The Getting To Know The Blogger Challenge: The Rest

I haven’t forgotten about the blogger challenge through A Little Unhinged. I’ve just been really busy with stuff like, receiving AWARDS (yes, people like me for some reason), not sleeping, and getting ready for the holidays.  Now I’m back to finish it up.  Today I’m answering all of the questions that I know won’t take a whole blog post to answer.  I realized that after we started the challenge that the questions were changed a little, so I may be answering some that aren’t on the list any longer!

What are your fears?

I also hate things that pop up suddenly-I can relate.

One of my biggest fears is something happening to my children.  I have lots of dreams where I’ve lost them.  I mean, like I can’t find them.  Dreams for me are so strange anyway.  I also dream about losing my husband.  Now as an ADD person, losing things is highly typical.  Just not children.

My other fear is natural disasters-specifically the more weather related ones.  I probably am afraid of these because it is something totally beyond my control.  My whole life seems beyond my control these days!  I actually have legitimate fear of tornadoes.  As a child we traveled home to see relatives during tornado season.  We were held up during one part of our route, and that turned out to be a good thing.  If we had been on schedule we would have been smack dab in the middle of a horrible tornado.  It was a scary night-I remember it vividly to this day.  The eerie cast to the sky, seeing all the destruction as we drove-telephone poles in the road.  And the radio broadcast-the stories they told. One woman got in her bathtub for safety and took a little ride in it.

A few years later when we were living in Maine my mother and I went shopping an hour and a half away from where we lived.  On the way back, a fuse went out and we were left in our Toyota in the dark, waiting for my dad to come help us.  It was a night of horrific weather with spectacular electrical storms.  This was very scary for me, even though we were probably in the safest place that we could be.  A lot of it probably had to do with that night in Iowa, but in Maine, thankfully tornadoes are very rare.

I can’t watch those shows about the super volcanoes or about the giant earthquakes or about giant asteroids smashing into the earth.  I just can’t!  They scare the bejeezus out of me.

What are your hobbies?

I scrapbook.  Or at least I used to.  Then life got in the way.  It was my release.  I am hoping getting my printhead ordered tomorrow so I can get back into it.  Much like my blogging, it takes up a lot of time because I am a perfectionist about it!

It’s true!  (ignore the typo)

The last couple of questions I saved for last.  This is because I am not real technically savvy when it comes to blogging.  If I hadn’t hooked up with A Little Unhinged, I’d probably still be walking around like a blindfolded person!

What are a couple of your favorite blog tools that you use?

Top blog tools that I use?  Ummmm… a laptop?  Maybe I should just say Bonnie Franks, she’s awesome at answering questions and helping you get things figured out on your blog!

Social Networks/Blog Communities that you want others to know you’re a part of.

Why cats are lousy with social media

Social Networks that I am a part of?  I have a fan page on Facebook, I use Twitter but not as much as I probably should (it is fun to do what I call “Twitterdropping”, where you read conversations that other people have on there.)  I have a Pinterest account that I’ve had for a long time, I just haven’t quite figured out how to link up to it yet.  I’ve joined SITS.  I’ve done a couple of Blog Hops.  I have an account on BlogHer and Networked Blogs.  I’m a member of the Bearded Iris’s #PMSClub on Twitter, does that count?  I created an account on Circle of Moms, but haven’t done anything else with it.  I have an account with SparkPeople through my other blog, Aluminum Girl, that I NEED to do more with but haven’t.  If you know of a social community that I SHOULD be a member of, or you WANT me to be a member of, please feel free to tell me about it!

And that’s all I’ve got for this challenge.  It’s been a lot of fun sharing.  It has also really helped me out-I’ve been inspired to change my blog to work better for me, and am trying to implement some changes that will help all of us connect better.  I have icons to load on there, and I am trying to make a blogroll on my sidebar that includes the blogs I read every day, not just the WordPress ones!  I like giving credit to people who have great blogs!

If you haven’t been participating in the challenge and want to, there’s plenty of time!  I couldn’t get the button right on my blog, but you can click on the link to A Little Unhinged and it will take you to the page where you can get going on it.

I hope you have enjoyed reading all of this!  😀  I leave you with this:

ALL THE CHALLENGE POSTS RIGHT HERE!:

This Could Be Fun:  I’m Doing The 15 Day Getting To Know The Blogger Challenge, Where I Grew Up, Favorite Childhood Memories, School, Work, Life, Friends, Family, Goals, The Why and the What, The Top Posts, The Blogs I Visit

Caught With My Pants Down: It’s All a Dream (Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter!)

Are dreams like the tree in “The Empire Strikes Back”, where you face your fears?

Oh boy, I had another anxiety dream last night.  This one was really weird.  Freaky.

I moved back to my hometown.  I don’t know why.  I went out and applied for some jobs.  I got hired at one place right away.  I mean I literally started working immediately.  It was a place that sold jewelry.  And comic books.  And I think Chinese food too.  Yeah I thought that was strange too.  There was a cash register, only the boss didn’t actually keep any money in it.  At least not one dollar bills.  A customer needed a dollar for some change, which is weird because it’s usually the other way around.  But I couldn’t find any dollar bills.  I went to the boss and asked her where they were.  She blew up, she exploded at me, called me all kinds of names, because I didn’t know where she kept this stuff.  Apparently there was some sort of drawer that was nowhere near the cash register just chock full of one dollar bills.  And I was just supposed to know that.  Then I had to work really late and wasn’t allowed to leave until all hours.  After I left work I really had to use the bathroom, so I stopped at some random house and used their bathroom.  There was just a blanket covering the doorway, and the toilet sat dangerously close to the door.  Just as I sat down to do my business, the police raided the house.  And I was there, using some stranger’s toilet with my pants down.

It wasn’t like this. There was a blanket.

Then the alarm went off.

The kicker about this wasn’t just the fact that I literally was about to be caught with my pants down.  It was who the owner/boss of this Chinese restaurant/jewelry/comic book store was.  It was a combination of the evil supervising teacher who got me off on SUCH a good start of my music education career and the babysitter that my son used to go to who never had a good thing to say or a smile, ever.

The babysitter one was easy to explain.  She just got a job where I used to work.  Doing not the same job I had done but something similar.  I was surprised and not surprised that they hired her.  She’s just the negative person that they like there.  Toxic environment.  Good for her.  I hope they all bring each other down together.

But the Supervising teacher?  I really had hoped that 15 years later I would begin to move on from that negative experience.  This is one of the reasons why I started my blog.  I wanted to be able to tell about my life, mostly funny, and to be able to look back on those bad experiences that have been dragging me down with humor.

The first two years of my college career were shockingly awesome.  I was so down because I didn’t get any money to go to the school I really wanted to go to.  Instead I lived at home and went to a community college.  I was expecting to loathe it.  But some good stuff happened right off the bat.  Remember I was a band geek.  Upon exploring my musical options the band director at the time asked me this question:  “Is there any other group in the music department you might be interested in?”  I thought about this for a moment.  I was terrifed of the high school chorus director, therefore I never did any vocal music.  “I always thought it would be fun to sing.”  I barely got the words out of my mouth when I was almost literally picked up and thrown across the hall into the vocal music director’s office.

Guess what?  I could sing.  I could sing well.

Memorieeeeeeees….All alone in the mooooooonlight…

For the next two years my college career centered around music.  Community College is an interesting place.  You meet people of all ages, from all walks of life.  The professors are more interesting than anyone you’ll probably meet.  Not only are they your mentors, they get involved and are your colleagues.  I left that place really feeling that I could make something of myself.  Then real life reared it ugly head.

I went on to attend Lord Valdemort College (The School That Cannot Be Named).  At first it was exciting to be out on my own and all that jazz. As time went on I should have known something was wrong.  In the end I realize that after everything that could have happened I could have so SUED THEIR ASS.  But as usual, I rolled over and took it.  I crawled under the proverbial rock and tried to go on as if nothing had happened.  And stuff kept happening.  That hole under that rock got pretty deep.

HA HA HA. That’s some dark humor for ya…

I’m not necessarily blaming the school itself.  But there were certain people involved with that school that did stuff that they shouldn’t have.  They should have let me transfer without fighting it, and filling my head full of things that you don’t tell a person with anxiety problems, like I’d have to pay back all my scholarships.  But they were more interested in my money than they were letting me be successful.

My student teaching experience had to be beyond a shadow of a doubt one of the most awful experiences that anyone should have to endure. I’m saying that because there would be more awful experiences. I was given no direction, no mentoring, no support, no anything from my supervising teacher.  I was yelled at, told I was useless, and taunted when I tried to tell other people what was going on.  If I hadn’t opened my mouth to that other teacher, however, I would have probably gotten an F because no one seemed to realize what was going on.  I wish I could have seen the whole thing go down, the elementary band teacher chasing down my adviser as he left the school, screaming at him.  All because he never even set foot in my classroom to see what was happening.  That woman to this day is my hero.

I’d like to think my supervising teacher was like the Borg Queen. She had her own body though. And to think if she wanted to assimilate me she would think something I did was valuable.

I eventually was rescued from that situation but I never recovered.  I understand the supervising teacher had a nervous breakdown the week after school got out, brought on by personal issues in her life.  Turns out that what happened had very little to do with me.  To this day though I spend a great deal of time wondering how I could have dealt with that situation and made it work for me.  I analyze it over and over.  But the awful truth is that she was against having a student teacher from the start.  And she was a brilliant pianist, I could plunk out chords and could play music with a lot of practice.  Noone seemed to get that I set out not to teach vocal music but elementary band.

I really think I was thrown to the lions.  Even when they pulled me out of the coliseum, my wounds were pretty bad.  I floundered.

If there was only Facebook, and blogs, and search engines at that time.  I may have felt like I wasn’t the only one in the world going through this.  I’m sure I wasn’t.  And people could comfort me by sending me stuff like this:

And I have yet to share the worst experience.  That’s enough gut wrenching sharing for today.  Tonight we’ll see what else I dream about.  Unless I have a cool dream like working on the Enterprise, I don’t know if I want to have any dreams!

I actually dreamed I ran a daycare on the NCC-1701-D. It was the coolest dream ever.

These Dreams (Originally A Reference to a Heart Song but Now My Anxiety Dreams)

I bet cats don’t have anxiety dreams…

My last post, not my finest moment.  So not fine that I didn’t share it on Facebook like I usually do.  I got up this morning and looked at what I had written the night before, and thought about all those things that I haven’t shared.  It certainly was easy to write about.  I decided that it won’t hurt anything.  Oh hell, ok.  So I published it.

The anxiety dreams last night didn’t help my case.  Oh I had weird ones.  The one that stands out was the one where my dog became the Don Juan of the neighborhood, impregnating every female dog in a five mile radius of our house.  Yeah, we’re going to get the dog fixed next week whether we can afford it or not.  I can’t be responsible for an explosion of dog population in this small town.

That’s not the weirdest one I’ve had.  I’ve had some doozeys.  I’m not sure how you are supposed to spell doozey.

I often dream I’m losing my children.  I’m always losing things, so I’m not surprised.  In real life I’ve actually only lost my son once.  He ran ahead of the stroller and disappeared into the crowd at a home football game.  Don’t worry, he came back.  But that was the longest two minutes of my life.

My personal favorite is one I had about a month or so ago.  I dreamed we were going to Target (imagine that, in my life all roads lead to Target) and I lost my daughter.  Not exactly in Target.  There was a very big hill in front of the store.  For some reason, there was just this big grassy hill instead of a parking lot (I don’t know where we parked… details, details…).  Princess Naughty ran down the hill so fast I couldn’t catch her and disappeared into the revolving door (I don’t know of any Targets that have a revolving door, do you?)  She reappeared later in my dream, but then I lost my son.  He went somewhere in the car with my husband, and I couldn’t get a hold of them on my cell phone.  Which is perfectly normal.  My husband is notorious for either not having his phone, having it on silent, no knowing it’s dead, or just plain not hearing it.  He’s getting better, but he’s the reason why I pay for a texting plan-whenever he gets around to looking at his phone, I hope he may see my text.

Maybe she was after the bomb pops.

I have the school dream several times a week.  I’m back in (choose one):  a)  high school b) college c)  elementary school d) obedience school.  I a)  have never been to class b)  have a test I haven’t studied for c)  leave for school but never actually get there because I get sidetracked by half a million things d) never put on clothes.  Or it’s the work dream.  I’m at a) Kmart b) where I taught music c) one one of the daycares I worked at d) the preschool I worked at e) my associate job f)  the clothing store job.  I a) oversleep/don’t go b) have an evaluation c) am on my way but never actually make it to work d) never put on clothes.

Not exactly the school dreams I was talking about.

Do you see a pattern here?  Anxiety is FUN!

Another classic is the one where my husband leaves me.  I have been left because a) he didn’t like dinner b) he met a hot veterinarian c) he met a hot guy d) I did something he didn’t like e) I have no idea.  It’s always a relief to wake up to him snoring.  I tell him about these dreams, he just shakes his head.  I guess I’m safe-we’ll have been married for almost thirteen years and he hasn’t stormed out over dinner yet.

There are others too.  Many of the dreams I just plain can’t find something REALLY important.  I shouldn’t be surprised by that one, since that happens quite frequently to me.  My life is one big brain fart.

Maybe I just need a starship.

I really think if I ever get to therapy they’d probably write a book about me.  I hope I get some kickback from it, because I could really use the dough.

The anxiety itself has been much better these days thanks to a very effective anti anxiety medication.  I hated to do it, but the doctor really didn’t want to see me dead due to a heart attack.  I had been dealing with a racing heart and constantly being on the edge of a panic attack for the last few months.  While it doesn’t really help with other stuff, like moodiness, it’s nice to feel like I can deal with life rationally.  Like laugh at these dreams I’m having (I suppose the anxiety has to manifest itself somehow).  Enjoy my life.  And write this blog.

Have you ever had an anxiety dream?  Was it funny or freaky?  I find mine a combination of both.  And that’s ok.