Happy New Year! Welcome to 2022

Hello everyone! Happy New Year! How is everyone doing? I hope I still have a few followers out there.

Again I apologize for the lack of posting. As I said before my computer is no longer letting me post. I don’t know why. I can read my site; I just can’t copy and post, or write a post directly from the website. So I have to write the post, copy it, email it to myself, retrieve it off my phone email, copy it, paste it into the blog on my phone, edit it for spacing errors, and then edit the rest of the post. It’s time consuming and I simply haven’t been in the mood lately to take those additional 10 minutes or so to get it posted.

On the bright side, I do have around 5 posts waiting to be posted, not counting this one.

Christmas came and went. There are all kinds of things I could say about the holiday but I’m not going to. Let’s just say the holidays continue to be disappointing and I am desperately trying to overhaul them for my own peace of mind.

I was all set to write about the wonderful weekend our family had in Indianapolis but that came and went and now it seems anticlimactic. 

To sum up: My mom has been lamenting not being able to get everyone together at the holidays. My niece got married 2 1/2 years ago so she’ll never be spending another holiday with us. My nephew is kind of a package deal with her. He’s not going to come up without her so we’ll never spend another holiday with him either. I finally sent out a text asking if anyone was interested in getting together for a dinner this year, and mentioning perhaps being able to extend it to a weekend next year. We ended up booking a house in Indianapolis for the 14 of us for the weekend. It was my mom, my 2 kids, Rock Star’s boyfriend, the mobster, my brother and his wife, plus their two kids, Queen B’s boyfriend, and then my niece, her husband, and my other nephew. We spent most of the time inside and together. Almost everyone took part in putting a Christmas puzzle together. Lots of football was watched on Saturday as my brother and mom were hoping Notre Dame would make it into the championship play off bowl. Didn’t happen. We ended up going to downtown Indy Saturday evening for a Christmas bizarre, which ended up not being that great. We ordered pizza Friday night, had breakfast casseroles Saturday morning, a big Mexican buffet Saturday night, and biscuits and gravy on Sunday morning. There were snacks and lots of alcohol and plenty of games. I made 2 pans of Scotheroos and 3 batches of sugar cookies. All in all it was a pretty good weekend; we left with everyone looking forward to doing it again. There was even talk of doing an extended weekend because as it was we really only had one day together.

I’m not sure that’s going to happen anymore. Neither my mom nor myself is really feeling up to planning yet another family adventure. But it was nice while it lasted.

The mobster survived his first holiday season in Indiana. I think I mentioned he went back to Virginia over Thanksgiving. He was here in Indiana over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but left Wednesday after and was back in Virginia through the 2nd. He misses his kids. I understand and sympathize, of course, but this raises my anxiety and leads me to think he’s going to sell his new route and move back. Ah, the perils of being in love with a man who is a genuinely good father. Harley had it so much easier. Jerry Lee was willing to walk away from his kids in order to be with her. I’m definitely not saying that’s the better man because it isn’t and I wouldn’t want to be with someone who could discard his own flesh and blood. But it does make it easier.

The biggest thing that’s happened in my life recently is kittens! I got two of them shortly after our trip to Indianapolis. I got them from a shelter and they came already named. I have a little black one that I seriously wanted to call Snowball, but alas, her name was Noël. Her sister is Holly. She’s a little gray calico. I’m not sure what the technical term for her coloring is but she’s not a solid gray cat. There are patches of cream throughout her coat.They are both adorable and highly active. It’s been a slow road getting them used to Milo and quite honestly, Holly has come a lot further than Noel. She still bats at him when he walks too close or too fast. Holly, on the other hand, likes to rub up against him and swish her tail along his body. I’m not sure Milo appreciates that.

My mom is down in Florida once again. She’ll be there through most of March. She always gives me a date she’ll be returning and then comes back 2-3 days sooner.

My daughter has one year left in nursing school. She finally conceded that trying to do three nursing classes in summer school was just not feasible so she’ll be returning for her fall semester.

My son is a mess. Ran out of his medication (which isn’t doing a bang up job anyway) and didn’t bother to say anything. I guess he felt the Prozac Fairy would drop off another bottle eventually. He quit his job at the grocery store. I understand there was a personality conflict between him and the manager. It didn’t help that he was the only person left in the department. So he applied at Chick-Fil-A. He lasted at that job for four days. When I told him that playing video games and working a solid 15 hours a week was not a life plan he got very upset and let me know he wasn’t quitting because he was lazy; he was quitting because that job made him want to kill himself. He then spent the next hour sobbing. Needless to say, I felt like shit and I’m still left wondering how much of this is truly a mental health issue and how much is him manipulating me. We’re still waiting for a referral to a psychiatrist in the hopes that proper medication will help. It’s been at least 6 months now and they said when they contacted us it could be 6-8 months.

There is also a sleep issue. He claims that he rarely gets much sleep. He tries to go to sleep but he just lies awake. I’m hoping our family practitioner can prescribe something to help him sleep, although the idea of him and sleeping pills scares me, too.

Also, for those who might be worried, he does not appear to be suicidal now. Once the stress of the job was over he was pretty much back to his old self. Aside from his reluctance to shower everything seems fine.

Honestly, with the addition of the kittens I thought he was coming out of his shell more. The litter box is in his room right now so his door is always cracked open at least a little bit so they can get in there. In the beginning we were told to keep them in one room. His room was that room so he spent lots of time with them and seems to really enjoy them.

I guess it’s true what they say: A mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child. Mental healthcare in this country sucks!

I’m slowly coming to realize that yet another saying is true as well: Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.

There have been very brief moments where everything seemed to gel: My money situation was good, my kids were both good, the mobster and I were doing great. Now it seems more and more like one or two areas will be good and then another one falls apart. Get a new job making almost double what you’re making now. And then…. Picasso’s medication stops working. It’s a series of those situations. It seems to always be raining so learning to dance in the rain is the only thing you can do.

Speaking of dancing in the rain… our bank revised their vacation policy. As of January 1, 2022 I now get an extra week and a day of vacation time. All salaried employees get 3 weeks per year. I was going to have to work another 2, possibly 3 years before that happened. If my boss went in front of the board and lobbied for me to get my 3 weeks at 7 years instead of 7 years, 11 months and 21 days I would have received it in 2024. If not, it would have been 2025.

We also got an extra personal day and the threshold for 4 weeks of vacation has been lowered from 20 years to 15 years.

I’m still ruminating over making New Year’s resolutions or coming up with a word or phrase for the year. I’ve been toying with, “Be Here; Be Still.”  At its core it’s about not letting my mind race to all sorts of disastrous situations. Possibly it could also be about accepting what I have instead of dwelling on what I don’t. And it’s also about being in the moment instead of spending so much time on my phone, playing games and reading. I am not a big Facebook user but I do usually spend a fair amount of time scrolling through the stories on Chump Nation, as well as checking out posts from friends and family. 

Facebook is really my only social media vice. I don’t have a TikTok account. I have a Twitter account but I’ve never tweeted and I don’t ever check out my feed. The amount of time I spend on Instagram can be measured in minutes for the entire year. And as I said, even with Facebook I rarely post anymore. 

The mobster and I bought poster board and Sharpies so we can do a vision board. We’re hoping to spell out our financial and physical goals, as well as changes we’d like to make. I’ll let you know how that goes.

One resolution I will make and will do my best to keep is to post more often. I’m hoping to be able to get a new laptop in the next several months but until then I will simply have to suck it up and do all that copying, pasting, and transferring.

Here’s to a brilliant 2022!

Back row: Rock Star’s boyfriend (holding Milo), Rock Star, my mom (holding Holly), and Picasso (holding Noël). Front row: Me and the mobster