A (Sort Of) Triumphant Return(ish)

Well, long time no see Life and Times of Ica.

I remember when I was first blogging, I'd find other blogs that hadn't been updated in years, and the last entry would be just a normal one, and I'd wonder what happened that made the writer just stop.  And now . . . here I am 2+ years since I posted and the answer is that LIFE happens.  Honestly, it hasn't been anything crazy exciting, just life.  Some bad, some good, some amazing, some awful.  Way way way too much to put into just one blog post.  Probably way way way too much to blog about, period, but I think I'm going to try.  I actually do miss this little space, and I started it back when what I was documenting was 90% misery.  There are definitely some good times on here too, but I think there should be more of them now that I'm, y'know, happy. 

So briefly . . .

The good/amazing:
--we are still in WA and we still love it
--I'm still working for MHC and loving working from home; Jerbs works in medical billing too now and she loves her job
--we still have Max and Hollie and Irene and Ilya, and they're all healthy and happy
--we have a new cat named Nikolai, and 2 rats named Juniper and Delilah
--I joined a gym that I really really love
--I'm subbing in multiple handbell choirs
--I actually have a love life!  (or . . . really a sex life, I guess, and I love it)
--I think I've finally gotten to the very root of my mental health issues and I'm finally on a med regimen that is WORKING
--over the past couple of years Jerbs and I have seen Game Grumps Live, NSP live, the Mountain Goats, Alton Brown, Neil Gaiman, TSO, Maroon 5 . . . and we're seeing the Mountain Goats and Morrissey in September
--the Goldwomen bought a HOUSE  earlier this year! (I have yet to visit them and see it, but I'm going to someday!)
--the Flicks had another baby and she's AMAZING, and their first baby is now a toddler who is also AMAZING . . . I legit love those kids and their parents; they also bought a new house since I last blogged and it's super cute
--Jerbs' cousin had a baby and he's 2 now, and he's adorable, and hilariously fearless
--Austy is TEN and started 5th grade the other day, and I'm blown away both by the little person he's become and by how it seems like just yesterday that he was a tiny baby; he's smart and funny and an amazing baseball player and I just love him
-Austy is also a BIG BROTHER now!  my sister had a baby girl in January, her name is Logan, her birthday is close to mine and Jillian's, and she's literally the cutest baby I've ever seen
--related--my sister is married!  she met this awesome guy in 2017, they fell in love, got engaged at a Dbacks game, had a baby, and had a mini wedding in April . . . their real big wedding is next April (on their 1st anniversary) and I'm so excited!  I'm so genuinely, over the moon happy for my sister
--my new brother in law has 5 kids from a previous marriage, so I have 4 step nephews and a step niece . . . I've mt two of the nephews and they're awesome, and my step niece is just adorable and I love her

The bad/awful:
--I went through a pretty awful bout mental health wise for awhile
--Jerbs' mom passed away last year
--around the same time, a friend/sorority sister from college passed away while giving childbirth
--literally everything about the Trump administration . . . thank God next year is an election year, hopefully it'll be the end of this utter bullshit nightmare

I think that's about it.  Life is pretty good at the moment, minus constantly missing Jane.  Hopefully sometime soon I can write more in detail.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this lovely picture of our neck of the woods--Capitol Lake and the capitol building in Oly.

Why Mondays And I Will Never Be Friends

So today.

I woke up feeling good even though I didn't sleep well or enough last night.  I got out of bed early enough to take my time in the shower and do my hair.  I felt super cute and confident in my new shirt and shoes.  I left the house on time.

Needless to say I was pretty dang proud of myself when I got in my car.  I may even have thought to myself, "I am finally getting the hang of this morning thing!"  The fact that I thought that was probably a good indication that something was going to go wrong.

And sure enough, I was about half a block from home when I felt the car doing something weird.  It felt like a flat tire but I hadn't felt any kind of pop, so my initial thought was that I was imagining things and to just get to work.  But I decided to be safe and pulled into the little plaza at the end of my street and sure enough, my rear passenger side tire was flat.  Not just a little flat, but on the ground flat.  And my spare was also flat (which I kinda knew but wasn't too worried about . . . good job, Ica).  And of course there isn't a single open WiFi network anywhere in the plaza so I had to call Jerbs, who graciously texted me some phone numbers for towing companies.

So I waited for a tow truck to come and take me to Discount Tire (which cost me $65, yay).  Then the guy at Discount Tire who looked at my car was all, "Haha, hope you weren't on your way to work!"  Thanks, dude.  I waited and waited and waited at Discount Tire and fortunately, they were able to repair my tire.  I really thought I'd have to buy a new one and I wasn't looking forward to spending that much money.  There was a little staple in my tire, so I'm assuming it was just a slow leak that I didn't notice and it just happened to go out today.

I didn't leave Discount Tire until just after 10:30 and--because I just can't win--they were painting stripes on the exit I take from the highway so that added a good 5 minutes to my time.  By the time I got to work it was almost 11.  Because being 2.5 hours late to work is just the best way to start a week, right?

As aggravating as it was, I found myself feeling very grateful that I ended up not going to Kingman this weekend, because then I wouldn't have had much extra money and paying for the tow would have been horrible.  Plus, I don't know when I ran over that staple, so what if my tire had blown on the way to Kingman?  Just goes to show that there's a reason for everything.

I'm just glad my tire's fixed, glad my boss and co-workers are understanding about random BS like this, glad that I had the money to take care of it, glad that I can calmly handle these kinds of situations instead of completely flipping out, glad that nothing worse happened, and glad that today's over.

Happy Monday!

Thoughts & Stuff

I've been feeling pretty happy lately.  For the past two weeks, really, ever since I got back from Kingman; I think something about my visit home had an energizing effect on me.  I've been writing--like actually writing, not just sort of scribbling notes here and there, but actually focusing on one specific writing project and working on it.  I'm making progress on it and it makes me happy.  And I'm really proud of my diet accomplishments this past week; I know I wasn't perfect but I definitely took some really good steps in the right direction and I feel confident about how this next week will go in that respect.

It's been nice.  I've just felt very sure of myself and very engaged in my life.

And then tonight just . . . I don't know.

It started with an argument with Jerbs and then kind of snow balled from there, because that one little argument over nothing made me think of things I generally try to just ignore.

Let me say that I am happy with my life.  I know I don't have a lot to complain about.  But there are times when I'm not content.  Because at the end of the day, as happy as I am, I know that this isn't how I want to spend the rest of my life.

I am so lonely.  This is probably the worst thing.  I can honestly say that Jerbs is my only friend here in Flagstaff.  There is literally no one I can call up and go to dinner with or go hang out with.  She is the only person I interact with socially and it makes me miserable.  Yes I have my co-workers but they're all married and have kids and they don't really have time to hang out with single co-workers.  I love Jerbs but not enough to want her to be my only friend.

And I'm sick of being single.  So fucking sick of it.  I miss Ex-Fiance and I'm painfully aware of how not over him I am.  And I hate myself for not being over it.  I hate missing him and knowing exactly what went wrong with us and exactly how I could have fixed and that for whatever reason I chose not to fix it.  Sometimes I wish I could be blissfully ignorant of the role I played in the end of our relationship, that I really had no idea what I did wrong and blamed him for the whole thing.  The regret is still immense.

I just . . . want a change.  I want to be out of AZ by the time I'm 30; that's my goal.  And sometimes I completely panic that my life, as it is right now, is what my life will always be.  And if I turn 35 and I'm still sharing a bedroom with my ex girlfriend in the town where I went to college, I am going to feel like I took a very, very wrong turn somewhere.

Sad News From Back Home

In the past week, 2 people I went to high school with have died.

One, who graduated with me and who I didn't know very well personally, was in a car accident.  She had 3 kids and died the week before our ten year reunion.

The other, who graduated a year behind me, I was fairly close to my last year of high school when I TA'd for the junior A.P. English class he was in, the same class I'd taken the year before.  We didn't keep in touch much after graduation but I know he was a bright, wonderful person.  He took his own life Saturday night.

I hate hearing about people my age dying.  I hate it.  Even if it's someone I didn't really know or someone I lost touch with a long time ago, I hate it.

Suicides especially get to me.  I think because of my own past with suicidal ideation, because of how much I wanted to do it . . . it just shakes me.  Both in that I hate thinking of people I know going through that sort of mental anguish and giving in to those dark thoughts and in that it's a very chilling reminder that it very easily could have been me.

All I want right now is someone to hold me.  Isn't that stupid?  But true anyway.

Out of Sorts

I've felt out of sorts the past few days.  I'm not really sure why and I'm not really sure how to describe it but it kind of sucks.

I feel anxious.  Antsy.  At times almost like I want to crawl out of my skin.  Shades of how I felt when I was still really sick.  Kind of uneasy, like I'm not fully engaged.  Impatient, like time somehow isn't moving fast enough.  I hate it.

I feel twitchy and the pressure in my head has gotten worse.  It makes me miserable.  MISERABLE.

I feel useless and worthless (this comes and goes).  Like a loser.  Like I just kind of suck at everything.  Like I've not got a whole lot going for me (which is stupid because I know I do).  Like I'm treading water and not getting ahead despite having a good job and whatever.

I feel fat.  And ugly.  Like I'm getting bigger instead of smaller.  And I know I need to do better on my diet (seriously, the Dr. Pepper needs to go) but I get so frustrated, because with all this going on I feel like even if I completely cut out soda and kept busting my ass at the gym I'd get nowhere.  It's very very aggravating.

And the thing is that for me frustration can still escalate pretty quickly into rage.  On Monday at the gym, a lot of things went wrong (had my headphones with me but not my iPod, put my locker code in wrong and got locked out of it before my workout and my water was in there; spent 10 minutes trying to figure out what I did wrong since the only staff members on duty were male and couldn't come in the women's locker room unless it was empty, which it wasn't) and I felt a surge of that old rage run through me.  I hated it.  I haven't felt that in a long time (the last time I remember being rageful was September) and it scared me.  I don't like that feeling.

I really don't know what the hell all this is from because before . . . like Monday, maybe Sunday, I was totally fine.  Then all of a sudden . . .

It's frustrating.  And on top of this my mom's been in the ER twice this week (today and yesterday) and she's fine (getting better with antibiotics and steroids) but I'm still worried about her.  And I'm pissed that I'm not in Kingman to be there for her and you can imagine the whole mental can of worms that opened.

Maybe my period's going to start early this month, because this almost feels like the start of a cycle.  So we'll see.  I also think it may be related to the change in the weather recently, because I'm very sensitive to weather changes, particularly from winter to spring/summer.  And we got like 8 or 10 inches of snow this past weekend, and since Monday the temps have been in the 60's.

Whatever the reason I hope this passes soon, because feeling like this again--even though it's not nearly at the same level it used to be--is even worse now that I know what it feels like to be happy.

Unemployed

I'm officially unemployed.

I have been for a few days now, but I've hesitated to admit it.

I quit Hastings.  I quit without notice, and I'm not proud of that, but I'm also not ashamed of it.  After the way I was treated in the time I worked at this store, I don't really think they deserved much from me.

First of all, I've averaged 10 hours a week since I got here, which is nothing, especially at $8/hour.  I've heard employees talking shit about other employees more times than I can count.  I've heard our store manager bad mouth other employees.  It's beyond unprofessional.  Another associate's husband has literally stood at my register and just stared at me, which is incredibly creepy.  I had a manager throw his keys at me because he was pissed at me for something I honestly didn't do.  That same manager has a long history of anger issues and apparently once before punched a hole through the office wall.  My boss witnessed the key throwing, and ultimately, I was told to watch myself around this other employee.  Sorry, but that is complete bull freaking shit.  That guy should have been fired, and quite frankly, he's lucky I didn't call the cops on his ass.  And no one there liked me.  Maybe a few people, but the thing is, this store has no well trained employees.  They're all shit.  Not one of them would last a week at a decent store.  So when I do things right, they get pissed.  It's ridiculous.  And I swear up and down that that's true, I'm not just trying to make myself look better.  The fact is that I was trained correctly, I do things correctly, and this store couldn't stand it.  (Always been the case with this store, BTW).

The last straw came last week.  I mentioned on here that I was scheduled to work last Sunday, the 4th.  I am not available on Sundays.  I haven't been since I started back at the Kingman Hastings last September.  Initially I did it that way because I wanted Corey and I to have one day completely off together.  Since he worked Monday thru Friday, and I knew I'd be working Saturdays, Sundays was basically the only option.  When I moved, I left it the same, so that I knew I'd have a day for my own stuff.

Well, suddenly I had a 7 AM to 4 PM shift on a Sunday.  I left my boss a note saying I wasn't available on Sundays.  When he finally got back to me about it at work, he basically told me that I'd been specially requested for a project, and that he had just really hoped/assumed I could work it.  There are SO MANY THINGS wrong with that!  Let me say that if I'd been asked in advance, say the week before, if I could work a Sunday for a big project, even though it's outside of availability, I probably would have been willing to help out.  But that courtesy wasn't given to me.  Instead, the assumption was made that what I said my availability was is a lie.  To me, that is a huge amount of disrespect.  If you can't at least respect my availability, then what CAN you respect?  That's like the most basic level of respect, in my opinion.  And it was made very clear to me by my boss that he was incredibly disappointed in me, and he hinted that it might be grounds for a write up and termination.  I was kind of in shock about that, but I stood my ground: respect me or I don't do shit for you.

On the same day that this conversation happened, I got bitched out by the LS manager for how much stocking I'd gotten done.  I'm normally a pretty quick stocker.  But on this particular day, the guy working in video was brand spanking new, on maybe his 5th shift altogether.  So every fifteen minutes he either asked me help, or I overheard him giving a customer incorrect information.  I probably saved at least $200 in sales by correcting him.  So here's another issue: people get hired and thrown into departments without any training.  Then the experienced people working on the floor have to train them as we go, and yes, it takes away from the time we have to do our own jobs.  And the LS manager was like, well, the other day in my shift, I stocked this much and this much and I was like . . . wow, really?  I don't give a crap how much you can stock in a shift, in my opinion, training where it's needed supersedes stocking.  Period.

Then I went to Kingman for Austin's birthday.  I was scheduled to work Saturday and Monday; I called in both days.  It was made clear to me that this was not OK, and again, it was insinuated that I could potentially be let go.  At this point, I'd really already decided I was done so I didn't care.  Seeing my family was well worth it, in my opinion.

Ultimately, I decided to quit to save face.  I think that at future interviews it'll look better to say, I quit because I was treated so poorly, than to have to explain why I was fired.

Am I terrified?  Oh God, yes.  I've been having anxiety attacks about this for days.  I'm scared to just not have a job, and I keep flashing back to last time, when I was unemployed for almost 2 years.  I can't do that again.  I am also ashamed of how irresponsible I feel comfortable being--but I tell myself that if this was a job where I was treated like a human being and that I enjoyed or at least didn't mind, I'd feel totally differently.  It's also weird because quitting without notice means I can't be re-hired, so if I was to move back to Kingman, Hastings isn't a work option there.  That part makes me sad, because in a way, it's like I'm severing a tie to that life, and . . . I don't know, moving on.  Making it harder to go back to.  I hate that feeling.

But as far as finding a new job goes, I actually think I'll be OK.  Since I've been back in Flagstaff, I've limited my job search to office jobs.  But right now a lot of places are hiring seasonally, so I think that if I expand my search to include other retail places and grocery stores, I'll probably be able to find something pretty quickly.  At least that's what I'm hoping.

But Jerbs supports me completely, and I trust her judgement in pretty much everything.

So . . . yeah.  Scary, but even with the anxiety attacks I'm relieved to be rid of Hastings.

Good/Bad

Good
--It's payday.  I like payday.  And since that evil place where they keep my paycheck* actually gave me some decent hours this pay period, I might actually have some money!
--The fact that I'm going to Kingman this weekend for my nephew's 4th birthday.

Bad
--This weird depression I've sunk into/reverted to.  I can't seem to shake it.
--Insomnia/hypersomnia cycle.
--My bed situation.  I need a new bed . . . preferably one that's not made mostly of air.
--The holiday season officially having started (I think of Halloween as the start of it).  And the fact that it's now November.
--That I've been in Flag for 4 months.
--Corey just flat out not speaking to me.  Even when I try to talk to him about normal stuff.
--Just . . . life right now.  I feel so out of it.  I had all these things in my head that I was excited to do (like a harvest/Thanksgiving blog background, Thankful Thursday posts, etc) and now they all just make me anxious and weird feeling.

Hoping that things improve this month.  I really need to shake this funk and whatever.

*Can't take credit for that line.  It's from Charmed--totally a guilty pleasure show of mine.