Huh...

I'm starting to get used to the medication more.
Though I'm also starting to go deaf I think? I'm having a harder time hearing the louder this ringing gets.

I got coffee earlier, and made sure it was Decaf... I noticed though, a direct link between extreme stress and the ringing in my head.

Stress #1, oldest comes home from school today after her choir practice. "My book report is due tomorrow."

"What do you mean, tomorrow? What one?" I say, not liking where this is going already.



"The Science Fiction one," She says, still too calm and I think. We don't have any science fiction books... Oh dammit!

"Have you read a book for it yet?"

"...No..."

"Really??! Fine we're going to the library and getting a book. Not only do you have to read it tonight, but you have to have a report done on it tonight as well. Young lady we've talked about this!" I raise my voice, obviously agitated at her... deciding to slack off her homework like this?! She can't stay in the advanced classes if she decides she wants to let her grade slip. Of course she knows this.. and is upset.

"We're going to go in, find a book, get out and you have to do nothing other than homework the rest of the evening so we can get this stuff done!" I'm trying not to curse or be really really upset here. I mean, she KNOWS she has a book report due EVERY two weeks. KNOWS this. She also knows that I have my own homework and so many other things to keep track of that I cannot ask her DAILY if she's done her book report. I assume (perhaps wrongly) that she is perfectly capable (as she's been in the PAST!) of getting her book report done like she needs to. Because she does, she can, because she HAS done this the rest of the year so far! So the sudden NOT doing it for two reports?? I don't get it! But it's maddening!

So we go to the library, I'm containing myself very well despite how much I am just so upset about this..

We get a book, we get home, and she decides her math is "too hard" after she's done 3/5 of it. ALL correctly mind you, this wasn't something difficult for her by any means. So she locks herself in her room (I should remove that.. I need a door that locks, they don't right now. >.>) and starts crying. Okay. Fine. I know I was a little harsh, I have apologized and offered to help with whatever she needs as long as she understands I'm not going to DO any of her homework for her. She's a SMART kid, otherwise they wouldn't have placed her in the advanced placement classes here. You know??

So, I sit around holding her on my lap and she cries, and cries.. and I tell her that I do love her, I do, and I'm sorry I raised my voice so much but it's so frustrating to see her stress herself out by leaving this to the last minute. So. We've reworked out the plan. Get the book for the next report the day after turning one report in. Read the book over the next week. Work on the report over the week after that. Turn it in with no issues. No stress, no drama, and still tons of time to be a 10 year old girl and have fun and work on choir practices and all that other jazz she has to do.

To be honest, she doesn't really get THAT much homework. In comparison to the rest of her normal classmates in the 5th grade she gets less. As she no longer has to do any of the spelling assignments, spelling tests, or weekly sentences. She's not in the basis 5th grade math class, so she doesn't have to work on basic 5th grade math skills on a nightly basis. Monday she gets a math worksheet, and needs to work on the getting the book reports done. Sometimes she has to go 15 minutes of online math practice that her Advanced math teacher assigns. NOT really that much, nor is it anything she's not getting. She wouldn't be getting graded as "Advanced" even in the advanced stuff if she didn't get it.  So yeah.. *sigh*

That drama aside, she got her math done once I talked her into realizing, you know this, you've done 3/5 of it because you looked at the example, and despite their not being any words to explain it.. you KNOW what you're doing.

Then dinner, and now she's reading a book she has to write a report on. Another report is due Friday, for Regular class (she has 3 book reports due a month, okay that's probably a TOUCH ridiculous... but it is what it is. Right?). Of course the one for her regular 5th grade class she needs to act out the story from a Historical Fiction book (lucky for us, her last book report for Advanced Reading was a Historical Fiction book!), in costume. Oh god, IN COSTUME?! By Friday?!

Thank goodness the Historical Fiction book that she already did was about a Native American girl, and she already has a costume for that from last year when her class did some musical thing for Lewis and Clark and the Native Americans and she was one and had a solo and all that jazz. Now all I have to do it pretty that up a bit, and she has to work on how exactly she's going to do this presentation. She has three days to do this. THREE because today she doesn't have the time to worry about it.

Of course, that couldn't be my only stress this evening. My son was trying to talk to me from the living room while I was clear in the kitchen. Nope, it wasn't working. I was cooking, I had the overhead fan on the range, was running water into a pot and focused on browning the sausage for dinner. So I told him, "I can't hear you, if you need to talk to me please come to the kitchen." No drama there right? Of course I had to repeat it, still, I wasn't stressed then. Until, he does what I've told him time and time again NOT to do, he decides to RUN, across the linoleum that's around the doorway and in the Dining Room and lands FACE first. He sits up, crying his head off, and I ask if he's okay from in the kitchen. I look and he LOOKS okay, at the glance I got. Until suddenly my second daughter goes "He's bleeding a lot and he LOST A TOOTH!"

Um what?!

 So I look over and sure enough there is something white on the ground that COULD be a tooth, and he's bleeding big old drops of blood from his nose! "Shit!!" I can't help myself sometimes and my mouth gets bad...

So I turn off the water, abandon the browning sausage and run to him to pinch his nose and the EX asks "what's wrong??" and I call "I need tissues now! There's blood everywhere!" I don't really HAVE the time to think to be all "Oh, mind you getting me some tissues please? He's bleeding a fair bit" or some pleasant crap like that. You know? My 5 year old bleeds like I do, a lot, and the sight of blood makes him just flipping cry like there's no tomorrow! So he's panicked, crying, and there is blood on the light colored floor and my hands are dripping with it as I'm pinching his nose.

Ex hands me the roll of paper towels and I manage a shot "thank you" and grab some for his nose with one hand and start cleaning up some off the floor so my poor 5 year old will stop flipping his lid. You know?

Ex goes "What do you need me to do with dinner?"

"Umm?? Just stir it please?" I mean, come on,  I was focused on something else and a little bit stressed at the crying bloody mess right in front of me. What else DO you do with browning ground meat? You mix it and not let it burn and stick to the pan!

So he goes "What the fuck?" and gets all attitude-ish at me. So I say "What?"

and he goes "you having an attitude at me!?" So I go "Yes, right now I have an attitude, I'm dealing with him bleeding because he ran across the floor in socks like I've told him time and time again not to do and he should know better!"

He has the balls to  yell "He's 5 of course he doesn't know better!"

"I've told him many times, not to do it because he'd get hurt, he SHOULD technically know better??" I say as I then keep trying to calm the poor boy down. His head hurts, his nose is a little purple, and of course the bleeding is being a PITA. He's still crying because he can see the bloody paper towels and I'm trying to stay as calm as possible despite the EX deciding to be a douche.

Then, the ex goes "Whatever Bitch"

"What?"

"I said you're a bitch!"

... I just shut up there and focused on the kiddo. I mean, seriously? Of course I am not going to be thrilled to be in the middle of cooking dinner that I was already stressed out before hand.. just to have this happen and have you being a bit of a dick? Anyway.. I thanked him for taking care of the meat and he continues his attitude.. Omg.. seriously? Whatever. You get on the 5 year old for acting like a brat and you're acting worse than him and he's the one who got hurt!

After that... dinner goes okay. The EX acts like there is absolutely nothing wrong with how he acted, and I just pretend to be all hunky dory so I can just expel all my frustrations right here.

Which, I feel better now. Because getting to write this all really has helped. The massively painful stress knot in my right shoulder has subsided and I am now able to feel more than just a painfully numb tingling in my right hand. *sigh.*

I still have my own homework I need to do, it's due tomorrow. Just a general proposal for my final project, and some thumbnails that I need to throw together.

I have various ideas in mind for what I am going to do, but I'm not 100% on any of them just yet. Thank goodness I have time, and no one else has turned in their assignment. So, I'm not under a ton of pressure or anything. I mean, I AM but that's only pressure I've placed on myself.

Still, sometimes, I really wish I liked alcohol better. Or something to help relax me a touch more than just writing has been. Maybe I do need a long hot shower. Just melt the stress. A back rub would be good too...?

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Today wasn't all that bad though. I managed errands with the youngest, and a hellishly long line at the post office without a panic attack. Actually, I handled myself and being in public fairly well today. Surprisingly, I was able to even talk with the really pretty Barista at the coffee shop about our hair colors. She has this lovely Burgundy (I had it a few years ago actually) and we were discussing how hard it is to keep in 'punky' red and all that. I actually felt good about it, no freaking out. Wow. I'm so happy I haven't given up just yet on these anti-depressants.

The youngest was really great during the errands, adorable, sweet, somewhat playful and a little bit in the way of other people a couple of times. But she moved out of the way easy enough and was polite and sweet. So it hasn't been all too bad of a day.

The second daughter filled out all of her Valentines day cards.. well.. candies? It's those Lick-m-stick candies? The white stick and the flavored powder? I thought it came with cards, but instead you just write the names on a little heart on the package. Hmmm okay. Damn. I SHOULD have gotten her those cards she would have liked too huh? I may still do it. I think she'd like it. Then I can get the oldest some real cards too, and of course the son as well.

Huh, I still don't know what nick names I should call the kids on here. I don't want to reveal too much you know? This place is for me to just get things out, but I don't want.. Say my mother, or siblings, finding this...

Well I will admit, I've gone around and found some other bloggers who suffer/have the same thing(s) that I do. Because it helps me to read their writing, to feel their words, I feel less alone. I guess it's like "Normalizing" as JW puts it. To know that others think, feel, and do similar. So I feel like alien, less disconnected, less flawed, disgusting, and unworthy of anything.


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Oh, and the youngest and I did get that final thing for BF, so a package with love and happiness is on it's way from our country, to him. It wont make it in time for Valentines Day. :( Since to make it would have cost between $45 - 77... *shudder* but... it'll get there and it's.... sometimes the thought that counts?

Really, my own issues and things got in my way. Back in January, mid actually.. I was thinking to get him stuff. Then just things really spiraled with the Diagnosis and just... a lot happened. *sigh* I feel awful, like he wont have anything on Valentines Day because I suck as a person and I let life with the kids, school, mental issues, ect.. just get in my way like that. :(

Still, hopefully he likes what is coming. There's something super special from the youngest, and it was so so sweet the amount of effort she put into making sure he got something nice for Valentines day.

I'm really glad the kids like him too. Though of course we kept things on a "as friends" basis when he was here last. Now that I know everyone gets along between him, me and the kids.. I'm not afraid for them to know we're actually an item finally.

21 days!! I only have to live 21 more days without him here. Even if he'll only be here for 23 days, it's better than him not being here at all! March 1st! Hurry up and get here! Who cares anymore that you're bringing my aging another year and me looking at myself in the mirror and mourning that my body is aging while I still don't feel like I am where I should be mentally.

I've, been a bit all over the place huh? Sorry about that. Lots to get out I guess.

Write soon.

~Shattered