Friendships: Why Don't They Happen?

Sometimes I have to wonder about us as women! I have a wonderful life. I have a husband, 2 kids, parents that are still married, 2 sisters that are my best friends, yet I still get jealous of other women. I have never been the most popular girl in anything in life. I was very, very shy as a child and therefore only had a few friends. As I got older and in high school, I was very active in my youth group. I was considered one of the "leaders", yet I still was not popular. I still wasn't invited all the time to go out with the other girls or be included in their things.

I always had this dream of developing friendships with other mommies once I had kids and we would get to go and do things together with our kids, or just go out every couple of months for a girls night. Now I am a working mommy, so I can't do all the playdate kind of thing. I love my job and am blessed to have one, but a lot of times I miss getting to have that friendship with other women. During the summer I try to get together with other moms on Fridays so that EmmyKate can play and I can hopefully develop friendships, however it is hard to really develop deep ones when you only get to do it once every few months.

All of this is leading up to the fact that I love blogging. I see all of these women making friendships on their blogs and I sometimes get jealous. There is a certain group of girls that always seem to get together here in Houston. I have been reading and commenting with them for years (before some of them were even here in Houston) and yet somehow I always get left off of the invite when they get together for dinner or something. I know I shouldn't get jealous of them, but I do. I would love, love, love to get to know some of them in real life rather than just bloggy world life. I don't like to whine on my blog, but it seems like sometimes the whining is what gets you an invite.

Don't get me wrong, I love and am grateful for what I have, I guess I just don't understand why girls always have this need for friendships with other girls. I also don't understand why some people get left off the invite when others get included. What makes someone want to become your friend? I feel like I am much, much more outgoing than I used to be, yet it still does not get me anywhere. Do I smell bad or something (though that would be pretty weird if you could smell me though a computer, ha!)?

Okay, I will get off of this today and quit my complaining. I just needed to vent for a moment, and that moment is now over. Moving on for the day...

Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.

Proverbs 18:24

Exhaustion

Weaning a baby

+

That time of the month

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Baby waking up every hour last night

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Summer hours at work where we are at the office from 7:30-5:30

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No time to take a nap this weekend or the next or the next or the next

=

A very tired and emotional Mommy

Working Moms: A Little "Why" Session

Lately, S and I have been having conversations about women working and how society and especially the church sees it. As you all know, I am a working mom. It is my dream, and S's dream, that I will get to be a stay-at-home mom one day, but right now, financially we can't do it. We are looking at perhaps after this baby comes, then I will be able to work part-time because we will have our student loans paid off. We in no way live extravagantly, but rather because of some really bad situations with the landscaping industry, S did not land in very good jobs over our first years of marriage.

We had EK when we were married for 4 years. When she was about a year old, S lost his last landscaping job, and decided that he needed to get out of that industry. The people always seemed to lie about the things he would get and nothing ever came through. So now, he has an awesome job (not in landscaping), but not one that can support us on 1 income right now. God continues to do awesome things in this job and just over the 2 years he has had God there things have progressed wonderfully. We know that this is where God wants S and He will make it work for our family. Just looking at our normal bills and nothing else, I would still be required to work part-time (we don't have cable, all cars are paid off, we don't buy "things" on a weekly basis, but rather save up for them, etc). I am completely okay with this because part-time is better than full-time and we know that God will put us where He wants us at the right time.

What we are both really struggling with, is how can so many women stay home and not have to work. Looking at our Sunday School class alone, every single woman in there that has kids stays at home. How is it possible that so many of them have husbands that have great paying jobs. We want to live debt free, and will be doing so once this student loan is paid off, but are the rest of them doing this? Do they just act like they have it all together and really they are going home at night and wrestling over the debt that they have? Are they just keeping secrets to make it look like they have it all together, when really the woman should be working at least part-time?

Also, we are really struggling with the fact that especially in the church, everything for women and mothers is during the day. Every MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group in Houston is during the day. I have only found 1 group in all of the Houston area that mets in the evenings and it is at a very large church that I just think I would get lost in the crowd with. To me, as a Christian, I feel bad enough that I can't do these things, but what is this saying to non-Christians? Are we telling the working moms "Oh, sorry, you work, so you can't do anything with us. You are too different." Shouldn't we have groups for moms at night? I struggle with that fact that I would love to get to know ladies and develop relationships, but when there is nothing that you can go is, how can you?

At our old church, we had Girls' Night Out and it was wonderful! I think I only missed 1 or 2 of these, but I loved going to them. I was able to actually develop a few friendships because they actually had things that I could go to. I was so sad when we had to leave that church because I enjoyed getting to actually do things with other ladies.

Even outside of the church, when I was looking for EK to do dance classes, I could only find 1 place in our area that had classes for her age group at night. Everything else for little kids is during the day. Do these places think that working moms don't want their kids to do things? I work for a school district and just in our district alone, there are hundreds of moms that work. Do they not want their kids to participate in things? What did they do when their kids were little?

So, this is just a little something that we are discussing lately. We had a long talk last night in which I was fighting off tears (partly the hormones), because I want to develop relationships so badly but there is nowhere in the church to do that.

So, what do you think on this topic? Am I just being whiney and hormonal? Have any of the rest of you been through this? Tell me, please!!!

Update on Life

Well, this week has been another one of those weeks! I haven't shared in this whole non-pregnancy thing in a while, but as of Monday I was 2 weeks late and yet all tests pointed towards the negative. So finally after hearing 2 more pregnancy announcements on Monday and being very down in the dumps about them, I decided I would quite doing the waiting game and call my doc. I went in on Tuesday for some blood work and before she even ran the workup, she said "Yep, you are having some hormone issues". So finally, I don't feel like I am a completely crazy, but there is probably something actually wrong and we can get this fixed. So now I am on some lovely medicine for the next 10 days that is making me want to wring S's neck, but after that I will go back and see what the bloodwork showed. She said that it is most likely 1 of 3 things, but that the 3 things were very normal to have issues with. I told S last night that at least the 1 good thing about me not being pregnant yet is that when we go to Schlitterbahn in a few weeks with my family I will actually get to do all the fun rides instead of sitting in the baby pool with EK. Last summer she loved all the fast stuff at the Galveston Schlitterbahn, so I know she is really going to love it this year at the original Schlitterbahn!!!

So, after getting this good news (I know it does sound weird to hear that it is good to have something wrong, but it is comforting to me that at least my doctor did not think I was crazy and tell me to just wait it out, but rather is working to figure out a way to get us a pregnancy), EK did not have a good night. On Tuesday night she was awake for much of the night. At first I was frustrated at her because I was sleepy from the medicine I am taking, but after going potty twice during that time and both times she had a slight look of pain on her face, I figured she had another UTI. So Wednesday I took her to the doc early and of course, the little stinker would not tee-tee in a cup. We finally had to go and play at Mimi's school until she decided she needed to go. And of course, she has a full blown UTI! The doctor is wanting to run tests on her kidneys, but I just don't know if I want to do all of that just yet. I really feel like she never fully got over the other one because it has only been about 2 weeks since she had it, the first one was probably going on for a while and we had not known it, and the doctor only had her on medicine for 5 days last time as opposed to the regular 10 days. I know definately that I am not doing the IV test, but can't decide whether we should do the ultrasound or we should just wait a little while and see if this comes up again.

So, that is our week in a nutshell. It has been a week full of illness/nonpregnancy stuff. I am praying every night that the medicines we are on will do what they are supposed to do and that God will take care of all of this. Hopefully next week will bring some better news in the Maynard household!

P.S. We did end up with a free HDTV last night. S went to deliver some furniture yesterday and the customer was getting a new TV, so he asked if S wanted the old one. It is a Sony TV and is extremely nice!

Worship While I'm Waiting

This week I have been in a funk. It is has been slow at work because the computer system that I use to do everything was down and so I have had literally nothing to do. Add that to the fact that it is supposed to be "that time of the month" and it has made it for a lovely week in the Maynard household. I am currently waiting and waiting and waiting. I am just waiting around this week, which has made the slow work days even slower. Nothing is happening and my selfish nature gets mad when other people announce they are pregnant after trying for all of 1 month and here I am after 8 months and still waiting! I want things to happen and I want them to happen right now. Just get this month over with and let's move on...

A girl from college stated it perfectly on her blog a month of so ago:

I wish I could remember what magazine I read this article in but it talked
about how during trials of infertility you start wishing your life away 30 days
at a time. You have your cycle, you try to get pregnant, then you wait, and if
your cycle starts you start wishing away the next 30 days and doing it all over
again. I thought this description was so perfect. When you're trying to get
pregnant there is a lot of waiting and waiting and then when you're cycle starts
the waiting starts again!

That is exactly what this is and I just have to remember that though this is not in my time, that God has it all in His hands and that I just need to wait. There is a song on the radio right now that is from the movie Fireproof that is by John Waller that I am trying really hard to listen to:

I’m waiting

I’m waiting on You, Lord

And I am hopeful

I’m waiting on You, Lord

Though it is painful

But patiently, I will wait

I will move ahead, bold and confident

Taking every step in obedience

While I’m waiting

I will serve You

While I’m waiting

I will worship

While I’m waiting

I will not faint

I’ll be running the race

Even while I wait

I’m waiting

I’m waiting on You, Lord

And I am peaceful

I’m waiting on You, Lord

Though it’s not easy

But faithfully, I will wait

Yes, I will wait

I will serve You while I’m waiting

I will worship while I’m waiting

I will serve You while I’m waiting

I will worship while I’m waiting

I will serve You while I’m waiting

I will worship while I’m waiting on You, Lord

I know in the whole scheme of things that 8 months is really not that long. There are some people that wait years to get pregnant. I know that I do have EK and so I should be grateful for that. Don't get me wrong, I am completely and utterly thankful for that little girl in my life and there is not a day that goes by that I don't thank God for her, however I want another little someone to go with her. I know I need to step back and not allow my selfish nature to take over, but sometimes that is hard.

Sorry you all had to listen to whining today, but since I use this as my journaling too this is what you all got. Hope my weekend is a little happier since we are painting our house and I can't wait to see the transformation!

Fall is here at last and Refrigerator Drama

I just went outside to run to the grocery store during lunch and it is actually chilly outside. I am so excited! I bought myself a box of Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal while I was at the store, because nothing says old weather like Oatmeal. I can't wait to break open the box tomorrow morning and eat some. We are having soup tonight and next week I am going to make some Tortilla Soup in the crockpot. I will have to try and remember to post the recipe for the soup as it is super easy. You just open up cans and dump it all in before you leave the house and when you come home it is yummy, yummy smelling.
Okay, now to the refrigerator drama. A few days after we got electricity back from the hurricane, our refrigerator stopped cooling. We called and it was going to take them 2 weeks to get out to fix it. I was patient and waited due to all of the other people that had hurricane issues. They were supposed to come out yesterday and fix it. S missed the phone call of the technician and then got a call from a certain Repair Center saying our service was cancelled because we did not answer the phone. S called them back and spoke with a dispatcher telling her that he had been home. She called the technician, then got back on the phone with S and told him that we were still on the schedule. Long story short, they never showed up. I was so mad. I called and did a little stern talking and got nowhere. The earliest they can come out now is next Wednesday. So now we have to wait another week. This is only the 3rd time we have had to call this certain Repair Center out in the 4 years we have lived in our home and we have had issues with them 2 of those times. Not a very good track record if you ask me! The first time was a major catastrophe with our furnace that almost caused us to have a home fire. So needless to say, I will be reporting them to the BBB again this time. I don't know if it will get me anywhere, but at least it will make me feel a little better!