Guhh

After all that I posted yesterday, I had a "moment" today, which unfortunately fell during my birthday dinner, and which ended up making my husband feel like he'd not properly feted me, which isn't the case at all. I guess that's what he gets for having married a woman?

Anyway, I wanted to follow up because I want to be honest and real, and I sincerely felt and meant what all I said yesterday, but today... Well, today was another day. Fiddle dee dee.

Please excuse this admission: I got something for my birthday that I didn't want. It's something I get every single month, if you catch my drift. So that's not helping. Today, we received the copy of "All the World" that I ordered for Mal last week, and I wept reading it three different times. So that's where we are.

Another thing you should know is that last week, I installed sparkpeople on my phone because I need to track my calories. When I was pregnant, of course my appetite grew and I ate more. After I had Mal, that kind of continued; you burn lots of calories breastfeeding, so no biggie. But as he gets bigger, it's more and more difficult for me to lug him around, so I try not to as much. I encourage him to walk, so my exercise level is going down. He still nurses a lot, but I'm not sure how much he actually drinks, and he'll wean at some point... so we have to reign this in.

So I'm still in the two-week "calorie modulation" period where I'm just hungry a lot of the time. I really hate that. And I feel stupid for lining this up the week I'm on my period, too, because what kind of crazy person does that? Oh well. We're almost a week into it now, so we're plugging on...

Tonight, James got home and wanted to show me the Prisma app he'd downloaded. Unfortunately, the picture he snapped was of me turning around after having cut D a piece of my birthday cake. It was a very unflattering picture, and I told him, "That's revolting. I don't want to look at it." He was trying to show me the filters, but I said, "Seriously. I'll look when you take a different picture."

Because I'm nice.

Anyway, that was bad enough.

Soon after, I hounded D into letting me take a picture with her FOR MY BIRTHDAY. We squeezed into the chair in my bedroom, and James took a picture with my camera. I didn't look at it until a bit later, but, lort, it was awful. I just wanted our faces, in general, but the picture was at a weird angle like your shadow looks when it's late evening: giant freaking feet, big legs, smaller torso, itty bitty heads. I barely glanced at the pictures before deleting them, saying aloud that they wouldn't work.

At that exact moment, I'd been cutting a piece of cake for myself. Instead, I teared up and had to leave the room. My self-talk was seriously, "When you're this disgusting, you don't get to eat cake."

And I couldn't. Like it didn't sound good, and I knew it'd be dry in my mouth, and I just could not.

But James can't read my mind, and all he knows is that I've bitched at him for two different pictures, and now I'm not eating the cake he picked out for me.

It was on that note that he and Mal both went to bed super early tonight. So when my mom asked me if I'd enjoyed my birthday evening, I wasn't sure how to respond.

*sigh*

I did talk to James before he went to sleep. He said he feels like he never gets it "right" on days he tries to make me feel special. But he did everything right! He did stuff in advance. He got me what I asked for (See's Candy). He even picked out a cake and some cake pops (one of which I did have for breakfast this morning). AND he got me the awesome tablet on which I am writing this blog post right now. He would have done any of these things any day of the year, too, just because he loves me. This was actually kind of over the top for him.

But it's not about what he got me. It's that despite my ugliness, physical or emotional, actual or perceived, he loves me. He loves me and wants to be with me and wants to make me happy. And he does. But sometimes, it's just hard, you know? So I thought I'd share that with you.

Good night.