Lasting Effects

I went to the doctor this week, and we are trying a different type of medication, and I'm doing an ultrasound for other reasons at the end of the month.

He also told me that over the past year my glucose levels were bouncing up and down.  I knew that I had been going overboard with the sweets, but when I thought back to why, it came down to a friend who didn't want to eat chocolate alone.

I was never really big on sweets, like my mom.  However, because of this "friend" I sort of got a taste for it that I never shook.  When I really sat down and thought about it, I needed something sweet at least once a day, if not two.  It was a bad friendship, but until this week I had no idea of the lasting effects that it had caused; I was actually had developed a bad habit that was bad for my health.

It also made me think of other relationships that have had bad lasting effects.  My cousin told me when I was very little that Nana (her dad's mother) didn't really love me, and whenever we were together she was just being nice to me.  When you are a kid, you pretty much take things at face value, and what she said made sense at the time.  Nana made them clothes and did things for them that she didn't do for me, but they did all live in the same city.

At the cousin's wedding a few years ago, I sat down and had a conversation with Nana, and she made a comment that she missed me and wished I'd call once in awhile.  I brushed it off, thinking that she was again, just being nice.  She died around the same time as my dad, and when I emailed her daughter to give my condolences, and she told me that Nana asked that she bring my thank you notes to the hospital before she passed. 

When I found out about that I cried for so long, because not only was she gone, but there was no chance of getting to know her.  Years that she wasn't just being polite, but she actually did like me, and I could have had another grandma.  She wouldn't have even kept my thank you notes if she didn't care.  An entire relationship lost because of one comment that my cousin made.

Now I have to worry about being diabetic because of another lasting effect of something someone else manipulated me into doing.  I'm not saying they are all 100% to blame, but I'm still disappointed that other people can mess with my life that much.

The Miracle of Life

There was a death in the family this month.  Like all deaths, it was expected yet unexpected.  It was a parent of my husband's this time, which is altogether a different thing from 2009 when I dealt with my side of the families deaths.

This week I watched the Hanukkah lights slowly burn down and finally out, like life.  I have to be strong for my husband, but in that moment, with the lights one by one going out, I let myself think about how life is like a candle, starting out burning bright, and slowly going out.

I started the year about to turn 30, and without a job.  I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, and started thinking that maybe those weekly pill boxes might not be such a bad idea after all.  I did have a job lined up, and I managed to keep it before the end of the year, which has been nice.  I hope to get my thyroid medication working next year, enough so I can lose weight and think about having a baby.  Maybe.

I want to have the energy to enjoy life, before death comes knocking at my door.

New Car, New Life

I got a new car, and a few weeks after I got a new shift at work.  A shift that required me to wake up about the time that I was usually going to sleep.

It's been pretty bad, but the worst of it isn't that I have to wake up early, but the fact that in order to get 8 hours of sleep, I have to be asleep by 7pm.  People always say that it's awesome to get off of work early, but honestly when you have to be in bed by the time senior citizens are eating dinner, it pretty much kills life.

Thankfully, we just had another shift bid and I'm back to being a night owl again, which is what I love.  I also have a person I love back on my team at work, and 1 day off with my husband again instead of zero, which is nice.  It will be great to be back on the same sleep schedule, where we share a bed for more than 2 hours at a time.

When I posted a picture of my car on FB, my 6th grade best friend said "this car is totally you" which meant so much to me.  I feel like I'm getting my life back a little.

If only my thyroid meds were working better.  It's been 6 months, and all I've ended up losing is 4 pounds.  I'm eating under how many calories I'm burning a day, and 4 pounds is all I've lost.  And I'm still very tired all the time.  I guess that means it's time for another doctor's appointment.

The Mom Car

So, I hate my car.  I've hated my car since I've gotten it in 2006.  I was forced into buying it, and sometimes I wish I had thrown money into my first car and just kept it.  My car now feels like a mom car, and I hate feeling fat and old in it.

My car is now approaching 100,000 miles, the magic number where you can't get anything for it.  I feel like my sentence should be up with this car, and I want it out.  I want a car that I connect with.  Maybe I watch too many Herbie movies, but my first car and I had a relationship.  I talked, it listened, we worked as a team together.  I had a connection with it, and we were good together.  I want that again.  I want to trade in my mother-in-law of a Camry for something younger, hipper, and more me.

I test drove a couple different cars the other day, and I found myself thinking more into the future with my car choice.  The car I choose will be the one I cart my future kids around in.  I don't want to be the mom that doesn't think about her kid's comfort and carts them around in a tiny car.  On the other hand, I'm not going to go out and buy a mini-van and drive it around for 2 years before I have kids.

I can't believe that I'm thinking about cars and babies at the same time.  This is silly.  I'm picking out a mom car.

Uneasy

I went to get my blood test and see where my thyroid was.  Everyone I've talked to said that it would take at least a year before anything would happen for me, and to just be patient.  Everyone told me this so much, in fact, that I called and left a message with the doctor to just call me and let me know when they'd called my new prescription into the pharmacy and I'd go pick it up.

I got a message back from one of the nurses to call her.  I didn't understand why she just didn't call in the prescription and leave me a message.  After an entire day of playing phone tag, she finally called me when I was able to answer the phone.

"So, your level is at a 2.(something).  You're fine.  You can keep taking what you are taking."  I was shocked.  I had no idea how to respond, because so far I'd felt no improvement.  Sure, my limbs weren't losing circulation the way they used to, and it felt like the depression was gone, but I associated that mostly with being able to work again, and having such amazing co-workers.  But, apparently, something that took everyone else years to accomplish, I'd gotten in 6 weeks.

"I don't feel any different.  I still have no energy, and I haven't lost any weight." I told her.  She responded with give it a couple of weeks, and make an appointment if nothing had changed.  Maybe it was something else, she said.  I don't want anything else wrong with me.  I just want people to stop asking me when I'm due.

Then the last week of training at work, something happened that just happened to take place beside me, and I almost lost my job.  I can't get into it, it's far too convoluted, but it made me think I might not want to be at this company.  They were asking things of me that compromised my integrity.  They also basically made me dance like a monkey for them in order to keep my job.  Then they told me that I had to tell my new supervisor the whole story, as part of my punishment.  I'm still waiting for the Scarlett "A" that I'll need to sew onto all my clothes.

My new crew doesn't seem like this, which makes me pray it was an isolated incident with those particular supervisors.  I really need the money, and the emotional support.

The Most Amazing Thing

I had 4 weeks worth of beginners training at my new job.  I start 3 more weeks of deep training next week.  I'm still in awe, because when I lost my last job they told me they couldn't take 8 hours out of their busy schedule to train me on something that people have degrees in.  My new job is entry level and I get 7 weeks of training.  Huge difference.

The last three days of training we got into groups and did a scavenger hunt.  We went all around the office, doing all the tasks and taking pictures to post to Twitter to show the trainers what we were doing, and learning about the culture of the company.  It was fun, it was great teambuilding, and we had a blast.

On Friday we had to do a presentation about what we did, and I edited together a video and set it to the current #1 pop song.  It's the perfect montage song, and we ended up winning the challenge.  We were given a $100.00 giftcard to go out with the team to a nice dinner.

All at once, without any talk, my team just gave me the gift card.  They told me to take my husband to a nice meal, and we'd all go out to eat some other time and to have fun.  Because I edited a video that helped us to win.

These are the amazing people I'm working with now.  Ones that recognize that I worked hard and gave me the credit.  I'm not sure that's ever happened to me.

A Bi-Polar Week

I started my new job last week.  It is everything and more that was promised, and I love it there.  While I'm in training, and for hours afterward, I was really happy, all week.  We all went out for happy hour on Friday, and I had an awesome time.

But today I've had time to think, time to regress back a little and think about other things in my life.  The week before I was back home visiting and helping out at a show.  I love being home because it's so much better than my current town, which is vapid and everyone is a fake.

But something happened back home.  I saw a friend in a different light, and it changed our friendship.  I no longer want to call her up and tell her how my week went, because I have the sneaking suspicion that she really doesn't care. I began noticing that whenever she called, it was about a problem she was having, and there seemed to be no time for my worries.  Her troubles with her boyfriend far outshown my new issues with my thyroid problem.  She even seemed to ignore the fact that I'd told her before I came that not only would I be tired all the time, but I'd be a little cranky too.  She insisted on bringing a friend with us everywhere who I don't like, and I really didn't like the way she was treating her new boyfriend.

While I was there she seemed to grow impatient with me if I didn't answer her texts right away, even though she knew I was out trying to help my mom.  Yet she showed up late to places and it seemed to be okay.  It seemed like she had become the kind of person that I avoided.  I hated that I felt like I was losing a friend.  Even on the last day I was there, after telling her to please call me before she flaked out on me, she called a solid few hours after she was supposed to show up to say she wasn't going to show up.  I felt hurt and betrayed, and then after some mis-communication I got another passive aggressive note from her, in a public forum.  It was the final nail in the coffin for me.

I've even given her the address for this blog, and told her how much writing means to me, but she's never logged on.  Maybe someday she will, and she'll see this, and know it was about her.  But somehow I think not.

So I left home disheartened, but waking up at 5AM the next morning for the job.  The job is so great though.  I was so happy all week, riding along on a cloud.  Everyone I met I loved, and I feel like I'm finally making friends in this town.  But today I'm thinking about it, and I'm sad about a friend that I feel like I've lost.  In her mind, nothing has gone wrong at all.  That makes me more sad.