Battle Kitten: Ascension

[fleaball]

22 hours ago, Owlet said:

His little pawwwws XD taptaptap.

 

I missed you too! It's taken me a while to catch up on your thread lol. I agree with the others, you're awesome and you are making progress. It's always hard to see it yourself, but from an outsider's perspective it's definitely there. Even the fact that you keep having realisations, and then sometimes feeling shit for not being able to fix or get over the thing right away, shows progress. Like, you've come far enough that now you can see what's even happening. Pretty hard to deal with shit when you're too deep in it to see what's going on. 

<33 

 

22 hours ago, Owlet said:

 

Updates, let's see... I'm finally in a position to get my own cat and would you believe it, there's a kitten shortage. Soon to be a flash flood apparently, but a few months can feel like a long time when you're trying to find a cute fur baby  related, I moved house (away from extremely frustrating flatmates and non-pet-friendly house) and now have a wood burner for basking in front of. Work got super stressful and I had a few weeks of anxiety (oh hey anxiety, been a while. I didn't miss you. You don't need to visit again. Really) but it's calmed down slightly and I've told my brain enough times that I'm not about to be fired that it's doing ok now. Still wildly sensitive and moody but working on working out why lol. Trying to befriend the neighbours because they seem cool, preferably without coming across as a weird stalker girl. Introduced my boyfriend to Thai food and feel immensely smug that it's now his favourite. You know, just tackling the big things in life.

i demand pictures as soon as there is a furbaby! Are you still at the job you were at before that couldn't figure out whether they were letting people go or not because they kept signing you on for longer? Idk man minus the work stress and cat-less-ness your life sounds pretty chill. I approve.

[fleaball]

Okay I know I said I was going to bed, but then I realized the new challenge forums were up (already?!) and had to go see who'd posted already before I forget to check later. Sitting this one out again while I figure out what the fuck I'm doing with my life.

[WhiteGhost]

16 hours ago, fleaball said:

My entire day is wasted because of someone else’s stupidity and I’m probably not going to be able to recover in time to get anything done. 

If I had a nickel for every time this happened...

 

 

8 hours ago, fleaball said:

But let me repeat that - I went grocery shopping while completely fucking miserable for unrelated reasons, and I survived.

Woohoo!  

[Sylvaa]

8 hours ago, fleaball said:

Somehow writing that made me want to buy chopsticks as well, but I don't make anything that would require it? Unless I wanted to be ridiculous and eat spaghetti with them? Okay brain. You do you. 

 

Christmas present! 

[fleaball]

You know what’s more fun than getting an ultrasound? Getting a surprise mammogram to go with it! Apparently the imaging center has a protocol where if you’re over 30 and have a family history of breast cancer they do it automatically anyway. Both came back totally fine. So it’s possibly scar tissue from my surgery that has decided to be a bitch and start hurting and the part that feels weird is just typical Flea’s body doing weird things. So that’s good. Anxiety definitely ratcheted up while I was sitting in the waiting room with a bunch of older women discussing their experiences. But now I’m off to my other appointment and then getting lunch with @Severine whee. 

[fleaball]

Apparently this week is "make Flea do unnecessary bullshit instead of the things she planned on" week. Driving back from Severine's I realized that when I brake it sounds like something is scraping or grinding? I assume that means I need new brakes even though I never heard them squeaking or anything else to indicate that they were worn down. Fucking womp. But whatever the reason, I need to take it to stupid Pep Boys at 7:30 in the fucking morning. D: I have to decide whether I want to sit there and wait for it and hope they get it done before therapy (noon) or drive it there, Lyft/Uber home, Lyft/Uber back to pick it up eventually, and take the train or bus to and from therapy. I'm not sure I trust they could get it all done in about 4 hours but I also don't want to spend a stupid amount of money going about my day. But I have to make the decision tonight because if I wait there for it I'll need to shower when I get up; if I come home I can attempt a nap and shower later. Raaaaaage. Alternatively, I could take it to the shop on Thursday and just drive carefully tomorrow, but I don't really want to play games. And I can't take my mother's car because my father hasn't even turned it on in about 5 months plus he never added me to the insurance. So frustrating. 

 

Is it bedtime yet? Getting lunch consisted of walking 0.75 miles each way, which was great, but that combined with getting up early this morning and not sleeping well means I am exhausted. Rawr. 

[fleaball]

11 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

 

Christmas present! 

Where do you find this shit? They're super cute but also super random.

[Sylvaa]

12 hours ago, fleaball said:

Where do you find this shit? They're super cute but also super random.

 

Internet. The real question is why am I the one who always finds this stuff first?!  

 

Also, the second sentence probably describes a lot of aspects of my life. 

[fleaball]

Uggggggh fml. Last night I decided not to wait for the car so didn’t set an alarm to shower. Wake up, decide I’m going to wait for it despite not sleeping well, take too long being a zombie and leave 10 minutes late so I don’t get to the place on time. Get there, spend forever waiting for the guy to come out and take my info. Ask how long it might be he says he has no idea because even though the service place is 7:30a-7:30p, the mechanics all work 9-5. So they have to get through however many cars are ahead of mine with appointments and whatnot, and then if it just needs new brakes it’s an hour and a half after that. So nope, not waiting. I really wish my father would get his shit together so I could drive my mother’s car when I need to. This is annoying as fuck. 

[Bean Sidhe]

Dooh, Hopefully they get their act together. I think it is weird the fact that the service place is open at 7:30, but the mechanics don't get in till 9. I mean I understand it in a way, but why not stagger the mechanics to cover more of the time?

[Severine]

I wish you could install a chip in your father's brain that would let take over his consciousness when needed. Imagine how much shit you could get done in an afternoon if you could just directly control his actions! You could drive around to all the banks, signing shit and sorting things out, hit the RMV and sort the car, spend an hour or two on the phone, sign a bunch of documents...BAM suddenly everything is 400% more organized and taken care of.

 

And just for fun, when you went to the police station to sort out his work benefits stuff, you could sign him up for diversity training or something.

 

 

[fleaball]

3 hours ago, Bean Sidhe said:

Dooh, Hopefully they get their act together. I think it is weird the fact that the service place is open at 7:30, but the mechanics don't get in till 9. I mean I understand it in a way, but why not stagger the mechanics to cover more of the time?

Right?? Like I’m sure they open early and close late so people can drop off before/pick up after work. Why not also schedule someone early in case someone needs a quick thing before an appointment or trip later in the day? Ugh. 

 

1 hour ago, Severine said:

I wish you could install a chip in your father's brain that would let take over his consciousness when needed. Imagine how much shit you could get done in an afternoon if you could just directly control his actions! You could drive around to all the banks, signing shit and sorting things out, hit the RMV and sort the car, spend an hour or two on the phone, sign a bunch of documents...BAM suddenly everything is 400% more organized and taken care of.

 

And just for fun, when you went to the police station to sort out his work benefits stuff, you could sign him up for diversity training or something.

 

 

Honestly. I could solve all my problems and most of his in like two hours. As Flea I could handle 85% of the issues that need handling without him except for the fact that he’s the account holder/otherwise only person they’ll talk to and of course he’d have to be on the phone at that time to give them permission to talk to me so it’s useless. 

 

If he found himself in diversity training I think his head would explode because he’s so fundamentally opposed to everything they would teach. >_> 

... but then again if his head exploded or would also solve a lot of my problems so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

I had an epiphany about your dad. These are theories, so take them with a grain of salt.

 

The theatrics when he's beating himself up are partly self-flagellation, and partly his way of asking for help.

• He was enabled his whole life, so:
  • he doesn't know how to ask for help
  • he doesn't really think he should have to solve things
  • he doesn't expect to have to ask for help
• He is to proud to ask for help because admitting he needs help means admitting he's a failure 
  • but for some reason loud self-deprecation does not mean admitting he's a failure
    • theatrics are an outward focused activity
    • focusing outwardly means not having to make any inward changes
  • Some part of him hopes if he rants and raves long enough someone (Flea) will rescue him and solve the problem 

[fleaball]

^ will address this later when I’m on the computer because fuck mobile. 

 

Meanwhile, it’s 4pm and I haven’t heard anything about my fucking car yet. Rage. 

[Bean Sidhe]

4 hours ago, fleaball said:

Right?? Like I’m sure they open early and close late so people can drop off before/pick up after work. Why not also schedule someone early in case someone needs a quick thing before an appointment or trip later in the day? Ugh.

 

I dunno, I agree totally. But logic doesn't always work on people.  Good luck getting the car back

[fleaball]

It's deja vu all over again! Called and asked if my car would be ready tonight, first the dude can't find it, then he puts me on hold again and says they're still waiting on Hertz to authorize it. Which is exactly what happened with the bullshit experience last year. He told me he would check on it and call me back, but that was at 4:15. The Lyft and Hertz people who rent the cars out leave at 4, so I can't call and badger them either. I'm slightly worried because the car's over 63k miles and apparently 70k is when they retire them, so since I know nothing about cars I'm wondering if the hold up is someone thinking it's not worth to fix the brakes just for 7k miles? I don't know what the fuck the deal is though, because when I had to take it to the other shop a few months ago, they got the work approved in like half an hour. I think Pep Boys just doesn't give a shit at all. Looks like I'm getting up early again tomorrow so I can call and find out what's going on, and maybe ask if I can take it to the other place instead. I swear to god if they take this car from me or start playing games again I'm going to be pissed. Next weekend is the weekend before Halloween and that's guaranteed to be serious money. If I can't get a car before then I'm going lose my shit.

 

And of course since I don't have a car right now, all I want to do is go out shopping. But I'm too dead to walk (had to book it to the train station for therapy because the bus I'd planned on taking was late, on top of walking yesterday) and taking a Lyft/Uber adds an unnecessary step that murders any desire I have to go out. 

 

Also the stitches in my mouth are starting to come out, but they're not all the way out and it's the most annoying thing. 

 

tl;dr Flea hates everything. 

[fleaball]

2 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I had an epiphany about your dad. These are theories, so take them with a grain of salt.

 

The theatrics when he's beating himself up are partly self-flagellation, and partly his way of asking for help.

• He was enabled his whole life, so:
  • he doesn't know how to ask for help
  • he doesn't really think he should have to solve things
  • he doesn't expect to have to ask for help
• He is to proud to ask for help because admitting he needs help means admitting he's a failure 
  • but for some reason loud self-deprecation does not mean admitting he's a failure
    • theatrics are an outward focused activity
    • focusing outwardly means not having to make any inward changes
  • Some part of him hopes if he rants and raves long enough someone (Flea) will rescue him and solve the problem 

You're definitely onto something. Both he and his father never ask(ed) for anything directly. My grandfather would just keep bringing up the same subject for a while until you finally asked him if he needed help/a ride/whatever and then he'd be like "oh, sure, since you're asking about it..." (e.g., "you know, my tv's been on the fritz for a while and I can't watch my shows." And then just keep bringing up the TV. And then we were supposed to ask if he wanted us to come look at it and/or go with him to the store to get a new one.) Unfortunately I catch myself doing this every so often as well. Not nearly as often as they do, but it happens. So yeah, my father doesn't know how to ask for help, or even for what he wants really. When he has a phone or computer issue I get "when you're not doing anything..." and if I say okay let's do the thing immediately he backpedals like "oh no, I didn't mean right now, it's fine, just when you're not busy." 

 

I think somehow the self-deprecation doesn't mean he's a failure because he makes the universe responsible for that? Like even "I have to learn how to pump my own gas if I'm going to go on trips by myself" immediately became a whiny "why do other people get to pump their own gas and I don't?!" so a lot of his issues become not-his-issues. He could've been better at X if someone else had(n't) done Y, if he'd had a chance to do Z instead of getting somehow screwed over then things would be different, etc. So I think he even puts all that onto someone else. All of this is in addition to what you said. So yeah, even if he were to go to therapy he wouldn't do well in it because he's not going to want to look at his own issues. 

 

I'm trying really hard not to solve his problems for him. I ignore a lot of the screaming and just turn up my music to drown him out, I wait until he asks me to help him do computer things and even then I make him do it while I supervise rather than saving us both 10 minutes and doing it in a few clicks, I rarely volunteer to fix things for him unless it's going to benefit me as well. I don't want to be enabling him because I know it's never going to get better if he never learns to do shit for himself. But on the other hand, I wonder how much progress can be made undoing 60 years' worth of enabling and bullshit when he won't acknowledge the problem and doesn't actually want to be a self-sufficient adult. Like when I called CVS last week because he fucked up his medication, he seemed genuinely surprised that that was an option. Same with taking apart the massive TV chest last year that he was ready to saw into pieces because he didn't realize where the screws were. I'm not sure if in either/both cases he was just too worked up to find a solution or if he honestly didn't think there was a solution to be found. He's hella damaged and I know it's not my responsibility to fix him, and I'm not going to, but I don't know how much I can help him when he doesn't seem to think it's his responsibility to fix him either. 

 

Unrelated: it's 5:35 and I haven't heard from Pep Boys. Fuck everything. I just want one day this week where I can sleep as long as I need to and not worry about getting up early or having to be anywhere.

[fleaball]

Good news for a change: two weeks ago was my grocery trip after therapy when i made pasta and didn’t get a lot of takeout that week. Weighed myself the following Sunday and had lost a pound from the week before. This past Sunday I didn’t lose anything but I didn’t gain either. (Not sure if getting my period on Tuesday meant that my weight was higher or not? I don’t understand how periods work other than the bleeding part.) So hey, there’s that. 

 

Also did not get takeout today. Waited so long to eat that I got stupid hungry, opened UberEats and GrubHub and was like “fuck it I have chicken nuggets.” 

 

Small wins. 

[Severine]

22 minutes ago, fleaball said:

Also did not get takeout today. Waited so long to eat that I got stupid hungry, opened UberEats and GrubHub and was like “fuck it I have chicken nuggets.” 

 

Small wins. 

 

This is awesome. And IMO it's not awesome so much because you didn't get takeout - it's awesome because you made a plan to reduce your takeout consumption, took realistic steps to make it happen (keeping comfort food at home that's cheaper and better for you than takeout), and it WORKED. Like...plan ---> intended results! Win! It's a good reminder that if you approach your goals with a realistic and flexible plan, you can make changes that make you happier.

[fleaball]

1 hour ago, Severine said:

 

This is awesome. And IMO it's not awesome so much because you didn't get takeout - it's awesome because you made a plan to reduce your takeout consumption, took realistic steps to make it happen (keeping comfort food at home that's cheaper and better for you than takeout), and it WORKED. Like...plan ---> intended results! Win! It's a good reminder that if you approach your goals with a realistic and flexible plan, you can make changes that make you happier.

I have like 37 different thoughts in my head to discount all of this and be like "nah it's a coincidence, it only happened because..." but I'm going to keep them to myself because I'll get yelled at. And I sort of recognize that even if this didn't happen because of conscious/intentional planning, it still happened so some part of my brain is apparently on board and that's good enough for now. 

[Sylvaa]

10 hours ago, fleaball said:

This past Sunday I didn’t lose anything but I didn’t gain either. (Not sure if getting my period on Tuesday meant that my weight was higher or not? I don’t understand how periods work other than the bleeding part.) So hey, there’s that. 

 

FWIW, the weigh in I do before my period is always heavier. YMMV, but this probably isn't too unusual. 

 

Also, every time you talk about going to the grocery store, I just have this mental picture of grumpy cat stomping down the aisles of the store angrily grabbing food. So thank you. You make me smile.

[fleaball]

brb lighting everything on fire. Call Pep Boys at 10am, they’re still waiting for authorization. Call the Hertz people I rent from and they won’t answer the phone even though I know they’re open. I let it ring for more than 10 minutes. Twice. So fine. I pet the cats so in lieu of screaming, take a shower because obviously I have to go down there and fight with people in person. Try calling for the hell of it when I get out of the shower and surprise, they answer. Start this post because the girl is telling me all kinds of wrong shit, then realize she misunderstood and thought when I said I “dropped off my car” I meant just left it in the parking lot and put the keys in the after hours drop box without telling anyone. Fine, crisis averted. She said she’d go in and talk to them and see what’s up. That was 30 minutes ago. I know shit takes time and people are busy and whatever but really? I just want to get an answer and go back to sleep, but it’s 11:35 and rapidly approaching “it’s dumb to go back to sleep” territory. So I guess I’m spending another day exhausted and grumpy. 

 

3 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

 

FWIW, the weigh in I do before my period is always heavier. YMMV, but this probably isn't too unusual. 

That’s what I figured (and am hoping lol). I can never remember where/when in the cycle it happens. 

 

3 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

Also, every time you talk about going to the grocery store, I just have this mental picture of grumpy cat stomping down the aisles of the store angrily grabbing food. So thank you. You make me smile.

I aim to please! But honestly that’s more or less how it happens. 

[fleaball]

Story time:

 

Last week I was talking to my father about something and he changed the TV channel to something showing a classic car auction. While we’re talking I’m like “oh that car is cool, I wonder what it is.” He immediately tells me it’s a ‘61 [car I’ve never heard of] and I’m like “wow that was fast. The only car I’d ever recognize would be a ‘67 Impala because that’s on Supernatural.” 

 

He proceeds to tell me one of his coworkers has a teenage son who’s super into the show and that dude and his son were driving out to some massive car thing in Hershey, PA, and dude was gonna try to buy a ‘67 Impala for his son. 

 

I’m just sitting there like... you’re telling me this dude is driving hours away to buy a classic car for his son who only recently got his license, and you can’t even be bothered to make a phone call adding your daughter to your insurance so she can drive a 15-year-old car sitting idle in the driveway for months? Or make other simple phone calls and sign forms she’s been begging you to forever? Or, you know, start a college fund back in the day so your kid isn’t mortgaging her entire future and still living with you at 30? 

 

It may be a petty thing to be annoyed about but I am annoyed nonetheless. 

[fleaball]

Hallefuckinglujah. Pep Boys just called to say they got the approval to work on the car. (I was a minute away from calling Hertz back because the girl said she’d get back to me an hour ago and never did.) Pep Boys service manager was like “I talked to the Hertz manager here and told her you’d been waiting and she said if you want to come now she’ll give you a new car.” Asked him how long it would take to get my current car back, he said it’ll probably be done by 4-5 o’clock today. Fuck it, I’ll wait. I hate that fucking car but at this point I’d have to go there, get all my shit out of it, transfer it all into the new car, get used to driving the new car, hope the new car didn’t have any surprise problems... I guess at this point it’s just a case of the devil you know. :/ blah. But at least I should get it back tonight. And get to sleep as late as I fucking want tomorrow. 

[RES]

2 hours ago, fleaball said:

the devil you know

Really feeling this quote today

 

Flea is awesome