I Think I Did Not Survive

I really, really, really wanted to go camping this summer.  Like, a lot.  I have such fond memories of the summer when my friends and I went camping for like a week, and it took like 8 hours to get there.  I would really love to be able to do that again, but I don't really have any friends here that are campers.  Shit, I don't have any friends here who are really adventurous and would leave for camping trip last minute with me.  I need new friends.

Linda gave me the names of a few places I could go camping.  After extensive research, I have decided that I am not skilled enough to pack in a tent, sleeping bag, air mattress & pump, cooler with food, at least 5 gallons of water, pillow, blanket, dog bed, firewood, clothes, and incidentals all by myself.  Hell, I could even put a little pack-thingy on Phoenix and it still wouldn't be enough.  And to have to carry all that for around 2 miles, hiking.  That's called "backpacking," and I'm not prepared enough to do that.

I looked into a bunch of the little drive-in campsites in the mountains, but I'm so picky about what I want in a campsite - secluded, near water, preferably moving water, campfires allowed, water spigots available, uncrowded - and because tomorrow is October 1st, the campsites that are still open do not meet all my standards.  And they need to have hiking trails and stuff around to explore, thus again my standards are not met by any of the campgrounds within 2 hours of where I live.

So instead it looks like I will be staying home, trying to figure out how to enjoy the weather and not lay on my bed watching TV all day long.  Which is going to be tough.  Maybe I'll clean all the tons of dog poop out of the back yard before the first snow.  It might take 3 hours, considering how long it took last time I tried.  In like May. 

That's really all I can think of.  I am going to go running. 

Yesterday, when I was riding my bike down The Hill from school, I was stopped at a crosswalk/stoplight by an old man I had ridden by while crossing the street.  He told me it was "proper bike etiquette" to warn people before I ride by them that I'm about to ride by them.  I was FUMING the rest of the way home.  I hate, with the passion of 10,000 suns, people who think they have any right to tell me what to do, in any way, shape, or form.  That guy last year who told me to pick up Phoenix's dog poop.  I fumed for days after that one.  As I was driving home, I thought about about a million things I could have said to the guy on the street that would have made me feel better about the situation, but I can never come up with something on the spot like that.  It's my fatal flaw.  Someday, I'm going to be in some situation where I have to come up with a good burn immediately, because I'll have a gun to my head and I'll be shot if I can't come up with a retort off-hand.

Right now, at work, I am watching the Conan documentary of the time between his shows when he was doing live shows and wasn't allowed to be on TV or the internet.  It's awesome, and makes me love him even more.  Except that I am having a bad dizzy spell at the moment and it's making it hard to write and to pay attention.

Okay I think that's over.  I feel better.  I'm having a good day today.  My mood is good, I feel pretty relaxed, and like I have some kind of control over things.  I'm really glad it's Friday.  I wish I had people to go camping with.  I wish I had some semblance of a social life.  But only some days.  Not every day.

That's about it for my thoughts for today.  When I get home, I am grabbing my puppy and going to the puppy-friendly liquor store, aka my favorite place in the world, and then cooking myself a meal of beef stroganoff.  And wine.

Thursdays Are My Favorite

I made it through the day and I actually feel okay.  I did everything I was supposed to do today - went to the Lafayette court to fight my ticket, went to school, went to a synagogue for a Rosh Hashannah service, went to the gym, and went to my Anatomy lab.  I'll start at the beginning.

I left the house at about 8:10 this morning to get to the court early, just in case I needed to be there.  I got there, went in, and went to the little window to check in.  They pulled the file that had my information in it and the lady told me the prosecutor wanted to offer me a plea deal of 2 points and a $115 fine.  Rationally, I did my best to make a quick decision about that, and took it.  I didn't like it, but after weighing my options, I figured that it was my best option, given that I had about a 50/50 chance to have it taken off my record, and probably less of a chance.  If I'd gone in to see the judge I probably would have had to pay court fines on top of whatever the judge decided, and I figured that $115 wasn't so bad compared to the $250 I had budgeted out as the maximum I'd have to pay.  I'm not thrilled it's on my record, and now I know that I'll pretty much NEVER get an EMT job for an ambulance company, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

I got done with that and got back to my house by before 8:30am, so I changed my clothes real quick and headed to school.  The good news about the court thing being really quick was that I wouldn't be late for or miss class.  I got there about 15 minutes early and sat and talked with my class-buddy until class started.  She's a fun girl.

After that I had to go to a Rosh Hashannah service someplace, and I'd chosen to go to an Orthodox Hassidic service that was just off campus to get the most out of it, and it was super interesting.  It was mostly in Hebrew, but the book (hymnal?  It's a hymnal in Christianity) had translations, but I definitely had trouble following it.  I had really no idea what to expect, and bunch of my classmates were there, but I was dressed in sweats and everyone else looked nice. I was also the only blonde person in the room.  They had dividers down the center of the room, separating the men from the women.  I almost tried to sit in the men's section, but I was able to realize what was going on before that happened.  All the guys were in suits.  I stayed for just over an hour, until just after the shofar (blowing of the sheep's horn), and left so I would have enough time at the gym.  Although I knew I was totally out of place, and felt extremely conspicuous, I didn't feel weird while I was there.  I did the best I could to look like I knew what was going on (although I didn't touch the Torah with the book, or kiss the book like everyone else).  I felt welcome and almost at home.  I would definitely consider converting to Judaism if I had to in order to marry someone.  Terribly interesting.  Also, the Rabbi was a total stereotypical Hassidic Jew, with the long, wiry beard and the almost New York accent, using Hebrew words like "schlep."

I rode my bike back to campus and went to the gym.  I did 30 minutes on the stair machine and then 15 on the treadmill so I would have time to do some weights.  I should maybe do the treadmill first so my legs aren't so tired next time.  I could barely run 1.3 miles.  I had to keep slowing down and stopping.  After that, I ran down to the weight room and did only about 100 total reps of like 75lbs of the arm weight machines.  I felt like throwing up and I could barely move my arms afterward, so I at least feel like I did enough work, even though it was quick.

After that was Anatomy lab, which I had to go to get caught up from everything I missed the last two labs.  Some of my classmates and I decided to form a study group, and I feel like I have a way better grasp of the forearm and lower leg muscles than I had last time.  We went over to the room next door to look at the other two cadavers we'll be tested on, and the other TA is SOOOO much better than ours.  She's more confident, she knows the material better and she's just all-around a better teacher.  Next week is all review of everything, so I think I'll get o spend more time in her classroom learning from her.  I feel a lot better about all of the stuff I missed, though.

And now I'm home.  I called my mom to see if she'd gotten all the stuff done she needed to get done today, and turns out she and my dad and little sister are in Iowa.  They decided to go to my cousin's wedding, but neglected to tell me.  Which is pretty upsetting considering I spend a good portion of my weekends over at their house, even when the kids aren't there.  I have no idea what I'm going to do this weekend, now.  I feel like I should try to find stuff to do with people but that also sounds like a lot of work.  I know I can spend a lot of time exercising - we'll go running and I'll hit the gym, maybe clean and rearrange my room or something.  I have a couple of people I can call if I decide I really need social interaction.  Maybe I'll go out with my new class-buddy.  She's a bit of a partier.  My dad just texted me and told me it was a last-minute decision and that if I want to hop in the car and drive to Iowa there's room for me and Phoenix.  But I can't take off work this last-minute and expect to have a job when I get back.

As for the rest of things, I think I must have been really freaking out about traffic court and getting caught up in Anatomy because now that those things are done, I feel quite a bit better.  I might bring both my computers to work tomorrow to spend some time transferring music and pictures from my old one to my new one.  And since I'm finished with Lost, I will have to find things to do to occupy my time.  I assume it's going to go by really slowly.

I (again) slept like shit last night, waking up every once in awhile to move around.  I think I'll take another Ambien tonight and try to get a decent amount tonight.

Honestly, in the back of my mind I'm considering the drive to Iowa....considering...But I don't think my car would survive the trip and I don't want to pay the $160 in gas.  Even though it would be a fun trip and it might be the last time I see my grandma...

Whine, Bitch, Moan

I'm gonna fucking kill someone today.  It looks like it's going to be one of those wonderfully frustrating days at work where I have to interact with my boss way too much, and yet I get nothing from her.  She might be one of the worst property managers, ever.  She seems to have this attitude that some things are just not her problem, even when they are.  From my experience, being a property manager is a 24/7 job, because the properties being rented out are going to have problems that don't stick to a 9-5 schedule, but she doesn't like to work outside the 9-5 schedule, and she is always telling people to call someone else, instead of being the one to call herself.  She knows next to nothing about the telecommunication technology we use in the building, which in turn prevents me from knowing anything about it, and it makes me look like an idiot when our tenants ask me a question about it and I can't answer it.  And the last time I had a "meeting" with my boss, she told me she doesn't like it when I answer a question with "I don't know," and then don't further investigate to find an answer.  But from my point of view, that's what she does, too.

I feel really panicky today, like I need to do things, or control things, or something, but I simply cannot.  I just had two consecutive dizzy spells that almost made me fall out of my damn chair, which I'm pretty sure are related to my feeling panicky.

So, in the property management business, we have a constant turnovers of tenants.  When you're running a business like the one I work for, it's important to have as much information about our tenant's businesses as possible.  Well, voila, all of a sudden we have a new tenant moving in this morning that no one fucking told me about that I'm going to be answering phones for, but I have no fucking clue what they do or who they are.  To me, the lack of communication between my boss and me of this pertinent information is extremely unprofessional and it's going to make me look incompetent.  Which I HATE.  I'm also not in the mood to have to answer inane questions from the people moving in about the building and how things work that my boss has deemed below her or whatever to have to explain to these people.  Guaranteed they haven't been given a fax or copy code, which is something I'll be asked to do and it will be in a tone of voice that indicates, "Why haven't you done that yet?" when it wasn't something that I was asked to do in the first place.

We also have tenants whose tenancy is in limbo - they're not here anymore or not paying bills or whatever, but I'm still having to answer phones for them when I have no fucking clue whether or not we're still supposed to be providing services that aren't being paid for anymore.  I've just been letting those calls go to voicemail.  They're not paying for them to be answered anymore, so why should I do that?

On a positive note, I was told on Monday that when I am at the desk, there's a whole different air to the office - in a good way.  I feel a little bit of deja vu there, like I've been told that before, but it was a husband of one of our tenants who was meeting his wife for lunch.  I already knew that because of the amounts of complaints I get about Anna, but it was still nice to hear.

Something that occurred to me while I was driving home from school yesterday is how many strikes I feel I have against me.  I feel like I do everything I can to make something happen, I go out of my way, make phone calls, talk to people, whatever, but I feel like no matter what I do, there's something that is 100% out of my power to control that will prevent me from getting what I want.  Often it's people in positions of power who are too lazy or jaded to want to help someone like me, more often than not it's my health problems (as I'm seeing in the case of wanting to work in Federal law enforcement jobs or government jobs), and I find it to be incredibly unfair and disheartening.  It makes me not even want to try anymore.

God damn.  I am a little worried I am going to totally lose my shit on someone today because of my level of irritation over the tiniest things.  I went into the kitchen just now to fill up the watering can (which my boss has reminded me for the 9,000th time that I need to water the damn flowers out front every single day)and one of our most annoying tenants (I think I find her annoying because she's crazy awkward and a terrible communicator - in that she is like Anna - she has no idea how to properly convey an idea to someone without making them feel about 2 inches tall) was in there with a big stack of dishes she was washing in the sink from a book launch party she held last night.  Wash them after hours when she wouldn't be in everyone's way?  Why, no!  To think of such a thing - to be considerate of others?!?  Inconceivable.

See?  It's like I almost want to get fired.

No Change

I didn't completely forget to write last night.  I remembered at one point, but I was feeling to lazy to type it all out on my phone, which is what I've been doing at home, because my computer sucks major watermelons, and yesterday my new laptop came but I haven't set it up yet.  Yesterday pretty much sucked major watermelons, too.  I apparently forgot to take my meds on Monday night and the nausea of withdrawal hit me right in the middle of my first class.  Just sitting there.  It was at that point I decided that I would go to Judaism after, but skip the gym and Anatomy because I didn't want to subject myself to things that would certainly make me vomit, those things being exercise and the smell of the chemicals that are preserving the cadavers in the lab.  I emailed my TA, vowed to myself to learn the material on my own (today) and went home after Judaism. 

I could not figure out why I felt so sick until later in the evening last night when I was having a hot flash.  When I miss a dose of Effexor, I get really sick to my stomach and have extreme temperature swings, but they weren't that bad during the day yesterday, so that didn't occur to me.  When I realized it, I looked at my pill box and sure enough, Monday's pills were still in there.

When I got home yesterday, I slept for a few hours, and I felt pretty good when I got back up so I did some grocery shopping, but when I got home I felt really sick again.  So I felt pretty worthless yesterday.  I did get all my attendance points and assignment points for my classes, though.

As for my mood, it's still shit.  I can't seem to regulate at all, although I think regulation might be moot since there's no real upswing in it at all.  I just feel irritable, mad, sad and depressed all the time.  I feel like I am on the verge of tears pretty much all the time.  I saw a story about the elephants from the circus walking down a street yesterday and holding up traffic and I cried because all I could think about as I saw those beautiful creatures holding each other's tails with their trunks was how horrible a life they have because they're stuck in captivity and forced to perform and who knows how they're treated when they're not performing.  These are the kinds of thoughts that are in my head all the goddamn time.  I'm totally fixated on the stress of not knowing if I'll manage to graduate, and also on the sheer terror of having to deal with not graduating if/when that should happen, and also in trying to figure out how I'm going to make my life better once I don't have to work this stupid job anymore and how I'm going to get another job and fear that I'll hate that just as much and be just as miserable.

I didn't sleep well last night.  I had really no problem falling asleep, but every once in awhile, I'd just wake straight up, be totally aware of my surroundings and have to go back to sleep again.  It happened 4 or 5 different times.  I've kind of given up on trying to get decent sleep during the night because being frustrated about it just makes it worse.  I have access to Ambien, but I don't like feeling all sloggy in the morning after so I don't want to take it unless I don't have to wake up early.

And speaking of waking up early, I'm crazy uptight stressed about having to go to court tomorrow for this speeding ticket.  I don't know what I'll need to do or say or what will happen.  I've been trying console myself with the fact that it won't be any worse than it already is, a 4-point ticket and a fine which I can pay, and there's a possibility I can get myself out of it altogether, so I should be really excited to go.  Except I'm not, I'm just stressed out about it.  I was also really excited not to have Judaism class tomorrow because it's Rosh Hashannah, but turns out I have to actually attend a stupid service for it and write about it for points, and I won't have any time to attend a service except during the time I would be in class, so it's like I have to go to stupid class anyway.

I just want to feel the way I did a couple months ago - good, excited to be living life, excited to be back in school, excited about not really having any long-term plans set out for me, and like I had some protection against the world.  I feel like all I'm able to think about is how horrible I feel, and how to fix it.  I've been using my coping mechanisms, which is basically lying down and watching TV, and I'm still pretty much functioning like normal, or at least faking the best normal I can fake.  I feel incredibly guilty for not going to the gym, when I was doing so well and working so hard and finally seeing results.  I feel incredibly guilty for not really watching what I'm eating anymore, either, because again I was doing really well with it.  I just can't seem to summon the energy to put forth to do these things right now, and again, I'm trying to make myself feel better by telling myself that making myself feel guilty about it is not helping, and that I need to just do the bare minimum to get through each day because when I'm feeling better I can just get right back into the routine since I saw that it is possible...but that's not doing it for me.  I still feel like shit.

I don't know what to do except medicate.  After feeling yucky yesterday, I vowed to stop putting chemicals into my body that a.) it doesn't need, and 2.) it's not used to, at least for awhile.  Feeling yucky like that is awful and just makes my mentality worse about everything.  I plan to make a phone call to the campus psych people today to see if I can get in for my med eval any sooner than two weeks from now, and I'm going to ask for a shitload of anti-anxiety meds and sleeping meds and everything I need to get through this bullshit.  I've been through this enough times to know that I'll get through it, I just need some help.  And it's not forever.

Okay, that's the post for yesterday.

Bleak

I am in the worst mood, ever.  I physically feel pretty much like crap, and I would do just about anything to not have to be at work today.  I have grown to hate this job so very much.  I feel like it is such an enormous waste of my time and potential and skill.  I have the most enormous disdain for just about every person that works here, today, anyway.  Not that I know what the hell I'd be doing if I weren't here.  Besides spending time with my puppy, which is never time wasted.

I really fucking hate how I feel right now.  It's sort of a combination of wanting to cry and wanting to throw up.  I am not exactly sure what it is that I want to cry about, but it sort of feels like everything.  Interestingly, I know that it has nothing to do with the fact that I drank myself silly over the weekend.  It doesn't feel like that, and it's not a craving for more alcohol, either, which is sometimes how I know that's what's making me feel strange.

I just feel miserable.  Terrified of the unknown, guilt for so many different things, and above all - and this is what I've been most fixated on - is learning how to, or trying to, let go of the fact that there is nothing I can do to help my parents, and that it is not ultimately my problem.

What pisses me off the most is that I know how good I could feel, because I've felt it.  I know that this is something that will come and go for the rest of my life, but if I want to have any kind of fulfillment in my life, I have to ignore it and pretend it's not there, even when it is clawing at me and making me feel raw - as though I have no protection against the world. 

Interestingly, although I feel totally all over the place right now, I am completely even.  As though I have complete control.  I think my brain is understanding that I have a job to do, and so I have to just do it, no matter how much I hate it.  I'm answering the phone with total control over the amount of rage I feel towards the stupidity I am having to deal with, which is unusual for me.

I want to finish school so badly.  This is the worst time for this to hit me, because it makes me not want to do a goddamn thing but sit on my ass and watch movies and doze off every now and then, but I can't fucking do that.

I am having so much trouble sleeping at night.  I sleep a good 5-6 hours and then I wake up and can't fall back asleep until about 3am, and I get into a good REM sleep and have to wake up right in the middle of it, so it's really difficult to wake up.  I had a really vivid dream about going to Africa and seeing the poverty and squalor the people there are living in.  I dreamed I went with my parents, and my mom was doing nurse work, and I saw some things that really upset me a lot, like a baby missing half of it's head.  I knew that it was really dangerous where I was and I was followed down an alleyway and almost attacked once.  It really creeped me out.

I don't know what to do with myself.  I am going to just keep riding the inertia of time because I really have no other choice and just hope that things change, or get better.

When Does This Get Easy?

Apparently, something that is really important to me is feeling like I've successfully fulfilled my duties as a doggy-mommy. I woke up in a great mood today because of how well I fulfilled those duties yesterday. Tonight, not so much. And it definitely gets worse as the week drags on because I get more and more exhausted and can't even think about doing things for Phoenix that require any of my energy because I have none left by about Wednesday. Today we didn't do much. We did go to the dog park for about an hour, which usually puts me in a great mood but today a dog got out and was one of those crazy-crackhead-dogs who tastes freedom and is immediately intoxicated and runs far, far away. Literally, I watched this dog run up a long, long road and couldn't do anything to stop it. That made me sad, for the family and for the dog. I don't want to get into that. Out of sight, out of mind. We went over this last week. I did go to Macy's to get Clinique facial stuff because I am tired as shit of having zits all over my face at 26. Seriously, what the fuck. I napped, cleaned the house a bit and watched Phoenix and Nali flip shit over the squirrel in the backyard who is constantly talking shit to them. Thought about going to my parents' house for the afternoon but my older sister was home and she had a fit yesterday when I brought Nali over so I just stayed home in order to avoid that. I'm going to do the best I can to keep my shit together this week so that I get to next weekend in one piece. Which is getting harder and harder. Using this weekend to both get things done and to recoup really helped now I'm going go bed so that I can feel something like rested tomorrow and not hate being at work every single second I'm there tomorrow. I'm expecting my new laptop tomorrow so that's just another thing to add to the list of things I'll never have time for but need to do anyway. Someone really needs to figure out time-travel.

The Direction of the Wind Changes. Slightly.

I don't feel much like writing today. Not because it was a bad day, the opposite, in fact, but because I've been drinking since about 2pm and I'm tired and also I ran 4 miles today, with a 5 year-old on a bike and 2 dogs. Today is pretty much how I wish every day were.

A Stir

I don't know what to write about today.  I'm kind of sick of writing about how miserable I've been feeling and what I think it is that is making me feel this way.  Obviously I'm tired of feeling this way, and I'm tired of complaining about it. 

I got to the office this morning to find yet another note from Anna on my desk.  It was a copy of an invoice from the company that we lease our postage machine from.  It had written in red ink on it, "Copy," and "Beth, please do not change the address on any of our accounts.  If there is a question, leave it for me.  I have had to change this back to us 3 times now. - Anna"  This account was held by the company that formerly managed this building, before the company I work for took over.  The name of that company is still on the account.  Somehow, the mail still comes to us, but the address on the account gets changed to the address where that former company is located now (which just happens to be Broadway Suites, where I used to work).  This pisses Anna off to no end.  It's not like we're not getting the bills despite the address change, they're still coming to this office, but she has had to call them, three times, apparently.  Anyway, I know that I haven't called to change the address, and she asks me every time she gets a new bill why I did it, and asks me not to.  So this time, I'm playing her game.  I made a copy of the note she left me, wrote "Copy" on it, and wrote, "Anna, I have told you 3 times that I did not change anything.  Please stop blaming me. - Beth"  Hopefully that will have some effect.  We'll see.

My refund from the cleanse company came in, so I'm about $300 richer now.  Which helps a LOT.  That, and I still had almost $800 of the first grants/loan that came in, in savings, and then another $1800 came in, so I have quite a bit of money in my bank account now.  So I went ahead and bought myself the new laptop I'd had picked out for awhile.  I got a 1-year extended warranty on it, and I plan to treat it as though it were made out of the most delicate glass on Earth.  But then I'll be able to actually use it as a laptop, which is crazy exciting.  It's been more than a year since I had the ability to use my laptop as an actual laptop.  Now I can buy cool accessories for it so it doesn't overheat and stuff.  I didn't choose the Microsoft Office that they wanted to make it come with, and saved a couple hundred dollars.  I can buy it separately on Amazon for $100 less than that.  So once it comes, that's what I'll do.  I also got free 2-day shipping on it.  And I plan to do a full once-over on it to make sure that there's nothing wrong with it like there was with my now-laptop, which had a problem when it came.  In 2007.

I can also go and get new running shoes now.  So that's something I'll do in the morning-time tomorrow.  I plan to take Phoenix and Nali on a couple of runs, and to the big dog park while it's warm this weekend, and since I'm dog-sitting Nali while Meredi is gone this weekend.

The only thing I really, really want to do this weekend is drink.  Stay slightly drunk all weekend.  Go running.  Enjoy the weather.  And try to feel better.  If it will help, I don't know.

I took a whole Ativan this morning when I saw the note from Anna.  I felt pretty goofy for awhile, but now I feel just plain fine.  In a better mood.  Not so edgy, irritable, easily annoyed.  I don't know if it was the pill, or the fact that I feel okay now that I have some money. 

Hopefully I can get back up on my horse next week.  I'm not going to push it, and I'm going to be good to myself this weekend.

Taking a Break

Yup.  I didn't do anything today.  Actually, that's not true. I just didn't go to class.  I did a couple of loads of laundry, I vacuumed the entire downstairs, I scrubbed down about half of the kitchen, and I got my 5th shot.

I needed to get some rest and relax a little and get some stuff done around the house.  I think that it was piling up for me was part of why I have been feeling so anxious.  So I just let it go that I didn't go to class, didn't get the attendance points and didn't learn the 2nd portion of the muscles we were learning in Anatomy today.

I'm not going to let myself go on and on feeling guilty about it.  It's over and done with and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'm going to go to work, get shit done and get on with my life.

I am just not cut out for the 5-days-a-week-7:30/9am-5pm-day.

Another Ugly Day

I know exactly what ruined my mood for the entire day today.  There was a story on the news this morning about a woman from Boulder being arrested and charged with animal cruelty after being caught "walking" a chihuahua on a leash while driving her car at 15mph.  People stopped and confronted her, and she told them to mind their own business and that she had a gun, but the people called the police and she was arrested.  The dog was found to be scraped and bumped and bruised, which the woman claimed was from a rash the dog had prior.

What.  The.  Fuck.  Who does that?!  I swear to God I almost started crying right there.  I can't believe there is such cruelty in the world.  I want to go over to the jail, wait for her to be released and then tie her to a car and drag her at 15mph and see how she likes it.  The punishments for animal cruelty should be an eye for an eye.

When I was little, hearing about things like this would upset me very, very much.  I asked my mom several times, how to stop being so upset by things like this, and she told me that you have to ignore them if you want to be able to get on with your life, not ruminate and not let your broken heart tear you apart.  **Interjection - I am truly talking about hearing about horrible things in life and not about relationships...relationships are a whole other ball game.**  When I hear something about some kind of animal cruelty on the news, I either change the channel or mute it, because if I hear about it, I will ruminate on it and let it break my heart, just like this morning.  Sometimes, if I'm feeling strong, I purposely subject myself to stories about animal cruelty (I don't go looking for them, but if I hear or read about one, I don't stop myself), just to try to build some strength of character in that arena.  But you know what?  That doesn't work. 

And that is what ruined my day today.  I had this attitude of abject horror about the state of a world where shit like that happens, and it went downhill from there.  I got into the office and had a note from Anna on the desk telling me to water the new flowers out front every day (which my boss and I talked about last week and I had already been doing anyway), and that just pissed me off even more because I am so sick of her bossing me around and trying to make me feel inferior to her.  I don't even know if she does it on purpose, but it's starting to irritate the shit out of me.  Then my boss scheduled a conference room for an hour, and because I'm emotional and anxious already this week, it immediately triggered the possibility in my head that it was for interviews for my position because my attitude has been so crappy for the last week or so.  I tried to calm myself down with the rationality that it was probably because she was meeting a vendor or doing a couple of lease-signings back to back, but that didn't help.  I got a phone call from a girl for my boss today and I immediately assumed it was my new replacement.  I looked on our Craigslist account to see if there was a job-posting for my position, but there wasn't.  Where the hell is this paranoia coming from??  It's just making me even more miserable.

And that is where my thoughts have been today.  Animal cruelty.  Getting fired.  Throw in a little stress about not wanting to do my homework, wanting a day off, wanting to get some decent sleep again, and guilt over eating two cookies this morning, and that made for an extremely anxious day.  I feel like I'm on the verge of tears and one good blow is all it will take to get them going.  I feel like I've been punched in the stomach, too.  No appetite, while at the same time being starving.  I'd very much like to just crawl out of my skin.  I feel the combination of the awfulness I've been feeling these last two days with an anger and feistiness that I'm certain is going to get me in trouble in some aspect of my life.

I'm not sure if it's hormonal - it could be that I'm due for my next shot, and that my body is experiencing some form of modified PMS - or if it's mental and I'm not really being persecuted the way I feel like I am.  Either way, I don't like it and I don't know how to stop it and it's driving me absolutely up the wall.  Like I said on Monday I just want to crawl into bed until it all goes away and I can get back up and be normal again, because I was feeling pretty damn normal there, for awhile.  My mom says it might be that sneaky grief of having a death in the family.  This definitely all started when my grandpa died, but I don't feel outwardly upset by that anymore, so I don't understand how it could be causing me this upset of feelings.

For the anxiety my mom is going to grab me a few Ativan from work, and I've got appointments with a psychiatrist and a therapist in October for a check-in and maybe a tune-up.  I'm really hesitant to go because that's just more of a paper-trail for the Navy to find to disqualify me for OCS eventually, but I'm not sure it's worth the misery of trying to deal with this by myself.

Drinking is probably a bad idea, but that's all I really want to do, and all I really think will help me quiet my brain for now.  So we'll see what I decide. I'm trying really hard not to make any decisions about how to handle this right off the bat, and I've been giving myself some leeway in my decision-making anyway.  The only conscious decision I've made for myself this week is to treat myself well, not be too hard on myself for eating too many calories or having a couple of alcoholic drinks, because the more I beat myself up for that stuff, the worse I'm going to feel.  And it's just not worth all that.

It's Not Brain Cancer

Mother of God I am tired!  I figured it out.  When I was in school over the summer, it wasn't so bad because it was only one class I was going to.  Now it's three.  I think it's being on campus all day after being at work all day, day after day after day.

Today was fine.  I had a lot of trouble waking up this morning, but I woke up after I got to the gym.  I think I'm going to have to start pushing myself more.  Which I don't want to do.  Anyway, turns out I did really horribly on my Anatomy test - I got a 58%.  So there's that.  At least I don't have to wonder any more.  I went back to the doctor for my lab results, and everything is fine, except for having high cholesterol.  She had me make an appointment with a therapist, a psychiatrist, the sports medicine doc, a nutritionist and the lady doctor.  Which I did.  I've gained 3lbs since last week which is so fucking frustrating.  That's why I'm seeing the nutritionist and I am supposed to ask my other lady doc about weight gain as a side-effect of the Lupron shots when I go in for my next one.

I just have to keep telling myself that it's going to go, I just have to wait for it and keep working.  By December I will see the results I'm looking for, I just have to keep working.  It'll happen.

That's about it.  I want to be really proud of myself for continuing to function like a normal human being even though I don't want to.  I think that anyone who has been in this place would be really proud and impressed.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming....

Another Ugh Day

I feel like a piece of shit today.  I can't come up with a good reason why.  Feeling like a piece of shit is different than feeling like shit.  I think it's important to make that distinction.  Feeling like a piece of shit is what happens when you feel like you've done something wrong, or wronged someone in some way.  When something happens that you feel that you were supposed to have control over, but when it didn't go the way it was supposed to, you feel like it's your fault.

I can't really think of something substantial enough in my life, over the last week or so, that's happened that I could have controlled the outcome of (is of a preposition?  Am I ending a sentence with a preposition?).  I really don't want to consider the possibility that I'm having a relapse, or that I'm about to have a relapse, or something of that nature.  I just hate feeling this way, pretty much more than anything in the whole world.  It makes me want to crawl out of my skin.  Or sleep until I feel better.  Or cry until it's fixed.  I want to climb under a rock and stay there until I am ready to come out again, until I can handle the horror of the real world.

I really hope that this is temporary, and that I'll just snap out of it again in a day or in a few days.  It wouldn't be the first time it's happened that way.  I just can't stand feeling like this.  Luckily, I didn't have that much reading for class to do, and I still have a homework assignment to finish, but I can do that in an hour or two.  It won't take me that long.

Things that are on my mind that are grating on my soul today:

All my parents' financial stuff
My decision about whether or not to go to Iowa
The fact that I'll have gotten a C or worse on the Anatomy test from last week, which I may have failed the first time around which cost me the class the first time around
Phoenix - I'm not spending enough time with him, and we haven't gone for a walk or a run in over a week now
Impending terror over what to do after I graduate; including fear of not finding a job I actually want, that pays well and gives me adequate insurance
Guilt over eating, and uncertainty over whether or not I'm doing enough to lose the weight and tone up the way I want to
Nerves about going to court to contest the speeding ticket next week - what I'll say, what will happen, how much I'm going to owe
About 1000 other things...

I'm fighting it really hard.  I did allow myself to really relax and recoup over the weekend.  I got caught up on sleep, only to be unable to fall asleep until after 2am this morning, so I'm dragging a bit today.  I'll take that last Ambien to try to reset tonight.  I want so badly to just give up and get in bed and stay there.  I don't want to have to get up and go to class and do my homework and read all the dumb shit I have to read.  However, that is not an option, and I know that I'll feel better and stronger if I can just get through this and to do it by functioning as normally as I can. 

I wish, above all things, that I would never, ever feel this way again.  I have the hardest time describing what it feels like.  It's like the ultimate disappointment anyone will ever feel.  But along with that disappointment, there is despair, hopelessness, worthlessness, uncertainty and fear.  A combination of all the worst things you can feel, all at once.

Here's another thing - the doc I saw last week wants me to make an appointment to see someone at the Mental Health Center on campus for a med evaluation.  She said she wants to make sure I have enough, and to make sure that my physical symptoms - the fatigue, especially - isn't depression-related.  Or grief-related.  She also wants me to get hooked up with a therapist so I can work out what the issue is.  But I don't want any more of a paper trail about my mental health, or mental illness, as the case may be, to have to attempt to cover up in the event I apply for OCS.  I want to begin the road to complete rehabilitation all by myself, and I want to be able to do it as honestly as possible.

Watching Lost, it makes me want an easy life.  A life on a beach, where I make enough money to live comfortably, where I don't feel tired all the time, where I don't feel burdened by other people's problems, where I am away from the pain and suffering of the world, and where it can be just me and Phoenix and I don't have to feel the guilt of all the other dogs and animals who are abused and suffering that I can't help.  There was a story on the news this morning about 60 horses who were in really bad shape, whose owner was going to send them to be slaughtered, but someone heard the story and managed to raise enough money ($400 per horse) in 28 hours to save all the horses.  I don't have that kind of power, even if I had the drive.  For anything, I fear. 

Maybe this week I'll take it a little easy on myself and just be kind to myself in hopes that doing that will help me snap out of it earlier.

My self-control surprises even me, sometimes.  I've been thinking about Aaron and Brian a lot over the last couple of days.  I must have dreamed about them.  I know I dreamed about Aaron.  I saw a comment on one of my Facebook friend's statuses, from a girl that I know Brian was (is?) close friends with.  I don't think I put it together that my friend and the girl might be friends, but that's just one more temptation for me to check in on Brian's life.  If I had no self-control, and absolutely no self-esteem, I'd have done that instantly.  But I stopped, thought about it for a moment, and decided that it would do me no good, especially in my present state, to know what is going on, specifically, whether or not he and Bryn have gotten married yet.  I told Meredi about it when I catered the wedding a week ago, that I was terrified that I'd get asked to cater a wedding for her company only to find out it was their wedding.  I told her the last names, and she said she'd keep an ear out for them.  I told her I don't want to know if she does find out that they're catering that wedding, because it would destroy me.  And it would.

I considered texting Aaron in a moment of weakness last night, but I didn't.  It would have been more trouble than it was worth, and it would have just worsened how I'm feeling right now.  I don't understand where this need for self-destruction comes from, especially when I'm already down.  I don't deserve to feel any more lonely, incomplete, or unhappy than I already feel, and thinking about these two men, or considering making contact with either of them - voluntarily or accidentally - makes me feel physically ill.

I'm not really sure what to do now.  I still have plenty of time to do the homework, but I mean once I get home and alone with my thoughts tonight.  It may be a drinking week.

Creeping Relapse?

I feel yucky today.  Woke up that way.  It might have had something to do with Phoenix having a sleepover with his Grammy and Grandpa last night so he wasn't on top of me when I woke up this morning.  I woke up at about 8:30, and laid in bed feeling grumpy and unhappy for awhile, and went back to sleep.  I finally got up at 11:30, washed my hair and vacuumed a little.  My mom was planning to come over to take a shower sometime after noon, so while I waited for her, I ran to Walmart to get some more foods that are high and lean protein and some more veggies for the week.  I've virtually stopped eating out altogether, and it's saving me money and allowing me to lose some body fat.  I'm liking it.

The best way I can describe how I've felt today is that my heart hurts.  And I don't know why.  I think it's mostly all the stuff going on with my parents, and how I can't do anything to help them.  It's beyond frustrating.

When I got home last night, after having dinner with my parents, and talking to them about what the plans are for the trip to Iowa we've been planning to take to go to my cousin's wedding on October 1st.  They went through all the options for how to get to Iowa the least expensive way, and we can't take the Suburban, apparently, because it needs more work and wouldn't survive 1,400 mile round-trip journey.  They considered flying, taking a train, renting a 12-passenger van, two sedans, or any combination of rental vehicles.  With gas now over $3.50 a gallon, it's going to cost the same to fly as it would to drive.  Anyway, after going over all our options last night with them, several times over, I got home and pretty much decided, for me anyway, that I can't afford to make the trip.  If I hadn't gone to Palm Bay a couple weeks ago and missed two days of work, it might be feasible, but I simply cannot even afford to take one more day off of work and expect to survive.  The problem is that I want to go really badly, because this cousin is the one who is closest in age to me and I worry that she'll be offended if I don't go.  I would be if I were in her place.  Plus, my dad says that this may be the last time we get to see my grandmother because she's not doing well and consistently getting worse.  Which really worries me.  I think what I'll have to do is write my cousin and my grandma a long letter about how sorry I am that I can't be there.  That's all I can think of.

I napped after my mom left, and then got my ass up and went to the gym.  Spent an hour on cardio and an hour on weights.  I'm not even tired right now.  I was tired while I was working out, but I'm not now, so I'm not sure if that means I didn't work hard enough or what.  My ankle, which I sprained yesterday, held up really well.  But now I smell really bad and I really need to shave my legs.

Oh and I got a motherfucking parking ticket at the campus gym.  Fuckers.  Like I don't give them enough money.

Coming to the Conclusion

I don't feel like writing tonight. I'm in a bad mood. I've been feeling fine most of the day,aside from the fact that I rolled and sprained my ankle today, really good. I'd planned on running today and/or going to the gym tonight but I decided to give my ankle a chance to heal a little before I go work my ass off tomorrow. I've noticed changes and I feel great and I'm not ready for that to stop. I'm just angry and frustrated tonight and so wine and rest sounds good. Apparently my parents had their water shut off yesterday and the utilities office is closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday so they're without water this weekend. Even though the check is written and has been sitting in the box at Westy Water since Thursday. They came by and got about 40 gallons of water from my house today to get them through. My mom is coming over to shower tomorrow. I stepped in a hole in the backyard bringing the hose around for them and that's how I did my ankle. I went to dinner with them and they told me that my dad's wages are being garnished to pay for the restitution he owes my sister's ex-husband's mother for her hospital bills after the altercation in August of last year. The stupid bitch. They're so broke already. I can't believe this is happening to them and there's nothing I can do about it. So I'm stressed. Frustrated. Ready to strangle this woman for real should I ever come upon her ugly face again in my lifetime. So I'm going to bed now in ores to get up and go right to the gym in the morning. It's better I don't go tonight anyway. CU played CSU today and won so it will be a madhouse in Boulder tonight. If there is a God, I'm praying to give my parents a break. That saying - that God never gives us more than we can handle - it's a lie.

All Night Long

Something that's been on my mind today is happiness.  Happiness is a relative term, I think.  It is a state of being depending upon perspective.  Some people might look at me and say, "That woman is happy."  Some might look at me and say, "That woman is unhappy."  Hell, I can say both about myself, several different times each day.  It changes all the time.  I'll admit that I say to myself, "I am not a happy woman," way more often than I catch myself feeling genuinely happy.

And I was thinking to myself that the circumstances of my life are also relative.  I have a job, I have enough money to pay my rent and my bills each month, with just enough left over for groceries and dog food.  I have friends and family that love me, and I have a dog that I adore, and I am lucky enough to be in college and I'm pretty healthy.  I should be genuinely happy.  I have not gone down the path I thought I would, I am not where I thought or hoped I'd be by this age, but I have my health, my job, and my friends and family.  I think that makes me pretty lucky.  The things that I look at as really, truly negative things about my life are the circumstances of my parents lives.  They're broke - living paycheck to paycheck.  They have to live with my psycho sister, whose mood swings are as unpredictable as the weather.  They pay all her bills - which is the reason they're so broke - and they only have one vehicle among the three of them because my psycho sister has broken two vehicles in 9 months.  She's cost my parents roughly $40K in the last year - the full cost of the two vehicles, the $15K in lawyer bills and legal fees, plus the cost living.  My mom has cashed in every cent of her retirement fund, which I believe at one point was somewhere around $15K or more.  Together, my parents make around $100K a year, but somehow have pretty much no money to spend.  They're in debt themselves, although it is pretty low for people their age - mostly credit card debt.  The Suburban is paid off, the truck (which is totally unfixable, as in needs a new engine, I guess) is paid off, they've refinanced the house and pay a pretty small amount of interest.  There are odds and ends that they pay for that they could eliminate to save money, but they're not doing that.

I think, if I could separate myself from my family, I'd be happy.  I think, if my family could separate themselves from my sister, things would get exponentially better.  Or, if my sister would grow the hell up and support herself.  I think if she were supporting herself and my parents were just supporting the kids when we've got them, it would be easier.  If I could give my parents $50K or even $25K, I would do it without even thinking.  I'd invest about $10K for them to start, and then give them $25K so they could pay everything off that needs paying off, and so they could live comfortably.  If I could, I'd ship my goddamn sister off to a mental institution where she can be as fucking irresponsible and careless as she wants without making my parents financially responsible for her fuck-ups.

I feel like that's what a good solution would be to bringing me closer to what I consider "happiness."  I love my parents very much, and it is breaking my heart watching my sister drown them.  I swear to all that is good and holy that if I ever come into any kind of substantial money, or even if it's a little bit of money that I don't need, I will give them most of it.

I'm worried that my car isn't going to survive much longer.  I've been trying to think of what I can afford in terms of a new car or car payments, but it's not great.  I'm sort of working on faith that I will have better options once I'm graduated, but I need to start preparing for things to be exactly the same after that, too.  The doc I saw at school on Tuesday suggested that I go to Career Services and get hooked up with them so that maybe I have a chance come December instead of just relying on my own non-abilities in job-hunting.  If I ever have time, I want to make a really interesting and creative resume.  I'm guessing that won't be until sometime in November, probably around Thanksgiving break. 

I'm also worried about my school workload once the writing class begins in mid-October.  It's not that I can't keep up right now, but my energy has been so low that I can't get everything read that needs to be read for both my social sciences classes and still have time to really study Anatomy in-depth.

Anyway, like I said before, happiness is relative.  I think I should consider myself a happy person, but from my point of view, I don't feel that way.  It's not enough for me.

In other news, I slept really well last night.  Took an ambien, fell asleep around 8pm and slept all the way through the night, no waking up.  It felt amazing.  I may or may not do that again tonight, since I get to sleep in in the morning and I have no plans during the day, except to probably go running and/or to the dog park and two hours at the gym.  The gym will probably be tomorrow night.

I'm not sure what the plan for tonight is, but I gotta say, I love not having any plans at all.  I don't even feel like I need to go straight to bed after work, because I'm not sleepy.  It's a wonderful change.

Dreary Day, Dreary Body

This is gonna have to be another non-post. Or post with no substance. I am totally out of energy. I could hardly walk and ride around campus today. I made it to the gym, did 20 minutes on the elliptical and 20 on the stair machine. I went downstairs to the weight room after that but I couldn't do much. I just felt like I didn't have enough strength to lift even the lighter weights, so I quit. We had our first Anatomy lab test today, which I felt prepared for yesterday, and I even went over the stuff while I was on the stair machine, but when I got in there I felt quite confused and unsure. I'm hoping for a C on it. Praying for a B. I slept for shit last night so I'm going to bed now. I'd told my mom about being so tired and having trouble sleeping so she grabbed some ambien from work to give me. She knows my tendency to get addicted to that stuff so she only gave me three. I'm planning to take half of one tonight. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully I can write more tomorrow. That's it for tonight.

Being Tattled On, Part Whatever

Yikes.  I'm in a mood today.  I don't know how exactly to categorize this mood.  I think it's a little bit of everything.

Last night, just like the last 15 nights or something, I didn't sleep well.  Awoke every so often, to turn over, change positions, something.  I didn't get up to let Phoenix out of the room when Meredi came home.  I stuck cotton in my ears, but I found it more annoying than comforting.  Every time I woke up, I was annoyed that I couldn't hear very well, and that I didn't know what was going on around me.

I heard Meredi get up and leave around 4am, and finally fell back asleep after that and got into a deep sleep.  I know this because I was dreaming really vividly about getting married. 

Otherwise, I was in a pretty decent mood this morning.  I stopped and got some sugar cookies for breakfast from what used to be Paradise Bakery and is now Woody Creek.  They're my absolute favorite cookies in the whole world.  They've got sprinkles on them and they're the perfect combination of soft and crunchy.

I got in to work and did my morning routine, and Carol, the owner of the cleaning company that cleans the building came in to talk to me.  She likes to come in and converse with me in the mornings, and she's a really nice lady.  The first thing she told me was that Anna had reprimanded her yesterday for opening the door for people to come in before 8am.  I am so fed up with Anna.  I had notes on my desk this morning telling me that she'd ordered coffee (I totally meant to on Monday but then completely spaced it as soon as I got up the stairs from making the damn coffee), and that I'd added up my hours wrong on my timesheet.

So then I turned on the computer and opened my email just like I always do, and I had an email from my boss telling me that I hadn't locked the cabinet on Monday night, nor had I turned the light in the conference room off.  Anna tattled on me.  Again.  Except, instead of checking to see if there was a tenant in the conference room on Monday night (there was, from 7-10), she immediately blamed me.  Fucking bitch!  So when my boss got in today, I told her that Anna has left the cabinet open a few times and I didn't go running right to her, and that a tenant had left the light on in the conference room and that I don't appreciate being blamed for that.  I take great pride in my work, I am not given many duties, and so I try really hard to remember and do everything correctly.  Also, I want to be able to retrace my steps and prove that Anna is wrong in blaming me for things I didn't do.

Ugh!  I hate how she makes me feel!!  Carol told me that the new 1st Bank that's opened up down the street is hiring, so I am going to look into that.  I really want to tell Barbara that I am sick of working with Anna, and how she is making my job uncomfortable and that if Barb doesn't start looking for a replacement for her, that I'm going to start looking for other work.  Even though I sort of already am.  But I refuse to put up with this kind of petty shit at work.  Even though I'm going to have to put up with it pretty much no matter where I am. 

So that's where I am right now.  Also, tired.  Felt the drag of good sleep and am totally craving it now.  And that dream was SO real.  I remember teeny tiny details about it.  I remember that I was supposed to be marrying a kid I grew up with but am not in contact with anymore.  I knew I shouldn't be marrying him because I didn't know him, in the dream.  Brian had shown up to the wedding, and I knew that I'd invited him out of politeness earlier (although when, I have no idea), and he was all involved and interested in helping out, and he was trying to make sure I had my something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.  It was creepy, and he mentioned his "wife," who I knew was Bryn, but I didn't like it.  Then there was a brief moment when the dream switched over, and I was watching Kate put her stuff down on a beautiful beach, with her kiddo, and she was telling me about how the beach was deserted.  It was like I was watching a live video feed or something.  Then my alarm went off.

So this may be my only post for the day, as long as nothing catastrophic happens that sends me into a downward spiral of some kind.  We'll just have to wait and see.

Caffeine and Vitamin B6

Well I woke up today totally prepared to be in a bad mood all day but that just didn't happen. I was awakened at 5:30am when Linda got up to go to her early-morning exercise class. She wasn't excessively noisy, I think I'm just hyperaware when I sleep lately. It's driving me nuts. I just want to get a good night of sleep! Instead of falling back asleep (despite trying for almost an hour) I decided to watch an episode of Lost until I had to get up. I had to argue with myself about not just staying home to sleep, but I had a doctor's appointment this morning and they charge you $30 if you don't show up and don't cancel. So I go up, got ready, and went. The doctor's appointment took way too long and I had to have blood drawn and give a urine sample so it took even longer and I was late for class. I had planned to stop in at the student center and grab an energy drink anyway, but on my way in there, they were handing out free bottles of 5-hour energy, so I grabbed a couple, then got a Rockstar anyway. I got to class just as the prof put the in-class assignment up, so I attached my note from the health center to my work just in case. I drank the 5-hour energy then, and saved the Rockstar for Judaism. Which required it because damn that class is difficult to concentrate in. I ran back over the the student center to grab another bottle or two of 5-hour energy and then hit the gym. Someone was on the stair machine so I just hit the elliptical really hard for 20 minutes and planned to do more weight-liftin instead. I did so much I felt like I was going to throw up, which also means I got a good work out. I had to leave at that point so I just sat outside before my lab to cool off. Lab was just a review session in preparation for the first test on Thursday, so I got as much out of it as I could and I feel reasonably prepared. I plan to do some more studying of things I don't know perfectly at work tomorrow. I got home, and needed to check the mail because Kate sent me something about a week ago, so I decided to take the dogs - all three - up to the park to run around. Nali wouldn't listen and Rainey almost got hit by a car but we got home alive and in one piece. I cleaned up the kitchen and then sat down Nfld awhile. Made myself a chicken, onion and Swiss cheese sandwich for dinner, did my ab work and hopped in the shower. Oh yeah and called my mom to check in with her to make sure she's doing okay. She is, but she's gotten whatever cold or flu bug the kids came over with this week. And turns out the truck needs a new engine so they are pretty much permanently with jus one vehicle. Which sucks and stresses me out. My parents need a break so badly and they just can't get one. So I am going to go to bed now. My mom suggested I use cotton in my wars and use my sleeping mask to ensure less stimulation from the world to wake me up. I'm trying it.

Make-up Novel

Apparently, as of yesterday, I have written 365 blog postings.  Now, as it has been only 11 months and a few days since I began writing, I know that I'm not finished yet.  This does, however, signify a major point in the year of writing I set out to do.  It means that I've written more than one post many days.  It means that technically, I could stop here and have written a year's worth of posts, one post for every day.  But I'm not ready to stop yet.  I still have much writing to do.  I have approximately 22 more days of writing left, and I am going to try to squeeze everything out of those days that I can.

I haven't kept a count of how many days I've written something along the lines of "I don't feel like writing today," or "I'm too tired to write today," but I bet those add up to at least a couple of weeks worth of posts, if not more.  I'm not really sure how to account for those days - because there are some days where I've written two or more posts, and there was a day back in March where I transferred a bunch of posts from an older blog that I'd gotten going awhile back.  Maybe all those erroneous posts make up for my too-exhausted-to-write-anything days.

Either way, this is the home stretch, I guess.  I've kept a pretty accurate account of my life for the last year, a record of my thoughts and feelings and my personal analysis of what to do with the thoughts and feelings and how to handle them.

Honestly, I feel like I'm about 90% cured of having depression.  There are days when I can feel it creeping up beside me, about to overtake me, but I've been almost entirely able to catch it early and do something to change my mood, or use a coping mechanism to ward off the alienation and isolation I feel I instinctively need to protect myself.  I've learned a lot about myself and my abilities, and about how to take care of myself when I am feeling vulnerable.  I've worked really hard on my self-esteem, and I've done the best I can to work out the issues that tend to send me on a downward spiral.

I think I still have a shitload of work to do, and so for right now my plan of action for after writing for 365 days straight is to keep writing, although I'm not going to force myself to write every single day.  I'll write as I need to, which at this point I feel is going to be just about every other day or every two days.  I think that choosing to write explicitly and candidly every day for the past year has been more helpful than I ever thought.  Deep down, I hoped that I would attract more followers and get more people interested in my process and I was hoping to decrease the stigma that's attached to mental illness, especially for people like me who are extremely intelligent but broke, who have almost no resources with which to attempt to rehabilitate with.  That didn't really happen, although I have gotten a ton of great feedback from the people that I know that have read and followed my progress.  I haven't really decided what to do with the 350+ posts that I'll have just lying around, but I don't need to make any kind of decision anytime soon.  They can sit there and collect dust.

As for my weekend lack of writing - here's what transpired:

Saturday, I woke up on my own around 8:30am.  I had planned to wake up and get going at 9am.  Meredi and I had had a little roommate-bonding dinner of grilled tilapia that I made when I got home from work on Friday night.  Remember how I couldn't decide whether or not to stop at the liquor store?  Well I did, and I got a big bottle of Barefoot white zin, which is sweet and bubbly.  I cooked and Meredi and I talked and drank wine for a few hours.  I took another glass up to bed with me, too.  So when I woke up, I had the worst headache ever.  I didn't feel nauseated or anything, but I was definitely hung over.  I was planning to go to my parents house, pick up Z and take him running, so I took 4 ibuprofen and 2 aspirin to knock the headache totally out, and it worked.  I got there around 9:30am but it took forever for us to find his bike helmet so we didn't leave until almost 10.  We ran the 3.5 mile loop, with a quick stop at the pond at the Westminster rec center.  The weather was beyond perfect - about 70-75 degrees, calm winds, no clouds.  I stuck around the house for a little while playing with the kiddos while my dad did some work on my sister's van, but I had to leave to go home and shower before my shift with Meredi's catering company.  She told me to be at her work at 1:15pm, so I got ready and headed over there.  She processed my paperwork, and I got my uniform and we drove to Lyons.

Let me interject here and say that catering is hard fucking work.  I am not sure if it's like this all the time or not, but holy shit.  This particular location was really pretty, but the layout was incredibly difficult.  We were catering a wedding for 92 people.  There were three different areas where things were happening - a small courtyard and covered table for pre-ceremony refreshments and post-ceremony cocktails before dinner, another courtyard where the ceremony was to take place, and the huge-ass fancy event tent that had three chandeliers, next to a pond with a fountain and token ducks who were adorable.  There was a road made of rocks for set-up companies (DJ, bar, bakery) to drive down to the tent, but the rocks were slightly bigger than marble-sized and real pointy, and I can't even tell you how many times I walked back and forth from one area to another on those rocks.  There was a small storage area where all the decorations and extra beverages for the bar were being kept, which was up a small hill, down which we had to carry the decorations and beverages, and again up which we had to bring the decor and leftover beverages back.  This was enough bottles of white zinfandel, merlot, champagne, cran-grape juice, sprite, hawaiian punch, and pineapple juice for 100 people.  For each person to have multiples of everything.  Plus the decorations.  The pre-ceremony refreshments were humongous (I'd guess 4 gallon) glass jugs for fruit-infused waters (cucumber mint, strawberry, and lemon), which I had to carry from that area to the tent, entirely full of ice-water.  Linda had carried them over to begin with.  Also, there was a keg in a trashcan full of ice that had to be moved down the hill.  The only guy on our crew recruited the owner of the location to help him move the keg down the hill and I carried the ice.  I couldn't lift the keg. 

I don't think my feet have ever hurt so bad.  I thought the shoes I wore were one of my most comfortable pairs, but I think they are some of my most comfy shoes for a sitting job.  Not a walking and carrying heavy things job.  Now I know that.  My back and arms and legs were all really sore when I got up yesterday, and I discovered that I had two blisters - I think I wrote about them - on my right foot.  Which according to my stride analysis carries 55% of my weight.  I apparently favor my left.

Overall, I feel really proud of myself.  For following through with the job, for making the money, for learning the system of catering an event like this, and for just plain doing it.  I left the house at 1pm and arrived back home shortly before 1am.  I thought I'd pass right out but I stayed up and watched a few episodes of Friends on Nick at Nite.  I was also famished, so I snacked a bit.  On cheese and garlic croutons, which was about the healthiest thing I could think of that wasn't McDonald's.

The wedding itself was pretty, and as fancy as it was, apparently it wasn't the fanciest.  Meredi said it was a really easy event - low-key - because we weren't passing the drinks, dinner, and cake.  Everything was buffet-style.  The food was a Caribbean theme - cornbread with green chiles, rice with mango and coconut, black beans, and Caribbean jerk chicken and barbequed pork-loin with a mango salsa garnish.  Really delicious.  Yes, we got to eat after all the guests had finished, and Linda took some home.  They had a specialty drink for the cocktails, called a Purple Peacock, which was the cran-grape juice with Bacardi hurricane and a lime garnish.  At first people were really wary of it, but that ended up being the most popular drink of the night, aside from the beer.   They had cupcakes instead of a cake, three kinds - strawberry with a champagne cream filling, amaretto with a chocolate ganache filling, and butter pecan with a buttercream filling.  They were amazing.  I cannot for the life of me figure out how they got the fillings into the cupcakes.  I ate the frosting off one and saw a little hole in the top, but they had to have removed some of the cake in the middle to make room for the cream fillings, and I can't figure that part out. 

They partied until just after 11, when the contract had stipulated the location would shut down, and when we were scheduled to start breaking down.  It was actually like Kara's wedding - where the guests were all staying in rooms and cabins on the property, so I'm nearly positive the celebration continued well into the night like hers did.  Meredi had actually sent Linda and the guy on the crew home around like 8, except that he'd left some of his things in my car and so I gave him my car key to get it all out before he left, but he left with my key.  Meredi tried calling him and Linda, but couldn't get a hold of them, and he finally showed back up at like 10 with the key.  Dumbass.  I couldn't believe he'd forgotten to give it back to me in the first place, and I was definitely pissed that I'd let him leave with it, and actually let it dampen my mood a bit, but I felt a lot better when he showed up with it.

We had to pack everything leftover into my tiny car, along with Meredi and her friend Julia, which was a trip.  Poor Julia had to sit in the back seat with a huge bag of garbage.  Meredi tried to have me drive my car down to the back of the tent, where the Spice truck had been and where the DJ pulled his Jeep to, but I couldn't figure out how to get there (hint: move the cone and drive down the rock driveway, and take a right at the pond), so I gave Meredi the key to my car and told her to do it, saying I was too stupid to figure it out.  Julia and I got things ready to pack into the car, and waited, and waited some more, for Meredi to drive my car up, but she ended up walking back down, saying I might have been too stupid to figure out how to get the car back there, but she was too stupid to figure out how to get my car into reverse.  I'd forgotten to tell her you had to lift up on the handle of the gear shift to put it into reverse.  In my defense, and hers, it was late and we were exhausted.

So that's the story of my catering adventure.  I made about as much as I'd have made at work in 9.5 hours, sitting on my ass, watching Lost and doing homework.  Which was what I was aiming for - to make up for some of the time I'd missed going down to Florida.

Yesterday when I woke up, I felt like I was walking on painful little pillows because the bottoms of my feet were swollen.  I tried sleeping in, but woke up early anyway.  I was able to get back to sleep for about an hour before I had to go over to my parents house to babysit the kids while my mom drove my dad to the airport.  I was so tired I felt like I was drunk.  Luckily, the time of day that they had to go to the airport was essentially naptime - the baby took a nap and the boys had what they've been calling "quiet time," which is just a couple of hours to watch a movie and relax and be quiet.  Z snuggled me really good for awhile, and I fell asleep.  We watched Monsters, Inc.  They woke me up when it was over, and my mom came home right then.  The baby had awakened and was lying quietly in her crib so I grabbed her and brought her upstairs.  My mom had asked if I wanted to stick around until she had to pick my sister up from work, so I did.  I had the kiddos come out and hang out in my car while I cleaned it out, which they got bored with, so my mom got them going on washing their bikes.  Even the baby.  I vacuumed my car out while they "washed" their bikes (read: played in the water and soap), and then I had them all come over and help me wash the outside of my car, too.  Which they did a surprisingly good job on.  Especially the baby.  She was intense!  Such a good little worker!  And she had a blast, too.  By the time we were finished with that it was time for my mom to leave again, so we went inside and the kiddos played while I read a little of the paper.  My sister had offered to bring food from work for dinner in exchange for me watching the kids, so we had Olive Garden for dinner and it was wonderful.  I haven't had cheese-filled pasta in such a long time.

After we were done eating, I cleaned up my mess from outside and Phoenix and I left.  When I got home, I popped in the shower and got ready for bed, and was ready before it was even 7pm.  I had a movie called Conviction on, so I laid down and watched it until 8 and then tried to go to sleep.  Which I did just fine, except that I woke up at about 1am because I had to pee.  This shit has been happening a lot lately, pretty much every night.  At first I attributed it to the fact that I was drinking a lot more water to compensate for all the exercising I've been doing, but if that's the case, I should be rehydrating and using the water, not voiding it.  I drink almost no soda now (I had a couple diet coke's at my mom's), mostly water, protein shake and wine, but I didn't think I had enough to drink yesterday (not talking alcoholic beverages) to have to pee that bad in the middle of the night.  And then again this morning.  When I got up during the night, I couldn't fall back asleep right away, either.  And when I did fall back asleep, I had a lot of trouble getting comfortable, kept tossing and turning.  So I woke up this morning feeling like I'd barely slept.  I feel like I haven't gotten a good, restful night of sleep in about a week, which is killing me.  Between the amount of exercise I'm getting, and the sleep I feel like I've been lacking (and for whatever reason my body is telling me I need a whole lot of sleep right now), I am drained.  I force myself to exercise even if I don't want to, and I try to get enough sleep but I just can't seem to feel like I'm catching up.  I'm worried that the lack of energy, the high thirst and the excessive urination are all symptoms of diabetes, so I'm going to the doc on campus before class in the morning to have some tests done.  It's been going on for about a month now.  I'm also concerned because I'm actually gaining weight despite my exercise.  I was attributing it to the Lupron, but I'm tired of working really hard with no results.  

Something else I'm really proud of is my determination on Saturday to do what I'd planned to do - go running and work the wedding.  Even though I woke up with a crazy headache that morning, I went running anyway.  I didn't really even give not running a thought.  It was just like, this was my plan, this was what I was going to do, so I did it.  That's kind of unlike me, at least over the course of the last 7 years.  I used to take whatever excuse I could get to not have to do anything, but I'm really glad I got up and got going the way I did because I set the tone for my whole day that way, and I think I could have made my mood much worse if I'd excused myself from running and/or working just because I had a hangover headache.

I'm hoping I can use the good feelings I got from doing things this weekend even though I didn't want to do them as fuel for the rest of this week because I am motherfucking tired as shit and I really want to just do nothing for at least half a day.  But I think that will have to wait until the weekend.  Or maybe Thursday because I have a test in my lab and that only eats up like half an hour. 

This is one long-ass post.  Holy hell.  I think that helps make up for the lack of writing from the weekend.  I don't think I included some of my more random thoughts during the wedding catering adventure (like, how the hell are these people still conscious after that much booze and all that dancing?!), but that's okay.  Maybe I can include them in a more serious post about how depressing it is to be 26 and single and have to attend weddings more than once a year.  Although going to a wedding of people I didn't know was a lot easier than a family or friend wedding.

I think I'm going to treat myself to sushi tonight.  It's been awhile and I do not have the energy to cook the chicken I want in a salad...or else I'll just have the salad....

Deliriously Tired

Holy hell. Operation Catch Up On Rest did not go as planned. I didn't ever sleep very deeply, got about 6 hours and then someone outside my house, a neighbor, perhaps was yelling something about Eric. Who knows what the hell was going on but that got Phoenix up and he was all barky for the next couple of hours. So I'm not writing anything of substance today. In fact, I am all ready for bed now. Gonna pass out here soon. This week is going go be long, and hard. I'm deliberately avoiding saying it's going to suck because I don't want to put that out there. It won't suck. I'm just going go be exhausted. I'm also going to see a doc about my leg pain, and about the possibility I'm diabetic. I worry my exhaustion ties in with the fact that I'm so thirsty all the time and pee a lot. Like, get up in the middle of the night to pee. I hope I can remember everything I want to write about later on so I can write about it all. Maybe at work sometime this week.

2 Jobs

It's tomorrow already and I didn't have a chance to write today. Literally. I'm so far beyond exhausted and my feet are killing me so I'm going to go to bed and sleep for several or more hours and then get back to you with all the interesting thoughts that passed through my mind today.

The Many Meanings of Contrary

I don't feel like doing much of anything today.  Every little thing is an incredible expense of energy.  I've been going back and forth for the last few hours about what I want to do after work today.  Originally I wanted to get a bottle of wine and consume the entire thing and nothing else.  No food.  I'm not really even very hungry anyway. 

I really don't want to have any obligations tomorrow.  I told Meredi I'd work, and so that's what I must do.  I asked her if it would be totally horrible if I bailed and she texted me back and was real short with me.  So I have to follow through.

In order to not hate tomorrow, I have to not drink tonight.  Which upsets me a little bit because there's nothing I'd like more than to get tipsy enough to feel happy tonight and sleep really well.  But if I do that, then I won't want to get up in the morning to run like I need to, and I won't feel any good after running.  So I can't do what I really want to do tonight, either.

Basically, I'm not real happy about having to act like an adult this evening, and about having to make the right choices.  I could totally do a 180 and go ahead and buy the wine and then have to make it through tomorrow, and I may just, for no other reason than to be contrary.

I may make myself an easy Asian noodle and veggie medley for dinner (out of ramen noodles and frozen veggies), if I feel like it, which I only halfway do.  We'll see how I feel once I actually get home.  I've got my weekend all planned out, and have since this morning.  I'm going to run tomorrow morning, then work, then go to my parents house for dinner, and then hit the gym tomorrow night and get a good work out in.  Then Sunday I'm going to take it easy.  I may go run, I may not, depending on how my legs feel. 

I feel like Phoenix is upset over not being able to go running during the week like he had been.  He seems unusually full of energy and I worry that he is mad at me most of the time. 

I'm also extremely tired.  I feel like I'm not able to get enough sleep, no matter how much I get.  That may have something to do with the fact that I've been working out so hard and so it's taking more for my body to recover, and it may have to do with my brain's being in the grieving process still, even though I sort of refuse to acknowledge that.  It might be that there is less sunshine during the day now that summer's on it's way out, and it may be my brain's dismay over having to actually put in some work for school.

I don't know.  I'm just in a crappy mood right now.  Not entirely sure why, since nothing has happened to me today to upset me, aside from having Meredi be unusually short with me, which is a first.  My boss wasn't even here to annoy me today, and I've just watched Lost all day long.  Got a couple of things done that I needed to get done, and now it's the weekend.  I think I'm just pissed that my weekend is pretty much full with very little time for me to have to myself, and then next week will be here just like that.  I hate being so tired and not being able to get the rest I want.  I hate that it upsets me so much.  I hate that I'm about to be broke and in another $2750 in debt starting sometime next week.  I hate that I have to do such a boring, repetitive job three days a week.

I'm going to have to get that wine tonight or else I might just hate the weekend that much more.  Man, I really hate being grumpy and hopeless.

It Takes Energy To Title a Post And I'm Out

The usual. So tired. School didn't suck total monkey balls today, so that's good. I got my missed homework assignments and found out that pretty much everyone in my Judaism class didn't understand the reading assignments from yesterday. Which makes me feel like I don't hate the class quite so much. I did my workout at the gym, same as Tuesday except without all the weights. I just did arms today. We got out of lab an hour early and I went straight to my parents house to get the puppy, who I loaned to my parents last night. Right now I need to do my core ab work and take a shower but I feel pretty energetically drained. I may doze a bit now and do it later. We will see. Holy cow. I need to borrow someone's energy. So exhausted. And feeling guilty for eating so much at dinner. Blah.

Multidirectional Emoting

I feel like an emotional mess today.  I'm actually doing really well considering that, though.  I think a lot of it has to do with the rain today - it hasn't stopped raining since last night - and the fact that I didn't get much sleep because Phoenix was up all night.  I'm totally paranoid because of the plague thing, and I'm real worried that he's gotten it.  I cannot for the life of me figure out why he was up and about like that.  This is the first night he's not slept with me at this house almost at all.  I could hear him going in and out the doggie door, and at about 1:30am I whistled for him and he came in all hyper and hot.  It seemed like he'd been running around outside or something, but being the doggy-parent-hypochondriac that I am, I thought maybe he had a fever, so I kept waking myself up to see if he'd cooled down.  I think at one point he was asleep either with Nali or with Meredi in her bed or something, because he wasn't outside.  I woke up literally at 4:59am wondering where he was, and then my alarm went off.  I whistled for him again, and he didn't come, so I waited a few minutes and then I got up to see where he was, but he met me on the stairs.  He was inside, and I think ignoring me.

When I finally got him back into bed, my alarm was going off every 9 minutes.  I was able to doze for about 45 minutes and he passed straight out.  I think he might have been awake all night long because when I got up and got ready for work, he didn't move.  He didn't even come down to walk me out the door.

So he's either sick, or just felt like partying all night.  I think it's the latter because he seemed just fine earlier in the evening.  He ate and drank and played.

Anyway, I am feeling kind of all over the place today.  It might be that I haven't had a drink since Monday.  It might be lack of sleep.  It might be a combination of those things.

I just finished season 3 of Lost and I just want to keep watching.  I don't want to be a responsible adult and do the readings.  They're fucking long.  Like 30 blathering pages for each class.  Or more.

Ugh.  I really do feel like my emotions are pulling me in seven different directions.  Mostly I feel fine, but there are moments of anger, and sadness and uncertainty and sorrow.  I'm hoping this will all pass. 

I'm going to my parents house for dinner tonight - they're having one of my favorite meals, stuffed peppers.  They're stuffed with tomatoes, rice and beef, then oven-baked with cheddar cheese on top.  When I was little I hated them, but now I could eat them every day.  Yum.

I just wish it were the weekend already.  I told Meredi I'd work for her this weekend at an event, because I've now missed two days of pay this pay period and I'm going to be seriously hurting come the 15th when I don't have enough money to pay any of my bills.  I'm still waiting on the rest of my loan money to come through, and I should probably call on it to see what the hold-up is, but I don't feel like doing that, either.  I just don't want to do anything, and I'm tempted to just let myself be irresponsible after being so responsible this last week and staying all caught up with stuff.  Maybe.  We'll see.  Maybe I'll get a wild hair and want to do my homework later today.  I doubt it, though.

I think maybe I'm starting to actually mourn the loss of my grandpa.  That would be a good reason for feeling so strange today, because I know that will go away.  I'm just hoping and praying it's not the beginning of a relapse.

Back to Reality

Man.  I feel like I got a shit ton of stuff done today.  Went to school.  Got caught up.  Stopped at the store on the way home and got a bunch of yummy healthy food.  Dozed for awhile.  Made a big salad for dinner, with chicken, which I couldn't finish.  Oh, and I worked out at school today, even though I didn't have my anatomy lab.  I did half an hour on the stair machine and another 20 on the elliptical on the highest resistance I could get it on.  Then I went downstairs and used every arm and leg machine in the ladies weight room.  I could do that every day, I think.  I really liked it, and I felt really good afterward.  I'll need to figure out how to condense the work out so that I can do it in the time I have between class and lab, though.  Maybe one day will be arms and the other will be legs or something.

I just vacuumed my bedroom.  It looked like it wasn't sucking, so I checker the bar on the bottom and it was unable to move from all the hair on it.  Holy shit.  I have had it what, two weeks?  I know Linda vacuumed the entire house - and I am nearly positive she even did the basement - but I wasn't expecting it to be that bad.  But I cleaned it off and everything was working fine.

I am exhausted.  I am getting into bed now, to snuggle with my puppy on this chilly, rainy night.  Work tomorrow, which means homework and getting back into Lost.  I'm kind of excited, actually.

When Things Go Exactly As You'd Known They Would, Even When You Hoped They'd Go Differently

Today went pretty much exactly as I thought it would.  It was pretty relaxing, really.  I got all my laundry done. I cleaned the first shelf of the refrigerator and I cleaned and am in the process of defrosting the little refrigerator in our dining room.  Those things alone make me feel more normal and more organized.

I picked my parents up from the airport with my little sister and took Phoenix along.  I accidentally ran over the stand of a metal sign in the pick-up lane and my dad threw a fit (literally) that made everyone else standing around look at us.  Fucker.  We talked in the car a bit about the whole trip, the experience of it all, and how mad we all are about the outcome of the will.  Turns out my grandpa's wife got all upset about me taking any of the wine, and instead of arguing with her, my mom just put it all back where I found it.  That bitch.  She isn't going to drink it.  She wouldn't know what the hell she was drinking if she opened a bottle because she can't see to read the label.  There are probably about 100 bottles of wine there, and she's 81.  When the fuck is she going to find the time to drink all of it?

And what is going to happen it what she doesn't drink?  Where's it going to go?

We are all pretty enraged - my parents and me, especially having seen what I saw and been through everything with them.  My little sister and older sister are upset, but I think they're looking at it with a different perspective since they weren't there for everything.

We all know that at this point there is nothing any of us can do to change anything, and so we have to try really hard to just let it go.  None of us are any good at that kind of stuff, but with something this intense, we have to try.

I stayed at the house for dinner, and the kids were there so I wanted to see them and hang with them for a little while, too.  When I left, my mom thanked me for going down there, for having a good attitude about all of it and for being helpful in general.  That meant a lot to me because I really am going out of my way to be supportive and helpful and have a more positive attitude than what my gut is telling me to have.  I really just want to be mean and petty and cruel.

Anyway, I need to finish this reading for class tomorrow, as skipping for no apparent reason is completely out of the question - especially now having missed class last week altogether - and I am determined not to fall behind.

Also, I love my dog.

A Morning Post

Yup.  I didn't write anything yesterday.  I blame my emotions. Which is really the whole basis for the blog...so that won't work...

I left FL yesterday, leaving my parents there.  My dad was supposed to come with me, but he was too hungover to move so he changed his flight to today.  He got his mom a flight today, too.

I spent my morning re-packing and sitting with my mom going through a few of my grandpa's things.  I took about 20-25 bottles from his wine collection, with my grandpa's wife sitting there "watching" me to make sure I didn't take anything she wanted.  I only took one bottle that didn't have a duplicate in the collection and it was a 2004 bottle.  She wouldn't appreciate it anyway.  I wanted to check the boxes with the wine in it at the airport, but that wasn't possible, so I had to leave them behind.  My aunt and uncle will have to figure out some way to ship them to me.  I wanted my grandpa's big flatscreen TV too, but I doubt I'll see that, even though his wife is blind and can't use it anyway.

So I left.  I got emotional on the flight, which I tried to sleep through most of, and again on the shuttle to the parking lot.  I am trying to imagine what it will be like not to hear about what a pain in the ass my grandpa is being and what shenanigans he's gotten into with someone that pissed him off.  My poor mom was totally incompetent yesterday from the combination of stress and grief and anxiety and lack of sleep and alcohol.  She had a lot of trouble using her brain.  She plans to take the week off of work so that she can get her shit together enough to go back to work next week.

She is now an orphan.  Both her parents have died.  It makes me sad.  Her dad was an asshole, a bastard, a crotchety old bugger, but she still loved him because he was her dad.  She's really upset that he's gone, and even more upset that he took her and her brother out of the will.  She was supposed to have had a conversation with his wife about that last night, but I don't know if it actually happened.

I've got a ton of energy today so I need to use it to my advantage so I'm ending it here.  I am probably going to go get my parents this afternoon, and I get to see the kiddos today, and I have a little homework to get caught up on, but I'll write again later to keep up with the having-to-write-every-day thing.