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Friday, 31 July 2009

Quick update: we're renting a loft in a really cool artist's community building and will be moving at the end of August. Can't wait! We'll finally be able to get the letterpress business going because the loft is perfect to set up the presses.

Josh is living with Haley and Monroe in Kansas City . . . did I already post that? I can't remember. My memory sucks lately. I'm pretty sure my thyroid is all hyper and stupid again, which makes for fuzzy thinking and overall blah-to-horrible-feeling-like-a-truck-ran-over-me-so-I-can't-get-anything-done-ness. That doesn't even make sense but I don't care. That's another symptom - not caring. Sort of.

Michael is working on a lot of figurative ink paintings; doing really well, and good things are happening with the soundman job thing. He may be interning at a recording studio soon, something he's wanted to do for a long time. He deserves it; he's the hardest working person I know and I would love for him to have a job he actually enjoys. That's a rare and wonderful thing.

There's a tiny lizard in the dishwasher door . . . that's the only other exciting thing I could think of. : )

Wednesday, 01 July 2009

So I went to this meeting tonight and came home incredibly depressed. It would take too long to get into all the details, but mainly what it comes down to is that my anxiety and social awkardness made it sort of miserable. The meeting was with the letterpress printers group I'm in and a paper rep - all incredibly nice people, most of them friends. But not close friends - not close enough that I could say I was feeling inadequate and left out and wanted to be included in the conversation. Well actually I could have, I just didn't know how. These people are all designers and some are designers AND teachers; all successful at what they do and very knowledgeable. All have degrees. Most of them already knew each other and have worked within the same circles. I'm from another state, I don't have a degree, I don't do a lot of freelance, I don't print (yet), don't even have the presses set up yet, am not a teacher, am not a Mac person, not a member of the design association they're all in . . .

I came home after the meeting, ate a bunch of cookies, cried all over Michael, and watched Graham Norton, which worked pretty well as a distraction, but I'm still depressed. Talking about it helped some but the problem is still there. I know my thinking is all screwed up and negative, but I don't know how to fix it. I've been going crazy lately because I'm at home all the time with only Michael to talk to unless someone calls. No friends. So these people are the best chance I have at making some friends, and you would think I'd be so grateful to have other designers to talk to, but they just make me feel like I don't know what I'm doing - not by the way they act towards me, but just by being so far ahead of me in business, knowledge, social skills, etc. For years I've been wanting to go back to school and get a degree, but then I wonder if I only want to do that just to finally silence that nagging voice in my head that says I'm not as good as a designer who has a degree. And this even after my boss called me today to tell me that one of our clients moved to another department in another state and liked working with us so much that he's giving us another contract. I was one of the people who worked on his project, so I'm one of the people he liked working with and whose work he thought so highly of. Isn't that great? You'd think that would override all the negativity. But no - my little negative voice reminds me that that particular job was not design, and not even anything I'd want to put in a portfolio. Not that anyone ever looks at my portfolio anyway, or would think anything of it if they did.

The problem with this kind of depression/anxiety/horrible negativity is that situations like the meeting tonight could have been made much better if I'd just had the confidence to tell someone how I felt, or to at least move over to where I could join in the conversation - but confidence is exactly what I DON'T have, and don't know how to just conjure up. Sometimes I can, but this was not one of those times. I'm a little terrified of having the really bad scary kind of depression again - the kind I had for years and years. What I have now sort of comes and goes and I thought I knew how to deal with it better, but lately it's here more than it's not and I don't really know what to do. No actually I do know what to do, just not how. How do you suddenly stop caring what people think? I've been trying to figure that one out for most of my life.

I don't really want answers, I just wanted to get this out.

Saturday, 20 June 2009

Hi people,

I spent a really long time writing an extremely long thing on myspace the other day if you want to check that out (www.myspace.com/teenyandtoasty). It's not really much of an update though.

Michael and I celebrated our one year anniversary on May 10th! It has been both a very good year, as far as marriage goes, and also a very challenging year, as far as all the other stuff goes. Lots of sickness and job troubles and car troubles and stuff like that, but nothing really horrible. He is still wonderful and amazing and I think he still likes me pretty much too. It's so nice to be madly in love with the guy you're married to and have the kind of marriage where you actually enjoy each other's company. I didn't think that kind of thing existed anymore, but it does.

Haley and Monroe and babies came through and visited for about a week in May; that was very, very nice. Then they went to Oklahoma and I followed to go to a friend's wedding. After the wedding we stayed for a couple of days to see family, and Haley and Monroe talked Josh into going with them traveling around for a little while, so I came back home alone and he went with them. He has since decided that living with them is pretty great and is not coming back He's almost 21 and feels like this is a good step to getting closer to living on his own, and I agree, it's very good for him and I'm glad he's getting out there.

But I miss him horribly. I mean, I know he had to move out sometime, but I wasn't expecting him to be so far away. I was already missing Haley and her family, and now Josh is gone too, and they're all in Kansas City ten hours away. I know it's strange for a kid and his mother to get along so well but Josh and I really did. He was good company and always kept me laughing. And now I have to watch the last season of Lost by myself because Michael doesn't like it. : (

Michael misses Josh too, he lost his hockey/music/synthesizer/beer drinking buddy. Rotten kids, growing up and leaving home like that.

That's about all that's worth talking about. We're still working on the house thing and the business thing. I seriously need to get out more and make some friends because when Michael is working I start to get a little stir crazy being in the house all the time. I can't wait until we can get our own business going just so I'll be forced to get out and talk to people and will hopefully be a little busier doing the kind of work I'm dying to do.

I hope everyone is having a good summer.

Oh yeah, I added some recent photos of all of us. They're all out of order because my computer wanted to die in the middle and I don't have time to figure out how to rearrange them. I'm sure you'll live through the catastrophe of having to look at them in random order though. : )

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

Da, ja bih još jednu bagel, više krem sir

So . . . since everyone is migrating from myspace to facebook, which is even more annoyingly blog-less, I keep finding myself wanting to write stuff and no place to write it. Not that there's much to say or anyone to read it, but whatever.
We're waiting on some things to happen right now, but also not rushing anything. There's a house in Waxahachie that we like. We've seen it once; it needs a lot of work but the price is right, so we're patiently waiting for things to fall into place. If we get it, we get it. If we don't we don't. We need to find a place eventually though because we're starting a business that requires lots of space, and we definitely don't have that here. It's a nice apartment but we can't put a 1,200 pound press in our dining room, even if we could get it up the stairs.
One of the things I'm waiting on now is for Haley and Monroe and babies to get here! I haven't seen them since last June. Zadok and Isaiah are growing and doing cute things and I'm missing it all, which makes me very unhappy. After May 16th I should have LOTS of pictures of all of them; hopefully enough to hold me for a while because they'll be ten hours away in Kansas City after that.
Michael and Josh are still watching hockey all the time, but I can't get into the playoffs with no Dallas Stars, it's just too disappointing and I don't know who to support - except whoever plays against the Red Wings. Can't wait for next season though.
One thing facebook is good for - finding people. I have people on my list from high school who I haven't seen in 25 years, and also a guy in Croatia, a distant relative on my dad's father's side. Everyone named Zuvanich is related and we're all from a little island called Premuda, Croatia (used to be Yugoslavia) which is apparently a beautiful place with only about 50 residents. So my "cousin" added me and then sent me some good genealogy stuff on our family, which was very nice of him. I like to go to his site and use google tranlator to translate his posts and friends' comments from Croatian to English, which never really works very well but is always entertaining.
Maybe someday I'll find uses for phrases like this:
Gdje su moje hlače?
Oprostite, mislim da idem na zameriti.
To je bio veliki lonac tuna, hvala.

Actually, I hope not.