Briannah

Yeah. And the dog really is beautiful, and with proper handling would be able to live a happy dog life instead of being in danger. But there isn't anything I can do, Dad didn't hear a word I said when we were talking, he's not going to hear it now. I hope Dad's increasing jerk behavior reduces the amount of social visits to his home and thus protects the dog that way. Dog deserves better. Looks around. I adulated. I finished packing yesterday, two days early. Usually I'm up all night trying to pack until an hour before time to go. LOL

Thank you, it was last April that she went, but we only found out about the issue behind the filing cabinet and the bookshelve when we just moved them as part of the prepping to sell. She was a great cat though. And ​normally didn't pee all over the place, I swear. She did live a long life of 14 years though. Her brother is still going strong, and trying to kick Nikki out. Hes' a bit of a terrirorial cat about me.

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 it until the day we had to put her to sleep, but in the last six months or so of her life she had developed some strange behaviors as the cancer was changing her little brain. My poor kitty. But anyway, she had taken to peeing behind the metal filing cabinet, and apparently on this ancient pressboard bookshelf I've had since I was 16. That is 1988 for those who really wanna know the age of this thing, and no, I have ZERO idea how it lasted that long, it's the kind where they sorta glued sawdust together and called it wood but this thing really didn't wanna die. So pretty much unsalvageable, so I put both out on a Friday afternoon and resolved not to think about it unless they were still there by Wednesday, in which case I would call the trash company and arrange for the Thursday pickup to take them. Saturday morning I am started out of my bed, at FIVE IN THE MORNING. By the sound of grown men arguing LOUDLY just under our bedroom window. I am exceedingly confused why it seems two random strangers chose to have some sort of what sounded like a deeply emotional conflict on my yard at that hour, so I hauled myself out of bed and reached for the curtain, and pulled it aside just a wee bit to see. And yup, it's the neighbor son, fighting with some random dude who was loading the filing cabinet into his pickup. Which I suspected would go easily, it's metal and metal salvage is big here among the poor now . But the neighbor is yelling at him his mom saw it first and it was theirs. Dude was finally like then you should have taken it, finished loading, and left. Yes, there were two people who argued for nearly a half hour over my TRASH. We have reached the point where people are actually fighting over peed on, trashed furniture that really isn't usable anymore. ​ So I figure that's the end of it, the bookshelf will sit, and I'll have to pay a coupla bucks to get rid of it. Or Nikki can take the hatchet to it and we can burn it in the fire pit out back. Whatever. I got back to sleep, and we get up a few hours later and go out to run a few errands. As I'm standing by the car, something is bugging me for a minute, and I can't figure out what... and then I realize, yup. The creepy neighbors actually took the ancient bookshelf that had finally begun to disintegrate and was so soaked in cat urine that no amount of the enzyme cleaner I tried to use to salvage it made a difference into their house. Where they have cats, who are going to take that as a challenge and pee all over my cats pee. Some days the crazy just won't let me not look at it and contemplate how we got to this point on this street. Here's hoping future battles over my trash occur at reasonable hours at least. Do you think it would be taken amiss if I put out a sign that reads "All battles over our trash must occur in this corner of the yard, and only between the hours of 1pm and 6pm". LOL

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 helping. And new doctor reassured me a bit that maybe this relationship will work out because she addressed on her own that the pills and his antidepressents are contraindicated for each other, but he's not going to be on the new stuff long enough to run into trouble so not to worry without us having to ask or see the warnings. These days a doctor who is paying attention to what medications you are taking and how they mix is great, so many have stopped. We start driving Friday, and board the ship Sunday. I'm so tired, stressed out, trying to figure out how to proceed forward in the best way, I need this vacation. I had a weird breakdown over trying to pack. Simply the act of deciding what clothing to take was the last raindrop that burst the dam, but there is so much going on right now internally and externally that I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Like I told my friend recently, you feel what you feel, it doesn't go away even if you don't act on it, and you do have to deal with those feelings. So taking my own advice and trying to sort through it all. A reminder that no matter how good you have it there are things that harm you. I know I have a good life, I do, but still, there are ugly things trying to claw my eyes out. And when people say "I wish my life was as simple as yours!" it's a trap you can start to fall into and forget that your life isn't really so simple. I just keep a lot of internally irl, I don't talk about things nearly as much as I do here, and aside from coming to learn about transgender, I have also come to learn a great deal about the safe space concept and it's real world emotional applications here. Good lesson. So I try to make my home and interactions with others safe space. So getting to know my paternal aunt a bit better, we've been talking on Facebook a lot, and at first she was trying to fix things between me and my dad, but as time goes on she's coming to understand what happened and that it can't be. She just got back from a visit with him, and his 70-something pound german shepard just bit her, and instead of controlling the dog or correcting it, Dad just stood there laughing about it. And when she was rightfully upset, he did the whole "Roscoe wants you to know he's a scared little being in a world he doesn't understand, and he can't help his feelings". Really? No one is challenging the dog, and as usual, Mr You have to take responsibility refused to take any for his responsibility to properly control and handle his pooch. It's a beautiful dog, and I don't really want to see that poor thing put down because my dad is stupid about his dogs. And then it became 'you're obviously an unhappy person, and we'll pray for you!" when she refused to just brush it off and left. Which is really sad, because my Dad made so much fun of my poor grandma for saying things like that. I didn't really want to be involved in that conversation, but she was worried I needed to know about the dog and the issue. I already knew, same thing happened when I was younger, to both her and me. She'd forgotten about that, and it was her aha moment, that she really didn't understand the dynamic between dad and me was a lifetime of things, and calling my kid and me stupid was just the final thing that made me realize how unhealthy it is. But hey, at least I sorta have a relationship with an aunt I didn't really have one with before, so that is potentially good. I'll relax when we've achieved the goals I guess. Even on vacation this stuff is inside, it goes with you.

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 out gorgeous. but we're not ready to list (although working hard at it!) and that city doesn't have a huge migration...so it's possible it will still be there when this one sells. I need to sell this one first for the down payment for the next one. And watching Trump deconstruct our country has forced me into the realization that we need to get a setup where if we have to we can survive okay on minimum wage jobs. We can't do that in this house, and I feel financially insecure in what he's going to do in the next four years to realize now is the time to change that. Course, if he drives us into another Great Depression, I'm not sure there will be any burger cooking (I just can't say flipping, I've worked at McD's, no flipping involved it's a giant really hot clam thing) jobs to be had. Especially if you're me. Republicans are trying to pass a bill now giving employers the right to genetic test employees and get the resutls. So much for Hipaa. I'm asthmatic, among other things, and I have no idea if that will show up or not. But I imagine if that law passes people with conditions can start saying goodbye to jobs so employers can save money on insurance feees. There is seriously no real reason an employer needs that level of medical information on potential employees. And since they also want to defund medicare and welfare and everything else, I wonder what these jobless ill people will do to survive. I imagine it won't be pretty. But the decision to sell the house and go has been finalized no matter what he does job wise. And it's weird. On the one hand, there is new life possibilities! on the other hand...so much work, and crazy fears, an waiting for the house to sell being stuck in a limbo you can't control til that is done. And resentment that it literally is the fact that I can't count on my country to care about people like us, or anyone not in the top 2% financial positions, that i have to do this. Weird headspace for me right now, and I"m sorta volatile. The trump fans are trying to tell me I'm overreacting. I'm not. When you see a potential weakness, you fix it. $676 a month when I could get $150 to $290 a month is not an overreaction, it's a positive change so that if they automate, offshore, or just downsize nikki's job out we're not screwed. My offspring is coming home next weekend to get the rest of his things, he's moving back with crazy ex. Here's hoping she's grown less crazy with time and it works out okay. It'll be great to get to see him, originally he was coming the weekend after but his moving plans changed, which is good becuase the weekend after I'll be driving to wehre it's warm to hop on a boat. PALM TREES! I'm coming palm trees! I can't really explain the palm tree thing, they just make me happy.

I don't know. I don't think anyone will ever know if those two groups are the same or not, and so much of it would matter on what is the definition of same in this case. But I'm not really sure it matters all that much anyway. Every person is made up of both their inherent nature and the effect their life experiences have on the brain. We all share common traits and wildly different traits no matter how you define a group of humans. I think social's obsession with grouping people in the first place is the bigger problem than if any people with radically different life experiences are the same or not. Society insists on grouping us and then extending certain behaviors to people in those groups. Religious groups, gender groups, age groups, ethnic groups, racial groups, political groups. Being in a group of shared experience/belief isn't bad, where it becomes bad is the mass social treatment (either on the good or poor end of the spectrum) based on belonging to a group, and individual merit, worth, and (I don't know the word I want here, deserved treatment?) gets supplanted by the groups. We see ONLY the forest, and not the trees. I don't think of other women as automatically the same as me either, a lot of them are dangerous or unpleasant in a variety of ways and I"m always highly aware of that and looking for individual traits rather than 'oh, she's a woman like me, soidarity!' I'm not sure if it's curable. Misandry is a real thing too, and I run into it every day, but it's not talked about, I had to research hard to find out what the formal term was (Never once had to look up misogyny). And it could be argued that it's not as big of a problem as misogyny, but that doesn't erase the fact that it something changed in the shift of power it would be. These unkind feelings to the opposing gender exist in both, it's not a flaw of just one. It's possible it's a leftover survival tactic, something we don't need anymore but haven't quite shed in our dna yet. Or it's something we bred into our pscyhe after thousands of years of behavior. I'm not sure we can talk about curing one side without the other realistically. And it's just as ugly in the women as it is in the men.

Oh my god it came out great! Longer than I am ultimately looking for, but I wanted to cut it longer in case it didn't come out right. I love it! The layers are great and soft, and it took me literally four minutes to do (other than the three minutes of mirror silliness where I was flipping the pony tail you make on the forehead going "I'm a unicorn! UNICORN!" and possibly badly singling some music from teh Last Unicorn before I got down to business like an adult). And not only do I really like how it came out, but it occurs to me that three minutes is a really simple, fast process to keep it constantly touched up and keep that fresh new haircut feel whenever I want to. Not only free, but it put's me really back in control of my own hair. Nikki liked the final look too. Cleanup was easy too, I did the actual cutting over the toilet so just flushed the snips away. No mess. I was super nervous but the results have calmed my fears. Sent photos to a couple freinds to make sure nothing looked funny, got the all important girlfriend approvals. What are you looking to do with your hair?

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 awkward descriptions and miscommunications, and best of all, no product hard sell. There is nothing a the salon I can't get cheaper elsewhere. And my hair is long enough that if it doesn't work out for my texture(you never know, salon or at home really, what a particular cut will do with your individual hair I have learned the hard way, I look like a weird porcupine with some kinda bent quill birth defect if I try to rock the really short hair) I can go in and get the layered bob I was thinking of. I'm going to cut it longer than I was thinking I would like it to see how it looks first, and then I can always do it a second time if it works for me. Then I have to redye it green, it's fading into blond really fast now. What is everyone else doing with their hair?

So there is a still a lot of work, I swear the cosmetic parts are more work than the actual structural parts, but the decaying and failing runners have all been replaced by new ones, that are deeper (the come out a but further, giving a larger space for the foot) with new pine runners. Nikki did an awesome job, sawdust is everywhere (sawdust smells good, I forgot that), and w'ere ready to start worrying about making it look nice now. I forgot how QUIET stairs are when they're not...well...ancient. I'm really having to confront some internal senses of helplessness about changing things in a house and diy stuff that I didn't realize I had or the extent of which I allowed to hold me back. I'm firm on the professionals only for electrical work, but the rest is negotiable apparently. This has been good for me, and I think Nikki likes all the praise. I helped. Awkwardly. And at one point AssassinFeline decided he was going to be a carpenter too, but we got him shooed away without bloodshed. That's a victory! Nikki is really good with wood, while I'm still terrorized about power tools. In my small defense though, I was constantly given the message since I was small "Machines will hurt you" and I'm having trouble overcoming that lifelong conditioning. It didn't help when my 8th grade metalshop teacher cut his finger off (not when I was in the room, it was a few class periods before mine, but still) and my father worked accident scenes with trains and used that to scare me to make sure I respected trains and the damage they can do. Nikki didn't get the first job he tried for, but we're not giving up. We had a talk with the people at this therapy place, and they recommended a second therapist who went to school with the one he was seeing and has a similar approach, so he's going to start seeing her when we get back form the cruise. Like the day after I believe. I think with the stress of trying to job hunt and move us it's better to have someone than wait, and he either agrees with me or is humoring me hugely. I've started plotting out a deep clean as stuff vanishes into totes and boxes and moves to my mom's. We might have to invest in new carpet for the upstairs, 10 years of cats puking is problematic, but I'm going to try to shampoo it first and see if I can't coax into something reasonable enough to present to buyers if we reach that point. The weather has been fairly reasonable, I think Nikki is eyeing fixing the broken fence cracked by the falling tree from the neighbor next door (Yes, I know he should have fixed it, but he's a slumlord and sugin him would cost more than just dealing with it). I've been dealing with my mom having a cow that my aunt new about our work to leave town before she did. Of course my aunt new, she and I talk all the time. Aunt is unpredictable and can be difficult without warning, but she genuinely is trying to help. If he does secure the job, I was planning to ask her to come to Dayton with me and do the house tours, she has a great eye and is super nitpicky and notices EVERY little detail, great resource! I'm sure that will give birth to a whole herd of bovines with my mom, but I don't have time to humor the fantasy land anymore. In one month vacation begins! WOOHOO! CARIBBEAN here we come! *stupidly excited* And the night before we get on the ship a guild mate of ours from an online game is in teh area, we're planning to meet up for dinner and have a bit of silly chatter. It'll be fun to put a face to the voice in my headset. It's going to be a great trip! So that is what I've been busy with, how are all of you? *hugs all around*

It's a deal breaker in my friendships too, I back away from any serious racism, religionism, sexism, whateverism because I think what matters is how individuals behave. I don't care who anyone else sleeps with as long as proper consent is contained (I do care if people are being molested or raped!), I don't care what religion anyone practices so long as it doesn't harm anyone (don't get me started on the weird religions need to punsih people who don't share the same one), I don't care where people came from, I don't care what they wear, eat, like, whatever. None of that has anything to do with me. What has to do with me is can we converse nicely, do they treat me and others around us well, are they likeable, what do we have in common, things like that. I have a everyone welcome whose not a jerk sign hanging over my friendzone! Before Nikki and I decided to switch from Polyarmory to Monogamy, my dating sign was "everyone welcome whose not a jerk, but I make no promises til we see how it goes" sign over my datingzone. Even when I ran into things dates were into that I could not personally handle participating, I never had a need to make them feel bad or weird about it, I just said I'm sorry, this isn't my thing, but I wish you luck finding someone who enjoys this too. People say I'm weird that I"m still friends with several people I'd had romantic/sexual relationships with in the past. I think I'm fairly normal, if you like a person for being that person, not just their looks, it doesn't seem that strange to stay friendly as long as there was no reason not to, like cheating or abuse or something harmful. Nikki is friends with them and genuinely likes them. Not my ex husband of course, that falls under the abuse clause, but others. People tell us that's unnatural too, and I wonder where this "if we can't be in a romantic relationship we can't be anything' comes from. Or where the 'you must erase all traces of exes to prove you love the person you currently choose to be with' idealogy comes from either. Are we as a culture in America that insecure? I will never understand why anyone would choose to attack you for choosing to have relationships with whomever you are attracted to. They are not in the relationship, they are not harmed by the relationship, and it has nothing to do with their reltaionship with you, they are forcing it into a place it doesnt' belong. People make me sad more and more these days.

Aww thank you! As a let live and like everyone liberal girl trapped in conservative hell, it's always nice when someone actually likes me. Sometimes I wonder how makes people so happy to be mean to other people, and then I flee to the internet and am all like "Oh yeah, there are still nice people in the world who want to be nice to other people! YAY!" LOL I'm mulling over an epiphany I had today on some of it, from an article about where the safe space hatred comes from in the so-called 'alt-right', and it's one of those enlightening moments. I"m just not sure what to do with it.

I do mean the human race. We is everyone who would use it for normal purposes both social and news/information spreading, but abandoned it to what it is now. It didn't used to be like this at the start, I'm told from people back in the day who used things like Chatroullette and Omegle that i used to just be conversations, people reaching out trade news of the regions, or just bored people who wanted to meet ohters, but we as a global community let it fall to the wayside. People who don't use a thing for good things, who just say "it's full of garbage, I'm not going there!" and leave it to be exactly that. And yes, it is tough to filter them out, but we are supposed to be a world that doesn't shy away from things because they are hard. And at the end of the day, that next button makes them vanish. No, I don't mean anyone in particular on this site, I mean the whole internet population. We as a whole. All the normal people who don't get on it and have normal conversations. I'm still scrolling through things I can't mention here becuase I'm not ready to give up on meeting even just ONE person out there who I can have a conversation with (That Turkish dude's body language seemed normal, so while I admit he could have been saying extremely kinky things in Turkish, I would be sorta surprised). B ut I picked mysefl back up and slogged through some crazy again, and almost had a conversation. Some man in Micronesia and I were doing really good (or horribly gone wrong) pantomimes. It was weirdly fun. He was trying to explain how to prepare a fish I believe, as he kept turning his camera to the food he was working on while he was talking, and I was showing him pictures of my area. Language barrier again, but ti was still...cool. I think what makes me really sad is that we COULD reclaim it, if the army of people across the world with webcams got on, just nexted the gross and ignored them, without reinforcement and with just ordinary chatter boring them it could be reclaimed. And I think with so many governments going crazy, it's probably important that it we do take it back and start talking to people beyond our normal daily run ins. *shrugs* but I"m just one turtle, I'm not really the revolutionary type no matter how hard I Try to be.

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 things, I would find and chat with interesting people. But it seems like the ENTIRE thing was unspeakable things. And it makes me really sad. Random video chat is a lifechanging technology. It has the power to connect people around the world, to talk, meet, share their lives and stories, educate each other about different places of the world, and learn the truths in the world for yourself through contact instead of media. And we've let it languish into some sort of perverts only waste. We could change the world here, and we just...don't. I wouldn't even mind wading through the random body parts and weirdness if it meant there would be gems of awesome somewhere. I"m an adult, I can push the next button and not be irreparably harmed. But there was nothing no matter how many times I nexted. If you are under 18, stay off these things, even the ones rated 13+ the users really don't care. So my webcam sits off quietly, until someone I know someday might also get a webcam other than my son. And I'm still lonely at night hwen it's quiet, and I could have spent that time broadening my understanding of the world, and I think I"M a little mad at the world for not being there. To tell me why Togo is an awesome place, why I need to fight pollution to try to save the Maldives from vanishing because they have this awesome thing, what this custom I don't understand is all about, or to answer any question they have about american weirdness. Lonely turtle.

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 defense, it was IF someone breaks in, not I could just go out and drill into someone.

Not surprisingly, I don't really remember thing. I was only 20 when we left it, and engineering sadly was not on my radar. I do remember Johnson's Park, and the village on the end of it with the Really Old houses they preserved. There was a racetrack for horses too, but I'd never even once managed to see it used for actual racing, just one or two horses getting excercises. The mall used to be great (now it's kinda gutted and weird) and we all hung out there a lot, eating Bavarian Pretzels, browsing the record store (how excited we all where when it flipped from a small store front to a huge one across the way!), movies, and this neat little nautical theme gift shop called Poopdeck Galley that weirdly also sold plush puppets and is where I got my two gorgeous dragon puppets! They had a great bookstore too, I spent hours in B. Daltons back in the day. LOL We also hung out at the library a lot, there were to, but we mostly hung out at the JFK one way out by the school, until they moved the New Market one from this TINY store front to a big building actually built to be a library. It was right near the Carvel, so we used to get ice cream then go hang at the library, no parents! LOL And there was this little park called Columbus Park near my freind Lisas, they had handball courts we used to spend a lot of time just practicing with tennis balls. We never really did learn the rules of that game, only tennis. I miss home.

Maybe I really should start stocking up on this creepy food in the basement once we decide where we're going to be living. Cheeto has me really worried, not just on what he can do to the social fabric of our country, but he says of lot of dangerous things to dangerous world leaders.

I'm starting to really read the prepper websites, and I can't tell if I've joined the tinfoil hat brigade or if that Cheeto is goinna wreck it all and turn into a giant mess of we're all gonna die. I"ve been consdiering gun lessons. I don't like guns. But so many people around me have them, and if it gets really bad, might need to have and undersatnd them. That man has been in office less than a month and he's done so many illegal and dangerous things that I'm really starting to fear for my long term safety.

Between you've drank the Kool-Aid, joined the paranoid tinfoil hat brigade, or are having a reasonable response to something? How do you REALLY know? Because I might be over that line. *closes prepper information websites* Or the line is over me, and I'm just starting to realize things can slide really quickly. I don't know.

I grew up in Piscataway, then lived for a couple of years in Plainsboro after graduation and a brief time in Heightstown before I moved to Ohio to get away from crazy ex. I really miss it, there was this little mom and pop pizza place across from Quakerbridge Mall that had the BEST CHEESESTEAK EVER! It's called Red Moon Pizza if it's still there and you're in the area. We spent a lot of time at Sandy Hook beach, but then changed to Island Beach State Park. I know everyone loves Seaside Heights, but I liked a somewhat quieter beach.

Ah, I grew up in NJ. I miss it hugely, but not the cost of living. I would go back in a heartbeat if it wasn't so crazy expensive!

Thank you very much Emma! We're enjoying a week of putting things in order to move forward with our plans and hopefully end up in a nicer future.

I"m sorry, I didn't meant to make anyone thing I was leaving Nikki! We have issues, like every couple, but we are pretty successful in working through them I think. There were a few times it came close over the years, but we stuck it out. At least we've held it together a long time. We may be doing the separate cities thing for a while though, depending on how prepping/selling the house and his jobhunt drop into place. But the days when you could wait for everything to align perfectly are long gone, and we gotta make it work in any order we can.

It is a shared office of six therapists, so we're going to call the receptionist to see about the future. It feels gross though. It feels gross to call these people who just lost a coworker to sort out our business. I know they understand and are still looking to help patients, just my emotional brain feels really gross about it. And we literlaly know ZERO transgender people in the area. If they're here, they're not talking. There are no local support or social groups at all here, no one whose popped up on any of my searches. I know Nikki can't be the only person, but they're in deep hiding or something. And there is the this sucks, i LIKED her. She was a really nice person, sweet, and very good at what she does. She had small children and a husband, and I hate seeing life cut short like that. I know it happens, no guarantees for any of us, but it really breaks my heart.

Nikki's therapist, his younger than me, super healthy therapist, had a heart attack and passed away this weekend. I can't wrap my mind around it. She has been so helpful working everything out, and such a huge part of our lives (Nikkii's directly, mine through the effect she has on our life) that i just am floored. So far Nikki is okay, but I don't know how this works for a patient. If my former therapist had just died, it would have really messed me up, I can't even imagine. And she was so sweet. I know rationally that if we moved, a new therapist search was in the near future, and nothing we feel is anything like what her family feels, but the finality and suddenness of it is just stunning. And of course now I"m worried for Nikki, having that taken away so suddenly can't be good for him.

So it was a rocky year, but we made it out okay. Today was our 18th anniversary, and we had a great day. And the weather was almost nice! We had a nice brunch out(Nikki is trying to live on my schedule during staycation, silly sleepy boy so we didn't wake up til 11), my aunt stopped by to drop off my birthday card since I was busy yesterday only she actually forgot the card on her counter, then we packed up more tubs and moved them to my moms and stopped and my aunts on the way home, grabbed some dinner, and spent the night gaming together. It was fun. Right now my cat is super high on a catnip stash I didn't know he has, and is amusing the daylights outta me. Drunk cat. I think he may be in need of Catnip Anonymous. So I bit the bullet and had the we're leaving as soon as reasonably possible talk with the family, it went better than I expected. Turns out the aunt's interest aligns with our desire to be outta here (She's not eager to be rid of us, but she thinks my mom will have to come outta lala land without us to pick up the slack). She asked to see some of the houses I saved as potentials, and we had fun looking them over. She has a good eye too and was helpful picking out little tidbits and we had a good time. I like my aunt most of the time, but sometimes she gets WEIRD. Runs in the family. She also thinks we just sorta lingered too long here after Grandma passed. The deal with Nikki was we couldn't leave unless there was no way around it until Grandma passed, and she went in 2011. There was a long time of depression where change was a bad idea, and then we just sorta got into a holding pattern. It was kinda disturbing when I talked to my mom though, I asked nicely if I could stay with her for a while and before I could finish explaining she got all gleeful thinking I was getting divorced. It's not about Nikki at all though, don't misunderstand. My mom married my dad reasonably young, I think they were 21, I"m not really clear on that bit. I think they were married three to four years before I was born. And only three years after, my dad had the affair I talked about before that he involved me in. So they divorced, and she literally never did anything again. No dates, no talking to anyone, didn't even make a single non-work friend, just sat around all the time reading romance novels. It's creepy to me as an adult, but as a kid I thought that was what grownups did. And we never got along after my divorce when I didn't sit around doing nothing, and started dating again immediately on the separation (it took me a few years to save up for my actual divorce, but everyone I went out with knew I was legally married but not in contact with my husband at all and why). And then it got worse when I succesfully married again. She literally resents me for making it obvious it was her own choices that led her to her current life, that you can get up and start over and find the happy ending. So I get frustrated realizing how it is, but at the same time I just sorta shrug cuz what can I do? I can't make her less crazy. And I'm not going to babysit a grown woman who won't do anything to improve her situation. I make no apologies for continuing to kiss the frogs til I found the prince/ss. I do make some apologies to the frogettes for not understanding the difference between bisexual and biromantic though, I dropped the ball on that one and hurt some women's feelings and own up that. But those experiences were part of what made me me, so that's ultimately okay too, I didn't do it on purpose. So sorta creepy in an otherwise great fun weekend. I think I don't even understand how much pressure and emotional weight will be gone when I am. Sometimes I back burner things I know I cant' really change, and then am astonished when the situation is gone and how happy I am that it's gone. And let's be real, with the Cheeto destroying everything, lower living expenses to pay the crazy medical fees that will be there since there won't be any protection against my pre-existing conditions or lifetime caps is important. I may have to go back to college and major in chemistry just so I can figure out it the local water is safe to drink.