And now, to add insult to injury, Jason’s car broke down in the grocery store parking lot. It runs, but it’s not drivable because the front wheels are pointing at each other or, as he says, his car is pigeon-toed.

Yeah, so…

If you haven’t done so yet, or today, please go here and vote for Emily’s school. The school that is in first place has an unfair advantage because they were featured on CNN. Seems fair. Not.

Apparently, I’m “not taking this seriously enough”. Even though I’ve posted about it several times on Facebook, I’ve Tweeted it multiple times, I’ve emailed all my coworkers about it and I posted about it here. I guess I’m supposed to do an entire post about it, so here it is.

Emily lost a good friend on January 10th to suicide. It has been very hard on her circle of friends and really on all of the seniors at Andover High School. It is a great tragedy. He was talented. He was well loved. He was funny. He is greatly missed. His name was Nick.

To honor/memorialize their friend, Max Roth made a video and submitted it to Dell’s Superprom Contest. If they win, they will get $100,000 to spend towards their prom. I think it would be awesome for them if they win. I don’t think it will make them forget Nick, or miss him less, but it would help to bring some happiness to their final year of high school that has been very difficult for them.

In addition, Max will also win something if he gathers the most individual votes. Since he’s the one who did all the work on the video, if Andover wins, he should rightfully win the individual contest. Some people inadvertently posted copies of his video. While all votes for a certain school go to that school, no matter which of the videos you vote on, the individual votes don’t go to Max. So when you go there to vote, please vote on the video that has Max’s name below it.

And here’s where you come in. Please go here. If you haven’t already, you will have to register. It takes a few minutes for them to send you a password (you can either stay logged in, or you can change your password by clicking on your name once you are logged in and choosing “edit” and then “sign-in information”), but when you get it, log in and vote for Andover High School (you just click on their high school in the standings on the left side). They are currently in 2nd place, but they have been in first on and off. With your help (all 10 of my readers) they could possibly win.

Please, please, please vote and vote everyday. There are 5 days left. Tell your friends, tell your family, post about it, Tweet and re-Tweet it, share it on Facebook. Whatever you have to do. If they don’t win, someone (ahem, Emily) will blame it on me. Dell, in their wisdom, has even made it easy for you to share it on various networking sites. So, if you do, I will be eternally grateful. I would offer something as an incentive, but I have NO money to buy the winner of any contest anything and I don’t think that you would like anything that I could make you. Also, I don’t have time to make anything. So, there’s that. I’ve been voting and voting and voting, but one person can only vote so many times, y’know.

So please vote. I love you. Thank you.

Why hasn’t anyone ever told me about Pandora? I mean, seriously, I thought you guys were my friends! I AM IN LOVE. I’m addicted to it. In fact if you want to buy me a subscription for the upgrade for my birthday, I’d love you forever. Well, I would probably love you forever anyway, truth be told, but it would be nice of you. This is the exact kind of thing I talked about doing one day. I have told people that I would like to start a radio station where it played all kinds of genres of music. It’s absolutely perfect.

I joined, and then while looking around, I saw all of these people I knew who were listening and what they were listening to. It was so awesome. One of my dearest friends was listening to an artist I absolutely love and I didn’t even know that we both liked that artist. Generally, we don’t even listen to the same kind of music. Or so I thought. Anyway, I’ve put the little widget there in my sidebar, so you can see what I like and maybe take a listen yourself if you haven’t had a chance to experience that particular artist or group. I like almost any kind of music, so you’ll see a wide range of tunes in my lists of listenings. (Yes, I just made that up.)

Pandora is in the title of this post twice for a reason. The first Pandora, I already told you that I LOVE. The second Pandora, not so much. Pandora is Ashley’s annoying, pissing, petrified cat. She doesn’t like anyone besides me (probably because I look a lot like Ashley) and she doesn’t like any of the other animals, which is annoying since she’s lived here for more than a year and she still hisses at them whenever they walk near her. She pisses all over the basement (which is finished, by the way) and has even done it so much that there is one place where the trim is rotting. Why haven’t we gotten rid of her yet, you ask? Because Isabelle LOVES her. And it’s not our cat. We’re just “babysitting” (read: fostering it and paying for it’s litter–that it uses rarely–and all it’s food) for the last 1 1/2 years.

However. And here’s the good news…She’s moving out!!! Ashley and her boyfriend and Isabelle are moving to a new apartment where they allow cats without the exorbitant pet deposit! Hurray. As soon as she moves out, we’re ripping up the carpet, scrubbing down the floor, replacing it with new flooring and replacing the trim.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s not all bad. I mean, she likes me, doesn’t she?

My life has not been really busy. Okay, it’s busy, but probably not as busy as other people’s and not any busier than usual. I’ve been tired, so I’ve been going to bed a lot earlier than I ever have. No, really. I’m talking about going to bed at 8 on nights when Isabelle isn’t here. However, the real reason I haven’t posted is because life in 2010 for us has been depressing. I feel like who wants to hear about all the shitty things that have been happening to me and to the people I love? It has pretty much sucked.

I’ll give you a quick run down…

• I was dealing with the mass in my neck at the beginning of the year. Still don’t really have any clear answers on that except that it is two cysts along my clavicle (collar bone). They say that they are benign (not cancer) and to just watch and wait to make sure they don’t get bigger. I don’t know why anyone has cysts in their neck/chest, but whatever.
• My father-in-law died. Life has been tough for my husband and children. Especially Jason and Emily. Sam has grown up and is trying so hard to take care of everyone. That hurts me, too. It’s hard for me to watch them all grieve, especially Jason and Emily (who it seems to have hit the hardest) when i don’t have a fucking clue what to do for them.
• The same week that my father-in-law died, Emily lost a good friend to suicide. This has been very difficult for her, too. She already struggles with depression and SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), so add shit on top of shit and you have a big pile of shit. And I can’t take it away. And I feel guilty for giving her my genetic make-up.
• I have been tenatively (the thing I’m learning about rheumatologists is that they never say that anything is for certain) diagnosed with something called ankylosing spondylitis. I was having severe hip and back pain and was seeing my rheumatologist for it and even had cortisone shots in both hips. She mentioned that she was thinking more along the lines of ankylosing spondylitis and when I researched that, it fit my medical history and my family history more than any other rheumatological disease. There is a specific genetic marker that they can test for called HLA-B27. Mine tested positive. Only 9% of the population tests positive and never develop symptoms of the disease. I have a lot of the symptoms. This is both a good news/bad news sort of thing because systemic lupus (which is what they thought I had) can cause all sorts of damage to your organs. AS can cause it’s own set of troubling side effects, especially if you have to take the nasty drugs (that are like chemotherapy) to control it. It’s mostly a manage what you can with the least hazardous drugs, exercise, rest, etc., and see how it goes. So that’s where I am at with that.
• Our finances have sucked (which hasn’t been helped by me, Sam and Emily needing to go to this doctor and that one, CT scans, ultrasounds and physical and psychological therapy), but we were hoping for some relief from our tax refund so that we could pay off some of our bills. No such luck. We got back enough to pay for our taxes to get done. First time in 18 years that we haven’t got a significant amount of money back.
• We had to replace our kitchen floor because we had water damage from our refrigerator leaking way back when, but we have a graduation open house coming up in the spring and it really looked like shit. Pull money out of our asses to do that and then again when we have to rip up the carpeting downstairs and replace it with something else because Ashley’s cat has pissed all over and it stinks like crazy down there. And it has to be done before, yes, you guessed it, Emily’s graduation open house.
• While replacing our flooring in the kitchen, Jason cut his finger on the table saw, causing a late night, frantic trip to the ER. He cut a huge chunk out of his finger and there was nothing to do besides cut away the chewed up skin and hope for no infection and that it heals okay. There’s pictures here, but I’ll warn you that they aren’t for the faint of heart/stomach.
• We keep getting more and more stuff about Emily’s impending graduation and her going away to college. I’m so, so, so proud of her, but dammit, I’m scared to death. I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. I know she’s going to be fine and will do well at college and she’ll only be an hour away, but I’m still terrified about how I’m going to be. Every day, it seems, there’s a reminder in the mail. sigh
• Ashley has had one car problem or another. One that threatened to cost her nearly $800. She cannot afford that. She works hard, but she has no cash to spare since she is supporting her and Isabelle on only her income. She gets no aid. No food stamps. No rent assistance. Just the money she makes and the occasional money she gets from Isabelle’s daddy.
• Tonight, Sam told me he hated me. After I told him he was being an ass. I’m not sure whose words hurt me more, his or mine.

So, see…life hasn’t been very fun. But, I’m trying to keep a positive outlook. I’m looking for the positives in everything. I’m even writing them down in my Blackberry as they come up. I’m keeping track of inspirational quotes. I’m trying to stay upbeat and, truly, I don’t feel depressed. It’s just depressing shit keeps happening, y’know?

It’s Monday…time for a fresh start.

*Please go here and vote for Andover High School. These kids could really use to win this contest.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, there was a girl–a woman, really–who was really unhappy. I mean, she was really, really unhappy. She had no reason to be. She had three beautiful, healthy children and one beautiful, healthy grandchild. She had a husband who loved her. Very much. She had a roof over her head, clothes on her back and food on her table. She had a job. A really sweet job with the best work schedule that a person could ask for. Still, she was so unhappy.

She was taking medicine and had tried therapy and still she was sad. She was sadder because she had no reason to be sad and because there were other people who, she felt, had more rites to sadness than she did. She felt guilt and sadness that her depression so deeply affected those around her and made them feel helpless and sad themselves. She felt like happiness was something that could never be achieved for her in her lifetime. She was destined to live out the rest of her life in complete darkness and hopelessness.

However, she had friends and she had family. They made her try. Just try. Try therapy. Try getting more help. Try other medications. Try to not give up hope. Try to believe that they loved her. Try to believe that there was light and happiness outside of the darkness that she lived in.

And. She did. She went to therapy. She started seeing both a counselor and a psychiatrist. One for talking to the other for getting her drugs.

Sure enough, things began to change. It began to get lighter in her dark world. She started to believe in the love of her family and friends. She started to have hope. Most of all, she started to believe in herself. She stopped listening to the negative voice inside of her. She slowly became happy. Sure, there were sad times and small setbacks but, overall, she was happier. Life was good.

And life continues to be good. Yes, I’ve had some sad things in my life, and I feel appropriate sadness when those things come up, but I can truly say that I am happy. I have been in this anti-depressive state for nearly two years and I can barely believe it’s been that long. And–I am so happy that it has been.