It's 1am, do you know where your ability to sleep is?

If it's with mine, would you kindly send it back to Montgomery? I am still awake at 1am, staring down another day of work and so much left to do to be ready to go on my trip Wednesday.

Hmmm, why the insomnia?

In 3 days I will meet someone in person that has become a very dear friend over the past five months.

In 4 days I will meet my new babygirl for the second time, only this time she'll be coming home with me!

In 6 days I will be back again with all my FTH friends, people who know me better than most and whom I love dearly.

Yeah, I'd say that's plenty. I still have to change the oil in the car, pack my suitcase, make sure I have all that the dogs need, and get the car packed and ready to roll Wednesday morning.

I may not sleep till Wednesday night.

Post office labels

A few hours ago I went to the post office to pick up the certified copy of my divorce papers. It's real now, official, in print, etc etc that I'm soon going to be single again. But I won't be single, I'll be DIVORCED.

That word means different things to different people I think. I'm still struggling with whether it means brave, free, stupid, deficient, tainted, used, or just no-longer-married. I've had a roller coaster of emotion since the phone call that let me know the papers were on the way...am I happy to be almost into a new chapter of my life? Am I relieved that what has been, at times, a very unpleasant time in my life is almost over? Or am I back to being out of the norm as far as most of my friends and family are concerned? Unmarried. No children. Over 35.

I've just about forgotten who Nancy Elizabeth Allen is, but I suppose I'm going to have to find out...as soon as the judge bangs his or her gavel, that's who I will return to being, like the Cylons do after death on the TV show Battlestar Galactica. All my old thoughts, feelings, opinions, memories, everything will remain intact, but I'll be in a new shell, so to speak. A new/old me.

The thing I've been struggling with that I thought was just fear of being alone is really a bit deeper than that, and it hit me as I was reading over the court papers. It's a fear that I will be alone forever...somehow, twisted though it seems, at least while I was still married to Scott I didn't feel alone even though I was two states and a gazillion emotional miles away.

Watch this space for more developments. You'll see it here when I pop back into my new body on board the base ship. Too bad I can't look like Number 3 afterward, hey?

Yesterday, today, and two weeks from now...

Four years ago yesterday I lost a very good friend, a greyhound called Bo. Hope you're still flying free, my brave boy. I still miss you and still hate Valentine's Day because it reminds me that I was cheated out of a life with you.

Yesterday, as if on cue because it's Valentine's Day...I got my divorce papers. Couldn't have been more perfect if I'd tried.

Two weeks from yesterday I will go on vacation and get to finally meet someone that has become very important to me.

Life is good.

Soon and Very Soon...

Uncle! Uncle!

At what point do those of us who see ourselves as the helpers and the caretakers of society get to cry uncle? How much to bear is too much? Lately I find myself asking that question a lot, and apparently Karma has not been listening to my cries because I just seem to find more and more piled on top each time I yell. When do I get to say "I want to change jobs because this job is just not what I want to do with my life?" or "I'd like to move somewhere else because I just don't like where I live now," or something of that ilk without sounding like a whiny child?

I am not the type of person to share my personal tragedies in order to get attention or sympathy. That sort of thing ain't my bag...baby. Further, I find myself becoming annoyed with those who do...people who constantly have something wrong, who are never happy, and who want to share their misery with anyone around them that will listen (or is too polite to run away). I am of the opinion that everyone thinks as I do, and that at some point my troubles will become tiresome and morph into a ploy for attention if I talk about them too much, so my tendency is to shut it when I'm feeling stressed...until I can't do that anymore and I just lose it.

Today was a "lose it" day. Work has been hard lately. For the past three weeks or so we've only had a day or two where SOMEONE didn't become out of control on the unit and that wears on you physically and emotionally. I'm getting close to time for my long awaited vaction to Sandy Paws and my budget is totally out of control. The ex still hasn't turned in his financial statement to the lawyer so that we can get this divorce over and done with and in the books. But none of that is anything that anyone can really fix...in my mind it's just stuff to have to deal with for me.

The camel's back broke today when I went to pay my rent as I do every month on the 7th. Every month with the exception of about 2 months, that is. I go in person and hand in the check to make sure it gets there on time. On the 7th. Today when I handed her the check, the woman said, "Does it have the late fee included?" I asked her if today was the 8th and she said that it was the seventh which meant there was a late fee.

Nearly every month since September I've paid my rent in person on the 7th and this is the first time they've felt the need to tell me it is actually due on the 6th. I asked why that was and the girl at the desk pulled up my record. "They're all entered on the 6th. You must have brought them in on the 6th. We can waive your late fee THIS time."

Before I pulled out my check book to show her, the other woman says to me, "Just make it the 7th from now on," with a grin that bordered on patronizing. I must have been a glutton for punishment today because I asked them about my lease next, and if I wanted to find another place to live how much notice was needed prior to the last day on my lease? I told them that I was asking now because it's up in June and...

"No, you're down for a one year lease," the girl says, as she still has my apparently non-delinquent account still on her computer screen. I assure her that the lease was for 9 months and not a year. "Nope, right here it says one year." When she offers to get a copy of my lease agreement to prove to me I was wrong again, I let her. At least I got a little of my own back when she returned and told me that it was a 9 month lease.

Ugh. The thought of moving again is just almost unacceptable...but I can't afford where I live now and I'd like to not be with this company if possible. But again, I'm not complaining...I just need for the carousel to slow down a bit so I can hop off for a little while, both in my private and work lives. Instead, though, I guess I'll just hang on...

Something Rarely Overheard on the Deaf Unit

"Sssshhhh."

I may have to go out and investigate that one...