zeptember

For the past six months, since working close to home and not having a daily commute anymore, I have not listened to the news on the radio.

I don’t have regular television to watch news - we only have DVD and VCR hookup - we don’t have cable or satellite TV.

I don’t watch the news in online video feeds.

Every now and then, I’ll google national and world news to see what’s going on, or I’ll see news via posts made in LiveJournal, Facebook or Twitter.

But I have to say, overall I’ve been a much more sane person since cutting two things out of my life:

• working for the computer industry
• listening/reading the news every day

For the past couple of days, I’ve been full on checking the news again, because of the school and health care speeches that President Obama has given, and everything surrounding what’s going on with those speeches - mostly right-wing nut jobs (check it out here, here and here). Since I was paying attention to who said what about the President’s speeches, I thought I’d also check in on national and world news as well.

I’m seriously depressed, now. It’s been no more than 36 hours all told I think, checking the news a few times, and I’m a mess. This world pisses me off. This is why I had stopped paying attention in the first place - I don’t have the energy or health reserves to be absorbing world news and politics.
It wasn’t any one thing - it was all of it: right-wing nut jobs, several child abuse stories, continued horrors of vets returning from war when I know I still have extended family in the military, all kinds of stuff on The Canary Report by a fellow blogger-acquaintance, unemployment stats, continued heat waves, local homophobia, and other news.

I have a daily job that makes me work really hard for eleven effing dollars an hour. I come home exhausted. For up to two weeks out of each month, I am incapacitated in some form by endometriosis, culminating with being bedridden for 1-3 days. I don’t have time outside of my own home life and health issues for much else. I NEED to focus on me and not on the rest of the world. So when I do pay attention to the news, it leaves me emotionally bitter and depressed. And when I’m left like that, I don’t have the extra spoons on reserve to also handle what’s going on in my own life, or my family and friends’ lives. I certainly don’t have the stamina to catch up on my own blog, which captures and reposts the latest news and research surrounding finding a cause and cure for endometriosis.

To try to correct the damage I’ve caused myself over the past couple of days, this evening I took a dose of Happy News. It’s sort of like a news anti-depressant if you will.

I’m not trying to sing LA LA LA! while plugging my ears and pretend nothing’s going on in the world around me. I know there’s a lot of bad and serious shit going down in the world, in the U.S., in the Bay Area, in my town.

I just not the right person to talk to about these things - if I get involved in any way in matters which I feel are completely beyond my control, it will literally take me down emotionally and physically. And I’m too self-preserving to let that happen.

After reading some happy news, I remembered I should be attending a meeting to help get the word out to say NO to a recall of three of my town’s school board members. I panicked a bit, wondered if I should bother now that I was late, but in the end, I bit the bullet of social phobia and walked to the event. I only wanted to bolt from the meeting a few times, but I stayed in my seat. Two of my friends were in the row in front of me but that didn’t stop the social anxiety.
After the meeting, I met and shook hands with one of the board members and got her business card. Wouldn’t you know it? One of her kids used to go to the school I now teach at. Connections are a great thing.

After the meeting, I went to the grocery store and spent an hour trying to figure out the best groceries for me and my food allergies. I still eat a lot of processed foods - still not prepping most of my dishes by hand. Need to work on that. Food prep is calming.

Tonight’s outings more than pass me on the homework I was assigned by my shrink, which was to walk alone around the block as a step in facing my social anxiety.
I know my therapist will be proud of me. The thing is, I know she means well, but she really just doesn’t understand what I go through, and how intermittent it can be, and how debilitating it can be. She may say I’m on the road to recovery but she has no idea. At least, that’s how I feel right now. She’ll view me going out as a huge success, but down the road, it could be a day, a week, a month…I’ll have another social phobia freakout and/or drink myself to blackout again in order to deal with the anxiety. It’s hit and miss.

*sigh* anyway…

Now it’s nearly 11pm and I need to be in bed but for the past three nights, I’ve not been able to fully wind down.

Hot shower, here I come.

I’m home alone as usual on a Sunday afternoon but the difference today is that I’m enjoying it. I have done nothing physically active all day today. Sunday is usually my day to get all the housework and laundry done before the work week begins again. Today there was so much going on and I totally cleared my schedule.

• There was afternoon tea in the backyard, courtesy the neighbor upstairs.
• There was a sheet rock party at a friend’s house - a work party to help him get his new house in order so he and his wife and infant can move in.
• Another neighbor in the back of the house needed help getting her digital converter box all set up because as of last Thursday, broadcast television as we’ve always known it in the U.S. ceased to be. I called the FCC and we got a guy to come out and wire everything up for my neighbor, because I didn’t know how. I have not had regular TV or cable TV for probably six years now, by choice. We just have DVD and VHS hookup when we want it. We did not purchase the digital converter for our home.
• A neighbor two doors down wanted me to babysit her toddler.
• A neighbor almost three blocks down wanted me to babysit her toddler.

I cleared all of it off the schedule because of george, who is not actually showing himself, yet, but today I’m extremely weak, tired and sore.
I even asked my husband to go to the grocery for me because I couldn’t even manage that.

Aside from the blah of the pain, the fatigue, the weakness, I feel so happy to be able to sit alone and journal. I’ve truly been needing alone time like this.

Every Sunday, my husband has band practice, comes home for an hour, then goes to game night with his buddies. Sometimes I mind, sometimes I don’t. I would love to get a Sunday evening group hangout thing going for myself. But not tonight.

Friday was the last day of school. As of Monday, there will be no kids for one week. We teachers and assistant teachers will be tearing down our classrooms and preparing for summer daycare, which begins on June 22nd.
Out of nine weeks of summer session, each of us only have five weeks of employment. We’re all juggled around between the school we’ve been working at and the toddler school, which is located a couple miles away - over by where I used to nanny in Spring, 2008. There’s too many teachers and not enough students enrolled for summer session.
I’ll be using any extra time I can make for myself to look for other employment, or to stack babysitting jobs to tide me through until end of August, when the full time school year begins again.

With the lack of full time employment so soon after returning from our honeymoon, I should have been stacking babysitting jobs already, and should have worked all weekend. The opportunity to work all weekend presented itself - by two different families. But the thing is, I have to also take care of my health. Right now, I’m in downtime. My body is just not coping, nor are my emotions. So the money will just have to wait.

Well I wanted to get out to the club for the undead wedding themed party last Friday, but instead, the snotmonster cold I’d been fighting for a week finally caught up with me and killed me dead.

I took it easy for most of the weekend, while trying to get as many chores done as possible. Ugh, no more time, time running out. AIEEEE.

I’m tired of hemorrhaging money. Please, make it stop. Had a minor meltdown at B over this last night.

The cough and snotfest seems to have stopped as of today. I’ve coughed only twice. I spent the weekend drinking tea and water and eating assloads of vitamin C, vitamin B, cal/mag and zinc vitamins.

Although I ran errands on Saturday and Sunday, I feel like it was wasted time, all for naught, nothing accomplished. So frustrating.

The other monster I’ve been trying to keep at bay is the Endometriosis. I’ve exhibited symptoms for two damned weeks now. I blame myself for having a shitty diet because I’ve been under stress of starting a new job and continued “hurry up and wait…GO! AAAIIIIEEEE” on all the chores that need to be done before the end of this month.
When I woke up this morning, the pain was there. I checked myself every ten minutes but no girl do0m. I waited til the last possible minute to get dressed and go out the door cuz I wanted to be sure I didn’t have to call in sick. My body gave me the shaky ’sure, you’re alright’ nod, and off I went to work, zo0m.

It’s been a mellow day here with the baby. I’ve not taken her on a stroller ride outside. My body is shutting down. No energy. So tired. Knees have had it. Pelvic region aching.
I’m still on Motrin twice a day since last week.

Gah - I haven’t even gotten plane tickets to Michigan yet for November. I’ve not been home in 4 years, 3 months and 23 days (and counting). I’m going home to visit, dammit! I don’t care if Michigan will be frozen over by then! I wanna go home.
Hey, with all the bare trees Michigan will have by then, and spo0ky overcast sky, I’ll get some awesome graveyard pix for ya’ll. :p

But now, right now, I’m missing peak colour. *sob*