So, I scraped for things that were good that had happened, and it was hard but I found some and over the past two days I’ve been realizing that perhaps my GP was right when he said I needed to see the psych and get back on some anti-depressants. However, we can’t afford those so instead I’ve decided I’m going to make myself focus on the positive things until I get myself out of this slump. I’d rather not be popping pills to mask my problems anyway.

My brain is strong. My mind is strong. It has to have been to have been able to get me through the things that I have survived, so this little economic crunch and loss of job and all the rest of it I can get through this. I’ve been through worse!

People always talk about the power of positive thinking, but it’s hard, and I recognize that, it’s very hard to start the climb out of the hole, but I have to, my family needs me, and frankly I need me. Yes, I’m tired. Yes, I feel like crap, but you know what? There is a LOT of good in my life. I’m not around my abusive step-father any more. I’ve cut out several people who bring negativity into my life, and here I am bringing it back in. So, I need to CUT IT OUT.

Today, for example, yes there have been some bumps, but you know what? I got laundry on the go, and in doing so cleaned up some of the mess in the munchkin’s room. I rearranged his closet, and he and I had a great time doing it. We played games, and hid under covers, and rebuilt his toy box, and had some quality snuggle time while we played Boomshine and made pretty music and sang and danced, and I’m still tired, but I can already feel my mood improving.

Rather than yesterday where I spent most of my time irritable, irritated and I bet irritating to those who were around me and having to deal with my shitty attitude.

So, what if I only got $95 on my final paycheck? That’s $95 we didn’t have before, and sure we’re not going to have much money because I had to delay the mortgage payment until tomorrow, which means hubbie’s paycheck is going to be thoroughly toasted by not only the mortgage but three credit card bills and the phone bill BUT we will have a place to live, and we may be eating ramen and hamburger for a week or so but we can make that damn tasty with stuff from our herb garden and we’ll have food, and a place to live and we’ll be together.

Ramen can be freakin’ tasty, and Kore and I are both damn good cooks so we can come up with some great meals with what we have, we had the foresight to stock up on meat and things whenever it’s on sale, so we’re not going to starve.

We have so many blessings. We’re in a safe place. We have really good people in our life, and we can appreciate that. We have plenty of DVDs and old video games that we’ve acquired over the years, so if we have to turn the cable off to save money it’s not like we’re going to be starved for entertainment, especially as several of us can run role playing games which will also help stimulate the munchkin’s imagination.

Add to that great things like freecycle — and we can pass along several of the things that munchkin doesn’t need any more to other people in our area, and perhaps get other things for him in their place. I don’t need his Pack’n'Play any more or his Rock-It exercise center, but I imagine there are other people who would be able to use them, rather than us just throwing them away.

What is it they say, pay it forward?

When hubbie gets up and asks me how the morning has been instead of whining about whatever it was that might have frustrated me for a moment I’m going to tell him about the fun we had playing tickle monster and how helpful he was as I was sorting out his room. It’s a small start, but I’m putting out positive vibes into the house and that should help keep things upbeat, and if that continues for a few days it should become habit and will hopefully spread throughout everyone who lives in this house and just keep building and building.

Here goes nothing!

Marriage has been a long strange trip, but at least we’re taking it together. I tend to consider that my husband is a saint and deserves a medal for doing all that he does.

This time on that day we were already married and we were on our way back to my in-law’s house to spend some time at their after party so that we could hang out with our friends a bit before going on our honeymoon to St. Augustine. I realize that marriage marked a step of freedom with me. I was able to start cutting ties with certain Evils in my life and really see all the damage that they had been doing to me. Although I’m still working through the issues of a lot of that.

I’m very grateful that I was able to spend that day with so many friends and family. Although I find myself also reflecting on certain people and wondering about things, but that’s not for this sort of post. I don’t wish to hang in limbo any longer, but in some cases I don’t know if I can escape that right now.

We’re going to the zoo tomorrow as a celebration and tonight I’m making some thing with steak. I hope to be able to celebrate everything with my husband I’m so grateful to him as well. I wish there was a medal that I could give him.

1. Thank you to the man at the post office for helping me get things sorted so that my taxes are finally in the mail! Woohoo! We should be getting a refund within the next month or so. I can’t find my checkbook at the minute and didn’t want to wait any longer to get things in so we have to wait for them to cut us a check, but the taxes ARE FILED, which is good given I started the darn things in FEBRUARY

2. Hubbie’s getting his operation!!!
This is major. He had to go all the way into  the city I used to work in to consult with a different doctor, but the guy took one look at his tonsils and went, “OMG THOSE NEED TO BE OUT LAST MONTH!!” so he’s getting those and his adenoids and his uvula fixed, but at a different hospital than the one the other surgeon was affiliated with so that will hopefully mean good things all round.

3. I’ve started writing again. Well, obviously I’ve been writing for a while because I’ve been doing blog entries and things, but I actually wrote a short fun drabble of a story based on a prompt a friend gave me yesterday and I’m working on another one right now too, but got sidetracked with hubbie coming back with his good news.
The story may be nothing major, and nothing publishable, but it’s a start. It’s more than I’ve written in almost six months and it actually had a beginning middle and end, so that was good, especially because it didn’t suck.  It just flowed out of my fingers into the keyboard the minute I read the prompt I got from Soro.

This is good though. It’s getting me slowly back into writing gear, and hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll be in gear enough I can start working on some of the actual stories that I started. I think I’m going to start with one I haven’t touched for a while, an idea I got back in my second semester of college, and I’ll start ironing out it’s direction/outline and then go onto writing the story itself.

I tend to forget that prep work is key when writing anything, making sure you know where things should go and how to get there so that you can actually do what you need to do.

I hope everyone else is having a good week. What are you guys grateful for this week?

1. I’m thankful for friends who are willing to help out with things. We got a fire pit dug in our back yard thanks to the help of some great friends, and one has also loaned us an axe so that we can make a better and stronger start on clearing out some of the jungle.

2. I’m thankful that my son has started to pick up manners and conversation skills. That he’s actually getting the whole “listening and asking” rather than shrieking thing, for the most part, and also starting to show an interest in potty training.

3. I’m thankful that we can get by. It’s rough some times but we manage it. We have a great place to live and it’s getting better every day.

What are you thankful or grateful for?

1. I’m thankful for doctors who are on top of their profession and genuinely care and don’t make me feel silly for taking my son to see them. The staff at my son’s pediatrician’s place were very good when I visited them yesterday. They’re always kind and compassionate but I was a little apprehensive because this is the first time I’ve seen a particular doctor who works there and I was worried that she would be the “evil bitch” sort of doctor, but instead she complimented me on the way I’d been taking care of the munchkin and told me that I was doing everything right. That’s nice to here because with him being my first child I still have moments of doubt that I really don’t have a clue what I’m doing with this “Mom thing”. Even though they can’t definitively tell me what’s wrong with him I’m reassured that between us and them he’s going to be fine.

2. I’m grateful to our friends who are understanding about the fact that we have a child and will do things to help us out so that we can still socialize despite the fact we have a child and he’s sick. I’m grateful and thankful that I can trust them to be around him and to actually watch out for him while they’re over and am making food for us all or otherwise occupied. That they’re smart and kid-watchful and kid-safe and will entertain him and play with him and aren’t acting “put out” about him either.

3. Last but not least, as you might have guessed by yesterday’s post I’m extremely thankful and grateful and lucky that I’m spending the rest of my life with this man of mine.

1. I’m thankful for the understanding nature of some of the people that I work with in the business world. Our mortgage broker also works for our insurance company. They’re always reliable for mundane things like auto insurance quotes and other rate quotes, but they’re never pushy. I feel that they truly have our best interests at heart. She called the other day to ask me if my husband and I had thought any more about the mortgage insurance protection plan that she had recommended. I told her that we would like to do it but we’re still struggling financially, and she said she completely understand that there’s lots of “Oh, crap I didn’t budget for that!!” moments when you buy a new house and that she’d talk to us at a later date about it, perhaps after our taxes come in and we have a bit more float money built back up.

2. I’m thankful that we were able to find a friendly good natured cat to become a member of our family and give her a safe and happy home. She’s so laid back she’s practically horizontal. You can do anything, within reason, to her and she doesn’t bat an eye. The munchkin’s hung her upside down and she’s just carefully pulled away and walked off so she can get to higher ground. No hissing. No spitting. No scratching or clawing. I’m very glad she chose us. I love having the cat in our house. I’ve missed curling up on the couch and snuggling with a purring feline.

3. I’m thankful for my medical team. My primary care provider, therapist and psychiatrist are wonderful at working together and helping me get back on an even keel, not sending me for too many tests, and not forcing me to be on medications that I don’t want to be on. They want to work with me to do what I want to do as long as it’s in my best interests to get better, and they actually listen to me when I talk to them. It’s great.

What are you thankful for this week? Let me know. I’d love to hear from other people about good things going on in their life.

1. Thanks to the wonderful people who work at Leesburg Humane Society. I used to work for them when I was in high school. I did my volunteer work for scholarships with them, working every Saturday from 10-3. I took the munchkin up there today for a “kitty play date” seeing as his Dad is allergic to cats and it reminded me what an amazing job the care-takers there do, looking after cats, dogs, rabbits, birds, horses, donkeys, goats and many other animals who have been mistreated or abandoned. It’s doubly amazing with them because they’re a no-kill shelter which means they’re often really over-crowded.
We had a lot of fun with the cats there. The munchkin got to play with many animals who are really friendly as opposed to our skittish neighbor cats. The only thing is that now I’m in kitty-pine mode myself and want to race back up there and bring about ten of them home with me.

2. Thanks to the U.S. of A for saying I can indeed get my citizenship and will soon have the ability to have a say in the running of this country.

3. Thanks to my wonderful family for being here with me. I’m really feeling the love this week, especially as the munchkin is asking for and spontaneously giving kisses and hugs now. It’s so sweet. Especially when he hurts me somehow, like yesterday when he tried to climb up on the couch using my hair and I said, “Ow! You hurt Mummy!” and instead of giggling like it was some big joke like he has in the past he said, “Mummy!!” and patted me on the shoulder and kissed me.

1. Thank you to the people in line at Walmart who didn’t get mad or angry that my son was throwing a huge tantrum but helped keep me calm and positive that I was doing the right thing not giving in to his demands for a ball when he’d been misbehaving and shared funny anecdotes about their own kids with me to help me out.

2. Thank you to the staff at the Publix Deli for always being nice to us and chatting, and joking with us, especially this week because before I went in there the munchkin got stung by a hornet right before we went in there and they gave him a chicken tender to help cheer him up.

3. Last but definitely not least thank you to my husband who despite being sick and having had no sleep yesterday helped Mum and I get a heavy thing out of the UHaul to store in our garage.

What do you have to be thankful about this week?

1. Thank you to the lady being served ahead of us at the Publix deli counter who heard me telling the munchkin that I was sorry I couldn’t give him any thing because they didn’t have any samples out today even though he was asking nicely and gave us a piece of the cheese she was ordering so that he could munch on that.

2. Thank you to the gentleman at Walmart today who brought me his empty shopping cart so that I didn’t have to traipse through the rain to get one and could get the munchkin and my bags into the store easier.

3. I’m also thankful that overall I’m feeling a lot better lately than I have been in a couple of months.