- Mother-in-law died
- Grandma died
- Met my sister-in-law
- We lost the house
- We moved into a rental packing 5 years up in about 3 weeks
- Went on vacation that was just fun, but just off.
- A friend I've had for going on 14 years, but haven't talked to in 4 contacted me out of the blue.
- Had at least 2 major management changes at work
- Worked an insane number of hours again throughout the year
- Went through crazy management changes, replacing the worst manager I've ever worked with with her mini-me
- Was laid off on 10/24/2011 due to an effort to decrease spending in my division.
I just don't know what to expect anymore. I had a very very strong feeling that I was going to be laid off. The pressure that was put on me to finish my knowledge transfer in the 2 weeks between moving and vacation and in the week since I've been back was just insane. I put in 116 hours in the 2 weeks before going on vacation working on documentation and training.
But the bottom line? I'm relieved. I'm relieved to be done with the stress of having so much on my plate. I'm relieved that I don't have to feel like I'm being second guessed on what I'm doing. I'm relieved that I might get my friendship back with T.
Most of all, I'm excited at the idea of spending time with Zoe and being a mom and wife. One of my highest priorities for the new job? It has to give me time for a work/life balance and time to be a mom.
The second priority? I get to break stuff and find bugs. I really want to continue with UAT/QA/Development. If I had the money, I'd pay to go out to San Diego and do the Blaze training myself. I loved what I was learning in interpreting the FICO code. I want to continue with that. I want to continue working in PL/SQL and improving my skills until I can do complex database design and programming and be a developer. I want to learn new SQL tools. I want to learn new programs to help with designing and implementing test cases.
There is a part of me that is wondering about going back to school in the fall and being a full time student. Could I get the aid and/or loans to do it? Do I have the self discipline to finish this time? Will I learn what I need to in order to be competitive?
I feel like most of this year I've been waiting for the "other shoe" to drop. I think it finally has. It's like this whole year has been building up to this.
There is also a little part of me that is just sitting back and chuckling wanting to hear how seriously screwed up things at work get. In a perfect world the newbies would pick up and take off immediately and it would be seamless. In reality, they just lost 3 years of knowledge and 1 of two people that had a clue about FICO the BRE outside the dev team and the only one on the team that had 95% of the business rules memorized.
I slept today for the first time in weeks. My mistake was picking up a really good book on my Nook last night. There is a part of me that misses kink so much I could just scream. This book of course was about kink. It's more about the psychology and thoughts behind it than the blatant sexuality like most bodice rippers.
Needless to say it led to some crazy dreams. Nothing will get the picture of Andre Leon Talley dressed in a blue kimono and a crescent moon headpiece/hat/looks-like-it-should-be-in-cirque and light blue shimmery facepaint appearing in my door and hearing someone asking him "Andre are you truly ready to spread your butterfly wings for the first time?", out of my memory for a while.
How a crescent moon equates to a cocoon is dream logic to me.
I think there really was a series of dreams that all kind of ran into each other. One was about a metal foundry that was under our condo from vacation. The floor was so hot, I dropped a hammer and it went right through the floor. When the hammer hit the floor it set off a chain reaction that ended up with a major explosion, not at our condo, but at the foundry owner's mansion. There was sulfur being used to color the glass being made using the heat from the molten metal. It made the glass poisonous and if the glass shattered and hit the molten metal, it would cause poison gasses to expand, eventually leading to the floor of our condo melting.
We chased the suspect glass all the way back to the owner's mansion, but that was in smoking ruins by the time we got close.
So while we were trying to get close, I ended up walking through the street pushing Zoe in an umbrella stroller. She was maybe 15-18 months old. We were at some kind of street carnival and she was trick-or-treating from inside the stroller. We went past one stand that had bins of candy, but they were all drug laced. The stereotypical Latino drug pushers were mad because I avoided them and started to chase us. It was a ruse though. They were really trying to help me get to the metal owner's house.
There was a car chase in these Smart Car looking funky automobiles through Escherland, but we finally ended up in this area with all these mansions. I don't know even know if I can describe it. Picture a chessboard with alternating shades of light green and dark green grass as the squares. On each square was an amazing property. Castles and mansions and lakes. All of them ha a grass walkway around the back side of the property and all of them had a pool. Of course as I pushed the stroller by, synchronized swimmers dove off a multitude of diving boards into the water.
Until we got to this one house. The had a slip-n-slid instead of a diving board. The dad was sliding into the pool, but he kind of missed and ended up knocking Z and I onto the slip-n-slide instead, with his foot literally up my rear.
I went inside to clean up and ran into his son. I was in my 20s again and so was the son, so all was well. From there it was like watching an episode of "Revenge". Son was interested in art, not going to work for his dad, i was helping to facilitate that interest. The matriarch of the clan was a senator. There was a teenage daughter and a young son about Z's age. The mother was a socialite, very unhappy, and dominated by her Mother-in-Law the Senator.
At some point in the dream, my hubby and I started fighting. That's where things started to get kinky. Half this dream I was married and the other half I was not. During the "not" part, the kid, I think he was going by Danny, and I was were madly in love, but it was forbidden love because the matriarch didn't approve. Danny and I decided that we didn't give a damn and it was time to change things.
So we ended up at a condo his friend owned. This was going to be a training party. Danny and I had never had sex so we were going to at this party. There was initially only one other couple. It was one of those dream things where you "know" them but don't really have a clue who they are. They were definitely into Dom/Sub role when we arrived. I immediately went sub and followed the dom's command to disrobe. Somehow this meant leaving a black nightie though.
Danny was naked though. Things were about to get started when Andre showed up. From there it got weird. There was this incredible erotic energy to the dream, but no sex. There was something about having to make a run to the grocery store for lube and having to hold thin slices of slimy cucumber in my mouth while on my hands and knees. A nurse showed up to give everyone flu shots, but kept giving me shots incorrectly and whipped me with a belt because I was moving to much when she tried to give me a shot.
There was more to it, but it's fading out. I do remember hubby leaving me stranded at our condo to finish packing while he took Z to Disneyland. I was not happy about that. Especially since it was November and snowing.
There was more to these dreams, but I woke up with one hell of a headache, frustrated and unsatisfied.
Yep I need to get back into therapy.
