harold_maude's journal

It's Tuesday morning and I have the day off. All that really means is that I have a list that is waiting for my attention to be completed.
It's a bit slower paced, but it's still work. What I want to do is paint, play music and relax for the day.
But there are things like clean work clothes, and grocery shopping and putting gas in the truck so I don't have to leave early tomorrow morning.

There have been alot of days in the last month that I would have loved a clone to fill in for me.
The truth is that I really need some time away. I need to just be able to stop for a while.
Not have any pressing stuff to do, and the freedom to do spur of the moment activities.
Ah if wishes were horses, then beggers would ride. A lament of every single person who's life is stuck on overload 365 days a year.
I did get sunday off, and I took the day and did nothing. I had to, I was exausted from work, it's a lot like going to the gym and doing insane work outs for several hours with a few minuets break in there some where.

So it was more a matter of I needed to stop for a day. I still did some stuff, dishes and cooking, but other than that, well, I didn't get groceries or go and do laundry like I was planning to.

I get to do thoes lovely things today. And I'm tired tired. That never seems to get fixed, the tiredness. I think until something comes along, in the job arena that doesn't beat the crap out of me while I'm doing it, I'm going to be tired.
It's good and bad that my two days off are staggered like this.
There is a realtivly easy day between the two so it's like an inturption more than anything else.

I've taken to going into work with the idea that as soon as I get this done I can go home. That's helped alot. I know I really don't want to be there. But it's a job. And the bills don't take a vacation. Until they go on a long world cruse and not come back for a while, then I'll get to take a vacation.

I need to find something that will help my hands. They are stiff in the morning and it takes me a while to loosen them up.
So I will continue looking and reading until I find what I'm looking for.

So I've been working this currant job for just over a month now and have finally got some of the ducks back in order. This finally feels like maybe a bit of a breather from the way things have been for a while.

I will be all caught up after tomorrow as far as the bills go.
And a two hour laundry trip. Shopping for food. And then home for a few hours and then sleep and then a four day run at being a human pizza crust factory.

Does life get any more, (insert favorite word here) than this?

Geeze, I sound like a crazy commercial.

Seriously,life is going on. I'm working on some new art, although it's taking me a while to complete peices. I've noticed that besides the pain my hands are in because of the work I do, my focus is still kind of strange.

I'm tired. But I must be related to the energizer bunny who just keeps going. I'm gonna take his batteries away and hide them.
I know if everything was where it needed to be and I could really relax, I would sleep for a couple of days straight.
I would get up a few times, but then go back to sleep and sleep somemore.
I've been tired for so long now that some days I don't think my brain works quite right half the time.

I would love to take a vacation, but that isn't feasable in the near future that I can see.
So, I do the best with what I've got, which is the only thing I can do.

I feel like I need to write about the last 8 months since the depression hit.
My depression era. A brief two week storm that hit and blew up everything inside me.
I don't know any better explaintion for what happened and the aftermath.
For two weeks I sat on a chair and felt everything go ka-boom inside. Like some kind of super eruption. For two weeks it went on.
The it stopped. It just stopped going ka-boom and it got very, very quiet inside me.

I've had lots of unique experiences in my life. Some of thoes experiences don't translate well. So writing about them hasn't worked so far.
This one was by far the hardest experience in terms of how it felt when it was happening. Death used to be the hardest, but this one tops that.

It was intense. Then when the quiet came, I realized that I needed to start moving and doing stuff. I finally got to the place where my head was together enough to look for a job.
I found one. It came with 16 hours a week and promises of more hours.
That didn't happen.
I think the whole purpose of that job was to help me get used to working again.

Everything was affected, and effected as well. I love art, and for as much as I love it, I couldn't do it for a few months. It's only been in the last 3 months that I have done any at all.
I'm slowly doing more, but it's not easy. Not like it was before.
I'm having trouble getting focused into it now.
But I have done some peices. The prolific ear marks are still there.
Art used to be a daily activity for me. Now it's a few hours here and there.

I had to stop watching and listening to any kind of news at all.
Everything was so broken that any thing tended to over load me.
So the last eight months have been this long road of healing that is still going on.

I'm looking into some different kinds of healing techniques that I can learn and help myself get better.
Along with that I'm looking for a manuel typerwriter so that I can start writing a manuscript. I finally decited it was maybe time to try to write a book.
I want to write about art, and I want to use my art as the pictures for it.

I know I could do it on the computer, but there is something about doing it on a typerwriter that is very appealing to me.
So when I find one that I can afford, I'm buying it along with a little table to put it on.

Life has progressed forward. I find that I really like sitting in a quiet house. I still love music, but there are times when even music is just loud noise to me. I really think the love of slience right now is more about healing than anything else.

If I could, I would go so far as to find a place with the nearest neigbor at least a mile away. I'd hire someone as a secretary to screen calls and to be there incase I needed help of some kind.
The time spent there would be in silence for the most part. No need to explain anything to anyone.
No need to set the alarm clock. I could finally really take time to heal inside.
That would be wonderful. Until that happens, I have to make do.
I know that's why I wake up before the alarm. To get as much of that quiet while I'm awake as I can.

I know I will heal completely. I come from strong, resilliant stock. So it will happen. It's all really just a matter of time I suppose.

I am surrounded today on four sides by snow. It's April and we had a blizzard yesterday. Crazy weather anyway.

I have a day off. I can sleep in and what do I do? I get up before the alarm goes off. I didn't have to set the alarm last night. A bit of freedom in a single act.

I love the early morning quiet of a slient house. No human noise, except what I make here and there. The sounds outside are clearer then. This morning the sound of the wind can be both heard and felt. Makes me feel like I'm on a boat. I like the feeling.

On this day off, I had planned to do all kinds of things, get caught up on house work, and go to the laundry and to the grocery store for food. Some day off. It's not a day off, it's a change of venu. It might be different if I worked in an office at desk all day.
I'd be stiff and sore then too, but that would be from sitting all day.

My latest job is working as a dough master, that's what they call this job, at a pizza place. Resturaunt. I think that's what the idea was when the orginal owner of this chain of resturants, food joints, fast foodish world, what ever this gener of food discripitions is, was thinking when they came up with the idea.

Anyway, I've got this crazy title now. Dough Master. Sounds so impressive. In reality it makes the person who has taken the job little more than a pizza crust factory.
I do this job 5 days a week now.

For a little over a month now I have been doing this job, or really trying hard, and it has been among other things, a painful journey into iron man training.

The first sunday I got off after I started, I was sick all day.
I did stuff I needed to anyway, because it had to get done.
Every day off since that one has been a little better.

The realization that I am just a human dough to crust factory kind of hit me a couple of days ago.
Out of all the jobs that I have done, this one has really been the most difficult in many ways.

The intense workout of my upper body has pushed me some days to the edge of being able to stand up at the end of the day.
And I keep going back. Some days I think I'm nuts for doing it.

But there is an upside to all of this. There usually is somewhere lurking around, waiting to be found.
One of the possitives of this job is the work out that I'm getting. I don't have to go to a gym to work out. I just go to work and work hard.
The crusts are a kind of edible plate that comes with a unique dinner on it.
A kind of soup that stands there with stuff piled on top.

This is what pizza is if you really look at it. If you were going to try and discribe pizza to someone who had never seen one or eaten one before and didn't know what a pie was either, this would work for a discription of it.

I'm learning the value of stretching before and after work.
I'm make a point of remembering to drink water. And I am learning in this job how to be efficant under pressure.

All good things to know.

I have had a mix of feelings about this job since I started it.
Everything from ambivilance to hate. I really do not like this job when it's all by itself. I like it better as part of the whole process.
As a job, no. But it helps pay the bills. The job I want is doing my art and getting paid for it.
That's my perfect job.

I've been working on getting back into doing my art. A lot has happened in the last 8 months since the depression came and blew my life apart.
Depression is the only word I know for what happened.

Anyway, this job is now where I spend most of my week. It's forced me to find ways to adapt to living inspite of it.
It's starting to get easier now. And I am greatful.
I was getting tired of waking up in such intense pain every morning.

I finally had a good day there yesterday. I finished the work load early, so I got to come home early. It was so nice to be able to do that.
I'm learning to go easier on my self when I do housework. I tend to go slower at my house work, and that's ok.
It's more relaxed that way, it doesn't hurt to do it, and it gets done.

In all of this finding a happy blance is nessiary to keep doing this job for any length of time. It has a tendency to be brutal to who ever does it.
There are other jobs like this one that do that to the people who do them.
Meat handlers in a slaughter house. Warehouse workers. Dock workers. Construction workers. All these jobs require physical strength, and all these jobs beat the crap out of the people who do them. At least when they first start them.
The body adjusts. And so does anyone who does anything like this for a living do.

I never thought a job in food service could be added to that list, until I met this one.

I haven't fallen off the earth. It's too round for that. But I have fallen into a few cracks, and the walls were strange so I ended up crawling out only to find that the days keep going on and so does life, wether or not I am ready.

Long about the end of July of last year I crashed into the darkest depression that I ever knew existed. It was black, the kind they don't put in paint tubes. A black black depression. It took a couple of weeks to get my brain into some kind of moveable gear so I could go forward.
Since then it's been a long road up.

Going up, I have discovered is a good way to skin life here and there. My mom ended up in the hospital for a few months with viral meningitis and is back home now. For a while we weren't sure if she was going to live or die, but she is the incredible rubber woman and so has bounced back. We get her for a while longer, which I am happy about.

I finally found a job, but it's not alot of hours so I am employing my skills as the budgeteer to make things work.
So much fun, that if it gets any more fun I will find out what other skills I have.

I'm tired and it's been a long day, so I'm stopping for the night.

It's been awhile since I wrote in my journal.

Winter is starting early this year with a vengence. With each winter that passes, the less I like it. I would love to spend the next few months hybernating like the bears do. I think it's a smart move on their part.

I went to the dental clinic on friday and had to have an absessed tooth pulled. The wonderful mix of novacain and ibuprophen and other numbing shot they put into the absessed area really made me sick. I ended up missing a day of work.

Speaking of work, I found a part time job working as a cashier in a pharmacy which feels weird considering how I feel about drug companies. I don't like them. But it's a job, and it brings money in so that I can still pay my bills.

I've been fighting depression and working to keep from falling back into the dark depths that I was in a few months back.

My mom is doing much better. She has been in an extended care facility for almost 3 weeks now. She had two falls at the end of September and that put her in the hospital. They found out she had bacterial meningitis.
We weren't sure if she was going to live or not, but my mom is a really strong woman.
She is 90 years old, and up until it happened she was very self sufficiant.

I miss talking to her. Her eyesight is not very good, and she was planning on having catarac surgery this next spring. But for what ever reason decited against it.

When my dad died in 1997 I didn't miss him at all. I was never close to him, although I had spent most of my life trying to do something that would make him happy that I was his daughter.
When I found out three weeks before he died how he really felt about children and parents, I realized I had wasted all that time waiting for something that was never going to happen.

Over the last 11 years my relationship with my mom has become a good relationship. We've had so many discussions about death and life, and since this happened with her, I haven't been able to talk to her, and it's been hard.

I'm 1200 miles away and tied to this place. I would love to get back there to see her, but there is no way that I can unless I win the lottery.

Bills do not care about family. So I send cards and letters as often as I can. It's going to be a difficult christmas this year. Christmas has been a very depressing time for a long time anyway, but this year will be more difficult I think.

With the way things are in this country now I'm very uncomfortable and unsettled about the future. We have a new president, and it's my hope that he will see this as the responsiblity that it is rather than seeing it as a place of power.

George made such a huge mess of things over the last 8 years. The garbage we are living in now is because he screwed things up all over the place.
Obama has alot of problems that George created that need fixing.
I really hope he picks a good group to surround himself with.

Only time will tell what he is like as a leader. There are fears that someone will try to assinate him because he is black.
Which depresses me because it would seem that this country is past that time.
But I guess old predijusices die hard.

I woke up this morning with the feel of a page being turned, another day. And it's still cold out there. I wish I were hybernating right now.