Can I Throw a Pity Party? UPDATE

[FayeW]

I have a lot of things going on right now, and frankly, I'm feeling a little sorry for myself. I am taking a course that is required for my professional designation. I chose to do it online, and it has been fairly painless for the most part,however, the final exam is on Saturday, and there have been reports of people leaving the exam room in tears, after previous courses. I have been studying all week, and still have 3 days to study, but I don't feel prepared. The part that roasts my chestnuts is that at least 75% of the course is completely irrelevant to my job. I feel sorry for the people who are starting out in their careers ( I've doing the job for 3 years already) and are actually worrying about having to know this crap. Mind you there was certainly some good information that is relevant, but perhaps they thought it would add more credibility to the profession to have all that filler. In addition, the last quiz I did for the course took me nearly 2 hours, and I just found out that their system crashed last week and we all have to redo it TODAY!

In the midst of all of this, we have to entertain the idea of being transfered next summer. My husband is in the military, and he is on course right now, so that means that once the course is finished in June, he will have to be posted somewhere. We are lobbying hard to stay in Ottawa, but because we will have been here 8 years by next summer, the chances of us staying are pretty slim. We have an opportunity to request a position back to N.S, which is where I am from, and where we came from on our last posting, but we don't want to say "yeah, we'll take that" and then miss out on a position opening up here closer to posting season. The other side of the coin is if we do nothing, the posting might be to Tim-buk-to and we will have missed the opportunity for Halifax. I am torn in what to suggest to my husband because while we love it here, and I have a fabulous income that I have been building up for 3 years, I do regret that my kids don't really have any relationship with their grandparents (my parents in NS and in-laws are in NFLD) because we live too far away to see them regularily. I am afraid that NOT taking the posting to NS is selfish, because, let's face it, none of us are getting any younger and who knows how long they will have all of their grandparents? I think I've actually made the decision to agree to go to NS ( the other option was to let DH go alone for awhile) but I am devasted about uprooting the kids from their terrific school, good friends, activities, and throwing our quality of life out the window ( I actually make more money than DH, so losing that would be a significant financial hardship). Thanks for listening to my vent, can I go stick my head in the sand now?

 

[Scratch42]

 

[FayeW]

And I forgot to mention that the estimate for getting our air ducts cleaned, the furnace, humidifier and airconditioner serviced, and the air exchanger cleaned and balanced is $900.00! My husband is having a fit, but I'm getting it done anyway, because unfortunately, to my husband, home maintenance appears to be some sort of vague concept. The service tech who did the inspection discovered that while DH noticed the furnace filter was dirty and needed to be replaced, he removed it but didn't actually REPLACE IT so the furnace has been running without a filter for who knows how long. Perhaps he would prefer the several thousands of dollars it would cost to replace the furnace instead of doing the maintenance. Can you tell I'm a little bitter today?

 

[melindaandrob]

We'll share a 'pity cake' today, OK? Pity chocolate maybe?
I am in the last few days of work as I close down my bookstore. My dream is crashing down around me.
Then, while in the midst of my own pity party/mini break-down my Grandmother passed away yesterday.
I keep telling myself, if this is the worst thing to happen today then I guess I'm doing OK.
Take care,
When one door closes, another door opens.
Melinda

 

[TimNDansMom]

I'm so sorry to hear about your Grandmother, Melinda! My deepest sympathy to you and your family. And to be closing your bookstore dream as well!

You sure have a lot to think about Faye. All the best that things work out for you!

A is definitely needed here!

 

[maryliz]

Faye ... it will all work out the way it's supposed to ... unfortunately you just don't know what that is right now.

Melinda ... my thoughts and prayers are with you.

Sending {{{HUGS}}} and pixie dust to you both.


Mary-Liz

 

[FayeW]

Melinda, now I feel foolish to be complaining. I'm sorry for your loss.

 

[ChisJo]

First of all Faye, I can understand needing to learn things that are not relevant to your career - I am in a "well rounded" nursing program, and I am continually learning things that are useless and and pointless to my future, and I can honestly say that I have never really met anybody in the 6 years of university that I have been in that does not get stressed before going into an exam. I can understand stress - I have finals this week and next.
Secondly, I am sorry to hear about everything else. I have never had to be uprooted and cannot understand the difficulty you are facing right now with that, and also, a financial burden right before the holidays must too be difficult.

Melinda, I am sorry that you have to close your bookstore and on the death of your grandmother. All I can offer is a big .

I have found that many people here are great to vent to, so if you ever need to vent again, we are here to listen.
Jo

 

[melindaandrob]

I'm sorry Faye, I didn't want to come across sounding like 'mine is bigger than yours'!!
Thank you for your condolences, my Grandmother was in her 90's (she never did confess her real age) my father has confirmed this but he says he isn't sure anymore because he has been lying about his age to validate my Grandmother's 'fibs'

 

[FayeW]

No need to apologize, you helped put things in perspective. You know the old saying, "I was sad because I had no shoes, and then I met a man who had no feet". I should just stop stressing about being stressed, and go and do some study. I will confess to being more than a little depressed about the possibility of not being able to scoot down to Syracuse to take my cheap flight to Orlando in Nov., but how trite would that be if I lost one of my parents and regretted not taking the opportunity for my kids to spend time with them. I can still do my work from a new location, I'll just have to start from scratch to build up my referrals again. Who knows, maybe some of my DIS friends will need a mortgage by then.

 

[FayeW]

Well, things had to get worse before they got better, but for better or worse, the exam is finished.

My poor son came down with the stomach flu after we got home last night. We went out for supper and I noticed he wasn't quite himself, seemed very tired and pale. He ate well enough, but within a half hour of being home the virus struck with a vengenace, and I spent the evening, and much of the night taking care of him. I did manage to get some sleep, but was up with him again from 4-5:30 and finally got him settled. To add insult to injury, after I got back to bed, the dog threw up as well (on my bdrm carpet) so I had to get up to clean that as well. That is just wrong!

We had a snowstorm last night/this morning and I was really hoping for a "snow day" so I wouldn't have to go to the exam, but no such luck. I dragged my exhausted butt out of bed and made it through the 20cm of snow to the test center, and I'm happy to say, it wasn't bad. I actually came out of it thinking I got off easy. (Maybe my mind is just so addled that all the wrong answers looked like the right ones, but we shall see). I am fairly confident that I did well. I only hope that the rest of us don't come down with the stomach virus, but I am not as optimistic about that.