The search continues

So what have I figured out in a week's time? A fat lotta nothing! lol No, no, let me try to think more objectively for a moment...

1. Despite my love for and knowledge of animals I probably shouldn't work in any field having to do with them. My guidelines on how they should be treated and kept even at a minimum are strict and SOMEONE will always fall short turning things quickly into a big mess.

2. I've done retail type jobs to death and though I seem to be good at selling it just doesn't hold my interest. It becomes too much of a grind. It starts out great as I learn the products! My whole sales technique is to learn the products inside, out, and compared to others then simply tell customers about them honestly, the good, bad and ugly. I don't do pressure sales, period, but I do like partnering with a customer to help them find what's really right for them. I think I need something more mentally stimulating. Plus in sales it doesn't matter how much you sell, there's always a push to sell more and more and more which starts nudging you back towards the high pressure approach. What on earth is wrong with gaining in customer loyalty and satisfaction to count on word of mouth bringing in new customers for that sales growth? It's slower. That's it! The bosses want bigger profits and they want it now, now, now even if it means having to stay on that treadmill because you lose out in customer loyalty and satisfaction in the long run.

3. Working in restaurants seems to be even worse than retail, mentally void.

4. I tried a few plant nurseries thinking that with all there is to learn about gardening/landscaping and such it'd certainly be mentally satisfying enough but if someone mistreats a plant somehow I just don't get quite the same kind of hacked off as I do if it was an animal. Unfortunately there was so much to do simply maintaining the stocked plants that I never really got that mental stimulation and it too turned into a grind of water, pick off the dead bits, repot this, find a way to display that...blah.

5. I did daycare once and in some ways I simply loved it, especially when I was switched over to the babies that were about 12 months old! No matter what kind of bad mood I'm in nothing can magically turn it right around instantly like a baby! That particular job ended up having the same drawback as working with animals did, though. I could not, would not abide someone not treating those children as I thought they should be treated! No one at that daycare seemed to agree with me but I still say that keeping a boy in the 2-3 yr old room in a playpen all day every day so you don't have to deal with him is abusive.

Two ideas that I keep coming back to are nursing and psychology. Psychology I've kind of put on the back burner just because I don't know if I'm ready to go through quite that much school at my age! Nursing, on the other hand, would only take a minimum of 2 yrs of school and opens up realms of possibilities. Home care? Pediatrics? Pallative/Hospice? I volunteered for a Hospice for awhile before I moved away and found that caring for someone that is dying didn't bother me at all. I would feel pangs of sadness, of course, but I also felt great to be able to give some joy and comfort to people like that. But would it really fulfill me?

What about Ob/Peds? It would be a huge, awesome thrill to help babies come into the world, care for them, help new parents learn what to do, and all!! That just sounds like the best thing in the world to me!! But could I handle the dark side of the job where we lose a baby? It might help exorcise my own demons about the loss of Jonathan and who could sympathize with a woman who's just lost a baby better than another woman who has also lost a baby? But it might just rip that wound in me wide open again every single time. I just don't know which! What would I do if I didn't approve of how someone was handling a baby? What if I did something accidently that lead to the injury or even death of a baby??? Could I handle that??? It sounds like a possible minefield to me!

Pallative/Hospice type nursing wouldn't hold the same kind of risks for me but it wouldn't compare to the possible joys of Pediatric nursing either. Surely the joys would make the risk worth it? In that it would be similar to my days of animal rescue, at the sad, hard times you hold tight to the good times and remind yourself that you can only do what you can do, you have to hold on long enough to reach that light at the end of the tunnel because there'll be more there that really need you. Or am I just in the wrong ballpark completely with this? Am I idealizing the role of a nurse? I know that a lot of the job would be the mundane, dirty, hard stuff like changing soiled sheets, giving meds, paperwork, getting barfed on...but ANY job is going to have it's less than fun and pleasant side! Maybe I should push the idea of nursing aside and think about other options but what? Am I simply asking that to put off making an actual decision?

Searching

What am I still looking for? I'm content with what I have in life so far. A family, home of our own, my horses, those are all the things that I really wanted in life but there's something still missing. I've searched my heart and mind more times than I can count and sometimes I'm not sure but sitting here at the computer right at this moment it's clear that there's something else. And it's not the usual "I want/I need" type of thing because I could easily list loads of those! I'd like my van fixed so that we have two working vehicles again. I'd like to go to Pagan Spirit Gathering this year. I really want to do some more scuba diving. I need to figure out why these things from my past still hurt like they do, get some closure and put it behind me. But no, I think there's still some fundemental element that I need to be fulfilled. I believe what I'm looking for is a job!

So what's stopping me? I don't just want a job. I want to really do something that fills in that last spot in me! But what? That's the biggest thing holding me back, I think, not knowing what job to do! All my life right up till college the only thing I wanted to do was be a veterinarian. After working in a pet shop, running a rescue, and all the other animal related things I've done in life I'm actually grateful that I didn't become a vet! Having such a big part of my life subjecting myself to seeing an endless parade of animals suffering from ignorance, abuse, and neglect just might have ruined me. As much as I love animals and as qualified as I am to work with them in a variety of fields I really think that it's best I don't include them in my professional life.

There's things now and then that grab my interest, becoming a Bradley instructor , scuba instructor, certified hypnotist, pet sitter...that list is darn near endless but my interest in them fades out. Since I don't have to work at all in order for us to stay afloat financially I want to find something that I love! I want to be one of those blessed people that get up in the morning feeling happy that they get to go into work! So what would I enjoy that would hold my interest long term? I think it might be people.

People are endlessly fascinating to me but they also scare me to death and I worry that I don't get along well with them. I don't know why though! For instance, we've now gone to this new church in Austin three or four times and everything's great so far. We've met quite a few very friendly, interesting people which I've enjoyed immensely! I like them just fine and they seem to like me just fine but I know that the longer I'm around these same people the closer I get to a day when I don't like them and they don't like me for some reason. Maybe I'm too strange. Maybe I don't accept other's shortcomings easily enough. Maybe I'm not confident enough in myself. Hmmm this is something I'll have to really think about. I'll letcha know more about it next Tuesday.

The dance

I've only just realized it's this dance I do, tell some secrets, maybe get brave enough to peek out of the closet, then, scared to find myself so vulnerable, run to bury myself back in the deepest, darkest corner of the closet I can find. When the world doesn't end I start to wonder why. I get curious about what's really going on out there. So I creep forward to nervously peer out again. In times past I just might decide not to look out of the same peephole. I'd see what the view from a different one was like. This time I recognized the steps in this dance and thought I'd use this peephole again to see if I can see any of the same people. Eh the bottom line is I missed some of you and thought I should at least drop in an update instead of running away =)

Son #1 is grounded for bad grades which is really unusual for him. He's normally the type of student who's worst grades are usually Bs so the first time we let him slide with a warning to fix it. This time we had no choice.

Son #2 has dodged a bullet labelled "sexual harassment" only because he's never been in Trouble at school before and the girl's dad isn't pressing charges. You know, I fully understand that they were all just messin around writing and drawing on each other and the girl allowed him to draw on her back but did he have to draw a penis and balls with an arrow pointing down at her butt saying "insert here"??? I know, I know, all he thought was it would get a few laughs from the other kids and the girl wasn't upset about it but it was still wrong on many levels. Needless to say he's grounded like we've never grounded a child before this.

Son #3 is STILL grounded for bad grades!

Thank the Divine, Son #4 is, at least as of this very moment, not in trouble!

Son #3 is facing heart surgery. He's had SVT for some time now but a week or so ago it acted up twice in one weekend while they were digging a fire pit outside and the second one we had to take him to the hospital to get his heartrate back down. Since it seems to be getting worse instead of him growing out of it they did an exam and tests to see if this surgery is an option. We're coordinating with the doctors right now to get it done as soon as we can. They'll run a line up the artery somewhere around the hip/groin area up to his heart and simply burn out the extra nerve that's causing the problem. His mom tried to block having it done but quite frankly we just ran right over her on this one. Of course there's SOME risk, there always is no matter how tiny, but it truly is a very small risk and in return he may never, ever have to deal with his heart racing painfully out of control like this ever again. HE wants it done! We think it's worth it.

Me? I've just been doing a lot of the usual, really. Exercising, taking care of critters, wrangling kiddos, cleaning house, playing World of Warcraft... The horses are coming along nicely! I thought poor hubs was going to have a heartattack yesterday when I casually announced that I was going out to ride the gelding. After some initial nervousness though everything was just fine just like I knew it would be and it was a fun ride.

Today it actually snowed enough and stuck long enough to do something with it! Two snows in one winter??? So much for global warming. Hubs and I made loads of snowballs at strategic locations, waited till the boys got off the bus, then started a massive snowball fight. After we started to make a snowman but someone put an odd lump of snow on him so he became a snow-woman. Son #1 then went off to make a snowman he could pummel to bits while I started on a whole crowd of little snowmen in a tribute to Calvin and Hobbes. Hubs went off back to show Son #3 how to make a snow fort and Son #3 decided instead to make a snow angel on the trampoline. I'll have to go out later to finish my C&H tribute but we were finally frozen enough to run inside for awhile to warm up with some nice hot cocoa. *sigh* I may hate the cold but I love the memories you can make with it. The only thing missing is my other two boys.

My first fail

Today I'm making this short and sweet for ya! I stumbled over this website a few nights ago and got so hooked into it that I stayed up hours past when I'd planned to go to bed because I wanted to see every single picture. They're cute! They're cuddley! They're downright hilarious! Today I give you My First Fail.

My birthday weekend

My birthday isn't for a few days yet but since this was a child free weekend we kinda considered this my birthday weekend anyway. Saturday I really did a whole lot of nothing! Most of the day I played, yep, WoW but I did cook dinner. When I was growing up my father made a tuna casserole that I really crave sometimes. It's just a warm, filling, comfort food for me. Unfortunately all four children uncharacteristically agree on this one thing if not many others and that's they HATE tuna casserole! Now hubs and I are the sort of parents that choose what goes on the dinner plates and the children can like it or lump it but we don't go out of our way to torture the poor things either so tuna casserole is something we save for when the boys are all away. With all of them at their other parent's houses this weekend that's exactly what we decided to have and it was so good!

We had planned to go to this UU church in Austin that we've gone to the last two or three Sundays again this morning expecting a newcomer's orientation but I also wanted to go check out the Wildflower UU church. When we looked the newcomer's orientation wasn't listed on the website of the church we've been visiting but the Wildflower church was having one so we instantly decided to give the Wildflower's a go. Despite mixed feelings about the whole day I'm really glad we did!

The day started out really rough! I got up a bit extra early because I was in the mood to go out as an actual girl today, dress up a bit, curl the hair, the whole thing. First I just couldn't feel good about any of the clothes I tried out. I've always been a very tiny woman so with this extra weight around my middle right now none of my clothes fit right! But I persevered and found something that I thought was good and went off to put the now hot curlers in my hair...only to find that it's been so darn long since I played with curlers I've lost the knack of it somehow. The darn things just didn't want to stay in place, bits of hair kept unwinding itself to stick out every which way, and as I'm struggling with this it was time to wake hubby up.

It should be pretty clear by now that I love my husband like crazy but perfect he's not and one of his faults is he is a pain to get up earlier than noon! He sleeps through alarms so I have to wake him up myself and I like to wake people up nice and soft. It's nasty to get jerked or startled out of sleep suddenly! So I woke him up and after a little bit of gentle coaxing for him to wake up, wake up, no, REALLY wake up went back to fighting with curlers but stayed alert because he has a habit of falling back to sleep. When I didn't hear him get out of bed in a few minutes I gave a slightly frustrated "sweetie, PLEASE get up!" to which he snarled back " I AM up!!" Oh boy. It was like he flipped my bitch switch from zero to "she's gonna blow!!" all at once! He stood in the bathroom doorway for a minute while I ripped the curlers back out of my hair growling under my breath. He apologized which I really did appreciate deep down but at that moment it was going to take me a minute to come back down so I gave him the bathroom, went to just tie my hair back in a tail, and change clothes to something plainer and simpler. By then the angry had gone out of me and I started crying!

I went back to the bathroom, softly told him to come back to bed, stripped and climbed back into bed cuddling down to comfort myself. He came over to me and knelt by the bed to pet my hair concerned about my sudden turn around. I told him that it simply wasn't worth it to me. I wanted to have a nice weekend with him and if that meant sleeping late together then doing whatever around the house that's what I'd take. I was tired and frustrated and scared about going to a new place anyway and just wanted to go back to sleep but I also reasoned that the church wasn't going anywhere so we could try again next week. But he kissed, petted, coaxed and pleaded with me asking me not to let one buttheaded moment from him spoil the day until I gave in.

We got there a few minutes late after an hour and a half drive but settled down to see what we'd see. The group was much larger than I'd anticipated but otherwise pretty much what I expected to see. The reverend was an extremely striking woman, very slim with short cropped hair and an easy magnetism with a generous dash of a sense of humor. I really liked her. Just after the service we called ahead to the house where the orientation was being held to make sure that they had room for a pair of sudden drop ins but they assured us that it was a case of the more the merrier. We were sure that'd be the case but thought it would be more polite to call ahead just to be on the safe side since we hadn't been there before to sign up in advance.

It was a very lovely house where we were welcomed warmly, pointed to refreshments, bathtrooms, and told to make ourselves at home. Just glancing around I felt like a little kid wanting to explore everything! I noticed right off several things that indicated we shared some common interests with a sunroom full of new plants coming along, a loom with a partly finished weave on it, display shelves full of rocks, shells, and fossils, and lots of books including some on foreign languages. We chatted, my social phobia kicked in pretty bad making me feel extremely awkward and like I was running on and on to avoid uncomfortable silences, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and tell myself that no one but me probably thought me a freakish blabber mouth. There were several people there in particular that caught my attention in some way as someone that I might really like to get to know better. Overall we really felt like this group might end up being a better fit for us personally than the other church so we'll definitely be going back at least a few times to explore how we and they may fit into each other's lives.

Then we went to the mall where I bought a dress I think I really like and a few pair of fun earrings. I'm trying to relearn how to be a girl and social! When we got home hubs asked if I would put on the dress to show him while he went to feed the horses. When he saw it he had his doubts for a minute. I adjusted it thinking it might need a blouse of some sort under it to be considered decent enough by the social standards which had my confidence starting to sneak out on me but it's a dress that fits with ties behind the neck and one in the back so shifting everything around, tightening this and loosening that, I managed to cover more of my chest and the top of my panties while keeping it secure and comfy. When he drew me down on the bed with him for a little cuddle we discovered a bonus too, it's a very silky but light, thin material so the more he petted me the more he wanted to pet of me which heated up rather quickly!! The dress didn't stay on very long then we had a nice nap snuggled up together. So there were some ups, downs, and bumps in the road today but I'd call the whole weekend a success.

Random thoughts

We are childless for the entire weekend! That's a good and bad thing for me. On the one hand I miss my babies to the point of almost physical pain but on the other hand it is really nice to have all that responsibility lifted from me for just a little while. So I'm both ok and a little depressed at the same time.

Normally on a Saturday I'd be doing laundry while playing WoW because the game has a little alarm clock so I can relax between loads without losing track of time. Not today though. Today the silly breaker won't stay on so I'm stuck until the hubs makes a fix that'll stick! We've replaced that one breaker several times over the almost two years we've lived here. The wiring in this place is just weird!

My father sent me a card with a little birthday money in it. He was hell to live with, drunk, volatile, verbally/emotionally abusive on his best days and sometimes physically abusive. I cut little holes in the side of my matress to hold a few knives and practiced drawing them sometimes just in case he got really crazy. Our bedrooms didn't have locks on the doors but I discovered that if I pushed sneakers under the door really tight it made it hard enough to open the door that it might buy me a few seconds. Isn't that crazy? A child self teaching tactics like these? But these particular problems of the past are easy to talk about and don't really hurt or make me angry anymore. I've dealt with these, carefully sifted through them, reached my conclusions, and buried the bodies. All I have left is the memories. It was awful at the time and left me with quite a lot to work through in my early adulthood but no big deal now. It's just what I had to get through to get where I am. I'd never, ever live with my father again but I've reached a peace when it comes to him where I've forgiven him the past. Now I can admit that for all his faults and problems there are some things I can really count on him for, not many but a few, and one of those things is he never forgets my birthday. I love you, Dad.

A visit to the dumps

Here I am, depressed, and I don't really know why. Yesterday was actually a great day for the most part! I decided to have a day off, just play WoW all day, had some quality time with hubby that left my legs shaking (have I mentioned lately how much I love that man??? lol), and one of my favorite dinners, spaghetti. After dinner we were playing WoW when I decided I'd join some of our guildmates for a series of attacks on the enemy cities just for funsies. It started out fun but along the way I got killed, reported that I couldn't rejoin the group because an enemy had me staked out, and they simply left me behind. Just a game...no big deal...what else do you expect on that game...but my recent bouts of loneliness took the opportunity to jump me.

I have no friends. No one really cares except my husband and children. Considering my social phobia, being Pagan/bi/and another secret that I haven't yet named, and that our local community is very Bible Belt-ish I'm not likely to make any friends.

And this leads me in a downward spiral dropping me in an unelegant heap face down in the muck of The Dumps. Jan. 27th I'll be 39 years old... I already feel like I'm having the first symptoms of menopause. How lovely! I had to have Panic Disorder hit me unusually early in life and now I may get to experience menopause earlier than average in life. No friends... No career and not likely to ever have one... I feel fat and dumpy from this persistant extra 50 lbs... My skin is breaking out like crazy... Instead of my usual patient, unflappable self I can go from happy to dark and sullen in the blink of an eye...

Blah, blah, blah, whatever. I'm gonna go play WoW. Hope your day is going way better than mine :)