Adjusting

 08/21/21 -- Now that my mom has been officially been in her home state of Ohio; it has been a lot easier to adjust.  I think that the whole idea of her moving was the true cause of all the stress and the headache that I had been dealing with.  In the last week my headache has significantly decreased, now it it's still hanging around but it hasn't been getting all that bad, not intense enough to have to take something to reduce the pain.  

  The great thing is that we can still message each other everyday if we need and whenever we want.  We can even FaceTime too.  I also do still have the phone number of a family friend that I can call to "I need a hug".  This woman and her family was like a second family to us kids growing up.  Her children and us weren't that far apart in age and we had fun at their farmette when they had chickens, rabbits, and goats.

  My mom did inspire me to continue going thru the rest of my stuff and get rid of the stuff that I don't need.  I have already unloaded to large containers of clothes to a charity within the city I live.  I have 3 more bags and a box plus a trash bag of clothes but I know that I have other stuff that has to be gone thru and gotten rid of.  I am going to continue to get rid of stuff as I want it all gone (i don't have much left to go thru either)  

  Mom did inform me that it would be ok for me to move in with her and bring my cats with me.  She just has to let them know when.  So, I am currently planning on moving to be with my mom, in Ohio, next year.  I have to wait for when my 21 yr old cat passes away as I don't believe that he would survive a long trip in a car or truck for 9 hours.  There are a couple of things that could alter those plans, I am open to anything to change my plans.  One thing would be my son and I reconciling, another would be getting married, and the last would be something to open up in the city where the church, I attend, moving closer.

It's Done

 8/12/21 --So, yesterday, my mom officially moved out of the home that my sisters and I grew up in.  She, purchased a condo in the town she grew up in.  Her and dad had talked about moving back to their home in the state of Ohio but it never happened while my dad was alive.  My mom was successful, now she is in the process of unpacking: which she said is going quite slowly.

  Let me tell you, it was so hard to let her go, but this is what she wanted and what she believes God wanted her to do. This is the hard part for me, you see, as it stands right now I am not close to my son and his family nor am I close to my only sister, her choice.  So, essentially I am alone family wise,  My church family is 40 minutes away, my son and his family is 3 hours north of me and my sister is just too busy to have a relationship with me, along with I don't think she wants a relationship with me.

  I do have the option to move in with my mom, but I can't do anything for a year, yet.  I have to wait til I can start putting more of my paycheck into my savings account and for my 21 yr old cat to do what he is going to do.  I am pretty confident that he wouldn't survive the trip, it's nine hour drive.  To go along with the fact that he is a horrible traveler, even to the vet.  He gets all stressed out, to the point of vomiting, constant meowing.  Given the fact that he has renal failure, it is just a matter of time before he passes away.  I am doing my best to give that cat, the best life I can.  I have already got him so spoiled, it's pitiful, he pretty much tells me what he wants and when, lol. 

News

7/21/21 --More news but this news I am not adjusting to, all that well.  I think that I mentioned on here that my dad passed away three years ago, since then my mom has been working on her health and emptying her house of all of dad's stuff, and the hoarded stuff that he accumulated.  A long time family friend has been helping her to unload all the stuff from our old bedrooms, from the basement and attic.  Her cleaning crew has also been a great help to her.  Of course, every time I have gone down, I have helped her.  

  Just in the last month or so, she has purchased a condo, in her home state.  That means that she will no longer be within a short driving range for me to go and visit, where I can drive spend a day, then drive home.  I gotta admit that I have very mixed feelings about this due to not being close to my sister or my own son, relationship wise, so I feel like I will be alone.  Her condo is big enough that I could live with her for a while, til I get a place of my own.  Yet, I can do any kind of moving, especially two states away, due to my male cat, who happens to be 21 yrs old.  Yes, he is 21 yrs old and has renal failure.  He has lost significant weight and he is a lousy at traveling in the car.  Just a simple trip to the vet, 10 min away, he gets stressed enough to vomit.  Therefore, that tells that me that he wouldn't travel two states away, very well if at all.  I believe that that type of trip would possibly kill him, so I have to wait til after he is gone. Although I am not looking forward to that, by any stretch of the imagination.

 

 

This is my Bear, he is 21 yrs old.  In that photo he is staring at me because he wants fed, like hadn't fed him before I sat down to work.

He is one that doesn't travel well, at all.  I have had him since he was a kitten, I already had to put his brother down as he had cancer, or something close to that.  This boy has been with me thru some very difficult times, so losing him is going to be very difficult on me.  If it wasn't for him and his sister Penni, I don't know if I would have made thru that very dark time of depression, as easily, altho it wasn't that easy.

The other thing that is keeping me from making a major move is, that I don't have enough money saved to move.  I have been working now for 9 months and saving money that long, but it's not enough saved to move.  Now, with the work hours cut back to around 24hrs or so, and my second raise taking effect this week, I am making enough to survive.  When fall arrives and the hours increase back to normal, I will increase the saving so speed up the amount going into savings.  That way by next year, at this time, I will have the financial ability to move anywhere.

The options are to where my mom will be, closer to where I go to church or possibly closer to my son.

Slowing Down

5/27/21 --Here we go, now is the time of year where we have to either take a leave of absence or reduce our hours  and the call volume drops thru the summer.  I thought we had to do both so I reduced my hours and took 2 weeks off, but then received an email asking which on i wanted. Told her to reduce hours.  I don't think that I can handle 2 weeks off in a row.  The way I reduced my hours still leaves me 24 hours a weeks, for sure.  I will update my availability in the fall tho.   

    I have been talking this man in who is now working in Alaska.  I thought he had stopped due to my not helping hime with money.  After about a month he finally called me and had told me that he had lost the internet for a while. 

7/21/21

  Well, this man that I was talking to, has pretty much stopped talking to me.  Basically, he claimed to have went to Alaska, for an engineering job, with an oil rig, with Exxon Mobil.  Now, he went up there, allegedly, in March ish. We talked a couple times while he was supposedly, up there, but when I wasn't able to help him with money to get his equipment up to him from Canada, he slowly stopped calling me.  So, he went from claiming to be, not like those past men that have contacted me but he has proven that he is.  I haven't heard from him in months, something of which I am not surprised about.

  There is another man that I first met when I was on e-harmony.com.  After several years of occasionally chatting with him on google chat and him stopping by for a couple of hours, I decided that I have had enough.  I just want something more that what he has been giving me, and what he is able to.  He is so married to his work.  He pretty much works 7 days a week. He travel all over the same state that I work in, but I just can't get my head around the fact that he works so freaking much.  Any way, I am so ready for something better than he can offer.  So, consequently, I finally broke down, messaged him to let him know that he no longer had to worry about me.  That I want more than he can give me, right now.  I let him know that he no longer has to feel pressured to try and get to where he is close enough to be able to stop by to spend time with me.  Surprisingly enough, he didn't even offer a response, an "I am sorry" or anything. 

      

   

Training twice

2/16/21 -- Well, since I started working in that latter part of Oct., I have been trained twice.  The first training was training to handle payments from the other side of the company.  Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was asked if I was interested in a new position.  The new position is a Credit Specialist, which means that I will be fielding the calls that would be transferred by Payment Specialist and Customer Service agents.  I have more access to see and do more plus I was trained to handle loss prevention too.  I do actually like what I am doing, it is great that I don't have to leave my home to go to work.  With all this snow and the deep freeze that we have been in, in my neck of the country.

   I am still getting out of my place, thought.  I know my tendency toward depression, so I have to make the effort to get out and exercise and socialize.  I have kept my membership with my local Y, along with going to bible study at the church I attend, and the zoom study that we do 3 days a week.

  I was asked to watch 3 children, while the dad when to California, to drive home with his wife, the children's mom.  So, I stayed at their place for 4 days and 3 nights, as they came home on Friday afternoon.  That was a different experience for me because the oldest is 13 yrs old, the next in line is like 9 or 10 then the youngest is 4 yrs.  The difference was in the fact that the older tow had their chores, so like I didn't have to do any dishes or any real cleaning, which was the weirdest thing.  However, I just couldn't stand not doing anything, so I wiped the counter and the stove top down really good.  Otherwise I did some reading and bible study in the work book that.

   Of course, there was a snow storm while I was there and we started getting into the deep freeze.  Staying at their house was a nice treat, like a vacation.  They had a king size bed, a nice big bath tub, of which I did take advantage of, since I haven't had a bath in a long time.  I always take showers since the bathtub really isn't suited for baths  Anyway, the last night I was there, I ended up sleeping in on the last day.  I actually slept in til like 8:30 or something.  Thankfully, their oldest boy had made breakfast and when they sent their littlest sister down to make sure that I was awake before making my food and coffee and putting it on the table.  I hadn't slept that late in a very long time, part of it is due to the fact that I don't have cats that make sure I am awake to feed them.

  I was home by 6ish on Friday.  I sure missed my cats, tho.  I missed my cat that sleeps with me every night.  All of my cats were very glad to see me and have me home.

 

Covid-19

11/15/20 -- Well now, where I live, we are now in the season of switching vehicles from one side of the street to the other on the even and odd days, this continues til midnight of March 31, next year. It has to do with the snow fall and the plows. When the vehicles are all on one side of the street, the other side can be completely cleared, then we are supposed to move them to the cleared side so the plows can then clear the side where the cars were moved from.  If we don't move our cars every day before midnight, we get a ticket for $20, for parking on the wrong side of the street.  As much as, I despise going out in the bitter wintery weather, its good to start the car every day to keep things moving and such, also it is good for me to get outside for the fresh air and a bit of vigorous exercise of clearing the car off and moving it.  Not necessarily my idea of total fun, but it kinda is annoyingly fun.

   Ok, I bet some of you are wondering where I stand or how I feel about this covid-19 illness that is making the rounds.  Well, this is actually the first "pandemic" in my lifetime.  There have been many others in our country's history, measles, smallpox, black plague, and yellow fever. I am sure there are others, I have forgotten, anyway.... There is quite a different in this one and the era we live in.  We, live in a time where travel is quite easy from state to state, city to city, town to town, and even country to country. Back in our history with those other communicable diseases, it took longer to get a neighbors house, let alone a town or city, so the disease was typically contained and often decimated an entire community.  Nowadays, because we have pretty easy access to other towns, cities, states, and countries, diseases like this will travel further and faster.  This is a virus that will morph and change just like the "so called regular flu".  That is why the "flu vaccine" has to be given every year: even then when the vaccines are made, they are guessing on the strains that will pop up each and every season.

  I feel like people haven't ever really taken precautions to slow down the spread of the normal flu, so why would they so anything they are told to slow down this virulent version?  Every winter, there are people that go to work, sick and don't use hand sanitizer on their hands after they have blown their noses, children aren't taught/made to sneeze into their elbows and aren't taught to blow their noses early enough, so they don't run around with noses running and wiping all over the place. That is simply gross.

  Now, I am not in total agreement with this wearing a mask/face covering because I don't 100% believe that they work.  Even the CDC has said that they are as effective as we have been told by many other sources.  I haven't worn a mask/face covering unless I am going to a smaller store where it's difficult to have the 6ft. spacing or if I know that I have to be in a place for a long period of time.  If I am going in and out quickly then I typically haven't been wearing them.  I don't like the masks because I feel like I am not breathing very well.  However, I will wear a bandanna or a neckgator when I get one of those.  

  I will tell you that if I am sick, I will not go out without a face covering of some sort.  I have no one, close to me, that can run my errands for me, so I usually have to do them myself.  However, I have been taking advantage of delivery services more now.  Like I can order and have my pet food and such delivered to me, I can order groceries online then pick them up, they are delivered to my car, which I am doing today, because of the pain and swelling in my toes and upper part of my left foot. 

  I DO NOT IGNORE the severity of the illness, however, I absolutely refuse to live in fear.  I have a God that is so much bigger than this illness, He is still in control of all that is going on.  I believe that He is allowing this illness for a reason, most likely to get EVERYONE'S  attention who hasn't committed their lives completely to HIM.

  Please please, stay safe and healthy.  Please keep in mind that your decisions also effect others around you, not just you.  We do not live in bubbles, our decisions do effect others, in a ripple effect.

Change Starts with each of us individually