1.27.2012

It Is Like Being In The Desert With No Water, But More TIRED

I have developed some kind of NyQuil-dependcy-induced/unemployment-linked insomnia where I just lie in bed late at night and stare at the ceiling while I begin several amusing (To me only. Probably.) blog posts that I never actually write. One of them was a bitter diatribe aimed at one Mr. W. Wonka and his misuse of the term "everlasting" as it applies to his "gobstoppers" and linking this to many of the ways movies LIE TO US. Another one was a meandering treatise on the merits of yoga pants over traditional pajama bottoms (I know, shocking).

And this Sunday, while sick, I tossed and turned from midnight until 4:30 AM (and then again from 6:00 AM until 8:00 AM) and the more tired I got, the faster my thoughts moved. Not as in: faster thoughts = more efficient and effective thinking. More like: faster thoughts = more frenetic explanations of topics I ALREADY UNDERSTAND but have seemingly forgotten that NO ONE ELSE IS LISTENING since none of this is OUT LOUD. Or you know, coherent.

I'm not kidding. I got halfway through a stern lecture on the difference between "health insurance" and "state-paid health care" (In case you're wondering, the lecture went something like this: "Health insurance" is a tool to mitigate risk and "state-paid health care" is a benefit to citizens regardless of risk. So, no matter where you land in that particular debate, we should probably at least be using the terms correctly, ET CETERA!), before I realized that NO ONE CARES because I am the only one inside my head and I DON'T CARE I JUST WANT TO SLEEP OH MY WORD SHUT UP!

Anyway, at one point during this fugue episode, I began transcribing my thoughts as if I was going to tweet them. Which? Basically just means you think every thought twice, but the second time, you do it in 140 characters or less. It was FANTASTIC, let me tell you! Erm....

Several days for the last few weeks (the ones before I got sick), I helped Sister-In-Law paint her house. She couldn't pay em in money (no would I want her to), so she paid me in calories. TWO BAGEL TUESDAY, BABY! And I thought, after six to eight hours of manual labor (climbing ladders, lifting buckets, moving furniture, and actually painting), I would be exhausted and go right to sleep. HA! I lay in bed, unwilling to move any muscle and completely worn out. FOR HOURS AND HOURS.

This must END, people.

Okay, you know what? I wrote all of the above paragraphs yesterday evening, hoping if I blogged WHENEVER I had the inspiration, I would actually get some blogging done. I got interrupted and was going to finish it in the morning. Do you know what time "morning" came today?! DO YOU? It was NOON. Which is not morning AT ALL!

Do you know why I woke up at NOON?! Because I did. Not. Fall. Asleep. Until. Five. Fifteen. AM.

FIVE-FIFTEEN! And the only reason I fell asleep then was because I finally took a Benadryl. Was I having an allergic reaction to something? NO I WAS NOT! Unless there is such a thing as ALLERGIC TO SLEEPING. And then yes, I think I might have been.

I repeat: THIS MUST END, PEOPLE.

Any tips? Tricks? Suggestions? Sledge hammers you are willing to lend?

[This post originally shared the same title as a controversial "children's" book (which was actually intended for sleep deprived parents) begging children to please, for the love of God, BE UNCONSCIOUS. But since I don't swear on this blog, even with the vowel asterisked out, you get the lame actual title above. This is one of the rare occasions on which I wish I swore.]

1.26.2012

Yoga Pants Will Be My Downfall (Into Poverty, At Least)

I cannot believe January is almost over. Most days, it feels like I quit my job a few days ago. But, alas. Today marks FOUR MONTHS. And I do not have another one. After all the interviews right after I quit, there has been nothing. To be honest, though? I haven't been looking that hard. I know, shame on me. But every time I look, there is nothing that I am qualified for that will pay enough. I'm not looking to live like Kanye or anything, either. I would just like to be able to pay all my bills each month and buy pizza occasionally. So I get a little bit discouraged. I keep reminding myself to trust that the right job will come along eventually, but I'm kidding myself if I think it's going to jump out of my unopened Internet browser window, through my closed laptop, and smack me in the face saying "WE WANT TO HIRE YOU!"

But that would be awesome, right?

Now that Sister is back at work, my day basically consists of a lot of TV and Sims 3, along with sleeping late, getting the SICKNESS OF DEATH AND PHLEGM, and going to doctor appointments with friends. I'm not kidding: I went to Godson's Mom's ultrasound a few weeks back and today I'm driving into the next town over with another friend to wrangle her children while she talks to the doctor about an out-patient procedure I have no idea about. It's a little strange, right? I'm fully expecting to start getting Evites to colonoscopies and tonsillectomies. Maybe there's a job in this? Professional Child Wrangler and Medical Appointment Support Technologist... Has a nice ring to it. But I bet the pay isn't much and the insurance is crap...

And speaking of insurance: I have been sick for a week. It's that upper-respiratory, post-nasal drippy kind of thing where you think you will drown every time you try to sleep. And the whole time, I'm praying that it will not develop into anything more serious because I HAVE NO MONEY. Okay, I have some money. But I'm trying to use that to eat, not pay for incredibly expensive medical care. And then I get a twinge in my ear and I think, "Don't be an ear infection, please don't be an ear infection. I cannot cure an ear infection with NyQuil and tea. Please don't be an ear infection!" And then my ear stops twinging and says, "PSYCH!" And I want to weep a little. But then I remind myself that would not make my sinuses feel better.

It doesn't help that I have been watching copious amounts of Grey's Anatomy in all of my spare time, which is also copious. So now my ear twinges and I'm like, "Please don't be an ear infection! Or a brain tumor! Please don't be a brain tumor. Although, if Dr. Derek Shepherd were my brain surgeon... No, not even that is worth a brain tumor. Please don't be a brain tumor. Or an ear infection..." When my throat was all swollen last week, I thought cancer or some kind of infectious, auto-immune thing, not "common cold." (I was also watching a lot of House that week...) I should probably just turn off the TV and go get a job. But I really like my yoga pants.

Anyway, at this point, I am almost over it. I'm not achy or exhausted anymore. In fact, yesterday, I did two loads of laundry and most of the dishes. I'm like a SUPERHERO or something, right? (Yeah, no...) But I've still got that feeling of having Silly Putty hanging down the back of my throat that is involved in some kind of Whack-A-Mole challenge with my windpipe. Too much information? Sorry. I get honest when I'm sick.

ANYWAY! I'm not sure why I'm telling you all the gruesome details of my sickness. I know it's not very entertaining. Unless you're the kind of person who enjoys laughing at other people's pain. And then I'm not sure I want to be your friend. Which leaves me in a strange conundrum of my own making, I guess.

But the thing is? I'm going to PJs@TJ's in two weeks. And we are all trying to get to know one another through blogs and twitter before we all arrive. And as soon as I decided to go, I promptly stopped blogging, reading blogs, or checking twitter. Because that's logical. So I'm trying to get back in the pattern so they don't accuse me of FAKING being a blogger just to get invited to TJ's house. I am a blogger, I PROMISE! I just kind of suck at it. Also, anyone reading this who is also going to PJs@TJ's, could you please forget that I just gave way too many details about my bodily functions and just appreciate the fact that I'm blogging? Pretty please? Thanks.

1.04.2012

Enough About Me. How Are YOU?

Have I said lately how much I love my readers? Well, since I haven't been saying much of anything for a while now, I guess not. So here goes, YOU GUYS ROCK! The comments you left me on my last post made me smile all day long. And it made me realize that, although I totally needed to write that post, if only for therapeutic reasons, I was being pretty negative and very self-focused.

SO! To remedy that, today I want to hear about you!

1. How did YOUR year go? You can do the list thing that I did, summarize each month, or even just used a general "It went badly!" or "IT WAS THE BEST YEAR OF MY LIFE!" But I want to know how you feel about 2011, the Year of Ugliness and Pain the Year of "Character Building" Moments.

2. Do you do resolutions?
       a. If so, what are a few of yours? Are you good at keeping them?
       b. If not, do you do something else like set goals or make wishes or just hold on tight and hope for the best/expect the worst?

3. What do you hope for in the next year? Even if you're not a resolutions kind of person, you probably have expectations for the next 360 days (give or take a few, since I can't be bothered to look at today's date or check to see if it's some kind of leap year, which has always seemed like a slightly ridiculous concept to me and by ridiculous, I mean I don;t really get it...), so what are your EXPECTATIONS?

4. What do you already have planned? Are you going on a big trip or expecting a child? Planning a wedding or about to undertake a big move? Aside from the"expectations," what do you ALREADY know about this elusive beast, the Year of 2012?

Basically, I just want to know more about you. And I want to know how everyone else felt about 2011, may it die a fiery death be a jumping off point for many good years to come. Plus, I'd like to be a little bit less self-involved. Because I could medal in navel-gazing if it were an Olympic event. And by navel-gazing, I mean being self-centered. Because I find little pleasure in gazing at my ACTUAL navel, which is surrounded by more flab than I care to admit and has never been a gaze-worthy navel. Wait. What am I typing? I have no idea. This is what happens when I try to blog while tweeting AND texting with two different people. Forget everything after "self-involved," okay? Thanks.

1.02.2012

I Can't Do Resoultions, So I'm Asking Jesus for the Things I Need

I've never been much for New Year's Resolutions. Partly because it was never a THING in our family and in my general social group--we just didn't do it. And partly because I have absolutely NO FOLLOW-THROUGH (see the month of December on this blog). So I don't make resolutions and I don't keep them. So, you know. That makes January 1st really hassle-free. And also kind of a let-down.

This year, however, I was smacked in the face by the appearance of 2012. I mean it. Sister and I were sitting at our front windows watching the neighbors shoot off fireworks (it was nice: we got to see a beautiful show without spending any money or putting on pants). They started at about 10:00 pm and then took a break. We went back to our TV show and a while later, we heard more cracks and pops and rushed to the window to see the next act.

Sister asked, "Is it midnight already?"

I looked at the clock and it was 12:04, so I said, "Happy 2012!"

And she replied, "May it be so much better than 2011!"

We made jokes about having jobs and also having jobs that DIDN'T suck in 2012. And then one of us made the Friends quote about "NO DIVORCES IN 99!"

And then all of the sudden, I wanted to weep. Because 2011 sucked in a big way. It had some really great moments and cannot beat 2010 for the emotional scarring I went through. But 2011 still really bit it. Here are just a few examples:

  • I moved (temporarily) to an island town that I hate, for a job that was both amazingly fulfilling and also soul-sucking.
  • My beautiful niece fell off her changing table and hit the back of her head and neck on the near-by bed frame, leaving all of us in a panic about concussions and brain injuries and her life never being the same again. She recovered well and by her first birthday only a few weeks later, it seemed as if it had never happened (thankyouthankyouthankyou, Jesus!), except for the terrified memories her parents still hold and the chest tightening the rest of us experience when it's mentioned.
  • After years of searching, our church hired a new Youth and Family Pastor and Brother, Sister-In-Law, Sister, and I were incredibly relieved to have the burden of Youth Group on a paid staff person's shoulders and that we could return to being ONLY volunteers. Less than a month after hiring said pastor, our church had to fire him. And even though it was for perfectly legitimate reasons and none of us wanted him to stay, Youth Group got difficult again.
  • Sister got fired for reasons we still do not understand.
  • Brother and Sister-In-Law went to California for a month, so that Brother could have a fourth sinus surgery, since the three others (two within the last four months) had not solved the excruciating headaches and vision changes. This surgery did not entirely solve the problem either, but he's doing okay.
  • My grandmother, my beloved Nana, was admitted to the hospital for internal organ failure and sepsis after a too-long-undiscovered bowel perforation, where she stayed (gravitating between fighting and getting stronger to being completely uncommunicative and needing three of her major body systems controlled by machines and medicines and back again) for over 6 weeks before her body gave up and she went to be with Jesus. 
  • I returned home from my relocation and stayed with the job, even though my pay had been cut significantly without my knowledge and without explanation and even though my coworker sabotaged me at every step and I was bored out of my mind.
  • My best friend asked me if I would be willing to be Godmother to her son and to any future children she and her husband may have (one of which is due to make his or her appearance in August 2012). This is the highest honor anyone has ever given to me and also one of the most humbling things I have ever experienced. I pray that my role of Godmother will only ever be figurative and that my relationship with him remain Auntie Elise. Not because I would hesitate to take him if anything ever happened to her and her husband, but because I pray NOTHING ever happens to her and her husband.
  • I started this blog, which has been a constant source of joy (and an occasional source of guilt...) in my life and is one of the highlights of my year. I joined Twitter soon after and found that my job was more bearable because of all of the strangers willing to stab my boss for me if I ever needed it. 
  • Every job that Sister applied for disappeared without explanation--not that other people got them, but that the jobs/positions CEASED TO EXIST for various strange reasons.
  • Roommate visited Far North for the first (and maybe last? I hope not) time and we had a WONDERFUL ten days together. I constantly miss her, but it is much easier to deal with if I have seen her in the last six months--we've recently passed this threshold and I am planning a visit to her place in February, as long as I can find some money.
  • I bought an AWESOME PURPLE COUCH!
  • Things became more strained at work and I experienced several ethical dilemmas before coming to the conclusion that I needed to quit and distance myself from the emotional devastation and the bad behavior of my boss and coworker that might damage my future career prospects.
  • I realized I have put on ALMOST ALL of the weight I had lost at the end of college, meaning most of my clothing do not fit and I have hit the lowest self-esteem point in years.
  • I developed a belated case of SNOW ANXIETY that I continue to battle with.
  • Biggest Brother struggled to finish his PhD in a series of frustrating circumstances, heaped on top of years of frustrating circumstances. His wife and daughter had to move across the country without him for several weeks because of these frustrating circumstances.
  • Things got worse at work AFTER I quit and the problems followed me into the next month and are things I really wished I could blog about but are secret, so I ended up writing an angry and vague post entitled CAPSLOCKTRAINWRECK.
  • Biggest Brother finished his PhD! Now he and his wife and daughter have settled into their new home across the country and--
  • BABY NUMBER TWO IS ON ITS WAY!
  • Oh, and?
  • SISTER GOT A JOB!!! Today is her first day.
Along with all of these things, here are a few things that were not date specific: I did not meet my future husband; Sister did not meet her future husband; Sister-In-Law did not start a LONG-AWAITED (5-6 years of waiting) pregnancy; I did not buy the car I have been trying to buy for over two years.


As you can see, 2011 had its ups and downs, with a lot of BIG downs. Most of these things were unexpected and many of them were unwelcome. I know this sounds like I'm focusing on all the negative and I AM grateful for all of the blessings I have received over the year, including the ability to quit my job and survive financially for several months. This was just a pretty rough year, not just for me, but for many of the people closest to me. And I can't help but think that any resolution I would have made would not have been accomplished in 2011.

So as 2012 breaks over the horizon, I will not make resolutions. But I will whisper a small prayer:

Lord, please bless my family and keep them safe. Let us not lose anyone this year, but let us add to our number, even many times over. Place good men and women in authority over us, that we may be fulfilled by our daily work and earn enough money to keep us well-fed, well-housed, and able to give to others. Grant us health and fitness, that our bodies would be better able to serve You and bring You glory. Let us not wander away from You, that when difficulty comes, we may lean on You for strength and guidance. We praise you because we are fearfully and wonderfully made and we know that Your plans for us are for good, for hope, and for a future. So, Lord, please let 2012 be a year of hope and goodness.