I thought my son was going to withdraw from college today because of money. He had enough grants and scholarships for the tuition and books, but he is required to buy a laptop computer. And not just any laptop. It must have at least 4 gb RAM--and I hope that's the right abbreviation--because he's doing a drafting class that will require the use of a CAD program, whatever that is. He can't go get one of the ones that are even halfway close to my budget...he not only needed that 4 gb, but it had to be one of three specific ones, the least expensive costing $1800. I don't have that kind of money. His student loans won't even cover that. I was panicking, but I figured it out today and I took a loan against my 401k plan. But I don't think a student needs such an expensive computer, and the school should be looking at their requirements again!

I'm tired tonight. It's been a long day, and tomorrow looks the same. Oh, well...

There are some women my age who are looked at as the victims of an "empty nest" complex. My youngest child has started college. But he hasn't left. Sometimes I think I've given too much to them. Maybe not enough to myself. I want to go to another life, to be somewhere else and start life as a married woman. I've been engaged for almost five years, but I want to go to him with no debts and no children that need to choose between a stepfather and a father, or me needing to choose between him and my children as these young adults fling out the words "you're not my father!" or "You love him more than you love your own children!"

And then I wonder if I'm just making excuses. He lives over an hour's drive away, and maybe I just don't want to leave my home town, or maybe I don't want to make my children leave a place they've lived for the past sixteen years. And maybe I don't want to marry him without being totally honest with him, without telling him about my childhood and how terrible it was. I told my first husband, and he couldn't deal with it. And this man is even more straitlaced than the first husband...but he's much more sweet and understanding.

Maybe it's just that I want a perfect time, and the reality is that there will never be a perfect time. The reality is that I'm not married. And now I really have to ask myself why not.

I had a call today that made me wonder how some people can be so self-assured and self-confident that they act in such ways that demean others without even meaning to--but, somehow, it doesn't take much to bring these people back to reality. Yet, again--somehow--they will figure out a way to come out smelling like roses.

The incident today involves a man that first mis-filed some papers in court that gave a legalized illusion of his ownership of assets that belonged to someone else; and that someone else was stymied from making any kind of move to market that asset until it gets straightened out--and,of course, that takes legal action that costs money that isn't there. And, then, today, we find that the asset has been used as collateral on a loan--and the true owner may never get the use of that asset if the lien has to be removed before anything new can happen. It's very clear that the man does not own the asset and never has, but on paper it looks like he does because he manipulated it to look like that--and he did so on the assumption that the true owner would mis-step and the asset would fall into the snake's hands anyway. He mis-judged the situation, and now everyone is up in arms. And, when it's all said and done, I bet he walks away with the benefit of using the asset while the true owner has been walked all over. I encouraged the use of a pro bono attorney, and this time she might even listen to me.

Still, I also saw in the paper that there's a couple accused of murdering an older couple and then an elderly lady. How can these people do such horrible things to people that never did anything to them? No one deserves such a thing.

I suppose if I try hard, I can figure it out and understand their thought pattern--but I don't believe I will ever sympathize enough with the murderers to be able to justify such acts. There is no justice through law for such things. We can only make the deaths of these innocent people mean something and look to life and good things to justify their existence. And then we should let the law take care of the murderer and let him rot wherever the law finds appropriate.

Wouldn't it be nice if life were good and right and fair?

I am a bit irritable today. I started with needing money, so I automatically look for the child support that is now almost four weeks' past due since the last payment....now that my youngest child is emancipated, I have no idea why I would think the arrearages would come any sooner than they did while they were supposed to be current, but I still hope. And that hope is dashed every time...and today is another time. But what's really irritating me is the government's collection system. They won't go after the employer for the money...though he collects it once a week, even though it's not here in four weeks, they'll wait until nothing has come in any given calendar month, then write a polite letter--and then wait another couple months before taking action against the absent parent, not against the employer who is either improperly withholding the money or improperly forwarding it. The county figures their resources are better spent in going against the usually-unrepresented absent parent in court than against the employer--who might actually have a lawyer--and trying to get the employer to follow the law in collecting child support. My ex-husband gets paid weekly and can live knowing he has a regular income, but my children and me have to hope that we get a child support check from an employer that could care less. And, for some reason, the trucking industry and independent owners seem to be pretty united in their handling of child support collections, or non-collections. It frustrates me and irritates me.

Then I read in the newspaper how some young children who have siblings with disabilities have attended a work shop and wrote about their experiences, all of them somehow expounding on how they all love their disabled sibling...and some even eventually intend to become involved in a career that helps the disabled. It made me shake my head. I had a disabled sibling...but we didn't know it. When I was young, she was just called "slow". For her, it was good...she never learned that she could qualify for many of the disabilty payments that I have no doubt are waiting for her should she ever get intelligent enough to acknowledge her physical and emotional barriers to "normalcy." So, now, my elderly mother supports this almost-50-year-old woman and it is a struggle for everyone. In the meantime, my life was strongly influenced by my physical likeness to this slow person and my undeveloped emotions that wanted to protect her and care for her and encourage her, all while not understanding that many of my behaviors that put other people off seemed to mimic her behaviors, most of them negative. Not knowing she was not normal, I learned to many time mimic my older sister...and it was not a good thing for me. And, not knowing that she, too, was being molested at a young age, I unknowingly identified with more of her behaviors. I protested the molestations and stopped them a few years before she did...and before I found out about the molestations that were inflicted upon her. I don't know exactly how to say these things, but it is frustrating to know these young people are encouraged to show their love for their sibling--all the while knowing it's possible that these young people have no concept of the true impact the sibling will have on their lives. Good or bad, they will not know the impact for many years. I hope they keep their writings and look back on them in about twenty years...and can then objectively look at those words and understand how their lives are going to be influenced between their lives now and their lives in twenty years.

And then I read about how two set of mice were examined for their reactions to stress...and find that those whose mothers demonstrated stronger and more frequent acts of less had less of a "fight or flight" reaction to stress. Somehow it affected the adrenal glands and body makeup in their later life--particularly as the less loved mice had a stronger reaction to stress. I wonder if that's why I'm so stressed out. I know my mother loved me, and still loves me, but the demonstrations of that love were limited by a baby sister born eight months after me--and a series of visits to the mental hospital by my mother in my developmental years. It's always blamed on the mother, isn't it?

I was a bit late to work today. I was scheduled to get there at 8:00 a.m., and I got there about 2:15 p.m. I was late because I had to go to the Emergency Room last night to try to get an injection of toradol for my headache. I got there about 9:00 and left about 12:30. When I arrived, they advised me that all rooms in ER were full and it would be a while before I would be seen...but my head hurt so much that I didn't care. They put me in the waiting room with some very loudly-talking family members of others in the ER--and a TV that seemed to be very loud, too. I asked if there were any little rooom I could go to that were dark and quiet, but nope. Finally, I asked where a bathroom was (they are remodeling and I didn't know where anything was in this new design). I went in a unisex bathroom, one room (no stalls) and found that I could close the door, lock it and be in darkness unless I turned on the light. Then I really started to cry in earnest....it hurt so bad.

About two minutes later I started vomiting. 4 or 5 times all together. It was awful. I learned later that everyone anywhere near me on the first floor heard the retching....I guess I haven't learned how to be sick in a quiet way. Then, after my stomach was done taking care of itself, I left to return to the larger waiting room (knowing there were others who probably had to use the bathroom), and immediately my headached went to about a 9 on a 0-10 scale. The people in the waiting room could see I was in pain, and they tried to keep it quiet, but they weren't very good at it. I was sobbing with tears running down my face, my eyes closed, my head bent as far back as it was going, and my hands and feet trying to move in some kind of crazy rhythmn--I'm not sure why that helps, but it does--those people eventually decided to go outside and wait for their friend...and then my daughter turned off the public tv, and it was so much better! Finally, about an hour and a half after I got there, they called my name...though my headache had largely settled down by then.

I told the doctor I could have gone home without help, but I knew that if I went home, then shortly I'd be back because without the medication, the headache returns. So he ordered toradol (works better than the narcotics they used to order) and something for nausea. Soon I had the injections, but the nurse said I had to wait a half hour to see if it worked...and then she didn't return for another hour and a half. I was more than ready to go home, where I went to bed and slept until after noon. I then took a shower and headed for work.

My co-workers were happy to see me. They don't like dealing with my customers since they are very demanding of one's attention. So, I took care of the immediate needs, and then some more pressing customers, and left at 7. Now, I'm ready to go to bed.

But I note, as I do, that my mind seems to have settled down a bit after last night. I was really stressed before that, and each minute it seems someone adds to that stress. After the shot, it seems my mind has settled down and has been making reasoned decisions moreso than the ones of last week where I was making decisions based on expediency rather than common sense. I hope this sense of calm continues and the stress doesn't make it too bad.

It doesn't help that I was given Bactrim a week ago--and apparently it threw my system off by attacking both the bad and the good bacteria in my body. So, now I have to eat yogurt with active cultures (luckily, I like yogurt) and drink lots of liquid. I sure hope that, for once, doctors know what they are talking about.