Living the Dream is... Kinda Scary, Actually.

I'm not gonna lie... 2013 was a pretty good year for me. 2012 wasn't bad either. 2014 is off to a pretty fantastic start as well.

Train would tell you I'm an optimist, if you were to inquire about me. Compared to him, yes I am, though I still have a hard time thinking of myself that way. After so many years of depression and struggle, it's hard to think of myself as an optimist. But like I said, I have to admit that the last couple of years have been pretty kind to me. See below:

April 2012 - Got new job/new career. Moved to new city. Made what seemed like a ridiculous amount of money to me at the time.

July 2012 - Reconnected with my best friend from elementary school.

September 2012 - Turned 30, which wasn't as scary as I thought. Started dating my best friend from elementary school.

October 2012 - Moved to another new city. Made even more money than before. Got a huge 1,200 square foot apartment for free out of the deal.

May 2013 - Moved up in the company. New responsibilities. Less resident contact. This is a happiness.

December 2013 - Went to Hawaii. Got engaged to my best friend from elementary school. Got a new (used) car that is 8 years younger than my child and does not have a massive goat dent in the hood. Also, things work on this car. The windshield defogs in less than 15 minutes (less than one minute, even!). It's really quite amazing.

January 2014 (so far) - Made a budget and a meal plan with my husband-to-be. Found a house to rent that's within our price range. Won't have to live in an apartment anymore. Signing the lease tomorrow night. Also I got a yellow belt in karate.

Our new front yard, as seen from the driver's seat of my new car.

We're also planning to get married and go to Bora Bora in a couple of months, so it does not look like this upswing my life is on is going to peak anytime real soon. Which, quite frankly, scares the crap out of me. I'm not used to everything going so well, I'm not used to being so happy, and I'm sort of subconsciously waiting for the other shoe to drop. Surely this cannot continue and something will go horribly and irreversibly wrong. I mentioned this feeling to Train earlier tonight (the pessimist in our relationship) and his response was a dismissive, "Nah, everything will be fine. Just enjoy it."

I am enjoying it, and I'd like to relax, and most of the time I manage to put those thoughts aside and relax, but I have a deep-seated mistrust of anything that seems to be going too well, and right now everything is going too well. My kid is even getting decent grades in school, for crying out loud. Sometimes in quiet moments, I wonder which part of the fairy tale castle I've built is going to come tumbling down first.

Anyone else ever get that feeling, or am I mentally damaged?

The Changes FIVE Years Can Bring

This post is a carry-over from my old blog. Those of you (the "reading several") who paid attention to that one know that every year at about this time, I do a comparison of the state of my life this year to the previous year. I started this in 2009, comparing to what was at that time a drastic change from 2008, and I've carried it over and added onto it every year since then. So without further ado... 2013 shall be added to the list in purple.

2008: We lived in a falling-apart house with no heat.
2009: We live in a pretty nice apartment with gas heat.
2010: We live in the same apartment as last year. Have somehow managed to keep paying the rent. Praise God!
2011: We still live in the same apartment. I have an eye toward moving before the end of the year, though, because I'm close to being able to afford to at this rate.
2012: We have moved twice in 2012. The first time was to Gresham (in April) for a new job, the second time was to Milwaukie (in October) for the same company.
2013: Still living in the same apartment in Milwaukie, and sort of enjoying the stability. Have an eye toward moving to a house sometime in the next year or two, but there's no rush.

2008: I was unemployed. All year.
2009: I sometimes wish I worked less, but I am blessed to have a job surrounded by good, godly people who are passionate about what they do and make working with them so much fun.
2010: Same job situation except it has dawned on me that I really don't like teaching. Okay, so I knew that all along, but now I'm really starting to get the urge to move along... still like the people I work with, though!
2011: I now work FULL TIME for the first time since 2001. I adore the people I work with, but I like teaching less and less. Looking to move on (and when I do that apartment change thing will probably shortly follow).
2012: I am now a full time, salaried property manager. Which sort of explains how I have moved twice this year, no? And look up there and see how psychic I was in 2011! I knew something was coming, just didn't know what... lol. Anyway, not only do I get free rent on a 1,200 square foot apartment, but also I am salaried for more money than I've ever made before in my life. I've had years where my total yearly income was barely $8,000. This is not one of those years.
2013: Still with the same property management company, but in a different capacity. I've moved up!

2008: I did nearly all my Christmas shopping at the Dollar Tree, because it was what I could afford.
2009: I did most of my Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart... moving on up!
2010: Primarily Wal-Mart again. No huge change in this department.
2011: Again, no change! What can I say? I like Wal-Mart.
2012: Haven't done any shopping yet. Could I shop somewhere else? Yes, probably. Will I shop somewhere else? Eh... maybe. But it's hard to beat Wal-Mart!
2013: Well, I did some of my Christmas shopping in Hawaii this year, but still a lot of it at Wal-Mart.


2008: We got food boxes from a couple of different local organizations.
2009: An organization called to offer us a food box and I told them they could probably find someone who needed it worse than we do. After I hung up I realized what I'd just been able to say and I almost cried.
2010: Nobody even offered us a food box this year.
2011: I don't even get food stamps anymore. (Well, $16 a month, but that hardly counts, now does it?)
2012: Virtually no change from 2011 here. I do technically still qualify for the minimum amount of food stamps, but I often forget to use them. The only reason I'm still signed up is because I do it at the same time as the Chamaco's medical insurance (which I'm keeping, since I don't have health insurance myself to add him to). 
2013: Actually no change since 2012 here, except that I'll be getting insurance myself come January 1st.

2008: I carried my son upstairs to his bed when he fell asleep on the couch.
2009: I can barely pick up my son, much less carry him upstairs. This only happened in the last month or two. I realized today that soon I won't be able to pick him up at all... my baby is gone. I almost cried.
2010: I can still pick up my nine-year-old boy for brief periods of time
2011: My kid turned 10 this year. I can still pick him up, but I can't carry him much of anywhere. I realize that the only reason I can pick him up is because I routinely lift up to sixty pounds of child at work. He clocks in at about 74, last I knew.
2012: The boy will be 11 next week. And I can still pick him up, but only barely.
2013: He's 12. He's in middle school. Still trying to get my head around that. Sometimes he jumps on me and hangs, and I can stay upright but I'm not going much of anywhere.

2008: My son was the sort of co-dependent that being the only child of a single mom will get you.
2009: I have an increasingly independent eight-year-old who more and more often wants to do things by himself. I told him that I was going to get Nancy's recipe for play-doh because the stuff we make at work is better than the store-bought stuff. I said this because I thought it would be something fun we could do together. He asked if he could do it by himself.
2010: My son cooked dinner a few weeks ago. I supervised him, but the only thing I actually did for him was turn the knobs on the stove, because he can't reach them yet. He's older but still short... lol.
2011: My kid can stay home by himself for increasingly long periods of time (I haven't yet pushed it past an hour and a half). He has a cell phone. As long as there is a microwave and a stocked freezer, he can feed himself indefinitely. This works out well for me going to Zumba classes on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
2012: All this moving and new job stuff has created the necessity for the Chamaco to stay home alone for up to eight hours a day if he's not in school. Somehow, against all odds, I have raised the sort of responsible, independent kid that can handle this just fine so long as he has a microwave and internet access.
2013: Same sort of situation here, except he can reach the stove knobs now. I'm still not letting him stove-cook without supervision, but I sense it's on the horizon.

2008: I had a couple of friends, but mostly felt very lonely and isolated.
2009: I have some very good friends, some less-close-but-still-good friends, some casual acquaintances that  always make me smile (hello CTG!), a pretty full social calendar, and sometimes wish desperately to just be home by myself for a few hours.
2010: All of the above, plus a couple of new friends... :-)
2011: Loads of new people in my life this year. Some of them are even male... lol.
2012: With the new job comes a new social circle. I must say I like working with a mixed group of men and women again... lol. The estrogen levels in my life were approaching critical.
2013: A few of my "new" coworkers (here at this job where I've been for a year and a half) have wormed their way into that circle I would call "friends". For my own sanity, I have taken to keeping Saturday for myself and having that be a day where I can just stay home if that's what I want to do, because it often is. I'm kinda busy these days.

2008: I was single.
2009: Still single... no change there. : )
2010: Despite some rumors you may have heard, still single. But I guess there were at least rumors this year. Maybe next year there will be something to them! ;-)
2011: Still single! But I did actually go on ONE date in 2011. Which is one more than in the previous eight years combined, so I guess that's progress... ha ha ha!
2012: I am... not single. Haven't been since September-ish. (Don't ask me exactly when, because I don't know!) Here's the funny part: Internally, I have always said two things... that I wanted to date someone I didn't date in high school (because all previous boyfriends and my ex-husband I dated in high school), and that I wanted to date someone who was my best friend (obviously, this required finding a male best friend). To which, I presume, God said, "Okay then... how about your best friend from elementary school? That's not high school!" You will never convince me that God doesn't have a sense of humor (as well as a keen sense of irony), but I am still very grateful to have Andrew back in my life after 19 years of absence.
2013: Okay, here's the big one! Andrew and I became officially engaged on December 17th, 2013, and we're planning to get married on March 22, 2014! I am thisclose to having a "squee" moment, and if you know me, you know I do not squee easily. See the previous post for how it all went down if you're curious, but know this - somehow I went from 10 years of impoverished single-mommyhood to being the sort of person who gets flown to Hawaii and proposed to on a beach. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone!

A Very Strange Dream

Those of you that follow me on Facebook may have noticed I posted something yesterday morning about having had an unsettling dream. Nobody asked what it was, so I'm assuming that nobody cares, but I'm gonna write about it anyway since that's sort of how I process things. You can read it or not, your choice.

Some of you, especially those that have met me fairly recently, may not know this about me: I wanted to sing in a rock band at one point. I was auditioning and everything. And I had two little pins on the bag I took to work with me every day (teaching preschool at that point). Once said "All grown up and still waiting to be a rock star." The other said, "I'm just working here until I become a rock star." Two variations on the same theme. 

Also, some of you may not know that I have a girl-crush on Cristina Scabbia, the lead singer of Lacuna Coil. Because she's awesome, and she's over 40 and still looks that good, that's why.

Anyway, on to this dream I had. In this dream, I was in my old, old apartment... the one I had in Molalla before I took this job I currently have (property management). And what I was doing in that apartment was packing away everything I had that pertained at all to music or my rock band aspirations into boxes, leaving the apartment pretty much empty. And also Cristina Scabbia was there. And I gave her some piece of rock-ish looking jewelry of mine (I think it was a necklace) and told her that she should wear it for me next time she was on a magazine cover, and that I had been planning to wear it for a magazine cover but that probably wasn't going to happen now. 

No, the symbolism of this dream is not particularly deep. And I guess what disturbed me about it is that I haven't even really thought much about how completely different of a direction my life has gone in than what I always hoped it would. But I guess my subconscious has been doing some meditation on just that subject and felt the need to let my more conscious mind know what was going on.

It's true that I do have a rather ludicrously boring "grown-up" job now. I don't even get to play with play-doh at work anymore. Or cornstarch and water. Nor do I get to put glitter and feathers on things.

Still not sure what I'm going to have to do about this, but clearly my subconscious is not thrilled about something.

No other point to this blog post, really. I'm still deep in thought about this. I'll update later, maybe, but if anyone has something useful to say about it they can leave it in the comments.

And this is Lacuna Coil, for the uneducated.