Tiring Sunday

Today I went to San Marcos to spend some time with Anna. I started the day extremely early in the morning so I could do side jobs in San Antonio. I left at 3:00 am just so I could get to San Antonio as stores were opening at 6:00. As I walked into the first store (the jobs I worked on were to capture pictures of HBC endcap), there was an Asian woman following me in the dark parking lot. She  stayed about 5-6 feet behind me. She had her phone out but didn’t have earbuds and was listening to something that was very obviously from North Korea (the communist part). A couple years ago, I got hooked on YouTube documentaries about North Korea, and I learned that when they talk, they speak extremely dramatically and fake. South Koreans speak the same language but have a wider vocabulary and a normal tone. This definitely sounded like something from North Korea. I actively tried to avoid her twice, both times giving her dirty looks. She kept following me. Finally I went into the family restroom, and when I came out she was gone. I didn’t see her in the store anymore. This was in San Antonio, so it was weird. I don’t understand Korean, but the way North Koreans talk made an impression on me that I never forgot, and this was definitely it. 

I did five side jobs before Anna texted me to pick her up and by that point I was only 30 minutes from Texas state. We went to lunch, and I took her shopping and on other errands. She really likes it there but is homesick!  I miss having a little kid, but I’m proud of who she’s become. One thing that’s getting to her is that she wants to work. I got paid yesterday and sent her some more money on PayPal. I brought my own student loan balance to $16,100. Plus I shopped, paid the phone and car insurance, and I have to get my registration sticker. 

Vivid Dream

 I have been having vivid dreams lately. The one last night felt like a premonition of sorts. In the dream, my husband Kevin was deceased and so was my cat Alex. I was living in this house by myself with his cat Mitchell, who at this point is a very old cat. Then in the dream, my daughter who is now 18 years old, walks in the door holding large boxes. She is in her 30’s in the dream and I think that the boxes mean she’s moving in with me. She puts one on the table and says, “Look, Mom, I got all of these from your garden. Look how prolific it is this year!”  She started pulling out every kind of vegetable there is. I don’t know whether to be happy about my garden or disappointed that she’s not moving in. Then she tries to pick up Mitchell, but he hisses at her. She starts crying and telling me that I need to euthanize Mitchell and I get really upset saying he’s all I have left of Kevin. Anna said, “That’s not true, you have this house.”  So I agreed through tears and we both put Mitchell in the carrier for his final ride to the vet. 

I woke up with a sore throat and phlegm. I must have been sleeping with my mouth open. Kevin wasn’t in the bed and he wasn’t at the table. He was asleep in Anna’s room (she lives in the dorms at Texas state). I woke him up and he said I was sprawled diagonally across the bed so he couldn’t get in it. I wonder why I slept so rough last night. 

Wreaths

I made this fall wreath yesterday. Absolutely no thought went into it beforehand. I do not sit out and plan wreaths. I just sit at the table with all the stuff spread out and as I’m making it, I decide what will go on next. This is because I’m not trying to be professional with it right now. I’m only trying to make one for each season for my own home. With this one, I feel like I might could trim the leaves, but nah.  It’s fine. It looks good in the wreath spot next to the door. 

This is the one I had up all summer. I was going to stick small white daisies in between the sunflowers, and maybe some more leaves, but then I decided I liked it with just the sunflowers. I have enough sunflowers to do another one with sunflowers, white daisies, and leaves. 

If anyone has ideas or expertise, lemme know in the comments. 

 

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.