Stress Headaches?

Yes I know… “Tina, do you know how long it’s been since you blogged?” Yes… I know.

Honestly I think I’m not blogging as much anymore because I know Julie and sometimes the kids read the blogs. I really hate that, and feel like I’m forced to hide my feelings. So I stuff them down and every week or two they just bubble up and I have to get something out. It was never my intention to blog in order to talk bad about anyone… it was to get out my feelings, put them on paper, and in doing so, relieve some of my inner stress. It works – but Julie and Kayla have both talked to me about the blog recently and I feel bad that they interpret it that way. So… I blog less. Not because Julie is doing so much better – but because I am stuffing my feelings. Stuff still happens around the house all the time – trust me on that one.

I had a scary episode about two weeks ago. First you have to know I get headaches.
All.
The.
Time.
Migraines run in the family, and I just get them often. I was on medicine to prevent them, but it cost too much and that’s a whole different story. So… I’m at work in the morning and I start to feel --- weird. I get a headache, but not a sinus headache… not a migraine… not a stress headache… I have no idea what it IS – but I do know what it’s not.

By the time I got home for lunch I had taken my second Fioricet (medicine for headaches). The first one didn’t touch it, so I didn’t expect that the second one would do much good either. This pain in my head was – different. It was a very localized and very sharp pain right over my left eye. At times it throbbed something horrible… if I bent over even the slightest – I could feel every beat of my heart feeling like it was going directly to the spot in my head and that my head might just explode. I thought to myself… “Jeez, I’m gonna stroke out or something and nobody is going to know I was hurting or what medicine I’ve taken!” So, I called Chris to just let him know that I wasn’t feeling so good and I wanted to describe the pain to him “Just in case something happened.”

Well, I quickly found out that those were NOT the right words to tell your husband. He FREAKED out. He and Wayne were on a job, but he was coming home. I told him not to… but he wouldn’t listen. He insisted I stay home and call a doctor. Well, I didn’t want to stay home – but I would agree to make an appt at the doctors to see what was up. Later that afternoon the two of us went to the doctors together. Sure enough… it wasn’t a headache. Well, not a normal headache anyways. My blood pressure was sky high.

She gave me a pill to take at the office and I had to wait for the blood pressure to start coming down to a safe level before they would let us leave. They added another medicine to what I’m already taking. I knew it wasn’t good when she was talking to Chris about the signs to look for to take me to the emergency room: half of my face not moving, drooling, etc. Yuck.

Well, it’s been two weeks now and – thankfully – my blood pressure is better. I know this because I was deathly ill last Monday and had to go BACK to the doctors. Test showed I had two flus… type A and type B. They told me they had never seen anyone test positive for BOTH types of flu before. Guess I’m just lucky like that, eh?

Honestly, I’ve just been SO stressed lately. The biggest stressor would be my office move that is to happen in four weeks. Four! My boss JUST signed the lease for the new location in Safety Harbor earlier this week. Now he’s on vacation for the next week and a half. He made me “project manager” for this move… which I honestly hate. It’s not that I can’t figure out what to do – it’s that he is SO particular, he is SO careful with his money, and he is a hoarder who has a huge room full of stuff that needs to be either tossed or moved. By far, that is the thing that has me all tied up in knots the most. This room is something that **I** cannot do. My two bosses need to go back there and determine what needs to be saved and what needs to be tossed. There is a whole story to further demonstrate how particular he is about this kind of stuff… but I shouldn’t go into that online. LOL

The second biggest stressor would be Kayla. She doesn’t THINK she is doing anything wrong. But – I feel it. She is making bad choices. I think I told you already that she was almost fired from work for giving away food. Well, she is now working again, albeit not a whole bunch of hours. She was also skipping classes in school a LOT. She had at least 10 skipped classes in Jan and Feb, and so far in March (since we’ve talked to her about it) she’s only had one. She isn’t saving her money… in the past month she has cashed out her paychecks and put in a whopping $50. But then, she’s withdrawn over $150… so she’s going the wrong way towards saving for a car.

She also got upset with me the other day, sending me a text message (while she was in school) telling me that she feels that I don’t love her anymore. Well – she isn’t HERE. She leaves for school at 6:30 in the morning. She sends me a text message about 2 every afternoon informing me of where she is going to be for the evening, and then I see her about 10 at night as she’s running up the stairs, into the shower, and then into bed.

Here was my weekend with Kayla.
Friday at 3:30 a text “Sleeping over Jessikas. Love you”.
Saturday at 8:31pm a text “Going to the club K”.
Sunday at 1pm a text “Going to Kevins for dinner after work.”
Monday at 2pm a text “Hey after school I’m going to Jessica’s house. We are baking a cake for a friends birthday then going to USF. Be home by 10”. Right after that text message I got one saying “I love you even though you NEVER say that to me anymore.” Well – I don’t usually text the kids “I love you” notes… I talk to them in person… but whatever. An hour and a half later on Monday she sent me another text asking ME to bake the cake for her and her friends. “Can you please bake me a cake and I will put the frosting on it. Pllllllleeeeeeeaaaaaaseeeee BEST AUNT EVER”. Of course, I did bake the cake.
Tuesday night she worked and the only text message I received was one asking to pick her up at work. I was out at chorus rehearsal, but Chris did pick her up.
Wednesday, I got at 2:10pm “Going to Jessica’s after school. We are going to chill at USF.”

Then my sister Katie calls me. She was managing another branch of SunTrust today. Who came through the door at noon? You know – smack dab in the middle of the school day? Kayla!! As soon as Kayla heard that her Aunt Katie was there she bolted out the door. Did she actually think my sister wouldn’t call me and tell me that Kayla skipped school today? Funny.

We also got a call from the school last Monday. They said she wasn't in school. She said she was... and with all of her skipped days/classes - I don't believe her. Chris is going to talk with her when she gets home tonight. I don’t know what more we can do for her. She’s choosing not to go to school and not to stay at home.

Ya know… the more I think about it the more upset I get. I’m sitting here at work – nearly in tears (and sometimes actually IN tears) because of things that are going on at home for us financially. And… on top of that, I have to worry about if Kayla is getting into trouble and if she’s choosing to stay in school? That’s just basic common sense. That should NOT be something I have to worry about.

The financial stuff is frustrating because I think it’s all things that I shouldn’t worry about. I know God has ALWAYS provided. And yet – here I am worried about what’s going to happen.

The jobs that Chris had been doing are slowing down. He needs some work… and he is SO GOOD at it, so it’s really frustrating that he’s not working. He wants to get his General Contractors license – but that takes money and time off work for schooling. So we have to actually get ahead. But he should get it because he is so good and he'd make an awesome GC. I pray about it often… but sometimes I get concerned if my ‘fear’ cancels out the prayers. I’m supposed to be trusting in Him… and if I don’t – maybe He won’t listen to my prayers.

Then we got news today on Chris’s dad’s house up in Tennessee. We received a nice letter from a woman at Century 21 who knew Doug. She said that she’d be happy to try to get his house sold for us. We had her go and take a look at the house and she described it as “scary” when she first walked in. The first thing she saw was a big hole in the floor. She said we couldn’t possibly sell it for more than 25-30k. Well, we need to clear 45k on it to come out even… so……… ARGHHHHHHH

It needs work, and Chris CAN do the work…but he would need to go up to Tennessee and do the work himself. Pay for it himself (including turning on all utilities for the time in which he is there). And then hope that the work he does means the house can sell for more. A LOT more. But… I doubt that repairing a hole in the floor is going to increase the value of the home by 20k. I know the little town where the house is just isn’t doing very well. They’ve had several factories shut down. I think Chris said they were down to 8,000 people living in the town now.

Maybe we could have a renter move in for free and he fix up the house in lieu of paying rent. That would be perfect for us… it would still cost us every month as we’d have to pay the mortgage, insurance and taxes still… but at least someone would be living in it and fixing it up. But… the last time we tried that the place was destroyed. What the heck is wrong with people today? Sigh…

Maybe we should just sit on the house for the next couple of years and then, when all the kids graduate, we just move up and live in that house. I mean – heck – do you think you could even FIND a home in Tampa for $25k? Or even $45k?? Absolutely not. But then… it’s such a small town. There is a reason people don’t want to live there, right? It snows. They think ‘cow tipping’ is fun. They put pig tongues and feet on the counter at the local Circle K. But then again, the mortgage payment is like $300 a month. I can’t live HERE for that. And… surely the two of us could make enough to cover mortgage and utilities and have enough left over for pretty much anything, right? I dunno……

Well, look at the time. I really have to run.

If you could all please say a prayer for us. Or twenty. That would be great.

"Remember, success is not measured by heights attained but by obstacles overcome. We're going to pass through many obstacles in our lives: good days, bad days. But the successful person will overcome those obstacles and constantly move forward."
-Bruce Jenner-