I’m back at work after a four day week-end and oh the boredom and annoying-ness of it all.  I hoped somehow I’d return to this God-forsaken place refreshed and renewed.  Ready to take on the environment with a new attitude and better spirits.  Alas, new attitudes and better spirits are in short supply and I seem to have missed the boat.

Friday was my birthday and the only way you could not already know that is if you’ve never seen my blog before or if you live under a rock.  Because my birthday fell on a Friday this year I took Friday and Monday off with the foolish thought that maybe, just maybe there might be some sort of road worthy excursion to be had, but sadly, none such excursions took place.  It’s just as well, really.  By the time I finished paying all my bills and doing the necessary grocery and household items shopping this week-end, there was no money for road worthy excursions anyway.

Michelle took Friday off with me and together we went to lunch at ye old Cheesecake Factory where for the first time in I don’t know how many visits, I ventured outside of my usual choice of Sweet Corn Tamale Cakes and ordered the Four Cheese Pasta with Chicken.  Hey, it was my birthday; I’m allowed a little splurge, right?  The food was good, though I’d have preferred the large dollop of Ricotta cheese that they plopped on top to either be mixed in, or not be there at all.

After lunch we wandered across the street to the movie theater where we watched My Life in Ruins, the latest film written by and staring Nia Vardalos.  I loved My Big Fat Greek Wedding and was very impressed with her talent after that so when My Friend @NiaVardalos told me that she had a new movie coming out and that she needed me to go see it I was only too happy to comply.  Folks, this movie was great, and Nia looked amazing!  If you haven’t seen it already, run, don’t walk, to your nearest cinema and watch it.

After the movie we returned to The Cheesecake Factory to purchase our cheesecake for later.  I don’t know anyone who can actually eat a meal AND eat cheesecake while actually AT The Cheesecake Factory.  I can never decide on one preferred type of cheesecake so I end up getting two pieces, one Chocolate Moose Cheesecake, and one Godiva Chocolate.  I always tell myself that these two pieces of cheesecake will last me for days and days because I WON’T eat the entire slice in one sitting.  Then I take my cheesecake home and eat the entire thing in one sitting.  So much for good intentions.

We decided to have a drink at the bar before we left so we fought the crowd (it was after 6:00 on a Friday) and made our way to the counter were the very handsome bar tenders ignored us for about five minutes.  Finally we ordered our top shelf margaritas and sat down to enjoy our drinks and chat.  Midway through a sentence, Michelle and I both stopped and stared as we watched the cuter of the two bartenders pour a shot of Patrón tequila into a glass.

Michelle asked him what he was making and he said it was called a Patrón el Diablo (note to self; remember this drink next time you go to ye old Cheesecake Factory.)  He told us it had Patrón Silver, Pomegranate and Grapefruit juices.  I imagine there was more to it than that, but then he stopped mid sentence and walked away.  I thought he was ignoring us, but then he came back with a straw and used the old dip-the-straw-in-the-glass-and-put-your-finger-on-top-of-it-to-take-a-small-sip-worth-of-the-drink-out-of-the-glass trick and put it in a small glass so we could taste it.  It was muy yummy and you could taste the Patrón which is quite possibly the best tequila ever.

Now the story might have taken an interesting turn here…  But it didn’t.  He walked away and that was the end of that conversation.  Ah well, he most likely would’ve been more interested in Michelle than me, anyway.

When we first sat down at the bar, my cell phone rang and it was my mother.  I sent the call to voice mail because I knew I wouldn’t be able to hear her and that we weren’t going to be terribly long.  I would call her back when we left.

You see, for the first time in more than four years, my mother sent me a birthday present.  Normally, it’s a day or two before my birthday and she asks me, what do you want for your birthday that doesn’t cost more than about $30.00.  I think long and hard and can’t come up with anything (‘cause I’ve already bought myself everything I want that doesn’t cost more than $30.00) and finally come up with the same thing as the previous year.  A series of books she told me about that sounds interesting but I’ve never gotten around to buying/reading.  Then when it’s said and done, I get nothing.  This year, she told me on Thursday that she’d gotten me a present and after asking where I wanted her to send it (home or work.)  She told me that it was to arrive at my house by 10:30 AM Friday morning.  I was going to be home and I got out of bed around 8:30 so as to be ready to answer the door when the FedEx driver arrived.

Having already told me that the gift was roughly 10 x 7 x 1 I was pretty sure I knew it to be one of the books she and I had discussed repeatedly for years prior, but I was excited to get the gift nonetheless.  Around 9:30, I saw a FedEx truck go barreling down the street and I was surprised it didn’t stop but figured my package must just be on a different truck or he would be back.  When I left at noon, it still had not arrived, so I put a note on the door for the driver to leave it and I went to meet Michelle.

I called my mother back when we left The Cheesecake Factory and she told me that she’d received an automated e-mail from FedEx telling her the package had been left at my door at 9:28 AM.  She was noticeably annoyed, I can only assume first, because I didn’t call her to tell her I had gotten the package and to thank her and then because I didn’t answer the phone when she called.  Then she was testy because there was noise in the background.  Noise that amounted to Michelle telling me I was about to take the wrong entrance ramp to the highway (I wasn’t) and then the sound of my accelerating on to the highway.  She seemed unconcerned that the gift hadn’t arrived and honestly, I don’t know if she’s going to pursue it with FedEx or not.  She was so snide about it, I decided not to ask.

I dropped Michelle off at her house and then I went home.  I turned on the TV and the Wii to be a good boy and do my EA Sport Active Workout, but first I did my Wii Fit Body Test and the graphic on the screen of the Balance Board was wearing a party hat and threw confetti my way!  And then she (the balance board is a she) told me I was obese and that I’d gained weight… Bitch!

Saturday, I sat around on my obese, more weighty butt and watched TV most of the day (after having slept till 11:00.)  Fortunately, it was a rest day for the EA Sport Active.

Sunday, I got up and prepared my shopping list, took a shower and headed out to take care of my shopping.  I returned home around 4:30 and after putting away my haul, I commenced thoroughly cleaning my bathroom.  I started cleaning the kitchen as well, but when it was creeping up on 7:00 and I still had to work out and prepare and eat dinner, I decided I better call it quits for the day.  (Nice thing is I got a gold medal on my EA Sport Active journal for having additional activity, in the form of housework, for the day!)

On Monday, K and I had plans to go to lunch together.  She has been off for over a week for her son’s eighth grade graduation, her parents visit and her own birthday which is one week before mine.  I picked her up at about 11:45 and we made our way into and across San Francisco, where we went to lunch at the Beach Chalet.

She surprised me when I picked her up with a gift bag to which four very large balloons were tied.  The gift was a large coffee mug with superman on it.  Very cool!  I’ll update this post with pictures.  Let it be said, that Mischa is most unimpressed with the balloons which are currently hovering in wait in my living room.  Let it also be said that I am a dead beat friend that didn’t get K anything.   Yes, I suck.

The Beach Chalet was awesome.  I had made reservations in advance and as a result we got a nice table by a window looking out across San Francisco’s Great Highway, over Ocean Beach and right on out at the water.  When we first arrived there was a cruise ship coming in and heading for the Golden Gate Bridge (I should have taken pictures.)  The view was incredible, the food  was delicious and the desert was so decadent!  We shared the Chocolate Sand Castle.

When I returned home, I checked around, but my FedEx package still was no where to be found.  I went inside, cleaned a little more, worked out again (so glad today is a rest day), made dinner and settled in for the evening.

All in all, it was a pretty good week-end and pretty good Birthday.  I couldn’t have asked for too much more!

And sadly, now I’m back at work where it seems, I wasn’t missed at all, and wishing I was just about anywhere else.

I wonder when that cruise ship leaves port again….

By the time many of you read this, I will be another year older.  Well, I won’t be a year older, I’ll be a day older or possibly even just a few hours older, but the number that is my age will be plus one.

I have very mixed feelings about this… Or maybe I have no feelings at all about this…  You see, there was a time when I didn’t think I’d live to be thirty.  I’m not dying.  I don’t have any degenerative or progressive diseases, not that I know about anyway (and if I do, I don’t think I want to know about it.) There are no curses or trends of early deaths in my family; in fact, very much to the contrary my grandparents all lived to a very old age, except my maternal grandfather who was in his early 40s when a man, distraught over his wife leaving him, wore a dynamite vest onto the same plane as my Grandfather and detonated it in the lavatory, killing everyone on board.

No, I didn’t think I’d live to be thirty because growing up, thirty seemed old.  Thirty was “too late” to accomplish anything.  I figured if you hadn’t made a life for yourself by thirty, you never would.  To this day I struggle against that belief.  Thirty was old in my mind, and I have never been able to imagine myself as an old person.  I always assumed I was alone in that feeling.  I still don’t know that I’m not, but I have found that as I get older, so does my image of what “old” looks like.

When I was coming up on my thirtieth birthday, Michelle and I were still roommates and we were about to move.  I wanted to ignore my birthday and focus on the packing and move preparations.  Michelle made a “special”  dinner (special is in quotes because she made surf and turf, which she makes anytime there’s even the slightest  hint of a worthy excuse, like a birthday, or a holiday, or a Saturday) but that was the extent of my celebration. On June 10, 2005, I got a text message from my friend Heather, who lives in Oklahoma, saying, “Happy Birthday!  I guess you made it to thirty after all.”  I replied with “Thanks!  But my birthday’s not for two more days.  A lot can  happen.”  You see, I wasn’t living in fear of dying.  I didn’t really figure at that point that I would die.  It was just  that I’ve never been able to imagine myself getting old and for a long time old was defined in my mind as thirty.

If you’re reading between the lines here, then you realize that, yes, I still have doubts about my own longevity, and I think I’m OK with that.  While my grandparents lived to ripe old ages, my Paternal Grandmother died at 86,  of cancer after a four year battle.  My Paternal Grandfather died just shy of 93, presumably of “old age” but not  before slipping into dementia and depression.  He lived four years after his wife died and all he wanted the entire time was to be with her.  And my Maternal Grandmother?  I don’t know what she died of, other than just plane  giving up.  She was a miserable woman her whole life and she was kind of determined to stay that way.  Sixty  years of Anti-depressants and addiction to Valium, followed by a 6 month stay in an assisted living facility she finally gave up and willed herself to die at the age of 84.

None of these are things I want to experience and if I’m not very vigilant I could easily experience all three.  No, I’d much rather die in my fifties after, hopefully, living a full life, than live into my 80s and be miserable and  sickly.

Wow, once again, on a major tangent.

Anyway, tomorrow is my birthday. I’ll be 34 years old.  When I turned 30, I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.   I’m not sure how I’ll feel next year, turning 35, but for now, 34 is not so bad.  I’m still waiting to feel like I’ve built a life for myself and given the major changes I’m considering, it may be a while still before I feel like I have.  And  yes, sometimes I get twinges of feeling like that makes me a failure, but frequently people tell me, and I choose  to believe, that at 34 years old, I’m still young and can accomplish a lot in my life…

My feelings are mixed for other reasons as well.  Growing up, we never made a big production out of birthdays.   I’ve never had a birthday party.  Not a single one.  There’s never been anyone to invite to one.  I don’t make  friends easily and when I was a kid I was even worse.  In my family, a birthday “party” pretty much consists of a  dinner out, but nothing special because we ate dinner in restaurants all the time (mom never wanted to cook) and possibly a Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake.  Believe me when I tell you, Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake is not nearly as bad as it  sounds.  It’s actually quite delicious, but like the dinners out, Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake was a  regular staple in our house so that wasn’t particularly exciting either.

Michelle turned 40 this year, and her sister threw a big party for her.  There were at least 30 people at this party and they were all there to see Michelle, to wish her well, and to heap gifts up on her ancient head.  I had a nice   enough time, except for one isolated incident but it served to remind me that I haven’t, and probably won’t ever,  have an experience like it.  Poor me, whatever.

You know, I’ve written many times and verbally commented many more times, about how much I dislike contrived holidays in which you’re supposed to go through special efforts to show your affection for someone you care  about when that should be a daily occurrence.  I guess if I was honest, though, I’d have to admit that when a  birthday (and I would imagine an anniversary) goes by largely unnoticed, it is a bit of a slap in the face, like you’re deliberately telling the person that they don’t matter to you and so there’s a part of me that wants certain people to make a big to-do about my birthday, even while I know that if they did, I’d be embarrassed about it.

I’m so not sure where I was going with this post, now that I’ve gotten this far in.

Tomorrow is my birthday.  I’m taking the day off work.  (In fact I’m taking Monday off work and making a long  week-end of it.  Since my birthday falls on a Friday this year, I thought there was potential for a birthday trip or  something so I made sure I had the time for it.  There is no trip and I’m still off Monday, but I’m ok with that.)   Michelle and I are going to go run around a little bit. No firm plans yet, just a movie, probably food, maybe  miniature golf or  something.  My mother has already informed me that a gift is on its way (first time in three or four years).  It’s a book.  I would assume I’ll get an e-mail from Erin.  She’ll send it to my work e-mail and since she doesn’t know that I won’t be here, she doesn’t know that I won’t see it till Tuesday.  Heather will likely send me a text.  K will likely send me a Birthday Tweet (I did for her.) And well, now that I’ve written this whiny post about how pitiful my birthdays always are, I’m sure I’ll get a few “Happy Birthday” comments, all of which is, or will be, appreciated.  Mostly, I’m just grateful to take some time off work to relax AND clean my house… If it’s possible to do both of those things at the same time…

Happy Birthday to me!

Six months ago, I fired my therapist.  I said then that I hoped it was a temporary thing, more of a lay-off than a firing.  It was really hard for me to do and I had a lot of fear and anxiety about it when I did it.  I was genuinely worried that I was risking a lot, that I might not be able to maintain my emotional health on my own.

I really had no choice in the matter, however, my finances had gotten completely out of control and I had to do something:

Over the last few months I have gotten farther and farther behind on my utility bills.  My three credit cards are all maxed out and even though I keep making my payments, they’re not always before the due date and as a result I’m incurring fees on top of the finance charges and I’ve been unable to get ahead of all that.  And as the final straw, my December car payment didn’t go through because of a typographical error.  Due to my own ineptitude, or stupidity or whatever, I actually thought I had seen this payment post to my on-line banking for my checking account and that I was in good shape.  As a result, by the time I knew that the payment hadn’t gone through; I no longer had the funds to make the payment.  Now they want two months worth of a payment (and they’ve charged me a late/returned payment fee.)  I hold them partially responsible because while they have both my phone number (they’ve called when I was a day late with the payment) and my e-mail address (I get receipts for my on-line payments this way), they’ve made no effort to contact me about this other than to send me a letter that didn’t arrive for five days after the payment was reversed, but I recognize that it is ultimately my own responsibility which is why it’s so difficult for me to tolerate the situation.

For as long as I can remember I have been living paycheck to paycheck and I just can’t take it anymore.  So I made the very difficult decision to discontinue therapy for the foreseeable future (Deb, my therapist, called it a hiatus – which I much prefer.)  Starting with my next paycheck I’ll have an additional $500.00 to $550.00 a month (the Health Care Spending account – for my invisalign – deductions were pre-tax so I don’t know how that will all shake out.)  It is my intention to pay off my credit cards and cancel two of the three, and get my bills back to current and stay on top of them.  I want to get some money in savings.  I would also like to start paying ahead on my car and get that expense paid off as quickly as possible.

Recently when I decided I want to go to college and I began to contemplate the prospect of moving to New York and living with my sister and her family and what that would mean for me, I realized that I needed to get back to therapy.  I shouldn’t be allowed to make a decision like this alone.  It’s much too big.

I wish I could say I’ve learned all my lessons.  I wish I could say that the credit cards are all paid off and there’s money in the bank and I’m ahead on my car payments and that everything is fine.  I wish I could say I was a different person now.  I can’t.

I’ve gotten things more under control and I’m current with all my utilities, for now.  I’ve gotten my credit card balances paid down enough that I’m not in danger of going over the limit if anything goes wrong.  Unfortunately, the credit cards are not paid off as I hoped they would be and I have found it more difficult to make the large payments on them I wanted to be making.

I’ve gotten somewhat complacent about it.  It’s important to make these large payments on the cards, and I do, but then, I run out of money (because I spent it all paying the cards off) and so I use the cards to get through till payday.  This is a counter productive strategy and I’m already working on reversing that pattern.  But now I’ve added the cost of therapy to the budget and I’m not sure, yet, how that’s going to impact things.  Unfortunately, in my absence my therapist raised her rate and since I pay out of pocket, that really sucks but I’ll deal with it.

I had a strategy worked out regarding school, or so I thought.  And when I realized that strategy wasn’t going to work and that there were no other obvious solutions, I began to fret and things became very muddled and cloudy in my mind.  This is what happens to me when things don’t just happen, when things don’t just work, when things don’t just make sense.  I’m a very intelligent person and a lot of things do just make sense, but when they don’t it’s very frustrating and the factors become incoherent for me.  Everything runs together.  It’s like a part of my brain just wants to shut down.  Things start sounding like they’re written for someone who already understands them.  So all the factors and circumstances are bleeding over onto one another and I was beginning to lose focus… and I was beginning to lose hope.  And then the lack of focus and hope spreads, and I’m not just hopeless about the particular issue, but hopeless about everything.  This is how depression starts for me, and that is not something I want to experience again.

So I had my first therapy session in nearly six months yesterday and it was really nice.  I am, by no means, any closer to figuring out what I’m going to do, but I’m not so cloudy anymore.  I have hope.

And that feels best of all!