Faking It Until Making It
Monday, Jul. 01, 2019 5:47 PM

Somewhere on the great world the sun is always shining, and just so sure as you live, it will sometime shine on you. - Myrtle Reed

I have been extremely busy. Then again, since I started taking Vyvanse and Naltrexone, I come up with ways to keep myself busy. I hate sitting still and not doing something. It's almost as if I'm catching up for all the things I have missed doing while living a very lethargic existence.

On Thursday the 13th of last month, I went to see The Sound of Music with my niece Megan, sister Angie, and both my parents. It was fantastic! Standing ovation and everything. It was better than I expected, and I was glad to see that the play used a lot of the music from the movies. When I saw Sister Act last year, I was very disappointed when the music didn't match the movie's. Last Thursday, the 27th, my parents and I saw An American in Paris. It wasn't as good as The Sound of Music, but I think it's because it had a lot less singing. They did most of their communication through tap dancing and ballet. The actors were all extremely talented and I was very impressed with the dancing. I was just sad to hear less singing. The Thursday after next, we'll be going to A Chorus Line, followed by Chicago, and ending the season out with The Heights. We bought season tickets and the shows are every other Thursday.

On the 20th, I was the judge for an adult spelling bee, a benefit for one of the Catholic charities here in town. Since most of the people were dressing up like bumble bees, I wore yellow and black, as well. I was subbing for a real judge, who had an obligation that night and couldn't attend. I was able to bang a gavel when they were wrong, and say things like, "you are.... correct!" Now that I look back on it, I should have said something like, "I'm sorry but... you are CORRECT!" Maybe next year if they have me back. They would like me to come to their offices on the 8th to go over what could be improved or what went well. My parents attended, and my dad kept going on about how great the food was.

I've been cleaning up the storage area of my garage. Since I put up a wall between my third car garage and main garage, I call the storage area my basement. I started out by going through my holiday tubs. I gave a lot of the stuff to my sister to sell for me at her garage sale and made $30. That eliminated 3 tubs from the giant pile.

Then I started sorting through all my stuffed animals. I still can't seem to get rid of a single one, and I often wish I had a place to put them inside the house instead of keeping them stuffed away in plastic bins. I put all the stuffed animals that were the most important to me in one bin and marked it with a sign that says to never give them away while I'm alive. I did take my pink teddy bear from when I was born and put him inside my safe-room closet with the rest of my baby stuff.

After that, I sorted through all the pictures and was able to organize them by type and put them in a tub in the safe-room. Once I was done with that, I pulled all 7 tubs in from the garage that had random stuff in it. I have narrowed all that stuff down to three tubs. I put my yearbooks and trophies in one tub, then things like my wedding bouquet and veil in another. With a lot of the random things, I put them up around the house on display in see through cabinets. My niece did take some of my cat figurines my sister had gifted me one year for my birthday. She absolutely loves them. I told her she could keep them for as long as she wants but if she ever wanted to get rid of them, to give them back to me.

Now I'm down to the last bit of tub stuff. I was sorting through all the things people ever sent me and I recycled two garbage bags of cards and letters. I kept only the letters and cards from people I remember, and only if they meant something important to me. They all ended up in manila envelopes and went from one big tub to a half-sized tub. I'm very happy with that. I also found all my old poetry and a bunch of the short stories I've written over the years. I've been slowly putting the poetry into one document sorted by year. I plan to print them off and put them in a pretty binder. I may sort them in the binder by year, as well. As for the short stories, I'm thinking about putting them all into documents on the computer and possibly finishing them or tweaking them. You know, just in case I ever want to try publishing them or something.

I also bought a bunch of binders the other day at Office Depot. I plan to take all the ancestry.com information I've collected and put them in the binders just in case any of my nieces or nephew wish to look at their family history someday. I have some stuff from a relative of my dad's on his mother's side, but while most of the information is accurate, there is a lot of dates wrong - mostly birthdays - but that's also because the census taker or the document they found that information on is wrong. For some reason, my grandma's birthday is listed as the 22nd of October when it should be the 23rd. In such cases, I put "on gravestone" next to the date so that people who follow the leaf in the future know where the date came from. I know my grandma was born on the 23rd because I was born on the 19th and we would celebrate our birthdays together on the 21st.

There are so many projects I'm starting right now. I just hope I don't get sidetracked and never finish them. It's very easy for me to get sidetracked by other things, even though I'm on Vyvanse. Then again, I'm on the drug for binge eating - not for ADHD. Instead of going inside my house and relaxing, I do things like go pull a bunch of weeds from what I call my weed garden. I don't have a yard yet. I have a bunch of weeds instead. They are supposed to come trench a path to my irrigation well from the house, then set up the electricity to the well, and then install the sprinkler system soon. After that, I'll have the cost of putting in my landscaping. Once the landscaping is mostly done, I get the lovely task of seeding the yard. All of this is one huge expense, which I'm paying for with the money I got from the sale of the last house.

By the time all of this is done, I'll be flat broke again. Not that I'm not flat broke already. After all, I am about to be jobless since the company can no longer afford to pay me to work for them. I never did hear back from the vet's office I applied at, but I did apply for a receptionist job at the church. They are taking applications until July 5, so we shall see. Fingers crossed!

Speaking of the church, we had our last book club session for the book The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic by Matthew Kelley. It was an okay read. I enjoyed Resisting Happiness more. For some reason, the book spoke to me and possibly came into my life when I needed it most. I've been going to mass the last two Sundays. I keep trying to find balance in my life, and I know my spirituality has been the main thing out of wack. My mentality is the best it's ever been, and I've lost 85 lbs since January of 2018, so I'm doing a lot better physically. I do have my moments when I stop moving around and all I can think about is the divorce and Kent, but I push those thoughts away because I know I did the right thing, even if sometimes it feels like I didn't. It only takes a text message or a phone call from him to remind me that I did, because, most of the time when he contacts me, he is drunk. As the poem I wrote him goes, I love you when you're sober. I hate you when you're not.

I am not sure if I am more spiritual yet. All I can say is that I am attempting to fake it until I make it in almost all aspects of my life. I keep myself busy by doing whatever needs to be done. I try not to complain or think negative thoughts. If I catch myself falling down into the depths of despair out of self-pity or something else, I pull myself back out of it by engaging my mind in other things. Usually, I do some kind of physical task to keep myself busy because if I just read a book or watch TV, my mind wanders back to the negative thoughts. I know one day I'll have to take the time to process the death of my marriage and deal with all the emotions involved, but I am not ready to feel anything beyond mediocrity so I'll continue to disassociate myself for the time being.

I have a lot on my plate right now. Haley was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and given only 3 years to live back in March. She's been peeing on the carpet in the same spot by the bed for awhile now no matter how much I clean it or what kind of enzyme cleaner I use. I have taken to locking her away in the guest bathroom sometimes, but mostly just locking her out of the carpeted areas of the house. I have three litter boxes in the house, comfort zone plug ins in almost every room, and I even bought expensive cat litter specific for senior cats and attracting them to the litter box. None of it seems to work. I'm not about to go put her down, nor am I the type to abandon one of my kitty loves to the shelter just because she has behavioral issues when it comes to peeing. I know she's been through a lot with the stress we lived in, the three moves we've done in the last 5 years (2 of which were in less than a year). If anything, I will give her away to Aaron before I do anything else. She prefers men. She was Kent's cat, after all. Plus, she and Comet don't get along very well anymore since living in my parents house with Tinky. I think keeping her out of the carpeted areas is best for now. Whenever I look at her cute little face, my heart melts and I want to cuddle the smidgens out of her.

Saturday, I met Jen F. at her hotel to catch up. She was in town with her best friend Gina for a bowling tournament. She is the same as she has always been, which is nice because the familiar is a comfort right now. We talked about our college years and some of the years after that, and spoke about our mutual friendships. One of them was Chris B., whose mother passed away last year causing him to have a difficult time with things right now. I spoke to him on the phone Saturday night all the way until 5 AM Sunday morning. I'd discuss what we talked about but it's very personal on his end. I'll just say he's going through a lot relationship wise, and I hope I can be there for him to help him deal with all of this. I was helping Russ F. out with his similar issues, but we haven't spoken much lately. That's mostly my fault as I am terrible at texting and I've been avoiding the phone and computer as much as possible while I stay disassociated from myself.

There's a lot more I need to update on, but I've written a novel and the cleaning guy has just showed up at the office. I hope I can log back in sooner and keep up to date on this more often. For now, I'm content with just knowing I am a survivor and I will continue to plug away until faking it makes it.