Long time, no write

So, it’s now November. I was ‘released’ from employment back in July; I’ve been on disability ever since. I spend my days bored as shit, feeling like a useless nothing that is contributing nothing to the world. My doctor thinks I won’t be released from disability until Christmas.

So why haven’t I been writing? This blog used to be my almost daily release, my catalyst. I guess I have been so incredibly BLAH that I cant’ bring myself to say I have nothing worthwhile to say. I keep trying to convince myself I’m ready to go back to work, and then I spend 30 minutes standing in a department store while my husband shops for shirts and I feel like I’m going to die. I’m doing the treadmill, the recumbant bike… and I still feel like shit.

I haven’t seen or spoken to my daughter since March. Occasionally I can get her to reply to an email, but usually with attitude and we just aren’t getting anywhere. At this point it looks like there is no way she is graduating High School, and it doesn’t seem like her or her dad think it’s even an issue. It makes me crazy that trying to care and reach and help her seems to only give her ammunition against me. I can’t imagine what she thinks she is going to do with her life.

My marriage is doing great. I don’t know why, but I feel incredibly guilty about that. I feel like my husband should be so angry at me at this point for still being so helpless, but he’s been better than anyone else at understanding what I don’t even understand. I apply for jobs I know I’m not ready for, and I’m crushed when nothing works out. Sometimes I feel like there is no future for me now. That’s a really fucking depressing feeling.

So why haven’t I been writing? I don’t know. I guess that’s just how dead I feel inside. It really sucks.

Well this has been a roaring success. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow. Or the next day. Or maybe I won’t. I guess we’ll see.

…And she’s back again

Hey out there. I know I’ve been gone for a long time again. This time there’s just been so much bad stuff and I’ve been SO depressed I couldn’t muster the energy to even put it all down in words.

So, in a nutshell:

My boss wants me out. She has been riding me since last October (when without a single warning removed me from salary to hourly over attendance I had never been told was a problem) and had been making a bi-weekly to monthly habit of keeping a little list of all the things I do wrong, saving them up until she has a long enough list to pull me into a little ‘You’re a loser’ meeting. Things like not completing a task that was not in my job description that I had asked for training on repeatedly and was not given… Or not updating her on another project where I was able to prove to her she had received the email and lost it. Everytime, I took the criticisms and swore I’d do better, kept a good attitude and told myself I wasn’t being targeted.

Finally, mostly from the stress, anxiety and a grueling schedule that was hard on me physically, one moning BOOM! I threw my back out big time. My husband called my boss and let her know we were going to the ER. I called her later that day under medication and told her I needed to be off my back a certain time. I guess I mixed up the days, because she apparently expected me back a day before I came back. All smiles, so concerned about my health, she says ‘meet with me this afternoon so I can make sure you’re alright’…

We sit down and she goes over FMLA stuff with me, so nice and concerned, wants me to take time off and get better. Like I didn’t see the blank folder in her hand, like I didn’t know what was inside it. I’m so tired of these games.  SO she finishes off with whipping out a written warning and hitting me with that before telling me to go home.

My doctor insisted I go on full time FMLA. I didn’t want to do that, but EVERYBODY insisted they HAD to hold my specific position for me if I was back within 12 weeks. People, DON”T BELIEVE IT. The very day I handed in my FMLA paperwork from the doctor my specific position was posted. I have had nerve block shots. An epidural. A discography, which TOTALLY sucked. Meanwhile, I am trapped in my house unable to do anything, and my boss hires a SECOND person for my specific position. Evidently I was lazy and unproductive but as soon as I went on leave it was determined TWO people were required to handle the workload… I just love it.

Tell me kids, do you think she’s waiting with baited breath for my return? She’s already cleared out my cubicle to make way for one of the people taking my job, she and the rest of “my pals” packed up all my personal belongings and shoved them under a desk.

So here I sit, waiting for the end of the month, when I will undergo spinal fusion surgery to save a job I know I’ve already lost. And how did I lose it? I did what everyone told me to do, and tried to be nice about it. Yay me.

God, I loved my job. I thought the people I worked with liked me. Not one person in my department has even sent me an email since I left. Apparently it was my evil plan to get hurt to make their day suck. Shame on me.

The pain pills don’t work. None of the therapies so far have worked. I am scared to death of this surgery, we are talking about my SPINE here.

Meanwhile my dear husband juggles work and home, manages everything on one salary right now because there have been repeated ‘mishaps’ with my disability money and I haven’t seen a dime of that yet, and it’s been almost seven weeks. I don’t know how he has managed the stress, and me being a basket case on top of it all. I am climbing the walls here – I don’t go anywhere, I don’t see anyone. Certainly no one cares to see me. And I am losing it.

Wow… big nutshell, huh? I’m exhausted. I need to go lie down, this computer chair sucks. It’s Percocet time.

Yay me.

My Pirate Name

My pirate name is:

Iron Grace Bonney

A pirate’s life isn’t easy; it takes a tough person. That’s okay with you, though, since you a tough person. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate’s life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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Little Jagged Hole

The day dawns cold but bright

Chug chug, off to work

Never enough time, can’t even see my desk

Always worried my time is coming

He leaves today

Another round-the-world trip

Another two weeks at home with the boys

Our boys, our silly goofy boys

And that little, nagging, jagged hole

She left.

It looks much smaller than it is

But I keep telling my self it’s hardly there

That little place

Where she ripped herself out of my life,

Out of my family.

That little place that’s empty now

We all pretend not to see it

But it’s always there

And it’s not always a bad thing

But it’s always there.

I tell her goodnight every night

Even though I know she isn’t listening.

At least she knows I think of her

And I still see

That little, nagging, jagged hole.

Thoughts and Changes

Leaning against the back porch

Cool breeze on my cheek from the new fallen snow

Two silly dogs crunching at the ice on the deck

Enjoying the early evening calm

Once again asking the constant question,

Did I make the right decision?

I see my furniture back in it’s old places

I wake to the sounds and smells of family

This is my home, my family, my husband.

I am home.

Definitely, yes.

Fly in the ointment

So, things are going pretty well with the marriage counseling and the hubby and I are feeling pretty good about the progress we are making. I think we both see improvements in each other and our ability to listen and respect each other, and that’s been a huge improvement. We are definitely headed in the right direction.

Here’s the problem: my daughter is absolutely against the whole thing. She won’t even entertain the idea that we might work things out, she has said she won’t move back in to the house if that’s what I decide to do, and when I suggested she accompany us for some counseling, the next thing I know I got an angry phone call from her father about what I was supposedly “forcing” her to do against her will.

This kid has spent the last six months overinflating every negative encounter she has ever had with my husband and convinced herself he is Satan in human form, which he certainly is not. In fact, overall he has not been nearly as disciplinary with her as I have been. Now, everyone else in the family is willing to put the past behind us and work on the tools we need to move forward in a more positive way, except her. She absolutely will not let go of every tiny little injustice she feels she’s been dealt, from as far back as second grade (she is going on seventeen). And her dad is just fueling the fire. He uses terms like ‘outcast’ to describe her and it makes me absolutely nuts. She has never been treated like anything but a complete and total member of my family, often to her disliking.

So what am I supposed to do? If I let her move in with her dad full time, I can guarantee her diploma and any purposeful future will go right down the drain. But I have spent sixteen years trying to love this disrespectful, hateful little user, and when is it time for ME to get a break? I have tried, and tried, and tried… and her affection and respect for me only go as far as what she’s getting from me. The minute ‘NO’ comes in to the picture, I’m a rotten bad guy all over again. People, I am so exhausted.  She has worn my heart right out.

My husband feels hurt, and is hurting for me right now that she would turn away from me and her brothers simply to avoid the effort of making a new start with him. She can’t face the fact that she has been truly awful to him over the years, and our entire family has spent a great deal of time walking on eggshells as a result of her moods and tempers.

So what do I do? How can I move forward? I have told her I will never choose between her and my husband, but it seems she HAS made a choice… how do I deal with that?

GRRRRR!!

 

Grrr.

That’s my commentary on the day; Grr.

Grr for the snow that has returned to my finally melted world

Grr for the executive busting my chops over his own oversight

Grr for the cold and that groundhog’s stupid shadow

Grr.

Grr for the auditor who wrote up really stupid findings

Grr for the FDA visit that has to be just around the corner

Grr for my ever shrinking bank account

GRR.

Grr for the laundry

And Grr for the dishes

And Grr for the freezing conditions in my apartment

Grr for the projects I should have finished by now but haven’t

Grr for people who don’t listen

Grr for kids who won’t help out

GRRRRR for the traffic

Grr, Grr, Grr!!!

Self-Affirmation

Long nights of half-sleep

Anxiety over the nothing

Plodding through the tight stomach days

Living for the sunshine on my face

Slowly shrugging off the nonproductive habits

Learning to be okay with it all

Looking at life from a fair perspective

Taking stock of where I am and how I got myself here

Assessing what’s really important

Letting myself be human, even in my own eyes

Taking responsibility

Setting a better example for my children

Trying to put my life back together

Reminding myself what I can be capable of

Allowing myself to hope

Setting my sights on what I deserve

Communicating in positive ways

Developing better tools to relate

I will be okay.

I will be OKAY.

Not Normal… but at least Unchanged

So a few days ago the Doctor’s Assistant left me a voicemail, regarding the results of my recent brain MRI. He stated that ‘The results from my most recent MRI scans indicate my condition is unchanged’.

I love how they do that.

See, they can’t tell me the results are NORMAL. Ever since a neurosurgeon went in there and removed a golf-ball-sized mass from the center of my brain stem, my condition has not been ‘normal’. Ever since a month before that when the mass filled with blood and then ruptured, causing a hemmorhagic stroke, my condition has not been ‘normal’. They can’t use the word NORMAL when referring to my brain. I just get a kick out of it. They can’t do it. So they have to use the word UNCHANGED, to tell me that there is no cause for worry and that it still looks as good as it’s gonna get.

I’m glad things are unchanged; it’s pretty much what I expected. I figure I’ve gone this long without any recurrence, I’d be surprised to see problems of a neurological nature start popping up now. But hey, I guess you never know.

Some people are so obsessed with being normal. I think most people who know me could testify I am not one of them. I am hardly concerned with the latest fashion or the hottest accessories; give me some comfy jeans and pirate T-shirts and I’m good to go.  In most areas of my life, I’m fine with new things, new experiences.

This is one arena, however, in which I am happy to remain ‘unchanged’.

Bloggers, Riddle Me This…

Okay…  here is a strange question. If you were to change the word “GAS” to a plural word, how would you spell it?

I know… I said it was a weird question. I am reviewing a document for revision in which someone (who happens to be higher-ranking than me) has repeatedly put the word ‘gasses’ where I personally think ‘gases’ is more correct. Spell check accepts both of them, but in research I can find many headlines with the word ‘gases’ and not a single one with the double ‘s’ spelling.

So what would you do? Make a big deal out of correcting the whole document when it’s one outside eyes will rarely, if ever, want to see? Or just let it go, since as I said before, it IS a spelling that seems to be acceptable?

Hmmm.

Why does spelling make me itch like this? I cannot stand misspelled words. They stand out to me like a sore thumb, and once I see one I can’t see anything else. They make me crazy. My husband would write little notes to himself, and although he is a highly intelligent man, spelling just isn’t his thing. I would find these notes and be compulsed to error-correct them, I couldn’t help myself – it used to drive him nuts.

I, on the other hand, was that weird kid who thought Spelling Bee day was the biggest event of the school year. I took second place in 5^th grade… that was my big year. Woo hoo, buddy. Good times. I also took First Place in the school Reflections contest that year… I remember my teacher cried. She was frustrated that only two of her students submitted entries that year. I guess me winning first place kinda made up for it…

…but I digress. What do you think – Gases, or Gasses?