Corner of Bourbon & Division

The week is over, I hope. The car has been delivered to the car vet, and things at work are more or less under control, even if they're not great.

I ended up going to bed late yesterday just out of sheer inertia. I didn't play Stardew Valley, but I just didn't pry myself out of my chair in time to go upstairs and to bed at a reasonable hour. Oops.

I had a nice chat with my therapist today: she let me rant about this clusterbang of a week, and we focused on how I can try to "allow" myself to take proper breaks during the day without constantly being eaten alive by guilt and the feeling that I *should* be productive at all times, or something. She also gave me some ideas for better handling delegating tasks to others. I am getting better at delegating, but I am terrible at keeping track of the things I've delegated, which doesn't help much.

So I have some homework to try out for the next two weeks, to see if it helps, and to see what needs tweaking. 

In the meantime, I am going to finish my dinner and head to bed. No Stardew Valley for me tonight, but I will likely treat myself to a few hours tomorrow.

 I've spent the last two days running in circles. I worked two night shifts, and I had agreed to spend some time with L. and J. on both days. Apart from my own crazy with my landlady, I found myself sucked into the nightmare crazy that L. and J. are experiencing too. Because they have to work everything around their harassing neighbours, even the simplest things end up being super complicated.

Monday was a bit of a clusterfuck. Originally I was supposed to go from about nine to noon, but they called and asked me if I could come later in the afternoon. Since I had a house viewing scheduled for 16:00 and then work at 17:30, I told them it wasn't really possible, but that I could stop by anytime up to 15:30. So they initially cancelled my whole visit, only to call back at noon to ask me to come by anyway. Monday was Family Day, which is a statutory holiday in Ontario, and so their neighbours were home and causing trouble.

I went over right away, and there ensued a logistical nightmare. Uh, I think I need to provide some context before this will make sense. The neighbours, among other things, harass them by parking their very large trucks in front of their house and sometimes in their actual driveway. Mostly they park in front of the house, and then they all hang out around their truck or stand right up on L. and J.'s property (the police won't lay charges because you can be up to 15 feet away from the public street on someone's property, make rude gestures, and even take pictures legally, apparently. I'm not well-enough versed in the law to know for sure myself, but the Ottawa Police made it clear to L. and J. that they weren't going to intervene in this kind of situation). So in order to discourage the harassers, L. and J. try to have cars parked in their driveway and directly in front of their house at all times.

Okay, explanation done. L. and J. don't own a car, but they've been renting vehicles. They also had a friend lend them a car over the weekend while she went on a ski trip, and that's where I came in. They wanted me to stay while J. drove the borrowed car back to its owner, and then got dropped back at home. I told them that was fine, as long as I could leave by 16:00 (my house viewing got cancelled, luckily), and also drove L. to Loblaws to do some grocery shopping, as they'd both been sick all weekend. While we were out at Loblaw's, J. called L. and revealed that she'd accidentally broken her glasses. So when we got back at 15:45 J. couldn't leave until L. had helped her Scotch tape her glasses together, and I ended up going with her because she can't see at all without her glasses, and they were worried the glasses might break again while she was driving. We left at 16:00, and when we got to our destination, the friend we were going to see wasn't there yet. So we waited some more, and ended up returning to L. and J.'s house at a quarter to five.

I ran home as fast as I could, tried to get ready for work, take care of the pets, and have dinner, and only succeeded at two out of the three. Oh, and the dog was sick while I was gone, so I had to clean that up too before work. It was, as I said, a total clusterfuck, and I ended up being late for work as a result.

Yesterday wasn't quite as bad in terms of logistics, but I ended up spending most of my day with them, from 09:30 to past 14:00, which means that I only got about four hours of sleep all day, total. I wasn't late for work, at least, but I was exhausted by the end of it all.

And today the landlady saga continues. The coop called me and said they left her messages which she hasn't returned yet, and when I spoke to them I hadn't heard from her directly in about three weeks (not since February 1st). I checked my cell phone when I hung up with the coop, and to my surprise found a text message from her, demanding to know if I'd be home tomorrow so a floor company could come in. I responded with my availability, and she hasn't gotten back to me. 

I'm a little concerned, because I spoke to my paralegal today, and she said she hasn't sent the letter yet that we agreed upon, and that means my landlady doesn't yet know that I've engaged legal representation. I don't know what that means for how tomorrow's as-yet hypothetical visit (with the floor company) will mean, and now I'm super stressed about it all again. I honestly thought that the letter would have been sent out either late last week or early this week. Two weeks seems like a really long time to send out what is essentially a one-page letter. I don't know, maybe legal stuff really does take that long, but this is sort of a time-sensitive issue. :(

Ugh. Anyway. Speaking of anxiety, it's time to go to therapy. I haven't been in over a month, due to scheduling and life issues. I had to cancel my last appointment due to my landlady being crazy, and then my therapist got sick, so it's been a while. I'm thinking of stopping, anyway. I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere or developing any true insights into my psyche that I didn't know before, and that means I'm wasting her time, and wasting my time and money.

i'm averaging one post a month. That's... actually better than what I was managing before, but it's not quite the prolific journaling I had imagined myself doing.

Part of the problem, of course, is that I'm not doing much with my days. The only thing I'd be able to write about is my circular thought patterns, and how many hours of Borderlands 2 I've logged in a day. Not exactly the most exciting or uplifting stuff, you know? I'm still off work, and most of my days are spent puttering around the house, taking the dog for short walks, playing Pokémon (while on said short walks), and bopping from one doctor's appointment to the next.

I used to be a lot more confessional in this journal, but now I feel like I have a weird case of stage fright. It's most likely been brought about by the slew of new people I've added. You all seem really cool and interesting, but I don't know you, and I guess I'm past the point in my life where I feel comfortable sharing the more intimate parts of myself with people I don't know well. Those of you who aren't new to this LJ will doubtless already be well-acquainted with my failings at intimacy, and not be at all surprised. :P

I'm giving therapy another shot, after over 13 years since the last time I did it. The last time was group therapy, and it was an unmitigated disaster. I hated it intensely. I also had a brief few sessions with a student, who upon learning that I'd once dyed my hair green asked me if I'd done it to make myself ugly on purpose (o_O), and also seemed convinced that I couldn't possibly be gay. He had very rigid views about what was and wasn't appropriate, didn't understand much about gender or sexuality outside of cisgendered heteronormativity, and I felt like I was educating him most of the time. It was exhausting.

Anyway, I'm trying again. The new therapist seems nice. She's also a student (I'm going through a program at St. Paul's University), but she seems less horrified by LGBT stuff and geeky things than my previous therapist, by which I mean not at all. I saw her yesterday for the second time, and she asked me how I thought things were going, to which I didn't really have a response. I mean, am I supposed to see major changes after two sessions? I thought this was meant to be a longer process, to be honest. :P We'll see. I'm going to keep with it until the money runs out (some of this is covered by insurance, at least).

I'm off work until August 31st, at which point I'm seeing my doctor, and we'll proceed from there.

I had a really lovely weekend, at least. I went to visit fearsclave and his lovely wife, and spent two days going on Pokéwalks, having delicious food, learning how to play Go, and fishing. It was awesome, and I wish we could get together more often.