Saturday, April 30, 2011

Minor Disappointment

Today was a bust.  After waking up in the middle of the night (Meredi came home at like 2:40 and Phoenix loves her so much that he got up to see her, which woke me up), I wasn't able to get back to sleep for awhile.  I stayed up and watched some crappy TV and went back to sleep around 4:30.  I had planned on getting up around 7 to get on my way to the plasma center, but I ended up not waking up until around 8:45 and took my time getting ready.  I dropped off my puppy with my parents, and went.  Turns out, the center didn't open until 9:30 today, so it's a good think I let myself sleep in a little.  I got there at 10:15 and had to stand in line for about an hour before I got checked in.  They did my hemoglobin and hematocrit, which were fine, but my pulse and blood pressure were high, so I had to wait another 15 minutes to get re-checked.  When I got re-checked, my pulse was 101 and my BP was like 140-something over like 110.  Normal BP is 120/80.  So that's way too high.  While I was waiting the 15 minutes, I tried to do some breathing exercises and slow down my pulse (when I checked it, it was 92), but I guess it wasn't enough. They told me I had to go home but that I can go back tomorrow to try again.

I'm fairly certain that there's nothing wrong with me, but that the amount of water I drank in order to facilitate easy donation (around 100oz in 24 hours) increased my blood volume to the point where it made my blood pressure too high.  So I have to take it down a notch, I guess.  I know I'm at risk for high BP just because of genetics and the fact that my grandparents and parents all have a history of high BP and high cholesterol, and so that's worrisome.  However, I'm nearly positive that it's all to do with all the water I drank.  I've had a little bit here and there today, just because I've been thirsty, and so I'll probably go back and try again tomorrow.

When I left, and was driving home, I had a hard time not being really pissed off.  I spent two hours there, waiting, and it was a waste.  It's not as though I would have been doing something better with that time, but I didn't get the 50 bucks out of it like I had hoped, and at this point I am so broke that I am depending on that money to buy food and gas.  Until I can get back into school and get caught up with my finances, I need this little supplemental income.  I was really certain that I didn't want to go back and wait again tomorrow, but I really need it, so I am going to go.

I watched a show on Biography about Jeffrey Dahmer.  It mentioned how he used to sell his blood for the plasma, and it really creeped me out.  I could be sitting in the waiting room with a serial killer.  I'm certain I'm sitting in there with at least one or two sociopaths, and possibly even a couple psychopaths, but I'd never know if any of them were homicidal.  Also, what does that say about me??  The whole time I was sitting in there today, I was people watching and judging and comparing myself to all the other people that were in there, trying to figure out what circumstances were driving people to be there like I was today.  I feel dirty and almost wrong for being there.  I wish I could say that I do it just for the charity, but I'm not, and that disappoints me.  I'm really trying to reconcile it with myself, but I can't seem to do that.

So I went back to my parents house.  I had been charged with driving the dogs back home to my sister's ex-husband's house (which is literally 5 minutes or less from my house), so I planned to just hang out there until it was time for me to do that.  My parents said they'd picked out a huge steak for me (my dad was teasing me about my hematocrit), but after all that this morning, I told them I had no appetite, and my mom offered to do the job of bringing the dogs back to my sister's ex so that I could go home and relax.  So I went home.  I slept from about 2 until about 7, and then got up.  I was hungry, but my stomach seems to be getting upset every time I eat, so I am really uncertain about eating.  So I haven't eaten anything, but I spent some time making a breakfast casserole to throw in the oven in the morning.  It's going to be amazing and I'm real excited because the whole thing is for me, and I can bring some to work to eat every day this week.

Since doing that and cleaning and disinfecting some of the kitchen, I've been watching Parenthood.  It's such a cute show.  It might be a little over-dramatic, but I think it's well-acted and I like the storyline very much.  I feel terribly over-emotional when I watch this show, but it's okay.  Sometimes you just need to cry.

I had a big glass of wine while I was watching, and now I'm really hungry.  What I really want are pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream, but I think I might just go get taco bell instead.  It's not great, but it's not over-greasy and it sounds good and it never upsets my stomach that much.  So maybe I'll go get that.

I should make a list of why it's awesome to be single.  Being able to go to taco bell at 10:40 on any given night would definitely be on the list.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Not Unhappy Friday

Not much to talk about today.  I've finished the 7th book in The Outlander series finally (it only took 9 months!), and did a little research and found that the author, Diana Gabaldon is in the process of writing an 8th book, so I guess I have to do something in the meantime to tide myself over.  I think I'm going to to go through the entire Patricia Cornwell/Dr. Kay Scarpetta series again and then it will be onto The Clan of the Cave Bear series which I tried starting once but couldn't get into. 

I really like the prospect of having such an incredible and wide variety of books to look forward to reading.  It helps mix up the monotony of daily life, and it's nice to not know what to expect, and it's wonderful to get lost in another time and place with drama of new and different characters.

Anyway, the point of me saying that is to express my new-found boredom at work today.  I brought the first two books of the Scarpetta series with me, but just haven't worked up the energy to get going on the first one yet.  My mom has suggested I read a book called The Discovery of Witches, which I started the day I gave plasma last week.  It is interesting, no doubt, with witches and vampires and daemons and humans, but I'm not sure I want to move on to a single book, and not a series.

Either way, I've been trying to keep myself busy by surfing the net, and without facebook to hang out on all day long, it leaves me a bit short and so I've had to be kind of creative.  I've looked at new places to live and I've researched in detail possible new vehicles to replace my car which I fear may be getting close to the end of it's life with me.  I've been searching for new cars for awhile, and my dream car is a Jeep Wrangler 4-door with a soft top and power everything, but I simply cannot afford that.  So I've looked at Jettas and I'm thinking of the Subaru WRX.  I know my parents are not keen on the idea of me buying foreign (they're Chevy people), but a girl wants what a girl wants.  I want something sporty, with 4 doors and power everything, that gets good mileage and front-wheel drive for the winter.  It's gotta be either black, dark blue, or purple.  And I'd have to finance it, so I'm looking at anything after 2008.  It looks like I'd get a better deal if I sold my car privately to get retail value on it instead of trading it in, but that would require me to have a back-up vehicle which I don't have, so that may be out of the question.  But we're talking a $2K difference in what I'd be getting for it, so it might be worth the trouble.  I've found that the Jetta has fun extras I hadn't thought about, like heated seats and heated side mirrors, so right now that's what I am leaning towards.  As though I have an extra $400 a month to spend on a car payment right now!

But it's fun to dream.  And it's not entirely fantastic - once I get caught up on my bills and go back to school, I'll be saving an extra $200 on insurance and student loan payments monthly, so it could actually work.

I'm also trying to load up on H2O in preparation for my trip to the plasma center tomorrow.  I'm eating well today (Cheerios to help lower my cholesterol and a Lean Cuisine for lunch), and I'm already up to 60oz of water.  When I tried to donate blood unsuccessfully, the tech suggested I drink about 100oz of water in the 24 hours in order to facilitate easier donation from my tiny-ass veins.  He might have just been blowing smoke up my ass and came up with a nice, round number, but I figure, more water can't possibly hurt.  So I'll be continuing to hydrate for the rest of the day.

I plan to get up around 7am to go donate (sell?  Donate is not the proper verbiage for that because I am being monetarily compensated for my blood plasma), so that I still have plenty of daytime left with which to nap or read or clean or whatever.  After work today I am going to go get a burrito from Chipotle (YUM!) and go eat it while my family eats pizza (typical Friday meal), and then I'm going to go to bed a little early so that waking up early tomorrow isn't quite so painful.  Even though it's Friday, and the end to a VERY long week, I can't drink tonight if I want to donate tomorrow.   I don't want to do anything to jeopardize my chances of donating successfully and I would really prefer if it didn't take 6 damn hours again, although I am trying to be prepared for that possibility.

When I woke up this morning, I turned on the live coverage of the Royal Wedding, which I missed most of, but The Kiss (proper noun) was scheduled for 6:25am sharp, and so I got to see that bit, even though that's what most of the news pictures are of.  It was quite romantic, and Kate Middleton looked oh, so pretty, and her gown was very simply and classic and gorgeous.  She looked exactly as I would imagine a Disney princess to look.  Obviously in all the run-up to the big event involved a whole lot of comparison to previous royal weddings, and after seeing Prince Charles and Diana's wedding video, Prince William and Kate looked so much more at ease and so much happier than Diana and Charles did.  That gave me some comfort, although I don't know why.  I think watching the coverage of such a magnanimous event before work today set my mood on a very tranquil and comforted path for the day, because I've felt that way all day long.  It might be the first wedding I haven't been enormously jealous of since I was like 18.

When I got to work, I watched a bunch of new trailers, which is perhaps one of my top three favorite things in the entire universe to do, and many of them are for movies that were presented at Sundance, so they're independent and low-budget and tend to be a little more heartfelt and twisted emotionally, and it got me thinking about the book I want to write and the screenplay I want to adapt out of it and the movie it will make.  Which then got me motivated to actually get started on it, which I did.  Nothing fancy or complicated; I only started making a list of events that I want to include in the story.  And I think after all this time, I've decided what I want the whole thing to look like.  It's going to make a great movie - that much I can tell you now.  It's going to be "based on true events," and while it's nothing considerably adventurous, I think it's an emotionally exciting story that other people might find interesting.  I'm going to use my family as the main focus, and use all the same events and situations as part of the storyline and plot points, but I'm going to have to exaggerate some things and change some things so that it's not exactly the same.  But it feels really good to have gotten started on it.  Once I get the list done, I will be able to pick and sort through it and then include details later.  The dialogue is probably going to be the most difficult part for me, and so I will work on that last.

It was yesterday, when I was researching Diana Gabaldon that I really put together how lucrative writing a book (or several books, in her case) can be.  And that's not just my aim, here.  I want the story of my life to be able to affect others in the world in a positive way, and I think this might be a good place to start.

Anyway, that's that.  I'm doing my best to keep my mind occupied and off other, less positive things and I seem to be doing well.  I don't like having to spend the extra day at work, but I think once I get the money from it, being here will make more sense.  Also, I don't feel so hopeless and helpless now that I'm living without facebook.  I could keep this up for awhile.  I like it.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

This is NOT a Jimmy John's Endorsement (Unless they want to pay me)

Physically, I am feeling quite a lot better.  Near famished all the time, in fact.  After a brief period of not wanting to ingest anything solid (or liquid, for that matter) for fear of vomiting it back up, the body seems to return to normal function with force.  I ordered a Jimmy John's sandwich for lunch and it took 12 minutes between my submitting the online order and it's delivery.  I took that as a sign and inhaled the thing, and it was delicious.  I had contemplated actually leaving the building to walk the two blocks to Chipotle for a burrito but thought the better of it.  I almost certainly would have gotten away with leaving for ten tiny minutes, but I didn't want to risk it.

What was nice about returning to work today was the wonderful things everyone's had to say to me.  They're all inquiring if I am feeling better, and they're all telling me that they missed me on Tuesday, because apparently the temp they had in here was straight-up terrible.  Which is why I need to discuss with Barbara the prospect of hiring another part-time person so I can return to school.  I can easily do classes online this summer, and had intended to regardless, because the way the summer term scheduling works is to have class for over two hours, Monday through Friday.  If that is the case and I am able to go back, I'd have to work Monday through Friday, but only part of the day, which I don't think would be too bad, as it would only be for a couple of months.  But either way, I will get some classes done over the summer, whether or not I am actually IN a classroom.

I had a lot of trouble with maintaining my patience this morning.  Here is an email I sent to a girl that I'm friendly with in the building describing my encounter with some clients this morning:


So I have to vent this to someone.  There’s a client here for Cordell and Cordell (a law firm whose ad logo is "A partner men can count on.").  He brought his mother.  Here’s what happened:

The form I give to their clients is 4 pages long.  He is unemployed, so he asked me what to put for his employer contact information.  And apparently couldn’t tell that the form had three more pages.  Then as they were getting into the elevator, his mother asked if there were any coffee pots in the building.  Just like that.  I think that was her way of saying it was rude that she hadn’t been offered coffee yet.

Then they went upstairs, but his mother came back down to put change in the meter outside, but asked me why I don’t provide change for the meters located around the building.  I directed her to either park in the garage across the street and pay with bills, or to go to the shops on Pearl to get change.  She came back, and asked where the bathrooms are.  I said the women’s room was to the left of the elevator, so she went right and then told me it was the men’s room.  I had to repeat “go to the left.”  Then she asked where the elevator buttons were.  I said they were on the wall to the right of the elevator, and she replied, “Nuh-uh!”  And then, “Oh, there they are.”

Kill me now.

I'm serious.  These two people might have been the two stupidest people I have ever had the pleasure of encountering in my entire life!  And it was quite obvious that they were genetically related.  Unbelievable.  I would even go so far as to venture that the son - who was meeting the lawyers to attain their services in his divorce - might even have some kind of disability.  In which case I should feel much worse about commenting on his lack of intelligence; but I don't.

I think part of my low tolerance was due to the fact that I was so incredibly hungry, and I felt quite a bit better after eating.  It's amazing the things a good sandwich can do. 

Something I've been wanting to write about is a point of pride I have taken in the work I'm doing on myself - and to be perfectly honest, that one thing is actually escaping me right now.  I am pretty sure it had something to do with my acceptance of my loneliness and my coming to terms with my being alone.  In fact, and ironically, two of the three guys I had a flicker of hope for dating contacted me within 24 hours of each other.  I may have plans to meet up with one of them (Tim - from a long time ago), but I haven't heard anything else since I called the other back and left a message.  I'm really doing my best to not really think too much on either person, because I'm fairly certain neither one is thinking much about me (well they must have at some point to actually try to get in contact with me).  And that seems to be working for me.  The less I care, the easier it gets.


I haven't been back to the plasma place yet, although I plan to go on Saturday, because I am so low on money that I may have less than $7 to get me through until May 15th.  I have submitted my application for employment there as well, but haven't heard anything back on that yet, either.  No big deal.

One thing I want to touch on that I do not like and feel as though I have very little control over is how much I've been sleeping.  Now, naturally, when you're sick, you need sleep, and I've been using that excuse for the last couple of days to doze and nap whenever I feel like it.  But before that, and now, even, my body just craves sleep ravenously and is incomparable to anything else.  I think part of it might be that I really like my dreams, and yearn for the comfort that I feel when I'm living my life in my dream-world, but I can't come up with an explanation for why I want to sleep so badly all of the time.  I know that it's a major symptom of depression, and it's also a symptom of hypothyroid, but I know that's in check since I just had blood-work done (which will end up costing me more money that I don't have).  I hate it, too, because it makes me feel guilty for not being active with Phoenix and it makes me feel guilty because there's a whole big world out there that I know I'm missing out on.  I feel guilty because I know that there are interpersonal connections I could be making with new people and finding new friends and people that I can actually go out and do things with, but instead I just want to crawl up onto my bed and drift off into whatever the dream-life I've created for myself is.

Last night, while I was in the shower, I made the decision to stop using Facebook for awhile.  I spend so much time on there, most of it making minute comparisons between myself and the people I'm friends with on there, and I don't think it's good.  I feel like I need to take a break from that world and interact with the world that is not on the internet for awhile and see what happens.  I have no plans to do the online dating thing again (I'd really like to swear that off completely and permanently but I know my desperation will reach new heights if I'm not married in about 10 years), and without those two major highways of communication, I will be forced to interact with the world that is just outside my door.

I think Facebook gave me an outlet of sorts to act as and be myself to it's truest form without actually having to leave the safety of the very small and very comfy little world I have.  I was able to flaunt my intelligence and my sense of humor and be self-deprecating and genuinely sad without having to actually BE those things in real-life.  But what I don't like about the instantaneous accessibility that Facebook (and other kinds of technology, i.e., Twitter and texting) is that you're available to have attention from vast numbers of people at any given minute of any given day, and when you post something and get no response, the echo is much, much louder than if you simply call someone and tell them the same thing.  I guess what I mean is that for someone like me who thrives on and craves attention for validation of self-worth, to get it or NOT get it from a large audience such is the "friends" I have on Facebook (which currently number at 124) has an even more devastating effect on whatever it is that I view my self-worth as.  I think it helps to have a few very close and very important friends that like to stay current on all thoughts and feelings I have and choose to post, and then comment on those posts for the rest of the world to see, sometimes inciting an interesting or ridiculous discussion.  But when it comes down to it's most empirical form, just means that someone cares that you had something to say.  And when no one comments, does it mean that no one cares what you had to say?

That's about it for now.  My brain feels micro-ounces lighter after having gotten that out.  More later.  Or tomorrow.  Probably tomorrow.

Also.  I dropped a butter knife, point-down on my toe this morning!  This week has not been easy on my body.  I fully expect to be clobbered if I go to soccer this weekend.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Nothing Doing

I don't feel like writing today. I feel better but I'm in a real pissy mood and don't really think I will get anything constructive out of it.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Stomach Bug

As much as I want to write a decent post for what feels like the first time in a while, I am not up for it today.  I got home from work yesterday and my torso felt as though it had been held in a vice - it was throbbing all over.  I was nauseated and every time I moved I thought I might throw up.  I didn't actually throw up until later in the evening, but when I did it was awful, and then I threw up again around midnight.  I still have traces of fever, but my whole body was in pain from the fever last night, right down to my skin.  I felt like just wearing clothes was hurting my skin.  My hips hurt the most - as they do when I have a fever - and they've continued being sore all day today.  I haven't thrown up since last night, but I haven't eaten anything either, except for literally like 5 croutons a few minutes ago and I've had nothing but water all day.

I texted my parents last night to tell them I was sick, and my dad texted me back to say that my mom was sick too, and had left work early.  I wish I could have left work early yesterday because I felt like shit.  I am really proud of myself for sticking it out, though.  I had every intention of going to work today, but around 7:30 last night when I thought I would never feel any better, I called my boss to tell her I was sick, and she proceeded to make me feel extremely guilty because we don't have anyone to cover the desk for me when I can't be there.  Which is in no way my fault, and neither is my being sick, although I still feel exceptional guilt about it.

I felt much better when I woke up around 11 this morning, and I'm such an anal retentive person that I had to get up and vacuum the mud chunks from my floor and bed that the dogs have brought in over the last few days.  At one point I noticed the vacuum wasn't actually sucking, so I had to take it apart and put it back together.  That pretty much used up all my energy and I just woke up from a three-hour nap.

I hate being sick.  I don't think there are many people who like it, but I have worked so hard to sustain the illusion of my reliability and dependability at work that I worry that being sick ruins all that.  There's nothing I can do about it at this point, though, so I am going to try not to worry about it.  I'm off tomorrow and won't be talked into working since I'm already working Friday.  I threw up my meds last night, so I am already feeling a tad crappier than I would normally be feeling coming off a stomach bug, so I'm going to take it SUPER easy tonight.  It doesn't help that now I have a bit of an appetite back but no food in the house to eat and no energy or money to go get any food that won't trigger another upset stomach, so I may have to trek over to my parents house at some point and eat their food.

Just ugh.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Unpredictable Malaise

And now to fill my captive audiences in on what happened on Easter.  As usual, there was minor catastrophe.  It began on the night before, which I have already described.  I went to bed around midnight after going back over the bunny footprints and putting them on surfaces which were not the floor, because apparently my sister forgot that part of the fun of the footprints was finding them EVERYWHERE.  I slept downstairs on the pull-out couch which enabled me to hear my oldest nephew Z get up when he did his nightly bed-switch to his mom's bed, except that he didn't actually come downstairs TO sleep with his mom, but I did hear him moving around upstairs, so I went up to see what was going on at 2:45am, and he was so excited about the bunny footprints and the full Easter baskets that he was beside himself.  I told him that he needed to decide where he was sleeping and if it meant he was going to sleep with his mom then he had to do it and be done with it.  I went downstairs with him, and drifted off for awhile, but I heard him get up to go back upstairs but I stopped him and told him to turn his little butt around and get back in bed with his mom.  Then I fell asleep, during which time he apparently sneaked past me and went upstairs and I woke up again when I heard him moving around upstairs again.  He had already emptied his basket and eaten some of the candy.  I whisper-yelled at him to get back in his bed and told him he wasn't allowed to leave his room again until it was time to get up.  I went back downstairs and fell asleep, briefly, until I was awakened by the sound of crazy-little footsteps running around up there, and when I went up there I found H running around all excited by the bunny footprints and full baskets.  So I had to put him back in his bed.  That was about a couple of hours after Z had gotten up, but Z was still awake, although he had stayed in his bedroom, which I was thrilled to see.

I went downstairs and tried to get a little more sleep before having to wake up for church at 6:15.  I got up when I heard the kids running around and laughing and screaming upstairs.  My parents got my sister and the baby up, but when my sister came upstairs, she decided that she was sick, and was throwing up and had diarrhea.  She is the biggest drama queen there ever was, and really likes to milk her illnesses for all they're worth, and made a big show of sulking around the house and being hot and cold and shaky and throwing up in front of me (which was so disgusting I started gagging myself, which rarely happens).  I told her to suck it up and that if she wanted to be able to take sick-days that she shouldn't have had kids because when you have kids, you don't get time-off for being sick, you are a mommy regardless - which she didn't like and screamed at me for saying.  She was then given permission to skip church, which meant that my mom and my little sister and me were responsible for getting them all ready and then child-wrangling at church.  Which was really hard.  But the kids behaved really well at church and even seemed to enjoy it a bit. 

I have to stop writing there because I am quite sick to my stomach myself right now.  This is day three of general feeling-yuckiness, and I am definitely worried that I am going to be throwing up this time tomorrow, and I really don't want to have to call in sick to work tomorrow.  Moving around makes me even more nauseated, so the drive home should be fun.

I have so much more I want to write about, but I need to really do nothing right now.  I've only got an hour left of work so I would like to attempt to make it through that hour without puking.  Oh my god.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Missing Post

Yup.  There is no post from yesterday.  I spent most of the day trying to sleep off the massive nausea I discovered at 4am yesterday morning.  I meant to go to the plasma center and get another $50 with Tiffany but I was thinking about how bad of an idea it would be to try and spend any amount of time there with nausea and that they probably wouldn't let me donate anyway.

I went to my parents house right around dinner time, and had dinner and hung out with the kids, and after the kids went to bed, I started on the breakfast casserole only to find that there wasn't enough cheese, which I guess my dad had forgotten to get.

Meanwhile, my sister was trying to get the house covered in the little bunny footprints my parents used to put all over the house, but apparently she'd momentarily forgotten that there were three large and clumsy dogs in the house who would be traipsing all over the footprints.  She should have waited to do them until everyone was in bed for the night.  Anyway, as I was chastising her for being the retard she is, she got all bent out of shape, and THEN she realized that we didn't have any plastic eggs to fill with candy and hide all over the house, so she decided to start yelling at both me and my dad about how unprepared WE were.  She had to make an emergency run to Walmart to get cheese and plastic eggs, but not before telling me how fat and ugly I am.  It was awesome.

And I'm so unbelievably tired, so I'm going to stop there.  I'll write more about how today went when I get to work in the morning (hopefully).  I'm giving myself a pass on not writing yesterday based on the events of last night.  Not a huge deal.  

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Last Friday Off For Awhile - Fully Enjoyed

I really, really, really want to get into my bed, but I have a few things to jot down first.

I did a load of laundry, and put away the two laundry baskets of clean laundry that have been sitting on my bedroom floor since I moved in.  I did some closet and dresser organizing, and still I don't have enough room for all the clothes in my closet minus the three piles of dirty laundry that are now on my bedroom floor.  However, I felt terribly efficient having gotten all that done today.  I took a brief nap (only 2 hours) and then went over to give my mom a hand with the kids.  My sister was working all day today, so she had all three monkeys all day by herself and I'd already told everyone I'd babysit tonight while my mom picked my dad up from the airport.

Today is Meredi's birthday (28 or 29, I think) and as I am broker than broke, and I have opted not to partake in her birthday celebrations, I made her a cake and it turned out spectacularly!  I made a recipe of a cake that I really like from scratch, called a silver white cake, and frosted it with a fruit dip that's simply cool whip, cream cheese and sugar.  The cake itself is not super heavy, but I'm of the opinion that less can be more in the frosting department, and I wanted to try this combination to see how it worked.  I'm really satisfied.  I may need to play around with the cake a little more to get the high-altitude right, but it's a firm yet moist cake, and the "frosting" is a great consistency for holding the cake together, being firm and not melting (except when using it for decorating and the icing bag gets warm in-hand), but altogether I am quite excited that it turned out as well as it did!  I made a double batch, and made a cake for my family for Easter, which I colored pink, yellow, green, blue and purple and then swirled it.  I made a sheet cake and cut it in half to make a small rectangular layer cake, this being the first time I've been successful in doing it this way.  I started decorating it for Easter, but got really tired and finished after frosting it and laying down some "grass."  Tomorrow at some point I'm going to put some jelly beans on it and make a cute frosting rabbit and maybe a couple of little baskets.  I'll post pictures when it's done.  It's going to be delicious, too.

Oh, so when I got home from work last night, I came into my room to the 5-gallon bucket I had purchased the previous night and then filled with dog food and then put the top on, OPEN, and with half the dog food gone.  I was SO pissed.  I thought I was going to explode with frustration and anger.  I know it was Nali because Rainey isn't tall enough to reach into the bucket, but that doesn't change anything.  I was already pissed because Linda had used my damn hand towel that I leave in the kitchen to dry my hands to clean up coffee or something, and so that really did it for me.  I went to the liquor store and bought a big bottle of wine and a bottle of champagne, and sat at home drinking my wine and watching TV last night, trying to relax.  I felt fine when I woke up this morning, but then I saw that after I had placed the two containers of cool whip in the freezer - which was a chore in itself because the freezer is so damn packed full of shit that I couldn't get them in there, so I had to move a bunch of stuff around - Linda had moved a bunch of stuff back from where I'd put it.

So I left her a note when I left the house today asking her to not clean up messes with my towels and to please take the recycling out because in all the time I've been here, I have not seen her do it once, and it's mostly her trash.  I felt better.

I had a great time with the kids and my mom today.  The boys were extra energetic and the baby is so stinking cute when she's not squawking and screeching at the top of her lungs.  I got video of her showing me where her belly-button is that is beyond adorable.  Z helped me make the cake, but got bored and wanted to go outside to play with his friend that lives a couple houses down.  My mom informed me that earlier in the day he and H had gone to play with the boys that live there, and had been talked into going INTO the creek, in all it's glorious muddiness, and came home caked in mud, to the point that you couldn't tell where their pants ended and their shoes began.  And then when they went to play with the neighbor boys again after naps, my mom explicitly told them both no playing in the creek, but they did it anyway and Z lost a flip-flop and then cried about it.  I went out to help him look for it, but then sent the boys in and when H opened the gate, the wind caught it and whipped it open and smacked Z in the face.  So he's standing there, covered in mud, one flip-flop on, and now crying, and it's blusteringly windy, and I go to pick him up and a big ol' string of his snot hit me square in the face.  I really wasn't sure whether to scream or to laugh because of how strange the situation was, and because I couldn't get the dogs back into the yard, but we all eventually made it inside, the boys got out of their muddy clothes and I was able to wipe the 5 year-old boy snot off of my face.

All in all, it was a good day.  I really didn't have much time to think, and I think those days are the best.  I momentarily got a bit blue in the car on the way back home just now, but forgot it all the moment I walked in the house to find a little tiny dog had been added to our chaos.  I'm guessing she's Meredi's best friend's dog, and her name is Coco Chanel (she smells like No. 5, too which I think is splendid).  Phoenix wasn't sure what to make of her, but she took right to him and started prancing around him like she wanted to play.  She looks like a shih-tzu or something, and I don't normally like dogs like that but she's got a ton of personality and she's really sweet and playful, and how can you not love a dog like that?!  Phoenix and Nali got mad because I was giving Coco more attention than them, but that's okay.  It's quite novel having a tiny dog around when you're so used to enormous and clumsy ones.

I brought the cake home for Meredi and left her a note that it is in the fridge, and I just happened to still be up (writing this stupid post) when she and her friend came home, and I heard them gush about how sweet it was, and how pretty the cake is and how delicious it is.  So I'm pretty satisfied.

Tomorrow's agenda includes another trip to the plasma center, this time with Tiffany, so it will be another long trip, but I have nothing better to do and I'll enjoy getting to sit there with her and chat and be judgmental and everything.  Then I'm spending the night at my parents house so I can be there when the kids wake up in the morning to full Easter baskets and baby-powder bunny footprints all over the house.  It's going to be a really good couple of days.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Back to the Regular Routine

If I'd written anything at this time of day yesterday, I wouldn't have had much to write about.  But I'm at work today, and I think I've probably discovered all the things I'm meant to discover for now.  I had a hard time falling asleep last night, and when I woke up this morning, I found it difficult to believe that anything that happened yesterday was real.  But it was!

I haven't filled out the application for the plasma center yet, but I will either later tonight or sometime tomorrow.

As for this evening, I have to go get Phoenix from my mom, I'll probably stay for dinner and hang out with the kiddos for awhile, and then go home and relax.

Tomorrow is Meredi's birthday, and I really wanted to be able to go and hang out with her and do things for her birthday celebrations this weekend, but I don't have any money to be able to spend on any of it, so I am going to make her a cake instead.  It's going to be red velvet with a creamy cream-cheese and whipped cream frosting.  I am going to make two cakes, one for her and one for my family to have for Easter.  That will be tomorrow at my parents' house while I am there helping my mom with the kids while my sister is at work.

I haven't written much about how I've been feeling since I've given up any hope of dating right now.  And how I am feeling is lonely and sad.  I've been doing really well keeping those feelings to a minimum, and not letting them bubble up to the surface and wash over me, but they're definitely in there.  I'm faking being okay with being alone as best I can, but it's hard work.  I will probably have to babysit the kids tomorrow night while my sister is working and my mom is picking my dad up from the airport, and I really don't mind as I don't have any plans and will most likely not be making any plans between now and then.  I even told my sister that I was perfectly satisfied with not having plans on a Friday night.  Which I mostly am, but there's a niggling part of me that wishes that I had somewhere to go, with someone who cared about me.

I really am doing my best to be okay with it.  I'm trying to sort of transpose the happiness I sought in a potential partner with happiness with just me and myself.  It's really difficult to find things about myself that I can see that will allow me to experience the same type of happiness I might find with another person.  I really want to be able to treat myself as my own best friend, to give myself the support and love and compassion that I reserve for everyone else, but it's really difficult when every single day is a new journey in self-discovery and pursuit of positive change in myself.  And if you're trying to change something, you must not like it the way it is, right? 

I feel that as I've gotten older, I've thrived on change.  I change my hair, the decor of my living space, the purse I carry, my daily routine, my location, the style of my dress, the people in my life, my job, my education focus, you name it.  I keep nothing as it is for too long.  I'm not exactly sure why, but I've always liked how it feels to change my daily experience.  I have almost no constants in my life, aside from my family, and now my dog.  I think I am terrified of mediocrity, of regularity, of normalcy, and that might be why I require so much attention and why I feel so upset when I don't get the attention I so desire.  I think I am just not sure how to be satisfied with myself just as I am and that is a huge, enormous, gigantic problem.  How can I build my self-esteem and learn to love myself if I can't stand myself the way I am right this second and need to constantly change every single thing about me?

Relatively speaking, I am okay.  The rather enormous amounts of life-changing events and information I have received in the last few days has given me a life-preserver to hang on for awhile I guess.  I would really like to make some more progress in terms of not just accepting but coming to enjoy my loneliness and independence from responsibility to anyone in the world but myself.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Mysterious Ways, Indeed

And so day three of explosive discoveries happened.  By all predictions, today was to be an extremely mediocre day.  I slept in this morning (or as much as Phoenix and the other two dogs would let me), and sort of screwed around watching TV and showering and cleaning (because it's been raining here, the part of the backyard in which the dogs prefer to run is solid mud, which requires me to be vacuuming chunks of mud off the carpet and my bed nonstop - which actually ended with my simply cleaning Phoenix's feet).  I was preparing to make a trip to Walmart to buy a plunger (for my BATHTUB) and pick up a prescription when my mom called to tell me that she was at another Walmart and had locked her keys in her car.  I'll stop briefly on that because I like to quietly celebrate anytime this happens to my mom because she likes to think that she never does that, even though I've had to help her twice in the last few years.  So I ran to my parents house, left Phoenix there and drove to the Superior Walmart where my mom was patiently waiting.  While I was there, I decided to just do my shopping then and pick up my prescription at the other one later.  After that, I went back to my parents house to shoot the shit with my mom for a little while and to get directions to the plasma donation place that I had been trying to talk myself into going to for the last week.

My mom and I discussed the situation over at their house, which is that my parents are stuck being babysitters because my sister finally has a job and is too low on the totem pole at work to be able to take days off when she's got the kids.  It's really frustrating for them because my mom was just getting used to having to only work for half the week and getting to sleep in and get things done around the house, when the divorce was finalized and it was made permanent that the kids would be with my sister Wednesday through Saturday or Sunday evening.  It's not that my mom doesn't like the kids - it's just the opposite - but she doesn't like having to be their primary caregiver two or three days in a row while my sister is at work.  I can completely understand where she's coming from because I am just like her when it comes to my time off.  I need my time off, and I need it to myself or I get very overwhelmed.  Unfortunately we were just getting into the middle of the discussion when my sister came home on break from work, so we had to stop talking.

It was at that point that I decided to go ahead and go to donate (sell) plasma.  I'd called ahead to make sure that my being on medication wasn't going to prevent me from being a donor, and the guy I talked to (who later would do my "physical") said that I should anticipate being there for at least 4 hours.  The place is in Aurora and it only took me about 20 minutes to get there, and it is ironically located exceptionally close to the Rural Metro Ambulance company where I had the interview back in January or whenever.  I had to sit in the waiting room intermittently while occasionally being called back to answer questions about my health and get my hematocrit done and my picture taken and my information input into their system.  I read a new book that my mom recommended since I had left my book at home, and people-watched, and watched some TV on my phone.  I ended up sitting there for a good three hours before being taken back to a bed.

And then something magical happened.  I warned the tech who was working on me that I am a hard stick, and unfortunately because I was screwing around with some needles I brought home from the health fair on my own veins on Monday night, I have a ginormous bruise on the interior of my left arm, and so they couldn't use that arm.  The tech called over the supervisor of the facility (which I didn't know at the time) to see if he could get a good stick in my teeny, tiny vein, which he did.  While he was working, I told him that I had worked the 9 Health Fair over the weekend and that I do phlebotomy and that I'm an EMT with my IV certification.  He asked me what I'm doing now, and I told him that since I haven't been able to get an ambulance job that I'm working reception and am bored out of my mind.  He asked if I might be interested in coming to work there and to make sure I stopped to talk to him before I left!!  I couldn't freaking believe it!  I ended up having to lie there for two and a half more flipping hours because of how small my stupid vein is and how little blood and plasma it was yielding.  I also had to keep pumping my fist while the collection apparatus was sucking blood out of me, and so my arm is SO tired and will be very sore tomorrow.  But I stopped and talked to the guy after I was done and gave him my information, and he told me to fill out an application and that he'd be sure that he saw it and got in touch with me.  Oh yeah, and I got $50 out of it.  But compared to the possibility of a job, that is SMALL BEANS.

I'm so floored.  I like my job.  It is exceedingly boring and does nothing to challenge or stimulate me and I am just dying to do something different, especially in the medical field, but I'd pretty much given up hope that I'd ever get to work in a field that might help me get my foot in the door and get some experience.  This job could be it!  I'm trying not to think too hard about my availability or the hours that I might be asked to work, but I would certainly take this job if they offer me the right amount of hours with higher pay than what I'm getting now.  So I'll fill out the application in the morning and see what happens.  Even if I don't get a call for an interview for the Path Tech job (which I'm not counting on), I will at least be able to work in the field where I can get enough experience to transition to an ER job, which I can hold while I'm finishing my undergrad degrees and maybe even through grad school.

I feel unbelievably lucky.  I'm not a social person, but I am friendly, and I want people that I have to interact with in the medical field to know that I'm a fellow medicinal and have medical knowledge so that they don't have to necessarily explain everything to me as they would to anyone else.  I never thought I'd get anything out of it!  Especially knowing what I know about the EMS community and how incestuous it can be, but I don't think it ever occurred to me that I might be qualified to work at a place like this.  I don't really care that it's in Aurora.  I don't really care about the quality of the clientele.  I need that kind of experience!!  It will be perfect for a jumping-off point.

I am tired.  It has been a long, although not grueling, day, and while I'm still pretty much wired, I do have to work tomorrow and need to get some sleep before that.  I'm going to crawl into bed and watch last night's Conan with Tina Fey (my heroine, but not in the way that I want to inject her and listen to jazz) and try to turn my brain off.

I wonder what awesomeness I'll encounter tomorrow...

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Another Big Discovery

So, after discovering that I have fewer credit hours to complete than I had originally thought, I was a little disappointed today because I had nothing awesome to think about during the grueling 9.5 hour work day.  My mom had mentioned something the other night at dinner about how I should be looking for jobs in my field of interest to try to get my foot in the door somewhere, so I randomly checked the Boulder County website to see if they might be hiring for Autopsy Techs, and guess what?  They are.  They posted a job last Friday for a Pathology Technician which is exactly the job I was looking for!  So I spent a good portion of the morning filling out the application to the best of my ability, and telling people about how excited I was and trying to think of ways to enhance my chances for at least an interview.  I spent the rest of the day vehemently ruminating on the possibility that I may or may not be given an opportunity for the job because I am only semi-qualified for it.  Even now I am having trouble NOT thinking about it.

I went over and had dinner with my mom and talked to her a little about everything to sort of get it out of my brain and into the universe where it can float away and not bother me anymore.  She thinks my chances of being called for an interview are pretty low, but even if that doesn't work out for me, I still have the prospect of school to look forward to.  So I'm in a win-win situation right now.

I'm also really, really tired, and kind of dizzy, so I am going to go lie down and turn on the TV and turn off my brain for the evening.  I'm really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow and hopefully accomplishing some of the things I need to get done to get my life more organized.  

Monday, April 18, 2011

The All-Contagious Bad Mood

Despite my spending so much time sleeping yesterday, I still felt like I hadn't gotten enough sleep when I woke up this morning.  Also, Phoenix was SO cute and snuggly and I really didn't want to leave him!  I'm trying really, really hard to keep my shit together in the face of all the things that are going on around me that might otherwise influence my mood.  For example, when my boss came in today, she was already in the worst mood I have ever seen her in.  I didn't bother asking her why, because she was grumbling about whatever it was that had happened this morning to put her in a terrible mood and I didn't want to make it worse.  However, the first phone call I received for her was someone who, when I asked him to identify himself, he only gave me a first name.  I've found, in this particular industry (that being professional reception services) when people call one of our tenants, they identify themselves with either a first and last name, or a first name and company name, and so it can be terribly frustrating when someone only gives a first name.  However, I don't often question that, as someone might be calling a husband or wife or friend or other relative who works in this building and I feel silly asking for a last name after someone's chosen to identify themselves by first name only.  Unfortunately, Barbara, being in a bad mood, sort of condescendingly told me that in the future I need to get a last name from people calling for her.  I understand her frustration, and she said it in a way that I'm certain was the kindest way she could transmit her frustration at the time, but I still took it personally.  I mean, I know that when I attempt to transfer a call to someone that I need to be prepared to give them as much information as possible, and I suppose that it is, in fact, part of my job description to get that information from each and every caller.  However, after having done this job for nearly six months, I have made myself comfortable with what is expected of me, and sometimes I don't investigate further when I am only given a first name as identification of a caller.  I guess today was the wrong day not to put in the extra effort.

Then, Barbara came up to tell me she was leaving for lunch and we spoke briefly about something and she say that I was playing a game, and listening to something that was playing (which happened to be Russell Brand stand-up), and she looked terribly annoyed.  She knows that I play games and watch TV and movies up here (and ironically that is not one of the things that she has a problem with) (even though the cleaning lady says that she used to tell the girls that worked up here before that they weren't allowed to watch TV or movies up here), and she never says anything, probably because I use one earphone to listen, leaving me able to still talk to people and answer questions and answer the phone, and I will willingly walk away from whatever I'm watching to fulfill my job duties.  But I can just tell that she's super obnoxed today, which makes it that much harder for me to do my job without getting upset with myself for whatever it is she's upset with me for.

Oh, and to make it all more difficult, I don't know where the boundaries are regarding my recent decision not to help with apartment showings.  I would have assumed that it would no longer fall to me to be the person to set up showings on the one apartment that we show by appointment only as I am no longer involved in showing said apartment.  However, Anna approached me today with a list of names and phone numbers of people who'd left messages over the weekend looking for information about this one apartment, and told me that I needed to schedule a showing on the apartment, call the tenants and then return all the messages to tell all the people when we'd be showing it.  I'm not sure if it is just that she doesn't want to have to do it, or if she really thinks I have nothing better to do, but I am perturbed by her asking me to do this.  I am mostly just fine with having to make the phone calls and set the appointment up, because mostly I am bored to tears here at the desk, but the part of me that is not fine with it is the part that remembers that I am responsible for answering incoming phone calls and answering questions and doing things for the tenants in this building first and foremost.  I will not be bringing this up to Barb today, but I will certainly not forget it and I will be asking her about this another time.

I think I am just plain annoyed today at the fact that there appear to be people on this planet who cannot be held responsible for themselves.  What I mean by that, is that apparently not everyone can be counted on to do their jobs themselves, or to clean up after themselves, or behave as an adult.  I made a point of cleaning my bathroom floor yesterday, with the full knowledge that Linda would be in there this morning, and she would inevitably walk out after leaving what seems to be half of the hair from her head on the floor.  Yesterday as I was cleaning, I imagined how I'd react when I saw that she'd done it again, and I imagined myself being  more charitable towards her, and less aggravated because of how often this happens, but nope.  I am just as annoyed as ever.  It didn't help that when I went downstairs, I went to make my PB&J sandwich, and found all the counter tops completely filthy.  She has several water bottles that have been just sitting on the counters since I moved in, and I keep a couple of hand towels in the kitchen to dry my hands (they are there for THAT PURPOSE ONLY) when I don't feel like wasting a couple of paper towels, but when I went to use the one that was out, it was no longer in the location I had left it.  Meredi is much more considerate, and I don't understand what it is about Linda that makes her feel as though she can walk around making messes everywhere and just leaving them.  For crying out loud, that is one of the bigger reasons I had to move out of my parents house after my sister moved in!  Also, Linda is SO awkward.  Just thinking about being stuck in a room with her makes me shudder.

And the best part about today - I was able to get my degree audit from CU, to tell me which classes I've taken and what requirements they each satisfy, and this tells me that I have completed 105 credit hours already!  It takes 120 or more hours to graduate, depending on the person, and after carefully reviewing all the requirements and the classes I've already taken, it may be that I can knock 12 credits out this summer and finish up this fall!  That is the best news I have gotten since my dad paid off my debt.  I obviously need to go and verify that this is correct with my academic adviser, which I plan to do as soon as I pay the enrollment fee, but I have picked out the classes I want to take and as soon as I pay the enrollment fee I can get registered!  I am suddenly having all kinds of crazy fantasies and ideas about what my life will be like once I have actually graduated from college.  I realized that I could apply for grad school almost right away, and there's a possibility that I could move in the next year.  This is a huge development, and a good one at that!  I definitely need to talk with my adviser and see what I need to do, and I would very much like to be able to raise my GPA before I apply to grad school, but that's going to be something that's really difficult to do, so I may have to wait until I get a second degree in IPHY or Criminology before I apply.  We will wait and see what happens.

And somehow it is after 4pm already!  Getting into the school stuff this morning really made the time fly by and I'm thrilled that I get to go home in just a few minutes now!  I miss my dog, and I want to spend more time with him.  I may even take him on a walk off the leash just to test some boundaries.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Sunday Again

I'm not gonna lie; I didn't feel like doing ANYTHING today.  And so I didn't do anything.  I slept most of the day, watched a few movies, and just plain relaxed.  I feel like I've been ridiculously busy lately and I was perfectly okay with not leaving the house today.  I'm so tired of being in my car.

When I got up around 5pm, I ate some leftover chinese food (yum!), and then cleaned.  I scrubbed the bathtub, vacuumed my room and the bathroom floor, I hung up curtains in my room (which look lovely and make me feel like I've changed something in my life to make it less monotonous), and then I cleaned the floorboards in the bathroom which were caked with dust and dirt.  Then I dyed my hair.  It's a really light blond now, but I haven't dried it yet so I don't know exactly how it's going to look, but I didn't do all of it; I kept some of the darker blond to add some dimension to it.

I feel really relaxed.  I wouldn't go so far as to say happy, but maybe close to satisfied.  I am getting back into the mental routine of being single and staying single on purpose.  I'm pampering myself, paying close attention to myself and being really super nice to myself, and it feels pretty good.  Instead of focusing all my energy and attention on finding someone to be my companion I am trusting myself to me companion enough.  And as silly as this sounds, I've moved my diamond ring from my right hand to my left hand in a symbolic commitment to myself.  I am working really hard to use the energy I'd be using on a boyfriend on myself.

And now I'm going back to bed, to be as awesome in my dreams as I am in real life.  While I was sleeping today, I dreamed about Phoenix as a puppy and he was SO cute.  I don't know if it's possible, but I think I love him even more.

To Volunteer

I burned my tongue drinking coffee today.  That's pretty unusual, mostly because I am not a coffee drinker.  But as I awoke before 5am this morning, by around 10:30am I was starting to feel a little slow.  I guess I should start with working the 9 Health Fair.  It was really fun!  Everyone that comes in is really friendly and nice, and they're all very grateful to everyone who volunteers.  This particular location is one of the busier sites in the state, and I worked it for the first time last year.  It was great being a "veteran" volunteer this year, mostly because I knew to choose to be at a table at the front of the line so that I'd get the opportunity to stick a whole bunch of people, and boy was that a great idea!  The place blew up right about 7:30 this morning and there was a steady stream of people for about the next hour and a half.  I missed the first couple of sticks that I tried, but I got the next few.  As a rule this year (to conserve supplies, we were told) we were only allowed to stick people once before we sent them over to the "hard stick" tables.  I'll admit that I definitely stuck a few people twice.  I didn't stick anyone three times.  It was pretty tiring, bending over for 5 hours, and my lower back is killing me at this point, but I had a blast, and it felt really good to brush up on both my blood-drawing skills and my social skills.  I was one of the first people there, and I grabbed a good table and sort of camped out for awhile, and there was a girl who came in to volunteer who told me that I looked "approachable" so she decided to sit with me.  It ended up being great.  We sat and chatted the whole time, and this was her first year and so I was able to help her out a little here and there.  I'm a dumbass and didn't ask her for any contact information or else I'd say that I made a new friend!  I may still tap some of my resources to see if I can't get in touch with her.  We got breakfast burritos and Chik-Fil-A for lunch, and overall I had a great experience.  I will definitely keep volunteering.

I got home and crashed.  Slept for a few hours, then I had to get up and go with my sister to take the kids back to her ex-husband's house because she had to go straight to work from there and we had to switch cars so she could drive the truck (which is running terrible, by the way, it sounds absolutely horrible).  Then I went to Red Lobster with my parents and then headed over to watch a movie with Tiffany.  I feel like I got a lot out of today, despite my sleeping through part of it.

I've got a lot of thoughts running through my head, a lot of which are stemming from having watched Love and Other Drugs (I give it a B+ for semi-originality, storyline and acting), but I would very much like to get into bed now and relax after this long-ass day.  I'm finding it more and more difficult to record the array of feelings that I go through each day because of the complexity and sheer number of them, and that's really frustrating.  I really want to record everything that I think and feel because I know that this is not the only time in my life that I am having these thoughts and feelings and I think it will be really helpful in the future for me to be able to go back and look at what I did to cope with what's going on inside my head so that I never have to be as miserable as I have been in the past.

One thing I guess I should write before I get to bed is about how I dealt with my nerves over volunteering today.  I was really nervous!  I mean, I knew that I hadn't completely forgotten how to draw blood, but it's been a whole year since I've done it and I was worried that I would screw up in some catastrophic way.  I just put it out of my mind - all the imagining how it went last year and how it might go this year, and all the things I remembered, and all the worries about things I might forget, I acknowledged their presence in my mind, but I didn't allow them to flourish.  I just didn't allow myself to think about it, almost at all.  Anytime a worry would pop in there, I would focus on thinking about something else entirely, and it worked really well.  I got there today and just got right to work, and I suffered no major nerves at all.  It was very refreshing to both feel like I had control and to actually have control over what thoughts I would choose to acknowledge.  I hope that I can do that more in the future.

Friday, April 15, 2011

100 Words or Less

Today was a good day.  I spent most of it hanging out with the kiddos and my parents.  I had to go pick up my check from work because Barbara forgot to give it to me yesterday, but that wasn't a huge deal.  I got some shopping done, hopefully I have enough food to last Phoenix for the next two weeks at least.

But I have to go to bed like RIGHT NOW because I have to leave the house at 5:30am to do phlebotomy at the 9 Health Fair in Broomfield tomorrow morning.  Hopefully I haven't forgotten how to draw blood!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Part-Mommy

What a long day.  I was even fairly busy at work, which is kind of unusual, but that did not help the time fly by.  No, no, no.  It just creeped by, minute by minute.  I felt mostly okay, except for when I spoke to the company that is supplying my Lupron shot and it will cost me $580/month and that's with my insurance.  After hearing that, I decided that I hate my insurance (I had already mostly decided that anyway), but after that, I really decided I didn't want to give them ANY more money (as I have already given them roughly $2,017) for a reduced price on prescriptions, 80% lab coverage and about 40% on regular doctor visits.  I feel like they are charging me $140 a month to cover me on the off chance I get in some kind of horrible accident and need extensive medical treatment, and getting just about nothing else.  I'm happy to pay for insurance coverage in case I do get in an accident, but with the amount of medication I need, and the amount of treatment I need for mental health and Endometriosis, $140 a month is out of control.  So that upset me.

Today is my dad's birthday, he's 58.  Apparently my sister had to work a double today, so she wasn't around for dinner or cake, which left my parents in charge of the kids.  By the end of the night, they were totally exhausted.  I took over for baths.  I love sort of feeling as though I have kids of my own even though they aren't mine.  I can have fun with them, teach them things, and be an authority figure, but I don't have to worry about all the really intense stuff like paying for school or their medical bills.  I still have to make sure they eat their dinner and get the proper nutrients and behave and bathe them and clothe them and put them to bed, but that's also sort of the fun part.

I am really, really tired, and I need to hydrate on the chance that I really go to donate plasma tomorrow (for the money!), so it's off to bed with me.  I plan to sleep in and sleep well.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Beginning to Start Over

Today was a pretty decent day.  I went to my first doctor's appointment of the day, which was the lady doc.  After talking with her and explaining to her that I'm miserable and that the Endometriosis symptoms are restricting my life, we decided that the best course of action will be for me to go back on Lupron.  Lupron is a depo shot that will essentially put my body though menopause, stopping my menstruation altogether.  It takes a few months for it to kick in and really do what it's supposed to do, which is suppress the endometrial tissue in the uterus from growing.  I'll have to be on the Lupron for 3-6 months and then after that I will be going back on the continuous birth control.  Interestingly, the doctor sort of justified my opinion that the female reproductive system  will only tolerate being suppressed for so long, and told me that in order to sort of maintain healthy function, I'm going to have to have a couple of periods a year.  But that beats what I'm dealing with right now.

My second appointment was with the occupational health doctor, whom I regaled with my throwing my back out while shaving my legs anecdote.  She wants to release me but I still have to go see the chiropractor/acupuncturist a couple more times.  She gave me the go-ahead to play soccer (oops!), and she said that the chiropractor was right, I'm pretty much symmetrical, which is good.

The third appointment was just a quick blood draw to check my thyroid level to decide whether or not to adjust my hypothyroid meds.  I learned from my lady-doctor's nurse that wacky thyroid levels can mess with menstruation, so it's good that I'm getting everything checked and figured out now.

I washed my sheets and my duvet cover and took out all the garbage in the house, and took a nap.  I really wanted to make it through the day without napping, but then I gave myself a pass because somehow I woke up at 7am before my alarm even went off even though I needed to be up anyway.

Phoenix is staying at my parents house tonight and tomorrow, and they were having pizza for dinner and since I'm broke and foodless I went over there early.  I got there at the same time as my sister's ex-husband was dropping off the kids and the dogs, and it was glorious.  They hopped out of the car going, "BETHIE!" and came and gave me hugs.  Then Z said he wanted to sit on my lap while he ate his pizza.  They're so flipping cute.  I told H to finish his milk, then turned around to get a plastic bag out for the leftovers and I turned around in time to see him pouring it in the sink and then pretending to drink out of the empty cup.  And when he hopped out of the car, he wanted to show everyone that he'd brought his Darth Vadar action figure with him in his pocket (they have a policy not to bring toys between the houses) and he wanted me to fight with the "life savers" (light sabers) with him.

I stayed over there to play with the kids for awhile and now I am home and watching what I anticipate to be my new favorite show, Happy Endings.  It's about pathetic single people in their thirties!  Right up my alley!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

My Sweet Tooth

I am exhausted.  It's been a long day.  My first thought when I woke up this morning was, "Okay, what time can I go to bed tonight?"  And then throughout the day it was all I could do not to put my head on my desk and take a quick snooze.  My dad picked up Phoenix while he was out and about today, and so I went straight to my parents house after work.  I wasn't in the greatest mood, but being there and sitting down and having a Mike's helped me relax a bit.

I managed to not watch TV at work again today, and I got a lot of reading done.  Nothing major happened to change my mood for the worse, which is good.

After dinner at my parents, I had to go rescue Tiffany from school (she goes to Metro) because her car got booted, which I did not mind doing one bit because she has helped me in so many ways.  I just wish I could have done something more to be helpful because that really stressed her out.  It was also nice because it got me out of the house, out from in front of a screen.  However, as I was turning left to enter the on-ramp to get on the highway, I almost got into an accident.  The two turn lanes had a green arrow, and I'm so glad I was paying attention, because I started to turn, but then I noticed that a car driving towards the intersection wasn't stopping at the light, so I slammed on the brakes, and Phoenix hit the dashboard.  The oncoming car went right through the intersection, but the driver realized way too late that she had run the red light, and tried stopping, but managed to stop just in time to get hit by the car to the inner left lane of me.  Luckily, neither car was moving terribly fast at the time, so the damage wasn't horrible.  I felt like I should have stopped, but didn't because I needed to get to Tiffany.  I drove by the intersection about 30 minutes later and the police were still there and the car that ran the red light was being loaded onto a tow truck.  I felt so very lucky that I was being observant and attentive, otherwise I would have hit the car for certain.  Not that that would have been so terrible; my car is really starting to sound awful and I'm really worried I am going to need to either spend more money to get it fixed or have to try to figure out how to get a new car.

When I got back home, Linda was home, and had taken poor Rainey to the vet, because she's been running around on three legs, holding her front right paw up, which has been swollen.  Last week she was limping and Linda and I found what looked like a puncture on her leg there, and Linda put some iodine on it, but it looks like it got infected anyway.  So I sat down and rubbed Rainey's belly and gave her kisses and hugs, at which point Linda surprised the crap out of me by asking if I might be interested in taking a fitness class with her at the Lafayette Rec Center sometime.  The one she's picked out looks like a good one, and it's two days a week from 5-6am.  She and I both would need the motivation of having a partner to get us each going, so I told her if I could come up with the money I'd do it with her.  Then Meredi came home and we all sat and chatted for a little while.  Roommate bonding is going well, albeit slow.  But we're getting there.  I'm starting to feel like less of an alien, or stranger, or visitor.

I need to get to bed because although I don't have to work tomorrow, I have an appointment with the lady-doc at 9am, then a check-up with the occupational health doc at 10:30 and then an appointment to get bloodwork done at 11:45.  And speaking of the occupational health doc - I wrote my blog post yesterday before I got in the shower, and while I was in the shower, in the middle of shaving my right leg (the left one was already done at this point), my freaking back went out again!  Exactly as it did that day when I was showing apartments!  I managed to finish shaving and get out of the shower, but holy shit did that hurt!  And it's frustrating because a back injury can be really chronic and all I could think about was the enormous pile of laundry that I have sitting in my hamper and how I'd been planning to get that done on my day off and how the heck am I supposed to do laundry if I cannot bend at the waist?  So I took 1000mg of ibuprofen, and a percocet and laid down on a bag of ice for about an hour before I actually went to sleep, and when I woke up this morning, I was a little sore and stiff, but otherwise, just fine.  So I am going to probably have to go to damn physical therapy or something or be really serious about seeing a chiropractor which is such an enormous pain in the ass, but I guess a theoretical pain in the ass is better than a physical pain in the back.

I stopped at the old Target in Broomfield on my way back home tonight (which immediately caused a flashback of how Kate and I used to run in there in the summer-time and buy $5 halter tops before we'd go out at night and then change into them in the Target parking lot) because I was having a craving for something ridiculously sweet, so I bought some Red Vines and Gobstoppers.  I will call this act my first act of pampering myself after deciding to give up on dating.  It feels pretty good, and I've been snacking on the candy all night and my teeth hurt they're so coated in sugar, but it's exactly what I wanted.

I hate feeling this energetic at night because I know I'll be paying for it in the morning when I have to wake up.  Probably should lay off the sugar now.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Ache of the Head

Oh man, my mood was terrible all day today.  I'm sure that it's mostly because of my dating/non-dating situation.  I fucked up with the last two guys, and I got an email from a random guy last night, who I decided to give a chance.  We exchanged a couple of emails and I added him on facebook, and he accepted my request, only to take me off his friends almost immediately.  My guess is that he looked at my pictures and decided I wasn't his type or whatever.  I had started replying to his last email when that happened, so I deleted it and then deleted my account on the free dating site.  I've certainly had enough.

I made it through the entire workday without watching any TV shows online, which I had sort of made a goal for the day today because I knew I'd be tempted to do something to get out of my head, and I knew that I needed to sit with the discomfort I was (and still am) feeling.  I feel like I did pretty well.

I have a pretty decent headache going.  It's not like a lot of my headaches, which sort of target someplace behind one of my eyes.  This one has taken over my whole head.  I've taken a couple of aspirin, but it's not really helping that much.

I just watched a show on A&E called Relapse.  It's about drug addicts who have been through treatment programs and detox, but continually relapse.  I always forget how much I feel like my mental illness is like some kind of addiction.  It shows a lot of the same hallmarks of falling back on old habits, the same thought processes that lead to chronic depression lead to drug and alcohol use and abuse, the same struggle against something that is so familiar.  I used to watch a lot of the show Intervention, because I felt some connection to the addicts featured on there.  I wanted more than anything to be able to go into some kind of long-term inpatient treatment program, because I thought that the kinship I'd feel with others experiencing the same feelings I was experiencing, and the constant monitoring and support would be helpful.  And I have done an inpatient treatment, but it was only for 70-some hours.  It was really a good experience for me, to see how miserable it is, to see how different the experience is for different people, to see what it's like to have all of your decision-making choices taken away, and to be under constant surveillance.  To have to convince people that you are well enough to regain your rights and responsibilities again is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but it was ultimately exactly what I needed.

Anyway, I think I need to focus on what my addiction is - which is being sad, being negative, being unhappy and dissatisfied - so that I can find a way to recover from it, and get stronger each time I relapse so that the experience of going through all these terrible feelings all over again is less and less terrible.  One of the things the Sober Coach said to the addict on this show was that if the addict was willing to go to treatment, it meant that she loved herself and thought that she deserved to be happy, and did the addict think she deserved to be happy?  These are the questions that I need to be really cognizant of and be asking myself on a daily basis.  The Sober Coach said that when the addict is in the throes of addiction, and using and abusing, they're not thinking about themselves, they're thinking about using.  And while I don't have an addiction to any substance, the principle is the same.  If I can figure out how to love myself, and if I can discover again that I do deserve to be happy, I will be okay.

I just don't really think I can do it alone, and I feel like my support system is dropping like flies.  I'm still not speaking to Jen (although I don't think I ever really counted her as a huge part of my support system), Jonas and Jamie are upset because I didn't just get over the dog-sitting fiasco.  I feel like Kate is far too wrapped up in her own life to care about what I'm going through, I tried calling Kara the other night and she wasn't really able to talk and hasn't called back yet, and I think that often Tiffany doesn't know quite how to handle what I am going through.  I really need to see my therapist again, but I don't know how I'm going to do that, with as much money as I owe God and everyone right now.

I think that the biggest reason that I'm stressing out right now is because I am so far beyond broke.  My next two paychecks are already spent on rent, cable, internet, utilities, health insurance, a student loan payment, credit card payment, taxes, medical bills, and my enrollment fee for CU.  I'm really, really not looking forward to having to work 38 hours a week for at least 5 straight weeks here soon.

I was really annoyed today by Anna, the coworker with whom I share my job.  She shows properties on the days when I'm at the desk, and I'm the one who takes all the phone calls that result from the posting on craigslist that we do on Mondays.  I received a call today from someone asking what our pet policy is, which is that we are only allowing dogs at one property at this point, with a $500 deposit and $50/month pet rent.  I told a person that today, and when this person showed up to see one of our properties (one that doesn't allow dogs), she told Anna that I had quoted her $50 a month for pet rent, and Anna called me all afluster asking why I had told the girl that.  I explained that my boss, Barbara, had told me that we were charging that amount for pet rent at the one property that allows dogs.  She said that that amount was incorrect, and that she knew what the correct amount was because of her position as accountant for the property management company.  So I said that I would check to make sure I wasn't incorrect, and turns out, I was right!  Then she got very snappy with me when I asked her to verify with me that she'd said she'd scheduled a showing for 5pm on Friday, even though as far as I knew, we weren't showing on Fridays anymore.  She said that yes, she was going to show the apartment on Friday and that she'd scheduled it for herself.  She has this incredible ability to make me feel really stupid about some things when she hasn't given me the correct or full information in the first place.  And unfortunately, I'm not someone who deals well with confrontation and so it is especially hard for me to tell people when they are wrong, even if I know they are wrong.

Ugh.  My headache seems to be getting worse.  I need to go get into the shower before Linda the Inconsiderate jumps in there ahead of me again (as she did this morning, causing me to actually be late for work by taking a shit right at 7am when I was just about to brush my teeth).  I really hope tomorrow will be more bearable.  I need to start getting back to work on my self-esteem.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

The End

Okay, so I'm officially giving up!  I'll be deleting my free dating site profile tomorrow.  I think things are not going to work out with either of the guys I've met in the last couple of weeks, and I'm proud of myself for trying, but I'm done.  It's too hard on me, and I can't handle it anymore.  I need, probably more than anything, to really, really, really focus on myself and on doing things for myself that are good and healthy and conducive to my survival.  I think if I have to go on another first date, I might be tempted to kill myself.

Today's date went okay.  The guy is really funny, and really sweet and totally goofy, all of which are qualities that I like, but it was just awkward.  He's not the most distinguished conversationalist, and he is a little on the weird side.  I feel bad because I don't want him to think that I was just using him for a meal, because I wasn't.  But I doubt I'll be seeing him again.  And the other guy, the one I really liked, has not been in contact with me, which indicates to me that he's not all that interested.  The bottom line is that if a guy wants to see you or get to know you, he will move heaven and earth to make that happen.  And I'm sick of wondering and I'm sick of trying and I'm sick of thinking that there's something wrong with me because he's not interested.

I feel like my acceptance of my giving up is getting a little easier.  I don't really feel like crying out of despair and sorrow, at least not right now.  I sometimes wonder if maybe I am just meant to spend this life alone and struggling and suffering.  Perhaps I did something truly awful in a past life, or maybe my last life was really fantastic and wonderful and now it's my turn to hurt.

I have cramps right now, and I'm not feeling super great.  I have an appointment with my lady-doc on Wednesday to figure out what the hell to do about the incessant bleeding that I am experiencing.  Maybe it's better if I don't meet a guy because I think if I ever actually made it to marriage, only to find out that I can't have kids, I'd be heartbroken all over again.

So begins the life of spinsterhood.  

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

I feel like today was more stressful than it needed to be.  My biggest priority for the day was to get my taxes straightened out.  After I received the 1099's that Holly sent me last week (the deadline to mail out W-2's and 1099's to employees is January 31st), I resolved to do everything in my power to make her life miserable, since now I have to come up with about $500 to pay my taxes out of pocket.  After going over my whole entire tax return, top to bottom with the "tax professional" (I use quotes because I feel like he wasn't terribly certain about what the hell he was doing), we then amended my tax return to include the 1099 Holly sent me and the corrected 1099 I received from unemployment about the same time I got the one from Holly.  It only took an hour and a half, and with some extra help from another tax professional, we were able to figure out how much I'm going to owe, and I was given forms to use to report Holly to the IRS for 1099-ing me instead of W-2-ing me as an employee as she should have.  The use of the 1099 is for contract workers, and the example I was given was someone who comes in to re-tile a bathroom.  The person who hires the worker says, "Please re-tile my bathroom.  I will pay you $X when you are finished," and that's that.  An employee is someone who is under complete control of an employer, who sets forth hours and controls every aspect of the job: what is being done, how it's being done, when it gets done, etc.  After discussing my job with the tax professionals, it was decided that I was, in fact, an "employee" and therefore should have been subject to the taxes and tax withholding of an "employee" and not a "contract worker."  Holly used the 1099 on me to get out of having to pay payroll taxes.  But I'm going to fuck her every which way from Sunday (as far as is in my power) by reporting her to the IRS.  Once I submit the paperwork, there is a chance she will be investigated and audited, as well as fined.  Considering what I know about her and her organizational skills, I doubt the IRS will find much with which to penalize her, but auditing and investigation from the IRS is nothing if not an enormous pain in the ass, and I want to cause her as much of a pain in the ass as she is causing me by the late 1099 and for how demanding she was of me when I was in her "employment."

I felt substantially better when I left HR Block, almost giddy.  I grabbed Phoenix and we went back to my parents house, where I had decided to spend the rest of the day detailing my car.  Unfortunately, upon my arrival, all three kids woke up from naps and my parents had to go run some errands, so I was put in charge and was forced to wait to work on my car.  I'm not necessarily complaining because I really love spending time with them, but I was sort of looking forward to going over there and getting to be completely free of responsibility of watching the kids.

My parents are rock stars.  With my sister working now, they are given the responsibility of watching the kids when she's gone.  My mom is off on Wednesday afternoons, Thursdays and Fridays, and the kids now stay over there Wednesday night through either Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon, alternating each week.  So my poor mom is basically going through raising three small children all over again in her 50's, after having gotten rid of her own three children.  The only real positive of my sister working is that she can carry her financial weight now and pay for the stupid shit she does instead of forcing my parents to pay for it.  I'm not sure it will actually work out that way, but it's a nice idea in theory.  I wish my sister could be more sensitive about her schedule, though, and take the days off when the kids are there instead of the days when they're not there because it's really hard on my parents to be in charge all over again.  One positive aspect of my parents being primary caregivers is that the kids are given a little more freedom to make mistakes and misbehave without fear of being screamed at all the live-long day, and my parents are a lot more cognizant of getting the kids out of the house and out from in front of the TV.  Today, I guess, they all spent much of the day outside while my parents were out in the backyard working on the vegetable garden, with the boys digging up worms (which they named Squirmy and Slimey) and the baby doing a little playing in the dirt of her own.  By the time I got there, things were winding down and the boys went to play with their new friend that lives two houses over who is 5 or 6 years old.

I did get to finally detail my car, although ironically not in as much detail as I wanted, because the kind of Saturday evening ritual my family has is that around 4pm, my parents start fixing dinner and we all sit on the back porch drinking beer and chatting about whatever.  They turn the radio on and listen to the Rockies broadcast and my dad grills steaks and we all sort of get caught up on each other's weeks, or the kids, or on our own opinions of current events.

Something I was thinking about as I was driving over there today was what my roommates must think of my relationship with my family.  They know my sister's story and about how I had to get the hell out for fear of siblicide (the only word I can think of that means to kill one's sibling), but they know that I spend a lot of my free time over there, too.  I wonder if they think that I just sit over there and watch TV the way I do at home, or if they think I was being over-dramatic about the whole situation with my sister.  I don't really care what it is that they think, but I am just slightly curious.  I like to try to envision other people's opinions of me from time to time.  Even as frustrating and upsetting as it can be sometimes, I love my family so much, and I'm so close with them.  They know just about every detail of my life, and I like it that way.  They're my support system and that's a place that I can go to feel important and loved and cared for.

And that brings me here.  I spent about an hour on the phone with my breakfast date for tomorrow, which is a different guy from last week.  I'm real excited because after talking to him on the phone for awhile, I think we'll get along really well, and I'm feeling a twinge that maybe he is looking forward to meeting and liking me more than I am him.  I like the idea of being pursued and being considered interesting and having someone out there who wants to learn more about me without me having to try to convince them that I really am all of those things.  I'm just a little thrown on this guy because while he's nice and attractive and tall (he resembles Aaron, I think), and he's really down to earth and funny, but I worry that he might be just a little too into himself for me.  I really like self-deprecating humor and while he's funny, he's not funny in that particular way.  He likes to point out things about himself that he thinks I should know, and I totally get that and I've done it myself, but he does a lot of it.  I think part of it might be nerves and him trying to get me to like him, but I worry that he might be that way all the time.  So we are going to breakfast about halfway between our houses, which is about Washington Park in Downtown Denver.  I have a soccer game at 1, but I am not going to play because of how my ankle swelled up last night, so I am free to spend some extra time with him if the occasion should call for it.

With regards to my ankle - I feel just the slightest bit of guilt over not playing, both because I want to play and I need and want the exercise, but I want to be a dependable and reliable member of my soccer team since I've obligated myself to playing this season, especially since I missed the first game.  But at the same time, I really feel like if I want to survive the remainder of the season, and if I want to be able to do some running this summer, I need to give my ankle a chance to heal from rolling it last week.  It doesn't really hurt anymore, unless I step funny or stand on it the wrong way, or sit on it the wrong way, but it's still a little swollen and I can just tell that there is damage in there that really needs to heal before I get back out there again.  I'm really hoping that I can play again next week, but I know I'm going to have to take it super easy after that.  What pisses me off is that I was wearing my damn $90 ankle brace on that ankle when I rolled it.  This shit isn't supposed to happen!!  And I know I need to have surgery to fix both ankles and a lot of physical therapy if I want to continue to be active, but I am nowhere near being able to afford it with my shitty insurance.  Which is why I am looking forward to going back to school - I'm getting new insurance and either grants or student loans will pay for it for a whole year.

Okay I really need to get into bed now so that I can get up and shower tomorrow morning without thinking about canceling so I can go back to sleep.  The weather is supposed to be crappy again tomorrow like it was last Sunday, so I'm real glad I won't be outside playing, and I can theoretically sleep the rest of the day away tomorrow without guilt of missing valuable outside time while the weather is beautiful.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Abyss

My mind is going a mile a minute and I have about a million and a half thoughts swimming around in there.  A small part of me wants to write about all of it right now, but I sort of want to not dignify it by giving it more attention than it all deserves.  A lot of it is impulsive and unsettled and yucky.  All of it is impulsive, unsettled and just plain yucky.  But it's been a really long week, with a lot of crap going on, and I really just want to get into bed and allow myself to dream whatever I'm supposed to dream so that I can wake up tomorrow morning feeling slightly different, as though I've been somewhere else and been someone else.

I really hate feeling this way.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Prologue to Despair

I don't understand men.  It seems to me that every single guy that I've talked to and/or met up with is being very, very (unnecessarily) uncertain about having any kind of lasting relationship with me.  I don't know whether to chalk it up to males being male, or to something about me that creates uncertainty in males.  It's really causing me to question myself and whether or not I should keep trying to date.  I've got two guys on my list for now, but both of them are being very wary of me.  I guess I don't understand why neither of them is even considering the possibility of jumping in with both feet with me and seeing what happens after that.  I suppose it may have something to do with self-preservation on their parts, but for once, I'd just like to feel like I'm worth taking a leap for.

There I go, getting into my "why won't anyone love me" tirade again.  What I need to do is to take a step back, and focus on what's at hand in the here and now.  I'm still at work, but I'm leaving in 25 minutes.  I don't have anything to have for dinner, except red wine, although I may stop at the store on my way home and get some bread and subsist on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until next week when I get paid again.  I'd really like to be able to just remove the veil of uneasiness that I'm feeling at the moment and be satisfied with the state of things as they are.  I guess maybe I'm just not meant to be satisfied with things the way they are.

Okay, so I wrote that, and then left work, and after returning to it two hours later, I have some perspective.  As soon as I get any inkling that there may be decreased interest from a guy, I get upset.  At this point, I'm not sure why I get upset, as it seems to be the norm that I meet a guy, spend a little time with him, and then he decides that I'm not the one for him, and stops talking to me.  I think it just really bothers me that I can't keep anyone's attention for any longer than a couple of weeks.  It makes me wonder what I did or said wrong, or what is wrong with me that I'm not interesting enough to hold their attention.  I really don't like feeling this way, either.  It's a downward spiral - once I start noticing decreased communication with whatever guy it is at the time, I get upset, and I'll either tell them I'm upset, or pretend nothing is wrong, and then let them just sort of disappear and then quietly fall apart.

God, I must be one hell of a boring person!  At 26, I have virtually no life, and almost no friends.  My mom tells me that I need to get out and do things, take a class, volunteer somewhere, do something that I'm passionate about, but after I get done with work, I can hardly bring myself to work up the energy to make myself food for dinner, much less go and DO something.  I know that right now I'm having a relapse and it's going to be hard for awhile, and maybe get even harder to function normally, but I feel like I'm a lot more active than I used to be.  The days where I don't leave the house are more and more rare.  Even if I just leave the house to go to my parents house, it's something.  I guess being sick this way is just something that I'm going to have to make my peace with.

I also wonder if maybe I should be less open and honest and conversational about my feelings.  And I'm not just talking about guys, I mean all around.  I need to be more of a closed-off person.  At work, especially.  I've done pretty well about not divulging my every thought and feeling to any and everyone who will listen to me the way I've done before, but I think maybe I need to just back off from the perspective that the world is my oyster and that it will accept me as I am because there is no other option.

I sometimes wish that I could like me just the way I am, so that maybe I have a chance that someone else will like me as I am, too.  And I can't make up my mind as to whether or not I'm a complete mess, or if I'm very together because I feel like I have moments of both during each and every day.  Emotionally, I am a complete mess.  I have more self-loathing and more reasons to be very self-critical than anyone I know, but I think I am able to put off a really organized and together vibe to the world.  I'm a punctual person, I almost never lose things, I do the best I can to pay my bills on time, and I've cleaned up my credit and have it prepared to go in a positive direction.  I am aware of everything that is required of me from every organization that I have any involvement in (i.e., next weekend's 9 Health Fair, getting prepared for financial aid at CU), and I have been trying with every molecule of my being to be a more reliable and dependable person.  Yet I cannot, no matter how hard I try, nor what I do, seem to get my shit together emotionally.  I tried taking time off from dating, and I feel like I must have reached the point where I wanted to date again, but I'm finding it just as upsetting and frustrating as before.

Which makes me wonder - will I ever be ready?  Will I need to consistently put effort into it, or will it just happen for me someday, and if the latter is the case, then why won't it happen sooner than later so that I can stop worrying about it?

So I guess tonight I am a mess.  I'm trying to isolate as much as I can tonight, but I'm not succeeding very well.  I'd like to stop being a serial facebooker, and I want to stop checking the free dating site for a new email from last weekend's date.  I want to just be happy with me, as I am, without judgment from myself or anyone else.  I did it once, and I think I can do it again, but it's going to be really hard because I am so desperate for companionship.  I think going back to school will help quiet my busy mind and reroute all the energy I put into thinking of myself and my emotional health and my shortcomings to thoughts of real, worldly things.  But that is just a hope.  I also hope that going back to school won't overwhelm me as it has before.  I had a moment of panic today, when I thought about how much free time I'm going to be losing in the near future, with the combination of work and school.  I'm terrified of getting so overwhelmed that I have yet another breakdown.

I even thought, as I was ascending the stairs into the parking garage, as I looked over the railing to see how far down the bottom level was, about jumping.  I don't like thinking that way, because despair is like a parasite, and the minute I begin to feel it, the more it feeds on me and it grows and grows, inhibiting more and more of my mind with each thought.

Ugh, I need to be done with this.  I could probably write all night, but I want to have as much energy tomorrow as I had today, and I still have a new episode of Bones to watch.  My coping skills are not working too great right now.