Update-athon =)

Where to start, where to start? Well, I didn't quite get either job, but, the one I really wanted, really wanted to hire me. The only thing was someone had put in a transfer from another branch and of course they get priority. The cool thing is, though, they'll definitely be keeping my application open for the next spot. Yaay!

AND.... if I am very fortunate, I will be getting into the substitute secretary/clerk pool at one of the local school districts. Of course we all know about how much they don't get paid and the benefits stink, but it will be something. Hopefully flexible enough for me to get into massage therapy school and get that rolling and done with sooner rather than later. (flashes dashing smile with a glint of light on one tooth)

Things - well the other things - the severance of this nearly 13 year (for lack of a better adjective) adventure, is coming along I guess. It's still a bit of weirdness here and there, well, it's actually SO much more than weird, but I really shouldn't go in to those disturbing details in this forum. Must protect the innocent and recently disturbed by the disturbing details from any more disturbance. yes? lol - Seriously, if you ONLY knew - it's some seriously stupid messed up twisted insane crap. ( and this time I didn't do it! hahahahaa) even though it really isn't the kind of thing you laugh at because it's HA HA funny, but because you (or I rather) SO saw it coming and laughed that bitter, "I KNEW it!" laugh and then began to shake from the intense emotion of it all. Yeah, it was stupid bad stupid dumb stupid inappropriate stupid stupid stupid stupid idiotic stupid crap dumb stupid horrible. Some one told me that I should put him in "Girl, don't date him dot com" I laughed and laughed about how true that was, but probably won't just because it's a little like slander and cyber bullying - or whatever. I'll just write it across his forehead with a sharpie or something. (sharpie being not as it sounds, an instrument of torture, but a permanent marker - for those not familiar with those in case any of you fit that category) (again with the dashing smile)

Anyway, that vague and inspecific (at the risk of redundancy) account aside, most everything else is going mostly ok. I finally started to grieve over my dad and his wife last week. Started crying on Monday night and didn't actually stop until some time like Wednesday afternoon or something. I still have a very long way to go, but at least I have started the process. It's a bit earlier than I have in the past, with the exception of my Grandpa. That grief was more the normal type, but I was expecting it, too... so somehow, being prepared in advance does help me. When I think about it, though, I am SO glad that he, my Grandpa - the dad of my dad - is gone already and never had to hear about what my dad did. I don't recall how much detail I shared at first, but the more I learn about it, the worse the story is.

Weird how just when you think you can't get any more disturbed by an event or person, then the bottom falls out and there are so many new and horrific levels of disturbed and traumatic you never dreamt you'd have to find your way to the other side of. Basically, he had been drinking a ridiculous amount of alcohol for some months, which of course lead to serious tension in his marriage. He was devastated over the prospect and then the reality of losing his dream job, and having difficulty getting motivated to find another. Then got belligerent about leaving the property he was on (which was part of the job - they had a small place on the land there) and just kept drinking more and more. He was warned that he needed to stop the drinking or his wife was going to leave and then somehow he ended up shooting her - who knows how that played out, then ten days later (give or take a day or so) he set the house on fire and attempted to kill himself, but was SO drunk that he aimed poorly, and instead died of smoke inhalation. There is more scarier details, but that's enough, isn't it?

I am SO angry at him for the whole thing. I'm angry that he was dumb enough to drink himself into a stupor so deep that he'd kill the one person on the planet that could take his BS long enough to stay with him more than 20 years. Angry that he robbed her children of their mom. Angry that he was too selfish to face the consequences of his actions (not that he ever had done that before) and just take his up and comings, so to speak. Angry that he robbed my brother, my sister and I of our dad. Angry that his timing could scarcely have been worse if he had planned it. Angry that he didn't at least say he was sorry in a letter to one of us. Angry angry angry. Sad sad sad. Because no matter how much your mom or your dad makes horrible decisions or abandons you repeatedly, you still need them, you still love them and you still want to be able to pick up the phone and just talk to them. Sad and angry that we didn't even get any sort of memorial service or funeral type comfort and/or closure with the twisted nature of this situation. (That is one thing I think I'll take into my own hands and get done) Just sad and angry about the whole stupid twisted story.

One thing, though, that after having pieced together some of the stories and strangeness of his past few decades, I am beginning to think that my particular type of bi-polar disorder is hereditary and that he was very likely in the grips of it without ever having known or gotten help for it. Alcoholism would definitely make any such mental illness so much the worse. My bi-polar is really not the every day type, even though I have some of the text book type symptoms. When I really get to the manic stage, as they say, it's not that I'm so high and euphoric, but reality begins to blur and all sorts of unreal, irrational ideas and concepts begin to pour in and I take them all seriously as if they are real, and I believe it wholly. It's like being in a scary movie or the butt of some sick and twisted joke. It's not fun. It's only when I start to come down from what I can only describe as a trip, as in, I was tripping, that what is real and what was of my own wild imagining mind begin to sort out.

What I'm getting at, is this: My dad had made up several alternate type realities for himself. He said he had been to war in Vietnam - but it never happened. He said he'd been on a packhorse and mule type trip across Minnesota to Wyoming, and all the fantastic details and scrapes and stories - but it had never happened. The thing is, that he REALLY believed that they HAD happened and had all of his closest friends convinced and sympathetic and in awe over all these trials and tribulations and triumphs. They were all fiction. At first, I was so perplexed and a bit upset that he had told all these 'lies' and duped all these people, except that I knew he really believed them. It's only because I have been on about 3 of these nervous breakdown trips into my own mind with paranoia and the ability to believe the things I was making up at the time, that I have ANY perspective into his mind.

My point? If anything good has come of my having been pushed to the snapping point on THREE separate occasions, it's a perspective into mental illness that I could never have even began to wrap my mind around before. The relief of coming out of a state like that, too, is hardly conveyable in the words I know. I can say though, that it is a very upsetting process, and I am eternally grateful that there are people and medicine available to bring those of us who need help back to a place where we are ourselves again. Having this perspective gives me insight into my dad's mind, and other relatives of his who have had similar perplexing symptoms that plagued them all their lives - without ever getting GOOD help or the right type of medication. I can't imagine flowing in and out of that stressed out tripping place with the lines of reality so blurred that I can't remember my own life correctly. So, I'm glad I can say, I don't think he's been well for a long time, and I understand how a story that's in your head can seem all too real and so scary you can't imagine.

Hopefully this isn't too terribly much of a total bummer, this story and that story. I'm glad, too, that I have enough REAL stories to tell, that I don't have to make up stuff to make my life more interesting! lol - I think I'll write some of the 'fiction' I got on my last trip, because some of them really are very very funny and strange and wonderful stories - I just don't know ..... or didn't know JUST how um..... creative, I can get. wow

Anyway - I've gotten past the ribbing on my two socks on one circ using magic loop and am only a few rounds into the stockinette stitch of wonderful mindless stuff. I should totally go do some more.

OH DUH! My oldest, the now 9 year old boy of mine, got his tonsils and some freakishly large adenoids taken out today. He's resting nicely downstairs while the other two are playing over at my sister's house for a while, giving me the extreme leisure of being able to type for this amazing amount of time. cool eh? He's a major trooper, doing great, good attitude, lovely boy! Me proud =)

oh, btw, any spelling errors, just pretend they aren't there, I'm in NO mood for proof reading. lol take care my deary dears! love y'all