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Learning to grow

A blog by Briannah in General

  • Entries

    140

  • Comments

    285

  • Views

    50,955

About this blog

This is Bree's journal talking about how life changes, and how you grow with them (probably with the occasional freakout, I'm good at panic mode too!).  Life has been hard since day one, and not doing it alone is the key!

Entries in this blog

Sometimes people make me sad.

So I got the new webcame to skype and roll20 game with my son now that he's moved, and I Thought, ya know what?  I wanna say hello to the world.  Omegle, here I come!  So I loaded it up.  Now, I FULLY expected to run into a lot of pervyness.  I went into it with the realization I will see things, there is no way around that, the next button is my friend.  But I had it in my head that there were other normal people who just wanted to talk to the world, and after I waded through the unspeakable th

Sometimes it doesn't matter how hard you try.

Just cut ties with my father.  I've talked about him and the complicated relationship before, and why I didn't really know what I was holding onto.  Well, he finally pushed that last button and I went nuclear.  He called me stupid again, which I'm used to really, over my belief that we have to do better as a nation to care for people.  There aren't enough jobs.  They are getting shipped overseas en masse.  The old get a job rhetoric is a joke, and there is no reason anyone should be homeless and

So...everything is formalized.

As of August 31st I'll be going back to being a house turtle for Nikki.  Just knowing there is an end has lifted a lot of the stress of it all.  On top of my add issues and everyone thinking I'm stupid, there is a lot of bias because they're all Christians and I'm an atheist (something I did NOT introduce into any conversations, but my supervisor who is also my aunt did), I'm a liberal in a conservative group (same deal, I had no need to discuss things at work, but she apparently felt the need t

So. Much. Change.

There are huge, sweeping changes we have to make to our day to day lives.  Me exiting the working force changes our financial bad habits, and getting those under control is never easy.  All the prep work I have to do to exit the job for the person after me.  Supporting Nikki's depression recovery required a lot more changes.  Meeting his desire to change his poor social habits still more.  Figuring out how to fit girl time into all this crazy.  Trying to overcome the dysmorphia and bad health ha

So, still learning to adult apparently. :)

I've been gone a long time, I'm sorry!    Got ​really sick, found multiple causes, and started addressing them.  One of them was our diet, and Nikki and I are living on the DASH diet as best we are able to right now.  It's hard when you are staying at someone else's house (our repairs and slave labor to the house should be done tomorrow, and it should be listed within the week.  That took FOREVER!).  It helps that Nikki really loves my cooking, and has been visibly on the same page with me when

So, i'ts been a year. Aka How things are now. :)

As a couple: We're good.  Our marriage is strong, and we've been doing a lot of study on interpersonal skills as well as how brains, both the male and female, work in social relationships.  Some of our issues and misunderstandings cleared up from a really good Ted Talk about the role of hormones and physiological gender differences in the brain.  We're learning to communicate better than ever, and when and how to have deeper talks.  I'm super excited that Nikki landed a really good job the day a

So, a bit of progress has finally been reached.

We came away from Nikki's doctors today with the awareness that diabetes might be rearing it's ugly head, that part is pretty unpleasant, but on a brighter note we also came away with a prescription for Zoloft to help with the biological part of the dysthymia.  FINALLY!  I hope this stuff works, I hope none of the potential bad side effects manifests, I just want Nikki to be better.  And, in a weird way, I am happy it took this long.  The doctor was thorough making sure she's giving him the righ

So this is officially ridiculous. My throat is trying to kill me and other silliness.

She changed my second blood pressure medication at the last visit reluctantly, since my blood pressure is now perfect, however, I had developed that really horrible cough that the stuff can cause.  SO...been on the new stuff for nearly a week now, and the cough is gone, but my throat is still stupidly dry, swollen, and often sore.  I'm going to have to go back, apparently there was a reaction to the meds and something else going on.  Meh.  And it's not dehydration, ya'll would not believe the gi

So apparently I do have more need for external validation than I thought.

I was just watching a video on YouTube posted by Phil DeFranco's wife (he's a funny youtuber with a take on the news I often enjoy and watch sometimes) and she is describing a break in that had happened to them, and talking about it made her cry.  After we had the break in, I couldn't talk about it without falling to pieces either, and I wasn't entirely sure why, as we were not injured and yes we lost a lot of things, but we were okay and it was over.  Watching someone else struggle with the sam

Slowly Freezing

It's SEVEN degrees outside.  Seven.  Seven is a TINY number when talking about degrees.  It's so cold in our back computer room that I think I could use it as an extra food freezer while waiting for the space heater to warm up the room.  (the kind that is like a little radiator with heated oil inside, not the kind you can accidentally poison yourself with in an enclosed space, that's important!).  I'm torn between massive cleaning to keep my body moving to try to generate heat or a warm fuzzy bl

Slightly mind blown.

So..had those amazing flourless chocolate cakes before.  They are awesome, I love them.  Something that awesome had to be complicated...but...you can make a version with three ingredients and it's awesome.  Basically it's like a really chocolately dense souffle, made from eggs, chocolate and butter.  That blows my mind.   I have a tendency to overcomplicate a lot of things, and simple things blow me away.  Now if you'll excuse me, I require some chocolate chips to make a cake apparently.

Shaky morning.

Am having a really shaky morning.  It's hard when a friend has gone somewhere you can't follow.  I miss him so much already.  He was a beautiful person who readily opened the window for me to his part of the world and shared his culture and that soft Scottish brogue.  I felt better when Nikki was home, but alone it hits harder and there are no hugs.  Four more hours and I can get my hugs.  This really hurts.  And people saying internet friends shouldn't hurt this bad when they're gone piss me of

Scary wind.

It's shaking the house, and the fence was just at a really odd angle to the ground.  ti's a six foot wooden privacy fence, not a little flimsy decorative fence I mean.  I'm glad we had the roof finished last year from the windstorm that tore it up and made it look like someone ran a giant sander over it, because I think chunks would be gone tonight and smacking the neighbors house.  Don't like the neighbors, but I still don't want their home to get hit by my roof chunks.   One year I got hit in

Rough week.

So last week sucked, lost our Yuriko.  The day of her vet appointment she was having seizure after seizure and we knew we were definitely taking her to the Final Visit, no hail mary last minute outs for my little kitty girl.  The offspring met us at the vet's to say goodbye and be with her as she went.  Horribly painful thing to do, but watching her the way she was was worse.  Nikki has been incredibly down and not much I do can help until time does it's work here.  Talked with Nikki about my st

Restructering your whole life at once is hard.

It's like my entire life blew up all at once.  I never really realized how MUCH I'm capable of handling all at once, and still managing to be happy and helpful to others.  But at the same time, it's really hard when EVERY front in my life is changing dramatically all at once.  I keep feeling like I'm stressing out for no reason, and then I sat down and thought about WHY I'm having downward spirals and feel generally uneasy most of the time right now.  Nikki wants to think it's all him I think, b

Resolutions because there are actually things I want to do this year.

I confess, I'm being a bit cheesy here.    I always kinda snubby my nose at the resolution thing, because people make them and then forget them January second in my cultural experience.  But there are things I want to do so here goes. 1) My kitchen makeover.  Aside from the fact that I found actual educational tutorials on how to do something about it all affordably, Nikki was actually excited about my ideas and has the skills I lack in the excecution.  And a thanks here to my Grandpa again for

Reflective Bree

The first time I realized that being a girl was different than the boys was when I was in fourth grade.  If I remember right, that made me around 10?  11?  Growing up, I had a big group of mixed friends.  I liked the games, toys, and kids in both sides of the fence pretty equally, and never really thought much about any differences other than for whatever reason the other girls and I weren't allowed to run around topless in the summer like the boys, even though we all looked the same there, and

Reassurance in the funniest places.

So we went up to Toledo to do some shopping for xmas, much more selection up there than our town, and our favorite calzone place is on the way, so awesome lunch.  And while we're shopping, someone calls out to Nikki, and it took me a moment to place him, but it was our former roommate.  Sweet guy, and it was lovely to catch up.  I said he and his family should come down and I'll cook a dinner, and we could make the details on Facebook.  He said he thought I'd quit using it, it got dark on my wal

Putting my hair in Nikki's hands.

Waiting for my hair to dry out, and then I'm putting the one thing about my physical form I feel good about into...Nikki's hands.  He's going to first bleach it, then dye it deep emerald green.  I'm finally going to have my dream hair, my favorite color, green.  I've been trying to do my part to help find the balance between Nikki's two sides, and have invited him as far into the girl world as I go, which isn't far really, when someone online is judging me purely on behaviors and interests they

Psa to self : Habit Change

So I need to start going through my house every coupla years and just looking at the stuff that is lying around/saved somewhere.  I have saved some really useless junk over the years.  Anyone remember the Isle of Lost Toys from the old Christmas specials?  Apparently we are running the Sanctuary of Lost Cords.  Which of course Nikki won't let me throw any of those out because we might need them some amorpheous day in the future.  Fine, he let me throw most of the rest of the junk out, and we can

PSA for those with depression(or who just snore).

If you are suffering from depression, and snore, please ask your doctor for a sleep apnea test.  Or if you just snore, as it can have long term effects that build slowly. This is not a cure.  Depression can have MANY causes, and I'm not touting any snake oil easy card.  But recent experiences for both Nikki and I have given me some new knowledge about the links between depression and the damage sleep apnea can do to you, and the difference for both of our cases has been astronomical since w

Progress I guess.

​It's done.  By end of day tomorrow, my home will be listed.  It's a bunch of mix feelings, this is what is holding us back from moving forward, but it was MY HOME for eleven years, second longest I have lived anywhere, and longest Nikki has ever.  I'm not surprised, I have learned I really  hate endings of any kind, even when they are what I wanted.  So...now we are in the next phase, and this one sorta sucks.  There is nothing more I can do, it's just waiting until someone decides they want th

Pinterest is not ony for fun and games.

So was trying to start sleeping a bit earlier so I'm up during the day, Nikki missing me chatting with him on twitter at work, but my body wants to sleep 4 am to noon.  And I went to bed at 1 last night, and failed spectacularly to sleep until 3.  LOL  So while I was failing I had my ipad and was browsing Pinterest, and found the home decor section.  Now if you all knew me and my lazy home decorating skills, you'd be laughing right now.  Hard.  But there were interesting things there, and...proj

Perspective on change from the rain.

It's been raining since New Year's eve.  And our life experience SO color our emotional reactions to things.  We always assume that humans think rationally, but rational thought really goes to problem solving, while life experience and subconscious go to the deeper choice and reaction issues.  I always liked rain.  However, since 2007, if it rains more than one day I'm deeply uncomfortable and want to start moving everything I own upstairs.   Our town flooded that year.  It took somewhere betwee

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