Adventures, Misadventures , Reflections and Profanity

Well, I made it back from our trip across Nevada and back again. It was a journey, that much is true. It started with a drive from Las Vegas to Reno early last Friday morning. the nearly 500 miles long road trip takes about 8 hours to complete and by mid-afternoon, we were sitting in my sister's living room in down town Reno, unloading our things from the car and getting ready to head over to Sparks to take in the sights of their Friday night Hot August Nights celebration. If you don't know what Hot August Nights is, check it out here: https://hotaugustnights.net/ It is the largest gathering of classic cars in the world and it takes place each year in the month of August in the Reno/Sparks area. If you're into American muscle, this is definitely your scene. Our plan was to see the parade in Sparks on Friday night, then check out the happenings in Reno on Saturday night. We did manage to accomplish both of these goals quite handily and I was thrilled to see so many wond...

I have been attending a support group for grieving people (which I discussed in an earlier blog post) following the loss of my mother, grandmother, uncle and grandfather all in the last 18 months. This support group meets at a Baptist church and the content of the support offered is Christian-based. I am not personally a Christian but I have no biases against Christians as individuals and trying to just muscle through my sadness, anger and grief on my own was bringing me no progress, only pain, so I elected to try something new. My second meeting was yesterday. These meetings all go the same way. We get together, eat mediocre snacks, and briefly discuss our week before opening the provided guided "Workbook" and watching a short video on this week's theme. The videos are produced by a Christian married couple and much of the content is related to "surrendering your grief and sadness to God so that he may lift this burden from your heart" and various re-phrasin...

Warning! This post contains graphic descriptions of menstrual distress and the discussion of drugs which are now legal to consume n the state of Nevada. Yesterday I had a surprise day off from work in the middle of the week. My homeschooling student wasn't feeling well and so his parents cancelled school. This doesn't happen often, but when it does I like to make the most out of the day and try to be as productive as possible. I have been intending to use some old rope I had laying around to make my first attempt at a rope rug for my shop and so at 7:30am, I busted out the rope, my hot glue gun, and the Netflix and got to some early morning crafting. It was really wonderful to sit, enjoy my iced coffee that I would usually be trying to drink as fast as possible on the freeway on my way to work and to just do some mindless craft work. That kind of crafting is on the short list of things that actually relax me (sex, laughing, crafting, eating is pretty much the whole list). So ...

Managing my emotions is a thing I have always struggled with. I cannot remember a time when I didn't feel entirely ruled by the chemical and electrical goings on in my brain that are entirely outside of my control. It feels like there is a creature inside of me that consumes my experiences and expels reactions to those experiences that don't align with reality at all. Intellectually I know it is happening, I know that my instinctive responses to things are out of line with what has really taken place, but knowing it intellectually and being able to stop it or control it aren't the same thing. Today I am feeling so anxious and defeated that it is making me physically ill. I have been battling literal nausea for most of the day, twice dry heaving at work. My heart has been racing and I feel like I am in a state of "fight or flight", which you can't actually maintain for more than a few minutes, but I have been like this all day. I feel caught in a loop of pani...

Yesterday I tried something that I have never done before: I attended a support group for grieving people. Having lost 4 very important people in less than two years, the most recent of which was my mother in January, I have been struggling with grief and anger and exhaustion from it all. the anger and grief has started to make me a bitter person and I have caught myself being cold or short with people that I love, and that just isn't acceptable to me. I started researching online for some resources for free grief counseling. Being a teacher, there just isn't a lot of extra money to go around, so it was imperative to find something for free. My first choice was to find a grief counselor of some kind, but unfortunately one on one counseling just isn't ever free, or even affordable from what I could find, which I guess makes sense. That left support groups, which honestly scared the crap out of me. the thought of sitting and crying in a room full of strangers sounded like a t...

This must be the millionth blog I have tried to start. I don't know why, but every time I start a blog, I never seem to make it past the first three posts. In fact, any time I try to start anything I seem to have a hard time staying consistent. My home is filled with half finished craft projects, all representations of good ideas gone awry. If you aren't the kind of person who has trouble finishing things, you probably don't understand. But if you are, if you are also forgetful, tend toward procrastination, or suffer from manic depression then you know exactly what I am talking about. The burst of energy and creativity that inspires the craft or piece of writing or new task rarely last long enough to carry me through its completion and what I am most often left with is a sense of emptiness and failure. It seems simple enough and I hear it from the people around me in one way or another pretty often: "if you want to finish things, then just FINISH THINGS." And yes,...