I swear this was the longest semester ever. Once Aidan was born, all I wanted to do was snuggle that sweet baby. The term dragged on for about five more weeks, and I only missed one assignment in five classes, but I did get a couple of half credit scores on some half assed work. My heart just wasn’t in it, in part due to the looming issue of the USF Polytechnic split.

You can ask Dr. Google, as I tell my kids, if you want all the gory details, but the short version is this: a bully Senator ran right over the plan already in place to gradually separate my school, USF Polytechnic, from USF and into an independent Florida Polytechnic University IMMEDIATELY even though it would have no staff, faculty, students, or ACCREDITATION, and basically, everyone let him. So, over the summer, the school I enrolled at, USF Poly, will cease to exist and I will become a regular USF student. Except my major isn’t even offered at regular USF and because I screwed up when I was younger, my completion ratio is too low to even take courses at the Tampa campus. Supposedly there will be a “teach out” period so current students can finish their programs, but we are really just discarded orphans and I’m sure we will be afterthoughts. But, hey, at least I know now. Having it all up in the air was awful. It could have been stopped at so many points if we have more representatives who had common sense instead of cronyism, and we really did fight it every step of the way with protests, students speaking to the Florida Congress, petitions, and calls/emails/letters to representatives. But, it is reality now, so I’m just looking ahead.

Another big WTF issue is that I won’t get any more Pell Grants, again, because I was a moron when I was young (who isn’t, really? I just chose a way to be an idiot that would haunt the rest of my life. Go me!). I will still be taking out loans, which will cover my tuition, but I use what’s left after that to pay other expenses so I can just be a mom and a FT student, without working. Now those loans will go about $5500 a year less than they did, so about $550/month over a ten month school year. Working seems to be in my future and I’m very worried how that will affect my performance, so I did something kind of out there that I will tell you all about next time. Hopefully that will take the $550/month edge off. (Plus, Christian turned 18, so we don’t get the survivor’s benefits we’ve gotten since his dad’s death any more. Hopefully he will find a job…but come on, it took Brian a year to find a decent one and Christian has a lack of work experience, a felony record, no license, and some tattoos working against him.)

In any case, I am pretty sure I completed my second semester at USF with honors again:

• Advanced Technical Writing: A- (HATED this class and disliked the prof, but he was a fair grader. Just an arrogant ass.)
• IT Concepts: A (I have a class next term with this guy, and I liked him.)
• Intermediate Web Design: B (I got 100% on my first three projects, but my last two wouldn’t work right. Oops!)
• Object-Oriented Programming: B (I’m fairly sure of this grade. HATED the way he taught. Will be teaching myself over the summer, because even though my grades were excellent other than one forgotten assignment, I don’t feel like I learned enough.)
• Discrete Math: B (Fairly sure of this one, too. Bombed the middle test in this class but got a 100% on the final. That’s what I get for skipping lectures before the middle test. Weird thing is that the lectures were REALLY helpful…and this was the same prof as my OOP class. Maybe a graduate student actually did the video lectures.)

My grades weren’t as good as last term but they were all online courses which I do think are harder, if only for time management reasons, and like I said, BABY! I’m so. damn. happy. to have the semester over with. I don’t go back until August, and I intend to spend the summer working on my business, playing with my family, and drinking a lot of wine.

Which one of you did THAT shiz? Because you’re fired. >:-{

I don’t know why I can’t seem to write. I’m seriously starting to think I have ADD or something, because I sit down to do something, even something I enjoy doing, and I can not bring myself to JUST DO IT. (Unless not doing it will screw up my GPA. Then I can manage, but it’s REALLY FREAKING HARD.) I have opinions on crap that is happening in my world, and in the bigger picture, so why the hell can’t I just express them easily anymore? (My family would say I express my opinions JUST FINE, thank you very much. LOL)

School is going along okay…I’ve got four A’s and a B so far. Things are very much in the air though, because my campus has been in the center of a huge political storm. I enrolled here because it offered an IT degree rather than Computer Science, which I felt would have more of a theory focus than I wanted, and because it was a part of USF, which has a good reputation. Florida Senator JD Alexander has been on a crusade to break my campus off into an independent polytechnic university. I didn’t know this when I enrolled, and when the student body was polled, over 80% of the respondents were not in favor of a split, myself included. The Board of Governors or BOG, (which oversees the public university system in Florida), agreed in November to move ahead with the split, but put in place certain benchmarks to guide the process, which could take several years. Senator Alexander, hereafter known as the big bully, wasn’t satisfied with that plan and slipped a bill in that would immediately sever the school. He also proposed a 58% cut to USF’s funding for next year, (a full 20% of the $400 million dollar cuts to higher education were to be placed on USF), which many of us felt was retaliatory because USF didn’t just bend to his will. Thankfully, we have some bulldog senators who fought for our funding, and the burden of the budget cuts was more evenly distributed when the Senate was done. On the other hand, the bill for an immediate split was passed. Because of this, I really have no clue what will happen. I do know that this new institution will not be accredited for some time, contrary to what the big bully presented, which was one of the major benchmarks in the BOG’s plan, of course. No accreditation means no federal student aid, including Stafford loans, and obviously it means a degree worth MUCH less. Supposedly current students will have the option of finishing our programs at the USF Tampa campus, but the bill specifically says according to that campus’ criteria, and I don’t meet the completion ratio requirement to attend the Tampa campus…so what does that mean for me? Why do we even have a BOG, which costs taxpayers $6 million dollars annually to operate, if the legislature can just do whatever the hell it wants anyway? Grrrrr. I’m starting to get all breathing-in-a-brown-paper-bag-y about it so I’m moving on to another subject now…who the hell has brown paper bags just lying around anyway? I may live near a liquor store but I am not a frequent patron. Maybe I should be…

Moving on, guess what? My grandson is due in three weeks!!!! Wait, let me just type that again because it still feels surreal. My grandson is due in three weeks!!!! Holy shitballs. I can’t wait to see his little face. This hasn’t ever really been a mommyblog kind of blog, but y’all better brace yourselves for some bragging on my grandbaby. I think I am going to be pretty amazing at this grandmother thing. I’ve spent so much money on this little man already…I can’t wait to spend TIME with him. The kids painted their room and put the crib and changing table up…the house is ready for the takeover and so are we.

I think I’m not alone when I say this has been an extremely challenging year. I’m really going to try to get back into the swing of things here because the truth is that I need a creative outlet where I can talk about what’s happening in my life and the world, at large. Since I’m still uninsured, therapy is out of the question, and hosting is under $50 a year so this is my Plan B.  I’m going to kick it off with a list of what’s happening.

• The Boy and his girlfriend are having my first grandchild, a boy, in March. I won’t even be 35, neither of them will quite be 18 yet. But, no point in being upset now, so I’m looking forward to having a baby in the immediate family again.
• The Boy violated his probation when he was pulled over in the next county. I am expecting him home in early December. I’m praying becoming a father really helps him focus on staying out of trouble. Please pray too.
• My stepson went to live with his mom. We are still waiting for final confirmation that DCF will allow it, since his mom has an old case plan that wasn’t complete. We miss him, but it has definitely reduced the stress in the house.
• I finished my AA over the summer and I started at USF in August. I am carrying all A’s and B’s, which is awesome because the transition from a community college to a university is TOUGH. I literally work on school 6-8 hours. every. day.
• I’m sure I have lipedema, and it explains SO MANY issues I’ve had over the years. But as much as a relief as that is, knowing how little control I really have over my body is a tough pill to swallow, especially since I can’t afford any treatment.
• I’m starting a clinical trial tomorrow for a new depression medication. It will pay for my gas to St Pete 2/week for classes, which is a huge plus. I’m hoping that if the med would help me, the powers that be make it so I get it and not a placebo.
• We painted my living room/dining room, and it looks SO MUCH BETTER. Can’t wait to put the floors in. I really hate this house, and coming home to it makes me panicky sometimes. (I know, I should be happy I even HAVE a home right now.)

I’ve been somewhat thoughtful, as I navigate the treacherous waters of non-traditional student-hood during finals week.  I’ve learned a lot in the last several months.  My favorite class was my Intro to Humanities class, which amuses me because I put meeting my school’s humanities requirement off until nearly the very end because I expected to hate it.  I thought it would be boring, stuffy lectures about art techniques and lots of probing artworks that we may never understand without the artists’ express explanation.  I was wrong.

I learned about history.  I learned really interesting things about what has happened on this earth we walk, and I came home and filled my family’s heads with what I found fascinating.  (Yes, even if they didn’t.)  I can talk about the World Wars or the fall of the Roman Empire without feeling like I am a child clumsily trying to keep up with the adults’ conversation now.

I learned about religion.  Now I understand the roots of the tension between so many.  I still think tolerance is the only way, but at least now I understand the foundations of these epic battles still waged today both in battlefields and backyards.  I know why the Madonna became prevalent in the Roman Catholic church when it did.  I know about anti-semitism in a very real way now, that I will forever be affected by.

I did learn about art, but not the stuffy way I had imagined.  I fell in love with Canova’s Cupid and Psyche and Rodin’s The Kiss. (That is Canova’s sculpture in the photo above.  It’s amazing, as is his other work. Carved out of a single piece of marble in 1796, and standing 61 inches tall, this piece is so exquisitely done that you can see the light through Cupid’s *marble* wings.)  I now know that Van Gogh painted not with a brush, but with a palette knife.  I learned that it’s FINE that Picasso makes no sense to me.  Surrealism is pretty nonsensical, by definition, after all.

I learned about architecture. Oh, sweet, architecture.  Buildings call out to me in a way I find hard to describe.  I want to photograph them, from every angle, with every lens, and run them through every filter, until I can find the ones that let me show them they way I see them. I know all about cathedrals now, and rose windows, and flying buttresses…if I ever make it to Europe, you are going to be *so* sick of cathedral photos.  Also?  Guggenheim, people.  Form follows function.

But really?  I learned about people.  I learned both how small I am, and how much impact I can have, if I choose to, and follow through.  I was blessed enough to have a truly great instructor, who brought the world around us to life, with only a darkened classroom, a Powerpoint presentation, and her own passion.  For that long hour, I had a window to the world and all its past, present, and potential future.

It was epic.

*Photo credit: sebastiagiralt on Flickr*

I’m a little out of my element right now. I spent years with a very flexible schedule, and now I have a regular hour type office job. I am really enjoying the job though, in part due to working with Marla, who is training me to take over part of her responsibilities while she heads out west to start a new Tulsa office for the business. She’s smart and really down to earth, and I can relate to her on a lot of things..she is also an independent thinker and she has lots of projects going. She’s an idea girl, too, and I have to say that we make a hell of a team, even if I do say so myself. I’ll miss her bunches when she takes off on her next adventure in Oklahoma. (PS, She does Pleasure Parties and Jewelry Shows, so if you are interested, I’ll pass on your info to her. She’s only in Florida until the end of the month, so get on it, so to speak!)

I’m also really enjoying being able to ‘clock out’ and not having to do paperwork at home. I think what burnt me out most at the last position I held was the fact that my success was not dependent on my own efforts, but on the efforts and motivation of the clients. Sometimes you bend over backwards to help clients and get not one single bit of progress, and other times you THINK you made progress, and then you see your former client in the previous days’ arrests or in the paper or something. After three and a half years of that, I just crashed and burned, which is pretty common in social services. Regardless, I feel good to be back in a position where I AM being effective again, and I love that the big boss is totally supportive of me continuing my education.

Speaking of education, I’m really enjoying my US History class. I know, it seems like that should be followed by some sarcastic qualifier, but I’m a little fascinated with history now. A really amazing instructor can do that. (Teachers, take this to heart-your passion to sharing your knowledge matters. A lot. Your perspective and technique can make subjects long ago relegated to the “crap, I have to take THAT?” pile exciting again.) Mr. Yarnell breathes life into the stale, one dimensional idea of historical figures that previous instructors have beaten into my head. He tells stories that I had never heard before, and maybe soon I’ll post about them, because everyone I see day to day is tired of me rattling off about Colonial this and American Revolution that and the establishment of the Constitution. Heh.

I’m doing well in the class, too, and I know this sounds really self-serving, but I didn’t expect anything different. I’m a straight A student. Except for that ONE jackass who started his A’s at 91 instead of 90. Gah. But anyway. I’m thankful I was blessed with a mind that easily absorbs information and has no trouble with abstract concepts….but I do have to admit that the older I get, the less effective my ‘never crack a book’ skillz are. I do, indeed, have to study now, and I have to have a pretty quiet environment with little distraction to do schoolwork in. Still, a 97 A is something to be proud of, and I am.

The only thing is…I don’t have much free time. I don’t play on Twitter and Facebook as much anymore. I don’t even text or talk to or see my friends much, except for Greg and Chrissy and Trishia. (Since Brian’s truck is down at the moment with a wheel bearing that needs fixing, Greg is picking him up in the mornings and I am picking him up from their house after work and bringing him home.) I don’t see how I can develop and market the business idea I had been working on, so that just will have to wait until I have time, or can implement a routine that helps me eke out every last minute I can do something productive with. It’s still a new schedule for me, and since I’m taking summer classes, as soon as I am used to it, it will change.

But, really? I’m starting to think my family will be just fine, and that the job change is the best thing that could have happened for me. Things really do happen for a reason, and my reasons are starting to materialize. I’m so thankful.

I wasn’t always the anxiety-ridden control freak that I am today. When I was young, I was very laid back. It was something that most likely drew Brian to me throughout the years of our pre-romantic friendship. The irony that the way our relationship fell to pieces is what catalyzed my journey into anxiety and controlling behaviors is not lost on either of us. I was easy going and carefree, even while raising my son alone and balancing college classes here and there with working full time and running a home and family. I had a child-like faith that everything would turn out okay, and, no matter what kind of mess I got myself into, it typically did, for the most part.

But the years of never knowing what to expect..or, rather, knowing what to expect, but having the either faithful or stupid hope that things would be better than I expected..created a familiarity with anxiety and fear that I wish I had never known. I was never hit, or threatened, or verbally abused, or kept under tight control, or cheated on, or anything truly awful like that. But sometimes I feel like I survived a war, anyway. Sometimes I wonder if I don’t have some mild form of post-traumatic stress disorder, because when I look back, all I see is a vast period of mere survival. There was no thriving..there was no personal growth..there was little room for intimacy in my marriage, and I don’t mean sex, although that suffered as well, I mean *trust*. There were no family traditions or routines or vacations or outings or sleepovers or…anything. At least not much that I can remember. All I remember is despair. All I remember is insecurity and mistrust and feeling like my life and family were completely out of control. All I remember is putting one foot in front of the other, loving my babies, and all the while knowing I was not providing everything they needed.

When I got separated while I was pregnant with Faith, I made great strides to put that insecurity and chaos of the first years of my marriage behind me. I found FlyLady.net, and I followed that system like it was my religion. I was pregnant, working full time, raising an 18 month old and an 8yo, running my home, and grieving the loss of my marriage and the dream I had for my family, all on my own. And I did it better than I did when I had help. My house was always clean, aside from the toys the kids would pick up each night before bed, and we always had a home cooked meal. I managed my life and my family with routines that made me forget all about the tension that day-to-day living had before. I never had to think about a thing…we all knew what to expect and what to do because we just made habits of the things we had to do.

Then I gave birth to Faith, her father and I got un-separated, and within a month, friends of ours needed someplace to go, so we had a family of four plus a dog move in. That was one of the worst years of my life. Our friends are good people, but with the household going from two kids and myself to four adults, six kids, including a newborn, and a dog, and them being more accustomed to clutter and a less organized home…..it was very hard to maintain the system I had honed. I felt like I was the only one who gave a shit about the house staying clean and uncluttered, and really, I was probably right. I was let go from my job six weeks after returning to work, for missing work because the baby was sick, so by Christmas, I practically lived in my bedroom.And while you would think that my room would be the one clean oasis in the house of junk, the opposite was true. I was in such a depression, that it was a wreck, too. It was all I could do to make sure the kids were clothed and fed and loved. I did laundry, but rarely folded it and put it away. I gave up on cooking because the kitchen was always such a mess that I would have a baby panic attack just walking in it. Even after our friends moved out, I was so far gone that I didn’t know how to pull myself out. I became a social recluse; unwilling to go out because I was ashamed of myself, and unwilling to have anyone over because I was ashamed of my home.

But all of that is over now.

I know the limitations of my disease, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and I know what exacerbates it and what eases the panic that feels like a million buzzing bees are inside me, getting louder and louder as they swarm and swell in order to break out of my skin and consume me and everything I care about. And being in a chaotic environment literally damages my spirit. I need order..I need routine..I need security..I need to know what to expect, and I need those expectations met most of the time. I don’t handle surprises well, or plans that keep changing, or travel, just because of the sheer amount of the unknown, and how little control I have over flights and airports and planes.

It seems to be the lack of control that sets me off the worst.

It’s not that I am controlling because I just feel like being a prima donna and expect the world to kiss my ass. It’s that for a long time, if I wasn’t in complete control over every aspect of our family, something would always go horribly wrong. I couldn’t trust Brian with much of anything for those years. If I left him with the kids so I could work, he wasn’t as attentive as he needed to be, or he took them places they weren’t safe. If I depended on him to provide financially, he would often quit jobs or switch jobs or spend all his money on pot or whatever teh fun thing seemed to be for the moment for him..end result being me scrambling in a panic to pay our already late bills by begging for help or worse. It all boiled down to the fact that I couldn’t trust him for shit. I couldn’t trust him to provide, to be honest, to keep the kids safe or clean or fed…I couldn’t trust him to make our family his top priority, so I ran around like a maniac trying to clean up the piles of shit his unreliability created for me.

And now, I have to trust him.

I have to have faith, (Anyone seeing why I chose that name for my youngest yet? It’s SO hard for me to trust anyone but myself.Her name reminds me that sometimes I have to let go, and have faith.), that he will be able to make our family his priority..over the friends that I battled for him so many years..the faces have changed but the situation remains the same, over the partying that is admittedly more fun than raising a family, over everything that was more important than us for all those years.It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time….just letting myself be vulnerable….just handing trust over to someone who has not proven to be trustworthy….giving over complete control over whether this family survives or not. I’m afraid. I’m an anxious mess. I am second guessing myself every single day over whether I am doing the right thing, but now I’m in school, and dropping out now would mean it would be next to impossible to ever go back again, thanks to financial aid suspension and academic suspension, both of which I am on and only attending school on account of an approved appeal. So, when the fear and anxiety and OMG THE SHEER FUCKING TERROR that everything will go to shit faster than I can clean up the mess start taking over, I am having a glass of wine or a klonopin (which are amazing for anxiety attacks!), and reminding myself that the strongest thing I can do right now, is just have faith.

Just trust.

Even though sometimes I’ve been wrong to trust. Right now, I have to trust, and just do my part, and believe he will do his.

I am surrendering to the forces of good in my life, and having faith they will protect my family from the forces of evil.