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Learning to grow

A blog by Briannah in General

  • Entries

    140

  • Comments

    285

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    50,958

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

WIsh me luck - Youtube Hair Idiocy. :)

So I watched about a billion youtube videos about doing the fairly simply, layered haircut I favor yourself.  And it is actually fairly idiot proof, you basically let your head do the work for you.  Ponytail it all at your forehead instead of your crown, cut teh ponytail at the desired length, and take the band out.  Voila.  The natural spaces on your head arrange the hair at different lengths as it takes further from the nap to your forehead than mid-head and crown, etc. etc.  It's faster, no a

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

Being the parrtner sucks.

Nikki is going through some serious painful topics in therapy, nothing I can do.  Not a thing.  He has to sort all of it out, and it will be good for him, but I'm not stupid, he's hurting and nothing I can say or do can take that away until he works through it all.  I'm here, ready with the comfort and the hugs and the reinforcement, but that only goes so far.  I suspicion everyone here knows that.  The sheer helplessness sucks.  I WANT to be able to help him, to make it all better, and make all

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

Turned in my story.

Writing that was hard.  I tried to be overly articulate, and it was crap. I tried to write it like a report, and that was crap.  Finally I just freeform wrote it, fixed typos, and e-mailed it without reading it over and over and judging myself.  Writing it reminded me how scary a trip this all was, and also made me see how much progress I'd made.  I"m not angry anymore.  I'm still working on that full trust, but that takes time.  Admitting to my fears and problems with the things people have sai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

You never know a person until the crazy shows, I guess.

I've had a friend for about a year.  Nikki and I met him online, and we all hit it off and became good friends.  Through the internet, they live several states away.  But still.  Ten years of chatting is a long time, and real friendships form.  So...several years ago he had a full on psych meltdown and vanished, and his wife reached out to me (thinking I was having an affair with him and he'd come to the other woman, unaware I was part of a couple and it wasn't like that) and she and I struck up

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  

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

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

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

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

ALl the houses are starting to blur together.

SO it's my job to keep an eye on the housing market and come up with reasonable solutions for later, while Nikki full on job hunts and we work together on the actual physicality of packing and repairs.  So...he'll give me a city  he's found a potential job in and I yay or nay based on  housing prices.  But now I have looked at so so many that they have blended into one insane, nightmare of a house riddled with water damage, hideous pink bathrooms, strange flora outside that looks like it want to

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

Irma.

So I just saw photos of St. Maarten after Irma passed through.  On top of the horror for those people, there is this creepy feeling.  I was there, in March, with Ashe.  We lounged on a beautiful beach, we had lunch at this awesome open air restaurant right on the beech and iguanas joined us for the lunch, there was a drive through the beautiful now underwater streets.  It just feels weird when it's somewhere you have been.  Like when I see flood photos from the one we had here.  It's not a feeli

Spousal Perspective of tools.

How Nikki sees the new tool kit we got today (because I broke the drill, don't ask) - Ooh, cool, I can do cool things like built in book shelving and better closeting!  I can be all sorts of productive!  These things are kind of dangerous though. How I see the new tools: Hm..if anyone breaks in again, I could totally kill a person with those....and not have to worry about a cord.  I wonder if it would get stuck in the bone? Some days I think there is something really wrong with me.  In my defens

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