I went to ASU this morning and I'm just on academic probation. I say "just" because the first person I spoke to make it sound like I was disqualified, rather than just having a low GPA. It's harder to get back in when you're disqualified. The low GPA is directly related to Jasmine's health and will quickly be corrected when I replace 2 of the 3 E's (E -- dumb, dumb, dumb... who doesn't "get" that an E is the same as an F??) with A's. The third E can't be replaced because it's an upper level class, but once I get going again, it will be swallowed in the rest of my grades. I'll be fine. So in almost exactly one month, I will be a college student again. Going full-time, it should take me about 5 semesters to finish a degree in English Lit.

Anyway, it lifted part of the cloud that is hanging around these days, and I really do look forward to going back to school. I start with a British Lit class (I LOVE British Lit) and a women's studies class, so I'm looking forward to that.

Jeff's new job continues to go very well. He has made a lot of contacts in the department and it looks very good for him to "quickly" move into a recruit position. I say "quickly" because you may recall it took Jeff about three months to get into his current position. The wheels of ASU don't seem to move in a particularly quick fashion.

Also good -- the insurance from Jeff's job kicked in right away, so we can do all the doctoring and dentisting I've been putting off.

The Bad:

We aren't broke, but we have to really scale back our spending. Severely. We've been doing this gradually anyway, but now it will have to be all about basics, with the splurges few and far between. When I get back from California camp, we're selling the minivan and buying a 8-10 year old reliable sedan that gets good gas mileage. I've been talking about this for awhile anyway, though my primary directive before was to get better gas mileage. Now we'll also be pocketing the extra money from the sale and using it to keep me out of Cube World and in the Land of Academia. We will probably do the same with his truck -- sell the current one and downsize into a smaller, more gas efficient one. We thought about going down to one vehicle, but I am afraid that's just not practical considering where we live. Added bonus -- less for insurance and registration.

I'm also going to have to leave the luxury gym -- it's just too expensive. Besides, we have access to the Rec Center at ASU and it's quite nice and tons cheaper. And besides once over, I have a ton of stuff at home -- exercise balls, weights, resistance bands, DVDs, personal trainer software... I don't really have to have a gym membership to work out.

Hunh. I guess the bad isn't really that bad after all. It's all about perspective, I suppose.

The Ugly:

Tomorrow is Jasmine's birthday. She would have been twelve, her last year before the dreadfully anticipated teen years. I haven't been able to get it off my mind for days and it actually kept me up last night. Memories of being pregnant with her, of three days of labor (my water broke at about this time twelve years ago), holding her at my breast the day we brought her home and telling her I would never let anything hurt her. She stared up at me with her big gray eyes as if she had no doubt whatsoever that I'd do just that. I'm a wreck if I think about it too long -- I just teared up even typing this and I'm trying to be light about it, dammit.

My close pointer-outer friend Thalia pointed out to me that after I posted Old Clothes, I immediately retreated into what she called PR mode in my comments (over at LiveJournal). She's right. I'm not okay, not even close, but I'm also not quite ready to be committed to the insane asylum. These episodes of falling apart often coincide with Jasmine's anniversaries, she pointed out, and they do. I'm not sure if it's just harder at these times because, well, they're hard, or if the universe is having a good laugh at my expense, wondering which straw, exactly, is going to break my back. But what I wanted to say was... thank you to those of you who reached out after I wrote that. I wasn't trying to brush you off, I was just trying to pretend that I'm not seriously losing my shit. I realized today that it's not so much that I don't ask for help. I don't sit around thinking, "I need help, but dammit, I'm not asking." It's more that I'm too smart for my own good, too good an actress, and I am in so deep by the time I realize I need help that I can't open my mouth to ask for it without water rushing in.

Anyway, that's what's up with me. I was determined to keep my mouth shut until I'm in a better place, but I'm apparently not very good at that.

Previous | Next