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Learning to grow

A blog by Briannah in General

  • Entries

    140

  • Comments

    285

  • Views

    50,946

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

Well, crap.

So.  Since we both have tomorrow off, and I was feeling the joy of having time to get some things done, and its' a gorgeous day outside, we decided to clear off the porch of all the winter and home improvement debris that has collected on it.  It was going well when we were moving the cardboard boxes off the porch to take to the van when we found...kittens.  Yup.  Six tiny little kittens about twice the size of a gerbil.  Have I mentioned my neighborhood has a stray cat problem?  So we called ar

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

Bad week.

Having a crap week, and am going offline for a bit to sort it all out.  ​ Last week I was feeling...odd.  Especially late at night.  Saturday night I felt really odd, and checked my fitbit, and had a crazy high pulse rate for laying down.  40 bpm above my usual resting rate doing nothing.  So after goofling symptoms off the er I want, were I spent the next five ours waiting to find out if I was having a heart attack, pneumonia, viral infection, acid reflux onset, or a mineral deficiency (and tho

Why is buying a house so freakin' hard.

Feel free to ignore me, I'm just venting to try not to explode.  I'm super frustrated as we're so close to escaping my froot loopy idea to stay with my mom (man, I moved back into my awful childhood, what was I thinking that this would work out okay???) and it feels like everyone is trying to stop me.  First Nikki got mad at me: my fault, and sorta not my fault, I was trying to do research, I didn't realize any mortgage brokers were going to CALL HIM I thought I was just gathering intel or

Sometimes you slide backwards.

I'm having one of my best friends over to see the my new house, the first person I've had here other than the two coworkers that helped us move.  Shes' one of the reasons I wanted to come here, so we'd be close enough to hang out more than twice or three times a year.  And I'm realizing my job has had a deeply negative effect on some of my behaviors.  I know I will enjoy the visit, it will be fun, and still I'm dreading it like mad.  I have this antisocial streak lying underneath a need for comp

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

Update

So doing much better.  Yeah, that stupidly expensive Medcline wedge thing with the body pillow costs around $300, but WOW if you need some sort of sleeping wedge for a medical issue (I'm pretty sure apnea, copd, and some other conditions besides acid reflux benefit from the incline sleeping position) then I really really recommend this one.  The wedge is pretty firm and holds you up well, and it has a 'stuffer' pillow so you can change which side you sleep on (the other conditions it doesn't mat

First post - Today, just rambling thoughts.

EmmaSweet suggested I start a blog, and I think she has a point.  And never ask people for advice if you're not willing to try it!  So here I am, sorting out a lot of changes in my life.  So today, it's time to tackle a joint issue we both share.  Hoarding.  We're not going to show up on a tv show or anything, it's not the dramatically bad.  However, it runs in my family on both sides.  My mother is a hoarder, and getting worse as she ages.  And my father's mother was nearly tv show ready except

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

Winter's Day

I am so cold.  My job is cheap with the heat, and I sit by a window.  And I"m in the middle of a mass of office equipment, so a space heater is not practical.  So I'm freezing cold, struggling with the four new steps they decided to add to an overly complicated invoicing process on a day when apparently the pricing dude decided not to deal with it so I have two weeks backed up.  Stressed out.  SO...Nikki had mentioned girl mode today and playing with the clothing and the forms, so I told him to

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

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

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

CRANKY.

Doing taxes.  Gyah.  Just argh.  Frustration.  Confusion.  HEadache.  And I'm using the Turbotax site that does most of the work for me but this is still irritation.  Nikki's on his own tonight, I'm too cranky to be alive.

Spring is helping so much.

Actually going outside is helping my mood swings considerably.  I'm off the charts unpredictable with them when I'm stressed out, so Nikki never knows what he's walking into with me conversationally these last two months.  Finding out in the middle of cabin fever probably did NOT help my emotional cycles.  I can't go out much in the winter, the cold air even with a scarf on sets my lungs off like nothing else, and I literally can't breath.  So my time outside in Ohio between November to March is

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

FInally feeling on more secure footing.

Just thinking about where i am today with Nikki.  THis is probably rambly and nonsensical as my add levels are high today and it's hard to focus.  It thought writing may help, but now I'm not entirely sure. So after a crazy whirlwind of two months, things have settled down greatly, progress is being made, and that feeling of living in a crisis (as far as Nikki is concerned, don't even get me started on the cat or the yard or house maitenance!) has mostly dropped away.  Both of us are occasionall

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.

Follow up reaserach on artilcles really pays off.

No one here will be surprised when I mention my need for information to make ANY life choices, small or large, and vacation is not an exception.  I really don't understand my head here.  Researching the options = fun and entertainment to my brain, but actual specific planning sends me into a tailspin of resentment for my time and energy being sucked into the process.  So I'm always reading new things about everything I'm into, including cruising, and I like to read those 'things I wish I knew" a

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

Wish me luck, the renovations didn't wait!

So much for best laid plans.  Thanks to a sick cat spewing over the ENTIRE staircase top to bottom, Nikki and I had a quick meeting to figure out how best to deal with this mess, and the staircase IS on the renovation list...so... RENOVATIONS HAVE BEGUN!  I repeat, they have begun! This is not a drill!  Grab your emergency breathing masks!  *laughing*  At this point it's easier to just start early and toss the carpet than to clean that up, poor cat really didn't have a good night last night.  Th

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. 

Tentatively at peace wtih the new possiblities.

So more talking occurred, and it seems that making moving the focus is pretty much the desired outcome.  Which will mean a lot of job hunting on Nikki's part, and packing/cleaning/repair work on mine.  And a discussion that I'm not overreacting if Nikki wants this to happen.  Now is the time we have to do all the preparation work, so that if things do fall into place we are ready and not having a financial crisis making this happen.  So Nikki got on board with my 'we prep now, since either way i

Switch flipped.

Now I'm clam and zen, because NIkki is dealing with some really hard deep inside personal issues iwth his therapist, and he needs me to be okay right now.  So I have since righted myself and gone back to practical one thing at a time mode.  It helps that I see the exit from Hell Job now that they have hired and are training my supervisor's replacement.  So she won't be there to guilt me into staying longer.  Relatives have that power sometimes, especially since you still want someone to come to

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