Wow, it feels freakish to write in my journal after it's been so entirely long. Anyway, I don't have a lot to write about dealing with what's presently going on because I've been staying home a lot lately, which has been NICE, let me tell you. I think that a lot of my stress has to do with doing TOO many things. I'm not one of those go-getter types who can do 15,000 things in one day...I get too stressed, too tired. So the past week has been a nice break for me. Anyway, once upon a time at JCM, I wrote a big long journal entry in my little Dr. Seuss notebook. Much to my dismay, Angelfire was all weird when I tried to sign on to actually record the new entry, so I haven't gotten a chance to throw it up here until now...anyway, like two weeks later, here it is:

I must say that this has been the worst week I've had for as long as I can remember. I'm going to recount the bad things that happened so as to let go of the negativity ("no acquiescence to negativity" ~ Jeff Buckley) -- and then I'll start out with a positive outlook tomorrow.

The crappy stuff started on Tuesday. My mom was in a horrible mood and was taking it out on me. I'm a really defensive person -- well, not defensive so much as...well, I just don't let people talk to me in a demeaning way. If I get married one day, and my husband takes his bad moods out on me, I'm going to say something about it. Whenever I'm in a bad mood, I keep it to myself so I don't take it out on anyone, and on the rare occasions that I do, I always apologize to the person right after I treat him or her badly. So anyway, she was acting really bitchy to me, so I said to her "Must you speak to me in such a manner?" And she said, "I'm just in a bad mood. Can't you for once just say 'I'm sorry you don't feel well, mom'? I had the utmost respect for my mom. When she said 'Jump,' I said 'How high?'" (etc. etc. etc.) And I said, "I'm not the kind of person who sits back and takes it when someone treats me badly when it's not my fault." And she said, "But you are super nice to everyone else." And I said, "No one else but you takes stuff out on me." Then I went into work. Two hours later, she came in. I thought she'd be in a better mood because she'd just gotten done doing her holy hour at church. But no...she went into her big long, "I just don't feel like you love me. I never have anyone to turn to when I'm upset..." When she starts in on the "Oh poor me" stuff, my compassion level drops to zero. I sound like a bitch writing this...but I can't help it that my heart has hardened to her after all these years. You can only kick a dog so many times before it stops crawling back. So she finally left. About three hours later, I got a phone call from her, which started out with, "Jeannie, I think we're going to need to get rid of the cat." I just sat there, dumbfounded. She kept talking and said the cat had jumped onto the mantle and knocked over everything on it. I still wasn't talking. She went on to say, "I was talking to Aunt Rosemary about it, and she said 'Jeannie isn't home very much, and you've said she doesn't play with it very much. She probably won't care if you get rid of it.'" And she went on, talking about how she doesn't think I love the cat because she never sees me play with her. That is a load of crap. For one, we have conflicting schedules, so she's hardly ever home when I am and doesn't get to see how much I play with her. Anyway, all that aside, she said, "You don't love the cat, do you?" I still couldn't talk...finally, I stammered out, "Yes, I love the cat!" And she said, "Well, okay then. We'll keep her." After we hung up, I was holding in my tears, not wanting to be bawling my eyes out when a customer came to be rung up. But then I could hardly breathe -- I think I was having a panic attack. I felt like I was in a scene from Flowers In The Attic, and my mom was the mean grandmother. When I got home, I moved all the cat's stuff up into my bedroom and decided I'd keep her in there whenever I wasn't home. It's not as prison cell-ish as the utility room, where we were keeping her before. So that problem was solved for the time being. The evening ended up being disastrous. My car died in the middle of 275. More details remain that I don't feel like recounting. The next day was okay. I helped Ruth with the baby because it was Shawn's first day back to work. I didn't get to get with Angelina, though, because of both of our car situations. So I sat home on my ass and ate a bunch of food. Then today I woke up to mom screaming at the cat. I'd left my bedroom door open because my cat always gets all over me while I sleep. So I figured she might stay off me if she had the opportunity to roam the house a bit. Thus, mom had to deal with her in the morning. So anyway, she was screaming, "NO!" at the top of her lungs. I walked downstairs and said, "I'd rather wake up to her crawling on my legs than to your shouting at her." So I took Hug up with me. What I said wasn't the kindest thing, I know. But I was just really annoyed at being woken up. And she always is yelling at the cat, it seems. Hug is never bad for me or anyone else. I really think she senses mom's tension she feels toward her. Well, I couldn't fall back asleep. I heard mom leave the house. Then I went downstairs to find a note on the table that had ridiculous banter such as "You care more about the cat than me. You don't even love me." So I've just been kind of depressed today. I did some yoga, which alleviated some of the stress. But by the time I got into work, I was just really bummed out. I think having my period didn't help things any. And just the sorry state of affairs at the store -- parents letting their children roam the neighborhood, everyone asking to borrow money, etc. I just got really hyper-emotional and broke down to my brother Dave and told him that maybe we better get rid of the cat. I really don't know why I said that because the cat is hardly the REAL problem in our household. But I think I just felt like being the martyr for a second -- getting rid of the cat despite how much I love her just to make mom happy -- and deep down I wanted to be praised for it. I wanted people to say, "Wow, Jeannie...you have to put up with so much by living with her. You're such a good person." I know wanting that makes me selfish and horrible, but I just figure there must be SOME sort of reward for living with her emotional abuse day in and day out. Di was going to come and get the cat to take to the animal shelter...but I started bawling my eyes out because I love that cat so much. And Di said, "Just keep her in your room with the door shut when you're not home. I don't think I can bear to take her to the shelter either." So that's what has come of the cat situation. My depression slowly passed after various slections of candy bars and Frito Lay products, and I suddenly got a new outlook about this bitchy mom situation. Maybe instead of being bitchy right back to her...maybe instead of talking about her behind her back to anyone who will listen...~climatic pause~...maybe I'll be the bigger person. Being mean right back to her obviously isn't making her see the light. So I'm going to be nice to her, and maybe my niceness will spread. Maybe this is my one big suffering in life...my big test, so to speak, and if I come out of it a better person and having helped mom to be a better person...maybe then I'll get my A. So, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be a better, more positive person. Hopefully that attitude will seep into other areas of my life, like my study habits and exercise habits (and eating habits!).

This is going to be a good weekend. Everyone in the Van will be home. We're going to have the long-awaited Kairos. Conflicts will be resolved. I WILL NOT MAKE OUT WITH TONY...I repeat...I WILL NOT MAKE OUT WITH TONY.

I forgot to mention the boy I met. Well, he's not a boy -- he's a 31 (almost 32) y-o man. I didn't know he was that old until after our conversation (that ended in his giving me his cell phone number). He's really intelligent, really passionate...just not someone I think I want to date. I don't know why. He was in college to be a paleontologist (spelling?...a bone digger-upper) for awhile. He was married and had a little kid, but both his wife and daughter died in an accident -- a drunk driver hit them. Something about him made me slightly uncomfortable. I think I'm almost always uncomfortable when people talk to me at work because I have to talk to them and ring people up at the same time, and one of the two -- either the customer or the person -- always gets ignored. And also, customers I'm ringing up are probably thinking, "This guy likes her" which embarrasses me for some reason. AND, I'm kind of a private conversation-type person. So I hate when customers walk up while I'm in the middle of saying something I don't necessarily want everyone to hear. Anyway he (his name is Brian) was saying how he thinks I'm intelligent, which is nice. Even though I don't really want to date him, it's nice to be liked. Anyway, I'm done.

So, getting back to the present, that's what happened awhile back. It was a bad week. It's gotten better since then. We had Van Kairos, which was really nice. Shannon and I are pretty good friends again. That's about it.

Well, I'm going to go hang out with Melanie and Corey, despite that I'm having an allergy attack. I'll write more soon.