Angelamaphone

I’m working on getting my sleeping patterns back in check, but for now, I’m just trying to do what my body tells me to do. I ended up sleeping 14 hours last night, so this isn’t entirely unexpected – just unpleasant and inconvenient.

One of the worst parts of having insomnia, though, is the utter isolation. Mark is in there sleeping soundly (aside from when I accidentally dropped the TV remote when I moved to the living room!), and most of the people I know are curled up comfortably and happily in their beds. I’m here… awake and alone, save for the cats who occasionally try to stir up trouble.

A friend of mine had her bachelorette party tonight, and I had no idea it was happening until I saw some photos where she was tagged. It turns out it was an event on Facebook, but I never managed to find it or be invited. I’m really happy and excited for the awesome couple, but I can’t help but feel sad that I wasn’t there. I feel sometimes like I miss out on a lot of fun.

Another thing that the party reminded me of was my own bachelorette party. I don’t talk often of my previous marriage on here because there’s not a lot to say. However, the festivities of that night left a lot to be desired. My maid of honour left after supper because she was arguing with her mother (my ex-husband’s sister), my soon-to-be sisters-in-law spent their night dancing, singing, and drinking, I felt a bit like an afterthought throughout the night, and I ended up going home early because the only other girl there decided she wasn’t in a partying mood. As sad as it is when a marriage ends (I’ve had quite a few years now to get past those feelings), I’m glad I get to do certain parts of it again someday. The wedding is one of those parts. I often feel as though it’d be selfish to want a fantastic wedding since I’ve technically done it once already, but I figure I’m just as deserving as anyone else, and the people who matter won’t care that it’s not my first wedding.

See what sleeplessness does to me? I babble and ramble on about nothing and everything all at once. Here’s hoping I can get a nap in sometime during the day, and then perhaps continue fixing my schedule.

It’s currently 4:30 in the morning, and I’m exhausted. My sleep has been all sorts of screwed up lately – I didn’t sleep at all two nights ago and I slept for twelve hours last night. I think I’m getting the dreaded summer cold that’s been going around here lately (thankfully, one of my birthday gifts from a dear friend of mine was some Cold 911 from David’s Tea, so I’ll be drinking that as my tea of choice for the next little while!

Speaking of my birthday, I’m now 28 years old! We had my annual celebratory pot luck and board gaming day (and night!) and it was so much fun. I look forward to it every year, and I think our friends do, too!

I also received some amazing gifts this year. My entire gift from Mark’s mom was elephant themed (yay!), which was super cute. She knows me well! In addition to the tea mentioned above, our friend Brianna gave me a candle and some bubble bath, both of which smell amazing. Mark gave me some DVDs (we’re currently working on our Marvel collection) and a Kindle, which has given me a whole new outlook on reading, despite my being on the fence about it at first. It’s amazing, and I’m finishing books so much more quickly! I’ve always been a reader, but I think it’s somehow more fun when I don’t have to worry about ruining the spine or bending the pages. I’ll still be collecting certain books in paperback, and Mark is not convinced of the idea of an e-reader for himself, but I think it’s wonderful for everything else.

On my actual birthday (we did the celebration the day after, since it was a Saturday), we had our friends Megan and Jason over with their beautiful baby girl, and they brought me an ice cream cake in the shape of a hamburger! The cake was hilarious, too – I had just introduced them to Cake Wrecks a few days prior, so when I took the lid off the cake, the inscription said “(In Bold Writing) Happy Birthday Angela”. We all had a great laugh over it, and I think my cake from them will be “wrecked” every year from now on!

They also gave me one of the most sentimental gifts I’ve ever received. It was a beautiful silver necklace with an engraved photo of their daughter (it’s less creepy than it sounds – it’s absolutely gorgeous!), and on the back, it said “I love my godmother”. The original didn’t technically say that – it was incorrectly engraved to say “I love my grandmother”, but they gave it to me so we could all have a good laugh about it, before taking it back to have it corrected. That said, the necklace wasn’t the only gift – the gift was asking me to be their little one’s godmother! Mark is now her godfather, too, and we’re so excited. I’m so glad to be such a special part of her life.

She’s grown quite a bit since that photo, but it’s still one of my favourites! I love that Mark is so comfortable handling babies. I was nervous at first with her, since I’d never handled a newborn, but I learned quickly. I’m just glad her parents are patient!

Aside from birthday excitement, I finished the Semester From Hell, and managed to pass all my classes. I knew there wasn’t much of a chance of my failing, but it was my roughest semester in every aspect of my life – academically, medically, and mentally – so there was always a risk. I’m taking spring courses now (Taxation and International Accounting) and am so relieved to have a bit of a “break”.

Speaking of breaks, Mark and I are considering a small (low-cost/low-budget) vacation this summer, since I finally have my drivers’ license renewed (a story for another day) and can rent a car to drive. We’re going to stay in the relative area, but we’re considering PEI since I loved it so much last time we were there, and we could stay with his grandmother again.

I’m not going to make a promise that I’ll write more, but I am hoping that I can bring myself to do so. The funny thing about depression (okay, not funny – more like frustrating) is that even when I have enough emotion or thoughts going through my head to want to talk about them (or write about them), I either don’t have the energy to do so, or I feel like nothing I could write would matter. I think I need to work through those feelings in time, but I consider my blog here like an old friend – I should be able to call on it whenever the mood is right, and it will be here for me.

An ironic thing to have read while dealing with insomnia, I absolutely love all the tips in this post about maintaining a sleep schedule.

This post about the introduction of seven-digit phone numbers and the introduction of phones with their own dials was incredibly interesting. I love just about everything from the 50s, and while some of the videos were from other decades, they were just as charming!

I’m nearing in to 30 myself (okay, I still have a few more years, but it still feels close!) so I loved this list of things to do and have before 29. I might need to make a list of my own one of these days! If you had a list, what would be on it?

Every once in a while, I think everyone needs a reminder: weight loss is not a cure-all.

And last but not least, simply because I finally (after a year!) played through the entire Mass Effect series start to finish:

I’m just a big ball of awesome lately, aren’t I? First the death cold from hell, and now insomnia. I’m drinking “sleepy tea” right now in hopes that I can go to sleep soon, but it’s definitely 2:30 in the morning right now so even if I get to sleep soon, I’ve missed my goal by about… 4 hours. Whoops! Sadly, the tea isn’t my usual bedtime tea (I ran out of Mother’s Little Helper yesterday and need to go out to get more tomorrow!).

I’ve been hit pretty hard with all the anxiety and stress, and took a week off from the world last week. I felt guilty, of course, but I think I needed it. Here’s hoping next week will be easier.

I’m starting up my links for Friday Favourites tonight, and hoping that I can get back to writing regularly. I just hate not having much more to say than “Hey guys, guess what? I’m depressed and sick again” so I find it easier to back away when I’m feeling really low.

In the meantime, share some links with me – what have you read in the last little while that you found to be absolutely amazing?

I’ve said it before. More than once. Group projects should be banned from the university curriculum. I don’t care that they’re supposed to “prepare you for the real world” – I call bull. If people in the “real world” acted the way these people do during group projects, they wouldn’t have jobs, and people like me would get promotions. Simple.

I’m in the middle of another one of these lovely group projects, and so far it’s been like pulling teeth. It took a week and a half of emails and then going to the professor the class before our paper was due before one of the group members replied, and the other one still hasn’t – to me, at least. Apparently, he went to the other group member. Never mind that I’ve been sending out emails, and we’ve already turned in one of our papers, so he’s so far behind that I don’t know that he’ll catch up.

On top of that, I was sick for our last class (the one where our paper was due) so I had the other member turn in the paper – in theory. She still hasn’t confirmed that she turned it in, let alone showed me her part of the paper. At this point, I feel like I’m losing control. I emailed her on Thursday and also sent her a text message, since she said she doesn’t always have access to email (problem #… I’ve lost count). It took until today (Sunday) for her to reply, at which point she suggested meeting up at 7:30 tonight. First off, last minute? Not going to work when I have six courses and it’s the weekend before my second set of midterms. On top of that, I live an hour and a half away from campus by bus, which means I wouldn’t get home until at least 10 if we met for an hour – at minimum. Not going to happen on a Sunday night when the buses are messed up. That’s not even mentioning the fact that I have plans to do an assignment with another friend (one of the the only two successful group members I’ve ever had in university, surprisingly) and study for the aforementioned midterms.

Who waits three days to reply to a message – text or email – when it’s about something that’s due in five days? How does this constitute good work ethic? On top of that, the professor has implied that it’s my leadership that’s the problem when I asked her for help about what to do. This is simply not working at all. I’m so close to dropping the course – something I’ve never considered before – but I’ve already taken the midterm and feel like that would be such a waste after investing time and effort into the course thus far.

Of course, group projects aren’t my only problem at the moment. My phone is on the fritz yet again and refuses to connect to wi-fi. The last time this happened, I had to do a factory reset to get it working – not promising. Of course, this would happen right after I reduce the amount of data that I have on my account to lower my bill – I wasn’t using much before, so I figured I would lower it. Now, who knows how much I’m stuck using? I’ve still got another year and a few months before I’m eligible for an upgrade on my phone, so I have to just tough it out.

I’m seriously going to break if my stress level doesn’t die down soon. I’ve been sick – with a cold – for two months now. It will not die. I keep telling Mark that if university were a job, I’d be on stress leave right now because my immune system is so shot from the stress. Sadly, you can’t take stress leave from university – they just keep giving you more work to do.

HELP!

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I’m hanging in there. Barely, but I am. The medicine helps the anxiety, but as expected, my course load is nearly too intense to handle. I could probably have done it in first year or second year, but most of my classes now are fourth year specialized classes and I’m exhausted pretty much all the time from trying to keep up.

On top of that, I’ve got some other things going on that I can’t really talk about, but they’re weighing heavily on me. I’ll survive, though – I always do!

In the meantime, I wanted to share this comic. It’s incredibly well-done – so beautiful and simple for such an intense concept. It meant a lot to me, so I wanted to pass it on to anyone who may not have seen it.

For the first time this winter, the ground is covered in snow. Not a ton of snow, mind you – but enough to walk through and leave footprints, and maybe get a bit stuck in your sock (ick!). Or, enough to slip on black ice underneath and bang up your knee like I did this week – whoops! Either way, it looks gorgeous, especially from inside the apartment with a hot cup of tea and some good movies or TV shows to watch.

This post about body love is really good. I immediately followed the directions in the post, and was pleasantly calm after. I was surprised – sometimes when I do that sort of thing, I feel a bit like I’m just phoning it in – not actually going along with it and feeling anything. This time, though, I did.

On the topic of body love, I really liked this article about how body acceptance is absolutely necessary in business. As someone who will be graduating in a little over a year and re-entering the business world, I can admit that I’m afraid for how I will look when I go out there. My goal was to be thin again before I found a job, but that’s relatively unrealistic and doesn’t change the fact that when I graduate, I’ll have a good education and a great GPA. That’s what should matter!

On the entertainment front, I really enjoyed looking at these behind the scenes photos from famous movies. I am a sucker for anything that goes on behind the scenes of TV shows and movies – I like seeing people out of their characters for a bit and just hanging out. My favourite would definitely have to be #22 – the change in perspective makes so much difference!

Being an unemployed student means that we’re not exactly rolling in cash around here. Because of that, I’m always on the lookout for cheap or free things to do that will still be fun. I love this list! I might try working through it in the next little while and do as many of those things as I can.

Pictured: Financial Accounting Theory, Intermediate Accounting II, Strategic Management, and Corporate Finance.

Not Pictured: The cost accounting book I nearly purchased for $200 which would be a duplicate of the one I bought for the fall semester.

Lesson Learned: Wake up before buying books, and actually look at them before getting to the cash register.

Today is a very special day, indeed – Mark‘s birthday!

We’ve got some relatively low-key plans: a friend is bringing over a cake (devil’s food cake!) for him, and we’re going to play some cards. In the meantime, we’re just going to relax and enjoy our last day off – he starts his new job tomorrow, and I’ve got classes.

Happy birthday, Mark! <3

I’ve mentioned before that last semester was my hardest to date (and my grades definitely reflected that, for better or for worse). However, this next semester is proving to be something of a mountain that I’ll have to tackle. Six classes is a lot, but I’m hoping I can organize my way through it – I’ve got a new planner, a whole ton of new school supplies (this is a fantastic Christmas gift – makes me easy to shop for!), and just enough student loans to cover the massive cost of books.

However, I keep worrying. I have been known to worry from time to time, but this is sort of a constant “I should be more prepared” kind of nagging. I feel like I haven’t prepared myself well enough for the semester ahead, though I don’t know what else I could be doing to better prepare myself.

I think I’m afraid that I’ll get lazy and skip my classes, or have a meltdown and fail everything at once. I had a hard time going to four days of classes (the travel time on the bus irritates me when it’s only for one or two classes), made harder by the anxiety that literally kept me bedridden at times. Now, I’ve got five days of classes instead. On top of that, it’s winter – winter in Nova Scotia is cold (duh!) and windy and miserable, and I just wish I could live somewhere sunny year-round.

Yes, I’m whining. Oh, well.

I think I just need to hope for the best. I’m already putting extra pressure on myself just by stressing out – do I really need that?