Even Good Stress Is Stress

A cartoon rendition of me, a white,
brunette-and-grey-haired woman,
smiling unconvincingly at the camera
with the caption "I'M SO TIRED"

Please excuse me while I write this stuff out so it doesn't keep weighing on me. If you don't want to listen to me whine, just skip on down to the next post. This is therapeutic for me, and the rest of you - sorry! - are secondary for this purpose.

So, Abby is finally enrolled in CORE (orientation) at Cascadia. This is set for next week, and after that, she is able to enroll in her first semester classes. I am happy to report that she is able to enroll on the strength of her high school transcript (her cumulative GPA is almost a full point above that required to enroll) and so no other hoops needed to be jumped through. This is as it should be, but when your kid graduates from high school during the Pandemic Year of Doom, this is no small feat. Go Abby.

Getting to this point was a trifle stressful, though, not least of which is because I hate August. Anyone who has read this blog ever knows why this is, but in case you need a reminder, go ahead and read any post tagged with a blue ribbon. I didn't really grok this, though, until my therapist wrapped up our session yesterday by saying, "Jenn, August is hard for you. That's okay." I guess knowing is half the battle, etc., because that really made me feel good, like oh, well, I can just cut myself extra slack every year for a month and we're good. I can do that. 

And I guess it was my week for simple statements that should be obvious making me feel so much better overall. Monday I went to the financial planning company recommended by my bank and said, "look, my finances suck; how can we fix this?" I mean, I've been to them before, as my finances have sucked from before Laston died but much worse since (medical debt in the USA is real, y'all), but this time it was a solid hour discussion with an action plan and recommendations and options and all that. More than just the usual platitudes of saving x percent, blah blah blah, you know? And the simple thing he said that really made me feel better (I knew it but I hadn't had it said to me in so many words by an expert before) was this: "First housing/utilities/groceries, then transportation, and anything else comes later."

Oh.

Oh, wow.

As I said, I knew this already. But having it said outright by an expert in the field? Game changer.

At least in my brain.

I'm also getting over bronchitis - I had it for the first time in about twenty months because masks do actually work - and I don't have covid; I've been checked. It was a nerve-wracking 24 hours between the test and the result though.

These positives almost (not quite, but almost) make up for the note from HP, which basically said, "Yeah, well, she must've dropped it, because Chromebook LCD screens don't just crack on their own." Which, okay, she says she didn't, her sister says she didn't, and I've been in the biz before, long enough to know that tech support makes their money saying consumers violated the warranty and getting them to pay. But I'm unwilling to pay more to repair the damn thing than it would cost to buy a new one, thanks, so HP and I are having a conversation via email. I'm a widowed mom of teens with a job in a sector that was out of work for most of the last year, my older child no longer gets social security money from her stepfather's death or from child support, and I haven't got the cash. I didn't get that detailed with HP, of course -some poor hapless repair tech is probably calling me a Karen as I type - but there it is. They'll have to wait.

In any case, it's now safely not-August, life has ups and downs, and I'll survive. I'll even enjoy myself most of the time. I just need to remember that a) it's okay for some times to just be hard, b) priorities are a thing, and c) writing it out almost always helps me.