I was realizing the other night while hubbie and I were talking that we’ve been together 7 years. Well, 7 years 5 days now. Our first date was to see “Final Destination 2″ on the day that Columbia blew up, 1 February 2003. Hubbie proposed to me the following Thanksgiving, but we didn’t get married until the March after next, giving hubbie time to get out of the Academy and get in with a PD. When that wasn’t happening we started to look into cross country moving companies with the idea of moving to Alaska.

I’m glad we didn’t do that now, for various reasons. As it happened. The day that hubbie got sworn in at his PD we found out that I was pregnant with the munchkin, so that re-evaluated our priorities more than a little. We moved out from his parents house to an apartment, then went to another apartment, and then to our house. Things are pretty crappy on many fronts, but overall we’re doing well. We’re surviving, which is more than can be said for most. Hubbie has a job. He brings in a decent wage, even if it is hard for us to get by on it, and we’re once again not paying money on taxes, though we’re only getting $34 back.

We’ll have been married five years this year. It’s pretty wild and munchkin will be four in April.

I’m looking forward to the next five years though. I know we have a good plan in action for the next five years, and if all goes to plan we should have several of our credit cards paid off by then. As it is we’ve already paid off about $3000 of credit card debt which is nice to think about. I’ve also actually been able to start fiction writing again which is a real positive sign for how my mental health is going. Onwards and upwards.

This is supposed to be a jubilant event, the graduating from therapy and moving on free as a bird into the regular world with the tools to handle it, and the understanding of how things work. Except in this case it’s not. There are no celebrations, no champagne, no new hp laptops or cars. This is not graduation, or flunking out, this is withdrawing.

This past week I had to “break up” with my therapist. I was upset going in. Hubbie and I had nearly had an argument about the whole thing. I was feeling marginalized, as though my mental health was having to take a back seat, and I left the house still angry, even though I was the one who’d initially voiced, several weeks ago, that I felt we wouldn’t be able to afford to continue therapy, and with me having to quit work that’s a definite. We’re down $120 a month, and have to cut back where we can. We’ve lowered our cable package which saves us $90 a month, and thankfully I have other work from home earnings which have tripled that are helping making up the rest of the loss; but still we have a $1200 deficit between our deductible and our HSA that we have to account for.

Elsie understands, of course, there’s nothing she can do. She’s tried and tried to get permission to give me sliding scale but because I have insurance I don’t qualify. We technically make too much for Medicaid, and especially since I only have a set amount of visits it’s best to keep them for emergencies or crisis time than try to work through things in such a condensed form. We talked about game plans for the future, things I can do to help keep things flowing and going, the best way for us to continue to work together to keep improving our health, to stick to our diets and keep track of things, of the fact that we can send her updates by the mail and stay in touch by cell phone periodically, and hopefully disability will come through and we’ll be able to afford therapy. In the mean time we’re in limbo.

I was feeling good about the way things ended for most of the drive home, and was distracted trying to start our taxes given I have all our W2s and insurance paperwork and everything, and then the feelings of loss really started to hit and the anger and frustration that it has to be this way. Elsie told me that when she first started her practice in the 80s the Mental Health Act had just been passed. She called it the “Golden Age” where she could see whoever she needed to and they paid whatever they could and the government paid the rest, but now it’s impossible to do that because when Reagan came into office he repealed the act and things have been screwed up ever since.

I’ve been rejoining support groups in the hopes I can still work through some things, but I find them to be overwhelmingly negative places at times. I hope that I can find a place where there’s as much, if not more, focus on the positive than the negative. I know that I have things I need to work through that are overwhelming, scary and terrible but at the same time I feel if the support groups spent more time helping people see the positive aspects of being a multiple, the fun and jovial things that can go on, the ways that it can benefit us rather than harm us, I think more people would be able to deal with everything and it might help them get better. Take a leaf out of Patch Adams rather than Dr. Kevorkian. We’re not lost, we have so many great qualities, and we need to remember that

I’m going to look for a place like that, and if there is not one I’m going to try and create one because it’s something that a lot of people could benefit from.

It’s been a while since I’ve dyed my hair. I dyed it Scarlet and Black, or more appropriately “Nuclear Red” and black before we went to ECT for my BILs wedding but I hadn’t re-dyed it since then. Our hair dye supply was greatly depleted as a lot of the dye bottles had reached their year expiration and had turned to a spongy substance, rather than the dye goop that I know and love so well, but yes you read that correctly YEAR expiration, an open bottle of Special Effects dye lasts a year, maybe slightly over without losing any of it’s color capability. If you have them in your house unopened they should last around two years. This is why I tend to buy in bulk and stock pile.

However with a little bit of the Yule windfall money I bought several bottles in different colors: Fish Bowl, Electric Blue and Wildflower the latter at Kore’s request.

Finally, this past Thursday, after our girls day out to watch ‘Legion’ Kore and I broke out the bleach and started to work. Sickness and general ill-feeling meant it wasn’t until last night that I could color my hair. I wasn’t too happy about this, but when you’re sneezing and coughing every few minutes the last thing you want to do is try to color your hair.
I just don’t like being bleached because of the way it looks. See?

I wore the head scarf for a few days so I didn’t have to see it, plus the bleach messed with my hair in other ways, and I was paranoid I’d keep messing with the tangles and knots and break a lot of the strands off. I do torture my hair so; but that’s the other reason I really like Special Effects dye. Once you do get it in it helps to rejuvenate your hair. It’s the one dye product I’ve used that actually leaves my hair feeling better after the dye job than before, and that’s without having to add extra tinctures and serums and things to it after dying.

I enlisted Kore’s help to dye the hair as I tend to make a HUGE mess, and this time I’d remembered to buy petroleum jelly which means I’m not all smurf faced this morning ^^ though I can’t see my back which we forgot to jelly.

I went with Fish Bowl in the front and Electric Blue for the rest, and even with a lot of the black dye not bleaching out very well I think the effect looks pretty awesome. I have had some hair loss which is to be expected, but not as much as I feared, about as much as I tend to lose in general from day to day given I have SO much hair. We used an entire bottle of Electric Blue and about 1/3 of the Fish Bowl. Still I should have enough dye to touch this up once, which means I’ll be like this for at least four months if not closer to six. Unless I get sick of it, which I doubt I will.

If you’d like to get your own Special Effects dye I recommend Amphigory wholeheartedly. They’re awesome about getting you what you want, answering questions and their prices aren’t that bad either, which helps. When I ordered this past batch they were still $10.99 a bottle, it has gone up to $11.49 plus shipping; but if you buy bulk like I do it’s an awesome deal, and I’d much rather pay these prices and wait a couple of days to get the dye, than go to a store and pay $15 a bottle for something which will fade out in a couple of washings. As I say I can maintain the Special Effects so that it lasts several months (they advise 4-6 weeks) but if you’re careful about shampooing and keep the water temperature luke warm when washing your hair it’ll keep at least 3 months if not longer.

Seriously I need to see if the company needs a spokesperson.

Yesterday was pretty busy though I didn’t think it would be at the outset. My intention was to go to Walmart and come back, help Mum with some school work and generally veg given I still have the dregs of this cold that’s hanging on. Except fate didn’t let things go that way. First my car wouldn’t start, which wouldn’t have been an issue except I discovered this after hubbie had left to go to his chiropractor appointment.

Just then Mum called to say she was on her way out to pay some bills, but could she stop by and drop off her laptop first and then come back for the tutoring. I told her what was going on with the car, so she stopped by and jumped the car for me. Given I really needed to go to Walmart so that the cats wouldn’t starve and so that I could pick up more cold meds she invited me on the days journey with her saying we could stop by Walmart while going round and about for her errands. So I asked if she would meet me at the mechanic so I could drop the car off. While the car being dead isn’t something he could fix (she just tends to do that if she’s not driven every other day) her dying reminded me that she was almost 1000 miles over for her oil change which isn’t good as old as she is.

So, plan in place we set off, after I picked up a few things that were leftover from our neighbor’s yard sale. She invited us to pick through the leavings, which worked out in my favor because I picked up a 1 and 1/2 gallon fish tank to transfer our fish into so that I could give their 10 gallon tank a mega-clean out and major overhaul, which it has needed for some time. I’ve been so not with it the past couple of weeks that their tank evaporated down to about 5 gallons of water. So, now given there’s only two of them left they’re in their spiffy new home and will probably stay there for the duration. The filter for the mini tank is SO much quieter than the old one was even when the tank was full.

The fish in their new “penthouse”. Once I get the other cleaned out I may get some guppies for it BUT we’ll have to see, given taking care of it in the first place proved to be a chore I couldn’t entirely handle at the moment, and given they’re technically the munchkin’s fish his behavior needs to have a major overhaul before he gets any more pets. He’s been in a very Testing All Boundaries frame of mind lately.

Anyway, our day continued, we stopped by our insurance place so Mum could pay a bill there and chatted with the agent for a while catching up. She offered to do auto insurance quotes for Kore as she’s been having some issues with her former company and recently switched to what she hopes is a better one. Then we swung by SECO so Mum could pay another bill. Then she took us out to the Chinese Buffet, and I drank almost an entire pot of their Jasmine Green Tea because it was so, so good on my poor aching throat.

Then it was Walmart, where munchkin really started in on the boundary testing, much the same as he’d been doing at the mall the on Saturday, so there were stern words, punishments, apparent acceptance of limits and then more testing. At least he’s accepting that he has to hold hands in parking lots now without a huge tantrum, but he still wants to run off into the depths of stores possibly to be never seen again.

It was mathematics time after that, which is a bit strange. I haven’t done math in any capacity more than balancing a check book, which I don’t do nearly so often as I probably should, since high school. I did all my college math requirements during my senior year of high school, and being an English/Comm major didn’t have to do anything more than the CLAST while I was at Flagler. I did flirt with math briefly when I took the GRE for graduate school; but that was mostly done on auto-pilot in the sense of “someone in here knows how to do this,” and they did, and it’s generally not understood how but we did better on the math portion than the English portion by 20 points, so it worked.

The math in question is ‘pre-Algebra’ which is not really a term I recognize given in high school in England we just did “math” and when we moved to the States I was put into math courses here in Trigonometry/Analytical Geometry, then I went into Calculus and AP Calculus. I seem to be doing okay helping Mum with it (I hope). It’s a bit ‘I don’t understand the descriptive terminology but I get the theory and am hopefully explaining it okay.

We picked up my car and it’s had another issue that is probably sealing it’s death warrant, given expensive repairs don’t entirely seem worthwhile on a 13 year old vehicle. We’re discussing options. The idea of becoming a one-car family has come up before given I’m not working again, and that would save us on insurance what I’m no longer making on my paycheck.

The day finalized with me getting Kore to help me re-dye my hair; but that’s a tale for a separate post.

I took Mum to see ‘Avatar’ yesterday because I wanted her to be able to see the wonder of it in 3D. I just don’t feel that it will be the same in 2D especially not in 2D on a small screen. It’d be like trying to use shrink tube terminals to do an oil change; completely inadequate.

I maintain that the main reason Avatar is as good as it is because of the experience. You get completely drawn into the environment and wonder of Pandora the way that Jake in the story is because it becomes so real to you. I don’t think it would have nearly that emotional impact without. It reminded me of the fact my husband said there’s supposed to be a new TV coming out that will be able to do 3D properly in your own home. I’m figuring that he read is the world really ready to upgrade? and got all excited. He was talking about saving up for one; but really if we wind up being able to save nine grand then I want a working car, not a 3D television.

I’m down a pound since last week, which I’m surprised at, I haven’t done much walking this week because I’ve been sick with a mega-cold, and recovering from work which really did it in for me as I’ve mentioned several times.

So, to have lost a pound is awesome. Again I’m attributing this to cutting out soda, even diet soda, and I’ve been trying to eat smaller portions and I’ve allowed myself treats like a handful of chocolate chips or a cinnamon roll, so that I don’t suddenly binge on six bars of chocolate or something like that.

I haven’t been writing about this issue because I wanted to get it resolved with my family and my employer before I spoke of it online. It was common courtesy.

I’ve been having issues with my health at work, again. I spoke about the fact that I pulled out my shoulders and was having flare-ups. Despite the fact that the chiropractor sorted out my shoulder I was still having problems with the strain on my body. For the past few weeks, Kore and my husband have been concerned about the strain I was under, and my husband had spoken to me a couple of times about turning in my notice.

Last week both he and I and Kore and I had long talks about the problems I was having and the earnings versus cost and I was leaning towards the fact that it was not worth it, but Sunday cemented that for me. I worked a short shift on Friday and was very sore all through Saturday. Then I worked a full shift on Sunday and by noon I was in a lot of pain. I was trying to put that on a combination of things, fighting off a cold, it being “that time of the month” but the fact remains that by the time I got home I was in so much pain I went to bed, and was pretty worthless for three hours. I drug myself out of bed purely because I knew that I needed to eat, and I was fairly out of it for the rest of the evening.

So, that cemented it for me. This can’t go on. I psyched myself up to go talk to my boss on Monday forgetting that her standard days off are Sunday and Monday. Boss rarely answers her phone when she’s not at work, and doesn’t seem to get voice mail messages, and I didn’t want to leave her a note or write her an email, because that’s very impersonal and also she has issues sometimes with other people at the job reading her messages, so I didn’t want to risk her finding out from someone else before me. I was able to talk to her yesterday and she was very understanding. I told her straight out that I was going to have to turn in my notice and when she asked why I explained that I was having flare-ups again and I didn’t want to be calling in sick when I was only scheduled for a few shifts a week, and she said she appreciated that because the type of job that I was working it’s hard to get someone else to come in if you can’t work your shifts, it’s easier to not schedule me at all.

When I called today to check on my schedule I hadn’t been scheduled, which I had anticipated from the way my boss was talking when I explained things to her. She said she wants me to be able to be well, and once I am if I don’t have another job she’ll have a place to me. I wanted to check though because I didn’t want to assume that she wasn’t taking into account the two weeks notice.

But as of this week I’m free of the store, and just that relief of stress makes me feel a lot better. I dislike I don’t have anything on record though. This was just personal realization, not anything mitigated by a doctor’s stipulation. So, I don’t know what that’s going to mean with regards the disability claim. However it is something that I’ve had to do. I can’t go on losing one to two days worth of my home life for eight to fourteen hours of work.

I’m so glad that the munchkin has a really easy time interacting with people and getting to know them. We stopped by the park on the way home today and he ran off and was playing with the other children in no time, chatting with them, running around, trying to organize games.
I’m relieved. I’m often terrified in situations where there are “new people” I find it very hard to just walk over and talk to them unless there’s a context. At work I’m fine I can strike up conversation and chit-chat with the customers and things like that, most of the time, but when I have no context, when I’m just a random person in the park watching my child then I freeze up. I can’t open my mouth, but the munchkin he was all chatter and fun. Telling people his name, asking them theirs, who they were here with, if they wanted to play with him.
I hope that we can nurture this, that my nerves don’t rub off on him, but instead some of his bravado can rub off on us.

Hubbie stumbled across “Venture Bros” before we got rid of our extended cable, and we’ve been watching the first season via the wonder of Netflix since then. It’s really interesting in a bizarre sort of way given it is a knock off of a variety of things and a satire at the same time.

I can see elements of Johnny Quest, and the Fantastic Four; as well as almost every superhero show ever. It’s hilarious. I can’t believer some of the things they do in the show, the episode we just watched they crashlanded their superjet into a grave yard trying to get to a funeral on time, and the previous one they were doing a yard sale of all their weird inventions and things. There’s special kudos because their chief bodyguard is voiced by the man who played “The Tick: Live-Action Series”.

It’s doubly bizarre, like atro phex reviews in comparison to a regular show, but at the same time extremely addictive to watch. Especially when they do flashbacks.

Up until recently I had used Thunderbird for my feed reader; but then tragedy struck for the third time, and I realized I did not want to put all my links back into Thunderbird in case something else happened. I wanted a feed reader that was online, one I could access from anywhere, so that if the unthinkable happened to the new laptop I would not have to once again trawl through and put my feeds back in.

I put them back into the big computer three times over the past month, and I don’t want to do it again, but at least if I’m putting them in somewhere online I know that I shouldn’t have to do them again unless something happens directly to the source of the online program.

Within minutes of me asking on twitter I was recommended Google Reader by several sources, and I decided to check it out, and I’ve started filling things in. I love the way that it works. I also like that I can just type in a website and it finds the feed for me instead of me having to browse all over the site for the source.

Now, I’m just left with trying to find all the blogs that I was reading. I used to have at least forty sites in my feed reader, from friends sites likeMy Single Mom Life or Footprints on the Moon to more commonly known sites such as The Customer is Not Always Right and Fail Blog. It’s hard to track them all down again given the way my memory is, often I remember posts or the person’s name but not the actual website address. I’m sure I’ll get there, and perhaps I’ll find some new nifty sites on the way.