updates and my chance to see Eddie

I know I have been absent for a long while my life has been torn upside-down. In the last 2+ months I have filed for divorce, moved out, graduated, took 2 certification tests and taken some much needed time for myself as well as started working at the clinic I did my internship at. These are all good things.

Rob and I are going to be fine… as friends. We talk everyday and txt often. I think he is ready for all of my stuff to be gone from the house but that will happen soon enough. We had a hearing on August 6^th to get the divorce stuff figured out. The Judge signed off and we will be getting the paper work sometime here.

I graduated on June 25^th. On the 26^th I went on the annual vacation with friends and family to the north shore. I have mentioned it here before. We went up on Friday and came home on Tuesday. It was amazing. I got to chill with as my mom puts it “My family of choice”. The Cross-etts (all 8 of them), the Tennessen clan, Roger Doger and last but not least… Lois J. We played Todd ball and sat around the fire. I had the best and most well needed sleep.

We got back on Tuesday and on that Wednesday I checked in to the hotel where Convergence was going to be held. I spent the next 5 days/nights at the hotel getting my geek on. I realized just how much I missed my geeks. I hung out with the gang but also got to hang with my mom my real brother and my little brothers (My mom’s best friends kids) Pack and Andrew. It was great! I can’t wait for next year.

A few week later I went to Nebraska to visit my Grands. It was good to see them I haven’t been down to see them in a while. Mom and I managed to not argue/try to kill each other.. always a bonus.

Last week I spent time in Lansing MI with one of my oldest and closest friends, Eddie. Eddie moved away between 7^th and 8^th grade, after that we wrote each other letters (yes in the days before email). I would write him 10-15 pages at a time. There were times when I would start writing him letters but I never would get around to sending them and those letters turned into my love for free writing and how I have managed to keep journals. Every “journal” entry is started with “Hey You” and always written as if I was writing to Eddie to tell him all the ups and downs of my life and help talk myself through whatever it is that I am dealing with. Eddie and I lost touch but reconnected again and I went to visit him in 2001, it was the first time I had seen him since he moved away in Jr. High. It was a great time and then it was another 8+ years before once of us got it together to visit the other. It’s easy to see that my life has been a rollercoaster this year and I really needed time to spend with one of my best friends. It was great! I got to meet his friends and it was really great to get some faces to match the names.

Our friendship is a very unique one. Our entire relationship is based on communication. Through letters and phone calls. We have always been 100% honest with each other because we don’t know any of the other people, just names. The only concern we have is for each other. There also is no judgment. The good the bad and the ugly, it doesn’t matter. Ours is an unconditional love and I am not talking romantically. I have someone who I can talk freely with without fear of judgment... who knows every ugly secret and it doesn't change how he interacts with me... someone who will not tell me what I want to hear but the truth no matter how much it hurts... That is what is rare and the true meaning of unconditional love. I have been lucky to find that and be able to hold on to it for 20 years.

Finding that oasis in Lansing last week, was an amazing thing. I was able to step back from the worries and stresses that are a part of everyday. The stress of starting a new life and trying to keep my sanity. I didn’t know coming home would hit me as hard as it did. It is tempting to just run away, but that is not the answer to anything.

Oh and by the way I PASSED MY NATIONAL CERT TEST!!! I AM A CVT!

Good times

We got snow. I love fresh untouched snow, it is so pretty.

I got to dissect a rat in class, that was cool as hell.

I went out for drinks with Bill, last time we had beers was in June. We need to try put less time between when we hang out. We went to one of my favorite bars the Dubliner. Always a good time when live Irish music is involved. I managed to make it home with no police participation

I applied for a job at a vet clinic, everyone keep your paws crossed for me. (see that…I made a funny)

Today I had a hair appointment and Hair Rob did wonders on me. I just love what he does with my hair.
Before
After

And to add an ever better ending to my week… GREG AND AMY ARE COMING TO TOWN!!!! The whole famdambly Mom, Dad, me, Rob, Greg, Amy, Amy’s folks Jim and Milly, Amy’s brother’s family; Scott, Mary, Alex and Meg are going to mom’s house on Sunday for the annual Riedesel- Burroughs-Keen Extravaganza. I LOVE Riedesel- Burroughs-Keen Extravaganzas it has to be my favorite holiday all year.

GRUDGE

Part of Speech: noun
Definition: bitterness
Synonyms: animosity, animus, antipathy, aversion, bad blood, dislike, enmity, grievance, hard feelings, hate, hatred, ill will, injury, injustice, malevolence, malice, maliciousness, malignancy, peeve, pet peeve, pique, rancor, resentment, spite, spitefulness, spleen, venom

Grudges, I am full of them, and I hold them for a long time. In the last year my mother has been trying to convince me that I should forgive a childhood friend (she wasn’t really my friend but a daughter of my parents friends who was also my age), this girl was mean and a bully. She liked making the other girls at my birthday parties cry and when I was 5 or 6 I was at her house and she locked me in her parents room and wouldn’t let me leave, I was in hysterics. When my parents decided I was old enough to choose my own friends I no longer had anything to do with her. I hate her to this day and I still want nothing to do with her. I don’t care that she has signed up to save the world through the Peace Corp or whatever. There is nothing she can do that will make me forget/forgive what she did to me when I had no say in whether I wanted to be around her. Yes it seems petty that 25-27 years later I am so adamant about my feelings, but when I hear my parents talk about how wonderful she is I can’t help but feel like that little girl screaming and pounding on that bedroom door begging to be let out and just go home. I see no reason to change my opinions about people who royally fucked me over. The guy who molested me when I was 13 could find the cure for cancer, AIDS and world hunger, I still want him dead. All those kids who treated me like shit at my parents church and the assholes from high school, I don’t want to hear about them. I just don’t care. For some reason my folks have a hard time understanding that I don’t want an update on the people who treated me like crap or thought they were better than me. I have spent my time clearing my life of people like that for a reason.

But then there is Kate. That was a whole other issue. I managed to get over that because I had to ask myself, what had Kate really done to me that earned my being so angry. The simple fact was, she had done nothing. We spent four very intense and emotional (it was high school) years together. There wasn’t a day that we didn’t see each other or at least spend an hour on the phone. Then we graduated and went on to separate schools and paths in life. We tried for awhile to make each other fit, but life being what it is it just wasn’t working and that hurt. A lot. It always hurts when someone important to you moves on without you. The anger (at least for me) came from not understanding why something that was important in my life was no longer as important in hers, and the other way around as well. From there the we just got stubborn. As adults (and yes Kate we qualify as adults) we were finally able to accept that we now can fit. Will we end up like Mom & Molly?? Who knows, but we will always have a connection.

The moral of the story?? I guess it’s just don’t screw me over. And if you do, I am not going to care what you are doing 5, 10, 15 or 25 years later.

Monday...

My First day of school.......

On Sunday (well actually all week) I was stressing out. I was still trying to figure out if I had it in me to really take on full time classes and work.. I couldn’t find my class schedule (see previous post for the the irony), I had typed it into my online calendar but I didn’t put what the room number was. So as far as I knew I had biology at 8:25 on Monday and Wednesday. All I could tell myself to try and ease the freak-out was that at 1pm after school I was meeting Bret for lunch and beers. I tried to go to bed at like 8:30 because I had to get up at 6am for the first time in ages, so I wanted to get a full night sleep. I took my sleeping pills at 8:45, I should have been dead to the world by 9:30 at the latest. I think I finally passed out at 12:30 and it was CRAP sleep.

I got my stuff together, had my coffee , got dressed and at 730 I was out the door. I get to school and stop in the office to get them to print me a schedule so I would know where to go. He hands it to me and I realize that they don’t put your schedule together in the order of the days they fall on, but in alphabetical. So Monday’s class was in fact Medical terminology and it starts at 8:55 and I had ALL THE WORNG BOOKS. AS usual when things like that happen… I called my mom and at that point she tells me that she read on Heidi’s blog that Kate is engaged. WOOHWOOO! That made me feel a little better about my class debacle. So I went into the right classroom and sat down. Then I started talking to this girl who had sat down next to me, you know just chit-chat. Well the teacher made us go around the room and introduce ourselves, and the girl next to me says “Hi, my name is Katherine”. I almost fell out of my chair. You see 16 years ago in September on my first day of high school, in my first class, scared out of my wits, in gym class,
sitting against the wall in the wrestling room I started talking to the girl who was sitting next to me, and that was Kate. She turned out to be my best friend all through HS, so it was trippy that this girl was also a Katherine. I managed to make it through class because she let me share her book. Freaky! I feel a lot better about this whole idea of school. I think I can handle it.

After class I had to make a run over to my mom’s house and in doing so I have to drive past Kate’s house and I said to myself if her dog is in the yard I am going to make a quick stop to see the ring. She was home and I got the story about the ring and I told her about the chick in class. Great times, and we shall be doing beer soon. I love that girl!

It happened.

Bill and I did manage to get together and have drinks. We had a good time. I got to meet one of his coworkers. I ran into a kid (he’s 25) who I went to HS with who was a friend of Kate’s lil-sister Meg and I talked to guys from Wisconsin while waiting for Bill. It was good times all around. I can’t wait until we do it again. I guess the key to not jinxing it is to not get my hopes up and write about it a week ahead of time.

The next few weeks are going to be crazy. This weekend is the Shore. The Shore trip happens this time every year. It started when I was 8. It is 6+ families and we rent cabins up north. It’s the best sleep I get all year. And this year my bother will be going with Mom.

I start my 2-10 shift the first week of july. I have orientation on the 12th for school and then on the 16th I start classes.

Sometime in July Kate will be moving back home. Yippie!!!

blah!

YAY!!! My mom comes home today!!!

Blah... my husband ditched me to go visit HIS parents......

and I get to spend the time studying basic math and reading comprehension... all because I didn't take the ACT's in high school... and if I had then it wouldn't matter how much I have forgotten because I wouldn't have to take the test.

funk

Rob and I went to the MSB yesterday to find out more about my taking classes. The start date is July 16^th. We did a walk through of the building and the facilities are amazing. You would never know from the outside, being that it is set in a strip mall. There are also some really cool perks, in the same building is the massage therapy and the health & fitness studies. all students can use the gym and can get 2 massages per quarter. The VT course has partnerships with the humane society and no-kill shelters so students get to take part in the sterilization surgeries. We were very impressed. Next Monday I have to take the entrance exam, fill out the applications, and start dealing with financial aid. All very exciting.

While I was still giddy over the idea of going to school, I decided to check mom’s voicemail. As we know mom is out of the county so I have been checking in with her voicemail incase something major needs to be taken care of. When I checked there was a message about my lil’grandma (my mom’s mom) having an MRI. Why they called my mom no one knows, my uncle is the one closest and the one who had been dealing with her doctors. So I called him to make sure someone knew what the heck was going on, he was aware and didn’t know why they called Minnesota not the Colorado relative. While talking with my uncle I found out that my Great Aunt (my mom’s aunt) health was deteriorating greatly, and my lil’grandma health is to the point where my uncle is moving her in with them. I went from this great high of starting the ball rolling with school to this crash of emotions. I am not equipped to deal with these things. My Great Aunt and Lil’grandma are in their 90’s, I understand these things are going to happen, but emotionally I just can’t deal with it. We got home and just was depressed, just a funk I couldn’t shake.

I am still in a funk. I want my mom to come home. I don’t know what to do with this information. My parents flight is scheduled to come in at 4 on Saturday, I don’t get off work until 5. I am hoping their flight will be delayed so I can go pick them up. Rob is going to be visiting his folks without me this weekend, so it would be nice to see them if only to drive them home.

nerves

Mom has been gone a week and my head hasn’t exploded. That is a good sign. It was on the brink…. But I made it. I have one more week. I should be ok, as long a co-worker doesn’t do anything else to raise my blood pressure.

Last night I went to the 30th birthday party of my 7th grade boyfriend, we called it “going together” then so I don’t know if that qualifies as a true BF. We never even held hands. I’ll just say he was one of my best friends in Jr. high. I hadn’t seen Nick since our high school graduation. Almost 12 years. One of Nick’s good friends, Justin, is one of my myspace buddies. We knew each other in HS as well, he was a year behind Nick and I, anyway he told me about Nick’s little bash and I thought what the heck I’ll be the flash from the past. I thought it was going to be REALLY weird…. It was at first but then it was really cool. I got to talk with Nick’s sister and his parents, who I LOVED back in the day. They are just the sweetest people ever. I got to talk and hang out with Justin and meet his girl friend, who is also very cool. I had a really good time. It was random, but good. Funny thing is the day before another one of my really good friends form Jr. high said he might be visiting this summer. I guess I hung out with good people when I was 12&13.

Now… on Monday Rob and I are going to talk to the admissions/sales people about me going back to school. I’m a little freaked out to say the least. I have been getting nothing but support and encouragement from everyone I have told, but I am still scared. I keep thinking, “what if I am too old to learn new things?”, “will I just be wasting our money?”
I just don’t know if I can clam these nerves.

Argh!

Sunday my parents left me to go to Germany for two weeks. The problem is I talk to my mom at least once a day if not 3 times. So her not being here for idle chitchat is killing me and she has only been incommunicado for 3 days. My co-worker left sick during the 5 minutes I was out of the office and that irked me, that is when I would call my mom… rant… feel better and be over it. But nope… I was irked he left AND irked I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. That is never good for my co-worker… the longer I stew over things the more spiteful I am about the unfairness of being left to do all the work and finding even more work that should have been done yesterday hidden on the shelf so I had to do that too. The reason co-worker thinks he can get away with this is because our manager is on vacation. Every time manager takes time off co-worker does something to piss me off. The crazy thing is co-worker has been here 6 years longer then I have yet somehow I am the one how has to pick up the slack when manager is gone, I am the one people go to if manager can’t be found, I am the one asked to take on extra work even if it’s co-worker’s assigned duties, I am the help desk when it comes to our database even though we (me and co-worker) in theory took the same training AND I have showed co-worker about 100 times over how it works. All of this lead to MANY phone calls to my mom… to keep me from banging my head against the tape library.

The moral of the story is… Mom can not leave the country when manager has a planned vacation.