self-reflection

My trust is not easily won and then not easily lost. Once lost, however, it's near impossible to win back. I don't think this is a good thing. If I know this about myself, why can I not change it?

some days

There are some days that I just want to physically assault people.

I am so fed up. I feel like my soul is boiling in my chest, that if I open my clenched jaw an ear-piercing scream will emerge, my hands so tight in fists I nearly puncture palms with fingernails. I can't abide ineptitude, incompetence, and I have absolutely no patience for backhanded, sweetly-veiled threats. Absolutely none. Say it or don't, but tell the truth, and don't expect to hear from me anything but the truth in return.

A coworker, Emily actually, someone who up until recently I counted as a friend as well, has been driving me up the wall. I'm at the point that I just can't take it anymore. The fighting between her and our boss (her close friend) got to a point where they finally exploded and now they don't talk unless it's purely for business. It's actually worked better for the most part, for all of us, but she's decided for some reason that she'll fight with me instead. Every favor I ask of her is met with some sort of remark, every challenge I present her in a discussion is met with harsh disdain. I don't know if it's jealousy or fear at how quickly we're growing or just stress, but I'm so tired of it that I catch myself snapping back at her for no good reason. Mostly I just ignore her comments and only talk to her about work-related things, and 80% of the time we're ok. It's the other 20%, though, that's going to do me in.

Today, she asked me if I thought she could get a raise. She framed it with "I know we're struggling financially right now, but I really need a better car [hers is nearly dead], and I can't afford it on what I'm making now." Our company has been in the red the last few months as we struggle to finish up some projects. We're a small company, a start-up, and we rely very heavily on each other. She was the second of the twenty employees we have, and she carries a lot of responsibility no one else could pick up right now. She knows all that very well. Not to mention that I'm not sure she's earned the raise either. She works hard, sure, and does a lot of work, but she makes sure that we all know exactly how hard she's working, and she's threatened three times in the last six months to quit. She's cut back on her hours and has asked to leave the leadership team as well.

When I told her I didn't think raises would be possible til December, she said she was going to be looking for a weekend job, but that she's also going to be polishing up her resume to send out, "just to see what's out there." Oh, and "please don't say anything to anyone."

Maybe I'm just taking it the wrong way. Maybe it's the day I'm having. But what that looked like to me was "Give me a raise, please. Oh, you can't? Well, why don't I just see who will," without any understanding of the fact that we all, all twenty of us, are working our fingers to the bone towards a common purpose, a common aim, and that none of the rest of us are so self-important as to think that we could just give up on that purpose and walk away from this. I can't imagine quitting. I would feel tremendous guilt for those I had left behind to pick up my pieces. I care about the people here and about our work, but apparently having a newer car is more important to her than that. I'm busting my balls here, struggling, pushing pieces of my personal life to the side, so that one day I can say that I helped my friend, my boss, create an amazing company that does amazing work, and sit by his side around a large Board of Directors table, a Chief in front of my title, and look back on the meager beginnings we had. But apparently she'd rather have an SUV than see the rest of us and herself succeed here. Apparently she doesn't care as much as I thought she did. And I don't know what to do with that, other than to clench my jaw,  swallow it down, and get on with my work.

temptation not quite resisted

I'm eating an apple, a petite fist-size Pink Lady, juicy with a purse-your-lips-sour afterglow, the way I would think this magenta-pink color would taste if colors had tastes. But I don't want it. I want a Kit Kat. And a Dr. Pepper.

Last night for dinner we had baked salmon, brown rice, and sauteed squash (fresh from my backyard), but I didn't want it. I wanted a cheeseburger (veggie-burger, please) and steak fries. Even though I had had mac and cheese, sweet potato casserole, and cornbread for lunch.

I'm on a junk food kick. I want to fill myself up with cheesy biscuits and soft drinks and mint ice cream and chocolate brownies and McDonald's fries. And, yes, all at once is fine. In fact, it's better.

I'm sucking down this apple bite by bite even though the sourness is parching my throat and the chewiness is hurting my teeth. It's not even a good apple. I have cash-- that's the problem. There's a gas station next to my office, full of Ding-Dongs and M&Ms and caffeinated drinks, and I have cash in my wallet that's begging to be spent. I never have cash, they only take cash, and I'm hungry for junk food. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Yep.

Hey, at least it's a Coke Zero

no pill for "old"

I splashed cold water on my face and, cross-eyed, I watched the soapy water drip off the end of my nose into the sink. It's already July 1, I thought, half the year gone. How old am I? 27. No... that's not right. I was born in '82... it's 2010... I'm 28. How am I 28? Shit, I'm almost 30. Old. My heart palpated in my chest a little as I reached for the navy hand towel. I remember that show, 30-something, that was on when I was a kid. My mother used to watch it, and I remember thinking how old they were, how adult-like, and how long it would take for me to get there, there where my mother was too. And yet now I'm here, and she's quickly approaching 60 herself.

As I was sitting in the puce vinyl chair at the doctor's office this morning, flipping through a somewhat sticky copy of Lucky, I finally heard my name called so I stood up and walked down the hall, obediently following the nurse in purple scrubs. Thirty minutes and three games of iPhone soduku later, my doctor finally came in to talk to my about my birth control options. She pulled out the little green pill book from the pocket of her white coat and flipped to the page that had my original triphasic pill listed.

Basically, she said, I have four options:
1- Try an IUD. Not recommended because I haven't had children, therefore my cervix may have trouble accepting it. Plus she had a patient whose IUD got lost and she got pregnant-- that's how she found out it was gone. Not good for a control freak like me.
2- Try the ring. Good because it's less to remember than the pill and it's low-dose estrogen, but it's different progesterone from my current pill so it may cause side effects, one of which is going crazy.
3- Try the generic for my current pill. A good, cheap option.
4- Switch to another pill, a low estrogen pill, that has the same estrogen and progesterone as my original pill (hence the same medically as the generic too). Recommended because I'm getting older and need to be on less estrogen in order to prevent blood clots.

She used those words, getting older. Nonetheless, we went with option 4 for now. She gave me six sample packs of Loestrin 24 Fe as well as a card that will get me the prescription for less than $24 a pack for a full year. I can't beat six months free followed by 1/3 price pills, not even with a generic. She thinks this will work for me since it's medically the same hormones and also a lower dose. And she kept saying we need to prevent blood clots now that I'm older and that when I'm 34, I need to switch to either an IUD or something non-hormonal. Apparently that's a you're-too-old cut off point. But that's years and years away, right?

pains

As if $75 for birth control isn't enough, my new insurance also raised my Treximet (migraine med) price, from $50 to $100. Luckily my (very awesome) pharmacist told me there was a $50 coupon online I could print out, so I should be good for a few more months now with the new prescription. And really, I'll probably just pay the $100 next time as well. Nothing else has ever worked the way Treximet does for me, and with as few side effects as I've ever experienced. A little flushing, a little bit of an on-edge, drunk type feeling, but mostly I'm fine, and within an hour pain-free as well.

I've had a headache since Friday. Friday afternoon I took a Treximet and was good til Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon I took another and was good til Sunday mid-day. I haven't taken another yet, though my head is pounding pretty good right now, all around my right eye, as usual. Not so much that I can't work, but enough that I don't want to work.

Speaking of pain, my little brother contacted me again last week. He was apologetic and said he's officially off all drugs other than pot. Since then he's messaged me and called me, and he seems mostly back to normal. So I've let it go, all that pain from the past six months of anger. I'm chalking it up to him being a dumbass and messing around with stuff he knew he shouldn't be, and luckily he found his way out of it before there wasn't a way out anymore. I told him how great I thought he could be, how spectacular his life could be, if he stays clean, and he agreed. He's got one of those dynamic, idea-driven minds, the kind that can accomplish so much if not inhibited, and the only thing that was inhibiting was drugs.

He's driving a friend from Portland to Alabama as his friend's dad is very sick with cancer right now (that's the kind of guy my brother usually is, the kind that drives a friend half-way across the country at the drop of a hat) so they're stopping here overnight on the way, and we're going to dinner. My husband hasn't seen him since the day just before Christmas when I kicked my brother out of my house and called my husband sobbing, so I hope husband can be as forgiving as me and not kick his ass, which is what he's been claiming he would do for six months.

I passed the day of my last hug with my grandfather without thinking about it. I thought about it the week before, and obviously now, and I'm sure I thought about him that day since I think about him every day, but I did not acknowledge that last touch with any tears on that day. It's the first time since his death that I haven't. Is that progress? I'm not sure. It doesn't feel like much, and I'm also not sure I want to make progress.

frustrated

My insurance company is trying to make a medical decision for me. I can't tell you how extremely pissed off I am about it.

I've been on the same birth control, Estrostep FE, since I was 17. I've never had a side effect of any sort-- no moodiness, no weight gain, no acne problems, no spotting, nothing. In fact, it shortened my periods and made my cramps almost completely go away. It's been a blessing as the reason I got on it in the first place was because I was bleeding for weeks at a time and in pain. It was $30 a month until last fall, when they bumped it to $50. No big deal, inflation and all that, I can handle $20 a month extra to keep taking this miracle pill.

Today, my pharmacist, bless his heart, sadly looked at me over his glasses and told me the insurance company had "changed the drug class" and that it's now $75 a month. Are you kidding me??

I could afford it, I suppose. I mean $25 a month-- basically just skip one meal out and we would be ok. And really, our insurance just changed at work a couple months ago and my premium went down about $20, so I suppose it evens out. But it's the principle of it, the fact that the insurance company is trying to price me out of a drug that I've taken for 11 years of my life. 11 years, every single day! And watching that $75 leaving my bank account every month... well I don't know if I can do that.

The reviews I've read of of the generic, Tilia, are terrible-- a good three-fourths of them are along the lines of "I was on Estrostep and switched to Tilia because my insurance changed. It's awful! I've had mood swings, painful cramps, and just generally feel like I'm losing my mind. I'm going back to Estrostep no matter the cost." The other one-fourth say they didn't notice the change. But I just can't imagine I can be on some pill every day of my life for eleven years and not have some sort of issue when I change.

I'm making an appointment with my doctor tomorrow. I went ahead and shelled out the $75 today so that I have a month to make my decision. I played around with the idea of the ring or something more permanent a while back, especially considering that if we do have kids, I know for a fact it won't be for another two or three years at least. But the last thing I want is to feel like a crazy, fat loon with acne and horrible cramps. I'd pay a lot more than $75 a month to avoid that. But maybe I'm already being crazy by not even giving it a try. I mean, what if I switch to something else and it works just as well and costs three times less?

I just hate that my insurance company is forcing me to make this decision, a decision I shouldn't have to and never wanted to make.

over

I closed the door on my adolescence on Saturday night. I attended my ten-year high school reunion, and as one of three people in attendance that don't still live in our hometown, I felt pretty out of place. They all still hang out, still call each other up and go out together. They never grew as people beyond the edges of our town, beyond the friends they made at age 12, beyond themselves. They were exactly the same. How boring.

So as my (very social) husband and I felt relegated to the outside looking in, we didn't stay very long. It was such a weird night, watching them act like nothing had changed, sitting there playing cards, drinking beer, not noticing us. Only nearly everyone had added a partner-- sometimes someone we knew then, sometimes a new face. One new face brought her pugs which she fed with spray cheese from a can and talked to like babies. One or two familiar faces had become unfamiliar from too much spray cheese or beer or some other unhealthy addiction. But for the most part I felt like I had been picked up and transported back in time, and I felt just as uncomfortable and out of place that night as I ever did back then. And even my social butterfly of a husband, who never met a stranger, only had one or two good conversations throughout the night.

That's when I realized-- it's not me. It's that place and those people. I've changed so much over the years, have reinvented myself in a lot of ways. I'm so much more social and bright and alive than I used to be, so much more myself and comfortable in my own skin, but even with that I couldn't find a place in their world. And their world had not changed. I had always thought if I would've had more confidence and been more outgoing that high school would have been better, but I see now that it would not.

So the door is closed, the page is flipped, and that part of my life is over. It was a sigh of relief actually, and not something I physically made myself do, but something that happened to me, that just occurred, peacefully and solemnly.

With that, here are some pictures I've taken recently.

A poppy bud

Bubby, being cute as usual

A sunset off my deck

The sunset

Our new old furniture-- Stickley Bros. of Grand Rapids, circa 1902-1912, Mission style. And Bub

the veil between

A friend told me a story yesterday. Her parents both passed just before her son was born, so he wasn't able to meet them on this earth. She and her siblings would talk about these would-be grandparents, telling him stories about who they were and how much they would have loved him. He's about 5 years old now, and since he could talk he referred to his grandparents as KayKay and Mike.

They have a pool, and one of the boy's favorite things to do is swim. One day, a couple years ago when the boy was 3, early in the morning before anyone else in the house was up, he sneaked from his bed to the back patio door that led to their pool. The door had been left unlocked, so he slid it open. But he just stood there. My friend heard the door open and walked into the room. She paused and watched him for a few seconds, just standing there, and then told him he shouldn't go outside alone, that it was early and dangerous to be at the pool by himself. He said, "Don't worry, Momma. KayKay told me not to go outside too."

My friend said she was surprised at her own reaction at this, which was to thank her mother without questioning the truth of his statement. And it brought her peace.

I've heard children are more open to seeing what adults can't see. There's also the possibility that because of the stories he had been told, he had made his KayKay into an imaginary friend. But a friend who tells him not to do his favorite thing?

What do you think? Have you ever experienced this?

I'm open to it. I pray that my grandfather will visit me in my dreams, but he never has. I am not at peace over his death, and I don't know how to find it, not even now, 4 years after the last day that I saw him alive.

puppy love

I've been wishing for, praying for, conniving and lying for, craving a new family addition lately. Not the pitter-patter of two little feet, but four little pads. I don't know why I need a new dog, like Bub isn't enough, but it's some sort of misplaced maternal instinct, or a rescuer disposition, or something. I feel the need to save something, to love something else. There's room in my heart, house, and wallet.

But.

Husband isn't so excited. In fact, I would say he's totally against it. He cringes when I mention it. I think he's afraid I want to become the crazy cat lady, only the crazy dog lady instead. I can't help it. I get a new animal and am sated for a year or two, and then I get the itch again. We got our cat in 2007, so it's been too long!

I'd really love a big dog. Something like a lab or hound dog or pointer. Bub gets jealous sometimes, but he's so much better with big dogs since my parents have big dogs. Something like a Lewis or a Joyce or a Spot, all three of which are just sitting at the shelter right now...

Lewis, a two-month old Golden Retriever mix. Probably a little too young for us, but how can you deny this face??

Joyce, a three month old Airedale Terrier mix. Got to love the terrier attitude-- full of spunk!

Spot, such a noble and intelligent dog, 1 year old lab mix

I can't stand knowing such beautiful, loving animals are sitting out there right now just begging for someone to take them home!

I scan the roadsides as I drive, I jump at every bark I hear, just hoping that somehow a new dog is going to fall into my lap in such a way that husband can't say no. If a stray happens by, he can't make me take it to the shelter, how could he when he knows what its fate may be there? Talk about guilt trip. But I'd rather just adopt one so that we can figure out which would work best for Bub, temperament wise, and they'll go ahead and spay/neuter it for us, which is a necessity.

I decided to post this here because even though I know seeing these pictures would just make my craving even worse, maybe I'll influence someone else out there to consider a shelter dog. They're not broken, just wizened, and they make the best pets because they appreciate every day they're spoiled.

time flies

I'm old.

As I munched on my raisin bran this morning, perched on the edge of the ottoman in the living room (you can't sit on the couches before work, lest you leave covered in dog hair), I was enraptured by this stylized kid, Justin Beiber, dancing and singing on the Today show, with hoards of prepubescent girls crammed behind danger-orange barriers, all mouthing the words of the song with a glazed-over look in their eyes, only their lips and pupils moving, not even blinking in the flashes of cameras, following him around the stage with the ferocity of a hawk glaring down a field mouse.

Joey, my favorite, on the far right. And yes, he looks like a child.

I was reminded of New Kids on the Block. Remember them, the five boys who brought back boy bands in the 80s, with hits like "Hangin' Tough" and "Step by Step." I was the perfect age for New Kids-mania, and I even had a night shirt with Joey's face printed as big as my 9-year-old body.

Now I don't even know who these teen heart-throbs are. Justin Beiber? He looks like a baby. He can't be older than 14? Did Joey look like that to my parents? The Jonas Brothers, all those kids from High School Musical (which I thought was an actual play and not a movie for the longest time), Hannah Montana, who apparently is also Miley Cyrus... all these pseudo-famous children. Where do they come from? Who are their parents? It amazes me. Go, be children, play in the mud, do your homework, grow up in a small town under oak trees and loving families, not in Hollywood's bright and aging lights.

I felt sorry for his backup dancers and singers, all men in their 20s and 30s. What a life-- to have worked so hard on your craft, be it singing or dancing, just to be backup to a child, a child who is already more famous than you will ever be and already has more money than you will ever have. Well, at least you get the use of his stylist and are briefly on camera on the Today show. At least your mom saw you as you were dancing your heart out behind the short kid with the overly-coiffed blown-front hair and tight white jeans (that no 14-year-old boy in his right mind would ever actually wear on a normal basis), and she got to point you out to all her friends. "Look! That's my baby in the red hoodie! Behind that smarmy kid." It's better than a lot of people do.

It was like watching a train wreck. Repulsed but also amazed, I couldn't look away.

I find it sad that Justin Beiber brought me back to my blog. I needed some time away, time to gather my thoughts. I've been dreaming a lot lately, which is weird for me, but always by the time I get to a notebook or a computer they've faded into the haze and I can't recall anything but the outer-edge feeling of them, like something just beyond my reach, like a lingering taste on the back of my tongue. My headaches have come back after a very quiet winter. Down here, rain storms pop up for no reason and without notice, and it seems that every time one blows through, it rests a little too heavy on my eyelids.

I've been appalled by the oil spill that's threatening the beaches on which I spent a good deal of my childhood. Humans screw up everything we touch. We think we're gods among animals, that we can do no wrong, and even if we do, who is there to punish us? An egret can exact no justice, fish can't sue, and pelicans don't know the meaning of litigation. They suffer at our foolish hands, the hands more interested in Beiber fever and commercialism than preserving our one home planet. Mother Earth, though, she'll get her revenge in the end, when the world is so destroyed that not even us humans can stand to live here. We'll exterminate ourselves, but the rest of the world-- plants, bugs, sea life, animals-- will all come back and thrive when we're gone. They don't need us like we need them.

My first tomato... see it?

There has been much for which to be grateful in the last few weeks as well. Fun times with family and friends, beautiful weather, growing plants in my yard, my first home-grown tomato, a more reliable car purchased, the woman who pulled over and helped me save a lost dog wandering down the highway. Life carries on whether I'd like it to or not. I can't pause it the way I can pause this blog.

That said, I don't know how often I'll be posting now. I enjoyed letting my thoughts build up before finally putting them down. We'll see.