Downsized and Dreams

This has been the weirdest year.  I'm just not sure what to make of anything anymore.  So my year to date . . . 

• 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.

Regression . . .

Tonight I feel like I've been transported back 20 years. I'm 15 feeling like a freak and not able to understand why I feel so shitty. I want to hurt someone. I want to feel pain. Tonight I want a lighter and a razor blade. Tonight I want to bleed and wallow in self pity. I want to feel the pain and confusion inside burst out of me in a rush of crimson.

Tonight I want to be selfish. But I think of my toddler seeing that side of me and I'm crushed all over again. I'm scared to death I'll see her go through the anguish, pain and rage I feel right now. I don't want to ever see the hatred I feel against myself reflected in her eyes.

I know in an hour, a day, a week, soon I'll feel better and be thankful I didn't cut and that life really is better.

But right now I want to bleed.

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Dreamlog 03182011

I laid down for a while this afternoon and was listening to a book when I fell asleep. I had the most bizarre dreams, more so than usual anyway. I can't tell how much of it was dream and how much of it came from the book. I'll have to get further into the book to determine that. The dreams ran together and jumped around. They involved people I hadn't thought of in years.

I was once again living with an old college roommate that made my life miserable (CB). In the dream we were friends (this will not ever happen in real life). She was dating a friend of mine that I've known since preschool (ND), but haven't talked to since high school (has it really been 17 years?). I was helping track a serial killer (as is the lead in the book) but ended up at this asylum. Things shifted back and forth from first to third person rapidly during the dream. The serial killer was one disturbed man. He would take people and bind their hands and legs, then lock them up in a old broken down deep freeze for days. Then he would return and would use their bodies as twisted canvases, putting pins in them to make "art", singeing the skin with a handheld blow torch.

At the asylum was a girl named Annie. She was 19-23ish, tall, waifishly thin, red hair in a pixie cut, and wearing a dark green gingham dress that hung off her. It looked like the pictures you see in of girls during the depression, the baggy dresses just hanging off of them. She was not insane, but could touch things and see/feel everything that object had been used for. She found a pin used by the killer and tried to tell her partner about it. He had her committed because she would either go into a semi-catatonic state followed by losing consciousness, or just writhe on the ground screaming from the pain she experienced from all the other people that had been burned and then murdered.

At times I was seeing this 3rd party, other times I was Annie. I was begging for someone to please understand I was sane and I knew where the killer was. I knew that he had killed his father and thrown him in a pond on the family's property. I knew how many dozens of people he had tortured, but no one would listen. I knew he was living on his family's property. It used to be a farm or an orchard. There was a barn and the stereotypical white farmhouse with the porch that wraps all the way around. Both were falling into disrepair.

In the day room at the asylum, there was a large fireplace, with round river rocks creating a decent size hearth and surrounding the firebox. The firebox had a gas insert with the logs that don't really burn, but the gas flames blow around them. There was a bulletin board that was covered in a tightly woven green mesh underneath a 2 shelves set high on either side of the fireplace. I kept seeing the pins woven in and out of it, like the killer wove them in and out of his victims. I had to get the pins out and give them to the police. I tried climbing up to them, but every time I'd get close to the fireplace, someone would pull be back. Eventually I just floated up to the pins and pulled them from the bulletin board. The fear and pain from the victims and the blood lust, rage and sense of a child fearing for his life overwhelmed me until I laid on the floor just crying and screaming, holding the pins in my hands.

Then I was outside. I was climbing in this huge sycamore tree. Somehow it was grafted together with a banana tree. I do remember commenting on it to a friend saying how weird it was that bananas were growing in that particular climate. (I'm not sure what the "climate" was. Sometimes it seemed somewhere back east, sometimes it seemed we were in Flagstaff, sometimes it seemed like we were in Texas). The tree was overhanging the pond where the killer's father could be seen floating upright, chains crisscrossing his waist and arms. We had called the police and they were pulling the body out. Someone was finally taking Annie seriously.

I remember flashes of what the killer looked like. He reminded me a lot of Vincent D'Onofrio's character "Edgar" from MIB.

I don't remember much more than that. There was a conversation with my roommate and her boyfriend about how weird it was that we all lived together again and that the sexual situation was odd, but OK. I remember telling them about what I had experienced as "Annie" and ND asked me not to talk about it when CB was around because she was easily upset. I didn't realize that she was in the room when I had been talking. She came over and had these turtles that you put on your door to show you were supporting some cause, like the shamrocks you can buy for a dollar to support Muscular Dystrophy. I had one that everyone in my family had signed and she was telling me it was all wrong and that wasn't how it was supposed to look and I had managed to rip the head off of hers so she was upset.

That was about when I woke up.

It's always interesting to me who shows up in my dreams: my family, generally my parents who I'm either getting advice from or fighting with; people from my past that I have good memories of, but haven't thought of in years; people that I have some sort of traumatic association with and/or that made my life a living hell when I was in high school or college mostly. I also dream of friends I think of often but see rarely, perhaps in an effort to atone for my past mistakes. It's much easier to gain forgiveness from someone in my subconscious than in real life. Maybe it's my subconscious telling me to let it go.

Oddly enough I rarely dream of work or the issues I'm experiencing there.

Then there are the regular dream themes. I have a lot of anxiety dreams, mostly about being in marching band, where I don't know the music or where I'm supposed to go; dreams of my daughter getting lost or kidnapped or hurt; dreams of fighting with my husband; dreams/memories of being paralyzed again; nightmares of fighting off a faceless attacker; being bound and gagged and blindfolded (and not in a good way) and feeling helpless and lost.

There are also repetitive locations for my dreams. North Morton Dormitory, the Skydome for marching band competitions, the nameless asylum from any good horror movie is a frequent location, and my high school as it would look if it had been abandoned for a good 10-15 years: falling down ceiling tiles, blinking florescent tube lights, dripping water, green tiled bathroom with rust/blood and toilet paper strewn all over the place.

I seriously wish I could record my dreams for playback and show someone else how screwed up my head is sometimes. My husband is always amused by my dreams. They are so vivid and I remember so much detail usually. But they always lose something in the telling. To be able to show them visually to another person would rock. Maybe someday.

January Funk

I'm in a funk right now. I'm completely burnt out at work and there is something going on with my blood sugars/medications. Every afternoon around 4:30 I start getting really nauseated, cold sweats and dizzy. My blood sugars are in a normal range during this time, so I know I'm not crashing. I'm just not sure what to think. Maybe my body thinks I'm crashing since my BSL were running so high last month? New meds seem to finally be working, but I'm much more sensitive to carb intake than I was. I think it will be a good thing in the end. I don't like the highs and crashes. I almost think my previous meds were working too well and letting me ignore my carb intake because they were working to stabilize my sugars.

I should be totally stoked right now. I'm going to see "Wicked" in 2 days, something I've wanted to do for years. I just get a feeling that something is going to go awry. Doom and Gloom. Never a good thing.

My circadian rhythms are really hosed right now and I think that is also playing into why I'm feeling so funky. My work schedule has been so erratic the last few months, I can't seem to get to sleep before 3 am anymore. Then I get up at 8 and try to work, but get tired and end up taking a nap. It used to be that I could take a 20 minute nap and feel fine. Now unless I get a couple of hours sleep, I'm useless. I woke up early yesterday to get Z ready for school and had a doctor's appointment at 10:45. I went back to get ready for it at 9:15ish and fell asleep. I woke up at 4. I called J to have him pick up Z, then slept again until almost 10pm. WTF? That isn't normal.

I don't know. Maybe just everything from the last couple of months is catching up with me, plus post holidays blues. I've done really good to manage my stress and keep my depression at bay for the last year. I just need to get over this hump. Maybe this weekend will help.

I'm putting together things to keep me busy and give me something to look forward to intentionally so that I don't get into a post-activity slump, but I'm not sure it's working. I need a nice long vacation and some fun. A weekend away will help, but I want something bigger. I dream of Disneyland at least 3-4 times a week. It's been over a year since we've been. I want to take Z again. Until we get the house sold and/or move, I just don' think it's going to happen though. Maybe in the fall.

Brain Dumps and Time

I haven't blogged or journaled in a long time.  I've had a series of online journals and a couple of blogs, but I can't want to return to those.  They are a depressing view of the last 12 years of my life.  A chapter that ended 5 years ago.

I'd like to think I've grown up since then.  That I've matured and grown as a person and professionally.  Sometimes I'm not so sure though.

I was reading through some rants I did about a job I worked at in the early 2000's and the complaints and issues I had then aren't too different than the ones I have now.  I'm not sure what to think. 

All I know for sure is that right now, I need a place to get my thoughts out of my head.  I don't want to do Facebook.  I use twitter to read what other people are doing and to post the randomness in my life.  But this is going to be a better place for longer brain dumps.

That is what I need in my life right now.  A major brain dump.  I need to take all the frustration and stress and dump it out someplace.  I live a relatively solitary life.  I don't have friends outside my family.  I hold a lot in because I don't have people outside my family to talk to.  They aren't the most unbiased resources when I'm looking for advice.  Although I can generally count on my mom to give me a differing opinion than my own, which is helpful.  But sometimes I just need somwhere to rant and dump my frustrations.  I don't care who reads it or doesn't read it.  It's not important.  This is for me.  My outlet.

I'm so burnt out right now.  Work is killing me.  Sometimes literally.  I've worked between 60 and 110 hours a week every week since April.  This week, I worked from Tuesday 8-1pm and then 5pm Tuesday to 8pm on Wednesday.  36 hours in 2 days.  That's on top of the 15 hours I put in on Sunday and the 12 hours I put in on Monday.  So today I'm just not motivated to work.  I'm taking tomorrow off.  I NEED a break.

My meds are screwed up and I'm weepy mess.  I've let me job overrun my life this year.  I've missed my daughter changing from a toddler to a little girl this year and I kills me.  I've been travelling and working insane hours and schedules. I am proud of myself for managing my stress levels successfully for the last 8 months, but am devestated at the time I've lost with my family and how my priorities have shifted.

Goal #1 for next year: find a work/life balance and stick to it!