Guess that means that I’m really living the Jesus Year stuff.

The 33rd year of your life. Time to get moving and get things done (maybe).

Whether that means getting married or getting established in a job or having children or whatever other events may signify “getting things done,” I’m not entirely sure.  But since those are things that come to my mind… that’s what I’m assuming.

Married

Did that, took care of that just before turning 23.  So I’ve got that one covered.

Job

I’ve been in my current job over 10.5 years.  I really don’t feel like I’m old enough to have been in a professional job that long.  It’s weird.

There are pros and cons with what I’m doing.  When I get to learn new web technology and apply it, I get a huge rush.  I love reading about trends and movements in the field and being able to do something with them to make improvements.  I get to telecommute, so I don’t really have to get dressed and I can be with my dog all day.  But I got moved to a different department last year, and it’s not necessarily a comfortable change yet.  And being on my own all day can get lonely, I miss idle chit-chat with colleagues. And I hate the depleted feeling I get lately from the fact that we’re so understaffed that all I can do is keep things at status-quo while trying to keep my head above water.

But I don’t see myself changing it in my 33rd year of life.

Offspring

This is probably the biggest area to address in this year.

Lately people have been reminding me that 35 is when you are officially considered “old” in the medical world when it comes to having kids.  And apparently fertility starts declining every year after you’re 20-some-odd. (I don’t care enough to research it.)  And we have been married for 10 years, so we definitely get questioned about why we haven’t had kids yet.  There are a few good reasons:

1. I hadn’t wanted to.
2. I can’t.

See, I suppose I am, technically, infertile… at least right now.  I do hold hope that status will change.

The thing where I feel like I’m different from a lot of women who are “infertile” is that I do not feel any desire to go through any kinds of fertility treatments.  I have no desire to get on fertility meds or try in vitro or get a surrogate or any of those things.  My feeling is that if the doctor would just come out and say, “You can’t have a kid.”  I would say, “Alright.” and then move on with life.

My eating disorder took away my menstrual cycle… it’s been gone for YEARS.  And I haven’t missed having a monthly cycle at all.  It isn’t something that most women truly relish. However I am at the point where I would really like it to come back.  Mainly because that is a huge indicator of women’s health.  And since I’m missing that signal, it means that something in my health is off, not right, missing.  Plus, if I get my cycle back then I would be back to what we’ve deemed as “marathon training health”… thus I could actually contemplate training for a marathon again.  Selfish reason.

I have no biological clock ticking ticking ticking.  I don’t feel any ache inside my uterus to have a child.  I don’t feel baby hungry. Are there other cliches about this longing?  Because I don’t have those either.

I do think that my husband and I would be good parents.  I KNOW Kevin would be a great dad, and I have a pretty good feeling that I could be alright as a mom.  And I am 100% certain that we’d love a baby, no question there.  If adding Jade The Boxer to our household is any indicator of taking care of a living thing (even on a different scale than a human being) I know our capacity to love someone, even if they poop in the house* and we have to fish stuff out of their mouth, is definitely there.  And I honestly didn’t think I had that prior to adopting the pup.

The biggest thing though is that I don’t want my eating disorder to make the kid decision for me.  That sucks.

I am at a “healthy weight” now… it took 2.5 years to get back to one.  And right now the plan is to “sit and wait” to see if my cycle starts again.  I did go through some rounds of progesterone and estrogen, they didn’t do much except show that my body did respond to those hormones appropriately.  They just seem to be lacking in my body naturally right now.  So the doctor wants me to wait until the fall to see if my body adapts after being at a healthy weight for a few months.  I was supposed to scale back my running, to see if less physical exertion triggered Aunt Flo.  Then I got a stress fracture in my foot, so I haven’t run for 6 weeks and I won’t be able to run for a few more weeks yet to come.  I don’t think that has had any affect one way or another on my reproductive health, but it’s something I can’t really measure progress.  Seems like an all-or-nothing fix.

I did have a cycle on July 1.  But I haven’t had one since.  That means I am about “15 days late” according to regular trackers, but in my case probably just means “the body is not healed yet.”  Not enough to be regular.

I like having goals to work toward, so the “sit and wait” plan is not my style. I mean, I guess there is a goal at the end, but how do you even work toward it?  There is no timeline and then suddenly one day it’s either decided you’ve failed or you’ve reached the goal?

I guess I am not going to try to have a baby before my “Jesus year” is over, but I would like to know more definitively if that is something that I even need to bother thinking about.  Because I kind of don’t want to waste energy thinking about it if it’s a non-issue for me.

* Jade hasn’t pooped in the house since she was a baby.

I’m a little stunned.  It all started because I read about this new fandangled “blogging” stuff in a tech magazine.  I had just gotten married and was tired of looking at my wedding site still.  (Yes, I was a weirdo and had my domain printed on my wedding announcements.  At least, a weirdo at the time.  Now it’s fairly commonplace and there are whole businesses devoted solely to the creation of wedding websites.  But back then… no, not so much.)

Anyway, 10 days after the wedding I was tired of seeing a page about “how we met” and “directions to the ceremony” and “directions to the reception” and whatever other stuff I had on that site.

So I started a blog.  You can read that first post.  Go ahead, I’ll wait…

It cracked me up to read it again and see that I wrote I was “following the herd.”  I don’t know what herd I was following… except for people that are now considered to be pretty ground-breaking in this arena.  People that have made a lot of bank off these social media thingies now days.  Or they’ve published books.  Or both.

I had no idea what blogging would become, how it would evolve.  For the first couple years I blogged comments weren’t even part of the standard blog make-up.  (Hell, photos weren’t hardly part of it. I had to FTP a photo to a server and hard code it into the post myself. Not hard, but drastically different from today’s setups.)  Us bloggers were just spewing thoughts out on the web.  In fact, even though my site was under my own domain (meaning, my maiden name… which is what I used for my wedding stuff… and to get a job before that) I called my blog “Brain Dump”.  The whole “Glossy Veneer” moniker came later.

Anyway, I’m celebrating the milestone by promising to not blow this site up!

We dated nearly 4 years before getting married, so we’ve been together for a while. And I’m looking forward to a lot more years together!

I love you Kevin!

The Atomic Testing Museum is located near the Las Vegas Strip and is operated in association with the Smithsonian Institute.  As of today, the admission is $12 per adult, but if you are a Nevada resident they give you a discount (with your ID) of $3.

Photography isn’t allowed throughout most of the museum. One woman walking through at the same time as us was taking photos of just about everything!  However, I did sneak a photo with my iPhone of one display about radioactive fallout.  I’m pretty sure that my family’s breast cancer history is directly tied to fallout and being downwinders from the testing done in the 1950’s.

There was one spot that was kind of kitschy and was outside of the main display, so I made sure we got photos of us there to prove that we were actually there:

There is also a gift shop with the museum (I think that might be a requirement for opening a museum?) that sold all kinds of weird things, like:

We spent a few hours at the museum, after that we were hungry and the other thing I had planned for the day was to try something that I’ve heard about ever since we moved here but hadn’t tried it yet:

Luv-It Frozen Custard

My main purpose in choosing this was because Kevin loves ice cream and sundaes.  (Yes, I know frozen custard is different from ice cream… but it’s the same family. Although, I claim fro-yo is in the same family and Kevin denies this.)  I kind of assumed that I wouldn’t get anything due to being lactose intolerant and would just have a taste of Kevin’s… but when the time came I decided I’d get a tiny scoop for myself.  This gave us the opportunity to try the chocolate custard.

I ate about 1/3 of this.  The rest made it back to my freezer at home where I can scrape off little layers of it for a couple more days. (assuming that works)

They had four flavors for the day: vanilla, chocolate, cheesecake and Swiss almond.  Kevin ordered one of their sundaes with vanilla as the base.

It was tasty, as one might expect from such a concoction.  But the caramel was pretty exceptional, great flavor.

Luv-It is in kind of a sketchy area.  We saw several… um, colorful, individuals wandering around.  Kevin said, “Why is it that I feel like I don’t want to be in this area?”  Cause it’s not the prettiest or friendliest looking area, or cleanest, or touristy, or… well, anything like that.  But it was tasty and simple and had a real small town feel (if you ignored the surrounding area) as you ordered at the walk-up window.  Also, Luv-It is cash only… I knew this in advance from the web, but there was a couple that came while we were there and they left empty-handed after this revelation.

Luv It Frozen Custard on Urbanspoon

Image via Wikipedia

I stopped at the gas station after my eye appointment.  While I was getting a drink, I overheard a conversation between a customer and a gas station employee that amused me.

Customer: How much are the hot dogs?
Employee: 2 for $2.22, see the sign there.
Customer: Yeah, but I don’t want two, I just want one.
Employee: But they’re 2 for $2.22
Customer: I only want one. How much is one?
Employee: I’m not sure. Probably half of $2.22.
Customer: How much is that?
Employee: I don’t know, I’m not working the register today.

His response? “No… you watch too much Glee.”

He said, “You make it sound like there wasn’t any effort on your part, like it was all just random.”

“You’re right. I did work hard to find those answers. I’m pleased with my effort to get the win!”

“Duh… winning. You used your warlock skills and tiger blood to get it.”