My Big Butt

Alright, so I've officially decided to lose 35 pounds.  For those of you who don't know what a roller coaster my weight has been the past couple years, that may come as a shock.  

The history is that I was extremely skinny (yes, skinny, not thin) in high school.  I graduated at 5'6" weighing only 104 pounds with about 11% body fat.  Yeah, it was pretty 'concentration-camp-esque'.  Within a couple years I'd probably gained 10 pounds, which really didn't look like much.

After moving to San Diego and turning 20 and then 21 I really started to pack on some weight.  I got to maybe 140, which didn't look terrible, but was a drastic change from 104.  I lost 15 pounds pretty easily when I moved back to Lincoln, Ne in the spring of '02 kept the weight off mostly, and fluctuated only about 10 pounds up then down.  In the summer of '04 I was in phenomenal shape at about 135, riding my bike approximately 75 miles a week, eating really healthy and in general staying busy and active.

Then in July I got married to a psycho (that story is for another blog) and the next couple months lead to me leaving with post traumatic stress.  After meeting Darren, I moved back to California, this time Orange County, stopped riding my bike, was stuck inside for my job and wasn't very active and my weight sky-rocketed.  Getting remarried in October of '05 lead to all that 'happy newly wed weight' which I really wasn't happy about.  It's kind of been in check at times, increasing at others, but was never really going back down.  The next thing I knew the scale was at an all time high of 170.  Although no one would probably guess it's that high since I generally maintain a lot of muscle mass, it's really not a pretty sight.

It's hard when you're married with 3 kids to justify spending a bunch of time for yourself at the gym, but as of this past week I'm getting up at 4:45 (yes AM) to hit a spin class Mon, Wed, and Fri, I take a Lift class on Sat, Yoga Tues night and have gone back to really healthy (but do-able) eating habits.  I love my family too much to be too fat to spend quality time with them.

So off I go, and hopefully you'll be seeing less and less of me.

Bio Shmio

Well, Claudia and Joe's bio mom never showed for the visit on Monday.  Well, technically she never called to confirm that she would be there, which is the same to the courts as a no-show.  We hadn't told the kids yet since we knew that might be a possibility so we just took them to the park instead and they never knew the difference.  This does mean that she will NOT be getting a reschedule/make up visit.  The kids will just not ever see her again.

We will, however, have to figure out how we're going to tell the kids what is going on.  At some point we will have to tell them that they will not be seeing their "Tummy-Mommy" any more (and their dad too, but that's a different story).  I'm really not looking forward to that conversation.  I want to make sure that they know that it's not Darren and me saying they can't visit anymore, but based on their parent's choices the courts have made this decision.  I'm not sure if the kids understand what judges are, but I guess we'll have to talk about it.

I know some people think we tell our kids way too much, and that we offer too big of an explanation when we should just say "cause I say so", but I guess it's just my personal opinion that my kids aren't idiots and they deserve as much info as is possible and appropriate.  

I guess Darren and I have a lot to talk about still.  I hope it goes well, for those of you who pray, it would be nice if you said a few for us.

Thanks.

Good-bye

Well, tomorrow hasn't even come and it's already gotten my stomach up in knots.

At 1 p.m. we're supposed to be meeting Claudia and Joe's birth mom, Marisa, for a good-bye visit.  I have such mixed feelings about it.

We'd been notified by their former social worker that in the trial that terminated the parents' rights Marisa was awarded a visit so she could say good-bye.  Part of me is just pissed off.  Why visit now when she hasn't bothered to since before christmas?  And then it was only twice, and not for months before that!  

Every once in a while the kids will ask about her, tell me they miss her, or just tell me that they love her.  I always end up saying something like, "yeah, I know, she's just not making good choices right now."  They understand that, and they know that it's not that Darren and I won't let them see her.  There has even been a couple times when we've pulled up to a generic enough looking office building that they'll ask "oh, is my mommy in there?" all hopeful and innocent.  Of course, we feel horrible when we say, "no" and we watch the hope fall from their face as they realize that wasn't the surprise this time.

I suppose for that reason it will be good to have this visit.  Instead of just me saying one day, "by the way, you'll never see Marisa again." (not that I'd actually say it quite like that)  We'll get to tell them that the judge decided that she didn't try hard enough to make the right choices and that means she gets to see them one more time to say good-bye but then they won't be visiting any more.  After that, if there are generic office building incidents, we'll at least be able to say, "remember what the judge said?  she doesn't get to visit you any more" 

Hopefully some how this will help the kids to have closure.  I think it will be good for Darren too.  I was the one who monitored the couple visits the kids did have, so he's never met her.  In all honesty, Claudia will probably grow up to look just like her, and at least Darren will see what I mean when I say that.

I think part of me is just worried that she's going to try pulling a stunt like some of the horror stories I've heard.  Where she tries to tell the kids that she's the only one who really loves them and we'll never love them as much as she does and some how this is all our fault.  I'd hate to have her turn them against us in a moment like that.

Hopefully she'll kiss them, tell them she loves them, apologize in age appropriate terms and just say good-bye.

Anyway, that's just what's going on.  

My Life, Part II

Part II Ages 1 to 7

So at this point my parents are getting divorced.  My dad is living in the house they'd bought since it was his parents who paid the down payment for it.

My dad and mom tried attending church together (with the christian friends who saved my life).  At first it was an effort to reconcile, but that didn't end well.  While at church they met a woman with a couple kids looking for a way to keep her kids out of daycare.  Now enters Marlee to the scene as the baby sitter who came with her kids, Cody and Jillian, to our house to watch Aspen and me.

I can't say for sure when it happened, but some where along the line during/after my dad and mom were divorced, Dad and Marlee became romantically involved.

A year or so later and couple weeks after I turned 4, Dad and Marlee were married.  Cody was 8, Aspen was 6, Jillian was 5.

At this point, when I was 4ish, I'd been struggling with chronic ear infections for a year or so.  Although my parents took me to the doctor and would put me on antibiotics, it wasn't working.  Follow up visits would show improvement, but it wasn't actually taking care of all of the infection.  Two years later I started kindergarten when I was 5, to turn 6 in september.  It was then at the Hearing/Sight screening that they realized something was wrong.  Very wrong.  I was completely deaf in my right ear.

Years of raging infection had cause abnormal cell growth in my middle ear which had destroyed my 3 hearing bones (hammer, anvil, and stirrup)  For those of you unfamiliar, it's these bones vibrating against part of the cochlea that transmit sound waves to the brain.  So basically the missing bones are like having a section of telephone wire missing along the line.  The line had been disconnected.

I'm sure you all know that your ears do more than just hear, it also helps with balance.  So this also explained why I was never able to do cart-wheels, learn to ride a bike, and for the most part, walk through a door with out bumping into the frame.

Right away I was scheduled for surgery.  This initial one was just to clean out the infection. They waited a year to make sure it didn't recur and then I had another surgery where I was given a bone transplant (well, technically 3 bone transplants).  

The surgery was a wonderful success.  Without getting too technical, let's just say that your ability to hear isn't rated in terms of volume, but in which frequencies you're able to detect.  Although I wasn't able to detect all that a normal ear could, I could detect nearly 90% of them.  This was enough for me to learn to ride a bike, learn some basic gymnastics, and basically learn to walk without running into stuff.

It's important to note that during this period of my life when the infection was still active, I was like every other kid with an ear infection.  Whiny, irritable, dizzy, unhappy, in pain, had loss of balance, and couldn't detect a lot of low or soft sounds (which, as i mentioned turned into complete deafness eventually)  I was taught by my step-mom not to complain about any of these things.  Kids have a hard enough time expressing their feelings, and since it had been going on so long, it was hard for me to tell what was 'normal'.  My step mom liked to let me know that if I didn't stop crying she'd really give me something to cry about.  Yeah, Queen of Compassion.

I was yelled at and spanked a lot, especially since I couldn't hear anyone if they talked in a low or soft voice.  I was always in trouble, had a hard enough time fitting in, and being the youngest, was the scape goat for everyone else as well.  If you ask my step mom even now she'll tell you that I was a whiny, naughty brat as a little kid.   I say I got a crap shoot.  You spend 3 years sick at see if you act like an angel.  

Of course I can't leave out the fact that I was pretty rambunctious on my own at times.  I was for the most part a silly little girl, liked to play, run around, sing and play with my siblings (and I loved having 2 new one), even if I did take the fall for them a lot of the time.

Moving quickly through the rest of this part (not that any of this is less significant), my mom had re-married when I was 6ish.  She married a man named John, who also had 2 kids, a daughter, Camille, and son, Johnny, both older than Aspen and me.  The marriage only lasted a little over a year.

It was at this time in my life that my half sister Kate was born to my dad and Marlee.  I was a little over 7 and my dad and Marlee had been married for 3 years.  This prompted a move since our house was only 3 bedrooms, and they weren't willing to make 4 girls share a room.  When they decided to move to Panama, a town 20ish miles from Lincoln, this marked the end of joint custody that my parents had enjoyed since they'd separated nearly 6 years earlier.

It was an ugly battle.  Basically my mom was dragged through the mud to such a degree as to make politicians look like saints, and needless to say, my dad was awarded full custody.  Most people know that this outcome is rare, mothers are almost always awarded custody.  This meant that from that point on we'd live only with him and just see Mom every other weekend.

This ushered in the era of Marlee's relentless attacks on Aspen's and my self-esteem and her reign as the disney-esque style Step-mom.  Even sadder to say is that she didn't spare her own kids during this time.  She was an equal-opportunity abuser.

There are at least a million stories I could tell about this time in my life, funny things that happened to us, and silly games we'd play, a whole slew of bad, sad, terrible ones too, but I'll leave those for another blog.

My Life, Part I

I suppose it's about time I gave a little info about who I am.  Not that I'm all hung up on myself, but for those of you who don't know me well to have a little insight into who I am and why I bother typing these.  

I may only be 27, but this is a long story, so I'll tell it in parts.  I'm not sure how many yet, we'll take it one part at a time.

Part I, Before the Beginning and The Beginning.

My parents, Scott Williamson and Debra (Kulhanek) Rueb met in the late '70's at a bar my dad's band was playing at.  At the time mom was 19, dad was 22.  One thing led to another and they started a relationship that landed them pregnant with my older sister Aspen after a couple months.  They didn't marry until Aspen was about a year and a half.  Within a few months of that they were prego again, this time with me.  Their relationship was rocky at best.  My dad had fidelity issues and my mom knew the relationship was headed for divorce.  That and the chaos of their young lives led her to decide to abort me.  After making an appointment and waiting for the date to approach, some newly saved christian friends intervened.  After listening to some christian tapes on abortion my mom, thankfully, changed her mind.

At 6 months, my mom gave my dad an ultimatum.  Get his life together, or she was leaving.  At this point he turned to Jesus and gave his life to Him.  Although he wasn't perfect yet, he was trying, but at that point there had been too much damage done and my mom left anyway.  

Shortly after they were divorced.

Rx for exhaustion

so we're in a stage right now where i feel like we live at the doctor's office.  between the kids being sick, needing a check up, needing shots, needing a physical, thia needing booster shots, claudia having an allergic reaction again, joe running a fever of 104 it just seems like our life revolves around that place.  just today we were there in the morning getting claudia shots, then back in the afternoon for thia's well-baby visit and shots for her too.  don't get me wrong, the doctor's a nice guy, i just wish i saw my husband as much as i see him.

to dwell eternally

anyone who knows me well knows that there is a part of me that dwells eternally in the realm of silliness and the absurdly irrational.

i suppose my philosophy has always been to arm myself with the ridiculous rather than to suffer the slings and arrows of the mundane and, all too often, grievous. 

i suppose people such as i have to live this way.  there are too many evils lying in wait around every corner, thieves of joy and demons of chaos wrecking havoc in our lives and there are always dark shadows of pain cast over the paths we must walk.  if one doesn't carry their own light with them on this journey, they'll surely be lost.  lost in the darkness of unforgiving misery, loneliness and despair.  if i must carry a torch of frivolity-maybe foolishness- i'll at least laugh all the way through my life that's been riddled with sorrows from beginning to end.  but i will not rely on the limited resources of the world to illuminate my life.

before you say it seems that i am despondent, pessimistic or jaded, let me say this; i do not say these things because my life has been nothing but tragic, far from it.  there have been a thousand days bursting with light, exploding as supernovae across my life.  however, just as a supernova is the harbinger of death for the star, so do these flashes of light evanesce, slowly vanishing, leaving nothing but a lonely black hole behind.  a void so bereft of life in contrast to the fullness of the blaze that bore it.

  it is true, life is beautiful.  but true beauty can only be measured by the disparity between it, and the beast.  just as weight, height or length would mean nothing without a zero to start from, so does beauty intensify as it's "distance" from hideous increases.  for those whose lives have seen very little of the hideousness this world can host, they are severely limited in their ability to perceive the magnitude of the beauty it may also hold.  after all, we would never see the stellar brilliance of the supernova were the star not about to die.

   i, in my experiences of this life, have seen beauty beyond comprehension.  God's own hand has painted brilliant strokes of grace, hope, joy and love, these strokes so bold and in colors so true i felt i'd before only ever seen the world as monochromatic blasè landscape.  i've known love that's reached such great heights and stretched my heart to bursting, blissful ecstasy that's left me speechless, hope and peace that have saved my mind from horrors untold.  however, i would never have seen these things for what they truly are had i not first seen utter anguish and hopelessness.  pain and sorrow have bared their teeth, and with open claws dug in and torn hearts and lives to shreds.  for every nefarious crime committed against my life, there has been an equally stunning and wondrous blessing to arise and take its place.

as long as i sojourn here, i will carry this torch.  blazing, let it shine on these demons, blind their eyes, while i laugh and say "do your best to destroy me", for i've seen their kind, i know their devious tricks, and for all my scars they've got nothing on me.   

something i think #1

so i talked to one of my sisters last night (i'll draw the family diagram later).  it was great talking to her.  sure she called me at 10 at night and we talked till almost 1 am, that's fine.  a good sister is always worth losing sleep over.

i love having her in my life.  someone i can talk to about all my crazy life experiences and views and she doesn't think i'm insane or wonder what on earth i'm talking about.  she gets me, she knows me, she loves me.

i love being loved.  i know that sounds pretty obvious, but i do.  i'm sure everyone does, but i have a certain appreciation for it since i have been through so many times when i felt very unlovable or at the least, just not loved.

we talked about life, life as kids, life with kids, and about the couple of years where we didn't talk to each other.  it's amazing where life takes you.  there were years that i lived only a couple miles away from her, but we couldn't have been farther apart.  now i live over 2,000 miles from her and we've never been so close.  it's amazing how love can do that, span amazing distances and time like the mythical tesseract.

i love how we both have one the same general goals; not to do to our kids what was done to us.  being raised with such a strict, emotionally abusive, unloving mom was so damaging on too many different levels to count.  the way she stifled us and striped us of any sense of individuality and empowerment.  we became these weak, lonely kids who grew up never knowing how to stand up for ourselves, say no, or even knowing who we really are or what we want for ourselves.

now as adults and mothers we have the same struggles, and we deal with most of the same issues.  we constantly re-evaluate what we're doing in light of how we were raised.  for example, sometimes i tell claudia to stop doing something, then i think for a minute and wonder why i thought she should stop.  i realize that i only said stop because it was something my mom would have told me to stop doing.  i have had to spend a lot of time thinking about what really matters to me, what is ok for my kids, and my sister does the same.  

the one thing we know for sure, we don't want to have our kids grow up to talk about us the way we talk about our mom.