My view from the milk stool is not from the milk stool because I’ve stopped milking my does for the season. It’s nice to have the break, but I miss the grounding that is my daily milking.
It’s been a tough couple of months. It seems like the newspaper gets more and more difficult at the same time as it gets more rewarding. There are so many times I wish someone – anyone – will discover me and get me out of the craziness that is the paper now, but that’s not going to happen until I’m ready to go. I don’t mean, yea, I’m ready to go – I mean emotionally ready. Maybe I’ll never go. I’d rather not, but the stress sometimes and the absolute utter exhaustion I feel.
Only two papers are being published this week. That means, for the first time in several years now, I won’t be laying out a newspaper. That doesn’t mean I won’t be doing stories on Thanksgiving. I may well be, but at least I won’t have to spend eight hours in front of a computer bringing together five of the eight pages.
Then there’s the dog fiasco. I thought I was ready for more and more and more and more dogs. I thought after the exploratory piece that I wrote for one of my classes about my experiences with Gel and the underlying alcoholism that I had made progress – that I could be a dog person. I’m not ready to climb aboard that train yet. I’m lucky I was able to get it fixed as easily as I did. Katie is like a ripe peach ready to be picked and the little one, Muse, she’s a blank slate who’s going to take years to form. I have no excuse with these two.
Then there was the injury. Besides the pain and the debilitation, it’s caused me – it’s frightened me. It makes me realize I’m getting older and then there’s the problem of not having health insurance. Yes, I have a policy through healthcare.gov but it has a $7,000 deductible. Yea right. People said to me, did you get it checked out? Well, no. I don’t really have health insurance. Why don’t I have health insurance? Because my job doesn’t offer it. I’m one of those under, technically, uninsured people that float around under the radar.
Then there’s school. Graduate school is hard. It’s a good hard, but my feelings of inadequacy are really horrific right now. I feel so inadequate when I sit in my classes and listen to what others write. One class has been a workshop and I’ve had to read my work twice. Want to know what that was like? About like undressing in front of a crowd of people and believe me, I don’t feel like I want my naked body shown to anyone. The silence that ensued after I finished reading was akin to the horror of seeing such an ugly body. The other class has been much more tolerable, however, there’s a workshop coming up and I have to read one of my pieces – which is fiction! Something I’ve never written before. Oy! Here goes the naked business again.
It’ll be good to have a month break before the next semester starts. I’m serious questioning that I am where I should be as far as an education goes.
So things kind of suck right now. I want to work Katie but I’m afraid to step in front of sheep right now. I had thought I’d have one and maybe two dogs to start in agility, but that didn’t quite work out as I planned. I’m trying to convince Katie that playing with toys is a good thing. Not doing too good on that front but I did discover she has some interest in chasing a tennis ball so there’s hope. Katie’s a weird bird. Muse is happy to play and is really quite a terror but she’s itty bitty. It feels weird to have such a tiny puppy here.
Until later …
