New Year

Subtitled: And a Snow Day

I might do a monthly wrap up of the past year later but at the moment, I don't want to.  2013 had some HUGE (like "OMG T-Rex GINORMOUS!") ups and downs and I'm finally finding my footing emotionally this last week and I don't necessarily want to revisit last year yet.  Denial, not just a river in Africa…  Also?  Run-on sentences, the way I live my life.

Anyway things are looking up.  Even with a foot of snow on the ground (because that would be looking down…), but more on that in a minute.  I'm loving my new job so much that I'm almost to the Irish "I'm related to the Murphy's,  what's going to go wrong now?" looking over my shoulder.  I have a savings account.  I have a retirement plan.  I have renters, health, and life insurance.  These all are a big weight off my shoulders.  I don't want to get all political (in social class sort of way) but now that I've tasted a bit of "being poor" for the last few years, I can see why moderately wealthy to rich people don't understand the stresses of the poor.  The stupid little shit that the rich don't even think about in their daily lives are gigantic problems for those without money.  And it's so insanely stressful, it's not funny.  I will never take any of this for granted ever again.

Back to the snow, the kids were already scheduled to be off school today so the fact that there are 12 inches of snow on the ground and a windchill of -30F doesn't really matter to them.  But all this craziness means that Homeland Security (not particularly a fan but whatever) has placed travel advisories on us and the state of Indiana is pretty much just closed.  At least central to northern Indiana is.  Which for me just means my "non essential" clinic is closed and I "have" to stay home.  Darn…  *shrugs*  Even though I love my job (see above), I don't really want to go out in this mess.

Happy New Year, Happy Snow Day, and keep warm.

Quote of the Day: "A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water." -Carl Reiner

Reasons to not be dating right now

1. Lack of trust.  I don't trust anybody new right now.  I used to operate under a pretty broad level 1 clearance with new people.  I've always said I'm generally an open book.  I'd talk frankly about my divorce, my sex life, my wacky stories about camping in flooded creek beds & being pulled over by the Secret Service, my opinions on health care, politicians, organized religion, etc.  Right now?  I doubt I'd even tell a new person my cat's name.

2. Safety.  I think this is subtitled to 'Lack of trust.'  I just don't feel as safe as I used to around new people.  It's one of those "I've been burned horribly, I'm not going near anything that seems warm" type things.  I feel like I'm going to get hurt by anyone I don't already know and trust.

3. Still on the emotional roller coaster from break-up with S.  I think I thought I was close to getting off a month ago but when my dad died, I really realized I'm not even half way back to the exit.  Like I mentioned before, I know I have issues with "just fun, don't love me and I won't love you" (aka commitment-phobia).  I need to work on that.  Cause it's not really fair to another person for me to go out with them and then immediately put the brakes on if anything seems like it could turn into *gasp, the horrors!* a relationship.

These are all completely different issues from those I dealt with after the divorce.  The divorce involved more "stuff" (money, child custody, etc) plus some emotional turmoil.  Most of that came from my identity at the time being a married stay at home mom and now what?  I did feel betrayed, I gave up this for the promise of that and now I'm down two strikes.  It was a lot to work through but  I did.  After the divorce, I felt whole enough to be open to dating and possibly relationships.

Right now?  I feel very very broken.  S had all the security level clearances in my life, past what my ex-husband ever had.  And now I don't feel safe, I don't trust anyone, and I hate dealing with the emotional quagmire I'm in.

I miss a lot of the good stuff that goes into being in a relationship.  The 'good morning, my love' texts.  Hugs.  A shoulder rub after a long day.  Being in the presence of someone I love and who accepts me for me.  Looking someone in the eye and trusting that they have my back through thick and thin and them knowing that I'd do move the earth, moon, and stars if it would make them happy.

I want to get back to being mostly whole so that I could possibly go out and look for that again.  I've always been an impatient person and so the fact that this type of healing takes time adds to the "crap, I need to deal with emotions, ugh!" issue.  I just feel so very fundamentally broken, since trust and safety are the most basic human needs, that sometimes I worry it's not even possible.

I don't know.  I'm working on it.

Rough Week

I'm not going to sugar coat it, it was a rough week here.

We're all adjusting to me being out of the house for over 50 hours a week (including commute time).  I think I've been doing a pretty damn good job of making sure there's food for snack and dinner and making sure everyone gets rides to and from activities and we've been relatively successful.  We did momentarily misplace the littlest one when she was suppose to be at the dentist on Tuesday (she went to her after school music program, G and I both forgot about that.)

I've been aware of time constraints before but this week, they just sucked.  For example, the boys both need new shoes.  Monday they had scouts, Tuesday I don't even remember what happened but shoe shopping didn't, Wednesday I work late (shops closed), Thursday I was off work in time to pick up the littlest one from school, eat dinner, go to her scout meeting, and then again shops closed, and Friday the boys were off to scout camp before I was home from work.  It's like, fuck how does anything get done?  I suppose I probably had 9pm to 10pm to take them to Target or something but sheesh, at that point of the night I'm honestly in bed.  Oh I remember why I didn't take them shoe shopping on Monday or Tuesday, I had $4.75 in my bank account.  Payday was Friday.  So maybe the shoe shopping was delayed due to money constraints more than anything.

I slept 13 hours Friday night into Saturday morning.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I need to make time to see a therapist after my new health insurance kicks in.  My most lovely friends have pointed out that I really have not dealt with my break-up with S (there was an incident earlier this week, I had a mini panic attack when one of our mutual friends mentioned seeing him in person)  and I'm probably in the denial stage about my dad's death too.  Sounds about right for me.  Another friend pointed out that I've dealt with a lot more emotionally stressful stuff in the last year than most people deal with in a lifetime.  Huh.  Yeah maybe.  I don't really think about it like that, I just write a To Do List and get back to checking things off.  Since there isn't an easy To List for dealing with emotions, I just ignore them and concentrate on other stuff.  Damnit, To Do Lists, don't fail me now!

Anyway, it's been a rough week.

I took yesterday "off" from doing anything other than talking to friends, eating, watching TV, and goofing around on the internet.  Today I have a To Do List but I'm going to take it slow and not try to attempt to knock 10 things off it before lunch.  The kids don't go back to G's until tomorrow evening (November schedule is a bit goofy) and now that I've realized I'm not 100% emotionally healthy right at the moment, I'm going to take it easy on myself.  No one needs me ending up in a padded room.

I love my kids, I love my family, I love my cat, I love my friends, I love my new job, I love my cute little townhouse in a fun area of town.  Overall life is good, I just need to fine tune a few (major? minor?) emotional things.  I can do this.

Spin cycle

I'm trying to find my center again.  This last week has been...  I don't even have the words for it.

The viewing and the funeral were tough.  I did a lot of crying.  I gave the eulogy at Mass because it felt like something I needed to do.  I miss my dad.

I'm very thankful I have my new job.  I worked Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and it felt good to be finally doing what I've spent the last 4 years working towards.

I drove down to my hometown Friday after work and spent the night with my mom.  She's doing amazing.  It'll be a process for her but seeing her in person doing pretty well with everything helped me feel that she can do it.  I'm not a worrier but I was worried A LOT about her this last week.

Yesterday was a bit of an anomaly as I went to Churchill Downs with some of my extended family and ate lunch in Millionaire's Row and bet on some horses.  My aunt buys tickets to this event every year and she asked me many months ago if I could attend.  (KY Colonels)  It was fun and amazing and a nice break away from everything.  I even won $3.50 on my first horse race bet ever.

Today...  Today I feel like I just got spit out of the spin cycle.  I've been up since 7am and kinda overwhelmed by getting everything back in order again.  The plants need watering, the half & half for my coffee went bad, the laundry has piled up, I have a stack of new job paperwork that needs sorted, and I've gained like 4lbs since I last stepped on the scale (and since I was already 5lbs heavier the last time I checked, I'm so not happy about this, my clothes are starting not to fit at all).  Oh and I think that NaNoWriMo is a bust again this year.  I'm trying to take everything slow and easy to not overwhelm myself but I also know I need to get my butt in gear and tackle everything sooner than later as I have a full week of work ahead of me and the kids are back at my house tomorrow night.

Deep breaths.  Take it slow.  It took time to get to this place, it'll take time to get back to my normal.  I can do this.

The New Crazy Normal

Or is it the New Normal Crazy?

Whenever I get a free moment, I like to ponder how my Normal is never really what I expected to be my Normal.  We all grow up with an assumption of how our lives will go.  The majority of society has a Normal something like this: grow up with two working married parents, go to college, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, send the kids off to live their own lives, retire.  There's some slight variations in there, maybe a stay at home parent, move a few times, change jobs but for the most part, that's Normal.*

Since leaving my parent's home at 17, I reached a bit of Normal (married, kids, home) for some years in my twenties but the rest of it has been upside down and backwards.  And seems to be staying that way.

Nowadays I tend to think of my life as Crazy, not Normal and act accordingly.  On top of being divorced, a new college graduate, oddly employed in random part time jobs, and renting a townhouse, I also have a bi-polar home life of being a single parent of 5 kids one week to being (mostly) foot loose and fancy free the next.

It's a bit crazy at times.

I'm attempting to find one full time RN job but I've sort of accepted that I may be working a string of random part time jobs for awhile.  I don't have a goal to marry ever again but I figure I will jump back into the dating pool eventually.  I probably won't buy another home, renting is nice for a lot of reasons.  There's likely more college in my future in the form of a masters or doctorate degree if I take the nurse practitioner route.  And definitely no more children!

It sometimes seems to me that I veered off the Normal well trodden path of life.  It's like everyone else is on the wide straight interstate of Normal and somehow I'm hiking along a curvy cow path up on the hillside.  I can see everyone else traveling along at the speed limit, passing life's milestones, moving on in an orderly fashion.  Meanwhile I'm going up and down hills, around curves, stepping over fallen trees, and splashing across streams.

It's a bit crazy at times.

I'm definitely not saying the interstate or the cow path is the better way to get through life.  It's just different, like apples and oranges.  But I really did expect to stay on the interstate throughout my life so I often wake up surprised to be on this wacky cow path.  Am I going to make it back to the interstate ever?  Do I even want to?  I don't know.

Crazy is now my Normal and it's okay.  That's enough to have figured out for now.



* One could argue that divorce is often a Normal nowadays but it's such a huge disruption in everything.  And it's not like it's on anyone's goal list like 'buying a house' so I think it falls under Crazy.

On being a Special Snowflake and relationships

So I'm really trying to avoid being a Special Snowflake with my self contemplation on the blog because those type of people are extremely annoying.  I'd like to think I can find the balance between "I'm so awesome, look what I did, let's talk about me, me, me!" and the other cynical side of "life is meaningless, who gives a f*ck about anything ever, the world sucks."  I know my small insignificant problems don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world but there's probably a little room for me to do some belly button gazing occasionally.

I remember years ago some random troll posted a comment on my Ramblings of a SAHM mom site about something kinda special snowflake I had written.  Honestly it didn't bother me, obviously because I don't even remember what the comment was now.  The troll was just being a troll and trying to stir up controversy.  That's what they do.  But my best friend got all up in arms on my behalf and it was kind of amusing to watch them duke it out in the comments.  And then I went back to playing Mom Taxi or scrapbooking or something and forgot all about it.

The reason the troll's comment didn't bother me because it wasn't something that was even remotely true about me in my opinion.  Like you could call me a 'slug licking scrawny green mermaid' and I'd be like "uh, okay" and easily move on.  Because I'm not any of those things so the whole thing is silly and I could care less.

On the flip side, I've learned that if someone says something about me that I immediately strongly disagree with, I need to examine this a bit more closely.  Cause there's usually a glimmer of truth in it and it's probably something I don't like about myself.

During the last few months, I was forced to take a hard look at myself and how I approach relationships.  A lot of stuff was said and while some ideas I threw out pretty quick because it was blatantly obvious projection  (after 4 years of psych classes, you aren't going to pull any Freudian moves over on me), a few items have stuck with me.

One of the things that has been the hardest to comes to terms with about myself is that I'm really scared of romantic love and commitment.  But you were with S for 2.5 years, you say!  Yeah but he's just as scared of romantic love and commitment as I am.  If you put two of those type of people together, it kinda sorta works for awhile.  If I'm avoiding falling in love and also avoiding someone else falling in love with me and he's doing the same, we have an unconscious 'not falling in love and avoid being loved by others' requirement in common.   And that's a pretty strong trait that can bring two people together as oxymoron-ish as that sounds.

Of course we did fall in love anyways and into some sort of commitment that mostly worked for us most of the time.  It was like that poem about the little girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead:  When she was good, she was very very good.  When she was bad, she was horrid. When we were good, it was the most amazing time I've ever had in my life.  When we were bad, it was horrid.  And then some.

I'm not going to go into our fights here but on my end going forward, I'm going to try to learn some better "this isn't going well, let's figure this out" skills.  My usual MO is either ignore the problem (I do kinda like denial, it's one of my bigger character flaws) or attempt to hit a 'relationship reset button'  (which also has an element of 'ignore' built in).  Secondly I'm going to try to not be so extreme with "okay don't love me and I won't love you and let's just have fun!" in new relationships.  But I'd like to delve into the second point deeper in another blog post mostly because today's dating world is so full of amusing advice to discuss and dissect.

Naval gazing done for another day.  :)

5 years

It's been a rough week.

Hell, it's been a rough few months.

My birthday is coming up at the end of this month and while I'm not turning a fantastic milestone age like 40 or 50 (I'll be 36), I realized I had hit another milestone a couple of months ago. I didn't have much time to think about it then because I was in the middle of prepping for the NCLEX and trying to find a job (and paying bills and dealing with kids on summer vacation and writing run-on sentences...)

I've lived here in Indiana again for 5 years.

Granted I've moved twice since the original move to this city but 5 years. A lot has happened in 5 years (in no particular order):

• Got divorced
  
• Applied, was accepted, and went to 4 years of nursing school
  
• Passed the NCLEX and became a registered nurse
  
• Learned to tango
  
• Shot a handgun (at a target, not a person. Although I've been tempted)
  
• Learned to ride a motorcycle and earned the motorcycle endorsement on my license
  
• Ran a 5K
  
• Painted 2 paintings
  
• Took a hot air balloon ride
  
• Worked 6 different jobs (Katie Fleck Designs, Flower Shop #2, Student Nurse, Nanny Gig, Sewing Gig, Substitute School Nurse)
  
• Traveled to Hong Kong and Beijing
  
• Went on a cruise to the Caribbean
  
• Learned to ice skate
  
• Had the gas and electric turned off (bills... I suck at paying them)
  
• Adopted my cat and readopted her when she ended up at the Humane Society
  
• Sewn curtains (inside joke, for years I've said I've sewn everything under the sun but 'never curtains')
  
• Had kidney stones
  
• Traveled inside the US to Chapel Hill NC, Outer Banks NC, Put-In-Bay OH, Chicago IL, Louisville KY, Colorado Springs CO, Savannah GA, Orlando FL (Disney World), Philadelphia PA, Cherry Hill NJ, Venice FL
  

As well as:

• knit a bunch of stuff
  
• sewn a bunch of stuff
  
• read a bunch of books
  
• been to several music concerts
  
• been camping a few times
  
• eaten a lot of yummy food
  
• and hung out with the very best people on the planet (my family and friends)

It may seem silly but writing out this list helps. I've been stuck in a "can't do anything" mood because of the lack of a RN job and the money that comes with that. And since the break-up with S, I've been very "and I'm not going to be doing that now" *sad face* too.

I've been a bucket of joy to be around honestly...

I'm going to try better to keep a positive attitude. The job will come. I'll likely fall in love again eventually. I won't be living on a shoe string budget forever. The gas won't be shut off because I don't even have gas at my current home. *shrugs* It's the little things sometimes.

The one big thing I'm looking forward to:

I'm going to be an aunt.

And that's more than enough to be super duper excited about right now. :)

Moving on

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

Still no RN job.

Still sewing at the sewing gig.

Still mostly broke.

Hmm, nothing has really changed other than I recently got my heart broken.

Blah.

Where's the TV remote, I want to change the channel.

Some Quotes

Subtitled: I probably think too much

It amuses me that you can always find a quote that fits your current attitude. And then find one that means the complete opposite of it. Like ‘Love means never giving up’ and then there’s the opposite, something like ‘Giving up doesn’t always mean you are weak, sometimes it means you are strong enough to let go.’

Okay so I have to pick between love and being strong? I can’t do both?

Recently I’ve felt myself turned upside down and inside out and I don’t know which way I’m heading anymore. There are three things that I know for sure right now:

I love him. I’m hurt. I have no fucking idea where to go from here.

So being the literary nerd that I am, I went searching for some answers. These quotes speak to me. And aren’t too conflicting with each other.

• Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Course no one ever said I was sane in the first place.)
  
  
• Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime and falling into at night, I miss you like hell. –Edna St. Vincent Millary (I identify VERY strongly with this one right now. During the day, I’m mostly okay. But then I dream about him and us all night long. Thanks, stupid subconscious…)
  
  
• Every man needs a woman when his life is a mess. Because just like in a game of chess, the Queen protects the King.
  
  
• Everything happens for a reason. But sometimes the reason is you’re stupid and you make bad decisions. (I know this is true about me occasionally. I’m working on it.)
  
  
• I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. –Walt Whitman
  
  
• As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen. -Winnie the Pooh
  
  
• Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for. –Bob Marley
  
  
• Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering. –Paulo Coelho
  
  
• Love me when I least deserve it because that is when I really need it. –Swedish Proverb
  
  
• Everyone says that love hurts, but that’s not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Everyone confuses these things with love, but in reality, LOVE is the only thing in this world that covers up all the pain and makes us feel wonderful again.
  

I want to feel wonderful again.