Category : Growing Up
It’s official, I’m an old fart. Over the past few weeks I’ve begun to make observations about how my life has seemed to change. And these changes only point to me growing older.
We used to always tease my Dad because anytime we went to the movie theater, he would be asleep within minutes. But I’m my father’s daughter. This past weekend, my husband and I went to see The Other Guys. You know the movie with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell where they’re cops and it’s really funny. Yeah, I was passed out, asleep within minutes of the movie starting. Something about being in the dark and remotely comfortable and I’m out cold regardless of where I am. You may call this narcolepsy, but I call it old-fart-olepsy.
I have no interest in going to bars or clubs. The loud music and big crowds just aren’t for me. But if it’s a restaurant with a bland menu and more mashed potatoes than I can shake a stick at, well then I’m all in. Oddly enough, my husband and I are often the youngest couples in these joints. Also, I have increasingly noticed that if I have to wait until 6 pm for my dinner, I get mighty cranky. Prime dinner time these days is 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm. Anything after that is a midnight snack.
So I guess it’s all down hill from here folks.
xoxo,
Jes (a.k.a. The Early Bird Special)
I’m currently enjoying a stay-cation. I’ve come to realize that taking a couple of days off from work and enjoying some of the fun tourist things that are close to your own home is highly under-rated.
Today I went to the beach. I live 30-45 minutes from the beach and the last time I’ve been to the beach during the summer was about three years ago. So I made a conscience decision this year that I would go to the beach more, or at least once. I bought a beach chair, a beach towel, and let’s not forget the sunscreen. I got some spiffy new 90 SPF. It’s like full body armor in lotion form. It’s freakin awesome!
So this morning, I loaded up with all my beach gear and headed out. And it was great! The sun was shining. There was a gentle breeze coming off the water, and the water was a refreshing 60 degrees (by “refreshing” I mean your limbs grown numb after a few minutes).
I also took a walk around and looked at the beach houses and day dreamed about how one day I’ll rent a beach house and invite my family and friends to come stay with me. Some people may think that’s crazy. Why would anyone want to spend their summer in the same home with your extended family? I swear I’m not crazy. It’s just that growing up my Granddad had a lake house. And during the summer, my entire family, immediate and extended, would stay in the house together. Some of my best childhood memories are from that lake house. Riding my bike for hours in the circle drive, playing “kick-the-can” with my cousins, skipping rocks at the point, camping out in the front yard. These are all things that made up some of the best summers of my life. As a an adult, I realize that those summers helped develop a close bond among my entire family.
During my visit to the beach today I continued to think about all my childhood summers spent at the lake house and how much I want to continue those traditions so that hopefully my children will be able to have fond memories of summers at a beach house with their family.
Back in the Summer of ’94, I was 11 years old and I knew how to have a good time. My Dad and Stepmom both worked nights so when they took vacation time during the summer they would normally keep their same hours because that’s what they were used to. And during the summer, my brother, sister, and I kept their hours too because we thought we were the coolest thing since sliced bread to be able to stay up super late.
It wasn’t just that we stayed up late, we went out on the town too (a.k.a. going to Taco Bell for the 4th meal or Dunkin Donuts for tomorrow’s breakfast). We would take advantage of the cool 84 degree Oklahoma summer nights and drive to Taco Bell at 12 am in the Chrysler LeBaron with the top down. Oh yeah.
Even though we were with our parents, we didn’t care. We were the coolest kids around because we were out way past our curfew. Once we got back from the “Midnight Run” were were so hoped up on Mountain Dew or donuts that the only logical decision was to make a pact to stay up until dawn for no other reason other than that we didn’t have school the next morning.
But how do you waste away 6 hours in the dead of night? By playing copious amounts of board games and video games, that’s how. We played Wahoo, Monopoly, Mario Bros. But the game we played the most, for one reason or the other was Mortal Kombat. Yup. As an 11 year old girl, I was spending my summer perfecting finishing moves, impelling my enemies with spears and burning them to death with the fire breath from my skull head. All of which were moves for my favorite character in the game, Scorpion. Undoubtably these are things that probably wouldn’t be allowed in this day in age. But back then it was no big woop.
Recently, when the new disgustingly gory trailer came out for the new Mortal Kombat movie, the strangest thing happened. I was filled with so many fond and pleasant memories of being 11 years, addicted to Mountain Dew, playing games with my siblings until the wee hours of the morning without a care in the world. Aren’t violent action films great?
I’m an awful planner. It happens time and again in every aspect of my life. I make plans. Then my plans don’t quite work out. This weekend was no exception. My husband and I planned to go to a hot air ballon festival and perhaps even take a ride in one. We did kind of take our sweet time actually getting in the car. And even on our ride to the festival we stopped to ran errands, eat lunch, and jack around. By the time we arrived at the festival, all the hot air balloons were packed up and put away. Ha ha! It took us four hours to get to the festival to see some hot air balloons and they were already gone.
So no, I don’t have awesome pictures of hot air balloons or some kick-A photos of scenic northern New England from hundreds of feet in the air. But what I do have are some last minute pictures that I took from the car on our way home in a lame attempt to have something for the blog. So if you’re planning on starting off your week with a post from jescady.com full of nifty pictures of The Great White North, I managed to mess up your plans too. Oops. Sorry about that. Have a great week!
Wow! Has it really been a month since my last blog post? Apparently so. That’s a bit embarrassing. My first excuse was that “I haven’t had anything interesting to blog about”. But when I look back at the past month, that really isn’t the case. The truth is that there has just been so much going on that I haven’t had time to think about it let alone disseminate it.
Unfortunately, this past month there was a death in the family. As a wise friend told me, “weddings and funerals bring out the worst in people”. Yup, she got it right and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.
We had a couple of puppy health issues that some quick vet visits were able to fix. These girls look all sweet and innocent, but they sure know how to find trouble and find it good.
This week I’m finishing up a very laborious term of grad school. I’ve had a lot of projects, presentations, homework assignments, quizzes, and essays this term. I’m officially taking a break this summer so I can kick back and relax a bit. I really love school and would have no problem going all year long, despite the added stress. But when I was in school full time for my undergrad, I busted out a 5 year program in 4 years and looking back, I wish I would have taken my time and enjoyed the scenery a bit. So this time around, I’m going to take that approach. I think I’m just going to take 2 or 3 classes a year and if it takes me 8 years to get my masters, so be it. I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.
We did some work on our house this past month too. We finally re-did our kitchen floor.
The new floor hides the dog fur, the muddy footprints, and the food stains on the floor which means I don’t have to mop the floor any more. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Win for me!
Last, but definitely not least, we have had some major advancements with fertility issues. We changed up the entire game. We found a new doctor. A much more aggressive doctor who agrees with us and is ready to get this done. This game changer was the shot in the arm we desperately needed and we have some much hope with the promise of resolution.
I’ve missed you internet friends! I can’t wait to catch up on what you’ve been up to!
Those of you that know me personally, know that I have a bit of competitive streak. Okay, that might be an understatement. To give you an example, my brother and I would tease each other about who was on our parent’s sh*t list and who was the favorite. While we were kids, the power struggle was quite dynamic and could change daily. But now that we are adults the status only tends to change on an annual basis. And this year I have been beaten, royally. My mother’s birthday is today and Mother’s Day is this Sunday. My dad’s birthday is next month and so is Father’s Day and I will not be sending either of my parents a single thing. No cards, no letters. I may not even call them. All because my brother decided to up the ante of our competition and have a child. Yup, that’s right. On Monday, my brother and his wife gave birth to an 8 lb 11 oz baby girl. He made my mother a grandmother and my father a grandfather. There is nothing that I can do to beat that. I’m throwing in the towel this year. I’ll be surprised if my parents even know I exist anymore especially since I live a billion miles away from them.
So this solidifies it for me. I definitely have to have fertility treatments so that I can become a modern day marvel and give birth to sextuplets. Then I can get in my brother’s face and be all like “what! Look at your measly one baby, I have 6 babies. At one time, mind you. Suck on that”! (yeah just a little competitive). Not only will my parents be all like “you’re the best daughter ever for giving us SO MANY grandchildren so quickly, but you are a TV star now too”. Because all women that give birth to sextuplets become TV stars right? This is a warning for anyone reading this post today. You had better start sucking up to me with a quickness because pretty soon I’ll be a star and I’ll probably forget you unless you buy my love and affection with root beer floats and Lucky Charms.
So happy birthdays and Mother’s/Father’s Day to my parents. Sorry my gifts sucked really bad this year. Here are some stupid pictures I took of things that aren’t your grandchild. Love you!
As many of you know I am a super hero. I’m not quite as awesome as Superman or Spiderman, but let’s face it those guys aren’t real and I am. You may be asking what my super power is but I actually have quite a few. One can be seen in this picture. I’m like a chameleon and can change the color of my skin. I can really only change it between cardiac arrest red and translucent white, but you get the idea. My other super power is being a mediocre runner. This weekend I flexed my running super power and competed in a 5k road race in Massachusetts. I ran it in a little under 30 minutes and came in 146 out of 250. Oh yeah. Let’s just say that an eight year old beat my time by about 8 minutes. Eight years old dude! He has far less weight to carry and far more energy. It’s not really fair. Pretty soon, expect to see the Jes Cady action figures, coming to garage sales and flea markets near you.
Also, check out my new killer tat. It’s a heart with “mom” in it. Yeah, I’m tough stuff.
After running in my first half marathon, I suffered several injuries. My knee wasn’t tracking in the joint properly and was causing a lot of pain. So I went through several painful but effective months of rehab to fix the issue. When I tried to get back to running last month, my arch collapsed and had to be popped back in the right place. So for the past two weeks I’ve been slowly getting back to running.
Last night I went for a four mile run with another woman who I had just met that evening. We decided to take a shorter route than the other runners (who were going 6 miles). My reason for taking the shorter run was because I wanted to take it slow and not aggravate any of my healing injuries. As we got 3 minutes into our run, the woman tells me her reason for selecting the shorter route. She said, “I decided to take the shorter route cause I just found out I’m PREGNANT”.
Awesome.
I can’t get away from infertility even when I’m engaging in an activity that is supposed to relieve me of said stress.
The woman was perfectly nice about it, but I didn’t want to spend one of my first runs back listening to her talk about here pregnancy while I’m silently screaming and wanting to shove pine cones in my ears. The poor woman had no idea what she stepped into when she asked the socially polite question, “do you have kids”. I let the flood gates open. I gave her the whole run down. My entire fertility story, front to back in 15 minutes. It felt good to no longer keep my mouth shut when someone asks if I have children. It felt really good to be honest about who I am and what I am going through. It felt awesome to not let infertility have control over my life.
Her response was pretty prefect. She said “Wow, that’s an awesome story. I wish you the best of luck”. How great! No advice, no my sister’s, aunt’s cousin stories, no uncomfortable replies. A run that I thought at mile one was doomed for disaster turned out to be one of the best runs in a long time. That run really signifies the way I’m feeling right now. I have hope in every aspect of my life and it feels great.
One of the big lessons I have learned in my journey to becoming a real, bona fide adult is that things don’t work out quite the way I hoped/anticipated/planned. That’s really the place I’m in right now, nothing is quite working out the way I had planned and I’ve been fighting it every step of the way… and it hasn’t been pretty.
Lately, I’ve realized that maybe this isn’t the best way to go about life. Maybe, just maybe, the life I had planned out 10 years ago didn’t take into consideration the things I would learn and the people I would meet along the way. Take my career for instance. I got my undergraduate degree in engineering and had planned my future around working for several years, getting my graduate degree, and eventually conducting research. All of these plans were made before I had even worked one full day out in the “real world”. Once I actually did get a job as an engineer, I HATED it. I tried several jobs but none were a really good fit. During the that time I had started blogging and learning about social media and web programming. It was just something that I did for fun that I enjoyed. On a whim, I applied for a job in the web/software industry, and GOT IT! Go figure, when I wasn’t stressing about it or worrying about it, I got a job that fit me really well and actually offered a lot of unconventional opportunities to advance that I had never expected.
The same thing happened with school. I had planned and worried about how I was going to get back to school for my Masters in Engineering. When I quit fretting and worrying I kind of fell into an MBA program. I’ve only had a couple of classes, but I love it. I feel like I’m learning a lot of applicable information and I’m actually good at it. Letting go of my plans and objectives actually allowed me to be open to different opportunities that were a better fit for me.
I definitely can’t take credit for the way my life has worked out, cause all of it has been a blessing. But what I wish I could do, from here on out, is RELAX and let my life go where it’s going to go and quit fighting for silly plans I made when I was a kid. A kid that had no clue what life had in store for me. Instead of fighting my natural talents and trying to be the person I thought I was, I want to just accept who I am.
