Friday, September 28, 2012

Completely Insanely Busy Life

Well... my life is officially insane. I have a really good excuse for hardly posting at all this month. Seriously.

My day starts at 6:30. Wake up, get dressed, leave for class by 7:00. Class from 7:30-10:30, come home for a very short lunch and leave again by 11:30 to be at work for my first job from 12-5:30. After that I jet over to my second job and work there from 6-11pm. I finally get home around 11:30pm and dawdle a bit before drifting off too sleep. This madness is every Mon-Fri. My body is sooo tired. lol. I spend pretty much all day Sat/Sun resting on the couch.

In other news, I hurt my back at job #1 and am now in almost constant excruciating pain. Go me. The doctor said it's likely some tendon and/or ligament damage in my lower spine. Hurray. Yesterday it was so bad I could barely walk. Lucky for me that meant a day off. lol. I still hurt a lot today and have to leave for work in about 20 mins... still not sure if I feel up to going. If I miss today too though, that's $100 I'm missing out on. Decisions decisions.I've also been diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Which is just great. So now I sleep with a brace on and feel like a big loser, but at least my hand falls asleep far less often now.

Hubbs and I see each other when I get home from work, obviously, and for a brief 20 mins at 7:30 when he brings me dinner at job #2. It's nice, but I feel like in seeing him less, somehow I get more annoyed at the little things when we actually do spend time together. I think that's something I'll have to work on. Like when I get home from my crazy long day and I see that the dishes that have been on the table from 2 days ago are still there... I don't think it's too much to ask that he cleans up a little since he's actually home and I never am. He got all pissy when I brought it up. Oh well. Our apartment can totally be gross and dirty. I'm not really home enough for it to bother me I guess.

School is going pretty well for both of us. I missed a few days due to my stupid spine, but I'm learning pretty quickly. Hubbs is rocking all of his classes as usual, so there's that. On Oct 1st he starts his nannying gig for our nieces and nephew which will be nice. It will mean that 3 days a week we won't get to have dinner together, but that's ok.

We still haven't been to the adoption agency yet. Mostly because my injury and busy schedule means we're only available weekends and I'm pretty sure this one is only open Mon-Fri. Good stuff.

One of my jobs only goes till the end of October, so I'm hoping things will be a bit less hectic then. For now though, I'm trudging along and trying to make the best of things.  Hope things are going well with all of you.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

09/11/01

Today is not usually a day that I talk about much. Some years are better than others. For the most part I still feel angry.

At the time, I was living in New Jersey. I was a senior in high school. My town is about 10 miles across the water from where the World Trade Center was. Sure it takes forever to drive there, but just a short hop as the crow flies. My brother's apartment was about three buildings over from the WTC. About 80% of my family lived in NYC as well. I lived in a commuter town. A huge percentage of the population hopped on the trains and made their way into the city for their jobs. On several occasions my friends and I skipped school to go to the city just for fun.

Luckily, this was not one of those days. It was just a typical school day. We had TV's in most of the classrooms. I was leaving gym and getting ready to go to English. I heard teachers whispering in the halls. When I made it to English, I asked my teacher to turn on the news. There we just sad for hours watching everything unfold. It felt like forever. At one point, without making an announcement, the Principal cut off the feed. We all freaked out and thought that another building had been hit. Bad judgement on her part. My brother came and pulled me out of school a few minutes later. I just sat home with my parents watching the news. Our house sat on a hill. You could see the smoke plume from anywhere in our house. You could even smell it.

They needed volunteers to babysit at the elementary schools, too many parents were trapped in the city and couldn't get home in time to pick up their kids. I went and we just waited and played games with them. Some of their parents never came.

Friends of mine lost parents, I lost neighbors, and our whole community suffered. Houses that lost family members got yellow ribbons tied around trees in their yard.

I always get so angry. Sure I wasn't at the WTC that day, sure I wasn't even in the city. I was close enough. As a community we delt with the aftermath of that day for years.

There was this lookout point one town over. You could see the whole New York skyline. It became an impromptu memorial. People wrote notes, put pictures, stuck in flags, and tied yellow ribbons. My friends and I would go there all the time before... but after it was just transformed into this place where you couldn't escape that day. We used to go there to look optimistically at our futures. Afterwards it was just this constant reminder of that day.

A few weeks later, my friends and I took a day off school and went into the city. We stopped by "ground zero" and walked around. There were fences all around, covered with pictures and trinkets remembering those who had died. Even then, the smell still lingered, the ruins were still smoldering.
 We didn't take pictures that day. It just didn't seem right. I know the day we visited will haunt me forever.

Watching something unfold on tv doesn't have the same impact. When I watch the news, I'm separated from whatever is happening, but when it's something you can see right outside your bedroom window, you can't have that same separation. It's there, in your face. When you know people personally affected, it really hits home.

I hate seeing those "remember" stickers on cars. I really hated those billboards that were everywhere for a while. I'm sure it's even worse for people who were in the city that day, but my first instinct when someone brings up something about 09/11 is that they don't understand, and just need to shut up.

Usually, I take the day off. I don't listen to the radio or watch tv. For the most part I don't even go where there's a chance someone will mention what day it is. Maybe that's weird, but it's the best way I know how to deal with it. It's the best way I know to avoid the possibility of snapping and freaking out on someone who brings it up.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Positive Thinking

Yesterday, Hubbs was driving us home, I turned to him and said "Doesn't it seem like things are finally starting to go our way?" He agreed. Things have been completely on the up and up lately. Sure things haven't gone exactly as we'd expected, but things seem to be going in our favor.

I'm racking up the job interviews and feel like I have a lot of options.  Next week I'll know for certain which ones I get to choose from.

We were able to purchase a scooter to aid in my daily commute, so we're not spending an asston of gas every week, and we got it for super cheap without having to finance it. /win.

Hubbs aced all of his summer classes and will be working as a nanny for his sister in addition to going to school full time.

An lastly, we are having our initial meeting to start the adoption process tomorrow!!

I don't know, I'm really hoping that things keep going well. We were at such a low point for so long, we were wondering if things would ever start looking up. I know the rest of our lives will be a series of ups and downs and that only very rarely will things ever go exactly as planned... but we're definitely going to relish in this for a bit while we can. =)