I am exhausted. Every minute I work tomorrow will be overtime. I need the money, but I think I also need my health.

I am still wanting to go out and find relief in a way that can't happen if I want to stay anywhere near healthy. But, I am working hard to simply resist and go through the motions like I don't want to run away from it all. And it works...until 3am when I've been waking up and not going back to sleep until almost time to get up for work. Life could be a little more fair, I would think.

I haven't paid my electric bill since October. I have to now pay $1100 by April 15 (end of cold weather rule in Minnesota), and I think I'm on track to doing it. It's a great feeling. I think I'll actually have money left after that. I just wish I could have afforded to pay it monthly. But I've been paying other bills (catching up on them, too!) and things should be better soon. But with the overtime, the extra job, and maybe some child support, it will all work out. This is a good thing!

I had intended to pay it with my tax return, but I'm not getting much. I guess I grossed too much to get an earned income credit. I remember getting as much as $3600 one year. It was great. But now there's no refund, and I think I better adjust my withholdings for next year. I almost ended up paying in this year. At least, two kids have finished their college in the past six months, and the younger one will be just entering--but I think I have some practice with it now and things will get better.

There was a third newborn baby in eight years found dead in a lake in southeastern Minnesota this week. Do you know how unusual this has to be? It's a terrible, awful thing! And, yet, the police can't show that these three are related. Not yet, anyway. But, even if it were just one baby, it's horrible! Especially in this state where the baby could have been dropped off in a hospital with no questions asked. How could someone, or three people, do this? The first two babies were not related by blood, and they're testing this one. But how could they do that to an innocent child? An infant? I just can't imagine that!

I think I need to go to sleep. My brain is jumping, and all I want to do is go out and drink until I'm totally inebriated--and I've maybe drank a dozen beers in my entire life. But I'm beginning to think it's either get drunk or do something else that no one should ever do, voluntarily or otherwise.

I am a danger to myself right now. I can feel the urge to go do something reckless, something that could destroy all I've gained, all I've earned. A dangerous thing that is just waiting there, waiting for me to submit myself to a wild, painful situation that no respectable person would ever admit to voluntarily entering. I've done it in the past, learning it from childhood. I want to scream from the pain, yet I cringe from the agony.

What kindles this urge? What creates in me an absolute craving for somthing so very damaging? All I know is that right now I have a very bad, very resentful attitude. I swing between not saying anything and wanting to slam things (but kind of being extra careful so nothing looks out of the ordinary)--and wanting to yell and holler and shake people until they understand some very basic truths.

At work, I've been dealing with a very irritating situation, waiting for responses that never seemed to come--and then I find out my request were just discarded and never even read! My boss helped me get some answers, and I made a complaint, so the president stopped by my desk at the end of the day and advised me that he would be discussing the situation with the involved employees---but it sure didn't ease the frustration for the past two weeks.

At home, I strongly resent my fiance always putting down large, obese people. He is thin, and usually feels people are their own bosses who determine their own lives, but lately it seems that he is even more negatively behaving toward large people. As a large person, I am not happy. I've told him how I feel in the past, and I'm tired of telling him. He also doesnt' understand the fibro thing, and I really resent that, too. In the end, I almost want to just walk away and cry.

Instead, I am ready to go out and do something dangerous, something that has the purpose to totally hurt me, something that could end up in my death...and yet I want to go out and perform, to submit to the danger and feel the instant elation....

I will fight it tonight, and I hope that I get through this time without giving in to the craving.

I had a quiet weekend. It was good to not have to be working all the time. Still, I think I would rather have been working.

I love my fiance very much. We've been engaged over three years. And he is a good, honorable and kind man that is intelligent and caring. He is good.

But he has two concerns that concern me. One is my kids. He makes no secret that he thinks he doesn't have the patience to deal with the tantrums and demands that he recognizes as a part of every child's life. He understands the love that parents feel, but he doesn't feel he has the patience that children demand. I think he has more patience than almost any other human I've met, but he doesn't think the same.

The other is my weight. He has told me he has no intention of marrying a large lady, so he keeps waiting for me to lose this weight that I've carried all my life. He tells me that I'd feel better if I lost weight. I think he has it backwards. I'd lose weight if I felt better.

I guess there's one other concern: he doesn't understand my fibromyalgia. I don't think he realizes how debilitating--nor how real--this is. It's frustrating. No one ever seems to understand this diagnosis.

The weight and the fibro are not exclusively misunderstood by him. Others misunderstand it, too. It's frustrating.

I read something in the comic strip today that reminded me: it's all in your perspective. I don't remember which strip it was, and I apologize to the writer for not remembering the name of the strip or the writer so I can give credit, but that writer was very observant.

It opens with two men in a jail cell, and one gentleman remarks to the other, "They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." In the next scene, he offers, "Well, let me give you a tip." He ends by reporting, "In legal terms, it's called 'forgery.'"

I guess one man's garbage is another man's treasure, and there's more than one way to play the game. It all comes down to knowing that if you don't like the way your world looks, change the way you look at it. Think out of the box and come full circle to a new idea from the same basic thought.

We may all put our pants on one leg at a time, but maybe we should think about which leg we put forward first. At some time, maybe it will make a difference to change your routine just a bit. I'll have to try it one day. Soon.

Spring has sprung. I know the green grass and beautiful leaves will come soon, and I want it now. It also makes me always wonder about whether is any astrological significance in a pattern that emerges in my sons and their father and grandfather.

I used to say we had the seasons covered. I have a son born on the first day of winter in the year of his birth, which was not December 21, so I think there must be a reason he waited for that day. My younger son was born on the first day of summer, June 21. So they were my winter baby and my summer baby. Their father's birthday is the first day of spring. Their grandfather's birthday is the first day of fall. All of them significant on their own, but I'm wondering whether there could be greater significance in this pattern.

I did ask one lady that was into astrology once if there was any significance, and she said there wasn't. But I wanted it to be more, so I keep wondering, not accepting her answer. It's as if even when I know the facts, I still can't seem to accept something that would logically indicate something that doesn't really exist.

That's what happened at work yesterday, too. I was being told something by inexperienced workers that I just couldn't accept--though they were using logic and I had even used that logic at one time, albeit wrongly. Today, the day began the same way. That same logic was being expounded until finally I gave in and asked for their department manager to redraft the current policy to reflect their current practice. I was ready to cry because of all the grief I had taken as I somehow learned to do things differently than that logic had told me so many years before, and now as I tried to accept that change happens, I felt as if I had wasted all these years of not doing things this logical way. Then I went to lunch and tried to walk it all off--and when I came back, still all worked up, suddenly I had a visitor at my desk come and tell me that the policy was not being re-written and that I had been correct to do it the way the policy demanded. And only by my asking for the revised copy did the manager even know what these inexperienced people were trying to achieve. I felt so relieved--and then I figured I really wasn't all that great because I finally gave in to something that I knew was not right, though something was always telling me not to accept the reality that was being formed.

And, so, I wonder: Is there a significance to this pattern of births that ends with my younger son, a pattern that could only be completed by my two boys, their father and their grandfather. It seems significant to me that my daughter has no part of the pattern, and the only significance I have is that I enabled the completion of this pattern. But why that pattern was formed is something I don't know...but want to believe must be there, though someone has told me otherwise.

I also wonder: should I merely accept the inevitable or keep struggling against the mainstream and hold my head hight? I think the latter is better, but the ealier is easier.