Please Let Me Explain ...

In trying to sum up the past week the only word that I can really think of is AAUUGGGHHHHH!!!  Yep, that looks and sounds about right.  With the exception of a couple of high points, last week and this past weekend reached a high watermark of suckiness but I'm hoping that perhaps the worst of it is behind and we can now move on towards getting things done without feeling like I'm developing the world's biggest ulcer.

To try to sum things up as succinctly as possible (not an easy task for me on my best day being that I tend to be rather, er, wordy) - during the past week I have been dealing with some stress at work which came in the form of a couple of really, really busy days as well as a colossal feeling of being let-down by someone who shall remain nameless.  This blog isn't for bitching about work so I'm not going to go into detail but the stress from that certainly added to the stress from other arenas.

For those of you who are friends on Facebook, you've probably got a pretty good inkling of what's been going on in those other arenas and know that the major source of my stress has been centered around college financing for Amanda.  As I am the world's worst money manager and totally inept when it comes to finances, I am not able to do anything for her in regards to the Parent PLUS loans that are out there or am I even able to co-sign for her on a commercial student loan; some of that is my fault and some of it stems back to my divorce but let's just suffice it to say that my credit looks like a very fine and holey piece of Swiss cheese.  Eventually my credit will clear up but for now, I can't do anything for Amanda in that arena.

As such, Amanda's brother was going to co-sign for her loan as he feels that she has the talent to make a living as an artist and he didn't want to see her lose her place at Montserrat or her scholarship.  Unfortunately, he was turned down as a co-signer as he had a delinquency that he didn't know about so that option went out the window and things were looking quite bleak as there were no other co-signers to be found.  Needless to say, there were an awful lot of tears flowing this past weekend as Amanda saw her dream of going to art college turning to dust and I was feeling like a major failure as a parent as I should have been able to do something about this if I had just had the good sense to plan better for the future of my children.  Guilt, recrimination, woulda-shoulda-couldas ... it wasn't a fun time by anybody's standards I suspect.

Sunday night while I was tossing and turning with all of this running through my brain, the thought occurred to me that I have a 401K through work that - though it doesn't have much in it because of the recent hits by the national economy - might hold enough to get Amanda through the first year of college if I was able to access it.  It was a glimmer of hope at least and when I went to work yesterday, I contacted our Human Resources Director to see if there was a way I could use the money.  As it turns out, I am able to access the money through a hardship withdrawal that allows me to "pay tuition for the next twelve months of post secondary education".  Ah-ha!  There's a glimmer of light at the end of the college financing tunnel!

While I was at work talking to HR about what I was going to need to secure the hardship withdrawal, Amanda was at home getting a letter from Montserrat with the information for her residency and the names of her roommates - roommates that she was thinking she was never going to get to meet as from her end, things were still looking pretty bleak.  When I called to tell her that I was going to be able to withdraw the money to pay for her first year, she was both happy and concerned as she wanted to make sure that was something I really wanted to do - after all, the money in my 401K is supposed to be for my eventual retirement and it's taken me seven years to accumulate the not-substantial amount that's there so any withdrawal is a big withdrawal.

Well, the way I look at it is that the money is there, it's available to be used, and who knows if/when I am ever going to reach retirement anyway.  I would rather use the money now to help my daughter on her way to achieve her dreams then leave it in an account that's going to be buffeted by the ups and downs of the economy.  I'm not going to be able to retire until I reach the full Social Security age of 72 anyway so that gives me another twenty years of contributions to build the account back up. Besides, when Amanda is a famous artist she can support me in my old age!  And there's also the added bonus of knowing that there is at least one year of student loans she's not going to have to pay back.  Granted, we are going to have to figure out how she'll pay for the next years after this one but I'm hoping that the time between now and then will give us some more workable options.  There are three more bridges ahead of us but for now I am just going to worry about getting across the first bridge and setting Amanda off on her freshman year of college.

Now as if all of that wasn't enough, in the midst of all the stress from work and college financing I received a phone call on Saturday morning from Jamie that threw yet another log on the fire - her father has told her that she needs to move out and she wants to come back to Connecticut to live with me.  This is one of those double-edged swords as I think that moving back to Connecticut will probably be a very good thing for her but by the same token, until Amanda goes to college there a) isn't much room and b) the girls still don't get along all that great.  Of course, having been sent back to Connecticut by her father years ago herself, Amanda is at least a little sympathetic to Jamie's situation and hopefully that might ease some of the tension between the two.

The reason that Jamie is being told to move out is because she doesn't tell her father or stepmother the truth a lot of the time and this makes her no longer welcome in their home.  Whereas I can certainly understand not wanting to be lied to, I'm not so sure that gives a parent a right to send a child packing - especially a child who is still only 16 even if she has her high school diploma.  I had noticed when I was with her in Florida that Jamie embellished on things sometimes or minimized them but this is something that she has always done ever since she was a little girl; I don't think she does it on purpose and I'd be willing to bet that a psychiatrist may very well say that it's directly connected to her ADD.

I've been researching the difference between compulsive liars and pathological liars as I've got to think there's something in Jamie's makeup that causes her to lie easier than to tell the truth - especially when confronted with an unpleasant situation.  She's not a bad kid at all - she has some personality disorders that need to be addressed and just throwing medication at her isn't the way to do it.  And throwing her out of the house isn't the way to do it either.

I need to speak to my ex and get things figured out for Jamie to come up here and live with me and once she does, I'm going to see about getting her into some sort of regular counseling so that her problems can be addressed properly.  Jamie has told me that she wants to get a job and she'd be willing to do just about anything while she continues to study for her ASVAB to try to get into the Air Force.  I don't believe she's lying to me about that and even though jobs are still very hard to find around here, perhaps there will be an opening at the local Stop & Shop or McDonald's where she can pull in at least a few hours.  Once she gets up here we'll figure something out and I'll do my best to get her on a path she wants to be on also.  It's probably not going to be easy and I suspect we're going to hit some roadblocks along the way but Jamie deserves just as much of a chance at a good life as Amanda does and as her mother, I owe her that.

So anyway ... that's been my week and I hope it explains what's been going on that has put me in such a funk lately.  I'm hoping that now that a couple things have been resolved that I'll be able to get back to some form of normalcy soon and that I'll also be able to get around to visit everyone else's blogs and see how your lives are going.  Talk about feeling out of the loop!

Oh, and so much for succinct, eh??

Did Someone Say "Pressure"??

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone for your kind comments on Wednesday's post and to let you know that I'm hanging in there in spite of even more added stressors the past couple of days.  I'm sure there are many reasons for my being overwhelmed right now - not the least of which I'm sure is the heat & humidity and aging hormones - and I really do plan on seeking out someone of a professional nature to talk to before my head explodes or something, I just need to remember to do that!

In the meantime, this evening is Amanda's long-delayed graduation/birthday party for which she has a fantastic cake courtesy of the talents of Miss Maggie Moo and I promise pictures and such as soon as I can get my ducks together and keep them in some sort of row for at least a little while.

In the interim, this video might just sum it up!

Driving Myself Crazy

Exactly what good does it do me to have a day off when all I do is hang around the house and stress? All things considered, I may as well have been sitting at work in the air-conditioning rather than sitting at home without air-conditioning whilst biting my non-existent fingernails.  Unfortunately that's pretty much what I did all day yesterday, though, as I can be one of the worst obsessive-compulsive worriers when I let myself and the whole thing I mentioned yesterday with Amtrak had me on edge big-time.

I waffled back and forth between waiting to see how much higher Amtrak prices went to debating on driving down (brief moment of insanity there!) to checking just about every airline price out there to worrying about Amtrak again.  Honestly, it was getting to be a bit ridiculous so I finally decided that I needed to make a decision and stop being indecisive! 

I was driving myself totally crazy so I shut off the computer, grabbed some blueberry-rhubarb pie that I made the other day, retreated to the love-seat in the living room, and hunkered down to watch Tuesday night's episode of Glee that was on the DVR.  Sometimes a little mindless TV is just what I need to disconnect from the other stressors in my life and get my mind out of that continuous loop of anxiety; luckily that seemed to do the trick yesterday. Thankfully Rachel's problems are so much bigger than mine!

Even though I really wanted to take the train with Jamie as I thought it would be a bit more of an adventure, I finally decided that there were other things that I wanted to do while in Florida and it didn't make sense to spend all of my money on a train ticket when I could get a flight on Southwest cheaper.  Add on the fact that it will give me extra time to do some of those other things I want do while in Florida and that finally seemed to seal the deal in my mind. 

I'm just going to have to save the train trip for another time and I've already got a pretty good idea where that train trip will be to.  Due to the fact that I'll be flying down now I won't be able to fit in the stop-over dinner with Mimi that I was hoping for so I'm thinking that a trip down to Bloggingham at a future date might be nice, especially if I can convince Princess Patti of Ansonia in the Valley to accompany me.  Perhaps she would consider a weekend of royal mirth and mayhem at some point in time wherein we could journey south and set loose the prisoners from the dungeon have tea and crumpets with the Queen.  Rumor has it if you buy your tickets about three months in advance on Amtrak, you can get a pretty good price (nice to know now, eh?) so maybe an autumnal sojourn would be nice. Definitely something to consider.

So, I'm still hammering out the final details of things but I've got a pretty good grasp of the what/where/when at this point and think I can relax a bit where the trip details are concerned.  Now if I could just relax about the other thing that's been stressing me out lately ...

See those brown patches?  They weren't there last year and they are driving me totally nuts!  I've put down lime, I've put down grass seed, I've put down Scotts Turfbuilder, and I've been watering the lawn faithfully due to the recent overwhelming heat we've had but so far what I seem to still have are brown patches with no little sprouts of grass to be seen.  My Mom tells me to be patient but I'm afraid patience has never been one of my virtues!  Anyhow, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm certainly open to hearing them; as the duly  appointed Keeper of the Lawn I must say this is very frustrating!

Perhaps what I really need to do though is take a page from Tesla's book and just learn how to relax ...
... though I kind of doubt there's room for both of us on the dining room table!

Counting Sheep Over College Costs

Unlike others who seem to have no problem nodding off to sleep at the drop of a hat, I'm starting to have problems sleeping lately which I think is a direct result of feeling stressed and overwhelmed about the financing for Amanda to attend art college.  The amount of time that I've been spending lying in bed tossing and turning and trying to get to sleep - and staying asleep - without success is directly related to the amount of time I've spent trying to figure out Amanda's college financing. 

In the past few days, I've spent countless hours on-line researching one scholarship after another and have come to the conclusion that Amanda is basically up the creek with a leaky canoe and no paddles when it comes to grants or scholarships as she's the wrong ethnicity, I make too much money, we live in the wrong place, and she's healthy.  There are scholarships out there for some of the most obscure things but darned few for regular old kids who come from middle income families.

I know that everyone has told me not to stress about it as things will work out but based on my EFC (expected family contribution) on the FAFSA (federal application for student aid) Amanda does not qualify for any grants whatsoever which makes the only option available to her student loans.  Granted, everyone has student loans these days and it's all part and parcel of going to college but there's also the hurdle of her having to have a co-signer and - truth to be told - my credit is horrible and is not going to help her in the least.

I have no credit cards and I have no debt other than average bills and my car payment but my credit took a major hit after my divorce and it looks more like a piece of moldy Swiss cheese than anything.  It doesn't help that I totally suck at money management.  I don't think I could co-sign a loan for a stick of gum, never mind major college financing, so the whole thing has really got my stomach in a knot and my head whirling. 

It stinks that I can't be as excited as she is about the prospect of attending Montserrat as I'm just too busy worrying about where the money is going to come from.  I'm very proud and happy that she received a scholarship (a girl in one of her art classes got accepted into Montserrat but didn't get a scholarship) but there's still a lot of money that's going to have to be paid for her to pursue her dream.  Oh, and for those wondering - her father has not contributed a single dime towards anything to do with her since she moved back in with me in October of 2005 so there's no way he's going to be providing anything towards her college education.

I just need to find 27,000 people willing to donate $1 each as that would pay for her first year of college but alas, I don't have anywhere near that many friends on Facebook and I doubt that putting a virtual tin cup on the sidebar of my blog linked to Paypal would do it either!  I guess I could continue to try "College Financing via the Lottery System" but if Saturday night's dismal results of the two Powerball tickets I bought is any indication, that ain't gonna work either I'm afraid. Sigh. I really should have planned better for all this.

At the rate things are going, I'm going to give myself an ulcer!  Oh well perhaps I just need to learn to relax ...

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This!

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There are just some days when this really seems like a good idea, doesn't it? Having a stressful job, having a teenager who apparently doesn't under English, and having the worst finances in the world will do that to a person but other than that, I'm trying to stay positive! Heehee!

A Week of Lunacy Minus the Moon!

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Thank God it's my Friday and I have wrapped up another work week! This one has been a bit of a bear and I am more than thankful that it's over. To say that it was busy would be a major understatement but I can't for the life of me figure out why as we're not even close to a full moon (the next one isn't until the 26th).

Lest you think I'm just being superstitious about the the whole full moon thing please trust me - I'm not. Talk to the people who work in police departments, hospital emergency rooms, drug rehabs, psychiatric facilities, or any dispatcher anywhere and they will all tell you the same thing - it gets crazy during a full moon!

I've read several articles lately that try to debunk this particular "myth", as they like to refer to it, and chalk the erroneous belief up to five factors - media effects, folklore & tradition, misconceptions, cognitive biases, and communal reinforcement. Well, I don't care how scientific they want to be about it or what they attribute the lunacy to, I'm here to tell you it's true and no amount of scientific studies is going to convince me otherwise! People just get crazy during a full moon!

Well, no matter how you look at it and whether you believe it or not (do you??), all I can say is that as busy as this week was with one emergency after another (and off-the-wall ones at that), I can only imagine what it's going to be like in two more weeks when the moon is honest and truly full. I'm thinking hiding under a rock then might be a good idea!

Hmm, now that I think about it, I wonder if I could talk the Upper Management at work into giving us a little extra "Lunar Pay" for the times when the moon is full and it gets even more hectic than usual? What are the chances they'd tell me to "go bark at the moon" if I suggested it??

A Sure-Fire Stress-Release Technique!

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Got this in my email from my favorite Intermediate EMT, Bulldog, and thought that others might be able to use this stress management technique recommended in all the latest psychological journals.

Just follow the 7 steps below. The funny thing is that it really does work.

1. Picture yourself lying on your belly on a warm rock that hangs out over a crystal clear stream.
2. Picture yourself with both your hands dangling in the cool running water.
3. Birds are sweetly singing in the cool mountain air.
4. No one knows your secret place.
5. You are in total seclusion from that hectic place called the world.
6. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.
7. The water is so crystal clear that you can easily make out the face of the person you are holding underwater.

See? It really does work. You're smiling!

Some days at work are better than others. Wednesday was not one of them!

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I had a sneaky feeling that it wasn't going to be a good day even before I left the house when my pager went off advising me that a particular road in Norwich was closed due to a working structure fire. For those of you who aren't familiar with fire terms, a working structure fire means that a structure is on fire and firefighters are working at putting it out. Leastways I think that's what it means!

The road in question wasn't one that I had to worry about traveling but whenever there's a working structure fire in the area, American Ambulance sends out what is called the Rehab Unit. In a nutshell that's a trailer that is equipped with heaters, blankets, hot beverages, water, medical supplies, etc - anything that is needed to help firefighters who are battling not only smoke and flames but also weather elements like extreme hot and extreme cold.

Having never been bitten by the 'fire bug' myself, I have no desire to don 80+ pounds of turn-out gear and battle a fire but I have come to know a lot of people who do and from them I've learned that fighting fires can be pretty intense. It only makes good sense to have equipment nearby to help these guys out - a lot of whom are volunteers with their local departments.

Upon getting turn-over from the midnight dispatcher I was informed that, sure enough, a crew had been at the fire scene with the Rehab Unit and I was going to have to figure out who was going to go down to replace them as the current crew was off at 0700 hours (7:00 a.m. to you non-military types). Not everyone who works at American as an EMT or Paramedic is trained on the Rehab Unit so before anyone can be sent, one has to consult the list of qualified people and see who's working that can go.

What that meant for me was that I was going to drop down a full BLS car when I sent that crew to replace the crew that was already at the standby. On top of that, there were two burn victims of the fire and it sounded like we would be transporting at least one, if not both, to the closest hospital with a Burn Center. In our neck of the woods, that just happens to be Bridgeport Hospital which is about 75 miles south of us. Needless to say, it wouldn't be a quick trip.

The first hour of my day went by relatively okay and then someone seemed to open up the floodgates somewhere as I took several emergency calls, a couple of long-distance transfers (including the expected one to Bridgeport), and the hospitals that we service started calling in with one discharge after another. This was all in addition to the calls that were already scheduled on the spreadsheet laid out in front of me.

Soon I had every car at my disposal out running calls and yet the phones kept ringing. Add on to that a suspected HazMat spill at one of the local elementary schools developed and before you knew it I was giving serious consideration to biting my nails as I found myself starting to clench my teeth! Every time I thought I had a little bit of breathing room, the phones would ring again and I'd have to juggle things around a little more.

The crew at the fire standby with the Rehab Unit cleared from there basically just in time to go to the elementary school for the HazMat spill as somehow a small batch of white powder had turned into a Level 3 HazMat incident which took up two additional ambulances along with the Rehab Unit. Things were not looking good as I started to wear out my eraser moving calls from one spot on the spreadsheet to another.

Shortly after that I had to put two of the guys who work in dispatch that are also EMTs out on the road with medics to make up a couple of cars as I had run out of regularly scheduled road people and I had a need for more ambulances. Before the day was done the Director of Operations, the Director of Quality Assurance, and the guy who does the mountains of paperwork that we generate were all out running calls in various parts of the city. Falls, seizures, chest pains, alcohol intoxication, difficulty breathing - it seemed like if there was an ailment out there, someone was calling in with it!

It wasn't until 2000 hours (for the militarily challenged, 8:00 p.m.) that I finally had a clear screen on the computer in front of me. No calls were glaring at me from the open work module, there was some white space actually showing on the spreadsheet, and I could at long last breathe a sigh of relief after what had been one of the busiest and most stressful days that I can remember in awhile. Granted, calls kept coming in but at least it was at a slower pace that didn't require a high level of erasing or teeth-clenching!

I'm sure it would have been much worse were it not for the expertise of my Supervisor and his many years on the job (he always seems to make it look easy - damn the man!) but I have to say that I was quite glad when 2300 hours (11:00 p.m.) finally rolled around and I could put another double shift behind me for another week.

For all I know, today is going to be just as busy but I'm not going to worry about it as it's my day off and I plan on spending it not thinking about work. Unless, of course, I hear a siren wail past the house ...

Just another manic ... Tuesday??

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Here it is, after 10:00 at night and I am finally getting around to posting something in my blog which will probably end up amounting to about 1,000 words of whining when I'm done! Sigh ... I need a longer day sometimes!

I got home from work at the usual time and found not one but two boxes from WalMart had been delivered via the big brown truck. When I had finally gotten around to ordering a new desktop PC and microwave oven (my mother had given me a gift card to get one at Christmas), I had decided to order off of WalMart.com for the simple reason that I have a bad back and it seemed so much easier to have large, heavy boxes delivered to my door rather than go through the process of lugging them around myself. Plus WalMart actually has what one would call decent prices for shipping and handling so it seemed like a marvelous idea.

I wasn't expecting both things to arrive on the same day (got to love that package tracking info that is oh-so-accurate!) but they did and that left me with my hands full for the evening. Before hauling Amanda off to NFA so that she could play in pep band at the basketball game tonight, I managed to get the kitchen rearranged and get the new microwave set up (I really had been meaning to clean those counters for quite some time!). That, as it turned out, was the easy part.

After I got home from a quick run through the grocery store (don't you hate it when you run out of milk and kitty litter at the same time?) I then tackled the big project - setting up the new computer. First things being first I had to dismantle the old desktop to make room for the new and then I unpacked the new one and got it all hooked up and ready to go so that Amanda could use it tomorrow while I'm at work for 16 glorious hours. The only thing left to do was get the new wireless software up and running so that she could have Internet access.

The new computer didn't come with a wireless card so I had decided to try using one of the new ones that, rather than hard wire into the computer, you can just plug into a USB port. It had seemed simple enough that even a not-so-technologically-adept person like myself could handle it so I got the thing out of the box, got my glasses on so I could figure out exactly what I was doing, and found out that I couldn't install the software because it wasn't compatible with Windows Vista. What the ...???

After staring at the package inserts for awhile, I decided to give NetGear tech support a call to see if there was some way around this little predicament and after listening to a good five minutes of recorded instructions, I ended up speaking to some woman whose name had to be Helga who vacationed in the fjords. After getting through the language barrier issues, she told me that they didn't make drivers for Vista yet and I would have to use an older Windows operating system. Uh ... Helga ... new computer with only Vista installed ... "vell den, vat choo need to do ist to take der card bach to der store und get chour money bach."

Spectacular! So now it's 8:15, I know I'm going to have to pick Amanda up from the game soon, but I figure if I drive like a fiend across town I can get to Staples before they close and see if there is a wireless card that IS compatible with Vista. Of course, before I can get halfway there my cell phone rings and it's Amanda who is ready to be picked up - but of course! I explain to her that I am just about at Staples trying to get a new wireless card and if she can hang tight for a few I'll be there as soon as I can. "No problem", she says.

I careen into the parking lot of Staples on two wheels, jump out of the car, and run up to the service desk only to find out that apparently no one has Vista-compatible wireless cards yet because it's such a new operating system. A few not-quite-foreign and yet colorful words escaped my lips as I realized that I was going to have to go the old-fashioned way and hook the new computer up to the modem - which wouldn't be so bad except that there are no phone jacks upstairs where the computer is which is the reason I went wireless to begin with. Great - more rearranging when I get home as I know there is no way that Amanda would survive the entirety of tomorrow without Internet access - how could she check her MySpace messages, how could she IM Dan and Nicole, how could she do anything??

After returning the useless-to-me wireless card, I zoomed over to NFA, grabbed the kid, and on the way home made a quick stop at the local gas station for if I didn't I was going to be pushing the car to work in the morning. Some idiot had let it get down below a quarter of a tank! (Yeah, yeah, that would be me!) Could this day get any more screwed-up? It was now after 9:00 at night, I hadn't eaten dinner, the computer still needed to be hooked up, I hadn't written anything in my blog, I needed to find a picture for Wordless Wednesday as I have to post it tonight or it doesn't get posted, and- worse yet - I had forgotten to set the DVR to record House!!

Finally getting home, Amanda and I got the new computer disassembled from upstairs and down to the dining room where I hooked it up temporarily until I can actually find the time and strength to lug the desk downstairs. Of course I had to move both the modem and router and find another ethernet cable in order to get everything hooked up but shortly before 10:00 I had everything up and running like it was supposed to and I could at last throw something in the new microwave to nuke for dinner. Whew!

I was finally able to sit down with my laptop a little bit ago to post something but I feel terrible that I haven't had a chance to make the rounds of the blogs that I usually read each day. Add on the fact that I won't be able to get to them tomorrow until after I get home at 11:00 at night and I am going to have some serious catching up to do!

It's times like this that I really hate being the only adult in the house - the one responsible to make sure that everything is up and running as it should be - the one who has to do all of the assembly on new things - the one who has to do all the driving and grocery shopping and fueling of the car - and the one who's going to have to move everything around again on my day off once I figure out how to lug the desk downstairs without blowing out a couple more disks in my back.

Sometimes I just don't want to be "I am woman hear me roar" anymore. I'd really rather be "honey, can you take care of that for me?" Oh well ... whatchagonnado?? At least Amanda has Internet AND the new computer for tomorrow and she's happy - that's gotta count for something.