Issue #22 hot as hades
I was right—having a newsletter (specifically on TinyLetter) is gaining new readers as opposed to the supposed staleness of my blog. Hi, new readers! Also, hi to old readers coming back to the fold (Hi, Greg!).
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I had a piece, sky swallowed, recently published in The Drabble and people liked it, which surprises me. I'm always surprised when people like stuff I write, even after all this time. I wish I was more cocksure about non-spilling-guts stuff but here we are. I read recently by someone or another they took the advice of some famous author you should try and aim for 100 rejections a year. A writer I met via the comment boards on a lit magazine site said she felt that rejections help her hone her craft better, despite much teeth gnashing, and I have to agree. Some stories I thought they were so brilliant were really awful after I was able to look at them with fresh eyes.
It's all about the learning process.
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I fired my L-ville therapist last week. From Facebook (you can totally add me as a friend):
And she's fired. She asked why. I told her what she did was way out of line and unethical. She rolled her eyes. She wanted to know why I just didn't call or text, I said it was better professionally to do it in person. She asked me if I was really that pissed, I said no. She then asked if we are having a session today and I said no and that was it!
[response to a statement on the post]
Maybe. I still maintain it was professional and adult like to tell her to her face. ("You really think that?") Since she commented last week she didn't think her car would make the back and forth trip to Lexington so I am going to assume it was more her having to drive than anything else.
She's crossed the line on other things (negative comments on my clothes (jeans and tshirts at my age), said "why not have TEH pay for my re-eval", telling me my previous evals were probably wrong but her office mate would give me the correct diagnosis, told me she couldn't do my SSDI paper work when due because "she had personal things to attend to).
Fuck. Her.
So yeah, fuck. her.
I got in touch with Dr. P., my awesome shrink in Grand Rapids and we're scheduling appointments this summer if / when we are in Michigan. TEH and I's couple's therapist made a great recommendation for someone to work with me here in Louisville and this therapist has got me on the books for next week. Thank god for the hustle. # My current favorite word is "incensed" because that's how I feel most days about something or another. A little bit annoyed and not quite angry. Example: The practice my APRN works for sent a robo-call to tell me I had an overdue payment of $60. I called their billing and find out the $60 is for an eval questionnaire I supposedly took on March 3rd and I should have gotten results. I did not have an appointment on March 3rd, I did not take the questionnaire, I did not receive a bill in the mail or the results, and I pay for everything in full for every session. They tell me to email the ombudsman ("To keep a paper trail") and so I do. The letter was straight to the point and factual and I had to reword a few sections to come off as "incensed" rather than batshit fucking angry. It's been two days. No response.
This practice also incenses me with how to contact my therapist directly (you leave a message and 80% of the time the message is not delivered) and their handling of Medicaid when I first started going. (They did, then they didn't, they discharged me with no recommendations when they stopped taking Medicaid and if I had not already spoken to my APRN about paying my sessions in cash and thus remaining with the practice, I would have been fucked.)
Since we've been paying for everything in cash, as professional mental health services with Medicaid, and in Kentucky, are awful so I'm searching for a new APRN to start this fall. I haven't been off the drugs for nearly three years and I'm not about to go off them now.
Wish me luck this will calm down in the next six months or so or else I will go from being "incensed" to "batshit fucking angry." # As many of you know, TEH and I bought a cabin in the early days of our marriage and I didn't fight him for it when we divorced (he wanted to give it to me but I had no job and no money to keep the mortgage going and if I lived up there in the winter, I would have been fucked as they get over 125" of snow a year. At least.). Now that we're back together, we refer it to "the cabin" just as we refer to Mortimer as "the car" and the condo as "the condo." By stripping ownership of who owns what, it helps make me feel I'm not so cash poor in the world.
Anywho, since the job market has been tough on me (see the last three years and easily 300 job applications in a variety of fields), TEH and I agreed we'd go up to Michigan for the summer. I'd get a part-time retail job somewhere (my resume will be stripped of all but my bachelor degrees and my work duties will be sparse) and he would work from home. With most of my credit carddebt gone, I'd need $500/month or so to pay my ongoing bills which I should be able to accomplish up north. Then when we got back around Labor Day, the local stores here would be hiring for seasonal help and while I continued to pound the pavement for a full-time gig, I could get at least something to tide me over.
After rejection after rejection, imagine my surprise to get not one but three recruiters contacting me over the last few days for potential. One is for a full-time social media management position, another for an entry level web developer, and another to do document editing for a utility company here in the city. The first two are direct hires while the other is a two-month contract. All three pay much better than I had hoped but not quite the hooker and blow money from my library and archivist days (yes, academia does pay well as do large corporations). All three are slowly moving forward into references and drug screening phases and if one of them pans out, I could eventually have a semi-big girl job.
I also applied to do editing for a web company and my initial application was approved. I just now have to edit a document they sent and find out the final status. If that works, the pay is the same for all the editors in the company so I don't have to compete with others on the money and the money is a consistent time frame on getting paid so it isn't shady. I can also work from anywhere since it's all on the internets which would be grand. The downside is calculating the per word cost, and their estimation of how long that word count will take, you can make as little as $10/hour. But I am getting desperate so I'll take just about anything.
What this all means is my dreams of a frolicking summer in Northern Michigan may be on hold. My grand scheme was to get us out of here the weekend of Memorial Day which turned into the following weekend as TEH is on call and he doesn't want to be on the road if he gets paged and stay until Labor Day. Now I am juggling these job things and that could possibly push the date out sooner and for shorter durations. I told two of the three I have very set family vacation plans I cannot change of two weeks in June and another two weeks in August. One said that was fine, I haven't heard back from the other one yet but I'm sure it can all be sorted out.
I have a set day and time to get working on tattoo #18 and as my tattoo artist books out months in advance (I scheduled this in February), I am not missing it come hell or high water as the artist is located in Grand Rapids (hence the unmovable two weeks in June). We're connecting some a few tattoos together to make them more cohesive. It's been my plan for years to do a sleeve on my right arm. I started out with a half one and at the rate I'm going, it'll be a full one. This will be a two session work, each session will be about 4-5 hours and it's happening two days after my 45th birthday.
It's going to be awesome.
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