Just Updates in Life |2021|

The week ended up okay. Just a little mini-meltdown and I feel a little better now. I need to contact my doctor to get put back on my antidepressants, among other things. I just have to remind myself to make time.

Its been a while since I wrote. I think the last time I wrote I was fresh off an emotionally abusive relationship, throwing myself into rescue, and working in emergency management. I think I had just moved out of my mother’s house and into my own. A lot of things are still the same while others have changed drastically.

Starting with my home. I still have my house. It’s slowly starting to feel more like mine. After three years, I guess that’s a good start. Lol. My little sister and her boyfriend lived here for 2.5 of those three years. They just moved out in August. So, it’s back to getting adjusted to living alone, which this will be the first time I’ve really done that, outside of the first 6 months in my home. Learning to really and truly be by yourself is an adjustment.

My mother cut us out of her life a couple months back. We’ve had a lot of strain on our relationship, especially when she got together with her current boyfriend - they met December 2017. Things just got uncomfortable. Fast forward to this summer and my little sister gets a call from my mother saying she is have a mental breakdown, between her and the boyfriend they had completely destroyed their house (closet door broken down, doors broken, things everywhere), and she decided to hack her wrist open.

So the three of us kids (me, my sister, and my younger brother) drop everything we’re doing and fly over to her place. The boyfriend took off. We all decided that we needed to get her out of there (looking back, this is the only thing I regret doing - taking her choice away, but this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened). My brother takes my mother to the ER while my sister, her boyfriend, and I pack up all her shit. We filled my mother’s car and my sister’s car. We took her two small dogs with us, and I coordinated finding placement for her three big dogs. The plan was for her to stay at my sister’s until she could figure out what she was going to do. Long, dramatic story short after all of this she decided to go back to him. Then proceeded to flip out on us kids for not “respecting her decision” and then not communicating with her about our lives when we we told her that if she went back to him we weren’t going to be a part of it.

So, that’s fun. Prior to this I hadn’t seen her since March and rarely talked to her. While before the boyfriend we were constantly doing things together and were pretty close. But, it’s okay. Well, it’s not okay, but it will be…moving on....

Biggest update - I have a niece. She just turned 2. She’s the love of my life and is everything that is good in this world. I can’t imagine not being an aunt. I look at her and know without a doubt I would do anything to protect her. Being an aunt is the best.

I started my own non-profit senior and special needs dog rescue in February of this year. I currently have three fosters in my home that either are or will be available for adoption. They all came from the same home after landing in a rural shelter after their owner passed away. Two are chihuahuas and one is a schnauzer mix. So far we have rescued 8 dogs. Which isn’t a lot, but when I am the only foster home and it’s mostly a one woman show, it’s something.

I am still working in emergency management. Its been almost 5.5 years. I am now working in Recovery (2.5 years), managing FEMA Public Assistance grants. It’s a whole thing. I love and hate it - it’s probably one of my bigger stressors. It has mostly been me and my boss running three open disasters because every time we get staff hired and trained they end up quitting. Then add the COVID disaster to those, which has completely flipped everything we thought we knew about the program (we’ve had no less than 6 policy changes since March 2020), plus a constant revolving door of staff. Then we just found out the state is doing their annual audit and our disaster grants are what managed to get pulled. This will take place the last week of November/first week of December. I’ve never been through an audit, but my manager said these are a lot more stressful and in-depth than our usual FEMA monitoring (happens every 2 years, and my program has never really had to deal with it).

So, yay. Better get the drugs and therapy on board stat.

xx Shea