Feeling Put Upon

The Saturday of Labor Day weekend, Olivia woke up around 8am. She then talked at me for the next hour and a half while I lay dosing, trying to ignore her need to get up and go.

I finally dragged my lazy carcass out of bed at 9:30 but I certainly didn’t want to. The day went downhill from there.

I’d mentioned to Tom earlier in the week that I was going to paint the bathroom.

That morning he asked me what color. I told him. Then he asked me what color I wanted to paint the front door. See, I’d mentioned that to him earlier in the week too.

I hemmed and hawed on answering that one because I didn’t really care to hear his opinion on my thoughts. Dude has an opinion on everything. EVERYTHING. And see, the thing is, his opinions are always so strong. It’s never, eh, I don’t mind that. It’s always a sure and confidents yes or no.

It’s infuriating.

Except that morning all his opinions did was make me weepy.

I did tell him that it wasn’t him, it was me. I didn’t know why but my emotions were very close to the surface and those emotions were all sunshine and roses. They were teary and sad and angry emotions.

We made it to my mom’s house without any actual tears falling, though things were cloudy on the way.

Tom called me on our way to town to tell me that he didn’t actually care what color I chose to paint the front door.

That was nice.

See, once upon a time, very early in our marriage, I painted our laundry room a bright apple green.

He hated it. He hated it so much that he can’t imagine me NOT picking another horrible color for any part of our house.

But guess what? I learned from that. I don’t go all willy-nilly with my paint colors anymore. See my previous post about the nice cool white I picked for the bathroom.

So give the green a freaking rest, is what I’m saying. It’s been at least fifteen years since I did that. I’m not a bright eyed 35 year old with apples in her eyes and confidence in her choices anymore.

Whew, it feels good to get that out.

We made it to Menards and headed to the paint department. Let me tell you, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend is not the time to go to Menards. When we arrived, there were three carts available for use by the front door. The rest were scattered about the store, in use by the seventy million other customers.

My mom pointed down an aisle in the paint section and said, “The Rustoleum is at the end.”

I started down the aisle but couldn’t see the stupid Rustoleum and stopped halfway. I didn’t quite stomp my foot but I did give out a plaintive, “Where am I going?”

Yes, it was incredibly whiny. Yes, I hated myself so much in that moment. But I was so tired and felt so put upon by the entire world.

My girls are so amazing. They both just rolled with my stupid whiny mood. They laughed at me as I behaved like a brat. They didn’t take my bitchiness personally (I hope) and they just let me wallow in my mood.

We went to lunch, which helped because hello Applebee’s chicken fajita roll and strawberry lemonade.

Walmart was the worst but by then I’d expected just that and so I made my way through the store with as much stoicism as I could and finally, at home, I was done.

There was no paint prep that Saturday. There was very little laundry done. I did not vacuum.

Tom left to go…somewhere that afternoon. Alyssa went out with N and so Liv and I had noodles for dinner. It was comforting and just what we needed.

The next day, I was back to fine. I felt god enough, emotionally and physically to paint the bathroom and do laundry and cook so I’m calling that weekend a wash.

Smelly

Olivia and I go to my mom’s house at least twice a week during the work week.

I walk in the door each afternoon around 5pm and she greets me with, “Can we got to Gram’s?”

Sometimes I groan and tell her that I’m tired and just want to be home.

But other times, I hand her my phone, tell her to call Gram and see if she even wants company (if she’s home, she’s ALWAYS up for our visit) and off we go.

I do realize that O is stuck at home all day every day and so our visits to Gram are her way out of those four walls. Poor kid has had quite the sucky summer.

One recent afternoon we arrived at Casa Gram’s and found the dear woman hard at work canning relish. Olivia walked in and gagged at the smell. There was a strong smell of vinegar in the air.

After about fifteen minutes, Liv was able to remove her mask (she was ever so glad she had it) and declared that she’d gone ‘nose-blind’ and was able to breathe without gagging. She’s a funny girl.

After an hour or so Olivia and I left and once in the car, I declared that our car smelled very much like Gram’s relish. It wasn’t so much unpleasant as it was…there.

I smelled myself just to make sure the smell really was from the relish and not because my deodorant had stopped working.

Yikes. I reeked.

When we got home, I immediately added ‘new deodorant’ to our grocery list. I figured my body had done that thing where it just stops letting the deodorant work and my natural stench was pushing its way through. Not a pleasant thought. I wondered if I’d stunk all day at work but everyone was just too polite to say anything. What a horrible thought.

I have this real fear of being the stinky girl that everyone notices but no one lets in on the secret of the stench.

But wait! After dinner (and being disgusted by my own smell) I went up to take a shower and de-stink myself.

Guess what?

When I took off my shirt and sniffed myself sans shirt, there was no stink. I didn’t have horrible body odor after all.

I retrieved the shirt I’d just shed and sniffed. Yuck!

It wasn’t me. It was the shirt. The shirt I’d been wearing at my mom’s had absorbed ALL THE SMELLS and was horrible.

But man was I relieved to not be the stinky chick. If people at work are talking about me (and I seriously doubt they are. I try hard to blend into the woodwork) it’s not because I’m smelly. I take a lot of comfort in that knowledge.

I’m leaving ‘new deodorant’ on the grocery list, though. I’m going to buy a brand I don’t currently have so that I have new on hand just in case my current choice does stop working.

One can never be too prepared when it comes to stink prevention.

Job Hunting Etiquette

So I worked in HR for almost 18 years.

These days, I’m on the periphery of HR. And honestly, I’m okay with that. I have no desire to be back in the conference room conducting interviews and filling out reviews and sitting in on meetings issuing warnings or even, heaven forbid, terminations.

No thank you.

But since I’m still here, on the edges of it all, I have a bit of advice for anyone out there on the job hunt.

First, an interview is your chance to make a first impression. So…maybe shower the day of your interview and wear clean clothes. I know, this seems so obvious. You’d be surprised by how many people don’t do these things. I’ve had to spray the area around my desk more times than I can count in an effort to mask body odor and/or cigarette smoke.

That brings me to the second hint. If you smoke, well, obviously, you should quit but I get that it’s harder than I think. But, um, maybe don’t sit in an enclose car and puff away at that last cigarette right before entering the building where you interview is taking place. The haze of smoke is blinding and it causes more gagging than you may realize. Ick.

I mean, okay. I get that maybe you’re nervous and so you need that last cigarette. But perhaps you could finish it a few minutes early and get out of the car and let the wind blow the stink off for a bit before heading inside the building.

Third, let’s say you decide to apply for a job at the same place your significant other is applying. Good for you two for wanting to work. That’s awesome. And hey, if your interviews are back to back on the same day, I get needing to bring your kids with you. No big deal there.

But…see, if your significant other is called and invited back for a second interview, maybe DON’T send the hiring manager a snippy little email that says, “Guess I didn’t make the cut.”

Yes, that happened. Talk about burning bridges.

Why would you do that?

You don’t know if maybe the significant other was just a better fit for the position the hiring manager happened to have open at that moment. You could very well be the next on the list for the very next job opening but if you’re going to show that kind of attitude before you’re even on the payroll…guess who isn’t going to end up on the payroll at all.

Another suggestion is to maybe take your facial piercings out before the interview. I know that these days these things are much more acceptable than they were even ten years ago, but damn. When you’re face has more holes than…something with a lot of holes, maybe don’t wear the three lip rings, the tongue stud and the eyebrow ring for that first interview. The green hair probably can’t be changed as easily but the piercings…they just kind of put some people off.

I know I’m showing my age here. I am very much a member of Generation X and it shows. But damn, people.

Snob?

When I graduated from high school, I worked for a year and then headed to college. I was home for maybe three months after college before moving to Indianapolis for a year and then to Chicago for four years.

So, after high school, I lived in the area of my childhood home for a maximum of a year and a half before I was thirty.

At work the other day, a woman stopped in from a fork lift repair company. When I got up to greet her, she immediately said, “Tommie?”

I narrowed my eyes at her, as if trying to recognize her face and said, “Yes?”

She laughed and said, “We went to school together!”

Really?

She did not look AT ALL familiar. She said her name. Yeah, still not ringing any bells.

She said she’d been in the same class as my brother.

Let me remind you that my closest-in-age brother was FIVE years behind me in school. (My next closet-in-age brother was thirteen years behind me in school but he went to a different school and so no one from his class EVER recognizes me, thank goodness.)

You know how teenagers are. I had no freaking clue who was in his class. Why would I?

She then said that her brother had been in my class.

Oh.

Well then.

Yeah, I didn’t remember him either. He was one of the three Jasons in my class. I was besties with one of them.

That one was not her brother.

So…I vaguely remember his last name but not him. Not at all.

Was I a snob in high school?

Does it even really matter if I was?

I see people out and about all the time who stop me, ask me if I am me and then talk to me like we’re long lost best friends.

After chatting for a bit, ‘catching up’ if you will, we’ll part ways and Alyssa will whisper, “Who was that?”

And I’ll whisper back, “I have no idea.”

She always laughs at me because I never recognize people I went to school with.

I’m sorry but I was away for over a decade. I didn’t hang out with the people in my twenties or even my thirties. We’ve all changed (though, maybe I haven’t that much, except that I’ve ‘swelled’ as Joan Cusack’s character from Grosse Pointe Blank so brilliantly put it.)

I’ve made ‘friends’ with a lot of these people in social media but I don’t stalk their feeds or check out their lives. I have my own life to live over here.

After this woman spent about ten minutes gossiping about people she thought I knew from high school, including my high school boyfriend who I broke up with over thirty years ago (boy did she dish on that creep, not that I cared one way or the other), she left her contact information for our maintenance manager and exited the building. A co-worker who was waiting to use the bathroom asked me if I’d known that woman.

Nope, I said. I then explained about how I was apparently a snob in high school.

Bless her, this co-worker said, “Maybe you were, but then again, maybe you’ve moved beyond high school and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

I think I like that woman a lot. I’m grateful to be beyond high school and all that entailed.

Reason #7064 Why I Need to Chill

Last week I suffered a great deal of angst over the whole physical therapy thing. I was stressed over having to drive five thousand miles on a regular basis just to have my stupid arm massaged to make sure it doesn’t balloon into a cartoon version of itself.

This was on top of the fact that my doctor makes me feel like Fatty McObesity.

So I was kind of a bitch at home for a few nights.

I skipped a few dinners to punish myself for being…well, me.

I also walked and was miffed when Tom and Olivia wanted to walk with me because, hello, they don’t need to be punished!!

I took a few breaths, slept pretty well for a couple of nights and ended up calling the original physical therapy place back to schedule a consult.

I figured I could drive the million miles for a consult. Consulting with a PT didn’t mean I HAD to go back for any more therapy.

Basically, I started to get my shit together.

The very next day after I called the clinic that is on the other side of the sun and scheduled an appointment, I received call from the rehabilitation center at my local hospital telling me they’d received orders from my doctor referring me for physical therapy for lymphedema and did I want to schedule an appointment for the next week?

This would require a drive of two miles from my work to the hospital for this therapy.

Yes.

If I’d just chilled my stupid butt out, it all would have worked out without a lot of angst and tears and pissing my poor husband off.

Sigh. I might never learn but I am going to try.

See, wait. To give myself a little credit, the scheduler (Sandy) at the doctor’s office TOLD me to call the PT office that I originally called. At first, she wanted them to call me once she’d sent them the doctor’s referral. She had my cell # but I told her I didn’t receive calls while I was at work and that I didn’t have any voice mail set up.

Since I’m technologically challenged, she said she’d send the PT orders to IPT (the original clinic) and I could call them myself to schedule the appointment.

When I first called, the day I declared I was NOT driving to Pluto for therapy, the person answering the phone did not see any referrals for me.

What I think happened is that Sandy called IPT, they told her that their clinic is in the Delta Quadrant (REALLY FREAKING FAR AWAY) and so she decided to call the hospital’s physical therapy clinic, which is practically in my lap. Since they had openings, she sent THEM my referral and, hey, would you look at that, they called me a mere two days after my original doctor’s appointment.

Whew.

What a mess. But really, the mess is only in my head and that’s clearing, just as I knew it would. It always does. Those first couple of days after the appointment are always so awful and I know, logically, that things always get better. I need to remember to just keep to myself for a couple of days and my stupid mood will even out, I’ll calm down and everything will work out.

A Starting Line

So…yeah.

I read the blog of a lovely woman who has 14 kids. She’s adopted some, birthed some. Some are typical, some have special needs.

This woman recently wrote a post about her daily, hour-long workouts and what she likes (and doesn’t) like to eat.

She said she’s 5’7” and before starting her workouts, she weighed 125lbs.

Yes.

And she confessed that she hates to eat.

What?

I mean…for real?

She also admitted that she knows she can’t afford to lose even a single pound.

OMG.

Whatever.

Except, okay. Sure. There are must be people out there who don’t like to eat, who have incredibly high metabolisms and who struggle to gain weight.

I’m obviously NOT one of those people.

I want to lose weight.

I do.

I just don’t know, right this second, how to even get started.

I’d love to exercise. I mean, if I could find an exercise that I didn’t hate and that didn’t make me breathe hard and sweat and feel gross, sure, I’d love to do that.

I was a naturally thin kid. I ran, I rode my bike, I played tennis against the roof of our house for hours. I mowed the lawn, an acre with a push mower. I moved a lot and didn’t even think about my body.

I think about my stupid body all the freaking time these days. I hate my body so much. I hate my stupid feet, my horrible stomach, my disgusting boobs. I hate my jiggly arms and my short neck. I hate my thighs and my chubby cheeks.

I know that’s awful. I’m sorry.

But I need to start somewhere. I need to find a way to motivate myself to NOT eat all the chocolate covered raisins; to not eat my weight (which is considerable…) in Suzy-Qs.

I need to WANT to go for a walk, to fight the pain my feet and just get off my giant butt and MOVE.

What do I start?

How does one start working out for an hour every single day?

I only have two kids and I can’t imagine finding the time to work out daily for an hour. I just…can’t.

I know I will never be that person who gets up early to work out. And once I’m home, I can’t imagine actually leaving my family again to go workout. So…what do I do? Where do I start?

How do I fix myself?

File Under: Advice I Hope I Never Have to Remind Myself to Take

So back in the day when I was receiving my first four rounds of chemo, my worst days after the chemotherapy treatment were Friday and Saturday immediately following the Tuesday that I received the treatment.

Fridays were awful with the body aches and the general lethargy.

Saturdays were a little better but the, um, intestinal distress kicked in then. Not horrible, nothing uncontrollable but still, distressing.

The routing in our house is that the girls and I buy groceries every Saturday after we’ve gone to lunch so as to not go to the grocery store hungry.

I never missed a Saturday during those nine weeks of receiving A/C chemo (adriamyacin and cyclophosphamide.) Looking back, I know that the reason I insisted on going to the store even on those Saturdays following a chemo treatment was because I didn’t want to admit that chemotherapy was affecting me enough to actually change my routine.

I didn’t want my cancer or the treatment necessary to ever affect my girls.

I know now, though, that it would have been okay to stay home on those Saturdays. The grocery shopping could have happened on Sunday or any other day of the week.

I didn’t have to push myself to be ‘normal.’

My life wasn’t normal at that point. I should have accepted the non-normal issues I faced and rested.

In the end, no one was hurt by my need for normalcy. We got through. Sure, I had to take more than a couple of bathroom breaks in Walmart on those Saturdays but I got through.

But if I could tell my past-self (or anyone else just getting a diagnosis and starting treatment) anything at all, it would be to let go, even just a little, of the need for ‘normal.’ It’s okay to admit that you don’t feel good. It’s okay to admit that chemo is hard. IT IS HARD. And it’s okay to not be able to do the things you did before chemo. Things will get better. They’ll get back to normal. And that normal may look a little different from the old normal but that’s okay too. You’ve been through a lot. Take the time to be kind to yourself. Let your friends and family be kind to you. But also, if it will cause you more stress to not buy those groceries, well then just buy the groceries. Do what you need to do to get through this day and handle tomorrow as it comes.