School might not happen

Well...school might not happen in the way I thought it would. I meet with my advisor this week to see if I can complete classes realistically by the deadline. If I can't, I'm going to transfer to an online college called WGU.

I've been reading a lot. The Kendal is amazing. I've adjusted word spacing, font size and line spacing. I am half done with a novel!!! This thrills me. It's not Shakespeare, but it's a good start!

We got a new kitten:

His name is Rowan. I've been doing a lot better with my conversion disorder because he's been keeping me distracted with kitten needs and loving cuteness. Willow is not pleased with the intrusion, but they're steppe rated, and willow is bracing closer and closer to Rowan's quarantine room. I also got willow a calming pheromone collar, and that seems to be working.

Balsa is just snaking around being a noodle. I've been having trouble finding pre killed adult mice, so I got a smaller size (hoppers) and have been feeding her biweekly. Instead of weekly. No picture updates of her. Though I'm thinking of getting some terrarium plants to increase humidity. I'll probably take pictures after that.

I've been going out without joe a lot more because I have awesome friends. We're also planning to go camping overnight this weekend. I'll have to take it easy and have my pills at the ready, but I'm super looking forward to it. I miss camping. Maybe we'll take the kitten to let willow have some control of the house again.

Every time i close my eyes there's a singular voice in my head. It doesn't say anything. It just screams. It's a recent development, but it truly makes me want to rock myself in a dark closet. I've been powering through it, saving it for when I see the new shrink. 

Honestly, I'm doing a lot better. I'm not able to do a whole lot yet. Shopping at two stores exhausts me to the point I pass out when I get home, but the tremors have been less intense since getting the kitten. My joint pain is ignorable. Even my dreams have returned to their usual sexually crazy usual normality. If I could build up my stamina again, and actually get the screaming to stop I might actually be able to help around the house, or shower standing up. I'm excited about my improvements.

And now that joe is done with classes for a month, I'll be able to spend more time with him, which will be nice, and I can stop worrying that he's going to o.d. On coffee and sleep like a normal human. 

All and all things are looking good.

And because I'm graduating from somewhere come hell or high water, once both joe and I graduate, we're taking a two week vacation to Washington and an 8 day cruise to Alaska! I've already started the budget and started saving. I've got a long way to go, but 3 years to save for it as well as graduation presents from folks. The kitten  but a dint in savings, but not a whole lot, and at least  he's helping me recover.

If only the screaming in my head would stop so I can sleep...

School might happen...

So I was talking to Joe, and if I have the ability to get certain accommodations from my college, I might be able to finish my degree by fall of 2016. I'm heading over to the college tomorrow to see what can be done to help me finish my degree.

I might not be able to teach in the conventional method, but I'm hoping to get my degree and do something with it. 

Update will happen tomorrow.

Living on 11k a year

Today a good friend came to visit me from 2 hours away. It was so much fun! We talked about gaming and books and relationships. Earlier this week my friend Katie took me for my first pedicure (I'm sold on them for life) and I took her out to eat for dinner. I am so glad I'm getting more socialization. It's been so nice to see people other than my boyfriend. I mean, I love him and I'm super crazy about him...no seriously. I'm crazy creepy about him. Still, my life doesn't revolve around him, and I don't want his life to revolve around me. Which is why I'm glad he's doing a man camping trip this weekend.

I have 2 projects I've been working on. The first is scanning and reorganizing the pictures I inherited from my cousin and the ones she had from her mother. Today I finally got everything out of the albums. Next project is scanning them. I've learned 2 things from this endevour so far. 1) never use tape in a photo album. 20 years later, peeling off the pictures from the tape is a headache...especially if the pages are already self adhesive. 2) lable the pictures as if 20 years later your niece will be going through it. I have no clue who half the people in these pictures are. Luckily, I'll be visiting granny soon. She should be able to help. My Facebook family will fill in some of the blanks, and my father will fill in others.

Which brings me to a new goal. I'm going to start interviewing important people in my family. They're dieing off and they're taking with them so much rich and vibrant family history. Might even turn it into a book or something... Nothing to publish, just something to keep for the family.

The next project is to clean all my crappy paperback novels from my library and either put them on my kindle or purchase a hard cover or nicely bound edition. I've bought 4 books total and downloaded a bunch of free books. It's cleaned out a foot of book space so far. I'm not even 1/3 done going through my library either.

Reading to joe has been put on hold. He's been too busy and working nights. I'm hoping to pick it back up this coming week. In the meantime, I've been reading hans Christian andersons fairy tales.its slow going, but I'm 7% done. That's about 2 fairy tales a night.

I'm a tad disappointed that the kindle I got doesn't have a backlight function, but as that and the printer/scanner were under $90, I'm not complaining. I'll get a better one in a few years when I can afford high end gadgets.

Speaking of money, I'm so glad that I've been trained by curcumstance to live off $12k a year or less. I get about $900 a month from disability. With that, and my way with money, I've paid my credit card debt down from $6000 early this year to $1000. I plan on getting that paid off by Christmas, refinancing my student loans and starting to work paying those off. Normally I'd save some money too, but when you're on disability, you can't have more than 2000 in money's. What this means is my credit cards have become my safety buffer, which isn't good, but it's not horrible either considering I could be drowning further into the cesspool of debt. I found out my credit score finally made it into the top 50%. I'm stoked about that. I've always had horrible credit because of the amount of debt I accrued.

So, here's a brake down of my budget. Some of this I split 2 ways with joe:

$300 on rent. (We lucked out on the house.)

$100 on electricity. This normally carries from $20-$100 depending on how energy conscious we are and how much ac we use.

$20 on internet

$25 on water and sanitation

$50 on entertainment

$70 for groceries, which would be a meager budget only enough for eggs, rice, beans, peanut butter, the occasional fruit, and frozen veggies. But I only need to plan for 2 meals with that: breakfast, which is eggs, English muffin, oatmeal and/or yogurt. And lunch which is also inexpensive, normally rice or a sandwich. Dinners I splurge on with:

$140 for Blue Apron. I can't say how much I love this service enough!

$100 budgeted for health, doctors, prescriptions, etc. starting in October this will increase, but I'll manage.

$32 for pet insurance. The peace of mind is well worth it, especially with bald as history of egg binding.

$30 for pet food and supplies.

The rest goes into a mic expenses, that if unspent gets thrown at my debt. It's normally unspent.

I've also found it helpful that if your having trouble paying a bill, open communication and a willingness to work with the billing department will go a long way.

I think tomorrow I'll bust out some finance tips for people...maybe.

Amazon treasures

The Amazon prime sale happened a few days ago. I ordered 2 things to make my life easier and to work my brain.

The first was a printer scanner combo. I didn't get anything fancy, just your basic model. But now I can get rid of all the old photo albums I inherited from my aunt and cousin by way of my cousin. I spent half the day going through those pictures, and wondering who the people were in the pictures, and what their stories were. I found a bunch of pictures of my father when he was younger than I am now. We have a very strong family line. I noticed that with my cousin too. I have a hard time telling us apart till we hit about age 7. 

I wonder if I'll be able to have children one day. I wonder if they'll carry on my strong family line, or if they'll take after their father. I wonder what they'll say to the amazing pictures I found.

This is a picture of my grandmother, aunt and father. My dad looks exactly like my elder little brother, and my aunt looks so much like me at her age. Also, my grandma is hot!

Speaking of my grandmother, the badass, she has cancer, yet she's still chugging along and fighting back. Like me, she has good days and bad days, but she keeps moving along. I admire her so much! The fact we're both dealing with our conditions at the same time is comforting. We encourage each other.

I'm going to visit her soon. I'll be taking my box of pictures for further identification. I think I'm going to interview her about her childhood too.

I also got a kindle. The idea is with the line spacing adjustment and the font resized, it might help me relearn to read. The added benefit of reading from a screen is good as well since you use different parts of the brain to read book, vs  screen...well, different sections of the same brain part, but the fact remains. It should help reading comprehension and retention.

I picked up "a few" books on the kindle. Most of them were free editions. Currently I'm reading Hans Christian andersons stories. I've read 5 chapters! I'm paying for it with violent tremors, not being able to speak, and a headache (which is funny because the last story I read was about a toothache) but I'm in love!

I also downloaded a bunch of badass books including Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and teddy roosevelts autobiographies. I'll get more as time goes on. I'm slowly going to replace the crappy I'll kept paperbacks in my library for kindle editions, or realy nice hardcovers to serve to decorate as well as be read. 

I think my biggest wish is for my spawn to have a huge library full of books that they sneak into and read when they're supposed to be sleeping. That would make me the happiest ever. It's most of the reason I want kids...as accessories to my library. 

I hope that once I can read a lot again I can use my kindle to get back in school, reading the textbooks through that!

I so did some research for a novel I'm writing today (thank god for pictographs)I also started writing it, but ultimately got distracted by my new toys.

I'm working hard to improve my living condition. Writing, reading, minimilizarion of stuff, and learning languages...

Speaking of which I didn't do my brain exercises or my language learning today. Tomorrow I'll do double duty...

FOR BADASSITUDE!

Fuck yea!

You ever broken a sweat reading? 

I just did.

Laura - 4. Conversion disorder- 1.

Victory!

Inpatients and sick

Joe is sick today because I gave him my hell cold. He slept most of the day. Because he hasn't been conscious, I haven't been able to read to him. Instead, I decided to pick up my language learning obsession again.

I re downloaded duolingo. I love this program and I'm doing very well in Spanish. I wanted to get a refresher in Japanese, but duolingo does not have English to Japanese yet. Because of this I downloaded and bought a Japanese language learning program that I can't look up the name of for some reason. But it's by a company called mind snacks. I also have my you tube with bill vickers teaching ask. Wouldn't it be neat if I walked out of this disability with learning 3 languages and writing 2 novels and a non fiction book?

I also started work on my first novel. I secured an editor for that, and my non fiction book on re learning to read.

Mostly, however, I've been listening to podcasts and gaming. I took a lot of notes as I caught up on the mental mastery moment and started whittling away at my Montessori for everybody videos. I still have a slim hope of getting into education, if only as a reading coach volunteer. If I spawn, maybe include homeschool. However, the more I deal with this disorder, the less I'm convinced I could be put in charge of children.

Improvement.

Joe has noted a marked improvement in my reading with the addition of a bookmark guide. He said I read faster, and with less stuttering with its aid. 

Today's chapter was difficult for not only was my cd making sentence composition leap out out of my comprehension, but also the vocabulary of this chapter has always been challenging. It's all military jargon of various archaic varieties: world war 1 era as well as medieval. Lucky for me, the rest of the passages were simple for the most part. Although it was challenging I got through it. Laura - 3. Conversion Disorder - 1 (I had to skip a day because I was it too bad of a shape to read.)

Additionally today I've made it a mission to write and start sending out my book to publishers within the year. Because of this I'm carving out a 4 hour chunk of my day to write 10 pages or until time runs out. I actually made a neat little block schedule for it, but I think that deserves its own post.

This is a thing

If I were to die, I would want them to take one message from my life. I'm not sure if I succeed, but I would want people to stop judging others, and accept them, flaws and all. Love everyone, even the people you don't like or understand. The more you look at people not like you, the more you learn about yourself. That makes our differences valuable.

Also I would want a massive cheese tray at my funeral. 

One last thing. I want my corpse to burn up in reentry. Is that too much to ask? At least spread my ashes in the upper atmosphere so I can literally be the ultimate creeper by being in the air everyone breathes...

I'm totally normal I swear.

This message is brought to you by: "I wish I had the energy to give fucks about anything but my emotions, and how my body processes them (ie by flailing)"

Things haven't been perfect since I lost my amazing therapist to her being to awesome! I've regressed in some ways, and in others...well I can still bathe myself so I'm counting this as a plus.

I don't think I should write blogposts under the influence of my pills any more.

I think I have a cavity.

Like running through a dense forest.

Damn, reading is hard! I started reading a young adult novel outloud to joe. "Sabriel" by Garth Nix is a book I've read twice, once in the past 5 years. I'm ising several techniques I use to teach my kids reading. The first is reading a book they enjoy. The second is using a book they've read before (memorization breeds confidance) I'm using a book where the vocabulary and sentence structure are below my reading level. I'm reading the book out loud which gets the auditory part of the brain involved in decoding. I'm rereading problem sentences to improve comprehension, and i still didn't understand some sentences in the more sizable paragraphs. In the 14 page, large font chapter I read, I had problems with comprehension in 4 passages. Only one I asked joe to explain. The rest I ignored because I got the basics of what was going on, or the content wasn't important enough to ruin the flow of the story.

After the chapter was done and I had closed the book, I got the queezy adriniline driven fear and it felt, in my brain that I was running through a fence forest really fast. Flashes of light in the darkness zipping around you but never in front. And the whole time terrified that you'll run into something. It's a difficult feeling to grasp let alone explain, but it's both amazing and horrible. It's pleasant slightly, but mostly just aweful.

Tomorrow I'm going to read the chapter out loud again, and for the next chapter I'm going to use a bookmark to keep my place.

Guilt and forgiveness

I was born and raised catholic, and I've always had a very close, though not very public, relationship with God.

Throughout the years I've sinned a lot, and in big ways. The root of this problem has always been making promises I am unable to keep. The biggest of these has been my divorce with my husband. 

I'm going to start this by saying what a wonderful man he is. He's always been kind and noble. Yet despite my admiration of him as a person, we were ill suited as a couple. I'll leave it at that.

Still, several times leading up to, and on our wedding day, I thanked God for him and promised to love him and be with him forever. Little bargains here and there popped up as things started going south in an attempt to stay and fix what was broken about us. I never kept any of them, because ultimately I left him. It was my doing. I was the one not strong enough to push through the problems no matter how hard I tried.

I was raised with the word "sorry" to mean that "I was wrong. I knew it. I'll try to be better according to your word." 

The thing was, I couldn't be truly sorry for leaving my husband because I would rather die than go back to being that miserable, and making him that miserable. Neither of us could change enough to make the other happy either. There was no way, for both our sakes I could go back and reconcile.

Since divorce for "petty reasons" I.e. Not for the reason of abuse or infidelity is a sin by catholic standards. I am a sinner. Because I wouldn't go back to him, I couldn't be truly sorry for sinning.

I was doomed to hell, stuck in a catch-22. No amount of people telling me I did the right thing made that go away.

I finally figured out something. It's not that I'm sorry for marrying my ex husband. We had some good times. It's that I'm greviously sorry I couldn't keep that promise to God. That is something I can be sorry about and mean every word.

So, since I don't go to confession, I'm confessing my sins here. I made too many promises to God and others that I couldn't or didn't keep. This has wounded me greatly for years and caused many late nights fearing brimstone and letting my grief and inadequacy costume me.

But I promise, from this moment forward, that if I say the word promise, I'll damn well mean it. That may mean I'm going to use that word a lot less, and I may mess up sometimes, but I'm going to try my best to mean it every time.

Feeling Fiesty

So after a few weeks with the cold from hell, I'm feeling ambitious and Fiesty. Now, I have a hard time taking recovery easy, and I wasn't healthy to start with. So I've set some realistic goals for tomorrow. 

1) cook a meal

2) call my pharmacy and get refills

3) feed balsa 

4) clean bald as water

5) Do a load of dishes

6) get my Medicare paperwork finished

7) straighten my office.

The rest of the time will be spent relaxing. This is me learning how to pace myself. Wish me luck.

In the meantime, I'm feeling adventurous. I haven't been able to read with much retention for almost a year now. I'm going to do what I advise my students to do, and start with an easy book to build confidance, and then work up from there.

So I'm going to read the easiest of the easy novels, one chapter a night. I'm going to start by finishing one of my trashy romance novels, his up a few graphic novels and manga, move into some young adult fiction. 

My first book is "the heart of Devin MacKade" by Nora Roberts. It's not literature, and it's not going to add to my knowledge base, but I find the formula of romance novels comforting and Nora Roberts in particular paints a pretty scene. She's not particularly strong with dialogue, but her characters are diverse as they can be within the acheotypes allowed in the romance novel formula and most of all, I enjoy reading her works, so it's a good place to start.

Edit after reading the chapter:

Jesus, that was harder than I thought. I almost had to make a character map and draw out the scene. And it wasn't that it was poorly written. Nora Roberts has refined her craft enough so I should be able to follow the scene. It was just so hard remembering who was doing what...and then I had the additional problem that half the words I was reading I couldn't process so I had to retread sentences three or four times before I got what they were saying. Tomorrow I'm going to have to resort to reading out loud.