All Right, Everyone, He's Resisting!
I have never had such a weird success/catastrophe dichotomy going on in my life as I have now, and it's driving me crazy. On the one hand- I have graduated with a 3.97, highest honors and distinction in the major, been accepted to Phi Beta Kappa (whose induction fees are being paid by my department), and just won two departmental awards, including the highest honor a history student can win. Oh, and I get to go to freakin' Oxford in the fall.
Then there's everything else. My extremely frustrating inability to find work. Stress about how to finance Oxford. Resentment towards my San Ramon family, which so far hasn't even bothered to inquire when I walk for graduation and even if they had certainly wouldn't come because they are clearly still embroiled in handling their terrible financial decisions of the last few years. All this would have been enough to set my teeth on edge, but two final details are the ones that have me just about out of control. So, a bit over a month ago we let our cousins talk us into taking their 9 month old female German Shepherd, because Stevie has always wanted one. For those of you not already familiar with Laney's escapades since then, she is an out of control destructive maniac who has only been saved so far by the fact that she is very cute and sweet most of the time and Stevie is so in love with her that she cries every weekend when she has to leave the dog and go back to Davis. I, on the other hand, have been a huge advocate of sending the dog back since the day after we got her because she so far appears to be untrainable, is really bad for both of our other dogs, and has cost somewhere around a thousand dollars of damage if not more (most of the pillows in the house, the pool sweep, half the plants in our yard, our vacuum and my printer- the list goes on). Today, out of her separation anxiety after Stevie left for Davis, she ripped up another of Stevie's pillows, her mattress topper, and started in on the mattress itself. She wasn't even alone in the house when this happened, which is my other major source of frustration: Mom was there, heard her ripping stuff up, and did nothing about it.
See, last Tuesday Mom had her usual two glasses of champagne with breakfast (her 4-6 glasses of wine/champagne a day have not decreased whatsoever, despite the fact that she was diagnosed with bad high blood pressure just three weeks ago) and didn't notice that her left foot had fallen asleep. When she stood up from the restaurant booth, she took two steps then fell over on top of me, turning her left ankle in the process. After a really long trip to the ER, we learned that she had a teeny tiny fracture in her ankle. I mean, they printed paper copies of the x-rays and you cannot even see the crack on them. I broke a foot bone two years ago and not only ran on the foot immediately afterwards, I walked around on it for another day before meandering into minor injuries. Mom, on the other hand, refuses to do anything at all and sits in bed or on the couch all day, bellowing for me every ten minutes. She won't carry anything for herself, lift or move anything, etc. and I am going absolutely insane. She has zero pain tolerance, gets nasty when she hurts, and I am at my wits' end. I mean, I escaped to a movie (spending money I couldn't really afford to spend, but I needed to get away that badly) for two hours, during which Mom hears Laney destroying Stevie's room and does absolutely nothing about it. I am utterly at a loss.
Then there's everything else. My extremely frustrating inability to find work. Stress about how to finance Oxford. Resentment towards my San Ramon family, which so far hasn't even bothered to inquire when I walk for graduation and even if they had certainly wouldn't come because they are clearly still embroiled in handling their terrible financial decisions of the last few years. All this would have been enough to set my teeth on edge, but two final details are the ones that have me just about out of control. So, a bit over a month ago we let our cousins talk us into taking their 9 month old female German Shepherd, because Stevie has always wanted one. For those of you not already familiar with Laney's escapades since then, she is an out of control destructive maniac who has only been saved so far by the fact that she is very cute and sweet most of the time and Stevie is so in love with her that she cries every weekend when she has to leave the dog and go back to Davis. I, on the other hand, have been a huge advocate of sending the dog back since the day after we got her because she so far appears to be untrainable, is really bad for both of our other dogs, and has cost somewhere around a thousand dollars of damage if not more (most of the pillows in the house, the pool sweep, half the plants in our yard, our vacuum and my printer- the list goes on). Today, out of her separation anxiety after Stevie left for Davis, she ripped up another of Stevie's pillows, her mattress topper, and started in on the mattress itself. She wasn't even alone in the house when this happened, which is my other major source of frustration: Mom was there, heard her ripping stuff up, and did nothing about it.
See, last Tuesday Mom had her usual two glasses of champagne with breakfast (her 4-6 glasses of wine/champagne a day have not decreased whatsoever, despite the fact that she was diagnosed with bad high blood pressure just three weeks ago) and didn't notice that her left foot had fallen asleep. When she stood up from the restaurant booth, she took two steps then fell over on top of me, turning her left ankle in the process. After a really long trip to the ER, we learned that she had a teeny tiny fracture in her ankle. I mean, they printed paper copies of the x-rays and you cannot even see the crack on them. I broke a foot bone two years ago and not only ran on the foot immediately afterwards, I walked around on it for another day before meandering into minor injuries. Mom, on the other hand, refuses to do anything at all and sits in bed or on the couch all day, bellowing for me every ten minutes. She won't carry anything for herself, lift or move anything, etc. and I am going absolutely insane. She has zero pain tolerance, gets nasty when she hurts, and I am at my wits' end. I mean, I escaped to a movie (spending money I couldn't really afford to spend, but I needed to get away that badly) for two hours, during which Mom hears Laney destroying Stevie's room and does absolutely nothing about it. I am utterly at a loss.