Weekend Highlights

 When we got paid on Saturday, I brought my student loan balance to $17K even. The balance was $17,222.46, and I made a payment of $222.46. When the pandemic happened and interest rates were frozen for almost three years, it was at $20K even. I started making payments to decrease the balance when interest resumed 22 months ago. I only cared to make enough payments so that the balance would decrease. Now that my car is paid off, I want to do more. I’m extremely lucky. I still browse the subreddits for student loans, and it seems like so many people are completely screwed over for life. They make significant payments each month, and the balances increase. 

I’m also saving money into a retirement account on Robinhood and doing the 100 envelope challenge. I have been on Robinhood for years, but now can add more to it. The envelope challenge booklet was sitting empty in my car (tucked into the back passenger seat pocket) but now has some smaller amounts filled. 

I made plans to take my husband and daughter to the St. Francis Wolf Sanctuary next month. My daughter moves into the dorm on 8/15, and this will be our last major outing before she goes. I’m looking forward to seeing the wolves. You can also camp there, but my husband isn’t a camping fan. 

We are about to leave for Louisiana for about 8 days. We were off today, and I finished making everything from the last fabric shopping hauls into squares. I also finished laundry and packed. We didn’t want to go shopping due to being out of town next week, so we just went out to eat. 

Funny News

The latest viral sensation- the couple who ducked and hid their faces after being exposed on the big screen at a Coldplay concert- is hilarious to me. If you aren’t familiar with it, here it is.  I’ve been to some televised things before, and I’ve seen a camera person walking around getting audience footage. I saw one person put their hands up as if to say “no” and the camera man respected it and didn’t take their picture. This cameraman person, however, was like: 

No one would have noticed if they didn’t make it so super obvious. Also no one would care if he wasn’t a billionaire. 

Two years ago, I may have acted similarly to being caught in a romantic embrace on a camera like that. Not because I was being unfaithful to anyone, but because I had spend my entire life with a lot of people who always had a problem with the idea of me in any relationship. HOWEVER I would not have acted THAT ashamed. I probably would have just pulled away and that’s it. I would not have done all the humiliation ducking and face covering. That made it extra obvious that they were in an affair. If it had just been me and someone, two years ago, before I really came to realize that I’d reached the age where no one really wants to tell me what to do anymore, I probably would have pulled away, turned red. And applaud embarrassingly. 

Then the guy issued a statement where he blamed the band! 

 

My Birthday!!

About a week ago, Kevin was talking about how I “saved him from his townhouse”. 

If you don’t know the story, to make a long story short, he had inherited a townhouse from his grandmother. It was the second from the right in a row or five in a complex full of townhomes. The building had a bad foundation, and Kevin was dealing with a bad HOA as well. 

In 2023, I took a real estate class for fun. Almost as soon as Kevin allowed me to see the damage in his house, I asked him why he didn’t call an investor. He said “Because obviously they wouldn’t want this place.”  

Feeling unsure of that, I called an investor and described the situation without giving the actual address.   Once this investor convinced me to get Kevin to call him, I told Kevin what I did, fully expecting him to be mad at me for “overstepping.”  (I mean, I was overstepping, but I only called for my own curiosity and wasn’t going to tell Kevin until this dude convinced he wanted the townhouse and could deal with the HOA.) 

At the end of that week, Kevin met the investor, and the investor paid him for the townhouse about the same amount Kevin would have paid someone to take it off his hands. Since then, Kevin has said that “I saved him.” We had just become “official” about 2-3 month before. We then moved into the guest house on his parent’s property, where we still are to this day. 

I got this awful feeling that if god forbid something happened to Kevin and I was in severe grief talking about how “he always said I saved him” that others might just think that’s BS. Or, they might think that I just wish a man had said that about me. So I asked Kevin to write it all down, in his own handwriting, and sign his name. I said “don’t type it out, because that’s not proof.”  

I don’t know why I had that intrusive thought about some hypothetical future scenario in which I’m grieving my husband and no one around me believes what I’m saying he always told me. That was 1-2 weeks ago, and we forgot about it. Then I woke up on my birthday, and this note was with my card. I also got a $100 gift card, and we took my daughter to eat after work. 

Today I turn 47. Every year since I turned 36, I’ve googled on my birthday what celebrities died at the age I’m turning. This is the first time in 11 years that I didn’t do that. I knew offhand that Judy Garland did. I wasn’t interested in the rest. Maybe that anxiety is going away. 

 

Regular Week

 

I’m so glad to be back into a regular, local work schedule this week. We had a few days off in which I had no motivation at all. I took my daughter to get her first tattoo, and while she did describe it to me beforehand, I wasn’t expecting it to be as big as it was. First tattoos are painful. I only have a teeny weeny one on my hand, and even that hurt. She’s only 18, and I was 38 when I got mine. It was a little intense. She was squeezing my hand and almost breaking my fingers. I haven’t really seen her in pain since she was little and received her vaccines. 

But at lease that’s over, and she’s feeling a lot better. 

It did drain me though. I guess I could have spent the rest of my days off turning my big 25 cent day haul from a couple weeks ago into 6 inch squares, but there was no motivation to do even that. All I did was rot in bed and doom scroll. I constantly tried to raise my own awareness about why this tragedy in central Texas happened, and I became too aware. Sade Perkins was living in my head rent free until I saw a comment saying, “This is a psy op, and she’s a fed!”  I wondered what a psy op was and came across this video explanation. He explains what it is and then describes literally everything the mass media and social media do all day every day. Some in those comments were like, “is this video a psy op?”  If you go around repeating the things this guy says, imo that’s a great way to end up in a padded room. 

Luckily by the time I gave it up, it was time to go to work. 

One of the reasons why I like my job is because it’s constant movement, all numbers, all facts, and channels all this pent up energy out of me. 

Saturday Unplanned.

 

While I didn’t physically attend the protest I was going to attend, I did watch the live stream. There were a lot of people in the live stream, but not a lot in attendance. I guess my perception of what was going to actually happen was off. They were just standing outside the church, there was some honking, but that was it. I was driving while listening to it, so I didn’t see “handing out bibles” like they said they were doing. Then they all agreed that “they didn’t want people driving by to think they were associated with that church”, lol, so they got in a couple cars and decided to find the farmers market owned by Sade Perkins. This was the first I was hearing about a farmers market, and I think if I was actually there, this is the point where I would have left. If anyone was inside the church, I don’t think a church person would have gotten “non-peaceful” with them. But I imagined someone at the farmers market would have. I’m not sure why I pictured it to be like a nice Whole Foods market with employees and everything. In reality, they went to the address listed and it was at a dead end of a residential street in third ward with a bunch of run down houses. They look around and say, “I don’t see any farmers.” 

lol, nope!  Not in the hood! No farmers! 

They find a man who was possibly homeless just kind of hanging outside a small grocery store and asked him where the farmers market was. The man replied, “People keep asking me that!  I don’t know anything about a farmers market.”  (Lol) 

Then another man walked by and said it was in a Methodist church parking lot. This was only a block away, so they walked. They found the Methodist but no farmers market. They then went back to the church and I turned off my live stream. 

Periodically throughout, they would mention unmarked police cars and say things like “There’s another cop!  But we love and support the cops!” Etc etc.  it was as if they thought the cops were after them, but I don’t think they were specifically.  They were just there to keep peace.  

Sade then proceeded to make another TikTok video where she’s acting super scared and saying “These people are trying to find me and unalive me!”  She then at the end of the video clicks a gun in an obvious threat against the people who did the protest.  A couple hours later, a video was made by the guy who organized the protest with his receipt from HPD showing that he pressed charges for the threat. She got three charges pressed against her- the threat, being a felon in possession of a firearm and stolen valor. 

What a shit show indeed. 

But what was this originally about in the first place?  It had to do with a tragedy that happened in central Texas on the Fourth of July. There was catastrophic flooding, and several people died including children who were at sleep away camp. The children were 8-10 years old, and their counselors were no older than 20 years old. Sade, in an attempt to blame the political right, said all kinds of heinous offensive things including calling the child victims “cunts” and “dead white bitches”. She’s definitely it the only one, there are a lot of leftists doing the same thing, just not with such inflammatory language. 

I live in Houston, which is at least 300 miles from where this happened. I don’t live anywhere near Kerr County, but I’ve passed through often. If anything happened in their local politics to have caused this, I wouldn’t know about it. Finally, someone decided to educate- apparently, in 2021, they were supposed to get $10.5 million from the Biden administration and they refused it because basically they didn’t like Biden. And whatever they would have done with that money would have prevented this. Someone finally posted hours and hours of meeting videos from 2021, but luckily Someone made a condensed version. 

This is exactly what I mean when I say the extremism and the hate is on both sides. What the hell are they talking about? I thought the feds gave the states money for shit like that all the time?  What stipulations?  What were the stipulations?  I don’t know, but what I do know from experience living in Texas for 23 years is that it may have been stipulations for mandatory evacuation. Texans don’t like to evacuate. They like to ride it out. I’m the opposite. Maybe if I’m bored I can watch these entire meetings, but I’m going to be busy for the next couple weeks. By the end of the month, this will all blow over. 

Edited to add: I just learned that this money that they were saying would be a “pact with the devil” if they accepted, they really did accept and used 70% to give themselves raises.  Can you make this up? Who’s the devil now?  

I really do appreciate being shown the meetings where they (I was going to say refused funding, but didn’t refuse funding and pocketed this demonic money anyway).  And since they did end up accepting the money, were all the regulations put in place that they were so scared of?  But it would have been really nice if this more grown up, fact-based educating was done first, before blaming dead children. Everyone grow the hell up. 

Oh, and my sourdough starter failed. But I’m going to make a new one. 

Chickening Out

 I’ve been up all night long, and I’m absolutely chickening out about going to the protest. I went to the corner store, filled my tank and then came right back home, got back into my pajamas and back in bed. 

1. There might be a drive by shooting at the protest, organized by the person being protested.

2. The media might show up, accidentally get a picture of me there, that picture might get into the hands of the wrong person or people, and I will be perceived a certain way that I don’t want to be perceived as. 

3. I suspect that she either wants the negative attention, or she’s trolling. She set up a go fund me for herself (because of course she did).  And people are donating $5 to leave her negative comments!  😂 

People actually have to tell people to not do that because you are directly supporting her and can leave her negative comments for free literally anywhere else. Getting $5 in your account every time someone wants to leave you a negative comment is the ultimate Uno reverse card. 

But enough about her, here are some things Kevin and I have been laughing at. 

He had a bad case of the hiccups last night, and I’ve never seen him with hiccups. They’re frickin hilarious with him. I don’t know why he seems to overdo each hiccup. Then to make matters even more hilarious, his cat Mitchell decided to mock him with “ekekek” every time he hiccuped. The weird part was that we didn’t even know where Mitchell was. He wasn’t on the bed with us, but we could hear him from wherever he was doing “ekekek” every time Kevin hiccupped. Finally he took a shower and they went away. 

Then I don’t really know why, but old videos of Riverdance from the 90’s were coming up in my YouTube suggestions. Riverdance was a live show in the 90’s of Irish dancing starring Michael Flatley. I asked Kevin if he remembered it, and he didn’t. I told him they were pretty popular back then. I started playing one of the videos, and he immediately started laughing!  I said, “Are you laughing at Riverdance???” He laughed even more and tried to undo it by saying, “I’m sure they worked very hard.”  

I continued to watch some and was like, actually this is kind of funny from a 30 years later perspective. But back then, I was hooked!  

My Saturday Plans

 Tomorrow I’m attending a protest at the First UU Church of Houston that’s taking place between 10-4. I’m not staying the entire time, because I have plans with my daughter. My daughter doesn’t want to go to the protest with me, and I actually am glad.  If you are curious as to what we are protesting, see my below post. Or better yet, google Sade Perkins and go down the rabbit hole. 

I’m going to be wearing black jeans, a black top, black walking shoes, and my Texas drivers license and health insurance card will be in my back pocket just in case she shows up and starts shooting up. Do I think she’ll do that?   I think there’s a 10-20% chance. But nah. 

I am learning that not everyone in the world has the mentality that children are innocent. The mentality does exist that if a child is the child of your enemy, they will grow up to be “the same way” as your enemy. Sade doesn’t have that many supporters, but the few that she does have are giving examples of racist white people from way back in the day and saying the flood victims would have grown up to be just like that. 

….. No they wouldn’t. I have seen so many positive mindset shifts with “Gen Z”, and even more with “Gen Alpha”, that I’ve come to believe that their collective growth and their collective breaking of generational curses is actually the start of world peace. That’s actually the happy ending of my book, The Child Advocate. Spoiler alert! I start noticing how the young people are and realizing not only how much better they have it than us, but how much better they’re doing than we did. I do believe they will “start the process” of world peace. Don’t get me wrong, my kid has come across some shithead classmates, but absolutely nothing like when I was in school.  

But that mentality does exist, that the child of your enemy will “just grow up to be that way”. I saw this being talked about regarding the war between Israel and Palestine. Neither side sees the children of the other side as innocent. That’s partly why it’s so frickin ugly over there. Some guy explained it to me, and it just left me feeling a little bit of the ick. He said something like, they gotta make sure they get them all (including the kids), “or else it will turn into some kind of green goblin situation.” 

He eluded me for a second. Was that a Spiderman reference?  Wasn’t the green goblin the enemy of spiderman who yelled at his kid, “AVENGE ME!” Just as he was dying, and then eventually his kid became the next green goblin?  Yes that’s actually what this guy said. He said that. Out loud, he actually said that.  

If I remember correctly, though, the green goblin didn’t succeed and Harry died. So just don’t blame kids, hurt kids, unalive kids, or rejoice when bad things s happen to them. Just leave the kids out of it. 

I feel like this country is so divided and I honestly don’t want any part of either side. It makes me wish Trump was deporting second generation Americans as well, because my morals don’t line up with the BS of either side of the far left or far right anymore. Maybe in 20 years when the candidates are going to be more and more Gen Z, I’ll take more interest. 

The good news is, there’s some much lighter drama on TikTok that has me absolutely laughing my bitt off and laughing away all the pain of the Sade drama. It’s the “antipastogate” situation. A woman who appears to be in her 30’s (too old to be doing this) posted A video of herself crying, explaining that someone invited her to Fourth of July but forgot to tell their husband. He came in not knowing who she was and was rude to her and she left. Not only that, but she brought an antipasto salad that looked amazing and shared a brief picture of it in the crying video. The rude husband made a video in response saying that he thought she was casing the place out. The most hilarious response was This guy. So was This guy

I’ve been laughing hysterically, but is it really that funny?  Yes I think so. So are the memes: 

Sade’s World- my last thoughts on the flooding

 Going viral on TikTok right now is a woman named Sadè (pronounced Shah-Day) who has been extremely nasty in her descriptions of the children who lost their lives at Camp Mystic. She has claimed that their deaths are deserving all the way to actually calling the 8-10 year old deceased kids “cunts”. 

Some people are saying she’s a preacher’s wife. They actually aren’t married. Her partner is the pastor of The First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, which is located on Fannin St. near downtown and the museum district. I went to this church a handful of times. My ex husband used to make fun of it and call it “The come and believe your own shit church”, because there’s no creed. He wasn’t wrong though, that’s exactly what UU is. It’s a congregation of people with varying religious beliefs. Two of the times I visited this church, I also visited the Houston Women’s Group, which is a weekly gathering to discuss feminist politics. The first time I went, I was visibly pregnant, about 7-8 months along. I just sat and said nothing that first time. The reason I’m writing this here is not so I can be educated in the comments about how “feminism is all about choice.”  Trust me, I already know. I respect that that has been some people’s experience, but as for me I was heavily pressured to just be all about career and not a family. When I was about to have a baby, I heard of them and just wanted to go sit in the back. I just went and sat near the door in case I needed to escape. They were generally welcoming, but said nothing about me being obviously pregnant. 

The next time I went to the Houston Women’s Group was almost two years later. I let my daughter go to the nursery while attended the service and then went to the women’s group. They didn’t remember me. There was a guest speaker that day. She was talking about an email list about political advocacy, and she kept using the word “pro abortion”.  Someone cringed at like the third or fourth time she said it and reminded her something like, “When you write the emails though, please don’t use the term pro abortion please use pro choice.  I know it’s how we really feel, but it might get some people riled up.” And then mentioned that the right likes to misinterpret “pro abortion” so they’re “forced to” use the term “pro choice” and act like they really believe in choice. 

Haha, what?  I spoke up at that point and said it was always drilled into me that there was no such thing as pro abortion and that the correct term was pro choice. One of them explained it to me that the inherent act of having children was oppressive to women. Women were the first oppressed group in human history, and it was directly due to childbearing.  It was still oppressive even if a woman “chose” it, and in fact, if she chose it she was bringing all women down. I’m paraphrasing here, but they also explained that if a woman is choosing to have children, she’s not actually making an informed choice, she’s just doing it out of pressure. I clammed up at that point. What a weird thing to say, especially since all pressure I ever felt surrounding the issue was to not have any kids. I couldn’t leave, because I didn’t want them thinking I disagreed with them and having them get mad. I thought to myself holy shit and I showed up here when I was 8 months pregnant?  Eventually I did slip out the door and ran to the nursery to get Anna. Hilariously, the nursery volunteers convinced us to stay for mommy and me song time, and I did. It was completely different women there, of course, because they were all moms who had put their kids in the church nursery. I spent the next little while sitting in this circle with my toddler in my lap singing “Cumbaya” type songs.  It helped me forget about the weird “just use pro choice so you don’t upset the moms” comment in women’s group. 

The opinion that having children is in and of itself a negative- oppression of women literally caused by it- in my opinion is a seed that could manifest in child abuse. 

It manifested in this. This woman whose “partner” is a “pastor” there said those little girls deserved to die. She even called these dead little girls cunts. Go to TikTok and search “Sade’s World”. There are thousands calling her out on how evil she is. 

A lot of people are discovering Unitarian Universalism for the first time because of her too, and are like “Oh my goodness that’s why!  Because SHES NOT A CHRISSTIANNN!”  

Well that’s not why, and that’s why I shared my personal experience with that church. There is a hatred of children that manifests from the idea that having them is inherently wrong. I don’t think it’s all of those people though. Of course, there was a nursery with mommy and me song time following the service. 

One thing I will say I agree with Sade on though- and it’s the only thing because she’s an evil cunt whore bitch- is that “missing white woman syndrome” or “Gabby Petito syndrome” is real. It means that when a child of color goes missing, they don’t get as much attention as when a white child goes missing, in particular if it’s a little girl who’s blonde. It’s a thing  

Lord knows I’ve devoted so much time to trying to write about missing people who could still be alive and even tried to blog about them until I just kept finding out about more and more of them and it got too much. I would like to challenge Sade to go look for Asha Degree, Diamond and Tionda Bradley, Anthonette Cayedito, Relisha Rudd, Vinyette Teague, Manuela Orlandi and I could srsly go on and on. I would love to see any of them found. But the truth is probably doesn’t know who any of them are. She’s just a demon spewing hate. She doesn’t want to learn who any of them are. 

She also made a TikTok basically threatening to kill anyone who talks about her online. It’s not deterring me from this blog post. 

 Day two of my sourdough starter was just “give it a stir”. I don’t have to “remove half and add more” until tomorrow. 

Today Kevin and I are riding in the back of the boss’s car for five hours to “Louisiana”. He has no idea where, but the five hour timeframe suggests Alexandria. Tomorrow we do a job there and then come back in the evening. 

There’s a lot of drama on social media about the children who lost their lives in Kerrville. A lot of people saying Texas deserves it due to the politics here. Both sides of the political bird gloat when disasters happen in states that vote the opposite of them. I literally just really hate both sides. 

This is the most educational and factual take I’ve heard.  This woman is a meteorologist and gives a solution at the end of the video. 

To lighten the mood, here’s Alex. Yes I know he’s fat. 

Sourdough Starter; No July 4th

 Today, I made a sourdough starter. It will be ready in about a week. I got this container at Dollar Tree, and I’m following these instructions:

If anyone has any tips, let me know. 

Many times, I find people online to follow that I end up loving, and the whole reason I found them in the first place was because I had listened to their haters complaining about them. One of those is Nara Smith. Nara Smith likes to get dressed up for the kitchen and make things from scratch- so of course she has haters. But I watch some of her stuff and I’m just like, you can do that?  Here she is making a regular loaf of sourdough and a chocolate one. I’m totally going to do both as well. Chocolate sourdough sounds amazing. 

We didn’t hear fireworks on the fourth. Many people online aren’t celebrating because of Trump. I’m not a Trump supporter, nor am I really big on Fourth of July, but I couldn’t help noticing that the same people who aren’t celebrating the fourth out of the belief that he’s a dictator, also wanted to dictate my every move for several years of my life. In my old apartment, thanks to my mom leaking my address, I had cops occasionally knocking on my door for welfare checks because family members called and said I was suicidal. I’m not. One cop kept asking me if I had a gun. I don’t. He kept pressing. I said, you’re welcome to search. He said, “I just want to go home.”  Then go home!  The goal of these family members was to have me locked up, because they didn’t like several things, including my long distance relationship at the time, my 1099 job that wasn’t a W2 job etc. one of my best friends thought it was my ex husband and his wife doing this (Anna’s dad and stepmom), but I didn’t think so, because I was required to give them my new address as soon as I moved in. My mother didn’t leak it until a few months later, and that’s when the knocks at the door started happening. 

I’ve also seen a handful of comments online poking fun at recent tragedies in my home state of Texas. We lost several 8-10 year old girls at a summer camp due to flooding. The owner of the camp also died trying to save them. This is devastating, as a mom, as someone whose best childhood memories were at camp, and as someone close by. These were kids. Don’t do that. They were little girls. Our country is truly divided if people can stoop that low. 

The plus side of no fireworks is that my daughter reported that her father’s chiwawa-pug didn’t have anxiety and didn’t need meds. 

4th of July- Can’t Move Numbers Online

 As of this evening, Saturday the fifth, I still haven’t received my paycheck. So I sent this meme to my boss. He loves the movie Office Space, and if you haven’t seen it and/or don’t get the meme, here is the explanation. 

I have a bad case of the irritation. If I knew this was going to happen, I would have waited another week on paying the whole car loan off. 

Conversation With Gastroenterologist

 Back in April, I had a Fibroscan of my liver in a gastroenterologist’s office. At the time, they had told me that if they found anything serious, the doctor would call me. If not, then I could discuss my results at my follow up on June 17th. Only, I canceled the appointment on June 17th due to anxiety. I found out that I have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease back in November of 2021. It was discovered when I went to the emergency room for panic attacks that caused cardio symptoms. 

But with so many things going well in my life, I’m afraid I’ll die. So back on Monday, I called the GI office and was like look, is there any way the Dr can just call me. She was extremely rude, “Your insurance doesn’t cover that.” She snapped. I replied, “I will pay for it. I will pay 100% if he just calls me about this.”  I explained that I have severe anxiety over the issue and do no want to have to handle talking about it in the office. It would not only be humiliating for me, but they don’t want to deal with that, I don’t want to deal with that, and I would have to drive upset. She snapped again, “But your insurance doesn’t allow for a phone consult.”  And that’s true with Obamacare- if you have it and something is not covered and you are able/willing to pay out of pocket anyway, they won’t let you. But I started getting attitude back and said, “It lets me go on the teledoc app, that’s who referred me to y’all in the first place.”  She said hang on for her manager and then came back saying the manager wasn’t answering and then gave me her direct line. I called the direct line, and it was a non working number. That bitch! So I called back, got a completely different operator and started over. She put me on hold for the manager. I told the office manager everything and she asked, “Would you like me to run your insurance to see if it covers telehealth or would you like me to leave the doctor a message?” I said, “Can you do both?”  

So I was on kind of a long hold, she came back and said that yes my insurance covers telemedicine, she left my message for my doctor, and he’d call me Thursday the 3rd at 5:00 pm. 

He called a little before then. Immediately I started having panic attacks, but I did mention to him that this liver condition is an extremely serious cause of anxiety for me and that I wasn’t really interested in knowing what my liver looked like, I just had five questions- 1. Is there any medication he wants me to take? 2. Is there any medication he doesn’t want me to take? 3. Is there any specific food I should eat? 4. Is there any specific foods I should not eat and 5. How often do I have to keep coming back for this test? 

He told me first of all, to calm my fears, that everything on the test looks “promising”. He said a few more vague positive things before answering my five questions- there isn’t really a pill to take; my atorvastatin and metformin as long as they work controlling pre diabetes and cholesterol do fine. There is not anything to “not take”, he said, just don’t overdose on anything. As far as foods he described “The Mediterranean Diet” which is what they  all say, but there are more strict guidelines online. And that I should repeat the test about once a year. 

I then stepped back a little and said, “ok since it looks promising then I guess you can tell me what my liver looks like.” He seemed glad and said “Ok well your fatty liver disease is currently at a stage 0, which is the best it can be.”

I know from reading online that stage 4 would be cirrhosis.  Didn’t mention that though, was just glad to hear the number zero. He said the fibroscan was to check for hardening, and other bad things, of which I had none. 

I thanked him and before he hung up. He tried to convince me to get a colonoscopy again. I said, “Let me psych myself up for it for a couple months.”  He said that was fine. 

I told my mom, and she said, “I never had a colonoscopy, and I’m fine.”  

🤦🏻‍♀️ 

I’ve explained survivor bias to her before, but you can’t teach an old dog. 

I believe I know what causes this in me. It wasn’t the panic attacks. As a young woman, I was too skinny. I didn’t even reach 100 pounds until I was 22. Because of that, I constantly had older people telling me I had to gain weight and eat a burger and eat a pizza and I mean it was constantly skinny shaming. This seems counterintuitive to people, because only fat shaming is talked about. I was 220-something at my heaviest, and no one ever said anything about me being fat to my face. They kept it to themselves. Skinny shaming, though, is literally always 100% of the time, said to a person’s face. Because of that I spent many years making myself eat fatty unhealthy things, and that’s what I believe caused this. I feel like I’m not ever allowed to say that out loud though. People don’t like to hear about skinny shaming because they want to believe “society” wants women to be thin. But who exactly is “society”?  I’ve been working hard the last few years trying to reverse the habits and learn more about food. Combined with people who “wanted more for me than to just be in the kitchen” it has taken a lot of work and resisting. But I’m doing it. This morning I weighed 192.2, so some kind of plateau is happening. 

A Fruitful Wednesday Off

I started yesterday with a trip to 25 cent day at my favorite thrift store. I spent $13.25 plus tax, which means i got 53 pairs of jeans.  This is my second full ziplock bag of buttons harvested from 25 cent jeans. I cannot and do not remove buttons that were attached with grommets. I think it’s time for some button art. I was in a button art facebook group for a while, and I think the easiest thing to do would be a tree.  Some of the white buttons may have to be painted green. 

Also while cutting the waists off below the pockets, I thought to myself- if I was more careful in my cutting of these, did then more straight and intentionally, I could add flowy fabrics to them and make skirts. What are y’all’s opinions on that? 

I then took my daughter to Niko Niko’s for lunch and afterwards, we went to the metaphysical gift shop which is right next door. I needed scented votive candles, because I did receive nice votive size candle holders as a wedding gift. Anna bought little heart shaped stones to give to her friends. Her last day at her job is tomorrow. I’m actually kind of glad because I want her to spend more time up here with me. That’s one of the reasons she’s quitting. She wants to spend more time with me and with her friends before she leaves for San Marcos on 8/15.  

I then went to Walmart and not only got what seems like the perfect glass container for my own sourdough starter, but in the sewing department, three yard packs of solid 100% quilting fabrics were on sale for $5.94. They’re usually over $8. 

 

Stephen Hawking Movie Scene- Explanation

 Two posts ago, I mentioned this movie scene and how I thought about it when thinking of my deceased first boyfriend. This scene was from a movie called “The
Theory of Everything” about the life of Stephen Hawking. My first love didn’t have Lou Gherig’s disease like Stephen Hawking did, but he did have cardiomyopathy as a result of long term Ritalin use as a child. I suspect that’s how he died, but I’m not sure.

He and I used to daydream out loud to each other about our future kids and what they’d be like. In reality, we went our separate ways, married and divorced other people, and he had two sons while I had a daughter. In this scene, Stephen Hawking is with his estranged wife at an event and their three kids- two sons and a daughter- are playing. Stephen is so advanced in his disease at this point that he can only communicate by typing. He starts typing, and his ex wife leans over to read it. He says in his iconic robot voice, “Look what we made!” And they gaze at their girl and two boys. 

Of course that scene hits different now that I know about Matt’s passing. We didn’t get to do it together, but we did it.  Of course I see that scene and think of my daughter and his two sons. 

Then, it starts showing major memories of his life in reverse.  The scenes reverse all the way through the advancement of his disease, as if he’s getting better and better until he’s perfectly healthy and sees his wife for the first time- as two little 18 year old nerds like me and Matt were.  

Someone put this in the comments: 

I often wonder if when we come into this life, if there are truly hundreds of possibilities of what will happen based on what choices we make.  When Matt and I used to attend church, they used to argue about “predestination vs free will”.  But I believe in a mix of both.  The high number of possibilities is predestined.  Our free will determines what possibility actually happens.  I hope that makes sense. 

What ended up happening is that Matt and I broke up and I was so brokenhearted that I dove into working jobs that helped abused kids.  I was pressured to break up with Matt, so I did.  But when I tried to reconcile a month later, he rejected me and said I’d hurt him too much.  I became obsessed with my career goals.   I did several jobs that helped children, and there was so much sadness.  I look back on it now, and I don’t even know how I handled all of that weight on my shoulders being just barely out of childhood myself.  What was I doing and how did I do it?  

What if Matt and I could rewind like that, maybe all the way back to when we were in kindergarten, before we knew each other, and someone could convince his parents not to give him Ritalin?  Maybe they could have met my anti-helping kids- with mental health- and learning disability parents and been swayed by them.  Maybe Matt could have had a childhood like mine where he was just yelled at and told to buckle down instead of drugged.  It may sound like I’m being snarky, but his death has made me almost glad I never got help for my own neurodivergence.  I didn’t have that male privilege! (Snark intended since I’m alive and he’s dead)

What if we did get to get married and have our seven kids?  Would there be as much sadness as I’ve had working with kids?  Maybe  or maybe not.  

Today I’m just very sad, and I shouldn’t be.  I came home from work and immediately got in bed.  When I got hungry I just had (baked whole grain) chips and salsa.  I’m very happy with my life. But I’m so sad today.  

I should be happy that my car is paid off and that I got a raise.  And that I’m happily married to a man that’s honestly much easier to be married to than Matt would have been.  And my kid is going to college. I am just sad as hell and I want to spend all day tomorrow crying since there’s no inventory- BUT it will be 25 cent day and Anna wants to spend the night so if I want to cry I better do it now 

New Budget

 Phone: $164.74  This includes the WiFi for this house. 

Health insurance: $102.98 But I hate my insurance. Changing January first, asap. 

Car insurance is now $79.75 a month now that I paid the car off. At one point, it was $349 a month , went down to $2-something and is now under $80. Love it. 

I don’t have a minimum payment required for my student loans, because of my income, but I also realized that I didn’t tell them I got married. They’ll figure it out when we file jointly. Each time I log in to the servicer “Aidvantage”, I make a payment that decreases the principal balance. When you’re on an income based repayment plan, your interest compounds and compounds and compounds. If I left it alone, then I’d never retire because it would be over $100K by the time I got to my 60’s. This is why you hear people talking about having made significant payments every month, but the balance keeps increasing. What a scam. The plan now is to pay it down much more than “just a little bit” each time I log in. 

For the three years that interest was frozen during the pandemic, the balance was $20K even. I started paying it down in September of 2023 when the interest started accruing again. My balance is now $18,200 even. Of course now I’m going to be tackling it more aggressively

When I graduated, it was somewhere between $37K-$39K  I don’t remember anything except that it was “close to 40”  

Kevin pays the rent here, but I can definitely pay it sometimes now too.  It’s low, because this is his parents’ property. 

Goals now:

this booklet I have in lavender. It’s stuck in the seat pocket of the passenger seat of my car. It’s full of slots you number from 1-100. In the 1 slot, you put $1, in the 53 slot, you put $53, in the 100 slot you put $100 and so on. I fill some slots and then take them out. I’m terrible at this challenge. I wanted to give it to Anna, but she’s going to be living in a dorm and I didn’t want it to get stolen. I’m going to be better at it now with no car note. And I’m not going to keep it in the seat pocket of the car when it starts to get high.  If you fill all the slots, you’ve just saved $5,050. And I am not able to do it daily, it’s going to be a per payday thing. 

I have a retirement account on the Robin Hood app. It’s super low. Part of me hasn’t expected to live long enough to retire, but now I think I will. I’ll keep adding small amounts to it. I was always raised to believe that social security would go away by the time I was old enough for it. But people my age and younger are fighting back on that now. We are realizing that that was probably just said to us in order for the people saying it to drain social security. And my husband is turning 62 in February of 2026. He can collect it at that point but doesn’t seem to want to yet. 

My side jobs on the apps- I’m going to lay off of those and work on my writing and sewing more. Of course, if I’m driving to my mother’s house 65 miles away, there’s likely to be a handful of them there and back. It would make sense to do them then. We have two HEB stores we go to- in cypress and in Brenham. One is 30 miles east, and one is 30 miles west. When Kevin and I shop together, I always push to go to Brenham because that HEB always has a bunch of jobs at that location. 

I’m going to be giving my daughter HEB gift cards since there’s one in San Marcos walking distance to the university and she’s only on a two meal a day plan. And because the university has convinced her not to work her first semester- I think her dad and stepmom told her that too. It’s not wise. But I can’t say anything- when I first married her dad, there actually was a few month period where I was a stay at home wife. Before my pregnancy with her. There was a few month period when I was about 20-21 ish that I lived with my parents and didn’t work. I was a stay at home daughter. So it’s not like I ALWAYS worked. I did have breaks. Would my maternity leave with her also count since she was the easiest baby ever?  Most people would say no, but that was a chill time for me. (I also had a supportive partner!)

Hopefully my financial situation turns around. I make good money at my job in my opinion. It’s actually insane behavior that I returned to a job I had in my early 20’s that everyone told me to leave and go back for my degree, and even more insane is that I married my supervisor/coworker. Goals are shifting now that I’m getting older. In 2014, I didn’t think I’d live through each day. Now I rock.