New Beginings, But The Battle Never Ends

 I had experienced migraines throughout my time in Florida and a little bit since returning to Oklahoma, but rarely. It started slowly, and I only had to call out of work once in the first month. Then they jumped up to happening once a week. It felt like it would take three full days to recover, and then I would just get triggered all over again and be sent into the next migraine a week later. I had to be put on temporary leave of absence so I could leave as needed and pull from my LOA hours instead of my PTO. Those were the same LOA hours I would later have to pull from my maternity leave time bank as well. The migraines got worse and more frequent the closer I got to my due date.

I wanted to go into labor naturally this time since I was induced previously. However, times have changed in those twelve years, and they now say that giving birth as close to your due date is much safer than waiting. So my doctor had no problem inducing on my due date this time, and with the amount of suffering I was in, I was begging for any relief... I tried all the tricks to go into labor naturally before the scheduled induction, but had no luck.

This time around, I was induced at 8 a.m., had my epidural at noon, and quickly escalated to full pushing by 2:30 p.m.! She was very ready after some time on my side with a peanut ball. Our little Princess was born so very much smoother than her giant big brother. She came out much smaller at seven pounds nine ounces, but still 100% of adorable sweetness. Since it was still COVID times, the hospital allowed early discharge, and we did not have to wait the three day period like we had previously with Rayne. It was so nice getting to go home quickly and settle into our routine right away.

Four weeks later, after very little sleep, Princess gifted me the most caring Mother's Day gift of all: eight hours straight of sleep! At just one month old, she actually slept through the night. She didn't stick to that, but she would get four to six hours of sleep continuously most nights. By two months, she was sleeping a regular schedule of seven to eight-hour nights. I did not experience the insane sleep deprivation that is usually a three to four month long trial, and I felt beyond lucky for that. During her awake periods, we quickly realized she was extremely observant. She tried copying her surroundings incredibly early and was always super watchful of everyone and everything. Studying it all so very closely.  She was great at rolling and wiggling, but she refused to learn to crawl, doing a modified army crawl for the longest time. Her attention was way too focused on language and absorbing every tiny detail in her environment. She spoke early and knew baby sign language for many words, too.

A few months before her first birthday, I gave myself a concussion while putting away groceries by standing straight up into a cabinet door I thought I had already closed. In my lifetime, I had suffered from at least three concussions before this incident and knew how to handle the symptoms on my own and what to monitor for before an ER trip. So, as usual, I avoided medical attention. Then, just as I was starting to feel better and have fewer headaches about a month later, my husband and I both caught COVID.

COVID messed with my brain and senses so very badly. My memory has still not recovered. It was part hallucinatory and part just plain brain-melting. Then, about four weeks after that, I was playing with Princess and she accidently headbutted me in my head. The issue is that I was already resting my head against the wall, and she caused me to smash into it insanely hard with the sudden impact. Instant repeat concussion… Vision issues were instant, and I now know exactly what it means to “have your bell rung,” because I felt sore on both the front and back of my head where my brain banged back and forth from the pure inertia.

After two weeks, my vision was horrible and beyond sensitive. I gave up and finally found a doctor for the first time in over 13 years. She told me I couldn't have possibly hit my head hard enough to be as bad off as I thought. Oh, and that my anxiety was the true cause of allllll of my symptoms. However, she was willing to try to prove me wrong by ordering tons of tests and specialist referrals, which ended up being exactly what I needed. The neurologist started me on different headache meds, and thankfully she actually believed me that the concussion could have done lots of weird things to my brain. I finally found a few options that worked for me to control my migraines and headaches. A mix between two steroid shots directly into the back of the head, daily hydroxyzine, and monthly Emgality injections. I still have lots of headaches, but I haven’t had a single migraine in almost one year now (fingers crossed!)

After returning to work, I started suffering from horrible pain in my hands. I was finally getting about half my shifts to be online chats only, which I loved and excelled at, sometimes even taking three chats at a time. But oh, the horrible pain! I went back to my doctor after a few months of torture, and she sent me to an orthopedic surgeon who then sent me to a 90-plus-year-old neurologist for a nerve conduction study.

This old man was supposedly the best of the best and was sticking around to train his replacement. However, the machines wires were all tangled, and if any one of the dozens of electrodes they attach to you touches another, they short out and don't work. So basically, he would tell me I was about to feel a big electric shock, and then it wouldn't happen. Then he would say it again, and it still wouldn't happen. Then ten seconds later…BAM! a major, sudden shock. The only way to test how your brain controls muscles is to send electronic messages down them and see what pings back. I essentially was sent into a mindset of feeling like Frankenstein's poor monster.

The procedure continued on with random shocks continued on for both arms. And THEN he stuck full-on needles in my hands and ran electricity too them, shocking them harder twice on each hand as well. That needle part is called an EMG. The results showed mild to moderate carpal tunnel in my right hand and mild carpal tunnel in my left. However, right then and there, he gave me his personal advice and suggested I just get surgery in both hands (not just the right)  as this condition only gets worse over time and never heals on its own.

The results were sent to my orthopedic surgeon, and we discussed the surgical options. Doing my right hand first seemed like the best choice so I could at least have the use of my dominant hand back first, plus it was the worst affected limb. My doctor said that he only performs a completely open surgery and not the less invasive laparoscopic version. The full open release allows for a full vision on the median nerve and to be fully sure no damage is done to it. It comes with a longer recovery time but a much higher chance of success, so I was on board with this plan. The plan was a five-to-six-week recovery for the first hand, then to repeat with the left after that. I had to take off work and go on another formal (unpaid) LOA, which only meant that while I was juggling all the recovery and scheduling, I also had to juggle tons of red tape and paperwork to just to keep my position at work yet again.

The first hand went oh so very horribly… The surgery itself was a three minute, simple in-and-out. However, my recovery process took a full year. Not being able to use your dominant hand for two weeks is a very disorienting thing all in itself. My original bandage was done much too tightly, and my hand swelled greatly. On top of that, the pain meds they gave me at the hospital to take home didn't work at all with my EDS. I spent two days trying to get new pain meds and finally got something that would work sent in for me on day THREE post-op…It was just ridiculous, and I barely remember those first few days at all from dissociating due to the pain combined with all the working pain meds I filled up on directly after.

Getting the stitches removed was also on the level of pain you could associate with the level of  a rib or knee tattoo. This freaking horrible nurse had the dullest scissors in the universe and spent one whole minute (felt like hours) per stitch, just slowly hacking and hacking and hacking and hacking through the tiniest piece of thread in the world. Then she would go to pull it out and say, “You might feel a slight pressure,” and then it felt like a horrible stabbing bee sting instead. My husband told me he didn't realize it was that bad for me because I didn’t scream or even make a single sound. I told him I felt too embarrassed to show discomfort after the nurse walked in literally boasting about how she was a pro “remover,” saying she had just flawlessly removed twenty-four staples from a guy’s chest. I couldn't believe my people-pleasing nature extended so far as to dissociate through the pain to avoid embarrassing an incompetent and excruciating moment that no one should have had to endure. She was, in fact, no longer part of the clinic when I went back later.

 

 

A Gift Wrapped in Terror

I pushed through for months, but it was a stressful, extremely sweaty struggle. I was also helping Rayne with his 5th-grade school, which meant a lot of Zoom meeting timing, checking on him, and helping with his work during every break and lunch period I had off. Sitting for hours on end became very hard. I had to make very elaborate pillow and blanket setups to support and position my body just perfectly to be able to sit at the desk. I couldn't start work each morning until the area was perfectly clean; I would wipe down and sanitize every surface and sweep the floor before every shift. Feeling the slightest crumb under my foot might make it harder for me to work. I would spray room freshener and make sure everything was exactly in its place before every shift.

Organization is not something that comes naturally to me, but it is something my brain craves greatly. Routine, routine, routine. Everything became mundane and routine. Day after day, the exact same thing, and now, I never left the house. It didn't feel like we could buy a house while I had no job, then we were both working and had zero time to put into the immense effort of starting house shopping. It felt like the whole world was crumbling down around us anyway. After that year, things were just barely beginning to change. Rayne wanted to be in Band, and that would require in-person schooling. He would be in 6th grade and really did not need to miss out on more social time with friends, or more accurately, miss out on the chance to make more friends!

During his back-to-school night before the first day, we walked the halls together and visited all his new classrooms and teachers. The halls were so packed, and I had not been around people much since COVID, much less in an enclosed area with wall-to-wall people in a very long time. I had the worst anxiety the whole time and was sweating buckets. It was hot, and I was definitely a gross and shaky mess by the time we got back to the car. I felt like I had just walked through 100 heart attacks from all the panic of so many people in a confined space with us being the ONLY ones still wearing masks…

The next day Rayne went to his first day of 6th Grade and I had a full shift at work while my husband was off and hanging with me while I worked. I started my shift feeling kind of painful and crampy, but I fought through it. The pain became more and more unbearable, and I was able to get them to switch me to chats, as I was newly trained on handling emails and online live chats. I was dying in pain, but at least I didn’t have to speak to anyone. I had some sick leave so I left an hour early and lay there in horrible pain. About an hour later, I got my period and assumed a cyst had ruptured, causing all that pain, and thus I was just now on deck for a super painful period. My husband was worried, but I chose to ignore it. It was awful, but I had a short cycle of 2-3 days and thought not much of it then.

Two days later, mid-shift, I stood up and the lower half of me was covered in blood. I definitely freaked out, and my husband, who was sure I needed to go to the doctor many days prior, was now taking me to the minor emergency right then! They ran a few tests and did an exam, worried it was something random that I don't even remember, and had me waiting around 15mins for an X-ray. A tech took me back for the X-ray and had me filling out some forms when a nurse ran in and said my X-ray was absolutely canceled and that I should go wait back in the room.

I went back and told my husband, "I think I’m pregnant because they yanked me out of that X-ray room soooooo fast." After 15 more minutes, they finally came in and said the urine test showed I was pregnant and that they feared I was having an ectopic pregnancy and needed to go to the ER right away. How crazy is it to hear that you're pregnant and probably losing the baby in the same statement? We went home, had my mom come stay with Rayne while we went to the hospital… where I continued to bleed heavily for the THREE-HOUR wait to even get into a room. I was in so much pain while waiting and by then my one single pad was completely soaked. I wanted to start screaming at everyone so badly, but I knew it wouldn't help. They kept coming out saying all their beds were full and they were redirecting ambulances to other ERs. When they finally took us back, they fully treated me like I was miscarrying until they did an ultrasound.

Then they told me the opposite: that in fact, everything looked perfectly normal inside me and that the baby was alive and well at about 4-5 weeks developed. The whiplash from that statement sent me fully into shock. After the doctor rushed away, I was then seen by a discharge nurse who gave me a pile of paperwork on miscarrying and said, "With this much blood, you’ll probably miscarry anyway, and you will need to get your hormones tested ASAP to actually know if the baby is even still viable."  I was so confused by all this conflicting info, plus I didn’t even have insurance! We went home, filed for Medicare, and I was given a very basic pregnant women's care insurance coverage only, as we made just sliiiightly too much for full medical health coverage.

However, because of the state covered insurance, no one could take me in… No one said they accepted this insurance. The sliding scale walk-in clinic said they had next-day appointments with their OBGYN, so I went to see her. At this point, I was still bleeding and in pain and now no longer able to eat, getting down about one bite of food a day and a few sips of water ONLY. She told me my bloodwork was only half the amount of hormones they expected to see based on my last count at the hospital and that I was probably going to miscarry. At this point, it had been two weeks of assuming I was miscarrying. The doctor let me know she could hand me over to a more specialized OBGYN, and I jumped at the chance.

The new doctor was actually linked to a local major medical system, and she had amazing reviews! I had to wait two more weeks to get in, still bleeding but a little less now. I was still only eating a bite of food a day, even with the Rx nausea medication I was prescribed. I felt half dead and was still not allowing a single ounce of hope to wedge its way in for fear of the emotional toll when it all came crashing down, just like they kept saying it would. But I walked into that appointment hopeless, and within the first second of being checked with the ultrasound, there she was! A tiny little peanut shape with two arms waving around like mad with the smallest hand ever right at us for all to see. Well, “Hello” to you too!!

It took my breath away. I was completely speechless and did not believe what I was seeing until the doctor started speaking so very positively! Baby was super healthy, and I just had some weird bruising under the baby’s sac. It seemed the egg had attempted to rip away and that tear hadn’t healed and just kept pooling blood, causing me to bleed so very much. When we left that appointment I just cried and cried. I was so happy and so in shock yet again. Plus so very worried even still. We were only at the 8-week mark and would not be more out of the woods until the 12-week mark when miscarriage in general becomes much less likely. 

Only my mom knew for the longest time. We didn’t want to deal with the disappointment of telling people I was pregnant only to have to deal with the burden of telling them we miscarried. Especially when I had been told I was going to miscarry so very many times. The next few weeks were horrible. I got a new medication from the better new doctor; however, it completely knocked me out and I was totally drunk from it.

The whole time I was on a leave of absence from work and had to jump through a billion hoops. My employer's third-party LOA team was critical when I was just trying to save my job because they only offered a few hours of sick leave total a year. You have to get a LOA for anything longer than three days. Since it was the highest-paying job I had ever had, and I could do it from home too, I really wanted to keep it. My boss was very sweet but extremely unhelpful. At Petco, I had just been told by the General Manager that I was on leave and never filled out a single piece of paper. REI? A hundred and one steps plus hoops to go through. It was a horrible added stress on top of just trying to live and survive day-to-day. After that 8-week appointment, I finally slowed down with the bleeding, and by 10 weeks, it had finally stopped. I got genetic blood testing done and was able to find out the gender at 10 weeks: it’s a girl!

At 11 weeks, it was all actually starting to feel real. For real for real! We told Rayne that he was going to be a big brother before anyone else. The next week, we slowly started telling everyone we saw during my son and I’s many birthday celebrations. We called and let our Florida family know as well. They had been hearing how sick I had been for months, and it was a relief for them to finally know why. I started eating again slowly and was able to even start back at work for the super busy fall and holiday season. Then the migraines started…

 

From Bruises to Brain Strain: The Covid Pivot

 Hard labor was now my day to day reality. To try to escape the most face-to-face interactions and cash register assignments, I learned quickly that no one liked doing deep cleaning tasks. I volunteered to clean and change beddings on all the cages to get out of dealing with people as much as possible. The repetitive cleaning tasks were much more familiar, and my attention to detail kept the animals healthier and more cared for than ever. Then they said I couldn't get a raise unless I moved up, and the only position directly above me that involved the animals direct care and not the products/people/money side was the Aquatic Specialist position. There was one already, but our store was allowed two due to our high sell volume. I then immersed myself in everything fish and took over EVERYTHING in the section fully by 3 months. I knew where every single fish in the tanks was located and their habitat/social/general care requirements as well. Then the other aquatic specialist quit and I was all alone in the job with no one to delegate my duties. A few people came and went in the 2nd position, but none fully hyperfixated enough to care to learn anything about anything. They were okay at following instructions, and that was all that really mattered to me. I still can’t believe there was a time in my life where I was physically able to stock pallet after pallet of 50lb dog food bags and 40lb kitty litter buckets. I was hurt so very often and always covered in bruises, but I found it was survivable if I just slept with a heating pad every night.

Scrubbing fish tanks was a twice a week task that is beyond repetitive, you would not believe how strenuous it actually adds up to as well! Especially going up and down the ladders to get to the multiple levels of those towered banks of tanks. One day I was determined to clean the central display plant tank because it had the grossest looking acrylic waterfall ever, completely green with slime and algae. I spent a couple hours straight on a stool bent slightly forward to reach the back of this plastic waterfall feature. However, the next morning I was not able to walk or even bend my left hip at all whatsoever. I called in for three days straight, barely able to tough out the pain. Without insurance at the time, I did not go to get a $350 x-ray or $150 evaluation. I iced it and didn’t leave bed. I was able to slowly bend and put weight on it and, like most of my previous injuries, it got to a point the pain could be semi-ignored and I moved on with life, with a new chronic pain added on to my daily, already painful, life.

Also, the psychological torture that is holiday music around Christmastime should not be legal and really needs to be stopped!! The same 24 songs played on repeat for 2 months straight each and every year... It was psychological warfare, especially since half of them were Sia’s album where I swear she had a cold or something because I’ve never heard someone whine/mumble-sing so horribly out of key...even just thinking back on it back now I can hear that overly nasally tone engraved in the back of my brain, “oh that puppy in the window.” The way I got out of working the Christmas holiday time register the following years was simple. On December weekends, I was able to assist with the annual “Photos with Santa” events. I was the photographer for two years in a row and had assisted my first year before that for one day too. I was really good at making stressed and dressed up dogs look good for that one single important keepsake worthy shot. I also could avoid the register on weekends by volunteering to demo whatever product or food was supposed to be featured. I was usually just in the dog food section giving specialty diet recommendations, as I spent so many hours reading label after label learning the fine details of every brand and protein type of all dog and cat food brands.

Months went by, and then months turned into a whole year. I was now promoted so many times I was upper level management at this point. Being an expert in animals put me into the Companion Animal Leader role (CAL for short.) I was now head in charge of the lives of every animal in the store and stock quantities/ordering all of them as well. I knew exactly how many of each animal we had in the whole store, plus when and what we would be getting in. This made me the most popular source of any pet information, and being an expert also keeps you away from the register when you’re able to push tons of products and make the big sales, while educating the whole time too. I had a lovely older couple who owned a massive Discus tank and, without fail for months, they would show up every afternoon of our typical fish delivery day from that specific vendor. The Discus come in very different styles and colors, some rarer than others, but Petco sells them all as “assorted.” Watching the joy they would spark as soon as they saw the specific pattern/coloring they were currently searching for was always the best, even if they did attempt to haggle the price with me afterwards, every single purchase. These fish were like $50 a piece, so I didn’t blame them for trying! I’m sure I gave in a time or two. I would also give free snails to anyone who asked, especially if they were to be used for Pufferfish food. Our aquatic plant display was always riddled with hundreds of them, and they had no price/value to Petco, so why not!

I’d love to tell you the animals at your local pet store are better taken care of than you’d think for creatures shoved into tiny terrariums and cages, however it completely varies by quality of your management, combined with each animals’ varying needs. The spiders, millipedes, and various other creepy crawlies reeeeeeeally don’t mind a 12inch by 12inch enclosure. That baby chameleon in a 24inch by 12inch space? Probably going to die if not purchased quickly. Their housing policies are strict to be universal, however they are made from the retail positive side and not the animals care. I did everything in my power to break every rule for the benefit of every creature in that building, except the feeder goldfish. I’m sorry, but they’re rarely pets and mostly food. The things that eat them are so cute and make amazing pets. Before opening I would break EVERY rule and give a scoop of live goldfish straight into the aquatic turtle tank. Not a single employee minded, in fact some asked for me to do it because it was the most active the turtles got all day, speeding super fast around trying to snap a fish by the tail. I called it a red ear slider glitter party because the only thing left afterwards would be tons of glittering scales sparkling in the turbulent water. When we got a shipment of super large feeder goldfish in, I called my mom and had her come buy every single one because they seemed like they were meant to be pets despite being the typical pond Comet. Also! In defense of my goldfish murders... If anyone DID want one as a pet, I would pick out the brightest and prettiest of them all. Some people buy them for their horse trough too for mosquito prevention. The birds were the saddest animal in the whole building. I kept them out all morning before opening, and even while open I would often be found with a baby conure tucked into my hair somewhere. While yes, everything in the store is a baby/juvenile, these were just BABIES!!! Poor babies that could only be transported legally via cat carrier style via airplane cargo hold. They say they come to the store “hand raised,” but they came to us traumatized beyond belief, and I worked my butt off to earn the trust of every single one. Please, please, please never buy a bird from a chain pet store... They will ALWAYS see it as a win even if sold at a discounted price for being in the store 30+ days. The management will be forced to fill the empty cages as they are only products to be sold by the corporate people in charge. There was such a high employee turnover, a few days I had to run this top tier selling store in the area all alone. I felt like the ultimate knowledge on everything pet related, and the education side of changing people's lives with a new hobby/companion meant the world to me. Another year flew by. Still didn’t buy a house but with two incomes now we were finally saving and had a small safety net that seemed vital to home-ownership responsibility. Being around so many different animals and working at a place that was welcome for people to bring their own pets in to shop, is the closest I will ever come to a dream job.

Then COVID hit…

Near the beginning of it all Rayne went on spring break, and then they didn’t have them go back to school the whole year. Petco said I could go on a leave of absence and not worry about it. I was horrified at first because those animals would suffer without me, but I did not have a choice. Rayne was doing the end of 4th grade online, and I was needed at home. Oh boy did the pets LOVE THAT! The dog, cat, and lizard were so super happy. The lizard sat on Rayne’s shoulder watching his Zoom meetings and class videos on his laptop. The cat would always be nearby in Rayne’s lap or mine. Jack cat definitely interrupted a lesson or two with his cute fluffiness. Rayne and I got to be closer than ever, and he was already my best friend. We watched Youtube videos all day and played games together. We made big breakfasts every day and only argued about how Loooooooong it would take him to get his school work done. He was an amazing COVID buddy, and I will cherish our time locked in together always. My leave of absence ended, and the school said we could choose virtual for the next year, so out of safety we did. I was able to apply for unemployment while job hunting for a work at home position. Walmart had a call center job that was hiring if you had a landline, so we started the process of getting one through our internet carrier, when REI Co-op replied back to my application. REI was a dream corporation to work for, as they publicly display as a super liberal and member owned co-op. But once inside their bubble? Just another group of shady CEO money hiding liars. However... It was something I could do from home AND they would send me all the equipment I would need as well. The training was Loooooooong but easy, and I was paid well for it too. Starting out as seasonal, I had to take all kinds of calls at first. That literally meant needing to know a little bit of EVERYTHING about outdoor sports. That's where my logic and researching skills really came in handy. What didn’t come in handy is my extreme people pleasing handicap and crippling social anxiety. The metrics were impossible to meet, but being seasonal they didn’t care much, my stellar track record of exceptional service out weighed the fact it took me twice as long as they thought it should to do it. They invited me back to stay after the season was done and I was then placed on a Sales team, focusing more on products and completing sales/making orders. It was very difficult, people want to call and have you be their personal shopper for 30 mins, and even one call like that wrecks your average call time so badly for the whole day. Especially if it’s only a 4 hour shift. Everything was averages and metrics... That was the only way they could manage a staff of 800+ people. You just become a number at the end of the day, no matter how inclusive the company claims to be. Sitting for 8 hours killed my body, and masking for 8 hours straight killed my brain.

 

 

Back to the Simple Life

We moved back to Oklahoma and I attempted to reconnect in person with my now constant pocket friend (who was no longer long distance). We did some archery lessons together, but physical activities were so rough on me, my shoulders were dead for days, it was hard to feel up to it again. She tried hard to pull us into her little community of friends, but it was difficult for both me and my husband at that time as we were suddenly thrown into figuring out a brand new life path. With my husband not working, I spent less time reaching out to her, and she got a boyfriend and went quiet on me too. I really miss her so much but have no way to contact her. We only spoke through Facebook Messenger, and I have long since deleted that platform from my life. We were both so introverted yet also extroverted in exactly the same ways. Being her friend was one of the times I didn’t feel bad for enjoying childish things or unmasking my daily obsessions and ramblings. I was only just starting to understand what autism was and how it might present differently in women, but that was the first time I saw myself in another person and recognized how I edited myself around others so heavily. I would like to day say im a mysterious person by nature and breaking my walls down to my true core is difficult to discover, but honestly? All it takes is letting out your own authentic self around me to break my walls down instantly.

Life suddenly slowed down and became simple. There were new stressors and triggers now, but at least they were mostly scheduled and routine. We were able to cook what we wanted and spend time learning new life skills, finally. We moved in with my Mother and were able to send our son off to the best school in the area due to her address being in district. Rayne had an incredible teacher and the best principal a kid could ask for. She let him just lay down by her desk on the floor to do all of his work next to her so he could ask all his questions as much as he wanted without disrupting the class. They paired him up with a brilliant speech-language pathologist, and she was the biggest boost to his abilities during all his years at this elementary school.

We were able to take our new food talents over to our best friend's house, with their now three-month-old, and help by cooking dinners multiple times a week. It felt so good to make up for all the lost time while also feeling needed, cared for, and wanted. Friendship and that deep level of camaraderie is absolutely the “home” feeling that was missing in Florida. We felt so relieved to be on our new path while equally nervous for the unknown that was looming ever ahead.

We started the tedious task of job hunting. By November, I found a listing for Petco and went for an interview. They called me back an hour later and told me I was hired. They also mentioned my first day would be one day before Black Friday. I went in that first day and was taught the very basics of the register and told that this is where I would probably be for a while… They also warned me that it’s the bottom of the totem pole and no one helps on the register. Greeeeeeat. The next day was hell on earth. For anyone who has worked retail on Black Friday, I FEEL YOUR PAIN! I went home very sick and for the next six weeks was in constant extreme stomach pain from the stress of such a fast-paced, zero-training job. My appetite was reduced and I was always painfully nauseous. Plus, I had to learn how to speak to people all the time and constantly diffuse angry situations. I did learn these skills, but my people-pleasing qualities overruled and caused everyone to walk all over me all the time. I took stomach meds three times a day and ate mainly rice and bananas. We still got to see our friends a few times a week and now my pockets are also full of puppy treats for their super sweet canine buddies too.

Some time went by and we were told of a rental house my Mom owns that was suddenly vacant. We really wanted to get about six solid months of working under our belts and then start looking for a house to buy, so the rental house seemed perfect. It took a bit longer than expected to get it cleaned out and fixed up. The lady had wrecked the house. Her dogs had chewed holes through walls and covered the entire house in feces. The floor was barely salvageable and definitely cannot be resurfaced ever again, as it's way too thin and warped now. This house is also about 100 years old and in need of more than a small facelift, sadly. My mom and her brother worked tirelessly for months to get it back in livable conditions again, mainly fighting with the floor. It definitely still had a bit of a smell, but nowhere near toxic levels anymore. Plus, we could finally get our stuff out of storage and unpack after the move back from Florida, as well as some things that had been stored with my mom since BEFORE we moved to Florida. It was so. much. work. Lots of things we hadn’t seen in a long while, but also so many memories and keepsakes as well that we finally got to see again. I was able to decorate and use all my own things again. We bought a couch and some more furniture and it felt like it could be a home. My husband went back to the Domino's he had left before we moved to Florida, and they gave him his job back that same day.  This time he worked day shifts only to hopefully avoid any more being held at gunpoint scenarios. So… we now both had jobs and could cover all bills and life expenses. Very little in savings still, but we planned on using an FHA loan and first-time homebuyer deals to get us through as easily as possible. For some reason...we just… didn’t...