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You can call me Al. 🎶

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Truly, I have never worked with such incredible people. (See previous post for handwritten context.)

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Wes’ mom passed away yesterday. I am … feeling very matter-of-fact about it. I’m sad for everyone who is sad about it, without any judgement of my own, but I’m feeling very unaffected personally. Unusually so, I thought at first. I asked my coach if this was fucking weird because it feels so unlike me, and she said it was healthy in a different way than grieving is healthy, but still healthy nonetheless. Wes’ mom was an extreme alcoholic who lost her will to live after her abusive boyfriend died 3 months ago. The situation is deeply sad. Lots of people are sad that she’s gone. I am not, and it was an incredibly weird realization that I’m not, but it makes sense.

I spent the better part of a decade running damage control in the aftermath of other people’s dealings with her, people I love. For ten years, all I saw was the raw and ugly side of how she impacted people I care deeply and protectively for—both before and after I understood (was reminded) that addiction is devastation. I picked up pieces of things and relationships she broke, over and over, instead of having any type of relationship with her myself, a lot of which was my choice. I grieved my own loss of her as my favorite aunt, as someone in my huge fucked up family I actually had a relationship with at all, long ago. I accepted that she would probably not ever change, and I accepted that she would probably continue being cruel to people who attempted to help her until she died. (That remained true.) I took on a significant role in raising Wes, which I was terribly unequipped to do, because of her and her refusal to seek and accept help before it got capital-B Bad. (I’ve worked through all sorts of other feelings of how my own parents affected all of this too.) Wes’ mom had a heavy, uncomfortable indirect effect on me for a long, long time that I couldn’t escape and I’ve harbored an incredible amount of anger and resentment towards her for it and because of my often strained relationship with Wes in all its varying stages ever since my parents took him in ten years ago. I went through all the stages of grief about her while she was still alive and only yesterday realized that I had reached this weird finality, some strange kind of acceptance without knowing it some time ago. And now she is gone. All of the anger and resentment that has existed in me all this time, this quiet but powerful little frequency with nowhere to go—I can finally set it down. I don’t feel sad, I feel relief. I feel worry too, I am worried for deeply self-destructive Wes, but more than anything I’m just fucking sad for him. I have been for a while. I’ve finally arrived at the realization that I can be sad for him from a distance if he, too, refuses to seek and accept help. I hope he chooses light when he can and support when he can’t. I hope, I hope.

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I think I want to move back to Chicago.

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Here are the things I want to do, in no particular order and with varying degrees of certainty:

• Move home (ugh why can’t I create a bulleted list on mobile anyway my mom’s starting to age, I mean she’s fine but her knees got bad fast and now my aunt drives her around while her doctors figure out when they can give her whatever magic shots she gets, meanwhile I’m over here gallivanting around in Colorado not appreciating nature and shit—it should be me driving her around, getting her groceries, whatever I can. I can do my gallivanting in Chicago surrounded by much better food.)

• Start my own company / work for myself / be a girl boss / whatever the fuck — I want to keep doing what I’m doing, just not for a single company (I am also terrified of not having steady income at 37, not having insurance, not being good at sales ever, fuck)

• Get a boob job (will I have kids? Who knows/cares)

• Repossess the car I bought for Wes in 2021 (told you we had a lot to catch up on)

• Complain about the weather in the Midwest as my main personality trait now that I’ve lived somewhere where it’s basically ideal (I’m still not outdoorsy whatsoever but the weather in Denver is pretty amazing all the time)

• Get married for free in both Denver and Chicago with all my favorite people at both, like they all attend both and it doesn’t cost me anything

What do we think?

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I think I want to move back to Chicago.

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I just sat through an incredible webinar about narcissism, trauma, abuse and toxic environments in the workplace. I’ve come a LONG way in the time I’ve been with my current company, and I also feel more balanced about my past experiences after just this hour than I have talking to any therapist about it during or after.

More of this in 2023, holy shit.

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How do you guys blog? Like, what’s your style? Do you sit down at a dedicated time? Do you blog at work (or at home while working from home)? Do you use a phone, a keyboard-having gadget of some kind, a work-owned keyboard-having gadget of some kind? Do you write whenever the mood strikes or do you curate things? Both? Something else? Do you always have to have Luther Vandross playing in the background (like me) or ?

My askbox (wow blast from the past) should be on and should be anonymous if that’s important. (If it isn’t, tell me and I’ll make it so.) I’ll tell you why I’m asking all these questions next time.

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7:19, I’m an idiot*.

I started taking extended release adderall (can I say that here? You can’t in Facebook groups) a little while ago and didn’t consider any interactions with the cold meds I’m taking. It was never an issue (as far as I could tell) on the immediate release but I took a DayQuil at like 8pm. I know there aren’t heavy stimulants in daytime cold meds but the armchair doctors on the internet say it (phenylephrine) can fuck shit up a little bit if you’re also taking the good stuff. I can’t tell how legitimate it is but I’d bet half my next paycheck that’s what’s up, nothing else is any different. Cool, great.

I feel fine except for not being tired at all. I’ll pull the occasional all-nighter when I’m in panic/cram mode for work (thanks grad school) but I don’t think I’ve ever stayed up just…because.

Work should be fun today, huh?

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4:33, still at it. Will this be an all-nighter? Just for not being sleepies?? That would be so stupid, but it might be. (My alarm is set for 5:30am tomorrow/most workdays, and would you believe I hit snooze for like an hour, every fucking day, and Matt still wants to marry me??)

My nose will not stop leaking and I can’t figure it out. It’s really bad. I have Kleenex just stuck up there, I’m coughing, my eyes are watering too. I am a vision right now.

My phone just alerted me to ask how rested I felt when waking up today. Cruel and unusual.

I also meant to post this photo in my last post but I can’t figure out how to replace, also why not just do a second one anyway? Yes we have better pictures but those aren’t for blogs, they’re for aunts and uncles. We are considering “”””engagement photos”””” but we’re in our mid/late 30s and we’re so awkward, you guys. I’d want to find a coach to help me learn how to pose and smile and not hate the outcome. I’m 37, it’s fine. My face here is not ideal and would you believe this is a Walmart bathroom? Anyway, that’s what I look like as a fiancée who drove for 7 hours straight (15 total) and braved the Iowan highways in an early snowstorm after the sun went down just to see our goofy families and celebrate with them and I guess talk about Christmas a bit too.

Welcome (back) to my blog where I write about the tissues stuck up my nose and complain about my face in the same selfie pose I’ve been using for as long as I surrendered to the concept of a camera phone.

I’m going to go take a nap on the couch before I *actually* have to get up for work. It’s 700 degrees cooler down there. I expect to have the best 42-minute sleep of my life and will definitely not wake up in a terrible mood. Tomorrow will not suck at all.

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It’s 3am and I can’t sleep.

I’m engaged!!! I have so many feelings but mostly I’m just over the moon. I’m an aunt now! I have two nieces!! I have a sister (in law) who I adore and two brothers. (I know I had these things before but this is new and exciting now and I love it.) I can finally take my “love shit” playlist seriously because a lot of it is going to become my fucking WEDDING playlist—that was the goal all along, and I started that sucker in 2014. There are so many things I get excited about all over again every day. More on this later.

I really fucking miss my dad and getting married is going to be hard without him.

One of my intentions for 2023 is to start journaling again. Inevitably, this will wind up here. I hate mobile tumblr though and I can’t blog at work. Maybe I’ll … get up even earlier and retreat into my little nook (we live in a house we’re renting now, it’s HUGE and cluttered but I kind of have the entire finished basement to myself if I want it) so I can shitpost and braindump and forget how to deal with my problems in real life because I’ll start writing them all here again? But tomorrow won’t be the first day — not because it’s currently 3:12 (aw) but because I don’t know where my not-work laptop is at all.

What are the blue checks?? Does everyone get them? Did someone blog at AOC about them? Help me understand, I haven’t been here in months and I have FOMO.

I have bronchitis but it really should be COVID. I mean. I have tested negative 3 times since before Christmas but almost everyone we saw has tested positive since we’ve seen them. How?

I’m going to be a whole ass WIFE, oh my god. Look at this thing! (My nails are better now.)

Oh man I have so much to tell you one of these days. Ok, love you bye.

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So I started seeing an ADHD coach about a month ago. She’s the second one I’ve seen in 3 months and the first who doesn’t take insurance, but I really like her.

She said I’m an overachiever today, or that I have those tendencies anyway, and she’s the second person who’s said that to me in the past week. Legitimately, I’ve never seen myself that way. Never. I feel like I’m always behind, always catching up, everyone is doing more than me. Always.

It’s an interesting experience, being in this type of coaching, because (stay with me on this) I feel like I’m paying someone a lot of money to essentially read me things I’ve already read on the internet. And that’s because I think she’s really good at her job.

In sessions, I feel amazing. Heard, understood, validated. And then I digest a little and I’m like, damn. I could’ve googled that. I have googled that. What’s the difference now?

The difference is the immediate responses and thoughtful compassion I (we) don’t get from words on a screen written to an anonymous audience. I wish I had done this a long time ago.

I’m grateful to have a supportive presence in my life finally who sees me AND will call me out from a place of awareness. She gently preaches and encourages radical self acceptance and I’m finally listening and taking the babiest of steps. Googling it for 15 years hasn’t worked and I can admit that now. Figuring it out on my own hasn’t worked, therapy hasn’t worked (because we’ve focused on all the other hard shit I’ve grappled with in the past 3 years instead) and I need something specific, and I’m ready to do something about it.

This has been a really fucking hard month because I’m facing shit I’ve been masking and things about me that I’ve gotten really good at keeping hidden from most everyone in my life. A lot of it deals with work, but not all of it. I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to fit into a neurotypical professional world and being shamed and feeling awful for it.

My best friend says I’m the best storyteller she’s ever met while I’m wishing I could be more concise and regularly qualifying what I’m about to say by starting with “brevity isn’t my strong suit” and using “long story long” to signal when I’m finally about to land the plane. I think, often, that it drives people nuts and the impact of the one piece of negative feedback I’ve gotten about this (when I was interviewing for the job I have now, by someone who regularly gets chastised for taking forever to get to the point) is far heavier than all the compliments I’ve gotten about it, because brains are jerks.

I don’t think I’m in the right job to truly flourish and one day I need to figure that out because I LOVE my current job a whole fucking lot. It’s more that I’m struggling keeping this Big Thing About Me™️ hidden, but I’m actively choosing that. If you ask me why, I’ll tell you construction is a tough industry for “overhead” (support) roles like mine that I can do anywhere else for probably lots more money at this point, but I still choose it because I really like being a big fish in a small pond. I really, really like that. And then I’ll say I have enough stacked against me: I’m a woman, I’m “young” (I’m not, but people don’t think I’m as old as I am which is not a humblebrag), I have tattoos and bleached hair and a nose ring and a fancy degree and my job is to teach crusty superintendents how to feel their feelings at work, why are the youths so sensitive these days anyway, etc., — so in my mind, I don’t need to be known for having an attention disorder on top of everything else.

That’s what I’ll tell you, at least. In reality, I don’t think it matters what industry I’m in because I’ve had both great and fucking terrible bosses in all of them. I’ve doubted myself in all of them at some point and I could draw up a litany of reasons why I’d want to keep this to myself in all of them, when really I want to be acknowledged for it and more than that I want to be able to relate to others, and help others from a place of “I get it, I actually do”, but I can’t do that where I am right now. I am terrified of going off on my own is the truth, but I want to, and it’s just a matter of when at this point.

Today was a good session. I see her every Monday afternoon and honestly, I can’t wait to see how things are going 6 months from now.

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Can’t tell me anything.

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I have no idea how to do an updo, and I’ve never had my hair professionally styled before so I was experimenting. I grabbed a section of hair, twisted it, pulled the top a bunch for volume, and threw a clip in it hoping it didn’t fall. I loved it and I’ll never be able to create this look again.

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Have you ever seen someone in like, head-to-toe (shoulder-to-thigh?) spanx, but without the bra part? It’s like a BYOB (bra) situation? It’s not great.

Anyway, my best friend’s wedding is this Saturday in Chicago and we leave at 6am Thursday. I need 8 more days to be ready for the trip.

It’s been so long since I’ve written over here that I was excited to fill in the “Listening to:” field. That’s … never been a thing here. Livejournal. Twenty (20) years ago. It’s fine. You should listen to this song though.

I don’t care about no hoes, where is your spouse at?

Red text!

(Personally, I truly don’t care about no hoes nor spouses. In fact I’m very actively trying to become a spouse myself, for fuck’s sake.)

So I’m a bridesmaid in my best friend’s wedding this weekend and I love her but she did us all dirty with the color of these dresses. It’s like a smoky lavender - the kind that looks good on no one. We were able to choose our own style at least, but they are all relentless and unforgiving. I am wearing head-to-toe spanx (BYObra) and you can see like, the line of the contour? on the thigh? And it’s not because I have thick legs. I mean, it’s because the material of the dress is almost as though it was stuck to you, but it flows nicely in a breeze. I don’t know. I’ve also lost a bunch of weight since June (thanks, keto!) and that honestly helps me feel better about the dress. I took selfies tonight, even! Maybe I’ll post one.

This has been a hard week. Since Friday, I: organized and attended yet another suicide prevention training at work; unexpectedly found myself needing to support a dear coworker towards the end of that training class because he had been struggling with all the thoughts we’d been talking about for 2 hours and needed to step outside to cry and asked if I would join him (a senior general superintendent); attended a coworker’s wedding with another coworker, got drunk for the first time in a while and lost the latter coworker’s sunglasses before raising my voice at a third coworker who was getting mouthy with me; had what would have been the worst hangover of my life Sunday if it weren’t for Amazon’s party patches*; have been running around with my hair on fire at the office for both 10+ hour days I’ve had today and yesterday.

That whole thing was all about work. I’m working on that, but now’s not a good time for progress.

Seriously though, look up “party patches” on Amazon. Slap 2 of them on you (gonna do 3-4 for this weekend’s festivities, I have to be in proper shape for Nine Inch Nails at Riot Fest on Sunday #priorities) and while they won’t always stop a hangover from happening (I mean honestly how do you stop a speeding train, you know?), they will help you avoid an ambulance at least. Ask me how I know. Look for the blue and orange packages. They’re just vitamins, I don’t know what kind of witchcraft they’re about otherwise but they’re like $30 for I want to say 40-something patches? You really can’t put a price on magic.

(Ok here’s how I know: The last time I got that hungover, it was the morning after Matt and I got into a big argument about something stupid in public and I was crying at the table quietly but also pretty dramatically and the server had just approached with the check that I stubbornly insisted on paying. I could not pick my head up off the pillow the next morning and it took us 3 weeks to finally reach the end of the conversation because I was so embarrassed that I cried at a server as a 37-year-old woman for really the dumbest reason. I’m really fun to date. Fortunately he and I were genuinely fine those 3 weeks, we aren’t about grudges which has probably done a world of good for our 5-year run so far. But I was wearing 0 party patches that night. I currently have 2.7 packs for the bridal party and maybe the groomsmen if they’re acting right.)

Matt is standing up in the wedding too and we’re going to walk down the aisle together. I hope at least a couple people throw shoes at him. Gently, because he is a gem, but he needs a kick in the ass and he knows it.

Hope you and yours are loving your adventures lately. 🖤

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Ok, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is, today is my birthday, I spent it with my best friends, and Matt got me a Dyson Air Wrap! Hair dryers and styling tools are very exciting. Everything is great. The bad news is, this is the last year I can say I’m in my “mid-thirties”, my apartment lighting sucks for these filters and those aren’t my real lashes (they’re not even lashes at all! More filter witchcraft). But all in all, today was a win.

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Living here does not suck.

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I repeat.

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Living here does not suck.