curious-me's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 - what does it mean? Good question. I may be having what one would call an existential crisis. To be clear I just looked up the meaning on all the all powerful google: "An EC is a moment at which an individual questions if their life has meaning, purpose, or value. It may be commonly, but not necessarily, tied to depression or inevitably negative speculations on purpose in life." After a (mostly) wonderful birthday weekend I was lying beside Keith and chit chatting as we do before he goes to sleep and I just suddenly got this heavy feeling in my chest and thoughts began to fill my head about death. Life. Death. What is after? Is there anything after? Do we just one day cease to exist. Life WILL continue on without ME but where will I be? Like this was heavy shit. The weight of the world and the unknown was consuming me. I felt at once like why am I so afraid of pissing people off? Not speaking my mind? Always saying sorry when people are taking up the whole aisle in a store and I am forced to squeeze between them and their cart? Why am I saying sorry? I'm not. Why do I let work consume my thoughts and give me such a headache? Why do I let it get to me? Why does only getting 94% on my stats for the week cause me to be upset? Because they want me to get the 110% which makes no sense?! I know I can never achieve it because I refuse to brand our calls. I tell people to have a great rest of their day instead of saying 'thanks for calling us because I know you had no choice we're the f*cking gov't and you HAVE to deal with us!" It's stupid and I refuse to say it 99% of the time. So no I won't get the perfect score. But my work is solid. I try hard to help people. I have people thank me profusely at the end of the call or ask if they can call me next time they have an issue and not the queue. I try hard to get as much done as is expected of me (not wanted). And yet it will never be enough for them. What does it all matter in the grand scheme of things? When I die will I go with people saying well she gave 110% at work! My mind is about to explode. And no I'm not smoking any funny tobacco but then again maybe I should be! So yah am I having a mid life crisis here? I just turned 44 years old yesterday. Am I where I want to be in my life? Maybe? Who knows? Did I expect this would be my life at 44? Depends on which curious-me you asked? At 20 I thought I would be married with a parcel of kids. At 30 I still had the same hopes. Maybe a big fancy house with a pool. At 40? At 40 I was worried I would be living on the street maybe without my husband because he did talk a lot about dying back then. Things were horrible. Our finances were dragging us down to depths I didn't know I could go. I prayed. I cried. I was ashamed. I was afraid of rev can taking our house away. It was bad. I shared very little back then with anyone. Keith and I mostly stuck together but there were times we had knock down drag out fights over it. We were both scared. BUT here we are mostly debt free. F*cking rev can is paid off. We are chiselling away at all our remaining debts in huge chunks of money. We were almost paid off everything until we bought the jeep, but again that will be paid off in a few months. AND yet - everything could go to shit just like that! One of us could lose our job or get hurt and not be able to work. So while I am more liberal in spending money now there is always that 'what if' at the back of mind that keeps me from dropping a grand on a new wardrobe (can you even imagine??). I still shop at thrift stores. If I shop at a regular store I only buy clearance items. Not because I can't afford it but the prices seem so obscene to me. I can buy someone's cast offs for a fraction of the cost and I'm pretty choosy about what I buy so I pretty much only buy clothes that are like new or even still have the tags on them. But I do buy too many clothes and I have my theories but I can't get into that right now - that's a whole other long rambling entry! So where do I go from here? Let me ponder on that answer while I tell you about my birthday weekend! It started with getting a call from my parents at 8:30 - they said they'd call at 9 but my dad had to leave so they called early - which was cool as I was awake. After that I got up and showered and dressed for the day. By 10-ish Keith came home with an xl coffee and lotto tickets for me $44 worth. The man is cute. He had asked me what I wanted for my b-day the day before so I blithely replied a tim's coffee, lotto tickets oh and pumpkin spiced tea. He bought me all 3! Secretly the $44 of lotto tix were for him cause man he really wants to win the lotto so he can quit his job! Sadly we checked them today and only won 1 free play and $5. So it goes. Within an hour we were on the highway to our day of fun and then the traffic began to slow down. Then it came to a complete stop. Then we watched a truck go by with a huge light up arrow sign. It turns out they shut the 401 down like right at our cut off which was 2km away. So 4 lanes of traffic had to merge into one and get the hell off the highway. Fast forward 1.5 hours later and we finally crawled off the highway. I was spent. I was pissed. We were in the lane that all 3 merged into so we didn't move for the majority of that time. And people got pissed at me - a lot - cause I stopped letting them cut in front of me. I had planned for us to go to this Fall artsy fartsy festival - where everything is hand made and they charge what our mortgage costs to buy any one single thing. That I did not know until we paid the $12 to get in - yes just to browse their overpriced shit. Maybe that I could have handled but it was so damn hot out that people just had sweat streaming off them and fanning themselves with the stupid flyer you got when you paid for the honour of walking thru their gate. We were there for maybe 30 minutes and then I asked to leave. Keith for his part was being a good sport as he hates this shit but knew I wanted to do it. I told him I wanted to go to the thrift store we like near there as it closed soon. Wires got crossed as he googled it and chose another and once we got on the highway I lost my shit and I am still ashamed when I think of my behaviour. I screamed at him. Screamed. I told him that he ruined my weekend. I am writing this so I don't forget what an asshole I was. This man was trying to make sure I had a wonderful weekend and I literally hurt my throat yelling like a spoiled brat. We went to a few thrift stores and the mood of the day was gone. I wanted to cry. We got to our hotel around 5 and decided to just relax til our reservations at 7. It was then that I apologized, for the first time, to him. He asked if he really ruined the weekend and I felt my heart break a little at the thoughtless words I yelled out in frustration. You always hear or read about how you can't take back words once they are said and this is so true. Keith is no saint but he has never yelled at me like I have at him. We hugged and I could only hope thru that hug he knew just how sorry I was. At 7 we went up to the restaurant, in the same building as the hotel. I didn't need my reservation. The hotel and restaurant overlook the lake and I had booked it so we could watch the setting sun - expect yah I never requested a window seat. We did sit almost by the window - ok it was the window but with the big metal building impeding most of our view. It didn't lift my spirits but I also didn't let it dampen them either. I had to cut this shit out of trying to create the perfect weekend. Life isn't perfect. I have become a control freak over the years. I try and plan way too much. Like the other night when I spontaneously got up and went for a walk. Half way down the block I almost turned around as I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a goal for my walk. I was just wandering and that scared me. I needed the comfort of a plan. When did I get like that? I did force myself to go on with my walk and ended up having a great little walk. Keith and I did end up having a pretty great meal. We shared an appetizer of jumbo shrimp and scallops wrapped in bacon. Then we both had prime rib and we left there stuffed and happy. We then drove to tim's as I decided to top off my b-day I would like a decaf coffee - it was around 8:30 by this time. Yah turns out tim's didn't sell decaf at night. WTF? When people need it most I said to the employee who told me this. I wasn't kidding. I bought a caffeinated coffee and we headed back to the hotel. Around 9:30 I decided to go for a swim since the pool closed at 10. Nobody was in it and I had it to myself. It was a nice little swim even though the water was a bit chilly for me. By 10:30 Keith was snoring and I was reading a book and around 11 I turned off the light and tried to get some zzz's. This morning I woke up at 8 and decided to go for another swim before we checked out. I again had the pool to myself but this time the water was super nice and I could have swam all morning. I went to pour myself a cup of the gross lobby coffee only to get about a quarter of the cup full as they were all out. We showered and loaded our stuff up and checked out by 10:30. It was another sweltering hot day (hey Fall where are you??) but this time I was prepared to sweat through my shirt within minutes of stepping out of our jeep. We went to the antique place beside our hotel (see how I plan??) and we spent a little over an hour walking around, we bought a few things (we are getting better with our impulse buys). I bought a cup that we had growing up in our cupboards. Keith and I had seen it once before a few months ago somewhere else for $22 this lady was selling it for $10 but everything was 50% off so it was $5- pretty sweet! We then hit one more place where we had lunch - I pushed the issue to eat first as Keith and I can get pretty hangry with each other and with the heat I wasn't taking any chances of going down that road! We ate. Bought a few more little things (stuff that I was actually looking for and not impulse buys). Then we hit the hwy for home with one more stop at VV where I bought a shirt for next weekend when T and C take me out (unless it's still a million degrees out in which I will have to ditch the cute long sleeved top). We got home around 4:30 and had a chance to relax and do our own thing for a bit before having a dinner of leftovers from Friday (roast beef - yum!) and some low carb mug cake (don't ask) but it was still tasty. Then it was the whole "what is the meaning of life" chit chat as per above and now here I am. I have decided I am going to bed after this entry - so roughly 9:30 and I am going to set my alarm for 7am (normal time) and at that moment I am going to decide whether to go into work or not. If I am feeling the work vibe fine. If not then I am making the call. BUT if I make the call I am still going to stay up. I am going to take myself out to breakfast. I am going to drink a gallon of coffee. I am going to go to town on our house. I am going to make our living room presentable. We are maybe having a contractor come on Tuesday to discuss updates to our house - roof, siding, windows ALL of it. Maybe we won't get all of it done now but we are going to discuss it. Costs etc. The Roof is a must as we have shingles missing and if it rains super hard for a long time our roof leaks. Not good. We've also lived with a cracked window for years that we would love to replace. But in order to discuss this it would be nice to have a clean and clear living room. Keith was like who cares? Which kind of scares me I'm not going to lie. I have too much pride to knowingly have people come over and not make an effort. Plus I had already started clearing our living room as we will be having people over for Oktoberfest in less than a month. So yah. That's what I will do if I decide to take a mental wellness day. And you know after all the shit that I've been thru this weekend and after my existential crisis I sort of think it's not a bad idea. They give us Wellness days for a reason! Alright it's bed time and this entry is hell-a long for me. Long but real. Maybe too real but that's what it is. Here's to a "real" 44th year on this earth! 9:33 p.m. - 2018-09-16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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