So much to post, so little time

I'm sure I have many things I'd like to blog about - our home computer is having issues and I've been without it for nearly two weeks now. (Let's not even get into how unreasonably crazy it makes me to have no home computer.) We thought it might be the monitor, bought a new one, hooked it up...and it wasn't the monitor. So off to the shop it went. Hopefully it will be an easy, not-too-expensive fix and I'll be back online at home before too much longer.

The news of the day: I have strep. Again. I went to the doctor on November 11 with the first bout of it. My throat started hurting during the night, so I went in this morning, and surprise! Round two! Brian is reminding me to take all of my antibiotics, on time, this time. I blame my pediatrician, who could have had my tonsils taken out when I was a kid and chose not to. Dang it.

Why can't they just call already?!

Still no word from Brian's interview. I'm doing my best not to call and check his voice mail every ten minutes, just on the off chance that a call finally came in. Have I mentioned that waiting sucks? No, really, it does.

Frustration

It's 4:30, and Brian still hasn't called saying he's left work yet. I swear, the time he manages to get out of there seems to get later with every shift. He's "officially" out of the field at 1:30, but then they've got a whole bunch of debriefing shit they have to go through. For Christmas, I'd like a job for Brian that's here and not out in the damn woods three hours away. *sigh*

I'm just a little black rain cloud

Hovering over the honey tree,
I'm just a little black rain cloud,
Pay no attention to me.
Everyone knows that a rain cloud
Doesn't eat honey, no, not a nip,
Floating around,
Over the ground,
Wondering where I will drip.

So. That's how I feel today. I am in a funk par excellence. I should be in a good mood - today is my Friday, I'm taking off tomorrow for J's awards ceremony and year-end party. But I'm surly and unreasonable and thoroughly unfit for human consumption. My lunch is good enough, but I wish I had something else. I have no cash to go get something else. I have no good snacks in my desk drawer. And I have not one, but two two-hour conference calls today, one from 10:30-12:30 and one from 1:00-3:00. Even if I had money, I wouldn't have time to go get anything.

I think part of it is adjusting to losing the things I liked about being single (yes, there were actually some good things about it! LOL). Yeah, doing all the parenting stuff on my own sucked, but I had my space. To some extent, I've lost that, and I miss it just a little. Is that silly? I know if it were still me and J, nothing productive would get done around the house, I wouldn't have gotten Spring Fling done, J's behavior wouldn't be improving as much, and there'd be absolutely no hope for any improvement in the family finances. And I love Brian. But I miss having all my time to myself after J goes to sleep. I have more obligations now, and maybe I'm adjusting to the reality of that settling in. (And that sounds fairly awful, but I don't mean it in an awful way.)

I also think part of my mood is because I showed J the family movie video last night - all our old Super 8 home movies were put on videotape (I got them from my dad after the house flooded for a third times, so I could preserve them), and we watched them, and it's made me rather wistful. I miss my mom. I need to go sit somewhere and have a good cry, but there's really nowhere to do that anymore. Can't cry at work, it's just not the done thing. Can't cry at home, there's always someone around to ask me what's wrong. And this isn't the kind of cry where I want to be asked what's wrong and be comforted, I just want to get it out, you know?

And I think I also feel stuck at work. I'm not miserable at my job, but I'm not happy. This isn't where I saw myself at 40, I don't see it as a career position where I could gladly stay for the next 20 years, but I can't figure out where I do see myself or how to get there. I worry that with the economy what it is and our industry taking such a beating, they'll start laying people off at some point, and if that ever happened, and I were laid off, I don't know what I'd do. I think I've been out of the legal field so long, I've pretty much worked myself out of any legal jobs. I don't see doing what I'm doing now at a different company. But I don't know what I can do. I found a listing for a legal word processor that pays as much as what I make now - problem is, it's a night position, 3 PM to midnight. Something like that I could do, if it were at a decent hour and if they didn't tell me off the bat that I was overqualified. So, not enough experience for the high-dollar legal jobs (and I don't want those anyway - I've decided I'm not cut out to be a good lawyer, it's just a pity I didn't figure it out twenty years ago), too much education/experience for a lot of stuff I probably would be really good at (word processor, paralegal, legal secretary), and no idea of what else I could do that 1) pays enough to pay the bills and 2) doesn't require a huge outlay of money and/or time for education/certification. Yeah, I've really made something of my life, haven't I? A hot mess is what I've made, and I don't know how to make it better. I like to write, but have no idea how I'd even get started on any kind of writing position. I love doing my candles and bath stuff, but I can't quit my day job and do that full-time, not right now.

Ugh. Hot mess, indeed. This too shall pass, right?

Things could be worse

That's what I tell myself after days like yesterday and this morning.

I had a tire that was low yesterday evening. I stopped and aired it up. By the time I picked J up from school, maybe 15 or 20 minutes later, it was low again. I went to have it checked. There was an unrepairable hole in it - tiny, just a pinhole, but the air whooshed right out (I could hear it hissing). And I thought I needed an alignment as well, for which I would need four good tires on my car and not the spare. So, I planned to take at least half a day off work today to get it taken care of.

Then there was J. He had a good day in class, but not so much in the after-school program. I found a Home-Gram waiting for me when I picked him up. That's what the after-school program sends home when your kid has a bad day. The first one he got was last year when he intentionally colored on the gym floor while in time out. Today he was in time out at least five times, maybe six, for not listening when he should have, for talking non-stop, for touching people when they didn't want to be touched (apparently there's some concern about J being a hugger, and about the fact that you can't do that at school - more on that momentarily), all things we've talked about in the context of class and at home. *sigh*

I've noticed that lately he's said that so-and-so doesn't like him anymore, and he said once that nobody liked him. I'm wondering now, if that truly is the case, if it's because he does things after people have asked him to stop. He does that to me at home - he'll make some irritating noise or tickle me or poke me and I'll tell him to please stop, that's bothering me. He keeps on and keeps on and keeps on until I'm screaming in frustration and annoyance, and then he's upset because I'm mad at him. If he's doing that to people at school, well, yeah, that's the kind of thing that would drive friends away after a while. I don't *know* if that's the case because I'm not there, but given how he does me at home, it's a reasonable suspicion. So we talked about that, about how people might not want to be friends if they ask you to stop doing something that bothers them and you don't stop. We talked about how it's just as important to listen and to mind the counselors at the Y program as it is to listen to his teacher and mind her in the classroom. He told me that if you get three Home-Grams, you get kicked out of the after-school program, and I told him, well, guess what, buddy, you've got two. I told him it was really important for both of us that he really make an effort to follow the rules and listen to the counselors and do what they said, because I can't take off work to be there when school is out and it's really important to me to know he's got a good, fun, safe place to be while I'm still at work. I hope this makes an impression, and I hope today was just an off day, just getting back into the routine after spring break. But honestly, it makes me want to cry, and it makes me worry for my son. I don't want him to be socially inept, I don't want him to be someone that no one wants to be friends with, and I can't fix this for him. I can offer suggestions and guidance, but I can't be the one to make friendships on his behalf. He's the one that has to figure out a way to do that.

As for the hugging - I'm not sure that's all J instigating it. We saw two of his friends at Wal-Mart yesterday evening when we went to get the tire checked, two little boys, and one of them ran up and hugged J first. I know this particular little boy is in the after-school program with J, which makes me wonder if J is always the sole instigator of the hugs or if sometimes he's just hugging back. I just told him we need not to be hugging on people at school or at the after-school program, that those are the rules, regardless of who hugs first.

J's teacher sent home the Conner's survey for me to complete, the one that looks for ADHD characteristics. I filled it out. Some things on the survey I never see in him - for example, being angry and resentful. J is like me - he gets mad/irritated/annoyed, he has a fit, and in a little while, he's fine and life goes on. There's not a whole lot of grudge-holding there. Some things on the survey I see all the time - for example, interrupting others' conversations or games. He does that constantly. I can't recall ever having a conversation where he hasn't tried to tell me something in the middle of it, and he's bad about telling me he wants me to get off the phone when I'm talking. Some days I think, eh, this is just five-year-old boy behavior, with a good dose of change and upheaval mixed in. And then there are days like yesterday, where I think, OK, is there something else going on? The repetition of things after being asked to stop makes me insane. Lately he's started making sounds like he's choking, and when I called him on it, he said he was just making funny noises. I told him I didn't like those noises because I thought he was choking when I heard them, so please don't make them, because it scares me. He kept on (this was two days ago), over and over again. Yesterday evening he started up with the noises again. I asked him to stop, he said why, I said because it sounds like you're choking. He did it again. I asked him again to stop. He did it again. I told him that when he kept on doing something after I'd asked him not to, it told me that he cared more about doing what he wanted than he did about what he was doing upsetting me, and that hurt my feelings. And then he cried because I was mad at him (and yes, at that point, I was). But what's not to get? "Please don't do such-and-such, it scares me." Or I don't like it. Or it's annoying. Or whatever. But if someone asks you repeatedly to stop doing something, how many times of the person getting angry or upset does it take for you to realize, hey, I really should stop when someone tells me they don't like what I'm doing? These are the things that make me worried that there really may be more going on than just five-year-old boy stuff, and worried that whatever the cause is, that I won't know how to help or how to control it or how to help J learn to control himself.

We'll see how today went. Hopefully he had a good day both in class and after school. I'm going to go pick him up a bit earlier than usual, since I ended up taking the whole day off work to get the tires taken care of. It took me for-freakin'-ever to find a place that could do both tires and alignments, but I did end up finding a place here in town. They quoted me a price of $235 and change for two new tires and the alignment. Turns out it was a bit cheaper than the price they originally quoted me - my car is made in such a way that the tires are going to wear on the inside, that can't be adjusted. So I really didn't need an alignment after all. That was happy news. I'm not crazy to have spent $184 on this, but at least it wasn't $235. And I have my car back now, so at least that particular crisis is resolved.

OK, if I'm going to accomplish anything before I go fetch the boy, I'd better get off of here and get to it.

Where's a sledgehammer when you really need one?

If I had one, I'd go destroy our stupid printer. We've had people up here messing with the printers, supposedly changing them out as part of some "print optimization" project, and now that we're essentially two different companies, we have one printer with one type of letterhead and one with another. I've been trying to print a letter for half an hour. The first time, I forgot and sent it to the wrong printer (wrong letterhead). The forty-seven times I've tried since then, I sent it to the right printer, but the first page WILL NOT PRINT on letterhead. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

And when I finally went and copied it onto letterhead and took it to the administrator for her signature, she informed me I'd done her signature block incorrectly. I scream now, 'K? I am so ready to go home, it's not even funny.

Dad had a bad day. What a day Dad had.

OK, Mom. But geez, it has been a day and a half.

Yesterday ended, and today started, with me trying frantically to clean as much as I could before the appraiser came at 8:30 this morning. I was trying to clean, shower, get dressed, get J settled with breakfast and get him dressed, and get out the door. I was hoping to get J to school early, so I could run back home and pick up a couple more things before the appraisal.

Ha. Then there was the great yogurt throwdown. J has taken lately to wanting to bring something for snack at school. I guess some of his classmates bring their own snacks rather than eating what the school provides, and that's fine. Today, though, he wanted yogurt. I told him no, yogurt needs to stay cold or it gets yucky. He said he liked it yucky. I told him yogurt had to be put in the refrigerator and there wasn't one in his class. He then started howling that he WANTED yogurt, and there was a refrigerator in his CUBBY. I tried to be patient and gentle and remember that he wasn't doing this to push my buttons. That lasted for all of about three seconds before I snapped. *SIGH* So the day started off with a screamfest over yogurt.

We left later than I'd intended, and J was in prime dawdle mode. I was antsy thinking I might not even make it home by 8:30, much less would I be there in time to pick anything up or clean anything, and I was short with J. (Yeah, today was not my best parenting moment.) But we had hugs and kisses before I left, so that was good. Still, I felt guilty for being abrupt with him. No one tells you in parenting classes that guilt is a huge part of becoming a mother.

I made it home by 8:27, resigned to not getting any more cleaning done. 8:30 comes and goes. No appraiser. 8:45. 9:00. Still no appraiser. I was thinking of leaving for work - tonight is my late shift, and I was supposed to be at work by 10:00. Finally at 9:15 he got there. He'd gotten stuck in traffic (I can relate to that) and hadn't had my number to call and let me know. So he did his thing and was finished by about 9:40 or so. I tried to schedule this on an off time, so I wouldn't have to take extra time off work, and damn if I wasn't going to end up late to work anyway.

I head out the door, and as I'm toodling up the highway, it hits me. I had a conference call scheduled for 10:00. It's 9:51 at this point, I am NOT making it to work by 10:00. D'OH. I called my buddy and asked him to call my client, apologize for me, let her know I was held up, and tell her I'd call back to reschedule. Turns out she thought the call was at 10:00 Eastern time (her time), so she was already miffed. *SIGH* I called and got her voice mail. I'll have to try again.

Then work is a three-ring circus, as always. I'm crazy busy trying to dig out of all the stuff on my desk when we get word that a co-worker has passed away unexpectedly. She had some outpatient surgery this morning, and came through that fine, but died in recovery. They're not sure if it was a heart attack or blood clot or what.

And I thought my day was bad.

Godspeed, Doris. Things won't be the same around here without you, and you will be missed.

To sleep...or not

Why is bedtime hell? J got maybe seven hours of sleep last night. After thrashing around (in bed, with the lights out, just not sleeping :tearhair: ) for an hour or more, he finally looked up at me at 10:45 and said, "Mama, let's go to sleep." And finally, he did. So he was tired and C-R-A-B-B-Y this evening. He screamed over everything when I picked him up from school - that made for a fun trip home. He cried because he didn't get to watch the movie they'd just started (never mind that everyone was going home in about five minutes, anyway). He cried because he wanted to go home a different way than the one we went. He cried because he wanted to go somewhere else other than home (as in, somewhere that would require me to spend money). He cried because I didn't have a new video for him to watch (never mind that we have a kabillion at home). I knew he was tired.

I started the bedtime routine a lot earlier than usual, and we had the lights out by about 8:30, 8:45. And again, with the squirming and thrashing and not sleeping. Tonight there was a new twist (well, not new - we've done the ghost thing before, but not recently). He came looking for me, crying that he couldn't sleep in his room, he was scared, there was a ghost. I got him back into his bed, finally - I knew he was just way tired and that was part of the problem, but still. So frustrating. He didn't go to sleep until 9:45. Better than 10:45, but it vexes me 1) because I know he's tired and needs to sleep, 2) because I'm tired, too, and 3) because I have no clue how to help him unwind sufficiently to settle down more easily. When it's light in the evenings, we play outside. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not. I've tried the Nighty Night videos. I've tried the Arbonne Unwind spray. I've tried warm baths. I've lit a lavender candle, used lavender soap and lotion, tried everything I can find that bills itself as "relaxing" or "calming". It must work for everyone but my kid. Even his cough syrup with codeine doesn't knock him out, and if it does help him relax a little, he usually wakes up about the time the medicine wears off, after about four hours.

I'm to the point that I'm just about ready to try this stuff:



or try to set up a sleep study at Children's Hospital here. I don't know what prompts these horrible spells, because some nights/weeks are worse than others, but I do know that bedtime is never easy. Maybe once every six months I'll get him in the bed and he'll fall asleep within minutes. And it's hard, and it's frustrating, and dammit, I'm tired of having to fight this fight almost every night. Bedtime should be relaxing and quiet and restful, not stressful and maddening.

Oh, the fun just never ends

My weekend was nice. It was just a low-key weekend, which I think I needed. I slept until 10:30 both Saturday and Sunday mornings - I guess I needed the rest!

And now I'm back at work. Which, as we all know, makes me so happy I could just throw up.

I started out my day with a complaint. I got a complaint on an account that's not even mine, that's one I took a call about from the 800 line (since we're all required to help out with phone duty). THAT'S why I hate phone time. I have enough work to do and get complaints about without adding in the whole "one call, one response" thing that has us taking on whatever work comes out of calls from the 800 number, too. So that was a dandy day-brightener right out of the box.

We're having a team meeting this afternoon regarding the fifth special project we've got going (I think that's right, we've got five special projects). It wasn't supposed to have much of an impact, but it's been revamped and will now have more of an impact on us than was previously anticipated. So the meeting is to discuss what we'll each need to do for this. Yay. This is in addition to the four other special projects, the investment reviews that have to go out and be followed up with phone calls (this could be full-time by itself), and the daily workload that you never can get caught up on. Goody!

And I called to check today - I didn't get the child support position in Fort Worth. For whatever reason, it wasn't meant to work out.

My devotional yesterday was about God answering prayer in unexpected ways. It talked about times where we prayed for one thing and didn't get what we expected, but looking back, we did get exactly what we needed. How this job can be anything I *need* is beyond me, so I can't even see the answering of prayers in unexpected ways. All I see is the answer to my prayers being "no" or at least "not yet", for reasons I can't fathom. I'm glad God knows the reasons for all of this, because I sure don't. And it's hard to keep the faith when you can't see rhyme or reason in it somewhere.

I'm meeting with the financial advisor tonight. Hopefully it will go well.

I've applied online for an assistant city attorney position in Arlington and another writing position with Baylor. There are also two assistant U.S. attorney positions I want to apply for, one in Dallas and one in Fort Worth. I keep on flinging that spaghetti, waiting for the piece that's going to stick.

And the verdict is in

Flu AND bronchitis, yay! It's a mild case of the flu, a not sol mild case of the bronchitis (hence the horrid cough, I was awake from about midnight to about 3 AM hacking and coughing). The doc gave me an antibiotic for the bronchitis, and daytime and nighttime cough meds (including the super-duper fabulous Vicodin in a bottle). I'm not contagious at this point, she doesn't think, so that's good. I'm just thankful J hasn't gotten sick - hooray for Airborne Jr., is all I've got to say.

I'm debating whether I should take tomorrow off, too. Isn't that sad, that I've got flu and bronchitis and am even debating going in to work?! I think I'll go ahead and schedule the day off, and if by some miracle I feel tons better tomorrow, I can always un-schedule it. I don't feel *bad*, necessarily, this damned cough is just wiping me out and making me hurt all over.

Back to the grind

And so begins another work week. It's Tuesday, it feels like Monday, and my motivation is zero. On the bright side, traffic was still light today. I'm not looking forward to a return to our regularly scheduled nasty traffic.

I was talking to a co-worker this morning. Every year we have an employee survey that we're asked to do (OK, nearly hounded to do - they're real big about wanting as many people to participate as possible), and once it's finished, we have small-group "listening sessions" to discuss the biggest areas of dissatisfaction (which have yet to change in the nearly three years I've been here). One of the five is always that no one feels like anything will change as a result of this survey, and I think the reason for that is clear - the survey topics never change. The general consensus is that we're paid too little and asked to do too much work, and we feel like we aren't free to speak our minds (because there is a bad list around here, oh yes, there is). Anyway, this year's listening sessions were held not too long before Christmas. My co-worker said that one of the people in his group regularly reads up on our company, and this person was saying that in one of the articles he read, our CEO was talking about the efficiency of our latest merger. He was bragging about saving costs by cutting back on salaries. So it's a point of pride to our CEO that we're paid under market. I know companies are in business to make money, not to make sure I'm happy - I can appreciate that. But when you hear on the one hand that your company is setting milestone after milestone, breaking new financial ground left and right, has annual net income in the billions - well, it's really a slap in the face to hear your CEO bragging about how the company keeps costs down by cutting back on salaries. And where, then, do you think all that profit is going? I haven't seen a red dime in raises or bonuses since I've been here.

It's not just me who's unhappy. The co-worker I was talking to this morning started at just about the same time I did, we went through our training together, we were teammates until just a few months ago, so we're pretty close friends. He told me this morning that he really just wanted to go cry, he was so discouraged about being here. I've never worked any place where so many people are so unhappy. And it just upsets me - I work with good people, intelligent people, people who are (for the most part) willing to work hard and want to do a good job. We all deserve better than this.

It's getting ugly

The weather, that is. There's a tornado warning for Johnson County, which is right close to where I live. It's pouring rain and thundering and lightning - just in time for us to leave early at 3:00.

Yay.

A little bit better

J was awake until nearly 10:30 last night, and I was just about to pull my hair out trying to get him to sleep so I could dose myself liberally with something and get to bed myself.

I feel a bit better today - not bad enough to justify a sick day, so I'm at work. Woo. But I still don't feel *good* - my head is clogged, my nose is running, and my eyes are itching like mad. I hate it when my head is stopped up. It makes me feel like my IQ has dropped about 30 points.

I read somewhere that mountain cedar is bad this time of year and can really give people who are sensitive to it a bad time. So this may be just allergies - not fun, but preferable to a sinus infection. I took some Singulair last night in addition to my usual Allegra, and I guess it helped a little bit. I dug out my nose spray, too. Hopefully I'll start to feel better soon. I'm just glad not to be cold and shivering today. That was the worst.

J and I checked the mail, and found that Brian had sent J a Christmas card! I thought that was sweet of him. J was thrilled to get something in the mail with his name on it.

Today is Brian's birthday. He's still at his parents', so I probably won't get to talk to him today, but I sent an e-card that he'll see when he's back in town. I figure not talking to him for all this time (I haven't talked to/e-mailed him since before I left for Christmas) just gives him time to miss me, right?

I'd better try to get some work done. I'm so glad Monday is a holiday.

Ugh.

I feel like a hammered cow pie. I'm freezing, my nose is clogged and running at the same time, and I want nothing more than to go home, take a hot bath, put on my jammies, and sleep for 12 hours. Instead, I'm stuck here at work for another hour and a half, and then I get to go home and wrangle the boy to bed.

Here's hoping he's worn out from last night's antics and that bedtime is both easier and earlier tonight.

Oh, please, can I just go home?

I'm tired. J was in rare form last night. He didn't give it up and go to sleep until nearly 11:00, and he was a pill just about every second of the evening. He finally asked to sleep in his own bed, and fell asleep there in short order. But he woke up just before 5:00 with pants full of poop and wanting milk, so we changed and got milk. Then he crawled into bed with me, and by the time he fell asleep, it was close to 6:00. Just in time for the alarm to go off. I hate nights/mornings like that. If he wakes up at 2:00 in the morning, or 3:00 in the morning, at least I have a few hours of sleep left. When he wakes up like he did this morning, I just get to sleep long enough to make me REALLY not want to get out of bed.

I'm starting to wonder about his behavior. I don't know what's just normal 4-year-old/strong-willed boy behavior, and what might be cause for concern. He's always been busy, but now I seem to be noticing a lot more inattention and outright defiance. Seems like everything I've asked/told him to do or not do the past couple of days, he turns around and immediately does the opposite of what I asked. When I ask him why he isn't listening to me, he just says, "I don't know." When I'm asking him a question, it takes three or four times asking to get a response. I know his hearing is fine, so it's not that he doesn't hear me. He throws fits over seemingly insignificant things - I mean, screaming and howling and sobbing because I've told him we can't stop at Whataburger for dinner, come on. We've talked about hamburgers and take-out food being occasional treats, he knows we don't stop there all the time, and yet he screams. He goes against rules we've already talked about, that I know he knows. And it's making me crazy. I don't want to use spanking as discipline, never have done, but there have been moments recently that I've certainly considered it. So. I don't know how much of this is a function of being 4, how much of it might be post-Christmas letdown, and how much (if any) of it might be something to be worried about. All I know is, I'm tired of fighting these fights every.single.day. Just once, I wish he'd surprise me with an easy bedtime, or with not screaming when I tell him no, or with doing what I ask without me asking fourteen times. He's four, so I think he's old enough to understand what I'm asking and to mind when I do ask (allowing for the occasional spurt of disobedience, since he is four, after all). But it's like he pushes every button he can possibly think of to push, and then some. It makes me tired. It might be easier with a man around the house to share in the discipline, or perhaps the behavior would be better if there was a man around the house. I don't know. I'm just tired.

It doesn't help that I'm trying to fight off the crud. My head is clogged, my nose is running, and my eyes are itching. I'm loading up on vitamin C. I hope I can avoid a full-blown sinus infection and a trip to the doctor. I have neither time nor money for that. I haven't even refilled my blood pressure meds, I'm certainly in no position to shell out $40 for Augmentin. I sure hope bedtime is easier - and earlier - tonight.

I won't be home until after 8:00 by the time I pick up J, but at least he will have had dinner. Since it's my late night (oh, yay, I just love answering phones until 7:00), K is picking him up, and he and A and J are going out to dinner. I expect J will eat a boatload of spaghetti at Johnny Carino's. So hopefully when we get home, I can wash the sheets (they're wet) and get them dried and on the bed, and get him bathed and asleep in fairly short order.

At least I have lots of sugar to get me through the afternoon. My friend John brought pralines that his MIL made (they're fantastic!), my friend Rose brought pecan pie, and I bought a caramel brownie at Starbucks this morning. Hopefully all that will fortify me sufficiently that I can make it through to 7:00.

I just hope it's a quiet day. I don't have the energy to deal with whining.

Oh. I got a neg letter from Ellis County re: the felony prosecutor position, and from the Brazos Higher Education Service Corporation re: the in-house counsel position. Things suck here, so it makes me seriously question whether I belong here, but then every possible open door I find is slammed in my face. What does that mean? Will I ever figure out where I belong? Will things ever get better? I'm having a despondent day - no surprise when you combine no good job news with lack of sleep and feeling halfway crappy.

Trepidation

I have this awful feeling of dread/foreboding - is it just the normal feeling of not wanting to go back to work after a day off, or is there something really awful waiting for me when I get there? I don't know. Whatever it is, I don't like it.

OUCH.

Did I mention the fact that last week I started smelling engine coolant in the passenger compartment of my car? Well, I did. Not good. And my windshield fogged up like mad with the heat or defrost turned on. Also not good. Visualize, if you will, me driving in rush hour traffic trying to use a Clorox wipe to clear enough space on my windshield so I could see to drive. (At least there weren't any germs left on that part of my windshield.)

So I made an appointment to take it in for repair. I knew it was likely a leaking heater core from the research I'd done online, and the mechanic gave me a general estimate of $300-500 to fix it. Ow, painful. I harbored a secret hope that it would be something else, something much less expensive.

No such luck. Today I took it in. The mechanic told me they'd checked, and due to the way the heater core was placed in my car, they'd have to remove the whole dash to get it replaced. Eight hours of labor. A $100 part, estimated total bill now a whopping $770. *Gasp, choke.* I was so depressed I couldn't even eat breakfast.

And the actual total when I picked my car up ended up being $801.10. Lovely. Merry Christmas to me, huh? No idea where the money to pay the rest of my bills is going to come from.

But on the bright side, at least my car no longer smells funny.

Oh, crap.

My job makes me want to throw up. We're having our 4th quarter reviews by the end of next week. Y'all may remember that my last review went OK, but there was a caveat attached to it, that if some things didn't improve, then I'd likely be out of a job. Well, I just got a complaint - one that is my fault, and one that will stick. I don't know if one will get me into trouble sufficient that I might lose my job, but I'm terrified. I'm trying hard to trust that all will work out. But what if it doesn't? What if my manager says, hey, you tried but not enough, we've got to let you go? I haven't managed to find anything in nearly two years of looking, what in the world will I do if I find myself out of a job? I'm trying not to nut out over this, but it's hard. Seriously, what would I do? I have no savings. I have virtually nothing in my retirement plan. If I were to lose this job, I would be beyond screwed.

I hate this. I hate that this job has ended up this way. It seemed so promising when I started. And I'm not stupid, that's what kills me. It's not that the work is so difficult that I'm not capable of doing it. There's just too much of it most days.

Help.

Wanted to share

I posted this as a comment in response to a couple of other comments (thank you, Kalleigh and Meno!), but since I'm not clever enough to figure out how to save my comments in PDF when I save my blog, I wanted to post this here (with a couple of small additions) for future reference.

(In reference to the thought of giving K full custody of J and me getting a second job) I'm not sure how that would work, given the current logistics - this is why K doesn't keep J during the week as is, as it would be very difficult for him to get J to school each day given where he lives and where he works. I could ask him to keep J some nights so I could get a second job, and we have discussed that (he and I have - not sure if I've posted about it or not). But I think the switch from all the time with mama to all the time with daddy would be too abrupt for J - he's a creature of routine, and it would disrupt him mightily to suddenly be at daddy's house all the time (even if the logistics worked out OK). Something to think about, but I'm not sure it would work out in practice. Thank you for the thought, though, and if you've got any more, feel free to share 'em.

The challenge would also be, with a second job, finding one that paid enough to do any good. If I get a retail job for 10, 15, 20 hours a week paying $7 or $8 an hour, by the time taxes come out of it, I'm not sure it accomplishes anything other than leaving me slightly less in the hole and having almost zero time to spend with my son. So unless I could find something part-time that paid enough to make a real positive impact, it's not worth the disruption of having K keep J all the time.

I sell Pampered Chef - if I could just find the time to put some effort into promoting that, could I make it work? People do, but do those people also work full-time? I don't know. I do calligraphy. I make candles. I do all sorts of little crafty, gifty things that could be potential money-makers. The trick is, finding time to do them and promoting them so that I'll actually make money.

(In response to Meno's comment) Right now, it does feel fairly overwhelming. And what really makes me kind of sad is that K and I suffered and limped along financially while he had a crappy job that was basically temp work (the job itself was decent, low-stress, not fabulous pay but not horrible, he could work there as long as he wanted, and it was 40 hours a week when there was work to do, but they might run out of work for days, weeks, months, and that can pretty well destroy any semblance of a budget) while we were married. If we were still together right now, given that he's now got a good job that pays decently, we'd be doing all right, maybe even kind of sort of well. And that sucks the worst. Things were hard when I was married. Things are hard (hell, harder) now that I'm not married. When do I quit feeling like the butt of a giant cosmic joke?

Yeah, I'm in full-out whine mode right now. I freely admit to wallowing in the pity pit.

OK, it's official....

I could just throw up. My finances are reaching critical mass, and I don't know what to do. Get a second job? In what free time would I do that? Win the lotto? If I knew the winning numbers, I'd have done it already.

And to rub salt in the wound, every day I have to see our company's stock price go up and up. We're constantly hearing about how we're developing this new line of business or acquiring that company, about how we've just reached another milestone for earnings or whatever, best performance in the second quarter, blah blah blah. In short, it sounds like our company is making money hand over fist, and it sickens me to know that the odds of me ever seeing any of that benefit in the form of a raise or bonus is so small as to just about be a negative number. I've been here two and a half years now, and I've never gotten a raise or a bonus. Nothing. With the cost of benefits going up, I'm probably bringing home less than I made when I started. So if things are going to get better, I damn sure can't see how they're going to get better here.

Some days the thought really does cross my mind that if anything happened to me, at least K would have the insurance money to take care of J. Those days, the thought of my little boy is darned near the only thing that keeps me going.