A Leap Begins

First and foremost, thank you to everyone who read and commented (or read and didn’t comment…I do see everything) on my last post. It was a big step for me to put that out there and the support I received was so wonderful. Many who commented (either via the blog or social media) said they hoped I would continue blogging. Well THANKS! That’s probably one of the nicest things a writer can ever hear.

My life has changed a lot in the last year. I touched on it very briefly in my last post but it’s a huge part of my life and I’m ready to talk about it. Or at least I think I am. Gah, I’m so nervous.

Ok here goes.

I am in a relationship with a great guy who has a 7 year old son. We all live together. Me, Great Guy (his name is Joe), and son (we’ll call him G for now.) G lives with us half the time and with his mother the other half.

Joe, G, and me. Currently, G is sporting one more hole where a top front tooth used to reside.

Well, shoot, that wasn’t so bad. 😉

I wanted to write about this for the same reason I wanted to write about my divorce. Putting this out there via my blog reaches most, if not all, of my internet friends (there’s no better way to describe you awesome people…fans? followers? Ew gross never.) all at once. Imagine me all of a sudden tweeting “OMG what is Minecraft and why does my stepson love it so much?!” Like, literally no one would have ANY idea what I was talking about. (Or at least that’s how I perceive things.)

To be clear: no, Joe and I are not married so I suppose technically his son is not my stepson in the standard definition of the word. But it’s SO much easier to say “stepson” than “my boyfriend’s son.” Less characters, etc. Besides, G is a big part of my life, affects a lot of things I do, and I have an impact on his life, as well. So yeah, he’s basically my stepson and anyone who wants to shit on that can kindly ignore me. 🙂

Having a 7 year old boy around is crazy and loud and frustrating and hilarious and fun all at once. A “blended family” (or step-life, as I like to call it) is filled with unknowns, blurry boundaries, and a fair amount of drama (which I can’t really discuss but will 10000% allude to because some of this shit is unreal.) Also, you guys? First grade homework is HARD. I’m not kidding. Clearly I didn’t go through the newborn/infant/toddler stages, but I’m currently experiencing the school-age stage and Common Core Math is the actual worst.

So there you have it! My new normal in a nutshell. There have been tears and there have been “what the fuck am I doing?” moments (or full days, if we’re being honest), but I’m happy.

Now really, can some one explain not only the appeal of Minecraft, but the appeal of watching YouTube videos of OTHER PEOPLE playing Minecraft? Because I’m lost.

Wow radio silence on the blog for a looonnggg time, huh? I guess the thing to do these days when explaining an absence is NOT to say sorry. Or to say sorry and then say “I know I shouldn’t apologize but I feeeel bad.” So basically I’m going to say “Hi, again!” and fill you in on some…stuff that’s gone on in my life over the last year.

I’ve kept a great deal of my personal life off social media for over a year. With the encouragement of some very close (and wise) friends, I’m slowly inching my way back to coming out of hiding. I’ve kept a lot of things private out of embarrassment, what other people might think or say about me, and out of respect for everyone involved. So what happened?

lastsummeriendedmymarriage

::runs and hides::

::peeks out from behind the couch:: (why I ran behind a couch I’m not sure, it just felt right.)

Still with me? Great. The specifics don’t matter to anyone but the parties involved and for obvious reasons will not be talked about here or anywhere. What does matter is this: it sucked, it hurt, and it was for the best.

I haven’t known how to really come out and say all of this. Like, do I just randomly say on Twitter “YAY the #pumpkinspicelatte is back! Ps I’m separated from my husband.”? Mmm no. Do I just start posting about the guy I’m seeing and my current life? That would be weird. I felt like after blogging about my wedding and married life, I needed to explain myself a bit more. However, going back to what I said earlier (embarrassment, judgement, etc) I didn’t know *what* to do.

So I just kind of…didn’t say anything. Since Summer 2013 I stuck to posting about work or life with my friends/family (and the occasional selfie, of course.)

Lately, however, I’ve really missed sharing my life with my “internet friends.” Life is great, really it is, but I also have a lot of shit going on, to put it lightly. Having another outlet to talk about the good and the bad, get advice, and just get back to being myself…I need that.

I’ve lost a lot of friends, gained new ones, and developed even deeper connections with the ones who have been there for me. I’ve done a LOT of growing over the last year and things in my life have changed drastically. I’ve changed jobs, sold a house, bought a new one, started seeing a new guy (acquiring a 6 year old in the process), and adopted another puppy. WHEW. SO MANY THINGS I’ve wanted to talk about and I just didn’t know how or when.

But I think now I’m ready. I’m ready to share things like “The six year old doesn’t want his food touching and OH MY GOD Mom I’m so sorry for being like that as a kid.” I don’t know if I’ll keep this blog going, start a new one, or just share via Twitter/IG/Facebook, but I’m ready to open back up.

I hope you’ll follow along. 🙂

Well hey there!

I kind of left you guys hanging back in January, didn’t I? Whoopsie! Welp, we’re in the house and it’s great. Really. 🙂 I have moments where I miss the city (and I think those moments will actually become more frequent as the weather gets warmer and I start to crave patio drinking) but for the most part I’m loving the house and suburban living.

Plus…

WE GOT A PUPPY!!!!

His name is Frankie and he’s (we think) a Lab/Shepherd mix. We adopted him on March 18th when he was 10 weeks old and I think I fall in love with this dog more each day. Good GOD he’s adorable. Hands-down the best part of having this house is having the space for a dog. We have a huge backyard and a great walking neighborhood.

Ok, another Frankie pic:

Our biggest struggle so far has been crate training. As in he HATES his crate. Hates it. Thinks it’s his own personal hell. We’re adamant about crate training. I like my things and I don’t trust my puppy to roam around the house all day when I’m gone and NOT chew shit up. The thing is, when I’m at work I can’t hear the crying/whining/howling (I know, I’m the worst puppy mom. Whatever.) It’s nighttime that’s the problem. Some nights are better than others, but ALL start and end with the crying/whining/howling.

Since I know you’ll ask, here are the details:

-The crate was downstairs in the living room for the first 4 weeks. Last night we decided to move it upstairs to our room, which resulted in a GREAT night. He cried when he went in for about 10 excruciating minutes, but didn’t wake us up with his cries at all during the night or in the morning.

-We used to have it covered with blankets but that didn’t work well because he pulled the blankets through the holes in the crate and tore them up.

-We give him treats when we put him in and sometimes give him a longer-lasting bone/rawhide to keep him occupied.

-We praise him when he’s in there.

-He gets toys to play with.

Now that the crate is in our room, I’m expecting it to get much better. But I don’t WANT him in our room forever. Our room is for sleeping and *wink wink* time and I don’t want a dog or a cat or (eventually) a baby to interrupt that. So…any tips for getting a dog to love it’s crate? Does it get better? (Everyone said it does and I’m beginning to think all of you assholes were LYING TO ME!) (Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you assholes. Ok maybe I did. But I say it with love!) And seriously, how the HELL does anyone handle cry-it-out when it’s a human baby??

Ok one more Frankie pic because I just love him:

Hoookay.

Right. So the post I published yesterday about house hunting was actually written 10 days ago. Apparently, a LOT can happen in 10 days when you’re house hunting!

Last Sunday we had appointments to see 3 houses. The first and third were fine, livable, but nothing that made me go, “Oh! I like it!” The second one, however, did catch my eye.

(Taken from the listing, which I’m not going to link.)

From the pictures, I wasn’t crazy about the the outside but I thought the rest of the pictures showed an interesting house. When we drove up and I saw the house in person, I changed my tune quite a bit. It was pretty much the first house (out of probably 10 we’ve seen) that made me go “I don’t hate this! I actually think I really like it!” Josh was shocked and hopeful. But I knew the inside would be the real test.

I’m not ready to reveal those pictures yet, but I will say the inside is very nice. There are things I would like to change, but I think that’s inevitable with any house. The bones of the house are good, the lot itself is perfect for us, and it’s in a great location (only 5-10 minutes from some very close friends!!) Walking through the house I got a really good feeling and could start to see myself living there.

That was Sunday.

By Monday I’d sufficiently freaked myself out. Things were moving so fast, numbers were being thrown around, and it seemed as if decisions were being made without me. Not good. Not good at all. After thinking about it, I realized I’d seen the house with two boys (who are best friends) and what I really needed was to see the house with a girl. Luckily, our realtors, Mike and Rachel, are a husband and wife team. I emailed Rachel that night and made an appointment with her the following day to see the house again.

Cue big sigh of relief. Not only did I still like the house, but I also felt much (MUCH) better after talking about decorating and “girly things” with her.

Soooo after really thinking about it, talking it over with Josh, my mom, his parents, his sister, and my grandma and THEN talking about it with Josh even more (clearly my decision-making skills need a bit of work), we’ve decided to put in an offer!!

That’s all you get for now…updates to come!

**Originally written 11/8/11 in anticipation of making this announcement on the blog at a later date.

Now that we’ve told our families, I can finally announce that Josh and I are officially….

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Ha, you thought I was gonna say “pregnant” didn’t you?

Josh and I haven’t talked about this with anyone except a few close friends (who also just bought a house in the DC-area), our friends who are realtors, our parents, and his sister. I’m the kind of person who wants to have as much information about something like this before putting it out there. I want to be able to answer any questions that come my way

It started back in late August when Josh sent me a link to a house he thought I’d like. (Well, it actually started months before that when we had our friend who is a realtor set us up with a search that met our criteria, but that was originally just for fun. But I digress.) Turns out, I loved the house from the pictures! It had a lot of charm on the outside and inside, hardwood floors (very important to me) and best of all, a red front door! We picked a day to see the house, along with a few others that caught our eye.

Since the little graphic up there says house “hunters” and not house “owners” you can probably guess that none of the houses we saw that day worked out. But it did make us think a little more seriously about home ownership. We’re not aggressively looking and we’re not going to open houses every weekend, but we’ve met with a mortgage lender who gave us really great advice AND told us what we could afford. Our realtor also showed us a few homes last week (again, none that made us want to put in an offer) which helped us further define our “wish list.” I’m excited to see where this process takes us in the next 3/6/9/12 months!

Current and former house hunters: any tips??

Well. This is awkward.

I never intended to stop blogging for 5+ months. I even have a few half-finished posts I probably could have mustered up the energy to complete. But instead…yeah I just kinda gave up.

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What had happened was event season got crazy, I took on a new role at work, my free time and weekends became non-existent and when I *did* have time to write, it was the last thing I wanted to do. I know I could have kept up with it if I’d made it a priority. But for me, spending time with my husband and my friends always comes before spending time blogging.

HOWEVER! I think I’m back. I can’t make any promises since the holidays are fast approaching and, well, I sometimes get overwhelmed this time of year. Hopefully I can get back on track and resume entertaining the masses (aka my 20 or so readers.)

So, what have I been up to the last few months?

We saw Kenny Chesney at Fed Ex Field for Josh's birthday

We went wine tasting in Virginia wine country

We traveled back to Ohio for Josh's cousin's wedding

Then we traveled to Ohio AGAIN to "rough it" in Hocking Hills

We spent a few days down in the OBX

We watched two of our closest "Maryland" friends tie the knot (and do the Hora!)

And I coordinated an EFF-TON of weddings (22 from May 1-Oct 31, to be exact)

If you read the caption in the last photo you’ll see how many weddings I did this summer. TWENTY-TWO. Good lord, I’m exhausted just thinking about it. I learned a lot in the last few months…but that’s another post for another day, my friends. 🙂

So, if you’ll have me, I’d like to consider this my “I’m back” post.

But in the infamous words of one Mr. LL Cool J…

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Don’t call it a comeback. 🙂