Too Much Going On

I am at the hospital with my mother in law. My stress level is extremely high. The Hubby is exhausted with working overtime and coming to the hospital after work. I worry about him. Our relationship with his family has always been shaky so these times add extra stress. His mother is not well and is currently living with The Hubby's grandparents, which is not a good situtation becasue both The Hubby's mom and grandfather require constant care by his grandmother. I don't know what we are going to do, but something has to be done. His grandmother is taking care of both of them and she doesn't need to keep doing so. Moving his mother in with us is not the answer because I am not stable enough to take care of anyone and I would be the one taking care of her because The Hubby is the major bread winner in the home. Plus, I think she needs professional care. She is too sick for non medical personell to be taking care of her.
I had my first therapy session with my new therapist today. It went well and I really like her. Things got off to a rough start because the office was in chaos when I arrived because someone didn't show up for work. The therapist was late getting to me because she didn't even know I was there. I was getting anxious while waiting and almost left but I stayed and I am glad I did. There was quite a bit of internal struggle about going at all because I have had maybe 6 hours sleep in the past 3 nights due to The Hubby's family being at our house and his mother being in the hospital so I almost blew the appointment off in leiu of sleep. I was proud of myself for reasoning myself into going because I realized I wouldn't actually sleep if I blew the appointment off so I made myself go. I must admit though that I didn't get a shower in and my hair is unbrushed and in a pony tail. I pray that I don't look or smell offensive.
A leave of absence from work may be in my future because I feel myself spiraling downhill. I don't have much vacation and sick time at work but I do have FMLA and short term disability, but I don't know what that covers. Trying to go through the channels of finding out overwhelms me, which is probably another sign that I need to do it. Sadly, I haven't even had a chance to talk with The Hubby about this yet. He is always supportive, so I am not worried about that, I just don't want to stress him out more. Of course pushing myself until I am back in the hospital again would certainly stress him out, so maybe a leave of absence would be best for all. I just hate doing it. The other issue is that my boss would end up finding out that I am crazy. I know there are laws and stuff but it will be obvious when my paper work comes from a psychiatrist. I dread them finding out. Honestly, I know my boss would be understanding but still...

Tiny Giraffe Kisses To Everyone!

The Homeless Gentelman and His Dog

The Hubby and I were on our way home from dinner last night when I spotted a homeless gentleman and his dog walking on the side of the highway. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that gets to me more than a homeless person and their dog. Due to the fact that we are involved in dog rescue we usually have dog food in our car at all times. Thankfully, last night was no exception. As with all of my attempt at good deeds lately, I came very close to screwing this one up as well. When we first spotted the gentleman and his dog they were on the opposite side of the highway so I had to exit the highway and turn around. By the time we got back to where we saw him they had disappeared. After a few minutes of looking and going up and down the highway we were able to find him. The Hubby was kind enough to get out and give the food to the gentleman while I stayed in the car for safety reasons. People are notorious for going 80 miles an hour down that stretch of highway and my door was to the side of traffic. I watched as The Hubby greeted the gentleman and his dog. Both were kind and excited to meet The Hubby. The sweet doggy jumped up and said hello and The Hubby gave him some petting and loving. The gentleman shook The Hubby’s hand and thanked him for the food and the measly $8 we had in cash. I am sad that there are no shelters in the Dallas/Fort Worth area for homeless people and their pets. This made me wonder if there were any shelters at all like that in the country. Oddly enough when we got home I was watching Pit Boss on Animal Planet and the show was about that exact subject. The Pit Bull rescue was doing a blanket drive for a shelter that specifically shelters those who are homeless and have pets. This of course was in Los Angeles, but it made me feel a tiny bit better that somewhere there is a place for these amazing folks who have so little and chose to share what little they have with a dog who is most likely their only companion in life, and possibly the only live being who gives them unconditional love, friendship, joy, comfort, and respect.

Tiny Giraffe Kisses To Everyone!

Just Because I Don't Believe In The Bible

Just because I don’t believe in the Bible or in God doesn’t mean I am a bad person or that I have no morals. I don’t believe in murder, I hate to see others hurt or in pain, I try to treat others as I would like to be treated, I am faithful to my husband, I do my best to help those in need and have even made it my life’s work…I just don’t need a deity or a holy book to tell me I have to do all of those things. I choose to do them on my own. I also don’t need the threat of hell, horrific afterlives, or bad karma to make me “do the right thing”. This is a choice I make on my own without coercion or threat from religion and other organized belief systems. Am I perfect? Not by a long shot. Is my imperfection due to a lack of religion? No, it’s due to being human.

Tiny Giraffe Kisses To Everyone!

Not Much Better

I got some really good sleep last night so that has helped my mental stability a little bit but not a lot. At least it is some improvement. Of course, I am off of work today so that means I have skirted my responsibilities and am not fully functioning.

My husband got the carpet pulled up in our bedroom and painted the floor. While this is something that we have wanted to do for years now it means our house is in disarray, even more so than normal. This has me highly stressed out. The bed is in the living room, the dresser in the master bathroom, the night stands are in the hallway, the clothes are in the dinning room. I am about to lose my mind. My aunt has done so much to help us get the house in order and now it feels like the house is back to where we started. I pray that once the bedroom gets put back together and I no longer have bedroom furniture strewn all over the house I will start to feel better.

I also saw my psychiatrist yesterday and she raised my antidepressant dosage. Next week I will also start therapy again. It worries me a little because it is one other thing on my plate. Obviously, it is completely necessary so I will have to make it work.

Tonight I am meeting with a lady who is interested in adopting Shandy. I really need this to work out. She is impossible around Kya and it is not fair to Kya. We also really need a break. Having 6 dogs in the house is completely overwhelming. I feel so guilty for taking a break, but I am close to falling apart.

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Falling Apart

Well Kya went to the vet today. I wanted her to have a check up because she has been having chronic diarrhea for the past month. The lady that we got her from had her on Albon and some probiotics with only minimal results. We were informed by the vet that chronic diarrhea in cats is the hardest thing to diagnose and treat. I find this a bit overwhelming and it breaks my heart for our little Kya. A fecal exam was done and was negative but he gave her a dewormer anyway because he was not able to get a whole lot for the fecal exam and he said that sometimes there can be bad stuff in the upper GI tract that doesn’t show up in the fecal. The vet also prescribed and anti diarrhea medication (Pro-Pectalin Gel), a prescription diet for sensitive stomachs (EN Purina). I pray this gives us some results.

One of our foster dogs, Shandy, is about to drive me crazy as well. She just won’t give Kya a minutes rest. We have been in the process of getting her adopted but it won’t happen overnight and it’s never a guarantee that the adoption won’t fall through at the last minute. It’s not as simple as moving her to another foster home either because the group is low on foster homes. We are unsure of the best way to handle the situation because this is the only dog in the house that can jump a baby gate so that doesn't help to keep Shandy contained. Shandy means no harm at all. She just wants to play but that doesn’t make Kya feel any better. Kya was around dogs her whole life, but Shandy is a little over bearing. There is an extra bedroom in our house that is vacant and we have turned it into Kya’s Room, but I don’t want her separated from me at all. Keeping the foster sequestered is hard because she barks incessantly and it stresses both Kya and me out. I am trying to find comfort in the fact that this situation is not going to last forever because Shandy will be adopted eventually, but I am impatient and want Kya to be able to get used to her new home.

This leads me into another issue. We have made the hard decision to quit fostering for a little while once these two fosters have been adopted or moved. This isn’t a permanent change and we will continue to do transport and other volunteer work, but our pack needs a break and I need a break. We tried to take a break earlier this year but the guilt got to me and I gave in and ended up with two fosters. I am hoping I can stick to the plan better this time.

My mental health feels like it is faltering. My stress level is through the roof, focus is non existent, and I am starting to not function well. I called in sick to work today and already called in for tomorrow too. I feel like I am starting to fall apart. I hate this. With my aunt’s help I am finally getting my house in order but I am starting to fall apart in every other way. That is always my problem. I can’t seem to get more than one thing in order at a time. These are the times I begin to hate myself.

Tiny Giraffe Kisses To Everyone!

More Kya Pics!

Kya is doing well. She slept under the covers last night all warm and toasty. Isn't she beautiful!?

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Introducing Kya!!!!!!!!

Introducing Princess Kya! Kya is a 5 year old Sphynx. Recently Kya’s family fell apart leaving her and her Sphynx brothers and sisters in need of a new family. Thankfully her owner, who had showed and bred her for many years, turned her over to another breeder who agreed to find them good and loving homes. My hubby and I got lucky enough to hear about Kya (Thank you Laura and Brandon) and went and met her today and instantly fell in love. We are so thankful for Rhonda (the breeder that agreed to find the orphaned cats homes) and her efforts to make sure these babies found homes.

Kya has been having some tummy troubles lately so she will be at the vet first thing Monday morning. Rhonda has been working hard to try and get this cleared up and it has gotten better, but we all feel that another vet visit is called for. Plus, she still needs to be spayed. There will be no more breeding for this precious girl! Her working days are over!

For those that are not familiar with the Sphynx breed, they are indeed hairless. Many people think they look funny or ugly, but my hubby and I happen to think they are very unique, exotic, and beautiful. So if you happen to think she is ugly or weird looking kindly keep your opinion to yourself. Sphynx kitties are also VERY loving and loyal and have amazing personalities. They are highly intelligent and easier to train than other breeds. Another great quality is that they are a hearty breed without a whole lot of health problems that sometimes plague other breeds.

Here are a few professional pictures that were taken at one of the many cat shows she has done. Rhonda was kind enough to pass these along to me. I will add some more pictures soon.

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Evil Women From Work!

This won’t be the nicest or most sensitive of posts that I will ever write. Please forgive me for that; I just happen to be really pissed off at the moment. I am so sick of some of these bitches that I work with. The funny thing about the situation is that the two of the worst ones are the “Christians” who are always talking about what wonderful “Christians” they are and then turn around and stab people in the back and say the UGLIEST things about people. Seriously, in less than one minute they will go from praising God for some random and stupid event (like finding a file that they had misplaced) to badmouthing their coworkers for any number of reasons.

For those who follow me on Facebook some of this will be a rehash of events over the past few weeks but I feel like I need to tell the whole story in order to really be able to let go.

One of the women that I am referring to was a “best friend”. I will refer to her as Y. She is a single mom with 4 wonderful kids. Due to the fact that she is a single mom (and that she is manipulative beyond belief) my husband and I began to help her out when we could. We spent about $1,000 on them at Christmas, buying the children a Nintendo Wii and her a Coach bag. Then the oldest made the drill team at school which was $800. Due to the fact that Y is a single mom with four kids she could not afford to pay that kind of money for extracurricular activities, my husband and I paid for that because Y’s daughter is a great kid and does well in school. Plus, I am a firm believer that the more involved kids are in extracurricular activities at school the less trouble they will get into.

Things started to go down hill with Y during this time. I guess part of the reason is that I was starting to spend more time with her and see who she really was. Being at her house was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for me because of the way she would yell and scream at the children, even with me present. Then she constantly griped to me about what a problem the oldest child was and how horrible she was. When I would ask Y about what was going on, Y would say that the oldest was just disrespectful and talked back to her all of the time. This just didn’t seem to be a good enough reason to bad mouth your own daughter in the way that Y did. She then started to threaten to take the oldest out of drill team even after my husband and I had paid so much money for her to be in it. This became a weekly drama, kind of like an on again off again relationship. The drama was just never ending. Again, the only reason behind Y wanting to take the oldest off of the drill team was because she was being disrespectful. She wasn’t failing school, sneaking out, getting in trouble at school, stealing, or getting in trouble with the law. I tried my best to remind myself that these were Y’s kids and she has the right to raise them the way she wants, but we had talked about this with her before we paid all of the money for the oldest to be on drill team. We had told Y that this was a big commitment for us and we didn’t want her to take the oldest off of drill team as punishment (unless it was for failing school, which the school would kick her off the team automatically) and she agreed.

Next came the parent meetings and fundraisers that Y expected me to do. Really? I just forked over $800 but she can’t go to a parent meeting or do the fundraisers (which simply include selling concessions at football games and dance shows). I finally told her this last weekend that I would not be doing the meetings and fundraisers and that I felt her expectations of me doing so were overwhelming.

The last straw was when she had made a comment about the kid’s cell phones being turned off because the bill was due. She made the comment that she couldn’t pay it. My hubby and I talked about it and decided to pay it for her. This was met with a phone call from Y in which she cussed me out, yelled at me and told me that I would be reversing the payment immediately. I even took off work the next day to take care of getting the payment reversed. When I went back to work the day after that she accused me of lying to her about getting the payment reversed. Thankfully, I had the receipt from the payment reversal with me and went down to my car to get it. She then chewed me out AGAIN because I was angry with her for accusing me of lying. Sadly, it took me a while to realize that I don’t deserve to be treated this way at all!

Two weeks ago things really came to a head at work. Two of my other coworkers finally broke thier silence and we all began to compare notes and what do you know? She is a manipulative, back stabbing, bad mouthing, lying Bitch! She had told my coworkers that the day things went down about the phone bill she was reprimanding me because I was disrespectful to our boss! That is soooooo laughable for anyone who truly knows me. Plus, Y has no right to reprimand me in any way, shape or form since she is below me on the totem poll at work (I don’t like looking at things like that because I think what we all do is important, I don’t care if you are the janitor or CEO, but I am angry and trying to make a point so please forgive). She was also telling people that I am always sneaking food at my desk and that my drawers at work are full of food that I sneak through out the day. All of this is really funny since I don’t keep ANY food at my desk and I don’t ever sneak around and eat. She knew this would hurt me though because she knows I am self conscious about my weight. Though she shouldn’t be talking because she isn’t thin either and hides food from her kids and sneaks around eating it so she doesn’t have to share with them.

The things she said about my coworkers were unforgivable though. Y was spreading rumors about one coworker (I will call her A) saying that the A’s husband was sleeping with someone else and even had a love child with that woman. I was shocked to hear this because there appeared to be nothing amiss with A. Y continued to bad mouth that coworker saying that A was fake and was just trying to save face because A thought she was better than everybody else. Come to find out it wasn’t A’s husband that had been cheating it was Y’s husband who had cheated on her and had a baby with another woman.

Everything kind of blew up this past Friday. I wasn’t at work because my cousin had come into town. I had not seen her in 20 years and she was coming to see her sister (my other cousin Gwen) due to her recent cervical cancer diagnosis. Anyway, Y proceeded to call me 9 times, text me 3 times and PM me once through Facebook. Can we say psycho? She said she didn’t understand why I didn’t want to be her friend anymore and that she didn’t have time to talk about anyone behind their back because she was dealing with breast cancer. Now, to be honest, none of us at work really believe her about having breast cancer. Even if it is true, I am still not going to be your friend out of pity. Just because you have cancer doesn’t mean you get to treat me like shit and I have to take it. Plus she needs to learn the right way to treat people. Besides, if you’re an island you don’t go around burning bridges!

It’s sad though because I really think Y is just miserable and jealous. She resents her oldest daughter because she had her at such a young age. She resents the fact that A and I both have good men who love us. She resents my other coworker because she is single and not tied down by 4 children. She resents me and my hubby because we are able to spoil ourselves because we don’t have the financial responsibility of 4 children.

Now Y is all chummy with the other “Christian” at work (I will call her Q), who she used to bad mouth all of the time for being a fake Christian. Such a sick mess of people really. I am so tired of it. It is to the point now that I just want to vomit every time I see their face or hear their voice. Now I just ignore them to the best of my ability. Sometimes it is hard though.

One of my coworkers told me today that Q was talking to Y the other day and badmouthing me because I took all of the pics I had of Y’s kids down from my cubicle. Q said something snide about the fact that I have more pics of dogs up in my cubicle than I do of people. Yep, I do, and both Y and Q are the reasons I sometimes prefer dogs over people. Seriously, who would you rather spend your time with, Y and Q or my sweet Skittle, Budddy, Tuggy or Jazzy? Hell, I would rather spend time with a rabid dog than Y and Q!

Tiny Giraffe Kisses To Everyone!

So Far So Good

Well today has been going well so far. Another day of productivity at work and the day isn't even over yet. I am still experiencing a bit of a sore throat and a cough but it's getting better, not worse. Both will probably be gone by tomorrow.
It may seem pessimistic to say this, but I wish I could know how long this good phase will last before I crash and burn. When you have BPD it is inevitable that you will crash and burn as some point no matter how good you have been doing and how long you have been doing good. The most irritating part is you have no idea when that will be and how much “sanity” you have left until all reason, energy and mental wellness drains out of you. Sometimes it is a slow trickle and I feel sanity leaving a small bit at a time and I have time to prepare or prevent, but other times it’s like a dam breaks and the stability and rationality rushes out as the darkness, loneliness and insanity floods me without warning. It’s kind of like hurricanes and tornadoes. Sometimes I get warnings like you do with a hurricane, days in advance with plenty of time for preparations. Other times are like tornadoes, with only minutes or seconds of warning and I have no time to get to a stable structure. For now I will try and enjoy the good times. I sure hope they last.

Tiny Giraffe Kisses To Everyone!!!

Good Day - Balanced

It was an amazingly balanced and good day. For the first time in weeks I was productive at work. Then, I got some errands done on my way home. Once home I mopped my kitchen floor and cleaned up piddle on the living room floor. I sure hope this lasts! I wish I could bottle this and save it for those bad days that come and hit me like a bus. It's crazy when I compare where I am today to where I was just a week ago! I HATE BPD! I just want to be stable, to know that I can count on how I am going to function from one day to the next.

Tiny Giraffe Kisses To Everyone!