Things Are Normalizing

So, starting to get finally used to the new relay position. School also starts in a month, so I have that to look forward to. And by look forward to, I mean get ready for. Our steno machine still acts wonky half the time, so trying to get it to work is always a pain, but it’s better than spending another several thousand dollars that I just don’t have on a newer one. Though I do wish I could afford a newer one. There’s no way that is happening with this $13/hr job.

Trying to get an actual, workable schedule here has been a nightmare. Like, a literal nightmare. This place is a shitshow. However, we managed it. We are also on the final stretch of the administrative headache for school. Namely, we are just down to getting transcripts imported properly to the new school. It’s a small enough school that the transcripts are done by, like, one person. And that person is not very responsive and just kind of clicked “import all” on our transcripts and didn’t look over them again. Not a great look, but this is where we are. At least the financing part is out of the way, besides buying the books we will need for the two years or however long it takes us (hopefully not longer than that.)

I’m really glad that we have made a few work friends to vent at or just chat with. It definitely helps. Not the biggest fan of the weird things being whispered in my ear on night shift either, so I’ll be happy to get off night shift in general. Plus more time with E and them.

Uh… well, there’s probably more to update, but I’m just too exhausted. We keep having bad nightmares as usual, so it’s hard to stay totally awake. I’m glad they also just keep us on M-F, which isn’t surprising considering that’s when they need us the most at work.

Well, I’ll be waiting to win the lottery, so I can upgrade my steno machine. Until next time.

Blog Move

Finally, got onto a decent blog structure. Of course, there’s still a lot left here to be desired. For example, I wish it showed the time, so it was more obvious that I am up doing this on my phone terminal at 2am. ah well.

Finally registered for classes again. Didn’t think we would ever go back to college, but here we are. On top of that, tomorrow is our first day taking live calls at CSD. Just a lot happening. I hope things settle into normalcy soon.

second day at job thoughts

I’m starting to think the nurse thing is an age issue. the younger nurses seem to be little jerks and the older nurses seem to have enough wisdom to not be little jerks. but yeah lots of “them being little jerk” moments to me today which I won’t get into yeesh.

i also learned today that the main part of the hospital has a bad reputation - apparently stuff happened 20-30 years ago and in a small community like this people just… you know. I don’t know about BHU though.

you can learn basically any unlicensed positioned in the hospital on the job here. for example, the rehab people said that if we ever get bored of behavioral health we can float to rehab or even pick up extra shifts there. that is, if our manager would let us - because apparently behavioral health is VERY busy from what everyone has said.

my autism continues to make me weird and unlikeable in group settings/classrooms ahaha. because I cant read the room sometimes. no “major missteps” but, for example, she showed a video with a true story where two people went into the ER at the same time & one had really bad wounds and the other had not as bad but had an alcohol addiction. she said it was a high speed chase. she asked who we thought the victim was - of course my brain goes “well she wouldn’t ask this question if it wasn’t an m night shamalayan twist” but also I was like “well it was high speed which makes me think the non addict was speeding and hit the addict” and yep that was the case… I was like “you can’t ever truly know who it was just based on their addiction status” because it is entirely possible for some kid texting and driving to hit someone who just also happens to have an alcohol addiction (maybe they weren’t even drunk then) but yeah didn’t make me the most likeable person there.

I try to step back in classroom settings from answering all the questions but always it feels like the teachers are specifically teaching me because I’m the one who nods my head, writes notes, asks questions, stays engaged. a lot of these nurses seem to have the “been there done that” attitude and it’s like, you might learn something new, you don’t know?!

a lot of this content isn’t relevant to me in behavioral health like catheters but the wound dressing lady said “we get a lot of gunshot wounds in BH” and I was like is that because of the jailed people or suicide….

I signed up to volunteer for the Sunshine Guild here at the hospital - it’s a volunteer group that does stuff like patient and employee help, runs the little shop, etc. they said they needed someone to run the shop because everyone there is a little old lady afraid of the register - and they went from 30 people to 8 because they lost a lot of their volunteers (old people) to COVID which is incredibly sad. but I can come in on my days off and work the gift shop. the shifts are a pretty small commitment (i think only 5-6 hours per day?) and since they work directly inside/with the hospital, i’m sure that both parties will be able to work with each other schedule wise.

we ended up running literally 45 minutes late from leaving today for a really dumb reason. I don’t mean to be judgmental, but if you can’t follow simple instructions like “at least ten characters, one capital, one special character, and not your name” then I’d be scared to have you as my nurse… other people had serious things they needed to be attending to - one girl next to me is late to her study group and the other she is the caregiver for her mom and her mom was at home waiting for her. and none of us even got paid for those 45 minutes because it was a manual punch today. :/

sometimes (most of the time) when I’m around other people besides close friends and family I feel like I’m just faking all my reactions and emotions which makes me very likeable because I am decent at gauging what reactions someone expects and subtly pivoting when needed. i don’t know if it’s the autism or the trauma (probably a combination) because obviously it’s an autism thing but also growing up in a severely abusive environment i was basically every single second watching everyone’s micro reactions and reacting back in the exact way that they wanted me to, to diffuse their abuse

for example, today, the trainer at work told us a story about how she had to go sit and watch someone in the psych unit for her entire shift. she was like, “oh, he told me ‘give me one good reason i shouldn’t kill you then everyone else in here’” and i didn’t react at all, ahaha. like, my face didn’t move even a little bit. i just have no reaction to that information or someone saying that. but all the others in the room (just nurses today) audibly gasped and had gigantic reactions. and the trainer was like, “see, you can’t have that kind of reaction when you’re watching psych patients.” and it’s not like i was particularly having to bite my tongue or change my expression, i just… didn’t have any reaction to that information? i might also be desensitized from being friends with literal sociopaths over the years who have said things 1,000 times worse, but like… yeah.

i’m almost like “that’s not even the most awful thing someone has said to me this week let alone the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” reminds me of the therapist who threw a gigantic fit (started crying???) when elias told her their trauma.

then i came home and ava had ingested something bad and we might have to take her to the ER. ah, life.

mostly just tired​

Hi all. I find myself mostly just tired lately. It’s hard to explain how fatigue inducing TMS has been for me. Really, it’s been the biggest negative side effect, which is hard to push through when there have been virtually no positive effects just yet. It’s three hours round trip every single day for six weeks (200 miles round trip), and I’ll tell you what… I would not be doing this unless I had absolutely no other alternative. Because right now, it is so exhausting. But what is the alternative? Not getting better?

It gets even more complicated when you realize that it’s making work awful too, or the lack thereof. There are no “normal” 9-5 jobs that are going to work around me needing to take half the business day off to go run to Dallas every single day. So, I have been looking into part-time/weekend/nights jobs. I got an interview at a grocery store for overnight stocking, but they took one look at me and how short and chubby I am and instantly decided I wasn’t right for the job. Which is awful. Like, they tried to say it was because I had “no overnight experience and no stocking experience.” You saw that on my resume. You just wanted to discriminate against my physical appearance. So pathetic.

I have another interview tomorrow, though I doubt it will go anywhere. It’s just for a job that is two Saturdays and four Sundays a month, just filling in for another person for a driving position. At this point, I’ll take just about anything. I even set up an appointment to sell plasma to help get us through and help pay for the copay and gas to get 200 miles every single day. I thought about doing Doordash today, but turns out, when I’m driving like that, I just want to get home and sit down in a chair and stop driving. I might do that a little bit later… not that Doordash is particularly worth it, honestly.

I’ve also been supplementing with Prolific. E says that I shouldn’t be so much worried about jobs and money right now and should just focus on getting better mentally. But how can I focus on getting better mentally when I know we are still negative every month? I don’t want us to have to start dipping into our super emergency. Right now, we have only been dipping into our “backup funds”, aka Elias' money, but we do have an actual emergency fund that I’d rather leave untouched if we can.

I’m probably going to try and transfer over all the posts from the other blog to this one today. But man, it’s going to be hard to look at them. I had such an “easy” life when I was a teenager, and seeing me whine about things like Gears of War versus what’s happening today is a little bit difficult… ahaha.

not forgotten about this

hey all. I have definitely not forgotten about this blog. My life has just been considerably full of stress the past few weeks. I have some major health stuff going on. Mostly major depression which doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it’s essentially an emergency level. I am going to go through TMS and Spravato soon, which is going to put further stress on our financial situation, which already isn’t ideal. Sigh… I don’t even have the spoons to get into what all is going down with the family situation, either. I will do a proper update soon, hopefully.

Transcribed 2025-06-02

I’ll just become the host, if that’s what everyone wants from me.

I probably wasn’t ever different anyway.

Transcribed 2025-05-19

Lost my red pen. Ah well.

Looks like we secured an interview next week for Junebrain. It’s at their stand up, with the entire company. Not nerve wracking at all…

Well, I’m sure we will do fine. They are just human beings after all. And if nothing comes of it, that is fine too.

God, I fucked up my right hand wrist, now it hurts to do anything with it, including writing. But our life must be documented.

Elias had jury duty today, but they cut them loose after a few hours. Guess they answered their questions wrong. Or right, depending on point of view.

We started watching “Person of Interest”. It’s definitely entertaining. We also ordered food because we didn’t feel like cooking. Definitely a luxury these days at $50 total, though.

Hm, what else… well, had to clean the trash can because the ants found it. Manu also caught and ate a fly, ahaha. Crazy boy.

I think that’s about it. Now, time for me to be nervous for the next entire week, since the “interview” is on Wednesday of next week. Ahhh… so much nervousness. I know we are qualified, at least.

Transcribed 2025-05-05

yesterday was the second to last day of our trip.

We went to Oatman first. What a neat little town with some interesting history. It was a gold rush town, but then became a ghost town. After some people decided to revitalize it, it is now a tourist town.

So many donkeys! It was a ton of fun to feed them. Plus, we could look around and see the old jail, etc. There were some really cute tortoises, too. And with so many handmade/local crafts, that is really a town I could see myself spending a lot of money in, if I visited again. Just got touristy stuff this time, though. And randomly, there was a car show in town, so we saw all the cool old cars driving around. A shopkeeper was also talking about how people brought their dogs around the donkeys, which just seems next level stupid to me.

We drove down historic route 66, the scary part, after that. So much winding road without rail. And of course we hit a pothole. At least it got rid of that hanging part? It was scarier than Yosemite though.

Next stop was to feed deer. They were so demanding, but super cute. Lots of other animals there, too. Lots that I had never seen before. One of the peacocks got disturbed by a wild bird and rose its feathers ahaha.

And of course, after feeding the deer, one just kept following me and trying to eat my hoodie and was biting my butt ahaha.

After that stop, straight to hotel. Xenos had been fronting, but the storm from hell happened. Extremely heavy sideways rain in the pitch dark fog on a location we were unfamiliar with. Needless to say, Richard had to come around to escort us to the hotel. Of all the scary driving we did this vacation, it was this that was the scariest. And it was flat land!

Richard didn’t even bother bringing up our suitcase. We were running so late that we didn’t get to the hotel until 1am. And we had to get to the boarding place around 5pm or 6pm. Basically running against the clock, especially since we lost 2 hours going from PST to CST.

Slept right away, then back to driving. Today’s drive was purely utilitarian since we were on a time limit. It had been raining across our entire route, but nothing near what it was the night before, thankfully. I was worried about time, but it ended up fine. Except that it was $2000 for 10 days. Worth it, but major sticker shock.

At least we know for next time that it is about $1000/ 5 days for all four of them.

They were so ridiculously excited to see us, and the feeling was reciprocal. We had never boarded them for that long, but since the place is fancy, they didn’t seem to mind. The front desk lady said Manu was especially sweet, ahaha.

We listened to the “rest of” (or, most of) “Thirteen Storeys” on the way back. The annoying part is that we were on the very last chapter, but we arrived home. Will likely try to finish it this weekend with our puzzle.

Getting back has honestly been nice. The house just smells like “us”. However, our ADHD mess blindness went away after a few weeks, so now it feels so messy. Will likely just be on a cleaning kick the next few days.

Got to see all the pics you took. All so great! Can’t wait to have actual copies. The animals got settled in again pretty easy. I put my new stuff away and got to writing in here. Mile long to-do list now though… ugh. And work, double ugh. Going to start clocking in @ 9am for OT. And also gray rocking Gabby. Life is too short to stress over stupid work.

Transcribed 2025-04-25

Raven,

We are on vacation right now. I bought this journal in hopes of archiving our life. Pictures are great, but I want to describe my emotions as well. And what better way than this?

I don’t know if we will give you this when we are done. Maybe we will keep it forever to ourselves. But knowing that I am not just tossing words into the void is a good incentive.

We are driving to California for the purpose of helping your sister recover from her pacemaker surgery. Thankfully, it went smoothly, and she is just recovering now.

We put Toni, Ava, Evil, and Manu into Paw Lofts, the bougie boarding place. Only the best for our babies.

We are listening to a book called “The Things We Leave Unfinished.” There is probably only about a chapter left. I will have to find a new one for tomorrow. It is about a woman who is taking her grandma’s autobiography and finish it, since she passed away. We hear about the grandma’s story in the 1940s, interlaced with the granddaughter’s. It is okay, the ending is fizzling out, though.

Yesterday, we went to Stonehenge Replica (Odessa, TX), Odessa Meteor Crater (Odessa, TX) and did a ton of driving. The total time was about 13 hours for 900 miles. And still in Texas!

The Stonehenge Replica was very cute. It was on a rock. Someone had abandoned their phone, too. I am glad we got to see these. Some cute photo ops. This was also the first time I noticed how dry the heat was! Such a change from home. The winds have made the days beautiful though.

The Odessa Meteor Crater was very interesting. I don’t think I would call it “fun”. But I enjoyed it a lot. I had no clue a meteor crater could be so big. The dryness of the air getting more obvious, but the wind is a nice respite.

We made it to El Paso fairly effortlessly. Of everything we did, my favorite thing was to just stop at a rest stop with you, and stare towards the mountains. So beautiful. I want to keep more memories, but what I find myself remembering the most is how I feel about you, Raven. We have been together for so long, and my love only grows every day. You will never know exactly how much I love you. I adore you. I still get butterflies. And standing on that rest stop, I could feel it so strongly.

Today was the short part of the drive. Accordingly, we planned a bigger side trip … White Sands National Park. When we arrived, we went into their great gift shop. Tons of fun stuff to buy. They also had an intro movie where we learned more about the park.

The main path we hiked was a mile long. Doesn’t seem like a lot, until you realize it’s so hot, and pure dry heat. I can definitely say that I’m not as fit as I was as a kid. And we almost definitely forgot your inhaler, so you nearly had an asthma attack that made you pass out. Not making that mistake again.

Despite being surprisingly difficult, it was just as rewarding. The dunes were almost eerily quiet; even for a deafie like me. The views were so nice, though. And we even saw some cute little caterpillars rolling down a hill.

It wore us both out thoroughly. But there was more of the park to see, and most of it was done in the car.

But we stopped off at a final hill. I was so exhausted, I could barely climb it. But I had to take a selfie with you… so I told myself a last push, so I could have a picture.

But then, you asked for a picture, alone. You sat down in the sand, and I took a picture. You invited me to sit next to you, to stare at the view for a final time. Tiredly, I collapsed into the sand next to you.

You smiled at me, and encouraged me to stick my hands deep into the sand. It was so cold. I looked over the scenery with you. And in that moment, I knew what it was all for. I knew why I fought so hard to keep alive. All those years. I fought to find you. Every decision I’ve made has led up to you, being with you, there on that dune. Exhausted, leaning against you.

“I don’t ever want to leave,” I told you. “But I can’t live in the desert forever. We can’t stay up here forever.” But my heart ached. Really, what I want to do is stay in stasis with you, when every thing is perfect. No sadness, no trauma, no work, no worry, no depression, no anxiety. I know our life together will continue to go like this, in different venues, but… “Ready to go?” you asked after a few minutes.

“Just a couple more seconds.” My pleading was really from the awareness of passage of time. Knowing how precious every moment is. It wasn’t about the dunes.

After about 20 more seconds, I stand up slowly. Time goes on, no amount of leaning against you there was going to stop it.

As we are driving out of the park, I ask you, “Have you ever loved someone so much you cried?” You laughed. “No,” you told me. “Well, maybe it’s just because I’m so happy. Why can’t it always be like this?”

The rest of the park was nice. The trip to Tuscon from El Paso was about 6 hours. Mercifully short considering we were both sun burned and exhausted.

The hotel was serviceable. Holiday Inn Express has good free breakfast. And the shower was excellent, considering we both were so dirty from the sand.

Next day; Sunday; full day 15 hr drive. Nothing much eventful. Just 15 hours of driving straight. We finished the romance book. Turns out the twins did a switcheroo. We started really driving through the mountains. It is so beautiful. 15 hours was definitely our limit, though. Also, you tried to hand us a bottle of water and we made it splatter all over which was funny. Other than that, nothing of note.

Truth be told, I am writing this on Monday night. So, we need to update for Sunday night - meeting w/ Courtney, screaming awake and Monday - fun day of beach, pretty restaurant, and being highly triggered and throwing up in the car. And by the time I do, we will have Tuesday to write about, sigh… almost caught up, though. Soon.

Love you so much

Transcribed 2025-02-02

Things are very stressful at work and life lately. We probably need to move out of the country. I suddenly lost steam to write in this. Oh well.

Transcribed 2024-06-24

Just got back from vacation, which was super fun. I’ll try to write the details somewhere soon, so we don’t forget. Unfortunately, the house is messy to the point that I don’t even know where to begin. Maybe I’ll just do it slowly, bit by bit.

Still having nightmares about sem after all this time. I don’t know if they can even be categorized as nightmares. More just weird. You’d think I’d be over it by now. Guess not… it has been 12 years though, I guess that shows what an impact it had on me. Maybe I need to reflect on it some more.

Ugh… okay, time to work. Worst day back is the first one. I’ll try to get through it. Wish me luck

Transcribed 2024-05-22

Honestly, its a little disappointing to hear that Brittany is excluding us from opportunities because we were honest about wanting to switch departments. Disappointing, but not surprising. This is why people tend to not tell their bosses when they want to do this. We were trying to be thoughtful, but once again, as always, our honesty is fucking us over. As it goes.

Transcribed 2024-05-20

Work is being so dumb. [large redacted/blacked out block of text, likely venting about work]

Anyway, guess i’ll get back to my job that I apparently am awful at. Should probably just go die or something and save the world from another fucking awful employee.

Transcribed 2022-07-28

Tomorrow, we will go and see kurtis live. It sucks that he took Dean with him because Dean is a fuckboi but it can’t be helped.

Gabby made the mistake of telling me I already hit my numbers for the month, so I am going to be extra lazy tomorrow.

The assholes @ Apple delayed my iPad shipment by a week, so now I have to wait. Very unfortunate.

Nothing else going on, really.

Transcribed 2022-07-24

Didn’t end up going painting whoops. didn’t feel good enough even though i feel guilty for canceling on florence. i just needed to have a self-care day today.

mostly just slept, not much else to do. just got to the episode where hank confronts walt about being heisenberg and damn it was good. this show is so good.

back to work tomorrow, rip….

Transcribed 2022-07-18

We took Evil and Toni to the vet today. They behaved really well, but we got annoyed because they needlessly scruffed Evil. We will tell them next time not to do that.

Other than that, not much happened. We scheduled to go to the Houston Cat Cafe this weekend. I think that will be really fun. They also allow you to adopt them. Raven said no adopting, and I said, “We’ll see” ahaha.

I can’t believe it’s only Monday. I wish it would hurry up and be the weekend again already. I have been being too lazy @ work, ugh.

Transcribed 2022-07-11

Boring Monday. The only interesting thing that happened is that we are watching Breaking Bad. We just got to the part where Jesse kills Gale. Poor Jesse. He’s just trying to do the right thing, and Walt pulled him into such a bad world. I feel for him.

Other than that, nothing new. Going to go do horses on Thurs and try not to die of heat exhaustion. It’s been in the hundreds and record highs lately, which is saying quite a bit considering this is Texas!

At least our power isn’t out still… knock on wood!

Transcribed 2022-07-08

I really don’t know what to write here. There’s nothing new going on, and I have the same worries I always have. It isn’t even worth chronicling the same worries as always. And nothing happened today, except that it was the last easy day from the easy week, and Monday, everything will be back to normal, which is a huge disappointment. I wish every week was as easy as this one was.

Nothing left to do but enjoy the brief weekend and the Umami Fest on Sunday.

Transcribed 2022-07-04

Stupid July 4th and stupid fireworks. The only good thing about today was that we got the day off. The rest of the week is supposed to be a “bare minimum” week, but still. Notlooking forward to going in tomorrow and dealing with work. Why can’t I just be independently wealthy. Plus there are so many things to buy and so little money. I don’t know what I’ll do to survive. Sigh.

Transcribed 2022-07-02

Got our septum pierced today. Really excited because it looks so good! Just had a really good day all together. And glad we are having a 3 day weekend and light workload week.

Steve said he will be coming down at the end of July. That is also when we are seeing Kurtis Conner live ahaha. We want to go horseback riding w/ Steve.

That’s all for today!

Transcribed 2022-06-27

Horses tomorrow. I love being on the horse but hate starting up. I hate getting on it and also waiting for the ride to start. I wish I could fall in love with the starting process, too.

Until I do, I will always be annoyed with having to drive there, waiting around. Etc.

I’m also scared of trotting, so I need more practice with that. I can’t post for shit. I’ll keep practicing and doing my best.

Transcribed 2022-06-20

I got a lot done today. I had enchiladas for dinner, but they made my stomach hurt. I want to watch Chii-chan’s grad concert some time this week.

Tomorrow is horses. I love them, but I know it will be hot. I hope it doesn’t exacerbate my sun burn. I will need to drink lots of water. My stamina is getting better, though. I am excited and I hope they have Shaker for me to ride.

Um, that’s all for now. Trying to keep up with journaling, even if it is mundane.

Transcribed 2022-06-18

Today was our birthday - 32. It was very fun. We got lots of presents and they were all amazing. The cake was also very good. I’m glad we have someone who spoils us, even though we usually don’t have the money to spoil them. I will try to get them lots of stuff next year if finances allow.

Wish I could sleep in tomorrow, but it’s church day. Maybe someday Phil will learn how to drive himself…

Happy

Transcribed 2021-09-02

Update: Literally the next day, Elias got a job offer. They are very good, and I hope this place will actually appreciate them.

It’s at a place that does medical imaging, he’s going to be looking @ eyes all day. Super happy and proud of him. We went out to eat @ Cheesecake Factory to celebrate and then went to Barnes and Noble.

Couldn’t be happier or prouder of him (& them). I’m so happy.

We’ll see how the place is. It seems good because the starting wage is decent and they have good benefits. So, it should be okay.

Sloppy handwriting. Tired… good night.

Transcribed 2021-02-23

Today we got laid off basically without any notice?? Very weird and upsetting. We knew it was a contract position, but a group call isn’t the place to drop that info suddenly. Veronika and John were equally as confused.

I feel like such a baby for being upset by it. Especially since I have interviews tomorrow. I also feel bad that I am judging my emotions because I know they are valid. Doesn’t make me feel any less guilty though.

I hate not knowing what is going to happen. I also hate that you reading this, here, does know what happens and I don’t. Give me an update underneath this entry?

I’ll try to be grateful for what I have. I have my family + that is the most important part.

(the update written underneath the entry)

It ended up fine + we got a job pretty much right away again @ TLC.

You worry too much!!!