Fear, Angst, and Suffering in Redding

It's absolutely insufferable, the fact that I have such a block against doing something that's going to make me feel better and help me out. I've been avoiding it, to the point of telling myself that I'm not letting myself go anywhere fun until it's done and then STILL not doing it, for months. Literally. It's not even the idea of getting it done that's bothering me. I wish I knew what it was. I wish it were easier.

Grateful

They say people draw to them the things they dwell on, so I'm trying to focus and dwell on what I'm grateful for. I'm in a lousy mood, so here's my attempt. Just in thinking about those things, I'm having trouble not thinking ",even though" at the end. But I won't type it, even if it's there.

I'm grateful that I own a home, and that it's a nice home.
I'm grateful that I have a vehicle that runs and that I can afford to put gas in it.
I'm grateful that I have a good job that I usually like.
I'm grateful that I work with people that I like.
I'm grateful that I still have friends who would drop what they're doing and come to my aid if I needed them.
I'm grateful that I've had friends who aren't around anymore, and that I learned lessons from them.
I'm grateful that I still have family in this world.
I'm grateful that I have a boyfriend who loves me and wants to be with me. I'm even more grateful that I'll be seeing him next week.
I'm grateful that I have my two great dogs and cats, who seem to love me at least most of the time.
I'm grateful to have life experience that I can share with others.
I'm grateful that I can point out the positive aspects of negative events in other people's lives, and that I can at least see the positive aspects in the negative events of my own life.
I'm grateful that I have the ability to do what I need to do to survive in this world.
I'm grateful to have knowledge of many things.
I'm grateful that I'm able to feel love for and be kind to people who aren't always loving and kind to me.
I'm grateful for a place to record my thoughts where people can know what I'm thinking, but not necessarily know who I am or have reason to judge me.

Those things being said, I think I feel better.

It comes and goes

It's interesting to watch what comes into and goes out of focus in my life. Some days, it's all I can do to get myself to roll out of bed. Other days, I just want to make it through work. There are so many days where things I think about first thing in the morning don't show up again until I'm trying to quiet myself for sleep because of all the little things that move in and out - work deadlines, birthdays, what to eat or when to leave for lunch, whether I'll get to talk to the man of my dreams.

A few weeks ago, I won a sweepstakes, of sorts. It was an online contest and I won a (low carat weight) diamond-studded ring, a "right hand ring," if you will. Well, it made me feel like, yes, my life has been sucking, but there is still a silver lining - I deserve something that makes me feel like I've been taking the right path. (I've won a lot of contests in the last year that have made me feel fortunate even in my pain.) The ring was a sparkly reminder of my ability to get pretty things without needing a man, or even a paycheck.

So what does it mean that my ring fell on the kitchen floor the other night and one of the sparklies - right in the center, mind you - jumped ship? The ring has moved off my radar for the moment, until I have the patience to go to a jeweler and have him or her replace the little tiny princess-cut chip that sailed.

Now I have Hawaii on the brain again because I got an email about what's planned for my birthday...a long horseback ride into a secluded valley with hidden waterfalls and picnics. Ah...a rendevous with my loving man and a couple of horses (oh, and a guide and whoever else goes on the same trip) in a tropical painting of an area. I'm still on the right path, I think.

Nothing, really...

Oh, hormones. I'm pretty sure mine are surging right now. The moods are swinging from the trees. Don't know if today's really a day to write, but I have some things that have been floating around in draft form that I don't know why I didn't post. It's probably because I didn't feel like they were finished or perfect, or that I wasn't ready to release them. Then again, it might be that I'm not okay with feeling lousy, or letting people know about it. But that's why I opened this blog - to be okay with posting whatever comes out, whenever it does. No names, no real identifying info except feelings. Safety in being honest with myself.

The following two posts will be dated at the top for when they were written.

Bastardized

I'm tired.

I've been yanked around on a variable-length chain for what will be a year tomorrow, and I'm not sure for how much longer. He said he wanted a divorce, then waited almost two months to file...on my birthday. He said he'd keep the house and I'd be paid off in a matter of weeks, then changed his mind a week after I'd put a contract on a new house. He wanted to sell, but not to do any work to make that happen. He wanted us to be friends, but wouldn't tell me he was back to swimming in the dating pool and neglected to tell me when he was going to bring the new person around - to a company event - and that she'd be staying in the house I used to live in. He said he wanted us to be fair to each other, then I realized it would only be fair if I took less than I'm worth. Here we are, a year later, and the contract to sell the marital house is in his hands, but not ready to be signed; my divorce is still not final.

Basically, he's a lying, selfish bastard who didn't have the guts or the strength to make his second marriage work better than the first. He's weak and mealymouthed and doesn't have integrity. He's a genius, but has no idea how to treat other people unless they're doing what he wants them to do or he's trying to get them to do what he wants. He's manipulative and boastful and first in line to help someone as long as he looks good for doing it. He wants to save people, but after he thinks he has or figures out they don't need saving, he's done with them. It's sad, really.

There are days when you don't want to get up in the morning because you feel sad or depressed or just not like going to work. Then there are days that start out fine but beging to go terribly wrong within hours of awakening. This was one of the latter.

I say "terribly wrong" not because that's the way things ended, but because that's the way I felt when I got to work. I had projects that were behind, had a class to teach during my normal lunch hour, and then I read an email from my long-distance love that made me feel like crying. We're having separation anxiety, both of us, and it's affecting our communication. It's so hard not to feel guilt and disappointment that we can't be together in the same place, and that the separation makes us grumpy, sometimes even with each other. What we really want most is a big hug and a little snuggling, but what ends up happening is that the anxiety takes over and we don't end up talking or we just spend our precious talking time bitching or wishing that we want to be together.

Fortunately, in this case, I feel like the stress opened up communication.

Canine Explosion

One of my dogs, sweet though she is, doesn't understand carpet. Or, I should say, she misunderstands it, because she appears to think that it's grass. In my last house, the floors were mostly wood with the occasional rug; that's where my little lovely grew up. My new place has more carpet, with wood floors in the area where the dogs sleep.

None of the pets, canine or feline, appears to grasp the whole "carpet as interior" concept. The dog was the first to show her lack of concern for my new space, within the first 12 hours I lived here. She obviously wasn't well, and it was not a pleasant experience. Then, a few months later, one of the cats began to pee by the front door, beside a chair I'd had for years, but had been a side-of-the-road freebie in a previous life. I took this to be a problem with the chair; I had some confirmation of that when I found evidence that the other dog had marked the area next to it. But when the chair moved, the cats kept going (so to speak). Now one of the cats lives in a kennel during working and sleeping hours.

And then there's my little girl dog.

Every now and then, she doesn't feel well. She goes through days when nothing more than semisolid leaves her. I almost always know about those days now; I didn't in the old place because the dogs spent most nice days outside. If it's not between the hours of 8-ish and 6-ish, she'll go on the patch of sod I have in the yard - and that's the only place she'll go if I don't stop her before she gets to that area. But if I don't watch every time she goes outside, there is another way to tell. During lawn-mowing season, my roommate won't pick up this type of pile with the poop-scooping equipment because it's too messy, and will mow around it. That means I have oddly shaped patches of tall grass in the middle of the grass. Not tough to see that.

If, however, she's having trouble during working hours, she'll break down a child gate or even make a break over the electric shock mat of death ("zappy mat" to me) to get to the carpet (grass) to relieve herself. I was lax, I admit. I didn't team up the zappy mat WITH the gate yesterday (she won't stand on the mat because it shocks her, so she can't break down the gate). And I knew she'd been eating potting soil (or something similar) and grass lately. I should have seen it coming. But I didn't think and I didn't act.

So, yesterday, I managed to get out of work at 5:00. That doesn't happen often. I left the office complete with plans to meet a friend for dinner early. I was going to do some sanding around a doorway later in the evening, but was going to be fortified with sushi first. I opened the door and knew. I was hopeful that it happened on the wood floor, but there was no doubt about the smell. My nose is sensitive and well-trained. It wasn't in the kitchen, and the zappy mat was in place. It wasn't in the dining room.

Oh, but was it ever present by the front door. And everywhere else within about an 6- by 12-foot space near that door. My dog had "ass-ploded" (a term someone else used in a blog recently, but I've known of the term for awhile and feel very confident that this term best describes what happened). Everywhere. I could tell where it started and where it ended. She had even peed a line through the middle. But she circled quite a bit during the ordeal. It seems that she'd been plugged up. There were probably 20 or more piles or drips. It was unbelievable. If the picture isn't clear to you, consider light beige carpet and sunlight streaming through the windows I had to open to keep from choking on the smell.

Strangely, though, I wasn't completely angry. I've been pretty grumpy the last week, thinking distasteful thoughts about all sorts of little tiny things that don't usually bother me, but this didn't piss me off. I couldn't blame the dog, though I wanted to. I couldn't even punish her. I know her habits, which come from her instincts. I know how to keep her out of the room. I saw the signs that something internally unpleasant might be coming soon (the soil and grass). Really, it was my own fault. So, even after spending 3 hours on cleaning up entirely disgusting things and trying to get stains out of my stupid beige carpet, I wasn't mad.

Is that acceptance, or am I just THAT happy not to have to go and deal with sanding and painting that doorway?