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Learning to grow

A blog by Briannah in General

  • Entries

    140

  • Comments

    285

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    50,492

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

Opening those cans of worms.

Had a crossroads moment, and finally ventured on to the harder path.  Helping Nikki deal with his issues and history is making me take hard looks at my own.  Some can't be conquered, but they can be mitigated.  Or at the very least, it can be said 'that was NOT okay'.  My parents are divorced, they have been since I was very young, around 4.  I don't think either were very happy in the marriage, but it ended because my father cheated on my mother.  And who outed him?  Me.  Yes, he was so interes

Ohio offers, but does not give.

A few glorious days of spring, then back to the 30's.  Like look what you COULD have Bree, but I'm not going to let you.  I'm going to make you be physically cold and stew while you're working through your latest emotional pissed offness.  Yesterday we were talking about our sex life in the car, and Nikki told me flat out he had been sexually bored for years, and he loves now that we're doing all sorts of new things.  And it didn't percolate right away.  I didn't like hearing that, was minorly a

Oh Pinterest...what have you gotten me into?

I need a suit of armor.  Nikki and I have been working on increasing our outdoor holiday lighting display.  I suspect mainly because I really really love sparkly lights and Nikki likes to indulge me.  But as you know I've stopped working, so our budget are smaller, but no worries!  PInterest to save the day!    And I found a great project to add to our lighting display, only it requires working chicken wire.  Chicken wire is plain evil.  But it would be a lovely inexpensive base for lighting in

Obligatory Bree is gonna talk about politics - aka my fear of Turmp isn't just about Trump.

I had a REALLY uncomfortable conversation with a friend of mine today who was worried that a third friend had offended me with a sort of inappropriate outburst of hate against Clinton in the middle of game raid night.  And I admitted it had made me really uncomfortable, but...not on the political front.  And then the conversation got way personal, and I realized that what scares me most isn't Trump himself and his crazy, dangerous things that he spouts. There is always that one person yelling cr

Nikki dropped a new bomb on my head.

SO....Nikki turns to me today and tells me that he's seriously job hunting in Dayton, has done research in the cost of living and it's lower and the salaries are the same as here so we can live better.   And he has a pocket ace in the hole, he's looking to move to the town that one of my closest friends lives in.  And apparently the child knew before me.  *headdesk*  After a lot of talk the current consensus is this is something Nikki is fairly serious about and we should actively work towards. 

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.  

New Neighbor story. Short, but this is my weird life.

So.  The neighbors.  Again.  Yes.  One of the many reasons I'm not sad that Nikki pushed the moving idea.  I have a trick for large item trash to avoid paying fees.  I put the times out the day AFTER trash pick up, so they have roughly a week until the next one.  And only once has it failed me and the item did not 'just wander off on it's own!".  So we found out that Yuriko had been peeing behind the filing cabinet I had for years to organize.  She died of brain cancer, but no one knew she had

Nervous.

So today is kind of a scary day.  Were supposed to meet up with a mutual friend who has agreed to talk to Nikki about her childhood abuse, since they suffered similar pain.  I"m terrified for Nikki.  He's already stressy and nervous, and this will be the first time he's ever going to try talking to someone more than a brief "this happened" sort of thing.  He's doing this form himself, not for me, not for any advice, but because he wants to sit face to face with another human that shares his life

Need help conquering financial and organizing kitchen like Bree? Read here.

So, in my ongoing quest to improve the new budget and live better on what we have now, and my growing fear that Trump is going to throw us back into 2009 or worse when all the jobs vanished, I have been working on one of the biggest expenses that IS mutable, unlike the mortgage, internet, etc.  And that is...food.  Most advice seems to always stem around don't eat out, cook yourself, but groceries are stupidly expensive, and the whole process of fitting cooking into a busy life isn't that intuit

My face is covered in makeup.

IT hasn't been like this...since um...the first year I was married maybe?   I stopped fighting with my skin and just didn't really care.  Nikki didn't care.  But now it's a thing again, because I noticed that people see what they expect to see, and two girls going out for a calzone (OMG I LOVE CALZONES! and they are SO hard to find in my area for some reason) blend better if they are dressed and made up similarly.  Like i reinforce the image of him.  I know when I went out with actual girls peop

Morning moment of confusion.

Nikki made a comment while I was plague moaning(I'm really whiny when I'm sick, I confess), that he'd been planning to spend all day until the gaming event tonight in girl mode, but me being sick required boy mode and I'd ruined his plans (In a joking manner, I don't think there was any resentment).  My response, after he figured out the words because my voice is cracked up, was "Does girl mode preclude me getting fed and taken care of?"  HIm: No... Me: Then what do I care?  Just gimme something

Monday morning started out terrifying.

So I get up, let my dog out, give her her morning dental treat, and sit down to read/answer some e-mail.  All of a sudden my dog is racing around the house like crazy, so I go out to see what is going on.  I'm not talking a little pacing, I"m talking full speed full charge ahead around the place, she never does this.  She goes behind the table where I can't see her, so I go around too, and she's on the floor on her side seizing, her little paws twitching and some foam on her mouth.  Having some

Mixed signals.

I don't feel shiny today, just kinda stressed and confused but trying hard to work it all out.  So...after trying to sort out some mixed signals from Nikki, I decided it was time to be Bree and came up with a plan.  Nikki talks about going out A LOT more than he realizes.  But when I asked him about it, he's like one to two years down the road.  Okay.  But then he talks about it again with all the signals of I want to be doing this.  Nikki and Bree have a dynamic here, and that is Nikki is afrai

Misadventures in Romance

So. Monday was gorgeous all day.  SIXTY degrees outside.  We hadn't done the Toledo Zoo Lights yet this year, so I called Nikki at work to find out if he wanted to go, it was a work night but it's not terribly late.  Thought it would be fun not freezing to death for once.  So we get in the car to go, and it starts misting a bit.  Then it starts pouring.  It was the soggiest zoo lights ever!  We bought a great big red and white umbrella and were congratulating ourselves on dealing with the rain w

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

Living on hope of vacation.

So Nikki's back has been out for a while now, so I dragged him strait to the doctor Friday, based on the pain response from limb manipulation test, they think at this point it's an inflammation problem rather than an injury from all the physical labor we've been doing.  (I'm sore as anything too, but I still have full flexibility and only sore-pain not crazy pain like after the surgery I had or what he's feeling so I'm sure I'm just tired) and they gave us anti-inflammatory pills that are helpin

LIttle worried about Nikki's blood pressure and other thoughts.

Nikki's blood pressure is refusing to cooperate.  It's still high, and they managed to conquer mine even.  I don't know if he's stressed out under the depression and unable to really feel it to deal with it, or if there is something more serious going on.  I know it sounds early to worry, but Nikki has a history of a minor thing suddenly becoming a health crisis.  So I worry.  Cuz I can't imagine being without him.  He's made an appointment with her after briefly discussing antidepressants, she

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

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

Let's stop judging the ones on the outside society.

Between sitting on the sidelines while Nikki sorts out himself and our entire future, and watching my friend whose basically been soloing a marriage for years and a complete tantrum and horribly ongoing vilifying is thrown every time she points out her needs haven't been met in years because 'she doesn't understand what he is suffering' (while he continues to smoke, not do his therapy, not do his rehab physical work, and eat in ways that aggravate his illness daily), I've come to realize my earl

Laugh, Cry, or just kill the neighbors.

Seriously, some days I don't even know.  Nikki has gotten a diagnoses, so that's good, however, he's been on a roller coaster of moods because next she wants to talk about the childhood abuse.  So from moment to moment I have very little idea what is going on in his head right now  and keep 'stepping in it' as it where.  I wish I was better with the random, he needs support not clumsy right now.  The dog comes in last night, and apparently found something that died horribly and instead of avoid

Just rambling.

I think I grew up a bit more somewhere along the way.  I'm at the post-stressout phase and tired, but Nikki's wish to leave isn't as scary as it first was.  I still have a lot of fears, but I think they're valid fears.  What if he can't get a job, the unemployment rate in Ohio is still bad, what if we can't sell the house, what will my mom do since my son is moving out of state next week and then we're leaving too (I know, on the one hand she's pretty much made her bed with me, but on the other

Just life.

Life evolves.  The original plan was only moving if Nikki found a job out of town. Which as of yet has not happened, but it's always a potentiality.  Unfortunately, I got curious, and I looked at towns around our area and asked NIkki what the maximum commute was, as apparently there are several choices in a city a half hourish south of us that would put our mortgage at a third to half of what we pay  now.  Let that percolate a moment, yeah.  And the houses are bigger and nicer.  One is so flat o

It's getting a little warmer!

Super excited about the weather, and had a long talk with the girl who runs our summer retreat of friends, and she is fiercely pro-Nikki and told me (unsolicited, I was just answering her questions why I'd gone weird the last six months and then so busy I couldn't talk to anyone because I was in deep talks with Nikki about everything) "I'm completely comfortable with him bringing his femme clothes and anyone who isn't comfortable here can go the fuck home because this is our safe space".  I love

It's almost over.

YAY!  We're closing on the house Tuesday!!!!  Then on Saturday a coworker friend we've been making is coming all the way up here to help us move.  He's aware of my hernia issue and my ability to live/carry things being compromised and wanted to help Nikki out and I'll just be organizing and using the wagon I won last year at a picnic giveaway (I love that collapsible canvas wagon, they are the best things ever!  Lightweight, maneuverable, but roomy and strong!).   I"M MOVING!   One more wee

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