Depression

Wow, I hate to say it, but I never thought that depression would find me during pregnancy.  I always seem to develop postpartum, but that's after baby is born.   This time I have wild mood swings and am generally very unhappy.  Of course, I feel completely horrible about that, because it's not the baby's fault this is going on.  

As I've grown larger, the old pregnancy issues have flared up.  I had hoped I would be able to exercise my way through the weight gain and swelling, but it's been another long winter of my husband's job and little free time for me.  I find that when I get free time, I don't know what to do with it anyway.   So I've gained a lot of weight and started to have a lot of swelling.  12 pounds in one month!  I missed the point where I should have taken my rings off, and my legs look like tree trunks.  

I find myself waiting to have a nap each day, because I am so unbelievably tired.   All of this napping interferes with the kids having playdates, so they make me feel guilty for that.  I try at least once a week, but I don't like to have kids over here when we don't have a playroom for them.  They just drag the toys out into the middle of the living room and then it's all left there for me to clean up. 

I just feel like it's so unfair that I have asked for changes repeatedly, and here I am, still waiting for them.  I never wanted to bring another baby into this house.   We don't have the room, plain and simple.  My mom actually suggested putting the baby in our walk in closet.  Don't do this, do that.  It's all I hear all the time.  It's easy to give advice when you live in Saskatchewan and I haven't seen her in over a year. 

Sorry, I know I'm being a bummer here, but I just have been feeling so down that I'm not sure what to do.  I want to be a good mom, I really do.  I am just having such a hard time with driving them back and forth to school, activities, playdates, trying to clean up after them, and living in the top floor of this horrible house.   Will anything ever change? 

Focusing on Writing

I have decided that I need to start to focus my thoughts and energy only on writing, because not unlike a friend of mine who discovered her talent in Photography, I have discovered a talent for writing.  Since joining Odesk I have written hundreds of articles on kids stuff, birthday parties, activities, and so much more.  I did a quick 400 word article on the developmental affects of classical music on children under 2, and was told that it was the best copy that he had ever received.  I've written press releases for a lady who was by far the pickiest person I have ever talked to, and she loved it without changes.  That was a major challenge. 

I joined Writers Market recently, and had to start a blog on there to keep up with the daily writing.  I wish there was a local group of writers I could join!  The motivation would be nice to have. 

I've copied below my first blog post on Writers Market.

"If I said that I never thought I would end up writing for a living, I'd be lying. I've wanted to write, and thought about writing, for as long as I can remember. The boxes of papers I managed to save from my decluttering mother are filled with short stories, journal entries, and poems. In 11th grade I was failing almost every single subject in high school except for English, and to soften the blow of such a horrible report card, my English teacher sent home a note with it that told my parents I had a promising literary career if they could just get me to survive high school. I even failed typing that year, so that note was a Godsend. I wish my mom wouldn't have thrown it away.

When I was in University studying for a Psychology degree, I took random creative writing courses. I lost interest quickly, because most of the people in there were only trying to get quick and easy english credit, and I recognized a lot of 'their' short stories as plagarism fairly quickly. Unfortunately the professor didn't pick up on that, so I lost respect for both the class and the person teaching it.

After I received my degree, I put my focus more on marrying my long term boyfriend than I did on writing anything. We moved to Vancouver, BC, and married a year later. Shortly after I had my first child, then my second, then surprise! My third came along in 2005. In the middle of all of that, I thought myself a web tycoon and started a popular children's web site. I've since learned that I am not interested in web sites, web design, or anything to do with programming. I found myself using the site to start an online weekly gossip column where I would dissect celebrities. I had more fun doing that than anything.

Long story short, the web site started declining when a company I hired turned out to be a bunch of scammers, and I lost interest in the site and the business in the way only someone who was truly burned can. I focused on my kids, and spent 2 years seriously depressed.

Last November, at age 37, I found out that unexpectedly I was expecting again. The pregnancy of #4 hit me right between the eyes, and has put me on a crash course of absolutely refusing to back down from what I want. If I have given my life over to my children, and I will be spending the next few years drowning in coffee, diapers, and screaming, then I will also be spending it doing exactly what I want to do with my life: writing.

I started freelancing on Odesk after asking someone on Craigslist where I could actually make money writing. They directed me to Odesk. My first job was video editing, but I soon found that the person who hired me wanted to get me to create web sites. Although I know all of the ins and outs of web sites, programming, and design, my heart starts to pound and my hands get moist when I think about working on them. You could say I have post-traumatic web stress, brought on by my 2 year legal altercation with the scam artist web design firm from downtown Vancovuer. I worked hard to get that Bachelor of Psychology, and I put it to good use by diagnosing myself.

I put the brakes on the web designing, and focused strictly on articles and web content. Press releases are also a favorite, and they come very easily. I've written ebooks, and entire web sites worth of content on kids, kids activities, and birthday party ideas. I've written book desriptions, letters of intent for graduate school, and a look at the developmental affects of classical music of children under 2. It's been fun, but I feel ready to move beyond Odesk to something else.

I'm currently 2 chapters into a novel I'm writing about a woman with post-partum psychosis. I've been writing this novel in my head for about a year now, because I can really understand how someone can tip over the edge from motherhood. "

I am no longer in complete control of reality

My horoscope for this morning:

After a night of strange dreams, you probably want your day to unfold exactly as you planned. But you are no longer in complete control of reality and the harder you try to wrest it back, the more complicated everything becomes. Still, you might need to demonstrate your competence now by pretending you're in charge. You can carry off this grand illusion today as long as you don't start to believe the hype yourself.

I did have some strange dreams last night.  I dreamt I went to Dairy Queen with a few friends and ordered a hot fudge sundae.  When they gave me the sundae, my friends had already ate all of the chocolate off of it.  I thought that was strange, apparently they did not. 

I also dreamt I was at Disney, but I wasn't allowed to enter the park or go anywhere.  Everyone else could go in, but I was stuck at the gates. 

I'm not sure what it means to not be in control of reality.  Does this mean you slip a cog somewhere in your mind (possible at this point!) or that you should just let the reins go, stop worrying, and see where life takes you. 

I suppose you could say I am superstitious by birth, because it's a deeply ingrained German thing with my Grandma.  I think horoscopes fall somewhere along the lines of superstition, so occasionally I am inclined to listen to whatever epiphany it leads me to that morning.   I am also inclined not to put my shoes on the table (if you do, there could be a death in the family), not to drop a fork in a specific direction (if you do, there could be company coming from that direction), or let my cat howl under my window (once again, death in the family).   I know, it's all ridiculous.  You shouldn't put your shoes on the table because that's just disgusting.   Dropping a fork is accidental, and I've actually dropped one on purpose a time or two because I was bored or lonely.   The cat superstition was probably taken a little too seriously by myself and my cousins, as one night a cat did howl under the window at my Grandma's farm and the next morning we found it killed by raccoons.  Now if my cat howls anywhere outside, I'm at the door bringing her in. I have seen up to 5 raccoons at any one time looking through the glass door on my deck, so I know that this particular superstition can take a very real turn for the cat.

I have no real plans for today, so I suppose I will see where this windy and cold March day takes me.

Is there a recession in Webkinz world too?

I woke up recently at 6 am to find my daughter crying in front of the computer.  She's 7, so there are two things in this scenario that bothered me.  Why on earth was she up at 6 am, and why was she crying at the computer?

I found out, between sobs of course, that she had woke up and decided to go and logon to Webkinz world.  She has 24 Webkinz that grace her shelves and sleep with her at night, and although she doesn't logon to the web site very often, she definitely loves her little animals. 

As we hadn't been on there, she hadn't been feeding her little animals regularly.  She also hadn't been amassing much KinzCash, because she was nearly broke and her babies all had ice bags on their heads from 'going hungry'.  I spent the next half hour selling off possessions from her rooms in order to bring these online creatures back to life, and although I was happy to make her feel better, I was not impressed with the entire web site!

Webkinz used to give you the option of sending your pets to the spa in order to revitalize them.  If you had a bunch running low, you could send them all.  I think the fee was $100 KinzCash for her 20 odd animals.  We tried that option, and it made me realize that recession had hit Webkinz world, because they jacked the spa price to $6000!  

Are they joking?  I know that the TV's we sold and the couches were not used (for real anyway) by her animals, but it made me sad to sit and watch her rooms empty one by one.  Her little face was crushed.  Prior to that morning, if you didn't actually choose that individual animal to play with, they remained in some sort of limbo.  Not hungry, not thirsty, just there if you wanted them.  Now they change it? What's the point?

It seems ridiculous to spend anytime at all thinking about Webkinz unless I'm playing with my kids, but really, is it necessary to add such urgency to a land of imaginary animals?  I'd rather my kid have the option of visiting occasionally than feel pressured to go every single day.  I don't even want her sitting on the computer every day.  

At any rate, that's my rant for today.  I'm still seriously considering sending them a letter telling them they are all a bunch of idiots.  Too bad Obama isn't the president of Webkinz World.  It looks like they need a bailout plan too.