So in a moment of panicked realization, I decided that I simply wasn't going to stress myself out with the demands of full-time when I knew I couldn't handle it. It wouldn't be fair to the company I'm temping for and it wouldn't be fair to me. So I got in touch and explained I simply realized how much I could realistically commit time-wise and offered up the option of either 3 full-time days (giving me two week days plus the weekend off) OR five, four-hour days. I got home this evening to a message saying that 9am - 1pm Monday - Friday would be perfectly fine with them. Yeah! I was so ready to throw in the towel and expected they'd end up saying nevermind completely, but they agreed and so I feel a hell of a lot better now. *whew* One less stress in my life.
On the other side of the coin, bad news is that we got turned down for our second choice of apartment. Dammit. Now we have no idea what to do. The first place wanted a really high deposit and the second place said that we didn't have enough "current lines of credit" to qualify. Let me get this straight. Because we aren't in debt and because we don't spend more then we have on credit cards, we don't qualify? What kind of shit is that?! So, now we're thinking of trying to go back to the original place afterall, and finding a way to raise the deposit. Oy. Life is never simple.
Today we went to a cool art show and walked around for an hour or so. Nice stuff. I was really surprised at the quality of items they had. After that, we got some food and then had a bunch of errand shopping to do (like get cat food and paper towels, etc.). Just got back in and had a generally nice - if not COLD - day. It only got into the low 50's today and once the sun went down, it got even colder. Even when the sun was up, the wind had a really sharp bite to it. It was in the 70's yesterday, so it was quite a drop in temperature.
Had a really great mail day today. Couple Changeling items I ordered (trying to complete my collection!) came in AND a really nice surprise from Edo as well! I totally wasn't expecting that! She sent a lovely peach soap, a warm vanilla sugar lotion (mm...I love that scent!), a perfume sample, and two lovely angel postcards! Thank you so much! Then, if that wasn't enough, I got my first card of the season, from the lovely Dawna. (Psst: Your card - with a small surprise - went out, er...yesterday. I'm making all my cards so they're going out in batches. More will follow.)
Let's see...oh yeah. Speaking of presents, I was reading Ruthie's journal today and she linked to a cool site which I just emailed to join. It's called I Wish You Wish and it's a collection of blogger's wish lists. Silly but neat. :)
Dammit. My neck's just been hell again lately and I keep getting headaches that ebb and flow and often feel like their just inches away from turning that corner into a full-blown migraine. Ugh. I hate it so much when my neck gets this way because there's just nothing I can do. I sleep and I wake up with it stiffer then it was. I try to crack it and it doesn't, it just makes that awful wet bone sliding noise (anyone who has problems like this with any part of their body which requires manually "popping" it back into place on a regular basis will know exactly what I mean). My Love rubs my neck to loosen it up and it hurts so bad to have him touch it, but I let him really beat it up and it feels better for like ten minutes, but then I go and sit back down and suddenly, there's not a single position I can sit in where I'm comfortable. It's just miserable and I hate it.
Not to mention, I'm all kinds of stressed out over the fact that Monday is looming closer. I just don't want to do this. I don't want to go work for this guy. Logically though, we just need the damned money and there's no "good" reason for me to pass up on it. (Besides needing time to pack and sift through way more stuff then we'll have time for even if I wasn't going to be stuck working all day. That and I know physically and mentally I'm just not ready to work full time for weeks at a time. It's just too damned much of a jump and I can't explain that to anyone who hasn't been on this side of the fence and hasn't gone through the depressive lows and the long, long time without schedule and restriction that a full-time job requires.) I think to myself that I should just grin and bear it, but then I also think that I'm not just willing to do anything for money. If I were, there's a lot of ways I could make quick cash in this world. I think to myself that I need to stick to my gut and that I need to stand up for what I don't feel right about and what I don't feel I can handle. But then I feel so selfish and worthless and like I can't even pull my own weight every now and then. It's just that I don't want to do it like this. I've planned and mentally prepared myself for a long time to get where I'm comfortable and even excited in a small way about my SLOW re-entry into the world. Where I can easily conceive of myself as doing three days a week or half-days or something smaller at a time. I can see it and it's a goal I know I can handle. But eight hour days, five days a week with the added stress of having one car and needing to get my Love to and from work before and after me, plus having to pack and move and deal with all of that on top of it, I just don't think I can do. I feel so stupid for not standing up for myself - why didn't I just tell him I could do it, but only part-time? Why didn't I stress that more? Why didn't I say that I just didn't want to commit to something that was more then I could handle? Now, if I back down or out I'll look the failure. Worse, I'll be the failure. And everyone will see me as failing by my own hand. They'll think I set myself up to fail and that I'm not willing to try. It's not that I'm not willing to try it's just that I have to know my own limitations. I don't need failures right now. Failures will only spiral me back down into a depression again. I need a slow and controlled return to working and schedule and situation. This is forcing someone who's forgotten how to swim (and who sometimes wishes she'd drown) into the deep end of a very cold and terrifying pool. I'm not ready for it and I feel like the walls are closing in and that I'm going to panic and try to breath underwater. The awful little part of me wants me to fail so it can stop trying. But I don't want to give into that part. So I panic that such a jump will just fulfill my worst fears and then I will have ended up giving it what it wants anyway.
I'm not ready for this!
How do you explain to someone this concept? How do you make someone understand the rising taste of overwhelming fear that's choking you? How do you explain it so they don't hate you. So they don't think that it's just an excuse or some desire to be lazy? I WANT to work my way back into the world. I'm just not ready to do it like this. I've mentally prepared myself for something so much smaller that I can't handle facing this mountain head-on. You don't start out swimming across the ocean, you start out swimming across your pool. I need smaller steps right now but I don't know how to do that and still make sure people understand. I don't want him to stop loving me because he thinks I'm not trying or that I want to be this way. I don't want him to resent me because he works and I don't. I don't want him to hate me because he thinks I'm chicken when it's really that I'm trying to re-learn living IN the world instead of watching it from outside for so very long. How do you explain this? How do you make them understand?
I forgot to mention how bad the tabby was yesterday...
This is Mika. She only looks sweet and innocent.
Yesterday we ordered Papa John's for dinner since we were going to watch the movie. Well, as usual, I opted for just an order of the cheese sticks - like a small pizza, only without the sauce (something I like an almost non-existant amount of anyway) and only $4.99. I went to bed early because of my head hurting, but my Love caught her on the counter, her face in the OPEN box of cheesesticks, munching away. You have to understand this is the cat who doesn't like anything. She won't eat cat treats, she doesn't like standard things like milk, ice cream, yogart, etc. that most cats like. I didn't expect her to be like Kush and eat popcorn and Cheez-It's, but I figured no self-respecting cat (esp. not one as BIG as she is) would turn down so many different types of treats. So imagine my Love's surprise to discover that cheese sticks are apparently one of the things she DOES like. We've left leftover peices of chicken and beef on the counters before - didn't touch it. We've offered her a range of different snacks, nibbles and bites - pretty much none of it she wanted. But, she broke the rules, went on the kitchen counter, OPENED the box and all that just for cheese sticks. Crazy, crazy tabby.
Thursday, November 27, 03 - Thanksgiving - So, we went to my Love's cousin's for Thanksgiving dinner. Dammit, they deep fried the turkey again. *bleck* Last year it was the single worse thing I had ever been served as food. Literally burnt on the outside and dripping with oil on the inside. This year was slightly better but still NOT my thing. Ugh. Turkey should taste like TURKEY; it shouldn't be deep fried. It's just wrong to me to mess with the classics - especially something you only get like once or twice a year at most.
Afterwards we stopped by my grandmother's house and had some desert. My mom made an entire pumpkin pie for me to take home and I've been eating it ever since. My aunt almost started in at one point, but I did my best to blantently ignore her comment and continue talking to my mom instead. (She said something to the effect of "God wouldn't let anyone kill the president." *gags*) The day went well enough though; better then I expected.
Friday, November 28, 03 - Hockey Game Rand's company has season tickets for hockey. Rand's favorite team, the St. Louis Blues were in town. He, my Love, my friend Karii and I went for the game. We all LOVE hockey. The seats are $107 a ticket seats and the second row off of the glass. Nice stuff. Well, some seat-hoppers managed to ruin it for us pretty much the entire night.
... pause for my friend Jef to come over and for us to watch "Bruce Almighty" ...
Where was I...? Oh yes, the annoying kids. See, before the game even started, this jerk and his two kids move up into the seats directly in front of us - in the first row. Well, needless to say, the people who actually HAVE those seats show up. They then move up to the third row - directly behind us. The entire first period, we have to listen to the father - VERY loudly give a literal play-by-play of every single thing going on on the ice. Annoying and loud, he's leaning forward as the play moves to the other end, practically yelling in Karii and my ears.
Second period comes around and for a bit, they're not around. When they do show up, they're not quite as assy. They make up for it in third though when one of the boys comes and sits in the extra seat in the front row again. Then the other boy decides to come and squat in the isle. Which of course you can't do and the usher has to come all the way down to make the boy take his seat. The owners of the tickets for the front row leave at the beginning of the third and tell the boys - the two with the dad and two others that just manifested out of nowhere. So, now there are four young boys in the seats directly in front of us. They proceed to spend every moment standing up, sitting down, standing up, sitting down. They also continuously are POUNDING on the glass - at totally inappropriate and annoying times - and KICKING their feet as HARD as they can on the metal flap which covers the seam between the first row and the boards. To the point that Karii, myself, AND some guy next to us have to spend the entire period telling the kids to sit down, stop kicking and oh yeah, sit the fuck down. Amazing parent dad behind us doesn't do anything as the kids are up and down, running around and making life hell for the rest of us.
Well, I grabbed Rand's camera and made sure I'd mock them online for all to see. You just don't act that way and you certainly don't spoil it for the other people in the $107 a ticket seats. These people snuck down there, didn't belong in those seats and caused a disruption the entire game. So a big FUCK YOU to the following:
The group of them
The annoying little ass who couldn't stay seated if his damned life depended on it
Saturday, November 29, 03 - Magic Kingdom A REALLY late start of the day saw us at WDW at about 1:30pm. We didn't think much of it since we go all the time (lovely, lovely passes have more then paid for themselves) and the park was open until 10pm that night. We thought the parking lot was empty - we pulled way in and were right next to the ticket center. Cheerfully we head over to the park itself. Ugh. Turns out that the only reason we got so close was because the entire other side of the lot had been filled. And filled apparently by every single goddamned stroller in the entire state of Florida. Ok, it's a given that you see strollers at WDW. You expect some. But this was SO BAD you literally couldn't walk anywhere without being run over and without having to literally jump out of the way to dodge the so-not-paying-attention parents wheeling their screaming kids around. Normally, the kids are happy and laughing or tuckered out and sleeping. Saturday, everyone was pissed and announcing it at the top of their shrill little lungs. Didn't help that it was COLD that day - the high only reaching somewhere around 55F (extreme when you realize that it was 83F on Thanksgiving not two days before). We got to ride what we wanted to ride, I drank WAY too much hot cocoa to stay warm (though I got an adorable travel mug with Brother Bear on it to use for the cocoa all day), I got two more pins and an adorable Tinkerbell "Sassy" bucket hat (my head was cold) and headed out about 8:30pm, pretty thoroughly frozen and beat.
We got home by about 11pm and I pretty much passed out after a delicously hot shower.
Sunday, November 30, 03 - Haunted Mansion (the movie) - On Sunday, we snagged Rand and went to see The Haunted Mansion. I liked it. It was really a cute movie. Not to deep or scary, but it was really fun and I enjoyed it a lot.
I spent hours trying to figure out what winter/christmas/yule/solstice theme type thingy to make for my forum (as the tradition is that I make a new theme and implement it by December 1st. I just wasn't happy with anything until about 2:30am when I finally put together what I ended up using. Saved it all and went to bed, not wanting to screw up the change over when half-asleep.
Monday, December 1, 03 - Xmas Shopping - Rand took the day off and wanted to do some xmas shopping. I decided to join him. I woke up to no water in the house - apparently there was some kind of leak - so I brushed my teeth with bottled water and skipped the shower since it wasn't an option. We spent all day wandering around the mall and various assorted places, buying a few things for ourselves and Rand accomplishing very little on the actual "buying presents for others" plan. *laughs*I did snag two small items for my Love - tee hee - and a cool book on beads which was only $12 (it's HUGE like a textbook; full color, glossy, etc. for myself. Nice.)
That evening I applied the theme I had made the night before to the forums with success. Everyone likes it and I'm satisfied with what I did. (Now I just need to change my fall theme here to a wintery one!)
Tuesday, December 2, 03 - Pirates of the Caribbean (on dvd) - Rand came by Tuesday after my Love got home from work and we watched Pirates of the Caribbean on dvd. (Yeah, there seems to be a heavy Disney influence this week) That's a great movie. Capt. Jack Sparrow of course makes the movie.
Unfortunately, but the time the movie was over though, I was getting a wickedly bad heading which I could feel just building up to a migraine. I went to bed early because I had to get up this morning at 7am to take my Love into work. Which brings us to....
Today... Wednesday, December 3, 03 7am, wake up. Get dressed. Take Love into work at 8am. Come home. Have issues with my stomach for an annoyingly long time. Don't have time to shower, throw clothes on and rush over to meet with this guy about a job at 10am this morning. Despite him saying it'd be quick, I'm there for like an hour. The guy weirds me out for some reason. The guy is WAY nosey and asks (pries) all kinds of very personal information about me, my Love, our situation with changing apartments (I ended up having to tell him about the whole Twin Lakes thing for example of how much he just pushed for info!), to how I make jewelry and how my Love does art, where we want to go with that, etc. etc. etc. WAY too personal. He's looking for someone to help out, answering the phones and some light general things like printing up letters and such. It's from 8:30am - 4pm, five days a week through at least the end of the year. The extra income will help, but I'm just not happy about the situation for some reason. I don't know if it's the guy or the job, or what, but something is just rubbing me WAY wrong about it. I'm really unsettled and it's more then just not wanting to/not feeling able to handle jumping into a full-time schedule. (After not being on one for so long and having such difficult issues with depression and such the last year, I'm not physically nor mentally ready to be full-time like that, plus I know I'm stressed over packing and such which I won't be here to do this month as planned.) It's more then all that though. And I can't put my finger on it, so there's no real "logical" reason I should be so hesitant. We could really use the money. But I'm just screaming on the inside NOT to do it. I didn't feel this way when I did the temp job for Rand's company last week. I just felt a little scared and nervous about whether or not I'd remember how to act in the office environment. Once I was there a day, even that butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling went away. But this....*cringe* It's something different. And I don't know where to go with it or how to react. I know people are just frustrated at me and thinking I'm just freaking out over it and to say no would be to pass up on a great way to make some extra money, but...it's not just some little over-reaction. I feel so strongly about it but I can't quantify what "it" is exactly that's making me feel this way. I told the guy I'd start on Monday but that was really only because I couldn't bear the thought of going in tomorrow or Friday. It was a stall tactic for me. I just don't know what to do about it at all.
I dropped off the application - in my Love's name only to avoid this looming Twin Lakes issue I need to fight - today for our second choice of apartment. Hopefully, all will go smoothly and we'll be moving in there the first of the year. We had originally wanted to do xmas in a new place, but it just doesn't look like we'll have enough time to make that a possibility.
Jef came over this evening and we watched Bruce Almighty. He bought the dvd and so brought it over. We want to pick it up eventually too. The movie is just hysterically funny. It's Liar, Liar funny and you just laugh out loud through much of it. He just headed out a little while ago and I wanted to finish this up. My Love and I are going to watch the episode of The West Wing we recorded (since we were watching the movie) as soon as I'm done, so I think I'll wrap up here.
Long entry, but I wanted to cover a lot of what's been going on since I've gotten so behind on so many things these last few days.
Watching Pirates of the Caribbean last night on DVD (a GREAT movie by the way) made me realize that I, like pretty much everyone else, just knows the Yo ho yo ho, a pirate's life for me! part of the song. I don't care how many times I've been on the damned ride, I just never for some reason learn the lyrics. So, I looked it up last night and no wonder. It's actually quite a LOT of lyrics and some pretty complex wording. Anyway, this is just for anyone else who wanted to know what the heck those words were. Maybe if I practice, I can sing along with the ENTIRE song next time I'm at WDW! *laughs*
We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot. Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho! We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot. Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
We extort, we pilfer, we filch and sack. Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho! Maraud and embezzle and even hijack. Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me. Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
We kindle and char, inflame and ignite. Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho! We burn up the city, we're really a fright. Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
We're rascals, scoundrels, villans and knaves. Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho! We're devils and black sheep, really bad eggs! Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
We're beggars and blighters and ne'er-do-well cads. Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho! Aye! But we're loved by our mommies and dads! Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me. Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me. Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me. Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
(written 1967 by lyricist Xavier Atencio and composer George Bruns)
Now there's no reason to say you don't know and can't sing along!
Dammit. Still haven't had time for an update. Spent all day Monday with my friend Rand out shopping - well, watching him shop - for xmas.
Today I have a killer headache and a 10am appointment with a guy's son from Rand's company I temped at last week. Which is great and all (he needs help this month) but dammit, 10am means I have to get up at 7am, take my Love into work, then come home and not have enough time to sleep some more before getting ready to meet him. THEN I have a ton of errands to run afterwards (not to mention having to go back and pick my Love up at 5pm) so no time to rest in the afternoon either.
Fucking head just isn't helping things. Certainly not my mood. *sighs*
I have a bunch to catch up on, but no time to do it right now. Thursday was of course, thanksgiving and we hit my Love's cousin's house and my grandmother's house. Friday we went to see hockey (thanks to my friend Rand's company season tix) and it was a fun, violent and annoying game all at the same time. Saturday we went to WDW and froze our butts off (the temp dropped from like 83 Thanksgiving day to a high of like 58 Satuday) and got run over by the millions of strollers that were there. Today we're thinking of going to see The Haunted Mansion movie. More to come though. Right now I need to get up and get dressed (brr! It's another cold day out!) and all that jazz. Full recap tonight.
