Tomorrow

Tomorrow, I am letting some kids make up work during the morning break – while I have breakfast at school – and then meeting with my other class that I didn’t see in the schedule today. I likely will have lunch after that, possibly work out, then go home and not come back for a week and a half.

And that will be very good for me.

I still have to sort out and post all of their assignments for while I’m not there, but I will have an hour to do that before I have class and after the make-ups. So, that should be enough time to get it all handled. I also have the time in class, when they’ll be taking their test. I’d forgotten that that is also usable time for me. Hmm. Thanks for that reminder(!).

Anyway, I have work to do in the morning for school, and then I will be able to come home and do the work I need to do here, both for my home and for myself, all for our healing and stepping forward into the life we want to be leading going forward.

I am still stressed, but I am also somewhat excited.

Thank you, God, for this opportunity for healing and accomplishments. Help me to do them both effectively this next week and a half, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024

Friday

The appointment went well. I had to have blood drawn, but she didn’t tell me about it until the very end, so I was able to be calm about it until the last seven minutes or so before it actually happened. And that was a good way to have it for me!

As far as the rest of it all goes, it was mostly very good news, plus a touch of slightly annoying but expected and totally fair news. A good outcome so far.

Now, I just am waiting for the blood test results. I hope they are clean and clear and under control, so life may proceed freely again.

Thank you for the good experience this morning with the doctor. Thank you for letting me make my last class, so I can still get paid something for the day. Please, make the balance bike safe and effective for Grace. Help us to tidy everything well tomorrow morning and to have a great crawfish bloom tomorrow afternoon. Also, please, help to heal W. Please. Bring him back to you fully, please, that he may truly heal and become who you call him to be. In your name, we pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024

Appointment

Well, I scheduled an appointment today. It seemed absurdly irrelevant, given that it was so far into the future and was about something that just happened. I said as much after the call ended. Within ten minutes, however, I had a call back from the office. ‘The doctor said to squeeze you in tomorrow. Can you do that?’ No, I didn’t want to risk missing the whole day of school and not getting paid – that would turn a $40/$80 appointment into a $240/$280 appointment. But I also need to have the appointment, and kind of asap. So, this is the only option if I want it handled now.

I begrudgingly accepted the appointment.

My mom adjusted her schedule to go with me. I am grateful. I am nervous about the whole thing, as I care very much about what might come of it. I just hope it all goes well and all is safe and good, and I make it to school in time still to get paid for the day.

God, help me to heal and to earn money to care for my family well financially, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024

Still here

Still here, being angry..

I’ve shared with a handful of co-workers at this point, and that ha scariest helped immensely. I’m still craggy and pissed off at regular life at school each day, but it helps, nonetheless.

I’ve started actually typing out a list of all the crap with which I have been dealing with my job this year, all the unfairness. I’ve reached out for contributions from my mom and husband, as well was a co-worker who has been there to hear it all and help me through a lot of it throughout the year so far. I think I’ll ask another coworker for his input, too, tomorrow. Then, once I’ve gathered all the points, I’ll put them in order and in a letter, and send a printed and a digital copy to the principal early next week, I guess. If I am granted the requested meeting with him sooner than that, then I will have it ready to hand him in that meeting. Whatever the case, my points will be communicated and documented, and I can move forward complete on it all, having been in clear communication.

Anyway, though I’m really relieved about that, I’m still utterly exhausted. All this emotion and all this lack of sleep has been especially tough this week.

And I really miss the dog. I miss the future we were living into, becoming a family of four. Now, we are a hopeful but woeful family of two. My husband is my dreams come true, of course. But the rest of this has been sacrificial suffering, without our understanding the ultimate goal of the suffering, which has made it al the harder.

Nonetheless, I am exhausted, and so I am going to sleep now. Getting closer and closer to being in bed when I truly want to be these days(!). So, yay for that(!). 9:30 lights out tonight.

Thank you, God, for the home and bed and husband. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024

The struggle

Sometimes, I just don’t want to do it anymore… it just feels so hard.

In a pit of the impossible, miserable and feeling like hope is worthless…

And part of me knows that all will be well.

Yet the everything of right now just makes it feel not worth it.

I guess this is the point they’ve been discussing all of Lent on Hallow, when we must just let go and let God take over for us. When we have hit our own limits and we can only proceed by acknowledging that we cannot do it ourselves, that we need God’s help.

A part of me doesn’t want it to get better, but I don’t know why. Perhaps because I know it will take such effort to get better. Perhaps because I don’t want to have to get over the pain. Perhaps because I want to be right that this is horrible behind fairness. Perhaps because, if this were better, I then would have to deal with all the other junk out there right now… and the idea of facing any of that after facing this is just…. even worse than sitting here in the crap mental space that currently surrounds me…

Oh, God… help me to want to heal fully and truly, and then to heal. Help me to forgive you. Help me to let go of the responsibility and guilt of this all. Please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024

Headache

I got errands done today and am very delighted about having done them myself, as well as having them done period.

However, I have this headache that I’ve had since about five PM, and I cannot seem to shake it. I’ve drunk water, spent time in the quiet, eaten lots of food… it seems it just just be a sleep headache (though I slept a lot last night, I believe).

So, I guess I’ll go to bed now, even though I am just at the start of a movie for the evening.

Goodnight, all.

Post-a-day 2024

Some true rest

Today, neither of us had work – both were closed. So, we slept in. I slept rather hard for most of the night. In the morning, I crawled back into bed and snuggled against my husband for a while after I had originally gotten up. I just wanted to feel loved, physically, this morning, especially. And I did.

I finally got back up and got the dog up – she might be dying, actually, but she might rally and be okay for another five years – and went and sat outside with her for a while, just enjoying the sun.

Of course, the chicken that always gets out was out, and she came right up to me, sitting there in the sun, and pecked one of my toes(!). As I was yelling at her, she seemed to be creeping up, considering trying it again(!). Totally nuts.

Anyway, after a while, I went and got up my husband, because midday is enough. I made us some eggs for breakfast, then hung out for a bit and had some tea before meeting a family friend.

I spent almost three hours with the family friend, mostly discussing my brain and my goals in life and how those fit in with transitioning into a tech career around coding, as well as how my struggles so far can be helpful with moving forward into it all. He has been in the industry for a couple decades, and offered to help me figure things out however he could. Why? He did even know. He said he just felt called to help me because of who I am as a person. (That was a really awesome thing to hear, by the way. I felt truly seen and appreciated.)

Then I stopped to get OJ that we need for Sunday, and headed home. I ate some food and hung out some more. Then I helped move several light-ish bags of potting soil before getting ready for bed. Just enough physical activity to keep me moving and using muscles, but not too much to be a problem for my current state. Because I do need to rest. But I don’t need to be like an invalid or massively depressed case, lying in bed all day and avoiding the world. Not at all.

All in all, it was a very productive but restful day. I spent time in direct sunlight, I spent quality time with individuals who care about me, I spent meditative time alone (and with the dog and chickens), I rested and relaxed, I got in some physical activity that used my muscles, and I ate food and drank tea and water. Yes, today was good for me, very good for me.

Thank you, God, for the rest. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024

Ugh

I ate reasonably today. Though, I definitely likely should have eaten more. I’m going to bed feeling slightly ill, and I’m hoping I’ll have a good appetite in the morning, and eat some good eggs. I need to make sure I have snack bars for lunch, though, because school has been doing only breaded stuff for Fridays during Lent, and that won’t do for me right now, especially not fried fish (I can’t stand it).

I wish my husband were home right now. He has a meeting. But I miss him.

Anyway, I’m going to sleep now. Goodnight.

Thank you, God. Be with us always, please, and take over wherever you see fit, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024

Carnival

Tonight, we attended the rodeo carnival. My husband and I went in with my brother and his wife, because a friend gave us some carnival packs he never ended up using or reselling. Plus, we had a few free ride tickets from the volunteer appreciation brunch the rodeo had this year (which was quite cool, by the way).

I think we all went into it a little tired, but game. And I think we all ended up having actually a really good time. We walked around a bit to get an idea of pricing and availability, and then we rode the gondola across first (after I got a corn dog with the food card we had). It was actually quite neat, but also slightly terrifying. Something about it just felt kind of janky, when compared to ski gondolas, and we had this paranoid feeling that our phones were going to plummet at any second, and our hats would go flying, forever lost to us. It also stopped twice, though briefly. That didn’t make it feel any better. But it was still cool, and I’m glad we did it. Definitely a fun view to have of the whole complex.

Then we all needed a bathroom break, so we went over to Center to use real bathrooms and to see the youth agricultural mechanics contest. My committeemen who told me about this contest were not wrong: these kids make aMAZing things. We talked with one girl who is a senior in high school, and she presented her project to us. It was an automated washer and dryer for sheep, goats, and cattle (they do this for showing constantly, and it is actually kind of hilarious to watch folks struggle to clean and dry these animals by hand). It was immensely sophisticated, it boxed up neatly for transport, and it took her over a thousand hours of labor, which she did by herself, and cost $24,000 in materials. She plans to patent it in the very near future, her siblings will use it for their show animals this next year, and she hopes to get it contracted for production and sale at about $80,000 a pop. Oh, and she also demonstrated its functionality for us with life-sized stuffed animals. That was both awesome and adorable.

Pretty neat, huh?

Then we wandered back to the carnival to use up our tickets. Should have done it earlier, we quickly discovered, because the place was packed and the lines were long now.

Nonetheless, they rode a swing ride, a spinning ride with almost no line, and another flipping-spinning ride that went super high up and, somehow, had an almost-zero line as we walked up to it (which didn’t last).

We spent the final tickets on a game we had seen and called unfairly priced early on, where you get to throw baseballs at overturned beer bottles and try to break them. But you only get two balls per turn and have to break two bottles. (So, if you miss the first, why bother throwing the second? Exactly.) However, we had tickets to spare and no one wanted to wait in any lines for rides anymore, so we went for it.

The boys enjoyed it and did not succeed in breaking the bottles. They did, however, succeed in getting tiny bits of glass all over their hands from the used baseballs that had been falling on the piles of broken bottles all day (and all rodeo, most likely). So, that sucked. After they washed their hands, it was immensely better, but not all the glass was gone, apparently. I’m just hoping it’ll be fully clear from my husband’s hands during his shower, so he can come to bed with fully clean and safe hands. I’m too sensitive for stuff like that, and probably would freak out for weeks if any ended up in the bed.

Anyway, we then went to the club we enjoy, partly just to use he tickets my mom had given us, but also so my brother and sister-in-law could try the awesome frozen (think frostie-style) Jack & Coke and the awesome Milk Punch (also called Rodeo Punch), a milky drink with nutmeg that is like horchata, but not. On the way, a girl from one of my committees was clearly leaving and she could tell we were going up to the club, so she handed me a handful of drink tickets she was not going to be using before tomorrow night. (Not like we needed those, but more to share! And we did both sue them and share them, which was great.) We still ended up with three drink tickets leaving in my hat, but those had been a gift in the first place, so no monetary loss on our family’s end, anyway, and more money for the kids (scholarship money).

We finally left to go home at eleven o’clock, all of us wiped. But the highways were actually open tonight, free from construction shut-downs, so it was a quick drive home for once. (Yippee!)

So, yes, another night both out and up late for me. And I had a very nice time with my family, doing something we don’t usually get to do. So, that was fun, and so am grateful.

Thank you, God, for such a nice time with my family and for keeping us safe. I love you. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024