Frustration…

After quite a few obstacles, I’ve finally got my two short story manuscripts printed, enveloped, and stamped. They’re ready to go out to The Georgia Review and The Paris Review.

The last couple weeks have been quite frustrating in many ways. Here’s a few highlights:

• Went to print my manuscripts and had no ink.
• Ordered an ink refill kit and waited for it to come in the mail.
• Attempted to fill the ink cartridge, only for it to all leak back out (futile!).
• Put up the Christmas tree and decorated the house while watching Home Alone and listening to Christmas music. Loved it. =]
• Have slowly been working on the same story, for the last month (Why can’t I seem to finish it? Maybe this means I need to work on a novel. Maybe it’s my subconscious mind’s way of letting me know I have more to say than a short story’s worth of words.)
• Been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get shopping done and ready for the holidays.
• Pulled my cat out of the Christmas tree probably a billion times because he thinks it’s his own personal jungle (and he still does it, even after I soak his ass with a spray bottle. I think we need to implement stronger kitty punishments in my house). Which also means I’ve had to fluff (it’s a fake tree) and adjust and replace ornaments about a billion times as well. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m just sick of doing it. Next year there’ll be no tree, thanks to Tyson The Asshole.
• Wrapped a few presents.
• Tried to finish the book I’ve been reading for six months, to no avail.
• Printed out pictures to send to a close relative in jail for Christmas, and worried about how he’s handling the holidays alone.
• My car’s broken, so I’ve been trying to help my husband fix it (because he won’t pay the $50 an hour to have it fixed by a mechanic. And the worst part is that neither he nor I know what the fuck we’re doing. I’d rather just pay the money and have it fixed already. It’s been more than a week now and I still don’t have my car.) So as a result we’ve been paying through the nose to keep gas in his oversized pickup just to get to town and around to see our parents.
• Finally broke down and bought an ink cartridge (I’ve been looking for a cheaper way to print. Ink prices are ridiculous!). Printed my manuscripts.
• Couldn’t figure out how much postage to put on my manuscripts (since I need to cover there and back), and finally found a postage calculator online. Had to figure out a way to weigh the envelopes, and finally managed that too, only to find that I had nowhere near enough stamps to cover postage.
• Had been meaning to turn in my accounting hours to the boss man (Ty’s Dad) in order to get paid and have enough cash to finish Christmas shopping, but somehow managed to forget my hour sheet every time we went to Ty’s parents. (Ahhhhhh!)
• Found out my Mom’s dog (he used to be mine when we first got him, when I was 14), Roger, has a growth/tumor pressing on his lungs and heart. The vets ran a biopsy and found that it wasn’t cancerous, but they can’t remove the entire thing because it lays too close to his carotid and the nerve that regulates the diaphragm. He’ll be alright, after he recovers from the surgery that’s going down tomorrow, but it’s likely the tumor will return in about a year.
• My grandpa is in a physical therapy/rehab facility in Chicago. He’s recovering from spinal meningitis (he has been in and out of the hospital since the day after my wedding in August), and a surgery to remove cysts from his spine in order to help him to walk and move again. The holidays won’t be the same without him home.
• And dysfunction of all dysfunctions: my older brother’s girlfriend (who he has the most adorable sweet little girl with) stabbed him with a fork on Sunday, while he was holding the baby. The police were called, and they hauled that bitch off to jail. My brother finally has custody of my niece (since his girlfriend made sure he wasn’t there to sign the birth certificate when the baby was born). The local prosecutor is going after her, from what I hear. CPS has been involved, and won’t allow her or her family to see the baby. (She stabbed my brother!!!)
• Baked Christmas sugar cookies with Tyler, my Dad and Grandparents, and three of my four brothers. One of them made a Hulk gingerbread man. =]
• Missed the end of the finale of Survivor (I love that show.), because Ty and I had this awesome idea for Christmas presents for our parents (we had an awesome coupon that was only good till Midnight on Sunday, so we had to get our order in before that, and Survivor kept being pushed back by a football game and the President’s speech). When we got home I didn’t even have time to finish the order, but figured what I had done was enough and that I could do more later without the coupon.  When I went to check out, it turned out that we couldn’t even pick them up in store, and would have had to pay over thirty bucks just for shipping. Scrapped that idea.
• Finally got paid.
• And finally got my postage. Ty picked up the stamps yesterday. My manuscripts are FINALLY ready, waiting in the mailbox, two hours and counting until the mail lady gets here.

I think the words “stress” and “frustration” don’t even cover it. Take those feelings and multiply them by a hundred, and you still might not get how I feel.

It’s not just the holidays. It’s my car. It’s that crazy bitch who stabbed my brother. It’s having to worry about money between Christmas shopping, grocery shopping, bills, and having the little extra I need to mail my stories out. It’s the stress of Christmas shopping. It’s my stupid cat’s inability to realize that climbing the Christmas tree is not cute. It’s worrying about my injured, sick, recovering, and incarcerated family members, and the rest of us left reeling and shocked by the past year’s events (And it’s not just this year. Every year I tell myself things will be better, everything will calm down, my family and friends (and myself) will find peace. But that day seems to never come). It’s everything.

I just want to scream!!!!

The only stress relief I have in my foreseeable future is the End of the World Party my Dad wants to throw on Friday. I think it sounds like fun. (It’s not a party because my Dad thinks the world will end, he’s just poking fun at the idea.) I’m looking forward to letting loose and having a good time. Maybe I’ll scrape together a little extra money to pick up something super yummy to drink at the party. It’ll be nice to relax and not think about everything for once.

One of my other brothers wants to throw a party on Thursday too, and then Saturday it’s looking like I’ll be babysitting my niece. Sunday will be Christmas with Ty’s Grandparents (and the whole huge family), and then Monday we’ll do Christmas with Ty’s parents. Christmas Day we’ll be up early to watch the kids open presents at my Dad’s, then off to Ty’s other Grandpa and Grandma’s for noon, and back out to my Grandparents for dinner. The next day we’ll spend celebrating Christmas with my step mom’s parents. Then, on the 29th, Ty and I will have our final Christmas engagement at my Mom’s house.

Then I’ll have New Years and Tyler’s birthday to worry about (yes, he’s a New Year’s Baby, =]). And I have to start thinking about the casino trip we’d been talking about, as well as a present for Ty and gift ideas for both his and my parents, and then there’s the bon fire we had been talking about throwing to celebrate his birthday with our friends. So far it’s looking like a no-go on the fire, since we have no snow, and the brush/trash pile we have is more than half the size of our garage. Don’t want to start a forest fire. But we are supposed to be hit by a blizzard in the next couple days, so maybe we will throw a party and light the heap.

So from the looks of it, things aren’t going to be letting up or getting any easier any time soon. Two weeks of chaos behind me, and yet another waiting in my future.

It’s a wonder I haven’t lost my shit and started wearing underwear on my head or something.

This is the pandemonium that is my life.

I need to start looking at the bright side of things. I still have Ty, and my family is all alive (even if they’re not all healthy), and I have a home, and two (occasionally) sweet pets, and people that love me. I am grateful, I just wish it wasn’t always so hard to see.

In light of everything going on, and the holidays, I hope you all don’t mind I won’t be posting so much. I’ll try to log on whenever I can, but until I do, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, whatever your religion or stance on the holidays. I hope you are all well, healthy, and happy, and I hope your writing and other works are coming along wonderfully.