Finding Me…Again

Posted on by Jennifer GB

It’s nearly 6am as i look out windows with condensation running down them, at the ocean about 500 yards away from where I am sitting, in the “first floor” apartment in Ocean City, NJ that my Mom rented for the week. Hubby, my sons, and my niece and nephew are all here with her. Its quiet and I’m listening to a book by Nora Roberts. It’s peaceful and just what I needed.

I don’t know why I woke this morning with an urge to blog. It’s been nearly a year from what I noticed the date was on my last posting. Nearly a year to the day. Maybe it had to do with the book I was listening to with the main character starting a blog after coming into money her Mother had kept hidden from her and she essentially told her Mother to fuck off and went on a three month trip to Ireland where her Father is from. In any case, I find myself at the keyboard drinking coffee i just brewed in the coffee pot, classical music playing in my headset and my nephew sitting on the couch looking at this phone. He’s an early bird too.

I can see the ocean at the horizon in this apartment? Not sure what you would call it exactly. Maybe a loft. The view of the ocean is partially blocked by a tree and some bushes but its still visible, all its calm grey blue color. I’m not seeing any whitecaps so I’m assuming its calm. The boardwalk is in front of the bushes and tree and I’m seeing a steady stream of joggers and a few walkers getting their morning exercise in. Kudos to them. Maybe if I lived down here with the ocean to my side and the salt air in my lungs, I’d be more encouraged to exercise. Maybe. Claire de Lune just keyed up in the playlist. Seems very apropos for the view.

It has been a year to say the least. I’ve completed my first year of my Master’s degree program. The summer session is killing me. 15 weeks crammed into 10 is too hard with all I do. And who’s bright idea was it to make statistics one of them?! Whom ever it was is truly evil and I hope they stub their toe for it. Two weeks left till its done then a whopping three weeks off till the fall semester starts. Straight A’s so far, but I fear Stats class will break that streak. As long as its a B, I’ll be happy.

While I didn’t come into money like the character in the book I’m listening to, my mother was very generous and paid off our mortgage, which was a big surprise. It’s unreal the weight that was lifted off our collective shoulders. Both cars are paid off this summer as well. I plan on saving as much as possible for retirement.

Ove the last year I’ve had a lot happen and a lot of it was really good. I started grad school of course, to be a rehabilitation counselor. I have a year of schooling left, then a year of internship, which I can hopefully do where I currently work. As a student in the rehabilitation counseling program, I could apply to be a counselor at my office, however I would be a trainee until I graduated. A position became available, I applied and they chose to hire someone from outside of the department citing I needed more experience. They brought in someone who worked at CPS and other than having a caseload of her own at her previous position, has no experience with the case management software, the services we provide, etc. I however, have worked in the field for six years…yet…I didn’t have enough experience. The entire office was sure I’d get it. I came to the conclusion that I was not chosen because the office would then be left without a counselor assistant that knew how to do everything. There is another in our office but, lets just say she is lacking in…. a lot. Enough of the other assistants complained about her. When they didn’t give me the position, I was unhappy about it. I may have taken two days off to go to a spa. When i came back, they’d switched all the counselors around and gave the ones complaining about her, to me and took away the one toxic counselor I was forced to work with. I think they feared I’d come back and turn in my notice, LOL! I thought about it. Thought about quitting grad school, etc. but honestly, its a free master’s degree so just finish it and use it in another career or position. A lot of people were happy to have me as their assistant and the stress levels of working with four over who I had before are much lower. And they were wise enough not to assign the newly hired counselor to me. That would be throwing it in my face that they didn’t give the position to me. I would have complained about that.

I went on my first cruise with a friend to Florida and the Bahamas. I had a wonderful time. It was a blast. I feared Id get seasick and had all the types of meds to combat it and ended up not needing them. Oasis of the Sea is the ship we cruised on. I highly recommend Royal Caribbean. I am hooked and am planning on taking the family on a cruise in the near future.

My youngest is in college for cyber security and doing well and working at Tractor Supply. My oldest is hitting 7 years working at Walmart. My husband is still working as a contractor and building or fixing everyone else’s project except ours (I’ve been living without a dishwasher for about a year now cause he hasn’t gotten around to running the pipes for the new one we have). The three fur balls are still doing well and shedding everywhere. Life is pretty good.

I don’t participate much in the SCA anymore. I burned out embroidering tons of stuff for friends that were King and queen, then someone I called a friend badmouthed me and my embroidering skills in a forum where I was being considered for an award and thus was not accepted. 29 years of working towards it, striving for it and being turned down just killed any desire to participate anymore. I’ve been a member since 1992 when I was 20. I’m 54 now and find that I feel more joy in staying around my home on the weekends, spending time with my family and doing hobbies there then dressing up, toting a bunch of stuff and driving hours away to a site. Swimming in my pool, gardening, watching shows in the evening, knitting, playing World of Warcraft, junk journaling and visiting friends brings me more happiness. Maybe its time to move on from that. Not end it entirely but not make it most of my focus as a hobby. You know?

Well, family is itching to get out on the boardwalk so I best log and get dressed. It is my hope to keep up on this and blog more often. Until later, Ciao!

You Can Wish in One Hand…

Posted on by Jennifer GB

Well, you know how the rest of the saying goes. Life has been busy and I wish there were more hours in the day to do all that I want (and need) to do. For instance, different types of crafts. I have a room full of crafting supplies such as many, many skeins of yarn, boxes of embroidery threads in varying content (silk, cotton, wool), fabric for sewing garb, hundreds of patterns for costumes, knitted items and embroidery. There are some odd ball things down in that room that I obtained the supplies for but have not started like mandala rock painting or ballet point shoes to paint and decorate or teeny tiny crochet hooks so I can try crocheting those beaded tube bracelets. Yet, what I end up doing more often than not is knitting with scrap yarn (which there is a metric ton of practically) and making scrunchies or wrist warmers. Or, of course, socks, but the scrunchies and wrist warmers are a memorized pattern and i don’t need to look at anything while doing it so its my go to for knitting while watching tv after work or even when I take my son to the movies and I knit during it if it isn’t one in particular that I wanted to see, but I go with him so he can see it. Oh, you know what else is down there? About a hundred blank journals to write down my thoughts but what I realize is I don’t get to journal everyday like I want to due to the fact that by the end of the work day I am mentally exhausted and all I want to do is play the Oscar winning role of a couch potato watching Supernatural re-runs on Netflix. My hubby who is a carpenter does a similar version of my role on the other end of the couch but his artistic medium is more musically based with varying base tones of snoring. While he is physically exhausted from his profession, mine is mental. Yes, I said it, my job makes me mental and I am about to embark on the next level of this by returning to college, after 20 years to earn a Master’s Degree in Rehabilitation Counseling so I can more knowledgably help people with disabilities become educated and gainfully employed. Not to mention, the pay raise will be significant and alleviate the stresses of the rising costs of living that has come with the current POTUS despite his claims and promises it would go down drastically when he was voted in again ( and not by me, let me just say that right now and make that clear).

In another instance that falls under helping people, a couple weeks ago while talking to my Mom, she mentioned her frustrations with transferring funds and shares from my deceased Father’s name to hers. See, its been three years since he passed and these funds/shares, etc. have a time limit on transferring them over or they become unclaimed property by the state. Since my Dad never made a will (because he was paranoid if he did it would make him die sooner?? I don’t really know..), nothing was made legal of how he wanted his estate handled. Now, let me just say I love my Mom, as trying as she can be sometimes, she is not tech savvy at all, has a short fuse with things she doesn’t understand and she also has the attention span of a goldfish if it isn’t in her scope of interest, i.e.: the amount of paperwork it takes to get said items transferred to her name. This is why things have sat for three years and she was in a panic two weeks ago on the phone with me when she started getting letters saying if she didn’t take care of it she’d lose what he had. So, even though I am stressed with “college crunch time” at work, I made her send me all the letters, death documents, statements, phone numbers and notes on conversations she’s had with financial advisers and I set myself upon this task for her. After two weeks, two financial adviser conversations and one state treasury conversation later (and several hours filling out forms and scanning documents), yesterday I emailed the last document out for her and hopefully in about a month, all these outstanding things will be handled. The gratitude in her voice when she said thank you for handling it for her made it worth it, but I will say that after work yesterday (and the final email sent) I sat on the sofa knitting a wrist warmer and watched Jaws 1, 2 and 3. Well, most of three because the 3D effect and the graphics of the movie were so bad even my mentally fatigued mind had had enough and I went to bed. That was 10pm. At 2:30am, a shout from my son’s bedroom (an excited shout at a video game he was playing, yes he’s a night owl) woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. So, here I am journaling at 3:30am and it’s the weekend so it doesn’t matter I’m awake this early because I can nap later while floating in the pool.

One thing I do wish is that instead of playing the Oscar wining role of a slug watching t.v., I’d like to be one of those people that handles stress by getting up and being active or exercising to alleviate it. I went on Wegovy about 10 months ago and have lost 35 pounds. I feel better already, but my goal weight is still a weighs off (ha, ha..see what I did there?) and I have hit a plateau for about two months now. Being more active would help with that I’m sure. It makes me think what makes one person love say mountain biking or jogging as a hobby and another like hand crafts or some other less active activity. I would say my injuries are my reason (having had a back breaking car accident at 24 which is now osteoarthritis). I wants to be and wish I were more active. I also wish to win the lottery so I don’t have to work and I can pursue my hobbies full time, but as they saying goes “We can wish in one hand…” you know how the rest goes.

One piece of advice before I sign off: MAKE A FUCKING WILL! Don’t leave your loved ones to go through this headache and heartache of stress and mounds of paperwork after you are gone. Put down what your wishes are and who beneficiaries are, make it all legal and pick an Executor/Executrix wisely, someone who has patience and knowledge to handle the phone calls, paperwork, cancellations of accounts, etc. You can do it online for free for God’s sake! There are several web sites out there that will help you. If you’re in a Union for your job, they most likely have assistance with this as well, as I know mine does. I miss you Dad, so damn much but seriously!?! (at least Mom learned from this and set things up immediately after my Dad died)

Well, I hear the coffee pot calling my name and hubby will be getting up soon. I will endeavor to post more often and I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful day. Ciao!

It’s Just One of Those Days…

Posted on by Jennifer GB

Wake up. Go to work. Pick up boys from work. Go home. Sleep. Rinse, repeat.

That has pretty much what my life has been for some time now and I am not that upset about it. It has been calm and quiet. Everyone is well, everyone seems relatively happy. There have been various things like I got a promotion at work which came with a descent pay raise. My student loans were forgiven and the relief that has given me to know I don’t have that debt hanging over my head anymore is wonderful! I believe my husband feels the same way. Office life is pretty good. New job has its stressful days but its the workload that can be stressing, not the work itself. I’ve become pretty good at “leaving it at the office” and not bringing it home. Took me a while to realize that there are no merit based raises and that I didn’t need to do all the things because the percentage raise I would get is the same from year to year whether I was doing excellent or just satisfactory.

I have done something I thought I would never do: I applied to graduate school for a Masters in Science for Rehabilitation Counseling. There is a scholarship that will pay for all the tuition through the state. I talked to several friends who I am very close to and asked their advice on going back to college and pretty much all of them said a free Master’s degree is not something you turn down. The pay increase to become a counselor is something like 20K + a year more than I am making now. I had my interview for entrance into the program the other day. I feel like I totally botched it but my coworkers who are currently in the program said I didn’t and were very comforting. I was pretty upset. I have some really great coworkers. A couple of them wrote recommendation letters for me for my application. They are very reassuring and have offered to help me with schooling and my studies.

Its Friday, work is nearly done and the weekend is upon us. Its time to start the garden and ill be buying many bags of dirt and fertilizer to get it going. Its time to plant peas and lettuce. More later. Im determined to blog more about my boring and every day life. But right now, its about time to leave and there is a glass of Cardbordeaux sangria in my very near future. Ciao!