Running towards something…

It’s official – all the insurance referrals have come through and I’ve been approved for a breast reduction. 

I go under the knife May 22nd.

So, it’s been a while since I’ve had any content to write in here – perhaps because my life has felt devoid of content and without making this a total “woe-is-me” blog, I’ve just decided to stay quiet.

But, here’s a couple of good things going on here:

• I still have a job.  I literally had to re-interview for it back in February.  It was down to me and a coworker who has been with the company for 3 years and somehow I managed to survive.  I’m not entirely sure how, but I’m not questioning it – I’m going to just keep doing the best I can and keep my head into a career I’m still pretty in love with.
• I’m on a decent path for the NCIDQ in October.  I was hoping to take the ASID Step Class in May, but there’s another one being offered in August and I think that will be the one I end up taking.   In the interim, I’ve signed up for 2 brush-up classes at my former college and should find out soon if I’ll actually be able to take them or not (they take the paying students first, of course).  I also purchased a study guide that has practice tests at the end of every chapter – I’ve copied all of them and try to do a couple of them per week, cold-turkey, without reading anything in the book – just to see how I do.   I’m running at about 50% correct, which means there is certainly room for improvement.
• My love-life is still non-existant, except that I have been on a few dates.  While neither guy (there were 2 for a little while) turned into anything romantic, it was still nice to get out of the house and have a little bit of positive male attention. 

I’m still really trying to work my way out of this funk that started around mid-December and the promise of Spring (aside from the snow yesterday) seems to be helping my mood.

I think this weekend I’ll take down my Christmas tree.  It’s been standing without ornaments for a month now.

It’s gotta go.

I’m hoping that this week is going to turn out much like the week before my 30th birthday did – where I was depressed up until the point where the day actually hit and then I was fine and dandy.

Of course, the better option would be to not be depressed at all, but since it’s hitting me full force despite my attempts to curb it… well… yeah.

So this is going to come out a jumbled mess, but bear with me:

I helped another senior go grocery shopping over the weekend.  This sounds like a simple enough task, yes?  Except that this senior had some major depression issues going on and recently discharged herself from the psych ward.  When I walked into her place the first thing she said to me was, “Now you listen to me: I’m not going to the hospital.” I looked at her rather puzzled and said, “I’m sorry?” She explained that she was feeling weak last week and she sometimes has seizures and if she had one while at the store she didn’t want them taking her to the hospital because the nurses were something along the lines of Nurse Rachet from One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest.  I told her simply, “Sweetie, if you have a seizure while you’re with me I’m going ot have to call a doctor.  I am not a medical professional who can take care of you like that.”  She said fine, but she wasn’t going to let them take her away to the hospital.

Anyhow, we go shop.  We get everything off her list and when I say, “we did it!” to her she begins to cry and says she couldn’t have done this without my help and I’m a gift from God for her and what on earth did she do to deserve me – etc. etc.

Point of this whole story is that this woman needs more help than I can give her.  Luckily, after talking with the director of the senior program, the plan was never for me to take on this woman as another senior to visit – she just needed help at the moment, requested a woman to shop with her, and I was available.  I may be asked to help her one more time, but Morrie is my senior whom I am to bond with, and have already started to do so… and that’s that.

So this was all Sunday and when I left her house I called Josh, got some groggy, but helpful advice from him (and he got the brunt of my crying over wanting to help everyone, yet not feeling strong enough to help this woman)… I then talked to Andrea who said what I needed to hear and all was well with the world again. 

Except that I was so drained I had zero desire to do anything I had planned so I took a small nap (set my alarm so as to not oversleep).

I woke up in time for dinner and gave Jody a call.  She picked me up and we went to our (well, hers really, but I like it too) favorite Chinese place – as we’re at a light, we witness a hit and run accident right in front of us.  We pull over to make sure the woman who was hit was ok (she was) and give our information to her, just in case her insurance company wants to hear what anyone else saw.  Hopefully it will work out in her favor that the intersection of said accident had a blue light on it… maybe she’ll be lucky that it caught his license plate number or something. 

The point of all this is that I didn’t get done nearly what I had hoped to get done Sunday because I was too busy with the emotional draining of not being able to help with ANYTHING that happened in front of me.   Oh, let’s not even begin to talk about what was either a very strange panic attack, or some seriously fucked up lucid dreaming as I was laying in bed Monday night.  I remember praying that if I fell asleep to please God let me wake up in the morning.  I don’t know how to explain it really, but it was like my body knew if I allowed myself to drift into sleep it wasn’t going to be a good thing… It might explain why I was up at 4am yesterday.

And I stayed at work til 6:30pm because both RSG’s needed to stay late and I had zero cash to take the train.  That put a major damper on my desire to clean, which is going to hinder having the place put together for Thursday so I can put up a Christmas tree and NOT think about missing a family that is no longer my own. 

This is the other fucked up thing (I don’t even care that I’m swearing, but that’s another deal) about this whole holiday: it was never ever ever a big deal growing up!  Sure I spent some Thanksgivings with my dad, and my mom and I would do a turkey every now and then, but every. single. year I was with the ex we either cooked a turkey for ourselves, or we ended up in Connecticut.   Over the weekend I was doing my dishes and it just suddenly dawned on me that said ex probably already flew out there and is with his family. 

I keep saying I don’t miss my ex, and I don’t.  He and I were SUCH a wrong fit for each other… it doesn’t change that sometimes I miss having SOMEONE by my side.  And I know I have friends and I’m not alone in that sense and I have my own family who I will see in a few weeks so it’s not that I’m not thankful to have those people in my life, but having a significant other by your side is just a different feeling.  Again, this is probably pathetic whining and whatnot – I realize that – but it doesn’t make me feel any better about the whole thing.

Spoke to a woman in New York who handles personal shopping for Tiffany in their New York office.  She looked for my ring, THE ring I have been wanting for so very long now, and told me that 1, since it’s discontinued and 2, since they aren’t showing any inventory at all nationally that all products have probably been sent back to wherever they make the jewelry and melted down to make other products.  

Really… who says that to people?! 

I’ve looked on ebay, and of course if I google-search I come up with the ring here and there, but a vast majority of what I find are either people boasting about how they got the ring as a gift, or they are knock-off sites.  I refuse to buy knock-off Tiffany.  Hell, I refuse to buy knock-off most anything.

And this probably sounds so silly to everyone else, but really… if I am to buy a small something for myself with a portion of this money, it should be jewelry. 

So, for now I wait… I can’t buy it tomorrow anyhow, but I’d at least like to know the possibility is there.

The good news is my rent is caught up, my utilities (except for one) are paid in full, and my budget goals have a much stronger chance of coming to fruition now.   Who knows, in 20 months, I might look like this girl…  One can only hope, right?

Maybe I’ve been reading Twilight too much, because I just willingly walked into the Vampire’s Den:

The first time I ever tried to give blood, in Florida, they couldn’t find a good vein on me.  The second time, up here at work, my iron level was too low.  Today I almost didn’t make it to the chair because my temp was 99.6 and the max it can be is 99.5, but the technician let me sit for 15 minutes, took it again and somehow I was down to 98.6. 

Anyhow, I’ve got a big boo-boo-band-aid on my arm and this snazzy little sticker (which is facing the right way, just not when captured by a cell phone.)

I went to Cassadega today and got a reading. 

I know some people think this is pure bullshit, but I’m going to type out what I do remember of the reading for prosperity.  Maybe I’ll look back on this and see it’s true, maybe false… maybe it is a load of bullshit but whatever.

She started off talking about my job and asked if it was new – I said within a year and she asked if it was different from something I had done before because she saw that my career had taken a major change. 

She asked if I wanted children and I said yes, but that I was rethinking the idea that I would actually be the one to bear them.  She said she saw a man in my future who already had a child, but he wasn’t in my life yet.  Also with regards to men she said I need to trust my gut more often and not be afraid to say no when things don’t feel right emotionally.  She did say that once my own life is straight, love will fall into place easily.

She saw me moving.  She saw me having a male neighbor, or someone who lived under the same roof, but not in the same house… she thought I needed to upgrade my apartment because it was too small for me (I said nothing of where I lived), and that in doing such an upgrade I should also take into consideration my social status.  There are people I am surrounded by who care for me, but may come off with a certain judgemental attitude when it comes to things that are important to me and I take their comments far too much to heart.

(I also feel its important to interject that the only thing this woman knew about me was my name, phone number, and that I came to Florida for work… I didn’t tell her my birthday, though she pulled out many emotional pisces things)

She said there is an older woman who passed on looking out for me.  In this life she was stubborn, and perhaps thought of as unkind in some ways, but people who knew her knew she loved deeply.  She is looking out for me and wants me to take more chances and be brave.

She’s the second medium who told me later in life I may consider becoming a medium as well because I have a strong spiritual pull.

My 2 other friends and I left today feeling calm and peaceful… maybe it was the surroundings, maybe it was our readings…  either way – so worth the time and effort it took to get there.

Meet Carl:

Meet Carl’s sisters, who are still napping:

Why does a 30 year old woman have butterflies growing on her desk at work?  Probably because she never did this little science experiment as a kid.  Maybe it’s because I read about Rob and Schuyler watching their butterflies hatch and I wanted to be cool like them.  Maybe I needed to see something actually flourish to remind myself that things aren’t so bad.

Whatever the reason, this has got to be the coolest 25 bucks I’ve ever spent.  Could I have put that money elsewhere?  Perhaps.  Would it have made me smile so much?  Unlikely.

I expect that Marie is probably hatching (emerging?) as I type this, but since they are at work I won’t know til tomorrow.  My bets are on Ellie following suit, then Isabelle, and finally Clara.  If they don’t all emerge by end of work Thursday I’ll be bringing them home with me and perhaps setting them free on the 4th of July.  My own little version of fireworks bursting free in the sky.

My best friend made this post a couple days ago and I am just now seeing it and therefore linking it everywhere:

http://splatterblog.com/2008/05/21/maynard-fish-frydonation-extravaganza/

The long and short of it is, his mother has Breast Cancer, ended up in the hospital for emergency brain surgery, continued to stay in said hospital for months and she has no insurance.

Money donated will keep the family afloat.

And thank you in advance to those of you who can either donate, or pass this link on to others who could help.  ANY donation, even if it’s only 5 bucks, will be appreciated.