I see little people

I might be losing my mind.

I'm 99.9 % sure that I won't survive this summer holiday.

Why do I continue to buy Popsicles when this kid asks me every 17 minutes if she can have another one?

Probably so that she can stick something in her mouth and I don't have to hear her torment her sister.

I count the minutes until their heads hit the pillow and I can disappear into my computer and talk to you all.

I think I exude a pheromone that causes them to latch on to me and only me and no one else but me.

It doesn't matter if I take them to McDonald's, the park, the donut store, mall, pool, or museum. They will still come looking for me throughout all of it.

I don't remember being this attached to my mother.

The only time they are content is when they are rolling around in the grass with Gabriella Moonlight's dogs.

With everything else going on with me right now, this is really fucking with my serenity.

Brutal honesty moment # 1: the feelings I'm experiencing right now are the ones I use to soothe with a six pack of Heineken and getting baked on the couch with a Doritos chaser.

Just sayin'.

Warm baths and chamomile tea just don't cut it sometimes.

But I'm still sober!

My serenity is shot, but I'm still sober!

Whoo hoo!

this is not a gratitude list: update

I'm tired of working on my Fourth Step.

I'm not even close to being in the mood for a Gratitude List.

In all honesty, I am restless, irritable, and discontent.

I want the kids to go back to school immediately.

I'm tired of being a stay-at-home mom.

I want a vacation all by myself in a state where no one can find me.

I want to lie in bed on that vacation and watch movies all day and not have to make a single meal.

If one more person tells me to pray about it, I might very well back-hand them.

Ugh.

Update: I met with some prospective tenants for the rental house and they were charming and intelligent. They did not ask me for Popsicles or gum or to tie their shoes. I had about 45 minutes of interesting conversation on the front porch with crystal blue skies and a slight breeze. This was enough to turn my head around and get me motivated to pack the kids up and to go buy more Popsicles and gum. In approximately 2.5 hours I will deposit the kids at church camp (don't ask) and then deposit myself at a coffee shop where I will lurk on your blogs for two hours. The day is looking up.

Steve and Anna

As promised, a bit on our visit with Steve and Anna....

Gabriella Moonlight and I met with these two bloggers on Saturday night. Steve and Anna had drove all the way from North Carolina for what was to only be a 3 hour visit. But it was 3 hours that I am grateful to have had. They are exactly how they appear on the blogs, but with added dimensions. How very one dimensional the blogs can seem, even when we're spilling out our life stories.

Anna has a calm, soothing demeanor that puts one instantly at rest. She is incredibly easy to talk to and one can see why Steve E. loves her so. Steve is as funny and outgoing in person as he appears in his writing. Seeing him sit with the other men at our local AA meeting made him look as though he had been coming around our halls for years. It was a joy to see Steve approach our fellow AA members and introduce himself and I was eager to introduce them both to some of our AA acquaintances who had heard so much about our blogger friends.

It was a pleasure to meet these two individuals and I will always remember their generosity of time and spirit in driving all this way for us.

Thank you again, Steve and Anna!

blogger humor

Two Floridians, an Oregonian, and a Californian walk into a bar.

No. WAIT!

Two Floridians, an Oregonian, and a Californian walk into a steakhouse.

(more on this later.)

Steve E. and Anna (Prayer Girl) apologize for the delay in blogging. Apparently, West Virginia is, indeed, as backwards as Gabi and I have warned them it was. After a nearly two week trek around the country, West Virginia is the only destination where they couldn't get Internet access in their hotel.

Figures.

the meeting

I met with the nursing program coordinator this morning. For about 5.2 minutes I thought she wouldn't show up. Poor Gabriella Moonlight is texting me love and encouragement and I'm responding with "Sheee's not heeeeere yeeeeet (sob sob.)" OK, maybe not that dramatic, but the insecure why-would-she-want-to-meet-with-a-drunk-like-me mentality was coming around the bend and I had to allow Gabi the opportunity to give it a smack down before I stepped out into oncoming traffic.

The kindly Dr. arrived and for the next hour and 10 minutes we proceeded to cover in detail every teensy tiny little detail that I will encounter on my quest to be an RN. What I took from this meeting was not so much a body of knowledge that will serve me in my application process (although that was definitely part of it,) but the fact that she couldn't stress to me enough,

"I know that the number of applicants is intimidating, but TRUST ME, you will not have a problem getting accepted into this program."

Um, can I kiss you now, because I'm SO loving you at this very moment.

I was able to walk away from this meeting with the confidence that my college education will account for quite a bit in my acceptance to the program and that I will not need to quit my day job and go work for the hospital in order to give myself an edge. That was a route I did not want to go down.

I am overwhelmed by this woman's generosity of time and encouragement. I'm still trying to figure out why she would go out of her way to help little 'ol me. But hey, I'll take it.

Thank you for all your encouragement. I will be back with a Friday 55 next week.

update

A short time ago I posted about letting go. Trust me when I say that I'm not one prone to histrionics; the post was an honest one. However, the reality is that the day of reckoning regarding my career choices has been looming large for some time. It isn't as though the downturn in my client base was the sole force behind my desire to find more stable employment. I have known for several years that once my kids are both in school full-time then I will more than likely need to find employment in a field that provides more stability in terms of pay and benefits. My Bachelors degree served me well in my 20s. But as a soon to be 40 something in an ever more competitive job market? Not so much.

About two years ago I started toying with the idea of going back to graduate school. To do what, I couldn't tell you. I just knew that I would have to advance my education in order to be competitive. The guy I am married to is in possession of two Bachelors degrees, a Masters, and a PhD. His motivation is to get me tucked away into a nice little PhD. program where he can oversee my dissertation and groom me for his future writing assignments. When I toyed with the PhD. idea, I think I may have seen a little bit of drool drip from his mouth. My empathic self certainly saw the visions of co-authorship dangle above his head. As much as I hated to disappoint him, the idea of going through a doctoral program whilst being married to him made me a little bit nauseous. He was the graduate director of the last university he taught at and I still feel pity for some of his students. He's that tough.

I needed to get honest with myself about what I really wanted to do. I had worked in brain injury rehabilitation during college and left social work to be a massage therapist. I knew I didn't want to be a therapist. I hated case management. I'm not wired for business or sales positions. I knew I would go into withdrawal if I couldn't work with the human body in some capacity. I wanted a job that couldn't be outsourced. I didn't want to have to wear a suit and heels to work everyday. I wanted flexibility with my schedule and the ability to make overtime if necessary. Monotony makes me want to hang myself. If there is a crisis, I'm your gal. Very little scares me or grosses me out.

I decided to apply to nursing school in the fall.

Over the last month I have been researching schools in my area and found that our region's medical center has a program that will pay for the nursing education providing the graduate signs a 3 year working contract. I have no problem with that.

After a roller coaster ride of dead phone calls, broken site links on college web pages, and all around frustration with not getting the answers I needed, yesterday morning I made contact with the director of the medical center's nursing education program. Within 5 minutes she answered every question I had including the big one: how many applicants do you typically get and how many are chosen?

400-500 applicants. 50 are chosen.

Nausea returns.

Sweet mother of god, how do I give myself an edge?

I don't know what I said to this gal, but she said this to me:

"I can email you all the information that you will need to begin the application process or, if you would like, I could meet with you in person."

Um, hell yeah I want to meet with you in person.

"Yeah! That would be great! Absolutely I will meet with you!"

She says: "Actually, where do you live?"

I say: "Downtown. On the East End."

She says: "Well I live on the West End over by Edgewood. How about we meet for coffee at First Watch and I will bring you all the documents that you will need."

OMG did I just hear her correctly? The woman in charge of the medical center's nursing education program wants to meet me in person for coffee and hand deliver the documents to me? Does she do this for all 500 applicants? This woman is so flippin' nice, you would think she's in the Program.

Long story short: We meet Friday morning at 8:00 AM.

Say a prayer that I'm really, really impressive. This could be a very good thing.

much needed gratitude check

I've been needing my head adjusted. A great big thank you to my cousin, Kacie, for a much needed gratitude check.

thank you, Karen

My head is still spinning over the fact that I actually won an item in a blog giveaway. Did I forget to mention that? Uh huh. I did. Over at Karen's place. I'm not one of those gals that's dripping in luck, so I consider it a total score that Karen picked me! picked me! for her summer book giveaway. Mating Rituals of the North American Wasp arrived minutes ago and will now be taunting me from my bedside as I hustle to finish required reading for work. Thank you, Karen. You're the best.

because you asked

I typically respond to comments in the Comment section of the post. Occasionally I will respond via email but only if I know that you have an active email account attached to your Blogger profile.

I have very little in my profile page but I have a 100 Things post listed on the left sidebar (under labels.) That will tell you everything you want to know about me.

I have a music player embedded at the very bottom of my site. It won't play automatically but should you turn it on you will experience my musical taste.

I blog about everything that I feel will help my kids to understand me better after I'm gone. Recovery related issues are the majority of that but not all of it. Occasionally I will post pointless day to day drivel that means absolutely nothing to anybody but me.

Gabriella Moonlight and I are neighbors and best friends.

If you want alcohol related content to read on this site, go to the labels section and click around there. Or go to the Blogger search bar at the top of the page and do a search for your topic.

I am a contributor at The Second Road. That Kristin H. and this Kristin H. are the same person.

Periodically Blogger needs it's ass kicked and posts won't update correctly. Go to the header (picture and title at the top of the page) and click on that to refresh the page.

I won't bite nor stalk you. Commenting is cool. Very cool. All the cool kids are doing it. You should try . Just try it. It's only comments...

random thought thursday

You all can thank me for not video taping my life for the blog.

Awoke today to a dog that hadtogooutbackrightnow because someone thought it would be a good idea to give her a ginormous pig bone acquired at one company picnic yesterday. Hindsight's 20/20.

Decided to excavate my kids' room this morning. Uh huh. I said excavate. Did you know that approximately every 3 calendar months I pull large Hefty trash bags of godonlyknowswhat out of their room? I couldn't tell you how the colossal pile of trash develops, but it does.

So between them thanking me for the much needed excavation and wishing I would just go fetch myself a hot steaming mug of Shut Up, the room is back in order. I find myself grateful that it's only errant Barbie heads and art supplies and not beer cans and water bongs.

I'm stressed of late. Those super close to me are aware of this and I thank them for their support. I find myself escaping to my happy place a lot lately. Unfortunately that place is in my head; the exact same location where all the other garbage resides. But I love my happy place and all that it provides me. I wish I could physically go there right this second. Talk about bliss ;)

Happy birthday to Pam. She's just super and I hope today is wrapped up in a big 'ol sober bow for her.

It's lunchtime in my neck of the woods. Any suggestions?

life would be much smoother as a sitcom

I want to live in a 30 minute sitcom where all of my problems would be resolved by the show's end or on the far end, within a few episodes.

First episode: cast of characters is presented and character building begins.

Second episode: audience develops a relationship with characters while episodic life problems are played out with brief intermissions for erectile dysfunction commercials and pharmaceutical ads. Nothing says ''Let's take a breather from our issues" like horny adults playing grab-ass by the kitchen counter while praying they don't experience any side effects or four hour erections.

Third episode: resolution of problem(s) often with an entire cast of characters satisfied with said resolution. Everyone is happy as they look back on their 30 minutes of crazy making life problems that were miraculously resolved with minimal injury and even fewer resentments.

The Brady Bunch was a good example of this kind of conflict resolution. There was no problem that Mike and Carol couldn't manage in the course of 30 minutes. Voices were rarely raised. Children were never hurt. The financial rug of the family was never swept out from under anyone's feet. Everyone had smiles on their faces by show's end as they looked adoringly upon one another and wondered what all the fuss was about. Good times.

This is so not my life.

what does jazzpopelectrorock sound like?

Long time radio DJ and musician, Dave Glenn Alley, knows music. His tenure in the radio broadcasting field has taken him from WQUT Tennessee, WKYE Virginia, Statewide West Virginia Public Radio, WV V100, WKAZ & 105. Decades spent in the music industry have allowed him to keep his finger on the pulse of all things current while providing an opportunity to seek out new avenues of creative music.

A departure from his freshman debut album, spa CD Crack A Smile, Dave Glenn Alley's newest release with musical partner and long-time friend, Giles Watson will answer the question "What does jazzpopelectrorock sound like?"


Intertaste 360 is an eclectic blend of genres resulting in a 12 track dinner party of Steely Dan, Miles Davis, and The Doors. Truly unlike anything you have ever heard before, fans of jazz, pop, and electronica could use this sophomore endeavor as ambiance for the outdoor barbecue, brain food on the hellacious commute home from work, or while surfing the web.

Added bonus: all CD art is created by Mr. Alley himself. An accomplished artist, Dave Glenn Alley's inspired cover art will make the CD as unique in the CD case as it is in the CD player.

the countdown begins

aka: I'm in a Twilight kind of mood.

I can do without the CGI werewolves, but omg I have been waiting for this. November can't come soon enough.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON trailer in HD

Recovery Tip Of The Day

On AA:

"This is not a self help program. This is a beyond human aid program."

Pam ~ Sobriety is Exhausting