so, i've been working a lot lately. i did some over-time last week and might work over-time this week as well. i know regular people do this on a weekly basis for years, even decades but i have the hardest time working 40+ hour weeks in which i work 5 consecutive days in a row. it's nice to have weekends off. but with chronic fatigue in addition to the whole grieving process, which definitely includes exhaustion as a step and symptom, it has left me with no energy to speak of. it's especially bad when i'll work an evening shift and have to work a morning shift the next day. when i'm off at 10pm and not home until 11pm and i have to get up at 5am to be to work by 7am i'm not exactly allowed a large amount of sleepy time. i also just ran out of my adderall prescription which helps me stay alert and focused during the day and won't be able to renew it until my next paycheck since money is very tight because i hardly worked at all in april.


and don't get me wrong, i love my job. but on those days when i'm running on 3 or 4 hours of sleep and i have to drive around with danny (an autistic client who gets agitated easily and is only calmed down by long car rides in which he usually sleeps for an hour or two and screams for the rest of the ride) or sitting at the hospital with carey (a down-syndrome client who has pneumonia and just sleeps all day) it's all i can do to keep my eyes open.


all of this busy work has really cut down on the amount of time i have to do other things. it seems like when i have a morning off all i want to do is sleep in. leaves no time to make and keep a dentist appointment or to go for a jog or do some laundry. i also see much less of my friends and feel pretty isolated at times which isn't always the best thing for me. and there's this business of packing up and getting ready to move into the new house. i'm also in the relief society presidency which requires quite a bit of attention.


i'm wondering how i'll be able to survive going to school full-time as well. i feel like if i push myself too hard i'll crash and burn pretty badly. that why i think i'm going to wait until the fall before i tackle that particular challenge. get myself into the new house, into a set routine, back on medication, around friends and i think i'll be ok.


i'm tired just thinking about it.

so, i'm trying not to make every post about how much i miss my mom. but yesterday was mother's day. that was really hard for me. only cried once that day in church though. so i did pretty well.i want to talk about the happy things in my life. i am moving out of my cousins' place into the cutest little blue house with a white picket fence. it's very ma and pa. the kitchen has a little breakfast nook and there's a panel in the wall that opens up and an ironing board comes down. it's got 4 bedrooms, a gas fireplace, a washer and dryer, a dishwasher(the portable kind that you can wheel around and plug into the sink) one bathroom with lots of storage, and a back deck and decent sized backyard with a storage shed. perfect for bbqs! it's also 20mins closer to work, 5 mins away from school, 10 mins from church, near a grocery store and a pharmacy and some really cool restaurants. i'm going to be sharing the house with 4 other girls. i'm getting the nicest room in the house because i'm sharing it with my friend megan for the summer until she leaves on her mission but after that i'll have my own room. it'll be so nice to have one of my best friends live just down the hall instead of 40mins away. we're going to re-upholster some old couches and paint some of our furniture to get a really cute retro/eclectic feel in the living room. i'm going to sand down and stain some of my furniture so that my bed, bookcase, cedar chest and dresser all look the same. big plans.
alyssa and i have also decided to adopt a puppy. he's a labradoodle and freaking adorable. we're going to name him cedric. megan's mom, who breeds dogs, is going to give him to us for free because she believes that animals have healing powers and that he'll help me not be so sad all of the time. we went to visit him yesterday. he is so sweet.
anyway, here's a picture of my new house! hopefully move in june 1st!

this last week has been hard. i don't really feel like going out much or spending a lot of time with a lot of people. i don't answer a lot of phone calls. or reply to a lot of texts or emails. i sleep a lot. and watch a lot of prison break actually. i feel sick if i try and do too much. dizzy spells.
i miss my mom. i feel like she's always watching me. sometimes i feel guilty. like i'm afraid she can see who i really am and i'm afraid that i'm a disappointment. sometimes i feel at peace. like i know that she loves me unconditionally and finally understands everything. like i don't have to hide who i am. i think about her a lot sometimes. and sometimes i try not to think about her at all.
i was thinking about her tonight. and how every single good quality i find in myself comes from my mother. everything i like about myself. my ability to be patient. my strength.
it's hard to remember my mom before she got sick. it's hard to remember her voice, what she looked like with hair. how she was when she wasn't so tired all of the time. i find myself wishing i had written everything down. usually when i think of my mom i think about how when i had a fever she would sit on the edge of the tub and pour water down my back to bring down my temperature. even when i was older. i think about how every time i would walk by her room on my way out the door she would say "there's my pretty girl" or how when i was little i would hold her hand everywhere we went and how i would look down at our hands and wish i was taller so my arm would be straight when i held it, like hers. i remember her singing to me at night when i was very young and then later reading to me as i got older. things like the scarlet pimpernel or the prince and the pauper.
that's all i want to remember tonight. i feel like if i dive too deeply i won't come back out.

. . .

sometimes when i look in the mirror at my reflection and i widen my eyes and stare hard enough my face isn't my face anymore. it's a stranger's face. with stranger eyes. a stranger with a different life than mine. happy and not hard.

momma dearest

i keep putting off updating my blog for months because it seems like the only things i have to blog about are depressing and hard to think about. or they're not depressing and i feel guilty because they're superficial.
i want to blog about my mom. but what do i say? do i talk about her in the past tense, all the wonderful things she used to do, like she's already gone? or do i talk about her in the present tense and describe how weak she is and how it's hard to watch the person who always takes care of you desperately need to be taken care of? or do i talk about the future and how it will be empty without her?
i don't know what to say about my mom. except that i love her. very much.

birthday wishes and worries

so much to say!!! where to start?!
1) mom is sick with the cancer again. very scary. she just had brain surgery on my birthday. luckily went very well. still worried and thinking of her always. went home last weekend to spend some time with her. brave woman!
2) got a job! at cascade christian home. it's a resident care position which is what i've done before. will get paid during all of my training which includes the training i was going to get in a nursing assistant class which now i don't have to pay for! hurray! went in for a TB test and a drug test. start on monday!
3) had a birthday. more like weekend long birthday celebration. wednesday night had friends over for a movie night. they stayed long enough to wish me happy birthday @ midnight. jamie spent the night and we stayed up until 5am watching a movie and chatting. thursday morning went diving with the boyfriend and cameron and jamie. fun to play around. hung out with dane the whole day until he suspiciously had to "run an errand". he gave me flowers! so beautiful! what a swell guy! then he took me out for sushi (it was my first time) where we met up with alyssa and cameron. pretty good stuff. after dinner we went to dane's place and played some mario party on the wii. then we decided to go get a dozen doughnuts from lafeen's and brought them back and stuck some candles in them. then we watched baby mama and fell asleep on the floor. friday i went over to dane's house thinking we were going to hang out before meeting up with cameron and alyssa to go to a haunted house. he somehow manipulated me into thinking it was my idea to go visit charlotte on the way out to the haunted house so we get to charlotte's house and turns out she had planned a surprise birthday party for me! i got there and a whole mess of people were hiding in the basement!!! it was so fantastic! we played games and charlotte made wonderful food. best night ever.
4) halloween dance tonight. went as a nerd. my mom jeans were epic.


blowing out my tasty pastry candles.

it's summer time and the living is easy

so, it is very true that i've been on a bunch of road-trips this summer and haven't hardly spent a whole weekend in bellingham in quite a while. i've gone home twice - first time to watch the kids for a week and second time to get my wisdom teeth pulled. the second time around was actually quite enjoyable aside from the pain and misery and vomit. i was happy that i got to hang around for two weeks. it was pretty fun. my family's cool.


but the road-trips with friends, that's where it's at. first friendly road-trip was up to calgary, alberta with jamie, alyssa, holly, and antonio for a wedding. that's a 13 hour drive. and jamie sang and poked the whole way. spent the first night in calgary at alyssa and holly's brother's house. ran full force into a glass door at his place. very nice. went to italian for dinner, watch g.i. joe. don't do it. awful film. next day went to deer mountain or wherever the heck (or should i say hick?) the wedding was. stayed the night in a hotel. jamie tried to kill me in his sleep. the hotel had a waterslide. heck yeah. went back to calgary for the last night. return trip home took 16 hours because we got pulled over by a cop (holly's car wasn't insured. stupid) and checked out a cool suspension bridge. pretty fantastic trip overall.


two weeks ago i went to whidby island with jamie, alyssa, eden and daniel. fun day trip. we went over deception pass (which by the by, did you know that if you drop a bowling ball off of the bridge at deception pass that it will shatter when it hits the water because it is that high up?! I must "aquire" a bowling ball. . .) we went to this old military fort called fort casey and checked out the creepy old buildings and lighthouse. then we played for a bit on a beach. had a war with kelp. climbed up this bluff to check out where this one white dude (can't remember his name) was beheaded by indians. then we walked along downtown something. . . (can remember the name of the town either) and had some ice cream. then we went to this inn that the one white dude built and took a tour. very cute little place. want to stay there someday.


then, two days after that little day trip, i went up to vancouver with jamie, alyssa (again. geez. i must love these kids), eden, daniel, will, juliette, carly and emily. we walked around stanley park (where i got a stupid parking ticket. why do you have to pay to park at a park?!!) and then got some greek food. we went to the grandville island market (equivalent but to pike's place in seattle but 10 gazillion times better) and goofed around at some of the shops and this awesome little playground that had teeter totters and a tire swing. then we went and saw 500 days of summer and this monsterously large theater called the colossus. it must be mentioned that 90% of this trip was spent utterly lost in downtown vancouver, or on the highway, or anywhere basically. it was a little ridiculous.


THEN last weekend i went camping with alyssa, eden, daniel, michael, peter, carly, holly and april up near mt. baker. i hate everything about camping so much that it's moderately enjoyable because i'm amazed at myself for even camping in the first place. we had some kind of meat something for dinner. it was supposed to be a tinfoil dinner with meat and veggies but ended up being a large meat patty. pretty gross. eden, april and holly didn't stay the night but the rest of us slept (or didn't sleep. i can' sleep on hard ground. grrr) in this huge 12 man tent. the next morning, daniel made us hot chocolate and oatmeal. very yummy. it was basically to butter us up because then he made us climb up a sheer mountain. daniel's kind of a jerk. but i made it and we played in a glacier lake for a while. very beautiful. we've been having a lot of bonfires this summer and it seems as if my clothes will forever smell of smoke because later that day we finally went down to teddy bear cove to swim in the flourescent water and have a bonfire on the beach. (side note: let me tell you, i love the beach. i love living near it. i do not however love getting sand in every article of clothing after you go swimming. uggh.)


and tomorrow i'm headed out on a trip to rexburg with jamie, alyssa, eden and michael. should be a blast. not really sure why we're going or what we'll do there but i'm going along for the ride. planning to stop by the parental's house on the way home to be fed and to say hi. pretty excited.

speaking of trips. . . lucy! you've got some packing to do!