Employed, NaNoWriMo, and Tears of Joy

A few days ago something really wonderful happened. I cried, just because the situation was so unbelievably touching. I didn't post it, because even though I had tears of joy streaming from my eyes, I was simultaneously having a panic attack about a job interview I had scheduled. The interview is over; they hired me on the spot! I'm thrilled. On to the more important, more touching, unbelievably sweet things. The thing that's made me not stop smiling since it happened.

Small bit of backstory: my sisters have been fighting a lot lately. They actually got into a fist fight a few days ago that Lauren told me about.

The other night I received the following chain of text messages (conveniently connected into one large text block for you to read here, and all txt-speak converted into their normal-word counterparts.)

"Hi Erin, It's Mindi. I now have custory of the girls. I took them so they didn't have to be split up and I could help them. I need your help as well. They are gighting all the time. You need to explain to them I love them and only want to do  what's best, but they need to learn how it's done here. Tell them "don't fight so much." I am a good mom and I will take care of them. Erin, I'm so sorry you all went through that you did, but I'm on their side. I do and always will love you all. I just need a little cooperation. I can't have my other kids suffer and take a back burner. We all have to work as one family. Please help that understand that I wont turn my back. I just need us all to work together. Love you, xoxo, Mindi"

I nearly cried at the words "My other kids." She didn't say "my kids" she said "other." It sort of touched something in me. She wasn't putting my sisters above them, but she wasn't ranking hers above my sisters either. That she loved them so much, cared, and really wanted to make things work for all of them..... I can't even really explain what that means to me. I've known the family for a long time. Mindi's daughter has been Lauren's best friend for years, and I used to babysit all three of Mindi's kid. I've always known Mindi was a sweet person, loving, kind, and loyal, but this sort of melted my heart.

"Erin I love them and I will always do anything I can. I just need you to tell them to work with me, not against me. They got in a fight today, so I took their phones away, including Kenzi's. And now I look like the bad guy, but I'm just treating them the way I would treat my own kids. I hope they get it, that I'm a mom that cares and wont put up with BS. Please help me keep them. I'm afraid if they are moved, we weill have lost them. I really love them and only want the best for them, even though it's hard. I'm thinking of putting Manda in voice lessons and get Lauren on Bball."

I can't remember if I ever mentioned it, but Manda LOVES music, is teaching herself to play guitar and loves to sing. Last year, Lauren started playing basketball and loved that too. That Mindi knew that, remembered, cared enough to think about signing them up, made me want to cry. She's such a sweet person.  I told her as much, and mentioned how much they would love those things.

"Thank you for your help. I had to take their phones away today because they were so difficult, but that's what needs to be done sometimes. But they will have them back tomorrow morning."

I talked to my sisters, tried to help as best I could. Let them know that Mindi loves them. Reminded them that I love them.

And as happy as I am, I can't help but have a small part of me be so angry that my mother never stepped up to do for the girls what Mindi is doing. But that angry bit is small. I can't wipe the smile off my face, and I'm crying again.
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On a totally unrelated note: I've signed up for NaNoWriMo, and will be tracking my progress (including pre-planning) over at Making Waves, my writing blog.

Leap of Faith?

It's a long story, but if you don't want to read it, there's a tl;dr version on the bottom. Just scroll.

I started cheerleading when I was 8, for a local rec-football team. I loved it, but it was only a few months a year. Outside of cheer season, I'd constantly be talking about it, practicing old cheers, and trying to talk the neighbor kids into practicing stunting with me (which looking back on, I'm glad they refused, since they had no idea what they were doing and we were all kids with no supervision)

When I was 11, an All-Star team (competitive team, for those who don't know anthing about cheerleading) opened up nearby, and I joined it. It was 3 practices a week, year round. It became my everything (second only to my love of writing) We were good. Not great, but good. We had two teams, a junior and a senior team. I was on the Junior team. Our seniors won first place at their first competition. The first competition any of our teams had. They continued doing just as well at all the regional competitions, but always came in last at Nationals. That was okay, we figured. That's still better than a lot of other teams in the country. Our junior team wasn't as great, but we did well enough. We made it to Nationals, finally, in our third year, and everything fell apart. One girl called us just before our flight and said she changed her mind about coming. Another girl, our best tumbler, broke her wrist in the pool at the hotel. A third girl (and her mother) got food poisoning and couldn't compete because she couldn't stop puking. We had to re-arrange our routine, we all messed up at least once, and we came in last. That's fine. Our performance was really terrible.

None of us knew, at the time, that it would be our last competition. A month or so later, our coach sat us all down at the end of practice. She had lost the lease on our gym. She was having a hard time finding us a new practice space, because we needed it three times a week. She asked what we wanted to do. We wanted to stay together, even if that meant only one practice a week. We'd just practice more at home.

We tried. Our coach couldn't handle it.  Our team dissolved. There were no other All-Star teams in the area. I was starting high school, but my school didn't have a team. I had no other options. Cheerleading was over for me.

It's 6 years later, and I still miss the sport more than anything. I'm in college now, but there's no way I can cheer. For one, my school doesn't have cheerleaders, and more importantly, I'm out of practice, and out of shape. I doubt I can even do a decent cartwheel right now.

But since I'm in college, I just moved. And the town I'm in has an All-Star gym. I'm tempted to send them an email, saying..... I don't even know what. I can't cheer, I'm not certified to coach, I've never choreographed anything half-way decent, and I can't even answer phones for them, because talking on the phone sends me into a crazy anxiety attack in which I'm likely to throw up or pass out. And their team is internationally ranked. Mine was only barely nationally anything, and I was one of the least-skillful girls on the team. But I want, maybe need, to get back into my sport. I'd happily vacuum their spring floors (THEY HAVE 2! TWO COMPETITION SIZED SPRING FLOORS! HOW FREAKING AWESOME IS THAT!? ) for free. But how do I say that without seeming like a desperate wanna-be, or a total creeper?

But on the other hand, it would break my heart if they turned me away. I hurt enough for Cheerleading. I don't want to hurt more.

Irrelevant, but  we've set the date for our wedding. May 31, 2012.

Battalion Bread

I have a fun story for you.

Today, the schedules at work got messed up, and no one was there until 5am. That wouldn't be a problem in any other grocery store deparment, but I work in the bake shop. We have to have several different kinds of bread and rolls (and bagels and pastries, etc) on the shelves by 6:30am; that was bad.

Then our oven, which had been on the fritz recently, finally kicked the bucket. No matter what we set the temperature at, it wouldn't get warmer than 100 degrees. We had one oven, and an hour and a half. Needless to say, things weren't out on time.

At around 7, we were still putting things in the oven.

A man came up to the counter, after spending several minutes staring at the shelf.

"Do you have battalion bread?" he asked. "I can't find any."

"What?" I thought for sure I had mis-heard him.

"Battalion bread," he repeated. I stared at him for a moment, when suddenly the metaphorical light bulb over his head turned on. "Oh! I mean Italian bread!" I looked around, and we had some in the oven, but none that was already done. I appologized and told him to come back in half an hour.

He never came back, but I giggled all day.

"

My mother and I don't get along

I hate living here. I really hate it. My mom's drinking again, but now only at nights before bed. she's mostly sober during the day. She's only been drunk for about an hour a night, the past three or four days. Then she goes to sleep. I am angry.

But it turns out, I don't like her much, even sober. I'm really starting to learn the difference between loving someone and liking them. I'd do anything for my mother. But I don't like her at all. Even sober she's SO negative. Nothing is ever good, happy, or even mildly pleasant. She can and does complain about everything. A part of me, the part I like to ignore because I'm not a shrink, wonders if this negativity is why she drinks. If it drives me this crazy just being around her, I can't imagine how crazy I would go if I were in her head. You probably wouldn't know it from reading this blog, but I'm usually a very positive person, and I surround myself with people who are even more positive than I am. I don't like negativity. I want to move out.

She brings out the worst in me. I keep catching myself doing and thinking stupid, childish things. And not he good fun kind of childish. More like, the back-talking but not quite logical type of childish. The type of childish that makes kids throw a temper tantrum when things aren't fair. That's not me..... or at least, I don't want it to be. But I keep doing it. And so does she. We're playing off each others bad behavior. I don't know how to stop it, except to bite my tongue. But I hate that too. It's not comfortable.

BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT (and yes, I did just say that out loud and draw the word out) There are other things going on right now which are a lot better. Which I'm trying to focus on. I just had to get that other bit off my chest. I've been writing posts, but not posting, for more than a week now.

I regressed, again. WORK! My job. It doesn't pay much, but it turns out, I actually like it a lot. I work in the bakery of a grocery store. I love bread, cookies, and pastries (all things we bake ourselves) and even though there's no discount, I do get to know in advance what will be on the shelves and I get to know exactly how fresh it is. My co-workers, though all significantly more experienced than I am (all of them have been working at least 5 years in various grocery store bakeries. Some of them have transferred between stores every now and then.) but all of them are really nice to me. It's fine, it's good. I cut myself on a bread knife the other day, but it's healing nicely. (cuts are no big deal. I'm just glad its healing finally. it's right on the joint so I expected it to take a lot longer)

And Jeffreys applied for a few good jobs. Hopefully he'll get one soon and then I can start looking for apartments and find us a nice pretty one. It'll be sad though, to leave my job. I'm looking into what I'd need to do to transfer to another store. At least that would give me some sort of job security.

Good News!

Good news! Lots of it!

1) My mother has had walking pneumonia for almost two months. I know, that doesn't sound good, right? But it is, because when she started to get sicker, a couple days ago, she stopped drinking. She was in such bad shape she could hardly breath, and I think it scared her almost as much as it scared me. But she hasn't drank at all since then (She has one unopened bottle. I don't know what to do with it yet. She's staying home  sick today, or else I'd throw it out or something, but I did get a chance to check and see that it was still unopened. I confronted her the other day and that did nothing, but more about that later.) And she's on antibiotics now, so she'll be better fine. She's miserable right now (understandably so. She's still coughing her lungs out) but hopefully in a few days she'll be good again, and hopefully a few alcohol free days will make her think a little more clearly and keep her from drinking more.

2) I got a job! It took me three years worth of effort to get something as simple as a grocery store position, but I'm relieved. I have a job. I will be getting a pay check. WOOOO!

3) I saw Lauren! Only for a few minutes, but tomorrow (after I get my work schedule) I'm going to make plans to see her next week. I also saw my uncle and cousin for a few seconds, which was nice. Lauren is also coming over on sunday, from about 9-2ish.

4) I'm going to Sturgis tomorrow, taking the bus in (catching up with my old bus driver) and then seeing friends and teachers and what not. This weekend is graduation, and I'm going. (although I'm starting to panic. work schedules are from sun-sat, and graduation is sunday (at two. works out perfect!) What if they make me work? AHHHH. maybe they'll have scheduled me for an early shift or something. that would be fine. or a late one. If not, I'm going ot miss graduation and that would be really sad.)

Anyways, I'm feeling significantly better today than I was a few days ago. Thank you all.