Routines Are Routines

I'll get to part two of our big changes in the next post. Today I'm just checking in, I felt like nattering on about nothing in particular. My brain hurts today so I don't think I can pull my thoughts together to post about anything substantial.

It's a routine morning so far. We get up between 5-5:30 every morning, and right now it's already super bright out by then. We have no trees at our new house, not a whisper of shade whatsoever, nothing to block even the slightest sunbeam. I bought black-out shades for the bedroom, but the windows face directly east and the material does little to nothing in the way of keeping the room dark for the mornings. I always make J's breakfast and hot tea while he gets ready for work. He quickly checks emails while he eats, then he's out the door for a long day. I'm alone in the house well before 7am. I usually have decent energy early in the day, then it falters throughout the afternoon until I'm barely functioning by the time J gets home. I'm usually a wilted flower with sadly drooping petals by then. My husband seems to only see me at my worst, when I first drag out of bed, and when I'm trying to hang on in the evenings. I'm thankful he doesn't mind, or at least he's just used to it, and he understands what I go through. He knows that more than likely I had a migraine, or a bout of anxiety that wore me down, or that my hip pain was unbearable that day and I spent a good part of my time on a heating pad. But I do have good moments, I just seem to be alone when they happen. And yes, I can function as an adult every once in a while. 

J had some major dental surgery the other day and for three days he had crippling headaches. He never has headaches, so when he says he has one, they are bad. He tells me he doesn't know how I manage with them, he had to stay in bed and sleep. Me, I'm so used to them I just roll along. I've had migraines since I was a teenager, I don't know what life would be like to NOT have them. My good days seem to be up and down, every other day. This past weekend we had a very nice time doing some work around the house. So Monday I was entirely wiped out and had a migraine that kept me down- I slept in late and was back in bed by 7pm that night- in between I simply sat limply in the living room wishing the clock would speed up and the day would be over sooner. Tuesday I felt good so I spent much of the morning running errands and doing some shopping, in an area an hour away that has all the stores I prefer to shop at. The little town we live in now is so small, my only choice for shopping is that big ugly nasty "W" store, and even that is 20 minutes away. But driving that much completely wore me out so that on Wednesday, I was useless and not moving much. Today on Thursday I'm somewhere in between, slightly recovered but not planning to overdo any one thing.

But this morning is typical for me on my better days. I didn't get great sleep last night, but I never do, and I do have a migraine that is getting worse by the hour. I will have to shut the computer down very soon I know. I took my blood sugar this morning- 190 because we had huge bowls of pasta for dinner last night. But it was in the 300's a few weeks ago, and my doctor said 190 is progress. I had my coffee this morning and watched a few minutes of local news- I never watch the national news, I don't want to start my morning off emotional, angry or sad at the world. Some days I catch up on shows waiting patiently on my DVR. Today I did not, I wanted the quiet. Laundry is going, load number one of two, clothes this morning and towels later on. My 30+ year old bread machine is humming along, creating a beautiful warm fragrant loaf of country white- all I had to do was dump stuff in the bucket and push an idiot proof button. It will be a nice compliment for the homemade cheddar broccoli soup we're having for dinner. I have some leftover red quinoa and feta green beans waiting for my lunch. And I have a can of chickpeas sitting out on the kitchen counter, waiting to be seasoned and roasted in the oven for a nice snack. We have several muddy nests of baby swallows around the house, under the eaves, and even inside I can hear the excited chirping and tweeting when mom and dad swoop in for a feeding. Birds make me happy, maybe happier than most things in my life.

We've had two weeks of 100 degree weather with no rain, and the next two weeks is looking much the same. The cats have all been fed and are sleeping in their various hiding places. I've closed all the shades and curtains in the entire house against the blinding sun and heat, so we're in a comfortable dark cave, staying a relatively cool 73 even with the AC not running. Usually outside it's already 80 when we get up. I've taken all my prescriptions and supplements this morning. I had steel cut oatmeal for breakfast, loaded with things like flax seed and hemp hearts and chia seeds and coconut sugar and bee pollen, because I'm trying to eat healthier. My kitchen counter is covered with lovely green bell peppers that I picked from my container garden on the back patio. I don't know why I chose this veggie to grow- yes it's super easy but I hate bell peppers. J likes them, so I'll go ahead and chop them up, put them in the freezer for a quick grab and go addition to stir fries or tacos. I'm making out my grocery list for tomorrow- J's best friend is coming to town and they're having a guys night out at the casino on Saturday, but we're grilling out on Sunday. J has a dental checkup tomorrow afternoon and said he might come home afterwards instead of going back to work. The pest control guy is coming Monday for an inspection and treatment- I'm not letting him in the house though. They can say all they want that the stuff is "safe" for people and pets, but it's not worth bringing it inside. I don't really like them to spray outside the house either- I'm against any toxins and poisons- but J has overrode me on that decision.

In a bit I will go clean all the litter boxes, and change out the pee pads for my old boy who can't quite make it into the box these days. The garbage can is full, so that needs to go out. The dishwasher is full from yesterday- I didn't manage to get it emptied- and the sink is already full of dirties waiting their turn. I loathe the dishwasher, because of my back troubles it's still the number one chore I have the most problems with. Not just leaning over to put items in and out, but also putting the clean dishes away properly. My pots and pans cabinet is the aftermath of an earthquake, I just throw things in there and close the door quickly against the tumbling and clanking. Once the laundry is done, it may take me several days to put it all away. It goes into the clean basket and into the bedroom but sometimes I just "live" out of the basket instead of getting the clean socks and underwear into the dresser drawers. It's another thing that J is used to and doesn't complain about. It honestly makes no difference to him. I just bought another new journal, which I plan to start in July- I just can't start mid-month for some unknown reason- and I have a book where I will start a gratitude list as well. It's all placed neatly on my desk with new pens, waiting. It's been ages since I wrote in a journal, but I always seem to give it another go every so often, hopeful that this time it will stick. And help.

I'm very close to being unpacked from the move, but miles away from actually having things put away and properly organized. I don't have the same spaces as I did at our last house, and trying to put six square pegs into three round holes gets overwhelming, and I haven't been ready yet to get rid of any of my pegs. The stuff we need to carry on our day to day lives is somewhat set up. But the knickknacks are scattered about, no art is on the walls, and my craft supplies are in such shambles I don't know when I will get back to my pottery or art journal or jewelry making. My Etsy shop has been in vacation mode for so long now. Mostly I'm just struggling to get used to the new house and the new town. We've only been here two months. For the first time ever, we have a pool. J goes swimming every single night after dinner and before he sits on the front porch at dusk, having his nightly bourbon, watching the sunset and listening to the earth drift off to sleep. We are W-A-Y out in the country, it gets quiet here. Me? I sit in the house. I can't stand the heat, the humidity, the bugs. I've been in the pool only twice. When we first moved here it was much cooler, still spring, and I would sit outside with him in the evenings, but I've given that up until the temps drop back down to "not from Hell" numbers. I'm much lazier these days. Although I've almost always had issues with back pain and foot pain, for the first time I'm starting to have serious issues with my knees. Not just pain when I walk or use the stairs. But all the time, a deep throbbing and burning even when I'm simply sitting around, or in bed trying to get comfortable for sleep.

So that is still my life, after all these years on the blog. I've lived in different towns since I started writing on here a decade ago, but basically nothing has really changed for me personally, other than where we live. It makes me sad that I'm still the way I am, and getting worse physically. I understand that what takes me all day long to accomplish undoubtedly takes the average housewife- with kids!!- probably an hour or two. When I was in my 30's, I beat myself up about this all the time. Now that I'm well up into my 50's, I pretty much don't give a shit. That is not me, that will never be me. My "best" might be someone else's bare minimum, but I have stopped worrying about that or wishing for better. This is my life, no one ever comes to see me, I'm not on any clock to finish projects, and my hubby is content. I don't know that I really need/want to punch myself in the face anymore because I didn't get my nightstand cleaned off or I didn't water my plants or I didn't cook dinner from scratch. We both eat, we have clean clothes, the cats are comfortable. I will always take care of the grocery shopping and cooking, the laundry, making the bed, feeding the cats. None of us really wants for anything more. My brain just needs to learn to be happy with that and stop reaching for more, stop expecting myself to "grow" at this stage in my life. Sure I might need to clean the toilets more often, but if my lower back is growling at me that day, or the next, or the next- who cares?? Clean toilets just get grungy again in a few days anyhow.

MISS GEE

The Big Changes: J's Job Part One

So most of our big life changes are always due to J's career. We'd already moved twice before for his job, when we bought our "dream house" in 2016. (I thought we'd already bought what for me was our "dream house" back in 2007 but that only lasted three years because we moved for a promotion.) This new house seemed even more perfect as it was in his hometown, one he'd been gone from for almost 30 years. His parents and other family members still lived there, and they were extremely happy to have us living so close.

When we moved into the house finally in 2017, J had been working on the road and traveling full time for the company for two years. I've already posted a lot about that. He would leave super early Monday mornings- sometimes Sunday nights- and get home late on Fridays or maybe Saturday mornings. Every week. There was no working from home, his job was a physical one that required him to be at different locations all over the US in person. He started the travel in early 2015, about two years after I had "retired" from the same company due to health reasons. It was a wonderful opportunity and a substantial raise, both in salary and bonus and even stock options. I won't rehash all of the early days of it, I spent many posts talking about the issues of suddenly being home alone for days on end, not enjoying or using my free time wisely and productively. So when we moved four hours north into that new little house up on top of a hill, we thought life didn't get much better than that. We'd had a huge estate sale to downsize and sold our old home within a few months, so the transition was uneventful. We now had 8 gorgeously landscaped private acres with a sweeping view, halfway up a hill so steep, sometimes my SUV couldn't get up the driveway. The house was immaculate in every way, inside and out, and they'd just put in an absolutely breathtaking addition of a magnificent sun room. I mean, completely stunning, I can't find enough adjectives to describe it. I couldn't believe they would want to leave it, but they were moving out of state to a mountain cabin for their retirement. Both owners were engineers and the husband's hobby was plants and trees, and he had loaded up every space around the house and yard with everything flowery and colorful. It was all quite dazzling to the eye, but if you've ever read my previous posts, you know that gardening has always been a challenge for me physically. Even though I love the idea of it! The maintenance of these beautiful gardens and flower beds quickly became overwhelming and I couldn't keep up at all. It fell to J of course, and because he had such a very limited time at home, it wasn't maintained the way it needed to be. Even though this was a much smaller house and easier for me to keep clean inside, the weeds unfailingly glared at us both, mocking. It would only get worse over time.

Because of the grueling travel schedule, when J was home he was always exhausted and in an ill mood. He tried to keep up his energy to do and go on the weekends because he knew that I wanted to, after being cooped up alone in the house all week. We would go out to eat, or the movies, estate sales, shopping, on long country drives. He also had to try and keep up with yard work and just normal chores around the house during his few moments at home each week. Plus he was still doing his online shop and making signs in the workshop there. With the move his travels now took even longer- before we had lived near one of the largest airports in the country and he always had direct flights. Now his travels always included one or two connecting flights with layovers, making his departures even earlier, his returns home even later. So he was becoming more and more worn out from it and home even less, and was undeniably burned out from the job. Yes we had crazy amazing magical perks from his travel rewards. Flying first class from coast to coast with his Diamond status, free hotel rooms with his Ambassador Elite level- even a lush room at the Ritz-Carlton overlooking Central Park one NYC visit- and always free luxury rental cars like BMW's and Audi's. Things we would/could never never ever actually "pay" for out of pocket. Dreamy stuff that most of our friends and family could only see on TV shows. We never felt guilty or ashamed for savoring these experiences, these rewards and points were simply growing quietly in the background as he did his job every day, every week. Why shouldn't we use them to enjoy "our" time together?? He was eating- and drinking- at nice restaurants with the company paying. On his extremely rare off times at work he would be able to sometimes do fun things like take in a ballgame or go to a museum in whatever city he was working in. He was accumulating rewards points for us faster than we could use them on our personal trips. Even as I write this, years later, we still have almost 700,000 points for a major hotel chain. Every week he would bring home a gift for me, sometimes just a cute find from a local downtown gift store, sometimes extravagant items from the duty free shops at airports. Other than the fact that he was never home, it was all very glamorous. Until it wasn't. I enjoyed the perks by doing nothing, except trying to survive without my husband for most of the time. It was becoming a steep price and J's health was starting to suffer both physically and mentally. It was nice to think of those rewards and experiences as "freebies" but really, they weren't free at all. J was grinding away his whole entire being for it, I was depressed and lonely while he was earning it.

I understand spouses all over the world have jobs that require them to be gone for long periods of time. Military obviously. Doctors, pilots, power crews, forest firefighters, guys on fishing boats and cargo ships and oil rigs, long haul truck drivers, hell even rock stars or athletes on the road. J was just doing the same, working for the corporate office as a consultant or "fixer" as it were. His job required him to go into divisions across the country that were struggling, to find out why and try to help them, or temporarily fill in for their vacant upper management positions if needed. Mostly he was seen (and treated) as an outsider and interloper, by people who worked for the same company as he did, doing the same jobs he'd done for many years and knew like the back of his hand. It became a heavy burden to be so openly unwanted by colleagues and during those years on the road he made very few friends or lasting contacts. People dreaded him coming, and were happy to see him go. He did grow one or two relationships from that job, but not many. He felt very alone in his work world and mostly unappreciated, when all he wanted to do was help out the company he was so dedicated to. He received little thanks (even from his boss), and a lot of resentment, and it started to weigh him down emotionally. That and being away from home of course, despite staying in comfortable suites (not our messy house) and eating great food (not my terrible cooking). We bought our little house on the hill with all the acres and big front porch, with the idea that we would stay there a long long time, maybe even forever. But J realized that in order to keep it, he had to continue to work on the road full time. Forever. We had a house that we loved, only he wasn't really living there. And I was sitting around alone not enjoying it, just waiting for the weekends, desperate for him to come home when I would basically bombard him with all my to-do lists. Two quick days where he would be so tired he would fall asleep in the living room and sometimes sleep away Saturday afternoons, while I tiptoed around, sad and still lonely even though he was right there in front of me. Keeping that lovely perfect house was destroying our life and our relationship.

2017 was a particularly crazy year, the first year we lived there. Right after we moved into the house, like literally, a promotion came open. The one he/we had always wanted and hoped for and dreamed of, for well over a decade. The one that would take us back to the town where we had originally met and started our life together, where he had lived for almost 18 years and I had lived for 15. The town where we lived when we were married and worked together and bought our first "dream" home. The town where both our best friends still lived, the town we always wanted to return to and live in one day again. Here, finally, was the lifetime opportunity we'd been waiting on for so long. And here we sat thinking about it, in our gorgeous barely lived in new home in another state. We were gutted at this horrendous timing and the decision in front of us- we had always wanted to permanently "go back" there again one day, yet we didn't want to give up this amazing property we were just settling into. We talked about how we could pull it off, with J maybe taking an apartment there and coming home every other weekend or so. And how long would that last? He'd be gone from home even more than with the travel job. Of course at that time one of our cats had major cancer and was on all sorts of pills and chemo that had to be given every day, several times a day (I'll post about that one day). I could in no way travel to stay with him for visits. Financially what would happen, trying to pay for two households? How would he help with necessary chores and yard work at the house, things I couldn't do myself, if he was gone for 2-3 weeks at a time? Hiring someone was just more of our money going out that could be going into our retirement funds, stretching out his remaining working years even longer. How could we balance the scales to even out the dream job versus the dream house, and having them both?? The job would be 250 miles away, not an incredible distance yet it felt completely like foreign shores when we tried to see the logistics of him going back and forth a reasonable amount. We wanted to take the new job. We wanted to keep the new house.

So try as we might to reach for the stars and have everything we ever wanted, we couldn't see how to make this work based on reality and not emotions, so he passed on the opportunity. Even though his boss at the time encouraged him to put in for the promotion, convinced he would absolutely get it. In the meantime, his travel job had him stuck in the NYC area for the entirety of the 2017 calendar year, flying home and back every weekend, dealing with the traffic and shenanigans up there. And worse than that he was mostly having to work nights yet come home and try to exist on a daytime weekend schedule with me, which proved to be nearly impossible. He was utterly miserable, and it was a very soul-crushing assignment with colleagues who actively were working against him because they didn't want him there helping (which meant sometimes making indifferent people do their jobs instead of drifting along pointlessly). Normally his assignments would be a few weeks, then he'd move on to new place for another few weeks, or sometimes return to places for a short second round. If it was an assignment he hated, he knew there was an end in sight very soon, and he could hang on just a little bit longer knowing that he'd be gone shortly. This time NYC was going on and on and on and ON with no end date and he felt hopeless, at a breaking point. So hopeless in fact that in the fall, when we took our always much loved yearly vacation to the coast to our happy place, he was so on edge and unhappy and full of angst that he didn't want to do anything but sit and watch TV and mope. And hate life. He was completely shut down. And in fact we (he) suddenly checked out two days early (!!!) and we came home. Cutting a beloved vacation short? We'd never ever done that before. I was clearly livid, but all he could do was think about how work was making him so low and so despondent that it ruined our time at the beach. When we got home he made it clear to his boss that he'd had enough- not of the job, but of the NYC assignment. It had been over ten months there and he felt that he had to get out of that place. His boss asked him to stay through until the end of the year, and then he promised he would get J into a new assignment.

The new assignments finally came, and rotated so that he wasn't stuck in one place for too long. And his boss was so appreciative- and quite very apologetic- that J got a substantially "extra" extra bonus for putting up with NYC for an entire year. And even though the new assignments weren't as painful as NYC, he was still away from home. And still working an always shifting schedule of days for a few weeks, then nights for a few weeks, then days again. Sometimes he would even be going to different time zones each week, needing his body to adjust at home on the weekends before heading back to it. Always traveling, always being gone, barely having 48 hours at home every week. 48 hours that he pretty much slept through because his body was so so so exhausted and getting worse, his mental gas tank was so dry. His desire to do anything was nonexistent, his ability to find any joy in finally being home was gone. All he could do was try to stay awake and watch the clock tick down until his next flight out, barely going though the motions for the few of our Saturday escapades he could manage to find the energy for. I was left on the sidelines to just basically put up with it, to accept it as our current and likely future life now. He'd passed on the fantasy promotion so we could live in this home, and the irony of us never being together there was not lost. He powered through 2018, flying off here and there, touching down briefly at his home base with time enough for me to do his laundry and get him packed up again. Because our previous home had been paid off when we sold it, this house was now also paid off, as was my car so our financial burdens were a little lighter at this point. We both knew as hard as this job was, it had allowed us to attain that achievement of not having a mortgage- twice. And those years we were gobbling up the perks of the travel rewards, taking extravagant vacations and cruises and casino jaunts, enjoying the most enticing and addictive fringe benefits of the job. It was always amazing but that certainly wasn't enough to make up for our empty real life, and was it really worth it to pretend to live that fabulous high life for a few weeks out of the year? By 2019 he felt so bereft that he was simply an empty shell visiting me, sitting then quickly napping in the recliner in "my" house on the weekends. At least that's how it felt to me. That house was becoming his albatross.

Then came the summer of 2019....and on to Part Two....

MISS GEE

(The incredible front porch view from our 2017 dream house)

Holy Crap I'm Back

Wow I've been wanting to get back on the blog and here I am. My only concern is J finding it, but I'll have to be sneaky. In the past I used a web browser that wasn't our default, so he didn't even know it was there and had no way to get on my secret blog here. I can't find my way back to that now, it's been so many years, and I didn't want to download something new that might alert him. But honestly he almost never gets on this old clunky desktop anymore. He has two laptops, one for work and one for his personal stuff like playing games. So he's only on here when he needs to find an old scanned document that's saved on the hard drive. I on the other hand, still have no laptop and I'm okay with that. Phone yes, but with my old eyes and gnarled fingers, I can't really "write" on it for any length other than a text. I will make sure I go behind myself and clean the history. This isn't a crime documentary, he's not going to run programs to find my deleted browsing history. He's actually been wanting to get me a laptop, but I'm okay with our super old computer. It makes me sit down in the office, at the desk, and concentrate on what I want to say.

I'll keep this post shortish. Since the last time I posted- besides the nightmare of Covid- so many things have changed for us. My last post was in the fall of 2018. In the interim, I lost my cat who was sick with cancer back then, but he made it almost two years and for that we were grateful and a little astonished because he made it longer than the oncologist predicted. And I lost another cat to a swift and incurable cancer, my sweet soul kitty girl who I had 17 years, since she was a teeny kitten. That about destroyed me. We got a new cat, a fat sassy little thing who has her own Instagram page with almost 7000 followers. I only have a scant over 400! Cats are so popular online, and she doesn't even do anything but sit there and look cute. So we're "down" to just three kitties these days. One is our senior kitty who we got in 2006 right after we got married. The other two are younger and each came from the last two cities we lived in.

We've also moved TWO more times. Yes, we had barely settled into our house in 2017, and in 2019 we moved again. And again just last month. The first move in 2019- to a beautiful older house right smack in the mountains that I absolutely loved- was due to J's job. He finally, after almost 5 years of constant travel, decided to come off the road. We could no longer live wherever we wanted, so he had to put in for a real job at an actual office. It was a promotion, so there was some give and take, but we landed in the gorgeous and peaceful river valley of a mountain area, and started to enjoy small town living surrounded by stunning views. When we got there, J said he could see us living there for a very long time. But we thought that about the previous house as well. To this day I still regret that decision, but that's for another post. And barely two years of living in the mountains, the unthinkable happened. After 25 years with the company, J was let go. Yes I know it happened to millions during Covid. This however, wasn't Covid related. J's company never shut down during Covid, he never missed a single day and had a job that of course couldn't be done from home. They weathered Covid very well, and that's for another post. He lost his job for political reasons, and four other of his same-position colleagues from across the region were also let go. And then three more quit. So we had to move again.

 

As for me, my mental health is about the same. The depression comes in waves. This is a bad week so perhaps that's what drew me back to the blog. The anxiety is always there, no matter what. I'm now on meds for all sorts of old people ailments- HIGH blood pressure/sugar and cholesterol. My asthma meds were increased since the area we live in now has extremely bad allergy numbers- I'm now on four different things to help control the symptoms. Physically I'm no better than when I started this blog other than a considerable weight loss. But the weight loss hasn't helped with energy or mood or body pains or my overall health. I still have day-wasting malaise and numbing migraines. I still have a shitty diet of quick grabs like popcorn and crackers, and I definitely don't exercise even though we keep dragging along my treadmill with every move.

I'm currently surrounded by packing boxes still, we've been here about a month now. I kept telling myself I needed another outlet besides daytime TV and putting away craft supplies. So I decided to get back on here. I know I know, no one reads this blog, they never have and I'm still okay with it. I was trying to keep a journal but of course it just turned into a "what I did today" kind of diary and that doesn't help much when I need to vomit out all the bad festering stuff inside of me. So today it was just getting back on and updating the password and such. I may go back and read some of my other posts to see where my head was at. But I'll be back on here to catch up the past 3 1/2 years!

MISS GEE

 

(The beautiful mountain view from our previous house- SO sad to no longer have this.)

I Get Lost Sometimes

I've had so much on my mind lately and I've wanted to blog. But I can't concentrate, and I can't seem to string two sentences together. I can't even write in my daily journal. There are weeks of empty spaces, and it makes me sad and angry at myself to see all the blank lines. I paid good money for that journal, damn it, and I'm pissed at myself that I'm not using it. I've had so much going on and I feel it all building up inside of me. The anxiety has been building the closer we get to the holidays. The depression has been dragging me down. This is the first year EVER that I did not put out one decoration for Fall. I didn't even hang the wreath on the front door. Like everyone else, Fall is my favorite time of the year, and I have boxes and boxes of decorations with pumpkins and sunflowers and leaves and acorns and all the other things you would warm your hearth and home with. I am absolutely 100% not feeling it this year.

We had another nice vacation recently, to Niagara Falls and New England, to see the colors. Frankly, the colors up there were no better than the colors back here at home. We did so much driving that we didn't have time to stop and actually do anything. And it rained almost the whole time. My entire vacation was experienced through the windshield, strapped in the front seat of my car. We had two days at the Falls, but the rest was a mind-numbing road trip that for me was agonizing. The pain of sitting all day, and the car sickness I get sometimes with my claustrophobia. Of course being with J was the main objective for me. He said he had a great time, it was one of his favorite vacations ever. I was thinking, I wouldn't even put it in my top twenty. I guess he got something out of being on the road that I didn't feel. But he had a wonderful time- and we didn't fight except for the few hours we were lost and driving aimlessly in New York City at rush hour. He was fine. I was freaking the hell out. Sometimes being in a car with someone nonstop for eight days would drive you crazy. But we did really well. It gave me hope that maybe we can take another big road trip one day. At least, if we can stop and DO things and GO places, instead of just zooming by and saying oh look there's....okay never mind, we already drove by.

When we got home, it was obvious that one of the cats had injured himself while we were gone. This is the cat who hides from the pet sitters, they can see him wedged behind the washing machine and the wall, so they know he's alive, but that's it. He and our newest cat tend to fight, or rather, the newest cat tends to beat up on him because she's very high energy and likes to play rough. And when that happens, he always gets stressed and anxious and develops a UTI- which leads to peeing all over the house and blood in his urine. This time it was so bad he became anemic. But after three appointments- and $1000- he began to improve. Of course, one of my cats being sick is like a massive bomb going off in my world, triggering an avalanche of anxiety in ME. I got buried in it this time. While he was sick, our other cat with cancer has started feeling worse, and in the middle of all that, one of my dear friends back home died in a tragic accident. I spent many late nights texting with friends about the meaning of life and why did shitty things happen to decent people while scumbags seem to rule the world.

It's been a long few weeks. Next week I'll be with my family for the holiday. J will stay home with the cats. The cat with cancer has to be boarded because he's on three medications a day and chemo. The other cats of course stay at home and our lovely pet sitters check up on them. But, it's stressful for them all when we're gone. Since we just had two back to back long vacations, we decided it would be best for J to take the week off from work and stay home with them. Ditto for Christmas- we had a trip planned but we've cancelled it and instead my dad will be here staying with us.

I loathe Thanksgiving, for real. Ever since I moved away from home, my parents have always rented a cabin in the mountains so the entire family can come together. For J's family, Thanksgiving is the biggest time of the year, so from day one of us dating he put his foot down and said there will be NO compromises on this one thing. He (we) will spend the holiday with his family. Since we've been together, I've seen my family either the few days before Thanksgiving or the few days afterward. But the actual day itself is spent with J's huge family. I know every family has drama, but J's family wears me down. There will be 19 of us this year. Ugh. J's sisters and nieces breeze in at the last minute- they don't help their parents with anything, not even cleaning up afterward- they huddle off in little corners with their whispers and laughs and glasses of wine. I've always felt excluded, even after these 15 years. They're wonderful women, but gatherings at their parents' house seem to bring out the worst in them. My oldest SIL can barely tolerate being around her parents, and she doesn't attempt to hide her feelings.

I will see my family at their cabin the few days before Thanksgiving, but even that has become stressful since my mom died. My sister is resentful that everything has fallen on her- in other words, she has to do all the things my mom did. Well, there are 5 of them and they'll be there 8 days. On the other hand, there's just little ol' me and I'm only popping in for 3 days. Sorry, I have no plans or desire to "take care" of her family and cater to them while I'm there, no matter how much pressure she is putting on me to "help" out. Her texts were dripping with meanness and guilt and sarcasm about what she "needed" and "wanted" both me and my dad to be in charge of. I volunteered to cook for everyone- ONE night. She had the nerve to send me this huge shopping list- which included things like toilet paper and laundry detergent. Uhm I'm sorry, I'm not providing all the supplies for you and your husband and your sons. She said she was busy with work this week and couldn't get to the store. Well, she has an able bodied husband and grown children who can go for her. J said NO way, I shouldn't feel guilty and cave in to her demands. So, I will be glad when the holiday week is freakin over! And I'll be damned if I'm going back to the cabin next year, I will suddenly get the flu or something.

My health is horrendous right now. No matter how much I promise myself that I will DO BETTER, I just never seem to be able to pull it off. It's like a magic trick whose secret continues to elude me. Last week I went to the grocery store and bought a shitload of healthy groceries, yet this week I've lived off popcorn for lunch and pretzels at night. Because it was easy, because I had no energy, because I've been in that I don't give a fuck about myself mindset lately. The weather isn't cooperating either. It's glorious and lovely on the weekends when J is home, and I'm grateful for that. But during the week when I'm floundering, it's been shitty and rainy and gloomy and damp. Every week. Every Monday through Friday for weeks now. It's miserable. It's making me miserable. The one day I did kick myself in the ass enough to go for a walk, it sucked.

But everything in this blog is just one big stupid meaningless excuse as to why I can't get my shit together. There's nothing in this post that millions of other people don't regularly deal with and overcome easily. I know I'm my own biggest obstacle, but how do you get around yourself when you are trying to help yourself?! I try to imagine my depression and anxiety as a road block sign in the middle of my path. If I was out driving and trying to reach my destination, what would I do? Just sit there staring at the sign? Turn around and go back home? I would find an alternate route to get to where I wanted to be. But instead when it comes to my depression, I'm not even on the road. I'm hiding inside because I already know that road block is out there, and there's no point of even trying to go anywhere. I don't know what to do to shake that feeling, to get over that. I don't know how to convince myself that there are a thousand roads out there and just taking the wheel in the first place is step one to a happier and healthier me.

MISS GEE

When Did It Start?

I've tried to go back in my memory and pinpoint exactly when my depression started, enough that I noticed it. It's maddening to me that I keep going back to the year that J and I moved out of state for the first time. I know that's not when it started, but it seems to be the time period that I was at my lowest and was suicidal. But I believe it just happened to be all the circumstances of that year- unemployed, new strange town, strong meds, debilitating pain, sitting alone in a dark house day after day- that caused me to feel as though I was beyond help, with one foot in my own grave.

I have always suffered from anxiety. I can remember being in elementary school and being on medication for constant stomach aches, which the doctor believed was caused by stress. I would walk around with my arms permanently cradling my abdomen, the pain was so severe. We're talking back in the early 70's, and I was maybe in third grade. Little kids didn't get diagnosed with anxiety and depression, but apparently I had a very forward thinking doctor who recognized I was undergoing some kind of stress- enough that it was causing physical symptoms.

I was also always very very shy, quiet, an introvert. I was always scared of everything around me, I never spoke up, I never spoke out. Even as a kid I was extremely controlling and a perfectionist. I recently found the letter I wrote to Santa Claus when I was 8- it was TYPED. Yep, no scrawling baby words for me, it was a letter with fully formed sentences and typed out. And I even erased and corrected my typos. I remember the little red plastic typewriter, my mom got it for me when I was about 5 or 6, even back then I was writing stories for myself- most were fantasy and horror. Luckily she saved them, so I have the dated proof that I was a dorky nerd as a child. I was that kid who was always reading, always drawing, always building with Legos.

I liked being alone, I liked playing alone. Even then most of what I engaged in were solo interests. I didn't care to run around with the neighborhood kids, I had no desire to have tea parties or play dolls with other little girls. Or even my sister. I climbed trees, I collected bugs and rocks, I would sit in the driveway and thumb through comic books, I loved stargazing in the backyard. I was a tomboy, but I was also a loner. And I think I was happy as a loner, I don't remember being sad or upset, I wasn't an outcast against my will- I always chose to hang out by myself. The few times I did want to play with other kids, I never had issues with making friends or getting along with others. I wasn't disliked or bullied. As a teen I had friends, dates on Friday nights, played in the marching band, sang in the choir.

It's fair to say my upbringing was happy and normal, that I was happy and normal. There was no trauma, no abuse, I wasn't molested or beaten. My parents didn't drink or party, we went to church but we weren't obsessive about religion. My dad always worked and my mom always stayed home to take care of the house and family. We always had money, we took vacations, we visited family, had birthday parties. We went to the beach, went to the skating rink, swam in the pool, went out for pizza, played little league sports, had fun at the fair or Disney or the movies. I had my own room by the age of ten, filled with a stereo, TV, nice clothes and shoes, toys, a phone. You name something from childhood that was fun, and I probably did it. I graduated high school, went to college, always worked.  My shyness persisted- I wouldn't even order a pizza on the phone- but I came out of my shell with my first office job. I continued to write, paint, draw, read. I lived at home until I was 24, when I met my first husband. I always had a car, lived in a clean home with good food, my parents were very demonstrative with their love and praise, they never shot us down and always supported whatever we wanted to do. I was never arrested, I never got pregnant. Even as a teen, I never drank alcohol, never experimented with drugs or cigarettes- and still haven't. I lived in my hometown until I was 30.

So I can't put a finger on when my life started to take a darker turn as far as the depression. I know I was unhappy with my first husband. He created a world for me that I wasn't used to. He was a drug addict, he was chronically unemployed, he was verbally and emotionally cruel. For years his actions bordered on being physically abusive, until the end where he finally started to lay hands on me in anger. He was the first and only person in my life to make me feel stupid, lazy, unattractive, not worthy. He tore me down. I gave up all my creative outlets. I gained almost 100 pounds when I was with him. I can remember days when I would go into work with no makeup, not having showered. I was always angry back then, defeated, I felt hate for him, for everything. But I never looked at myself in the mirror and said, "Girl, you're depressed." I never thought that I wanted to give up on my life. I spent 13 miserable years with him, but I never wanted to kill myself, I never wanted to disappear, I never felt as though my life was pointless. I was too busy being pissed off and fighting with him to look too deeply at myself.

Once I got away from him, I guess I expected everything would be sweet and bright and shiny and happy. Certainly with J in my life, taking care of me, supporting me, loving me, you would think I could shrug off the stink of my first marriage and move on. But I couldn't. It was then that I started to recognize I was suffering from depression, and it certainly wasn't anything that J did or said. It had nothing to do with him at all. Even though I was immersed in an amazing relationship with a man who adored me, even though I was surrounded by all the comfort money could buy, I was literally at my lowest point not long after we got married. But it absolutely wasn't caused by J or being with J. He was the only good thing in my life.

Have I always been depressed? Was I depressed as a young person who preferred to be alone? Was I actually depressed those years with W? Why did I just start to "feel" the depression once I was snuggled safely with J? Maybe being with J allowed me to relax enough that I could look back on my first marriage and see just how horrible it was, realize just how badly my ex screwed me up. I know depression can be caused by circumstances or trauma. I know depression can be the result of chemical imbalances in the brain. I'm not sure if my first marriage caused my depression or if it was already there, and my ex simply pushed the right buttons. Maybe the ingredients were always there, waiting, fermenting, and W finally lit the fire that cooked it all up into one big messy recipe of sadness and self-hatred and emptiness.

Maybe it's not really so important to know when the depression started or figure out what first triggered it? I know it's there. I just need to figure out how to get beyond it, to live the life I know I deserve.

MISS GEE...

...last week in Mexico...

I Remembered My Password!

Yes, it's been so long since I was on here, I couldn't believe I remembered how to sign on. But here I am. I am having one hell of a week with my depression, and told myself it was time I started back on the blog to sort through my life. I can't seem to keep my written journal going, and I can't seem to be honest in it. I don't know why. I've been meaning to get back to the blog, for so long now. No one reads it, but it's very therapeutic for me, and that's enough. I find myself falling asleep at night, "writing" blog posts in my head. Like, if I get up and blog tomorrow, this is what I want to talk about. I think about finally going to see a therapist, and I have conversations in my mind- what a therapist might ask me, how I would answer it, what they would tell me to work on. Then I convince myself I don't need anyone to listen to me or guide me, because I already know what's wrong and what I need to do to right my ship.

So here I go again, and I'm giving myself the goal of getting on here every week, or at least twice a month. I see people who blog every day, so weekly seems like a goal I can manage. That's one of my major flaws, and one of the most frustrating parts of my depression. I make goals all the time, very small easy goals that most people take for granted, and I can't seem to accomplish them. This week has been one of those weeks, today has REALLY been one of those days. My head hurts, inside and out. The self-hatred and negative thoughts have overwhelmed me and beaten me down. I had been doing well, at least for me. Last week we took a vacation and as it always does, my world crumbles when I get back home.

I don't know what it is about taking a vacation that inevitably pulls the rug out from under my feet. I think mostly it's because J still travels full time for work- it's been 3 1/2 years now of him just being home on weekends- and when we go on vacation together it's a comfort and happiness and safe feeling that I don't normally have in my day to day life. Then we come home, he unpacks the vacation suitcase, packs the work suitcase, and I'm home alone again for the week. We've had four vacations so far this year, with one more on the calendar, and of course J will have time off with the holidays. I feel like my world, my life is split into two parts. Time with J, time on my own. Most of it is time on my own. A little is a good thing, no doubt, but too much of it brings a crushing yet empty weight down on me. J isn't likely to change jobs any time soon. He's been with the company 22 years now, and although he's recently been offered promotions which would mean coming off the road, they all also meant moving again and we just don't want to do that right now.

We talked about this being our forever home. I talked about how I thought moving here would be the "cure" that I needed. Now neither of us is sure about that. We love our house, and our eight acres, but I don't know if we see ourselves here twenty years from now. Maybe not even ten years from now. I thought living here would open up a new existence and new opportunities for me, and although the potential is there, I'm still hiding in the house and not living out in the world. I'm starting to wonder if moving somewhere we were both already so familiar with was a mistake. J was born and raised here. And in the 16 years I've been with J, I'd visited here a lot before we bought this house. Before we even moved here, we already had favorite places to go and things to do. So in a way, although I'd never lived here before, nothing was really new. The only thing new was that I had the ability to go and do and see it all on my own, any time I wanted. Now we both think it would have been better to move somewhere truly new, to explore and discover and be awed with new experiences and new sights.

So much has happened in the last two or three years, it's been a very difficult phase for me. Not just turning 50 a little while back. Moving here to J's hometown and being around his family, sometimes more than I would like. J still traveling full time- the "glamour" of that first year has worn thin. My mom passed away. I'm still struggling with my own health issues, not to mention the depression and paralyzing anxiety. We lost one of our beloved cats, we took a new stray kitten in. The other cats have all either had life-threatening illnesses that required surgeries and long recoveries, and one currently has cancer and is going through treatment. I still fumble around with my pottery, but I can't seem to elevate it to anything more than a money-losing hobby. I am still unbearably overweight and in constant physical pain. I hate being so old and feeling so lost. At my age, I should have the answers already, but I still feel tragically behind the eight ball, all the time.

Well I'm going to keep my normally epic-length posts shorter, so that I will hopefully blog more often. My favorite, newly discovered quote: Never A Failure, Always A Lesson.

MISS GEE

Finding Routines In Chaos

I've been meaning to get back on here, but I've been so busy. That's part of it, but a big part of it has just been the depression. I walk into the office, look at the computer, and can't even muster the energy to turn it on. Yes I've been busy, but I've also spent way way too much of my down time vegging in front of the TV, eating junk food, drinking soda. Stuff that's okay if I was a college freshman with no classes for two days. But I'm an adult, with chores and responsibilities. I'm an adult with the freedom to go do anything I want. I'm an adult with health issues, both mental and physical. I just can't seem to find a reason to care enough about myself to live a better life. Most days, even though I may not be feeling the sadness that most people use to define depression, I do struggle with the other factors. Loss of interest, indecisiveness, confusion, trouble concentrating, no desire to do anything at all. For me the depression also feeds my feelings of immaturity and irresponsibility. I'm like a petulant child- I don't wanna do it!- and the depression is sweetly agreeing, of course you don't have to take a shower today.

Mostly I just don't give a shit about anything. I'm not sure if that's due to the depression, or just clinical detachment.

Mind you, this behavior and thought pattern is just when I'm alone. With J I'm a bundle of fun and happiness and want to go-go-go anywhere and everywhere. I'm suddenly full of nonstop energy and grand ideas. Let's go take a drive, let's get dressed up and go out to eat, let's go to the garden center and look at patio furniture, let's go shopping at the antique store. Suddenly when I'm with J I just want to experience everything! But, I'm not usually with J, because like most husbands he works for a living outside the home and he's gone. I just wish I knew how to bottle that weekend energy I give to J, and save some of it for myself on the weekdays when I'm home alone, or venturing into town by myself. This week was particularly bad- even though J left on Monday, it took me until Thursday before I could rouse myself out of my funk and away from the house to just go drop off his dry cleaning. Honestly, I did not want to move here just so I could continue on my same self-destructive path of becoming a hermit. There is TOO much to do in this area, I should be sailing out the door every morning to take on something new! Even if it's going to a farmers market to buy tomatoes.

Since my last post we took a long Alaska cruise. We had a gigantic estate sale back at the old house (five grand in our pockets and all our old shit gone). We've had family come stay with us for awhile. And we've been digging away at all the boxes in the house and garage. Trying to find our old life and institute it at the new house. I guess I should stop calling it the "new" house now, and just say HOME.

J got up Monday morning in the dark and headed for the airport. This week he doesn't get to come home over the weekend due to a work project on Saturday. So he'll be gone for eleven days. The night he gets back, he will have time to change clothes and pee, then we get in the car and head to the beach for the next five days. Not for anything enjoyable, it's an obligatory visit with family, which I never consider fun. Today it's storming all day, dangerously so. I'm staying in to attempt to catch up on chores. My plans are for me to keep unpacking boxes. And to do some pottery. Yes, pottery, because it's been too long.

I know I still have a long way to go to get the house put back in order, and I'm trying not to stress out over all the clutter that surrounds me every day. But for the most part, the main living areas are done. The kitchen, the bathrooms, the living room and sunroom and bedroom. The things still packed up are odds and ends, a lot of craft stuff, and just junk. So I told myself that this week, since I have an "extended" schedule of being home alone, I'm going to take a break and work on pottery. It's been w-a-y too long, and I deserve to spend a few days getting muddy and being creative. And it took quite an effort to convince myself that I did deserve a break. Even so, as always I feel that ticking clock hanging over me. I know that my job, first and foremost, is to be a housewife. During the week when J is gone, I can be whoever I want to be. But eventually that cycle kicks back around, my husband is home, and I have to shift into wife and happy homemaker mode. And I'm cool with that, because I love J so much and I'm proud to be his partner. But dammit, I'm always faking it for him.

Having the estate sale behind us has been a huge relief. It's just one more tie to the past that I can cut. One step closer to being able to completely cross that house and town off my list of things to think about. Now that the old house is empty, the contractor will get his work done in two or three weeks, and our house can go on the market. Luckily for us, the market is still hot in our area, houses in our little neighborhood are getting snapped up as soon as they go up for sale. We're hoping that a month from now, it's still going that strong. Since last summer, maybe two dozen houses have sold, but so far we'll be the first one with a basement. Our realtor said people should line up for that, because it's such a desired feature. We're crossing our fingers.

Mostly I'm concentrating on shifting my mindset these days. In the past, with the depression and anxiety, I've succeeded in always playing the helpless victim, and I've let it "happen" to me. I'm sick of it. I want control over it. I want to fight it. I want to manage it better. When it hits I always feel like I'm drowning, but I'm ready to learn to ride a surfboard on top of those waves of anxiety, I'm ready to learn how to swim against the currents of the depression instead of allowing it to sweep me farther out to sea. I make this sound poetic, but it sucks, it's hard work, it's exhausting, it's demanding, and sometimes I end up completed defeated.

But I feel as though I'm doing a little better. The depression still comes. The anxiety still pops up. However, it doesn't seem as though it lasts as long each time. Which is a relief. I would like to think my new surroundings help. Ever since we bought this house and these few wooded acres of privacy last year, I dreamed that once we moved here permanently my life would evolve into something shiny and new, like a snake shedding off and leaving behind its old skin, moving on towards the next day. It's only been two months, so I'm not giving up hope that this can and will happen. Maintaining this house will be its own form of hard work. Right now I'm doing my best. I will continue to strive to make that best get better.

I'm giving myself until the end of this year to truly make strides in redefining my life. By then everything will be unpacked, everything put away in its proper place. My craft room will be up and running again. The old house will be sold and will become just a memory. In other words, the world should be back to "normal" again for us as far as daily and weekly routines. We never plan on moving again. Things may change, J's job my change if he so chooses, family ties will change. It's time for me to stop using the fact that I was living in a house and town that I hated, as my excuse for just giving up on myself.

I'm still doing a halfway okay job of faking it on the outside. J still knows better, even though I try to be all smiles and coy winks when I'm with him. He also feels like this- the move, the new house, the new town- is my last chance at happiness. A few months ago he said to me that I've just got to try harder to get better. That's difficult for someone with crushing depression to listen to, but that was my old mentality of having the depression just "happen" to me without asking my permission first. J also went on to tell me, if there's something about my life that I don't like, then I have to change it. Again, hard to hear, but very much the truth.

I've got the home I've always dreamt about finally. I now live in an awesome college town swarming with culture and coolness. It's everything anyone could ever want. So I'm bound and determined to not fuck it up this time around. Life and love and laughter are out there happening every minute. It's time for me to jump into the mix and enjoy this ride.

MISS GEE

Quick Hello

A super quick post to report on Week One of living at the new house. Other than J having to now get up at the unholy time of 3:15am on Mondays to catch his flights for work, things have been good.

I didn't expect all of my negative behavioral issues to change overnight, so I'm not going to get upset that some of my worst habits continued last week. The laziness, the brain fog, the days where I forgot to shower and just vegged out in front of the TV. I know it's going to take awhile for things to settle down, for me to create my new routines. To unpack. To find direction. To just "deal with it" every day.

Unpacking has been the hardest thing to deal with, but I'm not going to stress out about it. Eventually I will "find" everything. Eventually I will figure out where I want things to go. Having a much smaller house, and now having no basement, will produce challenges. But I'm not going to worry at this point.

The cats have settled in nicely. That was one of my main concerns. This house has windows galore, so they've been happy watching the birds and squirrels. I met with the new pet sitters last week. I have reservations about them, but I'll give them a fair chance. They were recommended by family members, so I have to put my trust in that. We leave this Friday for vacation and won't be returning until the next next Tuesday. It's a long trip, and a long time to leave my babies in a relatively new environment, and I will worry about the new people in my home taking care of them. But I will try to put that out of my mind and relax and enjoy the vacation.

J needs this vacation badly. He is extremely stressed out about work, so this two week break will hopefully let him recuperate from a tough assignment. Even though we get back on Tuesday of the second week, since he travels for work, his boss is allowing him to "work from home" for the rest of that week. That's extra good news for me because he can help do some things around here that I'm not physically able to do. Our "first" weekend at the new house, was actually spent back down at the old house where we finished up some cleaning and packing. And bought a new car. Yes, really, from a friend. We towed it to the new house in an unrelenting storm that caused flooding on our new country road. We almost didn't get back here. But as always, when J is in charge, everything worked out fine. He has the golden touch, I swear.

I'm looking forward to the vacation, but I'm looking forward to getting back here so I can get things done, unpack, organize, find my new life. I know it's going to work out, I feel it already. My mood has been so much lighter. I can't say my anxiety is gone, because any small glitch in my day can cause me to spiral out of control. But so far it's been manageable. I just tell myself that everything is new, and everything is going to be different and unfamiliar right now until I get used to it. Then this new phase of my life can truly begin.

MISS GEE

One Last Week

Well this is the last week living at the current house. The newspaper has been cancelled. The cable and garbage pickup get cancelled this Friday. The mail starts getting forwarded to our new address in a few days. The new lawn service will start next weekend. The freezer is empty and the refrigerator is almost bare. I've been drinking coffee out of paper cups because everything is packed up. It's about as real and final as it gets.

But regular life goes on too. Monday morning started off the same, with J up at 4:30am to catch his flight. Normal chores are still on my list of things to do. Laundry, going to the pharmacy and post office, taking the recycling, meeting friends for goodbye dinners, checkups at the vet. Toilets need to be scrubbed and carpets need to be vacuumed. And somewhere in there I have to pack up the very last of our belongings that are still here-clothes, pots and pans, canned food in the pantry, bathroom stuff. AND we go on a big 12 day vacation the first week of May that I have done absolutely zero prep work for. Since I may not have a computer for a little while once we move, I have to take care of all that this week too.

On this coming Saturday morning J will pull out of this driveway with a small moving trailer behind him. I will be right behind him with my SUV loaded down with junk, houseplants, and the three cats. Then we make that 250 mile drive north once again. Not too many of those left, thank goodness. It doesn't sound like much, but when you always have to make that drive at 3am to avoid the horrendous, ridiculous, standstill traffic going through "the city", then that drive gets very tiresome very quickly. If I never see that particular stretch of interstate ever again, I will count my blessings.

We are coming back down here the following weekend, to do more cleaning and yard work, and to pick up a few last things. And that should be it for awhile. I've already handed over the key to the house and the code for the alarm to the estate sale company. After next weekend the house, and all that remains inside and out, is all theirs. And we've left a shitload of stuff. If you walked into my house right now, you'd never know we even moved anything at all, because we are leaving behind all the furniture.

We're disappointed that the estate sale company can't do our sale until June. But in a way that's nice too because we can move, go on our vacation, and not have to think about anything for a few weeks. We don't have to come back down here for awhile. In fact, they don't even want us at the sale itself- it's their policy to have the client not be there. Which is fine by me, I don't really want to watch the living room set we paid $5000 for walk out the door for $500. J said he still wants to come to town that weekend, and late on the last day of the sale he is going to stroll in and pretend to be a customer, so he can check out what's left. They didn't meet with J, so they have no idea what he looks like. He just wants to get a good idea of what all we will have to deal with once the sale is over. No estate sale sells out completely, and whatever remains will just get donated. If we left it behind in the first place, we don't need it in our new life.

We also finally met with our real estate agents this weekend. It was surprising for me. Not because of the meeting itself. But it made me realize how negative I always am, how much I beat myself up. I guess from the way I've been talking to my agent, she thought the house would be an utter disaster. But she walked in with her partner and they were both like, there is nothing wrong with this house! Fresh paint on the walls and that should be it. I was prepared to replace hardwood floors and kitchen appliances, everything from floor to ceiling, they said no need. She explained to me, this is NOT new construction, there is no reason to redo the entire house and try to compete with brand new homes. I mean, I wanted to replace the fridge because it has scratches on it. She said that is not even anything to worry about. They said our basement gives us a $25,000 added value over most of the non-basement homes in the area. I like the sound of that! They did say that we should have the carpets professionally cleaned once the house is empty, then they can see if we need to replace it or not. I know there are stains from the cats, and we've always overlooked them. I'm not sure the average home buyer coming in will be able to do the same.

So it's probably going to be July before we get the house on the market. And I'm okay with that. Again, it gives us time to relax and enjoy life at the new house. We won't have to rush back down here and do a bunch of stuff right away. And these days, agents handle most of that anyhow. I know we will have to make a few trips back here for things, but not for awhile. It's good timing. A few years ago when the economy tanked, the value of our house dropped to about $80,000 less than what we paid for it. Now it's worth about $60,000 more than what we paid for it. So we really want to sell as soon as we can, so we can get our new mortgage paid down down down. Although the new house is much smaller, it was about $100,000 more than this house, because of the almost 8 acres of land. The current house has been paid off for a few years now, so it's our goal as we go into our 50's eyeballing retirement, to get the new house paid off as soon as we can. Selling this house for full market value would get us there quickly.

Since we bought the new house a year ago, we've spent every weekend either packing or moving a load up there. Even on "free" weekends we were busting our butts at home doing work. I feel as though I haven't had a moment to catch my breath in a long long time. I know if I worked outside of the home, I couldn't do this. I know if J didn't have the travel job, we couldn't move at all. But it has all been extremely tiring, and I'm so ready for it to be over. It has been very very difficult these last few months, having most of my "life" sitting in boxes in a garage 4 1/2 hours away. Everything- my crafts, my books- even most of my clothes. Even our bed is up there already, and we've been trying to sleep on the tiny lumpy guest bed here. Most weekends J ends up sleeping on the couch because of it. I'm tired of that too. I've been living here for many weeks now with just two pairs of jeans, one pair of shoes, one set of earrings, and a few shirts that I wear over and over again- the jeans now have holes in them! That has fed into my depression quite a bit. You would like to think you aren't a materialistic diva, but when you have to live without all your things for a few months, you realize you ARE materialistic. And that's okay.

I know when we first bought the new house, we thought of it as just a "second" home that we would move to "one day". But every time we went up there, we loved it more and more, and it became almost impossible for us to think about anything else. We knew we couldn't wait several years to move there permanently. I won't say this has been the worst year of my life, but it's certainly been the longest and most exhausting. It's been stressful, but as always, it's stress and anxiety that I bring on myself. As far as any outside influences go, everything has been smooth sailing because J always makes it that way. I guess it's because his job requires him to take charge and make decisions and be strong, and that always carries over into whatever we're doing at home. When I start to go off the rails with my anxiety, he gently leads me back to the path without fail. He is definitely a steady yang to my crazy-ass yin.

Well I'll be back soon. I don't know when I will have the internet up and running once we move. Hopefully it will be quick and painless. We are out in the country, we don't even have cable TV out there, so I'm not sure what we're going to end up with. But whatever it is, it's worth it just to be there instead of here.

Our new front porch- by next week I'll be having my morning coffee here!

Getting It Together

Well I'm back, and I'm going to give the blog another try. I've been wanting to start a new blog (and I still might), but I realized that I've just left this one hanging for so long now. And my depression and anxiety are no closer to being gone. I started the blog to journal my ups and downs, and they still continue. Things have happened in my life lately that I don't really want to talk about now, but I know I need to vent eventually. Right now we have a big event looming, and that's all I can focus on. My time, my energy, my body, my emotions.

We are two weeks away from finally moving to our new house. Yes, the house I blogged about a year ago. It's taken all this time. Most normal people move over a weekend. But of course we don't do things the normal way. We've been spending weekends moving everything one pickup truck load at a time, making the 500 mile round trip- sometimes in one day. It's been exhausting and painful. Physically painful for me, doing all of this packing. And emotionally painful because we go to our beautiful, peaceful new home for just a few hours, then come back to the crappy shithole town and neighborhood we've lived in for almost nine years. I'm ready to be gone, for good.

My body is a wreck. I have days I can barely get out of bed, I ache so much. All the scrubbing and vacuuming and carrying boxes is more than I can handle in my current state. The cleaning supplies give me awful headaches and agitate my asthma. My hands are cracked and bleeding. Seriously. Moving is for younger, healthier people. The last time we moved, here in 2008, J's company took care of everything. Before that, it was just moving to houses on the other side of town. This is a first for us, moving ourselves so far away. And what you can do at 30, is a lot harder at 50. And I know I still have to unpack once we do finally move.

I took the photo above, in the fall, and it's my favorite one from the new house. I'm standing about halfway up the driveway, looking down. You can't even see the street out there. It's amazing. I have been hanging on for a year. These last two weeks are draining me. J still travels full time for his job, although he's become severely unhappy about it. He's been at his current assignment since the first week of this year, and he hates it. I think once we move, he will start looking to find a local job. We know he won't make nearly the money he makes now, but he'll be at home and he'll have a lot less stress. Sometimes money can't compete with the things that give you peace in your heart.

For now, even though we physically move to the new house on Easter weekend, we have a lot of work that we will leave behind. We will have a big estate sale- the people from the company come tomorrow to look at all our remaining stuff. Once that is over, then J and I will have to come back down here and get either Goodwill or Salvation Army to take the unsold items. Then we will have to get a contractor in here to fix up the house. Two realtors will be coming in this weekend to give us appraisals. Both are friends. I'm even feeling anxiety over choosing one friend over the other. Seriously. J said to let it go, they are professionals, they probably get turned down for listings on a regular basis.

It's nothing major, but anyone who has pets and carpet, know that the two don't mix very well. The house needs all new carpet, hardwood floors, paint. We also plan to replace our worn out appliances, and freshen up the landscaping. Then it goes on the market. I don't think it will take long. Houses in my neighborhood are selling within days of going on the market. We had six houses sell in about two weeks. Of course, we won't be ready for probably two months, but hopefully the desire for houses in our area will still continue.

All of this has caused tremendous anxiety for me. J keeps telling me it will all be okay, it will all work out. And I know it will. We're not doing anything different that thousands of other people are already doing every day across the country. But for me, with my anxiety out of my control, I can't help but to worry and pick apart our plans and find fault in every decision I'm making. It's been a long year. But now that we're at the end of it, it's oddly been even harder for me. No sense of relief, just increased angst. Because everything is more urgent now. And people- strangers, neighbors- will be coming into my house. Judging me for how dusty my furniture is. For the pet stains on my carpet. For the scratches on my floor. For the cobwebs I missed in the corner. For the musty pet smell in the air. For the weeds in the flower beds. All of it. J tells me, SO WHAT?! Who cares. We don't know these people, we'll never see them again, once it's over it's over and we move on with our new life. They are meaningless, their opinions are worthless.

He is so right, but it's hard for my brain to grab and hold onto that idea. And because of that, my anxiety right now is a 15 on a 1-10 scale. I try to just look forward to the joy and happiness that awaits us in our very near future, but I instead dwell on all the work I still have to do here. I dwell on the mistakes and bad choices of the past. I am paralyzed with it, and the depression has become overwhelming again. I drive by the house two doors down that sold in 11 days, I see their moving boxes stacked neatly in their garage, and I watched the two full moving trucks pull away on Sunday. I tell myself, see they just did it, easy peasy! Why the hell am I worrying myself to death!

Gotta go pack a few more boxes. I will plan to be back next week.

Still- MISS GEE

(The living room at my new house- can't wait to be there now!)

Unspoken

I shouldn't be on here today, I don't have time.  J's first art show is in less than 48 hours, and as soon as it is over we are leaving on vacation for a week.  I am overwhelmed right now with getting everything ready, for both.  But I felt as though I had to get on here and defend myself.

I've made it a habit of not getting too political on my social media.  I keep it light and post photos of my cats or the critters in my yard, share vacation photos, post where we've gone out to eat.  I don't want to do anything else on there.  I may have put a few funny memes about the stupidity of Trump on my page, but I don't want to post anything "anti" this or that.  I try very hard not to offend anyone.  I've found that my friends and family are pretty much split up the middle- I have those who share similar feelings to mine, and I have those who believe the complete opposite.  I am cool with that.  I'm not out to hurt anyone, I'm not out to piss off relatives because they are from another political party.  Plus I think too many people are cowardly online, they take potshots at people in their replies and comments, and it disgusts me.  I don't go on FB to be disgusted.  I don't want FB to make me angry.  I have even unjoined a few groups due to comments from others.  Hey, social media is a fucking fake life anyhow, it doesn't bother me to drop the newsfeed from any particular person or group.  It doesn't bother me to get unfriended by someone on there.

I am truly live and let live.  You can support and vote for anyone you want, you can go to any church- or not- that you want.  I don't really care.  I have my beliefs, I live my life the way I intend, and I don't worry about what the neighbors think, and I worry even less about what they are doing.  If everyone minded their own business, the world would be a better place, but that's never going to happen.  The world will always be divided into a million little pieces- it always has been, and it isn't ever going to change. But I accept that.  I will die 20 or 30 years from now with political parties still sniping at each other, with religions still going to war with one another.  In the meantime, I will continue to live my life surrounded by the ones I love, and that's my real world.

If I thought I could totally drop off FB, I would, but my family would rebel because they would no longer "know" what's going on in my life.  I stay on social media to avoid constant phone calls and emails "checking in" on me.  For the most part, I only read a very select few posts from only good friends on FB, the rest of it I scroll through with a glazed look of boredom.  If I "like" a post, then I've read it.  I may not always agree with it, but I agree that my friend has the right to post it.  I like FB least of all.  I prefer Instagram and Pinterest and Etsy, because I can relax and be happy and look at gorgeous photos of art and kitties and beaches, get DIY ideas for my house and yard, and ignore what is mostly garbage anywhere else online.  I can't even stand going to my email, because I have to sift through all the news stories before I can even sign on.  They pop up on the screen so that I can't ignore them.  Depending on where you live, the local stories are just as bad as the global ones.  Where I live, on the outskirts of the big city, the local news is filled with the latest shooting or murder. Truly, there is one- or more- every single night on there.  One evening last week I counted and the first FIVE stories were shootings and killings.

You can become a hermit.  Or you can take it all in and deal with it.  I may sound cold, but for the most part, I am deadened to it all anymore. I think a lot of people are. Evil is so commonplace that we stare it in the eye every day, shrug, and move on with our normal routine.  If I stopped to rage and rail against the gods every time, it would consume me and burn me alive.

But the other day, I let a post get under my skin and offend me.  It wasn't from some random troll or internet crazy.  This was from an actual friend, one from real life, the person I always sit with and talk to before my Friday morning support group.  I've known her for a few years now, she even comes to see me when I have a booth set up at craft fairs, and she's an amazing artist herself.  I don't normally let FB posts goad me, but this one did.  In her post, open to everyone she knew, she stated that if your FB page was "silent" about the Orlando shootings, then she had to assume you didn't care about it.

I tried to understand that she was coming from a place of grief and pain, but I felt the finger pointing at "friends" was unnecessary and quite frankly, it made me mad.  I responded, not in anger, but I couldn't help being defensive.  She wasn't at the meeting last week, and I know I'm going to miss the next two meetings, so we won't have a chance to talk face to face.  I basically told her that it's my personal choice not to post anything political or "newsy"  or "controversial" on FB.  I told her that I discussed my feelings privately about the shootings with my friends and family, and didn't wish to write anything on social media about it.  What I wanted to say was, how dare you assume anything about me based on my silence!  My silence does not convey ANYthing about how I am feeling, and it certainly doesn't condone what happened.  My silence is meaningless, it's not even a factor.  Her response was that we have to "fight" to "protect" our way of life.  I did not reply.

I don't want to fight anyone, I don't want to fight against anything.  I have enough trouble fighting down my own demons.  I can't take on all the ones out there in the world. If I can live my life right and be true to myself, then fuck everyone else out there. Some days I don't think I can even save myself.  I can't and won't take on the burdens of the universe.  I know there are injustices against humanity.  But if you are in the streets rioting against injustice, you are still rioting.  I am not being a bitch.  I am being realistic.  I think standing up for and supporting causes is amazing, and there are wonderful people out there working tirelessly. But I'm not going to waste my time and energy trying to get people to NOT vote for a presidential candidate.

Most of the time our brains are so scattered we can barely decide what to eat for lunch.  Yet we want to tell others what candidate to support, what god to worship, who to marry, what we can and can't have and do in our own homes.  It's all crazy, but there are those out there who truly believe they "know" what's "best" for the rest of us.  Again, it's happening on BOTH sides.  I am not pointing fingers at one particular group.

I would rather spend that time on finding a home for an abandoned puppy, saving the bees, supporting local farmers, feeding my city's homeless, getting better healthcare for poverty stricken children, cleaning up the streets I see every day.  Things I can touch, things that matter in my little circle of being.  Some people would snicker and think that is all lame and unworthy.  "How can you worry about animals in shelters when people are getting gunned down in public?!" they would cry.  I would answer, how can you NOT! How can you not start caring at the most basic level?  I'm not out for publicity, I'm not trying to slay all the giants. If I worry more about a tiny kitten getting euthanized because nobody wants her, then I guess shame on me for not choosing to picket the capitol instead.

I would rather take care of my own environment, because I can't fix Washington. I've watched on FB how my cousin and an uncle are tearing each other apart with their comments because they each support the opposite party.  It's ridiculous. Fuck Trump.  Fuck Hillary.  Neither of them are an actual, integral part of my life. Seriously.  We all know how the government works.  No matter who gets elected president, the opposition will find a way to vote down and stymy anything they want to accomplish.  Presidents are powerless.  Presidents, alone, do not enact laws and create policies.  It's been proven over and over again throughout the decades.  Do people REALLY still believe their vote counts?  Maybe I'm just a cynic.

They are all politicians.  They are NOT leaders.  There is no one running for any office, that I would wish to follow or support.  It's especially not worth my limited energy to bully my friends and family when they "like" the other party.  This world is already spinning too violently with its "us against them" mentality.

I know the shootings have weighed heavily on everyone, and at a time when the country is already so divided and angry and hurt and scared about the future, this just seemed to crush everyone.  Everyone, as always, is quick to rush to judgment and even quicker to condemn.  The shooter, the victims, the government, guns, religion, sexual identity, immigration.  BOTH sides are doing it.  We're all screaming at each other so loudly that NO ONE can be heard at all! People are taking a tragedy and turning it into a political platform, on both sides.  It sickens me.

Some people are too young to remember the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, where 168 people were killed.  I happened to be visiting in the area when it happened, and although I wasn't right there at ground zero, I did go back later to see the aftermath, the memorials, to walk quietly around the chain link fence to stare at the emptiness and devastation.  I stood there, in complete silence, and was engulfed in the agony.  I remember the photos of firemen carrying dying children in their arms.  It was a horrible blight on our country, that one of our own could do this to his fellow Americans, including babies and children.  This wasn't a gay thing.  It wasn't a Muslim thing.  It wasn't a race thing.  It wasn't an immigrant thing.  It wasn't even a gun thing.  But it was still tragic beyond comprehension.  Do I hate or blame or fear young disenfranchised white men for this?  No.

With 9/11, I became one of those people who fell into a black hole, not able to sleep, not able to tear myself away from the 24 hour coverage on the news.  I watched it over and over and over again.  I grew angry at my then-husband because he literally did not care about it.  At the time I hated him for it, for not being there to support me and talk with me about this anguish I was feeling.  Maybe I was being unfair to him.  I've gone to New York and I've seen the beautiful and awesome "Freedom Tower" that now stands on the site. But it doesn't erase the most terrifying vision I saw from the original attack- that of a man in a business suit sailing through the great wide open of nothingness as he made the decision to leap from a thousand feet up rather than burn to death. The news said he would have literally died from fright and shock, long before his body hit the ground, but that didn't make it any easier to watch.  Do I hate or blame or fear Muslims for this?  Absolutely not.

I could go on and on, I could go back into history as far as there are records.  I could remind people about the mass killings and abuse of my own ancestors, the Cherokee people, at the hands of the greedy American government.  By the thousands.  Can you imagine today, the American government herding a certain race of people into camps and slaughtering them for no reason, and having the rest of the country be okay with it?  To even encourage it?  Why?  Because they feared these people who were of a different color, who spoke a different language, who fought back when their lands were invaded.

I can tell stories about the other side of my family, how at the time when my grandfather came over from Sicily, Italians were the most hated group of immigrants and were treated like animals and regarded as dirt.  All because they worked harder and took jobs- for less money- that other "immigrants" (those Europeans who had come over earlier) wouldn't do.  It was said that at the turn of the century, the Italians were the only people who were happy and willing to work side by side with blacks.  So they became hated, as a group, and the prejudice was staggering.  Landlords didn't want to rent to them, businesses didn't want to hire them.  In fact a large percentage of Italian immigrants from that period actually ended up returning to Italy, after saving up money for their families.  And here we are a mere 100 years later- can we imagine Italians being treated that way today?  When now we all flock to Italian restaurants, want to drive Italian sports cars, wear Italian fashion.  And visit Italy.

There will always be hatred and discrimination and fear.  There will always be sides waging battle with each other, to prove their belief is the right one, that their way of life is correct.  Politics, sex, religion, class warfare.  This will never never ever end.  It happens not just in our country, but all over the world.  To say we hate this or that group, is insane.  I am a liberal, always have been and always will be, but I don't blindly follow the party line.  I do have some conservative beliefs.  I don't hate people who think differently. I don't try to force my ideology down anyone's throat.  Every person has their right to an opinion, and we all know the old saying about opinions- they are like assholes, everybody's got one.  Me included.  I'm not making fun, I'm just saying it's utterly pointless to A- try and change someone else's mind, and B- expect everyone to always agree with you.  Never.  Gonna.  Happen.  And our differences should be celebrated, not lambasted.  It's easy to say oh the conservatives do this to the liberals.  But don't we all do it to each other?  It's not just coming from one side, people, wake up.

Evil isn't one particular religion or race.  It's not affiliated with just one political party.  We all feel that we are well-guarded against evil, that we recognize it when we see it.  But it's gonna sneak up on you, sorry.

No one on either side seems to really truly want peace, they want domination.  People want total annihilation of the opposition.  No one is talking about how to live together in harmony. Everyone is talking about how to crush the other side.  We use combative phrases like let's "defeat" the opponent- I don't see anyone saying let's "understand" the opponent, let's "accept" the opponent.  What we all really want is to be heard and respected.  But instead people yell and rant, no one wants to discuss things intelligently.  Especially this election year.  I'm sick of it.  It's destructive, and I don't have room for that in my life. As long as people are different from each other, there will always be fighting and protesting, misunderstandings and suspicions, fear and rage.  It's human nature.  I have a big rule at my house- I refuse to watch, read, or listen to any news early in the mornings or late at night.  I do not want to start my day off or try to drift off to sleep with all this lunacy ringing in my ears.

Unfortunately, and sadly, people will always react and behave badly, and they will lash out to hurt others.  Whether they walk into a crowded club or movie theater with a gun. Or drive a truck loaded with explosives into the garage of a building.  Or fly a plane into a skyscraper.  Or stand at a podium and use their words and persuasion over others to incite more anger and hatred.

There is nothing wrong with being passionate about your beliefs, and getting emotional.  As long as your brain is also engaged along with your heart.  As long as your passions don't swallow you whole and cause you to bring pain to others.

Even if you just get on social media and accuse friends of "not caring" about something.  Let's start thinking before we speak.  Isn't that really what the world is needing?  Forget guns and bombs.  Words can provoke more damage than any weapon.  Words can cause death and pain, words can create a hostile environment where no one feels safe.  Yet words are the easiest thing for us to control.  We all have the ability to do this.

People now make fun of the late Rodney King's speech, "Can we all get along?"  It's an impossibility, but dammit, he was right in wanting it.

MISS GEE