i love Christmas tree farms, especially the ones where you get to chop down your own tree. it’s like a cat marking its territory, you know? a nice way to stake your claim: this is my tree. back off!
Logtar and the Dook have both been to tree farms recently. stop by their blogs and read their descriptions of the fun, fun, fun times. me, i haven’t been to a tree farm in about 10 years for a number of reasons–living in a studio apartment and not having a car being the main ones. last year was a different story. but we have to go back a few years, first:
Brian and i bought a fake (but cute!) little 3-foot tree to decorate on our first Christmas together in 2000. we both had our own ornaments to hang on the tree and started a tradition of buying a new Hello Kitty ornament and Eeyore ornament that year. at the time, we only had Basil and Hopper.
in 2001, we had already moved to Chicago and put the tree up again. by this time, Angelo had come into our lives. same in 2002. unknown to us, it would be the last year we had a tree.
the next year, 2003, Hee Seop joined the household. because he was (and still is but not as much) still somewhat feral in a scared and skittish way, not the mean and ferocious way, we decided against putting up the tree, and haven’t since. here’s why.
i’ve changed my blog template to this rather festive, poinsettia one that i quite like. this, i’m afraid, will be the extent of our holiday decorating.
i called her at her office. she said she’d look in the bank to see if my birth certificate is there. she also said that she will help me fill out all of the required paperwork.
part me wants to say, “yes! woohoo!!!” but then there’s another part of me that knows how my mom is. nothing’s ever “free” with her. she’s like the Godfather, seriously: “Someday ? and that day may never come ? I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this ? gift ?” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/quotes)
so i guess i’ll accept it and see what happens.
See more progress on: apply for disability
already. one of the pieces of paper the SSA wants you to supply is an original birth certificate or at least an official copy from the office. if i were born in Cook County, this would not be a problem.
unfortunately, i was born in Quezon City, Philippines, and according to my dad, it isn’t so easy to obtain government documents from there. wonderful. further, he insists that my mom has a copy in a safety deposit box and that i should call her for it. for some reason, i don’t believe she has this because she may have given it to me in the past and–duh–i lost it. second, i haven’t spoken to her in nearly two years, and i’m just not ready to.
on the other hand, i’m tired of brooding and brooding about the things that need to be done. it’s time to take some action if this ball is ever going to get rolling.
well, i just tried her on her cell phone and got no answer. my sister said that she gets poor reception in her unit and she doesn’t have a land line set up yet. we agreed that i should just call her at work tomorrow, so that’s what i’ll do.
See more progress on: apply for disability
saw my therapist today. i told her that i’m sick of being bipolar; that it isn’t fair. i’ve been thinking about this ever since last Thursday, when Brian and i met with the couples counselor for the second time. Brian said that if we didn’t both have mood disorders, we probably wouldn’t even be there. it’s made me start wondering what else would be different about our situation, or at least mine, since he’s functioning at a higher level than i am at the moment–than i have been for the past 2 years. would i have a career? would we have kids? would we not have so much credit card debt from having to pay for meds and other crap in the past?
part of the reason i’ve been procrastinating about applying for disability is because i’m afraid that it will label me, somehow, like it’ll mean that my occupation is: mental patient. or if i get denied, then i’ll feel like i’ve failed even at that–of not being a good enough mental patient.
i realize there’s no use asking what if, what if, what if, but i’m just so tired of having to struggle just to get out of bed every single day. i’m sick of not being able to get caught up paying our credit cards, especially since we haven’t used them in months! if i could work, we wouldn’t even be in this situation.
we can’t take vacations. we couldn’t even have a wedding because when we got married, we did it because my student health insurance was about to expire. so romantic. i mean, we knew we would get married one day, just not when we did. and it was one of the worst days of my life, thanks to my mother, but that’s another story.
ok, now i’m rambling so i’ll shut up.
for the first time in about a million years i was out for most of the day–yoga, then therapy, then our first appointment with a couples counselor. nothing terrible’s going on, we’re not like on the verge of a divorce or anything, but in a marriage where both spouses have mood disorders, managing day-to-day life can be very tricky. sexual side effects notwithstanding. 
Brian is sick with a bad, bad cold, and i hope he doesn’t give it to me. my allergies are really bothering me today, as it is. i think we both have the Sneezles. too bad we can’t really cure them with Magic Cookies. (sorry–Neopets references.)
can you see Angelo tucked under his arm? didn’t i say that he makes a great sleep aid?
anyway, this pic is dedicated to Ratty. she knows why!
my sister and her fiance are leaving for a week in Ireland this weekend. they think nothing at all of leaving their 2 cats at home alone for the entire week. i’ve offered to visit them at least a few times, but Lesley insists they’ll be fine. the cats have a running water fountain and Zac and Lesley leave tons of dry food in their bowls. they only clean out the litter box once a week, anyway, so that isn’t going to be a big change. they think nothing about leaving the cats on their own for 3 or 4 days at a time.
this really bothers me, but there’s not a whole lot i can do about it but vent. if i do visit the cats, my sister will take it for granted and not bother to thank me. it’s happened before. not only that, and not that i expect anything in return, but i seriously doubt she would reciprocate, and anyway, i wouldn’t ask her, which is why we have a catsitter.
am i overreacting, or what?
no, not wasted from partying, just wasted. we did absolutely nothing yesterday because our allergies were so bad, Brian’s especially. he thinks he might have had a cold, too, but i’ve never heard of a cold that lasts for only a day. i felt so bad for him because he couldn’t stop sneezing, even after taking allergy medicine. we were both so tired from all our runny and itchy noses, sneezing, etc. that we ended up sleeping on and off most of the day. didn’t help my sleep schedule, but oh, well.
we planned to go to a pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins from the vine, but most of the places we could find on the Internet had all of these other activities involved that meant tons of families with kids would be there. i’m tired of being a childless couple at the places we go.
sometimes i think we’ll never have kids because i can barely take care of myself–how would i take care of a child? besides, i don’t want to be a senior citizen by the time they reach college age. oh, well.
i managed to get out of bed and get myself to my therapist appointment amazingly enough, since i had trouble falling asleep. we talked about all those lifestyle changes the stupid doctors want me to make, and she asked me what one change did i want to do, that i think i could realistically accomplish. going back to martial arts, i said. so she said to just concentrate on that one thing. don’t worry about going on a dairy- and gluten-free diet, and all that other stuff. just one thing. fine with me.
afterwards, i met Brian for lunch at the Weber Grill. it’s a chain, but i’d never been there, and it was good. it’s so nice that he’s working downtown now at his new job, which means we can actually have lunch together. he also gets home at a normal hour and isn’t so beat from driving through traffic or taking the Metra from the suburbs. since i have my therapist appointment at the same time each week, Brian and i decided to meet for lunch every Friday. last year we tried making Fridays “date night,” but his office was way too far to drive to. there and back? forget it. now, it’s so much easier. how nice for us to be able to do things as a couple besides buying cat food and taking out the trash!
this is a total, feeling sorry for myself/i’ve wasted my life post. so if you don’t want to read my whining, don’t click the link. also, the reason i’m able to write really long posts is because i type 100wpm. i’m totally not kidding. anyway…
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