spring in search of rebirth

I find myself descending into a slight depression lately that I need to climb out of. Maybe I have a reverse season affective disorder. The logical ways to combat it seem to be activity - both physical and mental, quality sleep, and socialization. I am working to find new balance today. It's not like I'm all weepy or sluggish but that I feel a deep inertia and discomfort now. A restraint that will not be broken and a lack of confidence. I know this is something I have to fix on my own so I apologize if I seem to have a sorry attitude of late. I'll get over it soon.

welcoming the rain

The first tomatoes and peppers are planted now and the rain has come just in time to help everything have a good start. Now, I just want to plant some arrugula and MonsterMustDie wants some eggplants.

News: Worrying can add years to your life.

According to this study, I should live for a long time!

Can Worrying Add Years to Your Life?

Maybe all the sleep I've lost worrying about money, etc. is not so bad.

damp

Not too dreary today since I did get a bit more sleep last night before waking up to listen to the rain hitting the roof. There is no attic here so there is hardly any sound buffer between roof and ceiling. No work today so I'm looking at remaining in pyjamas until tonight when I plan to meet a friend for dinner. I spent the first few hours this morning as I usually do, searching for jobs online. Now, it is time for pacing around in circles and considering what to fill the hours with. I am out of all art supplies and the pantry is nearly bare so cooking will not take place today, either.

I don't expect to hear back from last week's job interview until next week because my interviewer is out of town for now. Fingers crossed that something good will come of that.

Doom. Doom. Doom.

Full disclosure: I am a major worrier from childhood through the now.

I would literally lie in bed at night worrying about my future and the horrors of the world at least as early as age 9 or 10. Pretty sure I started my time-honored tradition of fretting before then. I can remember being horrified by visits to nursing homes when I was a child and seeing how the elderly lived in awful squalid conditions, often in constant pain. I never wanted to grow old - not that old, anyway. By age 10 I was quite aware I had no fear of death. My fear was of old age and being incapacitated. True horror lied in the fear of captivity though age and disability. When I was 10, I also became aware that I did not have a good relationship with my family. I saw bits on TV about genetic disorders like Huntington's Disease, which does not show up until patients are in their 30's and worried about the deep dark murky gene pool of mystery I came from. By age 12, I realized I was always going to have a below-average home life and I would then lie in bed and fret that my family relationships had already doomed me to be screwed up for life and there was nothing I could effectively do about it. I read too many stories about troubled children and teenagers who always came to a very bad end. By age 15, I worried I was born, even conceived, doomed. Religion represented a form of thought control more draconian than the all-knowing Big Brother of 1984. True creativity and individualism was not approved by God. Nor was dressing in a way your family did not like or hanging out with the unattractive.

Yeah, I've always been the beautifully morose creature I am today.

healing

It has been an odd week. The funeral in Alabama was okay, as Aunt Mary's death was not a surprise. I imagine that this brings closure and a bit of relief for her family to finally say goodbye, since disease took Mary away long ago and it just took time for her body to quit. There was a certain shadow to everything. The death of Aunt Mary forebodes the fate of his mother, June, as well because she also has Alzhiemer's now. It is easy to live in some degree of denial from a state away but being with her at the funeral makes him aware again of how far she has deteriorated. Soon, he will have to deal with making arrangements for her to live in a managed care residence. She really is incapable of living independently at this point. I am sure the shadow also hangs over him. One should always plan for the worst and hope for the best.

My arm continues to heal but I'm still on antibiotics. My last doses were yesterday and I hope my body goes back to normal after this medication is out of my system. Between stress over work & money, lack of sleep, my monthly "gift from Mother Nature" and the antibiotics, I have been feeling very diminished this week. Saturday night, I was looking forward to my date with my pillow during dinner to celebrate Uglyfish and EpitomeGirl's birthdays. Sunday, I was only slightly more functional at Ferne's homewarming.

Today, all I want to do is sleep. I know I should be making calls and running errands, but it is 1:30 in the afternoon and I just want to go back to bed.

Good and Bad

This weekend, we were able to visit with some friends from Madison, Wisconsin. D&H were visiting with their six-month-old son, MCP, who looks like a blonde version of his father. Two other friends are expecting babies now. Seems like something is in the water.

Someone comes into town, someone leaves town.

MonsterMustDie's aunt Mary, his mother's sister, passed on Monday. We will be heading to Alabama for the funeral on Thursday. She had been fading for many years from Alzheimer's, a disease his mother now has.

I got a call today for a job interview on Friday. This is the first interview I've been able to get in a long long time. If they offer me anything, I'm taking it. Good news is it appears to be a full-time position with full benefits. Bad news is it is Alpharetta (40 minute commute each way), with the hours being 7PM to 7AM. But it would be a job, nonetheless, and I'd be delighted to have a regular paycheck again.

The lastest good news is that MonsterMustDie has reported that he is feeling a lot more sensation in his side and hip that have been numb since the stroke. It seems like the nerves are waking up again, somehow. He continues to improve and recover from the event, even now.

The possibility of the 3rd shift job puts the idea of adopting a cat to an end. If I get this job, we will need to simplifly things a lot more around here so I can sleep and function as normally as possible. This will not be at all easy. I had a third shift job years ago, while in my thirties, that I could only take for a year... and it was the loneliest year of my life. That was a much shorter commute then, too.