Tag: anxiety

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Where’d Y’all Brang Us?

I was a little worried that he hadn’t emailed us back yet by this morning, so I sent a text to Nick, the home inspector that Lelan recommended. Summer made breakfast again, but I was a little frustrated that she burned my Petit Jean bacon in the oven, and then let the bacon sit in the grease-filled pan after she took it out of the oven. She said they were out of paper towels, so we couldn’t soak it up with anything and it just made my stomach hurt.

I poked around a little bit, and then went home for a few hours. I took a shower and had a really bad anxiety attack that lasted quite a while. I had to open the shower door to breathe some cooler air, and my ears started ringing really badly.

I eventually made it back to their house after they had gone out into town for a bit themselves. Eaddie was going to see Barbie with some friends, so she wouldn’t be joining us at Brangus for Julie’s birthday dinner. We dropped her off a little early or the movie, and then arrived at the restaurant just moments after my parents, Julie, and Kevin showed up.

Dinner was good, and we stood around to talk for a bit afterward. When Julie and Kevin left, the rest of us went by my house so Mom could check out Bác Vân’s garden, and so I could give Dad some old bug spray I had. I took a small handful of peaches, and then we went across town to get Eaddie. We had a little bit of time to kill, so we drove down Sherwood just to check the place out at night. Then we waited in the UEC parking lot for Eaddie.

We headed straight to the house, and the girls went to their rooms. I was way more tired than I expected, so even I took the opportunity to crash early.

Peaches peaches peaches peaches peaches.

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What’s the Sitch?

I was sleeping pretty heavily when my alarm went off this morning, but I made it home and to work on time. I felt like I had spent more time away from work than actually working since I started, but it has just been such a weird time of year to start. I couldn’t imagine starting without any prior school experience. Kim showed up a couple hours in, and hung out with me for the day. We took a walk out to the agri building to check out a malfunctioning vape detector, and then out to the elementary to patch some cables in at the switch.

Otherwise it was really quiet at the office. Kim sorted through some old laptops that had been set aside for repairs, and I did my best not to get too distracted with anything for too long. By quitting time it was dead silent in the building, and I headed straight home to change and hopefully find something to eat. My parents had met the insurance adjustor at my house earlier in the afternoon, and I was anxious to get some repairs moving.

Just as I was walking out to head up to Summer’s, my parents stopped in and asked if we wanted to go out for dinner. Eaddie had gone to Greenbrier with Summer in the afternoon, and they weren’t that hungry after having lunch earlier in the day. We went to Western Sizzlin, and the food on the bar was fairly dry and of poor quality. The service wasn’t much better, but I did my best to make up for it in quantity.

After dinner, I found the girls laying in bed watching TV. Eaddie reluctantly gave up my spot in bed and I watched TV with Summer for a little while, and eventually made it to bed after a slow-rolling anxiety attack.

Dizzying

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Let’s Get Nuts

I woke Eaddie up on my way out this morning, and she got right up and got ready to go. I was so happy that she spent the whole day with me, and we had a pretty good time. She’s been such an incredible support for me the past few days. I went home and took a shower, and came back to get her for a movie. I brought some Taco John’s and an order of cheese curds from Freddy’s, and we ate before we left. We made it to UEC a little later than I wanted because I got caught up responding to a work email, but fortunately The Flash was showing in two different auditoriums, and the showing on the larger screen didn’t start until half an hour later, which gave us plenty of time to find a seat. We just shared a kid’s snack box since we had just eaten lunch.

I thought the movie was pretty decent. It definitely wasn’t as epic as some of the trailers made it look, but it was a reasonably good movie for the DC Universe. The CG really was pretty awful, like a direct-to-DVD movie, but the story was decent. It didn’t tie meaningfully into the other DC movies much, other than for some cameos, but it was a fun watch nonetheless.

Afterward, we stopped by Superfast to check on Summer, who was just leaving for the gym. Justin topped off my washer fluid, and then I took Eaddie home for a little bit to relax before we left again to go to Walmart for an air filter for their air conditioner. Then we stopped by Walgreens to pick up an online order I placed last night for some sodas, and finally made it to my parents’ house.

Uncle Mai had arrived with “Connie” and Daniel, so we got to meet them for the first time since I was a baby. Uncle Mai tried showing us a card trick that didn’t quite work out, and then I showed him my magic “car” trick. Summer met us there and I warmed up leftovers for both of the girls and then myself while everyone visited. Julie and Kevin came over briefly, but then left to go fly over the house to wave at everyone. Uncle Mai was excited by the pair of Teslas in the driveway, so I had Summer pick him up and take his picture with us.

Uncle Giao, Erica, and Nova showed up late, after everyone had left to visit Bác Vân’s house. I left to find clothes for the funeral, and then made it up to Summer’s for the evening where both of the girls were already in bed. Eaddie even had the lights out, which was unusual. I trimmed the washable air filter I purchased, and swapped it for the super gross one in the air handler. Then I chatted with Johnny for a little bit since he had called me while we were at the movies, before finally making it to bed.

They’re a reminder of your history.

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Rugs, Not Drugs

I woke up about 15 minutes before my alarm and headed home this morning. I was still exhausted, but I just wake up early like that now, without enough time to go back to sleep. I took a bit of a long shower though, and made it to work at what I would consider “just on time.” I tried cleaning up some old emails and tasks, which at one point included going down to the Elementary to collect copier serial numbers.

I had taco soup for lunch from the cafeteria, and spent some time in the afternoon placing stickers, and even went out to Plainview by myself. It was really the first time I went out into the buildings alone, and it was an even mix of people recognizing who I was, and others that had no clue.

Dad met the restoration guys at my house again, and they cut some drywall out and found a termite nest, along with a bunch of wet insulation in the wall under the window. I never recognized any leakage, but I guess that’s what they were going with. I’d almost suspect the outside water faucet. I overheard one of the guys on the security camera while he was talking to someone on the phone, and he kept repeating that I had a Tesla, and said he was pretty sure I was a drug dealer.

When I made it home, I changed and went to my parents’ house to discuss plans for the house. Mom made a great point that insurance may pay to re-carpet the entire area since it was all one solid style that wouldn’t match otherwise. That made enough sense to me that I felt a little better about it.

I headed back home, looping around to try and see any tree damage on Brody’s new, old house. There wasn’t anything broken that I could see from the road. I made it home to swap vehicles, and headed up to Summer’s for the evening. There, I scrubbed through camera footage to find clips of the restoration guys taking pictures of my motorcycles, the Tesla Wall Connector, and even telling another guy to come take a look at the hoarder house, but to carry a fan in so it wouldn’t look suspicious. I did not at all feel good about them being in my home, but it’s blue collar work. All I could do was hope they were only looky-loos.

Seriously, they start at less than $35,000 if you get the tax credit.

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Told Me So

The steady tone of the storm sirens confused me this morning. I didn’t even identify it as an alarm, and tried to go back to sleep. It wasn’t until I felt Summer moving around that I realized it was a weather alert. She said a tornado was confirmed in Knoxville, but all we heard was thunder and heavy rain. Eaddie woke up and crawled into bed with us, and I held onto her for an hour or so while she chatted nervously about the weather. Once it all calmed down, she went back to her room and we were all able to get back to sleep.

When I finally woke up for the morning, I started making some biscuits and bacon for breakfast. Summer came in and made eggs and corned beef hash, and the three of us sat down to eat together before we had to take Eaddie to band camp. She had been super excited about it for a while, so I wanted to go with Summer to drop her off.

There was debris everywhere, and we could see several branches down all the way to Tech. Trash can lids littered the campus, and lots of things were just knocked over. Eaddie hit the ground running as she encountered a bunch of friends that were excited to see her. Summer took me back to the house, and I left for home.

As soon as I got to my house, I peered around back to see if there was any damage. Then I saw some limbs down in the front yard. That was when I spotted a huge branch sticking straight up out of my roof like a lawn dart. I went inside to investigate, and it had gone down through the roof and into the wall of the front bedroom. It looked like it very easily could have gone into the bathroom, but it didn’t. Water was steadily dripping down onto Eaddie’s bed, and of course the paperwork I had scattered everywhere waiting to be put away was completely soaked.

I texted Dad for some help with a chainsaw, and had Summer come over as soon as she could. I started moving things out of the bedroom, and then Dad and Summer went up onto the roof to cut the branch up and remove it from the roof. As soon as it was removed, the water stopped actively dripping into the house. Luckily it didn’t rain again during the day, but we didn’t get to watch The Flash in IMAX like I had planned. I spent the entire day with my carpet cleaner, and sucked about five gallons of water out of the carpet instead.

The highlight of the day was hearing that Eaddie had made first band, first chair at camp. As my water extraction project slowed down, I took a shower and headed toward Summer’s for the evening. I picked up some Zaxby’s for dinner, where I ran into Allen and Charlotte. We chatted for a bit, and then I continued up to Summer to share our dinner. She was already in bed, and returned to it as soon as she finished eating. I ached absolutely everywhere, and tried my best to get to bed early.

Stupid me-tree.

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Sent Packing

Summer had to work a long day today. I slept in a little bit, but had to get home to do some laundry for our trip. Eaddie slept a couple hours later than I wanted her to, but it sprinkled on and off, so she had to mow in the dry periods. I cleaned up a bunch of leftovers, and once she finished the yard, I headed home.

The day went by relatively quickly. I got my laundry done and took a shower, but then I had to take Eaddie to Pasta Grill to meet some band friends to celebrate Kim’s retirement. I circled around to my parents’ house from there so I could visit before our trip. I ended up having dinner there, and Dad showed me the landscaping they had done.

I left their house to pick up Eaddie, but she decided she wanted to go to the movies instead. I went home and got caught up in deciding which vehicle to take to D.C. The Murano would be really straightforward, but I kept thinking the Autopilot on the Model Y would make the drive so much less exhausting. We’d have to stop a little more frequently and for longer, but driving for three hours at a time seemed like long enough for me anyway.

Summer stopped by after she finally got home from work, and I cleared up some confusion about the hotel. I couldn’t figure out how she booked the one she did, but it was twice the distance from the University of Maryland as the one that was actually advertised on the National History Day website. I booked the correct hotel and cancelled her reservation, and then we went outside to compare vehicles.

She went on home, but then I followed because Eaddie was on the way home from the movies. We needed to make sure her project would fit in the trunk, and it did, so we loaded it up and then I headed back home to charge and pack.

I didn’t get to bed until a couple hours later than I wanted, but I felt fairly confident that I had packed everything I should need for such a long trip. In reality, I was sure that I still overpacked, but travel makes me highly anxious.

It’s easier to unpack and repack than to do the Tesla Shuffle.

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Poor Test

I was pretty sleepy last night, and slept in a fair amount today, partially because my phone never finished charging overnight with a faulty cable, and I wanted to run a full charge cycle for testing purposes. Summer forgot it was Memorial Day and scheduled herself to work in Greenbrier. Autumn had plans to spend the day out, mostly with Adam, so Eaddie and I had the day to ourselves.

I started with a bowl of cereal while I shopped for a sunshade for my car. Mom called to offer leftovers for lunch, so I woke Eaddie up and we eventually made our way to their house to eat. Then she wanted to go play her flute with a friend, so we had to run back to the house for her instrument, and then I dropped her off and headed to my house for the day.

The first thing I did was poke around the logs some more to get them burning down some more. Then I went inside and had a bit of an anxiety/dizziness attack that gave me a little bit of a dull headache for a while. Eventually I got around to doing my practice testing for Entergy, but evidently I did the wrong collection of tests. I thought I had to do all of them, but it was just four specific categories.

As it got later, I went back to get Eaddie, and we made it home just after Summer. They watched The Office while I argued with Julie about the practice test answers. I just couldn’t see how they came to some of their conclusions, but hopefully they were just poor examples of test questions. It won’t be the end of the world if I don’t make it anyway.

I ended the night with even more frustration, trying to re-pair Summer’s Fitbit Aria to her new router. I forgot to update it when I replaced the router, and apparently Fitbit has abandoned the setup process, and it will no longer work. I wish I could just no longer work.

Money

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Collector of Worst Practices

I got up super early today to make sure I would make it in to work on time. I wasn’t sure how the commute would go, but I was pleasantly surprised at how uneventful it was. I made it in early and had to track down someone to let me into the office. Blake was at a picnic table with several other admins watching kids come in from the buses, and came inside to let me in before I had keys or a badge. Those showed up pretty soon after that, though.

It was a fair first day. I spent most of the morning filling out my new hire paperwork. Kim and I had chicken noodle soup for lunch from the cafeteria, and then I spent the afternoon just poking around, generally getting sidetracked by one horror after another. It appeared that every prior tech coordinator still had active accounts in the systems. Among other things, I also found an installation of Starcraft II, and a VM dedicated solely for a Plex media server, which was hosting a singular video – The Polar Express. It was then that I knew without a doubt that my entire life was a work of satire.

I really didn’t accomplish anything at all, and only barely found some of the systems I needed to access. I’ll probably have to dig into one of their more pressing issues tomorrow, just so they don’t feel like I’ll also be putting all of those things on the backburner indefinitely. Everyone filtered out about an hour earlier than I anticipated, but I stuck around to tinker some more before heading home.

The drive home was literally much faster. Traffic just worked out that way. Some guy flew up behind me, so I just followed him at interstate speeds until we got to Dardanelle. Autumn called and wanted to know if I would get Eaddie after a middle school band concert, so I went home to wait. When Summer got back into town, I met her at my parents’ house for dinner, and then she went home while I went to the high school for Eaddie.

Summer was in bed by the time we got there, so I tinkered on my new work phone for a bit, and then went through my nightly routine so I could get to bed as early as possible. I didn’t sleep super well last night, and I don’t think tonight will be much better.

Seriously, nearly all of this is a very bad, bad idea.

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Accepting Rejection

I was happy enough with the response I got this morning, along with the general excitement expressed in the offer, that I’ll start at Two Rivers on Monday. Unfortunately we ended up offending the sellers of the Ouita house with our offer enough that they outright rejected our offer, along with the verbal one they received. I talked with Alisha some more, and the seller’s agent finally talked them into negotiating some.

Summer worked from home, so I took a shower and she took us to Mulan’s for lunch. I ate way too much and then had to go home so Dad could come help me fix my leaky faucet. That project snowballed on us, and it took one trip to Leonard’s to fix the leak at the knob, but then the shutoff valves wouldn’t close enough to stop the water and we had to shut it off at the curb. Of course the box was completely full of water from all the rain. I tried blowing it out with my leaf blower, and all that muddy water ended up in my face. We took another trip to Leonard’s and got some washers for the shutoff valves, but using the impact to remove the caps may have caused them to leak somewhere else. There’s still a small drip at the shutoff valve now.

I took another shower to clean off the mud, and then I had to go get Eaddie and a friend of hers from robotics. We dropped her off a couple blocks from my house, and then I took Eaddie home until we had to go back to the high school for their band participation awards.

The house lights stayed on the whole evening, and then having the directors read out every single activity that each individual senior had done in their entire school career was just the start to how ridiculous the night would be. After they finished the seniors, they called every single junior and sophomore onto the stage to collect their participation trophies. We almost left early because Summer thought they were going to call eighth and seventh graders up as well, but they didn’t.

The girls went out with friends, so Summer and I came home and watched a couple episodes of Modern Family. The girls eventually made it home and I added some flavor and correctly-sized vegetables to the pico de gallo that Autumn basically blended yesterday. I got a little sidetracked after that, but tried not to stay up too late.

How can I be so tired and so restless?

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The Clown Who Juggles

I woke up to an unexpected notification for a hard credit inquiry, which got me heated. I was under the impression that the pre-qualification for a mortgage loan would only be a soft inquiry, so having two banks check had me in a panic. That may have been premature though, as I later read that if they fall within a certain timeframe, only one will count against me for the actual loan we take.

From then, I continued to be bombarded with new information. I got two interviews scheduled for the next two days, and I very nearly had to go pick up Gary from Little Rock. Fortunately his parents warmed up to the idea of getting him themselves, because then Summer needed to take some supplies to Fort Smith in the afternoon.

I made it home to get cleaned up before Autumn’s military signing luncheon, all while communicating with loan officers. Then while we were at the luncheon in the Black Box, Alisha texted to let me know there was another verbal offer on the table, which got me in a rush to complete our loan application. The lunch itself was some pretty decent barbecue for free. The national anthem was played by a singular, laughably bad trumpet player. I got the feeling he should have been significantly better, but he must have gotten choked. It did feel very fitting to be as bad as it was for Autumn, who happened to also have zero support from the Navy. She ended up inviting the librarian and getting her boyfriend out of class to come sit at our table.

On the way out, Jeff stopped to talk to me and ask how things were going. I wished I had recorded the conversation just to have a record of him saying how gut-wrenching it was to watch them terminate me. We immediately went to get Summer’s car and load it up with a big box of towels from the wash, and then we were off to Fort Smith.

I spent the entire drive going back and forth with Alisha, and responding to the loan officers. We have no idea what the other offer is, or if ours will be laughed off. It’s difficult to keep from doing too much with buyers’ anxiety, especially now that our credit has been hit. We weren’t in a rush to purchase a house, but we liked this one enough to go through the paperwork. If it doesn’t work out, I don’t know if this will screw our credit for the next time, if we don’t find a place soon enough.

We made it to Fort Smith by way of Highway 22. It aggravated Summer to drive so slowly, but the whole roundtrip was only about 20 minutes slower than the interstate, but 10 miles shorter. That’s assuming we wouldn’t have hit traffic in the construction zones on the interstate. On top of that, we saved quite a bit of battery power going so much slower. She ended up talking to their quirky shift lead Viking for a while, so by the time we made it back home it was too late for her to go back to Superfast to close the shop. We stopped to get Eaddie, and then we got her car on the fast charger before they headed home.

I took my car to the wash for a thorough cleaning, then stopped by Casey’s for a couple drinks before making it up to Summer’s for the evening. I cleaned up some Popeyes they brought home, Autumn left for a multi-hour signing and awards event at the high school, and I took a call from Donna, who had questions as a challenger in the school board election. I got some possibly-useful information from her on who might be able to help my case. I don’t know if she got anything useful from me. I certainly don’t have any time to go out campaigning, and I’ll be lucky if I remember to go out to vote in the morning.

Eaddie and I wrapped up the evening with El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. I thought it was a decent, if not unnecessary sendoff for Jesse. It did run a bit long, and brought in some unnecessary new characters, but it was an okay story. I think Better Call Saul will probably be better.

Seriously, a kazoo would have been better.