Thank you for my healthy family. Thank you for my warm and dry house. Thank you for two cars that run. Thank you for the red Jeep Wrangler hardtop I will own someday. Thank you for unemployment checks. Thank you for my husband finding a job he is excited about. Thank you for the human body having two kidneys. I am thankful that my frustration over the disorganization of the medical industry distracts me from my son’s health issue. I am thankful my husband has a 401k that we can dip into. I am thankful for warm fall days. I am thankful I have this blog as an outlet for my feelings and creativity. I am thankful for Strawberry Yogurt Cheerios. I am thankful for baby naps. I am thankful my son is almost one. I am thankful for my family and friends that listen to me vent during difficult times. I am thankful for sunshine and windows. I am thankful I am not sitting behind gray cube walls. I am thankful for wagging tails. I am thankful for all the clothes and toys that have been handed down to my son. I am thankful for diaper pail deodorizers. I am thankful for Tide Free. I am thankful for first train rides and first hockey games. I am thankful that my asbestos friend moved back to Michigan. I am thankful that I have so much to be thankful for.
Category Archives: A day in the life
Time Machine
Do you ever wish you had a Time Machine to skip over a hard day? I sure do.
I could put on Facebook when my son is going into the hospital to have surgery (which seems like a form of medieval torture) to get sympathy and support. But I do not, for two reasons:
1. I don’t want thieves to go “Oh, she is at the hospital with her kid, let’s break into her house.” That would add insult to injury.
2. I may want to get a job someday, and I don’t want potential employers to know that my kid has racked up over $100,000 in medical bills this year, and counting.
I must be the wussiest parent ever. All the other parents in the pediatric pre-op waiting room seemed calm and composed. I was a freakin’ mess. I was freaking out for two main reasons:
1. I am afraid when I hold him before surgery it will be the last time I ever hold him. Surgery always has risks.
2. I feel like this will never end. I feel like my son will be 18 years old and we will still be going to the urologist every month for his dilated kidney. I would LOVE for the doctor to fix it and then we only have to have a test like once a year to make sure it stays on track.
* I secretly believe my son’s urologist is writing some groundbreaking article he will publish in a medical journal about my son’s unique complications and the doctor will make a ton of money off of it.
As my son screamed in the backseat, my overwhelming thought on the hour drive to the hospital for my son’s latest surgery was: I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to be an adult. I don’t want to be a parent. I can’t handle all this responsibility. Everyone has their limit of how much shit life can throw at them, and my son’s medical issues are bringing me very close to my limit.
Feeling Strangled by a Pink Ribbon
Am I the only one bothered by the pink breast cancer ribbons on every product known to man? I have multiple problems with this campaign.
1. I try to believe in the Law of Attraction. What you think about most you will attract into your life. I don’t want my most prominent thoughts every day to be about cancer–any form of it. I do not want to attract cancer into my life in any way. This is the biggest reason this marketing bothers me.
2. I do not believe that all the proceeds from licensing the pink ribbon onto these products are going to cancer research. There are millions of products our there with the pink ribbon slapped on them. It seems like with so many robust funds being raised, that they could have found a cure by now.
Companies think that by slapping a pink ribbon on their product, it will increase the number of people buying it. That has the opposite effect on me, as I will go out of my way to find a different product to buy. If you want to support breast cancer, that is fine. Send your money to an established organization directly, so that you know they will actually receive and use your money. You can also use it as a tax deduction, instead of the potato chip company or the gardening glove company getting all the tax benefits. Or do the Avon 3-day (is it still called that?), where you can raise money for your cause and get physical benefits as well.
3. I choose which charities I support. I like to support the Lenawee Humane Society. Dogs are cute. And it is the humans’ fault that we have pet overpopulation, not the animals. I have been known to support a local food pantry. I just went shopping in support of Pajama Rama 2011, taking place Saturday, October 22nd at the Adrian Mall in Adrian, MI. Is there a better cause out there than collecting underwear and tolietries for homeless kids in Lenawee County? I don’t think so.
So, as you can see, I have my own charities that I support. So I don’t like being tricked or bullied into supporting others as well. I am not trying to be super-cynical. My mother & gramma both had (non-breast) cancer. I know it sucks. But I’m saying don’t fool yourself into thinking you are doing something good by buying a “Save the Ta-Tas” shirt. Try making dinner for the family of the closest person to you with the disease. It could mean a lot to them.
OMG, who is going to read this? What are they going to think of me? Is my blog just totally lame…
Anxiety: 1. the state of being anxious. 2. concern about an imminent danger, difficulty, etc.
Anxious: 1. uneasy in the mind.
I have anxiety. It often changes how I go about living my life, but I do the best I can to not be beat down by it. For people who don’t have it (or don’t have it in large quantities), it is probably hard for them to imagine what it is like.
My most recent example is that I wanted to buy two $5 gift cards from McDonald’s. I was afraid they would yell at me for not buying food too. Then I was afraid they would yell at me for only putting $5 on the gift cards. I ended up deciding to buy only one gift card, and I bought it at Meijer while I was already there so I wouldn’t have to face the anxiety of McDonald’s at all. (Of course, in all this I forgot that the people at McDonald’s aren’t paid enough to care about anything. That is a dig at McD’s, not at the employees.)
I have dealt with anxiety all my life. When I was younger, if I felt overwhelmed by anxiety, I cried. Which is why I got picked on in school (creating more anxiety, creating more crying, etc.). The prescription drug company commercials used to make me think I had depression (which I have had twice in my life), but that is not what I have every day. My friend had pretty serious anxiety too–maybe even more than me. But she went on prescription drugs and now that is no longer one of her biggest health issues. I don’t want to be a slave to doctors & pharmaceutical companies. I don’t want to deal with side effects. I don’t want to have to take a pill everyday for something that may only hit me a few times a week. Now, if there was “FAST-ACTING ANXIETY NOSE SPRAY FOR URGENT RELIEF”, I would be all over that. The most common time anxiety hits me is when I am trying to fall asleep. I have anxiety attacks about how I don’t want to be dead one day & cease to exist. Ugh, it is making my chect tighten & my stomach churn just to write it. Nose spray would really come in handy at these times.
Here is an excerpt from an old journal I recently found which provides a nice example:
Last night at the casino the food court was more like a cafeteria and I was scared to tell the grill guy that I wanted a cheeseburger. Then I was too scared to go up and get a refill. I just feel like everyone is always going to yell at me.
And no one has ever yelled at me for such things. Here is a poem from around the same time:
Worried
11/2/2000
I worry about things
I know about
I worry about things
I know nothing about
I worry about things
I have never done before
I worry about things
I do every day
I am beginning to feel
worried
that I worry
2much.
My husband doesn’t understand when I ask him to do something for me because I just cannot do it myself. This usually manifests as asking for help for something in a store and having to talk to a sales associate. Or giving my son a bath. I know that when I start the bath, if he starts crying or bumps his head or something, I can’t freak out and leave him in the bathtub naked. I have to finish the bath, no matter what, all the way through to putting on his PJs. And I find this scary. And too often I let my husband give him a bath because 1. he likes to & 2. I don’t have to overcome my anxiety to do it. Anxiety is probably one of the things that kept my mom at home throughout her twenties.
Sorry. Just felt like venting. I have been cleaning my house & unearthed some old poems/emails/journals that got me on this line of thinking. I wanted this blog to be a mish-mash of my life. And this is a big part of my life, even though many close to me do not know it.
So Long, Borders
I didn’t think I would need to write a farewell to my former employer, Borders Group Inc. But I somehow feel compelled to.
I was never much of a Borders shopper, having only been in one store once before I was hired at the Corporate Office in 1999. And it if hadn’t been for a college field trip gone awry, I wouldn’t have ever heard of Borders at all. (Ya, that is one of my pet peeves throughout the years. Borders just assumed everyone had heard of them. If you didn’t have a Borders store in your town, then you really never knew they existed. Seriously.) I only became a Borders shopper because I got an employee discount, which made me buy a ton of books I have never read because, wait for it, I AM NOT A READER. If I find a series (hello, Fearless & Twilight) or a single book that I really like, I will read it. But I grew up on television, and that is really my chosen medium of entertainment.
So, that finds this post as mostly a farewell to the Borders Corporate Office (and yes, I still call it that–screw you Store Support Center:P). I liked that it was a place where you could come in as late as you wanted, as long as you were there by 9am, and leave as early as you wanted, as long as it was after 4pm. I loved that they let people with unnatural hair colors wander the hallways as if they were no different at all. I liked that we had diversity activities where we made necklaces & bracelets of all different colored beads. One year we made mosaic drink coasters. I still have mine. I will hold on to them as souvenirs of my time at Borders. It is very sad that no company now has the extra time or money for such morale-boosting employee participation events.
I will miss the musical performers who used to stop by. In better times, we would have many of these a year, and most of them open to the full company. I met Jason Mraz twice. I saw Joss Stone perform. Met Ricky Scaggs and Rosanne Cash. I saw Cheap Trick perform in the cafeteria (not a very glamorous locale). I was in the lunch line in the cafeteria behind Phantom Planet…about 2 years before their song was probably used as the theme for one of my favorite TV shows, The O.C. I got to meet (& hug) NEW KID ON THE BLOCK Joey McIntyre! I saw Loretta Lynn getting off her tour bus and walking inside in her pink ruffled dress. I saw Robin Thicke perform–which as I figure it, gets me three degrees away from Matthew Perry! (Swoon) I walked past the conference room where Kevin Bacon was performing with The Bacon Brothers (would that get me one degree from Kevin Bacon?)
It was more than just musicians too. Suzy Orman came in & talked to us about one of her new books. I sat in the back of the room–she has a very bold, loud, scary personality! On one of my daily walks outside, I passed an old guy in a very expensive suit–only to realize it was Lee Iacocoa.
I worked at Borders when 9/11 happened. They came and said that we could go home if we felt uncomfortable staying. I went home just because I wanted a day off, but I got paid for it, which was really awesome. Borders lost a store at the World Trade Center site. It was store 142, I think in tower 12. Everyone got out, which is great. Borders turned a giant area of cubes at the corporate office into a giant conference room and named it conference room 142, in honor of the lost store. Too bad that should have been a sign to all of us that we had less employees every year if we could sacrifice that many cubicles for a conference room.
I do want to forget the girl in the cafeteria who always miscounted my change and thought I was a lesbian. And all the times I was reorganized into a new department or boss or position. And all the hours of my short little life sucked up by my terribly long commute. But I do not want to forget all the wonderful friends I made while I worked there. I hope to stay in touch with many of them as we find new wonderful, better-paying jobs (positive thinking people!).
I'm not stalking you. 