My fruitful Saturday

I have been out and about today doing a lot of things. First, I did some side jobs (retail audit apps that pay by location) at HEB. I browsed the Halloween section and saw these basic wreaths for $39!

These look pretty easy and inexpensive to make. Seeing these kind of lights a fire under my ass to start making more wreaths. I could make good money selling them. 

Then I went to another store where the pharmacy had a prescription ready for me. They asked me if I wanted a flu shot, and I agreed. I didn’t get it last year, and I got sick twice. There was a sign advertising shingles shots. I asked the pharmacist how old you have to be to get it. She said 50. It used to be 60. I explained to her that I’ve been trying to get the shot earlier in life ever since my dad passed. I explained that he had shingles in the eyes that became meningitis, and he died from that. I then said that I am turning 50 in three years. She looked a little dismayed at my dad’s story and said, “I think that’s a good enough reason!”  So she ran my insurance.  They covered a shingles shot for me, so I got it!!

 I do have to go back for a second round in 2-6 months. But this is a huge relief!  I had a lot of older cousins who went and got it after my dad passed. In 2020, the age to get it was 60, and now it’s 50. I’m not sure why it changed. 

I also bought this frame and put all of Anna’s graduation and senior moment pics in it. The bottom center will be her dorm picture. I ordered it from the FreePrints app, but it hasn’t arrived yet. 

Then I went to Costco and got a membership!!  I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time since my side job apps have a lot of jobs at Costco locations. You need a membership to get in. So I got one for $65. I went to three Costco locations today and made a total of $38 there. So a little over half compensated for the membership already. 

Then I got a 24 pack of white monster (Kevin’s favorite) for $30.99 and a 24 pack of sugar free Red Bull for $38.99. My total going out was $75.75, which is about $1.50 per can. What a steal!  Something I didn’t buy that I want to come back for was that they have $100 restaurant gift cards for $80. I heard they sometimes have subway, but they didn’t today. We eat a lot at subway, so I would definitely get those. None of the restaurants they offered gift cards to seemed appealing, and we have a lot of food at home. 

I spoke to Anna, and she’s doing well!  Her roommate is cool, and she seems to have a lot of new friends already. It was a great day and now I’m heading home

Short Week

 It was a short week, and we are off tomorrow. The next two weeks of work will be easier than this one. Tomorrow is payday, and I still had enough money in my account to do three things I was going to do with tomorrow’s check: I sent my daughter some money on PayPal, brought my student loan balance to $16,333.33, and did a quick Walmart run. I got a case of bottled water, scissors, a prescription, and a new toothbrush. I don’t have to pay car insurance until September 30th, but I just might pay the whole policy off through December tomorrow, since my check will be relatively nice. The phone bill hasn't cycled yet. I’m a little ahead on the health premium. I’ll put some in my retirement account and some in the 100 envelope challenge.

We plan to go together to my mom’s house tomorrow to mow her lawn and do other chores.  She’s a lot better now.  I have also decided on a haircut.  Kevin and I are going together before we go to my mom’s house.  After that I kind of want to go on my own and do my own thing such as errands and side jobs on the apps.  I need to get back into sewing again, too.  I’m just so glad it’s the weekend. 

“2000’s Themed”

 Anna texted me this morning and said she went to a “2000’s themed party.” I kind of scoffed. They’re acting like the 2000’s were so long ago. What did she wear to the 2000’s themed party?  Just her regular clothing? Because in my mind, it’s still the 2000’s now. 

Total Exhaustion

This week wasn’t hard or terrible at work. We worked Monday through Friday, and it was local every day except for Tuesday when we did a day trip to Rockport. Tuesday was about a 12 hour day, but all the other days this week were 4-6 hours. So no overtime this week, but I did get some last week. The stores we did locally this week are easy except that we have to use their scanners, and those scanners tend to get sticky keys. So I have to review constantly and make sure something doesn’t say 88 when I meant 8, and so on. I would say this takes a lot of mental energy, but for fuck sake I used to work with children and the elderly for far less pay. I really shouldn’t be complaining. There aren’t constant moral dilemmas in inventory. That’s why I like it. 

But I’m all around exhausted. Between checking on my mom, worrying about my daughter, and discovering some unsettling information about a cousin of mine that I wrote about in the post below, I fell asleep as soon as I got home and just now woke up. And it’s 10:00 pm!

I’m also “kind of” happy to announce that I restarted therapy, and have two sessions already with a therapist that seems really easygoing. I had a really hellish time trying to find someone. They make you do “free 15 minute consultations” that feel like job interviews, and the first handful of them that I had were massive setbacks for me. You can’t really explain everything in 15 minutes, and what these therapists were doing were nitpicking little things and using them to say I wouldn’t be a good fit, or they would use the terminology “not their specialty”. And the few things they all nitpicked were not related to each other at all, so it wasn’t like I could learn what not to say to the next one. With this therapist, I just inquired over email and was pretty distant at first and pretty straightforward but vague. She still insisted on having a free 15 minute consultation. It might be a requirement now. But with her, the 15 minute consultation was very quick and she called it a “formality”. In the last two sessions, I just started at the beginning of my life and gave her an autobiography. I highly recommend doing it that way for about 3-5 sessions or so, because if you just start talking about what you’re going through now then they’re going to kvetch that they don’t know your history. 

Therapy is going about 90% good, but it’s still draining. I’m tired. 

My daughter is having a blast in San Marcos. The first couple days, she was texting back immediately, and I was worried that it meant she was homesick. But she seems to have gotten over that hump and is now calling or texting just once in the evening on a daily basis. I’m in a facebook group called “Parents of the class of 2025” and omg are some of those people (and their kids) unhinged. Some kids are calling their parents wanting to go home already, some aren’t calling at all and the mothers are like “They don’t need me anymore! 😭 “ 

Makes me grateful for my once daily contact. Nice healthy balance. 

My mom is doing better. I went over there once this week to do her trash and some shopping for her. With my daughter coming of age, I’m getting a very good eye opening on how much she really set me up for failure in life. It’s not just that she didn’t prepare me for success. It’s like she actively raised me to purposefully fail. That’s how it feels to me now as the mother of a young adult. All the warnings about “just wait till you have kids and then you’ll understand” have 100% backfired. I understand too much. It makes me only want to do the bare minimum for my mother. I can’t wait until she goes back to church and starts up with her own thing again. 

I think I just want to be in bed all weekend. I needed that insanely long nap. 

Cousin I Haven’t Heard Fron

 I have a cousin who turns 55 in October, and my mom and I were talking recently and mentioned we have not heard from her. This was a couple weeks ago. My mom called me to tell me that she asked around about how this cousin was, and one piece of shocking news was that her husband died in August of 2023. The even more shocking news was that this cousin of mine, who is now widowed, is living in a group home. 

I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing. Nothing is wrong with her that she needs to live in a group home. She is both a talented artist and a smart businesswoman, and has had a lot of successful endeavors in her life. Many of those endeavors have been charitable.  So when I heard “group home”, my first thought was that she opened it and was running it herself. But no, it was clarified. She isn’t running a group home, she lives in one. 

She’s originally from east St. Louis, Illinois but the group home is in the Texas panhandle near Amarillo. She has a sister that lives elsewhere in north Texas, and this sister of hers is absolutely a terrible person. Their parents are deceased and neither one of them ever had children. My mom said “Well she just went nuts after her husband died, and apparently can’t take care of herself.”  

My mom sounded flippant when she told me. I am still extremely uneasy about this. She’s always been able to take care of herself. To me it sounds like she did have a pretty strong grief reaction when he died two years ago, and her terrible sister used it to manipulate her into this situation. It also sounds like maybe her sister wanted access to her money. Her sister would absolutely, 100% pull some garbage like that  

I didn’t tell my mom my suspicions. Of course it is possible that she really did lose her mind. But grieving your spouse is actually number one on the adverse experiences list. I have a strong feeling she should have gotten way more support than she did. I would really like to find out where she is so that I can go visit her myself. When we were kids, she babysat for me a lot. She was a fun person to be around. The thought of being manipulated into losing your basic freedoms is terrifying. I really hope I can go see her someday, but I’m not sure if it would be a HIPAA Violation for someone to let me know where exactly this place is. 

College and Dorm Thoughts

 I had a revelation when I went to San Marcos to see my daughter in her dorm. It was that dorm life is designed to actually prepare young people to be on their own. That’s the point of it. It serves a purpose. 

When I graduated from high school in 1996, I was not able to go to a university that offered dorm life, because I was a straight C student. At age 43, I was finally diagnosed with ADHD. But if anyone had told me or my parents back then that I had it, that would be extremely controversial. I’ve often shared here that my upbringing felt like an absolute war zone. My parents didn’t have any conflict resolution skills besides yelling and screaming. Periodically throughout my K-12 years, I know my teachers suggested many ways for my parents to help me, but my parents got extremely angry at them and me each time. In first grade, they wanted me to repeat. In fourth grade, my seemingly 100 year old teacher called my parents to suggest some sort of evaluation for learning disabilities, and my dad yelled at her on the phone. I was absolutely mortified. In 7th grade and my senior year of high school, teachers approached my parents about sending me to counseling and it only made things worse for me at home. There were three years that I know of (5th, 7th and 10th grades) that summer school was suggested, and again, it only got me in deep trouble at home with Armageddon yelling and screaming.  

I remember always wanting to learn, always wanting to do better, and always trying as hard as I could. I have several memories of looking ahead to future chapters in my textbooks and thinking that the topics were so interesting and I couldn’t wait to get there. Then we’d get there, and I’d lose train of thought almost immediately. Sometimes I get frustrated, because I find myself thinking, “They should teach this in school!”  Then catch myself and realize that there is a good chance they did, and I was just ADD as hell and missed it. 

So by the time my graduation rolled around in 1996, going to any university where I had a chance at living in a dorm was dead. I was told to enroll at a community college and maybe I could transfer to a university in my third year. I went to the local community college in August of 1996 and took their placement tests. I scored great in reading and writing, but my math and science were at a 7th or 8th grade level. It was as if I had never been to a high school math or science class. I had to take two years of remedial math at the community college. I remember one of them being a night class with 30-40 year old homeless people attending. 

I can sit here and wonder what happened all I want, but chances are what happened was that the schools didn’t want to and probably couldn’t deal with my parents. In the 80’s and 90’s, you were also really only considered a “troubled kid” deserving of intervention if your parents were divorced. If you came from parents who stayed married and were not “poor” then any problems you had were your own fault. I know this because after the counseling attempt when I was 17 and my high school teachers tried to intervene, my mom did pay for me to go to counseling a couple times. This counselor just sat there and told me how good I had it compared to kids in the inner city with one parent, and how I better shape up. (Thanks, I’m cured.) 

Everyone knows that the no child left behind act was passed in 2000, and to this day I’m still not entirely sure what that law did, what it prevented, what the purpose was, and why all the teachers are mad about it. I cannot find any simple explanation, so if anyone has one please lmk in the comments. Sometimes when I try to make sense of what happened to me and what allowed me to fall through the cracks so badly, NCLB lingo gets thrown around- and it didn’t exist when I was in school. 

Thinking back on the last 18 years with my daughter, I know I wasn’t a perfect mom but I did do about a hundred times better than my own parents. I never made fun of my daughter to her face, she never witnessed rage full yelling unless it was coming from her grandparents, if she struggled with anything, I helped, and she was allowed to do things I could have never dreamed of. She was allowed therapy, tutoring once, summer school once, and even got an evaluation that granted her some 504 plan accommodations in her sophomore year. 

Another thing that seemed to happen a lot in 1996 with me was that my parents, aunts and uncles, older cousins etc, would shame me for wanting to be on my own. I was guilted for it like crazy. I was also guilted for wanting to go to college, ironically. They successfully managed to demean me for wanting to go while simultaneously inventing future scenarios in which I would be nobody in life if I didn’t go. If I said anything out loud about someday any prospects of my own apartments or perhaps moving in with roommates, you’d think I was asking them to kill puppies. 

One time, my aunt started getting on my case about wishing I could go to a university and live in a dorm. She said, “What do you think you’re going to do when the dorms close for Christmas and summertime, huh?!?!?”  I quietly assumed that meant I would go back home to my parents. (It did mean that).  But my aunt was so extremely pissed that I just told her I didn’t know what I was goi g to do. “Yeah that’s right!  You don’t know!  You’d have to come back to mom and dad!”  

29 years later now, and I’m like wow. lol, I got yelled at for that. And the truth is yeah, that’s the point. I’m realizing now that dorm life is actually designed to teach young people age 18-20 how to live on their own. Going home for the holidays is a part of that teaching you, because in an ideal world, you still want to come home sometimes for the first couple of years. You actually don’t want to just leave and abandon your parents and never come back again. 

Needless to say, I am so happy for Anna and so proud of her. Despite the handful of setbacks above that I mentioned, she did receive a scholarship based on testing scores, and her father actually put the rest of the money in her account. (She told me he did that for this semester, but the scholarship is applied over 8 semesters).  I am super happy about that too, because some people (not my ex tho!) have actually forced their kids to take out loans.  That’s a discussion for another day. “Things we talk about on Reddit: 18-22 year olds tend to not question their parents when the parents say sign here.” 

This is all why it’s bitter sweet. I’m happy she’s getting the start in life that she deserves. And I’m sad that I didn’t. The good news for me now though, is that I’ve found my way to a wonderful place in life. 

90 Years Old

The youngest of my aunts on my mom’s side turned 90 today. Aunt Gloria was born August of 1935. This is a picture of her at age 11 with my mother at age 1. Yes that looks just like the baby pictures of my daughter!  

My mother complains about Gloria constantly, and the stuff she complains about is literally stuff she also does. I got on her about calling her for her birthday. My aunt didn’t even realize it was her 90th birthday. 

Speaking of my mother, she has made me power of attorney, but will not tell me any of her personal business!  That’s fun!  There’s a home health agency calling me to find out who her primary care physician is. I have no idea!  They wanted other basic information that I don’t know. I had to explain to my mom that I can’t be power of attorney if you won’t tell me any of your business. She proceeded to call the home health agency and actually chew them out saying, “Don’t call my daughter!  Call me!”  She even called them “you people”. I was mortified. I told her, it was unnecessary to chew them out like that because she gave them my number and made me power of attorney. She did that herself. She told me, “I only wanted them to call you if I die!”  I said, “That’s not what happened.”  She must have signed a bunch of papers and listed my information on all of them. 

I’m frustrated and came back home. I loaded her fridge with water bottles and folded and put away all her laundry. I made sure I got a nice bath at her house for all of my pain and suffering, because my house with Kevin only has a shower stall. She is walking way better. I just want to be here, in Hempstead with Kevin and my cats. 

I’m having a lot of bittersweet feelings about my kid being away at college. Don’t get me wrong, I am so happy and proud of her. She’s in contact with me a lot more than usual. If I text her, she responds immediately. Usually it takes her an hour or two to respond. I hope this isn’t because she’s sad and homesick. I want her there, I just miss her too. More on that later. 

Back to work tomorrow. It’s all local this week except for Tuesday, we go to Rockport- which is on the way to Corpus but not quite.