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1. I finally bought a new car (2010 Nissan Altima) and it is amazing. I'm super happy and relieved. I'd been anxious about driving for the past nine months, and now all that anxiety has just vanished. And the new car has a push-button start, which I'm probably going to break if I play with it any more.
2. My best friend's visiting this weekend, yay! We're going to go kayaking, yay! And eat alllllll the foods, yay!
3. I think I may have actually gotten out of my slump at last? Maybe? I feel enthusiastic about things again and I don't have a killer headache all the time now, so maybe it is at least a start.
Unemployment is byzanine to navigate, and I just found out going on my husband's health and dental will exceed student loan deferrment by about $30 per month, which means, unemployment will just about cover bills, but not groceries or gas or stuff like that, so I need to get a j.o.b within about four months, and that's kida bad news, right there.
rainbaby, from where I sit, you seem immanently employable. . .you'd be fun to work with.
1. Last Friday, sat through a day of interviews for a clerical position in another dept., but which I interface with a lot. The best one was someone from Tucson. The worst one was someone from Garberville, CA, who looked the part (Garberville is in the middle of pot country there), and I was excited to see someone like that but she BLEW the interview. . like the worst job I had ever seen anyone do in an interview. . .
2. Daughter has been down over the weekend. .leaving tomorrow. She's 21 now and been out of the house for 3 years. . .she was reflecting on her "hippie" upbringing, which we did not think we gave her, but anyway she bursts out "you sent me to RECYCLING camp, for gods sakes!" We did not remember sending her to anything like the but apparently one of the camps we did send her to was heavy on recycling. ..
3. Going to CA 2 weeks from tomorrow for a week. A week of seeing my increasingly slowed down mom, playing some beach V-Ball, surfing, if there is any, and getting a hit of LA. (I have tried to solicit MeFites down there, but to no avail, and probably won't this time.)
1. Back at work after a 2 week vacation. I didn't realize how much I missed work until I showed back up. That's probably pretty sad, actually.
2. Fired old pdoc and am hoping that the new medication regimen from the new pdoc starts to be worth something more than insomnia, jaw clenching, and headaches.
3. Kind of disappointed with things right now. I feel like I didn't get enough work done over the vacation, I'm not moving anywhere with therapy, the meds aren't doing shit...it's just irritating.
But oh man, I totes want a car with one of those push button start things.
1. We finished cleaning my parents' basement on Saturday. Given that "the basement is messy" is my mom's main excuse for, well, everything, this was pretty awesome. And honestly, it only took us 1.5 hours then and maybe three the week before. She did pretty well, managing to stand at the top of the steps and go "Are you done yet?"
We still have to get rid of the trash pile and do some heavy deacquisition of bedframes and the like (my mom loves curb-diving for seriously useless furniture), but we know what everything is and where it is supposed to live, and danged if there isn't less than I thought there'd be.
2. Oh, and now *I* have to move. The boy and I made an awesome team in someone else's house, but my ADD is making me wring my hands already with order-of-operations anxiety. Sort the clothes or box the books? But boxing the books is the easy way out... but they're THERE... but I should do something hard first!
3. Aaaaaand... my father, who has been in Sri Lanka for a month, has dengue fever but is out of the hospital and will hopefully come home this week... just in time for my mother to run away to the giant family reunion. Seriously, we don't do things half-assed around here.
1. Quick trip to Western MA to visit Mom who's at the end of a long long decline. She's in a managed care/hospice that's very nice and five minutes from my sister who's doing a saint's job in helping her. The visit was great but airlines, airplanes and airports all suck massively.
2. Saw a production last week of a contemporary Opera version of Orpheus and Euridice performed outdoors in the middle of a huge 19th century cemetery.
3. Very tired right now due to coming home from the airport at 1:30 AM.
1. I think we have someone to rent our house (fingers crossed), and if it works out, it would be absolutely fantastic.
2. That means I have to get serious about settling on a place in Brazil, which I haven't really been focusing on too much....
3. Holy shit, I'm moving in six weeks!
1. It was so busy at work today. That's a good thing. I love working with my boss. She is hilarious and makes everything fun.
2. My sister is having some health problems and other stressful problems. I wish I could make things better for her.
3. There are some things that are worrying me: My sister, washing machine is broken, I'm tired and have been sinking into a depression (nothing terrible but I can tell I'm more miserable and I've been doing things like eating a lot of ice cream in the dark while watching depressing shows), I worry that I'm a crappy parent and that my kids have poor social skills, my floors are dusty and dirty, I'm starting to get a flare up of foliculitis on my face. I am not going to worry too much about it because it's not that bad and next week I'll be fine.
3a. On a brighter note, I started reading Crazy in Alabama last night. It is so good!
It's been coming for a long time so I've been mentally preparing myself for about three years now. She's got pretty severe dementia so the mom that we knew hasn't really been around for a while. It's not fair that she didn't get more time but there's not much that can be done about it. I'm glad that my sister is there (and my sister's boyfriend too), they've been awesome and I'm not sure how I can ever repay them.
Oh man, such a bummer to read this thread after your early departure today, punch. Feel better!
1. Saturday rocked. Awesome party of awesome people.
2. Sunday was chill but still awesome. Chill in the awesome way. Went out to dinner with my lady and my grandmother, truly blessed to be surrounded by wonderful women in my life (not dealing with my mom right now, though I *am* investing the money she gave me for my birthday into NY Marriage Equality; you're never too old to rebel against your parents' idiocy).
3. Next weekend is going to be spent in Atlantic City. So that should be fun. This week is going to be looooooooong, though (even if it's only 3 and a half days).
1) At work: Just finished a project and showed it to the client this morning. She was very happy with it and didn't request any changes. I sort of have her pegged as a former high school "mean girl" based strictly on looks.
2) My kid is doing pretty well these days.
3) We went out for dinner Saturday night with some friends and had a really nice time. It feels like it's been a long time since we did something like that.
1. Giggling over this clipping from the newspaper:
A group of students in a high school in Montana played a prank, letting three goats loose in the school. But before doing so, they pained numbers on the sides of the goats: 1, 2 and 4. School administrators spent most of the day looking for number 3.
3 months angina free. After 7 1/2 years of chronic angina and multiple medications. Lately, I usually have had to push myself to near exhaustion to get even a hint of chest pain. I have not had to use any timed-release nitroglycerin for almost two months, and I used the pocket nitro spray twice. Those are the as needed meds. My miracle cure is the same substance that has made a joke of the US prison system; lab-tested for potency and to be herbicide free.
My cousin Andrew started Marine Corp boot camp in Paris Island this morning. He's signed up for delayed entry last summer; graduated from high school just a few weeks ago. His mother is posting lots of cute baby pictures and funny/weepy status updates on Facebook.
So excited for our move!! Keys on Saturday, move-in sometime the folloing week. I've been looking at furniture on Craiglist all day. Hoping we'll be able to find some good stuff at a low price! Meanwhile, we're using it to give away the junky IKEA sofabed we have. Hopefully someone will take it.
I was feeling blue earlier today (probably because I couldn't sleep last night) but now that I'm home, eating baked ziti and drinking some wine, I am feeling happier.
1. My eldest son graduates high school on Thursday. Where did the time go? I cannot believe he's 18 already. He wants to join the Air Force - he's got three years of ROTC under his belt. I am scared and so so proud of him at the same time.
2. Second son will stay in 8th grade this year. He has the brains, but not the motivation - all the punishment in the world couldn't get him to do his homework. I've asked for a child study team on him (they have to "see whether or not he needs it"), and I've explained that there's been a lot of upheaval in his life over the last four years. I have no money to send him for counseling (the kick is that I'm told I make too much money for assistance, but no one wants to hear that paying for my house takes up 45% of my net pay). Still, he seems to be growing up within the last couple of months, and I hope things will be different next year.
3. We just discovered two tiny, baby fish in our fish tank!!! I am so excited, this has never happened to me before.
1. Much mojo needed today and tomorrow and possibly for the next week or so because my boyfriend and I are trying to pull the trigger on a joint apartment search 5 months sooner than we had anticipated. Three words: Coop Board Application. Two more words: Financial Statement. Last word: OI!
2. I made sinigang (look it up!) for the very first time in my life as an adult on my own, and my boyfriend and my boyfriend's mom love it.
3. Yeah, I said it. My boyfriend's mom is in town visiting him before and after she goes to a conference in Boston this coming weekend and we are getting along fine. She is a lovely, lovely woman and is "one of us" and is so neat. I am kinda sad that I like her more than I like my mom. But my mom is rad in her own way.
3b. Tomorrow, my therapist and I will be talking about the fact that I can't express negative feelings about my parents without qualifications. Again.
1. Might have mentioned it elsewhere. I dodged a rather large flaming/sparking bullet this past weekend when my electrician finally replaced my dangerous breaker boxes with ones that don't self destruct on a whim.
2. The wife is finally regaining motion in her left arm after arthroscopic surgery. Yet I will still treat her as an injured Goddess as she deserves.
3. And now maybe my turn for surgery. I've had occasional bouts of purely excruciating kill me now pain for over ten years. A recent sonogram shows a dilated common bile duct as well as an enlarged gall bladder. Endoscopy to follow. Maybe a removal of the offending organ, maybe not. But my liver is just fine. (Quelle surprise!) Good for you liver. Bad on you gall bladder!
1. I had a nice birthday celebration with a small group of friends in prospect park Sun night, and then last night on my real birthday my bf took me to a great menuless dinner where they just asked us our allergies and brought us stuff. It was fun not knowing what or how much was coming next.
2. My trip to spain was ok, saw tons of monuments and everything with bf went well. It was a LOT of time to spend w his parents though, who are very sweet but very anxious people. It was hard for me to find veggie food, but at the end of the trip I had some good tapas.
3. My reentry to work was a bust, my email was broken and I spent all day trying to make tech support pay attention to me. When I finally got them at 4pm I was annoyed at my wasted day and the guy told me that it was a deeper problem in my computer and that my computer was the shittiest kind they give peopl and gently hinted that it somehow should find itself falling out a window so I can get a new one. I am leaving for a conference tomorrow in Madison--feel free to give me tips on what to do there--so I hope it can be fixed today.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
