#6

Everything feels like it's happening all at once and I don't like it!

Do you remember (if you're a returning reader, that is) how I said I wasn't feeling the holidays? 

I wasn't. I never did.

But, y'all, I tried. I tried to get into the spirit! I bought 4 little plastic trees, Christmas cards, and planned a work party where we all wore pajamas and watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We went on a Christmas Train trip and sang Christmas songs and all of that stuff. I tried.

It never worked!

I never got into the spirit because I felt like I didn't have time to enjoy anything. It literally felt like Thanksgiving happened and then December came and collapsed in on itself like a wet napkin and everything happened all at once, and I never got a second to think about or pay attention to anything. There were two days (literally two days) where I had a little bit of time after work, and I was so paralyzed by the amount of stuff that had to be done that I couldn't force myself to actually do any of it! 

Has that ever happened to you? You just look out and see all of the things that have to be done, and your brain gets completely overwhelmed and says "Nope!" and you just sit there and stare into space and feel like a failure because a million pounds of obligation "bricks" are sitting on your chest and it's pinning you down and you can't move or breathe, but you're kind of OK with it because you know if you tried to actually accomplish any of those things you have to do you'd just end up crying and hiding under a bed?

Just me? 

I sat and looked at the Christmas cards, but never even took them out of the plastic. Thankfully when I ordered them, I didn't put the year on them, so I can use them next year.  We received Christmas cards from other people, but I didn't get to open them until the 23rd. I managed to make myself do almost everything that needed to be done in the two days leading up to Christmas because I didn't have a choice. Cleaning, baking, wrapping gifts...I also hung up one garland. We had Mr. Lee over for dinner on Christmas Eve and we spent Christmas Day afternoon with my family and even though I love all of them and was glad to spend time with them, all I could think of the whole time is how I wish it could be over/I could go home and go to bed. I still feel that way. Zero joy. Only tired. No bah humbugs or anything like that, just no time to think or breathe or enjoy anything. It was like someone loaded a slingshot with December and fired it at my face where it hit me all at once.

Thank God I didn't have to travel to visit anyone, because if I'd had one more thing to do I might have thrown myself off of a cliff.

So I hope your Holidays were better than that. I hope you had fun and enjoyed your family and friends and food and all of those things and got to take a minute to look around and enjoy the moment. 

I've got my fingers crossed for next year!

THINGS I MIGHT WRITE ABOUT SOON

Y'all...I'm busy. This is kind of a Random Acts of Blogging and also kind of a list that is just as much for me to remember things as it is for anyone out there who might still read this old, creaky-assed blog of mine.  A "Possible Coming Attractions" sort of thing, if you will.

Some of these things will be elaborated on in future. Some won't need elaborating on.

1) Went to Charleston for work. Left my ass there because they worked it off.

2) Went to Chattanooga for fun. It was had. A train was involved.

3) Christmas - Not fully prepared for. Thankfully will not be traveling during.

4) Missed a birthday. Couldn't be helped. Thought about it that day, though. Hope it was a good one.

5) Had a cancer scare. Thankfully, that's all it was. Kind of tough couple of weeks before I got the results.

6) Everything feels like it's happening all at once right now and I don't like it!

7) Church is going through a temp agency to replace me as secretary. Finally.

OK, so that's it for now. 

Happy holidays. Hug your family for me! (They might not know me, or know why I'm sending hugs, but hug them anyway!)

A WEIGHT OFF MY SHOULDERS, AND EVERYTHING ELSE

It was a year ago, on December 8th, that I had my weight loss surgery! 

To date, I have lost 86 pounds, which is the equivalent of a whole ass middle school kid.

All along, I planned on doing a thoughtful, formal, yearly wrap up with insightful thoughts about the surgery itself; about how my body has changed, and the good and the bad of having a surgery like the one I had.

I'm not gonna do that after all. Well, not in the way that I had originally planned, at least. Instead, I'm going to talk about the things I've learned in this past year as I've gone through the changes that I have, because a lot of things that I've experienced weren't what I was expecting.  

First off - eating sucks. Look, my body may have changed, but my brain has not. I'm sure I've mentioned that before, and I'm certain that it can't be that much of a surprise, but reducing the size of my stomach did not, in fact, reduce my want for food. Not on an emotional level at least. If I had ever doubted that my eating habits were tied to how I was feeling, then having this surgery removed all of those doubts. There have been days when I've been very unhappy, and my first thought is to shove food in my mouth until I feel better. The trouble is, I don't have a lot of room for that food anymore, and the amount of food I can physically stand does not soothe whatever mental thing that eating did before. Plus, if I eat the wrong things (some of which I can eat more of than others) it just makes me feel sick and sometimes puts me in physical pain. I've got a long way to go before I can recognize being full and also not emotional eating. Also, don't even talk to me about if something tastes good. I want to eat more of that thing, just like everyone else, and I can't. It's frustrating in the worst kind of way. If I can't get this under control, I'm going to gain a considerable amount of weight back, which I never, ever, ever want to do. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please.

Secondly - Shopping is awesome now! Do you know what it's like to have maybe one store within driving distance that carries your size? It sucks. Especially when the things in that store are not necessarily your style? All grandma clothes with big sequined birds all over them, cheap fabrics and awkward lengths? That's what it was like before. Apparently, when you weight 230 pounds, you're also supposed to be 70 years old, not care what you look like, and be 6' 6" tall. One of the nicest parts about losing weight has been that if I need clothes, I don't have to go online, or pay extra for extended sizes, or cross my fingers that when I order the size I need, it won't be in Vietnamese infant measurements. I can literally go into a regular store and buy something. I haven't been able to do that in years. Unfortunately, due to my new enthusiasm for clothes shopping, I have purchased some questionable choices that probably don't fit my age or my personality, but I like to have them around, just in case.

Thirdly - Men treat me differently now than they did a year ago. In some ways that's ok, in some ways it's very much not ok, and in all ways it kind of pisses me off. I'm well aware that a lot of dudes look at a fat girl and see them as a joke or maybe don't really see them at all. I'm not here to judge anyone's personal physical preferences. Truly. BUT. BUT. Because I have changed so rapidly, the changes in people's behavior are really obvious to me. It didn't change gradually, so it isn't like any of this feels normal at all. Now I get some unwanted, creepy attention from people who would have used me as a joke before. Not always, and not from every guy, but stray randoms feel like they can send me DMs and make weird comments, or say borderline inappropriate things, or - God help me - just touch me for no reason. I was chatting with a man I didn't know at a work-related thing recently - and he was being perfectly normal - and then he ran his hand down my back to my hip. I genuinely don't know if he meant to be creepy, but I certainly don't think I did anything to signal "please, stranger, rub me!" I had to have a co-worker run interference between me and a much older man who wouldn't leave me alone at the same event. These men don't work with me, so I couldn't report them, but damn. No matter what size I have been, I know that I've always been the same person. I'm cute, charming, and probably more inappropriate than I need to be at times, so in all, I'm a freaking delight. All of that and I was invisible before, but the fact that just having a smaller body suddenly gets me attention? That's bull. I mean, I know those guys who suddenly "see me" aren't looking for a charming conversation companion, but still...it's bull. 

Fourthly - The touching. Good lord, the touching. It isn't just men who do it. I've had all kinds of people literally say "OMG, you look so good!" and run their hands all over me, like they are trying to find out if I've just folded the fat away in secret compartments and they want to find the release switch. I know they don't mean to make things weird, but who does that? If I came up to you and just rubbed your sides like I thought a genie would pop out of your butt, you'd think it was weird too, right? I believe it must be the same thing that pregnant women go through when people rub their bellies. Maybe people can't help themselves? I don't mind hugs and things like that (usually...see above paragraph) but I didn't know people were going to pat me down like rogue TSA agents for no reason.

Fifthly - that word looks weird, but fifthly - for the most part my health is a lot better, number wise. I'm still very tired and weak a lot of times, and in dire need of finding a type of exercise that I can do on a regular basis to build up strength, but all of the numbers that were edging on the border of being dangerous, are now normal. That is a huge relief. It's one of the main reasons I had this surgery. I knew I was killing myself slowly and I couldn't make myself stop. I couldn't overcome whatever mental issues caused the overeating and emotional eating on willpower alone, so taking this extreme measure has actually done good things. 

I could probably go on and on, but this is enough for now. Things have changed so much in such a short time that I'm still adjusting to everything, but I'm very glad I took the step I did. The fact that I can undo all of the good if I'm not careful hangs over my head every day, but I'm trying very hard to change my attitudes and ways so that I don't end up in the same boat as I was before. Is it easy? No, not really. It's a struggle every day, not just to keep myself fed and heathy, but to not put myself into a position where I sabotage myself. I'm naturally a self-saboteur, I think. But for now, and I hope for the future and beyond, I'm making progress in a positive way and I hope I can keep on doing that.

A QUICKIE

 Ok, you know how I said I couldn't drink for a year, and I was considering maybe not taking it back up again? Probably for the best. 

I cheated and had cocktails at home 5 days before my surgeriversary to test the waters and see what my tolerance is now. Anthony came over to watch some holiday movies and we made Soiled Kimonos (Champagne and Plum Wine - garnished with cherries or pickled umeboshi and an origami crane) which was a drink on one of the movies we watched - A Very Murray Christmas.

I had three. I was already buzzed after three sips of the first one, but I kept going to see if it would get worse.

It did. Drinking is evil and I don't want to do it anymore.

Thankfully, I didn't get sick, naked, or wind up in a tree. I also didn't text anyone I shouldn't have, although I remember considering it and knowing - even drunk - what a bad idea that was. However, I 100% lost my filter and said all the things that were in my head. Probably stuff that shouldn't have been said aloud. 

So, the low tolerance I once had is now nonexistent. 

If I drink again, and I don't know if I will, it will have to be in a controlled environment with bumper pads on all of the doorways and no access to my cellphone, and possibly with a handler to help me get to bed.

Now I know!

THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE

 Ugh, I had to do a very hard thing the other day.

A few years ago, I bought myself, and my late friend, Sara, a couple of friendship lamps for Christmas.

What is a friendship lamp, you ask? (Well, maybe you didn't, but I'm going to pretend you did in case someone new has shown up.) Friendship lamps are a set of two little LED lamps that you hook to the internet. You each get a code and go to the website and register the lamps together so that they get linked, and when you turn them on, when you touch your lamp, the lamp at your friend's house changes color, or blinks, or whatever they are designed to do. Basically, it's a nice, subtle way to let someone know you're thinking about them. I mean, yeah, you could text or call or write a letter, but this way you can just say "Hey, I'm thinking about you right this second!" and it's a nice, quick, warm fuzzy you can send without making a big production out of it.  Shut up, it's nice.

I got one for Sara because I missed her and because I knew she was very unhappy living so far away from her friends and family. Her marriage wasn't going well (I can say that now, considering...) and she was lonely. When I found those lamps, I got them immediately so that she would always have a link to someone back home. I can only imagine what it's like living far away from all the people and things you love, and I wanted to give her a link back so she would know she wasn't forgotten about. 

I think she liked having it as much as I did. It was cool to be sitting next to it and it suddenly turn blue because she had tapped it at her house. Then I'd tap it and it would turn red at her house.  I dunno, it's hard to explain, but it was comforting.

And then she died.

The lamp stayed where it was for months and months because it felt weird to move it. I have a hard time letting things go, we all know that, but getting rid of that lamp felt almost sacrilegious. How can you just get rid of a link to your best friend?

So, every time I'd sit in my living room and it got quiet, I'd inevitably end up staring at that lamp and it would hurt my heart. Losing a friend and knowing there is no hope of ever seeing or hearing from them again is agony. Looking at the lamp just reminded me over and over that it would never light up again. I knew I couldn't keep torturing myself like that, because that is what it was: torture. A mild form, to be sure, but torture all the same.

So I finally moved the lamp. Then it sat in the new place for months and months and I could still see it and it still felt bad. So finally, I had to make myself get rid of it last Friday. I didn't really want to, but I didn't think it was a healthy thing to have something staring me in the face that made me feel like that. You shouldn't keep shrines of the dead, because that way lies madness.

I felt like I should have some kind of ceremony or do something specific, but that felt weird. So I simply had to throw it away. That felt very wrong, but I didn't know what else to do. I suppose I could have bought a second lamp and sent it to someone else, but there is no one else that wants to be reminded that I'm thinking of them. Not anymore.

So I threw my best friend lamp into the garbage and I still want to cry, but I won't/can't because there is nothing that will change the fact that she's dead and I'll never see her again, and she'll never touch that lamp again. It would just be a dark reminder that my best friend is gone. 

I know that in time it won't be so bad. Such is life. I'm sure this was an important step in closure, and closure is important. 

Anyway...it was a hard thing. 

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 1) The other day I was watching Doctor Who (the regeneration episode of Jodie Whittaker's character) and there was this scene right in the middle that made zero sense, but it was so weird that it might be one of my favorite scenes of that show of all time. The bad guy (The Master - shut up, he's canonical) had time traveled to 1916-ish and set himself up as Rasputin (possibly actually being Rasputin, and not just pretending to be him...again, time travel) so that he could trap the Doctor in the ballroom of the Winter Palace and do some nefarious stuff. Believe it or not, it wasn't the nefarious stuff that didn't make sense.

So there they were, the Doctor stuck in a trap, surrounded by evil space robots, and The Master is walking around as Rasputin being menacing and unhinged. Then he does this:

It makes NO sense. It didn't do anything for the plot! I think it was literally only a scene created so that a guy dressed as Rasputin could dance in the Winter Palace to the Boney M song "Rasputin" and I wholeheartedly loved it.

I also now love the song. It's been stuck in my head almost daily for a month or so. I bought it on Apple Music and listen to it all the time. It takes three and a half "Rasputins" for me to get to work in the mornings. It's a fun song, but then again, I have a very soft spot in my soul for disco music, so maybe it's just me. It's a lot of fun, and you should listen to it, too!  (You can just listen to the song, though, and not have to watch the Doctor Who scene. I know you don't care for the show.)

2) Did you know that Steve planned a long, fun, not-work-related vacation in Florida for the week of our anniversary?  It wasn't with me, but at least one of us got to spend some time down there. 

I don't know why it bothers me, since our anniversary is never that big of a deal, but it's the principle of the thing.  At least he'll be back by the 11th unless he gets trapped there by the hurricane. Sorry, I'm a little bitter. It'll pass.

3) For Halloween, one of my coworkers brought in one of those plastic, almost human sized skeletons. I've named it Skelly Pratt and it's been in the office as a decoration since then. Every evening before I leave work, I move him to a new location and pose him doing some kind of boring office thing. It has become one of the things I look forward to every day, because being an adult is stupid and we have to find joy where we can.

I put the turkey hat on him today. I plan on decorating him for every holiday in the hopes that they will let it stay here with me all year. Today he's at the coffee machine.

Seriously, what is my life?

4) Is anyone else just not feeling the holidays this year? not to sound gloomy and I'm not quite to Bah Humbug status or anything like that, but it just feels like all of the stuff that is usually fun is just something I need to get over and done with so I can breathe again. Maybe I'll feel differently in the moment. I hope so! I'll be traveling out of state for work for a chunk of December, which is going to be a pain, but maybe I'll be allowed a little fun while I'm out there. I dunno. I'll keep my fingers crossed!

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 1) I got to wear three costumes for Halloween this year! Well, not all on Halloween, and not all at the same time, but over the week I got three different chances to wear costumes!  I haven't had that many costume changes since the boudoir photoshoot I did with that nice stranger on the internet!  

He still hasn't paid me for that, by the way. Huh. Anyway...

I FINALLY got to wear my Star Trek TOS uniform. I bought it years ago, and wherever I got it from (probably China) sent me a severely wrong size. Like, such a wrong size that I tried to put it on when I first got it and had a panic attack because I got trapped with it over my head and couldn't get it off. At any rate, while it's technically still very snug, it fit well enough for me to wear it to our office Halloween party! Everyone liked it! I did feel a bit exposed while wearing it, because the skirt was so short, but I wore dark stockings and didn't bend over in front of anyone. I don't see how any woman on the Enterprise could do their job in such scanty uniforms, but what do I know about working on a constitution class star ship? Maybe they didn't have to bend over very much.

I had to scrape together another costume for something called a "Dead Wine" party that the mother of a friend put on. We decided to go at the last minute, and since my Star Trek costume was damp from the washer (and washing it snagged a seam and took the gold off of my insignia) I put together a kind of Dia de las Muertas thing. I didn't want to be culturally insensitive, so I didn't do the calaveras face paint, but I did wear the flower crown. The shirt for my costume was too short and showed my torso, so I think I had my arms wrapped around myself the whole time to keep that hidden. 

A Dead Wine party is a neat concept. People bring their old and unloved bottles of wine that they don't want anymore, and the people at the party taste them to see if they like them. It's apparently a way to try new stuff and get rid of old stuff. I drank water, but it was fun to watch people who know wines trying everything, getting drunk, and talking about how gross some of it was. Steve and I had exactly one bottle of wine in our house, so it was sacrificed on the Dead wine altar. Apparently it was "Good, but sweet." Whatever that means. It was from Publix, so your mileage may vary. It was also from 2015, so technically it was old.

On actual Halloween I wore a Chewbacca dress. It was made to be subtle, so it wasn't like I was covered in fur and carrying a crossbow. IN fact, I think it might have been totally wasted because I had to wear a coat all day and I didn't go anywhere that night. but still....COSTUME!

2) Do you want to know what is humiliating? Finding out you've been muted on someone’s social media. They say you can’t know who mutes you, but there are ways to find out. Granted, it's not the slap-in-the-face kind of humiliating, but it's a creeping, heat crawling up the back of your neck kind of humiliating. I suppose this explains why I’ve been getting no responses from them.

Did I deserve it? I don't think so. I usually try to stay pretty neutral about things online, so the why part of it is unclear to me. It's also just embarrassing, especially when you don’t think there is a problem. I know the whole "mute" function is supposed to be a "nice" way to unfollow someone, but it isn't nice. If you're going to say "fuck you" to someone, say it loud enough for them to hear it. Geez. 

3) Things at work are still going well, but I am still 100% exhausted every day. I never knew there were so many things in the world to keep up with at the same time! 

Right now we are planning holiday parties in several different states, and it's...something.  There are so many little fiddly details and decisions to make, and when you have to keep up with things in 7 states, something is bound to fall through the cracks. I'm terrified we are going to forget something important, like paying for food or inviting people. There is a chance that some of us will have to travel to these different states to attend the parties and make sure that everything is going the way it's supposed to, but that decision seems to keep getting pushed off. I hope they don't put it off too long, because we have to actually have plane tickets and hotels and things. I dunno, it's kind of a mess, but we are hanging in there! I will be glad when this part is done with, though, because we've been running in high gear for weeks and my brain is fried. I wake up in the middle of the night worried about party details and whether or not we remembered to picke wines. I'm not sure I'm built for this kind of thing.

I'm also still working for the church, and unfortunately our congregation is dwindling, so there aren't as many people to do things as there used to be. I need a real vacation, but that isn’t going to happen. I’m so tired.

4) I keep buying converse shoes. I can’t stop! It started with a red pair, and then I got a black pair, and I keep finding colors that I want and it’s getting out of hand! I have a custom pair and I even bought a pink pair, and I don’t have anything pink to wear them with! They’re pretty much the only shoes I wear now, and I wear them with everything. I’m afraid wearing Converse has now become my personality. I may need an intervention.

5) Oh, speaking of social media, I joined Mastodon. I haven’t started using it yet. Mostly I did it to get my actual name as my user name. I only know one person on it so far, but no one who would bother to follow me back. I’ll need to find people eventually. I guess if Twitter goes kablooey, at least I’ll have a place for my nonsensical musings! I hope Twitter doesn’t get stupid, though. I like my little group of Twitter people. They are comforting! I’d hate to think the owner could screw it up so badly that he’d cause people to leave, but I think it could happen. Sigh. Stupid owner. I guess it doesn’t really matter. Everything ends.

6) I had a bunch of things to talk about, but now that I’m here, I can’t remember what it was! So I’m going to stop here and hopefully remember what I was going to say! 

I hug you!

PARDON ME, BOY...

This is long. Go get a drink and get comfortable. 

Steve, Anthony, and I went to Chattanooga a few weeks ago for a fun trip! Our main reason for going was to go on a long train ride on a museum train, but we decided to make an entire weekend out of it. 

We drove up on a Friday (Steve, who apparently can't take a day off, had meetings most of the way up there, so Anthony and I got to sit in on some of the most boring and confusing phone conferences I've ever encountered.) and got there in the middle of the day. We were staying at a place called "Hotel Bo" which looked to be another kind of hotel at some point that had been converted by Days Inn or Wyndam. It was cute and clean, but it was in a weird section of town. There was an all night diner and lots of people just hanging around the place being very loud. Eh, well, we were only going to be sleeping there, so whatever.

We spent the rest of that day doing touristy things. We walked around the city for the most part, but we decided along the way to take an impromptu duck boat ride. That was a lot of fun! I like being on boats that are slow and lazy, and the guide was telling us history about the city. (We found out later that his version of events wasn't exactly accurate.) The captain let all the little kids drive the boat, and then asked if anyone else wanted to. Of course, I said yes. I probably wasn't as cute as the kids driving the boat, since I could keep it going straight, but I enjoyed that! There are no pictures, though. we got our wires crossed about who's phone would be used, so you'll just have to trust me that it happened!  

I ended up having to buy a big sweatshirt to wear over my leggings in the boat gift shop because the wind was blowing so hard that day and it was making the dress I was wearing tangle around my ankles and it was annoying as frak. Believe it or not, I only packed exactly what I needed for this trip so I could take the  tiny pilot's bag, so I didn't have anything else to change into. It's ok, though, because I really like the sweatshirt! 

As an aside: It's becoming a habit that I have to keep buying sweatshirts when I go places because I'm freezing or not dressed appropriately. I don't do it on purpose, I swear! I don't need this many sweat shirts in my life, but here we are! We had to go back to the hotel so I could change, but that was fine. We were also resting up before going on a ghost tour that night.

The ghost tour was very interesting! You already know how much I love going on them. We had a great tour guide, and we walked all around the downtown area and got some good history, as well as the spooky stuff. We were also filmed for a Chattanooga tourist thing, so if you get bored, go to the tourism board web site and see if anyone looks familiar. As usual, I didn't see any ghosts. I don't think it's fair that I'm the only one of the three of us that actually believes in ghosts, but I'm the only one who never encounters anything! I need to write a strongly worded letter to someone. 

Saturday we had to get up before the sun so that we could drive from downtown Chattanooga to Delano, Tennessee to catch a sight seeing train! The Tennessee Valley Railroad has a museum train, that is to say, the train cars themselves are historic (from different places) and they offer something called the Copperhill Special, which is a long train ride with a 90 minute layover in Copperhill, TN! Steve and I found this particular activity online while looking for something to do, and since we all were already signed up with them for a Christmastime dinner train ride in December, we thought we'd try out the long ride as well. 

We splurged and got in one of the "first class" observation cars, which is a section on top of a regular car with windows along the walls and ceiling. We would be able to see all the way around us as we made the 3 ish hour drive to Copperhill and back. I'm really very glad we had Anthony with us, not just because he is our very good friend and a complete delight to have around, but also because the train seats were grouped into pairs facing each other and he sat across from Steve and I. If you didn't know the people who sat in front of you, you had to make awkward small talk and pretend like you enjoyed the fact that they were staring directly into your face for the whole ride.

The scenery was absolutely gorgeous! The fall colors had really advanced there, and we also spent a great deal of the trip driving along the Hiawassee River. A tiny bit of info according to the website:

"The railroad over which Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum trains travel on its Hiwassee River Rail Adventures was formerly part of the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad’s Atlanta Division stretching between Etowah, Tennessee and Marietta, Georgia." 

I kept dozing off on the first leg of the trip because it was so cold in the car, but other than that we had a great time. The only detail that marred our very fun trip were the people sitting across the aisle from us. I would think my annoyance was just latent misanthropy rearing it's ugly head, but both Steve and Anthony were also annoyed by them, so I know I'm not just being a bitch here. I don't remember their names, but they were two older teenagers, 18 or 19 years old, I think, and they were ENGAGED. We know they were engaged because they kept telling the people across from them they were ENGAGED. They'd never dated anyone else, EVER, and so they couldn't sympathize with people who feel heartbreak due to failed relationships because they'd never had one! That was said out loud. Dear God, they were insufferable. They bragged about how they were only teenagers, but they liked doing stuff like train rides, instead of things kids their own age liked.

Another aside: I can't be the only person who cannot stand people who feel like they are somehow remarkable because they don't like something other people like, right?  Some people don't like coffee while lots of other people do. Some people don't like country music, or lipstick, or biscuits, but not liking a thing doesn't make you special. It just means you don't like something. Geez.

Anyway, I mean, it's fine for them to like to ride trains instead of party or whatever teenagers do, but it doesn't make them somehow special. I wish I could have told them that. Oy. I also wish they could have talked a bit softer so that they didn't overshadow an otherwise pleasant trip. I mean, they were having a good time, so maybe I shouldn't be so judgmental. They were teenagers (ENGAGED teenagers) after all and their frontal lobes still haven't fully developed, so maybe they don't know how to behave in public yet. They were both very taken with how awesome they believed they were and talked about it at length. I dunno, man. Anyway, the scenery was nice. 

We stopped in Copperhill, TN, which is *surprise* a defunct, old copper mill town that now exists, at least partially, for tourists to visit on the two trains that travel there. It was cute and had the requisite shops and restaurants. We ate some top notch Cuban food at a place called The Rum Cake Lady Cuban Cafe for lunch, and spent the rest of the time wandering the shops. It was fun! I got to pet a dog that I suspect may have been a polar bear in disguise (it was a huge, white dog) and we looked into all the local color we could with he time we had. Believe it or not, I didn't buy anything. I kept thinking I would and then not. Maybe it was because of the earlier investment in the sweatshirt keeping me thrifty. Heehee. Pretty soon, though, it was time to get back on the train for the return trip. 

Ok, so...when you buy your tickets, you don't get an assigned seat. You just pick a seat in whatever car you were booked on. Some people were on the river side of train on the drive out, and some were on the mountain side of the train. Some people ended up facing the front of the train on the way up, and some people were facing the back of the train, so the ride was technically backwards to them. What the conductors asked people to do on the way back, was swap to the seats on the other side of the train on the way back, so that everyone got a chance to see the scenery on each side of the train and also face the "Front" of the train. (They moved the engine from one end to the other because there wasn't a round about to turn around in.) So when we got back on the train, we took the seats that our annoying fellow passengers had been in on the way out. All of this was fine. We were where we were supposed to be. In a perfect world, everyone would have just swapped sides of the train from where they sat on the way up, but the world isn't perfect. Please bear with me as I try to explain this next bit.

I paid attention to where the people I could see were sitting on the way out (in case I had to draw a diagram for a police artist due to crimes) so I knew that some people didn't completely swap sides. One family, who didn't get to ride together on the way up because they had been late, decided to all sit together on the way back, taking up two facing seats. This kept another couple from switching to the side they were supposed to be on, so that couple took the seats across the aisle from us. Technically, they were on the correct side of the train, but in the "wrong" seats. So, guess who came back to the train car and got upset about it?  You guessed it! It was our annoying friends from earlier! Well, actually, it was just the girl who got so upset and she made kind of a scene. Oh, there was no screaming or crying, but there was some loud "WELL, I just don't UNDERSTAND how this could happen! I mean, we were supposed to make an exact FLIP to the other side of the train! The nice ladies who sat in front of us on the way out don't get to face the front of the train now and that's not right! I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND how this could happen." She would not. Shut. Up. She was even embarrassing her fiancé, who tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn't be stopped. It was so fucking embarrassing and awkward, and she was looking around like her mini-tantrum was going to get us all to rise up and throw that family out of the seats they took. We didn't, of course. She even went as far as to turn around to that family and make pointed remarks about how they weren't where they were supposed to be. The mother of the family snapped at the girl and flat out lied and said she was sitting where she was supposed to (she wasn't) and even that didn't shut the girl up right away. She also made a huge, embarrassing production of going to the two women who had been displaced and loudly offering to give them their own seats - an offer that was refused. It was so cringy and stupid and awkward. I think the girl finally realized she was being an ass, because she finally sat down and shut up about it. Thank God. 

At least the scenery was nice!

We got back late in the afternoon and then drove back to Chattanooga for dinner. You know what's hard to do? Find a place to eat dinner, when you don't want to wait a long time for a table, in Chattanooga on a Saturday night. It also helps when you aren't with picky people. Haha! I've completely given up on picking restaurants because I can't eat very much and it seems dumb for me to choose where everyone else can eat if I'm not going to really be able to enjoy any of it. We went from place to place until we finally decided that we could wait a bit longer than we really wanted to to get seated at a Pucketts Grocery restaurant. It took a while, and just before we got seated, a live band started.

Y'all...I have a confession to make. I know this will horrify some of you. I do not enjoy live music. Ok, well, sometimes I do. Like, if there is a party where there is dancing, I like it fine. If someone is playing off in the distance of a festival, I'm ok with it. However, if I'm in a restaurant with friends and I'd like to talk and visit with them, I loathe live music. I hate it so...much. It's...flames, on the side of my face... That kind of loathing. It's not even that the music was bad. It wasn't at all! The lady had a great voice and the band was good, but we were in a small space and they were really damn loud. We couldn't talk to each other without yelling, and it was too much sensory input in such a relatively small space. Also, I felt obligated to pretend I was enjoying it because the hostess sat us very close to the stage and the singer could see us. So I couldn't enjoy the company I was with or my food because a sledgehammer of sound was hitting me in the head the entire time I was at the restaurant. The only bright spot was that I was facing the bar where they had a TV on the Roku Bob Ross Channel, so I got to watch him paint three different paintings. So, that's my silver lining.

I don't meant to complain like my whole day was bad or anything, because it wasn't at all, but those are things that still stick out to me about it. 

Sunday we slept in a while, checked out of the hotel, and went to the artsy section of town. At least I think that's what it's referred to. There is a hill where some shops, restaurants, and the Hunter Museum of Art is located. We wanted to eat at a particular Italian restaurant for lunch, so we sat at a nearby cafe to wait for it to open. This is where Anthony looked me in the eyes and told me he had lied to me the day before. I don't know about you, but that is a disconcerting thing to hear someone say. 

On our way out of the hotel the day before, I had noticed that there was a police car literally right outside the hotel lobby. I thought that was weird, but the place had a lot of loud noises and loud cars during the night, so I thought it was security of some sort. I'd asked Anthony if that was the case, and he said he didn't know and we dropped it. However, Anthony, the liar-face, actually did know why the cop had been there. A woman on the floor right above us had been robbed at gunpoint right outside her room. He said that he had woken up that morning and gone to the lobby to buy a bottle of water, and cops had been swarming the hotel and the victim was in the lobby giving a statement. Steve and I had been getting ready to go and had the curtains drawn and the TV on, so we didn't see/hear all of that, and by the time we went downstairs almost all of the police had gone. Anthony had told Steve about it, but didn't want me to be scared to stay at the hotel, so they decided not to tell me until after we checked out. I thought that was nice! I also know it was smart, because yes, I would have wanted to leave, but at least he finally told me the truth! Heehee. Can I ever trust him again?! 

Lunch at Tony's (clever name for an Italian restaurant, no?) was awesome, and afterwards we went to the Hunter Museum of American Art. I loved it! I don't think I've ever gone to a museum of nothing but American art, but it was fantastic! One painting in particular caught my eye:

I don't know who painted it, or what it is called, but I once kissed a boy and that kiss made me feel exactly like this painting looks. Maybe the kiss colors were different, but when I saw this painting, it threw me for a loop because I was immediately reminded of that kiss. And if you think spending time imagining kisses from my past is wrong now that I'm an old, married lady, I'll just have to ask for your forgiveness. I have had relatively few kisses in my life, and only a couple of them were museum worthy. This was one of them. Sigh. Wonder what that guy is up to these days...

We didn't want to stay in town too late, so went on to our next stop which was at the Chattanooga Whisky distillery, where Steve and Anthony wanted to do a tasting. Since I can't indulge, I went to the Hot Chocolatier that is next door. It's really not good for me to eat really sugary things like chocolates anymore because they make me nauseous if I have too much, but I don't care. I bought a huge box of assorted chocolates to stretch out over time. SUCK IT, BLOOD SUGAR! 

After they were done, we walked over to The Frothy Monkey (I have a love/hate relationship with that name) and had brunch before heading home. It was a great trip and was a lot of fun! I hope we get to have a lot more adventures like that in the future.

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 1) Speaking of my new job.

This week we are gearing up for a big deal conference that takes place in our town. It's a national thing, so we have people in the cyber security industry coming in and everyone is doing last minute things to get ready. It's...a lot. 

One of the things the new company I work for does is host a big party for some of the attendees after the first night, and somehow I got wrangled in to help plan it. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't know anything about planning a party. I didn't get invited to them, I don't usually host them, and I've certainly never helped plan anything bigger than a baby shower before! This is a big deal, a corporate event with about a thousand moving parts and I've already been told that no matter how smoothly it goes, we will get complaints. So, you know, no pressure.

The marketing manager had to go out of the country while this was in the beginning stages of being planned, so I was given a lot of tasks to take care of that required spending a lot of money and making decisions that I didn't feel qualified to make, but I did them. I picked a theme, a caterer, a menu (thank goodness the location was already taken care of.) I named specialty cocktails, ordered favors, made decorations and designed invitations and posters. It's been a big project and occasionally I just lie face down on the floor and have mini freak outs that something big will go wrong and I'll get blamed. I'm very grateful that the marketing manager came back, booked a band, and took care of some of the more dirty details (she is much better at getting people to do stuff they don't want to do) and one of the marketing specialists took care of the social media and gave me direction about who to talk to and graphics guidance. It's been a learning experience, to say the least.

So keep your fingers crossed that in a couple of days, when I'm in my LBD dress and converse high tops trying to babysit a bunch of drunk computer geeks, I don't run screaming from our party and drive off into the sunset.

2) I miss my friend. Very much. I kind of thought that, at least by this time, I wouldn't still feel quite so many things. Alas...  

It's kind of like pulling a muscle, in a weird way. You know how you do that, and if you sit or lie down the muscle might not hurt at all, but when you get up again or move a certain way you definitely remember that you hurt yourself? It's like that. 

I kind of feel like an asshole for feeling the way I do, honestly. I know no one else involved probably thinks of me or any of this stuff at all anymore. I caused a problem, so my feelings don't really matter. I know this. I wish my feelings knew this.

Anyway, I miss my friend. Still. A lot. It's stupid. I'm stupid. Ugh.

3) *Spongebob Squarepants Narrator Voice* A few days later...

Ok, so the first entry was written a few days ago, but I got so busy I had to pause my blog until I had a spare moment to finish. I know you guys are thrilled.

The party happened last night and from all accounts was a huge success! I ordered too much food, we might have paid a bit much for the open bar, but all the industry geeks (and guests) seemed to have a great time. The local band that the marketing director hired was genuinely amazing, although too loud according to our CEO, but otherwise everything went smoothly. 

It was a Bourbon Street/Mardi Gras themed event, so I spent most of the evening standing by the door giving out beads and greeting people. Because I'm not in the industry myself, I kind of hid in the corner with a few of my coworkers to observe and run interference if  necessary. Thankfully, no interference was needed! Mostly I just enjoyed the music, was charming to our guests, and stayed out of the way.

One guy came by and asked me what our company did, and because I haven't worked there long, and because I'm not actively involved with the cyber security that we do, I looked a bit like an idiot. However, I have been in that situation before so I told him I was a receptionist who had only been there a couple of months (implying that as time goes on I could not only fully explain the complexities of cyber security, but hack his whole personal computer) and pushed him off on someone else to explain.  This same guy asked if I was a Booth Babe. I was assured that was a compliment. Ok, then!

As the night wound down, some of us finally just took advantage of the band and did some crazy dancing, which was fun. Every part of my body hurts from that this morning, though, so I think that is a sign I had a good time. Heehee!

All in all, I think it went well and people seemed to be impressed with what I was able to pull together for a party planning amateur, so I'm calling it a win. 

4) One thing I did miss about going to an event was being able to have a cocktail. We had a special hurricane (the Cybersecurity Cyclone) made for the party that everyone said was delicious. I would have liked to try it, but I couldn't, of course.

Although I've been to scotch tastings - where I don't actually take more than a literal taste, and have had tiny sips of Steve's drinks to see what they taste like, I can't really drink for another three months and some change. I joke a lot about wanting alcohol, but honestly, I'm not sure I miss drinking all that much.  Mostly before I liked to try odd cocktails and specially drinks to see what they were like. I like to taste things, especially things I've never had before! I'm not one to order wine with dinner, or sit down with a glass of alcohol of any kind to watch TV, so most of my drinking has been social. The floopy, fuzzy feeling was fun, of course, and it helped in social situations where I needed to be a bit less anxious, but other than that I kind of like being the "sober sister." If someone needs a ride, or needs someone to watch their stuff, or if someone needs to have a clear head to make decisions, I'm glad to do that. Unfortunately, being the sober one makes me worried for people who aren't. I worry they aren't going to call an Uber if they need one, and I'm super aware of how many drinks people have throughout the night. I don't want to be a buzzkill, or the drink police, but it's amazing how aware you are about what other people are doing when you aren't buzzed. I will make sure people get water and I'll ask if they need a ride. I dunno, I just want people to be safe. That's my SADD and BACCHUS background shining through I guess. Maybe I'll keep the no drinking going? Who knows?

BUT! I did find out that I have chaotic, drunk-girl energy, even when sober, especially when I'm dancing or otherwise having a good time! Maybe I don't need alcohol, just a reason to be stupid and have fun!

We'll see...check back with me in three months and change. :)

SO...WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON?

OK, so...it's been a while. I have never had so much, and so little, happening at the same time in my whole life. 

This is where I will talk about it.

I used to work at the church. I still do, but I used to, too. (Forgive me, Mitch Hedberg.) 

However, now, I also work full time as an office administrator and receptionist at the same company where Steve works! Their last office admin quit because she thought the job was boring and someone Steve works with thought of me to fill the role. 

Steve asked me if I would be interested, and because I'd been feeling like my days as a church secretary were nearing an end, I told him I would submit my resume. I didn't think much of it, since I wasn't actively looking for a new job, but I figured it couldn't hurt to do that much. I assumed that it would take a month or more for the process to get going, but everything happened all at once. Apparently my resume was impressive enough for a recruiter to call my cell phone, and then our house phone, and then my cell phone again (calls I didn't answer because I didn't know who they were from) before I finally talked to them.  I don't know how many other people they had talked to about the job before me, but between that phone call, my interview, and being hired, it might have been a week. It was very fast!  I didn't expect that at all. There were definitely cons about leaving the job I had, but there were a lot of pros, too! It pays significantly more, I get a 401k and benefits, paid vacation and sick leave...all that jazz that comes along with having a grown up job. Plus, it was something new! I haven't had anything new in such a long time! So, I didn't see how I could turn it down.

I had to give my two weeks notice at the church, which I felt terrible about. As I've mentioned before, most of the staff of the church left in December. The pastor, his wife, and his daughter and son-in-law (who led the children's program) left to work at a different church, leaving only me and the youth pastor behind to hold things together. We finally got an interim pastor, and so had a bit of stability, and then I got another job. 

It's weird to leave a job you've been doing for 10 years, because you know all of the ins and outs, you know the routine, and you know where all of the paperclips are. You also know someone else is going to come in and move all of your stuff, change all of your rules and routines, and it's going to drive you crazy. I felt that my leaving was very abrupt, so it was like leaving a baby on someone's porch without leaving a note. It was a really fraught couple of weeks, because I had been running the day to day operations of the office pretty much alone for such a long time, and I knew that I'd be leaving them in a bind. They can't sign checks, they never answer the phone, and they are usually leaving the office or working from home, or some such thing, so I was always holding down the fort. Well, the fort was going to need a new caretaker, and that wasn't my business anymore...or so I thought. More on that later.

My two weeks were soon up, and I started my new job. The best description of my first month there would be "drinking from a fire hose." Please let this comic from The Oatmeal visually express how I felt.

Only imagine the soccer balls (or futballs, if you're nasty) being tasks. Tasks that I'd never done before, or had any idea how to do, or never heard of. I genuinely don't know how the lady who was there before me got bored doing this job, because it never freaking ends. She must have been some kind of genie or something to keep all the plates that need to be spinning spinning.

I was completely overwhelmed. I'm not going to lie, even after a month I'm still sometimes still completely overwhelmed. Granted, I now know how to do almost everything that I'm being asked to do, but the requests come thick and fast (That's what she said. Sorry...) and constantly. My time at the church taught me how to take care of an office, so it's not like that part is difficult. At least now I don't have to do taxes, or HR, or bookkeeping, but I don't just support the corporate office. I also support offices in at least 7 different states. Any one of them can potentially email me at any time and ask me to order things, or organize a party, or order them lunch, or make reservations for something. Thankfully, only two or three of the out of state offices have done this so far, but it does happen. I'm also not just taking care of the office itself, I'm assisting marketing, accounting, business development, and will eventually be helping out the R&D department as soon as I figure out how to use the software. I'm a lady of all work, and between my normal duties, and what are called "drive bys" which are the random things people come to my desk and ask me to do throughout the day, I work from about 7:30 to 4:30 with few breaks. I'm not even supposed to start work until 8:00, but I have to leave the house very early to avoid school traffic and I have to drive across town now, so I get to the office early and have to play catch up and then the day gets away from me from there. I leave there every day completely exhausted and wrung out like a wet rag. Also, working with Steve? Hardly see him at all anymore. We can't even drive in together because I have to run errands all of the time and have to have my car with me, and he's so busy with after work stuff now that we hardly are in the same room at the same time anymore. Me being in his workspace has caused a bit of friction, but nothing terrible, thankfully. Just the adjustments that you have to make when working with your spouse, I guess.

Some days I'm straight up not having a good time, y'all.

But please don't get me wrong, it isn't terrible. It isn't because I don't like the company, or the job, or the people, or even the random tasks. All of those things are great, actually! Everyone has been so kind, patient with my screw ups, and helpful! Also, I still get Fridays off since very few, if any, people come into the office that day.  I'm even getting to do real, legit graphic design work for the company, which I love. Mostly it's because I'm so. Frigging. Tired. All. Of. The. Time. Exclamation Point.  I'm tired from trying to keep up with everything and I think about work too much. I don't like thinking about work when I'm not at work. That is not the way the world should be! I woke up in the middle of the night one night in a panic that I forgot to do something, and had to go to my computer to fix it so I could go back to sleep. I went from a job that was low key and well known to the complete unknown and responsibilities I have never faced before, and it's stressful. I know that part will eventually smooth out, but for now, I have given up almost everything but working, eating, and going to sleep. That's almost exclusively how things are now. 

I was already in a place where I wasn't interested in doing anything at all, and having to force myself to get out of the house and not become a hermit. I still feel like that, and now I catch myself sometimes going to bed at 8:30 in the evening, or if I don't do that, just sitting down once I get home and not moving again until I decide to go to bed. I still have to force myself to do things that need to be done, but it's even harder now. That is a terrible way to live life, but that's where I am. I'm too blah. 

Plus, I still work for the church. Two-weeks-notice who? I couldn't bring myself to abandon them completely. The lady who comes in to do bookkeeping did not want to do the secretary job the entire week, so now on Sundays I stay after church for a while, and on Wednesdays I go from my new job to my old one and do all of the administrative tasks that don't get done during the week. They have put out an ad for the job, but have had very little interest. The problem is that the job pays very little and doesn't have any benefits. It's basically a job built for a person who doesn't really need a job, or who has another income in the family that covers the majority of the bills. I was lucky to fit that bill well enough that I could do that job for as long as I did, but these days people (rightfully) want more out of their work, and so it's going to be harder for them to find someone who isn't already retired or who literally just wants busy work during the week. It's frustrating for them, and I'm exhausted trying to keep up with it all.

However, I don't mean do sound all "woe is me." It's not like that. I'm just stretched so thin right now that even the things I actually wanted to do before just seem like a chore. I'm adjusting, and that is never a fun process. My work/life balance isn't balanced. 

I have, however, been able to tint my hair any color I want without anyone giving me shit, so that is one very silver (a color I'd like to try one day) lining! I'll take those where I can get them! :)

So, that is an update on my life at the moment. I'm a secretary squared and my life is about as vibrant as a broken toothpick! I hope you are having a more exciting time than I am! 

I hug you.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 1) I figured that I needed to come back and let you know I am still alive. Well, at least at the time of this writing. It would be weird if I wasn't, right? Who knows, maybe we can blog beyond the grave, but that isn't what is happening right now. I'm in my office and completely alive.

But isn't that what a ghost/vampire/zombie would say? Hmmmm...

2) So...yeah. Not much has changed since my last entry. I hate to sound like a broken record, but I still just don't feel much more than sad most of the time. Sad and blank and tired. I hate it. I hate every minute of it, but there's not much I can do. I'm still working it, though! I'm sure I'll wake up one day and things will be back to normal. It has to happen at some point, right? Can forever be like this? No color or sparkle or any of that? I hope not. But hey...currently still alive! That's gotta count for something!

It sucks, but there is still some tiny hope, so I'm better off than lots of people. That's...that's the silver lining that I have.

3) My weight loss is going well. I still haven't had the energy to get into any sort of exercise program or habit, but I'm hoping I'll figure something out soon. I don't think I'm eating the right things, or maybe not enough of the right things. I've been to see a dietitian, and she says that all my vitamin levels are good, and only my protein levels (the most important level) are a little low, but otherwise I'm doing well! I can definitely eat more than I could before, but hopefully that won't get out of hand again for a while. I hope not! I don't want to have gone through all of this for nothing!

It's funny, a lot of people who have this surgery are very active about posting pictures of themselves and their progress. Before and after photos are very common, especially in swimsuits and underwear and stuff, but I don't think I'm going to do that. Firstly, I'm incredibly picky about who sees my entire personage. Most pictures of me online are strictly shoulders and up, and if you've seen more than that, then you've either seen me in person or are subscribed to my OnlyFans*. Secondly, I don't really know how I feel about myself yet, which is weird. I don't really...recognize...myself. It's so weird! I mean, I haven't lost so much weight that am unrecognizable, but my brain image of myself and the mirror/photo image of myself doesn't match up and it's odd. I don't like looking at my own face in pictures because it's unsettling. I also think I look really old now, and my hair is awful, and I don't really feel like myself yet, but I've been told this is all normal. One day it'll just click and I'll recognize myself again. For what it's worth, even though I can't readily see it, everyone else has been very complimentary. 

Also, people ask me lots of weird questions. I don't mind questions, and I'll answer them all the best I can, but it's weird to have casual acquaintances so very interested in my body. They look at me all over and ask personal questions and it's...I dunno...a lot. It's like the weight loss surgery equivalent of when people feel free to touch a pregnant lady's stomach without permission.  

*I don't really have an OnlyFans, you perv. Good Lord. Although in this economic climate, it might not be a bad idea. I'll look into it.

4) So many people I know are traveling right now and I'm a bit jealous. I think that envy is my worst deadly sin, because I'm definitely envious of all my friends who are in fabulous places. Some of the band members went ahead and did the trip to Germany (sans band) and Josh and Geoff are in Portugal, and lots of people I know are currently in England and Scotland. Steve went on a solo trip and has two more vacations planned. I could technically go on one of those, but I declined because going to Hazzard Fest sounds like a nightmare to me. Maybe I'm just too picky, but I don't want to attend a hillbilly weekend somewhere in the butt crack of Georgia just to meet Daisy Duke. So, unfortunately, I don't think any major traveling will be possibly for me this year, but I can live vicariously through others! 

5) I have to do a stressful thing today. It's not a bad thing, but I'm low key wigging out about it because it is a thing I don't feel prepared to do and I'm not sure I'll do it well. I'll let you know the outcome because it'll be kind of a medium deal if it all goes well. We'll see.

6) Is it weird to send emails to someone's junk mailbox? Like...if you want to say some things, but can't say it right out, is it weird to send the messages where you know they probably won't be read? It's not a thing I've done yet, but it's a thing I'm considering just to know that my message has gone someplace out into the ether, but also to a place where the only possible person who could conceivably read it would be someone I trust. It feels like kind of a creepy thing to do. I don't want to be creepy. Eh...I guess I'll just have to try it and see how I feel. It's not like anyone will actually read whatever it is!

Yeah, probably definitely creepy. Damnit.

 

I feel like I need to apologize.

I mean, I know I don't have to, but I feel like I need to. 

I know that I haven't seemed like my old self lately. Maybe I've even been kind of a bummer. The world needs less of that.

I've suffered some very painful losses over the past couple of months and that is something that has affected my mood and my brain and the things that I put out into the universe. Add to that, my body is doing some recalibrations, both physically and chemically, and that also has affected me quite a bit while I'm trying to get used to those changes. 

More than anything in the world, I want to be a source of light and happiness and laughter for the people who know me. I want to make people smile and laugh, and I want to help people have a better day. Lately I haven't felt like I've been doing any of that. 

(Well, unless you got a big kick out of me trying Delta 8 and nearly dying of sensory overload, and in that case, you're welcome. Heehee.)

I don't know how to explain how I've been feeling, except that I don't seem to find much joy in anything right now. That's not exactly right, because I can go out and do things, even enjoy those things, but I tend to find myself fazing out halfway through whatever it is and wishing I was back home. I have to force myself to do those things. I have zero desire to go anywhere, or do anything, or talk to anyone, but I make myself do that stuff so I don't just stay home and sleep all of the time. I literally have to give myself pep talks to meet Steve and his work friends for dinner, or agree to watch movies, and stuff like that. I even have to make myself use social media because it feels pointless. The second I'm done with whatever it is, it's like something has turned the light off.

It isn't even like depression, at least not like I've experienced it before. It's nothing. It's not even like I'm feeling beige. I feel blank. Not, you know, psychopathic blank - don't worry about that - but just...like looking at a blank wall with no pictures. I can't find my sparkle. I know it's out there somewhere, and I know it'll come back at some point, but for now, it's gone. No sparkle, no color, no fire. Like a prism covered in thick dust.

BUT...but...I'm trying hard to get it back. I miss it. I just wanted to apologize in case anything I've written here (or anywhere else that you might follow me, if you haven't muted me by now, at least) has done anything to bum you out, or make you feel blah. That's never my intention. 

Oh, and just so you know, this isn't a cry asking for anyone to tell me how awesome I am. I know that when I'm on my game, I'm a fricking delight. All I'm asking for is for your patience (and to not abandon me) as I adjust to things, and hopefully I'll get my sparkle back soon.

HOW LONG CAN IT LAST?

I'm seriously going to have to stop trying weird things from farmer's markets.

A couple of weekends ago, Steve and I went to our favorite farmer's market. We usually go to this particular one because the Mennonite Lady (I don't know her name) who keeps a booth there has the best bread I've ever stuck in my face. We also sometimes buy squash, or peaches, or coffee, or meat from the Meat Lady (I also don't know her name) but unless something particular catches our eye, we tend to stick with those things. However, on this particular day, something new did catch our eye.

There was a booth that had some small packets and bottles that we had never seen before, so we walked up and the nice fellow behind the table started telling us about their products. Apparently there is a hemp farm a couple of counties west of us, and the stuff they were selling were products that were infused with CBD and Delta 8. I had heard of CBD before, and had even tried some to help control my back pain for a while, but didn't see any effects whatsoever. As for what Delta 8 was, I had no clue. The guy was explaining that it's completely legal and was not THC (I do know what that is) but it had some similar properties. He even opened one of the little bags and gave both of us a little gummy square to try. I figured, why not? Certainly if he can give us a sample at a farmer's market, it couldn't be all bad. My main takeaway was that it's supposed to help you relax, and boy did I need to relax.

The last few weeks have been a patchwork of different kinds of suck and sleeping/relaxing has been difficult, so we bought some of the gummy squares to keep until we needed them and went on our way. I figured maybe it would keep me from needing to take my anxiety pills as often. The sample one he gave us didn't do anything throughout the day other than make me slightly sleepy, really, so I figured that if nothing else they might help me go to sleep if I had trouble doing so.

Skip forward a day. I'd spent the afternoon with my family in Athens for Mother's Day, and had just gotten home. Steve (who'd been with his dad) had gotten home just after I did and we decided to take our traditional Sunday afternoon nap. I had the bright idea to see if the gummies would help us sleep better, so we each took one (and they were twice the dosage of the sample we'd had the day before, but still not strong.) We didn't end up sleeping right away. We decided to watch a couple of episodes of Fringe to unwind from the day before we napped. There was no effect from the gummies at all. I figured that whatever Delta 8 is, it wasn't going to bother us, so I didn't think about them again until I stood up when the two episodes were over.

I don't know if it was because I hadn't been moving around, or if the food I'd had for lunch slowed down the effect of whatever it was supposed to do, but I was so incredibly woozy that I decided I needed to go lie down immediately. I felt drunk, but not drunk. It's hard to explain. You know how if you've been swimming for a long time and you get out of the pool, you sometimes still feel a bit like you're floating? I felt like that. It wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't normal. I figured that was the relaxing part finally kicking in. Steve felt the same. It was like it was on a timer. We lay down and talked for a minute or two and Steve fell asleep. I did not. I did the opposite of falling asleep.

I don't know if it reacted with some of my medications, or if it hit my bloodstream too fast, or if I metabolize things differently now that I only have 20% of my original stomach, but I was no longer relaxed. In fact, I'm fairly certain that if I hadn't been lying down, I might have crawled right up onto the ceiling like Spider Man. It was one of the worst sensations I'd ever felt in my life. Every single nerve ending in my body felt like it grew horns made of electricity. I literally couldn't relax my muscles. It was like being hooked up to a TENS machine on the highest setting. I was in a state of complete sensory overload and it scared the crap out of me. I tried to wake Steve up, but he couldn't wake up enough to help me. The stuff put him out like a light. He said "I can't help you, I'm sleeping." and that was the last thing he said. I couldn't calm down. It was physically like the worst anxiety attack I'd ever had in my life, but my mind was at least not as muddled. I was afraid I was allergic to it or something like that, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. Ripples of what felt like electricity went through my body and it wouldn't stop. I tried to get up and go into another room so I wouldn't focus solely on the horrible feeling I had, but it was too much input to my brain. Walking down the hall felt like experiencing an earthquake. My teeth chattered and any movement of my head or hands felt too...much. I finally ran back and sat on the bed to try and calm down. It didn't work. If I had sneezed while feeling like that, I might have literally exploded. The only thing I could think to do was put on a pair of headphones and watch a video online. I didn't know if it would help, but I had to focus on something or I thought I'd fly to pieces. So for the next couple of hours, I made myself watch YouTube videos until the horrible tingly feeling backed off a bit. It was awful. The sounds were too loud and the lights were too bright, but the only way I could calm down was to focus on the videos. I finally yanked off the headset and tried to go to sleep. I couldn't do anything other than try to relax my muscles and that took hours. I think I finally slept for a while, but it was more from exhaustion than because I was in any way relaxed.

Do you know how long it lasted before I felt normal again? Over 24 hours. I had to go to work feeling like I had live wires running under my skin and I had to behave normally while doing it. It was the worst out-of-control feeling I've ever had in my life and that includes being sedated for surgeries. I hated it. I hated every minute of it. That stuff was being sold next to tomatoes and jellies and was supposed to be relaxing and safe! It wasn't relaxing at all! At least not to me!

Now, don't come for my neck and tell me I shouldn't have tried something I wasn't familiar with.That is obvious. To be fair, the lower dosage one didn't do anything remotely like that to me, so I thought it was safe. I've also never used THC before and had no frame of reference, so maybe I didn't understand what something similar was supposed to do in general. All I know is that I'm going to dig a deep hole and bury the rest of those accursed gummy squares in the backyard so that I never have to be in the same room with them again. I also have zero desire to ever try anything remotely close to them again. I'll take my anxiety and trouble sleeping over that feeling any day.

PS: Steve slept for a solid 14 hours and barely moved the whole time. The bastard.

A GOOD MAN

The world lost a good man on Sunday morning.

Capping off a spectacularly shitty April, and now moving into a probably similar May, my uncle, Garry Puckett, passed away after a fight with a long term illness.

He is Steve's uncle, technically, but I've been lucky with all of my in-laws and they all loved and accepted me immediately. He might as well have been my own blood. He was a good, gentle, kind, and funny man and the world is a lesser place now that he is gone.

I'm not good with words. I know people who could write beautiful paragraphs about someone's character, but I'm too clumsy. I mean, I could write a lot of words, but I don't think they would be the right ones. I think I've mentioned this before, but if I could cut myself open and spread out my feelings onto a table, it would be easier to show people how I feel about things than for me to try and explain.

Death is a weird thing. It can be sudden and cruel, it can linger, or it can be a relief. Uncle Garry had been sick and sad for a long time, so I believe death came as a friend to him. He was ready. He said as much. It doesn't make those of us he left behind hurt any less, but it helps us to hurt differently; maybe less sharply, and less raw.

I will miss him.  

That is all I have to say about that.

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I'm going to attempt to get my hair cut next week. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

2) Everything still sucks. I actually think I feel worse about it now than I did two weeks ago. I am, however, going to be 100% respectful of whatever things need to be done to fix it. 

But I've never been in a scorched earth situation before, so I'm not sure of the etiquette beyond the obvious. Am I blocked from everything? What if someone dies? Can I say happy birthday? What if I misdial or text the wrong person by accident, or am I blocked there too? I'm too scared to find out. What if there is an emergency or something important happens? I've never been the bad guy before and it's very weird. Until I hear differently, all I will do is nothing. I hate it.

I wonder how long I'll feel this sad, lost, and terrible? Probably long after everyone else is ok, I'd bet. Heh.

3) The person who bought the property next door went HAM and ripped out everything over the past two days. There is no lawn, no trees, and although we thought that the house was going to be sold and moved off property, it was simply crushed. I swear, it only took them 30 minutes to destroy it. I looked out of the window and it was there, and then walked out of the house half an hour later and it was nothing but a big pile of wood and bricks. They didn't even take the wreath off the front door first. It makes me weirdly sad.

I didn't know the people who lived there, but Steve grew up with the kids of the family. The house looked almost exactly like ours, but was on a slant on the lot. We learned a while back that it was the first house built in the subdivision and it belonged to the son of the developer. They positioned the house so that his family would have a clear view of the beautiful valley we live in while the other houses were being built, which I think is kind of cool. 

They are going to build one of those big McMansions on the property that will sell, unless the housing market crashes beforehand, for close to a million dollars. It's weird to think that property where we live could get something like that, but with a big, fancy house on the lot, it can. It's going to make our house look even worse by comparison, I'm afraid. There are only about 3 houses where we live that haven't been extensively remodeled or torn down and rebuilt, so our little 1959 ranch house is going to look like a hobbit hole next to whatever gorgeous, trendy thing that will be built next to us. 

I hope the new neighbors will be nice, but if they aren't, I'll just sunbathe nude, fall, winter, spring and summer, until they move. 

4) The people who work with Steve and trying to talk us into getting a dog. They know how much we love dogs, but they are being weirdly relentless about it. I don't like the pressure of it.

I've tried being coy about it, and joking about why we can't right now, but I wound up just being honest and telling them that I still miss my other dogs too much, and that the thought of getting a new dog or dogs makes me too sad, but they don't seem to understand that. Some people can just replace pets the second the other ones die, but I'm not like that. It hurts too much to love things that will just die and rip your soul out when they're gone. Butler and Bear were my boys. Simba wasn't even officially our cat, and it still makes me cry to think about her being gone. I know one day that we will have other pets, but they'll have to be snuck into the house under the cover of darkness and I will have to be told "this is your pet now."

I don't know how to politely tell them to stop bothering us about it. They're good people that I like and I know they mean no harm. But I wish they'd stop.

5) Twitter is sometimes a very weird place.

I was checking my followers the other day and noticed someone that I didn't recognize. I don't have many followers in general so I know who is there and who is gone. This guy was new.

I clicked on his name to see if it was someone I knew - I did not - and saw he had posted a series of photos. I looked at them, then looked again, and then looked again. I finally realized that they were all photos of his privates.

I don't know what it says about him that I couldn't recognize what I was looking at at first, or even second, glance, but the thing that actually threw me weren't the photos of his junk, but that he was wearing a Spider Man costume with the crotch cut out.

I'm sure there is a whole section of the population that might be into that kind of thing, and I won't judge, but I (fortunately or unfortunately) am not one of them. 

I did not follow him back, in case you're wondering. Geez.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) So I got to call 911 for the 6TH time at the church last Sunday! They don't even ask me my mane anymore. Soon, they are going to install a big, red button next to my desk that patches me right into the system.

One of our elderly ladies, who has some balance issues, fell while trying to walk between two pews and her cane tripped her. At least I think that's what happened. I was in the room, but was behind the sound equipment so I only heard the commotion. When I looked up, a bunch of people had surrounded her, and so I hung back until I heard someone say "She needs an ambulance!" So I jumped up, told them I'd call, and did the thing. Thankfully I'm an old pro at it by now, so I knew what to tell them. They had me go back (I'd been in the lobby so I could hear better) and sit by her so I could answer some questions. 

When an old person falls, usually my guess is that they are going to hurt a limb, or their back, or maybe break a hip. This lady had done none of those things. She was laying in a pool of blood. One of our deacons had a cloth pressed to the back of her head, but the blood had spread in a big pool under her head. She'd clipped the edge of the pew when she went down, and damn, scalp lacerations are no joke. 

She was lucid and not in much pain. Other than the bleeding, she said she was OK. Of course, when you're 85 years old and you hit your head, you never know. I sat next to her and made a few jokes to keep things from being too serious, and the EMTs finally showed up. They checked her out, and it didn't look like she was in any immediate danger, so they got her into a wheelchair and got her to the ambulance. I'd had to call the lady's daughter, and I have no idea if I was comforting or alarming, because adrenaline hit me like a ton of bricks when I went into "HELP THE OLD LADY" mode. 

Once she was out of the way, I shooed the looky-loos away and told them I'd clean up. That is part of my job, after all. There was a lot of blood. A. Lot. Of. Blood. More blood than I'd ever seen outside of the human body before. Thankfully, blood doesn't bother me, but it was still gruesome to have to carry out an armload of bloody towels in front of the entire congregation. When I woke up that morning, I hadn't imagined that I'd spend the first part of the day wrist deep in an old lady's blood. I didn't have any gloves, to which one of our church members helpfully pointed out that I needed them because this was, and I quote, "A bye-yo hazard." All I could do was promise I wouldn't lick my fingers. I did find out later I had a cut on my hand, so who knows how that will end up. I hope that lady doesn't have anything communicable.

I felt like Lady Macbeth the rest of the day. I still don't know if my hands are really clean yet, even though I scrubbed them. 

The lady is fine, by the way. She's a tough old bird. She called and said they'd put seven staples in her scalp, and she's staying with family until she gets better.

2) I deleted what I wrote here, because I forgot I wasn't going to say anything else about it. I'm too lazy to renumber. Everything still sucks, though. I hate every minute of it.

3) I found another pair of the giant underpants in the laundry, again. This is getting stupid! I know I washed and folded them all by this point, and there was no reason for them to be in the laundry four months after the fact! If it was a joke, Steve wouldn't let it go on this long. I think I'm going to have to burn them, or bring them to church and bury them under one of the shrubs. If I find one more pair in a place where they shouldn't be, I'm taking them to the closest priest and having them exorcised. I wonder how that would go?

4) My weight loss journey is going well. People are finally able to tell that I've lost some weight, which is nice. I'm still so tired all the time and eating sucks. I miss being able to comfort eat, or at least enjoy food! I don't anymore. I can't even watch cooking videos anymore without feeling nauseous. Right now, even the food I can eat, I don't want. But, I have to eat or I'll die. Allegedly. Geez. It's all supposed to level out in a few more months, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Oh! Another fun effect of my surgery is that my hair is falling out! I'm sure there are people out there who'd be thrilled to hear that, but I'm a little scared. I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't realize to what extent. I can only hope it won't be too terrible. I don't know to what to expect. I've thought about going and getting my hair cut short, just so it might not be such a shock if a lot more falls out, but I hate my hair being short. Ugh. Again, what can you do? 

Will you still love me if I'm bald? Even if my head is a weird shape? Even if I have to wear bad Hannah Montana wigs? Just don't let Chris Rock make any jokes. I don't think Steve would take up for me.

BROKEN

I fucked up.

I fucked up and ultimately destroyed one of the oldest, most important, precious to me, dear relationships I have ever had and I can't do anything about it. 

I'm not going to elaborate. I don't really even understand all the details. Suffice it to say that something that seemed fun, silly, and harmless wasn't. I should have been smarter, but ultimately I didn't want to be. I hate myself for it. Losing my friend was the one damn thing I didn't want to happen. I tried to explain but I don't think my message made it to the right place.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, my heart is genuinely broken. I don't want to eat, I can't think straight, my body physically hurts, and I forget to breathe. I feel the same way as I did when my father died. If I had my way, I'd sleep until it didn't hurt anymore. I know one day I won't feel like this, and somehow that's worse, because it'll be like it didn't really matter at all, and it does. I feel like I've lost part of myself.

Everyone else involved will be fine. I have no doubt. They always are. I doubt anything truly bad ever happens to them these days. They're too perfect. That's a good thing, though.

My only hope is, at this point, that maybe it won't have to be forever, but it'll be a long time.

You might think I'm over reacting. If so, then you probably don't know me or my heart very well.

That's all I've got to say about that.

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Something has occurred to me that seems very strange in a way that I don't think has ever crossed my mind before. 

We, as relatively normal, everyday people all have secrets. Not necessarily bad ones, just private stuff we don't talk about. Some keep more to themselves than others, obviously, and depending on who you are or what has been going on in your life, those things can either be silly or serious.

But what I think is weird, is that if you were to decide to tell someone something that you've never mentioned before, especially one of your very closest guarded secrets, they might think you were crazy, or even lying about it because those secrets can also be very weird.

Maybe only my secrets are weird. All I know is that I can never tell anyone else my very secretest of secrets, because I don't think anyone would believe me.

2) I'm wrestling with a situation.

It's pretty well known around where I work that the people who live in the neighborhood don't have very much. A lot of them have come to or called us asking for us to give them money. Our former pastor would occasionally let people come to the church and do work, and pay them minimum wage per hour for what they did, but anytime we gave money out to help people, word would get out and we'd be slammed with people and their sob stories asking us to pay for rent/bills/gas/whatever else they wanted money for. We finally had to refuse to give anyone cash, and went to a grocery gift card system so that we could be fairly certain the money they needed for food, actually went to purchase food.

I could write examples of the people who've taken advantage of our good will, but I don't want anyone to think I'm just that cynical about people needing help. I know there are people who are in need, and as a church, a lot of people think it's our job to bail people out of their problems.

See, the thing is...we can't afford to do that for everyone who calls and asks for help. But, if we do it for one person, we'd have to do it for everyone. We don't have the resources to pay for rent, phones, food, hotels, and things like that for everyone who asks. It has been that way for the past few years, and unless we get a huge windfall of money, we probably will never be able to do that.

BUT...here is the quandary.  This morning I was asked if I would personally give someone a certain amount of money. This person is a kid our church and they need to pay a cell phone bill that they will not be able to pay otherwise. This particular kid (teenager, I guess, but not old enough to get a job) has very little in life. Terrible home situation, no dad in the picture...that kind of thing. The kid offered to come by the church and do work, but we don't have anything for them to do. Even if we did have something for them to do, it wouldn't be enough work to justify paying them the amount of money they need for the bill. I considered just writing a check and telling the person who asked me to do it (the kid didn't personally ask me) and having them give the money to them, but I realized that would possibly be opening a door that couldn't be closed. I'm not saying specifically that people would come to me for money, but they might start asking the church for money, and if we helped this kid, why can't we help this other person? Or what happens if the kid can't pay their bill the next time? Would the money fairy need to pull out the checkbook every time?

One one hand, I can afford to give them the money. That isn't the issue. I'm not a stingy person by nature, and money is money and it's going to get spent one way or the other. On the other hand, I can't set a precedent of handing over money for cell phone bills or things like that, especially for kids who might mention it to other kids, or even adults, who have needs and then where will it stop? We tried to think of a solution, of inventing work they could do, but even then, I don't feel there is a good way to do this. If it were something more important than a cell phone bill, I don't know if I'd feel the same way or not.

I realize how awful this makes me sound. I just feel icky about the whole situation. I just don't think any of us giving them money is a good idea. We can't open ourselves up for the kind of problems this could cause. We're working on a solution, but I don't know what we actually should do.

3) Our church caught on fire a little bit last Saturday. 

We had a workday to clean out a bunch of junk that had been accumulating in the unused rooms of our church for the past 25 years. I never thought that so much junk would end up in a place that isn't regularly inhabited! 

Only five people showed up, three men and two women (plus two little kids and two ladies who were cooking for a fundraiser) but we hustled and managed to shovel out the worst of the junk from the basement to the second floor in just a couple of hours. While we were finishing the upstairs, the other woman came back from downstairs and mentioned that she smelled something smoky in the hallway. We'd had a door open on the bottom floor so that we could carry junk outside, so the guy who knows things (he really does, that is not sarcastic) said it might be the heat exchange trying to regulate the heat in that hallway (it was a cold day, so it would have had to work harder) and we figured he was right. I went downstairs and smelled the smoke, too. Granted, my sense of smell is so strong that I can sometimes smell lights turning on, if there is dust on the bulbs, but it was a very obvious electrical burning smell. Still, we couldn't find anything, and me and Amanda looked everywhere we could think of for signs of fire. We even opened the closet where the heat exchanger is and didn't see or smell anything in there.  So we walked into the church lobby. We saw a tiny bit of smoke floating near the ceiling, but because neither of us could see where it was coming from, we thought it was just dust burning off of the heater. 

I know you probably think we are complete idiots, but don't come for my neck, I've never been in a fire before, ok? I smell things all the time. I smell heat, and the ghost of food, and can even smell cold, but we didn't SEE anything other than the smoke, which was such a small amount that it didn't alarm us. So I opened the double doors to let it out so that...get this...it didn't set off the fire alarm. Oy. We went on to do some other things.

I walked into the office to bring some things out we would need for Sunday services, and I just happened to turn my head in the right direction and saw black smoke coming out of one of the air conditioning grates. I honestly didn't know what I was looking at. That sounds crazy, but it wasn't big billows of smoke, it was a black haze coming out of the grate and spreading over the ceiling. My brain didn't register it as even being real at first. I finally yelled out that there was smoke, and the guy (one of our deacons) walked into the closet and realized the exchanger was actually on fire internally. The reason we couldn't see or smell it was because it was enclosed in the housing and the smoke was floating through the ductwork.

We were very lucky that we had people in just the right places to take care of what was happening. The deacon told me to call the fire department (so I got to call 911 for a 5TH! time since starting work here) and he found the extinguisher and put out the active fire, they got the kids outside, and we eventually got everyone out of the building just in time for all of the firemen to show up and make sure all the fire was out.

Amanda and I sat with the kids and kept them occupied and out of the way of everyone, and thankfully the only thing that was damaged was the machine in the closet and some smoke damage in the lobby. It was still rather stressful, but thankfully after the smoke cleared, literally, the damage was minor. I actually felt bad that the firemen came in their whole kit, but I know they had to come and make sure it hadn't spread into the walls or into the second floor.

After that we went home and I didn't let myself think about it very hard until I went to bed, and that's when I realized how badly it could have turned out. The fire happened because a belt broke inside of the machine, and it took three people actively looking, sniffing and being curious to realize it was happening. Ostensibly it happened because the heater had turned on due to the door being open, but since it was a cold day, that would have happened anyway. The ladies cooking downstairs would have been there even if the rest of us hadn't been, so if that fire had started, they wouldn't have known until it was too late, and might have died. The location of the closet where the heater was is perfectly situated that if the fire had gotten bigger, it would have torn up through the cooling system and started burning the second floor, as well as an adjoining room where we keep choir robes.  Also, we had shoveled out a ton of junk from that closet, which would have been great fuel for spreading a fire into something much bigger. I just let myself have a little cry and was very grateful that we were there to catch it before it destroyed the building.

I don't really have a clever way to end this story except I'm really glad our church didn't burn down.