cartoon not that nasty remake with Jim Carrey).

I would love to be able to give all my friends and family awesome gifts, but that’s not what makes Christmas.

I have no words for the people who have money and just hate buying gifts for people, those people are just assholes.

Ok, I’m getting off my soapbox now (since Elena is awake and crying, lol)

Merry f’in Christmas!!! <3

I LOVE…being a new mom.

I LOVE…that I have the piece of mind of leaving Elena with my best friend Crystal instead of with strangers when I go back to work.

I LOVE…that I am going to see Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 tonight with Sarah L., woot woot!!!

I LOVE…that so many loved ones are coming to visit next week! Brooke from NY, Jaime from MS and another friend but she is surprising her family, so I can’t mention her yet

I LOVE…when Elena smiles

I LOVE…that Elena is starting to get into a bedtime routine. I don’t want to jinx it, but Operation in bed by 7pm/Sleep in your own damn bed has been working. She goes down at 7 in her crib and generally wakes up around 11 or midnight and then around 3 or 4 for feedings. Which she is supposed to do since she is only 9 weeks old.

I LOVE…that I already started Christmas shopping. This is a rarity. I normally do all my shopping a week before xmas. Everything changes with kids, right? Haha

I LOVE…heated seats in the car. They are magical!!

I LOVE…that I survived my first week back at work and that it will be over after today and I get two whole days with my baby girl!! <3

What do you love today?

check out the new diggs HERE

I’m wicked excited abut it!! Don’t forget to update your reader or RSS Feed (is that what its called? I’m still a NOOB) to my new location!!

XOXO Lauren

I forget the timing exactly, it was after I finally came home from running away, after my mom broke up with the creepy boyfriend finally. She even admits now that he was a little too funny around me.

Anyways, my mom met Mike, her fourth, current and last husband. The one that was actually a good fit for once. He was a southern gentleman, a navy man and he pretty much swept my mother off her feet. They went to flower shows, weekends on the cape, he eventually proposed. It was rather quickly actually.

He saved us. He bought a new house and we moved. We left everything at the old house, furniture, mattresses, pictures, clothes, EVERYTHING. It was all crap anyways. No more house from hell, no more bad memories, no more being embarrassed because your house is so disgusting you can’t have friends over. My little brother tried to make the move with us, but he was already in and out of rehab then, so he didn’t hack it.

Mike made it possible for me to get my drivers license, he let me drive one of his cars to and from school and work and flag line practice. We ate dinner together. He cooked; hell, we had food in the house!And if the dishes were dirty-he would wash them; not break them, amazing huh?

I had my own bedroom in the new house, with my own bathroom and a tv! I didn’t have to sleep on the couch because my bedroom was inhabitable, I didn’t have to hand wash my clothes in the kitchen sink and hope they air dry before school the next day. We had….a washer and dryer!

All of a sudden I had this step dad in my life who cared where I was, who I was out with, what time I came home, hell, if I came home, what I spent my money on. He would make me grill cheese’s on the weekends (he makes the best grill cheese)

So, its almost been what, 10 years since then? (i’m horrible with time frame’s and exacts), maybe about five years ago we found out that Mike was in end-stage renal failure. He has had diabetes for 20 years. We had some really bad scares. I have spent many of hours in the ER, waiting room and sitting there watching him sleep, silently hoping and willing him to pull through. He finally started dialysis and I’ve been helping my mother get him on the kidney transplant list. Getting him on the list is quite the process believe me, we have been working on it for over a year. He goes to dialysis 3 times a week. In the beginning it was so hard, seeing this proud, military man who generally isn’t very emotional be broken, weak and dependant. In end stage renal failure your blood has to get to a certain toxicity before you can qualify to get dialysis, so for a long time he was so miserable, he was giving up, you can tell. I used to bring him every Saturday and sit with him during dialysis. It’s about 3-4 hours. He’s really improved alot in the process. But its still such a hard thing to see him go from this strong savior man who saved us-to being unemployed, sick and broken. During the worst times of his sickness I gave him a rock with the word heal on it, he brings it to every dialysis session.

I don’t really have a point, but for once, I wanted to write about the one good father figure I have had in my life. With all my issues involving my dad, I wanted to write about the one that matters, my stepdad, Mike.

I asked him to give me away on my wedding day and he said yes and you could tell he was just tickled about it. I love him so much.

Because I’m tired of being disappointed. I’m tired of getting my hopes up just to have them crushed.

Did you actually notice I deleted you from facebook? It has been up for 3 weeks that I am engaged, I’ve made no secret about it. Even if you don’t go on there alot, I know your wife does, I see her updates. I don’t hear from you until I delete you and your wife. I don’t need another communication platform to be disappointed in. I don’t need another method your lack of communication skills can hurt me.

This will be my day. I don’t want to have to worry;  if you will be there, if you will give me away, if you will be late. I don’t want to have to deal with drama of you seeing chrissy & my brother in law for the first time , I don’t want to subject her to that. I don’t want to subject my nieces & nephews to the questions about who you are since you have never been in their life before. They don’t know you exist and it should stay that way. They don’t need to wonder why grandpa isn’t around. I love them more. So your not invited.

I LOVE…that my lovely coworkers are going to do our first happy hour after work today!! woot!!

I LOVE…the chicas I work with, we make a fantastic office team!

I LOVE…that my friends want to make sure I’m not selling myself short and that I’m going to be happy with my decisions, they only want the best for me <3

I LOVE…that my cough is finally moving out of my chest, that gurgling sound was disgusting, now if the cough would just go away, I’d be all set.

I LOVE…kissing him behind his ear…

I LOVE…being ridiculous and having no shame, WTF am I doing in this pic?

I LOVE…that I had three halloween parties to go to this year and I’m going to another one tonight!! My costume will get plenty of use!

I LOVE…that sean has had to pry my book out of my hands twice this week at odd hours of the night because I passed out reading due to sleepy time cough syrup, that stuff is magical.

I LOVE…how everything disappears in my head when I’m kissing him and all of me is in that kiss….

I LOVE…that I finally hit publish on yesterdays blog, its been sitting there for at least a month…it was felt good to get it out.

I LOVE…blogging. Writing and reading them.

I LOVE…that my mom actually followed through with helping me pay for my LSAT test re-take in December, now I just have to register!

I LOVE…that my step dad is going to give me away on my “W” day. I will have to write a blog about him soon, he is a great man.

I LOVE…that I’ve had to fill the halloween candy bowl twice so far, I think I’m gonna set a trap so that next time sean takes candy he’s gonna regret it!!

I LOVE…dance parties in the office!!!

Put that ass up!!!

What do you love today?

WHAT.

I don’t remember the exact words, just bits and pieces. I have this wonderful ability to bury and forget these kinds of things that hurt the most.

What the hell was my mother saying? Am I in some alternative universe? My fathers questions have a foundation?

My mother explains they had this good friend well there was a drunken evening with said friend and blah blah blah, you can imagine what happened.Then! She has pictures of “supposed biological father” and guess what. I look JUST like him. FUCK.

The best part:

Nobody knows. Not my dad, my sister, my grandmother, the supposed biological guy. oh wait. my grandfather knows, but he passed away.

The second best part:

I can’t tell anyone. She tells me it will hurt my sister. It will hurt my father-what about the part where it hurts me? So now I can’t confront my father for accusing me of not being his child. Because its true. And the one daughter who is actually his daughter he has completely alienated from his life because of the stepmother. She IS your daughter!

So here I am. One father who doesn’t think he’s my father and maybe that can explain his parental issues except that his actual daughter he treats the same way if not worse. Now I have this biological father whom I have a pic of and I know his name-Do I want to know more? Do I want to find him?

The pleasant twist to this would be that my father would love me and want me to be his daughter no matter if it were true or not. Because he is the one who “raised me and cared for me all while growing up”, right? WRONG. He picked us up maybe 3 to 4 times a year and then brought us back and left us in that house. LEFT US. With my mothers 3rd husband who was an emotionally and physically abusive drunk and druggie. He left us. In the filth, stench, vile habitat that was my childhood home. He’d send the occasional card, always late, always in the stepmothers handwriting. Point being, (I’m getting sidetracked) if he was more of a father figure it might be easier for it not to matter who this other guy is.

So to stay along with the story and not get emotionally sidetracked.  I tried to find “supposed biological father” I had no where to start. I went to a couple of place where he supposed worked, talked to some people. I got some guys card at the yacht club he used to work at-he was going to find me any into he might have and then I kinda freaked. Put my heels in and stopped.

What good does it do to find this man? I don’t want anything from him. He’s not going to fix anything or heal my daddy issues. If anything meeting him might hurt me even more. Hurt my mother. Hurt my sister. Because during all this she pleads with me not to tell anyone. Not to look for him. So I stop.

And I decided it doesn’t matter. I’m going to make it work with my dad because whether genetically or not, he is my dad whether he likes it or not (more because he doesn’t know it)

But its always the same. Never calls, no cards-I would call him and send him an xmas card every year-hell I even visited him in 2004 with this knowledge (by the way I felt like a liar the entire time by hiding this). It works both ways, right? Communication? Yeah, I try to tell myself that one. Or I try to be the better person, that never works out anyways.

I’m tired of not knowing the answer. I’m tired of keeping this to myself. It’s not my fault, its not my burden. I’m thinking of asking my father for the blood test. I just don’t know. Just to get that question out of my head. It won’t change anything, I know. Well, maybe it will justify my fathers actions. Alienate my mother. I think the only one who it wouldn’t be affected by it would be my sister, who was the one I was worried about the most. Which makes no sense b/c she knows our family is f’in crazy. This would be no big surprise.

So I sent my mother an email with my details of the “gathering” just so that she could see how very small and casual it’s going to be that way she won’t be nervous about attending and having to dress up or anything. I anticipated her paranoia, so I was trying to nip it in the bud, because she’s f’in crazy.

What I didn’t anticipate is:

Mom: “You know we really don’t have any money to help you with this”

Me: “Mom, what part of that email is asking you for money? I’m not asking for money or help, I just thought you wanted the details”

Mom: “Well, you know, it’s usually the brides parents who pay for the wedding….”

Me (in a comforting, completely not sarcastic or anything that could be construed as negative): “Hence, why we aren’t having one…it’s just not possible or practical”

Mom: (in semi-crazy voice): “so it’s all my fault?!?!”

Talk about flippin a nutty. Ugh. This is the part where I have to coddle her and make her feel better. *vomits*

Yeah mom, its all your fault. Fault?! There is no fault. I never asked you for ANYTHING. I didn’t even hint towards it. Why? Because I didn’t want it, I don’t want it. For once can it not be about you? And your flaws and how you believe you “failed” as a mother. I’m so f’in tired of making you feel better about bullshit that I don’t even care about anymore.

on a happier less bitchfest note:

I LOVE the way my plans are coming about. It’s exactly what I want. It’s small, I wish all my friends could be there, don’t get me wrong, but its just not possible. I’m even splurging more than I originally planned. (like real flowers, squee! and and maybe getting my hair did, double squee!)

But I heard this song come on my ipod and if I were to have a song for our day, I’m in love with this one:

Never knew I could feel like this
Like I’ve never seen the sky before
Want to vanish inside your kiss
Everyday I love you more and more
Listen to my heart, can you hear it sings
Telling me to give you everything
Seasons may change winter to spring
But I love you until the end of time

Come what may, come what may
I will love you until my dying day

Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place
Suddenly it moves with such a perfect grace
Suddenly my life doesn’t seem such a waste
It all revolves around you

And there’s no mountain too high no river too wide
Sing out this song and I’ll be there by your side
Storm clouds may gather and stars may collide
But I love you until the end of time

Come what may, come what may
I will love you until my dying day
Oh come what may, come what may
I will love you

Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place…

Come what may, come what may
I will love you until my dying day

-Come what may f/ Moulin Rouge

Of course right after that song Smack That by Akon came on, PERFECT!! hahahaha

I LOVE…that I finally got my registration in the mail yesterday and my car is officially legal again, no more panic attacks when I pass the po po’s.

I LOVE…getting surprises in the mail! Sarah totally sent me lingerie as an engagement gift from Victorias Secret. It’s white. I LOVE IT.

I LOVE…that I got a raise at work! woot!! I rock!

I LOVE…making chili in the crockpot!

I LOVE…painting my nails.

I LOVE…expectorant cough syrup. Its magical!

I LOVE…that work is now going to supply the k-cups for the office, that’s going to save me soo much $$$$.

I LOVE…that Sean’s vehicle is working again and we don’t have to share my car and commute in the AM like we did for the first half of the week. love him, but dang is he a grouch in the morning!

I LOVE…that Sean brought me flowers when he picked me up from work on a day he was particularily grumpy that morning.

I LOVE…sunflowers. They are my favorite. This is nothing new, but I just LOVE THEM.

I LOVE…shots! just sayin!

I LOVE…the way fresh clean sheets feel on a just made bed.

I LOVE…that’s its FRIDAY!!! Is it time to do shots yet??!?