Makes you fly

(Gotta get up – Rich Mullins)

I learned a lot on Thanksgiving this year…

I learned that my bedside table which was also doubling as a tiny dresser was growing a very significant amount of some kind of yucky growth on the underside that was made of particle board…which explains why random things around that area kept having weird spots that I’d have to clean off…I mean, considering I’ve had mice and until recently significant humidity that kept my clothes and linens from ever fully drying it shouldn’t be that surprising, but also I really wanted it to last a little longer. Like sure, it has looked like it was on its last legs for multiple years and multiple moves, but when you only have a very few pieces of furniture it makes a big difference to not have it anymore. As I turns out, a Kleenex box is not a very effective bedside table – especially when you are mostly blind, ‘cause now in trying to grab my phone I’ve managed to yank almost all the Kleenexes out of the box…also, despite the thing looking like it was falling apart, it definitely required every single screw to be unscrewed in order to take the thing apart. Hulk smash was not an effective strategy.

I learned that if you offer space in your fridge for someone’s turkey you should put it in a bag or a pan or something…or at least not put it on the top shelf of the fridge totally uncontained unless you want to have another round of throwing everything away like you did not that long ago because of the mice. At least the refrigerator only has food and not furniture or other expensive and destroyable household goods…but yeah, I went through over half a roll of paper towels, half a container of sanitizing wipes, and a few more trash bags of contaminated food. And then I realized that I have cuts on my fingers and potentially should have been wearing gloves when mopping up the pools of turkey blood in the refrigerator so that my fingers weren’t swimming in possible salmonella. So if I die this week that is probably why. Lol. I am thankful that at least a few food items were sealed in plastic bags so they could be salvaged…’cause wasting food is something I avoid at almost all costs, but getting sick is an even higher priority.

I learned there is a reason you are supposed to let the bread rest before dumping it out of the pan…and ended up with a loaf of bread that got ripped in half…

And I learned that apparently although I am the kind of person that unplugs the dehumidifier when I’m not home or am going to bed in case of fire and the kind of person who turns the temperature way down in the winter and way up in the summer to save energy, I am also the person who gets distracted and leaves the burner on the stove on high for 12 hours…yep, noticed that when I could see a pretty blue glow when I got home in the evening. So that’s gonna be a fun bill to pay this month. At least nothing was close enough to set the place on fire…that would probably be more frustrating even if it may ultimately not be more expensive since people tend to help you replace all the things you need and want if you go through a fire. But, like, not that many people get to come home to the warm glowing warming glow of the stovetop…or of a house fire…but both are quite literally warming glows…my home sure was cozy and warm.

Mostly unrelated, but I recently completed ASHP’s Wellbeing Certificate course, and am now working my way through their leadership/management certificate, and while most of the curriculum in both courses is geared towards people who are actually in management and also most of the wellbeing course was soft skills that honestly most people already know anyway, the courses have been very validating. It feels so good to hear this is what a healthy (and legally sound) workplace looks like and this is what it does not look like, and this is what a good manager acts like and does not act like. It feels good to know definitively that what I experienced was very wrong (and not legal) and that what I yearned for was what should have been happening in the first place. I mean, like no, I shouldn’t need someone to tell me that what I went through wasn’t okay, but there was so much gaslighting that it can be hard sometimes to fully believe it. It is certainly a job-focused trauma response to feel like you are in a great position because you aren’t terrified walking into the hospital, but these courses have taught me that I legitimately should be able to expect to have a work place that is free of physical AND verbal abuse. There are so many other little things that made me want to hug little Wiggle Worm and let her know what she was experiencing was not an appropriate work place. It kinda also made me wish I’d been brave enough to stand up for myself and gotten outsiders involved…or at least to have demanded legitimate answers. My past trauma is what keeps me now from asking for things I want and need to better care for my patients. And it isn’t fair to my patients that my PGY-2 manager and RPD are getting in the way of bettering their care. But it took my longer than I’d like to admit, for example, to ask for access to the tracking board for the floor I was working on…but within about a day of asking I no longer had to click through super long lists of past present and future patients to find the ones I actually needed to review and what had easily become an hour long task of finding the relevant patients became about 3-4 minutes saving the rest of that hour for actually optimizing the care of my patients and/or working with my team…and I still have a list of similarly simple things that I haven’t gotten the bravery to ask, and a few bigger things that I’m not sure I’ll ever be brave enough to ask. But the validation in these courses of how a good manager should respond is a helpful part of healing and hopefully moving closer to what I need over time.

Refuse to Fear

(Get up, get in the game – don’t know the exact name of this song or who it’s by…just that I used to play it in DDR…”reject rejection and refuse to fear, believe the truth about you. Seize the moment ‘cause it’s very clear that you have got some living to do. Impossible you say. Impossible today. Maybe when, maybe when, maybe when we’re old and gray, but impossibility is only possibility waiting for someone like you to believe. Get up. Get in the game; it’s get up, get in the game. It’s get up, get in the game. It’s time to play).”

This week in my trauma group I felt less alone. While I really don’t want anyone to suffer so I’d really rather be the only one struggling, it felt so good to hear that I wasn’t the only one who never really escapes the fear. I’m not the only one constantly scanning for exits and running what if scenarios. I’m not the only one for whom even sleep isn’t an escape because I have nightmares surrounding being found. I’m not the only one who sometimes feels like every day her attempts at normalcy just dig her deeper into the hole trauma created that I don’t feel like I’ll ever fully escape. It just feels like someday I’ll be so deep I won’t even be able to approximate normal anymore…even though theoretically over time it is supposed to get easier. I’m not the only one struggling with a piece of me wanting justice yet a larger piece of me wanting to be the bigger person and extend grace and kindness to those who only wanted to hurt me.

And so with that…a big part of why it has been so long since I’ve posted is the intensity of my fear of being found. And I don’t want it to take over my life so I decided that it is time to put something out into the world again. I can’t hide forever. Or, well, I totally can hide forever, it just really isn’t good for me to do so…

I’ve got like 5 million (slight exaggeration) (or possibly more than slight) half written posts from the past like 2 months so I deleted all but one randomly selected post which is now here for your reading pleasure…lol…

Have you ever seen a news article so incredibly illogical that you have to go back and look at it in depth trying to make it make sense? And it makes even less sense the harder you try to make sense of it?

That was me recently. I saw a news article on how the United States perpetuated the pandemic. I don’t want to get into politics today, because that isn’t the issue I am talking about today, so I’m not going to discuss overall whether the United States response did or did not perpetuate the pandemic. What I am going to discuss is the (only) reason this article gave. See, according to this article, the United States perpetuated the pandemic by (gasp) starting to vaccinate their population before some other countries governments had even started to purchase vaccines. Therefore (according to the article) the pandemic got out of control because vaccine access wasn’t equal all over the world.

From a public health standpoint, this makes no sense.

From a look at the COVID statistics standpoint, this claim appears invalid.

Basically however you look at it there isn’t a standpoint in which this claim makes any sense at all.

Ideally would every country have started vaccinating their population as soon as possible, sure, but I’m also fairly certain that the United States was not the first country to start this initiative, so I’m very unclear as to how it is our fault when I’m fairly certain England was vaccinating their population long before we were. If vaccinating one group of people before another is a problem then surely it is the biggest problem in whoever does it first, not the people in the middle. Honestly, when this article brought up vaccination I initially thought they were going to finish their thought with it is our fault because we didn’t vaccinate enough people soon enough…because that could actually be a logical conclusion…but when it was the opposite I was like are you sure you don’t have dementia right now?

Another article I thought was particularly dumb recently was for another reason…the intent of the article was clearly to inflame people rather than to actually provide any real information…the article discussed the downsides of zoning (Mr. Jones owns this land but isn’t allowed to build what he want on his own land and can get in trouble if he tries to build a high rise shopping center and apartment duo building in an area zoned for single family homes or vice versa and that is clearly problematic)…which already didn’t make a whole lot of sense, because of the principle that your freedom end where mine begins, and also just for the personal responsibility aspect – you bought the land knowing how it was zoned, and if that isn’t what you wanted to do with that land you probably shouldn’t have purchased it. Plus, a high rise in a residential area isn’t going to go well because you’re going to make a lot of families unhappy and ultimately there is a good chance people will leave and people aren’t going to want to live in your high rise that is surrounded by a broken down ghost town, and without occupied homes or apartments nearby the stores are also going to fail…and similarly I doubt many people would intentionally purchase a single family home in the middle of an apartment complex, so your property value is going to plummet. But anyway, they also briefly recognized that they wouldn’t want to live in those situations and maybe you don’t either, so clearly we shouldn’t change the zoning in our neighborhoods, but we should all push for zoning to be eliminated in “other places.” And I was like, so your solution is that we shouldn’t inconvenience ourselves but it is okay to change other people’s situations…like do you realize that these other people are actual real live people who have real live feelings who also do not wish to be inconvenienced? Just ‘cause you don’t personally know them doesn’t mean that they don’t matter…and then the article ended by pointing out that a few cities had tried taking away zoning so clearly it was a great idea…what they failed to mention is the numerous stories that came out after those changes that shared that it really destroyed those cities – what were previously vibrant communities became areas no one wanted to live and homes people previously cared for and loved quickly became run down as people who cared about their community left.

Bad things always happen to *other* people until you are other people.

You know how you know your stress levels have risen too high even if they aren’t impacting your work yet? When you are crying because in the place you want to move there is a towel ring instead of a towel rod in the bathroom and you really wanted a towel rod, not a towel ring. Like looking back on that moment I can see like seriously girl? That is what you are going to get worked up over? But also, I know it isn’t really about a towel holding apparatus. And it isn’t about the irrational OCD that associates a towel ring with more germs in addition to being less visually attractive and less functional. It is about fear of being found and other general stress bubbling up until something small became the last straw…and then I reminded myself about when I was looking for apartments in college when I didn’t get a spot in the dorm my third year. I can remember many tearful nights that I was never going to find an apartment. Everything I looked at was both at the top of my price range and either disgustingly dirty or incredibly run down and falling apart…with the exception of one place that had a long waitlist. The day I was moving out of my dorm I saw one more apartment that was only cleanably dirty but with a price above every other place AND further away than other places, but in desperation I put in a deposit there too. As it turns out I eventually got an apartment that served me well before it was time to move back to school…(and the very first week a police man gave me a parking ticket but was kind enough to write a quick note on the back explaining the complicated parking rules in the area so I’d know how to not do that again)…But yeah, I know things will work out some way in the end, and if nothing else, I will certainly learn something in the process. I’m also remembering that almost nothing is permanent…although I’m hoping the cards play out in such a way that this can be my last move. I’m not sure it will, and I am fearful it won’t be sooner than I had hoped, but I know God has a plan and maybe my move into this place will open the door for someone who needs it more than I do who otherwise couldn’t move in if someone staying longer than me had moved in, and maybe it is giving me the skills to be better at navigating finding a new place to live in the future. I mean, I’ve had a lot of practice with that already, but I feel like it is different at every stage of life…

…and I gotta post this because I said close to a week ago it was time to be brave and hit post, and I am running out of hours to make that anywhere close to true that I would post within a week…(lol, although someone told me today the definition of courage is knowing something is going to hurt and doing it anyway. And the definition of stupidity is the same. So chew on that).

as I finish life

(not sleeping in ‘cause it’s Saturday)

This is going to be a very random post because I need to write but I don’t feel safe writing it…

Fact, original cheerios (or the generic version) are the best cereal in the world. Also the box of said best cereal that I just threw away (because it was empty) had a game on the back…fill in the name of all the states on the map from the list at the bottom. I am very proud to have gotten 48 right…but let’s be honest…it was only a little skill and a lot of luck. I for the most part know which part of the country the states are supposed to be in and I know the real obvious ones like California, Minnesota, Florida, and Missouri that have a very distinct shape…and I was proud that I knew where DC would go if it had been pictured…but I mean, I also had to scribble out where I wrote Colorado because I ran out of big touching states and I knew Montana and Wyoming were supposed to touch…and eventually I reached a point where I had a bunch of states left and selected places to put them pretty randomly…

Completely unrelated thought…most places I’ve been I haven’t been fit tested for n95 masks…and one of them I knew the n95 was protecting me less well than the barely level 1 masks we were using for general universal masking, because with the n95 I could feel the air against my face as I walked down the hallway whereas I couldn’t with my other mask…but recently I did fit testing and I could see one of the two options was definitely not going to work with my facial structure, so I did the other one…and I mean technically my paper says I passed…but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to taste the spray and I did…so…there’s that…but I’m happy with it because I got what is by far the most comfortable n95 I’ve ever used, and it is one of the designs that folds flat if I were ever to need to re-use a mask, and it is one of the styles that I don’t feel like looks super weird…so yep, I am satisfied. And besides, if I were gonna get COVID I’d probs have gotten it after being inches from someone’s face who had it a year ago while he yelled for an hour…and honestly COVID was only temporarily a big concern for me. Noro I am still freaked out as ever about, but not COVID, and it still for some dumb reason is socially appropriate to wear a mask around respiratory illness but not around noro, and that is a huge part of why I never want to go back to working with adults. Adults are disgusting. Neonates nearly never throw up. They might spit up, but that doesn’t typically involve germs like vomit does…

It’s been a long week. I don’t feel safe writing about it, but I feel helpless, like nothing I can do is ever enough. And that makes it feel like all the hard things I’ve gone through seem even more unfair…like when it is easy to see the good that came after the negative it feels less bad, but when the pain is real today it is hard. The book I read recently said it well though…I have forgiven the things done to me and the hurt those people caused in the past, but I haven’t yet forgiven the pain that situation is causing today. Life isn’t fair, but I really want it to be.

Lyric break:

He sends his angels to open the prison doors, to come and set the captives free, to offer them more. To break open the doors of fear destroying your dungeon of doubt. He sends his angels to open the prison doors. Quietly they lead them out.

I don’t know how to earn points on ASHP, or how to lose points though I know both can be done, but I do know that somehow I currently have 777 points which puts me in first place. I am proud of that even if for all I know the points are distributed randomly by a toss of the dice every day…

Did you know that spiders are usually nocturnal? If that isn’t a good reason to go to bed I don’t know what is. Today I got up, had lunch, checked Facebook, had breakfast, made cookies (kind of – the recipe sorta failed for some reason) cleaned up, then had dinner. And I already want to go to bed after I finish church.

So I really wondered why this post didn’t get any likes because usually even my worst posts get at least one like by a week after posting…but apparently last week Saturday I did not actually hit post…but that means now I can write a few more sentences…(or paragraphs…we’ll see what happens)

I learned this week how much refrigerated water I am willing to pour on my head…it’s about 3 ounces or so.

So I was already up late and exhausted…and I’d just finished working the shampoo bubbles through my hair when the water ran out…obviously I couldn’t go to bed with a head covered in shampoo bubbles, but one thing I love about myself is that I am a problem solver. I will figure out how to make things work with what I have available. Some people might wish I asked for help or resources sooner (myself included once in a while), but asking for help is hard, and most things are reasonably solvable with a little effort (and sometimes asking for help also doesn’t feel safe because hashtag trauma). So I went to the refrigerator and grabbed the bottle of water that is usually there waiting for over-heating emergencies, because my body struggles with heat, so it can really help to have cold water to help cool down from the inside if needed. I had aspirations of getting the shampoo out then using conditioner and rinsing the conditioner out if enough water was left…as it turns out, refrigerated water is extremely unpleasant to pour over your head when you are not overheated. I got enough rinsed out that my hair wasn’t visibly or audibly soapy and took a break…then I took a drink and realized before I refilled the water bottle it’d most recently had a grape drink in it. And that is when I decided it didn’t make sense to keep pouring it over my hair because with how cold it was I really didn’t want to pour any more on my head, and if it was gonna be sticky anyway that gave me enough excuse that it might as well be sticky from leftover shampoo and no conditioner rather than from grape drink residue…and that is why reliable water supply is on my wish list for future dwellings…considering I do not infrequently rent sight unseen and people aren’t likely to disclose that type of issue I am not sure how realistic figuring that out in advance is (right along with no mice, no ants, no spiders, and probably no jumpy bugs, but I’d accept jumpy bugs in exchange for no ants, mice, spiders, or hornets) but considering that wasn’t the first time I ran out of tap water in this home, it is something that is important to me…who knew how thankful a girl could be for running water in 2022…

Can I also just say that while operational pharmacy is just like falling off a bike, clinical pharmacy, or at least adult clinical pharmacy, is not…this week I started attempting to re-learn adult pharmacy. And I feel like I am not an awful pharmacist by any means, but that I am also far from the pharmacist I was back in like February 2021 which was the last time I cared for adult patients…and even then I was competent and I could fight even the non-critical battles without being asked, but I wasn’t super comfortable with it…and also I am probably judging myself harshly given that I am deciding I don’t remember how to be a great adult pharmacist when I’ve tried for less than 15 hours…like even I can look at that and be like girl, give yourself a chance…and I want to be awesome at it, but honestly it isn’t really vital since I’m a pediatric (mostly NICU) pharmacist by training and by passion, so all I really have to do is be good enough to get by while deciding what to do with the rest of my life. My physical (and emotional) safety is my number one priority, so if learning to do something new is what it takes then that’s what I am going to do. After significant trauma in mid-to-late 2021 I’m hoping to find somewhere with enough stability for a while to start to heal before moving on again, but I also would rather sacrifice stability for safety if it has to be a choice.

…but now me is kinda wondering where November me may have put the extra watch bands…I had this great idea a few days ago to switch them out because they were getting a little discolored. I figured by the time the new ones were anywhere close to wearing out the battery would probably be dead anyway, and I am a buy a new watch when the battery dies kind of girl, not a replace the battery kind of girl, so I figured it would be fine to totally destroy the old band by ripping it in half…so of course I did that then went, umm, where is the replacement band…and couldn’t find it anywhere…I did find the instruction sheet, but none of the boxes I opened or baskets I went through had the bands in them…and I’m at a loss as to where else to look. Before I gave away my desk the watch bands were in the top drawer…but I dumped the contents of the desk out on the floor before I gave it away and the things it was next to have been located, but not the watch bands…I do have a backup watch (that is mostly just used for interviews because it looks nicer but is hard to read and not as comfortable) but that is not what I want to wear every day…so I’m hoping I’m gonna have a lightbulb moment soon…

Today I went outside and tried to bike. I didn’t get very far because omg was it a lot more hot and humid than I expected and it felt yucky, but I did see a sign on someone’s front door that said in bright bold red and black letters: private property, keep out, no trespassing, that means you. Lol. I thought about taking a picture and captioning it: I bet some real friendly people live here…but then my survival instinct kicked in and decided people cuckoo enough to put up that sign are probably also people who will claim that taking a picture from the very public sidewalk is somehow stealing a piece of their home…but yeah, that gave me a good laugh.

I’ve done all I can…help me to be okay

(Patient – Apollo Ltd)

I was a part of a buy nothing group for just barely over a month. This video the Buy Nothing Project Facebook Group helped me declutter save money / realistic minimalism journey – YouTube is the closest I’ve seen to describing what the experience is really like. It is an incredible feeling to give things away to people who you know will really value the gift. It isn’t like junkyard or a gimme gimme gimme culture, but rather a community. People can (and do) share what they need, so we can really meet those needs. For example, someone was having trouble finding a shampoo that made her hair feel clean and that she liked the smell of and I was able to give her 20-ish small bottles of shampoo to try. (yeah, I know, it is probably saying something about my ability to declutter that I had 20 travel size bottles to fill with shampoo…okay, and that I had that many kinds of shampoo to share). But the bigger mission of the group is to give where you live. I could post items to give to people who would value them in my community, like the > $100 pair of shoes I got online on a mega sale for a couple bucks that I tried on realized they were too big then felt like I couldn’t get rid of them because of the theoretical value: gifted to a neighbor who was thrilled to have a beautiful gift to celebrate her husband’s promotion. I loved getting to know both my neighbors and my neighborhood better. And I also got some great gifts including a beautiful red princess brush (just days after I’d said goodbye to my previous favorite brush), and a couple envelopes to mail some important documents when all my things were packed and I realized I’d remembered stamps but forgotten envelopes. (I’m no longer in a group because I joined one shortly before I moved and the current place I live is two blocks outside of the borders for one group and a few miles outside the boundaries of the next closest group). Depending on your group there also may be other activities. One of the additions mine had beyond the basic giving were clothing boxes. For every size from newborn to adult xxl+ there was a box and a Google list so the box could rotate among members interested in changing up their clothing. I never put my name on the list because I knew I was moving soon and didn’t want the pressure of ending up with a box while I was halfway through packing and ending up unpacking to trade out clothing items, but from what I’d heard the box for each size was substantial enough that approximately every fifth person or so was meeting up with the group moderator to go through the box and figure out which things were most worn out to stop circulating in order to make the boxes less overwhelming…and I did pick up a couple shirts that way that were just too cute to pass up even if they were definitely not objectively nice anymore. One of the additions one of my friends in a different part of the city was in was a women’s book club (not sure if there was also a men’s book club since I obvi wasn’t in that group nor was I a man). So yeah, I loved buy nothing. The founders really want people to switch from local groups to the app…and I don’t think they realize the community what they created became. While an app theoretically could allow participation without the boundary lines, it also takes away the community aspect making it into the equivalent of the free page on Craigslist except with more people asking than giving, and the asks not being specific because no one wants to open up to an anonymous sea of people online, so instead of being a close knit community it felt like an impersonal greed machine so after the first month or so attempting to enjoy it I was like this is bringing me no joy and gave up…

Speaking of other things that didn’t quite go my way…recently something happened. Objectively it was a good thing. But it really sparked the anxiety I’ve been trying to get past about being found and facing further retaliation. At first I was really confused about why I was feeling the way I was. There were things in my mind I would never in a million years have spoken out loud or otherwise shared with anyone that honestly didn’t even make sense regarding situations that were over, long practically forgotten, and most confusingly, with people who are incredibly important to me who have been overwhelmingly kind to me. For example, I saw a picture of someone smiling on Facebook and felt hurt that someone would post something happy-ish knowing what she’d done…and lol, what had she done? Well like probably a year before this she and a group of other people were going to lunch together. This group was supposed to include me. She was not at all involved in planning it. An idea was shared by the person planning it with a request for other ideas or preferences. I shared the places I’d rather go and hinted that perhaps the original suggestion wasn’t a great option for me. The other people completely ignored my suggestion as if I’d never even sent the email and were just like okay we’ll see you at (time) at (original idea suggested). The night before the event I was awake all night panicking about how I was going to make this work. There were a lot of problems. One was just that I don’t do well with new places, especially new restaurants, and especially going out with people I do not know super well. I don’t even remember what restaurant it was to know what the other issues may have been, but I remember clearly another big issue was that it was way on the opposite side of town. For the others this wasn’t such a big deal – they both worked and lived on that side of town. For me it was an issue. I lived and worked on the opposite side of town and it was incredibly unlikely even if the weather was perfect that day I’d be able to make it all the way over there in time without cutting out my morning duties. Ultimately, I emailed this person to ask if it was a problem if I didn’t go. Her response was that she was sad that I didn’t want to go…yep, that was her crime for which she was apparently no longer allowed to post smiles on Facebook. Yikes. I did feel hurt when I initially read that comment because I did really want to go and felt left out that I couldn’t be there, but honestly at the time it wasn’t a huge issue partly because I had bigger issues to deal with, but mostly because I absolutely knew this person’s heart was in the right place, and that she meant that in a supportive rather than a negative way. So that is just one example of the totally benign events that were becoming these huge dramas in my mind…and then it clicked into place. This recent event had kicked wide open the door I’d been trying to hold shut on the fear of the people who more recently much more legitimately hurt me and whom I have more legitimate reason to believe will continue to look for ways to perpetuate their attack.

Which is also a little bit confusing because I’ve read the book forgiving what you can’t forget like 5 times in the past 7-10 days and I really felt like before even reading the book I’d forgiven a lot of what had happened and reading the book was giving me really good perspective that had helped me move from forgiving to healing…like that hurt people hurt people and we might not know that someone is hurting and why, but chances are the reason they are doing hurtful things is that they have previously been hurt, and they might not even realize prospectively why they are acting like that or even how wrong what they are doing is, but retrospectively if/when they do they will need a lot of support to heal from the weight of guilt of what they did and feel powerless to change. That helped me see the scary hurtful people with a lot more compassion and opened my mind further to the possibility that these people could one day heal and change. I have learned enough in life to know that it is not wise for me to attempt to be the one bringing healing to a person who has significantly hurt me because if it doesn’t happen immediately I am just going to end up with more and deeper wounds, but I think it is helpful in my healing to recognize this person might not be as dangerous 10 years from now as he or she is today. Some people will stay hurtful, but others may very well learn to act differently. So yeah, all that to say I felt like I was making progress then suddenly I was a million miles from where I wanted to be just hanging on for dear life. Luckily figuring out what was going on took away the negative thoughts about my wonderful communities over the years, but it couldn’t take away the fear that I might still not be very safe. Prior to this event I’d started to become comfortable in known safe places  like church to be separated from my phone and keys, but now I’m at least temporarily back to wanting my phone to attempt calling 911 and my keys to attempt to get away…but I say attempt because I am very much aware that with my social anxiety I’m a lot more likely to freeze in a scary situation than have any ability to run and the idea that I’d have the ability to pull out a phone, dial the numbers, and actually tell the operator anything are still closer to a fantasy than anything I could realistically do despite my exponential growth in communication skills in the past few years.

But speaking of hanging on, that same person I was annoyed at for posting something mildly positive on Facebook gave me an incredibly thoughtful gift last year (with the help of a few other people), and one of the items was an infinity calendar with quotes on every page. To be honest, a lot of the quotes just don’t make sense to me, don’t seem true, or are bordering on or even are maybe overtly in the toxic positivity realm, but there are also some incredibly good ones which is why my calendar was on the same page for a month and why I wrote ‘tie a know and hang on’ on a post it note stuck on my fridge. The quote said when you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. It seemed like amazing advice and such a good metaphor for life.

Funny story, this entire post was not at all what I set out to write…but once I wrote that second paragraph everything I’d originally been planning to write evaporated from my mind, and all this stuff came instead…

Also, there is one more thing I thought of…like lol, everyone is totally spazzing out about the supposed tampon shortage (despite in every news segment they’ve panned across the shelves to show how nothing is there and while they may not be well stocked there are definitely still tampons in every size and more boxes than anyone could ever think about buying in one trip). People are acting like or sometimes even verbally stating there is no alternative to the tampon…which is complete nonsense. Probably the closest alternative is the menstrual cup. Sure, the ones sold at target are often somewhat expensive (though significantly less than a couple months of tampons) but especially if you can wait a few days for an Amazon delivery you can get one of my favorites, the anytime cup, for about 5 dollars depending on size/color, and I’ve seen other name brands as low as 3 dollars, and if you find a no name cup you like they can be under a dollar (but I tried a couple no name cups and because they have no name to use to find comparative reviews it was too hard to figure out what I needed and far more economical to spend a little more for one I could determine more easily what I wanted). The cup is especially incredible for travel or work outside the home because no need for a pile of supplies and hoping it is enough. With normal flow you can just dump morning and night or with heavier flow like I typically have (soaking super tampons and super pads together every hour for the first few hours) you can go into the bathroom at work every 2-4 hours, dump, reinsert, and be on your way. No trying to hide tampons in your bag then hide them from your bag into the restroom. So much less awkward and therefore more freedom. I get that cups aren’t everyone’s thing. The idea of having to put your fingers inside of you to pull it out might not be for everyone, but there are still other alternatives. I use cloth pantiliners every day and as my sole protection on light days. They hold so much more than a regular liner and do a lot better job in my opinion protecting my undies from stains even if they do start reaching capacity whereas the disposable ones start to leak while they are still 95% white…and cloth pads would obvi do even better, I just don’t use them because I’m a cup user. So yeah, even if tampons were unavailable and pads were gone too, you have options. Cloth seems to be going up in price lately, but you can still get about 6 for like $10 on Amazon. Oh, and there are period undies. I know some people adore them, but while I got a few pairs from someone for free, they are not my favorite. Mostly because if I underestimate my flow I either have to wear soggy undies the rest of the day (‘cause let’s be real, I’m not the person who’s gonna notice until we’ve reached saturation that we’ve got a problem), or I have to change underwear which means completely taking off my pants as well which just feels wrong to do in the middle of the day, because I’m not a toddler who has accidents anymore, so I’ll use them to have one fewer layers if I only need backup under my cup, but as soon as I’m ready to go cup free I’m back to regular undies with my cloth liners…and as a pharmacist I definitely learned in school about other forms of menstrual protection, but I’m not going to comment on things I haven’t tried, but basically there are a million and one choices and just the one is tampons.

took a year to be empty

(Renovate)

Well…you know how I said other people were using my trash allotment…and how it was kind of a joke to me because I don’t typically produce a lot of trash anyway? Well…I’ve been going through a lot of canned goods and milk cartons lately which take up more space in the trash. I didn’t worry about trash day because I knew I hadn’t taken out any trash in the past two weeks at least…and then today two grocery bags were full of trash and I was ready to be brave and take them out (my OCD still struggles with taking out trash)…well…umm…yeah, if your trash isn’t picked up you don’t get more trash for the next time until it is…and I just barely was able to throw out my trash…apparently my neighbors think they can use up my trash allowance but don’t think it is their responsibility to mark it for pickup…so now I gotta figure out whether I just wait and watch because in college I could go 3 months without taking out the trash and I bet if I didn’t eat canned goods I could probably do that again without much effort, or if I use my words to tell my neighbors to knock it off, or if I just figure I need to deal with other people’s trash regardless of how much it bothers me…’cause it isn’t a joke anymore when I can’t take out my own trash…I mean I guess there is also the fourth option of paying for extra pickups, but that option is not something I am willing to consider…

100% unrelated, but isn’t it great when you call one organization who says call this other organization so you call this other organization and they say call the organization you started with in the first place…so you do and they’re like it’s not our problem and you have to be brave and be like please look into this because I’m pretty sure it is…lol…that was what my morning was like…luckily I got someone who was willing to take a minute to recognize that yes there is a problem and submit it for review…but it all could have been truncated if the first person I’d talked to had been willing to actually look into what I was saying instead of blaming it on another organization…

Well this post was really short and I had another half written post so here are two posts jammed together…but also an update since writing that today I am feeling a lot more gracious and willing to extend a larger helping of kindness and self-sacrifice to my neighbors…so I’ll wear gloves if I have to and I will take care of making sure everyone’s trash gets picked up next trash day without confronting anyone about it…because really if someday I want to be a home owner I’m going to have to be able to do hard things…and I had to delete the next sentence because it was kinda rude…I just don’t like when people lie about where they live…but speaking of where people live…when I was really scared about someone who was tracking me, it somehow seemed plausible in my head that my location could be tracked through the postal service…in retrospect I am not quite sure how I expected that would even be possible…but in response I filed a series of address forwarding forms…even though the post office told me in like May or June that you’re really only supposed to do that once a month at most…but my safety was more important than following the guidelines to a t, and I did explain to the postal worker what I was attempting and they didn’t object…one small problem though…apparently what happens when you do that is the postal service gets confused as to where your mail is supposed to go and I now have mail being delivered to an address that most definitely is not mine nor is it anywhere that anyone I know lives…some of my mail is making it to me, but pretty sure a lot of it is going to not my address…whoops…but I mean really the people I am closest to have my cell number that hasn’t changed to reach me, and so far anyway the people who want my money have also figured out how to let me know, so it is what it is.

A petting zoo?…well I’ll tell you!

(crazy people – casting crowns)

You can have some really exciting adventure experiences by just by being in the right place at the right time. Last week I was at a hospital and some Pyxis machines needed moving and I was like hey if you need extra hands I’d be happy to help…and I got to join the group which was helpful to them and fun for me. And I learned something. The part with the computer its hard to move because it is heavy and doesn’t roll very well, (and hurts when you roll it over your feet) but the tower is hard to move because it rolls pretty well but it also is very tippy and you obvi don’t want to be the one who knocks it over. And being someone without access to the inside of the machine I was the perfect person to watch the machine while it wasn’t connected to the internet because I not only couldn’t get drugs out off record, I couldn’t get them out at all…lol…but I took my volunteered job very seriously. I thought about how I would respond if there was a fire (hide in the cabinet under the sink with the sink on and soak my shirt and mask in the sink to cover some of the gaps) or if someone tried to steal the drugs (press the code blue button)…I also read the back of a clock because eventually I kinda was getting bored and was wishing I hadn’t invited myself to this party and discovered there is a button just begging to be pressed with a stick above it that says do not press button…and I am obedient so I didn’t press the button but now I really want to know what the button does…it was an analog clock without any alarms so idk…

Also I got two new pairs of pants yesterday…which is good because last week I was being an idiot and ripped a hole in my favorite pants…like I was fidgeting with a stray thread on my pants and suddenly my fingers decided it would be a good idea to see if I could jam my fingers between the threads at the seam. Answer: Well, kind of. I could, but only because as my fingers worked their way in the seams ripped open and soon my pants were no longer pants shaped and it was time to put them in the trash. The new pants though are comfortable but have two small issues…both of them the pockets are fakers. They can’t even be unsewed to open – they are literally the illusion of pockets…what use is that? The other issue is that one pair has a skin tone colored waist band which would be okay except the waist band starts so low that if the waist band didn’t exist you’d see 2/3 of my underwear, so to wear those pants I’m gonna have to be careful to only wear longer shirts…so now I still don’t know which pair of pants will be my new favorite because most of my others don’t fit, but I firmly believe that pockets are the best part of clothing, so I’m kinda torn…but I’m also thankful for comfortable new (to me) pants.

Yesterday I was supposed to be playing games. I was kind of nervous because it was with a group I hadn’t played games with before so I didn’t know what kind of games to expect…as it turns out I was the only one who showed up and I was running 1.5 late because getting lost is my thing and I left in time to be only a little late but then I got lost a lot of times…but anyway it turned into a Starbucks hang out instead which was fun except I re-discovered how awkward I am at having a conversation with someone I don’t know well…but you can’t get to know people without, y’know, getting to know people…and I like having lots of friends…

Y’know what feels a tiny bit like a party? Eating ice cream for the first time* since when I was on call and the still broken at that point pager went off while I was trying to get some pie on my plate at community group and while I figured out what to do one of my friends helped me get ice cream on my plate. This time though, I got to eat ice cream while just laying on the couch. Much improved experience. I haven’t decided if it would be disrespectful to post my pharmacademic eval of the on call experience here so I’m not going to for now, but we’ll just say that there were some improvements that could be made besides just updating the technology…ice cream is delicious, but so far I’ve seen yogurt but not ice cream as an offering at places where I’ve gotten food, but a week ago I had a coupon and was able to find some yummy ice cream for only 15 cents after the coupon (for an itty bitty 2-cup carton, but you can’t be too picky when you are getting a treat for only 15 cents). Not that I’ve ever really purchased treats very often, but being able to purchase and enjoy a treat the way “normal” people do felt like a hugely relieving slice of stability. I think it is kind of like the picture I posted on Instagram 2.5 years ago when outside the window of the ICU room where my family was together I felt like I’d found a little piece of normalcy when I saw a bus like the one I rode on one of my interviews not that many months before. A reminder that for the rest of the world time is still passing and life is going on whether I am ready to come along or not. That is why people who have experienced trauma often age precociously, but then stay there longer. We kinda have to grow up to deal with things we shouldn’t have ever experienced, but then we can easily get stuck there and stop growing up. It is very multifactorial. One of the factors being that in the case of death we want things to be the way they were, and for other traumas we may seem younger because we’re subconsciously going back to before the trauma occurred…

*with the exception of eating ice cream cake at community group this week.

This message brought to you by the letter P and the number 5…lol…

got you from scared to brave

(wildfire – crowder)

I read something recently with which I really resonated. Part of it was discussing the fight/flight/freeze response. I was kinda skimming past that section because I don’t need someone to tell me the body’s response to adrenaline. I’ve heard it before. I’ve experienced it before. It’s nothing new to me…but then…then a sentence caught my eye. This was not just the exact same thing I’d seen and experienced so many times before. This time there was an additional sentence describing that while in animals the freeze response is physical, humans can have that presentation (I’ve been there), but humans often freeze their own needs and beliefs to focus on the other person. Boom.

I mean, if they hadn’t slipped that ‘and beliefs’ in there I would have totally missed it because yeah yeah yeah the sympathetic nervous system activation can inhibit things like digestion and stuff to focus on the threat at hand, but that is not what they are describing. It really matches the patterns I’ve seen in my own life. I am threatened and I focus on pleasing the person who is threatening me even though they totally don’t deserve it and I don’t even think directly about getting away. I’m so focused on keeping the other person happy that I miss my opportunity to run. I’m stuck helping the person who is actively hurting me.

Besides just how incredibly accurate that is, it totally aligns with what my trauma group was discussing this week. We’ve decided that it is best if we have a topic to guide our discussion (tbh, likely a lot because of me – I’m generally the first one there and it is easiest for me to answer questions on a topic than to directly discuss my trauma or my week. You’ll probably at times hear bits of my story through my answers, but you wouldn’t hear my voice at all without that…and the weeks no one has set a topic I’ve ended up in the audience rather than a participant…so when it was asked of me what the group wanted I answered what worked best for me). This week the topic was relationships. There were a lot of directions that went and due to some changes in the group I am one of the only people without a history of an abusive boyfriend or husband, some of the conversation was directed more toward intimate partner relationships than I could really relate, but a lot of the things I still connected with…anyway, we discussed how in an abusive relationship the other person starts by getting you to question things that you already were less confident in. That weakens your confidence in other areas over time so more areas are up for removing your confidence until you really believe it is your fault and you probably deserve the abuse…and we discussed that in a bad relationship someone hurts you, so to prevent getting hurt further we lose ourselves because we forget about how we should be treated. We forget about our desires and passions and throw all our energy into trying to make the other person happy in an attempt to keep them from hurting us…but it just gives the other person an easier in to keep hurting us…so yeah…all those things seem to fit really well into that description of a common way humans freeze…

I am so thankful for my trauma group. It is so helpful to have a group of people who have also been through some stuff and therefore understand what it is like to not be living a fairytale. It is hope-inducing on a bad day to see that other people are surviving too. And they teach me so much about vulnerability. Two weeks ago someone left the group because someone told her she wasn’t welcome. I didn’t believe that could possibly be true because she had been honestly the most important member of our group. She got us a platform to talk between sessions. She organized meetings when the organization hosted meetings weren’t available. She was the most consistent member of the group. She was so incredibly kind and thoughtful. She was improving but still had setbacks and stuff. She basically was exactly the kind of person you want in this kind of group…but when I found out it was true I was angry and had no idea who could have said such a thing to her. And we discussed in the group chat that she had been removed from that we needed some boundaries to ensure that we all felt safe. We had that discussion this week. It was a little awkward because we had two new people and me and the person I’d been discussing the need for boundaries with…one other person came about half an hour or so late by which point we’d moved on. At the end the three of us were asked to stay late. The person who came late expressed that she felt attacked by our request for boundaries because she wasn’t trying to wreck group. I strongly disagreed with the action she took, but I felt it was a good example of vulnerability to express how our conversation made her feel. The other person was ready to apologize and forgive for discussing boundaries. I wasn’t ready to apologize for what I still see as ensuring our group is a safe place, but I acknowledged my appreciation that she let us know respectfully how she felt. But seeing that display of vulnerability and her agreement to follow the guidelines we discussed in the future made me realize that I am in a really good safe place in that group because we can disagree and do it respectfully…well, we can now I guess considering that all started with someone being not so nice to another group member. I have a lot of big feelings about the original situation, but I feel really good about the way the fallout was handled. I feel like the boundaries we wanted, seeing how her actions caused us to react, and having that vulnerable conversation will go a long way in ensuring that unkindness will not continue to be part of our group. And that is important to me.

Life has enough going on without a group that is supposed to be healing causing harm.

Mostly unrelated, but in this week’s episode of ttfa, Nora said you have to understand who someone used to be to understand them. (or at least if my memory serves me correctly Nora is who said that)…either way it was definitely this week’s ttfa 😊. Anyway, it made me think about what might be hiding in some people’s emotional closet. Having pain that isn’t being contained well in your closet isn’t a valid excuse for being cruel to other people, and it doesn’t make it okay to harm other people’s well-being, but it can help to make the world feel like a less randomly dangerous place to understand why you were treated so poorly…for example, I was known for doing well in school. There was one person in particular many years ago who was quite unkind to me. When I found out she had failed an exam that most people found easy, it made a lot of sense why she would target me and other students doing well. We seemed to have what she felt was missing, and that jealousy likely instigated her actions. There was only so much I could do to help her find her worth, and to be honest, it was never enough to really change the way she behaved, but understanding why she acted in the way she did made it feel less like any random person would just become a bully…it doesn’t make her actions right, and doesn’t mean the way she treated me didn’t hurt, it just helped me put pieces together…and I don’t know if that even made sense, but my point is, Nora’s words were a good reminder that sometimes I may never know why someone is being unkind, but what is important is to realize that wounded people often wound people. Sometimes it is intentional and other times it may be inadvertent, but everyone has a story and while I might not know everyone’s story, it is likely I would know better why they were acting in a certain way if I did know. It helps me give grace to people who are incredibly difficult to forgive.

that kind of luxe just ain’t for us

(Rested – Atasha Chretien)

I really enjoy watching Caught in Providence on YouTube…sometimes the people are incredibly whiny and annoying and clearly are just there to obnoxiously act entitled and insist that they shouldn’t have to pay their fines because they just don’t wanna…in those situations I am amazed how kind and calm Frank Caprio is towards them. He extends grace and compassion even to people who deserve absolutely none of it. In those cases it is an inspiring reminder that even antagonistic people who are really hard to be with are, at the end of the day, people. The right thing to do really is to be kind to people and treat those hard to love people the same as the people who are so incredibly easy to love.  (I wrote like another paragraph here but I deleted it because it was starting to cross the line between respectfully honest and questionably disrespectful…really all I needed to say was I do not intend this to imply that people should stay in abusive relationships, but that if people who have hurt you are still in your life that they still deserve the same respect as your besties).

But other times…

Other times there are people like this: https://youtu.be/V_MFj0zbonY

The guy is very aware he screwed up. He is very willing to pay. He is there because he could really use some additional time to be able to more comfortably afford to pay. He recognizes that he doesn’t deserve that extra time and may have to pay immediately. He isn’t looking for a handout. And I don’t know if he, like me, struggles to accept even needed assistance or if he really does have a heart of gold to recognize that he can get by without the gift, but other people might need it more than he does. He is genuinely appreciative. And I love the reminder Frank gives this person that while maybe today he can’t, to remember how good it felt when maybe tomorrow he can. That is a good reminder for all of us. It is a hard transition from being a giver to admitting you have nothing left to give, but it can be easy to slip into complacency and hold on to even the things you do have to offer, because when you’ve experienced life on the edge, it feels good to have things. It is scary not knowing if you’ll have enough, and knowing how fear operates, I think I will need that reminder of how it felt at the bottom when I am in a place where I do have more than I need again.

Also, 100% unrelated except that the title of this post made me think about it…one time (many years ago) I stayed in a hotel called Luxor and I highly recommend not staying there if you can afford to stay anywhere else. There were wads of toilet paper stuck to the ceiling. There was almost no water pressure. The floor was so dirty your socks turned colors on the bottom. The lobby smelled horrendous. Really the only positive was the roof over my head…I can’t comment adequately on noise level because to be honest I was sharing the room with a group of girls I kinda knew, and they produced so much noise that I really don’t know if the noise level was appropriate or not within the hotel…I also do not recommend flights that take off 3-4 hours after bedtime after a week of that…it makes for a very challenging next few days as you try to catch up on severe sleep deprivation while still getting through your rotation and homework…

angels show up in the strangest of places

(Looking for angels – skillet)

I think this lyric is incredibly true…

The example that most exemplifies this lyric is someone whose name I am not sure if I ever heard in the first place…someone whom I have only ever spoke with on the phone…

It was a little over a month ago and I was terrified. About 12 hours prior to this moment I had found out someone I had wanted to avoid had been tracking me, and unbeknownst to me had had people following me around taking videos and pictures of me. That most likely wasn’t legal because I think even in one-party consent areas you can’t just take pictures and videos of strangers who have in no way interacted with you…but regardless of legality, it had happened and I was afraid…and I don’t know exactly what my plan was, I just knew my brain said call the police, so I did. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that I would do that because my most recent police contact maybe 8-10 hour prior had consisted of the guy repeating the same useless piece of information I didn’t ask for while I was trying to carry boxes until I finally snapped and more aggressively than I meant to told him that I didn’t care what he was saying and just wanted him to answer my questions which he refused to do. I felt bad about my reaction, but my friend who witnessed my side of the conversation reassured me that I wasn’t rude and it probably felt uncomfortable because it was so far outside my peace-keeping nature…and they’re probably right and I’m sure the police have heard a lot worse than someone taking a strident tone with them, but I still feel like I owe that dude an apology…I don’t know if I was terrified enough that I was willing to give the police another chance or if it was more like that I remembered that all my police interaction prior to that point had been people who seemed to care and that overrode the one big negative…but regardless of reason, I called.

And the person who answered transferred me to someone else and that person really was an angel. I don’t think I ever actually told him what was going on or why I was scared, but he remained calm. Without knowing my story or pressing for my story he offered that if I wanted to come in I could (and I realized at that point that it was around midnight and probably not wise for me to drive anywhere at the moment). I think just the offer that a safe place was there waiting for me was a huge blessing. And when I said I wasn’t ready to drive out there, this kind person asked whether this could wait until morning since most of the night crew was out on some other business, and when I agreed, because at that point I was feeling better, he let me choose what time I wanted them to arrive. And he had the foresight to let me know that if something more urgent came up he couldn’t guarantee that time unless I called and needed someone right away…

And that is the story of how I gave a couple police officers a tour of my apartment complex the next day because they did come and I still wasn’t ready to tell them what was going on, but I didn’t want them to leave because I felt safe and protected with them around. I wanted to ask them to stay and protect me and my social skills kept that from becoming a reality, but touring them around prolonged my contact with them…It didn’t fix anything per se, but it made me feel like I mattered, and it showed me that if I ask for help, someone will come help me…there are a lot of things the police couldn’t do, and they and I both were aware of that, but being there and being willing to do the things they could do was incredibly meaningful. I wish I had gotten everyone’s names, because I would love to send everyone a thank you for their kindness, patience, and for making me feel like there were people who would watch out for me and had my best interest at heart. And I mean, God bless them for not commenting on the cardboard boxes serving as my only piece of furniture and the roll of sheets/pillow/pajamas in the hall that I hadn’t folded up after getting dressed in the morning…it probably wasn’t the most normal-looking place they had seen…hashtag doesn’t everyone have to move a couple boxes of canned goods to un-barricade the door before answering it? And then become unable to find her shoes because the boxes are now on top of the shoes? (yep, I located my shoes after they left and I was feeling safe enough to not need to re-barricade the door and instead wanting to get stuff out of the entry and kitchen to allow for vacuuming and other required cleaning that hadn’t been done in the past week when the kitchen had become the dumping zone for anything that I might need in the next month or so…because sorting things is important, but so is cleaning)

The guy might be thinking he was just doing his job, but to me, he was doing so much more than that, and I wish I could tell him and the team that I spoke with in person how much their compassion and taking a few extra minutes to assist me rather than just taking a not my problem stance meant to me…so I guess if the police officers responding to a young-ish woman who called late at night and proceeded to show them around her apartment complex are reading this (which is highly doubtful) please pass along my thanks to you and your colleagues.

I was going to write about some other angels in my life over the past few months, but I feel like I’ve written about enough other amazing people over the past few months…and I really need to get things done because I haven’t gotten much done at all this week…

But one more thing that I promise is totally at least 3% related if I gave you more details about both this and the previous thing I wrote about…

Ever have those moments when you go, umm, and exactly how was this going to work again?!

So the setting is early August. The background is your girl really wants to have adequate food in her apartment even though she isn’t sure she is going to actually need it. This is basically a continuation of the wiggle worm is not going to be defeated by the grocery store story that I wrote back in August.

So I think in August we got as far as I was buying a watermelon and a few other things…

The problem comes in that even though the store I was at *looked* like a traditional grocery store and had prices like a fancy grocery store, it operated like an Aldi…and I definitely wasn’t about to spend money on something that should be free so I refused a bag…I mean, I did bring my reusable bags just in case I needed them…and except for my backpacks etc which I suppose are technically reusable bags, my reusable bags are super cute, so I’m not overly opposed to using them as needed (two of them are little fishies when folded up, and when in use have an ocean scene, and my other one has a picture of a target store on it which I know doesn’t sound cute, but it totally is). But anyway, I didn’t want to bring the cart all the way home and back because as usual I had a ton of stuff to get done. So my plan was to carry everything. And I quickly realized that while I lived less than a mile from the grocery store, it was a lot longer walk in the heat while carrying a watermelon in addition to other groceries…Plan B was quickly attempted – use the bags to carry the groceries…and Plan B was pretty close to a fail…as it turns out, it was rather difficult to get the watermelon into a bag because the bags are not stretchy like real grocery bags but are sized like regular grocery bags. I finally got the watermelon in and realize that the bag was most definitely not designed to hold the weight of a watermelon so I still had to carry it. The bag did kinda sorta make it an easier surface to hold on to…but yeah, when you are a walker you probably shouldn’t buy watermelon unless you have a well-thought-out plan on how to get it home. And let’s be real, at that point I didn’t have a lot of thought left for my personal life because work was taking so much of my thought.

Hashtag life lessons from wiggle worm…

…totally unrelated, but the leggings I’ve wanted from target since I bought my first pair of leggings years ago, someone was giving away a few pairs of them and it was an hour and a half to get there so probably I should have kept waiting until I could both find and afford them at target, but I wanted them and I’m very determined to make my dreams reality, so now I have two pairs of black fleece lined leggings, two pairs of black and glittery fleece lined leggings (not on my wish list, but I’ve only had glittery clothing one other time in my life, so I figured why not especially since it didn’t seem like the glitter would come off), one pair of navy blue fleece lined leggings, and two pairs I didn’t care as much about – grey and grey with pandas, but they were both fleece lined which will be warm and cozy…I was not a leggings count as pants person until recently, but now I don’t care that I still feel inappropriately dressed, because I’ve discovered how comfortable they are and it is my opinion that if you are going to judge me on looks then I don’t need your opinion…I mean, I’m not going to go outside showing off my bra like some girls do, because I do still have standards (plus, modest really is hottest), but I’m becoming okay with leggings without anything else covering my bottom once in a while…

…and I had one more completely random unrelated thought, but I’m worried it may provide too much information on my whereabouts for a public blog so that though it just going to need to stay in my head…

can you make something

(Tasha Layton – into the sea)

I’m a problem-solver by nature…but once in a while I have to admit I cannot do everything myself. And I started learning last year how to ask for help…which is how I got a new oven in early December when the smoke alarm wouldn’t stop going off because smoke was pouring out of the oven and the oven wouldn’t turn off and I didn’t know what to do because fanning the alarm was decidedly not working and I was starting to feel like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen…probably I should have run for help as soon as the alarm started going off, but it was so sensitive that just cooking a pizza a minute or two too long set it off if I left the oven open longer than the time it takes to remove the pizza, so the first few minutes were just me being annoyed and it wasn’t until I couldn’t see across my apartment that I realized this was a bigger problem than I could handle on my own…so it was kind of like the boy that cried wolf…although the first time the smoke alarm went off I also didn’t immediately leave either, it took me a couple minutes of grabbing my laptop, notebook, phone, keys, and putting on shoes, and by that time the alarm was already off again…so I can’t claim I am the most responsive person to smoke alarms…I blame middle school when no one cared if I went outside for fire drills so the majority of the time I didn’t, the exception being if I’d been on my way to or from the restroom or otherwise was wandering and caught in an area in which I was locked out of the area containing my notebook and pencil etc until the drill was over in which case I’d go outside since I didn’t have anything better to do…then I got to high school where they would select only one or two classrooms to participate in a fire drill…so all that to say my brain and body have been taught to tune out fire alarms…although I still don’t understand why if a classroom on the second floor was on fire why the classrooms directly above and below it wouldn’t also need to be evacuated, but not my circus, not my monkeys…

So yeah, there are a lot of things I can DIY, but there are also a lot of things I am unable to do it myself…

But I am now armed with the knowledge that the lowest cost fork-lift rental near me is about $250…which is more than I really would like to spend…but the bigger problem is that I realized I had no idea how I would bring the fork lift home because the item I wanted to use it on was currently blocking my car from moving, and I wasn’t really sure what kind of range a fork lift would have to know if I was able to walk to the rental place if I could drive the fork lift all the way home…in the process of trying to ascertain this information I discovered that they usually have three pedals vs the two that cars have…and that was the point at which I realized there may be a bit of a learning curve and perhaps I would need a new one so that I could ensure I had the complete manual (plus then if I owned it I could choose whether to hold onto it for later or sell it to recoup some of the costs)…this was after I determined the ones on Craigslist weren’t going to work for me…as it turns out there are some sites where you can have free delivery…the problem is twofold. First, the reason I want one is because I had an object I would like moved right away, and second, they range in price for things that look nearly identical from about $1000 to tens of thousands of dollars and I don’t want to get one that doesn’t work, but my credit limit isn’t high enough to even think about trying to purchase an expensive one…so I decided I was going to have to hold my horses…and now I have the song patience from Thomas the Tank Engine stuck in my head…which I suppose is better than last week when the rubber ducky song by Kelly Hogan was stuck in my head…

Also, some day I am going to learn not to go outside barefoot when there is snow on the ground…I did very quickly Thursday-ish though figure out that a damp paper towel is not an effective tool for getting millions of footprints off of a porous wooden surface…it probably also wouldn’t have been effective for a singular footprint, but as previously noted, I was barefoot and getting kinda cold so I figured that was another problem it made more sense to give up and throw money at…

It seems like giving up and throwing money at problems is becoming an unwanted super power of mine…I did the same thing with Comcast last week…it took around 5 to 6 hours to finally be connected with a call center employee who repeated the same unhelpful line every time I tried to rephrase the question until I just gave up and was like this isn’t worth my time…

Taking this another direction, sometimes I do not know what the right answer is.

For 2 months I carefully checked the locks as soon as I walked in my door, I was cautious about where I went, I was genuinely worried about what would happen if I was found, so I needed to keep my location secret from anyone who might be likely to share it even inadvertently with the wrong person.

And then I found out someone had been tracking me.

That was initially incredibly terrifying. I had a lot going on that week so I did the best I could to keep working through all the things I needed to do, but that first night I was hiding with the lights off so it would look like I wasn’t home…which was probably excessive, but I was really shaken up. I slept in the living room because those blinds were easier to completely close and since I was furniture-free by that point I could sleep wherever I wanted – I briefly considered the closet before realizing that considering the mouse fiasco and that the mouse had had no fear running past me while I did zoom calls in my closet, it seemed like a bad idea to sleep where I knew the mouse had been since I hadn’t bleached the carpet. Luckily a night to process it and my anxiety significantly decreased – helpful since trying to carry on with life without turning on the lights except when absolutely necessary (aka using the bathroom or trying to prepare for an interview) is kinda challenging. For at least a little while I felt like maybe what I found out meant that for the first time I could feel safe in my own apartment. That was a huge blessing. My safety outside of my apartment when not at friends’ houses may have been compromised, but I felt better about being home.

It’s been up and down a lot since then.

The way I see it there are a few possibilities and I alternate between which one I am most certain is accurate which means my sense of felt safety is all over the place. To be honest, based on the information someone was willing to pass along to me, I knew leaving my apartment at all was probably a risk and had selected a route that seemed like my best and least risky option, and as much as biking helped my body and mind, I now wonder whether it would have been better to just stay home completely. It would have been a much less joyful life, but it would have spared me the terror of finding out I’d been being tracked. I never actually entered the fitness center of my apartment, but perhaps a stationary bike would have been an option in conjunction with my buy nothing escapades that felt a little safer simply because they were so goal-directed and kept me in highly populated areas yet were also fully unpredictable because I checked the group for unsafe faces before participating. I don’t usually let fear limit my life beyond what is needed for a reasonable level of safety, but maybe my calculation of safety was off…but anyway, these are the options as I see it…

1. I had been incident-free because person A did not share my location. (safe-ish)
2. I had been incident-free because person B decided not to risk being caught doing anything to me in public. (safe)
3. I had been incident-free because there isn’t good public transit most of my route (which was part of the selection process on that route) which made it too inconvenient to bother me. (safe mostly)
4. I had been incident-free because I had gotten lucky that nothing had happened yet. (unsafe)
5. I had been incident-free because most if not all of my weekday rides were at times that would have precluded both being where I was and being at work the hours person B worked. (semi-safe)
6. I had been incident-free intentionally in order to eventually catch me off guard and therefore more vulnerable to attack. (very unsafe)

Pretty much 100% unrelated, but as much as I whine about masks, today I kinda wished I’d worn a mask to church…I really only planned on going to church and the library and so I had no reason to bring or wear a mask since if you are in an emergency the hospital I’m sure would provide a mask and obvi I wasn’t planning any scheduled medical visits on a Sunday 🙂 …but one lady who sat adjacent to me smelled like she bathed in perfume and it was really annoying but I didn’t want to be rude and go find somewhere else to sit and it didn’t occur to me to ask at the welcome desk for a mask…that is one thing covid has been great for – people or places smell bad and you can wear a mask which mitigates how uncomfortable it is to be around them, but without the social impoliteness of plugging your nose or pulling your shirt over your face…also if you have misplaced the headband you usually keep sanitized and use in the winter to warm your breathing air and it is really cold outside you can be one of those people who wear a mask when not at the hospital and not even inside and use the mask to warm your air. It is slightly less effective, but I haven’t lost all my masks yet (important as a pharmacist since hospitals are an important part of my world), but I have misplaced my headband.

Speaking of smells, I realized recently that while I’ve claimed for basically ever that I do not like yogurt, actually what I do not like is the smell of yogurt. I do not mind the taste of most yogurts if I don’t have to smell them, but I cannot handle the smell of Greek yogurt, and I do not like the smell of regular yogurt…how did I figure this out? Dark chocolate peppermint yogurt…it looked good. It smelt bad. I plugged my nose and loved the first bite. I then put vaporub in my nose so I couldn’t smell the yogurt and enjoyed the rest of the container. And threw the container in the outside trash to get the smell away from me…it was delicious…So that was a huge paradigm shift…

Also, someday I would really like to actually remember how directionally challenged I am *before* I try to go anywhere…I was like I totally know how to get to the library. I don’t need any directions…umm…what I knew was how to get to Walmart. Walmart is not the library. Luckily, I was 97% sure how to get from Walmart to the library, so after the road I thought would take me to the library brought me face to face with Walmart I made my best guess how to get to the library from there and I was actually right about that…so I just took the very scenic route to the library…someday I will learn that directions are important…today just wasn’t that day.

Also 100% unrelated, but way back whenever daylight savings happened I did not fully participate…unplugging my clock in mid-December was how I dealt with that…and I still haven’t changed my watch…but I decided that it was time to get back on a schedule that correlates with the rest of the world…which is all well and good, but my body was like why stop at one time zone? Why don’t we just shift everything by like 4 or 5 hours…which is how we transitioned from the girl who goes to bed between 8 and 9 depending on what clock you use (when not hanging with friends)  to the girl who goes to bed ‘eventually’ and gets up in time for lunch…also not an ideal schedule…it might be time soon to actually set the alarm on the clock…

Wanna know something? Now there are three songs stuck in my head…ADHD under the sea by the HolderMess, and I’m so pregnant by Iggy Azalea/WhatsUpMoms, and Rested by Royals (and possibly the Murray’s??)…that second one has me wondering where in the world the idea of push presents came from…like dude, isn’t the baby the present at that point?!?! Yesterday I was singing the picky eater anthem all day (are you hungry for some meat spaghetti do I make you feel like eating you say no not really ‘cause oh I got myself a picky eater, she will always refuse what I feed her)…I love music so much. I’m thankful for whomever invented music.

…and I am well aware my posts lately have been all over the place…my brain has felt like a ping pong ball and it has come out in my writing…it doesn’t bother me, and I am secure enough in myself that I really don’t care if I lose followers…I don’t have my blog set up to earn revenue from visits so it really makes no difference…and to be honest, since the point in college when I found out my views had spiked because someone was pouring through my posts trying to find a way to get me in trouble, my stats getting too good makes me feel nervous…I’m glad I had someone at that time who was a good informant letting me know that this person was annoyed at the random string of numbers I’d used as a moniker…I may have been super annoyed but I also knew that keeping the peace was more important than most other things.

Now I Can’t Care Less

(Lord I’m ready now – Plumb)

One of my traits that is both a curse and a blessing is that I can’t hold a grudge very long…it is mostly a blessing, but do you ever have those moments where you look at your life and are like why am I not angry anymore? I mean, I think that is probably what it means to be a Christian, but also it is definitely counter-cultural in today’s world.

I used to be so angry with my college mostly for their response when I disclosed what had been going on during my third year…and now I obviously still remember it and am not happy about it, but there is no anger left…instead I see the incredible people who supported me through that year and the rest of my time at the school. I can also see how the trauma impacted my relationships. I pretty much exclusively had friends outside of school after that because at school it was hard to be real enough to develop relationships because I was always so worried about the next time a certain person was going to try to insert herself into my life, but outside of school I had an incredible community that I loved and that loved me…and that I may have just mostly abandoned when I graduated because even the association with being my friends during that time period and in the same city as my school was too painful to keep up with.

And there are a lot of things I don’t really want to write about because I want to get to the reason I’m writing this…

So I felt really frustrated and angry in September because ASHP really should have had my back…especially after my many years of membership and thousands of dollars in application and match fees over the previous 5 years…and they pretty much told me (and the pharmacists who called on my behalf) that they don’t feel any responsibility in these types of situations – it is all up to the hospitals…and it isn’t fair because there were accreditation standards that were blatantly violated during my time as a pgy-2 resident but because I didn’t have the confidence to draw attention to the areas for improvement until I was gone they couldn’t do anything to change it for the future potential pharmacists/residents…so I decided I was never giving them any more money…

So I ignored the membership renewal notices and forgot about it…until today, December 31, when I was like oh c**p I forgot to renew my membership and it expires today…and then I remembered that it wasn’t exactly originally a failure to remember…and that is where the issue comes in…because I waited so long they took away my resident discount…and the new price was almost high enough that I was like nope, because this year I made very little money but spent more than any other year – even the years I was paying college tuition…and it was over 1.5 times the amount I spent any of the past three years before even getting to the end of December…but then I was like girl you want to work towards BCPPS this year and to do that you will probably still come out ahead by being a member…so I spent the money and prayed I’d be done with unexpected expenses for the year…but who knows, because I can’t remember whether I finished paying the rent penalty I earned myself when I was thinking I was going to move in mid-November and didn’t think about how that much penalty plus the notice I needed to give was so much that even if I had moved immediately the amount I would ‘save’ was actually probably only maybe a few hundred dollars if even that as compared to just keeping the apartment and not living in it if I moved…oops…and obvi continuing to live there just made the cost equation become more unbalanced…so there might be more coming…but as much as I hate asking for help, I do know that if I really couldn’t keep going financially that there are people who would jump in and help me if I admitted I needed help…it is just incredibly difficult to admit that you need help. It is so much easier to offer help than to ask for it…especially financial help…it isn’t so bad to accept food or clothes from friends, but money just feels different.

Lol…hashtag late addition…

So I thought I posted this yesterday, but then I opened up my computer today and what did I see, but this post…still very much in draft status…oops…but now I can add another thought…at what point in society did someone come up with the idea that on the last day of the year we should ensure that we start the next year exhausted? In what universe does that make sense? The only rationale I can think of (which is honestly not that rational in my opinion…) is that it gives you a really good chance of having a better day on day 2 of the year than you had on day 1 so that you can start the year with an upward trajectory…but considering you don’t have a lot of room for upward trajectory after that unless your goal by the end of the year is to hibernate, I’m not sure what good that is…I’d rather just start off on a level playing field and see what happens. I am excited for this year because I saw on Instagram someone posted that 2022 is literally 2020 too. Most of 2020 was pretty incredible, so I have decided that means 2022 is also going to be primarily great! I’m not saying nothing bad happened in 2020, because there definitely were things I wish I could change, but I mean it wasn’t a bad year. I went ice skating with an incredible friend. I went to a superbowl party with nobody I knew and had a lot of fun. I finally matched…in phase 1…with an incredible program. I spent 12 weeks in the nicu. I had a couple really amazing going away parties. I made a lot of incredible friends. To be fair, 2021 also had a lot of awesomeness as well, but right now I am too close to be able to really say let’s do 2021 again, because the memory of the pain is way too real…plus my bank account says let’s try to spend a little less money this year…

Hashtag second late addition…have you ever wondered what someone would think if a stranger was going through all your paperwork? I mean, a stranger would probably have a lot of questions looking at mine…and I’m having trouble giving good examples that don’t reveal more information than I feel safe sharing at the moment…hashtag forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting – you don’t have to let people continue to have access to your heart and opportunities to impact your safety as a prerequisite for forgiving them…but the biggest curiosity is probably why there was only one gas purchase for my Monkey between the last week of September and the first week of December, but like 7 of them plus some flights and busses in December (and if they could see the future, probably at least 4 more gas purchases in the next 2 days…) for someone who hates travel my bottom sure has seen a lot of seat time in the past month…surprisingly that travel is actually a negligible expense for the year. It was the most expensive car year since purchasing a car, but that is mostly because paying for parking from direct deposit doesn’t count in my budget but paying otherwise does, and I’ve never had to pay to park at my own home prior to this year…so yeah I’d love to not see the TSA this year unless it is to go to midyear, and there are also some states that I would be happy to not see again, ‘cause their roads are confusing and/or scary…not saying whether that last one is realistic or not based on my expected trajectory at this point…just saying I have some preferences…

Also, 100% unrelated, but about the first minute or so of this video was hilarious https://youtu.be/YALVhpj2uyc …the second half the jokes got more contrived and less funny, but true dat to the national mall being significantly less interesting than the mall of themerica…