I think I'm allergic to life.

The good news: the crazy itching that I first went to the doctor's for two weeks or so ago isn't (according to the nurse practitioner I "saw") scabies or any other crazy skin disease like I was worried it might be.

The bad news: the Prednisone, Zyrtec (and originally Claritin), Zantac and hydrocortisone cream that I've been taking in various combinations and doses since then don't seem to be helping-- or at least not consistently.

The nurse practitioner wants me to go see an allergist, which I don't have the insurance or money for right now, so I've been trying to do some research online to find a way to narrow down whether or not there's something I'm eating that's causing me to have this allergic reaction but the lists I've seen online of common food allergies to eliminate from your diet to try to narrow down an allergy are just so daunting. How in the world do I cut out everything with wheat or gluten or other assorted things in it if I don't know what has that in it? Do I carry a list of things I'm supposed to be avoiding and just obsessively read food labels for a few weeks to see if it helps?

This whole situation is just so frustrating right now. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. Sometimes I can go all day without it bothering me and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep because I itch too much.

I guess I need to just pick a plan of attack and see what happens because as it stands right now Plan A didn't work and Plan B don't seem to be working so I need a new plan of attack because it feels better than just doing nothing... or continuing to do something that I know isn't working.

Here's hoping...

I haz blog?

This is how my attempt at keeping a blog always goes:
1. Start blog.
2. Post frequently for a couple weeks.
3. Forget about it/lose interest.
4. Find it again and try to revive it.
5. Start again at #2.

But since this is mostly for me, I guess that's alright! I love going back to the couple of places I have blog entries from years ago and seeing what was going on in my life at the time, how I viewed life.

Anyways, I really just felt the need to make another list of the things I'm grateful for right now. The last couple weeks have been crazy and stressful and I feel like this rough patch might last the next couple of months until tax season is over so I want to focus on the good stuff and not let the not-so-good weight me down and I know that's easier to let happen when I get stressed. So without further ado, here goes...

I'm thankful for:
*Ericka, Nanda, Jenny and other assorted amazing friends.
*Delilah's need to spend every second I'm home lately cuddling in my lap.
*Family members that remind me that I have a few of them that aren't completely dysfunctional.
*Monday night Big Bang Theory traditions.
*My Xbox and good friends to play fun games on it with.
*Mass doses of caffeine to keep me going throughout the day.
*A job that I love to balance out the one that I maybe don't like so much.
*The ability to pay (most of) my bills (sometimes even on time!).
*The amazing salad E inspired me to make that I've eaten more in the last week than I care to admit.

I'm also making a couple not-New-Year's resolutions:
*To refocus on the good things I have and not dwell on the not-as-good.
*To think about what I want out of relationships before I get into them and not compromise.
*To be happy with my alone time and not feel the need to fill every minute of every day with "stuff."

Alright, back to work I go...

Tragicomic

I learned a new word yesterday (thanks Nielda!) and it's now a) my favorite word to describe my life and b) my favorite word period.

trag⋅i⋅com⋅e⋅dy –noun, plural -dies:
1. a dramatic or other literary composition combining elements of both tragedy and comedy.
2. an incident, or series of incidents, of mixed tragic and comic character.

In other news... according to the Fresno Superior Courthouse, I'm officially a Loiselle again-- just waiting on paperwork to be able to change it on my Social Security card, driver's license, bank cards, etc. AND I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow night-- yay!

08.25.09

It's been a crazy couple weeks, I didn't even realize it'd been so long since I updated this but I guess that makes sense since it hasn't really been an interesting kind of crazy, more of a working a bajillion hours a week kind of crazy...

The two exciting things that've happened:
1) The paralegal stealthily filed our paperwork on the 14th. She's still not returning calls to either of us but at least I can see that it's been filed. Now we're just playing more of the same old boring waiting game. Que sera sera, I say.

2) I bought a plane ticket to back home next month! In the midst of all the crazy hours I've been working I realized that I had two entire days (+ a little more) saved up so I'll be able to miss three days of work and spend some much-needed time with my family from the 18th to the 22nd of September. I caaaaaaaaan't wait! I always wish I had longer, I won't arrive until 2pm on the 18th and I leave at 2pm on the 22nd, but I'll take whatever kind of time I can get with them, no matter how long or short. My aunt is incredible and has been really helpful with getting plans made and I can't wait to spend some quality time with her. I'll be staying at her house this time-- the first time I've been there since I moved to CA almost 9 years ago! It's looking pretty probably that I won't actually make it back to Moultonborough while I'm there, which is a little odd for me but I'm adjusting to the idea... it's crazy how much things have changed over the last year. I'm excited though, I've been counting the days since before my ticket was even confirmed by the airline. :)

Other than that... work work work work work. It's a little, well... a lot stressful lately between the insane amount of work I have to do and the uncertainty of what's going to happen over the coming months but I'm trying not to let it get to me too much and to keep a positive outlook. Also trying to decide what to do when my lease runs out next month-- I really love my apartment and I absolutely adore living by myself but I'm a little concerned with what might happen with my job so... I'm just keeping my fingers crossed!

Guess that's it... time to get back to pushing that paper!

Crazy.

So the craziest thing happened this past week... well, it didn't really happen last week, I just realized it last week. I don't really feel like rehashing the whole story of what an absolute, incompetent moron the paralegal we hired to handle our divorce was so I'll just cut to the chase... the paperwork that I went in to sign at the end of June that made the papers/divorce we'd been waiting for for 6 months finalized-- never got filed. So after waiting for 6 weeks for the paper that says we aren't, we're still technically married. Bah.

Now I need to find time after work sometime to drive downtown to the courthouse and get it filed since we obviously can't trust the paralegal to do it (or even OWN UP TO not having done it, for real!). It's proving difficult-- lots of long days at the office lately trying to get/stay caught up on my usual work and also complete a couple big projects but it could be a lot worse! I'm hoping to have time tomorrow.

And on a completely unrelated note, I am completely and ridiculously hooked on True Blood now. I can't believe how good this season has been, it's like it gets better every week! True Blood + dinner + good company make Sunday nights something I look forward to, even if it means work the next morning!

Alright, back to waiting for these waivers to come in so I can go home! It's been a long, almost 9 1/2 hour day already!

TGIFriday!

I'm conflicted about the title of this post... on the one hand, I'm really glad that this crazy, stressful, sleep-deprived week is over; on the other hand, I have so much to get done at work that I feel like I could use either a clone or an extra day or two for the next couple weeks just to get everything done! Oh well, que sera sera.

Last weekend while Delilah and I were at Ericka's being nerdy and WoWing, her eye got all crazy swollen and icky looking and I had to take her to the kitty emergency room. Everyone there was amazingly friendly and super helpful and we were in and out a lot more quickly than I'd expected but the news wasn't quite what I was hoping for. She'd been a little sniffly and had a runny nose for a few days but I assumed she had an upper respiratory infection as is common in a lot of shelter/fostered kittens and had maybe just scratched her eye with her claws. However, it turns out she has FHV-1 (Feline Herpesvirus Type 1) and Chlamydiosis. Both of these are affecting her eyes and are chronic conditions that could have been prevented had she been properly vaccinated so the best the vet said I can do it to give her medication to help control the symptoms, which are a lot like conjunctivitis and if left untreated can result in loss of sight! She's already looking a lot better but even over the course of just a couple days I can see that sometimes it doesn't bother her at all and other times the white, inner lining of her eyes covers a big portion of her eyeball and causes pain. She's got drops for her eyes that she gets every hour, an ointment in them every six hours and a pill that I crush up and give her with food twice a day and she has been such a little trooper. I don't know if she just knows that I'll give her a treat when I'm done or if it makes it feel better but she doesn't even struggle anymore and (for the most part) she's FINALLY adjusting to the little cone she has to wear to keep her from scratching at her eyes.

So with that, I leave you with adorable kitty pictures-- I love how she keeps getting her paw stuck in her cone!

Hey there, Delilah...

I've been meaning to write this post all week but it's been a crazy week at work AND at home so these pictures will have to suffice for now... this is the newest inhabitant of my apartment and she's pretty much the most adorable, awesome kitten ever. Expect to see lots of pictures in the future... :)

Random Musing

I had a random thought today that felt worth sharing....

For a long time, I always had someone to (presumably, at least) help keep me accountable-- not to any one thing in particular, just to everything... in a big, general sense. I came to rely on that so heavily, even though it's obvious now that the accountability I needed to be held to wasn't always there, that I've just assumed for the last 6 months or so that I needed to find someone else to help me with it... Thinking about this yesterday made me realize two things that make me pretty happy:

1) I don't need to have someone else to do it for me, I'm learning to not just hold myself accountable to the standards I've set for myself and my life but also to enjoy being the one to do it.

2) I have some really amazing friends that, should I fail at holding myself accountable (at least in most situations, ones they could know about), wouldn't hesitate to point it out to me, even if I might not like it. Having people like that in my life makes me feel incredibly lucky (this seems to be a common theme lately, haha!)

Ok, that was it! I'm really enjoying this whole blogging thing... :)

What a weekend!

This weekend was amazing and crazy and bizarre and so many other words... I loved it! I just feel like writing a quick recap so I don't forget about it. :)

So Friday night Ericka had heard about what we thought was going to be a cool MJ tribute in the Tower District so around 9 or 930 we headed to where it was supposed to be and it turned out that it was... a restaurant-- and a pretty small one at that-- playing MJ songs over the sound system... not so much what we were hoping for! We spent all of about 2 minutes in there before we decided to head over to Avalon/Babylon instead. The band there was interesting, to say the least, but at least they were playing good 80s songs, even if I'm not sure how I felt about their renditions of them! Billy and Ericka whooped me at pool for a while until Nanda got there, and then all three of them whooped me... I'm a horrible pool player!

Anyways, the funniest part of the night was when the guy who was there with his friend (who tried to hit on Ericka, haha) came over and introduced himself to me at the bar and I realized that not only had I met this guy before, but we'd actually hung out quite a bit... The summer after I graduated high school my old friend Melissa and I met him and a friend of his at Blackbeards randomly and he and I quasi- sort of kind of dated or something. It was too funny, we both remembered such different, random things about when we met/hung out the first time and we spent most of the rest of the night/morning talking and catching up and stuff. It was good times... very, very drunk good times... Oh! Despite the random awesome-ness of running into Darren again, my favorite part of the night came just after last call when Ericka rushed over to me with a jager bomb already dropped in the cup and when I asked about it (because neither of us really needed anything else to drink at that point!) she told me "They said it was closing time and I panicked!"... I love that girl. :)

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. I spent Saturday recouping and catching up on the first season of True Blood (which I finally finished-- yay!). We BBQ'd, Rockband'd and swam at Ericka's Saturday night and both Darren and his friend that was at the bar with him (why can I never remember his name... was it Dave?) came over and hung out. JD and Jenny were in town too-- every time I see Jenny now it feels like I haven't seen her in forever... it makes me sad! E and I need to work on convincing them to move back to Fresno. ;)

And not weekendy but still something good... yesterday was the best Monday I've had in months! I spent most of my day working (right through lunch, so I got to go home early!) on reconciling our bank statement with my boss and the feeling of figuring it out after so much work was so rewarding! I'm such a nerd sometimes, but I really do like my job. :)

Alrighty, it's time for lunch-- today is positively CRAWLING by!

The Little Things

Whether my life is calm and quiet or crazy stressful and full of drama, there are so many little things that make me happy and trying to remember that and be thankful for those small things has been something I've worked on really hard over the last year or so. I'm going through a calm period right now and sometimes when that happens I just don't know what to do with myself so this morning on my way (late-- oops!) to work I made a mental list of the little things that are making me happy right now and felt the need to document it. Here's my list...

* Bagelfuls for breakfast in the morning.
* My voicemail boyfriend, Duncan.
* My awesome pink iPhone case.
* How funny and fun to spend time with my friends are.
* Pandora.
* How much I love my apartment and living alone.
* Hour long phone calls where nothing important is said.
* Making it through another Monday.

What little things make you guys happy?