update
A couple weeks ago, a blogger I read on a fairly regular basis posted the above pic on her blog. She wrote that she’d developed a major case of the Fuck-Its and it was affecting her desire to blog. I so identified with this statement, I decided to borrow it, pic and all, for myself. I have a MAJOR case of the Fuck-Its right now, and it’s affecting my desire to blog. Sometimes when I’m feeling too overwhelmed by my emotions, it’s hard for me to sit down and write about them, to sit here at my computer and choose words that are supposed to describe my emotional state when I haven’t even figured it out for myself. Which is why I haven’t written about things that are going on with me lately. It feels like there’s almost too much going on.
For the past 2 months, I’ve been in a pretty deep state of emotional overwhelm as one incident after another (some of them minor but very annoying, and others not so minor) have been building up. I haven’t even started to process my feelings about some of these incidents yet, leading to the emotional overwhelm. But in an effort to inform you of what’s been going on in my life, and to help create a more “manageable” list for myself, here’s what’s been happening, in order of appearance:
1) Two months ago, while eating a taco for lunch, a crown-veneer on my front eye tooth broke and got crunched up while I was chewing. I didn't realize the crown had broken until I was driving back to work from lunch, otherwise I could have tried to save it before crunching on it. I then had to have it replaced by my dentist and, because it's a cosmetic procedure, my insurance wouldn't cover any of it. In addition, I'm no longer eligible for dental credit (due to a shady dental credit agency), so I had to pay for it all myself - a total of $1,200.
2) The day I went to the dentist to get my crown replaced, I parked in a space that I thought was not metered because the parking meter appeared to be in front of the space next to me. Because I didn't pay the meter, I ended up getting a $40 parking ticket when I left the dentist. On top of the $1,200 I'd just paid to get my crown replaced. ...So, all told, it was a $1,240 crown.
3) Two weeks later, I had a major fiasco at Target when I tried to return a jacket I'd ordered online and paid for using Paypal, instead of my debit card. It was my first time using Paypal with Target, so I was unaware of their returns policy regarding Paypal - namely, that they won't refund your money (as they do if you pay with a debit or credit card), but issue you a gift card instead. I'd never had another retail store try to issue me a gift card when I returned an item paid for using Paypal, so this was a new occurrence for me. I wanted my money refunded to my checking account, but Target refused to do anything but issue me a gift card. In the end, I took up the issue with Paypal who filed a claim against Target. The money was refunded to my checking account, but not after I paid a $17 shipping fee to ship the jacket back to Target via FedEx (per Paypal's agreement w/ Target, I needed to ship the jacket with a tracking number, which is why I had to use FedEx).
4) That same weekend, I attended the pre-Love Your Body Day gathering at a Lane Bryant store in a local mall. You'd think that would be a positive experience, and while, in general, it was (I briefly met Joy Nash and Tess Munster, one of the Domino Dollhouse models), while parked in the mall parking lot, a mall parking cop issued me a $40 ticket for having an expired registration sticker on my car. Gah! I swear, the parking police are having a great lunch on me!
5) As a result of my “major fiasco” at Target involving my attempt to return the jacket I’d paid for online with Paypal and Target’s refusal to refund my money to my checking account, I posted about my experience in an LJ community where I’d been a long time member. The purpose of my post was to vent my angry feelings about Target’s Paypal returns policy and to share the policy info with other members of the community who often shop at Target. It was apparently interpreted by some members of the community as a bid for sympathy and, not feeling very sympathetic and in the mood, instead, to vent what snark they could, I got nothing but hatred and animosity for my post. One member even went so far as to mention personal details gleaned from my LJ user info as a means of “shaming” me…although I found it funny that she assumed my real name is Christine, not recognizing the reference - “Christine, the strawberry girl” - to a popular Siouxsie & the Banshees song from the ‘80s. She also misinterpreted other personal details from my user info, so her attempt at “shaming” me was largely laughable. My personal e-mail account was also hacked, I assume by a member of said LJ community who has skills in that area. I spent nearly a day going through the process of changing my e-mail account and address on the various websites I use, and eventually decided to leave the LJ community where I’d been a long time contributing member, eliminating one more internet resource where I enjoyed spending time and participating in conversations. Moderation of that community has always been questionable, though, and in the past few years, many older members have left or ceased posting on a regular basis because of the questionable moderation and addition of many younger members, some of whom think internet snark is a way of life. I’m sorry to have lost a community where I generally enjoyed spending time, but if the kind of hatred and anger I received for my post remains unmoderated, it’s not a place where I want to spend time any more.
6) A few weeks after that, I found out my mom, who is in her late 80s, had broken her thigh bone and is now in a nursing care facility. She broke her hip in March and spent 3 grueling weeks in the hospital and another 3 months in a nursing care facility that didn't always offer the best care. So I know she’s unhappy with having to stay in another nursing facility again, even though she’s getting better care at this one. Hopefully she’ll be home by December if she heals quickly and shows enough recuperation strength. Her doctor decided surgery wasn’t necessary, so her thigh is supposed to heal on it’s own with physical therapy help. I’ve talked to her on the phone a few times in her room at the nursing care facility, and she sounds fairly good, although her senility is growing more obvious and she more easily forgets things we talked about just a week prior. ...Point being, the signs of my mother's deterioration are growing and becoming more apparent. Things are changing rapidly in my relationship with her and with the rest of my family, and I have no idea how to process any of it.
7) Within a week of learning that my mom was in a nursing care facility again, we found out at work that our immediate boss, the AP over counselors, was moving on. We’d heard a rumor at the start of the school year that he might be moving on, but he squashed it and told us he was staying for the whole school year. …Until a few weeks ago, when he told us the school district had given him a promotion and he was moving on to a different job. For many of us, he’s been the best AP we’ve worked with, truly advocating for us and acting as a buffer for teachers who would bully us and administrators who would give us other duties because they don’t understand how much work we have to do and think we spend a majority of our time sitting on our butts and drinking coffee. I’ve worked with some crazy APs in the past, and have heard stories of some of the other APs who have worked at the school where I’m now employed. From what I’ve heard, they were 10 times worse than some of the APs I’ve worked with in the past, and that’s a pretty scary thought. We’re all worried about who the school will hire to replace our former boss and hope it’s not someone crazy like they’ve had in the past. Our work load already went up this year and we’re horribly overworked. Adding a crazy, asshole boss in the mix would not make things better at all.
Suffice to say, all these changes and losses are taking a deep toll on my emotions and I don’t know how to process all of it at once. My world is tilting on it’s axis and I don’t know how to get it back. I think this journal entry is the first step on the road to trying to make some kind of sense of it all, but I really don’t know what else to think, feel or write about any of it at the moment. I’m existing only in survival mode right now and I’ve got to conserve my resources just to make it through.