Stress @ MindSay

What have I been doing since my last post?

Waiting.

A guy from a literary publication contacted me, saying he read an article about me in Rosebud (see chapter 20 for details) and wanted to report the article in his own magazine.

How cool is that?  After running around the apartment, arms flailing, blood pumping, I sat at my computer to see what he needed. 

I filled out a bio like he asked me to, answered some questions like he asked me to, and then…

Waited.

It's been two weeks since I e-mailed him the answers and I haven't heard back.  Is my story going to be in the next publication?  Who knows.  All I can do is wait.

And last Saturday, the day before my first wedding anniversary, my wife and I went looking for houses.  We found one, we liked it, we went to see it again.

We decided to put an offer on it. 

So we print out all the documents and spend the evening signing them.  One after another after another.  Boom boom boom.

I get to work extra early so I can fax everything over to the realtor in time for her to get the offer in by 10.  I stick the papers into the machine, I type the number.

Nothing.

I try again.

Nothing.

I pitifully ask for help.

The fax machine is not my friend.

But fortunately we have another, so I try that sucker.  And wouldn't you know it, that one doesn't work either.  It's an epidemic.

But that's okay, because we can scan the documents and turn them into PDFs and e-mail them over.

If only the person who has access to the fancy printer would get in to work already.

Minutes tick by.  I keep trying to fax.  It keeps not working.  More minutes go by.

And hour goes by.

And finally she's here, and zip, we go straight to the machine.  It reads the documents hungrily.  We've got ourselves a PDF.

Oh wait, it's too large to e-mail.

We rescan.  Three smaller piles worth.  Three new files.

Oh, these'll go through the invisible e-mail wires, but veeeeeeeery slowly.  So I wait, and I wait, and I see the little "sending" icon on my computer, and I wait.

And I know that every minute that goes by an offer could be coming in from someone else.

But finally the realtor has all the documents!  But she has a meeting to go to.

"I'll send this right after lunch."

Uh, my stomach is killing me.  That other offer could be coming in right now.  The house could be disappearing from our grasp.

But "right after lunch" comes around, and I think the offer is in, and I know we aren't going to get an answer back right away (and if we did it'd probably be an answer we didn't want) but I'm still anxious anyway.

Waiting.

And then the phone rings at 5:00. Boy howdy am I nervous.

But for no reason, because there's no answer yet, because she hasn't even put in the offer yet.  There's a line on one of the forms that got cut off, so I have to rewrite my initials and send it through again.

So I do that.  But no, we BOTH need to initial.  So I forge Kristina's three letters and send it through again.

Okay, that's it, she's good to go.  The offer is in.

And now?

We wait.

And I know in that time another offer has come in.  I just know it.  How could it not have?

But even so…

…we wait. 

I could have an article printed about me in a literary magazine, and I could be the proud owner of a lovely new home in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

I could.  After the wait.   

We decided to go shopping before the zoo, my sister and I!  What a great day we had planned.  And it was going so well!  Out of the six major Thrift World Stores in the Metro area of Omaha, we hit two.  The two nicest ones with the Brand Name clothes!  One on the Northwest side of Omaha and one on the Southeast side of Omaha near the Zoo.

 

What a great way to end our mini camping trip that just turned in to being a mini stay at my sister's house due to the varying weather that kept popping up!  Instead of staying at the really nice free camp grounds we stayed at my sister's house for a few days, I wasn't going to chance being caught near a big man made lake that had extermly high levels near the banks of the camp ground!

 

Anyway, after a GREAT haul of a summer woredrobe for both kids from two different thrift shops and then treating the kids to lunch, we headed to Henery Dooley (sp?) Zoo for a nice afternoon.  It started out great!  We hit the Jungle, the Sea Lions, the Garden of Senses, the Cat House, part of the Avaiary, the Gorrila House, the Cat Complex, the feeding time for the smaller tropical birds, the Desert Dome, and the Giaraff House.  With smaller enclousers along the way of course!  Of course pictures are on here!  Enjoy!

 

While we were just ouside of the New Butterfly House and the Aquareme deciding which one we were going to go in first before we started heading to the town were my van was sitting so the kids and I could head home and my sister and her kids could head home, we heard the tornado sirins go off!  Now I know why so many ppl get killed in public places during storms!  The tornado sirns go off and the majority of the Zoo visitors head for the Goddess Dayum parking lots!  I kid you not!  Well being country girls, my sister and I herd the kids to the aquarememe (sp?) house under the canapoy and bust out our cell phones.  Each of us respectively calling our hubby's, asking them why the hell neither one of them called to tell us there was a storm system heading straight at Omaha!  We informed both of them that we were heading for the storm shelters in the Fish house and we would call once the storm passed.  Then we hearded the kids towards one of the Zoo Workers holding a door open to the basement of the complex leading to the exective offices and we were one of the first groups down. 

 

There were a few other ppl down there already but what we found the most funny out of this was that everyone single person down there including us, were NOT from Omaha persay but from the surrounding communities and areas!  We are NOT fools!  While the main secruity guy was telling us and the few zoo workers what the plan was, he was getting reports from the weather radio and the few of us that stopped and made calls.  Then he asked us to sit tight, while he and his other crew went outside to go round up the rest of the Zoo visitors and get them inside various zoo complexes till the storm passed.

 

We had a couple of upset kids of course, my daughter being one of them, and a lot of upset ppl, including ball players that stuck around after the College World Series before they went home.  Those of us from the midwest were laughing and joking and calming the kids down.  We kept telling everyone that we are in one of the safest buildings and don't worry about the animals they know what to do and the zoo workers were making sure they were safe also.  Once all the zoo workers got in the main secruity guy came back in to our basement and said it was pitch black out and winds up to 90-100 miles per hour and they would not know if a tornado hit till after it was clear out.  The lights did go out and thankfull the generator kicked on right away.

 

After we got the okay to clear out and leave the zoo, we got some pictures of the damage done in side the zoo.  Down trees and one of the heavy glass safety entrance doors to the Wild Kingdom Palliviallion was completely blown off and laid gently down in front of the Pavillion!  I missed that picture! There was hail everywhere!  We had to make our way out of the Eastern Side of Omaha back towards the I-10 exit so we could head to Freemont NE which is an hour Northeast of Omaha, where my van was sitting!  Damage everywhere!  While driving the news said, the Art Festival got hit hard downtown Omaha, there was a boat taken off of a dock in the Missiouri and was dropped on the roof of a house, trees blocking roads, and down electrical poles all over Omaha downtown/metro area!  We stopped on the outskirts of town to feed the kids and the Taco Johns we hit had running TVS.  The area heading to Fremont NE was hit hard also and a semi rig was entangled in electrical wires!  Cars of the road, rigs off the road, and major damage.  This system worked its way into IA and massive damage and two killed on the IA side.

 

We got detoured outside of a town between Omaha and Fremont due to massive damage and accidents.  Where I got a phone call from Randy when he got home.  My dog Spud died during the day yesterday!  Randy was upset and of course the kids and I were very upset also, but we also knew the dog was going to end up dying on us.  Spud was the dog with the unknown seizures.  At first Randy thought he somehow choked while he was outside on the chain but when he went up to examine Spud, there was plenty of slack in the chain and the collar would have slipped right off of his neck (we made sure that it could slip off if he was caught up when running or on the chain if something would have happened).  The way Spud was laying and his facial features, you could tell he had a massive siezure.  So trying to find our way on back country roads and county paved hiways we didn't know to get back into Fremont, we had upset kids and nobody was out directing the traffic.  My sister and I again being country girls said fuck it and got on a country road and started heading towards the sun because Northwest was where we wanted to head.  We picked up a truck in front of us from our home area just a different county and he had the same idea.  We got rerouted via the roads with no help from anyone due to big trees, silos, fencing, and other debries in the mushy gravel roads!  A normal 1 hour drive from Omaha to Fremont took 2 hours!

 

Once we got to a lil town Southeast of Fremont which would have been the quickest route we got denied by a State Trooper directing traffic.  Nobody was allowed into town where a small lake was surrounded wiht houses and such due to the damage!  They weren't letting anyone through not even family members of the town or land owners with no houses.  Ambulances and Fire trucks were all over the town and two of the rural fire trucks were making their way towards the other road leading to Fremont.  We just turned around and followed the fire trucks into Fremont.  Finally!  Fremont NE had no major damage.  Some trees down and some windows broken but no major damage.  Then we pull up into the truck stop where we left my van.  I got a lovely suprise!  My rear windsheild was blown out or a rock got kicked up in the storm!  I have no rear windshield now!  Nothing was stolen.  But everything was glass covered clear up to the front seat and everything was water logged!  Thank GODS I had what ever paperwork I did have in there in sacks and covered up!  My Leadership Manual alone would have cost me 100 some dollars to replace if it got water logged or damaged somehow!

 

So I called Randy yet again and told him we FINALLY made it into Fremont but I would be still a lot later because we had to clean up the glass and find places for the kdis to sit with out getting cut up!  Thankfull we were able to pull a couple of the pillows from underneith my tent that dind't have glass on it and give those to the kids to sit on.  My sister handed over one of her towels so I could sit on it while driving.  And then we rearrange the back so none of my Thrift shop finds, my tents, sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, or other camping gear would go flying out for my hour drive home!  I ended up pulling over twice on the way home to rearrange my back but FINALLY my normal two hour drive ended up being a 4 hour and 45 minute drive and we made it home at 8:45pm.  where we promptly unloaded the van and shop vaccued it out so I could get some plastic on the windshield due to more storms coming this weekend.

 

After we got that done, we gave Spud my Fat Man Dog a burial worthy of a King.  See we couldn't bury him.  The ground is too wet and his smell would draw the local wild dog pack and the local coyote pack.  Not to mention all the other wild critters int he area.  So we took my lovely burn pile Randy made up for me this weekend and gave Spud a Funeral Pry.  We didn't want any other anmals digging him up and eating on him.  Randy loaded him on the bonfire and I threw some sage, cedar chips, and sweet grass all over Spud and we said a lil blessing for him and said our goodbyes.

 

Now today, I get to call his old family and inform them that he is gone.  I am doing laundry from the back of my van and going to take the kids down to my girl's house because they are still stressed from last night.  A lil fun down at Aunties house and coming home about the time Daddy gets home from work will do them good. 

 

Now I am off to throw another sleeping bag into the wash!  Pictures to come after this post!

Jeannine Aversa - AP

 

The stress from deepening debt is becoming a major pain in the neck - and the back and the head and the stomach - for millions of Americans.

When people are dealing with mountains of debt, they're much more likely to report health problems, too, according to an Associated Press-AOL Health poll. And not just little stuff; this means ulcers, severe depression, even heart attacks.

Take Edward Driscoll, 38, of Braintree, Mass. He blames debt - $10,000 worth - for contributing to his ulcers and wife Kimberly's panic attacks. "Just worrying, worrying, worrying, you know, where the next payment of this is going to come from," he says.

Although most people appear to be managing their debts all right, perhaps 10 million to 16 million are "suffering terribly due to their debts, and their health is likely to be negatively impacted," says Paul J. Lavrakas, a research psychologist and Associated Press consultant who analyzed the results of the survey. Those are people who reported high levels of debt stress and suffered from at least three stress-related illnesses, he says.

That finding is supported by medical research that has linked chronic stress to a wide range of ailments.

And the current tough economic times and rising costs of living seem to be leading to increasing debt stress, 14 percent higher this year than in 2004, according to an index tied to the AP-AOL survey.

Among the people reporting high debt stress in the new poll:

-- 27 percent had ulcers or digestive tract problems, compared with 8 percent of those with low levels of debt stress.

-- 44 percent had migraines or other headaches, compared with 15 percent.

-- 29 percent suffered severe anxiety, compared with 4 percent.

-- 23 percent had severe depression, compared with 4 percent.

-- 6 percent reported heart attacks, double the rate for those with low debt stress.

-- More than half, 51 percent, had muscle tension, including pain in the lower back. That compared with 31 percent of those with low levels of debt stress.

People who reported high stress also were much more likely to have trouble concentrating and sleeping, and were more prone to getting upset for no good reason.

When their construction business went under four years ago, Pamela Crouch, 61, and her husband, who had retired from General Motors, found themselves struggling under IOUs totaling $30,000.

"We just kind of felt desperate. We just really didn't have enough to live on to pay what we had to pay," recalls Crouch, of Eaton, Ind. She remembers having trouble sleeping and concentrating. "We ended up paying a lot of our bills just on the credit card," says Crouch, a medical assistant in a nursing home. "We were stressed and depressed. ... It was really rough."

Their son, a manager of a construction supply company, recently helped them out with their debt problems. "Things are doing much better," she says. "It made a world of difference in how we feel."

It isn't known for certain whether such stress is causing health problems, says Lavrakas, who while at Ohio State University in the late 1990s helped to develop an index to measure the extent to which people are stressed from financial debts.

But medical research suggests that most of the symptoms reported in this poll are indeed typical of chronic stress. The body reacts with a "fight-or-flight" response, releasing adrenaline and the stress hormone cortisol. That helps you react fast in an emergency, but if the body stays in this high gear too long, those chemicals can wreak physical havoc in numerous systems - everything from a rise in blood pressure and heart rate to problems with memory, mood, digestion, even the immune system.

And no, stress doesn't cause stomach ulcers - most are caused by bacteria - but stress can worsen the pain.

Regardless of the health implications, Americans are taking on more debt as tough economic times - slowing economic activity, job losses, soaring energy and food prices, slumping home values and record home foreclosures - strain many people's budgets.

Revolving consumer debt, almost all from credit cards, now totals $957 billion, compared with $800 billion in 2004, according to the Federal Reserve.

Average car loans are up, too, to $27,397, from $24,888 four years ago. Home mortgages total $10.5 trillion, compared with $7.8 trillion in 2004.

So much for blogging everyday, huh? Oh well. I’ll give myself a break since I just got back from a wedding this weekend. It was a really beautiful wedding with a lot of music (kudos to that) and a nice reception, but I am incredibly glad to be home. Even though I like to dance and socialize at weddings from time to time, this wedding was made up of mostly people I didn’t know so I was too awkward to have any fun. J

 

When I got home the first things I did was ride my bike. Being alone with my parents for that long of a trip was a bit stressful. What I really needed to do was smash something, but I guess burning calories will have to suffice for tonight. I really don’t know what else to talk about tonight. I feel a little empty. I have the next four days to spend with my mother before I go the airport. I can’t wait for the trip, but I really don’t look forward to spending most of my time with my mother over these next few days.

 

Alright enough random whining and moaning (and not the fun kind). I need a shower and to do laundry so I can pack my bags.  

There is a screen play script contest going on for the drama club at one of the colleges here. I’m thinking about entering it, but I’m not sure I can find an idea that will actually be worth while. That, coupled with the fact that I am just beginning to realize how much more complex the format for screen plays is than stage plays, puts me off from attempting it. I have until August 10, so we’ll see.

As far as today goes, it was stressful. I am looking forward to my vacation and to being away from my house.