Stream-of-consciousness Poptart update
I've been in my apartment more than a month now. I've officially paid rent (I got my first month free, which was awesome,) and my electric bill was much less panic-inducing than I feared. All other utilities are included in my amazingly low rent. I am only filling up Artoo about once a month now that I live only a few miles away from work, down from every few days due to an 80 mile round trip. I have an indoor pool, which I finally took advantage of yesterday and plan to continue to visit a couple times a week.
My apartment is tidy. I've got nearly everything organized, with the exception of my craft room, which is now sorted and the non-craft stuff is tucked away, but I am still pondering how I want to organize my space and materials. I am keeping up with the cleaning, and it really isn't too involved, so long as I mostly unfuck things as I go. (My laundry is something I have yet to really get put into a system. We'll get there.) I am even keeping up with the litter box, which has always been a failing of mine. You can't tell I have a cat, except for the fact that she meets me at the door when I come home.
Chihiro is still a very lovey cat, which is miraculous. She is now into catnip to a degree I've never seen, plays with toys a lot, and is immediately in my lap the moment I create a lap-like surface. She is affectionate with other people, which really surprised my mom when she visited today, as Chihiro has never really been that interested in being friends. Chihiro is back to eating the way she used to, and doesn't look quite as bloated and uncomfortable as she had been when I got her back. She does bite still, but it's less "I'm going to eat you" and more playful nips. I have also been training her to help me get to bed on time, by giving her treats once I'm done with my nightly routine. She has caught on to this training, but she has started deciding my bedtime is somewhere around eight. I'm working on it. >_>
I am a little lonely at times, but no more so than I've ever been. I'm not really into the social scene, and I deal with people all day at work. I like my quiet, though I have found that I'm into the habit of watching an animated movie every night after living with a toddler for 1.5 years. Feels weird to go to bed without watching Despicable Me, let me tell you. I've been working my way through Transformers: Rescue Bots and LOVING it. I loaned my coworker my How to Train your Dragon movies, but I was watching those nightly at first, because it just felt so strange to not watch something, and I less than three Toothless and Hiccup.
Work is going well, as much as it can go well. The therapist and I got chased by a resident intent on murdering us with a brick the other day, for example. (Thankfully the therapist is faster than I and was able to get the door open in time to save us both.) This is why I have stopped dressing up for work; I wear jeans and tennis shoes daily. All the better for running for my life, you see. But I love my job, and I love my coworkers. There are only eight of us in the office. We are all ladies. We all have synchronized now and it has been REALLY bad this last week, as our campus is being terrorized by a handful of residents and all of us office folk have been PMSing to boot.
I do case management stuff and run groups and plan outings and for some crazy reason my boss thinks I am responsible enough to put me in charge of the rec funds. (I came in two hundred dollars under budget in January. Pretty damn proud of me right now.) I am in control of a craft room that is the size of an apartment, because it once was an apartment. I am very, very territorial about it. I did make the therapist a key to the craft room, though, because she enjoys art, not necessarily to the extent I do, but she likes it. She comes to most of my creative expressions groups, because it's quite frankly relaxing as hell to art in the middle of a hectic day on campus.
We co-treat a lot, which can be very useful in potentially volatile situations. (See the brick incident above.) We pretty much use the buddy system whenever we're on campus now, after Wednesday, as the hospital SENT THAT RESIDENT BACK and her home county arbitrarily decided that we needed to find her a new placement, nevermind that it is not our job, as we are just the AFC home; their county is responsible to place them. My boss is Very Unhappy with that county right now. I suspect their contracts will be reviewed and I don't know how enthusiastic she will be about new residents coming from there, though we really can't be picky about placements, as we really are running at half capacity, resident-wise. We have four active cottages out of a possible seven, and half of our supported independent living apartments are empty, too. Even the cottages aren't to capacity; each is licensed to house six residents, but only one of them even has five. One of the cottages has only two residents right now, as one of those two is a bully and does not need to be around residents who are easily bullied (read: most of the population of our campus.) We keep shuffling people around, trying to figure out the best fit with temperament and personalities. It's sort of exhausting. I cannot imagine the mental gymnastics it would require to have this campus running at full strength and keep people from killing each other.
I am still seeing my gentleman friend, though we still are an hour and a half apart. We haven't been seeing each other every weekend lately due to the weather. He's come to the apartment twice now. Chihiro loves him, which is problematic, as he is quite allergic to cats, but he is determined to deal with it. He's been spending more time around his friends' pets to try and acclimate himself a bit more, and I try to keep the apartment as dander-free as possible. He understands that Chihiro is here to stay, and that someday when Chihiro crosses the bridge, I will need a new cat, and I think sphinx cats look really, really weird, so I don't think I'll be getting a hypoallergenic one.
Overall, I've been... content. Considering my usual mental state in January (depressed as all hell, and/or sick with bronchitis to the point I don't know what my emotional state is, or very much care), I am doing fairly well. Some depression but nothing like I've seen before. I'm pretty happy, honestly. And my health insurance will kick in tomorrow, though the damn card isn't here yet and didn't come in the mail today. I got my dental card, at least. *facepalm* Hopefully it'll turn up soon, because I need new scripts for everything, and a new doctor, since I had been going to the county low-cost clinic when I lived with my parents, and I live in a different county now.
My apartment is tidy. I've got nearly everything organized, with the exception of my craft room, which is now sorted and the non-craft stuff is tucked away, but I am still pondering how I want to organize my space and materials. I am keeping up with the cleaning, and it really isn't too involved, so long as I mostly unfuck things as I go. (My laundry is something I have yet to really get put into a system. We'll get there.) I am even keeping up with the litter box, which has always been a failing of mine. You can't tell I have a cat, except for the fact that she meets me at the door when I come home.
Chihiro is still a very lovey cat, which is miraculous. She is now into catnip to a degree I've never seen, plays with toys a lot, and is immediately in my lap the moment I create a lap-like surface. She is affectionate with other people, which really surprised my mom when she visited today, as Chihiro has never really been that interested in being friends. Chihiro is back to eating the way she used to, and doesn't look quite as bloated and uncomfortable as she had been when I got her back. She does bite still, but it's less "I'm going to eat you" and more playful nips. I have also been training her to help me get to bed on time, by giving her treats once I'm done with my nightly routine. She has caught on to this training, but she has started deciding my bedtime is somewhere around eight. I'm working on it. >_>
I am a little lonely at times, but no more so than I've ever been. I'm not really into the social scene, and I deal with people all day at work. I like my quiet, though I have found that I'm into the habit of watching an animated movie every night after living with a toddler for 1.5 years. Feels weird to go to bed without watching Despicable Me, let me tell you. I've been working my way through Transformers: Rescue Bots and LOVING it. I loaned my coworker my How to Train your Dragon movies, but I was watching those nightly at first, because it just felt so strange to not watch something, and I less than three Toothless and Hiccup.
Work is going well, as much as it can go well. The therapist and I got chased by a resident intent on murdering us with a brick the other day, for example. (Thankfully the therapist is faster than I and was able to get the door open in time to save us both.) This is why I have stopped dressing up for work; I wear jeans and tennis shoes daily. All the better for running for my life, you see. But I love my job, and I love my coworkers. There are only eight of us in the office. We are all ladies. We all have synchronized now and it has been REALLY bad this last week, as our campus is being terrorized by a handful of residents and all of us office folk have been PMSing to boot.
I do case management stuff and run groups and plan outings and for some crazy reason my boss thinks I am responsible enough to put me in charge of the rec funds. (I came in two hundred dollars under budget in January. Pretty damn proud of me right now.) I am in control of a craft room that is the size of an apartment, because it once was an apartment. I am very, very territorial about it. I did make the therapist a key to the craft room, though, because she enjoys art, not necessarily to the extent I do, but she likes it. She comes to most of my creative expressions groups, because it's quite frankly relaxing as hell to art in the middle of a hectic day on campus.
We co-treat a lot, which can be very useful in potentially volatile situations. (See the brick incident above.) We pretty much use the buddy system whenever we're on campus now, after Wednesday, as the hospital SENT THAT RESIDENT BACK and her home county arbitrarily decided that we needed to find her a new placement, nevermind that it is not our job, as we are just the AFC home; their county is responsible to place them. My boss is Very Unhappy with that county right now. I suspect their contracts will be reviewed and I don't know how enthusiastic she will be about new residents coming from there, though we really can't be picky about placements, as we really are running at half capacity, resident-wise. We have four active cottages out of a possible seven, and half of our supported independent living apartments are empty, too. Even the cottages aren't to capacity; each is licensed to house six residents, but only one of them even has five. One of the cottages has only two residents right now, as one of those two is a bully and does not need to be around residents who are easily bullied (read: most of the population of our campus.) We keep shuffling people around, trying to figure out the best fit with temperament and personalities. It's sort of exhausting. I cannot imagine the mental gymnastics it would require to have this campus running at full strength and keep people from killing each other.
I am still seeing my gentleman friend, though we still are an hour and a half apart. We haven't been seeing each other every weekend lately due to the weather. He's come to the apartment twice now. Chihiro loves him, which is problematic, as he is quite allergic to cats, but he is determined to deal with it. He's been spending more time around his friends' pets to try and acclimate himself a bit more, and I try to keep the apartment as dander-free as possible. He understands that Chihiro is here to stay, and that someday when Chihiro crosses the bridge, I will need a new cat, and I think sphinx cats look really, really weird, so I don't think I'll be getting a hypoallergenic one.
Overall, I've been... content. Considering my usual mental state in January (depressed as all hell, and/or sick with bronchitis to the point I don't know what my emotional state is, or very much care), I am doing fairly well. Some depression but nothing like I've seen before. I'm pretty happy, honestly. And my health insurance will kick in tomorrow, though the damn card isn't here yet and didn't come in the mail today. I got my dental card, at least. *facepalm* Hopefully it'll turn up soon, because I need new scripts for everything, and a new doctor, since I had been going to the county low-cost clinic when I lived with my parents, and I live in a different county now.