Hello Dearhearts; Has it really been two months?  I knew it had been a while but I was surprised to see it'd been THAT long.

A LOT has changed since I've been here last, and it's the main reason I haven't been blogging lately. Shortly after I came home from vacation, everything just came to a crash.

I graduated a year ago - and started my first nursing job - and last year started off on such a high note - school finished, making money again, I'd worked my ass off for three years and I thought now I was going to be able to enjoy all the things I'd set aside for three years while I went back to school.

Ha.

I had a brief taste of freedom and free time for a short time, and then my new job kept taking more time....and more time.....until I realized that I now had less free time then when I was a student.

Not fun.

So I made the decision that I thought was best, which was to put in a year at my new job and then start looking for something else in the new year. I made this decision because I thought it'd be better for me to at least stick it out a year, and, I needed experience as a new nurse before I'd qualify to apply to some of the other jobs I was interested in. Plus, I don't hate my actual job - in fact, I like what I do - I just don't like the 10-15 extra hours plus per week that it requires.  Also - NOT getting paid overtime doesn't help.

So this seemed like a good plan, and although this job has been hell on my personal life, not to mention doing anything fun, EVER, my partner, or who I've referred to in this blog as Papa Cash, agreed with me that it was probably the best thing to do given the circumstances. He would even say to me during the hard times, when I was really down, 'It won't be forever, you just have to get through this year'. So I thought at least I had the support of my partner. 

Again, HA.

But I kept counting the months down till the end of the year, I kept trudging along, I planned and went on a vacation I'd always wanted to take, and in the meantime, continued to feel burnt out, tired, depressed......you name it. I've tried to keep the bitching to a minimun - after all, there are way too many people - loved ones of mine included- who have lost their jobs in this economy and are having a hell of a time finding new employment. So at least I had a job, even if I felt like it was wrecking my health and mental well being in the meantime. I told myself to count my blessings. I had a roof over my head, money in the bank, my cats, and my significant other.  Even if i had no time to enjoy them, at least they were still there.

It's funny, not very long before the proverbial shit hit the fan, I was whining to a friend of mine who sent me a short email back saying, in a nutshell, The only thing we can rely on is change.

That and she also called me Grasshopper.

I don't know if she had some sort of psychic vision about my life or what, but then that's exactly what happened. I wish I had some sort of better explanation of what I'm about to say, but the truth is I don't. One minute things were status quo, and the next minute they weren't. And ever since that single moment of realization, that second it hit me, nothing has been the same.

A couple of weeks after coming home from vacation - and maybe a week or so after my last post - I was working, driving around, doing my thing, when all of a sudden I knew.

I just knew.

And I can't tell you how I knew, or what happened before that I might have ignored, or what signs were there - I just knew. And as much as I tried to shake it off, or pretend that there really was no evidence to support it, the feeling wouldn't go away. I told myself to just let it go, that I was imagining things, that absolutely nothing had happened to support this idea in my head. 

But the feeling didn't go away, and if anything, it became more pronounced as the days went on. But still I thought, this is probably all in my head, and it's more likely a warning that something may happen if things don't change.

So when I confronted him (sooner than I planned but I found I just couldn't live with this overwhelming feeling hanging over me ever second), I was still dumbfounded to find out that I was right.

My significant other, my partner of almost nine years, had decided there was someone else he'd rather spend his time with.

I think he was surprised that I knew.  More surprised yet when I told him it literally hit me out of nowhere, that I had no evidence, that I had no suspicions or inklings before that day. There were no apologies, no asking for second chances, no admission that it was a mistake.
This is what was going on and this is who he wanted to be with now.

And apparently my epiphany, as correct as it was, was a few months late in getting to the party, as this had been going on for a while.

He went on vacation with me.  He let me pay for a vacation with him. We even talked about planning our next vacation in the spring. We kept living our lives and I kept working my ass off and counting down the weeks till I had my year in so I could look for a new job. I wonder when he would have told me?

So - I spent a few days feeling numb, then going through every emotion in the book trying to process, trying to explain, trying to decide my next move. Finally, I decided staying in Milwaukee (at least for the time being) was best.  And, as much as I hate to admit it, changing jobs in the near future is probably not going to happen, as looking for a place to live is taking precedence at the moment.

I even thought I had a place, briefly, but it didn't work out - which depressed me even more - and with the holidays approaching I decided to wait a few weeks to start looking again. I'm glad that the holidays are over - they weren't fun, as you can imagine, and it was the first Christmas ever that I've spent alone. Add to that watching your ex pack up and go spend the holidays with his brand new 'family'.

Yeah. Good Times.   And if Christmas and New Year's weren't fun enough, I also had a birthday nestled in between those as well.

I know. I can't possibly get much more pathetic.

Then in the last couple of weeks I got a couple of presents from my BFF, KK, which reminded me that if I'm going to get back to something that resembles the old me and try to put together some sort of new life for myself, then I have to hold onto to the things that keep me sane- my friends, my cats, my art (mostly on the backburner), and last but not least, my love of The Scary.

First, a GORGEOUS book; trust me, if you like Hammer, this is all kinds of yummy:


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And this morsel of cinematic goodness, one of my personal faves and which FINALLY has a REAL release with special features -
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 It's time to start dragging myself out of the pit of sadness/pity/inertia/anger and the only way I know how to do that is by getting back to what I love. And getting this movie for my birthday reminded me that even though I have a lot left to do, I need to start taking time again to feed my soul and for your old Mama, feeding the soul means getting back to The Scary again. Many things have changed in my lifetime, but at least one thing has always remained constant, and that's the way that The Scary makes me feel.

Normal. Sane. Comforted. I know that doesn't make the world's most typical woman, but guess what - Mama doesn't give two shits anymore. Maybe, in the end, that's what PC wanted - a more 'normal' woman.  He certainly never expressed an interest in my passion, including this blog. Which is why I feel pretty free to say whatever the hell I want - he never read it before, and if he's just starting now, well, then, too freaking bad.

So I'm sitting here tonight, watching Hellboy, reveling in the awesomeness of Ron Perlman and his huge noggin..

[Image] maybe it just shows how f**ked up I am that I think this movie is a ROMANCE

...getting ready to go back to the grind for another week, and trying not to think of all the change that's still coming and everything I still have left to do. But I suppose, even though I'd like to see it wrapped up by oh, next week? the truth is that it's going to take as long as it's going to take, and all I can do is let it unfold.

I hope there are still people out there that haven't completely forgotten about me...and I'm looking forward to catching up with the blogs that i love.

And, BTW, I haven't forgotten about the contest and mailing out the prints. I will be getting that done this month.

Here's to a better year in 2011 and here's a little song with a message I'd like to pass along to those it applies to....the genders may be different but hey, if the shoe fits....