Sunday, August 21, 2011

I'm going to develop a permanent tick

Things were looking up: I figured out a relatively inexpensive trip to take for my impending doom of a birthday (I'm essentially flat broke), my job isn't killing me, my health hasn't totally failed, and each day is another day further from the breakup which makes each day a lovely little gift that heals wounds, albeit SLOOOOOOWLY. I finally take a deep breath, re-assess, figure I have a grasp on things and all is going to be okay and find out today that my younger sister who is a single mother is near financial ruin and needs money support. My parents don't have money. At all. So...now I have to figure out how to support her as best I can and also somehow my parents eventually when the day comes? Sooner than later maybe if my dad loses his job? I know have have clean running water to drink and shoes to walk in so I have no right to complain and this is first world stuff but I have to vent: DEAR SWEET JEBUS UNIVERSE WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LET UP ALREADY?

I'm going to curl into a ball now and sob for awhile, then pick myself up, and deal with this one day at a time. I can't do anything else. This when I'm going to be taking yet another pay cut very soon.

/twitch

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Someday I will be able to afford to take at least a month off every summer to just enjoy.

Friday, July 29, 2011

44 days until three oh

tick tick tick.

Any fun suggestions for something to do? Something that doesn't require a passport, mine expired and I won't have enough time to renew...

Sunday, July 24, 2011

THE FRIVOLOUS SHOPPING MUST STOP, but first I ramble about internet innoventions

The internets keeps moving forward without me and I'm having none of it. I'm sitting on my porch (this blog) with a cup of tea under a caftan and yelling at you damn kids with your facebooks and widgets and RSS feeders to get off my lawn! I noticed today that there is some kind of "Followers" feature in blogger. I don't know what this is or how it works and I do not care to find out. I did look at my "Followers" and they all appear to be spam bots so I promptly blocked them, or rather, blocked about three then got tired and said F it. I drink decaf tea damnit.

Sometimes I wonder if I should join facebook and then I laugh and laugh and laugh. No one I know says that it actually enhances their social life. I don't need a place where I have to visit walls and tend to imaginary sheep or fight off mobsters and real ex boyfriends, that sounds absolutely awful. Still, I would like more ways to connect with people, but I like REAL connections, where I know the person actually exists and isn't just commenting on my most recent wall update or whatever so I'll go over to their wall and we'll all just have a big self congratulatory cluster F over how great we are. Ya. No.

As a matter of fact, Teresa Strasser, a writer I love whose blog you should visit and book you should read, has this great article on Social Networking which sums up what I've suspected all along.

The purpose of today's post was to tell you that I'VE LOST MY DAMN MIND and since the destruction of my worldy possessions this last March and starting a new more professional job I have gone on a shopping spree of epic proportions that I certainly cannot afford. There is no question that I needed new clothes, I just didn't need a purple satin wrap dress. Or the 7 dresses I just ordered online. One new pair of cute shoes would have sufficed, not THIRTEEN. I. Have. Lost. My. Damn. Mind. I need help. This has to stop. Having been poor my entire twenties I literally went years without buying clothes. I was well into my professional career, out of college, still squeezing into stuff I got when I was 16 at clothestime (shirts/blazers fit. Pants not so much. I had three total pair of professional pants that I found for under ten bucks each at Old Navy that I had to ask my Mom to buy for me because I can't stress this enough: NO MONEY. NONE. Name brand Top Ramen was a luxury).

Now, having a tiny bit of income, which actually should be going into an IRA and not into my closet, I can't control my new found obsessive shopping. I don't know if it is in response to having lived a famine for so many years or partially a salve for the breakup wound or what, but I have piles of new clothes and MORE COMING. I can't stop it. It's really bad. And the icing on the cake is that I found myself genuinely contemplating spending FIFTY DOLLARS on NAIL POLISH. Nail Polish. You heard me. And we aren't talking eighty bottles here either, we're talking like five bottles of name brand polish. My car isn't paid off. I owe 25K in student loans. I don't have a retirement account. I don't own my own home, I have no assets, my monthly medical expenses match my rent and I'm not Daddy Warbucks rolling in the dough and yet my brain says nail polish is a good idea. AUGH. HELP ME PEOPLE, you're my only hope.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Oh for fuck's sake

AUGH

AUGH

AUGH

Being as discrete as I can be, since this is news I cannot share because it would endanger someone, how can I vent about a phenominally stupid and shitty thing someone did that they chose to take me into confidance about? And how many times am I going to have to spin around on the grass outside my balcony before the knowledge of said transgression is permanently erased from my mind? SWEET JEBUS.

I'm thisclose to getting into my car and just driving. Who needs work, right? I can just...I don't know.

AUGH

AUGH

AUGH

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Catch up so we can move forward

To recap so we can move forward, in the last 5 months:

-I broke up with my boyfriend. Am still pretty messed up but the first three months I was devastated. I promptly lost 17 pounds but was so weak my gastroenterologist made me take anti-naseau meds, which were needed, (I have a dangerous intestinal issue that could kill me at any time, starvation isn't good for it), but I then gained back 25 pounds. BECAUSE LIFE IS A BITCH. If I'm gonna go through something this shitty AT LEAST let me BE SKINNY GODDAMNIT. ahem.

-I was a bridesmaid in a good friend's wedding a month after the breakup. I hardly remember it but I know it was lovely and I held my shit together. It was a gay wedding, and let me tell you, if you want a GORGEOUS wedding you better get two gay guys to throw it for you, no bridezilla has anything on them.

-There was a fire in the unit above my condo and my place was 80% destroyed by smoke, water, and broken glass. It sucked, yes, but it was a blessing: It got me moved out of that place and into someplace nicer. I didn't lose anything irreplaceable (photos and yearbooks, grandparent's stuff, somehow all saved). What stuff I could salvage I just let dry out. My new decorating theme is "shipwreck chic" since the stuff that I kept is warped, cracked, and stained with water damage. I replaced things like linens and clothes, I did not replace furniture. I have enough to get by and with a healthy weekly dose of febreeze I can almost pretend my water stained couch doesn't reek like acrid smoke. It's an adventure! I'm Robinson Crusoe! I don't care.

-My car was backed into. Twice. The wedding, the fire, and the co-pay for repairing my car (TWICE) wiped out my fun money account and dipped into my long term savings. Happy I had the money, but ouch.

-I have a new job. A super seeeeeeecret government job. Am not joking. My job is classified now. It is sorta with the same folks I worked for before but higher up and in a new location though I am still associated with my old co-workers (I'm just higher up than them? Muah ah ahhhhhh!). My office has no windows which is very sad. The pay raise was pathetic. But I have a job, which is nice, especially in this economy.

-My liver is F'd up. Bad. And I DON'T KNOW WHY. If you read here you know I'm a fan of the booze but not on a daily basis, and certainly not bottles of it at a time. My bitch doctor assumed I was an alcoholic until I did a ton of research and discovered that the specific elevated enzymes from my labs are not the same as those of an alcoholic, and my doctor was promptly fired. My liver issue has something to do with insulin resistance and not metabolizing fat very well which makes weight loss damn near impossible and YET I have to lose twenty pounds to help with the problem. I broke my ankle last October but the asses that read the x-ray thought it was fine so I hobbled on it for six months until I demanded an MRI. So: Ankle is bad, body won't let go of weight, yet I HAVE to lose weight. This isn't so much angering as it is sigh inducing. I'm figuring it out, but damn, this medical crap is OLD.


-A friend left her abusive husband and had no place to go. She lived with me for 5 weeks. She was a nut case. Ever been around someone who is in shock and denial but in denial about being in said denial? WOW. I mean, here I am just barely getting my footing back and then hurricane crazy pants came in. It did not fail to amuse me that while I was still waking up crying over the breakup (yes, three months in, at least now at five months that fun has stopped) I now had a full grown adult to care for. The universe had/has certainly seen to it that I have plenty of distractions to keep me busy while working through this breakup.

-I took a ten day training trip that was across the ENTIRE COUNTY, 3000 miles, to do some intensive work training. It was worth the distance but flying is low on my list of fun things to do. Like, under being drilled for a cavity without anesthesia low.

-A dear friend in Seattle had to have open heart surgery and now one of her boys is very sick. I may have my crap going on but it certainly isn't trauma of this nature.

-I jump into the next decade in September. I was supposed to mark said occasion with the now ex-boyfriend on a trip to Europe. I don't know what I'm going to do now. I know I need to be out of here and I don't need the reminder of the breakup looming over me, so I'm figuring stuff out. I would still go to Europe but see above re: wiped out savings and you understand why that is not a possibility at this time.

That is all I can remember, for now. It's been a loooooooooong five months and yet it hardly seems to have passed. I have this to say about the breakup, and then I will try to never discuss it again: I've been through some hard stuff in my life (the last 5 months don't count, I'm referring to losing friends to cancer, losing my fertility, my mentally ill mother nearly destroyed me and my siblings, so so many person tragedies and pains, it is truly a blessing to be standing) and yet this stupid breakup absolutely knocked me straight down unlike anything ever before. My therapist has been great and she pointed out that other people too, the most recent one that comes to mind is Shania Twain (for God's sake she was raised bitter poor with no food/heat, dad beat her and her siblings, then her parents died and she had to raise her siblings at a very young age, and yet she recently said that the most devastating thing that she had to suffer was the breakup of her marriage), have found breakups/divorce to be the most oddly devastating and crippling thing they've ever gone through. I really loved this guy. He didn't love me. I will be okay. It will take several more months. People have suffered love lost and betrayal since the dawn of time, I'm not alone in this and I won't be the last. It still hurts though, daily. But I will waste no more space here on that, because it doesn't merit that.

Onward and Upward friends.

Onward and Upward.

Lord, help me, onward and upward.

And should John Krazinsky of the office suddenly become single please send him my way.

Amen.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

A Cause I Can Totally Get Behind (because the Universe is a bitch to me in first world ways too)

Since I can't actively seem to help my own karma as it spirals dangerously into realms of crapness (I have a way with words, don't I? Says the person who has google Non-Alcoholic Liver Disease obsessively and can no longer form coherant sentences) I'm sending the universe a big F U by helping out this guy.

If you click the link you'll be able to find the original article on Cracked, one of my all time favorite websites (and where I now get 99% of all my knowledge aside from WebMD and Dr. Google) and the explanation that follows. If you can spare it send him a dollar. I worry that the burden of having to respond to approximately 2000 people (some will donate more than a dollar, I did) will probably push him over the edge but I can't think that far into the future. Not when my liver has decided to crap out on me for mysterious unknown metabolic reasons, the only minor help for which at this point is to lose weight and OF COURSE, ironically, said issue makes it damn near impossible to lose weight (which explains the 20 lbs that have refused to drop off my fat ass in the last four to six years). That's like saying the only cure for my sunburn is to stand in the sun, or something. I told you, I'm amazing with words.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Return of the great white dope

My life has not gone entirely the way I wanted it to. If I were totally frank I would say that it has actually, utterly, and totally gone entirely a way I would not have wanted it to go.

I have never been invited to a big beautiful sweeping mansion for a twilight backyard soiree.

I have never made the acquaintance with eccentric, rich, brilliant rich type folk to have expansive hedge mazes on their property guarded by large beautiful gargoyles that we frolic through at night, breathless, carrying champagne, giggling and scaring each other.

I have never been to New Zealand.

I have never lounged on a yacht.

I have never found myself in the position of being offered a fabulous job that fits all my qualifications beautifully, one where I can ride my bike to work, preferably have a window overlooking some sort of water, and be wry and smart all day, surrounded by good hardworking people that are fun to share a drink with after work (drinking, at this point, is a whole 'nother issue as it has recently been discovered that my liver is very, very bad. I did not imagine that my body would be so wholly feeble and incompetent for the task of living even as it was constantly breaking down as a child and I certainly didn't believe that entire systems, starting with the reproductive followed by the digestive and now the liver would simply give up entirely).

I imagined my life would take many courses, I imagined it would all turn out fine, somehow. But I never set my sites high. There were really only two very specific things I wanted, more than anything, for my life to have: My very own apartment with white walls and a good view, and friends. Oh god how I have wanted, struggled for, momentarily done well with, then lost, friends. The only good thing about getting older, which is not to be underestimated, is having a modicum of control over your life, or at least the illusion thereof. You couldn't pay me to even remember the unbelievable hell that was my early 20s ever again. You couldn't bribe me to experience my mid 20s ever again. And now, closing dangerously in on 30, still struggling with the exact same things as ever, all you would get from me are bittersweet tears over my late 20s.

My life has failed me, in ways small and in ways momentous, over and over and over and over and over again. I am not, I hope, bitter. I am forever hopeful. The girl in me who went to elementary school alone everyday but still somehow believed that friends would come along (and some did, for the first truly wonderful bit of my life in 4th grade and 4th grade only -- it would be six long years before I got to experience friendship and belonging again) still exists. She still always believes that things are going to get better. Even now, she stubbornly insists that even though we are up against a ledge age wise in a city we hate trapped in a job that is killing us and the love of our life just betrayed us and our health is worse than ever, that right around the corner good things await. Friends are there. Fun is there. Just hold on.

I don't know whether she is the sweetly hopeful proof of why humanity continues to exist or quite simply completely, totally, utterly deluded and insane. The best predictor of the future is the past and my past? Not great. But I'm hopeful. Like the end of Sweet Charity, I suppose I'm stuck living hopefully ever after, even though it never works out, and right now, right now: I am quite alone.

Which is, as always, okay.

And this is what I can give you because the last five months have produced nothing but misery and sharing what I wrote with you would make cerebral fuilds leak out your ear. If you had lived the last five months with me it is likely you would not have cerebral fluids left. It has been...hilariously horrible.

And I have missed you all.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

2011: augh

The breakup is still relentlessly kicking my ass.

Luckily the universe decided to help me by distracting me to the point of insanity:

I was a maid of honor in an ex boyfriend's wedding (not this ex, a different one. who is gay).

My apartment was destroyed by smoke and water after the unit above mine had a fire. 6 units in all were destroyed.

A lady backed into my car.

Work is insane.

I'm surviving but heartbreak is an unbelievable bitch. I have a handle on it during the day, mostly, but the dreams I have to contend with leave me emotionally drained and crying by morning. I'd like to take a non-crying shower sometime soon in my new empty apartment but that is one milestone I have to keep hoping for as time passes.

I'm around, I'm heartbroken, I'm okay.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Wow, this is gonna hurt.

When the shock finally lets me feel it.

Broke up with my boyfriend of three years last night. Over the phone. Because he is a non-commital son of a bitch who has been jerking me around for months and lied about his intentions. That won't make the heartbreak hurt any less, when it does hurt, because right now I'm sorta in a totally dazed shock.

yay life.