Layla's Dark and Foreboding Weblog

It's been a while since I've updated this. Since M's mom died, it's been a very busy time. About 2 weeks after her death, we went to Mexico for our wedding...

From Novemeber 2 through the 11th, M and I were in Cabo San Lucas for our wedding celebration/all you can drink marathon. The event was attended by about 90 people, 90 of our most bestest and dearest friends. The most wonderful people you can imagine, all in one place. I feel bad for the rest of the world that weekend, because we really got all the good ones by us. Our families flew in from all over, our friends were there with bells on despite the staggering cost, and they threw down. Hard. Our wedding party was beyond compare, helping with everything under the sun. And we drank. And drank. And drank. The fact that I didn't vomit the whole time is amazing to me. Pacifico and Margaritas is really the only thing the entered my body that whole time. The setting was perfect for the ceremony: sunset on Medano Beach. Everyone looked gorgeous...oh, I can't even convey how fucking amazing it was. Just what we needed to get through a shitty time. A good amount of friends and family to cry with, laugh with, dance with and drink with. I love those people.

And then, we got back from Mexico and a week later went to Erie, PA, where M's family is from...

Thanksgiving in Erie = Cold as fuck. Snow, lots of snow. It was lovely though. I met M's mom's mother for the first time, and she is really having a tough time dealing with J's death. She's got slight dementia and is a bit senile, so it's hard for her to grasp fully what happened. It's really hard to hear her ask "Did she know she was dying? Couldn't anyone help her?" over and over again. Heartbreaking. We also hung with his Dad's family, and they're a partying bunch. Fun and shit, all of them. Never a sulky look, or family drama for the most part. Everyone just loves to hang with each other, and they were right there to help us through our first holiday without J. Sad as it was, it was nice to have them all there.

Then, we came home from Erie, and needed to find the house we wanted to buy...

We had our eye on a few houses, and had been back to 2 of them a few times. It was scary though. Buying a house isn't something that you do lightly, right? So we thought about it and said, "How many times do you have to see a house before you buy it? How many houses do you need to see? 10? 20? 30?" Well, after seeing about 24, we went back to house #8. We loved this house. Loved it. So we bought it. We actually close on it tomorrow, the 6th of January. I'm leaving out a lot of the crap that sucked about buying it, like being fucked over by our lender until we fired her, giving us only about 10 days to come up with financing, and lots of other lovely tidbits that kept me faxing and copying and searching until the 11th hour...who cares? We move this weekend, mother fuckers!

Then, in order to bypass another holiday in Dallas so soon after tragedy, we headed to California...

Ah, Christmas in Southern California. Palm trees, smog, terrible (TERRIBLE) drivers and the 405. What more could you ask for? We spent Christmas Eve in LA with M's sister and dad, where we ate steaks at a posh-but-amazing steakhouse in Beverly Hills called Mastros. I live in Steakcountry, mind you, and these were the *best* steaks any of us had ever had. Great wine, great food. Missing mom and wife. Very sad for all, most bittersweet. Then on Christmas day, all of us headed down to San Diego to visit with my mom. We stayed there till Wednesday, then went back up to LA through New Years. It was a looooooooooooong trip. Long. But nice, when M and I weren't at each others throats, bickering like high schoolers.

So, I have good reason for not writing in a while. I've done some work on my short stories, which are coming along pretty well, I must say. This weekend my younger brother is flying from Stockton to help us move, and then next week my best friend from SF and my other brother are coming to help set up the house. I can wait to see everyone!

As far as my New Years resolutions go, I have a lot of goals this year:

1. Get pregnant. We'll see how this goes.
2. To lose an extreme amount of weight. I've been battling with this one physically and emotionally for a while. While I excersize regularly, I've been drinking too much and I haven't been eating as well as I should. Better than most, but my body doesn't work that way. Looking at a 115 lb girl eating McDonalds with scorn while I eat fresh veggies doesn't help, so I need a new idea. Working out isn't enough, and it's really taking it's toll on me. I've sort of slipped into a depression about it, and that's not helping either. I don't know what the next step is, but when we get into this house, it needs to happen. I may have to quit drinking all together. Losing 60-80 lbs. is no small feat. I'll keep you posted.
3. To be a grown up. Well, not really a grown up, but someone who is more thoughtful, and less impulsive. I've been better over the past year or so at not jumping to conclusions, to not judge (as) harshly. I had been going through some things I wrote over the past years, mostly offline stuff, and I was sort of shocked by how my feelings toward certain things had changed. Not my core values, but the way that I feel like I should approach things. I still get hostile and angry, but it takes more now for it to happen. I don't mean that I don't give a shit, I just feel like too much energy is wasted. I enjoy being happy. I love being married. I love my husband and our little lives here in Texas. I hate the way our government is run, I hate the administration, I hate the horrors we face as a human race, but I also know my limits more. I know what I can do to help it, and what I can't. What works and what is futile. Granted, ask me about all of this when I'm drunk and you'll get an entirely different point of view.

Happy New Year!