Faith in Echoes

We should stop thinking about the dentist; but the only thing harder than getting one person to stop thinking about something is getting nine people in a room to stop talking about it; because all it takes is one person to think of something horrific and then the entire room is in a panic again. We have just over a week to calm down about things so the only thing I can hope is that we do and don’t freak out.

We have good insurance which we’re lucky to have. I liken it to rv insurance for the teeth at times but still, we’re good with it, it’s a lot better than most insurance and it means these things are getting sorted out before I wind up having to have a root canal or something else that would be so much worse and more traumatic. We’re not talking about going next week to have our wisdom teeth taken out, what we’re talking about doing is having three fillings and a partial mouth cleaning. It shouldn’t be difficult at all. Still there’s nerves. There are worse nerves than when we went to the dentist that week and so many things have changed with dentists that we may as well have been going for the first time ever.

All of this goes back to us being our own worst enemy. Things would be fine if we could just stop making them worse for ourselves.

I’ve been having a bit of a muse. It’s not entirely that I’m in a funk but I think things are just taking some getting used to. There’s been a lot of adjusting with the household because the munchkin has started school and everything is all screwy at the house and I’m feeling unsettled.
We’ve been working on rearranging our head-space a bit and realigning priorities. We’re hoping that we can find a job; but that’s difficult for everyone right now, not just me.
Then we’ve been sorting out things and going to the dentist which is also unsettling. There are some freak-outs about the idea because the dentist experience is a bit unnerving and we have to have a deep cleaning and several fillings. We’re working on new visualization exercises and things like that in the hopes that we can maintain a calm demeanor during the appointment and not freak-out, though we did tell the dentists about the multiplicity so that they can be prepared.

We’re working on sorting out our internal environment a bit more. It’s been sort of loose and fluid which is good to a certain degree but we need to have some areas which are a bit more stable. We’re constructing some steel buildings within our head-space so that noise from the dentist office can be muted some more. We worked pretty well the last time tuning out but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

We’ve been super-busy this past week, a lot of things going on. Primarily this is getting prepared for the munchkin to go to pre-school which starts this next week. He’s very excited and eager to get started so much so that he’s driving the rest of us batty.

Also the issues with the car that we’ve had have finally been able to be sorted out. Mum and her boyfriend have fixed my car’s radiator today so we’re not having to get new vehicle insurance quotes and a new vehicle just yet, which is nice. It gives us a few more months of leeway for me to find a job and get our finances back on track.

We’re looking into a credit card settlement program also to help us in that regard.

I’m starting to feel a bit more relaxed about how things are going.

My car has been overheating again, quite a bit, when I had to get the water pump replaced the mechanic at the time warned me that the radiator was going to have some issues, and suggested I try and look online for a replacement part given my type of car is not manufactured any more.

The search was scary. I looked all over the country, California, Chicago auto repair everywhere, and the cheapest I found for the part was $500 not including shipping. I was going to start looking at the local scrap yards, and calling around to see what the Buick dealers had, though I figured that if I called a dealership they would expect me to bring the car to them so they could charge me the extortionate prices they have for repairs. I also started looking at other cars, maybe if “Cash for Clunkers” starts up again I can get myself a Toyota Corolla or something else. One of our friends has a really nice Honda.

In the mean time though my Mum and her boyfriend have bought the part I need for the car, which actually only costs $90 by itself, I apparently didn’t need a whole radiator? I don’t fully understand these things, but they’re fixing her for my birthday so that will be good. Every other time we go out with her now she threatens to overheat. Poor thing is so far gone.

I had a pleasant surprise this last week we finally got the information about my husband’s dental insurance and it’s a lot more economical than our other insurance. I don’t know Blue Cross Blue Shield NC but Blue Cross Florida is messed up for us. I think it’s more that the city my husband works for just doesn’t have the funds to hook us up with a better plan; but the dental insurance looks like it’s going to be awesome.

Our exams and cleanings are covered 100%, we pay nothing. Other things such as crowns and fillings we pay 20% and have a $50 deductible. I almost dropped the phone when I found that out. I mean, we have a $3000 deductible for our normal health insurance and that covers anything that you’re doing whether it’s blood work, chiropractic visits, shots, consultations or therapy, so essentially 75% of the year you’re paying at least $100 for almost anything you need, except prescriptions where you may be fortunate enough to get a generic; but there are no generic doctors and I probably wouldn’t want one.

I’m striving to be grateful that I can at least go to the doctor but the state of our insurance means that most of the time I only go if it’s an absolute emergency, such as the time I was up from midnight until 2 a.m. unable to breathe properly and it turned out I was a day shy of pneumonia.

Anyway, both hubbie and I are looking forward to going to the dentist for the first time since before the munchkin was born. I imagine there will be some lectures and some issues but at least we’ll be able to get things sorted out in that regard finally.

I’ve been feeling out of sync on and off for the past few days. I know this is in part due to not sleeping well and I’m not sure what can be done to rectify that until after Wednesday when I talk to the psychiatrist again.
Part of it is that I’m still trying to sort out what I’m going to do. I have this semi-plan that I’m going to try to find work again; and then again I start looking at the Best Online Schools and things like that to see if I can find some sort of schooling that might help open up the job field some, but narrowing down a focus is always hard. I get these drives of ambition and they go in all different directions because of all the different inputs so it becomes hard to make a decision which is it’s own curse because there’s always something that someone’s not going to like but stalling takes far too long and runs us out of options.

I suppose if I could narrow down a field of work it might help; but where we most like to work, while it is not something we’d really need additional schooling for, it’s a very elite area so there’s not much call for it in our area and it’s hard to break into fresh due to all the legislation about clairvoyance and hypnosis.

I often refer to our household as “organized chaos” but there are many times that my head-space is also characterized that way, especially if there’s upheaval going on or if I’m getting sick. For the past few nights I’ve been having difficulty sleeping. There’s been strange nightmares involving tall creepy creatures with metal fingers pointing themselves towards my face, panic and being unable to move.

Then the other night there was some lost time due to Rachel being out for a while after we watched “Alice in Wonderland”. It’s been illuminating though. Previous to this trying to piece together her interpretations of things and reasons was like trying to fix a bicycle with Ferrari parts. Now there’s more understanding. For reasons previously unknown to us she’s been extremely paranoid, particularly around night time and afraid that something or someone is going to come into the house and take her (us).

The fact that she not only spoke to Kore but took Kore’s word that the windows and back door were safe and only checked the front door are pretty huge. Also the fact that she touched and stroked Emmit, Kore’s cat is pretty big too. She’s very anti-touch. Through the course of this excursion of hers she spent some time examining electronics in the house and rearranging things so that they lined up properly but she also spoke about the fact that animals don’t talk which seemed to have been spurred by the fact that Kore was having a one sided conversation with Emmit, and the fact that certain things are the product of an overactive imagination such as animals talking, and people hurting each other, which leads to the conclusion that aliens are the ones that hurt you.

So, as we unravel the mystery we can sort some more things out and hopefully continue this healing process that we’re attempting.

Hubbie’s vacation from work is almost at an end. He goes back to work tomorrow. He’s enjoyed his time off. It’s like using spa filters on his brain. He’s needed to cleanse from the stressful things that have been going on. The job itself he enjoys but as with any job there’s always a lot of “politics” that goes on and that part annoys him because for the most part it’s stupid and petty.

We’ve had a lot of fun having him home too. He’s helped get a lot of things done around the house that have been sitting for a while because by ourselves we don’t have the strength to do them. This means the trees that overhang the driveway and house have been trimmed back, and the back deck has been cleaned. It just needs to be scrubbed down and then sealed up with Thompson’s Water Seal to stop it degrading any further given if it starts to rot we won’t be able to afford to replace it unless I get working.

We’ve gone on several trips too. We went to the zoo which the munchkin really enjoyed and yesterday we went to St. Augustine. We took our room mate Z also as we’ve been promising to take him to St. Augustine for a while but haven’t been able to afford to go ourselves. We saw a lot of nifty things when we went up there. We went to the beach which the munchkin and hubbie both really enjoyed and to the fort, and we also got to see Zoryada house this time. It’s right across from the college but even though I was there for four years I never got to see it as it was always closed. When hubbie and I came back to St. Augustine for our honeymoon it was closed, and any other time we’ve been (not that there have been that many) it’s been closed. Apparently it was being restored for just over eight years and is finally open again. So we got to see inside this time which was really cool.

This is not to say that we’re transgender, let’s get that out of the way first, because we’re not transgender all the time. Our ratio is currently three guys to five or six women/girls. Given us guys is myself, Jay and Max, and then we have Faith, Rose, Yana, Rachel, Kiddy and Katyana? This is just some thing I was thinking about last night and decided I would write up as there’s a whole bunch of “we should write more” “we should write about whatever and we should do it in depth because it will help someone” and then some of us hedge and still don’t despite apparently pledging and pledging publicly to do just that. You really can’t and shouldn’t step “out of the closet” and then go back in and peek out occasionally, at least that’s my opinion.

My point last night during our internal discussion was that I think the luckiest way to be as a male in a woman’s body is to be a bisexual male in a woman’s body, you get the best of all the worlds on that score, particularly in being in a relationship with an open-minded straight man. I’m sure there are some who would disagree with me, but that depends on their personal situation. As far as I’m concerned I’m in a great spot and I’m striving to enjoy every minute of it. I also say this based on my observations on how others of us are handling it.

You see there’s my brother, who is a straight guy. He deals with the situation but it’s more in a “suffers through it”. He has things that he helps with and can do really well, like make yorkshire pudding, do dishes, make psychic predictions and run his game but there are many, many things about the situation that freak him out and make him uncomfortable such as being married to a guy, the prospect or brief times that said guy expresses affectionate feelings towards us not realizing that Jay is the one fronting and anything to do with taking care of the body with regards to things such as periods grosses him out which I am starting to understand. However there are other things he doesn’t do or deal with well such as even going to the bathroom or showering.
It’s not all bad for Jay but he has it worst out of us guys. He and D can at least chit-chat about hot girls from time to time but both of them prefer to keep the socializing to times when Jay is running a game so that there’s less awkward PDA situations and things like that.

Then we have Max, he’s slightly better equipped to deal with our situation given he likes guys and has no trouble with exchanging affection with D or interacting with him in sexual situations. Though there are some aspects of female-male sex which some times weird him out and make him uncomfortable. I won’t go into much more specifics than that.

However, and honestly I’m not sure how much of this has to do with my personality than my sexual preferences; but for me the whole scenario is just a great learning experience and I’m enjoying the entire length of it. I can deal with the shower, with most of the other things, however the period thing is a little freaky, I’ll admit. Still so many of the things that go on between man and woman are extremely enjoyable even if they are from a different angle, and in essence it’s the best of both worlds appreciating the feminine form from the masculine perspective as well as the opposing side.

I’m approaching my birthday. It’s in four days. This is my physical birthday. The one that is properly celebrated. Given I consider my birthday is June 21st for example, and Jared and J.C. claim October 7th. So, we celebrate our physical entry into the world, of course, on the day that it actually happened. Still celebrations are nice, though a little weird.
Hubbie has arranged to have a party on the day after my birthday at a friend’s house which has the potential to be a lot of fun. The idea of gifts always confuses me. I’m not much for baubles. If I need a watch I’ll get a $10 one from Wal-mart instead of a Girard Perregaux. I can never think of anything that I could possibly need or want that isn’t hideously expensive. Right now my car is my main concern and paying of credit card bill. Hubbie always tells me that birthdays are about getting fun things; stuff that you want rather than stuff that you need, but I have a lot of things that I can do for fun. I play games on Facebook. I have games on the computer like Puzzle Quest, Plants vs. Zombies, the Sims. We get to go to movies every once in a while, and when we don’t there’s Netflix and On Demand cable, and various PlayStation games that I still haven’t finished.
One of our friends remarked the other day that I’m easier to buy things for because there’s bound to be someone in here that will actually like it. Still I think for me I’d prefer fixes to issues that we already have. Fun times with friends. I’m really blessed in many ways. Friends that we can be ourselves around. Family that are decent close by.