2009 is almost over, Thank goodness!!!

Next week is Christmas and 2009 is almost over. I, for one, am okay with this. 2009 has been an incredible stressful year for me. From giving up on selling my house and having to find someone to rent it. For having said person not pay their rent to having somebody run their car in to my fence and having to let a property management company deal with all of this. Then the whole work thing. Working my butt off but being told I'm not working hard enough. Having some psychopath I work with telling lies and trying to get me fired. Having that same person finally quit which moves more work on to me (since we were the only 2 people in our department). I am pretty sure she was telling lies about me so she could make herself look better and try to get a supervisor position that didn't exist. It's a long story, but it makes me want to change my employment location. Now that she's leaving maybe it will get better. I can get over having more work thrust in my direction for the sake of personal sanity, and not having to worry about that knife on it's way in to my back. In addition to all of that there was dealing with health issues of family members. My Dad had a health scare earlier this year and my BF's dad had a 13 pound tumor removed. Too much time spent in hospitals this past year

I did find skydiving this year! So that's wonderful, and next year it will be a cheaper hobby. This makes me happy. I love skydiving and I hope to able to do it more and more. Maybe I'll even be able to work my way up to competition level. That would be awesome

The second half of the year has definitely been better than the first. So I am hoping that trend will continue and things will keep getting better.

I am excited about Christmas and I have bought lots of gifts for the ones I love. I love giving gifts to my friends and family. It's fun to get them too, of course, but I like making people happy with a fun surprise.

It's snowing right now, and it's beginning to stick. This is unusual for where I live this time of year. It's kind of neat. Maybe that means we will get some good snow this year.

Okay I'm done typing for now, have a wonderful evening.

The past 2 months

Things have changed over the past couple of months. I finally got to go skydiving and I fell in love. It is such a fantastic feeling to be that high up in the sky and be outside a plane. I went on a couple of tandem jumps and I am now working on getting my license. It's a difficult process when the weather does not feel like cooperating. I just keep plugging away and try to jump when I can. This is something I can see myself doing for a long time. Every time I see beautiful blue skies I wish I wasn't going to work and going for a short plane ride to 13,000 feet. I would love to get to the point where I could do competitions and formations, you know neat stuff like that. I have my membership to the USPA (United States Parachute Association), so that's kind of neat.

Halloween was nice, I got dressed up and went out with some friends. We went out, saw a show, went to a bar, sang some karaoke, drank some, and all around had a good time.

Life has been pretty good overall. Work has been insane. I worked over 8 hours of overtime last week. That's a little much and it will probably happen again this week. Looking at the schedule last week, it seems like it will be a repeat this week. One good thing is I can have some extra money for a change. Things have been tight recently but I am working on getting it all back on track. I have a plan to get rid of some extra debt that has come my way, and I will work on that until it's all behind me.

I keep trying to be a good person and a good woman. I know that I will never be as good as some, no matter how I try. I will never measure up, not even in the same category. I know that I am better than some, but they don't set the bar very high so it's not much of a stretch. Sure I wonder what people really think of me, I think everybody does. I think I am a good person. I spend my life helping the animals, and I will always help a friend. I think that makes me a good person. So why do I always feel like I'm the person you don't know how much you like me until I'm gone? Who knows. Maybe it's because every time I move away, people always want me to come back. Even if we didn't spend that much time together when I was there. Oh well, whatever. I know I'm a good person, truly that's what matters.

It's November and the year is almost over. I'm ready for the holidays to come along, they always make me happy.

Wow

I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted. What a slacker. In May I turned 35, and that was a little odd. When I was a teenage I never thought I'd make it this far. I like my 30's and for the most part, I'm pretty lucky in life. My little house is still rented, it has taken an enormous amount of stress off of my shoulders and overall I am doing much better without worrying about the little house in Los Angeles.

This weekend I tried to go skydiving for the first time, but I got rained out. It's been rescheduled to next Friday. I am really excited about going. It's something I've always wanted to try and I have no idea why I didn't try to go before now. You never know, I may love it and it might become a truly expensive hobby for me. If that's the case I will do what I can to continue doing it. After you have to keep what you love in your life as long as you can.

I am getting a little antsy and I'm ready to move again. There is nothing wrong with Raleigh, but it just doesn't feel like home to me anymore. I need to find my home, a place I can live for years without wondering "where to next?". I'm not sure where that is but since renting out my house I'm willing to try and go find it. I know my Mom will be sad if I move away, if I had kids it would be harder to move away. My Mom already has grandkids that live in another state, she would be sad if they all lived far away. Since that is not an issue and doesn't appear that it ever will be, why not head off for new adventures?

I have really no idea what exciting events have happened in the past few months worth writing about, maybe my life is a little boring. Next month is vacation time, 10 days at the beach. This is needed and well deserved. We will be taking the pups. (That's right I did get another dog. His name is Thor, such a little clod hopper of a dog. He's a cutie.) I can't wait for vacation, work has been difficult and I need to get away. See working at a specialty practice for animals in a stressed economy reduces business quite a bit. This means when people have quit we have not replaced them, we have days where we get sent home early. Then we'll have a couple weeks where we a super busy but we're so short staffed that you end up working a 15 hours day. This is no fun for anyone. I can't say that we all don't expect to walk in one day and have them tell us we are closing. I hope that doesn't happen, but it wouldn't surprise me.

So there we go. a small update on life. I have really got to be more motivated to write more. I have found that it's nice to look back years later and remember the day to day things that happened that you just forgot.

Taking joy in the little things

Today it is absolutely beautiful outside. Right now I am enjoying it by sitting outside a coffee shop and having a mocha milkshake. I am wondering why no one else is sitting outside. Weirdos. Spring has begun in NC, which means pollen season. When I was driving down the road I could see yellow clouds making their way across the freeway. Just as I am sitting here typing this my screen has flecks of yellow dust that I have wiped off more than once. Luckily I am not one of the people that pollen compromises their ability to breathe. My boyfriend is out riding his bike and we'll meet up soon for lunch. I do not have a bicycle nor could I keep up with him if I did.

My house in LA did not sell, but it did get rented out quite quickly. That's good and takes a lot of stress off my shoulders. Hopefully this will be the last month I have to worry about how I'm going to pay my bills. It is weird to have someone else living in my house. I guess now I own "investment property". Maybe I can refinance now and get my monthly payment lower.

I can feel that my stress level is lowering. Hopefully that trend will continue.

I'm trying, but it's so hard

Life has been difficult for me recently and it is getting harder to pretend I am okay. I am fighting of a depression that seems to keep one hand close to me. The economy has collapsed enough that a first time home buyer does not want to buy my house because it's not in foreclosure. It's listed at a good price but I guess there are better deals out there if you want to profit from the hardships of others. So I have a choice to make. I need to rent it, move back to Los Angeles, or just stop paying and let the house go in to foreclosure (that is not an option in reality)

If I rent it, there are lots of pros and cons. I do live on the other side of the country from my house right now, and that presents it's own set of issues. What do I do if something is broken? What if they don't pay their rent and I have to evict them? What if they trash the house and I have to repair the house all over again?

Okay then, so what about moving back? Well there is lots of fun stuff to do in Los Angeles, and California in general. I could probably get my job back if I asked. Can I afford living there? That I'm not so sure about, and it's an expensive risk. It will take some money to move across the country again. I am not 19 anymore, and I can not fit everything I own in an 85 Pontiac Firebird like i did the first time I moved to California. I would hope if I moved Clay would go with me, but will he be able to find work? I'm not so sure about that, he's a carpenter and the construction industry is always so unpredictable. If I go back to California I am not leaving again anytime soon, which might prove to difficult since my parents are getting older now. My Mom has had some issues since I've been back in NC, and my Dad might explode from pure stress at any point. They have been divorced all my life so it's not like they will look after each other. So that is a consideration when moving 3000 miles away.

In the end it boils down to what is best for me and not anyone else. I did think staying in NC might be a good idea at one point and there are good reasons for that. Housing is cheaper, but if I can't sell the house in CA. I can't afford to buy one in NC, no matter how good of a deal it may be. Being closer to my family is nice, my nephews are actually starting to know who I am now. Sometimes I feel a little to close to my family and I do tend to get their two cents in any of my life decisions. I was thinking that if I had a baby it would be nice to have my family close, maybe even a little free baby-sitting at Grandma's house. I don't think that is going to happen. I don't think I can get pregnant, and I'm almost 35 now so the chances are getting slimmer. That kind of makes me sad. I stopped taking birth control a while ago and so far, nothing. Shoot I have never even had a scare, not even when I was younger. So I do not think I'm destined to be a mom, it's too bad I think I would have been a good mom.

So all of this has been bouncing around in my head. So many different aspects to consider for each option. There will be hard parts of any decision i make, nothing will be guaranteed. Unfortunately I am not psychic, so I can't predict what is going to happen. What ever happens I will face the consequences of my decision. I will move forward, hopefully with my credit intact and a roof over my head. Hopefully I will stop feeling like I'm going to cry all the time.

The worst part of this. I am making my boyfriend suffer with me. He sees me upset and can't fix it, and I think that bothers him. He knows I'm sad, I'm not very good at hiding my emotions from him. I just hope he knows how much he means to me and how happy he makes me.

it probably doesn't help that I stopped smoking about a month ago, which made me slightly insane for a couple weeks. I am doing better now. My sanity has returned for the most part. I still miss smoking, but I know this is much better for me in the long run.

Sheesh, this is a long and rambling post, sorry.

Long time no see

Wow it's been a long time since my last post. I don't really think I've felt much like writing anything. Christmas and New Year's have come and gone, and they were nice. There wasn't much money this year for presents, but that's okay it was nice anyway. I did get a couple of offers on the house, but neither one panned out. It might be time to turn it in to a rental. I really don't want to and I'm holding out a little while longer to see if the new stimulus will have any effect.

It's just been hard. I've been holding up pretty good. When the second offer on the house fell through, I cried. I'm not much of a crier, I have a tendency to keep things to myself and work it out in my head. This can make me quiet sometimes. I have faith that things are going to come around, in their own time. I just have to wait.

My job is okay. It can be pretty stressful at times since we've been short staffed. Plus we haven't been as busy so it's hard to justify hiring new people. Which makes the people there feel overworked when we do have those busy days. It does not help that my manager can not write a good schedule that makes any sense. That part is frustrating. For instance next weekend I was given a 3-day weekend, yet I'll be on-call on Sunday. What's the point of a three day weekend if you can't go out of town?

My boyfriend? He's wonderful. He's been very helpful in keeping me from having a nervous breakdown. We've been together two years and I'm very happy. He's smart, sexy, and thoughtful. He does make me feel like I'm someone special, and that I mean the world to him. He makes me laugh even when I'm having a bad day. Plus he has this knack for sending a message when I'm stressed out that always makes me smile. That part of my life is very good, and I'm thankful for that.

One day the house will sell, and I'll be able to put that part of my life behind me. In the meantime I just keep trying to move forward. Eventually this time in my life will be a distant memory and I'll wonder why I was so stressed out about it all. Life is always changing, and when I stop thinking about it so much it will probably fall in to place.