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Learning to grow

A blog by Briannah in General

  • Entries

    140

  • Comments

    285

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    50,945

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

Let's talk breats forms.

So the new full prosthetic breast forms Nikki and I picked out arrived.  Visually, they're perfect.  But I think I just got hit in the face with expectation vs. reality.  I was expecting totally different tactile feel.  Think...um....silicone real feel marital aids.  The plastic on the outer edges weirds me out.  Both in the one he got me to wear so I actually fit properly into a bra and his.  I'll adjust, but really, what is with the creepy plastic?  Wouldn't people, both those who don't have t

First move is happening. Save me.

So things are starting to happen faster now.  We have moved in with my mom as planned, and I am alternating between helping Nikki move things and cleaning mom's house.  (Seriously, it took three hours to go through the pantry and get out all the expired food from years 03 to 16).  And the rest of the house is insane, but I'm slowly taming it.  Mom is getting the better end of this deal, really.  Free cleaning and repairs and cooking until we sell and buy a new house.  Old house is nearly empty,

The germs have invaded

Awake stupidly early.  Spent much of yesterday sleeping or cuddled up in the blankets next to Nikki who was watching movies after the meltdown.  So we're both on this new supposedly low dose blood pressure medication since we're minority's but consistently above the normal range.  And my camel status has been officially revoked to a degree that is crazy.  So between waking up at four am again or explode all that sleep and I feel really bad is not letting me get back to sleep.  And my voice is go

Nikki did it

He took our conversation seriously and rallied round when the guild teasing turned to me.  I'm so sick I just wanna hide and he was all nope we're leaving Bree alone tonight she'll play with you guys next week.  It was a great practice start.  Love my Nikki.  Wanna collPse quietly in a corner.  Germs you win.  I surrender.  

Autumn Sad

Sometimes cliches exist for a reason, and as excited as I get when the pool goes up, as happy as I am in it all summer, I never really hit the full depth of how much that pool means to me as when I am facing the oncoming autumn and knowing it's about to go away for a long, cold winter.  So I'm frantically swimming as many days at the sky will let me, and trying to store away every moment of pool joy to mull over in my winter blankets.  And I'm reminded it's not just a pool.  It was a lifelong dr

Why I reject the growing anti-label movement.

I keep seeing in group after group a demand to reject labels.  And I can't support it.  History has made me really wary of this idea.  In Europe, most people couldn't read.  It wasn't just the expense of books, it was a choice by their leaders that they should not.  And the spread of literacy across Europe did indeed change everything, and directly influenced the various revolutions.  In America, very few slaves were allowed to learn to read and write, only those that their masters deemed requir

Help, I"m not sure what to say in a job interview.

So...you're never supposed to say anything negative about former employers in interviews, it doesn't come across well.  But what do I do with the question of why I'm going to be taking a major paycut (most of the positions similar to mine pay much less) to work somewhere else?  The real reason is they've put me in a position where I have to break a variety of laws to do the job as they require of me, and I deeply don't like this.  At first I thought they didn't know and were going to get me the

Why so much conflict in LGBTIA

So the more I read, the more I see a LOT of splintering and unkindness between the different groups under the big group umbrella.  It makes me sad.  All the groups under this umbrella are small population wise, logic dictates to me that banding together would be the way to go.  Rights for everyone, equality for everyone!  But instead there seems to be conflict everywhere.  Large groups of gay and lesbian hating each other, large groups of both of them hating trans people, a lot of transgender pe

This week is kicking my butt.

Seriously, I'm getting next to nothing done.  *headdesk*  I need a cleaning buddy or something.  I just have zero motivation this week, even showering was a massive endeaver.  And, of course, I had a clumsy moment and forgot the dimensions of the shower when I dropped the soap and cracked my head but good on the wall.  The lovely headache I had for half the day so DID not help.  I honestly think I'm having some kind of episode, anxiety maybe?  I just have this...constant feeling of vulnerability

Bree Freakout over something weird.

So Nikki was explaining binaurial tones to me, especially in the therapeutic uses in various diseases such as Parkinsons and so on, and that they are often used for relaxation and sleep aids.  He's not really happy with my out there sleeping habits currently, and he's right, I'm needing the pills too often, and my brain is getting stuck in high gear.  So I've been trying them for while, following the instructions, trying to relax, just the tones, the tones with a hypnosis induction, I WANTED thi

Making an effort.

So since Nikki's depression has been seriously lifted due to the combined efforts of therapy and his medication and the life chagnes, I'm making an effort on the holidays this year.  I have severely mixed feelings about holidays, so much unpleasantness to others hidden in that cheer, but what the #*&&.  Nikki's having a good time and can use some festivity in the middle of winter.  And me, being the extremely clumsy thing I am, managed to injure myself several times already trying to get

There be hope here!

So realtor lady after breaking the news gently that we'd missed the pricing bubble and our house was worth less than we hoped, said that we would know if she'd set the right price point, should have at least one showing a week.  So we set it, and our first week is now over (went up Monday). We've had three.  No ​offers yet, but I think I would be really surprised if my house sold in five days or less.  But I really want it to sell asap.  But that's good news, people are taking the time to go loo

I wish our bodies came with manuals.

Every time I think I'm figuring out the changes in my body with age, most of which no one ever talked about in my family, something else goes weird.  I'm not talking the "falling apart, unable to live" state like my mom, but the constant parade of guessing how food is going to affect me, sleeping patterns, how easily I injure/bruise myself, changes in the rhythms of my asthma making it harder to predict after I'd had it down to a science, acid reflux crazy, little things that add up to both a me

Well...that didn't work out the way I meant it to.

So it's crazy busy season at Nikki's job and he hasn't had a day off in weeks.  He MIGHT get one day next weekend, but it's also equally possible he'll work five weeks strait with no days off until the Christmas shutdown for the eve and day.  And while he's upbeat about it, all the overtime is paying for our next cruise this spring for his birthday and his dad and stepmom are going (I love his dad, his dad is awesome.  His stepmother stresses me out, shes a nice person overall, but she gets rand

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

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

Cat crisis averted, for the time being.

So...I'm starting to feel like some kinda superhero or something.  Nikki was messaging me all day, he's really upset about how the cat is doing, she's hasn't been eating and getting skinnier and skinnier.  So I told him stop at the pet store and get kitten canned food.  Which he couldn't find, so we settled on Iams.  The reason I was trying to find kitten specific food is that it has a much higher fat content to it, and I suspicion is very tasty.  Yuriko did everything she good to scarf Logan's

And that week of work is finally over.

SERIOUSLY I hate my job.  Nikki did the math, and barring any unforeseen financial emergencies (I can hear the peanut gallery laughing at the girl who thinks life is going to cooperate and nothing major will break in the last five months) it's looking like August is my exit day.  This week was just stupid.  Paperwork going wrong, customers being weird, half the people on vacation, half of who was left getting seriously ill.  If I have to forcibly tell one more person "I am reception/accounts rec

21st anniversary

Thank you to everyone on the forum who helped me sort out my feelings, learn, and work things out.  Yesterday we celebrated our 21st anniversary, and I can say we've really rebuilt this marriage and it's going strong.   And managed to get home from dinner through Ohio's surprise ice storm.  Outback Steakhouse is nice food(lobe their chicken tortilla soup) but not worth dying over! 

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

Let's talk biology vs. modern life.

So.  It took me 12 years of alarm clocks, schedules, and struggles with insomnia and exhaustion to get my body to a roughly midnight to 8 am sleep schedule.  Where I still needed the alarm clock, but most days I woke up without it or just before it went off.  But there was that knowledge that it wasn't fully reliable and I had better have that thing set so I didn't get fired.  And it's taken roughly...four weeks to end up back on my native 4 am to noon sleep habit.  And now I get tired around th

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

I'm 45 today.

It's after midnight, that makes it my birthday!  LOL  And even better, NIKKI HAS AN INTERVIEW!  And while I fully comprehend the difference between an interview and a job offer, it's still good to see him get a nibble less than two days after he applied.  It's done wonders for his confidence, and I'm proud of my Nikki.    It was amazing news. And if it does work out, both GREAT and OH MY TURTLES IT"S GONNA GET CRAZY.  LOL  

Working on my story.

So I'm writing this one slowly, trying to gather the whole thing into a coherent narrative for Erica Ravenwood.  Because when I was first struggling with my new reality, and it was scary and terrifying and I didn't know what was going to happen, I went looking for the stories of other people in my shoes.  But...they were stunningly hard to find.  And when I did find them they were usually stories told  years later after a long period of painful adjustment framed in such a way as to show that mar

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