wavesoflife

Recently, Facebook has twice suggested a sponsored post to me about a class action suit for birth defects from women who took Zoloft when pregnant. I mistakenly read the comments on there and they really pissed me off. Some people seem to feel that if you require any sort of daily medication, no matter for you, you shouldn’t even get pregnant. Or if you do get pregnant, you should immediately stop any sort of medication and not take anything at all while pregnant, despite your doctor’s okay that it’s okay to take that medication. Yes, that will be very helpful for my baby when I can’t breathe due to my asthma.

And then there were the people who said that if you have depression, you shouldn’t even have kids. Really? How about if you’re judgmental idiots, you shouldn’t have kids? What gives you the right to say who should or shouldn’t have kids?

And there were all public comments on Facebook, where anyone can see them and which were most often associated with their real name.

And then there’s the women on the due date club forums that I lurk on. Not only is there so much drama and cattiness and bitchiness, there is rampant stupidity.

People ask the same questions over and over that a Google search would be more appropriate for (or asking their doctor). Like, “can I take Tylenol”. Yes, you can. It’s the only class A drug in pregnancy. Look it up yourself. Now, I can understand questions asking for opinions or options, such as “what drug did you take for high blood pressure while pregnant”. That’s a reasonable question. And then there are questions that are just totally ridiculous like “can I eat doughnuts while pregnant” or some other food that there’s really no question is safe. Unless of course you eat like a dozen donuts yourself every day. I wouldn’t advise that.

Then there are the women there who are like “I’m not eating anything bad, taking any medication, or having even a drop of caffeine while pregnant because I love my baby and want the best for it”. Yes, way to make the rest of us who aren’t quite so fortunate to not need medication feel great. Or who enjoy still having a cup of black tea that doctors agree is completely safe to have. Or who don’t have the energy to cook healthy food all the time.

I will love my child and want the best for them, but I am still a person too and will not now or later have my whole life focused on my offspring. I will still have my own interests and own hobbies and be my own person. I will never have a username that is “mommyoftwo” or some other thing that shows my whole identity is based upon my kids. My own life is not ending just because I’m having a baby. And if my Singulair and Zyrtec allow me to breathe without tons of mucus and wheezing, then dammit I’m going to take them.

At the beginning of the year, I wrote that:

I want this year to be a lot better. I want to be healthier and I want to be happier.

I will be healthier and happier.

And for the most part, that happened. 2012 was a good year for me. For the first 5 months, I ate healthier (mostly paleo) and went off most of my medications because I didn’t need them anymore. I lost about 25 lbs (although I gained about 10 back this fall…). I did do some exercise in the winter/spring, but it seems like every summer I fall off my diet/exercise plan. And along with falling off my healthy eating, my health went downhill some. I don’t get why I can’t eat healthy all the time. I know eat bad = feel bad for me, and yet I still do it.

Career-wise it was a good year, especially in the second half. I created a WordPress plugin that I put up for sale on Code Canyon in the summer. I released a new, small, free plugin on wordpress.org in the summer as well, making it my second plugin there. I also released a few new versions of my other plugin throughout the year and started work on a pro version that I plan to sell. I did some freelance work throughout the year, mainly small stuff that just fell into my lap. All sub-contracting work, I don’t want to work directly with clients really. The biggest thing career wise was leaving my job I had been at for 7 years and start working for a new company as an independent contractor, which means I work from home. It was a hard change for me, which I didn’t expect. The new company, who I love working for, is much more “professional” in it’s development practice, using version control (as you should) and actually caring about the quality of the code they produce. Not coding like it was still 1999. That was all a good change, but it was still a change. Also no hour long phone calls telling me that the color of a link needed to be changed, which was great. The hard change was working from home. I’ve worked from home before sometimes, only for a day here and there. It wasn’t really the “at home” part that was hard, it was the you don’t just clock in, put in your time, and clock out. Working at my old job, I’d work 5-6 hours a day since I was part-time. So out of say 5 hours, I’d do maybe 2-3 hours of actual coding/design. There was a ton of email to go through, tickets to read, hour long phone calls that really only needed to be 2 minutes, estimates to provide for quotes, and so on. Now, I just check out basecamp to see what’s on my to-do list and work on it. And then do actual coding for 5 hours, or however long. My brain was tired for awhile at first. It wasn’t used to working so hard.

I had wanted to clean the house more this year. That didn’t happen. I’m just not into cleaning. Not spending so much and budgeting better didn’t really happen either.

I wrote my second novel this year. And re-read my first and realized it wasn’t as awful as I thought. I spent a little bit of time working on my own websites but not much. I was more into coding plugins. I did not keep up with journal writing like I had wanted. I did keep track of what I ate and how I felt up through August. By then, I was kind of eating bad and feeling bad after again but continuing to do it anyway so I didn’t see a point in keeping that up.

And so, on to what I want for 2013.

Obviously, the first thing is for a healthy and happy baby to be born around September 2. Most everything is going to revolve around that. Cleaning and preparing the house, saving money, buying baby stuff, eating healthy and doing appropriate levels of exercise. I do hope to write more journal entries, both on paper and online about all that and about everything else in life.

Hobbie-wise, I hope to edit my books and get one prepared enough to use my NaNoWriMo free 5 paperback copies though a book printing company by June. I have books on writing I want to read and books on black/blood magic to read for research for editing my first novel. Really hoping my reading material does not influence the baby negatively… And I do hope to do some more on my personal web sites and create new layouts for some.

Career-wise, I hope to do good and interesting work for the company I work for. I hope to create more WordPress plugins to sell and some to release for free. Possibly venture into selling WordPress themes if I feel like designing. I do plan to work after the baby arrives, although I guess I’ll need something of a maternity leave probably. Not too long, because we really do need my income. I’m very fortunate in that I work from home now so that will make it easier.

Happy 2013 everyone!

I finished NaNoWriMo on Nov. 28th, the same day I finished in 2010. It was a great relief to finish it. I was feeling so burnt out and tired of writing. Now that it’s over though I kind of miss it. I do plan on trying to edit it, and my previous novel, once I read some of my writing books (characterization, dialogue, description and setting, and general writing books).

I’ve been busy since then doing a cross-stitch for mom for Christmas. I have two smaller ones to do for her.

Joe now has a new job that he started Monday, doing help desk support for a company that does long term acute care hospitals. He finally has a regular shift, 9 am to 6 pm. This is after years of working two weeks for 7:30 am to 4 pm and 2 weeks of 1:30 pm to 10 pm, alternating. Except for the past 6 months, even his weeks of mornings have consisted of several night shifts. The health insurance is also better and will be almost half the cost of my current cobra payment to get on his insurance.

I finished the Dresden file books and read the new one (and loved it). I’m currently rereading the Pendergast books. I doubt I will finish them before the next book comes out on Tuesday. I know I won’t finish rereading Wheel of Time before the last one of that comes out.

Very oddly, I had about 6 requests for customizations/forks of one of my plugins in November. This was after only having 1 that didn’t pan out in all the years I’ve been maintaining that plugin. None have gone to the doing the actual work stage and I’m not sure if they will.

I’m going to be pretty busy next month.

I decided a few hours ago to do NaNoWriMo again this year. I completed it once in 2010 (and only did it for a week a few years before that). I had been thinking about doing it for a a few months, but ended up not doing any planning for it.

I started a new job at the end of August. It’s work from home doing web development, mainly WordPress themes and plugins. I also sometimes do some freelance web development and I have two free WordPress plugins and a premium one to support and update. Plus my own sites which are very neglected. I have some people who are waiting for a premium version of one of my free plugins with new features that I’ve promised. I’ve done some planning for it but no actual coding.

Plus new books come out for several series I read. The new Dresden Files book comes out November, the new Pendergast book comes out in December and the new Wheel of Time books comes out in January. I’m halfway through rereading the Dresden Files books so need to do the other two series after that.

Doing NaNoWriMo could be a good thing for my plugins and sites because I’m very likely to want to procrastinate on writing.