Open and Honest

In repairing my mental health I made a promise to myself and a friend (and maybe posted it here on my blog? I can't remember) that I would post at least once a week. I had to hold myself accountable. I had to do this, if I ever wanted to make myself feel pleasant again. I had to, if I wanted to get rid of everything I hate about myself.

So can we add to the list of things of things I hate, "not keeping my promises"?

I've always, always, prided myself on being a very honest and open person. But I'm coming to realize that I've been lying. Not just to people, but to myself. Open is not something that I'm good at. It never has been. Sure, I put on a good face. I talk CONSTANTLY. The endless babble that flows from my mouth and fingertips annoys the piss out of some people. No one cares that I just painted my nails. I do that two or three or more times a week. It's not news; it's not special.

Everyone knows about my family drama, and that's "personal" so of course I'm open, of course I'm honest. Except that I'm not.

I don't feel like I'm very honest. I don't feel like I'm very open. I share actions, but I don't share feelings unless they are the obvious sort of feelings. My last post, I really got into my feelings, and it scared me away from the blog for... how long? A few weeks, anyways.

And a lot has happened in these past few weeks:
1) My mother had a custody hearing about getting Lauren back. Originally I wanted to write a whole post about this. I am so torn, so broken up over this. Lauren doesn't know what she wants, and I just want her to be wherever she's most happy. I think things are perfect just the way they are: Lauren with her nice, big, family, and Amanda home with my mom (provided my mother continues to stay sober). Lauren visits my mom on the weekends. But Lauren sometimes feels out of place with Mindi and her family, and also feels obligated to go back to my mother. She misses Amanda when they aren't together. But then, at other times, she's so happy where she is. She's happier there than she ever was living with my mother, and feels obligated to stay with Mindi, because she was taken in and loved just as much as any of the other kids. Right now, nothing has been decided. I don't trust my mother, probably never will, but I trust my sisters enough that if the situation ever got dangerous, they would say something, so I'm okay with them living with my mom. They go back to court in June.

2) I bought an antique sewing machine. Remember how I said (or did I say?) that I had almost entirely stopped writing? Well sewing has been filling the creative void for me. I'm very slow, and end up having to rip things apart constantly. I've been working on this one quilt for ever and have to keep taking out stitches, but I'm enjoying it, and I have completed a few things at least. Anyway, the other day I was out with my future Mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law at an antique shop. I saw this pretty old table, and then realized it was a sewing machine cabinet, and then realized that it still had the old machine. When I found out that it was only $20, I decided I had to have it. The table alone is worth twice that, and if the machine works (it definitively needs to be cleaned and oiled first. Cobwebs everywhere and it squeaked like a seal when I turned the wheel. BUT all the parts moved so that's a good sign) it's worth a small fortune. I'll keep you posted on how that goes. I had to leave it at my MILs house, because Jeffrey made me promise to stop bringing home stray furniture. He's right. I do have a problem. I can't walk away from a pretty piece of furniture unless I know it's in a good home.

3)  I'm in disgustingly bad shape. I knew I was in bad shape. I've been in bad shape for years now. And Jeffrey hasn't been in the best shape either, so we decided to go for a jog. I didn't make it out of the parking lot before I felt like dying. I suffered from a headache for the rest of the evening. It was horrible and embarassing, but mostly, scary. I can't even run an 1/8th of a mile. I can't even jog that far slowly. I decided I wasn't ready for jogging yet. I need to get in shape, but I can't make myself feel so sick again. I'm too busy for that. So I went for a walk last night instead. It wasn't more than 3/4 of a mile. I was panting by the time I got there. WALKING. Not even walking briskly, but just walking like a normal person walks. Even at my previous worst, I could do that. I used to be able to walk endlessly without feeling anything. And now I cant. I'm scared. I don't want to be that sickly. I need to get better.

4) My coworkers have changed! I have worked at Wendy's for over two years now. And it's greasy and gross, and the smell of french fries has permanently permeated my skin. It doesn't wash off. Customers are rude asshats almost just as often as they are kind. It's surprisingly hard work, in a physical sense, and I don't particularly enjoy any of it. It doesn't pay anything and we end up with a new manager, on average, every 3 months. Half of them are jerks. My favorite manager was transferred about a month ago to a new store. We were really upset. She loved our store, and we loved her. Yesterday, I found out that she had been transferred again, BACK TO US! The new manager that had replaced her (whose name I never even learned. I never worked a single shift with her) hated our store so much that she threatened to quit if they didn't transfer her. So now we have V back and it's super awesome. I don't really have friends outside work, and she was the closest thing I had to a best friend in the area. I was heartbroken when she was transferred. All of us were. On night shift, my shift, we are a group of best friends. There are only two people I don't like.  And on the same day that I found out V was coming back, I found out that M (one of the two I don't like. She's a bossy rude bitch, and she likes to push and shove people. I'm clumsy enough on my own. Please don't knock me into the fryer.) had put in her two weeks notice. All in all, awesome.

5) And most importantly, and the reason I started this post, Jeffrey and I had a pretty serious argument/discussion. It started about grammar (just because I don't write much any more doesn't mean I don't still care)  but that was more just the surface stuff. What it came down to was that whole "open and honest" thing that I kept trying to pretend when it wasn't really the case. I don't want to go into particulars here, because it's fairly personal (I'm not opposed to sharing if anyone is curious, but I don't like to air my dirty laundry online so publicly). It was crappy, and I still feel awful about some of the things I was thinking and feeling, but eventually I shared them, and he had no idea that I had been thinking and feeling such miserable things for so long. There are not a lot of things I hate more than arguing with Jeffrey, but, as crappy as it was, I think it was probably a good thing. It cleared the air in a lot of ways.

And already, I'm starting to see that I'm getting better. My first blog post after the break* I mentioned an argument I had with Jeffrey, in which I said nasty and hurtful things. I didn't do that this time. I wasn't even tempted to. I didn't even yell. We just talked angrily. And it was good. It was awful, but it was good. We both have some things to work on, but we are working on those things.

I'm going to be more open and honest on here too. Because I want to be. Because I need to be. Because I want to be someone that I like, again.

______________________________________
* What do I call that break? The post I made on Feb. 12 feels like the first post on a brand new blog, but I've chosen to keep this on my old blog (because back story is nice, right?) It's like a different timeline though. I feel like it needs a name.

Budget

This morning I decided to re-vamp our budget. I made a nice pretty one back when we were living with Grandma, sometime around Decemeber, but at the time, it was all hypothetical. We weren't paying our own bills for much of anything. And then the program that I used crashed (wtf quattro pro? why are you broken? and why am I the only person on the internet to ever have this problem? I can't find it documented anywhere!) and so that budget rotted away.

But I'm an anxious one, and I've watched debt ruin both of my parents at different points of my life, so I really needed to figure things out. I opened up excel, which I have very limited experience with, and taught myself how to use it. I did add in a couple hypotheticals - car insurance for me - but I used a high estimate that I'd gotten - and after I did all the adding and subtracting we are making about $120 a month. I was very excited, until I came to a horrible realization.
 
We have three bills that we don't pay. My father pays my cell phone bill, and his parents pay for his car insurance and his health insurance. Once I added numbers for those in, we end up losing money. But actually, we could probably afford to pay our parents to pay our bills. Their bills are cheaper to pay than ours would be. My father pays an extra $10 a month for my cell phone, but if I had my own plan it would be at least $50/month. Same thing with Jeffrey's health and car insurances. We're borderline able to afford it all, through other people.

But for one moment in time, I was so proud of us. Not a lot of young couples in college get to say that they are doing it all on their own and saving money. For a brief moment I thought we were. Now, I'm determined to make it happen. I was already planning on getting a second job, but then I thought "eh, we're doing alright with me only working one." Now, I'm definitely going to (try at least to) get a second job for the rest of the summer.


Right now, even though we have student loans, we have enough money in savings to pay them back, and not totally drain our accounts. The only reason we haven't done it yet is because we may need that money to pay for me to go to school this upcoming year. My uncle still says he'll take care of it, but that didn't happen last semester (thus, the loans being taken out in the first place). Right now, if I don't pay back my loans immediately, I WILL still be able to afford to go back to school. And because of the type of loan they are, I don't acquire any interest on them while I'm in school. I'd still really like to pay them back, before they start acquiring interest, but right now, no rush.

Blessed

Back in January and February a homeless man used to come into Wendy's every day, and stay for hours reading his bible, or chatting with us and the other customers. He was a great man. Always laughing, making jokes, telling people he would pray for them. He never begged, even though he was quite open about his homelessness. Often, he refused people's offers to buy him something, explaining that if they did, would they please leave contact information so that he could pay them back someday.

One day, he came in, and headed straight for his table, where he sat, reading his bible. After an hour or two, he hadn't bought anything, which was unusual for him, but not unheard of. But that night, he looked sad, downtrodden. He didn't talk to me when I went by cleaning the tables, or when I went on break.

While on my break, I tried to talk to him, but he didn't seem to want to talk. After a while, I asked if he was hungry. His response was "you don't have to buy me anything."

"That wasn't the question." I rolled my eyes for effect. "Are you hungry?"

A little, but don't worry about it.

"I do worry," I explained. "No one should be hungry if they don't have to be." I got up, and went to buy him something.

"Just one doublestack," he said. It was our cheapest sandwich. Ninety nine cents. One-eleven after tax.

Sometime in early march he stopped being around. I often wondered what happened to him. About two weeks ago he reappeared. He didn't say a word to me or any of my co-workers. He didn't chat with any of the customers, and he didn't hang around and read his bible. He just came, ordered, ate, and left. At first I thought it was just someone who looked like him. A couple days later, he did the same

And then two days ago, he again came in, ordered, sat and ate. He didn't pull out his bible. I went on break and sat down, eating my own food. And by that point I had decided it wasn't him after all. That we now had a new regular who just reminded me of that old one. I mostly ignored him, since he didn't seems as social as he used to. I was texting my sister, and thinking about how I hadn't done dishes before work, when he came over and leaned over my table.

"Remember me?" he asked.

What? It was him after all. "Of course," I said. "Where've you been?"

"I got a job, working as a janitor at a church. I work most evenings so I don't come in anymore. I just wanted to give you this." he held his hand out. In it was one dollar, one dime, and one penny. $1.11.  One double stack. "Here. And thank you for that burger."

I told him to keep his money, and reminded him of what I said that night in February. No one should go hungry. I explain to him that when I buy someone food, I don't expect to get that money back, but I thanked him, anyways. The fact that he remembered and tried to pay me back meant a lot to me. I couldn't explain it to him then, and I can't now. It's a powerful gesture. I wanted to cry, or laugh or thank him more. But he just told me to have a blessed night, and then he left before I really figured out how to react.


I hope you have a wonderful, blessed life. You've certainly touched mine.

I just did the math...

School started. I'm so thrilled.

But I'm also really overwhelmed.

Here's what my week-day schedule looks like.
7:30- wake up, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, pack my bag (school stuff, food, work uniform, etc) ALSO try and get some housework done
8:30- Drive to school.
9:00- Classes then work study (two classes on monday/wednesday/friday and only a little time for w/s. One class on Tues/thurs, and longer w/s)
12:00- Eat lunch, do homework
1:00- Another class, then work study again
3:30- a 20 minute cab ride to work, then change into my uniform in the bathroom.
4:00- regular work starts
11:00- drive home. go directly to bed because I'm EXHAUSTED!


I'm so SO glad to be back in school, and I knew what I was getting myself into going back, so I feel sort of awful wining about it. Can you really whine about how hard something is, if you love it? If you knew it would be hard?

I'm sort of stressed out about my homework. I still haven't figured out how or when I'll do it. I guess I'll have to do it all over the weekends, the week before it's due, because I don't have any other time to do it.

I miss Jeffrey. I see him every day, of course, but only during car rides, really. And I miss him. And I miss being able to call my sisters, but I can't anymore because I work when they're not in school, and they're in school during my free hour.

God that's so sad. "my one free hour." But that's what I signed up for. I usually have one or two days off from regular work in the week. This week I was off Tuesday and I'll be off saturday, which will be a glorious relaxing day, except for the homework. My dad keeps pestering me to go look at this house he found online cheap, but I don't know when he expects me to go down there. I just want to sleep. I'd like to eat some decent food. Mostly, I'm living off of crackers, lunch meat, oranges, and fast-food. I haven't cooked in forever. I miss food. I want chicken. Baked salsa chicken.

And a nap. God, I'm so tired. So happy to be in school, but I wish it were easier. Lately, I've been feeling a little bitter about a couple of the people I've met. Most of the people here are okay, but there are some who just don't get it, and blame me for that. I don't go around telling my story, but sometimes an "I can't do XXXXX, I've got to work" comes up in conversation. I had one girl tell me I should quit my job because school was more important, and she "bet that if I quit my job, my parents would start helping out". Yeah? Really? I mean, yeah, she doesn't know why exactly my parent's aren't helping, but come ON? I wanted to scream at her "MY MOTHERS IN FUCKING REHAB AND NOT SPEAKING TO ME AGAIN, AND MY FATHER IS HOMELESS AND BROKE AND DISABLED AND HAS NO MONEY!"

But of course I didn't. I said "I'm sure they'd help if they could, but they really can't right now. If I quit my job, I'd have to quit school, too."

Oh I don't know whether I mentioned it right now, but the uncle who was supposed to help me pay for school can't after all, so I really am going it on my own. Student loans were my worst nightmare, but I took one out anyways. I needed to. I needed to go to school. I'm going to do my damnedest to make this worth it.

I'm going to continue with my A's, and work my "part time" job (have I mentioned yet that for several weeks I've been getting about 36-38 hour a week? More hours means more money, and I need it desperately.) , and I don't care how tired I get, because I know that it's possible. I've heard of people paying their way through school, getting straight A's, working full time jobs, or several part-timers. Now I'm going to join that crowd.

Oh and I've got so much more to say, but it's time for class.

Actually though, I don't have afternoon work study after class today because the department I work in is closed this afternoon. So I'm glad for that, even though it means less hours, and less money.

First Day of a New Job

Today was my first day working at my new job. My managers are nice, my co-workers are wonderful. The work itself (fast food. Today they had me on the fryer) isn't bad at all. It smells wonderful where I stand. Like hamburgers, because the grill is right near me.

But a little while into my shift, my vision started to go dark and fuzzy. I felt fine, otherwise, so I figured it was just a little spell. No big deal, happens all the time. I stepped away from the fryer, towards the register, thinking that getting away from the heat might help. One of my co-workers saw that I looked a little weak, and offered to walk me out of the kitchens. I said I was fine, but she grabbed my arm, and started leading me away anyways.

Turns out, the front was a good idea. Before we got out of the kitchen, I apparently passed out completely. From my memory, one minute I was walking, the next I was sitting on a bench at a table, and my manager was sitting beside me, on the phone, apparently, calling an ambulance for me.

I felt fine, before I passed out, other than the fact that my vision was almost totally gone. After wards, I felt sort of like I had the flu. I was tired, my limbs felt heavy, the light was too bright, and my body was just generally "uncomfortable." I wasn't really in pain, but just.... I felt off, bad. Something wasn't right. My coworker (the same one who decided to get me out of the kitchen) got me a glass of water, which I downed in an instant. The emergency personnel showed up, took my pulse, blood pressure, and asked me a whole bunch of questions. I decided not to go to the hospital with them. I don't have health insurance. I couldn't afford it. I wanted to go. Knew better.

I realized, while they were asking me questions, that I couldn't remember drinking anything all day, except for my morning coffee. I decided I was dehydrated. I was sent home from work an hour and 40 minutes early.

Horribly embarrassing. Horribly uncomfortable. Horribly stupid.

So much for making a good first impression.

Now, I'm just hoping that my self-diagnosis is right, and that i'm fine tomorrow, after a billion gallons of water.

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.