kittens

Daily Post 192: Post-D&D

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D&D was fun. I enjoyed being able to roleplay my character. We’re playing The Ghosts of SaltMarsh campaign, which I know a little bit about. Jon played through it with one of his groups. It will be interesting to see how our experience ends up different than his.

We gamed at the house of the husband and wife that Ox and I met the week before. The beginning was slow. We were waiting for other people to show up. The husband and wife have a daughter who ended up creating a character to play with us. She’s only 14-ish, so being around a bunch of adults she doesn’t know was a little awkward for her. I think she’ll come out of her shell more as we continue playing and she learns not only the mechanics of the game but the character she wants to be.

Once everyone was there we went around the table and introduced our characters. We figured out where we would be on the map and then began the game. We eventually all met up and after some discussion, agreed to check out the haunted house outside of town. A dead body was found washed up on the shore and it’s believed the house is somehow involved.

There were several times where the other players were having a hard time breathing because they were laughing so hard at what my character was doing or saying. God, it was so fun.

We didn’t get pizza. That was a little rough. Ox and I had stopped for snacks, but we didn’t really eat much in regards to dinner. Better mistakes next time.

As we were leaving I thanked the DM and his wife for such a good time. We’re scheduled to meet next Wednesday to continue our campaign. I’m thinking about offering to cook something for the group to eat. Not sure what, but I think it would be a nice gesture. They’re providing the space for us to play. I feel like it’s right for everyone else to provide food and drink.

Anywho, after gaming, Ox and I headed home. I called Jon back and talked to him during the ride. He had called earlier in the day while I was writing and I had said I would call him back, but then got distracted and then D&D was going on so I couldn’t talk on the phone… so yeah, I chatted with him for a bit. Ox drove to the house to get the stuff he needed for work the next day. We went to the apartment. He instantly fell asleep. I stayed up until 12:30-ish trying to fall asleep but not being very successful.

Today started decently enough. I woke up at six and stayed in bed, desperately trying to go back to sleep. At 7am I gave up since the kittens obviously did not care how tired I was or was not. I fed them and took my meds. I put the D&D stuff away so it wasn’t on the kitchen table anymore. Most of the hour I had to kill I spent reading Chapter 3 in my sociology book.

Around 8, I showered, got dressed, packed up, then headed to school. I was early so I continued reading. As class began I realized I didn’t have a pen, but was thankfully able to borrow one from a classmate.

We turned in our reference lists at the beginning. While the instructor went through them, the class listened to a presentation. It was a case study presented on NPR called New Baboon. It was pretty interesting. I took three pages worth of notes. After the presentation, we divided up into groups to answer some questions. We had just started discussing our answers as a class when we hit the 10:50 mark and class ended. We’re going to pick up the discussion on Tuesday.

All of my sources were approved, so that’s nice. I would like to start plucking away at the paper on Sunday. I had to run to catch up with the classmate who had loaned me her pen. She had forgotten about it. It made me feel good to remember to give it back.

I drove home after talking to Ox on the phone for a bit. I finished reading chapter 3 once I was at the apartment. I took the test associated with it. Got a 93. I’m ok with that. I typed up my notes from class and got them in my binder. I read the handout of another case study our instructor wants us to analyze.

At that point, I gave up trying to do more with school. The kittens were doing everything in the power to drive me crazy. Jumping on the stove. Stepping on my keyboard. Terrorizing the shower curtain…

I took a break, stepping outside to call Ox again while having a cigarette. I felt a little better after being outside. It’s sunny today. Not overly warm, but a nicer day than the previous two.

I ended up crawling under my blanket and napping for a bit with the kittens who thankfully settled down with me.

And that’s where I’m at so far today. I woke up. I called in the refill for my Synthroid since I have eight pills left. That will be ready for pick up tomorrow but I’ll most likely wait until Sunday to get it. I hope there’s not a copay for this one as well. That would be amazing. I’m not holding my breath though. I think it will be roughly another $40.

My to-do list has a few other tasks I would like to maybe do, but I’m still on the tired side of the energy spectrum and I haven’t done much in the way of coloring or cross-stitching since Saturday I believe. D&D sort of took over for a bit with character creation.

I don’t know… I’ll figure out the rest of my day, but for now, I do know that I’m done with school and I don’t have work obligations until tomorrow morning. The rest of the day is mine to do whatever I want.

Daily Post 182: Small Steps

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It’s been a while since I’ve written. A lot has happened during the lapse in posts.

The kittens are doing well. Saber gained over half a pound by the time we saw the vet again. Switching back to wet food and adding kitten formula to it helped. Both her and Dagger were big enough to get their first round of vaccinations so that process is underway. They have another appointment in two weeks. It’s crazy to see how much they’ve grown since I first got them roughly two months ago.

Yesterday I got an actual litter box for them. At first, they were so small they wouldn’t have been able to get in and out of a normal litter box. I had gotten an aluminum turkey baking tray; one of the disposable ones you can get from Walmart. I cut one of the edges down and wrapped the corners in duct tape. It worked really well as a litter box. The only downside was the kittens would track litter all over the hardwood floors in the bedroom.

The new litter box is a hooded litter box, so even if they go to town trying to find buried treasure in their litter, they can’t make as much of a mess. They seem to be doing well with it. I haven’t seen any messes to clean up in the 24 hours that they’ve had the new box.

So yeah. They’re still super adorable and lovable. They don’t run around as much at 2 am which I’m grateful for.

The spare money I had from my school refund ended up mainly going to new tires on the car. I wasn’t expecting that expense. But when the guy changing my oil came out and told me that my tires sucked and needed to be replaced I didn’t feel like I had many options. Winter is going to be bad this year. It didn’t seem smart to go through another icy, snowy season with shit tires. As logically sound and responsible of a decision it was, I really didn’t want to spend that $500, though. At least I had the money to do it rather than knowing something needed to be done and being unable to afford it.

Because of the unforeseen tire expense, the credit card is still where it was. No massive dent made in that area. Blah…

It’s getting darker earlier and days are already pretty chilly. I’ve been taking vitamin D gummies for about a week now. I haven’t had the AC running. Instead, I’ve been leaving the windows open. I’m hoping that makes rent significantly cheaper for the next few months. Maybe I can use the money I save on electricity to make a little more progress on the card.

I’m still plucking away at the apartment. The things I ordered from Amazon came in. The cubical isn’t exactly what I was hoping it would be, but it works and I don’t mind it. I love my coat rack. A new store opened in Lincoln; At Home. They have an amazing selection of stuff. Ox and I went to check it out last week after having our “date lunch” together before grocery shopping. I actually saw one of my patients there, which led to a really warm and connective conversation during his treatment the next day. I got spatulas last week while Ox and I were at the store since I didn’t have any for the apartment. They are light teal-ish blue and silicon which I love. This week I got a set of three glassware containers for my lunches along with a can opener that matches the spatulas.

I want that to sort of be my reward for doing well with school. Each week I do well I can get one kitchen thing. I feel like that’s a good reward system that also gives capacity and efficiency to my life.

On the subject of the kitchen, not sure if it wrote about it before, but Ox got me a Ninja Foodi a little while ago. I’ve been trying to use it once a week. This week I converted my Chicken Taco Soup recipe into a pressure cooker recipe and it turned out great. The Ninja saved me so much time. I love it.

I also recently got another portable filing box. It’s where I keep all my important paper stuff. My “box of important things”. The one I had was getting really full; mostly with tax stuff since you’re supposed to hold on to them for so many years. When it had been just lonely me, it wasn’t bad. But holding on to Ox’s stuff too and all the information for the three cars… it was making things a bit cramped in the original box. So I got a second one to spread things about a bit more. I feel better about it. I went through all of my papers and threw out what wasn’t needed anymore, rearranged things, updated others. It felt nice to go through and touch all of those papers again, to really know what I have and where it’s at.

Cleaning the apartment should be on my list today but I haven’t really figured out how I want today to go, not yet at least, so that’s up in the air.

School is going well. I think my lowest grade is a 93 or a 91. I met with my nursing advisor this past Tuesday. She’s super nice. We got along really well. She, like my current instructor, used to work in dialysis, so we’re able to share in those experiences. She feels I’m in a good spot. I have a lot of support in my life to help me get through school. She feels I have a high level of self-awareness and that I am already addressing issues or at least aware of what potential issues will be in the future and have mitigated them as much as possible for the time being.

I started going to counseling again. That’s something that is provided by the school. I like my counselor so far. She’s also extremely nice. The first session went really well. I basically explained everything about the past three and a half years. Mom’s death, switching careers, leaving Orlando and living with Ox, getting my own apartment and starting school, work and all of the accomplishments and stress that I’ve had with it. The session yesterday wasn’t as productive as I would have liked. I had a lot of paperwork to fill out so that was roughly half the session. I’m hoping the next session goes a bit better and we can start to focus on my grief and stressors in my life.

On the topic of stressors, I’m through the rough patch with work. I did my four days in a row and then my final three in a row last week. This week I’m doing what will now be my “normal” schedule of Monday, Friday, and Saturday. My FA and I talked pretty extensively about it and eventually, she agreed to try it out. It’s going to take time to recover from the burnout and then more time to adjust to the weirdness of having a consistent schedule. It’s something we talked about in counseling yesterday. It will most likely take me about a month to really find a groove and a routine that works for me.

So far I’m finding that I do better with school work earlier in the day. I like having evenings to myself or to go over to the house and cook dinner for the family. Making flashcards isn’t bad at night, but night time isn’t the best time for doing heavy reading and such.

I made egg roll bowls last night for dinner. It was fairly well-received which is good because I really like that recipe. Super quick and easy and also tasty.

Anywho… yeah… a lot of talking, a lot of studying, and a lot of “just let me get through this last stint of BS.”

Fortunately, I made it through. I’m still doing well in school and, in general, I’m pretty ok with how life is going. I’m taking small steps in several areas to make things better. Since the sun is finally starting to come up, I guess I’ll go for now and figure out what it is I want to get done with the day.

Daily Post 180: A Small Catch-Up

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Thursday ended up being a smooth day at work. I was on the floor with my FA. Pretty much all of my tasks were caught up. We’ve agreed to work through some of the supplies in the stock room to free up space. That makes the weird organization-junkie part of my brain happy. I can’t wait to have that space back. /happy dance

We got to talk about how I was doing with school and the work schedule. I said that working three days has been do-able so far, but this coming week I’m working four days and I’m worried about it. I said I would prefer to only do three while I’m in school.

I’m thinking about talking to the other tech and seeing if she would be interested in letting me work on Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Yes. Every Saturday. Last week seemed to work well schedule-wise. I had days off right after class to sit and study and do assignments. I didn’t have to wait so long in between because of work. It would let me do Adventure’s League on Wednesdays without worrying about rushing to get there or having to leave early because of work the next day. Every Thursday I could do the kickboxing class.

There’s a lot of pros to counter the one “always working Saturday” drawback. My FA said to think long and hard about it before offering something like that to the other tech. She said once I give up Saturdays I’m most likely never getting them back.

As sad as it is to say, I don’t remember a whole lot else about Thursday. Ox and I did our Darebee. I took my laundry over and got that going. I ate dinner…

Oh! There was sexy time. Sort of feel like a jerk for forgetting that… -_-;

The main thing I remember about Thursday was the fact that I didn’t have to go back to work on Friday.

I didn’t see Ox Friday morning. It’s the first morning in a while where we haven’t seen each other off to work. I forgot to set my alarm and he was running behind by the time he called and woke me up. When woke back up, I spent pretty much the rest of the morning in a low-grade depression. I was able to get stuff done, but I was tired and sad and everything took more effort than it should have. Everything was borderline painful. I felt emotionally fragile and raw. I knew there would be tears eventually, I just didn’t know when.

Eventually, I drove into town to have lunch with Ox. We put gas in both cars while we were there. He asked how I was doing and I told him that I hurt but that I was still doing things and not letting the hurt win. I said I didn’t know why I felt the way I did but that I was sad and I was trying really hard. We talked about my feelings for a little while.

A lot has happened in a short period of time. I started nursing school. I graduated from DSS. I passed my first nursing test… All of those things poke at my wound and I haven’t been doing a whole lot in the “tending to my grief” department. I think Friday was the first day since my nursing test where I didn’t have obligations spurring me to keep going. I could take the time to let the emotions have their time, to truly feel them, accept them, and let them go.

Ox and I ended up having a pretty awesome lunch at Village Inn. We meal planned out the next week, which is going to suck. I still need to see if someone is interested in taking my C2 shift or splitting it with me. I don’t want to do four in a row. >.<;

After lunch, we went across the parking lot to Super Saver’s to do the grocery shopping then we went home. By then the kids were at the house so I didn’t stay very long. I came back to the apartment to put the food away and to keep studying. Eventually, I went to sleep.

One thing I don’t think I’ve mentioned… Ox got me an iHome for the apartment. Or rather, he found one and brought it home to see if it still worked. It does. I’ve been using it to play thunderstorm sounds while I sleep or the radio while I’m gone so the kittens have something to listen to other than silence. I like it. You can even dim the display so it’s not blindly bright the whole night.

So yeah, Friday was a good day. A connective day even if it was slow and rough to get started.

Today has been decent but also a little rough.

I woke up fairly early and was able to start in on my to-do list. I typed up recipes. I edited the to-do sheets I’ve been using. I really like them. I’m glad I’ve put them back into my routine. One thing I added was a gratitude line.

It’s something I got the idea for in class on Tuesday. We had to do an evaluation of our strengths and weaknesses. Areas I am weak in include hope, gratitude, and perseverance. Ouch… but at the same time… not wrong. …

With my grief, sometimes things do feel hopeless and pointless and sometimes I don’t have much will to persevere. What’s the point in persevering when everything is pointless? And what is there to be hopeful or grateful about when everyone is going to die?

Yeah… some pretty fucked up mentalities right there…

So I’m working on that. From now on, each day I have to write one thing I am grateful for. One thing that I can think about or look at throughout the day to remind me that there are things that I appreciate about my life. Today’s gratitude was for Ox and his love.

Around 7:20 I pulled myself away from my to-do to shower. The kittens has a vet visit at 8 that I needed to be ready for. They were supposed to get their first round of vaccinations today. Lil’ Ox was up bright and early to go with Ox and me. She’s totally enchanted with how tiny the kittens are.

We found out Dagger is actually a boy.

We also found out Saber has lost weight. I explained how for a little bit it didn’t seem like she was eating well so we switched her back to wet food only. The vet said there were sores in her mouth and that she was concerned about feline leukemia and feline aids. She said the test wouldn’t take very long if I was ok with them drawing a blood sample from Saber.

I said ok. They took her from the room and I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited…

Dagger, Lil’ Ox, and Ox were in the room with me but all I could think about was what if the tests came back positive? What if the kindest choice would be to stop Saber’s suffering now? What about Dagger being alone? What about me and my abandonment issues and all of the fear I feel about forming attachments because living things die?

It sucked. Hardcore. It was not how the morning was supposed to go. They were both supposed to be healthy kittens getting their first shots. I wasn’t supposed to be facing the possibility of one of them being terminally ill and losing her before I even really got to establish a bond with her; before she even really had a chance to live.

The test came back negative but they weren’t able to get much blood for the test since Saber is still so small. We’re switching her to a different type of wet food; one higher in calories to try to help her gain weight. It’s a softer wet food to boot. I’ve already noticed her eating even more than she was before, which was an improvement to what she was doing after the first vet visit. I’m also going to be adding kitten formula to her food at the vet’s recommendation.

She’s nearly half a pound behind Dagger in weight. That doesn’t seem like much until you hold both of them in your hands and you feel how fragile and weak she seems in comparison to Dagger. The vet said there’s nothing we can do about the sores in her mouth other than feeding her soft food, which we’re doing. Hopefully, they’re in the process of healing. The vet said it could have been from their mother sort of disowning them and switching to solid food too soon.

At the moment all I can do is keep an eye on her and take her back if I feel like things aren’t getting better. She seems to be doing ok. Still super cuddly. Still purrs and snuggles up with me and Dagger for nap time. Just sort of a shitty start to the morning.

Once we were done with the vet I took the kittens to the house so Papa Ox could spend some time with them. After a little bit, I took them back to the apartment. I plucked away at chores a bit more before going back to the house for breakfast.

I tried baking a keto blueberry cheesecake recipe I found, but it didn’t go well. That was pretty disappointing. Oh well. You win some you lose some. I cross-stitched for a couple of episodes of Black Clover. I came back to the apartment and napped. I got up and studied for my test tomorrow. I ran to the gas station and got a few Bangs since I’m out. Swung by the house to see Ox one last time tonight and to get my sheet from the dryer because oh yeah, I woke up to cat yak in bed this morning. Very not cool…

It was Ornery Ox’s birthday today along with at least two other family members that I know of. They all went to do birthday stuff. I don’t feel bad about not going. I enjoyed my silent time napping and studying. I cooked chicken fajitas in my Ninja. They turned out alright. Not amazing so I most likely will try a different recipe next time, but I’ll be able to get through this week’s lunches without suffering too much.

There’s one more recipe I want to make for the coming week, but I’m most likely going to save it for tomorrow. It’s already getting pretty late and I’m tired again.

Tomorrow should be an alright day. I’m looking forward to breakfast and a cup of coffee and relaxing before taking my test and starting on the next chapter. I’m finding a routine and I think I like it.

Daily Post 173: Post Emotions and Kittens

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This isn’t a letter to mom. This is me writing so some of those swirling emotions inside me can potentially find a way out. I should have known today would go like this. It’s the first day in a while where I’ve had the chance to slow down and breath and because of that, all the emotions are welling up to the surface. I’m surprised it took until now to get to where I’m at. Silent tears running down my cheeks as I sit in front of the computer thinking about the mountain of everything that’s happened in the past few months.

Like normal, I don’t even know where to start.

I suppose I can start with the cutest thing first. I adopted two farm kittens this past Monday. My boss knew someone who wasn’t able to keep them and needed to find a home for them. So they now have a home with me. They’re sisters and they get to stay together. I don’t care that my lease says I can’t have them. I’ve seen the guy across from me come out to his balcony and his cat follows him out. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I accept whatever consequences there may be, including being evicted. They’re worth it.

They had their first vet appointment this morning. They were given a dewormer since mama cat was an outdoor cat and they spent their first six weeks outside eating who knows what bugs they were playing with. The vet said they sound fine and that there aren’t any signs of health issues so far. From the behavior I described to him he says there’s currently nothing to worry about. They go back in two weeks for their first vaccinations.

Their names are Saber and Dagger. Saber is the greyish one, and Dagger is the brownish tiger one. They’re my snuggle buddies. They both love curling up with me in bed. Saber is more reserved than Dagger. Dagger’s going to be the hellion of the house. I can already see it.

Thursday was my last day for DSS Leadership. I had to do my About Me slide. I know when I do it in the future it will be much different. It will have pictures of the kittens on there. It will have my DSS Leadership group picture on there. It will have a lot of different things there because I’ll be further in my journey.

This time it had a lot about mom in it. I talked about how it wasn’t until her death that I felt like an adult and how sometimes life throws you a curveball that you could never be prepared for. I talked about how I went to therapy because I wasn’t equipped to handle everything in my life on my own.

It was pretty emotional. I told my classmates at the beginning of my presentation that life is a lot like a heartbeat. You have ups and downs and that my story was going to have a really low down but there were positives on the other side of it so I needed them to stay with me through the hard parts.

My FA gave me a hand made give with my personal credo on it. “Show up to battle and fight for what you believe in.” I’m going to hang it on my front door so I see it every time I leave the apartment; my reminder to be the type of person I want to be. I had tears in my eyes as she gave it to me.

She also told me that I was chosen to write an article for the October edition of the Tech Talk news letter. It’s the letter that gets sent to literally every PCT in the company, and FA, and who knows who else. Literally, thousands of people are going to get this email with my article in it. It’s an “About Me” article since I guess someone somewhere feels like I should share my store. It’s humbling and intimidating and I’ve already written my rough draft and I’m emotionally exhausted from everything. Work, DSS, writing, studying for school because that’s going on at the same time…

I feel honored for the opportunity to write about my experience so far. I get to say thank you to everyone in my Orlando clinic. I get to include them in my journy and show how the company really is more of a village, a community, rather than a company. At least it can be if you let it.

School is going well so far. I feel fairly on top of my assignments. I finished the flashcards for chapter three in my Human Structure class. I want to take the test tomorrow, but with how little I’ve studied in comparison to what I wanted to do… I’m not sure.

Being sad and tired is factoring into not studying as effectively as I normally would.

I have the shopping list written out, but the thought of actually going to the store right now is draining. Who knows. Maybe I’ll feel up to doing it later tonight once it’s dark and hardly anyone is out and about.

Jon survived the hurricane. Thankfully it downgraded pretty severally before reaching Florida. He was on call at the hospital which got him a ton of overtime. Glad it was fairly uneventful for him.

The next few weeks at work are going to be pretty chill. I only work three days each week. THREE! And only one of those days is going to be at Cap City. I can totally handle that. I want to try to add structure back into my life. I want to figure out a class at the gym do each day I’m not working. I want to do the Adventure’s League at Hobby Town with Ox.

I want to figure out how to have a life again. I think that starts with building a routine. I think I want to go through and to the 30-day challenge again. I think that could help give me structure and focus and help me identify goals and milestones.

Oh. I did my yearly physical for my insurance. I’m .1 freaking point away from an extra $400 off my yearly premium. ONE TENTH OF A POINT! >.<; OMG

That’s so much better than what it first was three-ish years ago. It’s awesome to see that even though I feel like I haven’t made progress since last October, that I still sort of have. If I can get back on the bandwagon of going to the gym along with continuing to eat healthily I should be ridiculously phenomenal next year.

So… yeah… my numbers aren’t where I was hoping they would be at, but they’re still pretty good. Definitely healthier than where I started.

Ox and I had a small talk the other night. I asked him if he could try not smoking in front of me. I’ve been doing really well with not smoking. Not 100% awesome since I’ve had a few drags here and there. I had a whole one with New RN Friday when we worked together. But compared to the over half a pack I was doing a short two weeks ago… I feel like I’m doing pretty freaking awesome.

It’s hard to not want to smoke with the other girls in my LPN class. God, that sounds so much like a high school thing to say, but there you go. We’re all just kids with more expensive toys.

I want to be part of the group. I want to belong and to be part of “them”. But I don’t want to smoke, so if I go and hang out with them while they’re smoking then I’m going to make things awkward. I’ll also want to smoke and that will sort of ruin the whole retiring thing. And yes, I’m going to refer to it as retiring. It was super cute. One of my DSS classmates told me to say retire instead of quit since quitting normally a bad thing.

I can’t lie, saying that I’ve retired sounds way more dignified. XD

Anywho, I’m sort of struggling on Tuesdays more because I want to have a feeling of belonging rather than because I want a cigarette. When I’m with Ox and we’re outside and his smoking it’s sort of hard, too. When we’re out grocery shopping and he has one before getting in the car… It’s hard to not feel denied. I want one, but I can’t have one, but I have to watch while someone else gets to have the thing I want and they shouldn’t share with me because we both know I really don’t want it but I do…

He said he would do his best to be better about not smoking in front of me. I’m grateful for his effort. I don’t mean to be annoying about it.

Surprisingly I don’t really know what else to type about. I sort of want to go to the store now. I feel like I have a bit of energy. I could get the shelves I want for the apartment and keep plucking away at making this feel like my little dragon den.

I guess we’ll see how the rest of the night plays out.