New Schedule

10:21 PM Edit This 0 Comments »
Doug started his new job on Tuesday and it has made for hectic times. I drove him on for the first three days so he could get his bus/train pass and schedual figured out. This meant that we all needed to be up at 4am. This is now our life. Suddenly we are forced into being morning people. It's only 10:30 now but it feels like 3am. 4 in the morning was a time to go to sleep, not to wake up.

There was a time in my life that I had to be to work at 5am to prep and open Arby's but I usually slept during the afternoon, work late evening and stayed up all night. I only slept about 3 hrs a day since part of the time I actually had two jobs - three jobs, I closed at Ivars and worked graveyard at Jack in the box. I dropped Ivars after a while, not really enough hours after the store manager changed. Eventually I quit Jank in the box because hated my boss's arrogance and the way they tried to suck you in to commit to a life long career at jack in the box. When I finally left Arby's after working there 2 yrs and reaching managment level I had to no show. I tried to quit several times before but always got sucked back in. I felt like I couldn't let them down and owed them something, I don't know why, it's not like they paid me anything really. I remember getting so excited about getting a raise and thanking my boss who said "don't thank me, it's the law that increased your wage, it's the minimum and all." I was desperate at the time.

I really wanted to go to school and learn something but in order to get financial aid of any sort you need to apply for federal aid. If you are under 23 and have no dependents and are not married your parents need fill out the financial aid form to make sure they don't make too much for your to qualify for any grants there might be for you. My mom refused to fill out my financial aid forms. She wouldn't even send a note saying she refused. I had no choice, I got married.

Our friend had been in a serious relationship with a girl who upon turning 21 decided she needed to sow her oats and left him. Doug said he didn't want to marry me until 1.) he finished school (I was paying our way, he only had one part time job) and 2.) I turned 21 so he could see for himself that I wasn't going to go crazy and leave him. Somewhere in there between house cleaning and delivering pizzas I landed a job at the health department in medical records.

I was making pretty good money and after a few months quit delivering pizzas, actually the same night I bought the neon, I pulled in to Domino's and said, sorry guys, I bought a brand new car so I'm going to have to quit, but I would like to order the special ;)

In April life threw us a curve ball. I was on the way home from work when I was rear ended hard. I sustained a whiplash injury and had to take time off work. I had been a temporary employee and was near three weeks off of gaining union rights. Of course this was seen as a perfect opportunity to get me out and another temp in so they wouldn't have to pay benefits.

We were planning our wedding for August, Doug didn't graduate until June and I was injured and without a job. To top it off, the pain kept getting worse not better. After a couple months I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I was devastated. There is no cure and very few treatments. I told Doug he didn't have to marry me and I could understand if he wanted to wait and see what happened with me first, after all he had not yet made the commitment for better or worse.

I had a really hard time but fought through Fibro and all. I enrolled in college the spring after we were married and took classes for the next year and a half. Something happened last quarter as they always seem to do and my professor who had exempted me from a math class, didn't turn in my paper work for the exemption or the intership I had performed and he quit teaching at the school and moved on. I was technically screwed out of my degree without two more quarters of classes and $2000 more dollars that we just didn't have.

Well, I found a job as a designer anyway, twice even and I was pretty good at it. I don't like the stress though. It's never the customers that cause the stress, it's the art directors. The customers are always amazed with what you can come up with but art directors have an exact vision of what they expect from you but can't or won't twll you what that is. Now I can read minds but only of animals, not humans so I pretty much sucked at that part. I'm a perfectionist too almost to the point of obsession and it really irks me when someone tells me to move something over half a point. Do you even realize how small half a point is? The laser printer has that much variance between sheets of paper, it just goes to show it was always a control issue.

My Fibromyalgia, or at least the drugs the doctors were prescribing me were interfering with my job too much and so I was put on permanent leave but since there isn't a blood test for Fibromyalgia it wasn't paid leave in defiantly. I basically spent two years in bed I hurt so bad. Three years of time I barely remember because of the meds they had me on. We did camp a bit and I taught my dog to pull me up so I had a little help and was not alone.

We realized that I always had more energy and felt so much better when we were camping. Sometimes my ears even stopped ringing (caused dizziness and I had to walk with a cane) I felt so alive when we were camping. We decided to move out of the city to a place were it would be like camping everyday. Here we are, we have a house in the woods. I quit all meds shortly after moving here, we couldn't afford the $400 a month for meds (that was just in deductibles) once my disability payments stopped.

We lived so far from any fast food I had to learn to cook, really cook. I found out I have food sensitivities that trigger the Fibro symptoms and if I eat them I get sick and am down fast. I take food sensitivities very seriously now. For 8 years I lived in unbearable pain and could not function, now my pain is bearable most days and I wouldn't trade my freedom to move, the aches and pains, headaches or IBS for a piece of cake or pizza, it's just not worth it. Some people have said to me that I need to live a little and lighten up, I say living is exactly what I'm doing now. Previously I was only existing and barely at that. The cookies and burgers just weren't worth it.

And back to the original subject, lack of sleep. It's making me worse again. I'm in a great deal of pain but over the 8 yrs since my diagnosis I have learned to compartmentalize pain and so I push on. Swimming is really helping. I'm so glad we joined the gym. Just half an hour in the water provides so much relief, I wish I could make it every day. I need to work harder to feed myself too, I feed the kids and by the time they are taken care of I don't have time to feed myself before they are bored and needing me for the next adventure. If I don't eat I have less energy and without still needing to push on it's like grinding break pads, they still work but not a quick as you feel comfortable and you should fear them failing at anytime.

We will get it figured out, we always do and life should get easier as we get used to the new schedule.

0 comments: