If you’re not still to scared from the unbridled anger Emily released a few days ago in her rant about birth control pills, allow me to add a wee update about my journey with these things.

As you may remember, I started taking them a year ago, hoping to balance out my super-crazy hormones, which were causing headaches, acne, and (in my opinion) sleeping problems.

They cured my acne but they made me batsh** crazy and depressed. So I tried another kind, and another kind, and then anti-depressants on top of that. Then another kind of anti-depressant after a few months. I had a sleep study which came back negative, increasing my suspicions that hormones are at the root of my sleeping problems.

Because my sleeping problems are the main issue at this point, I asked my doctor last month if she could test them. She said I would have to be off the birth control pill for at least 30 days before she could do that. So I stopped taking it. My next appointment is near the end of April and I wanted to make sure my hormones were good and natural by then.

And I feel about 90% less crazy. Even with the anti-depressant, I was having very low moods before my period, and times of anxiety. And this month, I have had none of that!! I am still taking the anti-depressant, but it is amazing how different I feel now that I have stopped taking the pill. A couple more months of this, and I may be able to stop taking my A-D.

(Of course if my giant ZITS come back, I may get depressed all over again.)

Also, since I stopped taking the pill, my hair is falling out like CRAZY, just like it did for a few months after I gave birth. Fortunately, I have tons of hair, so I am not too worried about it (I wish the gray ones would fall out! Or some of my excess eyebrow!) but I find that to be rather odd and just another sign that hormones are FRAPPING WEIRD and they do CRAZY things to us lady people. (Check back with me in a month. If the hair loss speeds up and my zits come back, I am gonna be really fugly, and really depressed!! Nothing cuter than a bald, acne-covered 32-year-old woman.)

So, I am a little less crazy, which feels awesome. And a lot more bald, which at this point, is still ok. And also, a little bit more hopeful that one day I’ll be back to me.

So you may have noticed from the pictures from Joshua’s birthday that his cake appeared very store-bought and not at all homemade. “Whaaaat?” you say. “How can this be? We all know that Jenny feels that her love for her children is directly proportional to how much she tortured herself making their birthday cake!”

And you would be right. There was a time, oh so recently, when I felt that I had to trash my kitchen and stain my fingers with icing dye to ensure that my children had a fabulous birthday! Like this time, and this time, and this time!

But I was wrong. And I admit that Emily was righttarget (this once.) As much as it HUUURTS.

So around the time of Sophie’s birthday, my friend Cortney was getting REALLY good at making cakes. She had made my birthday cake and it was fab, and I decided, why not let HER torture herself making Sophie’s cake? I really wanted Sophie to have a “Word World” cake but I didn’t have it in me to give it a try. So, I was thrilled when Cortney came up with this masterpiece:

It was AMAZING!! And Sophie loved it. And I didn’t have to make it or trash my kitchen, give myself hives or turn to drink! Score!

So for Joshua’s birthday cake, I once again turned to my cake guru Cortney. Joshua wanted a Super Mario Bros. cake as he loooooves playing that Wii game with his Daddy. So Cortney was commissioned.

(In the meantime, being a true slacker mom, I couldn’t find Super Mario Bros. decor anywhere, and when I checked online, it was too late to order them in time, so I bought SpeedRacer decor. And convinced Joshua it would be totally cool.)

But even cake geniuses like Cortney sometimes have unavoidable cake-tastrophe’s. Check out her post to see what happened to the Super Mario Bros. cake! She texted me about 9:30 the night before the party that it had imploded. So, my wonderful hubby went out to Kroger in the snow around 10:00 to find his boy a birthday cake. He bought the only one he could find without flowers on it, we threw Joshua’s two toy SpeedRacer cars on it, and we called it a birthday cake!

Bobby did have to sit Joshua down and tell him that the Super Mario cake wasn’t gonna happen. He was a little sad, but recovered well, and had a really GREAT birthday!

And I am pretty sure he knows I still love him more than ever.

Although next year, I AM going to get the right decorations on time!! I swear!

For years and years, I have had a recurring dream. I guess you could call it a nightmare, because it’s emotionally upsetting, but it’s not filled with zombies or monsters or decapitation.

It’s about not finishing college.

I graduated from college a semester early. I tested out of nine credits, and took six in summer school, and – voila! – early graduation. This was especially exciting to me because Bobby and I were engaged and I really wanted to get married. But I wasn’t going to get married until I got my degree. So, graduating early allowed us to get married a few months earlier. It also saved my parents a bunch of money, and allowed me to take out less student loans. Yippeee!

And of course, opened the door for my subconscious to forever torture me with dreams about not finishing college.

In some of the dreams, I can’t find a particular class. It’s the day of the final and I realize I haven’t been to class all semester. I dash all over campus trying to find a textbook. I spend the dream searching, searching, running, never finding.

In some of them, I can’t find my school mail box at the campus post office, or CPO (read: see-po) as we called it. And of course, in said mailbox is critical info I need to graduate.

This dream I had last night was even weirder and more elaborate. It involved going to church at said college…and church was held in a swimming pool. And apparently it was taking me a real long time to graduate, because I already had Joshua, and somehow he was attending preschool at said college. And, I couldn’t find either one of our mailboxes at the CPO! Then, I got trapped in a class taught by Casey of Moosh in Indy (who was nowhere near my college, I am pretty sure she was still in high school then, the young whippersnapper) which involved her handing out a lot of Shabby Apple dresses to everyone but me, I got a mismatched top and skirt, and the class went over and I was late to pick Joshua up from his college-preschool and I had to leave Casey’s class early which prevented me from…you guessed it…graduating. (Dangit Casey! Cut a girl a BREAK!)

So.

(Quick congrats to Casey Mullins for making my my recurring nightmare!)

I didn’t sleep very well and woke up emotionally distressed. I hate it how dreams feel so real. My emotions were wrenched, my blood pressure high.

Maybe I should dig my diploma out of whatever box it’s buried in and sleep with it under my pillow?