Writing in my sleep

If “god” (or “the universe,” or whatever higher power there may or may not be out there) thinks he/she/it is funny, then I should say that they are sorely mistaken on this point.  Either that or their sense of humor is well past my finely developed dark sense of humor, to the point of masochistic tendencies.  

I have found myself in quite the pickle in the last two days.  Financially, that is.  First off, the down payment (which pays for the parts up front) that I had to make on the truck repairs was substantially higher than I thought I’d been told that it would be…by like $425.  Ouch.  To top that off, I had to secure one of those evil things they call a payday loan.  I call them evil because I’ve had them in the past and they just take forever to get rid of.  I still have 6 months of payments ($204 each…this covers the labor) to make to the mechanic.  For the duration of that time frame, they have installed a GPS starter interrupting device.  So I have that looming on my dashboard as a constant reminder.

Right before I had the mechanic tow my truck off to their shop, the courtesy officer at my apartment complex tagged my truck to be towed due to the vehicle inspection and registration both being expired.  Well, I also got pulled over yesterday and given tickets for both of those things as well.  Great.  Just what I needed, more complications in my life. 

So, I go this morning and get signed up for defensive driving with the court for a speeding ticket I got last month.  Then, I go to the tax collectors office and get my registration current.  Then, I went to go get the truck inspected.  It won’t pass inspection because the emergency brake won’t hold the truck in place when you place it in drive.  However, it WILL hold the truck in place if you place it in reverse.  Funny, don’t you think?  I don’t.  So, luckily since the guy found this out right off the bat, before he even drove it into the bay, he didn’t charge me the inspection fee.

I got in my truck and drove home, wiping away tears because I was crying.  I don’t know what I’m going to do.  I’m already stretched beyond thin with the down payment to the mechanic and the stupid payday loan.  Oh yea, and the emergency brake shoes broke when they were working on my truck so they replaced them (I only had to pay for the part, no labor since they broke it), so it should be holding the truck, but it’s not.

I get home, try to calm myself.  I look up the number to a mechanic where I take my truck for oil changes and ask them to give me a quote for how much it would cost to fix the problem.  He tells me that they would have to do a brake inspection to find out exactly what the problem is before he can tell me how much it will cost to fix it.  He does tell me that the inspection will cost around $50 and that if all it needs is an adjustment and a cleaning, then there’s no additional charge over the $50.  Great!  Or, it would be great if I had the money to do it.  I thank him and hang up.  I’m still freaking out, of course.  I still don’t know what I’m going to do.  I literally have $120 until my next payday on the 28^th.  It’s enough for gas and another trip to the grocery store, but nothing more.

I sent an email begging and pleading to my mom.  I showed no shame whatsoever.  I hope that her and my dad are able to help me out.  I hated asking.  I hate acknowledging that I can’t handle something on my own and that I need outside help.  Of course, I don’t really expect them to say “yes.”  I’ve asked for help from them far too many times and would understand them telling me “no.”  I just hope that they can find it in there hearts to help bail me out of a pit one final time. 

I sent the email because I didn’t want to call.  I didn’t want to sit there and bawl my eyes out in my mom or dad’s ear after they’ve both had long days at work.  While I had no shame in my begging her for a small loan, I do want to retain at least some semblance of dignity.  I didn’t want to stoop to what could essentially be considered emotional blackmail.  That wouldn’t be fair to me or to my parents.

Growing up sucks and I apparently suck at growing up.  I’ve learned some hard lessons, but it seems they have a hard time sticking in my brain.  I don’t know if it’s just my crappy memory or if I just plain refused to believe that I’m an adult.  You’d think after all these 15 years that it’s been since I graduated high school and went out on my own into the world.  And boy did I go out on my own into the world.  I went straight from graduating high school to 9 days later on a plane to bootcamp in the middle of nowhere in Missouri in the middle of summer.  Of course, I loved it, but that’s another story.

I’m hoping this all turns out alright and I can laugh at my stupidity over this whole thing later on.  They say that god (or the universe, or whatever) won’t give you any more than you can handle.  He/she/it will never overburden you.  While I have been telling others this very same thing for the past month or so, almost like a mantra, apparently this higher power had plans for me.  Either he/she/it is saying “haha, in your face” kind of thing to me or it’s saying something along the lines of “how would you like to test that little saying of yours out?”  Not funny.  At least, I don’t find it funny.  Maybe he/she/it finds it hilarious, but I don’t.

I’m not a religious person.  If I were, I’d be having what they call a crisis of faith.  Seriously.  I have done nothing wrong and yet “god” sees fit to rain down upon me all this ill-fortune and financial strife.  It begs the question what did I do to deserve this?  Whose karmic foot did I step on?  I know that these are pointless and verging on blasphemous questions, but they are what come to mind in my state of utter panic.  I can’t think straight.  Sure, I think better under pressure, but that doesn’t mean that I want to be thrown into some high stress situation all willy-nilly and haphazardly. 

I did speak to a friend of mine who does a lot of his own mechanical work and has lots of tools and such at his disposal.  I asked him if he wouldn’t be able to take a look at the emergency brake and, if it indeed needs tightening, tighten it down for me so that it will work the way the inspection place needs it to function so that it will pass the inspection.  I will take it to him after work in the next couple of days so that he can do that for me.  If he can, then I only have to worry about the $40 inspection fee and of course, still being painfully broke until my next payday, unless my parents can see fit to help me out.

I called and spoke with the apartment complex office about maybe giving me a little bit of an extension until the end of the month to get my inspection taken care of because I really am trying to get it done.  She said she would contact the courtesy officer and see what he says.  I hope he’s feeling nice.  She hadn’t called me back before I went into work.

Something that I am going to do in order to help myself out is that I am going to sell some of my things.  I have a Wii game console and some games.  I can sell my bicycle and the saddle bags.  I can list my cds for sale; however, I don’t know how well that’s going to work out for me since I don’t have the cases for them.  If I can sell those things in the next few days to a week, I’ll be alright.  Something else that will help me out is when I go out from work for my surgery for 3 weeks, I’ll be able to make a claim to my short term disability and get a check from them.  Of course, I won’t get that for like 2 months from now, so it’s nothing that’s going to help me out any time soon, but I can use it to pay down my payday loan and that will help me out a lot.

But I still have that pit feeling in my stomach.  Simply because things are not fully resolved yet.  Yea, sure I’ve got plans and hopes about things, but in the end they may not work out and my truck may get towed and there’s nothing I can do about that because I have done all that I can and it isn’t enough.  But I hope that it is enough.  I hope that the courtesy officer can be kind enough to give me an extension and I hope that my friend Richard is able to fix what is wrong with the emergency brake.  I also hope that my parents can help me out with something.  Maybe not the full amount I begged for, but something, anything that they are able to loan me would help out immensely.

I have managed to lose a total of 5.2 pounds within 3 weeks.  This is amazing because I have been able to do little to no physical activity.  It’s been cold and snowy and icy so I hadn’t even taken the dog for a walk in around 2 weeks, just her twice daily potty walks.  I should have started Weight Watchers sooner.  It seems to work great for me.  I love the point system.  It’s easy to use and I don’t have to count calories.  I am interested in seeing if I am still able to lose weight while I’m temporarily disabled by my surgery and barely able to get the dog out for her potties.

Once I’m all healed up from my surgery, I will be able to start working out, which will accelerate my weight loss.  I am really looking forward to being active again.  Since I’m going to put my bicycle up for sale, I won’t be able to ride my bicycle (if it sells, that is), but I can walk more and longer and faster than I have been.  I’m going to start working on my jogging and getting over my running phobia also.  I can go to town on the elliptical machine too.  Oooh!  And I can start using my workout dvds as well.  That will be so nice.  I’ve got a bellydancing one that I absolutely love.  And Pilates.  I love Pilates.  All this activity will make me feel so alive again.   

I really can’t wait to be able to go for day hikes with the dog or kayaking with my friend Doug.  Someday, I’ll be able to go running with Heather.  Maybe once I’ve gotten to that level, I can talk her into running a 5K with me.  That would be awesome and fun.  So that is really my ultimate goal, running a 5K and finishing it.  It may be a common goal for people trying to lose weight, but I can see now why it is such a great goal to aspire to.

Lately, in my sleep, I’ve been dreaming of writing.  I dream of writing whole blogs in one sitting.  I dream myself reading what I’m writing.  I even feel the sense of satisfaction that comes from writing something worth writing and something worth reading.  I think it’s great, really I do.  It seems to be helping my mind flow when I want to write.  I’ve also been writing more often and more volume lately.  And, frankly, I think my writing has a better quality to it as well.  I think about writing an awful lot.  I like to think in the way that I would write it if I had a pad and pen in front of me.

Twitterpated

Last night I was caught off guard by Twitter.  Yes, the little social networking site did something that knocked the wind out me.  What could it possibly do that would be so devastating to me?  I was looking through my “followers” and there was a little section over to the right that was titled “similar to you.”  It had my friend Jessica from Wisconsin listed there and 2 tweeters that I didn’t recognize.  The fourth person is the one that packed a heavy punch for me.  A punch I thought I’d be able to dodge and deflect.  Apparently not.  It was my ex, Jon-Pierre.  Why?  Why did Twitter think that it would be appropriate to even think of listing him as someone “like me” especially when I have him blocked on Twitter???  I haven’t a clue.  All I know is that it affected me to the point that I didn’t believe was still possible.  I guess because he still lives just one flight of stairs away from me, thus keeping him close to me when I’d much rather he was far, far away so that his existence would be so much easier for me to deny and so much easier for me to forget and move forward.  I slept horribly last night.  I don’t think I slept for more than an hour straight without waking up bathed in sweat.  My anxiety level was higher than it has been in months.  My chest was tight and I had to struggle with my breathing to keep myself from hyperventilating.  I had been tired before I laid down, but the instant that I placed my head on my pillow and assumed my comfortable sleeping position, I was wide awake, fidgety, and uncomfortable.

I would have thought myself more resilient than that.  I would have thought that anything about him wouldn’t affect me so deeply, so drastically.  But I would have been wrong, and I was.  I'm not as “over” him as I thought I was.  Part of me still hurts from the wounds he inflicted upon me.  Part of me still aches for the love I once felt for him.  And Heather pointed out to me that I was crazy about him and that what I was feeling was perfectly natural.  You don’t just get over being completely crazy about someone.  It takes longer than the statistical norm of 1/3 the length of the relationship to heal.  He was my Romeo and I was his lovesick Juliet.  Heather told me not to fret and to just breathe through it and remember that I am better off without him.  She also pointedly asked me what this little incident would have done to me 4 months ago.  Exactly.  It would have completely debilitated me.  I would have been a completely inconsolable emotional wreck.  I wouldn’t have been able to function properly.  So I have moved forward.  I may not have completely moved on, but I have moved forward and am making progress.  It’s not a setback like I originally thought it was last night while I was living through my own little emotional hell for 8 hours.  It’s a mile marker.  It’s something to remind me of my pain and to show me just how far I have come.

Some days, I wish I didn’t have to carry around this pain and wait for what seems like forever to work my way through it.  But, what lessons would I learn if I didn’t have to go through it all?  What progress would I make if I didn’t have to dredge through so much sorrow and anguish?  What movement would I have made if I had never loved him and been completely crazy about him and all consumed by him?  None.  None at all.  I would be a blank shell of a person.  Without suffering there is no hope for the future.  Without pain, there is no light at the end of the tunnel.  There would be no growth or sense of accomplishment when all is said and done with.

Life is marked with pitfalls.  Without them, life wouldn’t be worth it; it wouldn’t be so precious.  There would be no point to living a human life at all.  We might as well be mindless animals.  What keeps me up at night is what allows him to sleep.  He thinks he has done no wrong by me.  He couldn’t be further from the truth of the matter.  My heart was under his control.  I don’t know why he affected me so strongly…so much more strongly than all other men with the exception of one other: Vance.  Both of them I loved with every fiber of my being and both of them emotionally destroyed me.  They were my two great loves.  I haven’t given up so much as I am just taking a much needed and well deserved break from dating.  The last time I was truly happy and at peace and felt balanced was when I was single for 2 years and only concerned myself with myself.  I am on the path to regain that feeling and that balance into my life again.  And I will.  I don’t have a doubt about it.

It’s cliché, but it’s also so very true.  I'm a survivor.  I will move past this and be so much stronger for it.  I will become even more resilient.  I will do my best to not develop even more trust issues, but if I do, then there is a reason for it.  I must remember that all happens for a reason.  There is never a senseless act or moment.  The reasons may not make themselves clear, but don’t be fooled, they are there.  Not being a religious person, this is a concept I struggle with, but that I innately believe to be true.  That which does not stop me or kill me builds me up inside.  It gives me confidence for the future.  I will be okay.  I will move beyond this.

There is perfection in imperfection.  Without imperfection nothing is unique.  Without imperfection everything is the same, boring, redundant, mediocre, repetitive, endless droning.  I don’t want to be like everyone else.  I want to be true to myself.  I want to be my own imperfect example of perfection.  I am my own person and I need to take ownership of my life again.  I need to thrive in my own way.  I need to make new friends and create a social support system for myself.  I need to do what I enjoy and what I want to do and not do things just because it’s what other people are doing.

My paintings offer me a window into my mind.  They may be simple and not great works of art, but they are pieces of me, pieces of my soul.  I’ve been given the two greatest compliments I could ever hope to receive.  First, I’ve had 2 separate people tell me that they would seriously consider buying paintings from me.  Second, my mom told me that my sunflowers painting was reminiscent of Van Gogh, my favorite painter.  How great of a compliment to be compared to your idol?  My paintings are not something I do to make money, but if it brings me money, then great.  But it’s not the reason I do it.  It’s an emotional release for me.  And an outlet.  I love blending the colors for my backgrounds.  Bright and vibrant and varied.  I love dreaming up designs to paint in the forefront.  A few I will never consider selling and will keep just for myself.  But most I will seek to sell. 

Surgeries

I seem to be obsessed with food lately.  It’s very frustrating and disconcerting, let me tell you.  I will be nice and relaxed and then bam! all of a sudden I'm consumed with thoughts about food.  And it’s not like I'm hungry.  Oh no.  No sir.  Not even remotely.  In fact, I may have just finished eating not 30 minutes before and be completely satisfied and all I can think about is food.  Sure, I'm forced to pay extra close attention to what I'm putting in my body now that I use Weight Watchers’ food tracking program every day, but it’s not like I'm obsessing about food consumption.  What I'm doing amounts, more or less, to data entry.  I no more obsess about my food than the dog does.  I won’t say the cat, because he does obsess about his food.  He is very quick to let me know that his food bowl is nearing empty and when it IS empty.  The dog, however, will walk away from her food if I leave the kitchen while she’s eating, so I know she isn’t obsessed with it.  The problem comes from boredom I think.  I'm somewhat of an emotional eater, which for me means I eat when I have nothing else to do…when I'm bored out of my skull.  So when I have nothing else to do and nothing else to think of, my thoughts always seem to turn to food.  Like, “I could be eating something right now” or “I wonder what I have to eat?”  Why, oh, why do my thoughts turn to food?  No wonder I gained so much weight last year if all I can think of in times of boredom is stuffing my face until I burst.  And let me tell you, I can overeat with the best of them.  I will gorge myself long past the point of satiation and long past the point of being full.  I just love food.  I love the way it smells, the way it feels in my mouth, and especially the way it tastes.  The better it tastes the more of it I want to shovel into my mouth.  Also, the yummier it is, the faster I will consume it.  And that is never a good thing.  You will eat yourself silly if you eat too fast…I know I do.  And I'll pay the price afterward too.  I once ate so much of something that was absolutely delicious that it literally hurt to move at all for 5 hours after I’d eaten.  You would think I’d learn, but I didn’t.

So, herein lies my issue with losing weight.  I am my own worst enemy.  And here’s the kicker…if I hadn’t gained so damn much weight so fast, those 2 discs in my lower back may not have herniated and caused me so many problems.  Of course, then my luck would have been that they would have herniated later down the road after I’ve moved to Oregon and am working at a job whose insurance plan isn’t as good and that doesn’t have any kind of restrictive/light duty allowance for employees.  So, I guess my weight gain was somewhat fortuitous in that way.  Otherwise, it’s just a huge pain and a heavy burden (pun intended) for me to carry around with me every day. 

The main issue of my boredom is that I pretty much lack a social life right now.  While I will desperately miss the small handful of very excellent Texas friends, once I’ve moved to Oregon, I will actually have a pretty active social life and won’t ever want for human contact again.  I will have my fill of it.  Also, if I don’t have anything social to do, I can always pop in on my parents and have dinner with them.  Something I know I will greatly look forward to is doing my grocery shopping on Saturday mornings with my mom.  I have missed our weekly trips to the market to stock up.  In fact, our weekly shopping trips are the very reason I absolutely LOVE to go grocery shopping and find it not only relaxing but also pleasurable while most people abhor it.  So, at least once a week, I'll get to hang out with my mom, which will be awesome. 

I will have so many friends nearby that I probably won’t have enough time in a week to spend with them all.  We will have barbeques and potlucks, girls nights and karaoke and bowling and picnicking and hiking and camping, oh my!  I will be in love with life.  I will be so active and involved with things.  I want to take a monthly or every other monthly trip up to northwestern Oregon to spend the weekend with my very best childhood friend, Patricia, and her family.  And she’s already said that she wants to come down and visit and spend the weekend with me at my home.

I'll get to spend time with my brothers and their families.  I'll actually get to know my nephew and my niece.  I have never met my niece and she is 13 months old now.  My nephew will be 4 years old in April and I’ve only met him twice.  This is completely unacceptable to me.  This is my family.  I should know my family.  On that note, I do not know my mom’s brother, my Uncle John, and his family.  Sure, he, his wife and their oldest daughter “met” me when I was 6 months old, but I don’t count that.  I was a screaming and colicky baby that spit out pacifiers if you stuck them in my mouth.  I don’t really care to ever meet him.  As previously mentioned, he’s a trophy hunter.  That is something that brings feelings of utter disgust to mind. 

My grandma told me a little while back that my brother, Alan, wanted to video tape interviews with my grandpa about his time in World War 2 and save them for posterity.  I want to do something somewhat similar with our dad.  Sort of.  When we were little, our dad used to play his guitar and sing for us.  Our favorite song was Puff The Magic Dragon.  I want to video tape him playing and singing this song so that I will always have this memory.  So that when he’s gone, I will still have a piece of him.  So that when I'm missing him, I can be with him in that moment again.  So that when times are rough, I can watch it and be transported back to childhood when everything was less complicated.

Speaking of family and the chance of them not being there anymore…my maternal grandpa is set to have open heart surgery to replace his aortic valve with a pig’s heart valve.  They opted not to have the mechanical valve.  My grandma wasn’t the one who told me.  My mom did.  My grandma is extremely stressed out and spooked.  My grandpa is basically in perfect health except that his kidney function is a 3 on a 1-5 scale, so there’s a chance that he could go into kidney failure during the procedure.  If that happens, he would probably not make it and then my grandma would be all alone.  This stresses me greatly for 2 reasons: (1) I haven’t seen them in over 2 years and I selfishly want to be able to see him again if he’s going to be passing, and (2) they’re in Washington and I'm in Texas.  I'm so far away I wouldn’t be able to help her out at all.  So I feel guilty about that.  I think my grandma didn’t tell me because she didn’t want me to worry.  I have my own upcoming surgery to worry about, afterall.  Please.  There isn’t really a chance of me dying in my surgery…unless the anesthesia goes horribly wrong.  *shudder*  Okay…I don’t need to feed my anxiety here.  But, seriously, my grandma offered to put me on the prayer list at their church.  That’s very touching and all, but I think my grandpa’s predicament is so much more precarious than mine is.

I haven’t lost a family member since 2001.  That was my paternal grandpa.  He was one of my favorite relatives.  Yet, we hadn’t spoken for around 3 years when he passed away.  Why?  Because I was a stubborn little bitch, that’s why.  I don’t remember what the stupid disagreement was about, I just remember we had a disagreement and I talked back to him and he rightly felt offended and then we just didn’t talk for 3 years.  I was actually in the process of putting together an apology letter to him when I heard the bad news.  What made it even worse was that I was thousands of miles away and subsisting paycheck to paycheck so I didn’t get to attend the funeral.  I have a wonderful picture of me, my dad and my grandpa all in our military class A’s together.  I love that picture, even if I do look like Vampirella in uniform.  I was a little too liberal with the pasty white face powder, in case you didn’t quite catch that.  There really isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about him.  He was a wonderful man.

I'm not the praying type, but I'm inclined to at least beseech a higher power for consideration in my grandpa’s case.  I don’t know what I’d do if I lost him now.  I'm in no way prepared for that possibility.  And I’d feel completely awful for my grandma.  My parents are the closest family to her and I don’t think my mom would be able to take enough time off from work to really help her out and I really don’t see my grandma moving to Oregon to live in the spare room in my parents’ home.  So I really don’t know what she’d do.  I guess she’d probably sell their house and move into a retirement apartment complex like my other grandma lives in.  Not that she’s even in any kind of state of mind to even want to consider the possibilities if he were to not make it through the surgery.

All this just makes my moving to Oregon that much more urgent that it actually happens.  I want to spend time with the people in my family that don’t have much time left in this life.  I want them to know just how much I love them and just how much they will be missed when they’re gone.  I want to have good memories of them that I can think of and remember them with.

So, anyway, my own surgery is set for February 24^th at 8 in the morning.  I’ve already let Eileen know so that she’s prepared for it.  She’ll have to pick me up right at 5am if we’re to be at the hospital on time.  I’d really rather make sure we get there a little early just in case.  Sure, I'm a little nervous, but I'm mostly nervous that the lead won’t be in the right place when all is said and done with.  I'll be going under for the implantation portion of the surgery, which will take about an hour.  They’ll be making 2 incisions in my back.  One up near my shoulder blades and the other in my lower back at hip level.  I guess the thing I'm mostly concerned about with the incisions is that the lower one will mar my tramp stamp tattoo.  But, whatever.  I can’t worry about that.  The success of this surgery completely outweighs my need to have a pristine tattoo on my lower back.  Besides, the stoned tattoo artist messed it up anyway, even though I'm the only one who can tell.  Oh! And talk about a small world.  One of the office staff at the neurosurgeon’s office is a lady I know from a payday loan place I used to patronize. 

After surgery, I'll be off from work for about 3 weeks.  Then, I'll have about 3 weeks of restrictive duty at work and then I'll be back to full duty!  I'm so excited.  I'll actually be able to do cardio that will actually be able to help me lose weight instead of having the sole purpose of passing time.  I'll be able to be active again only 8 weeks from now!  And I'll be basically pain free.  It will be so amazing to be free like that again.  I’ve dealt with lower back pain constantly for the past 3 years, going to the chiropractor off and on.  After I'm recovered from the surgery, I want to start getting acupuncture treatments.  I think those will help me greatly with so much.  Hopefully they can help me with my anxiety.  That will be my main concern once this surgery is done.

Coping with Stress

Something that is at least a little bit frustrating is that of all the bloggers I read about in my memoirs and how they started blogging and suddenly they had followers and people who would read their every post, I don’t seem to have anyone at all who follows my blogs.  Sure, I don’t write every day, but I had issues with that approach and had to adjust my writing habits.  I understand that there are thousands of bloggers out there with far more important things to say than me, but one or two people that would read my blog and post comments would be awesome to me.  It would say that I am writing for an audience, which would be a huge success for me.  And, while that’s not the primary reason I’m writing, it would still give me a little thrill to know that others enjoy reading what I write.

I know that I have only been cultivating this blog for not even a month yet, but I still would have hoped that at least one person would have stumbled upon it and liked it and maybe told a friend about it.  Guess I'm not that lucky, though.  Maybe someone will someday stumble upon it.  Maybe not.   It’s not going to stop me from writing this blog and it’s not going to discourage me in the slightest either.  Why?  Because I’m not doing this for anyone else; I’m doing this for me.  And that’s the only thing I need to remember because it’s the most important thing, really.

I love to write.  It’s one of very few things in life that gives me true pleasure and a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.  When I write, I don’t need any validation from anyone else.  It is a conversation with myself.  When I just allow myself to flow with my writing, I can even learn new things about myself that I did not realize.  Writing is something that allows me to express myself without prejudice.  If someone does read my blog and thinks snide or mean things, even if they post them, I can just delete them.  But I wouldn’t.  I would want people’s honest opinions.  Also, their honest opinions would give me a topic to write about and would therefore end up being positive even though they had intended them negatively. 

I have quite the habit of always seeing the silver lining in a situation.  I always find the humor in the most stressful situations and make light of it to relieve some of the stress from it.  It’s the only way I can deal with extreme stress, really.  That and my habit of obsessively thinking about it until a solution presents itself. 

The superbowl party went quite well.  Doug picked me up…a little late because he somehow went in the wrong direction and got totally turned around and was like 30 minutes late picking me up…haha.  He didn’t have a problem stopping at the parts store so that I could return the wheel hub that I had bought.  He made a spinach-artichoke dip, vegetarian pigs-in-a-blanket, and potato wedges.  I made a creamy guacamole dip.  Everything was delicious.  The game itself was kind of a little disappointing.  I was expecting a neck and neck game, but the Steelers couldn’t get their shit together for the first half of the game and the Packers scored 3 times while the Steelers only scored a field goal.  The Steelers seemed to have found their game in the second half, but it was too late and the Packers won the game. 

The commercials were, of course, pretty cool.  It’s the only time I like to watch commercials.  My favorite commercial out of the whole bunch was the one for the Volkswagen Beetle.  It was so cute.  It had a beetle with racing stripes on it zipping around the forest floor passing other bugs and cutting off ants and making jumps in slow motion. 

I’ve been trying to win over Doug’s cat, Crissy, for the last couple times I’ve come over to his apartment, but she always runs into the bedroom and hides and then won’t come back out so long as I’m there.  Well, not only did she come out and stay out while I was there last night, but she let me pet her and even played with me.  At one point, I even picked her up, but because she doesn’t really like that she grabbed at my shoes to try to stay on the ground and ended up picking one of them up.

After the superbowl, Doug drove me home, but he was kind enough to stop at the store so I could get some much needed groceries.  Unfortunately, we stopped at Randall’s and they didn’t have the type of tuna I normally get, nor did they have Weight Watchers yogurt.  Seriously?  How does a store NOT have Weight Watchers yogurt?  So I got Activia instead.   Bought me a cute little rubber ducky and a rubber froggy too. 

So the down payment for all the work that needs to be done on the truck could be anywhere from 30-50%.  I’m obviously hoping more for the 30% figure.  I wish they had a set percentage value that they base the down payments on.  It’s just one more thing to make me nervous, you know?  All I can really do is cross my fingers and hope for the best, you know?  I don’t want to be trying to make large payments to the payday loan place and making payments to AAMCO for the repairs at the same time.  I’d much rather have reasonable payments to each that I can afford and that won’t stretch me too thin.  Jose is going to call me back later in the day and let me know just how much it will be.

I’m just a little stressed that this whole fiasco is going to delay my moving to Oregon next year.  It needs to be done, of course, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.  Frankly, if I don’t have them do the work on my truck now, it won’t get done until it breaks down later down the road and then it will cost even more because it will probably end up affecting more than the parts that currently need replacing.  And besides, I really would much rather just get it taken care of now and be done with it.

As soon as I get the truck back, I need to go and get it inspected and get the registration taken care of so that my apartment complex won’t tow my truck, which is something I definitely can’t afford, especially with all these repairs that I have to pay for.

I went ahead and printed out the FMLA paperwork that the doctor will need to fill out for me once a surgery date is selected, which I’m hoping they will select it tomorrow so he can go ahead and fill that paperwork out tomorrow.  I want to get that turned in as soon as possible.  I have to show fairly concrete proof that there is an actual end in sight if I hope for my employer to approve another stint of restrictive duty and that they won’t be inclined to recommend a demotion for me.  I’m asking everyone to have their fingers crossed for me that the most favorable outcome will occur and that they will indeed approve one last stint of restrictive duty for me.  I’m really anxious about this.  I really hope that I walk away from tomorrow’s appointment with the date set for my surgery.  If I do, that will do a lot to alleviate my anxiety over the whole issue. 

Speaking of this appointment tomorrow, I’m going to have to go through a whole process in order to just get there.  My appointment is at noon, but I have to leave the house at like 9am.  Why?  Because I have to ride the bus.  No, it’s not a 3 hour bus ride, but the nearest bus stop is 5 miles away from my apartment and that walk alone is going to take me close to 2 hours and then the bus ride itself will take almost 45 minutes and then I have to walk another almost half mile from the bus stop to the doctor’s office.  Thankfully, Denise has promised to pick me up on her way home from her acupuncture appointment so I don’t have to ride the bus back home. 

Other bus adventures I will have to tackle soon include Valentine’s Day.  That is the day that I hope to be able to pay AAMCO and retrieve my truck from them.  But, first, I will have to make a bicycle trip (that I am NOT looking forward to as I’m sure it is going to cause me some deal of pain in my back) into Round Rock to secure the payday loan to make the down payment for the truck repairs.  I also have a 3:30 appointment not too far away from AAMCO that I need to make my way to.  It is my plan to get the payday loan taken care of first thing in the morning and then, as soon I get home from that, I want to start my 5 mile walk to the bus stop to make my way to AAMCO first and then to my appointment. 

To make my bicycle easier for me to ride with my back the way it is, I’m going to remove the saddle bags from it.  I have a little drawstring backpack that I can put everything I need into so I won’t have need of the saddle bags to carry anything.  That will probably decrease the weight of the bicycle by at least 20 pounds which should make it more manageable for me to get it down and back up the stairs.

There have been numerous times where my stress level due to what is going on in my life has been so high that I wished I hadn’t quit smoking a little over a year ago.  The smoking would calm my nerves and lessen my anxiety.  I think that’s actually why my anxiety was able to get so high this past year involving Jon-Pierre.  My usual method of calming myself down was gone and I hadn’t replaced it with anything else, so I had no viable way to cope with stress.  But, more often that not, I am completely glad I quit smoking and that I really have no desire to start back up.  It’s mainly just me wishing for a coping mechanism for stress and smoking is the easiest one.

Running would be a great coping mechanism for stress if I was able to do that.  I would absolutely love to be able to run.  However, I cannot.  First off, I always end up breathing wrong.  No matter how much I try to breathe in and out properly and the way I’ve been told to, I always end up breathing very shallow and end up hyperventilating, which wears me out rather quickly.  Second, I had some very bad stress fractures in both of my shins from training in the military.  I ran on old running shoes that needed to be replaced before I ever arrived in boot camp, but I wasn’t a runner so I knew nothing about proper footwear.  Every time I have tried to run since then, I have pain in the areas of the stress fractures.  Maybe it’s all psychological...both things, that is.  Maybe I just imagine that I have pain there from the stress fractures and maybe I just need to get over the fear that my shins will refracture.  Maybe my breathing problem is also psychological and it is actually a panic attack over my fear that I will refracture my stress fractures.  I really think that I just need to get over it.  I think that once I’m all healed from the implant surgery that I need to try running again.  I think that so long as I approach it with the mindset that every problem I’m having with running is purely psychological, that I will be pleasantly surprised.  Maybe I can even work my way up to running a 5K…wouldn’t that be amazing!?!  I certainly think so.

From what everyone says about running, it is amazing.  It has been so long since I ran on a regular basis.  About 14 years.  So I don’t remember from personal experience how running feels and how it makes you feel.  I have an experience from a little over a year ago when I attempted to jog a little bit and I was able to go about 200-300 feet before the hyperventilation occurred and forced me to stop and walk.  From that little bit of jogging, I got a runner’s high.  It was an amazing thing to feel.  I felt so happy and elated.  I felt like I had no problems.  I felt like all the stress that had been on my shoulders had been washed away and there were only feathers in its place.  There was no heaviness left to me.  I floated.  I’m hoping that I can discount my running anxieties and become a runner.  I would love nothing more than to be able to run 3 times a week.  That would be absolutely amazing to me.  To run and breathe in fresh air.  Oh, it gives me a little high just thinking about it!

It shouldn’t be too hard for me to overcome my running anxieties; at least I don’t think so.  I just need to put my mind to it and stick with it.  I’ll get myself nice, new running shoes.  I’ll start off easy with only jogging a short distance from point A to point B.  Each week, I can gradually increase that distance.  I will only be jogging at first.  I want to be able to jog the whole distance I walk with the dog right now (which is about 3 miles) before I start upping the pace to running.  I am excited just thinking about this prospect ahead of me.  I am really excited now about getting the implant surgery, more so than I already was.  I am really excited at the possibility of starting a running routine.

If I am able to do this and it works out for me, then I wouldn’t have to do any cardio on the elliptical machine, I could just focus on lifting weights to tone up.  And just imagine how great and sleek my body would look with all the runner’s muscles!  I just want to squeal with excitement thinking about how great my body is going to look and feel.  And the impact that it will have on the rest of my well-being?  Wow.  That’s all I can say when I think of what will happen.

I really want to do this.  I want to take the necessary steps to increase my physical activity and to increase my general well-being.  I want to be healthy all around and I think that starting a running regimen is one key to doing that.  I want to be as active in my life as I can.  I want to run, I want to bicycle, I want to kayak, I want to lift weights.  I want to be well rounded in my activities.

On Display

Whenever I go out in public, I worry that people aren’t just staring at me, but are actually gawking at me and whispering to each other how gross I look.  Really, the proper response to this line of thought is laughter because, really, how realistic is that?  It’s not.  And besides, there are plenty of people that look far, far worse than I do.  There are plenty of people that are fatter than me and lumpier than me and people don’t pay them any attention.  The most attention I pay those people is to be thankful that I didn’t allow myself to get that big or to remind myself that I'm lucky that I'm not that big.  I don’t gawk at them or whisper about them.   

I feel as though I'm on display and I can’t stand it.  I am constantly checking myself out whenever I pass by especially reflective windows and mirrors to see how I look.  I want to make sure I don’t look gross or overly fat or that my clothes aren’t too tight or tacky.  I check out my shadow too, which is totally unreliable as far as how I appear.  It is a distorted silhouette of myself that is even more distorted by ground features such as grass and trees and stairs and whatnot.  I know that my shadow will never be an accurate representation of my body, but yet I still look to it as though it were.

Things are becoming a little complicated for me.  The repair to my truck has taken a turn for the worse.  I am unable to change out the wheel hub on my own due to special tools that have to be used and, really, only a mechanic has those tools lying around.  Besides, even if I had access to them, I probably wouldn’t have clue one as to how to use them.  When I discovered the fact that I am unable to do the replacement myself I became hysterical and started crying, like a girl, of course.  I let that happen for about half an hour, frantically texting a friend and posting on Facebook that I needed help finding a mechanic that takes payments.  Before anyone could even respond to my begging, I decided that I would call AAMCO.  I have done business with them in the past and really like them.  I know that they have a towing service that they will simply charge the towing fees to your mechanic bill.  When I asked Jose if they took payments, he said “Of course!”  They are lifesavers, seriously. 

This morning, Jose called me and let me know what’s going on with the truck.  It’s going to cost $465 to replace the hub.  Plus, there are some somewhat major things that need to be done to the suspension system.  At least all four shocks, but preferably the struts too, need to be replaced and that is going to run about $1300.  Then, there’s all the ball joints on the front end that need to be replaced and that is going to run $600-something.  Aaargh!  Of course, the more repairs they do, the higher my down payment for the payment plan will be and, also of course, I cannot pick up the truck from them until I have paid the down payment.  I would like for ALL this work to be done, but I really need the truck back on the 14^th.  I do not want to overextend Denise’s kindness toward me when it comes to riding to and from work, even though I have promised her gas money.

Having this work done on my truck is possibly going to delay my move to Oregon.  This sucks, but it needs to be done.  I cannot afford for my truck to break down once everything is said and done with moving and there’s no turning back.  So, if they are able to work with me a little bit on the down payment for the work, then I can get all the work done and have a healthy and dependable vehicle.

I have said that the truck is worth enough to me that if the engine went out on it that I would spend the $2500, or whatever it is, to put a refurbished engine with warranty into the truck.  So if it’s worth enough to me that I would do that, why wouldn’t I take care of the suspension system that is so critical to my truck’s overall well-being?  I can get a payday loan to pay the down payment for the payment plan if I need to.  I’d really rather not, but these repairs need to happen.

I was really hoping to have my truck back by this coming Monday or Tuesday, but that is quite obviously not going to happen because I have to wait until I have the money for the down payment and that won’t be until payday on the 14^th.  Getting these repairs done on my truck means I have to give up some luxuries like getting acrylic nails done.  Sure, it’s only $40 a month (that’s with tip), but it’s still a splurge item and I need to cut back on them.  I will have to reanalyze my finances to see if I'll even still be able to pull off buying a kayak, but I will try.  And as far as buying another bicycle goes, I need to focus on craigslist.com and pawn shops.  I won’t be buying a new bicycle.  Also, those options would work for buying a kayak too, so I'll check those out before I try to buy a brand new one and see what I can find.

I can do this; I just have to be tough about it and not allow my anxiety to control me.

I just talked to Denise.  She offered to pick me up after my very important doctor’s appointment on Tuesday so I don’t have to ride the bus and walk my way back home.  She’s an awesome friend, that’s all I can say, really.  Truly awesome.  I'm not sure that my $30 for gas money will be able to convey just how much what she is doing for me means to me.  Sure, she understands that if the situations were reversed that I would do the exact same thing for her, but I still feel like I owe her an enormous debt for this.  Also, I let her know that I probably won’t be getting my truck back until the 14^th and she was all like “no problem!  I'll just assume you’ll be riding to work with me for that time.”  Wow!  I am truly blessed.  Truly.

I am afraid, however, that the repairs on my truck have indeed set back my moving to Oregon by at least 3 more months.  I do not say this lightly.  I say it with regret, even though I know it is the right thing to do.  If I do not replace these parts now, then they will give out on me later down the road at the most inopportune time when I definitely do not have the money to fix them.  It is not ruining my moving, it is merely delaying my moving.  I will have to crunch some numbers to find out exactly how much I will be delayed, but it looks like summer time of 2012 is now my projected moving time frame.  Which, of course, because of the heat, means that Vlad and his kitty siren will be in the cab of the moving truck with me and the dog.  It will simply be too hot for him to ride in the Explorer on the trailer.

My plans for the superbowl are coming together nicely.  My friend Doug is planning on picking me up at about 3 so that we can stop at the store and get what we need to make our game food.  Then, we’ll have enough time to actually put those foods together before game time.  I'm going to ask him tomorrow if, on our way back to drop me off after the game if we can stop at the store again so I can do some really quick grocery shopping so that I have food for the week.  I'm sure he’ll be okay with that.  I know exactly what I need and it won’t take me long to grab it and check out.   Plus, he’s a really nice guy and wouldn’t knowingly leave me stuck without groceries.

I'm really looking forward to getting to hang out with him and his roommate to watch the game.  I like both teams that are playing this year, the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.  I was so happy when it wasn’t the Patriots playing like everybody said it would be.  I can’t stand the Patriots; they’ve won too many superbowls, I think.  So, I will be happy with whoever wins.

A friend of mine told me that she doesn’t watch the superbowl because all it does was promote human trafficking.  I almost laughed out loud when she said this, but I could see that she was serious, so I just said “What?”  She then explained and told me to google “superbowl and human trafficking” to see for myself.  I did and, you know what, it is very real.  It’s kind of scary, really.  I hate to say it, but I don’t see the superbowl as the only large event that draws this kind of “business” to it.  Human trafficking would still happen if the superbowl were done away with.