Updates All Around!

It turns out my silly little blog does have a reader! How delightful! Even if my +1 came from the need to explain my "'tude," it's still a good enough reason for me! Lesson learned from this: being a bitch gains readership. (Haha, just kidding, Jim. Really, I'm working on it.)

However, I promised actual updates, so here they are. I have found out that my great aunt Katy is doing well enough. She didn't break her hip as we suspected. She wore out the cartilage between the bones. Needless to say, she is in pain, but they believe that some rehab will help her situation. She'll be in the hospital for longer than she wants, but at least she's being taken care of. She's really the sweetest little lady, and I only hope the hospital staff comes to see that and treats her accordingly. (She broke her hip the first time when she was in her earlier eighties while volunteering at the local old folk's home. She used to wheel the ailing down to the church service on Saturday evenings--they're Catholic.)

My car is another matter. Additional hoses and an air intake boot (?) need to be replaced. Meaning, of course, that I will need to spend more money. Of course, this is money that I do not have. Alas, I require a vehicle. Can you see the conundrum here? The other thing that this has added to my equation is time, which we also do not really have. Being a one car family is a little taxing on all of us.

On the job front, it seems that my bosses feel that I may have misinterpreted the initial e-mail. If this is the case, I will be simply over-joyed. If this is not the case, I'll be out of a job. At any rate, my fears here have not yet diminished, but I'll just let the cards fall where they fall. Who knows, the end result could be a blessing rather than curse. Only time will tell and other such cliches.

I'm at a very strange impasse right now in my life. I feel like I'm not doing enough, and I feel like there's nothing I can do. It's like there's something missing, but I can't figure out what it is. Maybe church? Surprising as it seems that I would be comfortable with organized religion, I am a little bit. We haven't been to church on a regular basis since before we moved her because we had no vehicle then. I would really like to find a local church.

For some reason, though, what keeps me from finding a church in the area is the level of attachment that I have to my old church. I'm fifth generation at that church. People attend that church who were friends with my maternal grandmother and great grandmother. They have stories. I have history there. I don't want to be the new young folks at some new place that has its own history. Sadly, I'm a state away from that portion of my personal and familial history. I can't just drive out whenever I choose. I'm almost afraid that if I make a new connection here, it negates what I have there. Maybe part of me is afraid that if we make a commitment to a new church here, we might never go back to the old one, that we might abandon the idea of moving back to Indiana in general.

Strange as it seems and as long as I've lived here in Ohio, it still doesn't feel like home to me. I love being around my father. I love being near my family. But Ohio just doesn't feel like where I'm supposed to be. Indiana is what feels like home to me. I regret the fact that I can't just decide to head over to JJ's grandmother's for an evening just because we feel like seeing her. I don't like that I can't think about going to MY church whenever I feel like it. I don't like that it's a two hour drive for me to go to a wedding or baby shower or birthday party. This year we're actually missing JJ's grandmother's 80th birthday because I'm having my oral surgery and we can't afford to make it out after that kind of spending. I hate that we can't celebrate a major milestone with a family member because we're broke and we moved.

The worst part is the irony that we moved over here to get out of poverty, and we still live in poverty. In fact, it actually got worse because, rather than it being just the two of us, we are now working to support the five of us. We added three people to our worries. I keep wondering what would have happened if we had just stayed in Indiana. All of our school stuff is loans, so we wouldn't be worse off. We would have been paying all in-state tuition, so we might have actually been better off. A greater portion of me is kicking myself for ever thinking that this would be a good idea.

Maybe the weather is just making me cranky. It's cold and wet out, and it will probably snow in the next couple of days here. Actually, from what JJ's been telling me, it's already snowing in Indiana. That and I'm all hormonal and crampy. At any given point in the last few days I have been mere inches from tears. I'm just waiting for the moment that someone says something to me at work and, in my rush to get out my response, I start to cry. (It's coming, I can just feel it.) I hate crying in front of people. They always look at you with that pitying facial expression. Nothing makes me feel weaker than crying in front of other people who don't know how to respond to you. You keep crying, they keep looking confused and uncomfortable, and you just feel increasingly pathetic--which, of course, makes you continue crying.

I hate being a woman. Why anyone would choose to be a woman is beyond me--not that we're given a choice. Welcome to all the responsibilty, none of the credit, and the added bonus of feeling "not so fresh" once a month! Enjoy, ladies! Yeah, right. And the fact that some women call it, ironically, a "monthly gift" just makes me want to punch them. Ugh, seriously, shut up.

Better for me to quit now before I inspire myself to burst into tears.

Also, for the record, Blogger hates me. I had to repost this freakin' blog 3 times before it didn't tell me that there was an HTML error, and I didn't even use HTML posting!