Just Another Typical Day
Hahahahahaha!
See! Here I am freshly showered, writing comfortably from bed.
Except, it’s maybe been a week since I’ve showered.
I’ve never written from bed. My bed is actually still on its side, up against the wall so that I could shove all the living room shit in there while my sister re-floored my living room! It’s been on my list of things to tackle. I’ve been sleeping on the couch for months. We had three desks, and two couches in the living room (and 4-5 birdcages). The three desks went into my room, and they weren’t coming back to the living room because we were done with online schooling! One broke during the move, so it went to the curb, and another went into the two younger boys’ room, but the biggest one is still in my room, as are a bookshelf from the living room, my sewing stuff that had been in the living room, silhouette cameo stuff, t-shirt press from downstairs, random clutter in totes shoved in there when I needed to de-clutter… etc…
I can’t tell you how exhausted I am right now. The worst was Friday. Driving tired is the worst. It always makes me nervous. I have to shake myself out of autopilot and keep remembering where I am heading.
Last week I pretty much spent my whole week in the car. Two of my kids are doing after-school activities, which go until 5 pm, so I have to make two trips out to Eldridge four times a week picking up kids. But, Friday was an add-on as the Jr. High kids had “Fall Bash.” So, all five days I took two trips to pick up kids. Then on Friday, I had to go right from picking up the Jr High kids from Fall Bash to the Vet. Thankfully, it was fairly close to the school since I had to be there at 5:20 for their only opening. (OK, well they had an opening at 2:40, but I had to pick up one kid at 2:45 and the other at 3).
We had a baby bird hatch on the 6th. The day of my grandfather’s visitation. I tried really hard to get the baby’s parents to feed. But, the egg had been in an incubator for 4-5 days and not the nest. I put the eggshell and baby in the nest, and the dad pecked at it… I put mom back in (long story, but I had to take her out because they were trying to mate again, and they’d already had too many clutches this year) and mom trampled baby… I pulled the baby out from under her phalanges. She had her foot right on the baby’s neck…
Anyway, so I ended up doing what I never wanted to do, or trusted myself to do: feed a baby bird from day 1. You have to feed every two hours. The hatchling is so incredibly small! It is soooo easy to fuck up feeding baby birds. The temp of the food has to be just right, the mixture has to be just right, and you have to be sure to feed on the right side of the baby otherwise you will aspirate the baby and kill it. Thankfully, I did find out you can take a 5-6 hour break overnight because they need to empty their crop every 24 hours. It didn’t matter though because I’m up pretty much every two hours every night. With the new baby, I was obsessively checking to make sure he/she was breathing and making sure the temp was good in the makeshift incubator turned brooder. The temperature is very important as well as all the specific feeding requirements.
So, I’ve been working on a deficit of spoons. I just haven’t had time to do anything that earns any spoons.
Yes, I’m 51 and just coming to terms with the fact that I have ADHD. I want to do all the things, but I can only muster enough spoons to do some of the things. Definitely not enough of the things.
What I really wanted to talk about was yesterday! But, I went down a rabbit hole or two of information…
OK. So. yesterday. I got up at 7:30 to feed baby and give baby the medicine that I hope will fix his leg.
I finally talked myself into going to McDonald’s for breakfast because I was starving and wanted a fancy coffee. I was too tired to make a pot of coffee and did a couple of K-Cups before I had the energy to go to McDonald’s. I had to pitch two Blueberry Vanillas out of the variety pack before finding cinnamon and then french vanilla. The blueberry vanilla sounds good, but fruit in coffee is just a no. I used a couple of those, but the rest are either going in the garbage or to a friend who wants them.
When I got into the car, I realized that I had forgotten that I needed to check my oil. I also needed gas and a carton of cigarettes. So, I figured I would do McDonald’s, then gas, then smokes. I ate my McDonald’s in the car in their parking lot with my car off. I was afraid of driving it too far if it needed oil. Once I finished, I headed to Casey’s, where I could use my $1.47 fuel saver. I checked the oil while the gas was pumping itself. It looked to me like it was down below the last dot and desperately needed oil. So, when the pump stopped (on $22!!! WooHoo Fuel Saver!!), I went in and bought a quart of the oil that the lid stated: OW 20.
When I had pulled up to the gas tanks, they were all full. When I got out with my oil, the whole lot was empty. I pulled up my hood, and cranked on the oil lid, but it would NOT budge!! Like NOT one bit!! I waited a bit to see if anyone would come around, but nope…
I figured I would go get my smokes at the closest grocery store instead of the usual smoke shop I go to since they are about the same price, and I did NOT want to drive my car more than necessary with low oil! I LOVE my car!! And I was hoping to find someone there to help with my oil cap.
This here is what I absolutely hate the shit out of. I can’t do everything myself. I couldn’t open my fucking oil cap. I had to rely on some man to help me with this. This was infuriating to me in so many ways.
So, I went to the small grocery store, got my carton of smokes, and waited for the guy who went in after me to come out.
He couldn’t get it open either!
Sigh of relief. It wasn’t just me. Drove home to see if I could get it open with a tool.
Before I went tool hunting, I checked out the owner’s manual to make sure it wasn’t some kind of “special tool needed to open the oil cap" thing to make you take it in.
OMG. I’m so glad I did that. It wasn’t the oil light that was coming on, but the coolant light.
In the meantime, I had been messaging my mom. She suggested I just go get an oil change because I was probably due. Yes, I was actually a few weeks overdue. But…time… I never seem to have enough of it.
So, I fed my baby and headed out to the oil change place my sister recommended. No appointment necessary, and she said they top off all of your fluids with an oil change!
I went to the place, and amazingly, I was only a quart low on oil, but the coolant level was below where it should have been.
They checked all my stuff, got my oil cap opened, did an oil change and fluid top-off…
And I feel like such an idiot still. But, I am so fucking glad I went to a professional!!
I spent the latter part of the week and weekend watching Maid (2021) on Netflix. It was so triggering. It was also validating, and phenomenal. It also put me in a bad place of remembering and reflecting. That may also be a part of my complete and total physical and mental exhaustion. I bawled throughout the last two episodes. I’m so glad that she ended up with full custody of her daughter. That is something that doesn’t happen very often because emotional abusers are masters at making sure there is no evidence of the abuse. Without evidence, it’s impossible to prove that the children should not be with the abusive parent.
She was also super lucky to have had someone to offer her a lawyer at no cost. That rarely happens. The financial hardship depicted in the series was also all too real. A lot of women end up “stuck” due to lack of money and lack of a place to stay. I had my ex removed by a protective order with an entire twenty-four cents in my bank account, and no idea how I was going to manage the financial aspect. I assumed I would lose the house as I wouldn’t be able to pay the rent without his veteran’s housing assistance. Thank God there is a program that protects women in situations of domestic abuse and I was automatically given housing assistance (only because he had it).
Due to the stigma attached to “emotional abuse,” I still sometimes feel like it counts less than physical abuse. I remember a very heated argument my ex and I had. He was screaming about how his first wife claimed “emotional abuse,” and he said it was bullshit. He said that she liked to “play the victim,” just like I was doing.
The truth is that I am still recovering. I have nightmares about the control and isolation. They started right around the time we started the divorce process.
I still struggle with making decisions on my own. When you live for 16 years with someone who insists on making all the decisions, you forget how. Each decision, no matter how small, causes a huge amount of anxiety. You overthink each and every decision you make, and constantly wonder if you made the right decision.
We need more films, shows, books, etc… showing emotional abuse as the true form of abuse that it is.
I will absolutely write a book-length piece on my experiences one day. I still need a little bit of distance from it before I can do it. And maybe a bit of trauma therapy.
This got much heavier than I had originally anticipated, but apparently, I needed to work some things out.
The experience with the oil cap, while humorous, still took a toll mentally. I was anticipating writing something with way more humor.
I promise next time to make you laugh more!
Stay safe.
Love,
Kristin