Miss Cape & Islands Contest 2010

So I conquered my fear and kicked my anxiety of being in front of a big group of people by participating in the "Miss Cape & Islands" contest held at The Sand Dollar Bar & Grill in Dennisport. I had to say I was expecting pageant hell with catty bitches, but I was pleasantly surprised. All the girls were really awesome and I had a fabulous time! Free drinks also helped :) I had an amazing time going out there and talking to people, getting the crowd pumped, I never thought I would do that. I was however dissapointed that all the girls that won were employees of that bar or associated bars, and the judges owned that bar or neighboring buisnesses. To me that falls under 'conflict of interest', bad policy. So in my quest to awesomeness I will try again at the competition being held at The Cabby Shack in Plymouth on wedsneday the 12th.

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"Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength"
~Author Unknown

I'll give you the cliff notes on my upheaval thus far : We go on vacation to NH from July 18th - July 21st. Grampa has back surgery on the 19th, we're told he'll be admitted and then go to rehab. Come home on the 21st to find grampa in his recliner in the living room. WTF. Thursday the 22nd, I'm home by myself with the kids and my grampa is in excrutiating pain. Call rescue to have grampa re admitted to CCH, he's there for 3 days does great, goes to Harborside in Mashpee for rehab on sunday the 25th. I visit him monday after my MRI and he looks fabulous, acting like him self.


Tuesday the 27th, busy ass work day from hell, thank god for my partner :)Husband is blowing up my phone, I can't talk bc of the insanity in dispatch. All I catch is "There's going to be a massive blow out between me and ****". **** is the leaching cousin from NH who treats our house like a motel and brings her ankle biting dog and leaves it for other people to tend to while she takes care of her own agenda. Anyways, she had been at the house all week while grampa was in the hospital, and Michael and the kids went to the store for 45 minutes and came back to find the dog locked down stairs, where it doesn't belong, in our living space.


Apparently the first time Michael attempted to address this with **** she was on the phone (which he didn't realize at the time ) she waved him off, Michael went down stairs to keep his head from exploading. After a few minutes he goes back up stairs to get the rest of the groceries from the car, where he is met by **** at the top of the stairs. She then proceeds to get in his face, pointing her finger in his face yelling at him, and making many accusations, the most hurtful and inaccurate of all, that we don't help my grandfather. This obviously angers Michael and he then yells back and made a comment about he better not find that dog in our living area again, blah blah blah.


Well apparently **** took it upon her self to call the police, and I had (thankfully) called my father after Michael's call to me, and the situation was a whole to do about nothing. But I was mortified that the police were called on my husband for a supposed threat. In the 7 years we've been together he's never even raised his voice to me. This woman is a complete Dr.Jekyl and Mr.Hyde, she'll be nice when people are around, but as soon as they leave she's completely rude and disrespectful to us, she manipulates people to get what she wants and was bullshit bc Michael called her bluff.


Our unwanted guest left that same night, thank god. Wednesday my brother and I go to visit grampa at the rehab, and he looks to be doing great. We discuss what happened, and I'm not sure if he couldn't really hear or understand me even though he appeared to, and then we discussed the possibility of us (Michael, the kids and myself) moving out. My grandfather seemed on board with this, saying he needed to down size, the house needs a lot of work that he can't afford or do himself. Mj starting preschool in the fall, and especially after the incident with our unwanted guest, we just really felt it was time we left. We had what I thought was a very productive 45 minute conversation, and I thought we were on the same page.


The next day Thursday the 29th, my father visits him to bring him up to speed on us leaving and the situation with the unwanted guest. Apparently my grandfather either totally forgot or did not understand our conversation the day before, bc he got all teary eyed and was insistant that we didn't leave, and that this unwanted guest would be banned from his property. I visited with the kids shortly after my dad left, and he was having an episode of shortness of breathe, chest pressure and feeling cold. The rescue was called and he was admitted into falmouth hospital, where he's been since bc they're still trying to figure out whats going on. There was no sign of any new infarction with the exception of some elevated enzymes, but its extremely difficult to tell with him bc he's had a quadruple bypass, a pace maker, tri gemini PVC's and CHF. On top of that now he's having difficulty swallowing, which is a new development.


So now we're trying to go through our stuff, pack and deal with all this crap. On top of all the stuff going on with my grandfather, I'm going for a repeat MRI on my shoulder to figure out whats going on with it, bc once through the tomb wasn't enough fun for me apparently. And I just had bloodwork, ultrasound, biopsy and removal of my IUD to figure out whats malfunctioning in my uterus and making me hate life. I have a exploratory laseroscopy and D&C to look forward to also. Awesome. So I'm on auto pilot right now, and if I don't seem like my self, that would be why, don't take it personally my friends.

Am I An Imposter?

Today was my first attempt to get back in church on sunday mornings, my old work schedule was not condusive to my church going efforts. Now my more church friendly sunday schedule has afforded me the opportunity to get back into the swing of things. So I had hoped. I think that I probably was setting myself up for disaster bringing both kids with me, by myself, since husband won't get home from work in time to attend. So after emailing my pastor back and forth after she had checked in with me over a week ago, I had looked forward to seeing her. So as the children and I took our seat I looked around and craned my neck to see Pastor Nicole, but I hadn't seen or heard her. Then service began, and there was a Pastoral Intern, apparently Pastor Nicole had accompanied her husband ,who is also a pastor, to Nantucket where he was a guest speaker. Between Pastor Nicole's absence and my wild beasts poor behavior I felt completely deflated. The Pastoral Intern did nothing to invoke my religious spirit, she did the complete opposite. I could barely hear her and I was in the third row from the front. Her gestures were without conviction , or atleast not what I had become accustomed to with Pastor Nicole. We had recieved a letter in the mail from her about a month or so ago, letting us know that she would be stepping down at the end of September to move across country with her husband, as he was afforded the opportunity to be a minister out in California, where she was originally from.


While I wish nothing but the best for Pastor Nicole and her husband, I feel like I've somehow disconnected myself from the church I had just joined. I know it's not supposed to be about the Pastor , but about the church and the community, but I just feel like that Pastor Nicole really was the spark that had made me want to be part of the church in the first place. I feel that with her leadership and encouragement I have grown not only in the spiritual aspect, but the emotional aspect as well. I spoke with her about family conflicts and worked through them as a result, something that I don't think I would be able to accomplish with out her encouragement.






I kind of had a feeling that change was in the air when husband and I, along with a few other folks, attended a church meeting to welcome new members. Someone had posed the question of the event that she were to leave, and her response was that we should feel compelled to join the church regardless of who the pastor is. I know that I should enjoy the time we have left with Pastor Nicole, and be grateful for all that she has done, and we are. I guess after the church service disaster this morning, I felt like an imposter bc I really had no interest in the service or want to be there, I guess I felt let down. I don't know who will be taking over as Pastor, there is no replacing Pastor Nicole, but hopefully there will be someone who can carry on the duties with the same passion as she.

Deciding Between Waging Battle or Throwing Up The White Flag

I'm going to try and be as discreet as possible, as there is a chance some male readers might dry heave, so I'll try and be considerate of you male folks. As some of you are aware I've been waging battle against my uterus, aka my "incubator", it's been an ongoing battle since I was diagnosed with Endometriosis at 17. Since I had baby princess last year its been considerably worse, and in the last three months it went from misery to hell on earth. I am at the point were I am physically and mentally drained, on top of all the other wonderful symptoms of naseua, migraines, weepiness, agonizing abdominal pain, blood clots (sorry), loss of appetite, weight loss, and oh yeah I've been bleeding since May 24th. AWESOME.


I've gone through pretty much every birth control ever created when I was in high school, and they made me fat and crazy. I was on depo shot for two years, which was awesome, but apparently not good for my bones. Then I was on the patch, which almost killed me when it sent me into an unresponsive hypotensive crisis , apparently having a blood pressure of 73/40 is not condusive to being alert and oriented. I tried mirena, the IUD that has low dose hormones, it worked for about a year and then I started bleeding all the time. That came out and baby princess came along. After her I opted for the copper IUD (paragaurd), which was fine, it didn't help my endometriosis symptoms, but it was effective birth control. Then my uterus decided it was going to bring on an epic battle and make me leak like a god damned BP oil well..... sorry ....


My dr from Plymouth Shore OB (they are awesome BTW) has be scheduled for an ultrasound tomorrow, I already went for bloodwork, then the end of next month I have a biopsy scheduled the same day of my IUD removal. After the results from the biopsy come back (to determine if there's a pathalogical reason for my misery), she's going to to a laperoscopy & D&C on the same day. I could have a hysterectomy if I wanted to, seeing that I've had two children, and with my history of problems, I would be an acceptable canidate.Great. It's like jury duty to me, you really don't want to do it, but you know you're going to have to eventually. Except there's no bench warrant involved if I don't show up.... but I digress ..... The only time I'm not in misery is when I'm pregnant, I LOVE being pregnant, bc I'm a sick freak like that, and with baby princess being a VBAC I could totally do it again.


Husband and I had discussed it last week, and had come to the conclusion that we have two very healthy babies, one of each, and that we are lucky to have the family we have, so why push our luck. Plus we are in no position to try and have another one anytime soon, it would be one thing if we had our own house, etc, but that just isn't going to happen for a long time. So I had accepted it as fact, and skip all the jumping through hoops to save a uterus I was just going to get rid of. So I thought.





The more I thought about it, the more I cried. It sounds incredibly ridiculous, but I would feel less like a woman. And this may sound completely vain and ridiculous, but in conjunction with the fact that I have no boobs what so ever, if I had my uterus aka "baby incubator" taken out, I could no longer become pregnant, the most feminine state you could be in. If I didn't have that what would I have, it's like taking away part of your identity. All the women in my family have had a hysterectomy, bc apparently we all have defective parts, so I know its probably only a matter of time. I just don't know if that time has to be right now.


It's just too permanent for me, I don't know if I can say good bye to this

Dad's Don't Come With Instructions

Growing up I always adored my father, I wanted to grow up and be super smart just like him. I had an equal amount of fear & respect to the point where if I was being a smart ass all he would have to do was give me "the look" over the glasses and raise his eyebrows, and I would run hysterically into my room and hide until the coast was clear,or until my dad went to work, which ever came first. I don't remember my father, or either of my parents for that matter, being particularly affectionate or squishy, I don't remember them going out of their way to tell me that they loved me, even though I know they did. My dad didn't treat me like a princess, or give into my every whim, I remember everytime I told him something hurt he would reply "then don't do that". Whenever I had some minor childhood injury and would run crying to him, I was told to "walk it off" and when I asked how long was it going to hurt for, "two weeks". Now that I think back, everything was two weeks, regardless if it was a tooth ache or a skinned knee, two weeks.


Could my father have been a little more affectionate, probably, would I have liked to hear 'I Love You' more, yeah. I do remember 'the old man' always read to me and tucked me in, everynight. He would play monopoly with me once a week, and while he didn't let me cheat, he wouldn't buy certain properties, even though I knew he should. He always kept his word, he always showed up, and he always looked out for what was in my best interests, even if I didn't think so at the time. He saved my life, literally. I was born with a cogenital heart defect that would throw me into cardiac & respiratory arrest at the drop of a dime, the ER Doc had given up when I was a few months old, and as a practicing paramedic my dad took the IV kit himself and started the line, he saved my life.





My father may not have done somethings the way I had hoped, and there may have been more yelling growing up than I cared for, but he shaped me into the person I am today. He is amazing with my children, and melts for them, gives into everyone of their requests, and fawns over every single one of their boo-boo's. He fills them full of cookies and candies, re built the chicken coop because he thought MJ would like some baby chicks, and then made mention of emptying out one of the stalls to make room for a pony. Hey, as long as it stays at their place, what do I care.


The stern man that I had grown up with, and feared (most of my friends still do), has melted away to a loving grandfather, and turned into someone I can ask life's questions too. I hope that I can be atleast half as amazing not only as a parent, but as a person, as my father is. I am thankful everyday that I have him, and so are my children.

Not To Be A Negative Nelly ... Is It Just Me?

Maybe I'm just being a "negative nelly" and missing the big picture here, but I've come to the conclusion I really have little use for the Mashpee Commons, outside of a few exceptions, it just doesn't really seem to be pocketbook friendly to the year round residents here. Growing up on cape I had always frequented the shops there and spent time with my friends going through the shops, but it feels to me that the Mashpee Commons has started to cater to its seasonal, far more wealthy clientele, en lieu of appealing to its blue collar residents.





Honestly, Gustare Oils & Vinegars, a wine & oil bar, while it certainly is a novelty, is it really something that we could benefit from in the long run? Or the Troll Beads store,where you can make your own jewlery, while the product certainly is beautiful, I can't afford to be spending $30-$100 on ONE BEAD. Seriously folks, with Ann Taylor and Banana Republic gone, I really don't have any reason to go to the commons, with the exception of getting a coffee,a cupcake or painting pottery, what is there for the average Cape Cod family to do there? All these high end shops are nice to look at and all, but how does it benefit the community in which it is located?? Because I know , atleast for myself, I am not going to be spending $78 on a baby sweater .... Just sayin' .... I'm not sure what the goal of the Mashpee Commons is, but it doesn't appear to be one involving the benefit of its community.

Providence Children's Museum

Against my better judgement I decided to bring my two little ones to the Providence Children's Museum on what was supposed to be a miserable rainy saturday, in the middle of the afternoon. Suprisingly the museum wasn't that bad at all, mind you I've worked at the local children's museum and have expirienced rainy summer saturdays ... the kind of busy where you'll need a helmet, mouth gaurd and a steady supply of excenderin migraine on hand.


Admission was $8.50 per person (babies under 1 year are free and of course Mya's birthday was 3 days before the visit), and in my opinion if you spend your entire day there and enjoy the 2 floors of exhibits and activities its worth the trip. Parking in their lot is free, but if its full you'll have to resort to the meters on the side streets. They allow you to bring in snacks and such (which is always a bonus with little ones, I know thats one of the thing that's kind of annoying about the local one), however they do not have any cafes or food service like the one in Boston, but there are several options around the block.





The first floor has the "Water Works" which was my kids favorite area to play it, and it has two giant water "tables" that kids can experiment with the cause and effect of whirlpools, build drainage systems and participate in other experiments. There's also Power Play which encourages kids in 'free play' which includes air tubes, musical pipes,funhouse mirrors, giant lite brite and other super cool exhibits.





The 2nd floor houses a construction play zone with a workable crane for kids to operate, the "Coming to Rhode Island" exhibit tells the story of the immigrants who helped build the state, this exhibit has a ship that kids can 'steer' raise and lower the flag, and go between the upper and lower decks. There is also a really cool multi cultural grocery market that has a diner inside. 'Little Woods' was a great place for princess, I felt bad that she was stuck in her carriage for fear of her being stomped on, this area is gated off, and is made specifically for kids five and under, so she got to climb around and do her own thing.


The Children's Garden is opening this friday June 11th, and features an outdoor climber, similar to the one in the entrance at the Boston Children's Museum, and 'Underland' and outdoor exhibit that features creatures burrows and tunnels.





In my opinion it's 1,000 times better than the local one, besides the fact that its bigger, in my opinion its much cleaner, offers more things for kids to do and is more parent friendly. It's a little pricey and far away for me to consider purchasing a membership ($125 for 4 people plus the 1 1/2 hour drive), however if you purchase a Association of Children's Museums Membership it provides free admission to a minimum of 4 family members of the same house hold to 165 reciprocal museums including: The Cape Cod Children's Museum, Boston Children's Museum, Children's Museum in Easton, The Discovery Museums in Acton, and The Providence Children's Museum. That to me is a fantastic deal, as soon as I can scrape together a spare $125. Website: http://www.childrensmuseums.org/visit/reciprocal.htm#MA