So Much for the Afterglow

Andy is mad at me right now, I think. My birthday was pretty awesome, but since then I've been feeling down. I just now got home from a decidedly lackluster evening of attempting to educate completely apathetic adults. I would have killed for a clove cigarette (sorry- cigarillo) but none of the package stores are open when I'm driving home, so I settled for Camel Bold Crush things when I stopped for gas-- I was on empty.

And I'm on empty in my brain as well. Terrible segue. I got home, didn't say much, snagged my laptop and promptly headed to the back porch to type. It's actually quite nice- about 78 degrees (according to my car at least), overcast enough to make the barely waxing moonlight filter lightly on my computer just so that I can see what I am doing.

What am I doing? Meh. I had this whole idea planned out about trying to explain how I feel about birthdays, and my ideas about getting older, family, obligations, friends, life...

I had a good birthday. I usually don't. The subject of how shitty my birthdays usually are is a subject I have covered far too many times. I don't feel like it anymore. The past few have been good though. The addition of Andy in my life seems to have a lot to do with it. But I digress again. Saturday was very nice. Very calm, no annoyances, just friends and family eating and chatting and such. I like that. My brain was clear for one nice day, a clarity that lasted for most of Sunday as well. Then 27 set in.

27 has been my "lucky number" for as long as I can remember. It has a lot of significance to me; too many to mention here. It should have been an age I was looking forward too, right? Meh again. Then comes 28, 9, 30. I don't fear or abhor getting older. I guess I just wanted to feel happy and clear like I did  for most of the day on the 6th. And yeah, it's only bee a day and a half. Today just was a bad... something. It's not like I didn't sleep well. In fact, I sleep too well. By too well, I mean too much. Too long. Like my body wanted to compensate for that year that had suddenly been tacked onto my life.

Rolling this almost spent cigarette around in my hand, I'm just losing sense of direction. My husband is confused and disapproving, my dogs are confused as to why I am sitting out here and not in there with them, and even I am at a loss. I'm tired. I could sleep. But I won't.

Maybe here is a good place to state something about cigarettes and me. I seem to buy a pack a year, and it lasts me that whole year. It's not a coincidence that the pack in question is bought in late summer. I probably have about 2-3 dozen lighters around the house, packed up, shoved away, stowing in the nooks and crannies to convince myself that I have them in case I want to light a candle in and given part of the house and have a lighter within reach. Really though, it's because I stop to buy cigarettes and I need one right then and there, so I buy a lighter at the same time. So there's that.

Am I having a down day? Probably. Will I feel better tomorrow? Meh once again. I might. My car smells REALLY bad, so I'd like to at least clean it out. That's a project I can look forward to, right? Perhaps in another mood on a different day, I would joke about how the only thing in my car is everything I've ever owned. It's quite disgusting. But then, so is my mood when I am like this. I lose all will to take care of myself and don't want to be bothered. I hope to whoever that it won't get worse with age, but I know it will. It has. One day I'll wake up covered in bed sores and cat hair, my own hair shaven off because it's gotten to be too much to take care of anymore, and think: "You said you'd stop this. But you haven't."

It's that sneaky hate spiral. We all have ups and downs, but my downs are just getting worse and worse. The ups aren't as gratifying as they used to be. I crave companionship then push it away. I desire the ability to cry and show some semblance of human (non-cunty) emotion, but just... can't. I'm no different from anyone else. I know other people feel this way every day, and some don't even have the happiness to look forward to. Who am I to sit and whine about this? I'm Shaylin. Hi.

I'm not glowing. I'm fading. I am not a vibrant, intelligent, intuitive young woman anymore. I was once. I, I, I. Maybe I should start focusing on something else.

I think (I GAHHH IIII*) that might be my new goal for this week. Epiphany!


*As an English teacher, I say it's okay to use "I" in moderation, but all of my damn blog posts have "I" in them at least a few dozen times. IIIIIIII! I is not a bad word. You're the schmuck who's reading this shit anyway. Right?

Fuck my body

And not in the literal sense.

The pompholyx is taking over my entire body. I'd put up pictures, but I'm not sure I'm ready to share them yet. They are quite disgusting. I don't know why I keep taking said pictures, but I've got a camera-roll's worth of them on my phone.

Andy got paid today, so we could go grocery shopping. Groceries consisted of milk, bread, and about 20 packages of ramen. It's a good thing that Andy and I both like ramen. And frozen pizza. Does anyone else remember when Totino's pizza were $.98? Those bastards are $1.25 now. Too expensive for us these days. However, Mr. P's makes an acceptable 98 cent pizza, which we stock up on every time we get paid.

Unfortunately, we're overdrafted about $150. I had to go to the Dr. today because my fucking arms and face and neck, chest, legs, tummy, etc are itching like motherfuckers and becoming a bit of a concern. That's $40. $40 to have my nurse practitioner tell me she didn't know what it was so she would treat it like contact dermatitis (allergies basically) and prescribed some bastard ass pills I have to take 6 times a day for the first 4 days, then on some crazy fucking cycle adding up to 48 pills over 12 days. Also, some cream that is supposed to help with the itching.. oh and cost $40 more. Awesome. Plus I needed a refill on my zoloft, bringing our grand total for the day (including groceries) to roughly $175.

Andy's paycheck is mostly gone, then. I get paid tomorrow, but we have a mortgage payment to take care of before we get paid again, so we'll have about $200 for bills until 2 weeks from now. Too bad our bills due within the next 14 days are roughly $600-700. Hoo boy. Creative problem solving at it's best. What can go? What can we be late on? How long are the grace periods for each individual biller? I would start selling body parts/organs but I'm tainted with ebola aids apparently, so who wants that?

On a slightly brighter note, I might have a cleaning lady gig coming my way. I am excellent at cleaning other people's homes. Need someone to clean up for you? Fuck yeah, I'll do it! At this point I would accept payment in the form of food. Need your laundry done? That'll cost you a couple of potatoes. Dishes? No problem. Give me some cheese. Nothing fancy either really, just the yellow kind would do. Fuck, even American processed cheese product would work.

Andy's job opportunity seems to be slipping away. I'm at the point where I feel like I am drowning. He was told when he had his interview 2 weeks ago that they would call him last week. They didn't call. he called them, the guy he interviewed with specifically said he would call Andy on Monday (the 1st) and set up a follow-up interview. Andy heard nothing until he called them AGAIN today and the guy on the phone said some other governing body set up the second interviews and he should hear something next week.

For fuck's sake.

Edited to add: the 6-a-day meds I am on have the following side effects:

"Difficulty sleeping; feeling of a whirling motion; increased appetite; increased sweating; indigestion; mood changes; nervousness."


That's like every day of my life. Maybe my body naturally produces it and I'm a medical miracle.

Thin Skin: Day 2

My ankle is getting much better. I've been sleeping with a bandage and neosporin on every night and this morning it's gotten considerably smaller and less threatening-looking.

There is, however, a new spot of concer: the top of my foot. I am trying like hell not to itch it, but if I'm not really paying attention, it'll be a big scab soon.

My head itches as well. I'm not sure now if I am having a weird reaction to my own sweat or something, but there is definitely a link between moving into a house without A/C and this sudden onset of bumps and itchiness. All I know is my body is angry.

I haven't done any lotion or anything today, as I slept from 7 am-12 pm, then did something that, concerningly, I cannot remember, then helped Andy get ready for his interview.

He has been working at Wal-Mart since August 2005. Before then, he only had ever worked at McDonald's for a year or so. Bless him, he'd not been to an interview for 6 years. It should go without saying that I sincerely hope he gets this job. Our income would double and we would have full benefits. Not to mention, he wouldn't be in the customer service industry anymore (the job is working on the vehicles for Radford Transit), and the man who interviewed him indicated that they would work on no more than 10 vehicles a day.

Fingers crossed. I can handle my own issues. My energy is best spent on helping Andy get a new job.

Thin Skin: Day 1

Can you count the number of open wounds on your body? I can't.

I'm not talking about thin skin in the emotional sense, but rather in the epidermal sense. Needless to say, it sucks. I have a form of eczema- Pompholyx - that attacks my fingers on a regular basis, and I am beginning to suspect I have other forms/presentations of the affliction as well. I itch all the time. There is never a waking moment in which I am not aware of something irritating my skin.

I have a rather large wound on my ankle, which is a result of my scratching and scratching and scratching. At first I thought it was flea bites, to which I am very allergic, but it's been happening all over without any sign of bites as of late.

It's awful.

I fear the itch. 

Last night, in a fit of desperation, I ran across the road to Wal-Mart and got some Gold Bond Aloe and E body wash along with some Oatmeal and something else lotion by Aveeno. I've used the lotion twice, which alleviated my itchiness for a little while at least. I've just now used the body wash and hoping to see improvement over the coming days. 

I won't lament over my lost writing mojo

Or apologise for not writing more. I know that no one out there reads this, anyway. I often have too many thoughts to properly put down in writing.

My Comp I students googled me the other day and freaked out that I had so much information about myself on the internet. Should this be a concern? I feel like it really isn't. I did clean up facebook a little and also my google+. Who knows?

Of course I had about a million things to say, and now I don't. We moved into our new house. We've been here for a month and a half. We acquired another dog- Amelia- whose breed we still aren't sure of.

I'm teaching at ITT Tech now. Hopefully, I will still have a home at Radford come Fall, as well. I keep having nightmares that I work at Lowe's and I can't ever remember that I have a job, and only show up when I want. The latest one featured me not wanting to go to work to pick up my last paycheck because of how many times I have skipped work. Not terribly interesting, I know.

Speaking of money, Andy and I are strapped like never before. We have remaining bills from the apartment that seem to just keep coming. I haven't been able to pay my student loans in full for 2 months. We still owe my mother the full amount that she loaned us. Now we have found out that we are going to end up owing our contractor about $300 after the final draw is done, when we were expecting $300 ish back. That's if the lead based paint test comes back clean. If not, I'm going to have to pin the next $500 for another test on the contractor, as it was his job to do the abatement properly.

I'm much more tired than usual. Maybe I need stronger meds. It probably wouldn't hurt to see the doctor this summer. But that's $50 plus whatever she prescribes me that we definitely can't afford. I hate that my credit score has become so much more important to me than my health.

On the topic of trying to save money, I made a garden. I have a shit ton of cucumbers and turnips growing. The cukes are coming out very bitter (probably due to the dryness and hotness we have been experiencing lately). I think 7 or so carrots have sprouted. We have a watermelon or two growing, and some tomatoes. My freezer is full of blackberries and sliced peaches. I have a dozen half-pint jars full of mulberry jelly. I'm pretty damn stoked that I've found so much that is edible in my back yard. Furthermore, we have grapes back there as well, which we will have to wait and see what variety they turn out to be. Other than our mortgage, food seems to be our biggest expense.

Here's to the remainder of summer, and all hopes that the rest of my garden (peppers, cantaloupes and peppers) will get their act together and start growing. Hopefully I will blog again before I turn 27.

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