(no subject)
Ooof. Life has been rough lately. We'll know later today whether Nick makes it through part 1 of the exams for the CPD. 1 of many. Following part 1, if he scores well, he'll do exam 2, which we'll know the results of sometime between now and January. My work schedule has been cut down to next to nothing because of the slowdown in orders. We think the culprit is less the economic crisis and more the fact a new place moved in down the street that's a lot cheaper and offers free delivery. Oh, and advertises the snot out of themselves. So I'm barely making any money to supplement Nick's less-than-stellar paychecks. He's not getting his full 40 hours yet because they aren't into the rush season yet and don't have enough work for everyone. It's been getting better each week though, and this coming week he should see 40 hours finally.
I ended up dropping two more classes off my schedule because I'm not doing well in them and I'd rather have the W than the F. I'm retaking both of them next quarter, but in an online format so I don't have to worry about actually GOING to class, which is really my weakest point with these classes. I'll have a full course load and it'll be completely online classes, but I'm splitting it up by taking one class during the two week 'mini-term' before full term starts. That leaves me 3 classes during the actual term so I don't overload myself. If it goes well, I may do a lot more online classes. I looked at Ohio State's course bulletin and found a couple classes I can take online there too.
Depression is getting the better of me lately. I don't understand why, when I dealt with it so well during my 3 year hiatus from school, it's now come back so strongly when I'm back in classes. I'm looking at some natural and holistic treatment methods because I know I need to do something about it and refuse to take any medications that screw with my head because of the incident with Paxil in high school. On top of the sudden onset of my depression, I've now had two panic attacks. I've never had a panic attack in my life until recently. I had my first one back in April that led to a trip to the emergency room, and then another one at King's Island last weekend. The first one, I have no clue what brought it on, but the most recent one I know was brought on by uncontrollable coughing from the fake smoke in the park and I was having serious problems breathing. No emergency room this time, but I did get to ride across the park in their little mini-ambulance to the first aid station so that I could get out of the smoke. Hopefully if I get my depression under control I can also control the panic attacks.
I tend to agree with my mom, they may just be a result of the financial stress we've been dealing with lately. Between the knowledge that most of my bills haven't been paid in upwards of 3 months and the fact anywhere from 10 to 20 different collectors are calling my cell phone daily (literally, I've left my phone in my car before and come back to find 47 missed calls, none of them people I care to talk to) it's starting to get really overwhelming, to the point I'm honestly considering bankruptcy if we can hold onto the car through it. It disgusts me even to think of the fact a year ago, every one of our credit cards was paid off. But, extended unemployment will do that to you. Amazingly, we haven't missed a car payment by more than a couple days so far, but that's because we make it our top priority, followed by putting gas in the cars and paying the cell phone bill. The credit cards get paid when we have the money, and medical bills and collection notices just get tossed in a drawer and ignored because I have no other choice. The fact gas prices have dropped to half what the were 2 months ago I think will make a big impact, though. Paying $50 to fill up both cars is a hell of a lot better than $100. I actually did a dance at the gas station when I filled up the VUE two days ago from the e-light to full and it took less than $30.
I know we'll pull through it eventually, but it worries the hell out of me. I don't know how we're going to move, when we can't buy a house because of our now-trashed credit (which hurts a lot, when I think of all the work I did getting it back into really good shape before we moved) and we can't rent because we have four cats. My hope right now is craigslist, and that I might find a kindred spirit that would be willing to rent to us regardless of our credit and animal situation. It'll require having a lot of money saved up for massive deposits, but I'm still trying to stay optimistic.
I'm trying to keep busy to keep me from thinking about things. Maybe in a way, it's trying to escape from reality, but considering I'm already starting to have panic attacks, I need to get away from it. My friend Lisa (that I met through scuba diving) and her fiance are taking ballroom dancing lessons, and Nick and I came to the Halloween party at the dance studio last night. I had a ton of fun and got talked into belly dancing on Mondays (by a girl who's bigger than me, so I won't feel like a fat bubbling fool at least) and I'm going to see about getting Fridays off instead of Saturdays at work so I can go to ballroom dance on Friday nights. I really enjoyed the little bit of swing dancing and waltzing that we did today - especially since I was wearing my Belle dress, which flared so nicely on the turns! I've determined that ballroom lessons will require a fluffy skirt each week for exactly that reason. :) At $3 a lesson on a drop-in basis, it'll be a good cheap diversion - as well as good practice for Lisa and Woody's wedding next year. And belly dancing is reported to be a killer workout.
The Belle costume, by the way, turned out fantastic. I'm very happy with it and will post pictures of the complete ensemble in here as soon as I pull the rest off my camera. I even found comfy yellow shoes to go with it! And they're crocs-type shoes (the kind that are a full-shoe, they remind me of Mary Janes) so I can wear them in normal life too, even though they're bright yellow. They may become my dance shoes for now because they worked really well for dancing.
I need to go make sure Nick's up and ready to get out of here now.
I ended up dropping two more classes off my schedule because I'm not doing well in them and I'd rather have the W than the F. I'm retaking both of them next quarter, but in an online format so I don't have to worry about actually GOING to class, which is really my weakest point with these classes. I'll have a full course load and it'll be completely online classes, but I'm splitting it up by taking one class during the two week 'mini-term' before full term starts. That leaves me 3 classes during the actual term so I don't overload myself. If it goes well, I may do a lot more online classes. I looked at Ohio State's course bulletin and found a couple classes I can take online there too.
Depression is getting the better of me lately. I don't understand why, when I dealt with it so well during my 3 year hiatus from school, it's now come back so strongly when I'm back in classes. I'm looking at some natural and holistic treatment methods because I know I need to do something about it and refuse to take any medications that screw with my head because of the incident with Paxil in high school. On top of the sudden onset of my depression, I've now had two panic attacks. I've never had a panic attack in my life until recently. I had my first one back in April that led to a trip to the emergency room, and then another one at King's Island last weekend. The first one, I have no clue what brought it on, but the most recent one I know was brought on by uncontrollable coughing from the fake smoke in the park and I was having serious problems breathing. No emergency room this time, but I did get to ride across the park in their little mini-ambulance to the first aid station so that I could get out of the smoke. Hopefully if I get my depression under control I can also control the panic attacks.
I tend to agree with my mom, they may just be a result of the financial stress we've been dealing with lately. Between the knowledge that most of my bills haven't been paid in upwards of 3 months and the fact anywhere from 10 to 20 different collectors are calling my cell phone daily (literally, I've left my phone in my car before and come back to find 47 missed calls, none of them people I care to talk to) it's starting to get really overwhelming, to the point I'm honestly considering bankruptcy if we can hold onto the car through it. It disgusts me even to think of the fact a year ago, every one of our credit cards was paid off. But, extended unemployment will do that to you. Amazingly, we haven't missed a car payment by more than a couple days so far, but that's because we make it our top priority, followed by putting gas in the cars and paying the cell phone bill. The credit cards get paid when we have the money, and medical bills and collection notices just get tossed in a drawer and ignored because I have no other choice. The fact gas prices have dropped to half what the were 2 months ago I think will make a big impact, though. Paying $50 to fill up both cars is a hell of a lot better than $100. I actually did a dance at the gas station when I filled up the VUE two days ago from the e-light to full and it took less than $30.
I know we'll pull through it eventually, but it worries the hell out of me. I don't know how we're going to move, when we can't buy a house because of our now-trashed credit (which hurts a lot, when I think of all the work I did getting it back into really good shape before we moved) and we can't rent because we have four cats. My hope right now is craigslist, and that I might find a kindred spirit that would be willing to rent to us regardless of our credit and animal situation. It'll require having a lot of money saved up for massive deposits, but I'm still trying to stay optimistic.
I'm trying to keep busy to keep me from thinking about things. Maybe in a way, it's trying to escape from reality, but considering I'm already starting to have panic attacks, I need to get away from it. My friend Lisa (that I met through scuba diving) and her fiance are taking ballroom dancing lessons, and Nick and I came to the Halloween party at the dance studio last night. I had a ton of fun and got talked into belly dancing on Mondays (by a girl who's bigger than me, so I won't feel like a fat bubbling fool at least) and I'm going to see about getting Fridays off instead of Saturdays at work so I can go to ballroom dance on Friday nights. I really enjoyed the little bit of swing dancing and waltzing that we did today - especially since I was wearing my Belle dress, which flared so nicely on the turns! I've determined that ballroom lessons will require a fluffy skirt each week for exactly that reason. :) At $3 a lesson on a drop-in basis, it'll be a good cheap diversion - as well as good practice for Lisa and Woody's wedding next year. And belly dancing is reported to be a killer workout.
The Belle costume, by the way, turned out fantastic. I'm very happy with it and will post pictures of the complete ensemble in here as soon as I pull the rest off my camera. I even found comfy yellow shoes to go with it! And they're crocs-type shoes (the kind that are a full-shoe, they remind me of Mary Janes) so I can wear them in normal life too, even though they're bright yellow. They may become my dance shoes for now because they worked really well for dancing.
I need to go make sure Nick's up and ready to get out of here now.