Chelleology

Tomorrow is the big day.  I’m not nervous most of the tests they are running I’ve had before.  I just hate packing!  I’m always afraid of forgetting something important that I can’t pick up on the road.  Then I always over pack because I never know what I’m going to need.

I am looking forward to being on my own for a couple days (except the one day Scott will be with me).  There are some shops I can go to although I’m sure I’ll spend most of my time at Barnes and Nobles… maybe even at the hotel pool.  I’m also bringing some DVDs to watch on my laptop and plenty of books.

If there’s one thing I hope to accomplish with this trip is to find out why I’m so tired all the time. We already know that I’m very anemic and we are hoping to find out why.  I fear that they’ll say that I am for sure a celiac.  But if I am, maybe I can finally start feeling normal again.  That’s really all I want.  It’s hard enough to feel normal with Crohn’s Disease (Could someone find my dignity, please?).  Then of course, Celiac Disease makes it even more abundantly clear that I’m not normal.  I just want to be able to do things without feeling exhausted afterwards. 

I’m hoping to get on the road around 4.  I’m working the booth at the festival until noon.  So, I’ll have enough time to get some food for my trip and get home to rest for a bit before loading up the car for the trip up.  I’ll get there in time to check in and get a late dinner.

Wish me luck!

I haven’t written a quite a while.  I could give you the same tired excuse that work got in the way and that by the time I get home I’m so spent that I can barely put two sentences together.  The truth is that I had reached my breaking point with my job and by the grace of God I found a new job.

 

June 8^th started out as any typical Monday.  I went to work trying to ignore how trapped I felt in my job.  I figured if I went to work not feeling anything that I would be able to muddle through the day.  Now it wasn’t any one particular event that made me feel like I was going to scream but it was just the feeling of being overwhelmed that hit me.  I felt panicked.  Come 3:30, I was ready to get to my therapy appointment.  The second I got across town and my therapist shut the door, I melted down.  It was a wonder that they didn’t commit me on the spot.  Once I had calmed down, we talked about getting out of my job, even if it meant waiting tables until something opened up.  I cringed at the idea of going through that again.  I had tried that when I got out of TV and I hated it.

 

I went home, took a nap and got myself together and began the process of looking for a new job.  I looked in the usual places like newspapers and yahoo jobs.  I wasn’t finding much but I fired off a few resumes.  Then I remembered it was time to check the advertising agencies for jobs.  I didn’t have much hope that I would find anything because it seemed that they were never hiring.  But there it was, an entry level position was staring back at me.  I jazzed up my cover letter and cleaned up my resume and fired it off to the HR department.

 

It was the very next morning that I got the phone call for the interview.  I was a bundle of emotion.  It had been about seven years since I had an interview so I spent a lot of time picking out the right interview clothes and pouring over books on the perfect interview.

 

I went to the interview that Thursday and I was calm, cool and collected.  It started out with a few basic interview questions and before you know it, it started to feel like a conversation.  I was asking questions and the interviewers were explaining what the position entails.  Then we were talking about some of the people I knew that used to work for the agency.  You know, I was schmoozing.  They ended the interview by telling me that they would let me know next week.

 

From Monday through Wednesday, I went from confident that I got it to not so confident to downright depressed.  Then, right after lunch on Wednesday, the offer came through.  I was told to call on Friday and let them know my response.  It was no surprise I wanted it and I immediately turned in my resignation.  On Friday, I accepted the position and they were just as excited to have me as I was to take the job.

 

The next week and a half, I was full of anxiety.  It was primarily because I had so much to tie up and I didn’t want to overload my team with my duties than they already were.  I did it though.  There were times where I ran myself down and there were times where I was on the brink of tears but I got through it all.

 

Today was my final send off.  The department threw a little lunchtime picnic and gave me a nice sized gift certificate to Kohl’s, a funny card they all signed and a frog figurine.  They had a beautiful cake that said “Good Luck Chelle” (it was very yummy – chocolate with cream cheese frosting – my favorite).  We had some good chuckles about some of the crazy things I’ve said and done and how they enjoyed my quirky sense of humor and my sarcasm.  There were a couple of employees that had tears in their eyes when they hugged me goodbye this afternoon.  I was really touched that they thought so highly of me.

 

I worry about how they will manage my workload until they find my replacement.  But I know they can do it.  It will be tough but I know they can do it.  I will miss them terribly.

 

Scott has been away on a fishing trip for the past week which has allowed me time for some quiet reflection and some time to focus on me.  That is in no way a reflection on my husband although that’s always the joke within the family.  “Hooray!  Scott is gone!”  I have never needed lots of friends, only the peace and quiet that my soul craves.  I am a person who needs lots of time alone.  Scott respects my alone time and I am grateful to have his support and understanding.  However, having the entire house to myself and being on my own schedule (eat when I want, watch TV when and where I want, etc). 

 

On Friday, I was told that a guy who was politically involved and who had served in
Iraq was dead.  It is still a mystery to me exactly what had happened and it certainly caused some unexplained feelings to rise up in my heart.  You see, he died over Memorial Day weekend.  Since I had just seen him that Friday and he appeared to be healthy, I couldn’t imagine a 20-something year old guy would just drop dead.  It couldn’t be a vehicle or drowning accident because we would have known about it within 24 hours of it happening thanks to the media.  So, that only left us to speculate exactly what happened.  I think we can all agree that he killed himself.  He was a guy that went to events and we would sit and talk for a while.  He was someone who was a little more than an acquaintance but less than an actual best friend.  So, I don’t claim to be hurting any where near as much as his family is.  What hurts more than that I feel angry that he did something that at one point in my life I had thought about doing myself.  Whenever a friend or even an acquaintance takes their life, it conjures up a lot of those feelings.  Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t ever take my life.  I could never inflict that kind of pain on my family and leave them wondering if it was something they did or said that made me do it.  I just can’t grasp how anyone could do it.  I was an open and shut case.  It was ugly in the beginning when everything came to a head, I got help, I got medication and moved on.  It’s sad that he couldn’t do the same.  I want to be angry though because he took the wimpy way out.  I have that right, don’t I?  To be angry?

 

On Saturday, I was able to get down to Iowa City for some good old ‘hanging out’ with myself.  It’s something I love to do but never get much of a chance to do it any more.  I’m not quite sure I’ll go down there again.  I always knew that Iowa City leaned a little of the liberal side.  I mean, the University of Iowa is located there so of course it’s going to be liberal.  But I quickly found out that it wasn’t just liberal but it wandered off the reservation and apparently I was not alerted before I jumped in my car and made the road trip.  I wanted to go to the Haunted Book Shop which is a place I had never been.  All the way down I thought about how a bookstore could still be haunted after recently moving locations.  Anyway, as I do in every bookstore I enter, I head for the Current Affairs section.  To my shock and dismay, I found zip, zero, nada books that were conservative.  Not even one in the realm of Ron Paul, libertarian!  All of them, yes, all of them were Michael Moore and Keith Olberman and a few others of their ilk.  I eventually just wandered around to see if anything unique caught my eye like an Irish language book or a good paranormal book when I book in the “Women’s Studies” area caught my eye.  It was entitled “Women on the Right.”  I thought maybe I had found a diamond in the rough.  Nope!  It was pretty much about if you believe abortion is wrong then you are setting back the women’s movement 100 years. 

 

I moved on.  I went to my very favorite bookstore in Iowa City – Prairie Lights Bookstore.  Only I found the same dilemma.  There was one book by Ann Coulter on the shelves.  I wondered why out of all the great conservative books coming out in the market, did they choose an Ann Coulter book.  After having some coffee on their second floor, I came to the conclusion that they wanted to paint all of us as Ann Coulter types that appear angry and in your face.  Nothing against Ann.  She’s one of my favorites even though she can be quite abrasive.  She’s not for everyone.  I chuckled though.  I’m aware of just about every liberal book out there but Prairie Lights had some I had never heard of before.  I left shaking my head.

 

I did find a great shop that made my trip worth it.  It was a shop called Revival.  It was a consignment shop that sold some really awesome clothing for a great price.  I came out with a skirt, a shirt and a little sweater for like $22.  I also stopped by Ebeys to pick up some new fiddle music – the shop owner was great and let me inside even though they had closed already.  I then made my way to Coral Ridge Mall to shop the stores that we don’t have at home. 

 

Much of my other time with Scott away was working on my violin and fiddle music and spending time at Greg and Jolene’s house.  While I’ve had a lot of me time and had time to slow down and think, I’m ready for Scott to come home.  Going to bookstores without him is just not the same and not being able to share any good (or as the case was – bad) with him.  I’m now starting to realize that this house feels big and I’m starting to feel a little – dare I say it – lonely.